‘Well,’ Carolina said doubtfully, ‘there’s the matter of his confession and arranging for his pardon and - ’
‘That will be no trouble.’ Reba had regained her old jauntiness. ‘My father will arrange everything.’
Looking at her confident friend, Carolina hoped so. She hoped that Robin never told her of a night in the Sea Wench's great cabin ... or of another night on the black sand beach at Pico. She hoped he would not have to see too much of his mother-in-law. She hoped he would set a straight course at last - and now that Reba would be there to steady him, as a wife this time with rights and responsibilities, she rather thought he would do so.
God grant us all happiness, she thought. Although perhaps we none of us deserve it!
She had been thinking that when she saw Reba wed. Robin had glanced up at Carolina just before he slipped a heavy gold ring (Carolina’s gift to the bride) on Reba’s finger. And for a split second she saw in his eyes a yearning that spoke louder than words. I could have loved you, she read in that glance. And you could have loved me.
Carolina’s chin had gone up haughtily, warding off that look, and she had moved a step closer to Rye.
The marquess took her meaning. He had sighed - and Reba had taken that sigh as a sigh of love - and slipped the ring on her eager finger.
And afterwards everyone had embraced and Carolina had thrown flower petals at the bride and groom - yellow rose petals from that garden in Horta - and some of the yellow petals had caught in Reba’s hair and shone like fireflies in the slanted sunlight. Carolina would always remember her like that, flushed and happy, with her arm locked in Robin Tyrell’s and her russet eyes glowing.
And now it was Carolina’s turn.
Dressed at last in her scarlet silks, Carolina swished out on deck. It was deepening dusk now; the sun had sunk behind the horizon. But the huge rubies around her neck had the glow of a setting sun themselves. She knew the necklace looked overdone atop her tailored riding habit, but she did not care, she had promised to wear it. The sight of it overwhelmed the female passengers of the Mary Constant. They muttered enviously to each other that the necklace was now ‘really hers’, for the buccaneers who had set out from England to clear their names had been so grateful to the Silver Wench for managing to separate the pirate captain from his ship at exactly the right time, and later for keeping them from murdering the marquess - which they now realized would have made them permanent exiles from England - that they had voted to award the necklace to the Wench to wear around her pretty neck when she wed their captain. The rest of the ransom, fifty thousand pieces of eight, was prize enough.
‘And will she keep the necklace?’ murmured Mistress Hedge enviously. Her voice had a trace of a wail in it.
Her husband nodded. ‘So they say.’
‘Wild creature that she is - I wonder what she did to earn it!’
‘Hush,’ John Hedge said severely. ‘The brides are coming out on deck. You can see the necklace now - on the neck of the first bride, the auburn-haired one. But ’tis the blonde who will keep it, so they say.’
And keep it she did. Though not to wear riding, of course. Rye, looking at it, said ruefully that it was a pity she could not be presented at Court wearing it. The Queen would envy her.
Carolina thought the Queen might better envy her something else - the tall strong man who stood beside her and took his vows with a ringing voice and a stern look upon his saturnine countenance. Carolina stole a look at him as he promised ‘with all his worldly goods to her endow’ and wondered if stout little Captain Dawlish, who was performing the ceremony, had any idea of the amount of loot the bridegroom had stored in banks in Amsterdam and with goldsmiths in London - poor Captain Dawlish would choke if he knew, she thought in amusement.
For herself, she would take the man and let the treasure go, if it came to that. She knew it - she had always known it. Reba might sigh enviously over the ruby necklace that now blazed on Carolina’s throat, but Carolina would promptly have flung the necklace into the sea if God would but grant her an extra year of life to spend with Rye.
For the last time she stood on the deck of the Mary Constant as she spoke her vows in starlight - and the glow of the swaying ship’s lanterns. Beyond the ship’s rail the surf foamed up the black beach towards the low white houses of Horta, and they and their roses and hydrangeas were blurred into pale romantic shapes against the night. Around her now was no clamouring crowd of buccaneers - they waited to drink to their captain’s health aboard the Sea Waif, for they had already seen the Silver Wench married once to Captain Kells on Tortuga and most of them - lawless men that they were - thought a second marriage, however legal, to be redundant.
And then Reba was embracing her - Robin prudently did not - and everyone was crowding around wishing her well, and she was smiling up at Rye and thinking humorously that the middle of the ocean was a strange place to be wed.
And then Reba and Robin were being hurried on to the Sea Wench, which was about to cast off, and the passengers of the Mary Constant waved goodbye to Rye and Carolina as they in their turn boarded the Sea Waif.
Her last memory of the Azores was of standing on deck in her brilliant narrow-waisted red silk riding habit with her wide skirts whipping about her slim legs and the enormous ruby necklace gleaming barbarically about her neck in the starlight. On either side the peaks of those enormous undersea mountains called Fayal and Pico were dark hulks rising from the glittering water as the Sea Waif's great sails took the wind, and the ship soared like a swallow and fled down Fayal Channel, heading across the mid-Atlantic ridge towards the endless wastes of the broad Sargasso Sea.
They had left behind them the world of town, and courtliness, and the leisurely life of English country houses. They had left behind the world that was their heritage.
But for Carolina and her tall lover, leaning against the taffrail in the starlight, that world seemed well lost. With the rakish Sea Wench looking like a shadow of the lean grey Sea Wolf (for Sea Waif would be painted out once they struck open ocean) they were sailing towards their future - a future to be found in the sparkling Caribbean waters of the Spanish Main.
There in the Caribbean a man might seek a pardon - however unjustified the circumstances that had made him need it - from his king. There in the Caribbean, if money changed hands, he was likely to receive that pardon. And even if he did not, he could live out his life in those jewellike islands, owner of all he surveyed. He could raise his children and smile into his wife’s eyes and know that life was good - and always would be.
So, Rye promised himself, it would be for Carolina - always good. He blamed himself for her straying, but now she would have no need to stray for he would always be at her side, protecting her, loving her. His arm tightened around her and he bent his head and buried his face in the heady lemon scent of her hair, and felt her feminine body quiver a response.
And Carolina pressed closer to him, her every breath an invitation to a silken joining, her body one with his in silent communion in the starlight. She lifted her head and her luminous silver eyes focused lovingly upon that dark sardonic face above her, looking down into her own so intently and with such tenderness. Silently she promised him everything - her heart, her body, her very soul until the last wave had crashed upon the last shore.
They had forgotten the world now, these star-crossed lovers, forgotten the ship with its great timbers creaking, forgotten the winds of chance that had brought them here.
Sighing, lost in each other, they moved in unspoken agreement towards the great cabin for this, their third wedding night - indeed almost their fourth! Moved towards crisp smooth sheets and ardent fiery kisses and dizzy flights of passion - and a homecoming of the soul.
And above them in the crackling shrouds, as they moved together raptly towards that wondrous fulfilment, the wild winds flying down from the heights of Pico seemed to sing their own song that drifted out over the glittering wastes of the Atlantic, those seas that as they swung sout
hward would change into the clean shining aquamarine waters of the world Rye and Carolina had made their own. It was a song of love, that windsong, and it swirled to its own music, endlessly sweet.
In moonlight and in starlight
Their dangerous nights were bathed.
And now at last, by grace of God
They’re through it all - unscathed!
Epilogue
Naught but love to guide them now,
They who’ve broken every vow,
The winds of chance have blown and brought them here.
But the love they once had known
And the courage they have shown
Have won them through to all they once held dear!
In Williamsburg on a crisp autumn day Aunt Pet received a package. It was delivered in mid-afternoon by a laconic sea captain who said he had promised Captain Dawlish faithfully to deliver it. Eager to get back to the Raleigh where a certain pretty tavern wench had brushed him twice with her ample breasts (and not by accident, he hoped!) as she squeezed by him through the crowd, the captain merely rapped the knocker of the checkerboard brick two-storey house and thrust the package in without comment, other than that he was Captain Wentworth of the Philadelphia. It was received by a white-aproned serving girl who answered the door.
All the serving girl had caught of the captain’s mumbled words was ‘Philadelphia’ and so, when she carried the package in to her mistress - who was in the midst of serving tea to a group of ladies who included Carolina’s mother, Letitia Lightfoot - she announced prettily that it was a ‘package just come from Philadelphia.’
‘Oh, I wonder what my friends have sent me!’ cried Aunt Pet, naturally assuming it was from the friends she had visited earlier in the year.
Everyone watched brightly as she unwrapped it among the tea things - and there it was, her cherished silver chamber pot!
One of the elegant ladies dropped her cup and another gasped, but Aunt Pet clutched her treasure to her and beamed.
‘He has returned it!’ she cried joyfully. ‘Can you believe it? That pirate has returned my chamber pot!’
Among the ladies, Letitia Lightfoot restrained the bubbling laughter that rose to her lips at the sight of a chamber pot being clutched to her hostess’s ample silken bosom, and reached forward a violet-gloved hand to indicate something that had fallen to Aunt Pet’s lap.
‘There’s a note, Petula,’ she pointed out.
‘Why, yes, there is!’ Aunt Pet set down the chamber pot and picked up the note.
‘It seems hastily penned,’ remarked a pink satin-clad lady, looking curiously over Aunt Pet’s shoulder.
‘And full of blots,’ added her lace-trimmed daughter, craning her thin neck.
‘It says “Aboard the Sea Wolf'.' Aunt Pet looked up with a shiver.
‘Well, read it, Petula,’ said Letitia in a bored tone. ‘We’re all dying to know what’s in it.’
‘Dear Aunt Pet,' read that lady in a trembling voice. ‘Why, it’s from Carolina, Letty!’
Letitia sat up straighter. ‘What does she say, Petula?’ she asked sharply.
‘She says: Rye has retrieved this for you from the real culprit about whom you will soon hear, I’ve no doubt. Captain Dawlish must sail with the tide so there’s no time to write, but I wanted to tell you he has married us aboard the Mary Constant - l am Carolina Evistock now, and I hope you will wish Rye and me happiness. Ever your loving, Carolina. And wait, there’s a postscript: Tell Mother she was wrong about Rye - he’ll make a wonderful son-in-law!’
There was a general gasp and a rattle of teacups, but Letitia leant over and snatched the note from Aunt Pet and studied it. She was not sure how she felt about this marriage. Her daughter had found a husband who could drape her in emeralds - but one who might also get her killed. She pondered the matter and decided that, overall, Carolina had done no less than she would have done in her place.
Fielding Lightfoot took another view - one of relief. He doubted that tempestuous Carolina - that daughter he had felt forced to claim even though the shoe rubbed - would ever see the Tidewater again. No, she would be off somewhere else, making endless trouble beyond a doubt!
But it was Sandy Randolph who, hearing of the returned chamber pot and reading the note, shook his head and sighed.
‘I misjudged young Evistock,’ he said. ‘I see that he was every inch a buccaneer . . .’
And in a way that was a benediction, coming as it did from the real father of the bride.
Circuitously Carolina received a letter from Virginia who was still in Essex. It was mostly about the glories of the Essex countryside and the books she and Andrew were poring over together, but there was one passage she would never forget.
I have been wearing your clothes, Carolina - as you told me I might, the letter said. And I hope you will not mind that I have had them let out because I fear that since eating my meals with Andrew - who eats heartily for all that he remains thin as a rail - I have burst my bodice and strained my stays! Still Andrew beams on me and says I am fast becoming the best-looking woman in Essex (I think it is the glory of your gorgeous gowns that blinds him!).
Carolina read that over and over, with laughter - and with tears. For there had been a time when she had thought that Virge would starve herself to death. Now it seemed she was to be a plump and happy Essex bride - for Carolina had no doubt that if thoughts of marriage had not already occurred to Andrew and to Virgie, lost in their own little literary world, they would soon. And before long they would be bringing up a raft of bookish children in the glorious Essex countryside.
As for Reba and her Robin, Rye’s prediction proved correct. The marquess and his bride made it back to England well in advance of any nasty rumours and promptly sped by hired coach (they arrived with the bill still owing) to Essex to confront Reba’s family. As they passed the gates of Broadleigh and pounded in style down the long winding drive that led to the great house, Robin muttered feelingly that he hoped Reba’s merchant father would be home for it would be the Devil’s own luck if he were to be hurled into debtors’ prison before a king’s pardon could be had.
But it was Reba’s mother who rose as if jabbed by a hatpin at the news that waiting downstairs to be received were the Marquess and Marchioness of Saltenham.
With her most elegant gown - one adorned with jet, seed pearls, spun gold lace - only half hooked, so impatient was she to greet this exalted couple whom she had never met, she dashed downstairs at some danger of falling half a flight - to be confronted in her drawing room by a somewhat travel-stained pair, one of whom was her own daughter.
Nan Tarbell checked her advance so quickly that she almost tripped.
‘Reba!’ she exclaimed. ‘But I thought’ - she looked around her in bewilderment - ‘where are the marquess and marchioness?’
‘We are here, Mother.’ Reba made her mother a dignified curtsy. It was a triumphant moment and her russet eyes were sparkling. ‘Allow me to present my husband - of whom the world has heard if you have not - the Marquess of Saltenham.’
It was the nearest Nan Tarbell had ever come to fainting.
Robin Tyrell had approached this meeting with foreboding. Now he fixed his new mother-in-law with those interesting empty eyes and his heart sank. A termagant this - in fact, a harpy - for Reba had been telling him the unvarnished truth about her mother all the way from London. But - his effervescent spirits rose - perhaps a termagant to be turned to some account. He made the lady such a deep bow as she had seldom received.
‘Dear lady.’ His voice grew deep and resonant. ‘I must repent me that fate did not allow me the opportunity to meet you sooner - and to ask in proper fashion for your lovely daughter’s hand, for now I see where Reba inherits her beauty!’
Beside him, Reba suppressed a derisive gasp, for whatever else her mother might be, at the moment, with that dumbfounded look overspreading her hard features, she was certainly far from beautiful.
‘Oh, Mother, we would have sought
your permission - we would!’ she cried sweetly, backing Robin up. ‘But we are in the most terrible trouble. And we do need your help - in fact we need it now, to pay the coachman!’
At that moment Nan Tarbell, who was overwhelmed by having her hand kissed by the highest-titled gentleman she had ever met - and whose breath had just been taken away by the news that he was her son-in-law - would have granted them anything.
As indeed she later did.
Of the enormous ruby necklace which Carolina had worn at her wedding on board the Mary Constant, Carolina often laughed and said that she had traded emeralds for rubies - that Virgie was wearing her emerald necklace in Essex while she wore the ruby necklace in Tortuga.
Which was not entirely true for even Carolina had underestimated the cunning and perfidy of Reba’s mother.
On hearing of the marquess’s involvement in the affair of the kidnapping of the Spanish ambassador and acts of piracy on the high seas, Nan Tarbell had counselled her new son-in-law - and indeed had taken high-handed action on her own. The ‘confession’ was promptly disavowed as false and written under duress, and ‘witnesses’ hired by Nan Tarbell testified that the Marquess of Saltenham had never left England during the entire period in question - they had dined with him, gamed with him, etc. The matter was heard before a bored admiralty court that promptly ruled in favour of the marquess; Rye was not present, of course. And the result was that a search to discover buccaneer loot was ordered of Rye’s father’s house in Essex - and only circumvented by quick (and illegal) action by Andrew, who got wind that the authorities were coming and promptly rode for London to deposit with the goldsmiths the jewels Carolina had left behind.
Usually Carolina’s ruby necklace was locked in the strong room. But sometimes she wore it at dinner in the great rambling house in Tortuga which she had thought never to see again - and found she had missed. She and Rye would sometimes sit in the ‘English’ dining room of that house dressed as if they were to dine with royalty and would imagine themselves in Essex ... or London.
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