Fortune's Flame

by French, Judith E.

  Bess tensed. “I’m not bargaining with you over the price of a suckling pig. I said I’d give you fair wages, enough to set yourself up respectful.”

  “And I told ye that I’ll have half of what we take, or ye can find another fool to take ye.”

  “There are plenty of men who would jump at the chance to make their fortune.”

  “Not men who can get ye there and bring ye back alive.”

  “My chances of finding another rogue to escort me to Panama are better than your chances of finding another woman who will offer you such an opportunity,” she retorted.

  He laughed. “Aye, I’ll grant ye that much. I’ve seen all manner of wenches from high country to low, but I’ve seen few with your gall.”

  “Your freedom and a quarter of all the treasure we find.”

  “One third,” he countered. “And I’ll have my promise of freedom in writing.”

  “Done,” Bess agreed. She offered him her hand, and as he clasped hers tightly in an iron grasp, she tried again to summon up her witchy gifts and read his thoughts. She listened, straining with her inner senses for some hint of intuition, but all she could hear was the crunch of straw beneath Kincaid’s feet and his mocking chuckle.

  “A bargain made in hell,” he said. His eyes lit with devilish mirth. “And what makes ye think I won’t cut your throat and rob ye of all ye possess, halfway to Panama?”

  She forced herself to smile as she withdrew her hand. “Until we find the gold, greed will keep you honest,” she replied. “And after—”

  “Aye? After?” he taunted. “Why should I not decide to have all this wondrous treasure for myself?”

  She stepped back out of his reach. “For the same reason I won’t cut your throat when you’re sleeping. Panama is Spanish land, and it will take both our efforts to get out alive. And once we reach English territory, there’s no need for you to rob me. You’ll have more money than you can spend in a lifetime. Honest money. Money that will buy you what you’ve never had.”

  Kincaid’s face hardened to a mask. Bess knew she was treading on thin ice with him, but she thrust home her point, certain that this was one spot the Scot was vulnerable. “My gold will buy you respectability,” she said softly. “Respectability, and land that no man can take away from you. Maryland is a good place for a man to start over, and if I’ve ever seen a man who needed to walk away from his past, it’s you.”

  “Take off these chains.” It was an order, not a request.

  She nodded. “You can have the run of Fortune’s Gift. But stay on my land unless I’m with you. Too many of my neighbors consider you too dangerous to live.”

  “I’ll want decent clothing and weapons.”

  “The clothing you can have. The weapons can wait until we depart for Panama. I’d thought to take at least six men with us. You can—”

  “Nay. You and me. I’ll not attempt to smuggle an army past the Spanish. We’ll find the men we need in Panama. Until then, we travel alone. And you tell no one where or why we go. Do ye ken? No one.”

  “Why?” She knew better than to gossip heedlessly about her mission, but she wanted to keep Kincaid talking. It was important to her to learn more about him—to understand the way he thought. If she was going to trust her life and her fortune to this scoundrel, she had to—

  “If ye be too stupid to ken that, ye deserve to end up with your throat cut,” he answered harshly. “More missions and lives have been lost by loose tongues than by sharp steel.” He held out his manacled wrist. “Free me, I say, and we shall plan out this mad venture.”

  Bess raised her eyes to meet his. “One more thing, Scot. I want my horse back. I hold her dear, and I’ll not start for Panama until she is safe on Fortune’s Gift.”

  He shrugged. “I told ye where the horse was. Ask Mistress Pollott if ye’d ken more.”

  “No, Kincaid,” Bess said firmly. “You stole Ginger from me, and it’s up to you to get her back.”

  His lips tightened into a thin line. “Ah, I see. A test. A feat of skill and daring to prove my worth. And how am I to work this wonder, since you’ve forbidden me to leave the plantation?”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “And you think I’ll have more luck in retrieving your mare than the sheriff?”

  “You’d better.”

  “If the treasure is nay where ye say it is, woman, I’ll wring your neck like a plump chicken. ”

  “It’s there,” she said. She turned to go, then paused and glanced back. “And I’ll give you a warning. If you betray me, I’ll shoot you down like a rabid dog.”

  “Hard talk for an Englishwoman.”

  “Just so you know,” she answered. “I wouldn’t want you to underestimate me.” He took a long time to reply, and Bess was conscious of the rain beating against the cedar-shingled barn roof.

  “So kind of you.” His burred voice came thick with sarcasm.

  “I’ll have my men release you tonight. Sleep here, and in the morning proper quarters will be found for you. I’ll give you tomorrow to recover from your imprisonment. The next day we’ll ride out and fetch my missing mare.”

  He nodded in mocking salute. “As ye wish, m’lady. Your slightest command . . .”

  She dismissed him with a toss of her head. As she walked out of the stall, her faint chuckle drifted back and robbed the pleasure from his bluster.

  Damn her, he thought. An English bitch, as cold inside as frost on a hangman’s gibbet. The skin on his scarred back prickled as he remembered the lashes she had delivered with her own slender hands. He’d not forget that indignity.

  He’d not lived so long without taking justice from those who wronged him. And, wench or not, she’d be no exception. . . . He would have his revenge.

  A bargain made in hell, he’d told her. Maybe it was. But whether the gold existed or not, he’d never be a slave again. No man or woman would put whip to his flesh again. He’d walk free and he’d stay that way. No matter what he had to do . . . Next time, the pain would be someone else’s.

  He didn’t speak when they came to unlock his manacles. He’d waste no words on such as these, despite their taunts and bullying talk. When he was unchained, he left the barn, walking out into the cleansing rain.

  The guards followed him to the barn door, shouting threats, but he kept walking. Lightning bolts lit up the cloud-strewn sky; thunder echoed in his ears. Leaves scudded across the muddy farmyard, driven by gusts of wind. Kincaid paid no heed to the rain soaking his shirt and breeches. He turned his face to the storm, breathing deeply of the scents of wet grass, evergreens, and salt.

  From the pound came the heavy, musty odors of manure and livestock. They filled his head and brought back memories of childhood. He grimaced. Scotland . . . Ireland . . . France . . . the American colonies . . . In the rain, all barnyards smelled alike. At least here the fire in the sky was lightning, not the flames of a burning house. There were no screams of trapped animals or dying women.

  How many children, he wondered, learn their sums by counting stolen cattle . . . or subtracting missing comrades at dawn’s first gray light? God rot the bloody pictures flashing over and over in his head! Rain and mud. Wind in his face and icy water running down his back . . .

  Mercenaries. Soldiers fighting for whoever paid them. Marching in sun and heat, dying in muddy ditches, leaving their lifeblood in crimson streaks across rock, and marsh, and fallen tree trunks, in battles too obscure to have a name.

  His earliest memories were of raids on dark, rainy nights. Of bawling wide-horned cattle and gunshots . . . Of chilblains and frostbitten feet . . . Of being so hungry that he’d eaten half-cooked rats . . . Of fighting off men and other boys to keep the vermin . . .

  Somewhere, sometime, he must have had a mother. But whether she was whore or luckless lady, no one could tell. A woman named Fiona had once been good to him. She’d nursed him the winter he’d taken a sword slash to his left thigh and it had swelled with poison. He was six that winter . . . o
r perhaps five.

  It was snowing when Fiona took pity on him and stopped beside the road to see if he was dead or alive. She was a laundress with the army. Past her prime and looks, a woman who’d belonged to too many men and followed troops to too many wars. But Fiona had been the only one to notice a bone-thin lad sprawled in the mud, out of his head with pain and fever. She’d picked him up and carried him to her evening campsite.

  Fiona’s matted gray hair was streaked with auburn, she was missing teeth, and one eyelid sagged, but she’d looked beautiful to him. She’d fussed over him, and fed him, and called him her darling boy.

  It had been a hard winter, with soldier’s pay and rations late or nonexistent. Snow had drifted around the tents and ice crusted the muddy stream that was both washtub and the only source of drinking water for men, women, and horses. Aye, Kincaid remembered, it had been a fierce, starving winter . . . but he’d not cared a tinker’s damn for the weather or the war. He’d warmed his cracked hands at Fiona’s fire, and filled his growing boy’s belly with her mutton stew and hot, sweet scones.

  And then one morning he’d awakened and found her gone. No words of good-bye, no bedroll, no cooking pot. Fiona had vanished without leaving him a crust of bread or a farewell swat. It had been the end of his childhood and the last time he’d looked to a woman for mothering.

  At seven, he had slain his first man. On a night like this . . . He’d been grateful to the soldier who shared his tent and haunch of venison with a wet, hungry boy. Until the dog’s vomit had demanded payment in a filthy manner that Kincaid had vowed he’d never give. The soldier had chased him out into the storm and torn at Kincaid’s breeches until he’d ended the assault by stabbing the soldier with his own skean.

  Kincaid wiped his face and rubbed his aching eyelids. Do the memories ever fade? he wondered. He could still feel the way the knife felt, sliding between the soldier’s ribs. He could hear the man’s groan, and smell the sickly-sweet scent of fresh blood.

  “On a night like this . . .” Kincaid murmured. “A world and a lifetime away . . .”

  Lightning struck a giant oak at the edge of the pasture, snapping a limb as thick as Kincaid’s waist and setting the tree ablaze. He shielded his eyes against the flash and turned to stride away from the farm buildings. He needed to think, and he needed to be alone.

  As he turned, another flash lit up the sky, and he saw a cloaked figure standing near the house. It was the woman, Elizabeth Bennett, and she was staring in his direction.

  “Hellfire and damnation!” he swore softly. What sane wench would stand outside in this storm and risk being hit by lightning? Or catching pneumonia from the downpour? Then he began to chuckle. “None that I ken,” he muttered under his breath. “I’ve seen none as mad as I am.”

  He waited, ignoring the rain beating on his face, hoping lightning would illuminate her again. But when the next strike came, she had vanished like some ghostly kelpie. Kincaid lowered his head and walked directly into the wind.

  By dawn he was miles away from Fortune’s Gift heading south along the peninsula on a tall, stocky bay gelding he’d taken from the plantation. There’d be hell to pay when Mistress Bennett discovered he’d stolen another of her horses and ridden off. But if she wanted him to try to get her mare back, he’d have to converse with Joan Pollott in private. Having the high-and-mighty Elizabeth along would guarantee that the trollop would keep the horse’s whereabouts to herself.

  The temptation to keep riding plagued him like a blister from an ill-fitting shoe. Any mercenary worth his salt would put as much distance between himself and the Maryland Colony as possible in the least amount of time.

  But he’d struck a bargain with the mistress of Fortune’s Gift. She’d promised him freedom and the opportunity he’d been striving for his whole life. Enough gold to buy land of his own. Not just a few rock-strewn acres, but enough property to be a man of importance.

  Every war he’d ever heard of had been fought for land. It was the only thing that lasted. A landowner could look a king square in the eye and feel his equal. It was a prize worth dying for.

  Besides . . . he’d never broken his word, not when he was a scabby-kneed bairn, and not since. For so many years he’d possessed nothing but his honor, and he’d come to hold it dear. He’d promised Elizabeth he’d take her hunting Spanish gold, and by Lucifer’s shriveled cod, he’d do it.

  The village of Onancock lay south, across the Virginia line. He’d traveled this way only once before, but the peninsula narrowed to just a few miles across, and Kincaid was certain he could find the small settlement again.

  He kept the gelding moving at a mile-eating trot, taking care not to ride too close to the scattered houses. He knew word of his escape would travel fast, and he wanted to reach Joan Pollott before she was warned of his presence. The first night, he slept in a barn and made his breakfast on a clutch of hen’s eggs he found in the loft. The second night, he put his feet under the battered table at the Cock’s Comb, a disreputable riverside inn.

  Kincaid had joined an ongoing game of hazard in the inn courtyard. Since he didn’t have a ha’penny in his pocket, he knew he had to win, so he played it safe, calling seven as his main. His luck held, and he nicked on his first throw. The setter, a dour-faced farmer, demanded his turn as caster, then threw out with a deuce-ace. Kincaid lost a penny, then won six more in the next half hour. He quit when he had enough silver for supper and a round of ale for the farmer and his two companions.

  The innkeeper promised a clean bed, but Kincaid had known too many comrades who’d gone to sleep in strange public houses and never lived to see morning. He finished his meat and bread, downed a second mug of sour ale, and rode off in the opposite direction he intended to travel. He doubled back twice and finally rolled up in his blanket for the night in the shelter of a cedar grove.

  By midmorning, he had come upon the outskirts of Onancock. A few minutes’ ride brought him to Mistress Pollott’s isolated dwelling. He tied his horse in the woods out of sight, crept up close to the house, crouched in the tall weeds, and waited.

  An hour later, a yawning Joan appeared in the doorway of her ramshackle cabin, dressed only in stays and a stained linen shift. Her curly dark hair was uncombed, her feet were bare, and her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. She shuffled out to the necessary behind the shed, then returned and drew up a bucket of water from the well near the door. She was splashing water on her comely face when he stood up and walked boldly toward her.

  “Good day to ye, lass,” he called lazily. “A bit late risin’ this morning, aren’t ye?”

  Joan’s eyes widened in surprise. She stepped back, dropped the bucket—splashing water over her bare feet—and set her fists on her ample hips. “Go to hell, Kincaid,” she said.

  “Now, is that any way to greet me after all we meant to each other?”

  Joan started to run back to the house, but he was quicker. He beat her to the door and leaned against it, ankles crossed, arms folded over his chest, and grinning.

  “Damn ye,” she cried. “Ye brought the sheriff down on me, ye yellow-haired son of a bitch!”

  “I did nothin’ of the sort, sweet. ‘Twas you as turned me in for the reward.”

  Her reply blistered his ears.

  “Now, Joan, none of that,” he soothed. “What kind of talk is that for a lady?”

  “I thought they’d hanged ye. I hoped they’d hanged ye. What are ye doin’ here?”

  “Ah, so concerned for my safety, are ye? It fair warms the cockles of my heart. I swear it does.”

  “What do ye want of me?”

  He threw an arm around her and pulled her close. “Joan, Joan.” He grinned provocatively. “Must ye have a man’s desires put into words?”

  “Ye’re naught but trouble,” she said. “Go on wi’ ye.”

  He slipped a hand down the curve of her back and stroked one rounded cheek. “Ah, lass, ye wound me sorely. Do ye nay remember what fun we had together?”

  �
��I’ll ha’ no truck with pirates,” she said, sulking. “I’m an honest whore, I am.”

  He caressed her full lower lip with the tip of one finger. “There’s a mouth that bears kissin’,” he said. “I’ve missed ye.”

  “Hmmph.” She frowned and glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching. “Come inside,” she said grudgingly, “before ye’re seen.”

  He stepped aside and gave a mocking bow. “Is that bacon I smell cooking?”

  Joan flounced across the kitchen and proceeded to tie a battered canvas and wire hip-bucket hoop around her waist. Over that, she fastened a soiled petticoat that had once been canary yellow. “Ye might ha’ the decency to turn yer head whilst a lady dresses,” she admonished.

  “I like to look at ye.”

  Spots of red appeared on her round cheeks, and her brown eyes took on a hint of mischief. “Go on wi’ ye,” she replied. “Ye ply me wi’ sweet talk when ye want somethin’.” She frowned. “Like as not, your pockets are empty again, and ye ha’ the nerve to come to me, knowin’ full well I’m a helpless woman alone wi’ her way to make in the world.”

  “Nay,” he protested, flipping her a silver penny.

  She caught it in midair, bit down to make certain the coin wasn’t dross, and tucked it out of sight in her bosom. “A penny won’t buy ye much,” she said, but she smiled as she spoke.

  “Breakfast,” he said. “I’d like some breakfast. I’m famished.”

  “Men is always hungry for one thing or ‘tother.” Joan took a faded rose wool skirt from a peg on the wall, pulled it over her head, and topped it off with a large blue-and-white-striped kerchief that she draped over her shoulders, tied in front, and tucked into the skirt. She nudged a calico cat out of the way, thrust her narrow, bare feet into Indian moccasins, and finished her morning toilet by running her fingers through her untidy mass of curls and topping her hair with a beribboned linen mobcap.

  Kincaid knelt on the hearth and turned the bacon with a long fork. He lifted the lid of a Dutch oven, saw that the biscuits were nicely browned, and removed the heavy iron pot from the coals. “Ye wouldn’t have a bit of ale to wash this down with, would ye?” he asked.