Fortune's Flame

by French, Judith E.

  A heavy weight landed on top of her and bore her to the ground. Before she could cry out, her attacker pressed his lips close to her ear.

  “Cease your squirming, woman,” he hissed. “It’s me, I’ll nay do ye harm. I’ve come to save yer lily-white English neck!”

  “Kincaid!”

  “Shout it a little louder, why don’t ye?” He caught her wrists and pinned them against the grass. “Ye can’t win, ye know. You’ve ten seconds to come to your senses, or I’ll knock ye cold and carry ye to safety.”

  She mumbled something incomprehensible.

  “I can’t hear ye.”

  “Let me up.”

  “Not until ye promise to do as I say. The farm is swarming with pirates. They’ve come to take slaves and livestock, and anything else they can carry.”

  “We have no slaves on Fortune’s Gift.”

  “Ye may know that, but they don’t.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “A question I’ve asked meself more than once this night, I’ll tell ye.”

  “Let me go,” she insisted.

  “My way, woman. I’ll brook no argument from ye on this.”

  “Coward!” she hissed. “Why aren’t you fighting this scum instead of me?”

  “I’ve given ye fair warning. Come or be carried.”

  Her answer was a hard drive with her knee to his groin. Kincaid’s gasp of pain lent her strength. Bess twisted her head and bit his wrist. When he let go, she wiggled out from under him and began to crawl away. He caught her ankle and yanked her back. They rolled over and Kincaid threw his weight against her, knocking the wind out of her.

  Her head spun. She heard the rip of cloth and seconds later Kincaid bound a gag around her mouth. Panic surged through her and she struggled wildly, but he held on to her wrists and bound them as well. An icy current of pure fear washed over her and she came close to fainting, but then reason conquered the overwhelming terror. She ceased fighting him and listened with her inner senses. Instantly, the awful dread receded. Her rapid pulse slowed, and her breathing came easier.

  Kincaid threw her over his shoulder. “I won’t hurt ye,” he growled. “Devil take ye, woman. If I meant ye ill, I’d ring your neck instead of risking my own to get ye out of this.”

  His soothing words came to her from far away. She was concentrating, drawing up the witchy power that had come to her from her grandmother. For the space of a heartbeat, Bess’s consciousness was flooded with a sensation of sea-green light, and with it came the fleeting impression of being safeguarded by this rough Scot. But before she could take comfort from her intuition, his broad hand came down sharply across her backside.

  “Be still!” he ordered as he delivered the stinging blow. “Lest ye—”

  Bess’s sense of well-being vanished in white-hot anger. She rained muffled curses on his head and kicked him so hard in the midriff that her toes felt as though they were broken.

  “Witch,” he gasped. He began to run through the fog with her, dodging once to avoid being run down by a steer and again to avoid a group of men who loomed up in the murky darkness.

  Bess couldn’t tell how far he ran. Branches striking her face and tearing at her clothes told her that they had entered the woods, and the cries behind them grew fainter and fainter. At last, he stopped and lowered her to the damp forest floor.

  “Now, I’ll take off the gag and untie ye if you’ll thank me properly,” he said. He was breathing hard. “You’re no feather bed to tote, ye ken. Most men would ha’ dropped ye at the first fence.”

  “You bastardly gullion,” she said as soon as he pulled away the cloth. “Crow-hearted, yellow-backed—”

  “Cease your canting, chuck,” he replied, “afore I regret what I’ve done and give ye over to those priggers.” He cut the rope that held her wrists together and stepped back out of the line of fire. “It would serve both ye and them right. For a more ungrateful, shrewish lass I’ve never laid eyes on.”

  Bess scrambled to her feet. “Those are my people,” she cried. “My horses, my cattle. Why are you here? Why aren’t you shooting those pirates instead of carrying me off into the woods? You beetle-headed—”

  “Enough!” he snapped. “ ‘Tis not my war. I’ve not been paid to kill those churls, and I dinna waste my time on matters that dinna concern me. Ye should be grateful that I came back to save your slender English neck.”

  “Came back? Came back? How did you know they were going to attack Fortune’s Gift? You were with them, weren’t you?”

  “Aye, I was,” he admitted. “But only for the last three days. I overheard them planning the raid, and I decided that the faster way to get back here was to sign on as one of the crew.”

  “Some of my women have been attacked, my men killed.” Her voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “You could have warned us . . . prevented—”

  “Nay. I could not. I was south of here, too far to ride back. They had a sloop and—”

  “My horse! You stole another one of my horses. Where is it?”

  “I couldn’t very well bring the gelding on the boat, could I?”

  “Horse thief. Coward.” She balled her fist tightly and struck him in the center of his chest with all her might. “I trusted you, and you betrayed me.” She hit at him again, and he caught her hand.

  “Nay, no more o’ that, woman,” he warned.

  “You’re supposed to be a soldier,” she said. “A fighter. You’re nothing but a thieving blackguard!”

  “I can fight if I have to,” he admitted. “I thought that coming back to keep you from doing something stupid was enough.”

  In truth, he didn’t know why he’d returned with the pirates. It was one of the strangest things that had ever happened to him. It made no sense, and Kincaid prided himself on always using good judgment.

  He’d known Elizabeth Bennett would be in the thick of the trouble, and he’d known she’d come to harm if he didn’t interfere. He’d realized it the moment he’d heard the bearded mulatto mention Fortune’s Gift.

  “A plantation run by a wench,” the pirate had boasted to his drunken comrades in the Virginia, Eastern Shore tavern. “Easy pickings for a few stout men.”

  And Kincaid, who’d never had a flight of fancy in his life, had instantly felt the chill of fog and heard the scream of a woman in his head. Despite the clear, star-filled Virginia night, he’d seen a vision of Bess outlined in the light of a burning building and known her life was in danger.

  “I’m a stranger to your people,” he told her. “Like as not, they’d have tried to kill me along with the pirates. I’m nay fond of being caught between two sides. A man could die young that way.” He released her hand. “No more o’ that,” he cautioned. “I might hit ye back, and ye’d nay wish to wake up with a head the size of a pumpkin.”

  “Oh,” she said scornfully, “you’d strike me. You’re afraid of men your own size, but you think you can bully a woman.”

  “Do ye never tire of hearing your own voice?” He shook his head. “All my life I’ve been accused of being too soft with the lasses, but I’m not clod-skulled enough to stand here and let ye pound away at me.”

  “I’m going back.”

  “Nay,” .

  “Don’t try to stop me. Fortune’s Gift is mine, and if—”

  “Ye will do as I say, woman,” he said. “And I say ye will remain here where it’s safe. Dawn’s coming fast, and that band will be back to their boat soon.”

  “You’d let them escape? When they’ve murdered and—”

  “They’ll not go far. I took the liberty of knocking a hole in the bottom once they’d gone ashore.”

  “They could take my sloop.”

  “Nay, I put a hole in that too.”

  “You damaged my boat?”

  “Hellfire and damnation, is there nothing I do that pleases you?”

  “Precious little!” She took a deep breath. “If you fight for money, I’ll buy your services. Just go back and help
my men defeat them.”

  “Aye, I could do that. If the pay is good enough. I warn ye, I don’t come cheap.”

  “Go, damn it!”

  “Not until we agree on a price.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The gelding I rode off on. I’d nay be hung for borrowing—”

  “You can have the horse. Now, go back and—”

  “They planned to drive off the cattle and horses,” he said. “I told them I knew the plantation well. I sent them down the river road.”

  “But that road goes nowhere. It ends in Reedy Swamp.”

  “Aye, so I found out last fall. But by the time they figure that out, they’ll be too far along to turn the animals back and go another way. If you’ve any hounds left, I’d guess ye can hunt them down easy enough.”

  “It doesn’t make up for my people dead, my barns burned. You could have stopped it if you’d warned us in time,” she accused.

  “I told ye,” he repeated through clenched teeth. “There was no time.”

  “I still think you’re a coward.”

  “Think what ye please, Englishwoman,” he said as he turned to go back to the fighting. But her words stung like salt on an open wound. He knew he was no craven. And if he knew, then what matter what Mistress Bennett thought? “But if ye stir from this spot until I send for ye,” he admonished, “I’ll tie ye hand and foot and leave ye here for the buzzards.”

  He stalked away, trying to put her insults out of his mind. She was nothing to him, nothing but trouble, and he’d been a fool to make a bargain with her. “Better that lot than you,” he muttered. “Dealing with bay pirates will be safer and a hell of a lot less aggravation.” ,

  Chapter 6

  Bess stood in the ruins of her farmyard in the slow morning drizzle and breathed in the acrid scent of charred wood and disaster. The fog had given over to rain, and it seemed to her as though the skies were weeping for the fallen. Everywhere around her was the evidence of last night’s raid; the big horse stable and a smaller barn that had held tack and grain were smoldering ruins. Part of the pound fence was destroyed; the smokehouse had been looted and the door hung awry. Blackened walls were the only remains of three tenant houses.

  Of deaths, there were aplenty to mourn for: three men, an infant, and two women had died in the night assault. Another woman had been raped. Mariah Carey was missing; even now a search party combed the woods, fields, and shorelines for her.

  Fortune’s Gift had lost a good bull, four horses, and two milk cows in the fire. Another two horses had broken legs and had to be destroyed. Five sheep had run blindly into the river and drowned, and Bess’s hound, Tan, was close to death from three stab wounds.

  The kitchen gardens had been trampled. Some vegetables could be salvaged, but for many, they were tattered bits, and it was too late to replant. The plantation workers needed the snap beans, potatoes, carrots, turnips, and greens that the garden would have provided. Bess considered the loss as great as that of the livestock.

  Even the house had not been spared. The rear wall was scorched by fire and windows had been smashed. House servants had prevented the spread of flames and the morning rain had put out the fire before the dwelling was lost. Still, the manor house would bear the scars of the attack for a long time.

  Two pirates had gained entry, slashing their way into the great hall and destroying paintings and furniture. They had escaped with silver and several bottles of brandy. A third marauder had been struck down on the cellar steps by a thirteen-year-old maid. She’d knocked him down the stairs with a tall candlestand and finished him off with a three-legged iron spider.

  As for the pirates, Kincaid had sunk their vessel as he’d said. The sloop had reached mid-river before settling on a sandbar. The bow and part of the deck were visible above water, but the occupants had been picked off by Bess’s bondmen as they tried to swim to safety. Of those who had driven the livestock into the swamp, one had drowned, another had escaped, and two more had been captured and hanged on Bess’s orders at first light. Only three steers and two horses were unaccounted for; most of the animals had wandered back to the barnyard on their own.

  Bess was torn between stringing Kincaid up for a pirate and thanking him for preventing the escape of the attackers and saving most of her animals. For all his bold talk, he’d slain no outlaws, and she still wondered which side he was really on.

  She’d followed him back to the scene of the fighting once he’d released her, keeping far behind him to prevent him from seeing her. But by the time she’d arrived at the farmyard, the battle was over and a rainy dawn was breaking. Kincaid had helped to gather the scattered animals, and hadn’t shirked the dirty work of disposing of the horses that were too badly injured to save, but he had made himself absent during the execution of the captured murderers.

  Bess had forgotten none of her fury at Kincaid’s interference and abuse, but in the bitter aftermath of the raid, she was nearly overwhelmed by the task of bringing order to the chaos. There were dead to be laid out and washed, graves to dig, and hurt people and animals to tend. Him she could deal with later.

  She didn’t want to think about the price. Recovery of Fortune’s Gift would be slow and costly. Every Tidewater planter lived his life in debt, and the repairs to her buildings and the replacement of livestock would beggar her.

  “How many times can you go to an empty well?” Bess murmured, unconsciously echoing one of her grandmother’s sayings. She had been broke yesterday; today she was desperate.

  “You know what you have to do.”

  Bess glanced around and saw Kutii standing a few feet away, clad only in his usual loincloth and sandals. His obsidian-black hair hung loose around his shoulders, and armbands of solid gold glistened on his muscular, bronzed arms. “I didn’t know you were here,” she said.

  The Incan’s tattooed features creased in a sad smile. His dark, slanting eyes were huge and liquid with compassion. “Where else would I be?”

  “You could have warned me.”

  He shrugged, spreading his worn hands in an open-palmed gesture. “I do what I can for you. I always have.”

  “You’re as bad as Kincaid,” she grumbled. “Did you see what he did?” Bess lowered her voice to a whisper. “I can’t trust him now. For all I know, he could have led the pirates here.”

  “He is the one.”

  “He’s the one. He’s the one,” she mocked angrily. “I don’t care. I hate him. He’s lucky I don’t hang him with the rest of the scum.”

  “You will not.” The Indian’s eyes narrowed in disapproval. “You will do what your heart tells you.”

  “Look at this.” She waved her arms to encompass the damage around her. “How can I leave Fortune’s Gift now?”

  “How can you stay?”

  “It’s a crazy scheme. It’s madness. How can I risk everything by running off to Panama in search of buried treasure?”

  “Your grandmother risked everything when she set off across the great salt sea in a tiny boat in search of treasure. And she risked all again when she freed me from the sugar mill.”

  “I’m not my grandmother.”

  “You carry her blood. Her courage will not fail you.”

  “Mistress?”

  Bess turned to see her blacksmith’s son. Obviously bewildered, the boy tugged at his forelock and stared at her with wide eyes. She tried to keep from smiling. Doubtless they all thought her mad, talking to thin air. “Vernon.” She acknowledged him with a nod. “Is there any sign of Mariah?”

  “ ‘Twas what I come to tell ye,” he muttered. One bare foot made nervous circles in the warm ashes. “We found her, mistress, but she ain’t right. She won’t say nothin’. She just rocks and cries, rocks and cries.”

  “I’ll come and see to her,” Bess assured him. She nodded to the group of men who were dragging a dead steer away from the barn. “Butcher it,” she called to the oldest man. “We can’t afford to lose the meat. It will have to be salted and
smoked today.” She looked back to see if Kutii was still standing there, but he was gone, vanished into the drifting smoke. Just like a man, she thought. Never there when you need him.

  She rubbed her aching eyes with her fingertips, wishing that there were some way she could get a few hours’ sleep before dealing with all this. She was so tired, and she’d always needed a good night’s rest. She was cranky without one.

  “Mistress Bess!”

  Steeling herself, she turned toward the demanding faces and prepared to make whatever decisions couldn’t be put off.

  It was late afternoon before Bess found time to bathe and change her clothes. She was too tired to eat, so she drank half a glass of wine and stretched out across her bed for a few moments. Just as she was drifting off to sleep, Janie, the little maid who’d knocked the pirate down the cellar stairs, burst into her bedchamber.

  “Miss Bess!” the girl cried. “I told him he couldn’t come up here, but I—”

  Bess raised her head. Kincaid’s rugged form filled the doorway of her room, and it struck her once more how big he was and how out of place he seemed on Fortune’s Gift. As though he belonged in an earlier, more savage time, she thought, taking a deep breath. Her anger at him was still with her, but she pushed it back, knowing that anger made poor reason when you were dealing with men or animals. And Kincaid was certainly one . . . although which one, she wasn’t sure. “It’s all right, Janie,” she said in her most authoritarian voice. “I’ll see him.”

  “Not here, miss. Not here. It ain’t fittin’. Want I should call—”

  Bess dismissed her with a wave of her hand. “Why not? Pirates go where they please, don’t they?” Her words sounded slurred and silly, even to her own ears, but it had been a long day, and from the look of Kincaid’s face, it was about to get longer.

  “Were you serious about our bargain?” he demanded of Bess when the maid had scurried back down the hall.

  “I was.” She sat up, curled her stockinged feet under her, and stretched. “But that was before you stole my second horse and helped organize a raiding party against me.”