A Buccaneer at Heart

by Stephanie Laurens

  “Here you go.” Grinning, the boy spun, holding his arms wide.

  Caleb grinned back. “Thank you—this is just what we need.”

  Phillipe smiled at Diccon and patted his shoulder as he passed. “You’re an excellent scout, my friend.”

  The other men made approving noises as they filed into the space.

  Diccon positively glowed.

  It took only a moment for Caleb and Phillipe to organize the establishment of their camp, then, summoning their quartermasters—Caleb’s Quilley and Phillipe’s Ducasse—they presented themselves before Diccon.

  The boy looked at them expectantly.

  “First question,” Caleb said. “Have you got enough fruit in your basket to satisfy the cook?”

  Diccon lifted the floppy basket, opened it, and examined the pile of fruit inside. “Almost.” He looked up and around, then pointed to a small tree with dangling yellow fruit. “If I got some more of those, I’d have enough.”

  Two captains and two quartermasters dutifully gathered several handfuls of the ripe fruit.

  Diccon smiled as they filled his basket, then he clamped the handles together and looked at Caleb. “More than enough.”

  “Excellent. What we need next,” Caleb said, “is for you to lead us to a place where we can see into the camp, all without alerting any guards. Do you know of such a spot?”

  Diccon snapped off a salute. “I know just the place, Capt’n.” He’d heard Caleb’s men using his rank.

  “In that case”—Caleb gestured toward where he assumed the mine must be—“lead on.”

  Diccon did. He lived up to their expectations, leading them first along the disused path again, then cutting left into the untrammeled jungle. He looked back at Caleb and whispered, “This will be safest. We’re moving away from the other paths and into the space between that northward path and the one leading to the lake. The mercenaries take some of the men to the lake to fetch water every day, but they do that in the morning. There shouldn’t be anyone at the lake now.”

  Caleb nodded, and they forged on, increasingly slowly as Diccon took the order to be careful to heart.

  Eventually, he halted behind a clump of palms. Using hand signals, he intimated that they should crouch down and be extra careful while following him on to the next concealing clump.

  Then he slipped like an eel through the shadows.

  Caleb followed and instantly saw why Diccon had urged extra caution. The compound’s palisade lay ten yards away, separated from the jungle by a beaten, well-maintained perimeter clearing—a cleared space to ensure no one could approach the palisade under cover. The compound’s double gates were five yards to their right. And the gates stood wide open with two armed guards slouched against the posts on either side. Both guards’ attention was fixed on the activity inside the camp, but any untoward noise would alert them.

  Given the gates were propped open, Caleb surmised that the real purpose of the guards—and, indeed, the fence, the gates, and the guard tower in the middle of the compound—was to keep people in; the mercenaries had grown sufficiently complacent that they didn’t expect any threat to emerge from the jungle.

  Well and good.

  They watched in silence for more than half an hour. Caleb noticed that heavily armed guards appeared to be patrolling randomly through the compound, but the attitude of all the mercenaries was transparently one of supreme boredom. They were very far from alert; the impression they gave was that they were perfectly sure there would be no challenge to their authority.

  Against that, however, he saw some of the captives—he had no idea which ones, but both male and female—walking freely back and forth. More, some met and stopped to chat, apparently without attracting the attention of the guards.

  Curious.

  Then he noticed Diccon peering up at the sky. The sun was angling from the west. Remembering the boy’s concern over returning in good time, Caleb tapped him on the shoulder, caught Phillipe and the other men’s eyes, then tipped his head back, into the relative safety of the area behind them.

  Diccon retreated first. One by one, the rest of them followed.

  They gathered again well out of hearing of the guards on the gates. Caleb dropped his hand on Diccon’s shoulder and met the boy’s gaze. “Thank you for all your help. Now, we have to tread warily. Who is the person you trust most inside the camp?”

  “Miss Katherine.”

  Caleb blinked. He’d expected the boy to name one of the men, but his answer had come so rapidly and definitely that there was no real way to argue with his choice. Slowly, Caleb nodded. “Very well. I want you to tell Miss Katherine all we’ve told you. Can you remember the important bits?”

  Diccon nodded eagerly. “I remember everything. I’m good like that.”

  Caleb had to grin. “Excellent. So tell Miss Katherine, but no one else, and see what she says. Then tomorrow, when you come out, go and look for fruit in this area—between our camp and the lake. Behave as you usually do and gather fruit, and we’ll come and find you. We’ll be waiting to hear what Miss Katherine, and any others she thinks fit to tell, say.”

  Diccon’s face brightened. “So I’m like...what is it? A courier?”

  “Exactly.” Phillipe smiled at the boy. “But remember—the mark of a good courier is that he tells only those he’s supposed to tell. Not a word of this to anyone else, all right?”

  Diccon nodded. “Mum’s the word, except for Miss Katherine.”

  “Good.” Caleb released the boy. “I would suggest you circle around and come in from some other direction.”

  “I’ll go to the lake and walk in from there—that way, if you keep watching, you’ll see where that path comes out a-ways to the left.”

  Caleb’s approving smile was entirely genuine. “You’re taking to this like a duck to water.” He nodded in farewell. “Off you go, then.”

  With a brisk salute and a grin for them all, Diccon melted into the jungle; in seconds, they’d lost sight of him.

  “He is very good.” Phillipe turned toward the gates. “But I’ll feel happier when he’s back inside where he belongs.” He waved toward their previous hideaway. “Shall we?”

  They returned to the spot. Five minutes later, Diccon appeared out of the jungle to their left. He passed their position without a glance and, basket swinging, all but skipped back through the gates. He headed to the right, vanishing into an area of the compound that from their position they had no view of.

  Caleb consulted his memory. “He must have gone to deliver his haul to the cook—he said the kitchen was that way.”

  He’d barely breathed the words. Phillipe merely nodded in reply.

  Sure enough, ten minutes later, they saw Diccon, no longer carrying the basket, cross the area inside the gates, right to left. He appeared to be scanning the far left quadrant of the compound—but then he whirled as if responding to a hail from somewhere out of their sight to the right.

  Even from where they crouched, they saw his face light up. Diccon all but jigged on the spot, clearly waiting...

  A young woman appeared. Brown-haired, pale skinned, she moved with a grace that marked her as well bred. Smiling, she came up to Diccon and held out her hands. Diccon readily placed his hands in hers, all but wriggling with impatience and excitement.

  Closing her hands about the boy’s, her gaze on his face, the woman crouched as Caleb had done.

  Immediately, the boy started talking, although from the way the woman leaned toward him, he was keeping his voice down.

  “Miss Katherine, obviously.” Caleb scanned all of the area around the pair that he could see, but there were no guards or, indeed, anyone else close enough to hear the exchange.

  As Diccon poured out his news, Caleb saw the woman—younger than he’d expected by more than a decade;
he’d had no idea a governess could be that young—start to tense. Clearly, she’d realized the import of what the boy was telling her—and she believed his tale.

  That last was verified when she glanced out of the gates—not directly at them but in their direction.

  Immediately, she caught herself and refocused on Diccon again.

  But Caleb had seen that look, had caught her expression. However fleeting, that look had been a visual cry for help that had also held a flaring of something even more precious—hope.

  By some trick of the light, of that moment in eternity, he’d felt that hope—fragile, but real—reaching out to him, something so indescribably precious he’d instinctively wanted to grasp it. To hold and protect it.

  Then she’d clamped down on the emotion, but he no longer harbored the slightest concern that the adults in the camp wouldn’t believe Diccon’s tale. She—Miss Katherine—did, and even though Caleb had yet to exchange so much as a word with her, he felt certain a woman brave enough to stand up to a mercenary captain in order to save an urchin’s life would have the backbone to carry her point with the English officers in the camp.

  Diccon finished his tale. Her gaze fixed firmly on his face, Miss Katherine slowly rose to her feet. Then she released one of his hands, but retained her clasp on the other. Drawing him around, she set off with a purposeful stride, heading in the direction of the mine. In just a few paces, she and Diccon had passed out of their sight.

  They continued to watch for several minutes, but no alarm was raised, and there was nothing of particular interest to see.

  Caleb frowned. He leaned toward Phillipe and whispered, “We need to see into the compound—we need a much more comprehensive view.”

  “I was thinking the same, and it just so happens”—without raising his arm, Phillipe pointed, directing Caleb’s gaze upward—“the compound is nestled into a curve in the hillside, and if you look very closely just there...”

  Caleb looked. His eyes were accustomed to reading ships’ flags at considerable distance; he quickly picked out the rock formation Phillipe had spied. “Perfect.” Caleb grinned. He glanced back at Quilley and Ducasse. “We’ve plenty of time before the light fades to find our way to that shelf.”

  They did and discovered it to be the perfect vantage point from which to survey the compound. The rock shelf was wide enough for all four of them to sit comfortably, sufficiently back from the edge that the shifting leaves of trees growing up from below screened them from anyone on the ground. They spent another half hour observing the movements of the guards and the captives, thus confirming and acquainting themselves with the uses of the different structures in the compound. Diccon had given them an excellent orientation, but it seemed that most of the adult males were down in the mine and not presently available to be viewed.

  There was a large circular fire pit in the space between the entrance to the mine, the barrack-like building that from Diccon’s description was the men’s sleeping quarters, and the large central barracks that housed the mercenaries. Ringed with logs for seats, the fire pit was situated well away from all three structures. A small fire burned at the pit’s center, doubtless more for light and the comfort imparted by the leaping flames than for warmth, and the women were already gathering about it. Miss Katherine sat with five others, but from the relaxed postures of the other women, she had not—yet—shared Diccon’s news. Instead, she glanced frequently toward the entrance to the mine.

  “She’s waiting for the men to join them,” Phillipe said. “She’s waiting to tell whoever’s in charge.”

  Caleb nodded. “I wish we could stay and identify who that is, but we should get down and back to our camp before night falls.”

  Night in the jungle was the definition of black; scrambling about on an unfamiliar hillside above an encampment of hostile armed mercenaries in the dark would be the definition of irresponsible.

  Phillipe pulled a face, but nodded, and the four of them rose and scrambled back onto the animal track along which they’d climbed up. Once they reached the jungle floor, despite the fading light, they skirted wide through the deepening shadows. Giving the open gates of the compound and the well-armed guards a wide berth, they made their way back to their camp.

  * * * * *

  Copyright © 2016 by Savdek Management Proprietary Limited

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  BY WINTER’S LIGHT

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  All About Love

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  Loving Rose: The Redemption of Malcolm Sinclair

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  The Lady Chosen

  A Gentleman’s Honor

  A Lady of His Own

  A Fine Passion

  To Distraction

  Beyond Seduction

  The Edge of Desire

  Mastered by Love

  Black Cobra Quartet

  The Untamed Bride

  The Elusive Bride

  The Brazen Bride

  The Reckless Bride

  The Adventurers Quartet

  The Lady’s Command

  A Buccaneer at Heart

  The Daredevil Snared

  Lord of the Privateers

  Other Novels

  The Lady Risks All

  Medieval

  Desire’s Prize

  Novellas

  Melting Ice – from the anthologies Rough Around the Edges and Scandalous Brides

  Rose in Bloom – from the anthology Scottish Brides

  Scandalous Lord Dere – from the anthology Secrets of a Perfect Night

  Lost and Found – from the anthology Hero, Come Back

  The Fall of Rogue Gerrard – from the anthology It Happened One Night

  The Seduction of Sebastian Trantor – from the anthology It Happened One Season

  Short Stories

&
nbsp; The Wedding Planner – from the anthology Royal Weddings

  A Return Engagement – from the anthology Royal Bridesmaids

  UK-Style Regency Romances

  Tangled Reins

  Four in Hand

  Impetuous Innocent

  Fair Juno

  The Reasons for Marriage

  A Lady of Expectations

  An Unwilling Conquest

  A Comfortable Wife

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Interior Artwork

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Dear Reader

  An Excerpt from The Daredevil Snared

  Other Titles from Stephanie Laurens

  About the Author

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  —Historical Romance Reviews

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