Pirate's Rose

by Janet Lynnford

  The distinctive voice of the lookout drifted to him through the cabin door. And with a smile of pride on his lips, he looked down on the sleeping Rozalinde.

  Rozalinde was more relaxed after that night. And to Kit's way of thinking, it was a blessing she was. Then following days of bad luck put him in the foulest temper ever.

  Mounting the steps to the forecastle deck the next day Kit propped a booted foot on the lowest rung of the rail leaned against the top rail, and prayed for a place to land But no, fortune wouldn't oblige him. The coastline of this godforsaken country was made up of nothing but wide, barren sand flats. They had sailed steadily south for hours, and no where could they approach shore. The expanses of sane were backed by dunes. Beyond, he glimpsed an occasional lagoon or marsh flat. There was probably fresh water there lurking among the sea grass, but they couldn't get to it. All along the shore, sand shifted into dangerous bars, creating treacherous traps for a ship with a hull as deep as a galleon's. With each passing minute, he felt the fuse on his temper grow shorter, and his ship's company, down to the last man, shared his state of mind.

  The low-hanging sky was the color of dull, unpolished pewter. Pushing back an irritating lock of hair that the wind kept blowing into his left eye, Kit watched Wrightman who stood on the channel-wailes and dropped the hand lead line into the water, hauled it up to read the little tags of red and blue cloth or leather to determine the depth. They have found a landing place earlier, but the inhabitants living in the small village didn't like foreigners. Especially those who arrived in a galleon equipped for battle. Their small landing party had been filling their casks at a spring when the were driven off by a gang of men with pitchforks and guns. Kit wanted no trouble, so they had sailed on. They'd gotten little water for their trouble. Thoroughly irritated and frus­trated, Kit left the deck and sought his cabin.

  Rozalinde greeted him as he entered and pushed a cup into his hands.

  "What's this?" He stared morosely at the contents.

  "Drink," she insisted, pressing it toward his lips. "I know you didn't have any of the water brought back. I saved you some of mine. How many others went without?"

  He didn't tell her nearly a dozen, and the rest had scarcely a swallow. He drained the cup and banged it on the table.

  "For once you don't argue?" She went back to her books and charts, settling herself comfortably before them at the table.

  "Where are we?" Kit changed the subject, leaning over her shoulder while he loosened his shirt collar.

  Rozalinde closed her book with a snap. "We have a good way to go if we expect to find a stream or river."

  "We are near one thing we want." Kit went to stand by the bunk, stripped off his doublet and shirt, then loosened his trunk hose. Within minutes he stood naked before her. Sinking into the soft feather mattress, he held out one hand.

  "Come to bed," he coaxed.

  Later, as she lay languidly in his arms, drowsing, she counted the black hairs in his arm where it lay, drawn tightly across her waist. His hair was so dark, his flesh also a shade darker than her own. She wondered which of them their first child would favor, then caught herself.

  "Talk to me," she whispered, moving in his arms to see his face. "I require distraction."

  "A topic for the lady," Kit answered. "What shall it be?"

  Roz blanched and looked away, unable to speak. His words reminded her of Trenchard.

  Puzzled by her response, Kit gave her a pained stare. "Why don't you talk to Phillipe? Mayhap he can please you."

  "Not likely," she countered, rubbing her hips against his. It was too tempting, with both of them naked.

  "Caterwauling wench." He bent to kiss her.

  "Varlet," she whispered as his lips dropped lower, searching for her ear beneath the riot of her hair.

  "Ah, I know your trouble." Kit roused himself after a few minutes and left the bunk. "You're hungry. It makes you shrewish."

  "I'm not shrewish." Roz flopped onto her back and crossed her arms over her chest.

  He went to his seaman's chest and rummaged for something.

  "What are you looking for?" Roz sat up in the bunk "Don't let it be another lemon."

  "It's not a lemon." Laughing, Kit came back to the bed. "I've just the thing for such a moment as this. Saved for you." It was a disgustingly stale hunk of biscuit. Roz took it without thanks and ground away at it with her teeth until a chunk crumbled into her mouth. "It'll take me all day to eat this."

  "Good. 'Twill keep your mouth engaged."

  "If mine is engaged," she said between gnawings, "you talk. Tell me about your mother."

  "There's not much to tell." Kit's tone was dismissive. "She was timid and self-effacing. Did whatever my father told her. When I went away to sea, I eventually wrote to her. I don't know why. I didn't really care about her by then. It was out of respect for the memory, I suppose, for how I once felt."

  Roz chewed thoughtfully. "Does it make any difference realizing how you once felt?"

  "Hardly." Kit withdrew his arms from around Rozalinde and crossed them behind his head.

  She liked looking at the broad, muscled planes of his shoulders, the way they sloped down to his chest. It gave her gooseflesh all over. Hastily she hid the reaction by flopping over on her stomach, resting her chin on folded hands. "Tell me something about her. What did she look like?"

  Kit seemed vexed by her question. "She was small and thin," he snapped, brushing a fly away from his face and closing his eyes.

  "Like me?"

  "Not like you." Kit opened his eyes and gave her a short examination. "She was smaller, and her manner was different. Her coloring was perhaps the same." He eyed Roza linde with a wary eye, seeming to compare. "Her hair was brown. I got my dark hair from my father, along with a lot of other traits I don't like."

  "Her eyes?" Roz went on, determined to ignore his neg­ative comments. "Do you have your mother's eyes?"

  "Her eyes were ... I forget the color."

  He said it so quickly, Rozalinde knew he was lying. "Never mind," she soothed. "Tell me something you did together. Tell me something she said."

  "I don't remember anything she said."

  He closed his eyes tightly, a stubborn look on his face. Rozalinde let him sit there. Be that way, she thought si­lently, willing him to remember. She wouldn't interfere.

  A second later, Kit's face relaxed slightly, his mouth curled up at the corners the slightest bit.

  "I do remember climbing the cherry tree in the kitchen garden," he said, his voice low and tentative. "I was proba­bly less than three."

  Rozalinde stuffed her wadded smock against her lips to hide her smile of triumph. There were good memories. She'd felt sure he had some.

  "I'd seen the kitchen boys climb it all week long to pick cherries for tarts and jam," Kit went on, eyes still closed. "I was mad with impatience, waiting for my mother to pro­pose one of our rare walks outside so I could try it." He frowned a moment. "She had to wait until my father was away, you understand, though I didn't realize it at the time. And I wasn't allowed to go alone. At any rate, when I finally got to the tree, I was dismayed to find I was too short to reach the lower branches. My mother lifted me up to them, laughing as I remember, at my wish to climb. I probably would have fallen on my head if she hadn't kept hold of me, but she did. She kept a firm grip on my middle and refused to let me go higher. I recall howling something fierce when she made me come down."

  Kit fell silent and Roz studied him anxiously. All signs of his smile had disappeared, and she wondered if she dare prompt him. It might destroy his concentration and bring him out of the memory. She sat very still, trying not to distract him.

  Finally he opened his eyes and gazed at Rozalinde. "There, I remembered something. Satisfied?"

  Roz pursed her lips, realizing the memory was deserting him. "How did you feel?"

  "Then or now?" he asked harshly. "Then."

  "I don't remember. But I did sense my mother was al­ways nervous, af
raid of something. Later, when I was older, I thought back on it and realized we were never together in my father's presence. In fact, if I was with her and a servant announced his return, she would send me off with one of the maids. She was afraid of being caught coddling me. That wasn't permitted. She was to treat me imperson­ally, to give mundane orders for my care to the servants and then ignore me, like everyone else does their children."

  "Where was your brother?"

  He shrugged. "I don't remember much about him, except that he usually got me into trouble when he deigned to come around." He grimaced. "When I was six or seven, I often went to bed with a black eye from him and a sore backside from my father or the tutor he kept for us."

  "Doesn't it help to remember how much she loved you?"

  "No." His voice was sharp as he rose from his chair and caught up his shirt. "She gave up too easily, let my father make the decisions of how to raise me. No matter where the thoughts start, I always end by remembering that."

  "But look at the man who made her do it. How could she fight him? He was her husband."

  Kit looked at her, clearly stung. "You take her part? She couldn't overcome her husband's will to care for her child the way she thought best."

  "No, she couldn't. Not if he sent her away." Roz bit her lip and waited, wondering if he would see the logic of her statement.

  Kit stood. Looking away, he pulled his doublet on over his shirt, donned his boots, and went out without another word.

  Rozalinde turned back to her books. It seemed hopeless to overcome his animosity. He might have loved his mother, but that love had been killed by a circumstance that hurt him as badly as a betrayal. It pained him so deeply, he had forced his entire past from his mind. He didn't remember much of anything about his youth, and what he did remember was devoid of feeling. She washed her hands of him, at least for now. Burying her nose in her books, she sought solace. He didn't remember how he felt, but she, Rozalinde, hurt for him. A young boy, all alone, in the care of a harsh father, with no warm thoughts or feelings to call his own.

  Kit hunted with his men the next day. While he stalked his prey on the shores of Jutland, Roz worked. Seating herself at the wide desk in Kit's cabin, she arranged before her the silver ink pot, the sand caster, and several fresh quills taken from her trunk. The sheet of paper lay smooth and blank before her, bidding her begin. Trying to forget a throbbing headache that tormented her, she prepared to start.

  What would it be today? Not location. She'd figured their position so many times even she tired of it. Once she had determined their latitude, it was child's play to chart their course every inch of the way down the coast of Jutland, on to Germany and the Netherlands. She must make another selection. Something to soothe away care.

  The instant she lifted the tiniest corner of her thoughts, the ugly images of her worries escaped from the place where she'd locked them. They bombarded her conscious­ness. With a moan she rubbed her aching temple, then shoved them back. She must not acknowledge them. Tidal calculations were the answer. Pulling the white sheet closer, she dipped her quill.

  For several minutes there was no sound in the cabin ex­cept the usual noises of timber and rigging and the rasp of quill tip crossing paper. Since they were headed for Enckhuysen, she would figure for the bay there. With bold strokes she prepared the table, then began filling it with numbers, guided by her almanac. It was September now. From her pen flowed a neat list of the days and their corres­ponding figures. Neap tide. Ebb tide. Tidal intervals. Water rising and falling, dictated by shifts of the moon. On the twenty-second, which was also her birthday, came the day of spring tide—the highest tide of the lunar month. A time of equinox, when days and nights drew out in equal mea­sure, light and dark, half and half. So orderly, the progres­sion of days, the law of tides. Why couldn't her life now be measured and orderly, like it once had been? In her father's London house, her days had been reassuringly sys­tematic, devoid of trouble. Now, despite the deceptive calm on board the Swiftsure, her future threatened.

  Irritated with her own volatility, she returned to her work. Volume of their ship's hull came next, along with how deeply it rode in the water. Yet concentrate as she would, the numbers failed to deliver their usual soothing dose of mental numbness.

  Ceasing her work, Roz stared at the little compass box to her right. Like most compasses, it was topped with a wind rose, the flower to which Kit likened her. Was he right about her nature? Did it matter if he was?

  Automatically she named the rhumbs of the wind show­ing on the compass rose, just as she always did, starting at the twelve o'clock position and moving clockwise: Tramontana, Greco, Levante, Syroco, Ostro, Garbino, Ponente, Maestro. Two of these winds would blow them to the Netherlands. How long would it take? One more day, two at most? When their voyage ended, no more could she indulge in an idealistic dream of love and healing. Reality yanked firmly at her sleeve, bidding her to admit its sordid truth.

  And the truth was, love could make little difference in her life. Here on board the Swiftsure, she thought she loved Kit. But back in the everyday world, it would disappear.

  Rozalinde let her gaze travel to the map pinned to the wall. She tapped the quill against her cheek, trying to understand her own apprehension. For one thing, she was a realist, wedded to responsibility. And her responsibility loomed pressing and definite before her in the form of her family—her parents, her younger brothers and sisters—peo­ple who had meant everything to her for as long as she could remember. They wouldn't survive without her care— not that she had a distorted idea of her own importance. They wouldn't perish without her, but they could suffer considerably if ruin overtook their finances. She must pre­vent that.

  Balanced against it, on the other side of the scale, was Christopher Howard—Earl of Wynford and lord of her heart. But that was all nonsense. Here, at sea, cut off from reality, it was one thing to play at love when their daily activities were dictated by the need to pursue the necessi­ties of life—food and drink and the correct course at sea.

  If Kit was dictatorial about those things, it could be justified as necessary for their survival, or so she had told herself. Even then she chaffed as she obeyed his orders.

  Once back in England, she knew what would happen. She would again feel the urge of duty, of all the things she considered important and pressing in life, and Kit would interfere. He would tear her in two by requiring she serve him first—his needy insistence that she proclaim her love for him proved it. Whether he would be controlling about the business itself was difficult to know. He might wish to run it, to merge it with his own business endeavors, or he might not. Without question he would object to her going off daily on her own, devoting her time to shop and ware­house decisions. A husband was supposed to be the center of a wife's world, she thought dismally. And suppose she had children? He would expect her to stay at home and tend the nursery. Her siblings had never been a drain on her energy because neither her father nor her mother had ever dreamed of tying her to them. The thought of losing her freedom for such a reason was excruciating.

  No, it was impossible. She needed her independence. In fact, upon her return to West Lulworth, she would need to set out for London immediately, to meet with the company shareholders and undo the harm caused by Trenchard in stealing their cargo. West Lulworth had never been more than a temporary resting place for her family while her father's health improved. A Merchant Adventurer needed to be in London, at the center of commerce.

  The very thought of Trenchard made her writhe with anguished impotence. Since the night of the storm, she had purposely pushed him from her memory until she would be in a position to take action against him. Now that time was near at hand. She would have to deal with his many betrayals.

  With a whack she threw the quill on the table and began to work her hand, meaning to relax the writer's cramp from the last hour of scribbling. But the hand clenched and squeezed like a claw, reminding her of the anxiety pent up inside her. It looked
exactly like her stomach felt.

  With a groan she covered her face, wanting to deny it all.

  It isn't fair, she thought rebelliously, immediately realiz­ing the childishness of such an idea. The world wasn't a fair place. Many times had her father reminded her of that fact. But he softened it with his loving admonition to trea­sure her family, to remember that people she loved and who loved her in return would give her truth and fairness. Other people felt no compunction to provide such things.

  But that was the crux of the trouble. If Kit couldn't love her, if all he felt for her was passing fancy or physical pas­sion, they would eventually land in a situation where he would fail to grant her truth and fairness, simply because a man who didn't love would not feel obliged to consider her needs and desires. There was no guarantee she could teach him to love as deeply as she herself was capable.

  Given all these facts, could she really wed with him? It seemed pure madness.

  Pushing back her chair with a nerve-grating scrape, Roz abandoned her work. She was sorely in need of someone to talk to. Opening the door, she went in search of Phillipe.

  While Rozalinde wrestled with these dilemmas, the man she feared most stood outside the presence chamber of Fer­nando Alvarez de Toledo, Governor of the Netherlands and Duke of Alva. George Trenchard straightened his best green doublet, then glanced at his grave companion. "Is there always such rain in Antwerp?"

  "Always," replied Francisco DeVega tersely. He pulled repeatedly on the blue ribbon hanging down his chest that dangled the medal of the Order of the Golden Fleece. "'Tis generally worse in spring, when everything floods. I prefer Seville with its sun and citrus fruits."

  Trenchard did not bother to reply. He practiced his speech to the Duke of Alva again, running through the long version he'd prepared, then the short version, then answering the questions he anticipated. Idly he glanced around the chamber, barely seeing the gilding on the plas­ter garlands above his head, the carved, polished wood or­namenting the walls, doors, and windows of the Hotel de Ville, where the duke resided when in Antwerp. The guard on duty at the duke's door coughed, shuffled his feet and shifted his pikestaff.