by JoAnn Wendt
Ignoring her, he gave his attention to Tarcher.
“Yes, two children,” he said, unable to quell the pride in his voice. “A son, William, who is six, and a daughter, Catherine, who is three. They are in London, living with my sister, Verity.” It felt good to speak of his children again. Aboard the pirate ship, he hadn’t let one mention of them escape his lips for fear some insane, murdering bastard might take it into his head to go to London and hunt them down.
“A fine family, Mr. Steel,” Tarcher complimented.
“Thank you. Yes, they are.”
“And your wife died a year ago?”
Drake leaned forward and doubled over slightly, the question slamming him in the gut. Anne had been dead eleven months, and still he could not get used to it. He rested his hand on the edge of the table and drew a steadying breath.
“Yes. About a year ago.”
“Did she die in childbirth?” Edwinna asked bluntly. His narrowed gaze shot to her in anger. What a question. But when he saw genuine sympathy and not morbid curiosity in her eyes, he answered her, first drawing two steadying breaths.
“No...she died...at sea—a shipwreck during a storm in the English channel. She was traveling to visit her sister in France, who was ill. I was abroad in Holland at the time, on a wine-buying trip.” He did not add what was none of their business—that his trip had been coupled with a mission for the Sealed Knot, the secret society within England dedicated to restoring the monarchy.
Both Edwinna and Tarcher murmured appropriately. Drake felt drenched with relief when the subject went no further. He didn’t want to speak about Anne’s death—he couldn’t. Her death had shattered him. It was his own private tragedy—not something to be bandied about at someone’s supper table.
Alert and sensible, perceiving he’d trespassed, Tarcher took the conversation back to sugar. He and Edwinna talked sugar; Drake ignored them. He scarcely listened. Physically exhausted, mentally drained, he tried to think about how to get out of his situation and get home to England, but he was too tired to think. His thoughts went around in circles. Now and then, when the surf hummed and whispered, he saw in his mind’s eye the chained bodies washing back and forth in the dark water, and a chill shot through him. How near he’d come to death. God in heaven. But for Edwinna making him her husband, he would be out there...
He looked at her. She felt his eyes upon her, tossed her hair in that sexual way, and glanced at him—a lightning-swift glance full of emotions he could not read. She confused him. She was a mix of sexuality and stiff, hostile primness.
Entrapped by those blazing blue eyes, Edwinna swiftly looked away. He terrified her, with his handsome good looks, his careful grooming. His shoulders were so broad she hadn’t been able to find a shirt in the storehouse to fit him. The one he wore strained the seams. He was so clean he glistened— black hair, mahogany skin, neatly pared nails.
Did he suppose this to be a conjugal marriage?
Well, it wasn’t!
Drake wondered if this was to be a conjugal marriage. On the far side of the one-room cottage, out of the range of candlelight and in the shadows, stood the cottage’s only bed, a mosquito net cascading down from the tester. As guest, Edwinna surely would sleep in it. Would he be expected to join her, perform a bridegroom’s function in this less than private setting? He grew uneasy. He was a private man.
He was relieved when Tarcher broke off droning about sugar and addressed him. “I will string sleeping hammocks from the ceiling beams for you and for me, Mr. Steel. You have no objection, I hope, to sleeping in a hammock?”
“None,” Drake said quickly. “None at all.”
A little later, exhausted and spent and too tired to even think about his predicament, Drake climbed into his hammock and fell into instant sleep. He slept like a rock, dreamlessly and deeply.
He awoke before dawn the next morning, refreshed and with only one thought in his head—escape. He lay in the darkness in his hammock and considered his options. They were damned few. Make his way to the capital of Barbados—Bridgetown—and try to get passage on a ship? Impossible. He had no money, and by the law governing English colonies no captain could take a passenger who did not have a ticket of departure from the governor’s office.
Stow away on some ship? He grimaced. Stowaways could be hanged. Escape to the hills? Live in the wilds until such time as he could make his escape to England? Ridiculous. He was a wine merchant, not a farmer or hunter or fisherman. Forced to grow or catch his own food, he would likely starve to death in a month.
Frustrated, he climbed out of his hammock in the darkness, made his way through the sleeping cottage, went out to the privy, and then, haunted by yesterday, walked through the silent hamlet to the beach. Gently buffeted by the fragrant trade winds, he stood alone in the pink sunrise, looking down into the cove and meditating on his narrow escape. The tide was out and the swollen, bloated bodies hung from their chains in ankle-deep water. Crabs had already begun to feed on them. Drake shuddered. There but for the grace of God...
When he turned to go back to Tarcher’s, he saw Edwinna loping toward him. She made an intriguing sight with the bright pink sunrise at her back, setting her aglow as she ran along as graceful as a man, braid swinging. She reached him breathless.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “I thought you’d tried to escape.”
“Tried? Had I meant to escape, I would have done it. And I would not be standing here now with my hands in my pockets.”
“And that would have been the height of foolishness. They would hunt you down and hang you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “By your order?”
She seemed genuinely taken aback. Her expression showed it.
“No, I would never set the authorities upon you. I—I do not wish death for you, Mr. Steel. I am only saying that I am responsible for you.”
“I am your responsibility?” he asked. “Like a cow you own, or a slave?”
“Don’t be foolish.”
“Believe it or not—” He halted in frustration. He didn’t know what to call her. By rule of courtesy he should address her as wife, but he revolted against it. Anne had been that. No one could replace her. He settled for Edwinna—the bold name that suited her. “Believe it or not, Edwinna, I have been responsible for myself since the age of fourteen.”
“Then you have not done a very good job of it, have you —getting captured by pirates and almost executed as one!”
He flushed and swung a look out at the sea.
“I want a compromise.”
She grew quiet and wary. “What sort of compromise?”
“You need me to stay in Barbados three more years, until your brothers are twenty-one.”
“Yes.”
“I have children. I damn well will not stay here three years without the chance to see my children. Grant me leave, one year from today, to sail to England, and I pledge to you that I will come back. Do you hear me? I pledge it! I also pledge that in the coming twelve months I will do everything I can to help you hold on to your plantation.”
Men were liars. Edwinna knew that. Especially handsome men. They thought the world their oyster. Likely this pirate did, too. But given a year, her position as guardian of Crawford Plantation would be secure and unquestioned, especially if she had a good harvest this time. God willing, Thomas and Harry would be back. That would keep her uncle at bay. Besides, what was her alternative? If she refused to agree, he would escape. She could see escape blazing in his blue eyes. He would be caught and hanged. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want him to die.
“Very well. Agreed.”
Drake had just been warming up for the fight. He’d expected they would argue, haggle like a couple of fishmongers in a London fish market. He hadn’t expected capitulation. He wondered if she were lying. No, she wasn’t. Edwinna Crawford might be many things he disliked—overbearing, bossy, mannish—but she was not dishonest. He was a merchant and he’d long ago learned how to sif
t the dishonest from the honest at a glance. He didn’t know what to say, so he said what was in his heart.
“Thank you.”
It seemed to undo her, rattle her. What would she rather do—fight, slug it out? She walked swiftly toward Tarcher’s cottage. He walked with her. She had a long stride, but his was longer. Breeches. They were damned unfeminine, but he couldn’t complain of the view, that twitch of hip and thigh.
“I’m grateful to you, Edwinna. I am well aware that you saved my life. I’m not a fool—I know I owe you a debt.”
This rattled her, too. She seemed more comfortable with strife than with gentleness.
“Yes, well, never mind,” she said, and fled to an errand at her sugar storehouse. He went on to Tarcher’s alone and entered the cottage feeling less burdened of heart. A year was not an impossible length of time. He could stick it out. And he owed her. He prided himself on being a man of honor, a man who paid his debts.
Edwinna being Edwinna, she clashed with him again not an hour later when she came back from the storehouse and found him sitting at Tarcher’s worktable, writing Verity.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Obviously, I am writing a letter.”
“You cannot do that now. You can do it later, at Crawford Plantation.”
“I intend to do it here and now.”
“We have to leave.”
“I will leave when I’m finished with my letter.”
She brushed a hand at a strand of hair that had worked loose from the braid. “You fail to understand. Harvest begins soon. I must get home.”
He looked up angrily. “You fail to understand. I have two young children and a sister who believe me dead. I mean to rectify that situation at once.”
Her eyes softened. So did her mouth. She had a good mouth, wide and smooth, with a natural cleft in the center of her upper lip that formed two pretty peaks. On a woman less bossy, he would have found it stirring.
“I did not mean you cannot write your children.”
“Thank you!”
“I only mean it is imperative that I go, that I get back to my plantation, to my work.”
“Then go. Give me directions. I can find my way.”
Edwinna considered. “I will leave the boy, Jeremy, to serve you. Also, three of my bond slaves should be coming down from Crawford Plantation with a string of burros, to pick up supplies from my storehouse. You must wait and travel back with them. It isn’t safe to go alone. Runaway slaves—”
Drake flexed his shoulders in frustration. “Edwinna!” He’d settled on calling her that. Besides, he found a slight pleasure in the way she flinched every time he said her name. “I am so damned frustrated with my situation that I’d like nothing better than to be attacked. I would welcome the chance to tear someone limb from limb.” He went back to his letter.
Edwinna grew vexed. She was only taking sensible precautions. What did a London wine merchant know about the Caribbean and its dangers? Nothing.
“I will leave a pistol for you.”
He nodded without looking up. Dipping pen into ink pot, he concentrated on his letter, but said, “Don’t worry about the boy, Jeremy. I will take care of him.”
That, at least, was decent. Edwinna lingered in the doorway, aware that she’d handled things poorly, but uncertain as to how to make it right. She wished he would look up, exchange a civil nod with her, but he didn’t. She left.
Drake finished his letter and penned a copy. The copy would go on a second ship. That would assure that one arrived. Letters were chancy things. Some got to their destination, some did not. This one must. In the letter he’d been brief and succinct. He’d assured Verity and Arthur that he was alive and well, asked them to send money, and gave them an abbreviated account of his past six months, including the preposterous charge of piracy.
He’d been deliberately vague on the subject of Edwinna Crawford. He’d given her credit for saving his life and had admitted this obligated him to be of service to Crawford Plantation for the coming year, but he did not tell them he’d had to marry her. He was too damned chagrined by it. Further, and more serious, he didn’t want Catherine and William to know. They were so young and vulnerable. They would think he’d abandoned them in order to start a new family. He absolutely refused to distress his children. This so-called marriage would have to remain his own private secret.
* * *
Chapter 4
A string of eighteen miniature burros, dainty little creatures, picked its way down to sea level from the green terraced hills of sugar cane, and plodded gracefully into Speightstown’s dusty street by midmorning, as Edwinna had promised. For a moment Drake forgot his troubles and watched the delicate burros with pleasure, wishing Catherine could see them. She would clap her chubby hands in delight. They were as charming as any stuffed toy in her nursery, their faces rabbit-sweet, their eyelashes swooping and silky, their ears long and floppy, inviting touch.
Affingoes, the boy Jeremy called them when Drake reached out to pet them. Spanish bred, Drake supposed. They had amazing strength. They carried loads twice their size, and they knew the route so well they scarcely needed the three drovers who accompanied them. Of their own volition they plodded straight into Edwinna’s storehouse yard. Faithful little beasts.
He could say less for their drovers. They were Newgate trash, if ever he’d seen any. Shoulders hunched, they slunk to their chores, dog-sly, furtive. He disliked them on sight. Joining Drake in the storehouse yard, Tarcher identified the three men, pointing them out.
“That small one is Jacka. He’s a slimey son of a bitch. Watch him.” Jacka was slim as a whippet with a face full of smallpox pits and a cocky way of snapping orders at the others. “The big one is Yates. He’s a half-wit, but likely to do anything Jacka tells him to do, so watch him, too.” Yates was so filthy Drake could smell him twenty feet away. He had the greasiest, longest hair Drake had ever seen on a man. It straggled down his back to his waist. The third was a bond slave whom Tarcher called Hastings. The three had the look of ruthless ne’er-do-wells who would cut your throat for a penny.
“Why in hell does Edwinna buy such bond slaves?”
“She has no choice,” Tarcher said crisply. “Nor does any planter on the island. What she said last night was true. This is what England sends us to work our plantations: felons, pickpockets, murderers.” He gave Drake a tart look. “Is it any wonder planters prefer to use black African slaves?”
Drake had no answer. He hated slavery, but if the alternative was to use men like Jacka, Yates, Hastings? Good God. It made his blood run cold.
A few hours later, sitting on the stiff-legged, plodding mare Edwinna had sent down for him, following the heavily loaded affingoes and their drovers up a cane path to God knows where, he’d found no reason to change his mind. Jacka, Yates, and Hastings were a sullen, surly lot, skulking along, shoulders hunched. Drake was glad Edwinna had provided him with a loaded pistol.
Although he hated the company he was in, he reveled in the beauty he saw all around him as they climbed, heading for the plateau. The island rose lush and green under him. Cane fields rippled like green silk, mile after mile of it. Far below, the sea sparkled like a blue jewel. A necklace of surf encircled the island, and here and there, crescents of white sand beach shimmered. Overhead, exotic birds soared: golden plovers, blue heron, pelicans, wild parrots. Butterflies flew up in clouds of brilliant yellow, fluttering into the blue sky. Beautiful.
And he could fall in love with the trade winds. Blowing night and day without ceasing, blowing with the same mild constant velocity, the trade winds seemed the only “constant” in a chaotic, inconstant world. He was a man who prized constancy, and God knows, he’d had little of it in his thirty-two years. There’d been the civil war; the loss of home, father, mother; and then the hardest blow of all—Anne. He was still reeling from it.
“Sir? Do you be a real pirate?”
His chain of thoughts broken, Drake glanced down at
Jeremy, who bobbed along on the path beside his mare, staying closer than a shadow, and smiled.
“No. I was a prisoner aboard that pirate ship.”
The boy’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. He’s plainly disenchanted, just as I would have been at thirteen, thought Drake. Still smiling at the romantic notions of youth, Drake stood in the stirrups and looked back down the path to survey his surroundings. His smile faded. Where in hell was he? He felt edgy with the sea disappearing behind him and tall cane fields swallowing him up.
“Even so,” Jeremy persisted, “she must have been excitin’ bein’ aboard a real pirate ship, wasn’t she, sir?”
Drake gave the eager boy his attention. He wasn’t about to tell a boy of thirteen the truth—that pirate ships were hotbeds of sodomy, where men paired off with other men, coupling like husband and wife.
“It wasn’t exciting; it was disgusting,” he said firmly, shutting the door on the subject. The boy dared ask no more. But when his young shoulders sagged again, Drake leaned out and gave him a paternal pat on the back. He liked children.
“So, Jeremy. How did you come to be a bondservant in Barbados?”
“I was spirited, sir,” Jeremy offered cheerfully.
“Spirited?”
“Ay, sir. Grabbed right off Cheapside Street in London, I was. Shoved in a sack and throwed aboard ship.”
Drake had heard of such things. He knew unscrupulous sea captains made a practice of seizing children on the streets of London, spiriting them to the Caribbean, and selling them as bondslaves. He looked at Jeremy askance. The boy seemed remarkably cheerful about his fate.
“You don’t mind being here?”
“Nay, I likes it. Back home, sir’ in London, there was a passel o’ us around the table board. I ne’er could grab fast enough to get me fill. Here, sir? I fills me belly. Bone meat twice a week. Salt fish. Plenty o’ beans and cassava bread.”
