Paula Reed - [Caribbean]

by Nobodys Saint

  He rolled off her. “Oh, God, do not speak to me with that voice!”

  “What do you mean?” Mary Kate stared at him, her blue eyes wide, the flush fading quickly from her face.

  “I have frightened you,” he croaked.

  Quick as lightening, those eyes snapped with fire. “I’m not afraid of you! But you’re not stepping foot outside of this room until you tell me what’s going on!”

  “I want to marry you. I need you, María Catalina, and you need me, too.”

  “Are you saying you’re in love with me?”

  He drew a ragged breath and sat up on the bed. “No, but I think I could be, in time.”

  Mary Kate sat so she faced him, pulling her feet under her shift. “I admire your sense of honor, y’know. ‘Tis a fine thing. But sometimes honor is not what’s important.”

  He bristled. “It is always important.”

  “Listen now. I like you fine, and ‘tis clear you like me, too, but we’re from different worlds and want different things. Are you telling me that you care for me so much, or want me so badly, that you’ll forsake your own to live in my country?”

  “What?” he nearly shouted.

  “Well, that’s what you’re asking for! I want you, too, but I don’t love you, either. I’ll not take you at the cost of my home and my family.” She kept her voice even, the essence of rationality. “What we want from each other doesn’t require marriage. Are you a virgin?”

  Diego bristled again, his face the picture of indignation. “Certainly not!”

  “And yet, you’ve never been married.”

  “A tryst with a widow is a sin, and sins are forgivable. Deflowering a virgin is…is…”

  “Dishonorable?”

  “¡Sí! And for that there is no forgiveness.”

  Mary Kate laughed lustily. “You’re a piece of work, my friend. I’ll be ruined for the man my grandfather would have foisted upon me, and that will be getting me out of a marriage you know I’d do nearly anything to avoid. You hate the English as much as I. I know you can understand that. But Ireland’s a poor country, and the man that weds me can live in a fine house with me and my da and with food enough to last all winter. A man there won’t care so much if he was first. You’d not be ruining my life, Diego, you’d be assuring my happiness. And all the while, it wouldn’t be such an unpleasant task for yourself.”

  Diego’s heart began to sink. He had been wrong, so wrong.

  At the sight of his crestfallen face, Mary Kate hastened to add, “I’m making it sound like I’m looking for the first available man, and that’s not so. I’m a resourceful woman. I’ve no doubt that I can think of a dozen other ways out of this mess, but this one suits me.” She rose to her knees before him and ran her fingers lightly through his hair. “I’ve come to care for you so. You’re brave in the face of danger, and kind to strange and troubled women. You’re good to Galeno, just like a father. Better than my own da, that’s sure, though I love him. You’re a fine captain. And aye, you’re honorable to a fault. If I were to lie with you, it’d not be a way out of this marriage only. It would be a memory I’d treasure all my life. If I could have both you and my home, I’d marry you tomorrow, Diego.”

  “Pretty words, Mary Kate, but not the ones I needed to hear.” He pushed himself off the bed and walked to the door. “I will send breakfast to you.”

  When he walked out, it seemed as if something vital had left the room, and it was colder and darker than it had been a minute before. Mary Kate felt shaken, and she slipped back under the sheet and pulled it up to her chin. Mother of God, she had lied to him. Not on purpose! She had lied to him because she had been lying to herself. She had listened to herself tell him how she felt about him, and suddenly it was all crystal clear.

  She did love him. Heaven help her, she did. He was everything she had said, a dozen other things besides. When in her life had she known a man to listen to her and care what she said or how she felt? Like most, he found her infuriating, but he found her funny, too. And he was funny, in his formal, earnest Spanish way. When he touched her, he didn’t merely excite her, but he made her feel a part of something, filled her with a sense of belonging she hadn’t felt since she’d left her home.

  But there was the rub. Did she love him enough to give up the one thing that had borne her through four years of humiliation? Four years of being paraded before arrogant snobs who would have found her wanting even if she hadn’t made a spectacle of herself! Four years of Sir Calder’s sneers and derogatory comments. Four years of being treated like useless baggage! Through it all, she had clung tightly to memories of cool, green fields. She had reminded herself that, just across the Irish Sea, there were people who loved her and needed her. At night, she would lie in that strange bed and in her mind hear echoes of villagers greeting her with the cry, “Dia duit!” The thought of being surrounded by her own language had eased her terrible sadness when she’d realized that somewhere along the way, she had stopped thinking in Gaeilge and started thinking in English instead.

  Could she abandon her father and sister, just at the brink of being able to return to them? Well, maybe her sense of honor had a bit more stretch and give to it than Diego’s, but she had one, damn it, and loyalty besides! Nay, she had to get home.

  But this changed everything. Knowing what she now knew, she could never sleep with Diego. Mayhap she had a will of iron, but even iron could be bent—melted if the heat were high enough. By the saints, what she felt for him was hot enough to melt iron, and she feared she’d lose her resolve in his arms.

  Hastily, she reached for her ledger. She was going to have to ask Diego for more ink.

  Chapter Eleven

  Diego did not know what to make of the Mary Katherine who sat across the table from him at dinner. As had become their custom, they ate in his cabin with the door propped open. In a modest gown of indigo linen, she chewed carefully and asked polite questions about Cartagena between bites. What was the weather like? Did he have many friends there? Was he certain that he could find an English-speaking priest? Might she see another flota waiting to ship gold to Spain? No double entendres or inflammatory statements.

  He answered her informatively, adding an interesting tidbit here or there. He offered her more wine, and she turned it down. The meal went just as it should for a man and a woman between whom no formally recognized relationship existed. He had eaten such meals before with wives and daughters of friends and customers. But this one felt terribly wrong, somehow.

  “I did not mean to hurt your feelings,” he said, unable to continue the charade.

  “You didn’t hurt my feelings.” She took a bite of dolphin fish and chewed it slowly, avoiding his eyes.

  “I should not have insulted your own honor.”

  “I wasn’t behaving honorably. I’ve thought about it today, and I’ve decided you’re quite right. It would be wrong to make love with you. For now, I’m willing to see how your government will handle the situation. If I must go to Jamaica, well, it might have been easy for this John Hartford to agree to marry me, despite my grandfather’s unflattering description, but meeting me in the flesh will be quite another story. If you think I’ve been difficult with you, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

  He relaxed a little. That sounded a little more like Mary Kate. “I am sure my friend Don Juan will help.”

  “That would be nice.”

  They finished their meal, and he found he was reluctant to let her go back to her quarters. “Do you play chess?”

  Mary Kate frowned slightly. “I’ve played with my sister from time to time, and even my da when he’s—when he’s feeling up to it. I don’t know that I’m much good at it.”

  “I will not be my usual ruthless self then,” he said with a grin and set up the board.

  It did not take long for him to see that she had not merely been modest about her playing skills. For all that Mary Kate was a strategist, she was impatient. She was always thinking ahead to her own next mo
ve and failing to pay attention to his game. At the rate they were going, he would have her in checkmate in short order.

  “You said you played with your father when he was feeling well. You have told me he is sick, but you have never said what ails him.”

  What did it matter? They would be parting ways in a few days. She sighed. “Sometimes ale ails him, but more often ‘tis whiskey.”

  “Ah.”

  The spirit to which he was accustomed sprang back into her face. “Don’t you ‘ah’ me! He’s a good man, my da! ‘Tis only his heart broke when my ma died. He needs the drink to dull the pain!”

  “I did not mean to disparage him,” he assured her. He moved again, but he could see he had agitated her. Her mind was no longer on the game. “How long has he been—sick—this way?”

  Mary Kate shrugged. “Since she died, I guess. As long as I can remember, though it grew worse over time.”

  “Who took care of you?”

  “We had a housekeeper until I was seven, but then her daughter had a baby and she went to live with them. But we did just fine on our own, the three of us. We lived in my grandfather’s house, with a big garden and enough pigs and sheep to keep us if we were careful. I worry though, for Bridget’s never been a thrifty sort. Like as not they feasted on meat for weeks after I left and have been living on turnips ever since.”

  His face softened, and he felt a little ache in his chest. In his mind, he pictured a fierce little seven-year-old girl with blue eyes and tangled black hair caring for her sister and her drunken father as best she could.

  “But who cleaned your house and cooked your meals?”

  Mary Kate grinned a little. “I made my sister do the lion’s share of the cleaning. All I had to do was tell her she was no good at it, that any room she cleaned was no better than a pigsty, and she’d just have to prove me wrong. As for the cooking, it took me three years to get the better of our hearth and pot and more nearly inedible meals and burned fingers than I can count, but I finally got to be fairly good at it. I can make a mutton stew that’ll make you think you’ve tasted a bit of heaven!”

  “And all you want is to go back home?”

  Her chin lifted a notch. “Oh, I know it don’t sound the very picture of domestic bliss. I’ll not pretend it is. But they need me so, and what is there to life if no one needs you? Why would your heart beat unless it were set on something? Mine is set on my family, my home, my people. Like yours is set on your honor, don’t you see?”

  “I do,” he said softly.

  “Well then, I’ve bared my soul to you. What would you give me in return?”

  “What would you have?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Some deep dark secret.” He waited so long to answer that Mary Kate half-fancied that he would tell her that he was really a spy, or a murderer, or some other outlandish confession.

  “I have—dreams,” he ventured tentatively.

  “Everyone has dreams.”

  “Not like that. I mean, the kind you have at night.”

  Everyone had those, too, but Mary Kate knew he meant something else, so she waited silently for him to be able to speak of them.

  “Only—I have them during the day, when I am awake.”

  Before she could resist, she leaned across the table and took his hand, knocking over his bishop. The game had ceased to matter. “And that’s what happened to you yesterday?” He nodded. “Well, what are they about?” she prodded gently.

  “Pirates, mostly, where they are, when to fight them, when to flee.”

  “Saints preserve us, you have the sight,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  She smiled at him, her face alight. “‘Tis a gift, Diego! Left over from the old days, before the Christians came. Mostly ‘tis women have it, but sometimes ‘tis passed to a man. Were there others in your family with it?”

  He shook his head in adamant denial. “No, it is nothing like that! Madre de Dios, Mary Kate, you are speaking of witchcraft!”

  “Witchcraft? Nonsense! ‘Tis passed on from one generation to the next, like red hair or a gift with gardening. We’ve a family in my village with a seer in every second generation of daughters. Paddy O’Shea—aye, that Paddy, but it has nothing to do with what’s wrong with him—his mother had it last, and we’re all watching his nieces. Our village counts on these women for warning of hard times or foretelling of good fortune.”

  He could not seem to wrap his mind around what she was telling him. If there had been such a family of women in Spain, every one of them would have burned a century ago. “I do not think you understand.”

  “Then help me understand. Tell me about your dreams.”

  He pulled his hand from hers, scattering several more pieces. “That is all. I just have these strange dreams.”

  “But who were you talking to?”

  “Myself. I was—trying to stop the dream.”

  “You’re lying to me.”

  “How can you say that?” he demanded, trying to sound indignant, but he heard weakness in his voice.

  “I keep telling you, Diego, you can’t lie to a liar.”

  He grasped at the chance to change the subject. “And what lies have you told me, besides all those when we first met?”

  She thought about the things that she’d said to him just that morning. “‘Half the truth’s no better than none at all,’ my priest always told me. But sometimes there are things that are best left unsaid; that’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Sí, I think you are right. Some things are better left unsaid.”

  *

  As the days passed and Cartagena neared, Mary Kate had to wonder at Diego’s crew. Many of them had seemed to relax a bit, but there remained a core knot of men who regularly spoke in whispers behind his back and sent dark looks at him whenever he was on deck. Always at the periphery lingered Enrique Sánchez, Diego’s first mate. As far as she could tell, he did not engage these men in conversation, but neither did he hasten to his captain’s defense when she heard them murmur words like Satanás and herejía—Satan and heresy. She had nearly been forced to threaten violence to get translations from Galeno.

  She was waiting for the boy in the late afternoon, watching the shadow of the sails stretch out over the clear blue water. Below the surface, fish darted by in streaks of silver, orange, and brilliant green. Occasional silhouettes of longer, bulkier, creatures down deep slid silently under the hull. She was overdue for a Spanish lesson, but Galeno was engaged in a short, hushed, and vehement conversation with a shipmate. Bless Galeno. There he was, not yet a man, doing what should have fallen on Enrique’s shoulders—defending the captain against his own men’s slander!

  When the lad finally joined her, his face was red with anger held tightly in check. “Forgive me, Señorita O’Reilly.”

  He stood so straight and tall, spoke with such formality. The boy mirrored with painstaking detail the demeanor of his commander.

  “You had a job to do, Galeno. ‘Twas Sánchez should have been doing it, but ‘tis good to see that someone is taking care of things.”

  He nodded crisply, his face grim. “I have told the captain of Enrique. I think he will lose his position, maybe even his job, in Cartagena.”

  “As well he should!” Mary Kate agreed. “Y’ought to teach me a few truly vile curses, Galeno, the likes of which some of these men deserve.”

  The anger on the lad’s face dissolved quickly into horror. “You are a lady! I cannot teach this to you.”

  “Oh, I’m not that much of a lady. I can curse a cur who has it coming!”

  “If you wish to learn bad things, I will not teach you. We must not lower ourselves. We must keep our honor!”

  Mary Kate arched one dark brow at him. “You sound just like your captain,” she commented dryly.

  “Gracias, Señorita O’Reilly,” he replied, but the grin on his face gave him away. He knew bloody well she hadn’t meant it as a compliment.

  “Well, then, we’ll go back to
the last lesson—listing reasons why no woman in her right mind would marry an Englishman! I have to be ready for Cartagena.”

  She knew she was becoming entirely too attached to the boy. He had just enough of the devil in him to make him interesting, and she discovered it was not uncommon for him to accidentally set a bucket in the path of a sailor who had been less than loyal to the commander. Such a man might also find that his fish had been intolerably over-salted whenever Galeno was assisting the cook in the galley.

  Apparently, Mary Kate was not immune to his pranks, either. They concluded their Spanish lesson, and she went to her cabin to practice aloud while she got ready for dinner with Diego. When he tapped on her door to summon her, she told him that she wished to converse in Spanish as much as possible. He favored her with a dazzling smile and replied, “Por supuesta.”

  Almost immediately she discovered that “usted es muy macho” did not mean “you are very kind” and was not generally the correct response to a gentleman pulling out one’s chair.

  Diego chuckled while she blushed and stammered. “It is all good fun when you make such a mistake on purpose and it is I left at a disadvantage,” he said.

  Mary Kate’s face was on fire. It would have been funny, if he weren’t standing right over her shoulder, radiating heat, and being so…so…deliciously masculine. Macho. She was going to kill Galeno.

  She commented on the delicious arroz con pollo, requested más vino, por favor and even toasted a su salud, all without further incident. Diego was patient, helping her to fill the considerable gaps in her vocabulary, correcting her grammar, providing full phrases when needed. Finally, they piled the dishes onto the serving tray to make room for another game of ajedrez—chess. Diego stood next to her, holding up each piece and supplying its Spanish name, but he went so quickly she didn’t even have time to repeat each one and work on her accent. With a polite smile she interrupted him. “Me besa despacio, por favor.”