Paula Reed - [Caribbean]

by Nobodys Saint

“Very well, another twenty pounds and I’ll follow her plan. But if it doesn’t work, I’m not to blame.”

  “Twenty pounds!” Geoff exclaimed.

  “That’s not so much,” Mary Kate argued.

  “I’ve already offered him all the money you have, save a bit of pocket change to see you to your village. Where do you think the twenty pounds will come from?”

  Mary Kate smiled sweetly. “You promised Diego. You know, the man who made it possible for you to sail with that pretty wife of yours and make those two fine children. And your friend Giles. If not for Diego, he’d still be roaming the seas looking for his wife, who would be in a whorehouse in Havana. Now how much is all of that worth?”

  The Scotsman whistled. “She’s a piece of work, that one.”

  In the morning, she was on her way home.

  *

  At noon that same day, Diego brought out his sextant and calculated Magdalena’s position. They were on course and the weather was fair. A good start. He sent a little prayer to Magdalena that Mary Kate’s ship would find such good sailing the whole journey. “I can trust her with you, no?” he asked, once again feeling comfortable speaking to his patron saint. As Mary Kate had pointed out to the bishop, Magdalena had meant well.

  For the time being, they were well behind but within sight of a flota of six galleons. That meant they need not worry about the pirates who prowled the Spanish Main. If pirates lurked who could take on six galleons, they would, and leave modest, little Magdalena alone. If they feared the galleons, they would leave Magdalena for fear of inviting the flota’s interference.

  The cumulative effect was to give Diego too little with which to occupy his mind. His men would not appreciate it, but they would spend as little time in Cádiz as possible. Go in, dispose of the cargo, fill the hold again, and depart. With a little luck, he need spend no more than one evening with his family. Long enough to tell them he would operate out of La Habana, not Cádiz, and that no, he was not ready to think about getting married.

  That settled, he let his mind wander, entertaining thoughts of María Catalina that would give him plenty to confess when he made it to Cádiz.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Mary Kate watched the dark curtain of rain draw closer and closer. At this rate, they’d hit it in three or four minutes. If she didn’t go below, she’d get soaked, but she didn’t care. The sea in a storm was a fine thing. Terrifying, to be sure, but an adventure all the same. She dug her fingers into the rope wrapped around the mast and held tight while the deck pitched under her feet and she waited for the shock that came when the rain struck.

  “With any luck,” a sailor behind her shouted over the wind, “she’ll wash overboard!”

  “Even the sea would spit out a bite that bitter,” another shouted back.

  They had no qualms about her overhearing. Goodness knew, no one seemed to feel the least inclined to hide his animosity toward her. Who could blame them? She hadn’t been in Tortuga or on the ship for long when it occurred to her that playing the ill-dressed, unwashed, termagant was not the remedy for her situation. To these men, those components added up to one thing—whore. Instead, she wore her most conservative clothes and played the bitter, sexless, censorious, recluse.

  It was far harder than the role she had taken with Sir Calder. She was naturally drawn to interact with people, whether fighting, flirting, or jesting. Even though she didn’t like most of these men, she’d rather get into a rollicking row with them than purse her lips and look down her nose like some English prig.

  And it was hard to hide a passionate nature when, at the moment, she wanted with all her heart to open her arms and embrace the cold wind and the torrent of rain. In fair weather, she wished she could don breeches and climb into the rigging to better see the whole, wide ocean. As it was, she had to settle for standing at the rail on such days, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and snapping prudishly at anyone who drew near.

  Ice water doused her, and she quietly reveled in the feel of it soaking through her clothes and running down her face. She felt alive, awake, completely a part of all the water that surrounded her.

  “Look at that. It don’t bother ‘er a bit,” the first sailor said.

  “It don’t bother ‘er because she don’t feel it. She don’t feel a thing, icy bitch,” the other replied.

  The boat heaved up against a wave and then plummeted down again with powerful force. She held on for dear life, loving the rush that flowed through her veins.

  “Get below, miss!” Captain Cunningham shouted to her, and she looked up at where he stood at the helm.

  It was hard being so unkind to him, as well, but she didn’t dare appear soft to anyone on the crew. She liked Captain Cunningham, though. He was Irish and a merry sort. Even his partner, the Scot, seemed a decent fellow. To keep up her charade, she scowled at him and yelled, “I get seasick in my cabin!”

  “Go! I’ll not have you washed overboard!”

  Oh, she wanted a fight! She wanted to say, “Make me!” and then have a real brawl over it all. A lovely knock-down-drag-out fight in the pouring rain on a violent ocean. It would be heaven!

  Instead, she stuck her nose in the air and tried to march back to her cabin, but it was hard to walk across the deck in the storm, and no one made any attempt to help her. In the beginning, any sailor who approached her in any way was treated to her best impersonation of a snooty English nobleman disdaining what he thought to be a filthy Irish peasant. She had been on the receiving end often enough to have the look down pat. Now, she couldn’t have paid one of them to give her a hand.

  In her cabin she stripped to her shift and lay down in the wet garment, still glad for the cold that made her feel alive. Four years of being hated. And then Diego had come along. Diego, Galeno, Father Tomás, even Señor and Señora Gallegos had all been so kind to her. She had just been herself, and while she had annoyed them occasionally, they still liked her. Like real friends. And even though she hadn’t known them long, she had enjoyed being with Diego’s aunt and uncle and friends in Jamaica.

  Just when she had been getting used to it, the odd sense of being liked, she was back to having to make people hate her again. To comfort herself, she imagined her homecoming. The house would be a disaster, of course, and Da drunk as a skunk and on a rampage that Bridget had only exacerbated. The accounts would be a shambles. Da and Bridget would fall to their knees they’d be so grateful to see her, and even Sir Calder would realize that taking her away from the estate had been the biggest mistake of his life. Why, she’d work extra hard to turn a profit, just so she could send it to him and show him how wrong he had been to have ever taken her away.

  She would save her family and all of their tenants from ruin. “That Mary Kate,” they’d say, “she has a hell of a temper, but she’s good to her own.”

  Once, she might have dreamed of teasing the local boys again, of driving one or two of them mad with desire, willing to suffer her headstrong ways for empty promises of fulfillment, but now it didn’t even cross her mind. When she thought of desire at all, she thought of lying by a cool river while long, lean fingers worked magic on her skin, bare to the sultry breeze.

  Well, she’d be home in another month. She’d be with her family, back in the only place that she had ever belonged.

  That was a lie. She had belonged with Diego, too. To ease her longing, she closed her eyes and whispered to herself in Spanish. She practiced simple, polite phrases and requested various items of food and clothing, the way that Señora Gallegos had taught her in the market. It wasn’t the words themselves that brought comfort. It was the sound of the language and the memories it brought.

  *

  It was no use. Diego had knelt on the solid stone floor of the cathedral in Cádiz for over an hour, after three days of hard labor and fasting, and still, he could not come up with a drop of penitence for the sins he had confessed. He had never been a monk, but usually he felt a little guilty for his occasional discreet
trysts. For what he had shared with María Catalina, he felt no remorse whatsoever.

  Diego stood slowly. His face and ribs had mended, but the floor had left his knees the worse for wear. Maybe he didn’t have to repent. Maybe God considered it penance enough that he had denied himself release that day, and every day since. At any rate, since the fasting appeared to be doing no good, he would go to his parents’ for dinner. He had already made the mistake of telling his mother that he could not come sooner because the priest had ordered him to fast. Then she had demanded he tell her what he had done to bring forth such a penance, like he was still a child and accountable to her.

  “It was a woman, Mamá,” he had snapped, and her eyes had gone round as saucers. What? Did she think him a virgin? He was a virile, thirty-four-year-old man! The thought made him smile. He remembered pulling out a chair and a certain woman smiling up at him and saying, “Usted es muy macho.”

  He brushed the memory away with the thought of facing his parents. At least his announcement concerning his business plans should nicely deflect any further talk about women.

  His father, the senior Diego Montoya, greeted him at the door. The older man had long, black hair, shot through liberally with strands of pure silver. Whenever Diego looked at him, it was like looking into a mirror to the future. They had the same lean, dark faces and prominent chins, the same warm, brown eyes. He put his hand on his son’s shoulder and said, “It is one thing to give in to the demands of a healthy body. It is quite another to speak of it to your mother.”

  “She should not have asked.”

  “Then do not tell her you are fasting.”

  “Lie?”

  “You are a busy man. That was all you needed to say.” In a louder voice he called, “Ramona! Your son is here.”

  “Which one?” she called back, rushing from the drawing room into the foyer. She was a stout woman swathed in black, her dark hair pulled carefully on top of her head. “Oh, you.”

  “I have come for dinner after all, Mamá.”

  “I thought you were fasting.”

  “I was, but I need to talk to you and Father.”

  “I will tell the cook to keep something warm for you. You can eat after dark.” Leave it to his mother to watch out for him.

  “Thank you, Mamá. Where is everyone?”

  Ramona pursed her lips and said nothing. When she turned and walked back toward the drawing room, the two men followed.

  “They are having dinner with Mercedes’s daughter, María and her new husband,” Diego Senior explained. Mercedes was Diego’s sister.

  “Sixteen!” Ramona snapped. “Maria is sixteen! I told Mercedes that her daughter was too young for marriage. Fine. Mercedes will have no one to blame but herself when it goes sour and María’s life is ruined.”

  “Mamá,” Diego said in his sister’s defense, “Mercedes was sixteen when she married.”

  His mother’s eyes welled with tears, and his father looked at him like he had just committed a grievous sin. Ramona was still sensitive to the dishonorable circumstances behind Mercedes’s marriage.

  Dishonorable. Diego shook his head. Mercedes had left a note in Carlos’s prayer book at Mass, asking him to meet her in their courtyard during siesta. It had been broad daylight, but one of the servants had spied them behind a trellis, kissing passionately. Before the servant could spread any ugly rumors, Mercedes and Carlos were married. It had all worked out well. They were a very happy couple and good parents.

  Diego was seventeen at the time. When his father had confronted Carlos, Diego had stood behind him, his hand on the hilt of his sword. It had all seemed so very serious then.

  “Is Pablo there, too?” he asked.

  His mother began to weep.

  “Shortly after you left last time,” his father said, “Pablo asked the bishop to send him to another parish. He said he had decided he was too close to people here to be an objective priest to them. He is outside Madrid, now.”

  The discussion was getting harder by the minute.

  “Ramona, darling, Pablo must answer to God, you know that. Now Dieguito is here, and I am sure he has good news for us.” Dieguito. Only his parents could get away with calling him by his childhood name.

  Ramona wiped her eyes and took a deep, shuddery breath. “I know. I am still unhappy with you, Dieguito, but you are my first baby. What is it you want to tell us?”

  There was no way out of it. No matter how poor a start he had made, if he did not tell them now, he only delayed the inevitable. “As I told you the last time I was home, this voyage from Tierra Firme to Spain and back will give me enough to finish paying for Magdalena.”

  His father broke out into a wide smile. “So this is it, then? The next time you will be both captain and owner! Congratulations! This calls for wine, at least.” The senior Diego went to the sideboard and pulled out wine and glasses.

  “I have not eaten all day,” Diego reminded him.

  Diego Senior poured two glasses, handing one to his wife. “We will toast you, then.” He lifted his glass, and Ramona raised hers in return, all trace of distress erased from her face.

  “You will have an office near the harbor,” she said, “and you will spend weeks at a time here in Cádiz! You will marry here, and when you are at sea, I will have another daughter and your children for comfort.” She gave him a look that was part disapproval, part sly indulgence. “With a wife, you need never go hungry again.”

  “Mamá…”

  “I think that, under these circumstances,” Diego Senior said, “your brother Rico would do well with you. Rather than being answerable to Don Luis—I understand your reluctance to have Rico in the middle of that relationship—he would be answerable to you. He might cause you problems at first, but those problems would no longer shame you before an employer. And I think that Ramona will understand that you must be able to discipline Rico as you see fit. No, Ramona?”

  “I do not think that Mamá will be happy with me for taking Rico away. Not with Pablo so far and me at sea or in La Habana. Andrés would be the only son left.”

  “La Habana?” Diego Senior asked.

  “I am well known there, and there are a number of customers who will ship with no one but me.”

  His father nodded. “It would be a frequent destination, then. Certainly, we knew that you would be at sea much of the time. But there are many other aspects to owning your own company. You will have to have a permanent office.”

  “Yes, I will. In La Habana.”

  Ramona gave him a bewildered look. “I do not understand. I am proud that you have customers who rely upon you, but they are more important than your family?”

  “Mamá, you have all done just as well without me. I will still visit when I am here.”

  “Dieguito,” said his father, “I think there are things you are not considering. Your business may not always bring you to Cádiz. Don Luis has several ships, so he can always direct you here. The only shrewd way to make sure you spend time at home is to have your office here.”

  “I am aware of this, Father. La Habana will place me in an advantageous position for a number of routes.”

  “So would Cádiz.”

  “Shorter trips can bring substantially more profit.”

  Diego Senior frowned. “Shorter trips would not bring you home as often.”

  “I would try never to be gone more than two or three years at a time.”

  “Two or three years!” Ramona wailed.

  “Naturally, son, we would not interfere with your success. You have worked very hard for many years to come to this position.”

  “La Habana offers me the greatest opportunity.”

  Diego Senior nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps it will be better for Rico. A few years away from home might help him to grow up.”

  “He is not taking Rico!” Ramona proclaimed.

  “I did not say…” Diego protested, but his father cut him off.

  “You coddle the boy too much!” he s
aid to his wife.

  “And you are too hard on him. You simply have to know how to manage him. He cannot go with Dieguito. He is so young still. He needs a mother’s guidance.”

  Diego was not about to argue, because he certainly did not want to be stuck with his irresponsible, disreputable youngest brother, but secretly, he had to agree with his father. The only way Rico would ever learn to take care of himself was if his mother would stop doing it for him.

  The realization hit Diego squarely between the eyes, and suddenly he knew that both he and María Catalina had made a terrible mistake. A terrible mistake.

  He took a breath, and before he could think better of it, he said, “I will be happy to take Rico for you, Father.”

  Diego Senior went back to smiling. “You are a good boy, Dieguito.”

  “No!” Ramona shouted.

  “I think I should go now,” Diego said.

  “Perhaps that would be best,” his father answered.

  “Thank you for the offer of a late dinner, Mamá.”

  “If you take your brother, Dieguito, I will never forgive you!”

  “She will feel better about all of this tomorrow,” Diego Senior said.

  Diego nodded and let himself out. Without his mother there to disapprove, he went to find a hot meal to ease his empty stomach and light head.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  It had been nearly four months since Mary Kate had kissed Diego goodbye and they had boarded separate ships. In that time, the Atlantic had gone from brilliant blue to dull green, the sky from clear and sunny to cloudy and dark. It seemed to Mary Kate that the drizzle she had left behind had never stopped, for the clouds hung close and misted Lough Foyle, the main waterway from the ocean to the port town of Londonderry.

  It wasn’t that it had never rained while Mary Kate was in the Caribbean, but that which had been cool and soothing there seemed dreary and chill anywhere else. Then again, that probably had more to do with her own disposition than the weather. It was June, and regardless of the rain, not at all cold for Ireland. When the ancient walled city came into view, Mary Kate’s heart began to lift despite the gloom that had followed her all the way from the New World to the Old.