Revenge of the Corsairs

by Elizabeth Ellen Carter

  She felt the weight of Benjamin in her arms shift as the child turned his head to watch Elias.

  “Pa… pa…” he said, stretching out his chubby little arms toward him.

  There have been none before last night!

  The words rang in her ears louder than the blows of the axe.

  There had been no woman before her? Not even one? Laura swallowed hard and turned away to walk into the garden. Benjamin shifted his head to watch Elias from over her shoulder.

  She had never given any thought to the possibility a man might wait for marriage as was expected of women of her station, that a man might place any value on the act beyond it being something they wanted, and to indulge if they wished.

  She had taken from Elias something he held in high value – a hope, a dream, an expectation. She had taken that choice away from him just as much as Selim Omar had taken it from her.

  But she had only wanted to feel desire and be desired. Just for one night. She’d gone about it all the wrong way – and now she had lost the man who was everything she should ever want.

  Laura sighed bitterly. Samuel was right. She didn’t belong here.

  The sound of her frenzied axe man was now barely audible over the sound of the wind in the trees that surrounded the edge of the villa grounds and the sounds of birds flitting about in the cultivated gardens.

  Benjamin had grabbed hold of the wooden bead necklace she wore around her neck, a Christmas gift from Morwena and Jonathan. Laura exaggerated a choking sound, and the baby chortled but still hung on and tried to pull the beads into his mouth.

  She rounded the azalea bush to her studio. She plucked one the white flowers absently and singlehandedly secured it in one of her hair pins. The morning was sunny and clear; the view from the French doors took in the ravine and toward Palermo below and the sea beyond.

  Laura lay Benjamin stomach down on a blanket on the studio floor while she looked for one of his teething rattles. She was sure she had one of them in here, but a quick search revealed nothing.

  Perhaps she was mistaken.

  She pulled off her necklace and dangled it a little away from him. He rocked on his elbows and knees, and tried to reach for it.

  Starting over anew as Samuel urged in his letters would mean forgetting Benjamin existed. Little Ben… she knew she’d said she didn’t want him, would regret having him, but now he was here, she loved him as much as she was able to love anyone.

  She was a mother; she was his mother, regardless of who his father was. She watched him propel himself forward and snatch the beads with a cry of triumph. He shook his trophy violently.

  Perhaps it didn’t have to be forever. Perhaps she could go back to England for just for a little time, just until she could stitch her torn life back together. She could consult the family solicitor to set up a trust for Benjamin and work out a way to repay Elias for everything he had done for them both.

  He may hate her now, but she owed him that much at least.

  *

  “Gina!” Laura bustled through the deserted house until she reached her bedroom where she started to search through every shelf and every drawer. “Serafina!”

  A few moments later, the grey-haired housekeeper peered through the door with a quizzical look on her face.

  “Have you seen my small box of paints? The ones I had when I came?”

  “No, miss. The last time I saw them, they were in your studio.”

  “And they were there only five nights ago. I distinctly remembered putting the box on the dresser next to the bottles of pigments. I can’t understand where they’ve gone. I’ve searched every inch of the studio. Will you help me look?”

  Serafina started searching to her left, being as diligent as Laura herself was in a search to the right. Laura pulled out the drawers of her dressing table and removed each item in turn before putting it back. She did the same thing with the writing box and then even with the pot cupboard beside her bed.

  Granted, she had not been the most attentive person, but she’d never been careless about things she owned and, yet, for the past two weeks, things had been constantly out of place. Objects would go missing for a day or two then reappear not quite where they were supposed to be. But this was the first time something had been missing for so long. Was it coincidence it started happening the very evening Elias left to go on a trading run on the Calliope?

  “I have found it!”

  Laura abandoned her search under the bed and joined Serafina in the adjoining nursery. The housekeeper held out the rosewood box, looking no less puzzled than she did before. Laura accepted it and thanked the woman profusely.

  “Where on earth did you find it?”

  “It was here on the shelf.” She pointed to the narrow bookcase that held cloths, pins and ointments used for changing Benjamin.

  How could it have gotten there without her noticing? The only other person who slept in this room besides Benjamin was Gina.

  Gina…

  Laura thanked Serafina once more. The older woman accepted with a shrug of her shoulders and left the room to go back to her work.

  It was Gina’s doing, Laura fumed. It had to be.

  She thought she had seen how spiteful her sex could behave among her old circle in London until she’d witnessed the worst – as well as the best – in the female of the species among the inmates of Selim Omar’s harem. Well, here, Laura could at least put her foot down and intended to do so for as long as she remained.

  She determined to have strong words with Gina and, if the girl did not stop touching and moving her belongings, she would ask Elias to dismiss her.

  As though she had been conjured up, Gina waltzed into the room with Benjamin in her arms. The baby was tired and pounding on Gina’s shoulders. She placed the boy on his back, where he immediately started to express his exhaustion in hearty wails.

  Laura placed the paint box back on the shelf and picked up a silver mounted coral teething rattle. Bending to Benjamin, she shook it to make the little bells jingle. After a few moments, his crying subsided to a few hiccoughs, and he reached for the object. His little fist clutched the head of the rattle and a pinky-orange lozenge of coral on a silver loop went immediately into the boy’s mouth.

  With Benjamin now occupied, Laura turned to Gina with a critical eye. The girl looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. With Elias away, Gina was the same simple, amiable girl she had been when they first met on the cold, drizzly, winter’s day in the olive pressing shed.

  Laura’s anger – and the courage that went with it – deserted her.

  “I found my paint box on the shelf here.” Laura hated that her voice sounded apologetic.

  Gina dutifully glanced at the shelf and at the paint box.

  “I didn’t put it there,” said Laura. “Did you?”

  “Oh, no. I never touch your belongings, Miss Laura.” The answer, and the expression that went with it, seemed sincere enough.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I pick things up to dust as Senora Serafina instructs me to do, but I always put them back in the same place.”

  Laura wavered. Gina seemed so sincere – but the girl also had feelings for Elias. Jealousy was a powerful motivator. And there was no mistaking the hostility Gina directed toward Laura in the week before Elias went to sea – the week when he had been so disgusted with her that he preferred to spend his nights in the olive grove shed than be under the same roof as her.

  Even so, there was no choice but to give the girl the benefit of the doubt.

  “Does anyone else come into this room? Or the studio?”

  “No, Miss Laura. I don’t go there – that’s your painting place.”

  “I know you don’t, and I know the farmhands don’t either, but if there’s a stranger about…”

  Gina frowned and it was not one of alarm – more like she thought Laura had lost her wits. “A stranger?”

  “Yes, Gina, a stranger. Someone around the estate who doesn’t
belong.”

  “I don’t see anyone like that.”

  “But you will tell me if you do? Or tell Mister Elias?”

  “Of course! No bad man is going to take my baby away.”

  My baby? Laura drew breath to set the girl straight when a frission of fear ran through her as the rest of what she’d said sank in.

  She waited until after Gina left the room before giving in to the shiver. She looked at Benjamin. His eyes were closed, but the slow working of his jaw over the teething rattle showed he was still half-awake.

  “No one is going to take Benjamin away,” Laura whispered to herself.

  Later, after the noon meal, Laura retrieved the household keys from the cupboard in the kitchen and took them with her down to the studio. After she finished cleaning the paint from her brushes late that afternoon, she made sure she closed the windows and locked the door after her for the first time since arriving at Arcadia.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Early June, 1817

  For the first time in his life, Elias was not looking forward to coming home. Did that make him a coward? He hated to think so, but it probably did.

  He stood on the railing, one foot on the bowsprit, holding on to the rigging to steady himself as he yelled instructions up to the crew. At sea was the only place he felt mastery over himself. The elements seemed a much more conquerable force than a woman who refused to love him – or refuses to admit she loves him. The thought whispered in his ear, a traitorous resistance to his new resolve, encouraging false hope when there should be none.

  Elias kept his concerns to himself. There was no need to burden his shipmates with it. He looked up to the hills where he had always fancied he could see a glimpse of his villa if the angle of the sun was just right.

  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

  My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

  Perhaps it was time to move on. Laura had made it clear she was going back to England soon and would not return.

  His deliberations turned to Benjamin, and he thought of the gift he and Giorgio had made for him over a couple of evenings. It was three hand-carved, round-bottomed wooden sailors that wobbled when nudged. The child would enjoy them, and Elias was grateful to Giorgio for his help carving them – the cook was much greater skilled with the knife than he was.

  Finally, the Calliope had settled into her berth and Morwena waited on the dock, more or less patiently, for them to come ashore. She went unerringly to her husband’s side and held his hand, a proxy for the kiss they would no doubt share later in private. Yet it was Elias who was the focus of her attention.

  “I have a surprise for you,” she said with a satisfied grin. He was immediately on alert. Kit simply laughed, quickly followed by Jonathan, both amused by his squirming under Morwena’s gaze.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Am I going to like this surprise?”

  She swatted him on the arm. “Of course, you’re going to like this surprise! It is going to make you a lot of money. In fact, it’s going to make us all a lot of money.”

  Morwena led the way and the senior officers of the Calliope followed dutifully, like ducklings waddling off after their mother.

  “Is this going to take long, Morwena?” Kit asked as they approached one of her warehouses. “We’ve just come off a week at sea. I want a wash, a drink, some food, and to see my wife – and not in that particular order.”

  “Patience, my dear captain, I promise you will have all of those and more, but there is someone I want you to meet first.”

  “Is there a reason why this person couldn’t have met us at the dock – or even at our home?” Jonathan asked.

  “Yes, there is a reason,” she answered quickly. “You men battle pirates at sea; I battle pirates in commerce. The longer I can keep a secret, the more money we all make. Here.”

  Morwena opened the small door set into the larger warehouse door. They slipped through. A quarter of the space within was filled with crates stacked three high. In front of them, there was a small stack of cans arranged as if a pyramid. They bore bright yellow and red printed paper labels.

  Urged by Morwena, Elias picked up the uppermost can. In the center of the label was a cartouche. Around the edge, it read Prodotti Carantiti Stablimento I & V Florio

  In the center of the cartouche was a crouching lion drinking by a stream – the symbol of the Florio family, which Elias recognized from their winery interests.

  Above the lion, Elias translated the words Tuna of Favignana and Formica. And below, proudly in bold white letters, Sicilia and beneath it, Tonno All’olio.

  Then it dawned on him. “This is my olive oil?”

  Kit and Jonathan picked up a tin each and examined them with interest.

  “The experiment is a success,” Morwena confirmed. “And someone wanted to thank you in person. It is my pleasure to introduce you to Vincenzo Florio.”

  Emerging from the shadows was the slender figure of a young man – little more than a youth really. Elias would be surprised if the lad had actually reached his majority. Vincenzo stepped into the light from one of the high warehouse windows. He was sharply dressed in a charcoal grey ensemble. It set off his black, curly hair that rose from a pronounced widow’s peak.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for keeping this secret with me, and for your assistance in making this product possible. What you see here is a small sample of what we can do with the large numbers of tuna that pass by our waters. We can now export our products across the world and also make available provisions on long sea voyages. We set a whole pallet aside for four months. When we opened them, the tuna was still fresh.”

  “It’s very impressive, Senor Florio,” said Jonathan, putting the can carefully back on the pyramid. “Simple but ingenious. I wonder why no one has thought of this before.”

  “I think you’ll find, Senor Afua, that they have. There is a factory in London canning foodstuffs for the Royal Navy these past three years. It was they who supplied the cans we used for this test. What I intend to do is build the largest tuna cannery in Sicily – in the whole of southern Italy.”

  “So you want someone to bring in the tins,” said Kit.

  “No, Captain Hardacre – I want to make the tins. And for that I will need machinery. I understand that, through your wife’s English family connection, I can get the expertise to make my cannery.”

  Elias noted the curl on Kit’s lips at the mention of Laura’s brother.

  “I have asked my childhood friend, Morwena, for an introduction because I understand you are returning to England in the next few weeks. I wish to book passage with you.”

  “And you are welcome aboard the Calliope,” said Kit.

  Elias stepped forward and shook Vincenzo’s hand, then addressed everyone. “I think this calls for a celebration.”

  “Then you shall be my guests!” Vincenzo Florio announced.

  As Jonathan, Morwena and Vincenzo chatted further, Elias felt a heavy hand clasp his shoulder.

  “I’d have thought you’d be eager to get home to Villagrazia.” Kit kept his voice low, so it traveled no further than the two of them.

  “Matteo is becoming an excellent farm manager. There’s no reason for me to be there all the time. My absence for another day or two isn’t going to matter to anyone.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Kit responded with a frown.

  “I know,” said Elias, and he went to join the others.

  *

  Laura caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned swiftly and took in the sight of the man on a black horse coming toward the villa at a canter. Her heart beat along as fast as the horse he rode.

  Elias!

  He had returned.

  She hated the gratitude that flooded her being on his return. It seemed too much like the slavish delight she saw on the faces of some of the concubines when they had been chosen to grace Selim Omar’s bed for the night.<
br />
  But even so, Laura had to concede her feeling of relief was real. Now that Elias was home, he would stop this madness that plagued her.

  Every day, something else went missing and, a few days later, it would return – sometimes in the place she last put it (even though it hadn’t been there the day before), other times in completely the wrong place, sometimes even in the wrong room.

  It made her doubt her sanity, even making her afraid to be alone with Benjamin.

  She didn’t believe Gina’s assurances she had not interfered with her belongings, but without proof she could hardly accuse the girl. That was not to say she hadn’t been keeping an eye on her. One day, she even secretly followed the girl going about her duties right until the noon meal, before she was overcome with shame at her actions.

  So instead, from sunrise to sunset, Laura retreated to her studio. There were times a nap on the day bed would see her sleep so deeply she wouldn’t awake until morning. Her disquiet fed the muse, and she was ravenous.

  The darkness in her soul needed release and she had found it in dark and stormy seascapes, heavy seas in greys and greens pounding rocks and bringing unwary ships to be dashed in the shallows.

  It had been nearly three months since she had last had a letter from Samuel. Perhaps he had forgotten her, too, leaving her here to fade away. Dreams of having an exhibition of her own withered and died. Once she had instinctively known her best work and had sometimes surprised herself with how good it was. But there was none of that when she painted now.

  She turned back to her current work. Someone who wasn’t an artist would likely think it a nice painting, but she was dissatisfied with it. Perhaps she should destroy it, but that required energy she couldn’t muster. She ought to clean her brushes and re-order her pigments and pastels – but what would be the point? Her phantom tormentor would only have them in disarray by morning.

  She gave up on the seascape, merely putting her brushes in a pot of water instead of cleaning them thoroughly as she had been taught. She locked her studio, clutching the key in her hand, and started toward the villa.