by Connie Mason
“The islanders scavenge every wreck they can, but this one’s pretty deep,” Nick said. “Went down in the last hurricane, I’ll wager.”
Eve watched the wreck passing beneath them until it fell astern. When she looked up, the islands were drawing nearer. She could tell that, like Bermuda, Turks and Caicos was a cluster of little dots of land all alone in the vast blue. The Susan Bell skirted along the eastern edge of the archipelago.
“Prepare to drop anchor,” Nick ordered.
“We’re not going in to port?” Eve asked as the men scurried to do Nick’s bidding.
“There is no port,” he explained. “No deep harbor. The Susan B is shallow on the draft, but even she’d have her belly scraped if we dared too much farther. So we anchor outside the reef and use the jolly boat. Will you be pleased to go ashore, Eve?”
“Oh, yes,” she said gratefully. She was mortally tired of having the world heaving beneath her feet. “I assume there’s a decent inn.”
Nick grinned. “You assume wrong. Grand Turk is but a notch or two above a pirate’s hole, but I’ll see you suitably protected from the rain. I’ve a business partner on the island I usually stay with, but I warn you, the ratio of men to women is decidedly lopsided here. You’ll have to share a chamber with me if you decide to venture ashore, for your own protection.”
“And who’ll protect me from you?”
“I will,” he said softly.
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“Stay or go as you please, Eve. It’s of no consequence to me either way, but if you are going, I need to know now.” His knuckles whitened as he grasped the gunwale. “Choose.”
She looked up into his deeply tanned face. His dark eyes searched hers, but otherwise he was perfectly still. She didn’t even think he drew a breath.
“I’d like to go,” she said.
His lips twitched, but otherwise she had no idea if he was pleased or disappointed. He touched the brim of his tricorne briefly and left her side to supervise the anchoring of his ship at a safe distance from the white shore.
Eve looked back at the island, where clumps of palms swayed. Tangles of blooms overlooked the long stretch of sand. A breeze brought the scent of hibiscus and oleander wafting toward them. If ever there was a setting for seduction, this was it.
“What am I doing?” she murmured.
But for the life of her, she wouldn’t undo it. Nicholas didn’t seem to want her to come ashore, especially. Did he have a brown-skinned girl waiting for him on this island?
The mere thought of Nick with another woman disturbed her. For good or ill, she loved him and she couldn’t bear to lose him.
But if he didn’t love her, she couldn’t very well keep him either. Eve remembered her first day at St. Georges and the gorgeous dark-haired woman who whipped her horse past them as they drove up to Nick’s home for the first time.
That’d be Magdalen Frith. Lord Nick’s regular lady, Reggie Turnscrew had told them.
At the time, Eve was too concerned over what would meet them at the top of the hill to spare any thought for the woman barreling down it. Now she wondered about Miss Frith.
And all the others who had undoubtedly preceded her.
If Eve relented and became Nick’s mistress, how long would it be before he tired of her and sent her packing down that long, winding cart path? Wouldn’t losing him be all the more bitter after having had him?
“Miss Upshall? The cap’n sends his compliments and asks will you be pleased to board the jolly boat?” Mr. Higgs’s voice pulled her from her dark musings.
Eve followed Higgs to the opposite side of the ship, where the landing party was climbing over the gunwale to the boat bobbing alongside. Nick was already at the tiller of the small craft.
“I can’t clamber down like that,” Eve said. Not only would she likely lose her footing or catch her hem in the rope ladders, but all the men in the jolly boat would be treated to a view up her broad skirts.
“Of course not, miss,” Higgs said. “That’s why the captain asked us to set up the hoist. We use it to load cargo when we’re riding at anchor like this, but it’ll do fine to lower you to the jolly boat.”
Seaman Tatem brought out a woven cane chair and lashed it to the end of the boom. Eve settled into it and tucked her skirts tight, both around and between her legs. The crew heaved her up and over the gunwale. Then they lowered her gently down to the waiting boat while Nick shouted directions.
Nicholas was there to grab the swaying chair with a grin on his face. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“No, it was fun, actually,” she admitted. “Much better than having you strap a rope around me and haul me up like you did that first night.”
“Not from this vantage point,” he said with a rakish grin as he helped her onto the seat beside him. “I much preferred the other view.”
Higgs and the remaining crew hauled the cane seat back up. Then Nicholas raised his voice. “Cast off, lads. Now put your backs into it.”
Eight pairs of oars moved in concert as the jolly boat pulled away from the Susan B and rocked over the waves toward shore.
Once the hull scraped the beach, the first pair of seaman leaped into the spray and hauled on the prow, dragging the boat forward. The next set of oarsmen followed suit. Finally Nick stepped into the curling surf up to his knees, holding out his arms to Eve.
“Only one way to land without wetting your feet,” he said as he scooped her up and carried her past the sand to the sparse salt grass.
“Nicholas Scott, as I live and breathe,” came a booming baritone from behind a tall clump of date palms. “I always tell Maia you’ll die at the hands of a jealous husband. I can only assume none have caught you yet.”
Eve turned to see a large man in tattered knee britches and a buttonless waistcoat lumbering toward them. He wore no shirt and his bare arms and chest were as dark as some of Nick’s African crewmen, but his long, English face and startling blue eyes proclaimed him a displaced son of London.
“I see Maia’s cooking is still as fine as ever, Hugh,” Nick said as he set Eve lightly on her feet. “You’ve gained two stone over the winter if you’ve gained an ounce.”
The man patted his protruding brown belly. “My woman likes a man with meat on his bones and who am I to argue?”
His eyes flicked over Eve with amused interest. “Hallo, luv.” He removed a greasy and battered tricorne to reveal a bald, freckled pate. The man sketched the memory of a courtly leg to her. “Hugh Constable’s the name. Who might you be and what in the name of the briny deep is a high-in-the-instep miss like yourself doing with a no-good, smuggling son of a blowfish like our Nicholas Scott?”
Eve decided she liked this odd fellow very much. “I’m Eve Upshall and I ask myself the same question with regularity, Mr. Constable.”
The man threw back his head and laughed. “Call me Hugh,” he said as he crammed his disreputable hat back on his head. “We’re too poor here on Grand Turk to afford niceties like last names.”
“Don’t let him fool you, Eve,” Nick said. “Hugh is the richest man on the island.”
“Which is a little like being the only one-eyed man in a kingdom of blind fellows.” Hugh winked at her. “But we rub together well enough here.”
Hugh clapped a ham-sized hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Come on up to the house and we’ll raise a pint or two.”
Nick gave instructions for Tatem and a pair of rowers to ferry the jolly boat back to the ship to fetch the next group of sailors bound for shore. Only a skeleton crew would stay on board the Susan B and the men rotated that duty so all had a chance to feel dry land beneath their feet at some point during their stay on the island.
Hugh led Eve and Nick up to a cart path where his mule-drawn gig waited. There was only room for Eve on the seat beside Hugh, so Nick stood on the rear of the equipage and clung to the handrail. They set off with a clatter of wheels down the road, which was little more than two sandy tracks overgr
own with salt grass.
Off to her left, Eve saw workers knee-deep in shallow ponds, skimming white brine with wooden rakes. They passed several leaning, ramshackle huts that had never seen a coat of paint.
“Don’t mind our living arrangements, Eve,” Hugh said. “Not much point in building a palace if the next hurricane will knock it down again. Usually all that’s needed is a place to get out of the rain or the baking sun.”
Eve shook her head. “And when a hurricane comes, where do people turn for shelter?”
“Some go to the caves. There are a few about the island. But most of my people come to Go Lightly—that’s my house.” He pointed to the low-slung home rambling ahead of them on a bluff overlooking the endless ocean. “Limestone walls, you see. Go Lightly might lose a roof sometimes, but those walls are hell for stout.”
As they drew nearer, Eve realized Go Lightly wasn’t one structure, but several, built close together around a central court with palm-covered walkways connecting each separate room.
“Right-o, here we are then,” Hugh said as he tugged the mule to a halt before the largest of the stone structures.
A woman with cinnamon-colored skin appeared at the open door dressed in a vibrant, off-one-shoulder garment that appeared to be merely draped around her buxom form. Her kinky hair was shorn close to her head, accentuating her strong features. A dusting of white hair graced her temples.
A wide smile split her dark face as she recognized her visitor and moved toward them with the grace of a she-panther. She was as bright and exotic and sensually earthy as the flowering shrubs lining her walkway.
“Ni-cho-las Scott, you black-eyed devil-child,” she called out in a sultry voice that caressed and stretched each syllable of his name. “It’s too long since my eyes have seen your handsome face, bwoy.”
“Maia, you gorgeous creature.” Nick hugged her and kissed both her round cheeks. “When are you going to leave this old sod and run away with me?”
Eve blinked in surprise. Maia was not the sort of brown-skinned girl she’d envisioned waiting for Nicholas on Grand Turk.
Maia swatted his shoulder with her pink-palmed hand and laughed. “Shame on you, young cub. It makes no never mind about Hugh. He’s used to menfolk trying to steal me away, but don’t you try to turn my head in front of your lady.”
Maia turned to Eve and smiled. “Here on the island, when the sea casts up a newcomer, we see a friend. Welcome to Go Lightly. Don’t just stand there looking handsome as the devil, Nicholas. Introduce me.”
Nick did the honors and Eve was charmed by the guileless island woman.
“You’ll want to rest a bit after your journey. Come, children,” Maia said as she led them to the next little stone room in Go Lightly.
A string bed draped with mosquito netting was set between open windows that allowed the fresh breeze in but not the hot sun. Colorful rag rugs dotted the cleanswept, broad-planked floor. Maia opened a small wardrobe where a couple of bright garments like hers hung on pegs.
“English ladies wear too many clothes for the island. If you want, you help yourself to these, Eve,” Maia offered. “Hugh says the white folk on Bermuda pretend they are still in England, but you’ll find no such foolishness here. No one will shame you for not wearing sticks under your skirt.”
Eve laughed. Sticks under her skirt was a fair assessment of her panniers and hoops. “Thank you, Maia. I’ll think about it.”
“Oh, child, the world be too fine and too full of marvels to waste time thinking so hard about something so unimportant as what you put on your body. Sometimes, you just got to be.” She patted Eve’s cheek and then winked at Nick. “Got a pot of conch shell soup boilin’ whenever you’re ready. I’m thinkin’ it’s your favorite.”
“Whatever you make is my favorite, Maia. You know that.”
“That honey-tongue of yours gonna get you in trouble one of these days.” Maia left them with a roll of her magnificent hips.
“My goodness,” Eve said. “Mr. Constable certainly has a wonderful housekeeper.”
“Maia isn’t Hugh’s housekeeper. She’s his wife,” Nick said. “Or she would be if they could find a preacher who’d speak the words over them. They’ve been together since Hugh came out here to manage his family’s holding twenty years ago. You wouldn’t know it to look at him now, but he was once the second son of a lord.”
Eve fingered the twisted driftwood footboard of the bed. “What did his family say about Maia?”
“They cut him off, of course.”
“Poor Hugh,” Eve said softly. “He can never go home.”
“Poor Hugh?” Nick shook his head. “The lucky bugger doesn’t know or care what day it is. He doesn’t have to conform to anyone’s wishes but his own. And he has the love of a beautiful woman who thinks the sun rises and sets on his bald head. Believe me, Hugh Constable is home.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Nick left Eve to her privacy in the guest chamber and rejoined his friends in the main room of their unusual home. The interior limestone walls were crusted with bits of shells and Maia had decorated the space in her unusual island way, complete with a hammock strung from the ceiling beams. Nick tumbled into it and let Hugh put a horn of date palm wine into his hand.
They talked about the progress of the current salt crop and the rate of trade for Nick’s cargo of cedar, then moved on to the doings of the island’s “Belongers,” those who’d been there since birth or in Hugh’s case, those who had no other place to call home. No matter how long it had been since he’d last visited, Nick always felt as though he and his comfortable friends had stepped right back into the same conversation they’d left.
“Your lady, she be lovely, Nick,” Maia said as she settled onto a pile of pillows on the cool floor. “Be her heart as sweet as her face?”
“Sweet? Eve?” Nick asked incredulously. “She’s acid-tongued, prone to violence, passionate, mule-headed and single-minded, but never sweet.”
“Sounds like a man in love,” Hugh said as he lowered his bulk to join Maia. “Your Eve Upshall must be quite a woman.”
“She’s not mine,” he said sourly. “She won’t have me.”
“Smart, too,” Maia said with a laugh.
“She’s here with you, ain’t she?” Hugh said. “That says something, lad.”
“It says I forcibly carried her aboard the Susan Bell and locked her in my cabin,” Nick admitted with a wince.
“Nicholas, don’t take it so to heart.” Maia made a tsking sound. “Just because a woman say no the first time you ask her will she marry you, it don’t mean she won’t come ’round to it by and by.”
“I didn’t ask her to marry me.”
“Then what—” Maia’s dark eyes went round. “Oh, Nicky, you bad bwoy. You try to make a fancy gal out of a lady and it no work every time it be tried.”
“Aye, I offered to make her my mistress.” He swung his legs over the side of the hammock. “What’s wrong with that? I’d treat her well. She’d not want for anything. It’s surely no insult. And besides, it’s not really so different from what you two—”
Nick stopped himself, realizing his friends might take offense.
Hugh’s face went an unhealthy shade of purple.
“Forget I said that,” Nick said quickly. It was as close to an apology as he ever uttered. Not because he feared Hugh’s rage. Those were little squalls quickly spent, but because he genuinely liked Hugh and Maia and hated that he’d offended them without meaning to. “It was stupid of me.”
“It also be wrong,” Maia said. “Hugh and me, we be married, even if no one else say so. Our hearts know. You make to give this girl money and fine things so she take you to her bed. Why you surprised you fail? Anybody with eyes can see she want your heart.”
Was there even anything left of it after Hannah? Nick didn’t know. And if there was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk it again.
And yet he couldn’t deny his feelings for Eve, even if he resisted nami
ng them.
Nick rose and put his empty drinking horn down on the table. “I’m going swimming.”
“Take a spear with you,” Hugh called after him as Nick stomped out.
Maia dug her elbow into his ribs.
“What?” Hugh demanded. “The boy’s clearly frustrated. It’ll do him good to kill something, and I wouldn’t mind a fresh sole for supper.”
“It do him more good to get un-frustrated,” Maia said as she ran a hand over the front of her husband’s breeches. “Don’t you think?”
“Ah, as always, you are as wise as you are beautiful, my love.” Hugh cradled the back of her head and pulled her down for a long, satisfying kiss. “Have I told you lately how happy you make me?”
“Not since breakfast.”
She slipped her sarong down and bared a brown breast for him. Hugh bent to take her mauve nipple in his mouth while she teased him through the twill of his breeches.
“My, my, you be a very happy man,” Maia said as her husband’s body roused to her.
Hugh laughed. “And you know how to keep me that way. I know you’ll ease my frustration, love, but how can we help the lad?”
Maia looked out her window and caught a glimpse of Eve coming out of the guest chamber wearing a red and gold sarong. Maia frowned. The girl’s shoulders were hunched and she looked uncomfortable in her own skin. Even though the dress was much different from her English getup, her head should be high. She should carry herself like a princess. Like a woman who is loved.
And if Nick didn’t love this Eve Upshall, Maia would give him no peace till he started using the sense God gave him.
“We can’t help him, but I know someone who can.” Maia rose from their couch of pillows. “I be right back, old man. Keep thinking happy thoughts.”
The sun caressed Eve’s arms and the breeze slipped indecently through the slit along the side of the one-shouldered loose garment. She felt as if she were standing naked in the little courtyard. The thin silk brushed her nipples and her breasts hung free beneath the soft fabric. Usually her panniers kept the yards of muslin in her broad skirts from coming anywhere near her legs. This sinful garment brushed against her thighs and teased the small hairs at the apex of her legs when the wind was right.
