She was looking at Kells now, dazed. Dear God, did these buccaneers think she had actually promised to marry one of them?
He returned her gaze coolly. “I see you still do not fully understand, Christabel. When two buccaneers desire the same woman and that woman is willing, one will wed her and stay with her for a time whilst the other is at sea. The other then returns and takes the husband’s place and lives with the bride as if they are man and wife—until the husband returns, when they trade places again. The one to whom she is not wed is called the matelot. It is a custom time-honored among the buccaneers.”
As the full import of what she had gotten herself into, down on the quay, sank in on her, she thought her knees would buckle. Those two buccaneers believed she had promised to—! She clung to the chairback, staring at him in horror. “Oh, I never intended—I did not understand.”
“You are hot to depart with O’Rourke or Skull—and they intend to share you.”
“But they cannot!” she cried. And it was Carolina Lightfoot, the reigning Colonial belle who was speaking, and not this other self she had become— Christabel, the Silver Wench of the buccaneers.
“Who is to stop them?” he asked softly.
Her breath came shallowly. It was hard to keep her voice steady. “You mean—you would not stop them?” she whispered. “Oh, Kells, you would not let them take me?”
A muscle in his hard jawline worked for a moment as his steely gray eyes considered her. She felt she saw doom in their hard glitter, but she could not know the torment within him. Let them take her? They would have to cut him down first! Indeed, for her sake he would chop them both down like trees—but she was not to know that, for it would give this arrogant Silver Wench a power over him that he did not wish her to realize she possessed.
He fought for control and when he spoke at last his answer was cool. It was flung in her face and it struck her like a slap.
“You are saying that you are mine?” His hard gaze swept over her.
“No—no, of course I am not saying that!” She was suddenly terribly conscious of her state of undress, that she was standing here in the tropic night in her bedroom, clad only in her chemise. “I am saying—” She swallowed nervously. “I am saying that you could pretend that it is so.”
“I will not pretend.” The words rang like metal cast upon stones. “If I do this thing, it will be true in fact that you prefer my bed to theirs. Make your choice, Christabel. It is to be them—or me. I am telling you that I will deal with this pair on your behalf—but only if you come willingly to my bed.”
She recoiled. He would let this terrible thing, this matelotage, happen to her if she did not agree—he would! She felt blind terror surge through her.
“I will do as you ask,” she said faintly.
Around them the stillness was suddenly deafening. It was broken only by the sound of the sea breaking over the beach. The moon, being old and wise in the ways of lovers, with sudden delicacy retired behind a cloud and left them alone in scented darkness in that wildest place of all—Tortuga, stronghold of the Brethren of the Coast, the buccaneers.
Dear God, she asked herself in silent wonder, how could I say that? After all that has happened?
And for a brief tense moment as the lean buccaneer captain reached out and touched caressingly her shrinking bare shoulder, her past flashed before her as vividly as if she were living it now—and she was Carolina Lightfoot once again, fourteen and safe and careless and living in the American Colonies on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
BOOK I
The American
Beauty and
the English Lord
His siren song pursues her down the street,
His sins are legion but—his voice is sweet
And she, caught up in rapture, standing there
Is tempted to embrace and love and dare. . . .
PART ONE
The Colonial Minx
* * *
Let your skirts lift in the breeze!
And we’ll away to the Marriage Trees!
Twenty miles deep and twenty miles wide,
A forest fit for lovers to hide!
* * *
FARVIEW PLANTATION
OLD PLANTATION CREEK
VIRGINIA’S EASTERN SHORE
1685
* * *
Chapter 1
Carolina Lightfoot paused in her task of helping the servants gather in the laundry before the fast approaching storm, and her questing silver gaze flitted treacherously to the north. Toward the Marriage Trees. Up there somewhere past the flat meadowland, past the blue-green pines whipping in the wind, past the horizon where fluffy gray clouds whizzed by in puffs, Carolina knew, was that line of ancient gnarled oaks that marked the boundary between Virginia and Maryland—and beneath their heavy branches on the Maryland side sat Maryland parsons and justices ever waiting for runaway Virginia couples eagerly making the dash north across the border to be wed.
At this very moment Carolina’s older sister Penny was riding hard for that boundary—riding the best horse from her father’s stables, with a lanky young fellow by her side whose mount would have a hard time keeping up! Wistfully Carolina imagined Penny, who had slipped out of the house before dawn clad in her best yellow silk dress, taking with her naught but a light shawl and a basket of lunch. “Emmett and I will buy what we need,” she had declared blithely, and indeed all her sisters had contributed their pocket money to the venture.
All through the day the younger Lightfoot sisters had been covering up for Penny, but eventually her absence had been noted, the house and grounds thoroughly searched, the worst suspected (for hadn’t her own parents eloped by way of the Marriage Trees?). And even now Carolina’s glowering father, Fielding Light-foot, and all the men of Farview Plantation were thundering after the runaways, galloping on lathered horses up the narrow peninsula that split the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.
Carolina felt a stab of hope that Penny and her Emmett would make it to the Marriage Trees, gasp out their vows and disappear somewhere into the wilds of Maryland before Father caught up with them. He would at the very least horsewhip Emmett, for his temper was notorious and red-haired Penny was his eldest—and favorite—daughter.
For a treacherous moment she wished that it was she and not Penny out there making the dash for the Marriage Trees. For Carolina was growing up, losing her coltishness. She who had scoffed at men was beginning to look at them more critically. And sometimes, lately, when the moon poured its pale radiance over the Eastern Shore, her heart had seemed to catch at the beauty of the night that turned familiar landscapes to magic. Although she was only just starting to be aware of it, sweet feminine stirrings, older than time, were calling to her like a siren song.
Like a fortnight ago when she had fallen asleep in a hammock in the afternoon heat—partly because she’d been sleepy from staying up late the night before, avidly reading Wife to Be Let, one of the “trashy” (and tremendously popular) novels she had borrowed surreptitiously from her friend Sally Montrose, who had got them while attending school in London. The hot afternoon had drowsed on, the plantation’s noises had dimmed, and Carolina, with her damp fair hair spread out over her arm, and her thin, rather childish blue voile dress falling over her young body like wilted flower petals, had fallen fast asleep.
And while she was sleeping she had dreamed. Not the rousing adventurous dreams she sometimes had. This dream was different.
She dreamed she was swimming alone and naked in a warm sea of boundless blue. She came up out of the water to dry herself on a white beach littered with pink conch shells. Her dress had blown away somewhere, but it did not seem to matter. As the sun dried her wet nakedness she slipped into an almost transparent chemise and sat down on the beach, digging her toes into the hot sand. Palm trees waved from distant purple cliffs and a flight of brown pelicans flew over in a wavy line, the lead bird diving down into the water for a fish. Nearby a hermit crab tottered toward her.
But she was not to be diverted by the denizens of sea or beach.
For in her dream a man had just stepped ashore and she had eyes only for him. He was as unlike her father as could be—not over tall and slightly built—but he dropped over the side of a ship’s boat, beached it, and came confidently toward her over the sand. The sun glinted on his fair hair, turning it to glowing gold that haloed around his face, and the eyes that looked upon her were a merry burning blue. He was rakishly dressed in bronze satin, his coat laced with gold, and a single pearl earring dangled fashionably from one of his well-shaped ears. But she was not surprised by his elegance in such a setting any more than by her nonchalance at her own near nakedness in the thin chemise, because in dreams, all things seem natural and right.
She came to her feet as he strode up to her and stood for a moment bedazzled by him, feeling the hot sun caress her back even as his hot blue gaze wandered fierily down her feminine body.
“I thought I would find you here,” he said hoarsely, and she had no answer for him although her heart was near to bursting.
Silently she held out her arms.
And he went into them as if by right. His arms encircled her fiercely, his mouth trailed over hers and down her throat as his lips sought her firm young breasts. His impatient fingers were loosening the riband that held her chemise. She shivered as she felt the light material slide from her shoulders and a soft tropical wind stirred the sea and blew the thin fabric between her thighs as it glided down her back to fall unnoticed around her feet.
“I waited for you,” she heard herself gasp and knew, with a certainty as loud as trumpets sounding, that this man was destined to be her lover, and that the tingling expectancy that invaded every secret part of her was Love.
“Carol!” It was Virginia’s voice calling, filtering through her dream. “Carol, where are you? It’s almost time for supper.”
Carolina had come to in a kind of shimmering haze. She hated to move from the hammock for she was still under the spell of her wondrous dream.
She had lain there for a long time thinking. About life. About love. About what the future might hold for her. About the man who had come from the sea to find her.
A perfect man who, she was suddenly certain, was out there somewhere looking for her, searching for her—and who would someday find her and make her life complete.
And after that, whenever she thought about that dream man—and she would think about him secretly for a long time to come—she always called him The Golden Stranger.
For a moment last week—while that vivid dream was still very fresh in her mind—she thought she had seen The Golden Stranger at the Radcliffes’ ball in Yorktown.
All the family had gone. Carolina’s beautiful mother always went to Yorktown with glinting eyes and a very stiff back for Yorktown was where her husband’s people lived, or at least had lived until his parents had died. Fielding Lightfoot’s family had never really accepted wild young Letitia Randolph and in turn Letitia had chosen not to be civil to her in-laws. They had all ended up not speaking and when Grandfather Lightfoot had died last winter—following his wife to the family burial plot by one week—he had delivered the final blow. He had left everything he owned to his younger son, Darren, and had cut his elder son, Fielding, off with a shilling. Carolina’s mother’s feud with Fielding’s younger brother Darren was celebrated and much talked about, for even at social gatherings spirited Letitia always cut Darren dead, lifting her aristocratic chin high and passing by him in a whirl of taffeta and lace as if he did not exist.
It had been at such a moment that Carolina, following in her elegant mother’s wake, thought she had glimpsed The Golden Stranger.
Through a sudden break amid the close-packed satin-clad guests she had seen a golden head, and suddenly all the light in the room had seemed to gather around him so that his hair was haloed by the candlelight.
It had been a dazzling moment and Carolina had caught her breath. But then he had turned and it was only gangling Jimmy Radcliffe, who stumbled over his own feet and was always tongue-tied in the presence of ladies.
Carolina had sighed and gone looking for a glass of cool cider or fruit punch, always refreshing on such a hot night in such a crush.
But drinking the cider she had known a stab of deep regret. Someday, she had promised herself gloomily. Someday . . .
Across the room Carolina’s mother had danced repeatedly with her old flame and distant cousin, Sandy Randolph, and Carolina’s father had noticed that and was drinking too much and glaring at them both. Nearby Penny had slipped through the open door into the garden to meet Emmett somewhere down a dark path and make final plans for their elopement. And Virginia could be glimpsed sneaking down the hall with a plate piled high with little cakes despite her mother’s stern warning that she would soon become so fat she’d burst her seams.
All of it had escaped Carolina, lost in her thoughts of The Golden Stranger.
He had still been haunting her thoughts when, the next day (for they had stayed overnight at the Radcliffes’), she had stood watching her mother, who at the time was sitting before a dressing table in the Radcliffes’ blue guest room, carefully arranging the shimmering dark honey hair that, except for its darker hue, could have been Carolina’s own, so thick and so softly waved.
“Wasn’t that the door knocker I just heard?” Her mother had lifted that elegant head to listen. “Yes, I’m sure it was.” She gestured with her hairbrush. “Would you run down and see who it is, Carolina? Nobody seems to be answering the door and Sandy Randolph promised to stop by and take me for a drive today. Wasn’t that nice of him?” The words were spoken carelessly. “I told him how seldom I get out of late.”
Carolina had run downstairs to tell elegant, smiling Sandy Randolph (who had a mad wife back home at Tower Oaks but was said to be in love with her mother all the same) that her mother would soon be ready. And the words were hardly out of her mouth before her mother, attired in glowing green silk, drifted down the stairs and greeted him warmly.
Once in Williamsburg when she was very young, sitting beside a front window in Aunt Pet’s green-painted living room, Carolina had heard Aunt Pet mutter behind her fan to a caller that Letitia’s family never should have pushed her so far that she had flown into marriage with Fielding Lightfoot. By their loudly voiced displeasure, by trying to force Letitia onto that old widower, they had turned her simple schoolgirl passion for her glamorous Cousin Sandy Randolph into open rebellion—and everybody had suffered for it. Why couldn’t they have let time take its toll, let beautiful Letitia tire of her attraction to a married man? Indeed, whomever she wed, Letty should have certainly left Fielding to that Bramway girl who was so mad about him. Headstrong Letty would have made many a planter an admirable wife—but not Fielding, who wanted a clinging vine, someone who would bob her pretty head “yes” at everything he said, instead of a spirited woman like Letty who would insist upon arguing the point if she didn’t agree. Mismating, that was what it was—two strong wills opposing each other. It was no wonder they did not get along, they were each so determined to lead!
On that day in Williamsburg, Carolina had turned her young gaze thoughtfully to Sandy Randolph, just riding by the windows on a big gray horse. He was tall and arrow straight in the saddle and he had a fencer’s lean grace. His real name was Lysander—his mother, a learned woman who read Greek and Latin, had named all her sons for the heroes of ancient Greece. And like those heroes, all were now dead, victims of Indian uprisings that had burned their homes and slaughtered their families along the raw Virginia frontier. She was gone too, and all the family. Only Sandy remained—so nicknamed for his hair, so pale in his youth that it resembled the white sand of beaches, now gleaming, as he rode by, like a helmet of white metal in the sun.
She saw him glance toward the house and then doff his hat to someone beyond her vision—perhaps to her mother, who had strolled out into the garden to walk amid the fragrance of the morning flowers. Would her mother
have been happier with Sandy? she wondered. Certainly Letitia Lightfoot seemed to release a kind of pent-up excitement whenever she was in the same room with him. Her dark blue eyes sparkled, her slim body had a taut vibrancy and she carried her honey blonde head even more rakishly than usual.
And to Carolina’s childish mind her mother’s choice of a mate had somehow got mixed up with the color of his hair. If her blonde mother had chosen a blond man, all would have been well. If dark-haired Fielding had wed the striking brunette, Amanda Bramway, who was “so mad about him,” all would have been better. None of this turmoil between her warring parents would ever have come about.
The thought had been fixed in her mind so deeply that, without being aware of it, Carolina had turned against all dark-haired men. And so her dream of a golden lover had come quite naturally, the result of hours of brooding over the plight of her parents, tied to each other for a lifetime and fighting it every step of the way.
Fielding Lightfoot had come in just in time to witness that warm greeting at the Radcliffe house, to see his wife breeze by him, to view with fury her lighthearted wave as she drove off with her handsome cousin in a carriage built for two.
The elder Lightfoots had quarreled about that drive after Letitia had returned, pink-cheeked and laughing, and Sandy had driven away looking more than ever like the villain in a play.
“You’re becoming a scandal, Letty!” Fielding had growled at her as he went upstairs. He brushed roughly by Carolina who was just then making her way downstairs. Indeed he averted his gaze from the young girl as if he could not bear the sight of her and Carolina shrank back, bewildered. Her hurt gaze fled to red-haired Penny who was frowning upward from the living room door. He had not looked so at Penny when he passed her and she was the one about to run away! It was one more gratuitous rebuff from the father she had tried so hard to love. Her soft mouth trembled as she turned to stare after Fielding, to hear him bawl, “At the Raleigh Tavern today conversations were hushed when I came in—and I’ve no doubt they were all discussing you and Sandy riding about town together!”
Lovesong Page 2
