Lovesong

by Valerie Sherwood

  “Not dead,” he said, interpreting her look. “Unconscious from a head wound. He’ll come round.” Even as he spoke the fellow groaned and reached up gingerly to touch his head, which she could see now was matted with blood.

  A moment later they had reached the English doctor who looked up from his work and cheerfully congratulated Kells on how cleverly he had deployed his men. “And lost none,” he added complacently. “All should be well and flourishing in a matter of weeks.”

  Kells looked relieved and she guessed this was what he had come to ascertain—how his men had fared.

  “But I can see three dead men from here!” protested Carolina, interrupting. “They are in plain sight out there in the hall.” She waved a hand toward the sprawled bodies.

  “El Sangre’s men,” said Kells easily. “They left their dead behind as they charged back down the hill.” His lean face hardened. “Tomorrow morning those bodies will be ceremoniously carried through the town, rowed out to where the Santiago lies at anchor in the bay, taken aboard, and in full sight of shore, carried aloft and flung from the rigging to feed the fish.”

  Dr. Cotter nodded approval.

  “It’s barbaric,” whispered Carolina.

  “It’s an object lesson,” Kells pointed out gravely. “A warning to any others in Cayona that to attempt to storm my house is to die. Afterward we send a few kegs of rum down into the town and invite all comers to toast our victory!”

  Stunned by this—to her—remarkable aftermath of the battle, Carolina began to understand why to the Brethren of the Coast the lean buccaneer lounging beside her was “Lord Admiral of the Buccaneers.” He kept abreast of rumor in the town of Cayona; his best men were conveniently quartered in his house and personally loyal. And besides being a dangerous blade and a good shot, he had a dramatic flair that kept this unruly island afraid of him—and a winning personality that made even the envious grudgingly admire him.

  He ruled here—and yet he was homesick. She knew that from the loving way he had set up “a little bit of England” in his dining room.

  Kells had turned to speak to Hawks, who was looking a bit sheepish, and Carolina asked Dr. Cotter if he did not need some help.

  “Between Nat and Katje, I have help enough,” he laughed. He turned to watch Katje, some distance away, expertly tying a bandage, and shook his head. “Katje should have been a man—she belongs on a buccaneer ship. What a ship’s doctor she would have made!” Jovial and bouncy, he beamed at Carolina. “Not a man on this island could have handled this difficult situation so well as Kells. When he heard the gossip in the taverns that El Sangre planned to attack the house as soon as the Sea Wolf sailed, he fortified the house. Then he and his ship’s officers walked boldly through the town with the Spanish lady, boarded the Sea Wolf, up anchored—and then as soon as they were out of sight all but a handful poured over the side into longboats and returned by way of Cutlass Point— dragging cannon with them—to defend the house.” He shook his head in admiration. “Quick, efficient, successful—that’s Kells.” He chuckled. “And now his reputation will increase tenfold, for it’ll be said in the taverns of Tortuga that he’s superhuman—able to be in two places at the same time!”

  So the world was not to know how the urbane buccaneer chieftain had returned so quickly.

  Quick, efficient—and deadly. “What about the wounded on the other side?” she asked. “Where are they?”

  The little doctor looked at her in some surprise. “If they could run, they took to their heels. If not, they were carried or dragged away by their comrades. They are the concern of some other doctor who has by now received them and is binding their wounds—but not of mine.”

  It was her first view of casual warfare as practiced in the West Indies. They used cannon routinely, did these men—culverins, port pieces, twelve-pounders. They were as much at home slashing with cutlasses on slippery decks as firing their big pistols across the white beaches. They gained treasure, or they lost their lives. And after it was over everything went back to normal— the wenching, the drunkenness in the town. Except for a man like Kells, an exile really, who watched the scene from his high eyrie and dealt with it as needed.

  She felt an enormous tug of sympathy for him, living always atop this powder keg that was Tortuga! And now she saw that he was moving about the room, speaking to the wounded one by one.

  “Well, at least let me help you with that one, Dr. Cotter.” Carolina indicated the young buccaneer whose wound the doctor had been bandaging when they arrived.

  “I’ll give you a lesson,” volunteered the jovial doctor. “This is the way—here, you can bandage it yourself.” And Carolina bent gravely to bandage the slight leg wound of the sturdy young buccaneer whose face glowed with embarrassment but who would forever brag that the Silver Wench herself had saved his life “the night he had near lost his leg” in a desperate fight that had raged at Captain Kells’s house in Cayona.

  Kells had returned to her side.

  “I must take her away from you, doctor,” he said cheerfully. “Mistress Christabel is tired and ’tis time she supped.” As they strolled back he said, “On a hot night like this I thought you would prefer to eat outdoors. Unfortunately the guest quarters . . . that end of the house was somewhat damaged by the assault. The battering ram that crashed through the gate did some damage and later a cannon shot that went wild shattered one of the colonnades. I thought you would prefer to eat in the inner courtyard rather than view so much destruction.”

  She shuddered. “Was the parrot hurt?” For in the excitement she had forgotten all about Poll.

  Plainly he had not. “No, I removed Poll myself and he is now once again swinging on his hoop, only somewhat ruffled by the disturbance.”

  Carolina smiled at him. A trustworthy man, one who looked after his own. No wonder his men worshipped him!

  She let him lead her back to the inner court where a table had been laid in the white moonlight, although there was also a flickering orange glow from the torch that flared up on the wall beside his bedroom door. The torch glittered from behind the palms, casting seductive shadows that wavered as a light breeze ruffled the lacy fronds. After all the turmoil it was now remarkably quiet, as if all the world had gone to bed. She could hear the sonorous sound of the surf foaming in over the white beach from Cayona Bay.

  Kells seated her with great formality, then excused himself briefly. When he came back she saw that he had changed his clothes and was now dressed Spanish fashion in clothing he had captured from the dons with whom he warred. She supposed that in a way those rich garments, as well as this basically Spanish house, were badges of his victory—his way of telling the world that he had won. Certainly he looked very elegant in rich black taffeta coat and trousers, black silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes. His coat had black velvet cuffs edged with gold braid, a heavy gold “money chain” hung around his neck, and a pigeon’s blood ruby flashed from the burst of white lace at his throat. She knew he had gone to this trouble for her, and gave him a wan smile.

  “I am sorry,” he apologized as he joined her at the table. “I did not think to ask you if you might care to change your gown.”

  Carolina, who had been glad to sit here and collect herself after all that had happened, shook her head. “I am much too tired for that.” Indeed now that it was over, she could feel her entire body begin to tremble.

  He gave her a kindly look. “I think some brandy is in order. You are unused to battles.”

  “I hope I may stay unused to them,” she said fervently. But with shaking fingers she took the glass he filled, swallowed and promptly choked.

  “Drink it slowly,” he counseled. “It is liquid fire but on such a night as this it restores the spirit.” Sputtering, she did as she was bid and life did seem to come back to her faltering limbs, strength to her tired arms.

  “Your men are brave,” she commented. “When their wounds were being cleansed, I would have expected many of them to shriek yet the most I
heard was a groan.”

  “Buccaneering is not a profession that lends itself to cowardice,” he said dryly. “The timid are left behind, the cowards quickly die.”

  And only the strong are left, seemed to be the echo of his words. As he was strong. . . . She accepted another glass of brandy.

  He watched her finish it. “And now at last we shall have our dinner,” he said, as the little servant girl who usually served Carolina came in carrying a large tureen with an enormous pewter ladle.

  Carolina watched as a stewlike concoction was ladled into the silver bowl before her.

  “We will not have many courses, I am afraid,” he told her, “for tonight all will eat the same fare. But you will find this a very good stew. It is called salmagundi and is a great favorite among the buccaneers.”

  Carolina tasted it cautiously. She found it hot and spicy and filled with strange exotic flavors. “What is in it?” she asked.

  “Almost everything,” he laughed. “Fish and pigeon and turtle meat—perhaps even chicken or pork— marinated in spiced wine.”

  “But there are other things as well,” she insisted, tasting the stew thoughtfully.

  He shrugged. “Palm hearts, grapes, cabbage, olives —and yes, I distinctly taste mangoes—all well peppered and salted, with garlic and mustard seed and vinegar and oil.”

  Dutifully Carolina forced down a bit more. But she was not very hungry. The excitement of the evening had left her tingling and keyed up and the brandy was having its effect, as well as the wine he had poured for her.

  “You are very lovely,” he murmured. “I had never thought to see you sitting at my table, here in this place.”

  If that remark was meant to woo her confidence, it did not. She gave him a slightly blurred look. “Before you say more,” she told him, “I would know one thing: Who occupies the bedroom with all the pomades and women's clothes?”

  “A fair question,” he said. “No one occupies it.”

  “Who did occupy it then?”

  Did she imagine it, or did his hard eyes soften? “No one has occupied it,” he said. “I began furnishing it idly, after I returned from England. And have added the cosmetics and the scents and the clothing since.”

  “Did you really mean to marry Reba?” she challenged him.

  He gave her a brooding look. “I toyed with the idea,” he said with bitter honesty. “I had come home to Essex to find that nothing had changed, that my brother Darvent is still a wastrel and my sister still a fool and my father too old and sick to care. I had wasted on them what seemed to me rivers of gold—and now I had returned once again to find them barely afloat on a sea of debts. It occurred to me then to chuck it all, never to return to the Indies. I would marry me a fortune and settle down to a comfortable life of riding to hounds and managing the estates that would come to me by right of my wife when I married.” His lip had a wry curl to it. “And when Reba’s father spoke to me, I gave his proposition some thought. Oh, yes, when I came down to London to get back a part of what my brother Darvent had lost gaming, I had every intention of marrying me an heiress.”

  “But you did not. . .” she murmured.

  “I met a wench,” he said.

  Something tingled warningly in her veins and her silver eyes leaped to shimmering life. “A—wench?”

  He gave her a derisive look. “Do not tell me you do not know who it was, or you make fools of us both.”

  “And yet you searched for me none so long in London!”

  “I searched the better part of two days,” he admitted —and glanced away. He did not want her to see his eyes just then; they might give him away. She might see in them the naked truth—that for him she burned like a star in heaven.

  “That long?” she whispered, fascinated.

  He nodded gravely.

  “Would you really have gone through with it?” she asked softly. “The marriage to Reba?”

  “Not after I met the Silver Wench again,” he said, and winced at the triumph that flamed in her eyes. She was seeking power over him, he guessed, and she already had too much.

  “And yet you left me stranded in the maze?”

  “I counted you lost to me,” he said moodily.

  “So you went back to buccaneering. ...”

  He shrugged. “It is what I do best.”

  From across the table she stared at him, turning her wineglass about in her hand. He was attractive, he was urbane, he was perhaps the most dangerous man in the Caribbean, the mightiest nation in the world feared him—and he desired her. It was written in his eyes.

  “Christabel,” he murmured—and his tone made the word a caress. “It is a lovely name.”

  The fountain tinkled. The red and green and yellow parrot seemed to hang motionless on its big hoop.

  “I do not believe you,” she said stubbornly. “Those clothes in the bedroom you furnished for a woman looked to be of one size. The pomades and scents all seem new, unused.”

  “That is true.” He was smiling. “I chose them for you. It is your room, Christabel. You can sleep there tonight, if you wish.”

  For her? And yet, had she not known it all along? Had she just refused to face the truth about this wily and dangerous buccaneer who was even now playing a cat and mouse game with her? Still, to hear it baldly stated suddenly took her breath, and her face grew hot beneath his steady scrutiny.

  “I—I think I would like another glass of wine,” she said unsteadily.

  Here in this exotic place where the only law was might, where men carved out their futures with pistol and cutlass, here in the aftermath of the battle with the night air soft and mellow and the sea moaning softly on the beach its age-old lullaby, she felt her senses waver just as they had when she had believed him to be Rye Evistock—and not Captain Kells, the notorious buccaneer.

  She shook her head to clear it, telling herself the strong Caribbean sun had dazzled her eyes and addled her senses, but the lure of the night was too strong.

  Kells poured the wine and his teeth flashed white against his dark face, etched in shadow against the moon. The ruby set against the lace at his throat flashed too, like a drop of blood against snow in shadow. His was a dramatic figure, his a life steeped in drama. Even across the table she could feel the pressure of his masculinity. In silence he held out the glass to her. In silence she took it, and sipped.

  “I give you the future,” he said in a timbred voice and their glasses clinked.

  But a buccaneer’s future was the gibbet and the hemp and an unmarked grave between the high tide and the low. . . .

  Somehow tonight in this unreal place it did not seem to matter. She drained her glass. She was not used to drinking so much strong wine—and especially not after brandy. The room reeled slightly, righted itself.

  Kells poured her another.

  “To steady you,” he recommended. “You have warring thoughts.”

  She voiced one as she took the glass. “Buccaneers have no future,” she said in a low voice.

  He shrugged. “To a short future then.” He lifted his glass to hers. “But a happy one.”

  She sipped the wine soberly, considering him. And then she tossed it off, uncaring. The future ... he talked about the future as if it was going to happen some other time. The future was here, the future was now, they were drinking it up—like the wine.

  The room revolved slowly and she rose and took a dizzy step around the table toward him.

  “I think you have drunk enough,” he said sharply, rising too.

  She gave him a blurred look. “Yes, I think I will go to my room.” She took another step, wavered.

  He stepped forward and caught her as she fell.

  PART FOUR

  The Scarlet Wench

  * * *

  Scarlet wench she seems to he, scarlet she does appear

  Before a town agape to see her with her buccaneer!

  A lovely prize of silver-gold—and he displays her here

  But nothing yet that she'
s been told says that he holds her dear!

  * * *

  THE ISLAND OF TORTUGA

  1688

  * * *

  Chapter 31

  Carolina woke to a crash of timbers. It sounded very close. Of course it was Spanish workmen already repairing the house, but for a moment her mind did not work and she stared around her, recognizing nothing. This airy bedroom with its handsome Spanish furniture and jalousied windows open to the sunlight, those windows with their iron grillwork—this was not the room she had waked up in yesterday!

  And then she remembered and tried to sit up, even as a sharp pain split her head. This was the room Kells so amazingly had told her he had furnished for her. That dressing table that looked so inviting—all those puffs and pomades and scents, the spicy jars, the silver comb—all that belonged to her.

  His gift.

  Everything had happened so fast, and with her head fuzzy from all she had drunk in the wake of last night’s attack upon the house, she felt confused. She sat up gingerly, trying to sort it all out, and when the light sheet that had covered her slender body fell away, she realized that she was looking down at her own naked breasts, pale pink in the sunlight.

  With a gasp, she threw off the sheet and discovered that she was sitting there in her chemise and that the riband that held it had come loose in the night and allowed the light lacy garment to float down gracefully around her hips. Had it come loose because she had tossed and turned? Or had she not been alone in the big bed? Had the chemise riband been urged off by probing fingers, had her woman’s body been plundered by the lean buccaneer who took what he wanted from this part of the world?

  The thought made her breath come fast and her pulse race. Her eyes grew wide and dark and she leaped from the bed regardless of the pain that seemed about to split her head, threw on a light yellow silk robe that lay across a chair conveniently near as if placed there for just such an occasion, and went out into the courtyard.