“Hawks showed me how to open it when he thought the fight was going against you,” she said sulkily. “I told him that he should go out and help you—and he thought so too.”
He sighed. “I might have known. Hawks considers himself my guardian angel,” he added by way of explanation. “He was my father’s groom back in Essex. So now there is one more door that I must lock against you.”
“It will do you no good!” she flared. “I will escape you if I have to break out through the roof or dig my own tunnel to freedom!”
He studied her tense form in the candlelight, took in the flashing eyes, the rebellious mouth.
“What have I ever done,” he murmured, “that you are so hot to leave me?”
“Need you ask?” Icily. “You forced yourself on me!”
“Oh, yes,” he sighed. “There was that.” He gave her a crooked smile. “But I have been very good of late.”
“Good? You keep me locked up!”
“And suppose I said that I would no longer keep you locked up?” he asked softly. “Suppose I said that if you would walk beside me—willingly—that I would take you anywhere you liked, that I would sail you to Havana, that I would sail you to Hell?”
She sniffed. “I would not believe you.”
He lifted his head and his bitter laugh rang out. “Spoken like a true woman,” he said. “Ever evading the question.” He went to the door and called “Hawks!”
Hawks was obviously on guard duty at the front door. He quickly appeared. “Yes, Captain?”
Kells spoke to him rapidly in French—a language of which Carolina knew only a smattering. She guessed he was ordering Hawks to barricade the end of the tunnel in some way so that she would not be able to penetrate it, because Hawks threw her a sudden curious look.
“You might have spoken in English,” she complained.
“Yes, I might,” he agreed, coming back after closing the door and pulling out a chair for her. “But Hawks is a little rusty on his French. I have agreed to give him practice.”
She gave him a disbelieving look as he sat down and poured her a goblet of wine.
“What am I to do with you?” he mused.
“That’s easily answered! You can let me go.” She tossed down the wine and gave him a resentful look. “And do not pretend that you love me for I will not believe it—a man who takes a woman against her will and then throws at her her lack of virginity!” Her voice was filled with indignation.
He rose.
“I do not think you understand me,” he said slowly, coming around the table toward her. “I never ‘threw at you’ your lack of virginity when you first gave yourself to me—I only regretted that I was not the man.” And at her slightly rebuffing shrug, he took her by the shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “No, hear me out—this once,” he said, looking down into her face with great intensity. “And then we need never speak of any of it again. You do not understand the nature of my love.”
“Do I not?” she said scathingly.
“No.” His voice was suddenly sharp, a sharpness she had heard sometimes in Fielding Lightfoot’s voice when he was exasperated with her mother. But the words were such as she had never heard Fielding say. He looked deep into her eyes as he spoke. “I would love you, Christabel, if you had had ten lovers— twenty. I would love you if you had had none.” His voice grew rich and deep and fraught with meaning. “I would love you no matter what had happened to you, or what later came to pass.” And when she would have spoken, he held up his hand to silence her. “But it is not Carolina Lightfoot of the sulks and moods that I love.”
Her gray eyes widened, staring up at him. There was no sound in the room save their breathing and the light rustle of the palm fronds blowing outside their window.
He smiled, a slightly ragged smile, and she had a flashing vision of what she had put him through all these months when he was trying to fight off his love for her. “It is Christabel that I love,” he said simply. “A girl who would throw away everything for her lover— and I only regretted that I was not that lover.” He shrugged. “But now you will find him again and I will go my way and let you be happy.” He smiled down on her wistfully, and she could not fathom the expression on his face.
But she caught his meaning clear—and held her breath. He was going to let her go, he had said as much!
Outside, somewhere across a silver sea, her future waited—with Thomas Angevine.
Here, inside this mock English room in this dangerous tropical place, there was only confusion. She studied that dark mocking face before her, puzzled, wondering if she could believe what he had just said. Those gray eyes, that dark face, were suddenly quite unlike Fielding Lightfoot’s—they were Kells’s alone, and she would never confuse the two of them again.
“But before I let you go,” he said softly, “I will take some small token to remember you by.”
“What—what is it you want?” she asked raggedly. “You can have anything ... if only you will let me go.”
“Anything?” His smile deepened. “Then I will take with me a memory to warm me on cold nights in Essex, for that is where I am going.” And he wrapped his arms around her.
“To—Essex?” she faltered against his chest.
“Yes,” he muttered. “I am tired of the Caribbean. I intend to live in England.”
But he was a wanted man! In Essex, he would be found out, betrayed. It was one thing to snatch a visit as he had done at Christmastide, but not to try to live there—never that!
And then she was dizzily lost in the touch of him, the slightly tangy masculine scent of him, the warmth that exuded from his big body that sent a glow of desire through every fiber of her being.
“Kells, don’t,” she said faintly. She put the palms of her hands against his chest to push him away. “Please don’t.”
“Can it be that you feel something for me?” he wondered, letting his long fingers trail down her fair hair with its lacy black mantilla, to caress the curve of her neck.
“Yes, I feel something for you,” she said in a strangled voice. “But it is wrong for me to feel so. I am not a faithless wench. I belong to someone else.”
“Do you now?” He took her hand and pulled her unresisting body into the courtyard. She went with him as if she had no will, a leaf blown by the wind. He took her into the chart room which had a view down the hill of the town below.
“Consider me a magician,” he said ironically. “Observe, I will produce Lord Thomas Angevine right before your eyes.”
She gave him a troubled look. “I do not find that amusing,” she said stiffly.
“I do not expect you to. Come, look out the window, Christabel. You will see that he is strolling up the road.”
Despite her disbelief, the compelling note in his voice drew her to the window.
Before her the white moonlight was beaming down upon the silvery green fronds of waving palms, and upon a roadway of white coral rock, in some places no more than a path, crushed and spread by Spanish prisoners. And upon that roadway, beneath those waving palms, being urged along by a dour-looking Hawks, Lord Thomas Angevine in the flesh was indeed strolling toward her.
“But—” She gasped. “It cannot be! Thomas lies imprisoned in Havana. How did you effect his release?”
“He was never in Havana. He was here all the time.”
Her head whirled. “Here?” she said faintly.
“Yes. In Grenoble’s house.”
In Dr. Grenoble’s house! Ah, now it was clear! Thomas had been one of the fever victims that Dr. Grenoble feared to leave lest he spread the contagion. And Kells had not told her because he knew she might manage to go to him, contract the fever and die!
“He has been ill?” she asked tentatively, for verification.
“No.” His voice was cool. “Lord Thomas has been in excellent health save for several lashes the Spanish gave him on board the Santiago. ”
“Then you did take the Coraje?”
Kells shook hi
s head. “No, I missed her. But it seems that Lord Thomas has a way with women. It was because he had been so bold as to speak to a Spanish lady aboard the Santiago that he had received several lashes. And this lady, half mad with love for him, had managed to bribe two Spanish sailors with a large emerald cross. In the night they released Lord Thomas from his bonds, set the two of them into a boat, and the pair set out for Havana, where the lady had a brother who would do anything for her. I chanced upon them on their way there—before I took the Santiago. And it was as well I did, for understand the ways of the sea he does not, and they were about to be swamped.”
So Kells had captured Lord Thomas! But with a lady?
“I do not believe you!” she cried. “A Spanish lady? I would have seen her—or at least heard about her!”
“Few knew,” he said dryly. “And I promised death to anyone who told you. In any event she is a provable fact for she too is a guest of the good doctor.”
Her head spun. “You mean—they were together?” she asked in an altered voice.
He nodded affably. “In one room.”
In one bed, he meant!
He shrugged. “It was their own desire. Dr. Grenoble is no keeper of other men’s morals!”
So they had been the “fever victims'’—Thomas and this woman!
“I do not believe you,” she accused coldly. “You have invented this terrible story to confuse me. But Thomas will be here in a moment and he will explain all!”
“Will he now?” Her captor gave a short laugh. “Would you care for the lady to tell you herself? She speaks only Spanish but fortunately you know the language.”
This was surely some trick of this devious buccaneer! Her angry gasp gave him her answer.
“Before he gets here,” Kells said coolly, “would you not care to ask me why I did it?”
“Yes!” she cried. “What did you intend by this charade?”
“I meant to gain myself a silver wench,” he told her somberly. “I had thought that when you learned your perfect Thomas had been spending his days and nights with another woman it might change your mind. As it is, I have changed mine.”
“What do you mean, you have changed your mind?"
“Just that,” he told her calmly. “I have decided not to let you go so easily. I have decided to let Lord Thomas fight me for you, buccaneer style, with cutlasses—or if he prefers a more gentlemanly weapon, with rapiers. If he wins”—he gave her a sardonic look—“you are both free to go. But not until I lie dead upon the sand.”
She could hear the big iron grillwork front door clang shut even as she tried to grasp all this. Her own face beneath the drifting black lace had gone white. “Why would you do that?” she demanded in alarm. She could hear Lord Thomas’s boots along with Hawks’s ringing on the stone flooring. “Why would you kill a man who has never harmed you?”
“Can it be that you do not know I love you?” he marvelled. “Well, hold your tongue and you will learn something.” He stepped out into the corridor, leaving the door ajar behind him.
“Ah—Thomas.” Kells’s voice was casual. “And how is Doña Margarita today?”
“Complaining,” was the prompt response. “She yearns for Toledo. It is very tiresome being cooped up with her all day long.”
“I can well imagine,” the buccaneer commiserated with him. “But then at first you did not seem to mind.”
From behind that half-open door Carolina raked her fingernails into her palms. She could almost see Thomas shrug. “Well—you know how these things are. Passion waxes hot at first but then it wanes. I am glad at last to have the freedom of the town. Dr. Grenoble advises me that the contagion here on Tortuga has waned. I am eager to be out and about. There is a Silver Wench, Dr. Grenoble tells me, who is worth the viewing—although he does say she belongs to you,” he added with a drawl.
So Kells had tricked them both! He had told her there was a contagion in Dr. Grenoble’s house and he had told Thomas there was a contagion abroad in Cayona! He had kept them both prisoners of his lies!
She could hardly contain herself as Lord Thomas added, “Your hospitality has been much appreciated, but I was a little surprised to be wakened in the night and told to scramble into my clothes. Tell me, has some great event transpired that I should be apprised of? Are we at war perhaps?”
“Not yet,” said Kells. He swung the door wide. “Lord Thomas,” he said sardonically, “I bring you your lost lady—Christabel.”
Lord Thomas looked with surprise at this apparently Spanish lady who confronted him. The single candle that Kells had brought with him and set upon the chart room’s long table cast its golden glow upon an elegant black taffeta gown and a face obscured by a heavy black lace mantilla held up by an intricately worked tortoiseshell comb.
“My lost—?” He peered at her in the dim room without recognition. “Do I know this lady?” he inquired courteously.
A slow astonishment washed over the lean buccaneer’s dark countenance. Abruptly he began to laugh.
“Christabel,” he said, choking back his mirth. “Your late lost love does not remember you. And it is strange,” he added, cocking his head to view her. “For I would know you anywhere, no matter how much lace you draped over your head!”
Nothing so deflating had ever happened to Carolina. She ripped off her mantilla and her burning silver eyes were turned accusingly upon the English lord. “Now do you remember me, Thomas?” she demanded in a voice that quivered with wrath.
Lord Thomas had the grace to look astonished. “Carolina!” he marveled. “Have you been languishing in this fever port too?”
Carolina’s pretty teeth ground slightly. To have been rejected would be bad enough, but not even to be recognized! No matter that she was wearing a disguise —he should have known her! Instantly! She looked with distaste at Lord Thomas. He was more tanned than when she had last seen him—from lying about in a sunny hammock with his Spanish lady, no doubt! And he seemed to have grown shorter. Suddenly she did not like his curly hair. It seemed coarse and thatchlike. “The fever was just in our minds, Thomas. We have both been duped. By this blackguard here.”
The blackguard bowed slightly to acknowledge his regard, “the lady is understandably ruffled,” he told Lord Thomas gravely. “She has been put to some trouble on your account. Believing you to be incarcerated in—I believe I quote her correctly—‘the deepest dungeon in El Morro,’ she has been trying to reach Havana in a vain attempt to rescue you.”
Lord Thomas’s elegant mouth gaped open as he regarded with awe this pseudo-Spanish lady who was at the same time Carolina Lightfoot. “I cannot believe it!” he muttered.
“She was ready to risk her life on your behalf, Lord Thomas.” Kells’s voice was crisp. “I think you might suspend your disbelief long enough to thank her.”
“Oh, I do, I do thank her,” cried that gentleman hastily. “But I cannot understand why. I mean, I cannot understand how—”
“Oh, damn your misunderstandings!” cried Carolina.
“But now that I have found you again, Carolina,” he began quickly, “you and I—”
That did it, that easy assumption that she would resume her relationship with him!
“Not ‘Carolina,’” she jeered. “Rather call me ‘Christabel’ as all in Cayona know me. You are looking at the Silver Wench you say you yearn to view!”
If Lord Thomas had looked astonished before, he now looked thunderstruck. ‘'You? The Silver Wench?” he gasped. “But the Silver Wench belongs to—” He cast a look at Kells before his voice faded away.
“She is indeed the Silver Wench.” Kells’s hard voice, keen-edged as any rapier, cut into his words. “And you are right, she does belong to me.”
“Oh, I’d not contest it,” said Lord Thomas quickly.
“Would you not?” cried Carolina, outraged. “You who swore undying love but last December in England? You would not contest it?” Her voice rose.
“Carolina,” he said unhappily. “This i
s not the time for recriminations. I would remind you that we are both in a buccaneer stronghold—”
“Ah, so that is it!” Angrily she pounced upon his words. “We are to grovel before these buccaneers, are we? Well, I will not, and I will not let you grovel either!” Recklessly she turned to Kells. “Fight your duel!” she cried. “Let the blood of the loser stain the sand!”
Aghast, Lord Thomas turned to Kells. “What is she saying?” he stammered.
“I have just told her that I would fight you for her,” drawled Kells. “To the death.”
Lord Thomas paled visibly. “We can surely settle this matter peaceably between us,” he began. “There is no need of a duel.”
“And what of your lady of Spain?” jibed Carolina.
“Ah, she must be returned to Havana,” he said promptly, sensing that this was a sore point. “She was but aiding in my escape, Carolina,” he added beseechingly.
“And no doubt intended to marry you into the bargain!”
“We will let Lord Thomas be the judge of what she intended,” said Kells. “It is my intention to release both you and Doña Margarita.” He was speaking directly to Lord Thomas. “If you choose that she accompany you back to England—”
“Oh, no!” Lord Thomas put up his hand almost with a shudder. “She talks incessantly. Never stops. Indeed the lady and I have been constant companions ever since I reached these shores and I would be delighted never to see her again.”
How shallow he was! Carolina regarded her late lover with contempt. And she had once loved this man, loved him desperately, with every fiber of her being! It galled her that she should have flung herself at him, that she should have turned and tossed so many sleepless nights, wondering where he was, in whose arms he might be lying. What did it matter in whose arms Thomas was lying, so long as they were not hers? And to think that she had been about to sail to Havana to find him! Why, he was not worth crossing the grove to find!
“Then I will arrange for Doña Margarita’s return to Havana,” decided Kells. “Perhaps you would be good enough to inform her?” He glanced at his watch. “Well, we will not keep you, Lord Thomas. Dr. Grenoble will be up and eager to hear how you fared at my hands, and no doubt the lady will be grateful for the good news that she will be rejoining her brother in Havana.”
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