‘No, the Silver Wench prefers buccaneers.’ Carolina’s voice held an undercurrent of laughter. ‘And you will be better off if you do not meet Rouge, who queens over New Providence.’ She turned to answer something Monsieur Deauville was asking, leaving someone hastily to explain to Mistress Grummond the difference between pirates and buccaneers.
But she could not help hearing - for Mistress Grummond’s voice was both penetrating and loud - the lady’s next question: ‘Who was that woman who entered into our conversation and how does she know so much about it?’ And the chuckled answer, ‘She is the Silver Wench herself.’
‘What?' cried Mistress Grummond, her sallow face flushing. ‘You mean my cousin invites her here?'
Carolina stiffened. She turned to face the newcomer.
‘Here and everywhere,’ she said crisply. ‘I will remind you that Acting Governor White may rule this island but buccaneers control the sea. And the sea’ - she paused for emphasis - ‘surrounds this island.’
That flushed face was still looking at her indignantly, but for once Mistress Grummond could think of nothing to say. She turned abruptly and made her way through the crowd.
‘I fear the governor’s cousin likes neither our climate nor our ways,’ came a rueful observation.
‘I fear the governor’s cousin must needs learn to like them if she chooses to remain,’ said Carolina, nettled.
‘You forgot to add, your beauty rules Port Royal,’ said Kells, coming up behind her and claiming her for the next dance.
He had obviously heard the entire exchange - and did not care. Why should he worry about what some chit from Yorkshire thought about them?
Have you spoken to the governor?’ she asked as he whirled her about the floor, and he nodded.
‘The governor shares the general opinion. He is overextended, he has no ready money, no prospects of any - still, should I choose to go to sea again, he would somehow find the money for a share in the enterprise.’
She stared up at him indignantly. ‘I can’t believe he said that! You would make a wonderful planter! I have a good mind to speak to him myself!’
His grip tightened on her hand. ‘You will let the matter drop,’ he advised her. ‘I have no wish for the governor to know how straitened matters are for me.’
‘Well, at least I will plead a headache and leave early!’ she flashed.
He shrugged. ‘As you wish. I find these crushes beastly hot myself. My coat feels stuck to my back.’
‘Then we will find Governor and Mistress White and bid them both a good night,’ she declared energetically.
She was still smouldering when they stepped through the front door.
‘I thought you were worried about your slippers and must needs wait for Hawks with the carriage,’ he said, grinning.
‘Oh, bother my slippers! We’ll walk home!’
Kells swung into an easy gait beside her, but he kept a sharp lookout for thieves and footpads who might be lurking in dark doorways at this time of night and not recognize him for who he was - a dangerous buccaneer despite his fine clothing. Side by side they strolled back across the sandy way beneath the big white stars that lit the velvet night.
‘You looked lovely tonight,’ he told her affectionately when they had gained her bedroom. ‘And loyal, too.’ He tilted her chin up with one finger and looked down into her face. ‘You would have bearded the governor for me.’
‘I still will!’
‘No,’ he said ruefully. ‘That die is cast. There is no other place to turn.’
But there would have been if she had not been so rash as to send away the necklace!
‘You will think of something,’ she said confidently.
He drew her lovingly into his arms. ‘You are a citadel of misplaced confidence,’ he murmured and buried his face in her perfumed hair.
‘Wait,’ she said breathlessly, as his warm hand pressed her bodice downward. ‘This material is fragile - you will tear it.’
‘Then by all means let us get it off,’ he laughed, and expertly helped her with her hooks, then watched her slide the sumptuous black and silver gown from her slim body.
Now clad in her chemise, Carolina helped Kells ease the tight gun-metal coat from his broad shoulders, smiling to see him give a sigh of relief to be rid of it. He caught that smile and swooped her up, carried her to the window. The wind caught her light chemise skirts and blew them back against his muscular thighs as he stood holding her, letting the tropical wind caress them both as he looked out at the velvet Caribbean night.
She looked up at his dark visage, trying to divine what he was thinking, but his expression in starlight was unfathomable and told her nothing. As if aware of the sudden uplifting of her head, he bent his own and rubbed his cheek gently against hers.
‘Carolina,’ he said huskily. ‘Do not be so upset. We have been through so much, we will conquer this, too.’
Carolina pressed her head against his chest that he might not see her tears. He meant so much to her, this stalwart buccaneer, whom the world seemed determined to send back to a life at sea.
And even as they whispered and caressed, even as they forgot the world and slipped into ecstasy, Gilly, who had seized the opportunity to slip out before the house was locked up and who would slip back in again by morning’s light, lay wrapped in the arms of her pirate lover in an upstairs room of a waterfront dive on Thames Street - complaining.
‘The Silver Wench’s always got the necklace on, Jarvis,’ Gilly was telling him in disgust, even as she wriggled against him, trying to get her legs arranged more comfortably. ‘I think she sleeps with it.’
‘You’ll find a way to get it,’ Jarvis panted - for at the moment he was absorbed in more pressing matters, with the girl’s hot young body crushed against his own.
Jarvis had no idea Gilly was planning to double-cross him, just as Gilly, who woke with the dawn with her mind still sparkling with rubies and diamonds, had no idea that the necklace she lusted after was but a fake . . .
Carolina, too, woke with her mind on the necklace. If only she had not sent it away! But it was gone and she must make her plans without it.
Kells had left by the time she awoke - off to see to the outfitting of the Sea Wolf, she guessed. The only consolation in that was that it would take him some time - and that would give her manoeuvring room.
But how to manoeuvre? She puzzled about it all morning, giving short answers to everyone, biting her lip and frowning.
‘Do you think the mistress is ill?’ Betts asked anxiously of Hawks.
Hawks snorted. ‘Ill?’ he scoffed. ‘She’s upset that the cap’n plans to go to sea again - and she’ll find a way to stop him, I’ll wager!’
But morning turned to afternoon and the hot Caribbean sun beat down mercilessly on the seething city, baking anew its sun-bleached bricks and gilding the great market bell and the sweating greased backs of the blacks who were being auctioned nearby. Ships came and went from the harbour, cargoes were unloaded and hauled over the hot sand - and still Carolina paced about her bedroom.
‘Go away, Gilly,’ she told the girl absently, when Gilly knocked on the door with some trifling message from Cook. ‘Tell Cook to deal with the matter - I’m thinking.’
And thinking with the trunk lid shut and doubtlessly locked! thought Gilly, hard put to conceal her own annoyance.
The shadows had grown long, sending a violet light over the steaming town, when Carolina came at last to her decision. It was a simple one, an unavoidable one - she had known it all along.
And perhaps, she told herself, it was for the best.
But it would take some doing for Kells was sure to resist.
So that night she dressed with seductive care. The light lawn gown she wore, palest pink over a deeper pink chemise, was just short of a chemise itself. Its delicate lace foamed airily over her elbows; it was cut so low that her white shoulders gleamed and her breasts were in danger of popping out of the deep square neckline. Her petti
coat too was barely there, of thinnest silk of an even deeper pink, so that her whole body appeared to be blushing. This was no night for barbaric ruby necklaces. She wore around her neck a delicate chain of glittering gold with a teardrop diamond glistening between her breasts. Her ear bobs, too, were tiny diamonds, flashing like raindrops, and her moonlight hair was caught up with pale pink ribands.
She could have been a wood nymph or a water sprite with her grey eyes silver in the violet light of the swift tropical dusk - and she was so lovely that Kells, coming in hot, tired and hungry, was arrested by the sight of her standing there on the stairs to greet him as he entered.
‘You look more ready for bed than dining,’ he murmured humorously, not wishing her to know how just the sight of her could heat up his blood and weaken his firmest resolve.
Carolina gave an airy shrug that rippled her delightful breasts, already so near to coming out of the pretty gown.
”Tis a hot night,’ she murmured archly.
‘And likely to grow hotter, I see!’ he laughed, taking the stairs towards her two at a time.
Carolina fled before him like a songbird blown by the wind and reached their bedroom door just ahead of him.
It was fortunate for Gilly on the second floor that she had heard Kells enter and had had time to flee, because she had seized the opportunity to slip into Carolina’s bedroom the moment Carolina had left it, and had run to the curved-top trunk. ‘The first time I’ve found it unlocked!’ she would later wail to Jarvis. ‘And wouldn’t you know they both came running into the bedroom and almost caught me - and then Cook scolded me for being gone and I had to stay downstairs and help her till they went to bed!’ she added, aggrieved.
‘There’ll be other times,’ Jarvis assured her, draining his tankard and running his hand up her skirts.
But although Carolina, intent on her plans for the evening, failed to witness Gilly’s sudden departure, Kells’s keen eyes caught a flash of indigo skirts disappearing down the hall. It brought to him sharply how precious was the woman he was leaving in dangerous Port Royal - and how vulnerable.
‘I’ll have a strong lock put on that door tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘You’re to keep it locked and wear the key while I’m gone.’
‘Oh, Kells!’ she protested impatiently. ‘The house is secure enough with Hawks standing guard!’
‘There will be more than Hawks standing guard,’ he assured her. ‘I intend to station three other men here to help him. Your door needs no lock while I am here to protect you, but once word is spread about that I am gone - ’
‘You think I will be kidnapped and held for ransom?’ Her upturned laughing face challenged him.
He frowned down at her. Did she but know it, his enemies could make him deliver himself to Spain by just such a tactic - but to say so would only frighten her, just as his real reason for the lock was to forestall someone slipping into the house past that new serving wench Gilly, for example, and be waiting to overpower Carolina in her bedchamber. ‘Promise me you will keep this door locked,’ he insisted. ‘Both when you are in the room and when you are gone from it.’
‘But someone could come in by the window,’ she mocked him. ‘After all, it is only the second floor!’
‘Tomorrow, twin balconies will be constructed at these windows - and there will be a solid iron grillework that no man can penetrate without making enough noise to awaken the dead.’
‘And suppose there is a fire? What then? Am I to burn to death because I am so well locked in?’
‘I have thought of that,’ he said. ‘The floors of these small balconies which will jut out over the street will be of wood. I will leave an axe beneath your bed and in case you wake to find the house blazing, you may chop your way to freedom in seconds and drop into Hawks’s arms below - if he has not already raised a ladder and started chopping at the balcony himself.’
She stared at him in open-mouthed amazement.
‘But it is no matter,’ she declared. ‘I mean, it is all unnecessary.’
‘Necessary to my peace of mind,’ he said grimly, divesting himself of his sweaty shirt as he spoke. ‘And thus no small matter to me.’
She shrugged and called for his bath, then watched him take it. She soaped his back for him - running her fingers lightly down his back and up into his shoulder-length dark hair - then stepped back with a light laugh when he shook his head, sending droplets of water flying about, some of them landing on her. And when he was done and rose dripping from the tub, sunbronzed and gleaming, she bubbled with laughter as she helped towel him dry.
‘What are you so happy about?’ he wondered, for this sudden lightness of spirit made him uneasy.
She tossed the towel away and surveyed his naked form, smiling. ‘I am happy because I have come to a great decision - the only decision.’
He watched her warily. ‘And what decision is that?’
She came towards him like a blown leaf and embraced him as he stood there.
‘I have written to my mother - the letter is on my desk.' She nodded in the direction of her small slanted boxlike writing desk, which sat upon a table nearby. ‘Fielding will have paid off his debts with the necklace, his creditors will all feel secure - now he can borrow again and send us the money, which you can pay back at your leisure. Meantime you will have enough to buy yourself a plantation on the Cobre!’
Kells stared down at her thoughtfully. Carolina was beaming up at him, very pleased with herself to have worked out such a pleasant solution to their problems. Borrow from Fielding? It was a possibility, he supposed. But he remembered how willing Fielding had been to believe ill of him, how eager to turn him over to the authorities on slight evidence without verifying whether that evidence was true or false. He remembered that Carolina was not really Fielding’s daughter and that Fielding had always resented her. Even if Fielding did - reluctantly - accede to Carolina’s request and ship the money over the sea from the Tidewater, there was no guarantee it would ever reach Port Royal. Pirates, the weather, the Spanish - all presented an ever-present menace.
And there were other problems as well. Indeed he would need to divert some of the money meant for the venture into fortifying this house for her protection - but it was best for Carolina not to know that. He could not afford to wait. Especially on something so uncertain as Fielding Lightfoot’s whim.
‘No, Carolina, it will not work. It would take time and we are too near the edge. Is this the letter?’ He strode towards the little writing desk, picked up the piece of parchment that lay atop it, and glanced down, scanning it.
Carolina watched as he tore it in half.
‘You will not let me help you,’ she said sulkily.
‘You will help me best by listening to reason. What is done is done. You have made a grand gesture, one that pleased you. Be content with it.’
'But you - ’
‘I will arrange my own salvation,’ he said crisply. ‘As I always have.’
Carolina turned on her heel and ran down the stairs.
She was silent and pensive all through dinner, although Kells did his best to cheer her. And when they went upstairs to their bedchamber she clung to him with all the fervour of the lost.
‘Christabel, Christabel,’ he murmured, using the name the world called her. And then with a sigh, ‘What am I to do with you?’
You could stay with me! she thought, but this was no time for quarrelling. Not with his arms about her, not with her body burrowing against his own, not with their legs intertwined, their breath hot on each other’s cheek . . . no, these moments were for forgetfulness, when she could dream that he would stay by her side, that they would never be separated.
A dream that seemed real enough while their lovemaking lasted, but a dream that disappeared, vanished with the heat of the moment. Reality came back as they drifted hazily down into the afterglow.
‘Kells,’ she said, troubled. ‘You don’t really want to leave me, do you?’
Her voice was wistful an
d the strong arm of her buccaneer, just now lying outflung beneath her as she lay on her back studying the stars through their window, tightened about her as if to shield her from the world.
‘I never want to leave you,’ he said in his deep rich voice. ‘Don’t you know that, Christabel?’
He did not want to leave her. But he would.
‘But . . . you are going?’ she murmured at last.
‘I must,’ he sighed, and wished again that there had been no Marquess of Saltenham with his masquerades, no Reba with her wily mother, no deep intrigues to ensnare him. What cruel fate had decreed that he and Carolina must never enjoy their heritage, must live forever exiled in wild foreign places?
‘I know you feel you must go,’ Carolina said wistfully. ‘But - oh, Kells.’ Her voice held a wild entreaty and her slender fingers traced a fiery persuasive path down his belly and groin, burrowed enticingly below. ‘Don’t sail away, don’t go - stay with me!’
It was a siren’s song - and Kells was not slow to respond to it.
Wakened to passion again, he turned over and drew her slim yielding body against his own, caressing her tenderly. But he chose not to answer her impulsive plea. Instead he took her again, driving her to frenzy with his ardour, and let her go at last with yearning.
But she had not prevailed. All her efforts had moved him not one whit.
Carolina lay wide-eyed in the dark, listening to the even sound of his breathing.
Her plan had failed. She would have to devise another.
7
The hammering was maddening. From dawn to dusk it went on unceasingly, day after day, until the whole house was fitted with iron grillework. ‘A fort,’ Hawks called it, chuckling.
Carolina could see nothing to crow about. ‘A great waste of money you say we do not have!’ she told Kells crossly.
‘But will have soon,’ he promised her with a flash of white teeth. ‘Spain still sails the seas!’
‘Kells.’ She tried to remonstrate with him. ‘You have a pardon for buccaneering. If you go back to it now, you will have to get yourself a pardon all over again.’
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