‘Indeed I can hardly credit that you are the woman called Rouge,’ Carolina countered ruefully.
The two women were sitting in Carolina’s cabin, which she had hastily offered to share with ‘Rouge.’ Penny was lounging lazily back against the bunk with one long leg stretched out, her bare heel resting on the table in a pose her mother would have described sharply as ‘outrageous,’ and Carolina was perched on the edge of her chair, studying her beautiful sister, whom the family had so long regarded as ‘lost.’
‘Whatever happened to you, Penny? Why didn’t we ever hear from you?’
‘A great deal happened to me.’ Penny’s brilliant smile flashed. ‘And do you really think the aristocratic Lightfoot clan would have welcomed the news that a daughter of theirs was the notorious “Rouge” of New Providence? What do you think Mother would have said? Or Father? Or Aunt Pet? Or you, for instance?’ she added with a slightly jeering laugh.
‘I think we would all have tried to rescue you,’ Carolina said soberly. ‘And Kells would certainly have done it.’
Those dark blue eyes, so like her reckless mother’s, held an amused glimmer. ‘But suppose I didn’t want to be rescued?’
‘I suppose we’d have done it anyway,’ sighed Carolina. ‘Plucked you out bodily and asked you if that was really what you wanted to do with your life!’
‘Oh, don’t be priggish!’ exclaimed Penny. ‘From anyone else maybe, but I wouldn’t expect priggishness from you, Carol!’
Carolina was in a mood to be argumentative. ‘Well, you must admit New Providence is a terrible place,’ she said. ‘Everybody says so.’
‘Even Kells?’
‘Especially Kells.’
Penny chuckled. ‘I never saw him, you know. I was told he’d visited New Providence but at the time I had other fish to fry.’
‘Yes, he told me. Of course he’d never seen you before so he didn’t have any idea you were my sister, but he told me you were inciting two men to kill each other and when they lurched away, you followed them swinging a cutlass!’
‘Oh, I probably did,’ shrugged Penny. ‘I was just having a tantrum, most like. I doubt I really hurt anybody.’ She gave Carolina a keen look. ‘By the way, where is Kells?’
‘He’s dead,’ said Carolina, feeling a lump rise in her throat. ‘His ship was just coming into Port Royal when the earthquake struck. The Sea Wolf went to the bottom, taking him with it.’
‘Oh, Carol, I’m so sorry!’ exclaimed Penny, and real compassion lit her dark blue eyes. ‘I’d heard it was a real love affair - the Silver Wench and her buccaneer.’
‘It’s true, I loved him deeply,’ said Carolina in a blurry voice. She got hold of herself. If they talked about Kells, she’d be hard put not to burst into tears! ‘But enough about me. Penny. Tell me all that’s happened to you and how you ended up in a godforsaken place like New Providence? All we knew was that you'd run away to the Marriage Trees with Emmett and had got as far as Philadelphia. Were you married in Maryland or in Philadelphia?’
‘In Maryland, just over the border. The storm was tearing through the Marriage Trees - a big oak fell and nearly killed us - but we found a minister to perform the ceremony in a house that had a light in it. We woke him up. He was frightened by the storm and wanted to wait till morning but I aimed Father’s big duelling pistol at him and he read the words over us in short order!’
‘Father missed that pistol but he assumed it was stolen by one of the servants,’ marvelled Carolina. ‘He never dreamed you took it!’
‘Yes, well, Emmett had his points but he wasn’t the best of protectors. I thought I’d better have a weapon handy in case we met brigands on the road and I had to protect him.' Penny’s short laugh spoke volumes.
Carolina studied her sister: That long elegant body, that complete self-composure, that relaxed mien of a lounging tigress. It was a face of great beauty she looked into, with a jaw just slightly square and dark blue eyes as reckless as her own. There was something wild and untamed and forever free about Penny with her flashing smile and her luxuriant red hair.
‘I never understood why you married Emmett in the first place,’ she sighed. ‘Personally, I never could stand him - his eyes were too small and he looked at everyone sort of calculatingly as if wondering how he could make them suit his purpose - for all that he was such a dolt!’
‘You read him right,’ murmured Penny. She put her other bare foot on the table, leaned back and folded her strong arms behind her head. Her red hair framed a thoughtful face. ‘I ran away, of course, because I wanted to be free, mistress of my own fate. But I really think I married Emmett to spite my parents because they would have pushed me into a tiresome marriage with some dull-witted fellow who could “take care of me” sooner or later . . She laughed. ‘And so I married another dull-witted fellow who was even worse and who expected me to take care of him!'
Carolina was not surprised. Emmett had, so far as she knew, no saving graces.
‘Mother sent to Philadelphia when she found out you were there, and Emmett wasn’t hard to find. But all he would say was that you'd quarrelled and you’d left him. He never would say what you’d quarrelled about.’
‘I don't doubt it!’ Penny’s eyes flashed, dark angry sapphires fringed by russet lashes. ‘Emmett was very sulky. He complained that I was “too much for him” - in bed, that is. He said I wore him out! Can you imagine?’ She looked indignant. ‘Indeed, he said if he had to tumble about all night, he’d be much too tired ever to do any work the next day!’
Carolina could well imagine it; she had always had an instinctive dislike for self-centered Emmett. What she could not imagine was Penny’s next words.
‘But he’d worked it all out,’ she went on bitterly. ‘Since I was “such a hot wench” - to use his phrase - and since I kept him so “exhausted” - his words again - I could use up my extra energy and keep us both in luxury if I’d just accept the advances of certain gentlemen that he would find for me - and bring home to my bed!’
‘Oh, no!' wailed Carolina. ‘I hope you didn’t do it. Penny!’
‘You're right, I didn't do it!’ snapped Penny. ‘But that was what we quarrelled about.’
‘He said you attacked him,' remembered Carolina.
‘I did,’ said Penny, aggrieved. ‘I threw everything in the room at him when he suggested he’d find other men for me - for money.’ Her smile was grim. ‘I blacked both his eyes and near broke his nose!’
‘No wonder he wouldn’t say where you were - he was afraid you’d tell what had happened!’
Penny laughed her throaty laugh. It had a hard sound.
‘I don’t wonder Emmett didn’t care to admit where I was! Oh, we’d quarrelled, yes - but for him to seek revenge against me by selling me to a sea captain bound for Ireland . . . !’
‘Oh, he didn’t!’ cried Carolina, shocked out of her despondency.
‘He did, indeed,’ affirmed Penny. ‘Bribed our landlady’s two big sons to tie me up and deliver me to him in a sack down at the waterfront! He told them that I was a hellion and a harpy and that he was going to send me home to my family and leave me there! Of course, they believed him. And they had no love for me for from time to time I’d rejected both their advances! So one of them throttled me while the other tied me up and gagged me. They thrust me into a hempen sack’ - she moved her body restlessly as if she could still feel its coarse roughness against her skin - ‘and I wasn’t let out of that bag until we were four hours out to sea.’ Her teeth clashed together. ‘I can tell you that I came out of that bag fighting! And there was this coarse red-bearded giant who said he’d seen me and he’d fancied me and when it turned out Emmett couldn’t persuade me to - ’
‘So this sea captain was one of the “gentlemen” Emmett intended you to entertain?’ gasped Carolina.
‘He was indeed - and I’ll never forget his coarse red beard that nearly took the skin off my face! He said he had bought me fair and square and he intended for me to keep Emm
ett’s bargain. I gave him a most terrible kick that doubled him up. I had hoped at least to break a few of this scoundrel’s bones but he was more durable than that. He rose from the floor with what I would term an ugly expression and reached out lightning fast with one of those cordlike arms of his and knocked me across the room. Knocked me unconscious, he did.’
Carolina was leaning forward, hanging on her sister’s words. All this from the tall aristocratic beauty who had swept all before her when she danced the stately minuet to a tinkling harpsichord at the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg. She had always thought Penny born to wed at least a governor or a general!
‘When I came to, I was tied down in the bunk and he was having his way with me.’
‘Oh, Penny!’ choked Carolina. Her heart ached for her free-spirited sister, brought so low.
‘He kept me mostly tied up for three days,’ remembered Penny grimly. ‘And on short rations. I was so weak I staggered when finally he let me come up on deck. He said that “would teach me” - and it did!'
‘What do you mean, it taught you?’ faltered Carolina. Penny gave her an amused look - on a man that would have been called a roué’s look. ‘Would you believe it, that red-bearded captain made me discover that I truly had a taste for men? I mean, Emmett was nothing - he made me do all the work, it was very tiresome. But Red Beard plunged on me with joy - I refused to cooperate even though he knocked me about. I had begun to believe men were nothing and not worth the effort - having known only Emmett’s inept attentions. But now in Red Beard’s arms, even though I loathed him, I began to realize that something else existed, some joy I’d never really tasted, never really imagined, something beyond sex’ - the dark blue eyes were adventurer’s eyes now, boldly questing - ‘something past what Red Beard knew, past what I knew, something worth finding. Yes,’ she mused, ‘in Red Beard’s arms I discovered I had a taste for men’ - she laughed again, ruefully - ‘just not a taste for him.'
Carolina’s head whirled. ‘Then Red Beard was the one who brought you to New Providence?’
The red tresses shook a denial. Penny stretched out her long legs and crossed her slim bare ankles.
‘What happened to him?' puzzled Carolina.
Penny gave her a lazy smile. ‘Lost at sea,’ she said significantly. She stretched her arms above her head and her magnificent breasts rippled. She was like a statue of a reclining Venus lying there stretched out, thought Carolina suddenly - a slightly depraved Venus. ‘Red Beard had a very handsome first mate. I decided I’d prefer his attentions to those of the captain. So I flirted with him -and he fancied me.’ She gave a wicked little laugh. ‘And somehow that led to a mutiny. And after some romantic sailing about from port to port, he turned pirate and brought me here to New Providence.’
‘So you really - ’ She had been about to say ‘caused the captain’s death?’ but Penny caught her thought and interrupted.
‘Yes, I objected to being bought and sold like some prize mare! And I objected to being tied up and raped. And being beaten.’ Penny’s beautiful face hardened. ‘So I had him killed,’ she said blithely. ‘After which I felt much better about everything. I felt free. I wasn’t free, of course. The first mate made that clear soon enough. He made it clear with his fists.’ She sighed.
‘Oh, Penny, if we’d only known!’ Carolina’s hands clenched. ‘We’d have got you out of it!’
‘Yes, I dare say you would.’ There was a jolt and a creaking, scraping sound. ‘The tide’s at the flood - they’ll be pulling us off this sandbar. How did your captain ever manage to pile you up on this sandbar, anyway?’
‘Inept as Emmett,’ Carolina said whimsically.
‘Do you know where they're taking us?’ I heard them say Havana.’
Penny nodded her red head thoughtfully. ‘I suppose that’s the logical place but I was hoping for somewhere in Europe - Paris, perhaps, or Marseilles. After all, it was a joint attack - French and Spanish. Even Toledo would be a change after life in these islands!’
‘Oh, Penny, you couldn’t wish us to be taken to Spain! We'd be burned as heretics there!’
‘No, I suppose not,’ laughed Penny. She lifted her head, listening. ‘The scraping has stopped. We’re off the sandbar now. We’re getting underway. But you haven’t told me anything about the family, yet. How are things at Level Green?’
‘Extravagant as ever. Virginia wrote me they were about to go under and I - I did something about it.’ She told Penny the story of the de Lorca necklace and how she had sent it to her mother to pay Fielding Lightfoot’s debts.
Penny rocked with laughter. ‘You certainly delivered the coup de grâce to Father! He scorned you all those years and now it’s you who came to save him!’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Carolina was vexed. ‘They needed help - ’
‘And like a fairy godmother, you waved your wand and took care of all their problems at one stroke! I’d like to have seen this necklace of yours. Or at least the copy you spoke of. What a pity you don’t have the copy still - everyone would believe it was the original!’
Carolina thought of the last time she had seen the copy - those blood-red rubies and diamonds that sparkled like tears, clutched in Gilly’s dying hand - and shivered. She supposed she would have nightmares forever about the de Lorca necklace, for had she not sent it to the Tidewater, had she offered it to Kells soon enough, they might have been safe up the Cobre River when the earthquake broke apart and inundated Port Royal. She didn’t tell Penny that - it was all too fresh and hurtful, that the necklace was, in her mind, tied up with Kells’s death.
‘Well, it’s good to know the Lightfoots are still lording it over the Tidewater,’ Penny said complacently. ‘What do you hear from Virgie? Has she landed a man at last?’
Carolina launched into the story of Virginia’s early tragedies, ending with, ‘But everything turned out well for her. She’s married now to Kells’s brother Andrew and living on the family estate in Essex. She wrote me she is expecting her second child in late summer.’
‘Little Virgie,’ murmured Penny. ‘Married now and soon to have two children tugging at her skirts. And I was still thinking of her as a schoolgirl!’
‘We’re none of us schoolgirls except Della and Flo,’ said Carolina with asperity. ‘And you and I can never go back to what we were.’
‘Oh, I don’t want to go back,’ Penny said quickly. ‘I want to go forward and find something better. I’m sure there is something better - there must be; it certainly isn’t here!' She looked about her with some distaste at the cramped confines of their cabin. ‘Actually I was almost glad that Emmett acted so badly. I mean, it severed all bonds between us, and it ended any thought that I should go back to him because, after all, he had gotten up the nerve to elope with me to the Marriage Trees. And anyway, there couldn’t be any question of going back to him.’ She shrugged. ‘He’d only have sold me again -probably for more money this time!’
‘Penny.’ Carolina took a deep breath for she wasn’t sure, in spite of her offhand comments about Emmett, how Penny was going to take this. ‘Emmett’s dead.’
‘Is he indeed?’ Penny said indifferently. ‘How did he die? Did Father shoot him?’
'No, he drowned. It was last summer. He was fishing and he fell into deep water and his boots filled up and pulled him under before they could save him.’
Penny gave another hard little laugh. ‘How unpleasant for Emmett - and how fitting. To live an unworthy life and die an ignominious death!’
Carolina marvelled at how cool Penny was, at how hard she had become. Gone was the impetuous girl - in her place was a woman to reckon with!
As if to rebutt what her sister was thinking, Penny said lightly, ‘You must remember how relatively innocent I was at the time I new Emmett. You might say he introduced me to the hard facts of life. I suppose I should be grateful to him and mourn his passing.’
Carolina said hastily, ‘So you lived with this first mate on New Providence?’
‘For a while, yes. I enjoyed sleeping with him - when he wasn’t drunk and abusive. But he was too possessive, he wouldn’t let me branch out. And he was almost as rough as Red Beard. I didn’t like having my eyes blacked so I looked around for a way out - and I found it.’
‘You - found it?’ Carolina frowned.
‘Yes.’ Penny gave her a sunny smile. She enjoyed shocking her younger sister, who wore her heart on her sleeve. ‘I decided no one man could drive him out of port - but two could. So I accepted matelotage from the two leading pirates of all New Providence and set up my little homestead in the fanciest shack in Nassau.’
‘Matelotage?' gasped Carolina. ‘But that’s - ’
‘An old buccaneer custom,’ smiled Penny. ‘I see you’ve heard of it?’
‘Heard of it? I nearly blundered into it once - but of course Kells saved me.’
‘Of course he did,’ Penny agreed genially. ‘There was, however, no charming buccaneer around to save me.'
Carolina was staring at her sister as if she had never seen her before, for this was a new view of Penny, indeed. Matelotage was an old buccaneer custom. When two buccaneers wanted the same woman, and the woman was agreeable - or perhaps could not decide between them - they tossed coins for her, and the one who lost the toss married her. The other became the matelot and took the husband’s place in her bed when the husband was away.
Penny stared back at her coolly. Carolina decided Penny could face anything down.
‘Since one or the other of them was usually in port, it gave me a kind of sway there. I must say that I have enjoyed being Queen of New Providence.’
So that was the way Penny saw it - Queen of New Providence. And Carolina supposed Penny must have been just that, lording it over these wild men who yearned to possess her. Penny was her sister, she still looked the same - indeed the wild look she now wore had made her even more beautiful - but those words had made Carolina feel she was talking with a stranger. Sisters, but how very different they had turned out to be!
‘I am not really sorry to leave Nassau.’ Penny smiled lazily at Carolina. ‘I was growing rather tired of it.’
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