Don Ramon gave a shout - perhaps of warning - and sprang upon his own horse and thundered after her.
The white Arabian mare was fleet and they had covered some distance before the big black stallion caught up with her. As Don Ramon galloped up alongside, he leaned over and said, ‘Carolina, I am sorry. Slow your mount. I promise I will give you no cause for alarm.’
The night wind had dried her tears and Carolina allowed the mare beneath her to find a more decorous pace. She acknowledged to herself guiltily that she had invited his embrace, encouraged it, wanted it. And then rejected him. How bewildered he must be!
‘It is Don Diego, is it not?’ he was asking her warily. ‘You have given him your heart?’
‘I - don’t know,’ she said. But she did know. She had given her heart long ago to Kells, whatever name he used.
And if Don Ramon should learn that Don Diego was actually Kells - ! The thought froze her blood. Whatever folly her despair had driven her to this night, it must not cost Kells his life! On that point at least she would never falter.
Don Ramon was not looking at her now. He was looking sadly into distant vistas. Proud man that he was, it was a blow to find himself rejected. But - he wanted Carolina to love him and he knew instinctively that he would forever ruin his chances if he sought to take her by force. It was a wrench to let her go when she had seemed so nearly his beneath the ceiba tree, but he could still cherish the thought that she would change her mind. Women did that. He could hope.
Carolina was dimly conscious of this mood of his as they rode through a night magically scented with rosewood and saffron, and the strange exotic scents of lush tropical flowers wafted to them by the trade winds.
Finally she spoke - and what she said was the truth.
‘Don Ramon,’ she sighed. ‘I have done you a great injustice - and you in no way deserved it. I led you on - and backed away. For that I make no excuses but I offer you my apologies.’ She flashed him a bittersweet smile.
‘It is my lot in life to bring my world constantly crashing down upon me.’
He did not really understand that last remark but he studied her from shadowed tawny eyes as they rode into Havana.
'Querida,’ he murmured. ‘You are all a man could desire. For you I would forgo much, endure much.’
Carolina regarded him mistily. She could not bring herself to speak.
They rode silently through the dark streets.
When they reached the house on the Plaza de Armas, Don Ramon leapt to the street and lifted her down before she could dismount. For a moment he held her luxuriously in his arms, savouring her slight weight that rested against his chest, drinking in the faint lemony scent of her shining blonde hair.
'Querida, if you should have need of me, you have only to call,’ he murmured, then swiftly set her on her feet and went to bang the big iron knocker. It sounded very loud in the quiet street.
Carolina looked up nervously at the windows of the front bedroom above her, wondering if the noise would wake Kells and if he would come down and perhaps confront Don Ramon here in his doorway.
But no candle flared in the darkness above. Indeed it was a long time before old Juana shuffled to the door, unbarred it and let Carolina in.
Almost before the heavy door had closed behind her, Don Ramon had remounted and was gone like a wraith in the darkness.
‘Where is Don Diego?’ Carolina breathed fearfully.
‘He has not come home.’ Old Juana’s voice was stolid. What would be would be.
Carolina took a deep shaky breath. ‘What are you doing up?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t Luz answer the door?’
‘Luz slipped out to spend the night with Miguel. And if Luz does not watch her step, the governor’s cook will be pursuing her down the street with a butcher knife!’ She chuckled, for the amorous mishaps of those around her did much to brighten her days.
‘Go on to bed, Juana. If Don Diego bangs on the door, I will let him in. And one more thing.’ She turned on the stairs to call to the old woman who was lumbering across the courtyard. ‘Tell Luz that if she tells Don Diego that I went riding with Don Ramon, I will have her whipped until her back is nothing but stripes.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘No, I will not have it done - I will do it myself!’
Old Juana chuckled again. ‘I will tell her,’ she promised. And then thoughtfully, ‘I do not think she will tell him. Luz fears the whip.’
‘Is Nita awake? I would like a bath.’
‘I will wake her,’ said Juana. ‘She is young, she will not mind - and I will let her sleep late tomorrow.’
Carolina, in her black riding clothes, went on upstairs. From the top she called down, ‘Tell Nita I will be in the front bedroom.’
Just on her way to the kitchen, Juana heard that and grinned. Back from her tryst with another man and she would greet Don Diego naked in his bedchamber - ah, there was a wily wench. Juana did not know when she had enjoyed a job more!
Carolina pulled off her clothes thoughtfully. She had made a mistake tonight - made it with a hot-blooded Spaniard who was already half in love with her. And she would pay for that mistake, she had no doubt. A wiser woman would never have done what she did. But then - when had she ever been wise?
Nita brought the water and Carolina sank into the tub gratefully, washing off the dust of Havana’s streets, of the outlying barrios, of the magnificent countryside. She relaxed in the warm water, feeling it lap about her waist, and she scrounged down in the tub with her knees bent, letting it lap about the white mounds of her young breasts that had aroused such ardour in Don Ramon.
She was beginning to live with regret. Kells did not know his real identity, and as a patriotic Spaniard - for in truth he believed himself to be the genuine article - he mistrusted her as a ‘buccaneer’s wench’, and who could blame him?
But she - she had been about to betray him, with her eyes wide open. She had been angry and confused and despairing that he had chosen not to believe her, that he had gone off to some other woman’s arms.
Her eyes darkened as she thought about it, turned to tarnished silver as she considered the possibility that Doña Jimena had somehow spirited Kells away to her father’s house, and that the winking lights she had seen from the hacienda had been a candlelit upstairs bedroom where Doña Jimena strained with her lover ... It did not bear thinking on, but somehow it eased a little the pain of her own remorse!
THE HOUSE ON THE PLAZA
DE ARMAS
HAVANA, CUBA
27
Carolina awakened in confusion. Somewhere a door had shut. She sat up, putting a hand over her eyes to ward off the brilliant light that streamed in from the windows.
She realized suddenly where she was: in Don Diego’s front bedroom, where she had curled up to nap after she had towelled herself dry last night.
Now she lay completely naked upon the coverlet and Don Diego himself stood in the door. A Don Diego who looked haggard and worn, as if he had fought some great battle with himself - and lost.
‘Kells . . .’ she murmured, not knowing what to say to him.
‘You may call me that.’ He shut the door behind him. ‘You may call me anything you like. I have tried to fight you off but it seems you are in my blood and the only way to get you out is to stop breathing.’
‘You - remember?’ she asked joyfully.
He shook his head. ‘I remember nothing. I would swear before God that I have never met you before - and yet . . . and yet there is something about you . . . and this feeling I have for you.’ He shook his head.
‘That feeling is called love,’ she told him sadly. ‘You were in love with me once even though you do not remember it.’
‘I only know that what was enough for me before you came is not enough for me now. I find myself thinking about you at odd times through the day, no matter where I am.' And through the nights, as well, no matter in whose arms he spent them! ‘Try,’ he pleaded, ‘to call me Diego.’
She sighed. ‘That wil
l be very hard for me,’ she said in a voice gone husky. ‘Because to me you are Kells.’
‘Your lost lover . . .’ He looked bemused. ‘I am to become a shadow of some other man!’
‘No,’ she maintained stubbornly. ‘Of yourself. You are a victim of what others have told you. They saved your life - so you choose to believe them.’
‘Carolina,’ he said, ‘enough of this. I have come to offer you somewhat more than your other suitors in Havana may offer you.’ She tensed because she guessed he was speaking of Don Ramon del Mundo. ‘I have come to offer you marriage. I want you to share my life, Carolina. I will take you away to Spain. You will be happy there.’
Her eyes blurred with sudden tears as the declaration he had just made sank in. It was a great deal, coming from a proud gentleman of Spain - which he believed in his heart he was. And to a heretic, the daughter of an enemy country, bride to a buccaneer!
‘Kells,’ she whispered and held out her arms to him, and sank backward down upon the bed.
His grey eyes kindled at the sight of her naked loveliness, so charmingly displayed upon his coverlet.
‘Then you will come to Spain with me?’ he asked as he divested himself of his clothing.
Her smile was wistful. She would never go to Spain with him - for him to go to Spain, she felt, would be to die. ‘Perhaps not to Spain . . .’ she murmured.
‘We will stay here, then,’ he said eagerly. ‘I will find a post here. I will write to someone in power there.’ He frowned suddenly, looking down at his hands. ‘It is strange,’ he said, ‘but I have also lost my ability to read and write.’
‘You never knew how to read and write Spanish,’ she told him. ‘You only spoke it. Prove it to yourself. Take up a pen and write something in English - you will find it comes to you very easily!’
Instead he divested himself of the last of his clothing and strode over to the bed, stood looking down at her with yearning.
‘Carolina,’ he said. ‘Whatever I am or may have been, I love you past all allegiance. And if you will take me as I am, I will defend you against all the world.’
Carolina’s tears spilled over and the tall naked figure before her blurred.
‘That is all I could ever ask,’ she choked and lifted her arms to enfold him.
Very gently he lowered his big body over hers, very tenderly bent his dark head and pressed a kiss that was a promise upon her trembling mouth.
And although she had lain in his arms many times before and fit to his lean body better than the gauntlet gloves he often wore fit to his strong hands, this joining - here in Havana in the bright light of morning - had a wondrous quality to it. They had found it again - all the breathless magic of new love. And she thrilled to it, knowing from the way he suddenly lifted his head and stared down at her in the golden sunlight, that he must feel the same.
In truth he did. Even as his strong arms had gone round her, even as his lean hips had lowered to caress her feminine softness, he felt that he had known her always. In some other life perhaps? he asked himself whimsically. Or was her incredible story true? He thought not - and at the moment he cared not. It was enough to strain with her there on the big square bed, enough to know that he was carrying her with him to the very heights of passion, the outermost shores of desire.
He had found his woman, and whether she called him Kells or Rye or Diego Vivar mattered not to him. What mattered was that she loved him in return - and her ardent responses to his lightest caress told him that she did, her broken murmurings told him so, the desperate way she clung to him as if afraid that he might leave her told him so.
It was enough.
Eventually they left the big bed, eventually they ate, smiling at each other in the courtyard. Eventually they went back to the big bed and Carolina, lost in love, looked up at her lover in the moonlight with big luminous eyes.
The governor’s daughter called the next day and was told that Don Diego was sleeping late and had asked not to be disturbed. She sent word that a mighty galleon, the white and gold El Dorado, had cast anchor in Havana harbour, and to ask Don Diego when he woke if he would not care to view such a splendid ship.
‘She will not let you alone - you know that?’ said Carolina ruefully, when the message was delivered.
‘She will. I promise it.’ Kells left off stroking her hair and went down to leave word with old Juana to tell all who called that he had contracted a slight fever and feared to spread contagion. He would be on his feet again soon; meantime they were not to worry.
Hearing the instructions he had left, Carolina laughed.
‘Marina will stamp her foot!’ she told him. ‘And break things.’
The thought of the governor’s spoiled daughter breaking things because she could not persuade him to drive out with her amused him. ‘I think she will recover,’ he said drily.
‘Oh, no doubt,’ Carolina said. ‘But I pity the chambermaids when she receives your message for it will be their duty to clean up the broken crockery!’
‘Carolina.’ His voice had grown serious. ‘I took your advice. I set pen to paper and wrote something in English. You were right, it came to me very easily.’ He gave her a hunted look.
Her heart leapt. ‘You see?’ she said eagerly. ‘It is proof of who you are!’
He ran distracted fingers through his dark hair. ‘No, it is not proof,’ he corrected her. ‘It tells me only that the part of me that writes in Spanish is somehow blocked by the blow I received.’
She was disappointed but she sank back. ‘Come and make love to me,’ she murmured. ‘We must make the most of your “fever” for the world will not let us alone for long!’
He was very willing.
And the next day he said. ‘I have seemed to remember something. It is just a fragment but it seems to come from my past and not my imagination ... I seemed to be standing with you on a ship, looking out at a tall dark mountain that rose out of the sea. There was another man there. He spoke to you in English and my hand sought my sword. I think I might have killed him from the way I felt. But. . . that is all I can remember.’
Her eyes were wet. ‘We have been on shipboard so many times,’ she said. ‘But that particular time would have been in the Azores. And that black mountain rising out of the sea would have been the Island of Pico. This man you wanted to kill - he looked like you, didn’t he?’
He gave a slight start. ‘Yes, he did in a passing sort of way.’
‘He was Robin Tyrell, the Marquess of Saltenham,’ she said bitterly. ‘And I suppose it is a pity you did not kill him for you yearned to do so. He had masqueraded as you and sunk English ships and cost you your king’s pardon. It was because of him that you went back to buccaneering. It is because of him that you are here today.’ She moistened her lips. ‘A disaster I brought upon you because I begged you to spare his life.’ She gave him a sober look. ‘I have much to answer for where you are concerned, Kells.’
He shrugged. She was so believable, was this silver wench who flitted like moonlight through his life. And yet he could not believe it, it was too bizarre. He was under her spell, he told himself. Like a witch, she had cast an enchantment over him, and it would be easy to believe anything she said.
But the next morning he told her of a rambling white house where a great battle with cannon had taken place.
‘You have remembered our house on Tortuga,’ she told him calmly. ‘And the night El Sangre attacked it. You had a cannon mounted in the garden. You won a great victory.’
He stared at her in wonder. ‘I seem to remember a garden, too,’ he muttered.
‘With a green door,’ she supplied.
‘Yes . . . with a green door.’ He frowned. ‘You have bewitched me,’ he muttered.
She gazed on him fondly - yet with fear, too. For one day soon - very soon - he would come to himself and realize who he really was. But would it be too late? Oh, she must guard against his being recognized, she must keep him off the streets.
And t
he best way to do that was to keep him in her bed. She found him most agreeable to all her suggestions that they lie about, dallying through the long hours.
‘Do you not wish yourself to be off surveying a great white and gold galleon in the harbour?’ she teased him as they lay panting in the heat after a long bout of lovemaking.
‘I had rather survey the white-gold of your hair,’ he responded gallantly.
But in spite of his gallantry, she thought he cast a restless look at the outdoors. He was not a man to be cosseted indoors, she knew; he was a man of action.
‘If only we could find some place by the sea for a while.’ She sighed and moved restlessly in his arms. ‘Some place where we could be alone.’ She sounded more wistful than she knew.
He stirred. ‘I know of such a place,’ he said suddenly. ‘Captain Juarez told me of it. It is a great cavern with its mouth opening above a strip of sandy beach. He says it is a romantic spot.’
Carolina sat up, all excitement, and surveyed him from a vivid face framed by rumpled fair hair. ‘Oh, do you think we could go there?’ she cried. ‘I could ask Juana to tell everyone your fever had persisted!’
He laughed. ‘You will have the governor sending me a doctor!’
‘No,’ insisted Carolina seriously. ‘Juana can manage it - she loves intrigue. She will frighten the other servants with stories of contagion so they will stay away from our room.’ She sprang from her bed and began energetically to dress. ‘I will go downstairs and discuss it with her. I am sure she will be able to ward people off without alarming them too much.’
Trusting in old Juana’s diplomacy, they rode off just after dusk through the quiet streets. Carolina was sure that no one had seen them go for she had looked carefully about her. They were riding double on Kells’s big chestnut horse, who seemed tireless and glad of the exercise.
Kells was an easy rider; he sat loose and relaxed in the saddle and Carolina sat before him, leaning back luxuriously against his chest, feeling the pleasant pressure of her legs against his hard thighs as the horse moved beneath them. Kells kept an indolent arm about her waist that could be tightened should the horse stumble and unseat her. He did not talk much but occasionally nuzzled the softness of her hair and seemed at peace with the world as they left the white city behind them and rode out across the green Cuban countryside. The moon came out as they rode along the broken coastline, shining down on majestic royal palms and waving coconut palms that rustled overhead.
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