Poseidon's Daughter

by Diane A. S. Stuckart

  Her moment of weakness seemingly passed, Halia turned her attention back to Malcolm. “Lally and your Mr. Foote must already have seen to the luggage,” she briskly noted. “It would seem, then, that only one thing remains yet to be settled...a test of sorts, if you will.” So saying, she bent and reached inside her carpetbag.

  The sight of her rounded backside directed his way caused Malcolm, who had swung one leg over the vessel's edge, to halt. Forgetting his warning of a few moments before to himself, he did the only reasonable thing he could do, under the circumstances. He remained straddled over the boat's bow and enjoyed the view.

  Enhanced by just the hint of a bustle, that portion of her anatomy held an unexpected charm that he had never noticed until then. It occurred to him, too, that she did not dress to flaunt her womanly attributes, nor did she slavishly follow the latest modes in dress. Rather, she favored simple styles that, to his jaded eye, were a refreshing change from those of the self-consciously fashionable females to whom he had most recently been paying court.

  As Malcolm reached this conclusion, Halia straightened and turned toward him once more, a slim, cloth-bound volume clutched in one hand. Recalled to the present matter, he hurriedly scrambled out onto the sand...only to fall to his knees as a sugar-like spill of white beach lurched up to meet him.

  “Haven't lost your sea legs, Mr. Northrup?”

  Though her inquiry was polite, her tone held a note that was suspiciously like a suppressed snicker. For his part, Captain Rolle did not bother to hide his amusement but flashed a brilliant white grin Malcolm's way.

  Fighting the tide of hot color he could feel rising up his neck at this ungainly display he'd made of himself, Malcolm staggered to his feet. He would remain where he stood, at least until he regained his equilibrium. Damned if he'd give the pair another chance to laugh at him.

  “The sand is a bit loose, I fear,” he answered in a stiff tone. “Now, what is this about a test?”

  “It is quite simple. You claim to hold the missing page from my father's journal. I just happen to have that journal with me.”

  She held out the volume in one palm, like a sacrificial offering, and flipped open its cover. The inner pages fell open to a place somewhere beyond the middle, where a ragged edge of paper sprang like a cock's comb down its center.

  “All we need do is fit your page here, to the exact spot from which the missing page was torn,” she went on. “If it does not match, then you will go right back to the ship. But if both edges align exactly, then I will concede that your find is genuine...and I will take you on as my partner.”

  “Equal partner,” Malcolm clarified. With a flourish, he whipped the paper in question from his coat pocket and smoothed its creases.

  Halia frowned. “Do hurry, Mr. Northrup. You would not want the Retribution to weigh anchor without you.”

  “She can set sail at any time. I'll not be on her,” was his blunt reply as he took a few measured steps toward her and handed her the page.

  So you think, Mr. Northrup, she silently answered him. With nervous fingers, she took hold of the page, glancing as she did so at the several lines of text there. It did resemble her father's work, she conceded, but that did not necessarily mean—

  ''Ah-ah, Miss Davenport. No fair reading until you match up the two pieces.”

  Malcolm plucked the page back from her; then, with all the drama that she had grown to expect from him, he fitted the paper to the torn edge of her book.

  The two aligned exactly.

  “Oh, my,” Halia whispered and bit her lip, not daring to meet Malcolm's gaze. Until the very last instant, she truly had not believed he held the missing journal page. She had agreed to their ludicrous bargain merely to silence him, never dreaming she would be obliged to make good on her part of the deal.

  Fighting a growing panic, she gave the page a more careful reading, recognizing in the phrasing as well as the handwriting her father's style. As for the entry itself, it continued in logical sequence from where the previous page's text left off. Even the black half-oval, where the writer had blotted an ink splatter, mated with another such mark on the torn edge.

  “Well, partner, I guess we should make our way to the guest house and begin making plans,” Malcolm interrupted Halia's frantic thoughts, triumph evident in his tone.

  He made her a fleeting bow, and then turned toward Rolle. “Captain, I shall see you on the morrow.”

  With those words, he began trudging toward the bluff. Halia stared after him, the journal and its long-lost page both safely in her grasp. She remained watching as he negotiated the rocky footpath that led up that rise to her rented cottage above. Once he reached the top, he turned and gave her a jaunty wave of his boater.

  She bit back a few choice words of frustration and swiftly considered what was to be done. But what help was there for it? By her own words, she was stuck with this overbearing rogue as her new partner...or was she?

  For did she not have what she needed right here in her very hands? The Atlantis coordinates were hers now, as was the knowledge of how best to utilize them. All she need do was rid herself of a certain Englishman, and everything would be back under her control.

  She allowed herself a few moments to savor that scenario before slowly shaking her head. Doubtless, a few words to Captain Rolle and an appropriate sum of cash would readily solve her problem. Malcolm would find himself aboard the Retribution and out to sea again by mid-afternoon, with no recourse left him. Once he was gone, she would be free to recover the artifacts on her own and be certain that every item she unearthed found a safe haven in a museum.

  But that would mean going back on her word to the Englishman...which, while no doubt justifiable, was something she could not do with an easy conscience.

  “I believe we will all be staying in Bimini, after all,” she addressed Captain Rolle. “If you are agreeable, I will meet you and your crew at dawn tomorrow morning on the main pier. We can make a preliminary search of the site and then decide where best to begin our exploration, just as I outlined in my letter to you. As I'm sure you realized, it is the same site that my father explored.”

  That last came out as something of a question, for she had no idea if Rolle had ever been privy to her father's work. In answer, the captain shook his head.

  “Me, I never be takin' Mr. Arvin to dat spot, but dat don't mean he didn't be goin' there with someone else.”

  Halia bit back a disappointed sigh at his words. She had feared as much from the fact that her father had made no direct mention in his journal of the events leading up to his find. He must have captained his own boat and crew, or else, gone out on the sea alone...just as he'd done the day of his death.

  Pushing aside those painful memories, she summoned a smile for the captain.

  “At any rate, I have maps and charts of the area we'll be searching, and I will supply you with the exact coordinates tomorrow. You have found experienced divers?” she asked, knowing that he should have many to choose from, since one of the island's primary exports was sea sponges.

  He nodded, another fleeting grin showing bright white against his dark skin. “You already be meetin' Jeffers,” he said with a gesture toward the hitherto unnamed sailor. “The rest, they be all set.”

  He paused for a glance over his shoulder at the guest house, then added in a jovial tone, “Me, I be curious to see how you an’ dat one be gettin' along together.”

  Halia felt a blush steal over her cheeks. “If you are referring to Mr. Northrup, we will hardly be ‘together,’ ” she hurried to clarify. “The guest house has several suites of rooms, I am told, so I expect Mr. Northrup will keep to his own quarters. Besides which, he will not be joining us in the morning, as he has already made clear his intent to let me do all the work.”

  “If dat's what you say. This skiff, it be belongin' wit’ the house, so you can be usin' it if you want. Do you be needin' any help with dat bag of yours?”

  Halia shook her head. “Thank you,
but I can manage on my own,” she replied and hefted it in demonstration.

  With a shrug and a tip of his cap, Rolle started off down the beach, followed by Jeffers. Halia set down her carpetbag long enough to tuck the precious journal with its loose page back inside it. Then, sighing, she turned back toward the bluff.

  Perhaps she could convince Malcolm to take up alternate quarters in the neighboring settlement of Bayley Town. Cheered by that possibility, she began the trek toward the house.

  ~ Chapter 10 ~

  Halia's walk was hardly pleasant. With the earlier breeze stilled and the sun directly overhead now, Caribbean heat lay in a steamy blanket across the beach.

  She dabbed with the cuff of her shirtsleeve at the sweat that trickled down her temples, and then lifted her skirts almost to mid-calf in an attempt not to stumble on the uneven beach. Nothing, however, could keep the warm sand from seeping through her boot lacings and sifting between her stockinged toes. She gritted her teeth against the discomfort. This was to be expected, after all. Once she shed her traveling outfit for clothing better suited to the sand and heat, she would have no further difficulty...at least, not with the terrain.

  But by the time she finally stumbled up what was little better than a rocky goat path to gain the bluffs summit, the combination of physical and mental distress had begun to take its toll. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, giving a closer look to the exterior of what would be her home for the next few months. From this angle, she could see that it was in the shape of a modest, two-storied L. The yellow wooden shutters at every door and window not only added a cheerful splash of color to its white facade, they were practical, as well. In the event of a hurricane, those louvered doors could be pulled tightly closed against the brutal winds and pounding rain such a storm would bring.

  Once her breathing was almost back to normal, she wended her way down a path of crushed seashells that spanned the dozen or more yards from the bluffs edge to where the guest house lay. Dragging her carpetbag behind her, she mounted the wooden steps and called for Lally.

  “You be takin' your time,” that woman pronounced as she stepped past the open doorway to give Halia's disheveled appearance a wry look.

  Not waiting for a reply, Lally gestured her inside. Halia found herself at the far end of an open foyer—a cool, dark room devoid of furnishings and whose walnut-stained wooden floors protested her every step. Just to her left, an open staircase curved in a modified J up to the floor above. To her other side, at the juncture where the house's two wings met at right angles, was a pair of carved mahogany doors. They opened, she saw, into a cozy-looking parlor that no doubt served as the gathering point for family and guests. Across from her, a row of French windows revealed a rectangular flagstone courtyard within the crook of the L that was the main house. Two low stone walls ran either length of the courtyard's outer reaches, so that the entire paved area was completely enclosed. Intrigued, Halia spared that small patio a closer look.

  The courtyard was an oasis of shade in the midst of an abundance of sun. Its centerpiece was a twisted fig tree a full two stories high that spread welcome shadow across the hot stone. Wrapped around its substantial circumference like a starched white collar was a backless stone bench that could easily seat a dozen people.

  The two exterior walls set at right angles to each other were made of the same white stone as the bench. In one of the opposite corners, just beneath the roof line, she glimpsed a cistern—a huge, stone jug tall as a man that served to catch and hold rainwater.

  It and the rock walls were almost hidden by a tangle of green vines that wove up their heights and then cascaded over their tops with a shower of bright orange hibiscus petals. Other, more delicate blooms also peeked between the stones as a counterpoint to those showy flowers. In a final touch of whimsy, both walls were topped by a line of specimens of that ubiquitous, spiral-shaped creature of the Caribbean, the conch.

  Halia smiled at the sight. As a child, she'd always thought their shells resembled huge mouths, the way their spiked white outer shells rolled back to reveal cheerful interiors of sleek, pearly pink. She still had a fondness for them, as well as for the tasty stew the islanders made from conch meat.

  But even as she smiled in pleasure at this house that she had leased, sight unseen, Lally shot a dark look in the direction of the stairway. “You best be seein' what dat man”— she spat those last two words as an epithet—“be doin' up there. I be hearin' him wanderin' about, him an’ dat other one.”

  “Doubtless, the pair of them are up to no good.”

  Her brief moment of satisfaction flickered out. She dropped her carpetbag and stalked toward the stairs, trailing a fine sprinkling of beach sand behind her. The last thing she needed was for the Englishman to think he had the run of the place. Now would be the perfect time to approach him about moving himself and his manservant to Bayley Town.

  As she reached the upper landing she heard Malcolm's off-key whistling. Some English drinking song, no doubt, she decided with a sniff as she began tracking that raucous sound to its source.

  She made her way down a narrow hall that ran the inner perimeter of the house and took an unexpected jump up half a dozen steps at the juncture between the two wings. At the top of those steps was an open doorway, through which the sound of Malcolm's whistling came still more loudly. She did not bother to knock but merely stepped inside.

  Her first impression was one of spaciousness. This had to be the master bedchamber, she decided, for it took up almost the entire wing. Two open pairs of French windows leading to the oceanfront veranda were shuttered against the noon sun. Daylight lay in neat stripes across the gleaming wood floor stained the same mahogany hue as the main hall downstairs.

  Hands on hips, and lips pursed in dismay, she strode into the center of this room that, by all rights, should have been hers. Against the far wall, a broad mahogany four-poster swathed in yards of mosquito netting stretched pencil-thin limbs almost to the ceiling. An oversized armoire and a low chest of drawers, both mahogany, and an old-fashioned, mahogany-framed divan upholstered in white brocade completed the furnishings.

  But where was Malcolm?

  Barely had the question flitted through her mind than that gentleman stepped through the door of what had to be an adjoining dressing room.

  Dim as the light was, she had no trouble seeing that he had availed himself of that other room's facilities. He had exchanged his gray morning suit for a coarse white towel, jauntily wrapped about his narrow hips. Its fringed edge added rakish emphasis to that portion of his lower anatomy where both ends of the cloth happened to overlap.

  And, save for that towel, he was completely naked.

  He caught sight of her at almost the same instant, and his whistling abruptly broke off. Irrelevantly, she noted that he wore some manner of leather thong around his throat with a velvet pouch dangling from it. Then she glimpsed the lazy grin that was spreading over his face, and she realized in horror that she had been staring.

  “Oh, my,” she whispered into the resulting silence and spun about.

  She had seen him in a similar state of undress once before, that day on the ship, but circumstances then had been far different. Then, he had been no threat to her—recovering as he was from a head injury, tied to a berth and modestly covered with a bed sheet. But this...this was different.

  In the moment it took her to regather her scattered wits, she heard the soft padding of his bare feet against the wood floor as the Englishman started toward her.

  Her horror blossomed into full-blown panic, and she caught up her skirts to flee. Before she could take a step, however, an elegantly manicured hand clamped around her upper arm.

  “I had wondered where you'd gotten yourself off to, Miss Davenport,” he observed in smoothly cultured tones, as if he were not standing almost naked in the same room as she. “If you are looking for your room, it happens to adjoin mine. I do believe your luggage has already been stowed there—so, if you wish, you
can avail yourself of the connecting door between our two chambers.”

  “A connecting...door?”

  She swung about in his grasp, only to find her nose mere inches from his bare chest. And quite a respectable chest it was, her sly inner voice judged, comparing him to any number of bare-chested sailors or stevedores she had seen in her travels. Pale, perhaps, compared to the tanned skin of those men who spent their days in the sun, but still respectably muscled with just enough silky black hair to—

  She broke off that train of thought and bit her lip...hard. What was she doing, judging him as if he were the prize bull at the county fair? Why, she was supposed to be chastising him for trying to usurp her role as leader of their expedition. What matter that she could breathe in the very smell of his flesh...a masculine scent of soap and fine linen combined with lingering traces of sea spray and honest sweat.

  Resisting the almost overwhelming temptation to let her curious eyes glance any lower, she dragged up her gaze past his shoulder. There was a narrow door that all but melted into the panel work along the far wall, she saw in no little dismay. Then, refusing to be distracted by such details, she returned to the matter at hand.

  “That is what I have come to talk to you about—rooms, I mean,” she went on, determined not to be intimidated by his manner or his mode of undress. “I think it would be preferable for you and Mr. Foote to find another place to stay, perhaps in Bayley Town. It is but a short walk up the King's Highway, and—”

  “But surely you cannot expect me to abandon my partner our first day here? No, Miss Davenport—or perhaps I may more properly call you Halia, now—I intend to stay right here in this room.”

  “But it is my room,” she persisted through gritted teeth, “I leased the house—”