Poseidon's Daughter

by Diane A. S. Stuckart

  “But I still don't understand. Why did you leave like that, without even a word? I-I thought that you had begun to care for me just a bit.”

  “That's where you're wrong, luv.”

  At those bleak words, she bit back a cry and shut her eyes. Despite her earlier vow, she felt a single hot tear slide down her cheek as shame washed over her. She'd been worse than foolish. She had given herself to him, thinking that he harbored some tender emotion for her, and all the while she had been deceiving herself.

  “Here now, luv,” she heard him lightly chide her, “it's fairly difficult for a man to tell a woman that he loves her when she won't even look at him.”

  Her eyelids flew open. “What-what did you say?”

  “I said that I bloody love you,” was his wry reply.

  A frisson of hope sparked in her breast, but she refused to fan it into flames. “If that is true, then I still don't understand. Why did you leave…and where have you been this past week?”

  “In answer to your second question, as soon as Wilkie and I reached Miami that first day, I had the boat turn around and take us back here again. We've been staying with Captain Rolle ever since, helping out a few of the islanders whose homes were the most badly damaged. And as for your first question ...”

  He broke off on a strangled note, then shook his head and plunged on. “As for why I left, it was because I finally figured out the truth, that it was Lally's bloody potion that made me fall in love with you.”

  When she merely stared, he explained, “It had to have been in that salve you gave me that first night here in the courtyard. Afterwards, I realized that Lally had done it for a reason. She probably hoped that I would be so besotted with you that I would give up my share of the treasure. And it nearly worked, except that I told myself I'd be hanged if I would be manipulated that way. And, besides that, I didn't want to know what would happen when the blasted stuff wore off.”

  A giggle escaped her, and he scowled. “And what's so bloody funny? Here, I'm telling you I've been hexed, and all you can do is laugh?”

  “It's just that I have something to confess to you,” she replied, a sudden, joyful lightness washing over her. “You were right, there was something in that ointment. But I fear that adding it was my idea, not Lally's. You see, I asked her to mix up a special sort of potion to go with it...but it was not a love potion.”

  Malcolm coolly regarded her. “What was it, then?”

  “It was something that would make you lose all interest in me,” she admitted in a rush. “I-I was afraid that I was falling in love with you, and I thought it best for the sake of the expedition that we keep our distance.”

  In the faint moonlight, she saw a series of reactions—realization, dismay, anger—flash across his features. She feared for a moment that she had made a grave error in confessing her culpability. Then his expression settled into one of bland unconcern as he carefully addressed her.

  “So what you're telling me, then, is that any feelings I have for you are genuine?”

  “Correct,” was her wary reply.

  He shook his head. “I'm afraid your word is not good enough, luv, not after what I've been through. I believe I will require some more substantial proof.”

  “Proof?” she echoed in confusion. “What sort of—”

  She never finished the question, for suddenly his lips were on hers, hot and demanding. With a muffled cry of relief, she eagerly complied with that unspoken want.

  When they finally broke free of their kiss, several delightful moments had passed.

  “Very well, luv,” Malcolm conceded, his breathing ragged as he flashed her a wry grin and pulled her down to join him on the stone bench. “I believe that you have quite convinced me.”

  “Perhaps you are convinced,” she countered with an impish smile and shifted about to face him, “but I fear I will require more persuasion.”

  “As you wish, luv.”

  He promptly drew her onto his lap so that she straddled him, her skirts bunched wantonly about her thighs as his fingers clutched her buttocks. Through the thin barrier of her pantalets she could feel the heat of his engorged shaft as it pressed urgently against her. Sighing, she rubbed herself against him, the sensation sending waves of pleasure through her.

  He groaned. “I'd suggest we move upstairs to your chamber,” he hoarsely told her, “but I don't think I can make it that far.”

  “Neither can I,” she breathlessly agreed, “so let's not wait.”

  Barely had the words left her lips than he reached between them to unfasten his trousers. His erect shaft sprung free of the confines of the fabric, urgently throbbing against her. With the same quick moves, he caught at the fragile fabric of her pantalets and rent the inner seam to expose her woman's flesh, damp now with her own juices. Eagerly she spread her thighs, and he thrust himself deep inside her.

  Her soft, welcoming cry was echoed by his own harsh sound of satisfaction as he moved within her. This time, their lovemaking was the swift, urgent joining of two people who realized what they had almost lost between them. In moments, they had both found their release.

  They remained for several moments quite scandalously entangled upon that bench. Finally, with a sigh, Halia eased off him and rearranged her crumpled clothing. Malcolm did the same with his, then slanted her a wry look.

  “If you're in need of further persuasion—”

  With a groan of mock protest, she cut short what she was certain would be a most improper suggestion and sat back down beside him. “I fear I am quite completely convinced,” she told him. “Besides, my father or Lally might come wandering out in search of me.”

  “Ah, yes, that reminds me.”

  With a lazy grin, Malcolm rose and reached into his trouser pocket, withdrawing a folded sheet of age-browned parchment.

  “I almost forgot to tell you that I paid my half-brother Seamus a visit today. It seems that the Golden Wolf is in need of some repairs, so she is still anchored in the harbor. At any rate, I had begun to feel a bit guilty about cheating him of his emerald twice now, so I offered him a trade.”

  Halia frowned. “What sort of trade?”

  “Quite a one-sided deal, I fear. In exchange for Poseidon's Tear, he gave me a map he had in his possession, one purportedly showing the site of a certain lost tribe that some people claim was descended from the ancient Atlanteans. I rather thought that would make an appropriate wedding gift... that is, if you would like me to step inside and have a word with your father.”

  Halia barely heard those last words, for she leaped to her feet and snatched the document from his hands. Her fingers trembling in anticipation, she unfolded the page so that a stray ray of moonlight illuminated it.

  It was a crudely linked rendition, little more than a ragged section of coastline and the suggestion of a mountain range.

  “Brazil,” she softly pronounced, glancing up for his confirming nod before she returned her attention to the document.

  A dotted line wound from the shore to the foot of that range to an X, the coordinates of which were scripted in an ornate hand. It was dated, as well, the year being fourteen hundred and ninety-three.

  “Are you quite certain this is genuine?” she asked, trying to contain the note of excitement in her voice.

  He shrugged. “Wilkie took a look and judged it real enough, though all he could vouch for was the parchment. It might be a modern forgery...but then again it might not.”

  Slowly, Halia looked up again to meet Malcolm's gaze as the import of his earlier words sunk in. ”A wedding gift, you said?”

  ”A wedding gift,” he softly confirmed.

  She bit her lip, considering. “If we are to marry, then I would have to insist that you give up your fraudulent ways and turn your hand to some honest profession.”

  “I rather suspected you would say that,” he replied with a wry smile.

  She frowned. “And I would be quite uncomfortable living off the proceeds of the money you've already
obtained by means of deception. I would want that money go to some charitable cause...scientific research, perhaps.”

  “I feared that, as well,” he answered, looking pained. “Any other conditions, luv?”

  “Just one, Malcolm. I would prefer that you wait a few minutes more before going inside to talk with Papa.”

  As she flung herself into his arms, the map fluttered from her fingers. For a moment, it drifted like a fallen palm leaf on the soft Caribbean breeze. Then, gently, it wafted to the ground between them, marking the spot where a lifetime of love was just beginning.

  Epilogue

  “Sounds like a right good crowd, it does,” Wilkie Foote allowed, propping open the door of the tiny anteroom off the sanctuary. He peered past the resulting gap to gaze at the assemblage, and then gave a satisfied nod.

  Indeed, St. Stephan's church fairly hummed now with anticipation. The majority of the Bimini Islanders were in attendance, dressed in their Sunday best. Brightly dyed cottons and deep-hued calicoes rivaled the flamboyant yellow and purple hibiscus blossoms that decorated the sanctuary. Near the front, Wilkie picked out Captain Rolle and his family, then noted the crewmen of the Johnesta scattered toward the rear of the church with their respective families. A welcome breeze wafted through the open windows, adding to the stir from the numerous handheld fans of woven palm leaves that fluttered in brisk counterpoint to the murmured conversation.

  Wilkie stepped back from the open doorway and glanced over at his partner, who nervously smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle from his waistcoat, only to frown.

  “Damn it all, Wilkie, I forgot my lucky watch fob,” Malcolm muttered as he transferred his anxious glance from the waiting sanctuary to his flat midriff. “I can't go out there, not without it.”

  “‘Ere now, it's just a cheap bit o' stamped metal,” Wilkie reassured him in an indulgent tone. “Besides which, ye've done right well these past weeks wit'out it.”

  Malcolm nodded and relaxed into a wry grin. “I guess I have, at that.”

  He had only just returned from South America to the Biminis two days earlier, having spent the greater portion of a month tracking down a certain Señor Gutierrez. Upon finally locating the man, Malcolm had presented him with a sum twice the amount of his original investment in Arvin Davenport's aborted expedition. That, and a few persuasive words, had now made possible the scholar's resurrection from his ersatz watery grave.

  Now officially returned to the living, Arvin was putting the finishing touches on his latest monograph regarding the Bimini Atlantis site...which, following the gale, had been reclaimed once again by the sand. No proof of any tie to that lost continent had been discovered, he stated, even as he decreed that the site remained an area of scientific interest and should be studied again at a later date.

  Arvin also had launched an overt campaign to convince Lally that the two of them should, after almost a dozen years together, finally be married. Lally had yet to give him a reply, to Malcolm's private relief. While he and the Haitian woman had declared a truce of sorts following his return the week after the gale, he was not prepared as yet to address her as mother.

  His half-brother Seamus had long since sailed from the islands, though he had casually left behind wedding gifts for the newly engaged couple. His present to Malcolm proved to be a set of emerald cuff studs, while Halia's was an elegant emerald pendant in the shape of a tear.

  “‘Ere now,” Wilkie broke in on his thoughts, “it's time.”

  “I suppose you are right.”

  Malcolm took a steadying breath and, with his partner beside him, strode past the door and out into the sanctuary.

  A beaming Reverend Philpot joined them, and the waiting congregation fell silent. Then, a stir rose from the rear of the church as Arvin and Halia—dressed in a simple white gown like a charming figure from an ancient Grecian fresco—started down the aisle.

  Malcolm's uneasiness promptly faded, replaced by a sense of proud anticipation as his gaze met the radiant face of his bride. And her glow, he knew, was not just the result of today's ceremony. Only last night she had confided to him her suspicions that, in a few more months, she might be forced to curtail her role as an explorer of lost islands...at least, until the new baby was old enough to accompany them.

  A teary-eyed Arvin relinquished her into Malcolm's care, and he clasped her hand. The sensual spark that always accompanied their every touch was not lost with familiarity, he was glad to realize. Rather, it had been joined now by a warmth that reached his very soul.

  They took their places before Reverend Philpot, who launched into an opening prayer the equal, Malcolm realized, of any of his own bombastic forays into that dominion. He suppressed a wry smile and bent his head toward Halia's golden mane, caught up into loose curls atop her head and adorned with a single white hibiscus.

  “I have been thinking of names,” he murmured as the good reverend droned on. “If the babe is a boy, I believe I should like to call him Charles, after my father.”

  Halia met his gaze with a look of pleased surprise. “I think that would be most appropriate,” she whispered back. “I fear, though, that I have been more unorthodox in my choices.”

  She paused and slanted him a passionate look that, had Reverend Philpot glimpsed it, would surely have scandalized that upright clergyman. For Malcolm's part, it found him suddenly anxious for this ceremony to end so that they could begin the wedding night... no matter that it was still afternoon.

  “If the baby is a girl,” she continued in an undertone, charmingly unaware of the effect she was having upon him, “I had thought that, given the circumstances under which she was conceived, we might call her Tempest.”

  “Tempest,” he softly echoed. “I believe that I rather like that.”

  To the enjoyment of the congregation, Malcolm called an unofficial halt to the proceedings as, well before the prescribed moment, he bent to kiss his bride.

  Author's Note

  Atlantis.

  The very name has sparked the imaginations of countless men and women since Plato first recorded his tale of that lost continent more than two millennia ago. Convinced that Plato's account was no mere legend but instead a scholarly account of a vanished people, so-called Atlantologists have placed that island all across the globe: from the Mediterranean to the British Isles to the South Pacific.

  These believers have built cases for the existence of Atlantis upon the Biblical Flood, comparing it to various legends among diverse cultures concerning a long-ago and devastating deluge. Why would so many such accounts have survived, they ask, were the stories not based on truth? Other would-be scholars—among them, the eccentric former U.S. Senator Ignatius Donnelly, who published a popular volume of his theories in 1882—seized upon similarities in language and customs world-wide to claim that the majority of nations all descended from a common ancestral root…that of the Atlanteans.

  Indeed, theories concerning Atlantis abound. Two more recent discoveries, however, have put a new slant on the question. One concerns the Mediterranean island of Thera, off the north coast of Crete.

  Since the early part of this century, scientists have been piecing together the circumstances surrounding a cataclysmic volcanic eruption that occurred in that region sometime around 1450 B.C. That catastrophe is blamed for the destruction of the ancient Minoan civilization of Crete, a prosperous society known for its advanced technologies and its contributions to law, religion, and art. Excavation of that island and the surrounding waters has turned up the remains of a city, canals, and harbor, the layout of which coincides with Plato's description of Atlantis. Were the Minoans perhaps the model for the Atlanteans of legend, then? Some scientists believe so.

  Another, equally intriguing theory had its start with the American psychic, Edgar Cayce. Between the 1920s and 1940s, Cayce did “life readings” of hundreds of people whom he said were modern descendants of the vanished Atlanteans. Moreover, he claimed that the remains of Atlantis would rise from the sea somewhe
re between Florida and the Bahamas in 1968 or l969.

  Some believe that Cayce's prediction did come true. In the late 1960s, divers; discovered a series of huge rectangular stones along the sea bottom in the shallow waters off of Bimini…the very spot where Halia and Malcolm conducted their search. Dubbed the “Atlantis Road,” it sparked the interest of scholars, as well as Atlantologists. Some dismissed the stones as nothing more than a natural rock formation; others pointed to the stones' regular arrangement and sharp-cut edges as evidence that they were hewn by an ancient people—perhaps, the long-vanished Atlanteans?

  To date, no official determination as to the formation's origin has been made. Easily accessible by boat, the “Atlantis Road” remains a popular side-trip for visitors to Bimini. There, amid the sparkling turquoise waters that surround the island, it is easy enough to believe in legend…and in love.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

  DIANE A.S. STUCKART is the author of the popular Leonardo da Vinci mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime, which has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, as well as a Florida Book Award Silver medal (for PORTRAIT OF A LADY). Under the names Alexa Smart and Anna Gerard, she published several critically-acclaimed historical romances from Pinnacle Books, including MASQUERADE, which was a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart finalist. Writing as ALI BRANDON, she is the national bestselling author of DOUBLE BOOKED FOR DEATH, the first in her new Black Cat Bookshop mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime.

  A native Texan with a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, Diane now lives in South Florida. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America-Florida Chapter. Visit www.dianestuckart.com or www.alibrandon.com to keep up with the latest news about Diane. And if you enjoyed POSEIDON’S DAUGHTER or any other of Diane’s work, please spread the word via your favorite online review site!