Day Dreamer (11 page)

Dundee’s hand was shaking so badly he nearly dropped his saber.

“Change your ways, Dundee, from this moment on, or everything I’ve told you will come to pass before sundown.”

He sheathed the saber, turned away from the sight of her and began barking orders.

“Kujo, bring the men.”

“And Dundee …” Celine called after him.

He paused just as he was about to swing over the rail. When he looked back, fear still kindled his eyes.

“What is it now, you she-witch?”

“Get yourself some new clothes.”

Eight

A
s soon as the crew of the
Adelaide
was released and the last pirate had swung over the side, Edward and Foster rushed over to Cord and Celine. Flustered, Foster began sawing at Cord’s bonds with the paring knife until Captain Thompson nudged him aside and had Cord free almost instantly.

“God damn it, Thompson, we could have all been killed.” Cord said, letting loose the fury that had been consuming him.

“I suppose you think we should have fought it out armed with paring knives and skillets?” Thompson argued.

Cord refused to back down. “It wasn’t
your
neck in that noose.”

Celine stepped between them, laid her hand on Cord’s arm and said, “I think I need to lie down.”

He shook off her hold, then grabbed her arm and shoved her toward the saloon. Edward and Foster followed in their wake.

“What in the hell was that performance all about?” Cord shouted.

Exhausted, Celine did not try to answer until the four of them were crowded together in her cabin. Edward and Foster hovered behind Cord, who stood over her like an avenging angel, demanding an explanation.

“You should thank me for saving your neck instead of hollering at me.” She sat down on the bunk, folded her arms beneath her breasts and met his glare with one she hoped was just as intense.

He anchored his hands on his hips, intent on bullying her, but she refused to let him. “If that idiot Dundee didn’t frighten me, what makes you think you do?”

His eyes darkened. His lips thinned. He turned to Foster and Edward, who were trying to disappear into the woodwork.

“Leave us,” Cord told them.

The servants left.

“Now. I want to know why you left the safety of the cabin when I expressly told you not to. I want to know how you were able to scare the hell out of Dundee. Do you know him?”

The brief respite of calm had ended and they were under sail again.

“May I lie down, your royal highness?” she asked.

Cord quickly stepped away from the bunk. “Are you going to be sick?”

“Not if I lie down.”

“Then by all means.” He waited until she was settled before he pressed. “Start talking, Celine.”

“First of all, I left the cabin despite your orders because I wanted to. Everything was too quiet. For all I knew, all of you might have been killed and I was alone on a ghost ship. Secondly, I have never laid eyes on Captain Dundee before today.”

“Then how did you know those things about him?”

“Let me finish.” Stalling for time while she tried to think of a plausible explanation, Celine draped her arm over her eyes and said weakly, “I’d like some water, please.”

She could tell from his pause that he was about to refuse, but then she heard him move. Celine’s mind raced. She could not tell him the truth—he would think her mad if she tried to explain her ability to read the past. It would be easier to let him think that she had known Dundee, but how could she make him believe she’d had an association with such an unsavory character?

By the time Cord had handed her a cup of water and she’d slowly drained it and given the empty cup back to him, she had her answer.

“Every English child has gone to at least one county fair and I’d wager that every one of them has gotten sick on a bad pasty at one time or another. I simply made an accurate guess.”

“How would you know about English fairs? I thought you were from Boston.”

She sighed. “I lived in England as a child.”

“I suppose it was a lucky guess that he was from Cornwall, too?”

“Dundee’s accent gave that away,” she said.

“What about his mother’s name?” Now, he thought, he had her.

“Mary is one of the most common names in England.”

“And the dog named King?”

“I guessed at the name. Every boy has a puppy.” She looked him square in the eye.

“I had a monkey.”

“Which jumped to your tune, I’m sure.”

Cord shook his head. “I can’t believe you had the gall to brazen it out.”

“I didn’t have much choice, did I?”

“What if it hadn’t worked? What if he’d never gotten sick over a pasty or lived in Cornwall?”

She couldn’t very well tell Cord that she had actually feigned stumbling so she could purposely touch the pirate in order to learn something of his past. She had experienced the vivid scene where Dundee’s mother took him to the fair and he became ill, an incident lodged in his earliest memories.

Nor could she tell him that her powers had enabled her to divine that years ago some fortune-teller had predicted that Captain Dundee would one day be cursed by a woman, a curse that would ultimately be connected to his death. The prediction had greatly influenced Dundee’s life. Celine merely coupled the information she had channeled with the drama she had often witnessed during Persa’s finest fortune-telling performances.

“Answer me, Celine. What if it hadn’t worked?”

She shrugged. “Then you would have hung and I would probably have been ravaged by the entire pirate crew, chopped up and fed bit by bit to the sharks.” She propped herself on an elbow and smiled up at him. “Then again, you told me earlier I wouldn’t tempt a shipwrecked sailor, so I probably had nothing to fear in the way of ravaging. Now the crew is safe and so are you.”

She shot him a questioning glance and looked away before adding, “I suppose there is still a chance that I’m in danger of being ravaged when and if this godforsaken crate ever reaches your island.”

A hint of a smile teased his lips.

“A very slim chance,” he told her. He let out a pent-up sigh and tried to relax. “You are insane, you know that, don’t you? Any other woman would have been cowering beneath the bunk, but there you were, in nothing more than that damned flopping nightgown, toe to toe with a cutthroat maniac—”

“Dressed in satin, don’t forget.”

“In purple and yellow satin.” His slight smile broadened.

“You look better when you’re not frowning so.” She had not thought he could be any more handsome.

“Was that meant to be a compliment?”

Cord walked over and sat down beside her, so close that his backside pressed against her hip. In a move that surprised her, for it bordered on tenderness, he reached out and attempted to arrange her tangled hair. He gave up almost instantly.

“It appears I owe you my thanks,” he said.

“Actually you owe me your neck, but I will settle for a little kindness.”

“You are a strange woman, Celine.”

“You are far from a model husband.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking while I was standing there on deck trussed up like a turkey.” His expression darkened again. “I should have stayed with you, protected you during the attack—it would have been the honorable thing.”

She shoved her hair out of her eyes and watched him closely. He was frowning now, no doubt going over the whole incident in his mind.

“Some might think the honorable thing would have been to put a bullet in my brain as soon as it looked like all was lost.”

“That entered my mind. It gave me something to think about while I was waiting to hang—wondering what they would do when they found you, hoping they would be merciful, knowing they wouldn’t. Killing you first would have been the honorable thing to do.”

“Then I’m glad you aren’t one to rush to do the honorable thing.”

“That’s how we ended up married, you know. For once in my life I did the honorable thing.” He turned around to look at her. “Why did you do it, Celine? Why did you go through with this marriage?”

“My guardian … died very suddenly. I wanted to get away, to change my life. I told you how I came to be at your grandfather’s home that night.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

“We make quite a pair.”

He had said the words to himself, but she heard them. Unlike last night when she was trying to fight off seasickness, she used his being lost in thought as an opportunity to study him closely.

Cordero was exceedingly handsome, of that there was no doubt. He had the suntanned, rugged look of a man who spent much time out of doors. Unlike many wealthy planters’ sons, he did not appear unaccustomed to physical labor. His shoulders were broad beneath his white shirt, and his hands were strong. He had a firm jaw. Far too often for her liking, his eyes had a far-off, brooding look about them.

She wondered what it would take to make a man like this truly happy. Was there a woman alive with enough love to give to heal the hurt and anger he carried inside?

Before she was aware of what she was doing, she reached out and gently touched the back of his hand, compelled to learn more, to know why he always seemed so lost, so closed off from the world.

Cord looked at her in question, then at her hand where it lay over his. She thought he might draw away, but he did not move. Celine felt the familiar dizziness, felt herself slide into a dreamlike state as she slipped into his mind.

A beautiful woman in an outmoded gown danced in a luminous froth of waves on a silver sliver of sand beneath a starry sky
.

A wave of overwhelming love hidden somewhere in the deep shadows of his memory poured through Celine, but the haunting image and joyous feeling vanished like smoke as a rapid pounding on the cabin door shook her from her dream state. Cord had no time to ask the question she read in his eyes.

He called out and Edward rushed in. The servant stopped short in the middle of the cabin, wringing his hands. His expression bordered on sheer terror.

“What is it now?” Cord demanded. “Don’t tell me Dundee is back?”

“Worse. There’s a storm brewing. A big one. Cap’n Thompson sent me to tell you to keep to the cabin. Later on there’ll be a cold supper, if cook can manage it. The cap’n don’t want any fires in the galley ’cause it’s bound to get rough, ’e says.”

Edward was practically hopping from foot to foot, fretfully glancing at the porthole over Celine’s bunk as if he expected the sea to burst through.

Celine groaned. “It’s going to get rough?”

“A real blow, ’e says, ma’am. Told the hands to batten down the hatches.”

“Calm down, Edward,” Cord told him. “If you stay this worked up you’re liable to have a heart attack.”

“Better than drownin’, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

“I do,” Celine said.

Last night’s bout of seasickness had been bad enough; there had even been a few hours when she was certain she was going to die. Now she would have to weather a fierce tropical storm, possibly even a hurricane.

She glanced up and found Cord watching her closely while Edward busied himself closing her trunks, securing things around the tight quarters.

“I’m afraid it’ll be much worse than last night,” Cord said.

“My mother was buried at sea,” she told him, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

Over in the corner, Edward overheard. He stiffened like a marionette, cast one desperate glance at them and raced from the room.

Cord watched his servant flee. He looked down at Celine and sighed. “I need a drink.”

It was one of the worst storms he had ever experienced.

Through pelting rain and mountains of water that crashed over the side with each swell, Cord mounted the ladder that led from the ’tween deck to the main, intent upon making it back to the saloon without ending up washed over the side. He had gone below to see to Edward, who was cowering in his bunk. Foster had resorted to tying him down to keep his companion from rolling onto the floor. Both men looked the worse for wear, but Foster was doing his best to hide his fear. Edward, on the other hand, sobbed and clutched the four-inch rails on either side of his bunk.

An accountant named Alfonse Pennyworth, two bunks over, was content with alternately spewing vomit into and around a bucket and promising the good Lord he would never transgress again. As Cord passed him on the way to the stairs, he wondered what the whey-faced young man might consider a transgression. Forgetting to use a napkin?

Although he had much worse to be forgiven for, Cord was not ready to make God any promises or to beg for mercy. The only God he had ever learned about was of an unforgiving nature, a God who set shrubbery ablaze when He wasn’t hurling fire and brimstone. Cord decided long ago that he would prefer a trip to hell. The company would no doubt be more to his liking.

He was exhausted, having done his fair share to help the crew batten down the hatches and stand storm watch. He didn’t know how the exhausted sailors were able to stay on their feet, but when Thompson told him to go below and see to his wife, Cord realized how thankful he was to be a passenger and to have that right.

As his head and shoulders cleared the stairwell to the main deck, a wave washed over him. Water cascaded down the ladder. He wiped his eyes and stepped outside. There was no difference between the color of the sea and the leaden sky. The world appeared shrouded in seething gray clouds, lashing rain and undulating swells. He waited until the
Adelaide
was climbing up a wave before he made a dash for the saloon doors. Forced to walk on a water-slicked floor, he intended to make it to the cabin door unharmed.

When the ship plunged through one particularly deep trough, he reeled into the dining table, unable to right himself before smacking his hip on the edge of the table hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He staggered to Celine’s cabin door. Thankfully, it was unlocked, but when he opened it, another lurch of the ship jerked the knob out of his hand and sent the door slamming back into the wall.

He glanced first at the porthole over Celine’s bunk. It was seeping water, and he thought immediately of Edward. He looked down at her bunk and thought the weak light was playing tricks on him. She wasn’t there. Nor was she on the floor by the bunk. His throat tightened with fear. It had been hours since he had seen her last. Cord spun around and opened the connecting door to his cabin. The porthole there was not leaking, but the bunk was empty.

“Celine!” he called over the tremendous roar of the sea and the groan of protesting timbers. There was no answer.

The ship was tilting at a forty-five-degree angle. He grabbed hold of the doorjamb between the two rooms and hung on. As he stood there straddling the line between the rooms, he noticed Celine in her cabin, crouched behind a barricade of shifting trunks and boxes. With her face hidden in the crook of her arm, all that was visible of her was the top of her head and her very bare shoulders.