For Her Love (37 page)

Nearly a fortnight after his arrival, Giles stood at the dock and watched the sky turn the sea into a swath of shimmering sapphire satin shot through with silver, then gold as the sun set. A choir of frogs began to warm up for the night’s performance, and the evening breeze brought with it the scent of jasmine that tormented Giles with memories.

Jawara walked toward him across the lawn, the last of the day’s sweat drying on his bare chest. He studied Giles, who once again looked his fastidious self, his hair tied neatly back, his shirt pristine.

“Me don’ know how you do it,” Jawara commented.

“Hmm?”

“You work hard like evr’ybody, but you look like de maas dat don’ lift a finga.”

Giles smiled, but it didn’t touch his stormy gray eyes. “You didn’t see me this afternoon. More to the point, you didn’t smell me. While you were getting the evening shift started at the mill, I was helping to finish the kitchen. ‘Tis done, and the women are thrilled. I had to wash. I couldn’t stand myself. If Grace had seen me, she wouldn’t have believed it.” And there it was again, the vice that closed around his throat every time he said her name. Every time he breathed in the scent of jasmine at dusk.

“Tings be runnin’ pretty smooth. Me tinkin’ it ‘bout time for you a find you ‘ooman.”

Giles nodded, his eyes fixed on the horizon where sea and sky were one and the same, each melding into the other. “I think so, too.”

“How long you a-go look?”

“Until I find her.”

“Cap’n.” When Giles didn’t respond, Jawara put his hand on his shoulder. “Cap’n, look here. You gotta try; me know dat. A mon gotta try a protect what be his. But dis place gotta have a white mon at de helm. It not be long ‘fore de rest of de planters a-go make trouble. It be good dat we know we be free, but dat don’ mean nutten to de rest of de Whites on dis island. Deh be sum tings we jus’ gotta face.”

Giles fisted his hands at his sides. He had wanted to do something important with his life, to make his mark upon the world, and he had. It was here, all around him. But what about happiness? What about love? Was it so much to ask for those, too?

“I can’t put a time limit on this, Jawara!”

“You got no choice. Dat be de ting about savin’ sumbody life. Dem don’ owe you; you owe dem. Why trouble youself if you jus’ a-go let dem down in de end?”

“Why did I marry Grace if I was just going to let her down in the end?”

“Me never say dis be an easy choice, Cap’n. Maybe dis be de price of bein’ a good mon.”

It was a perfect day. The wind ripped briskly across the water, and
Destiny
raced with it. They had chosen
Destiny
above
Reliance
, for ‘twas her name and that of her captain that brought Spanish sailors to their knees, enabling Giles and Geoff to board and search their ships with little resistance. It had been two years since the ruthless privateer Geoffrey Hampton had stalked Spanish waters, but he had not been forgotten.

The voyage had met with its share of problems. Though all had gone well as they’d skirted Cuba and Florida, they’d run into naught but foul weather amid the Bahamas. To everyone’s relief, the rains had fallen behind ere they’d neared Santo Domingo. Then, in the heart of the Caribbean, halfway to the Spanish Main, they had outrun the wind, as well, and sat becalmed, the men slowly growing more and more restless. Three or four fistfights were erupting each day ere the sails rippled and snapped and caught another breeze. After so much, it was good to be sailing again on such a fine day.

Of course, the Spaniards on board the ship Giles had spotted might disagree ere the day was out.

“She’s not on board that ship,” Geoff protested.

Having been at sea nearly a month, Giles knew he was running out of time. He gave his friend an impatient scowl. “D’you see that flag?” he demanded, gesturing with the spyglass they’d been sharing.

“Aye,” Geoff answered, his voice edged with impatience, as well.

“And?”

“‘Tis Spanish. I see that, Giles. She’s a tiny merchantman, a waste of valuable time.”

“That’s the very thing, isn’t it? I have so little time, Geoff! We have agreed, we skirt the Serranilla Bank, and then ‘tis back to Jamaica. If I’ve not found her, ‘tis done. I have over a hundred people and a bloody farm that depend upon me!” He looked back at the tiny speck of a ship in the distance. “If we do not board, I will wonder the rest of my life if I missed her here today.”

Geoff nodded. “As you wish, then. I am, after all, a mere figurehead on this mission, lending my name and fearsome reputation. The command is yours.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. What you risk here is…”

Geoff forced an uneasy grin. “One of us must lead, and this time, ‘tis you. As for what I risk, it only fires the blood.”

But Giles saw the lie in his friend’s face. “I’ll have you home to your wife and son soon, Geoff. Safe and sound. I swear it.”

Geoff sighed. “She’s unmanned me, I fear.”

And Giles laughed. “Her belly will be rounding in no time and give the lie to that statement.” But the laughter died on his lips. His own wife’s absence threatened to drag him back down under the ocean of despair that he fought daily.

It wouldn’t do! Self-pity would not help him find Grace. His eyes hardened and he set his jaw. “Hoist the red flag!” he shouted. “The chase is on!”

*

“What do you think?” Enrique asked his captain. If the ship following them meant any harm, the captain would know.

Diego squinted against the sun. From this distance, he could tell very little. Still, he refused the spyglass that his first mate offered. There was no more heat or light in the air than the sun cast down upon them, no strange sensation heralding a message from his patron saint. If they were in danger, Magdalena would have alerted him by now.

He shrugged casually. “Nothing to worry about,” he replied. “Another merchant, like us.”

“English? In these waters? She is far off course.”

Diego closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Still, no sense at all of Magdalena’s presence. “Blown off course by some ill wind.” Then, he had an idea. “Wait! Perhaps we should let them catch up. If they are honest merchants, and their captain seems an honorable man, perhaps he could take our passenger. She works hard not to show her impatience while we make short runs along the coast of the Main, but she wants to go home. We have not been able to approach Jamaica, but perhaps he could.”

Enrique gave him a doubtful look, but Diego turned to give the order to heave to, and then the unthinkable happened.

“Captain,” his man in the crow’s nest shouted, “she has raised a red flag!”

“What?” Diego cried, and his crew stopped in their tracks, stunned into silence. Captain Diego Montoya Fernandez de Madrid y Delgado Cortes was
not
taken off guard by pirates. He had been caught once but had cleverly talked his way out of it. Since that time,
Magdalena
had been charmed, a fact that everyone on board had come to take for granted.

How could it be that he had been left with no warning? “Fight or flee, Magdalena?” he chanted softly under his breath. “Fight or flee?”

Emptiness. No voice, no strong sense of her guidance. What had he done to offend her? There was no time to ponder this. He had grown soft, lazy, too accustomed to having an unfair advantage. From Enrique’s hands, he grabbed the spyglass that he had previously disdained. A brigantine, he saw, much larger than his little carrack and likely with far more crew. The last time he had run into a brigantine, he had lost. He had been a very new captain then, and only just beginning to forge the bond between himself and Magdalena that had protected him ever since.

Without wasting another second, he bolted to the helm, shoving the helmsman aside and taking the wheel. “Make sure that I have every bit of sail available!” he shouted to Enrique, and the first mate leapt to follow the command.

Apprehension gnawed at Diego’s stomach and inside his head. His ship was small and fast, but a brigantine was built for speed and maneuverability. If it had been merely him and his crew, he would have found it much easier to accept whatever fate dealt them, but he had a woman on board, one who had already been through too much.

Grace! He should have someone inform her of what was happening. He had been teaching his cabin boy some rudimentary English. Just now, the lad was at the rail, staring wide-eyed at their pursuers.

“Galeno,” he called, and the boy skipped over nervously. “Go below and give
Señora
Courtney this message.” He switched to English and spoke slowly and clearly. “We are avoiding a pirate ship. Stay in your cabin. The captain will come when there is news.” He went back to Spanish. “Repeat that.”

Once he was assured that Galeno could deliver the message, he focused all his attention upon evading the ship closing fast behind them.

*

Galeno pounded on
Señora
Courtney’s cabin door with all the force of a tiny hurricane, calling her name over and over. She opened it, and for a moment he froze, staring up at her with dark, excited eyes. What were the words the captain had spoken?

“
¿Sí, Galeno?
” she prompted.

Her voice snapped him from his momentary paralysis. In his thick accent he said, “We are avoiding a pirate ship.”

“A pirate ship?” Grace cried. “What country? If they are French or English, then
Capitán
Montoya will need me to translate.” She rushed past him to the door.

“Stay in your cabin,” Galeno continued carefully.

She turned back and took his face between her hands. “You poor thing. You must be so frightened. You stay right here.” She led him to her bunk and pushed on his shoulders until he sat down.

“The captain will come when there is news,” he recited dutifully.

“Aye, that’s right. He’ll come and get you when ‘tis safe,” Grace replied. Then she patted him on the head and rushed out the door, closing it tightly behind her.

Galeno sat on the bed, blinking in confusion. Obviously the captain’s message had something to do with summoning
Señora
Courtney, but if he had wanted Galeno to stay in her cabin, would he not have said so directly? Still, she had clearly indicated that he should stay here. Perhaps that was part of the message as well. He would have to study his English much harder. How else would he become a captain like the great Diego Montoya Fernandez de Madrid y Delgado Cortes, who could defy pirates in their own language?

*

“She’s running!” Geoff called out, and Giles’s heart leapt. When Geoff had accepted Spain’s terms for his pardon, Giles had been more than happy to leave behind their life of thievery and feuding, but he couldn’t deny the pull of excitement when two ships employed the same wind and the same water in fierce competition. It helped to know that, once they caught the other ship, there would be no killing, no theft. They would use one of the crewmen hired for his command of Spanish to interrogate the captain, search the ship, and then be on their way.

Or better still, they would find Grace.

Destiny
seemed as caught up in the chase as her commander, swallowing the distance between them in greedy gulps of crystalline water. With a merry grin of his own, Geoff took another look through the spyglass, then let out a string of curses worthy of the most hardened pirate. “Hard to port!” he shouted. “Hard to port!”

It was second nature. Giles hands spun the wheel, even as the crew scrambled to compensate for the abrupt maneuver. “What is it?” he called.

“‘Tis the bloody
Magdalena
!”

Though he continued to turn the ship, Giles’s countered him. “But that’s perfect. Montoya can help us find Grace.”

“We are chasing Montoya with a goddamned red flag on our mast!” Geoff snarled.

Giles looked overhead at the banner. What had he been thinking? He had been so intent upon Grace that he had completely forgotten the implications for Geoff. “Oh, Jesus! Somebody pull that bloody flag down!”

Diego Montoya had been moved once to spare Geoff’s life, but he had done it for Faith, certainly not Geoff. ‘Twas he who had delivered Geoff to the executioner to begin with. Now, Geoff was in direct violation of his pardon from Spain, and Montoya was a man with an ironclad sense of honor. There would not be another pardon.

Giles gave Geoff a worried look. “They’ll not give chase,” he said, more to assure himself than his friend.

“If he saw who we are, he’ll follow me to hell and back,” Geoff replied. “Honor and duty and all that rot. Of course, he’ll be only too happy to console my wife!”

It seemed to Giles that Geoff ought to be more grateful to the man for saving his life, but gratitude was dangerous at a time like this.

“We’ll sink him if we must,” Giles assured him. “Prime the cannons!” he called out. Better safe than sorry.

*

Grace wanted to grab Diego by the collar and shake him. The only thing that stayed her hand was the sure and certain knowledge that she would not be able to budge him and she would only end up making a fool of herself.

“If you do not go back below I will have one of my men pick you up and carry you there!” he barked.

“You most certainly will not!” she retorted. He had made several similar threats since she had first climbed on deck, but he had yet to make any move toward fulfilling them.

“If that pirate crew sees you up here, your fate will make you regret leaving the brothel. At least there you would entertain only one man at a time!”

Grace gaped in shock. It was entirely unlike the captain to speak so basely to her. “If they board, they will find me sooner or later,” she reasoned.

Diego opened his mouth to reply, but excited shouts from the first mate a several crewmen interrupted them, and Diego turned away from her, raising his spyglass. Grace had been working hard on her Spanish, but when it was spoken too quickly, she was at a loss. She craned her neck to see what had caused all of the commotion. The pirate ship seemed to be turning away!