Nobody's Saint (7 page)

“There are no women aboard my ship,” he explained, “and therefore no one to provide you with a chaperone.”

The gesture suited Mary Kate perfectly. With the door open she would be free to use every female artifice at her disposal while ultimately remaining safe. Pirates were an uncertain lot, but honest men upon the sea treated honest women with respect. Even between hostile countries, women were protected by universal common decency.

“You’ve saved my life, Captain. I’m thinking I can trust you with my honor, as well.”

“I assure you, Miss O’Reilly, you are safe on board my ship, and once we reach Cartagena, you will be treated well until your ransom can be arranged.”

He pulled the captain’s chair away from the table. Once she had been seated, he took a chair that had been set against the wall and pulled it across from her. The talk of ransom didn’t worry her. It was standard protocol when two opposing countries ended up with each other’s innocents in their custody.

With fluid, graceful efficiency, Diego poured them each a goblet of wine. Then he took a seat and set to peeling an orange while she took a sip from her cup. The fruit’s pungent fragrance filled the air.

“I realize that you have been through a terrible ordeal,
señorita
,” he began as he worked, “but I hope that you can find the strength to answer a few questions.”

“Of course,” Mary Kate replied. Her eyes were drawn to his hands as he stripped the orange of its covering. They were elegant and well formed with long, nimble fingers.

“I do not wish to cause you any pain,” he assured her. “If the story becomes too much for you to bear, you have only to say so.”

Her eyes flew back up to his face, and she felt a quick jab of ire. To be sure, it was an unpleasant tale to tell, but she was no weak-kneed milksop! If she could live through it, she could speak of it!

“You are a strong woman,” her host observed.

The remark caught her off guard. “What?”

“You refuse to succumb to sorrow. You cling instead to anger at the injustice done to you and your loved ones. That is good. There will be time for sorrow later, no?”

Loved ones? She tried to affect a tinge of grief for those mysterious loved ones, whomever he might believe them to be. “I find that anger helps me to bear it. Maybe, once I am home…” She sighed and accepted the peeled orange half that he offered to her across the table.

They both popped a segment of the fruit into their mouths at the same time. The succulent pulp burst in sweet flavor, and it occurred to her that this was what his mouth would taste like just now if she were to kiss him. She had gone out of her way to avoid the thin-lipped kisses of her English suitors, but she didn’t think she’d mind terribly finding out whether a Spaniard kissed as well as an Irishman. Only if she
had
to kiss him, of course, in order to persuade him not to deliver her to Port Royal. Still, she couldn’t help but watch his wide, firm mouth as he chewed. She was going to have to add a new column in her ledger.

To Mary Kate’s credit, she mastered the little grin of triumph that threatened when he cleared his throat and looked away. Indeed, this man would be far easier to play than either of the last two captains.

“And where is your home?” he asked.

“Just outside Londonderry. I was for that city ere I found myself on this misadventure.”

Diego frowned. “Judging by the items stolen from your ship, it appeared that you were for the Caribbean. There were casks of wine, bolts of cloth, dishes, letters posted to Caribbean Islands. A ship bound for Londonderry would carry sugar, indigo, tobacco.”

Mary Kate bit her lip prettily and looked away with child-like dismay. “Well, more like I was bound for Londonderry just as soon as I could turn around and leave Jamaica.”

“Jamaica?”

“You’ll think me very foolish.”

Diego gave her a gentle smile. “I have been a fool once or twice in my life.”

Make that thrice
, Mary Kate hoped silently as she sweetly returned the smile. “You see, I was jilted by a lad back home. Gave him all my heart, I did, but he threw me over for my best friend! My da always did say I was a rash one. Got it in my head that I couldn’t live in the same village with either of them, my love or my friend. I’ve heard there’s always a shortage of brides in the New World, so I set my sights there. Thought I’d marry me a wealthy man and laugh at those two struggling on their little farm.”

“And?”

“And I don’t suppose I need tell you that several weeks on board a ship gives a lass a lot of time to think. My da, he’s sick. My ma died when I was a babe, and it broke his heart. He’s not been a well man since. Then there’s my sister. She’s younger than me, and believe it or not, even more hotheaded. And here I’ve gone and left them to fend for themselves. Selfish, it was! I see that, now. I’d quite made my mind up to turn ‘round and go home when we were set upon by those ruffians.” The shudder she gave at the memory was real enough.

“Surely your family did not allow you to set out on your own.”

Mary Kate hesitated, affecting overwhelming emotion while her mind churned. If she told him that she had come alone, how would she explain the dowry that had been in
Fortune’s
hold? And yet, she had to get her hands on Sir Calder’s money to buy passage home!

“I brought my maid with me,” she finally replied with a heavy sigh. “She was killed in the battle.” She wasn’t about to make up some tale of rape and torture. Here she was taking all of these lies upon her soul on the open sea where the whim of God could sink their ship and there wasn’t a priest for confession in sight.
Please, God,
she prayed,
let me live until my next confession.

“But your father, ill as he might be, surely he did not send a mere girl and a maid to seek a husband in a land of strangers. You must know someone in Jamaica who will be worried for you.”

The last thing she needed was to have this man contact her fiancé, but it seemed unlikely that he would believe her if she said she had come traipsing across the globe without family or connections. She gave her plate a gloomy look. She was about to become too distraught to talk, and she supposed that she should be too upset to eat, as well.

“Oh Captain,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

“I regret that I must bring up such pain,
señorita
. You have held up so well through all of this. We will pause for a while. You must eat and regain your strength.”

“I couldn’t.”

“A bit of cheese, at least, and some wine to fortify you.”

“Perhaps a bit of cheese…” It took every ounce of willpower she possessed to take a tentative bite, rather than rip into the repast before her.

Diego contemplated the woman across the table. She was, indeed, everything he could have ever asked for. She was beautiful and sweet. Impetuous, perhaps, to have done what she had, but apparently too innocent to realize the ramifications of it. He should have been profoundly grateful. Magdalena had come through for him once again, charming his life. And yet, something about Mary Katherine O’Reilly bothered him. For one thing, he had a hard time believing that a woman who had killed a pirate and cursed at him in the heat of battle would run from something like an unfaithful suitor. And maybe it was wrong to question Magdalena
’s
generosity, but Mary Kate’s grief and remorse had an edge of affectation. It did not quite ring true.

“
Capitán
,” Enrique called softly from beyond the doorway. He held in his hand several sheets of heavy vellum, a broken wax seal on the outermost page. Diego rose and joined his first mate in the hall, where they conversed in quiet Spanish for a moment until Diego began reading the pages in silence.

Mary Kate took advantage of his shift in attention to wolf down two more pieces of cheese and finish what remained of both halves of the orange he had peeled earlier. He had been studying her intently, and she’d had to work hard to keep up her shy and demure demeanor. Had he been Irish, she’d have flirted and teased until she’d had him wrapped around her fingers. But he had been so protective of her, so quick to assume that she would be distraught and powerless, it had seemed wiser to follow his lead.

The ability to read others and become what they wanted (or what they didn’t want, in England) was a talent she used without compunction. Even as a child, she could tiptoe into a room and gauge her father’s mood in seconds. Was he happy-drunk, angry-drunk, or morose-drunk? Should she tease and play, run for cover, or offer solace? Bridget had quickly learned to let Mary Kate size him up before she joined them, and if Mary Kate sneaked quietly upstairs, Bridget soon followed. As for Bridget herself? She was the easiest of all to manage. She was so bloody contrary that all Mary Kate had to do was order Bridget to do the opposite of what she wanted. If that didn’t work, they would simply pull each other’s hair and scream oaths at one another until one of them caved in.

Maybe they weren’t a perfect family, but whose was? Underneath the drink and the strife, they all loved one another fiercely, and Mary Kate missed them so. When Da was happy drunk, there was never a merrier man. Bridget was as likely to smile and laugh as to pull hair and screech, and she was loyal to a fault. But without Mary Kate to buffer Bridget’s temper and her da’s moods, where would they be? ‘Twas a miracle they hadn’t killed one another in the years she’d been away, no doubt helped along by her nightly prayers for their welfare.

When the captain returned and resumed his seat, she eyed him warily. He had changed. His face was cold, impassive, and his dark eyes looked her over in careful appraisal. In his hand, he held the neatly folded papers that his crewman had given to him.

“Was there a problem?” she asked.

He smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “Nothing of consequence. Do you know, I just realized that you have only one trunk in here. I sent you two.”

Mary Kate nodded. “I sent one below. It had only heavy clothes, and the weather has become too warm for them.”

“I see. Tell me, did we find
all
of your things? Was there anything besides the two trunks?”

He had found her dowry. He had found the gold and now questioned her story all the more. Mary Kate licked her lips nervously, still tasting the sweet orange. “Well, I brought a dowry with me, of course.”

“A dowry for the unknown husband you were seeking?”

“Aye.”

“A modest sum, I suppose. After all, a wealthy family of rank would never allow a daughter to board a ship to seek a husband, all alone but for her maid. They would insist upon choosing someone of equal standing.”

So, Sir Calder had been a cheapskate. He had sent some piddling sum, doubtless with the promise of more once he had obtained his precious grandson. This Spaniard now doubted whether or not her ransom would be worth the trouble he would have to go through to get it.

“If you’re worried about the ransom…” she began.

He smiled again, though it seemed the expression should have cracked his stony face, and Mary Kate realized that, whatever was wrong, it went much deeper than money.

“Then again, a dowry of but a few coins could have been easily kept in your other trunks, no?”

Oh, God.
How much had Sir Calder sent? Against her will, her voice cracked. “I’m not sure how much was there.”

“You never saw it?” he snapped.

“N-nay.”

“You never looked inside the cask that your
grandfather
sent with you from
England
?”

She could have sworn that she could actually feel every single drop of blood as it left her face. “My—? From—?”

He began to rail in Spanish, and the only word Mary Kate could understand was a repeated reference to the name of his ship. He stood and paced before her, gesturing with the parchment and dressing her down in his foreign tongue.

Diego was livid. Women! Saint or flesh, they were impossible. “This is how you deliver upon your word, Magdalena?” he shouted, shaking the letter Enrique had given him at the woman in front of him. “I grovel before you, obey your every command though I risk the stake to do so, and you give me this? This lying, deceitful temptress? Well, I do not want her! You can just take her right back!”

He switched to English. “Do you know what this is?” He shook the letter again. She looked at it with wide, blue eyes and shook her head. “It is a letter from a Sir Calder Larcombe to a Mister John Hartford. Perhaps you know them?”

Mary Kate stood up. She kept a tight rein on her temper, but damned if she’d sit and be scolded like a child! “Sir Calder’s my grandfather, as you’ve rightly guessed. I’ve never heard of John Hartford.”

Diego braced his hands on the table and leaned across toward her. “I will tell you now, I have no patience for lies.”

“‘Tis the truth I’m telling now. I never have heard that other name, though I can well guess who he is. He’s the bloody sot my grandfather promised me to!”

“Not so meek and mild now, I see.”

“He’d no right to give me to that man!”

“What does your father have to say?”

She hadn’t thought of that. Certainly her father’s wishes would outweigh her grandfather’s. She opened her mouth to say that he had objected and that her grandfather was sending her away, beyond his reach.

“Do not bother to answer. It will only be another lie.”

She snapped her mouth closed.

“It is all here, in this letter to your intended that your grandfather left in the cask with your dowry. The contracts are all signed, and your grandfather writes that he has given a copy to his solicitor. I do not know what is happening here, but…”

“But?”

“But it is not what I thought it was.”

Mary Kate gazed at him for a moment, puzzled. His face was etched with lines of sadness and disappointment. “What did you think it was,
Capitán
?”

Her voice was husky, the single Spanish word oddly accented. She tiled her head and shrugged one shoulder over which dark curls cascaded, and Diego ground his teeth in frustration. What had he done to deserve being played for a fool by his lady and her minion? He remembered with painful clarity Pablo’s warning. Might his visions have been less than holy, after all?