Fortune Trilogy 1 - Fortune's Mistress (9 page)

True to his word, James did know how to navigate. When the sun was out, he would take readings several times a day with the backstaff and compass, altering course when necessary so that they wouldn’t miss the tiny specks of land off the east coast of Africa known as the Canaries.

The
Silkie
seemed to lead a charmed life. Twice James spotted sails on the horizon, but no other ships came anywhere near them. The stretch of sea along the coast of Spain and on past Madeira was particularly dangerous. Fierce pirates roamed these waters seeking slaves and booty, and despite the recent treaty with Spain, no Spanish vessel would hesitate to fire on the
Silkie
.

The bold little pink sailed on as gallantly as though she were a three-masted square-rigger. The storm passed, the sun came out, and the weather cooperated beautifully. There was enough wind to fill the canvas and push the
Silkie
along at a steady pace that continued both day and night for week after week. Alfred’s stolen charts and James’s skill kept the boat moving southward on a route that would assure that they picked up the northeast tradewinds.

It was almost too easy to be believable. Lacy had heard of sudden storms off the Spanish coast that had smashed masts and plunged hundred-foot merchant ships straight down into the ocean floor, never to rise again. The
Silkie
ran into not a single squall. It was nearly two thousand miles by her reckoning from London to the Canaries, and they reached the islands in mid-October.

Lacy would have given anything to walk on dry land and get a better look at the black volcanic mountains. She wanted to wash her hair and clothing in fresh water instead of salt, but she was afraid to leave the
Silkie.
If she did, James might decide to sail without her, or he might put Harry ashore.

Instead, she remained on the boat, below deck and out of sight, while James went ashore to trade a few kegs of French brandy for vegetables and fruit, dried beef, and extra water barrels. For the remainder of the voyage, most of the ballast in the hull of the
Silkie
would be fresh drinking water. The pink was light, and without heavy weight in the bottom they’d be in danger of capsizing in the first Atlantic blow. Later, when James and Lacy had used up the fresh water, they’d have to fill the barrels with salt water to maintain the boat’s balance.

Reluctantly, she’d watched James’s tall form disappear amid the throng crowding the busy waterfront. Ships and boats of every shape and size rode at anchor in the Santa Cruz harbor. Because the
Silkie
was so small, they were able to get close to shore. Still, James had to beg a lift in a passing longboat to avoid having to swim to the nearest dock.

The sun seemed a hundred times hotter here than in England, and the cuddy was stifling. Lacy was tempted to go up on deck, but she didn’t dare. Her male attire was a sufficient disguise if viewed from a hundred yards, but she knew she couldn’t pass as a boy if anyone saw her close up.

Harry, on the other hand, saw no reason to share her captivity and remain hidden. He brazenly cat-walked to the tip of the bowsprit and dangled upside down. He climbed to the top of the mainsail and yowled a defiant challenge to an obviously inferior landbound tomcat strolling on the dock. He stalked seagulls that dared to land on the deck of the
Silkie.
Then when he tired of that sport, he simply lay in the hot sun and groomed his tattered black fur.

“Traitor,” Lacy accused. Sweat ran down her face and made her shirt stick to her back and chest. She wrinkled her nose, deciding she definitely needed a bath. Since she’d been a child, she’d had an unnatural obsession about cleanliness, a trait she hadn’t believed she’d shared with any living soul until she’d met James.

Damned if he wasn’t the washingest man she’d ever laid eyes on! Not only did he shave and soap himself from crown to toe every single day, but he scrubbed his teeth several times a day as well. He washed out his clothing and folded it as neatly as any laundry maid, and raised a king’s royal tantrum if he found a single cat hair on his shirt or breeches.

James made free with her brush, spending more time fussing with his hair than she did her own. Once, annoyed to find black hairs in her brush, she’d called him a dandified fop. In return, he’d retorted that she was a common shrew.

The
shrew
she hadn’t minded, but she was hardly common. After all, how many witches were willing to follow a fool on a treasure hunt across the entire Atlantic Ocean in a thirty-four-foot boat?

James was clearly impossible. He was arrogant and priggish. The man cut his bacon with a knife and fork for God’s sake! Who did he think he was? Crown prince of England?

He was a pirate, and a poor one at that. He had nothing more than the clothes on his back—garments she’d traded for with her father’s brandy. James Black had no reason to play the lord with her. Grass would be green on his grave if it wasn’t for her.

And what had he given her in return? Insults. Orders. A wild dream of Spanish treasure that didn’t have a chance in hell of ever materializing. All he wanted from her was a strong back and hands to furl the sails and hold the tiller.

Lacy dropped her chin on her hands. She was standing on the second rung of the cuddy ladder with her head and shoulders above deck so that she could catch a breath of air. Harbor noises rang in her ears: ships’ bells, the creak of rigging, the splash of oars, and the shouts of men in a dozen languages. Seagulls dived and wheeled through the sky, plunging down to the water’s surface to snatch scraps of food, all the while keeping up a din of raucous cries. Deep in her reverie, Lacy ignored the familiar sounds. She couldn’t stop thinking about James.

Day and night he plagued her. She’d suffered no more trances, but James had invaded her dreams, making her restless and irritable. And the dreams were ones no decent woman should have ...

She swallowed and moistened her lips. Her cheeks grew warm as she remembered last night’s dream. She and James were lying naked in each other’s arms on a white sand beach, beneath the strange trees she’d seen in her trance. She was touching him, running her hands over the curves of his hard hips and buttocks. Her head was against his chest and her breasts were—

No! She shook her head to rid herself of the lustful images. She’d told him that they could not share a bed and she meant it. They’d not so much as brushed fingertips in the last weeks.

So why did she long for his touch all the more? And why did she watch when he stripped naked every morning to bathe? And why did her heartbeat quicken at the sight of his bare bum?

She sighed. The man had a body to make an old woman’s loins young again. His legs were long and lean with hard, corded muscles at the calf and thigh. His belly was flat above the thatch of black curls, and his chest ... Oh, his chest! Lacy exhaled slowed through her closed teeth. If ever a man had flesh to tempt a maid, it was his tanned, brawny chest and husky shoulders. His arms were well-muscled and powerful, capable of pulling the anchor in half the time she could, or hefting a hundred-pound water keg on his shoulder as though it were empty.

She was mad for him.

I’ve spun a fine web for myself, she thought. I pretend to be a whore, yet I can’t even enjoy for free what every harlot gets paid for.

James Black was a deceitful scoundrel. If she allowed herself to care for him, he’d break her heart. He fancied himself a high and mighty gentleman, and if he found his fortune, he’d find a blue-blooded lady to spend it on. He’d want no part of Lacy Bennett, wrecker’s daughter. Witch and gallows bait she was, and as such she would go to her grave. A man could shake off a past, but not a woman—and certainly not a woman whose forehead bore the proof of her sin.

All these things she knew, yet she wanted him still. She wanted to feel his mouth on hers ... wanted to experience that burning ache that only a man’s virility could fill. And not just any man. It had to be this cursed pirate ... the one she’d sent running to some Canary Island whore’s bed.

He’d warned her that that was where he was going. “I’ll seek from some other wench what I can’t find here,” he’d said as he made ready to leave the
Silkie.

“Be certain she’s clean,” Lacy had thrown back at him. “I’ll not have you bringing lice into our cabin.”

Even now, he was probably in her arms. Kissing her. Stroking her flesh until it quivered with yearning. Spending his passion between her slack thighs ...

“Damn me to hell for being such a fool!” she exclaimed. “’Tis not like I have anything to lose.”

She’d given her maidenhead to a village boy when she was fifteen. Just once. The hasty encounter had been awkward and embarrassing. She’d felt nothing but rough groping, a coltish thrust or two, and a wet and sticky belly. It had been such a letdown that she’d never seen reason to repeat the act. Kisses, yes, and a little wrestling with the right man. But she’d never done it again. Never really wanted to. Until now.

Now, she could think of nothing else.

Harry strolled over to the hatch and rubbed against Lacy’s chin. Idly, she scratched the knob where his left ear should have been, and he purred contentedly. “I told him I was a whore to keep him from knowing I was a witch,” she ex plained to the cat. “Ye can see how I had to do that. But what kind of a ladybird would sleep in a cold bed with that much man so close by? I’m ruinin’ my own tale.” She rubbed Harry under the chin, and his yellow eyes became mere slits of gold as he quivered all over with pleasure. “What am I savin’ it for? A husband? I’ll take none, thank ye, sir. A husband is good for givin’ black eyes and bloody noses.”

Harry rolled onto his back and nibbled at the end of his tail. He opened one eye and regarded her solemnly.
Merowl.
It was a deep, rasping sound that conveyed a large measure of cat wisdom. Lacy interpreted the noise as a question for which Harry already had his own answer.

“Then you agree with me? A woman can change her mind about certain things.”

Harry closed his eye and began to purr again.

“You’re right. James can’t hurt me as long as I don’t let myself love him. I can satisfy my itch and his, and make the rest of the journey go faster if I act the role I’ve cast for myself.”

The cat got to his feet and butted his knotty head against her hand. She stroked his back carefully, running her hand from his head to the tip of his curling black tail. There was a definite crook about two inches from the end, evidence of an earlier break. “Poor old kitty,” she soothed. “You’ve had a rough life, haven’t ye.” She chuckled aloud. “You would have to be a black cat, wouldn’t ye? We make a fine pair, the witch of Cornwall and her familiar. Ah well, as the crow said, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ ”

And as she went back down the ladder into the cabin, her thoughts were still of James and how she would turn the coolness between them into something hot.

J
ames returned to the
Silkie
after nearly twenty-four hours ashore. He came back to the boat sober, but to Lacy he looked as though he’d had a rough night. His eyes were bloodshot, and there was a bruise under his left eye. His lower lip was split, and his clothing was rumpled and dirty.

Lacy was angry enough to blacken his other eye. She’d waited up for him until midnight, and when morning came without word, she’d begun to be afraid that he’d been kidnapped as a seaman for one ship or another. Press gangs roamed the waterfront of every town, searching for able-bodied seamen to replace missing crew. And if something happened to James, what would she do, marooned here in the Canaries, thousands of miles from home or the New World?

Seething, she remained below, watching through a crack in the hatchway as James unloaded a green leather gentleman’s traveling chest, a few wrapped bundles, and the water and food rations—including a live chicken and a bunch of bananas taller than she was—from a fishing shallop onto the
Silkie’s
deck. She watched as James paid the boatman with shiny French deniers, then waited until the small craft moved away.

“Where the hell have ye been?” she demanded, coming up out of the cabin. “And where did ye get the coin to pay him?” She waved in the direction of the shallop. “Did ye satisfy whatever slut ye slept with so much that she paid you instead of asking money for her night’s pleasure?”

James fixed her with a black scowl. “Get below. Let some of this waterfront scum catch sight of you and I’ll have to fight off a boarding party. We’re close to the African coast. Have you any idea what a red-haired woman would fetch in the slave markets of Guinea?”

Bristling, she held her ground. “I’m wearing a hat.”

His features hardened. “Aye. A wool hat, in this heat. So that any who set eyes on you will stare. Get below, woman; I’m in no mood to indulge your fantasies.” He crossed the deck, took rough hold of her shoulders, and spun her around. “Below, I say, before I—”

At that instant, the speckled hen sighted Harry. Squawking loudly, the chicken began to thrash about, beating its wings against the deck and kicking. Harry sprang at the bird just as the ties around its feet came undone.

“Harry, no!” Lacy cried.

The chicken fled along the deck with the black cat in hot pursuit. Harry pounced and feathers flew The terrified hen half-ran, half-flew to the tip of the bowsprit with the cat right behind it. It rose flapping into the air. Harry plunged straight off into the water.

“My cat!” Lacy ducked under James’s arm and ran to the bow.

Harry’s head bobbed up in the dirty water, his paws frantically digging, his yellow eyes wide and pleading. His pitiful
merowl
revealed the depth of his panic.

“Harry!” Lacy leaned over the water and stretched out a hand. “Here, Harry! Here kitty, kitty, kitty.” Her gesture was as futile as her call. Six feet of water separated them.

The cat went under and came up again, this time paddling away from the
Silkie.
The escaped fowl landed in the yards of a Dutch merchant vessel, much to the delight of the crew. Two sailors immediately started up the rigging after the chicken, cheered on by the enthusiastic shouts of their comrades.

Lacy took a deep breath and prepared to jump in to rescue the drowning cat. As she tensed her muscles, James pushed past her and dived into the harbor. Lacy’s mouth dropped open in astonishment as he swam toward the tomcat with powerful overhand strokes.

“Be careful,” she shouted. “He’ll scratch!”

James thrust out a hand and grabbed the cat by the back of the neck, then swam back to the pink, carefully holding Harry’s head above water. When he got close enough to the
Silkie
, he tossed the cat into the air. Harry landed with his front claws firmly dug into the gunnel and his back feet digging for safety. He shot up over the side and across the deck, vanishing through the cabin hatchway.

Lacy tossed James a rope and he pulled himself up with somewhat more dignity. She stared at him, suddenly speechless. “Why ... Thank you,” she said softly.

“Don’t mention it.” The laughter from the deck of the Dutch ship drew his attention, and he motioned to the open hatch. “I told you to go below,” he said brusquely.

She looked at him for a long moment. His clothes were dripping wet, forming puddles at his feet on the deck. A single chicken feather stuck to the lock of hair that hung over his forehead. “You’re something else, James Black,” she murmured.

“Are you deaf?” His dark eyes narrowed in unspoken threat.

“Yes, James,” she said meekly, and followed the cat below deck.

Harry was crouched along the far wall, his patchy fur plastered to his sides, revealing a multitude of old scars. “He’s some man, and you’re some cat,” Lacy said, taking an old shirt and rubbing Harry’s fur briskly. “I don’t think I’d want to make this voyage without either of you.”

James remained in his wet clothes, staying on deck until the tide turned and he was able to raise anchor and sail out of Santa Cruz. He waited until they were several hours away before calling Lacy up to help him with the provisions.

When she came topside, she brought him some biscuits and cheese, and a bottle of wine.

“I thought you were saving the wine,” he said. He pulled the cork and drank deeply. The sun and wind had dried his hair and garments, but the chicken feather was still stuck in place.

She reached up and plucked the feather. “You saved Harry’s life. That makes it an occasion.” She looked away, suddenly shy. It made no sense at all to her. She’d lived within arm’s reach of him for weeks. She’d watched him bathe every day, and she’d slept in the same bunk he did, although not at the same time. While one stood at the tiller, the other slept. Furthermore, she’d decided to allow him the ultimate intimacy. Why now could he make her blush with a mere look?

“Damned cat. I hate cats. I was hung over and not thinking straight. If my head didn’t feel twice its size, I’d have let him drown.”

“Well, ye didn’t ... and I’m glad.”

“Hmmph.” He shut his eyes, tilted back his head, and took another drink. “Just keep him away from me. If I see him, I may be tempted to use him for fish bait.”

 

A week passed and then another. Relentlessly, James steered the
Silkie
south, seeking the northeast tradewinds that would carry them across the vast stretches of the Atlantic to the West Indies. He barely spoke to Lacy, and he stayed at the tiller day and night, unwilling to let her take her turn as he had done before. His only rest came when he dozed for short periods sitting upright. He would give her no reason why, and he refused to tell her what he had done for the twenty-four hours he’d been missing in the Canaries.

Since she couldn’t occupy her hours at the tiller, Lacy set to arranging and dividing the food supplies. James’s acquisitions in Santa Cruz consisted of a large fish, four flitches of bacon, a bag of rice, some wilted turnips, a half-dozen oranges, and the bananas.

Lacy had eaten an orange every day for three days, leaving the rest for James. She’d also devoured the bananas, the first she’d ever seen; but after a week, she was getting sick of the sight and scent of them. Dozens of the long yellow fruit still lay on the deck, getting riper and riper with each passing hour. Finally, out of boredom, she began peeling and slicing them, and spreading them on a length of cloth to dry in the sun and wind. After a few abortive tries, she got the procedure right and had rows and rows of hard, round, yellow-brown disks to add to her larder.

Finally, in mid-morning of the sixteenth day, James altered the course and steered the
Silkie
southwest. “We crossed the Tropic of Cancer sometime in the night,” he informed her in a weary but triumphant voice. He pointed toward the billowing sails. “We’re in the trades. Watch the compass and hold firm on these marks.” He pressed the compass into her hand, and she saw the fatigue in his eyes and in the lines of his drawn features. “I’m going below for some sleep. Call me if you sight a sail.”

With those words, James bathed in sea water, shaved, and washed his hair, and changed into a fine cambric shirt with ruffled cuffs and gentleman’s cotton breeches he took from the green trunk. He brushed out his hair with her brush, braided it into a single plait, and tied it with a black silk ribbon. Then looking as though he might don a coat and attend some lordly affair, he bade her good night, went to the cabin, and stretched out on the narrow bunk.

Past being puzzled by James’s behavior, Lacy didn’t even ask him why a man would bathe and dress
before
he went to sleep. Shrugging off his oddness as more of his noble pretensions, she remained on deck throughout the day and into the night, tying off the tiller for an hour at a time to get something to eat, relieve herself, and catnap. The sunset that evening was a glory of bloodred and imperial purple, fading at last to the softest rose.

One by one the stars blinked on, filling the velvet night sky with glowing diamonds, each pinpoint growing larger and larger until it seemed that she could reach up and pick a sparkling handful. And when the moon came up over the water, it was large and full, as golden-orange as one of her grandmother’s prize pie pumpkins.

Memories of following her grandmother’s stout figure to the garden to pick one of those pumpkins flooded over her, and Lacy found her eyes clouding with happy tears. She blinked them away and smiled. “I tried to carry that pumpkin,” she murmured to Harry, “but it was too heavy for me. I stumbled and the pumpkin went rolling. It broke in three places, but Gram didn’t mind. She said it saved her the trouble of cutting and cleaning it in the house.”

Goosebumps rose on her arms and she hugged herself. If only she’d stayed on the farm with her grandparents ... If only Red Tom hadn’t come to take her home.

She shook her head. The old folks had lost their precious farm in the end. They’d been too poor to die in the house they loved so dearly.

“It won’t happen to me,” she whispered fiercely to the cat. “I’ll find this cursed treasure, or I’ll make my fortune in whatever way I have to. I’ll buy land that no man can take from me. And I’ll be buried in my own soil, where none can say me nay.”

Her fingers gripped the cat’s fur tightly. Her old dream hadn’t died. It clung to her still. Somehow, some way she’d make it come true. Red Tom hadn’t killed her dream. The white-hot irons of Newgate Prison couldn’t destroy it. “Land is what lasts,” she said softly. “Land lasts when love dies and men’s promises turn cold. And silver is what buys land ...”

There was plenty of land in America, so she heard tell ... rich land that went cheap. She’d have some of it, by God, or she’d die trying!

Gradually, her mood changed as the rhythms of wave and wind wove a net of complacency around Lacy, a feeling of safety and contentment that didn’t desert her when three huge whales surfaced around the
Silkie
sometime before dawn.

Lacy gasped in wonder. One moment the sea had been empty, and the next the air was filled with a strange musty smell—a scent of seaweed and decaying matter, and something more ... something that she’d never experienced. Wide-eyed, she stared at the whales, wanting to call James to see them and afraid that if she did, the sound of her voice would frighten them away.

The giant creatures of the deep seemed to float like black ghosts on the surface of the waves. Moonlight glistened on their shiny, wet skins and reflected off their obsidian eyes. The whoosh of air and water through their blowholes came loud in the soft night.

She’d seen whales before, off the coast of Cornwall, and she’d seen dead ones washed up on the beach, but she’d never been so close to a live one. The slight ripples of fear she experienced were overwhelmed by the awe she felt in the whales’ presence. “Ye be truly God’s creatures,” she whispered.

Harry’s reaction was less favorable. After a brief show of bravado, he retreated down the cabin hatch. Seconds later, Lacy heard a sleepy curse and next, the now-familiar thud of James standing up and hitting his head on the cuddy ceiling.

“James,” she called softly. “Come up. Quietly. Come and see our visitors.”

“What the—” He broke off as he caught sight of the first whale, only an oar’s length from where Lacy sat at the tiller. Barefooted and hair awry from sleep, he climbed slowly on deck and came to her side.

“Sweet wounds of God!” He exhaled and looked around him. The three whales had been joined by another and another, until there were whales as far as they could see into the darkness. The air reverberated with the sound of their heavy breathing and the hiss of spouts.

Lacy caught James’s hand and squeezed it. One flip of a tail and she knew the
Silkie
could shatter, her brave masts crumbling. She and James and Harry would go down into the endless deep, never to rise again.

From somewhere far off, a haunting cry pierced the air, followed by another and another. The whales’ song touched a chord in Lacy’s heart and made her eyes fill with tears. Never had she heard anything so lonely, so bittersweet.

James looked down into her face. Moonlight illuminated her features, dusting the awful scar with the magic of a tropic night and making her eyes twin stars. His heartbeat quickened, and he felt a sudden rush of emotion.

What was it about this damnable woman that made him want to protect her? Made him want to take her in his arms and hold her close forever?

She stood up and smiled, then quickly fastened the tiller in place with the rope and turned back to him. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” she murmured.

His voice stuck in his throat. “You’re beautiful,” he said thickly. He took a lock of her hair and raised it to his lips, running it though his fingers. It smelled as clean as an herb garden.