Gallant Rogue (Reluctant Heroes Book 3) (9 page)

Chloe
. He had to stop thinking of her on such familiar terms, lest he use her first name in polite conversation. His close association with her family did not grant him the right to address her so in public. He had to remember that doing so in front of others would imply an intimacy that might be taken the wrong way and harm her reputation. It was the woman who always suffered for such things.

Stumbling toward his desk, Jack sat down and burped. The men had had a whooping good time, exchanging lewd jokes and stories and even entering into a little good-natured wager at cards. He reached into his jacket pocket and extracted his winnings, several guineas. The clatter of coins rubbing together was a lovely song he preferred to hear often, particularly if it was won from the gaming tables.

Donovan called him an addict once, years ago, when Jack first lost his fortune. Donovan compared Jack’s gambling to those enslaved by strong drink or opium. Jack was trying to reform. These days, he never wagered anything more than he carried on his person. No high stakes.
That
had been folly, wagering all he had for the thrill of winning. He'd learnt his lesson years ago, when he recklessly wagered his ship in a game and lost her. She had been fine ship, was
Amelia’s Revenge
. He mourned the loss of his ship almost as much as the lady for whom he’d named the vessel.

Another robust belch emerged from his gullet and was given free rein to cavort about his cabin. Jack reached for the miniature in that secret little cubby within his desk. He was not drunk and yet his fingers seemed thicker this evening than usual and his coordination was a little skewered. He fumbled, trying to hold the wrapped portrait in his clumsy grip. At last, he set it on the desk and exhaled his irritation as he stared down at the blue velvet fabric he kept the treasure wrapped in to preserve it from the salt and the damp of the sea.

Amelia. She was to be his wife. What would his life be like now if she had never left Boston to travel to Ceylon with her father to purchase those damned silk fabrics? He would be married to Amelia now. They would have a passel of children. She wouldn't have been on that ship, wouldn't have been kidnapped by Barbary pirates or sold to an Arab prince. Jack would never have met Donovan in the east. There would have been no reason to turn to piracy to avenge the horrible death of his beloved twenty years ago.

A death he might have prevented, if he hadn't arrived with her ransom a week late.

Too late
. The words pecked at his conscience often, like buzzards over a rotting corpse.

Jack loosened his cravat. He ran his fingers through his hair, freeing it from the restraining queue. He touched the velvet fabric with reverent fingers. Amelia’s image had become an icon, a sacred painting, a holy relic representing all he had lost in life.

The painting called to him. Not actual whispers, as one might imagine in a good old fashioned gothic novel some women fancied. He liked to admire Amelia's portrait sometimes and forget everything but the enchantment of being in love. He’d been a young man when he proposed to Amelia. Barely twenty-two and full of noble ideas.

He cleared his throat. Jack unwrapped the miniature from its protective sheath.  The gilded frame seemed to sparkle in the candlelight. He caressed the painted wood, the pads of his fingers remembering its contours like an old woman feeling her rosary beads.

Amelia
. She was youth and innocence personified. He admired the soft, oval face of alabaster, the sapphire eyes that seemed to glow with delight, and that sweetness of her smile. Her head was tilted slightly. Wave upon wave of golden hair framed that delicate complexion. He stared longingly at the image of his Amelia at seventeen, the year she sailed east and was lost to him forever.

An abrupt crash and the sound of tinkling glass made him turn about in his chair to see what would cause such a disturbance in the empty room.

The whiskey glass on the table behind him was now on the floor, so many shards and splinters glittering in the low glow of the wall lantern. He looked about the cabin for the culprit. The windows were closed. No errant breeze was at fault. And as for animals, he knew the cat Red Jami kept as a pet was below decks at this time of night, hunting rats in the hold.

A cool wind moved past him, ruffling the hair on his nape and making his heart seize with an old fear he’d rather not revisit.

“Jack.”
  The breeze whispered his name in a faint, feminine tone.

Amelia never manifested before him. Not once. He often felt her presence but was uncertain if it was his imagination or too much strong drink. She did appear once to another woman, a frightened young woman much like herself----the count’s young bride. Amelia gave Lady Elizabeth a message to relay to him from beyond the grave. The message was simple: embrace life. He tried, but for some reason life kept eluding his embrace.

The miniature beneath his fingertips was snatched up by invisible hands. Jack watched, paralyzed by shock as the portrait was flung viciously across the room.

“No!” he shouted as he shot out of his chair and scrambled to where the portrait had been flung and now resided on the floor with Angelic Amelia smiling up at him. He crouched down, determined to retrieve it before it suffered further abuse.

His fingers barely touched the cherished portrait before it lifted up and away from his reach. The picture hovered in front of him and then was slammed against the wall repeatedly, as if the intention of the invisible abuser were to destroy it altogether.

“Stop!” he commanded as he rose to retrieve it. “Enough, I say. Leave me that small trinket to remember you by.”

The portrait hung in mid-air, as if the spirit of his betrothed were considering his words. It danced a little, moving slightly, and then was banged against the interior wall again with deliberate malice. The interior wall abutted Donovan’s cabin. He feared the banging might disturb Chloe at this late hour.

“Oh, you cheeky lass! Stop I say. Gazing at your image does me no harm. It soothes me.”

He was drunk; he knew it. He had to be. Why else was he speaking to the air?

The door to the hall opened and Red came in, looking frumpy as any lad would if he’d forgotten his chore and been roused from his bed to do his duty in the night.

“Sir?” The lad gave him a queer look, his freckled mug rumpled with confusion. “Do ye need a hand in findin’ yer bed again?”

The implication stung, as the little blighter was implying his captain was too drunk to find his way to his own berth and pass out. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time it happened, but tonight, such was not the case.

“Silence, you cheeky little brat.” Jack was quick to command the child. “Don’t speak disrespectfully to your captain or you’ll find yourself being keel-hauled just for good measure.”

“Gor—saints alive,” Red Jami’s eyes became as round as shillings as he stared at the floating miniature. “A spirit!” The boy dropped his tray on the floor and backed away.

“You see the painting floating, too?”

“It’s a haunted object. Run, sir,” the boy cried in a panicked pitch and then ran. The hall door was slammed hard as Red made his exit, leaving Jack alone with guilt and regret.

Jack wasn’t going to run. It was Amelia. Why should he run? He'd failed her; he deserved her wrath.

The drawer to his desk slid open on its own and papers were hurled about in a maelstrom of fury. He watched as they dropped to the plank floor like large feathers, floating slowly and silently around a slightly hazy form in the center of the storm. He could just make out a womanly shape. It was transparent, like a wispy cloud of smoke with a personality.

Was this what it was like to see spirits? Donovan’s wife was a seer. She spoke of her talent as being a curse, not a gift. He couldn’t hear Amelia speaking, but he was able to make out her veiled form as she tossed the contents of his desk drawer about in her search for some item she thought important.

The figure dimmed and faded. A folded parchment was held in mid air. Amelia’s form had evaporated like mist before the sun, but a single piece of parchment was floating across the room toward him. Jack grasped the note. It was solid, temporal in his fingers, unlike the now invisible specter who delivered it.

He shuddered inwardly. His gullet filled with dread.

Jack knew what that paper said. It would say what it had always had said:

Stop mourning me, fall in love, marry, have babies. Embrace life.

The parchment in his hand was rattled as if to remind him of the clear message she sent him long ago through Lady Elizabeth. Donovan had written it down on parchment for him.

Jack had kept it. Shoved it in the desk drawer and never really looked at it again. He looked at her portrait, took solace in the memory of her during the course of his solitary life. Having loved once and lost that love was better than having never loved at all.

The portrait at his feet skidded across the floor, as Amelia’s ghost kicked it. He followed its progress across the room. It went a full yard and a half before coming to rest on a chair leg.  

Another crash made him start. A metal ink pot went hurling past his head to clink against the far wall. As he watched, dark ink splattered all over the whitewashed wall. The sound of the small brass pot clanking on the floor was the only noise in the room as he was certain even his heart had stopped beating in that terrifying instant.

The black, spidery drips of ink slowly moved down the wall, gravity causing the fluid to seek the floor. Amelia was not finished. Words started to emerge from the dark splotches:
 

Stop mourning . . . Embrace Life . . .
True love lies beyond the w---

The writing stopped. The last word remained unfinished. The spirit either meant to leave him wondering or had run out of energy halfway through her efforts.

Jack released his breath and was surprised to find it visible, like steam. The atmosphere had grown that cold suddenly. He wrapped his arms about his torso and stared at the wall, the message clear. Mostly clear. Precisely where true love waited for him was still a mystery.

Beyond the waters? Beyond the west or the West Indies? Beyond Wales?

She picked a good time to stop, as one could speculate endlessly on the last word. 

He inclined his head toward the cabin door, and then the large windows comprising the wall adjacent to the door. Jack frowned as he pondered the meaning of the riddle. He looked again at the cabin door and then opposite the wall before him with ink dripping down it. The words were written on the wall between his suite and the count’s.

Jack stared with astonishment at the black words before him.

True love waits . . . beyond . . . the wall?

What was this, a great cosmic joke? First Old Barnaby nattering on to him about enchanted biscuits and Voodoo spells, now a female ghost, an adolescent ghost if truth be told, was destroying his personal property and writing cryptic messages on his cabin wall.

Chloe was a grieving widow. It would be bad form to pursue her. Bad form indeed.

She would begin her life anew in Spain, and Jack's place was firmly established on the other side of the ocean. A greater gap could hardly exist between them.

*     *     *

So many things nibbled at Chloe as she lay in the strange, rocking bed and tried to fall asleep. Worries, expectations, and the excitement of starting a new life in a different land kept her mind churning with questions. What would her family be like? Would they accept her?

Would they approve of her?

Would she have fat female cousins with dark moustaches? Would they be thin women with sharp features and even sharper personalities?

What about Uncle Miguel? Would he resemble Papa? 

She smiled in the darkness and rolled onto her back. How handsome Papa seemed when she was a little girl. Papa would sit near her bed as she lay tucked in with her childish braids draped across the white pillows. The window to her room would be left open at night so she could gaze out at expansive sea beyond their island home and count the stars as she slipped into the land of dreams.

“Once, long ago in the Spanish land called Andalusia, there was a little princess. She was loved dearly by her father, as her mother had died and she was all he had left in the whole world. She had long black hair as fine as silk, like yours, dearest.”
Papa would whisper in that sugary tone that conveyed his love. His large nose would wiggle in amusement, making his full black moustache ripple beneath it as he suppressed a grin.
“And she had skin as pale as alabaster , like yours. When you’re grown, we’ll sail to Cadiz and then go off to Madrid to present you to King Carlos and the Spanish court. Your Uncle Miguel is a powerful marquis; he represents our family to King Carlos. He must be the one to present you at court, not I, dearest.” 

Papa’s expression would darken then, as some unwelcome memory would rise up to mar the pride she heard in his voice whenever he spoke of taking her to Spain.

“But, Papa, my skin isn’t pale alabaster, like the princess’s in the story. See, I’ve a little bit of color.”
She held up her tawny hand for emphasis.

“Oh, my pepita! You play outside near the beach all day. What do you expect but for the sun to darken your pretty white skin?  When you are a young lady, you must stay out of the sun or wear a veil to protect your delicate skin. The Spanish Donnas wear mantillas made of lace to cover their faces when they leave the house. My naughty little girl!”
He would wag a finger at her and make clicking noises with his tongue
. “Such a hoyden. A proper lady’s fair complexion distinguishes her from the peasant’s wife who must toil beneath the hot Andalusian sun all day.”

“Yes, Papa. When I’m old enough to wear long gowns, I’ll not play out in the sun any longer,”
Chloe promised.
“By then I will have friends, I should hope, so I won’t need to seek out the turtles and gulls for playmates.”