Microsoft Word - Sherwood, Valerie - Nightsong (26 page)

"Only the women," he said grimly. "Will you do me ,the honor to be their translator, senorita? For we have found none of them who speak Spanish."

"Yes," Carolina murmured dizzily. All dead, she was thinking. Kells had never done anything like that-not when he took Cartagena, not when he took Spanish vessels.

He had ransomed them, not killed them!

She was diverted from her thoughts by the first woman clambering aboard-a blowzy woman with broken teeth and the wildest assortment of clothing Carolina had ever seen, topped off with a multicolored bandanna wrapped around her large head.

One by one they came aboard, some laughing, some crying, some making eyes at the men aboard and flirting their skirts invitingly. But the last to arrive was the one who made an impression on Carolina.

She came aboard like a spitting cat and slapped the face of the young officer, who had handled her too familiarly as he helped her over the side, with a crack that snapped his head back.

"Insulting whelp!" she cried. "Watch where you put your hands!" Captain Avila was watching this byplay with some amusement. His dark gaze-approving in spite of himself-passed over this splendid bit of womanhood, her magnificent figure only accentuated by the fact that she was wearing men's clothing. A pair of fine upstanding breasts pushed against the white cambric of her tom shirt and through it came delectable glimpses of pale female flesh. Her dark trousers fit rather too snugly and her lower legs were bare-indeed she was barefoot. Her dark blue eyes snapped imperiously and a head of riotous red hair sprang like glowing flame to surround a commandingly beautiful face-and a face accustomed to command.

"This, senorita, is the famous Rouge," the Spanish captain told Carolina humorously.

But Carolina seemed not to hear him. A look of shock had spread over her lovely countenance, and for a moment she seemed to totter.

"Penny," she said faintly. "Dear God, it's really you! You're Rouge!"

ON TO HAVANA!

"You are the Silver Wench? You, my little sister? I knew that Christabel Willing was the Silver Wench, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined that Christabel Willing was Carolina Lightfoot!" Penny nearly doubled up with laughter.

"Indeed I can hardly credit that you are the woman called Rouge," Carolina countered ruefully.

The two women were sitting in Carolina's cabin, which she had hastily offered to share with "Rouge." Penny was lounging lazily back against the bunk with one long leg stretched out, her bare heel resting on the table in a pose her mother would have described sharply as "outrageous," and Carolina was perched on the edge of her chair, studying her beautiful sister, whom the family had so long regarded as "lost."

"Whatever happened to you, Penny? Why didn't we ever hear from you?"

"A great deal happened to me." Penny's brilliant smile flashed. "And do you really think the aristrocratic Lightfoot clan would have welcomed the news that a daughter of theirs was the notorious 'Rouge' of New Providence? What do you think Mother would have said? Or Father? Or Aunt Pet? Or you, for instance?" she added with a slightly jeering laugh.

"I think we would all have tried to rescue you," Carolina said soberly. "And Kells would certainly have done it."

Those dark blue eyes, so like her reckless mother's, held an amused glimmer. "But suppose I didn't want to be rescued?"

"I suppose we'd have done it anyway," sighed Carolina. "Plucked you out bodily and asked you if that was really what you wanted to do with your life!"

"Oh, don't be priggish!" exclaimed Penny. "From anyone else maybe, but I wouldn't expect priggishness from you, Carol!"

Carolina was in a mood to be argumentative. "Well, you must admit New Providence is a terrible place," she said. "Everybody says so."

"Even Kells?"

"Especially Kells."

Penny chuckled. "I never saw him, you know. I was told he'd visited New Providence but at the time I had other fish to fry."

"Yes, he told me. Of course he'd never seen you before so he didn't have any idea you were my sister, but he told me you were inciting two men to kill each other and when they lurched away, you followed them swinging a cutlass!"

"Oh, I probably did," shrugged Penny. "I was just having a tantrum, most like. I doubt I really hurt anybody." She gave Carolina a keen look. "By the way, where is Kells?"

"He's dead," said Carolina, feeling a lump rise in her throat. "His ship was just coming into Port Royal when the earthquake struck. The Sea Wolf went to the bottom, taking him with it."

"Oh, Carol, I'm so sorry!" exclaimed Penny, and real compassion lit her dark blue eyes. "I'd heard it was a real love affair-the Silver Wench and her buccaneer."

"It's true, I loved him deeply," said Carolina in a blurry voice. She got hold of herself.

If they talked about Kells, she'd be hard put not to burst into tears! "But enough about me, Penny. Tell me all that's happened to you and how you ended up in a godforsaken place like New Providence? All we knew was that you'd run away to the Marriage Trees with Emmett and had got as far as Philadelphia. Were you married in Maryland or in Philadelphia?"

"In Maryland, just over the border. The storm was tearing through the Marriage Trees-a big oak fell and nearly killed us-but we found a minister to perform the ceremony in a house that had a light in it. We woke him up. He was frightened by the storm and wanted to wait till morning but I aimed Father's big dueling pistol at him and he read the words over us in short order!"

"Father missed that pistol but he assumed it was stolen by one of the servants,"

marveled Carolina. "He never dreamed you took it!"

"Yes, well, Emmett had his points but he wasn't the best of protectors. I thought I'd better have a weapon handy in case we met brigands on the road and I had to protect him." Penny's short laugh spoke volumes.

Carolina studied her sister: That long elegant body, that complete self-composure, that relaxed mien of a lounging tigress. It was a face of great beauty she looked into, with a jaw just slightly square and dark blue eyes as reckless as her own. There was something wild and untamed and forever free about Penny with her flashing smile and her luxuriant red hair.

"I never understood why you married Emmett in the first place," she sighed.

"Personally, I never could stand him-his eyes were too small and he looked at everyone sort of calculatingly as if wondering how he could make them suit his purpose-for all that he was such a dolt!"

"You read him right," murmured Penny. She put her other bare foot on the table, leaned back and folded her strong arms behind her head. Her red hair framed a thoughtful face. "I ran away, of course, because I wanted to be free, mistress of my own fate. But I really think I married Emmett to spite my parents because they would have pushed me into a tiresome marriage with some dull-witted fellow who could

'take care of me' sooner or later. ..." She laughed. "And so I married another dull-witted fellow who was even worse and who expected me to take care of him!"

Carolina was not surprised. Emmett had, so far as she knew, no saving graces.

"Mother sent to Philadelphia when she found out you were there, and Emmett wasn't hard to find. But all he would say was that you'd quarreled and you'd left him. He never would say what you'd quarreled about."

"I don't doubt it!" Penny's eyes flashed, dark angry sapphires fringed by russet lashes. "Emmett was very sulky. He complained that I was too much for him-in bed, that is. He said I wore him out! Can you imagine?" She looked indignant. "Indeed, he said if he had to tumble about all night, he'd be much too tired ever to do any work the next day!"

Carolina could well imagine it; she had always had an instinctive dislike for self-centered Emmett. What she could not imagine was Penny's next words.

"But he'd worked it all out," she went on bitterly. "Since I was 'such a hot wench'--to use his phrase- and since I kept him so 'exhausted' –his words again-I could use up my extra energy and keep us both in luxury if I'd just accept the advances of certain gentlemen that he would find for me-and bring home to my bed!"

"Oh, no!" wailed Carolina. "I hope you didn't do it, Penny!"

"You're right, I didn't do it!" snapped Penny. "But that was what we quarreled about."

"He said you attacked him," remembered Carolina.

"I did," said Penny, aggrieved. "I threw everything in the room at him when he suggested he'd find other men for me--for money." Her smile was grim. "I blacked both his eyes and near broke his nose!"

"No wonder he wouldn't say where you were-he was afraid you'd tell what had happened!" Penny laughed her throaty laugh. It had a hard sound.

"I don't wonder Emmett didn't care to admit where I was! Oh, we'd quarreled, yes-but for him to seek revenge against me by selling me to a sea captain bound for Ireland

... !"

"Oh, he didn't!" cried Carolina, shocked out of her despondency.

"He did, indeed," affirmed Penny. "Bribed our landlady's two big sons to tie me up and deliver me to him in a sack down at the waterfront! He told them that I was a hellion and a harpy and that he was going to send me home to my family and leave me there! Of course, they believed him. And they had no love for me for from time to time I'd rejected both their advances! So one of them throttled me while the other tied me up and gagged me. They thrust me into a hempen sack"-she moved her body restlessly as if she could still feel its coarse roughness against her skin--"and I wasn't let out of that bag until we were four hours out to sea." Her teeth clashed together. "I can tell you that I came out of that bag fighting! And there was this coarse red-

bearded giant who said he'd seen me and he'd fancied me and when it turned out Emmett couldn't persuade me to-"

"So this sea captain was one of the 'gentlemen' Emmett intended you to entertain?"

gasped Carolina.

"He was indeed-and I'll never forget his coarse red beard that nearly took the skin off my face! He said he had bought me fair and square and he intended for me to keep Emmett's bargain. I gave him a most terrible kick that doubled him up. I had hoped at least to break a few of this scoundrel's bones but he was more durable than that. He rose from the floor with what I would term an ugly expression and reached out lightning fast with one of those cordlike arms of his and knocked me across the room.

Knocked me unconscious, he did."

Carolina was leaning forward, hanging on her sister's words. All this from the tall aristocratic beauty who had swept all before her when she danced the stately minuet to a tinkling harpsichord at the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg. She had always thought Penny born to wed at least a governor or a general!

"When I came to, I was tied down in the bunk and he was having his way with me."

"Oh, Penny!" choked Carolina. Her heart ached for her free-spirited sister, brought so low.

"He kept me mostly tied up for three days," remembered Penny grimly. "And on short rations. I was so weak I staggered when finally he let me come up on deck. He said that 'would teach me'-and it did!"

"What do you mean, it taught you?" faltered Carolina.

Penny gave her an amused look-on a man that would have been 'called a roue's look. "Would you believe it, that red-bearded captain made me discover that I truly had a taste for men? I mean, Emmett was nothing-he made me do all the work, it was very tiresome. But Red Beard plunged on me with joy-I refused to cooperate even though he knocked me about. I had begun to believe men were nothing and not worth the effort-having known only Emmett's inept attentions. But now in Red Beard's arms, even though I loathed him, I began to realize that something else existed, some joy I'd never really tasted, never really imagined, something beyond sex'<-the dark blue eyes were adventurer's eyes now, boldly' questing- "something past what Red Beard knew, past what I knew, something worth finding. Yes," she mused, "in Red Beard's arms I discovered I had a taste for men"-she laughed again, ruefully-

"just not a taste for him."

Carolina's head whirled. "Then Red Beard was the one who brought you to New Providence?" The red tresses shook a denial. Penny stretched out her long legs and crossed her slim bare ankles.

"What happened to him?" puzzled Carolina.

Penny gave her a lazy smile. "Lost at sea," she said significantly. She stretched her arms above her head and her magnificent breasts rippled. She was like a statue of a reclining Venus lying there stretched out, thought Carolina suddenly-a slightly depraved Venus. "Red Beard had a very handsome first mate. I decided I'd prefer his attentions to those of the captain. So I flirted with him-and he fancied me." She gave a wicked little laugh. "And somehow that led to a mutiny. And after some romantic sailing about from port to port, he turned pirate and brought me here to New Providence."

"So you really-" She had been about to say "caused the captain's death?" but Penny caught her thought and interrupted.

"Yes, I objected to being bought and sold like some prize mare! And I objected to being tied up and raped. And being beaten." Penny's beautiful face hardened. "So I had him killed," she said blithely. "After which I felt much better about everything. I felt free. I wasn't free, of course. The first mate made that clear soon enough. He made it clear with his fists." She sighed.

"Oh, Penny, if we'd only known!" Carolina's hands clenched. "We'd have got you out of it!"

"Yes, I dare say you would." There was a jolt and a creaking, scraping sound. "The tide's at the flood- they'll be pulling us off this sandbar. How did your captain ever manage to pile you up on this sandbar, anyway?"

"Inept as Emmett," Carolina said whimsically.

"Do you know where they're taking us?"

"I heard them say Havana."

Penny nodded her red head thoughtfully. "I suppose that's the logical place but I was hoping for somewhere in Europe-Paris, perhaps, or Marseilles. After all, it was a joint attack-French and Spanish. Even Toledo would be a change after life in these islands!"

"Oh, Penny, you couldn't wish us to be taken to Spain! We'd be burned as heretics there!"