Paradise Island (7 page)

She had been sailing towards the warm winds that would push them to Paradise. Her home. Her haven. It was as much to the hundreds of women that lived there and worked its lands. Women from all walks of life resided there, personally invited by Estelle, Claire, or Dalia, and Estelle had finally felt the full benefits of what a community should be.

Women there did the things the rest of the female population of the world only dreamt they could do. There was profitable trade, schools for the children and education for the women who had never had the chance to learn to read and write, a fair governing system, food and water. Women there lived without the threat of a man's world where they could own no property, have no education to better themselves, where they could not provide for themselves, where they and their children lived at the whim of men.

On Paradise there were no bad husbands, no slack relatives, no governing rules made by men for the sole betterment of men, and where women were considered no more than pieces of furniture. It was a sanctuary, a shelter away from the rest of the world. It had taken years to build and it needed to stay a secret if it was to remain so.

Estelle stole a look at Gregory who stalked beside her, dark and brooding. He hadn't spoken a word since she'd left him to follow her in the surf. The wind picked at his open shirt and flicked a strand of raven hair across his forehead. She glanced at his chest, bare to the open wind. The hard muscles beneath the skin undulated with each step he took. She read the power in those sinewy muscles, honed by years of warship activity. Coupled with his height, his lean, long legs, his determination, his intelligence and obvious anger at being held a captive, would make him a formidable force.

She needed to keep him manacled. There was a sense of security knowing the panther within him was caged, and she didn't have the benefit of her crew surrounding her. Keeping him bound was akin to securing a wolf to a tree with a short lead. It would keep the wolf at bay for a time, but when it tired of being locked down, its anger and fury would reach no ends until it was freed.

He resembled a wolf, with his raven hair, tossed by the wind and sea in bedraggled strands. The night created deep shadows where hair met skin, made the planes of his cheeks more hollow and rigid, his dark eyes more onyx-solid and his sleek brows tilt downward with a watchful vengeance. She knew he was quietly biding his time. Like the wolf, he would have endless patience. She would need to keep her wits about her.

As she neared the wall of the cliff, she made out an irregular, darker shadow at the base and made towards it, hoping that it would be some sort of shelter where they could see out the rest of this miserable night. The thin, translucent moonlight picked up an outcrop of jagged rock. There was a stone or two sunk into the sand, leading to a towering stack of boulders. Tucked in the middle was a black opening just large enough for a man to slip through.

“We need to see inside, to check that it isn't wet, or inhabited by something a little more hostile than water,” Gregory announced.

“Indeed.” She lifted a sleek eyebrow.

Estelle gathered some seaweed and searched between the rocks for pieces of driftwood. She found some sticks that were dry. She bound the seaweed and smaller shards of driftwood to the end of a longer stick and reached for her tinder box that was in her hip satchel. Thank goodness she wore it as a matter of habit, securing it about her waist wherever she was going, no matter if she needed any item from it or not. Having lived by her wits for so many years, she took nothing for granted.

It took her a moment to light the tinder. A flame burst into life and set the rest of the dried seaweed alight. She moved to the entrance to the cave, carefully crawled through the entrance and cautiously peered inside. The flames illuminated the cave. It was dry and small, and large enough for the two of them to rest and see out the night. The sandy floor was littered with dry seaweed and broken lengths of driftwood. The ceiling was low, too low for her to stand upright, but that didn't bother her. It suited their purposes well. Estelle planted the lit stick in the center of the cave and squeezed back out.

“The space will do us well. Go in and I'll gather some wood for a fire to dry ourselves,” Estelle said.

Gregory stood and lifted his bound wrists. “I could help you if I had free hands.”

“I'm not stupid enough to let you free,” Estelle said. “Do what you want, but I'm making a fire inside that cave because I intend to dry out. If you want to stay out here and freeze, so be it. But I'm not so ruthless that I would not offer you some measure of comfort. Besides, I need you alive and well for you to attend your trial.”

“That trial is sinking further and further away. I'm sure you agree we have more pressing issues at stake,” Gregory said.

“Nevertheless, it will still happen,” Estelle said. She stooped to gather an armful of wood and carried it through the cave entrance, set it into a pile and crawled back out. She needed to get a good fire going. This night was going to be uncomfortable enough as it was. Gregory watched her silently and helped her collect the driftwood as best he could. Before long they had enough to keep a fire going for the next few hours.

Estelle ignored Gregory's penetrating black stare as she set about building a fire in the middle of the cave. She took one side of the cave while Gregory took the other, settled into the fine, soft sand and waited for the warm flames to lick life back into her bones. She watched him shuffle uncomfortably against the rock wall, moving awkwardly with his arms pinned in front of him by the heavy manacles. She felt a twinge of guilt at furthering his discomfort, but she couldn't risk removing his manacles, even for a moment of relief. For this night, until she knew more about her situation, he would just have to endure the discomfort.

Eventually the flames did their work and Estelle relaxed against the rock wall and closed her eyes, her extremities sufficiently warmed. Her mind wandered to the attack on her ship. In her mind's eye she watched the ships melt from the horizon, seemingly from the vapors that bound the sea to the sky. Black dots, coming fast, faster than anything she had ever witnessed before, intent on reaching her ship, destroying her crew. How could Cutlass have sailed so fast, and known their location?

“I don't know how you were attacked with such vicious force.” It was as if he read her mind. She cracked open her eyes, found his and was locked in a bottomless black stare that had her wanting to know what his thoughts were.

“You have a theory?” she asked. She shuffled straighter against the cave wall, leaning with her arms resting on her upturned knees.

“Although I am a captain of the Royal Navy, I am still not sufficiently important to warrant an attack as extreme, or with as many ships, as we just witnessed.”

She rolled the words in her mind. The disjointed shock of being in one place and then the other in a split second was wearing off and she found she could reason again. He was right. She hadn't expected such a chase as this. The
Wanderlust
sailed as fast as any rig in the Navy. At best they would have kept the same distance, with the gap neither increasing nor decreasing as they sailed the same winds, the same water. Sometimes those sorts of chases could last for days.

“Do you think it is something more than that?” She was, in fact, open to his ideas, no matter that she knew they would be those of a man desperate for release from his bonds.

“I do not know why Jack Cutlass would give chase as viciously and attack, even knowing I was on board. I am a nobody, new on the circuit, but my intentions for having my own ship, having a crew beneath my command may have been more widely known than I originally thought.”

Estelle narrowed her eyes. “Go on.”

“I think this involves your father,” Gregory said. His face was set in determined stone. There was not a flicker or a twitch, and as far as she could determine he was not lying.

“He died a long time ago,” Estelle said. She had to establish if this was a ruse, or could possibly be the truth as he saw it.

He hadn't broken their locked gazes. Instead the steely black depths glinted and burned. His mouth flattened to a harsh line and he drew in a large, steadying breath. “He is not dead. You never gave me a chance to explain about what happened that night. You blame me for his death because I went with him and I came back and he didn't, but I swear to you there was foulness about the situation I still haven't been able to make sense of in all this time.”

“Explain.” Her voice was low and flat.

“There were just the two of us on that mission. Your father knew something was amiss, but couldn't put his finger on it. We were meant to intercept a letter from one of the Crown's couriers at midnight. It was top secret correspondence about news from abroad. Elias made me hide in the shadows of an alley, when I should have been at his side. I was young then, it was a decade ago, and didn't have the experience I have now to know any better. Maybe if I had been at his side nothing would have happened. But he was insistent and I was under orders. I saw two men approaching him. They were hidden in shadows, dressed in black. It was dark that night. There was no moon and the sky was hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds. There was something wrong. It took me a moment to pull my revolver and set the trigger. I heard him cry out and then there was silence. I ran from the alley, but there was no one there. I looked for him, looked for some evidence that he had ever been there, a trail of blood, anything, but there was not a trace. No sound. No footsteps running away. No voices. Your father was a large man, and even though there were two of them he would have been heavy to drag if he had been attacked. There was simply no trace that they had ever been there at all. It was as if they melted into the night.”

“It can't be possible,” Estelle said.

“I am here, nearly drowned, dripping wet in some cave off a coast I've not seen before in the middle of the night, when not an hour ago I was in direct sunlight. I believe anything can be possible.”

“My father can't have vanished without a trace. There must have been some evidence you missed,” Estelle said.

Gregory shook his head. “There was nothing. Not even a scrape on the ground. I returned to headquarters and explained what had happened. A few questions were asked, but all enquiries led to nothing and people in charge lost interest. No leads were followed, no conclusions were made. It seemed as though no one wanted to know the answer to the question of what had happened that night.”

She had found the same when she had questioned the authorities about her father. “But my father was influential. He had status in the military. He was next in line to become a General. How could his death be passed over like it was?” Estelle asked.

“He never died. If there is anything I am certain about, it is that. His disappearance was swept under the rug on purpose.”

“Then why didn't you go back, track him down, help him come back to me. He was all that I had and when he went, I had nothing. Not even a roof over my head.”

“I made enquiries. I discovered a few things, but none that made any sense. Days went by and became months then years. I came back to you the first chance I had. But when I got to your house, you were gone.”

“I was thrown out,” Estelle said.

“They told me you went to live with a cousin.”

“I have no family. They threw me out on the streets with nothing more than the clothes on my back.”

Gregory shifted uncomfortably against the rock wall of the cave. His chin notched in a tick and his shoulders strained in a tight, straight line. “I give you my word that is what happened.”

She rested her head back against the rocky cave wall. “I don't know that you came for me. There is no proof of that, and your word means nothing to me.”

“I give you my word as a captain of the Royal Navy.”

Estelle scoffed. “Now your word means less than before.”

“I have always planned to find your father. Over the past years, I have made personal enquiries — secret enquiries. I have never let the matter of your father drop, and now recently I have made some inroads into your father's disappearance.”

Estelle squared him with a sharp gaze. “Go on.”

“I have researched an unknown land. A land where people who have disappeared without a trace, thought long dead, are jailed. I believe that your father is one of those poor souls. He has been imprisoned for all these years.”

“How can you believe that is even true? I have never heard of such a place and why would it even exist?”

“It has taken me all this time, all these years. Estelle, I was close to your father. Had I known my own, I would like to believe that he would be like Elias. Finding out what happened to him has been my personal mission all these years. I can prove to you that your father is still alive by finding that land.”

Estelle shook her head. “Even if he was alive, even if that was possible, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

Gregory leaned forward, pinning her with a hard stare. His eyes burned with a glowing fire. Even through the billowing material of his shirt, she saw his arms tense, the muscles bunching into tight knots as he sat forward. “I have coordinates. I know the location. In fact, I am so sure where he is, I was about to take my ship and my crew there next week to find him. I had it all plotted onto a map secreted in my cabin. But now I have been kidnapped by his long lost daughter. I have no map, no ship, no crew, and no hope. You alone are the one who has stopped your father's only chance of rescue.”

The interplay of flickering light and shadow played across the hard planes of his face. Tension rode towards her on palpable waves. He sat rigidly, regarding her beneath sleek slanted brows.

It would be tempting to believe him, take him at his word. His voice was laced with sincerity, but that meant nothing. He was a tactician, a captain in the navy, no mean feat. He knew how to speak to people. Knew what to say, how to say it and had kept his winning argument for last, timed perfectly for when she might falter against the lure of his words.