Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (51 page)

“Here, I go by Will,” I said. “And you look well. I am delighted to see you, but confounded and concerned as to the why of it.”

“I know,” she said with a nod. Her eyes flicked to my companions.

“Let me introduce you…” I began to say.

“There is no need. Hello, Gaston,” she said and embraced my matelot as heartily as she had me.

He returned her embrace with sincere warmth, and smiled at me over her head. It struck me that perhaps meeting my sister might have been a disconcerting thing for him; but he showed none of the awe or confusion he had experienced when first meeting Miss Vines, and I was relieved I had not worried about such a thing before, and need not do so now.

She whispered something to him, and he whispered a reply.

“You are not drinking the water, are you?” he asked seriously when he released her.

She shook her head. “Nay, nay, Will explained of the little things swimming in it in his letter. I am quite fascinated. Agnes says she has ordered lenses so that we might observe them.”

“So you received my second letter?” I asked.

“Aye, just before…” She smiled. “That is part of my tale. But first, I assume these are Pete and Striker.” She turned and smiled at them.

The wolves froze in surprise, and I thought the pair of them might hurl themselves off the stoop were she to attempt to embrace them.

Thankfully, she did not.

“You wrote of us?” Striker asked incredulously.

“What’Ja Say?”

“He said you are two of the finest men he could ever hope to meet,”

Sarah said. “He lauded your friendship, loyalty, and expertise at all things buccaneer.”

“Well, Lady, you know your brother suffers from delusions, don’t you?” Striker said with a hesitant smile.

“I think not,” Sarah said with a grin. “I think I shall take him at his word on this matter, and expect great things of you.”

I was not so delusional I did not realize she was being flirtatious.

It made me wonder how much she had understood of many things I said in my letter. But then again, Striker was a handsome man, and bore some resemblance in height, build, and face to Sarah’s latest unfortunate love interest, Shane: I had noted the resemblance myself when first I met him.

I was not the only one to interpret her words so. Striker flushed a little, and Pete frowned. I would have to speak with her at length. As it was, putting her before Striker in his recent mood was like waving meat in front of a dog. I silently cursed myself for not thinking of anything but my own concerns.

“And I believe you have met Theodore,” I said, before the pause after her words could become awkward.

She cooled quickly, and gave him a curt nod but did not meet his gaze. “We have met.”

Theodore gave her a compressed smile and nod in return.

He had mentioned she was not trusting of him. I thought it might be due to a perception that he was our father’s man. If true, this spoke much of her current opinion of our father.

“I did not write at length of Theodore in my letters,” I said quietly, lest Coswold or others be listening beyond the door. I stepped over to put an arm around Theodore’s shoulders. “But I feel I am as blessed to have his friendship as any other I have met on Jamaica. I did not write of him because he walks a fine path between the duties of his profession to our father, and his friendship with me, and I was not sure whose hands my letter might fall into.”

Sarah’s eyes widened at this new information and she nodded quickly. “Mister Theodore, I meant you no discourtesy…”

“Nay,” he said quickly. “Your brother is too kind. And Striker is correct; your brother suffers from mental impairment.”

“Aye, it is well known,” Gaston said. “If his reasoning was not impaired, he would not love all of us as he does.” He grinned at me.

I snorted my amusement and addressed Sarah. “I do not feel I am so poor a judge of character. Where should we speak? I believe you have a tale to tell.”

“We cannot go in there,” she said with a rueful grimace and gestured at the door behind her. “And I feel… I would like some wine for the telling of it.”

“Do you wish to tell it before so many?” I asked, “or should we…”

“Nay, I feel I will be fine in the telling of it to others,” she said quickly. “It is the remembering of it I seek fortification for.”

I nodded, still not sure how concerned I should be. “Well, let us retire to our house. We can buy a barrel on the way.”

Sarah’s eyes shot wide and she muttered an unladylike thing under her breath. “I forgot Agnes. I must rescue her. Hold a moment.” She slipped inside.

She returned a moment later with a very relieved girl in tow.

“Mister Will, Mister Gaston, how wonderful it is to see you,” Agnes gushed. Then she quickly stepped very close to ask, “When you marry Miss Barclay, sir, will I have to serve her?”

“Nay,” I assured her quickly. “Do not trouble yourself.”

A great sigh of relief escaped the girl. I thought it likely my bride was an unholy terror.

As we began walking, Sarah muttered apologies for abandoning Agnes in the King’s House; and Agnes looked as if she would forgive my sister anything, including being left alone in a room of plantation wives. I sighed to myself. The poor girl was dooming herself to another disappointment of the heart.

As we continued to the house, Sarah asked Striker of our time on Cow Island. Truly, Sarah’s gaze did not leave him any more than Agnes’

gaze left her. I was glad we would be sailing soon, and I had not even met the damn bride yet. I was seeing enough trouble brewing with the women I liked.

While I bought wine, Striker told the tale of Gaston and me being charged by the bull. As always, he was the consummate storyteller, and this for an event he only witnessed in the aftermath. Sarah was a most attentive listener.

I watched Pete. Thankfully, the Golden One seemed far more concerned with determining the similarities between Sarah’s features and my own than about how her gaze traveled over his matelot.

He would look at me, and then her, and then frown and look at me again, and mutter, “The Eyes, Wrong Color Though,” and other such comparisons.

As we finished the last leg of our short journey through Port Royal, I pulled Gaston aside. “We must keep a modest distance between Sarah and Striker.”

He sighed. “I was hoping you had seen. Oui, before Pete sees it.”

“I will speak with her as soon as I can get her alone,” I said.

“It may do little good,” he said. “Even I, who have seldom witnessed courtship between men and women, can see they are enamored of one another.”

I sighed. “If Pete were not involved, I would be delighted.”

“You are mad,” Gaston teased.

“Non,” I said, “Striker is no longer the boy he once was. I feel he would do well by any woman he was to marry.”

“Oui, but Will, he is a commoner. Your father would never allow it.”

“Damn that,” I said. It had not occurred to me. “Well,” I added,

“it may be that my father’s opinion upon the matter no longer has consequence or meaning.”

“Will,” Gaston said firmly, “your sister is a formidable opponent.”

“I suppose she is.” And I knew Pete’s opinion would carry great consequence.

We were soon all seated around the dining table in the front room, with cups of wine in hand, and young dogs running about our feet. I seated Sarah at the end of the table, with me on one side of her and Agnes on the other.

“Well, would you like the short version or the long version?” Sarah asked.

“I believe I would like the entirety of the tale,” I said, “but perhaps you could start with the most pertinent details. Have you been harmed in any way?”

“Nay, not as you might think,” she said quickly, and patted my arm in reassurance. “Though I would have been, if I had not taken to sleeping with a pistol. I shot him, Will. Yet he is not dead, or at least was not when I left England.”

The air was driven from my lungs without sound. It was simply gone; and I found myself taking a long breath to keep from becoming lightheaded. The implications were staggering.

“Where?” Gaston asked.

Her gaze shifted to him. “Here.” She pointed to her right shoulder.

“He was as far from me as you are now. However, my pistol was a piece designed for a lady’s hand. It shoots a small ball, and I had been careful not to use too much powder, though perhaps I did not use enough. He was drunk, though, and it made him drop a lamp and a bottle, and in the resulting chaos I was able to escape him. So it served my purpose.”

She looked to me again. “He is now burned as well, along with part of the new London house.”

“We’re talking about this cousin of yours, correct?” Striker asked.

I found my voice. “Aye, our second cousin, Shane.”

Remorse settled over me. I told Sarah, “I should not have left you. I should have killed him. I should…”

A strong arm came around my shoulders and familiar fingers were on my lips. I turned and found myself trapped by intense green eyes.

“Stop,” Gaston whispered in French. “She is here. You are here. And it is selfish of me, but if you had killed him, we would never have met.

Thus I am very pleased that you did not.”

His words tore the thickening mantle of melancholy asunder, and I felt caressed by a reassuring breeze. I kissed his fingertips and gently pulled them away. “Thank you.”

“He is correct,” Sarah said in French. “There is no need to have regret over what cannot be changed.”

Gaston stiffened as he realized –as I did – that she spoke French.

“I know,” I said in English. “Yet I fear that one day we will truly rue that he did not die at one of our hands. If he is now wounded and scarred, he is an angry boar and the future a dense thicket we may not see him charge out of until damage is done. What relief will his death bring then, if yet another has fallen to his tusks before he is brought down?”

“That is why he must not know that I am here,” she said. “Father swore he would not tell him…”

“Father swore he would protect you,” I said.

“Aye, I know it,” she sighed. “Sometimes, Will, I fear they are a beast with two heads: what one knows, the other does shortly.”

“What was our father’s response to your having to shoot Shane?” I asked.

She considered the table and toyed with a grease smudge with shaking fingers. “His response was the reason I decided to flee.”

I captured her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “You might as well tell it all now.”

She nodded and smiled weakly before taking another gulp of wine and composing herself again. When she spoke, it was directly to me, and I felt she had rehearsed her tale often during her voyage.

“I believe I mentioned in my letter that Shane was none too pleased,”

she began. “I do not know what was said betwixt Father and him, but Father decided it was best if Shane remained in London and oversaw the rebuilding of the house there. Father spent a good deal of his time there as well, and all was as it had been in many ways, until Elizabeth’s wedding in June. In the chaos involved in that event, Shane asked to speak with me, alone. I took my friend Mary and my maid, and we went for a walk with him in the garden. Shane was accompanied by an acquaintance of his and his manservant. In due course, Shane maneuvered to get me alone, and the women I was with were too silly to realize they should intervene.”

I frowned.

She shook her head. “Do not regard me so. I was carrying a dagger.

So we talked, or rather he did. He pledged his love to me and said Father had abused his intent. He said he was confused and hurt by my lack of faith in him. In return, I told him nothing of my conversations with you. I did not attempt to justify my change of heart in any manner.

This frustrated him no small amount. I flatly stated that it was not meant to be and that it would be best if we went on with our lives as friends. At which point, he grabbed my shoulders and attempted to shake me. I put the knife to his ribs and called for Mary and my maid.

The knife brought so much hatred to his eyes it verged on madness, and I felt terror to my very core.”

“I know,” I said quietly.

“Aye, you alone do. I related the event to Father and he…” She sighed and looked distant. When she spoke again her words snapped with anger. “He interpreted Shane’s actions as lending veracity to Shane’s claims that he had truly loved me. He did not think harshly of Shane at all for the matter and, to my horror, I believe it mended things between them.”

I swore. “How can he be such a fool?”

Some of the tension left her, to be replaced by resignation. “I thought long on that on the voyage here. I have come to believe that Shane represents something to Father. It is not Shane himself, it is some promise or perhaps memory that Shane holds.”

I nodded. “I have always thought that Shane is the son I was to be.”

She shook her head. “I feel that perhaps Shane reminds Father of Shane’s father. They were quite close by all accounts. I have wondered if they were quite close indeed?”

Her eyes flicked to Gaston and then Striker and Pete. Almost as one we caught her meaning.

The idea surprised me. It had never crossed my mind that my father and Shane’s father might have been lovers: it was completely foreign to me. There was much to consider if it were true.

“I need time to mull that over,” I said.

“I have mulled it over,” she said. “At one point in my ruminations I wondered if Shane were indeed our father’s son, but that idea…”

I was suddenly overcome with nausea, and the room swam for a moment. “Nay,” I said. “Nay, Father knew about…”

Gaston’s arm steadied me, and Sarah shook her head quickly.

“Nay!” she said. “I do not believe it true, I am merely saying I wondered at it; but Father’s behavior during the time you had trouble with Shane belies that. He obviously allowed it, and I cannot believe he would allow such as that.”

I was acutely aware of four sets of eyes upon us. I did not wish to meet them, but I forced myself to gaze upon their concerned faces. I resolved I could tell them if I could tell anyone.

“Shane and I were lovers in our youth,” I said before I could change my mind. “He became… abusive toward me in later years, and that is the reason I fled my father’s home. My father knew of it. He told me he allowed it because he thought it might put me off men.”