Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (3 page)

Now the Marquis had received word from his son that the arrangement with Doucette was no longer acceptable, and that his son had gone off with some English Lord. Perhaps the Marquis felt his plans were now in danger if his eldest son were not where he had left him and was now running about in the company of another wolf. Gaston had made it very clear in his letter to his father that we were lovers. Perhaps I was the threat the Marquis sailed around the world to face. Perhaps he was afraid I would urge Gaston to attempt to reclaim his title and inheritance.

Gazing upon my distraught matelot, though, I did not feel I should voice this new suspicion. He had been sincere when he told his father he forgave him. He did not hate the man, despite what had occurred. He blamed himself as much as anyone. He wanted his father’s forgiveness, and I daresay held hope of being loved by the damn man. I understood that well enough. I had journeyed here to Jamaica to gain favor with my damn father, on the mistaken notion that such a thing could be done at all. I had since learned otherwise, or at least I felt I had: much of my father’s motivations remained a mystery. Yet, there was still some little part of my soul that wished to grant him the benefit of doubt: that harbored a tiny flickering hope that perhaps all the wolfish machinations we ascribed to him were products of our fancy.

I let that hope cling to life, but I would not fan it to flame. I felt doing that would be foolishness of a high order, and I refused to be hurt yet again. Yet I let it remain, flickering there.

Would we be fools to assume Gaston’s father meant what he said in his letter?

“What are you thinking?” Gaston asked with great worry.

I cursed myself for not schooling my face. I had not thought he still had his wits about him enough to be concerned with my frowning.

“I am puzzling why he is here,” I said.

“You feel he lies?” Gaston asked with sudden ire.

“Non, non, I do not know. Hush. I am ascribing things to him as if he were my father, and perhaps that is not fair. Perhaps he is sincere in ways I feel my father could never be.”

He calmed a little, but the Horse’s words were hard. “My father is a good man.”

He spoke such truths of his soul when he was thus, yet I felt compelled to voice my surprise. “You truly believe that?”

“Oui,” he said firmly. “He was angry that night, very angry… and he had great cause,” he added softly and looked away. He began fidgeting again.

“Oui,” I sighed, “that night, but… My love, he sent you away, he kept you in schools all those years, he…”

“That was what is done!” His eyes were glittering emeralds again: sharp and hard. “It is not his fault I am mad!”

“Oui,” I conceded and looked away. “You are correct.” I sighed as I folded the letter. “But he hurt you, and I cannot forgive him for it. I am sorry.”

He gave a sob and threw himself about me. “I am sorry. I love you. I love you. I am afraid. I am… Do you truly feel he is insincere?”

I rubbed his back and held him. “Non, non, my love. I do not know.

I think it is my own fears speaking. I think, though, that we should at least be cautious.”

“You must meet with him,” he breathed against my cheek.

“With you?” Though I surely was not going to allow him to go alone.

“Non, first. Read him,” he sighed, “and tell me of it.”

I pulled away enough to see the small, sad smile on his lips.

“Whatever you wish, my love,” I breathed.

“I wish for you to care for me and never leave me.” He buried his face in my shoulder again.

I held him for a time, and then at last I roused us and we moved under the awning. The contents of most of his pots were quite boiled away, and in a few instances I felt a chisel would be necessary to chip out the remaining sludge. He set them aside without comment. I heated the chicken stew we had made the day before, and we carried a bowl of it to the rock on which we always sat to watch the sunset.

I sipped broth, and watched the golden rays upon him, and not the sea. His eyes glowed a pale green in that light, his skin shone like bronze, and as always, his unruly cropped hair looked as if flames licked his scalp. Unbidden, curiosity about his father’s visage crept into my thoughts. How similar were they, or was there any similarity at all?

Had all my matelot’s madness truly come from his mother, or was there some in his father’s blood as well?

“What else did they say?” Gaston asked quietly, his gaze still upon the sun. “Is there other news?”

He did not sound sincerely curious, and I wondered at his need to make conversation.

I sifted through what I could remember. “The king sent the governor a man of war, and the governor gave it over to Morgan. Of course, the idiot now wishes to sail against Cartagena or Havana. He has called for all to meet him at Cow Island this winter. Striker thinks Morgan a fool for wanting to attempt so much, but he chafes as he wishes to sail; yet their babe is unborn and our ship is out smuggling.”

Gaston nodded thoughtfully. “How is Sarah?”

“Well enough, she is as big and uncomfortable as Bella from what they say.”

He smiled at that, and then frowned. “We cannot leave here until Bella births.”

I had not thought of that, but he was correct. I would not dream of abandoning our dog, though I thought it likely she needed us not at all for the endeavor. And I surely would not leave without Gaston having a chance to find some solace in the innocence of puppies. He found them very calming.

“Could we not take her with us?” I asked.

“Do you wish to sail?” he asked. His gaze met mine.

“To Port Royal to meet your father, or to Cow Island to raid against the Spanish?”

“To rove and raid,” he said, his gaze still earnest. “The Devil with my father.”

“I have been quite content here this autumn with you. We do not need the money it… might bring. I do not feel we need the trouble it always seems to bring, either. But…”

Last year we had sailed because of Gaston’s madness, because he needed to unleash it on occasion against enemies.

“I do not wish to go,” he said suddenly. “To Port Royal or elsewhere.

But, I cannot have him here. And…”

He gave a ragged sigh and rubbed the heels of his hands upon his temples, as if he were trying to massage the dark thoughts away, or squeeze them into the back corners of his skull where he claimed they always lurked.

“Let us go to Port Royal,” I said softly, “and tend to the business that must be tended to there, and then let us return here.”

He took a deep breath and nodded. “What other business?”

“We must…” I sighed. “I must make some decision about the Damn Wife and act upon it. She is also soon to birth.”

“Could we not live here forever?” he asked hopefully with a childish mien.

I smiled. “As long as the Gods will let us. We have more than enough money, and… I am sure we can find some suitable woman to bear children so that you might revel in them. I do not see where I need my inheritance. Even Theodore’s concerns of… Well, I do not see where I must be my father’s heir to accomplish anything else here. I feel many of those concerns shifted when Sarah arrived and married Striker. The plantation will be as it is and I do not feel I can rescue them as I once intended. I have not felt that I could in a long time. And we have the R&R Merchant Company to make us all honest men. I say the Devil with it all.”

This seemed to please him.

It did not please me: I felt great unease, as if I had forgotten something, and I wondered at it until his kiss drove my dark thoughts away. Soon we were naked as babes and cuddled together in our wide hammock. We made love tenderly, seeking more reassurance than passion in our caresses and kisses. We eschewed the act of sodomy, choosing instead to hump against one another fitfully, belly to belly, until we at last found our pleasure. And as I drifted to sleep, I could not imagine anything better than spending the rest of my days at his side in our little corner of the world.

I woke to him hissing in my ear, “Will, I wish to ride.”

It was dark, and at first the words seemed a distant thing, devoid of meaning. Then his mouth covered mine while his hands woke my flesh with increasing urgency. My cock swelled and, ears pricked and tail raised, my Horse pranced into the light to play with his. Our common need for such games was a thing born of the demons that haunted us, and not a thing we indulged often, but when we did play, I embraced it with fervor and gave myself over to it and him with abandon.

With nips and licks he traced a path of fire down my jaw and neck until he was somewhat below my ear, and then the nips became biting and he sucked and chewed until I mewled and rocked under him in an ecstatic mix of pleasure and pain. He guided my hands to the netting above my head, and with touch alone, bade me tangle myself there so that I was bound after a fashion. Then his torturous teeth moved away from my neck and down my chest. I writhed and uttered harsh cries and growls, more animal than human. He was silent except for the occasional rumble of mirth. To my gratification and amazement, he left little of me in peace, chewing upon my back, buttocks, thighs, and belly such that I feared for my manhood several times. At last I could run beneath him no more, and the ever-peculiar cessation of the pain came as it always did. I slumped beneath him, sated beyond sex alone, and drifting on a cloud that felt like laudanum, only so much better.

He covered my face in gentle kisses and moved us such that he could truly mount me. I smelled the almond of our favorite salve and then he was within me. I was run out, but he was far from finished.

He rode me with hard thrusts that set the hammock creaking. I felt as if I were the rocks being pounded by the waves of the surf, and then I was the waves and he was the rocks, and then we were both the water, rushing in and out. When at last he came, it was as if he did it for both of us, and I cried out with the joy of it as I felt him spasm within me.

He withdrew almost before his cry had finished echoing off the stone walls of our tiny abode. He kissed me lightly on the lips and he was gone. He always did that after we played so. His reason returned in the aftermath, and with it, shame.

I did not wish to move, yet I knew if I did not, it would be that much worse when I did. Sleep would not be a balm for the aches I would suffer for the first day or two. I took my time in stretching and rolling out of the hammock.

I saw him standing by the cook fire, staring pensively at the glow on the eastern horizon. He was still naked. I went and relieved myself around the side of the hill. I ran curious fingers over the now-darkening marks he had left. Aye, I would be very sore this day.

When I returned, he winced at my appearance as I approached, and despite the dim light I could see him flush. I sidled up in front of him, to press the right of my chest to the right of his and rest my head atop his shoulder in a way horses sometimes stand together in a pasture. I cupped his balls playfully and he hissed with surprise.

“Why do you tolerate me?” he asked.

“Tolerate? Hmmm?” I chuckled. “I believe the question is why do I delight in you when you are thus? Non, tolerate is not the word. Trust, that is the word. I trust you. You are the only one I will ever allow to call the pieces of my soul I wish to keep hidden into the light.”

He sighed and his arm stole about my waist. “I love you,” he whispered.

“I know,” I said succinctly. “And I love you, and I wish you were not so troubled over the matter.”

He shook his head. “I am not troubled over that… If you are not.

Which in that regard, you are truly as mad as I. Non, I am troubled that when things trouble me I… need to run so. I wish my damn father had not come.”

“So do I,” I sighed.

“I feel I will have to sail, Will. I am sorry. I feel seeing him will…”

“It will bring much into the light, my love, I know. But, perhaps, that is for the best. Because truly, would it not be best to lay that night, and your sister, and mother, and all else that lies between the two of you, to rest?”

He nodded. “Oui, it will. But it will be as if I undergo a complicated surgery. I will need much time to convalesce.”

“I feel you are making light of it. If you feel you must sail, then you expect that this visit will open all those wounds and leave you draining noxious fluids upon the world for some time.”

“Oui,” he said softly. “I am afraid much will be drained upon you, and I cannot…”

I put fingers upon his lips and moved so that I could meet his tearful gaze.

“You will do what you must to heal, and I will assist you,” I said firmly. “We can weather any storm as long as we hold to one another.”

“It will be a very bad storm, Will,” he said seriously, and then the words began to tumble out in an ever-faster torrent. “I have not had to be as I was before here, without you.” He shook his head with frustration. “I have not had to wear a mask. I cannot imagine meeting him without… He has become tangled with Doucette in my mind, and I cannot… He must not see me as mad. I do not wish for him to see me as mad. Yet, I know I will not be able to help myself. I cannot hide it away any longer. I cannot wear the mask as I once did. He will see. He will see and he will hate me and… And that angers me. That he should judge me so. That he should be allowed to judge me so. It is not my fault! I cannot make it go away!”

I held him tightly with tears of fear and frustration in my eyes.

He did not need to tell me how bad the storm was going to be. It was already upon us and I saw no end in sight. Only the Gods could know what shore we would eventually wash up on.

Gaston and I did our morning run down to the beach and up it for a good league or so. We knew we could not allow his daily routine of calisthenics to lapse now: it helped keep his Horse calm. At the end of this exercise, we did not feel like frolicking in the waves or sparring as we were usually wont to do; we chose instead to walk hand in hand in the surf in silence for a time, listening to the raucous morning call of gulls along the shore and other birds in the bog.

I felt acutely how much I would miss being alone with him. I, who had spent so much of my life craving constant social interaction with anyone who would spend time with me, no longer wished to engage in pointless conversation, drinking to numb my heart, and, of course, carnal pleasures without love. Gaston’s presence had weaned me of those needs these past two and half years, such that I now viewed the life I once had as being lived by another.