Into His Arms (24 page)

A cloud passed over her companion’s features, but he seemed to dismiss whatever thoughts had cast the shadow. “We will live in Cuba or Hispaniola. Perhaps Venezuela. A sea captain does not have to be difficult about where his wife lives, so long as it is a port he frequents.”

“There is another matter! Will you not be at sea for months at a time?”

“Aye, but you can journey with me often. If you would like, you can visit here when I am away.”

There was some sense in what he spoke. What was the harm in leaving the door open? “There is time to speak on these things,” she conceded. Still, it pained her to see the hopefulness in his face. She sensed that he had set his heart on walking through that door.

He stepped closer to her and placed his hand gently against her face. “
Con permiso
— with your permission, I would give you some token of my feelings ere I leave.”

His eyes had gone soft, and he was close enough that she felt his breath on her cheek. In reply, she lifted her face and closed her eyes. His mouth was soft and gentle, perhaps too much so. It occurred to Faith that it was not unpleasant, but something indefinable was missing, and she did not mind that he pulled away after the briefest contact. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, but she wanted nothing more dearly than to go back into the house.

“I shouldn’t keep you so long from the others. They will want to spend some time with you ere morning,” she said.

“In a moment. I promise, I will take no further advantage of you.”

He seemed content to gaze at her in the opalescent moonlight, which only served to make Faith fidgety. She tried to make conversation, but her every remark seemed to occasion some outlandish compliment, and by the time she could flee to the privacy of her room she thought she would scream. Who would have reckoned that the only thing worse than censure was exorbitant approval?

Chapter 21

Geoff sat in the darkest corner of the Sea Nymph, slowly sipping from a tankard of bumboo, a sweetened drink of watered rum and nutmeg. What called to him from Port Royal for the whole of the two months he and his crew had prowled the waters of the Caribbean, he couldn’t say. He had no stomach for the quantity of drink his men imbibed. Even the harlots had lost their appeal, though the Sea Nymph was known for its women, higher priced and a bit more select. He groaned inwardly as Giles beckoned two buxom wenches, a redhead and a blonde, to the table that he had chosen to avoid just such an encounter.

“For goodness sake, Giles, must you?”

Giles smiled at his friend’s uncharacteristically soft tongue. “‘Tis pathetic, really Geoff. It’s been two months since Faith went to her relatives’, and you still never say ‘God.’ A sailor who says ‘for goodness sake.’ It’s bloody embarrassing. You’ve pined too long, my friend.” Giles turned to smile again at the two women, though he still spoke to Geoff. “If you’ll not go to Winston Hall and fetch the woman you want, then you’d best go back to wanting the women at hand.”

Geoff shot the other man a murderous look, but before he could reply, the blonde’s warm, soft body filled his lap and two plump breasts presented themselves in front of his face.

“I tol’ me frien’ Molly ‘ere,” said the woman with a seductive smile, “well, ‘e’s not ‘ere for the drink. I’m thinkin’ I might ‘ave a bit o’ what ‘e wants.” She laughed and wrapped her arms about his neck, drawing his face closer to her nearly naked bosom.

Molly, as was apparently the name of the redhead, had entirely captured Giles’s interest, so Geoff had no choice but to look up at the wench in his lap. She was fairly young and fresh-faced. Like most of the women at the Sea Nymph, she was probably only staying long enough to put together a nest egg. Then she would be off to seek a husband in the colonies or back in London where her accent placed her home. She might even have a man waiting for her, one who would ignore the source of the dowry she would return with. Such an arrangement was not unheard of.

Geoff flashed her an obligatory smile. “And what does your friend Molly call you?”

The woman laughed again. “On a good day, she calls me Nell. I won’t say what she calls me on a bad one.”

Out of courtesy, Geoff chuckled and slipped his hand into her bodice. He had not touched a woman so intimately since the one who haunted his every dream at night. Perhaps Giles was right. Nell, here, might be just the cure.

“Well, love,” he said, forcing himself to use the endearment he had banished from his vocabulary, “you’re right. I’m not here for the drink.”

She slid from his lap, and he allowed her to lead him up the stairs to the rooms above. Aye, it had been far too long since he’d tussled with a willing wench, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was breaking some kind of sacred bond. He laughed at his own musings. A sacred bond, for a man who held nothing sacred!

The laugh caught Nell’s attention. “I do likes a merry fellow,” Nell complimented over the bare shoulder that her sleeve had slipped from. “So many of the swabs ‘ere is drunk an’ surly. Molly and me, we picks and chooses. You and yer mate were the likeliest pair.”

What would once have been a flattering statement made his stomach turn uneasily, but he squelched the feeling. He had wrestled with the needs of his strong, healthy body long enough. Surely it was his self-imposed celibacy that kept Faith so prominent in his mind.

Nell’s room was cluttered, the sheets of the unmade bed rumpled, and Geoff tried not to think about who had lain there with her before and how recently. He had never been so fastidious before. He pulled her to him, would have run his hands through her dull blonde hair but found it too tangled. She smelled of rum and other men’s sweat, and with a muffled curse, he pushed her away.

“What is it, love?” she asked.

“I’m married!” he blurted, then brought himself up short. He couldn’t have been more astounded at himself if he had told her he was the king of England.

Nell smiled. “‘At’s all right. Lots of fellows ‘ere is. But yer wife’s far away. England maybe?” She trailed her fingers over his arm. “No ‘arm in getting the knots out o’ yer riggin’s. It don’t mean nothin’.”

It didn’t mean anything. God help him, he didn’t think he could ever again be content with a woman who didn’t mean anything to him, and he didn’t think any woman could mean more to him than Faith. His face split into a wide grin and he reached into the pocket of his coat to draw out a handful of silver.

“For your trouble,” he said. “You’re right, I’m missing my wife, but you see, I love her.”

Nell’s face softened, and he could see in her a young wife, even someone’s daughter. “I ‘ope she knows ‘ow lucky she is,” Nell sighed. “I won’t say I’m not disappointed. Yer as pretty a gent as a girl could wish for, but I won’t turn down the easiest silver I’ve earned in a good while.”

She grinned at him, and he felt light of heart as he left her. He wished her all the happiness in the world.

His step was effortless as he descended back into the dark tavern. Giles was gone, doubtless being entertained by the wench called Molly. Having nowhere else to go, he walked down High Street toward the docks. He dodged drunks where they weaved or fell and smiled carelessly at whores without stopping to linger. He had thought to return to the ship, but he wasn’t expected until late, so he headed west along the beach as the sun set.

A strange feeling of contentment overcame him as he settled the matter in his mind. He had always said he snatched what happiness he could where he found it. Why had Faith been any different? What was it about the happiness he felt with her that made him want to hold it close forever? And when had he started believing in forever?

As the gold disk of the sun approached the horizon, the light streaking of clouds around it took on a warm, golden glow that intensified to peach and finally orange, and the rippling water below reflected each hue faithfully. At the edges of the light, the sea turned to quicksilver, then blue satin scattered with diamonds. It was this sparkle, this scintillating, scattered light that delineated sea from sky more than any actual horizon, the reflection was so true. Air and water, so different, and yet only subtly distinguished. Each supported life. The creatures and plants that waved gently in the salty current would die as surely in the air above as he would in the depths below.

Mayhap this was what Faith had tried to tell him. Faith and faithlessness, men and women, air and water. What was God if not that barely perceptible line between sea and sky? Where was his soul if not in the love that had sprung to life where their two bodies, whole in and of themselves, and yet more so together, had joined? Was it his mother’s voice he spoke with when he told her such things were fairy tales? When would he venture to step foot upon his own path, as he has once challenged Faith to do?

In the growing darkness, he realized he had walked farther than he intended. He had to chuckle to himself. Had he thought to walk all the way to Winston Hall in the dark? Nay, that was no plan. He would return to the ship. In the morning, it would take no time at all to sail to the bay on the outskirts of Elizabeth and Miguel’s plantation. There he would beg, plead, do whatever it took to gain Faith’s forgiveness and begin to rebuild the trust he had so stupidly squandered.

It was rare indeed that a man of Captain Hampton’s experience allowed himself to become entirely lost in thought so close to the den of iniquity just beyond. If he had kept his wits about him, as any intelligent man did in this locale, he would have heard footsteps running at him softly through the sand, would have known he was in danger ere the stout club struck the base of his skull, blotting out his musings.

*

Diego joined his compatriot, the young sailor Killigrew had harassed, over the fallen body of the Englishman. He shook his head. It had been so easy; it was almost anticlimactic. He would have been disappointed, but knowing that he could quickly return the pirate to his employer and be free to pursue the fair Faith was ample compensation for the lack of a fight.

“It is another day, my friend,” Diego said to the other man. “A better day to play the hero.”

“Excuse me, Capitán?” the other sailor asked.

“Do you believe in destiny, Pablo?”

“Maybe, Capitán. I believe in justice. The pig who insulted my mother is dead. Now this one will be brought under the law. It was meant to be, was it not?”

Diego nodded. He and his man bound their prisoner, and Diego offered up his thanks to the saint upon whom he had come to depend. “Maybe you will give me my love, too?” he asked, certain that his lady would not fail him. Of all the saints, Magdalene would understand why a man would need to share his good fortune.

*

When Geoff awoke, he was bound hand and foot in the hold of a ship that rocked as though it were well out to sea. The hold was huge, close to a galleon in size. It was also nearly empty, a sure sign that the voyage would not be long. Unmistakably, it smelled like a Spanish vessel. He couldn’t quite define why. Perhaps it was the spices they so often held, but he had been in the bowels of enough Spanish ships to know that he was in one now.

He had thought of just such an eventuality often enough. In moments of drunken bravery, his men could joke about the “hempen jig,” that last dance at the end of a hemp rope, but when sober, the thought chilled the blood. To Geoff, it was an occupational hazard, a possibility one lived with in exchange for easy money and the thrill of battle.

He slammed his head back against the solid support beam to which he was tied and saw stars. Another blow to a head that already ached was a foolish indulgence. If he were a weaker man, he thought, the irony of it would make him weep. For the first time in his life, he had something to live for, and his life was as good as over. And damn it all, there was something in his eyes, for they watered fiercely!

Somehow he had always counted on dying on another captain’s blade. His body would be carelessly thrown overboard, and the world would go on as though he had never existed. If Giles survived the battle, he would have one friend to grieve him, but naught else. The wealth he had hoarded would be found in his cabin and divided among the crew. The indignity of hanging, and worse still, knowing that his body would rot in irons as a warning to others who would rob Spain in the name of England, set his teeth on edge. Of course, those were English customs. He knew not what to expect from the people who had set the wheels of the Inquisition into motion.

And what of Faith? Would the man who finally claimed her for his own be worthy of her? He indulged in a bitter smirk. More worthy than a libertine and privateer, that was sure. Still, what if she married some staunch Puritan and resumed a life of ducking her head and swallowing her passions?

Diego descended the ladder into the hold. “You do not look so good, Captain. In fact, you look so sad that, for a moment, I could almost pity you. Then I remind myself, you are the one who has gotten yourself into this.”

Geoff turned his head, recognizing immediately the captain of
Magdalena
. Almost automatically, an accustomed look of bored disinterest masked Geoff’s hopelessness.

“‘Tis empty in here,” he commented. “We’re not for Spain, I think.”

“You are very cool for a man on his way to his death,” Diego said. “We’re for Cartagena.”

Geoff grinned with a humor he did not feel. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to simply run me through now?”

Diego smiled back just as humorlessly. “It would be a kindness, but my employer prefers you alive. Not having Morgan, you’ll be paying for Panama and every other indignity Spain has suffered at the hands of your kind.”

Shrugging carelessly, Geoff answered, “There’s some justice there, for I was part of that, as well.”

Diego shook his head. “I would not offer that information in court. It would not go well for you.”

“You’re being remarkably civil. I don’t know that I’d be so friendly to someone who’d plundered my ship.”

“I am being adequately compensated.” Diego rubbed the faint, dark stubble on his prominent chin. “I think I know why you are so sad, and it is not just that you are on your way to Cartagena to die. I am not a cruel man. I would not torture you, but I think perhaps you would feel better knowing—about the woman.”