Caribbean Jewel Read online

  “...deny this is your horse, you Spanish bastard?” Lord Hauste was saying, indicating the nearby stallion with a jerk of his musket. It looked like her rescuer’s horse, but the man they were questioning was not him—this fellow’s hair was shorn. Anguished, Jolie wished she had gone with the other Spaniard when she had the chance.

  “Speak up, swine! I know you bloody well helped her to escape. Are you El Vencedor?”

  He still believes El Vencedor exists, even after discovering I’ve been helping the slaves to escape? Jolie cringed, worried for the poor, bewildered soul facing Hauste and his hounds. The man said something she couldn’t make out.

  “No English?” Hauste laughed and glanced over his shoulder at the henchman on horseback. “‘No English,’ this Spanish four-flusher says!” His guards chuckled nervously.

  Hauste leveled his musket at the captive’s face. “Well, you’d damn well better speak some English, you Spanish son of a whore—tell me where my ward is or I’ll leave your bastard’s carcass lying in the street to rot after I blow your bloody head off!”

  Jolie’s stomach knotted in anguish. An innocent man dying on her behalf at Hauste’s merciless hands was simply not right. She had to give herself up. She drew in a ragged breath, stood on shaky legs, and reached up to push the door all the way open.

  Then saw sudden movement, and froze.

  A dark figure leapt from the shadows, vaulted himself onto Hauste’s carriage, wrapped a powerful arm around the Englishman’s jowly neck, and placed a pistol to the side of his head. Jolie immediately recognized the assailant—it was the Spaniard who’d helped her escape the bloodhounds. She crouched and shrank against the wall as the dogs went wild with barking, causing the guard on horseback to nearly pitch from his saddle.

  “Or...” she heard the Spaniard say evenly, “I could blow your bloody head off.”

  Jolie felt like cheering aloud. The sight of someone daring to challenge her guardian, especially someone who appeared fully capable of defending himself, was like a miracle. The Spaniard’s muscular arms strained against his shirt, and the sharp blade of a cutlass strapped to his thigh shone in the silvery moonlight.

  The guards were frozen in place. Hauste narrowed his eyes, but didn’t lower his musket.

  “Let’s make an agreement, you and I,” the Spaniard continued, his jaw tucked tightly against Hauste’s temple. “You let my steersman go, and I don’t make a winter coat from your hounds.”

  Hauste blinked.

  The Spaniard cocked the pistol loudly and repositioned its tip against Hauste’s temple. “Come now, Englishman. Let’s be reasonable. Belardo and I—we are hired privateers from Spain, scarcely more than mercenaries. Our deaths mean nothing. But an important Señor from England, dying at the hands of two Spanish sea dogs? Is taking revenge on your escaped ward worth this dishonor?”

  “I’ll slaughter you, you bloody son-of-a-”

  The Spaniard cut him off, barely-restrained violence in his tone. “Be assured I will take you with me, amigo mío. Put the musket down or I put a bullet in your skull.”

  Hauste clamped his jaw shut and lowered his weapon. Behind the stable door, Jolie released her breath in relief, but suddenly Hauste twisted around and attempted to knock the Spaniard off the carriage with the barrel of his musket. The Spaniard grasped the gun’s barrel in a clenched fist, struggled with Hauste for a moment, and forced him to one knee. The carriage pitched precariously as they fought.

  A shot rang out from the musket, and the henchman on horseback tumbled out of his saddle, blood soaking his coat from a wound in his side. Released, the three barking hounds scrambled up the side of the carriage to attack, but the Spaniard managed to fire his pistol at them. One of the dogs fell back and the other two turned tail, darting off into the darkness.

  The Spaniard drew his cutlass and placed the curved blade against the pale skin of Hauste’s neck, then addressed the guard who held his friend hostage. “Put the gun down, Señor.”

  Jolie’s heart thumped rapidly in her chest. The bloodhounds had disappeared into the village, but they would eventually pick up her trail again. Her best chance to avoid being detected by the dogs and captured, she decided, was to sneak around to the back of the stable, run down the beach, and hide in the water under the pier. She peered through the crack in the door. Hauste’s henchman had not obeyed the command to lower his pistol yet.

  God help the crazy Spaniard, she prayed, working furiously at the buttons on her muslin gown. Slipping it over her head, she groped for a nail along the wall and hung it there, hoping its scent would throw the dogs off her trail at least momentarily. Left wearing only her petticoat, shift, and stockings, she moved back to the door to take stock of the situation in the street below. Hauste’s henchman was finally laying the pistol down and Belardo was reaching to retrieve it.

  It’s now or never. She opened the stable door just enough to allow herself room to slip into the shadows along the outside wall, then stole around a corner out of sight, adrenaline making her steps as nimble as a deer’s. She ran across the moonlit sand behind the row of shacks, heading for the pier. A few terrifying seconds passed before she reached the shadows of the customs house, hoping her flight had been obscured from the view of the men.

  At the water’s edge, Jolie kicked off her slippers and hurled them into the water as far as she could in order to hide their scent from the dogs. The waves rushed over her ankles just before she dove beneath their ebony surface and swam toward the pillars of the pier. The undertow tangled her skirts around her legs, alternately impeding her progress and pushing her along, but at last she reached a barnacle-covered post and inched carefully around it to peer up toward the street above.

  The two Spaniards were backing down the sand toward the water, their pistols still aimed in Hauste’s direction until they reached the copse of palms and disappeared into the shadows. She looked back up the hill to see Hauste lunge for a saddlebag on the dead man’s horse and withdraw a shiny pistol. As he stalked down the beach after the Spaniards, images from past slave hunts filled Jolie’s head. If he caught them—or her—she knew all too well he would show no mercy whatsoever.

  She glanced back down the shoreline and saw the Spaniards push a small rowboat away from the shore and jump inside. She decided she had one chance for survival, and it was to somehow catch the rowboat as it escaped and throw herself at the Spaniard’s mercy. She dove under the water and swam with more vigor than she’d ever swam before. When she came up for air, a shot rang out from the beach; both Spaniards flinched, then the taller one, her rescuer, slumped over, hit.

  No!

  She swam faster, angling her path diagonally to intercept the rowboat. Her muscles strained against the turbulent water, her eyes, nose, and lips burning with the salt. She came up for air again just as the other Spaniard paused in his rowing to raise a pistol and fire a shot back toward the beach. Hauste plummeted to the sand; his henchman rushed to kneel over him.

  Relieved, Jolie turned to focus all her strength on catching the rowboat. She dove beneath the surface and kicked her legs as fast as she could for as long as she could. When her lungs could bear the pressure no more, she came up to gasp for air.

  “Help!”

  The Spaniard’s friend swung around. She managed to stretch her arm up to wave at him, and to her relief, he began to angle the boat in her direction. She swam toward him, but her muscles were failing, and her chest began to heave uncontrollably. She fought to keep her head above the water as her breath came in short, wheezing gasps. She flailed about, struggling to keep her head up—only a couple minutes more and he’d reach her—but darkness engulfed her frenzied senses. She gave in to the gentle but insistent pull of the sea’s billowing arms and slipped below.

  #

  “The muchacha isn’t breathing. Hurry, hombre.” Marcano struggled with his injured arm to help Belardo haul her limp body over the side of the rowboat. They settled her on her back in the limited space in the floor.r />
  Marcano yelled over his shoulder, “Keep rowing!” as he turned to straddle the girl’s soaked body. He pumped her chest with his palms, trying to push the water from her lungs. She convulsed; he quickly rolled her onto her side to pour the saltwater from her nose and throat. Turning her onto her back again, he bent down to blow air into her mouth. Her lips were cold and rigid beneath his, but at last she drew in a sharp breath, then sputtered and coughed as she curled into a ball on her side.

  He retrieved his cloak from behind a seat and drew it over her, then brushed her wet hair out of her face and touched the pulse point at her neck for a second. Satisfied, he settled onto a bench just above her head to check the bullet wound in his upper arm, wincing as he felt around the area. He grasped his blood-soaked sleeve, ripped it off from the shoulder, and wrapped it tightly around his upper arm, then tore another strip of fabric from the hem of his shirt to wrap on top of it. He had to use his teeth to help tie the knot securely.

  The rowboat at last rounded the promontory and slipped out of the lighthouse lamplight of the bay. Belardo continued to row steadily in the darkness. He glanced back at Marcano’s wounded arm, indicating it with a nod of his head. “Everything all right, Capitán?”

  “Sí, sí. Nothing to be concerned about. Velez will have me fixed up in no time.”

  “And the muchacha?”

  Marcano looked down at the pale, semi-conscious young woman lying on the floor. Strands of wet hair clung to her softly rounded cheek. He reached down and pulled his cloak to cover her shoulder. “My uninvited distraction for the evening.” He felt behind his seat for the bottle of rum. “I do not know her name, but she is the reason you and I got shot at this evening, old man.”

  Belardo grinned.

  Marcano uncorked the bottle and raised it in a toast. “That is a pirate’s death, Belardo. If we must go down, may we go down fighting like renegades to save lovely young women.”

  “Aye.” Belardo nodded. “But we are no longer pirates, Capitán.”

  Marcano swallowed the rum. “All the more reason we should cling to the recklessness of our youth, amigo. We have become tame in our old age, more like simpering gentlemen of the court than the seafaring rapscallions we used to be.” He gazed out over the ebony waves, feeling nostalgic for escapades passed, and placed the bottle of rum to his lips again.

  “You have hardly reached old age, Capitán, at one-and-thirty. And now that you have stolen an English girl, I fear we are in for much more adventure than you bargained for.”

  “I did not steal her.” Marcano was beginning to feel the first faint effects of the liquor, his tongue slowing a little. “I found her fleeing across the French House lands. The English brute had released his dogs on her.”

  “She did not see you digging…?”

  “No danger of that. I had not yet reached the hiding place when she came flying out of nowhere and careened into me.”

  “Is the English cur dead?”

  “I only nicked his shoulder.”

  “Good. We cannot afford the wrong kind of attention, both here in Crab Island and back in España with King Philip right now. This Englishman will want revenge, but I doubt he will make it known that a Spaniard bested him.” Marcano peered ahead of the boat into the darkness, trying to make out his brigantine. “But now that I have an enemy on this island, it does complicate things.”

  “And what are you going to do with the girl?”

  “She will have safe passage aboard our vessel. I will not give her over to the Englishman against her will.”

  #

  Foggily, Jolie heard two masculine voices coming from somewhere above her, speaking a lyrical language she didn’t understand. She gradually regained some lucidity, recognized the silky, deep voice of her Spanish rescuer, and felt strangely comforted by it. Her entire body ached. She lay still, with no desire to open her eyes as their incomprehensible Spanish words caressed her ears pleasantly, mingled with the sound of the ocean.

  The men eventually fell silent, and the rowboat skimmed quietly along, dipping gently to and fro in the waves. After a while, she cautiously opened one eye. Her head was resting squarely between the Spaniard’s booted feet, his shadowed face just above hers as he slumped forward in his seat, breathing unsteadily. His arm was bare to the shoulder, the thick upper-arm muscle wrapped tightly in blood-soaked silk.

  She tried to sit up. “You’re bleeding!”

  He touched her shoulder, pressing her back down, and spoke to her in English. “Rest, muchacha. You have had enough excitement for the evening.”

  Jolie scooted sideways away from him and settled her head back against the sloping side of the boat. She could not make out his expression in the shadowy darkness. Above him the stars hung thickly against the velvety black sky, faintly outlining his broad shoulders, muscular neck and jaw.

  “You changed your mind about coming with me.” His manner was calm, she thought, for a man who had just backed down Lord Hauste, taken a bullet in the arm, and barely escaped alive.

  “I realized there are worse things than putting my life in your hands.” And perhaps you will be a kinder master than Lord Hauste, she added mentally.

  He chuckled. Jolie detected the faint aroma of rum as he spoke. “And what could be worse than putting your life into my hands, muchacha?”

  She shivered under the cloak. “Having to face Lord Hauste again.”

  He glanced up at his friend, then back down at her. “You don’t have to worry about him any longer. He is dead.”

  Lord Hauste, dead? It seemed impossible, even though she realized she had seen him shot down on the beach. In Jolie’s world, he had always been all-powerful, indestructible. A surge of relief filled her chest on behalf of the slaves she’d left behind. Hauste’s heir, his nephew Theo Wilkerson, didn’t have the strength of will to run the plantation with as much cold-hearted ruthlessness as Hauste did.

  “Since we are going to be traveling together, muchacha, I feel you should tell me your name, or at least a false one I may call you.” The Spaniard lifted the bottle of rum from between his boots and held it out to her.

  She shook her head. She was never allowed alcohol by Lord Hauste.

  “The rum will calm and warm you. You are shaking like a leaf. I insist.”

  Jolie mulled it over. Hauste was dead, and she would have to get accustomed to the glorious fact that she no longer abided by his rules. Still she hesitated, eyeing the bottle distrustfully.

  The Spaniard’s voice gained a slightly irritated edge. “Let’s make one thing very clear, muchacha. I am the captain of my ship, and I am accustomed to having my orders obeyed without question. I expect the same from you when you come aboard. If you do not care for that arrangement, perhaps you should reconsider your decision to come with me. The sea awaits, and the swim is growing longer by the minute.”

  Jolie swallowed. He was the ship’s captain? From his high-handedness, she should have guessed as much. She snaked an arm from beneath the cloak and took the bottle from him.

  “Sip it very gently,” he advised.

  She tipped the bottle to her lips, the strong fragrance of alcohol filling her nostrils. Eyes on his shadowed face, she took in a small mouthful, bracing for a wretched taste. The sweet rum was not entirely disgusting; she swallowed it down easily and held the bottle out for him to take.

  And then came the burn. She gasped and coughed, squeezing her eyes shut as her throat contracted painfully.

  He chuckled, then placed his mouth where her lips had just been and took a swallow. “And so. Your name, muchacha?”

  “It’s Jolie.” Her voice came out in a croak. She swallowed with difficulty and tried to say it more clearly. “Jolie Scarborough. That’s my real name, sir.”

  “Jolie,” he repeated. “It is a French name.” He extended the bottle of rum to her again.

  She accepted it this time without arguing, bravely took another swig, and choked a bit less than before. “Yes. I was born in England, but my
mother was French. May I ask your name, sir?”

  “Gabriel Marcano.” His pronunciation caressed her ears in a series of musical syllables.

  “Gabrell…Marco, ahm…Marcano. Right. How should I address you?”

  “Perhaps you should just call me Captain.”

  Belardo interrupted their conversation. “Capitán, the Amatista is in sight.”

  Marcano peered out to sea. “Ah, bella dama.” He motioned to it as he addressed Jolie. “There is my lady, the Amatista de la Reina. In English, it means ‘Queen’s Amethyst.’ She is beautiful, no?”

  Jolie pushed herself to sit up and turned to follow his line of vision, scanning the endless dark waves. Their rowboat was now quite a distance off shore, and all was darkness save the glowing moon. There across the expanse of ocean she beheld an enormous brigantine rising majestically against the black velvet sky, a fine Spanish rig with its sails furled. The gleam of a lamplight suddenly appeared off the upper deck. The light flashed twice, paused, then flashed four times.

  Belardo said something to Marcano in Spanish, and he murmured a reply.

  As they continued their approach in silence, Jolie gazed intently at the ship, awed by its ethereal beauty. She was definitely feeling the effects of the rum, she realized with a smile; its warmth flowed to every extremity of her body, to each fingertip and toe, erasing her cares with its intoxicating web of magic.

  “Once you board her, you leave your home once and for all, muchacha,” Marcano’s voice came softly, just behind her head.

  She continued gazing at the brigantine. “This island is no real home to me, Captain. I am eager to leave.”