Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (33 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

FOR ONCE DAVID
was at a loss for a lie.
 
Sophie handed
the spyglass to the captain and infused her tone with haughtiness.
 
"Yes, Daniel, do tell the captain about
Major Hunt's quarrel with you.
 
No doubt
the captain can relate.
 
He is, after
all, a
man
."

David seized
her implication and rubbed his chin with contrition.
 
"I've — er — dallied with his mistress —"
 
The sharp edge in Arriaga's gaze faded.
 
"— for the past two years, and he's
just now finding out about it."

"You have
been sleeping with that man's mistress for two years, and he is just now
finding out about it?"

"What can
I tell you?
 
He travels, she's lonely,
and —"

"Bah!
 
Britons, masters of the high seas, but what
Briton could ever keep a mistress properly?"
 
It was a question Sophie herself had pondered for several days.

David shrugged
with one shoulder to convey indifference.
 
"At times, they do seem a bit cold."

"
Cold
?"
 
Contempt curled the captain's lip.
 
"The stories I could tell you, and all
from the lips of their ladies."

"Yes,
ladies definitely know what they want, but some gentlemen simply cannot accept
it when they fail to discern a woman's subtleties —"

"Or when
they are ill-equipped to deliver."

The two men
regarded each other a moment in silent accord.
 
Then David's tone emerged blithe.
 
"I presume you won't drop anchor and allow them to board."

Arriaga stomped
forward, voice carrying over his shoulder.
 
"We go on to La Habana...mistress...two years...bah..."

David muttered,
"Thank you, Sophie.
 
I was
stumped."

She studied the
Zealot
.
 
"Do you think
they'll pursue us?"

"After
everything that's happened on this trip, I shan't be surprised."
 
He guided her fore, where the rising sun
danced on the Atlantic.

She shaded her
eyes.
 
"How many guns has the
Zealot
?"

"Seventy-four.
 
She's a full ship-of-the-line."

And the
Gloria
Maria
had but six swivel guns and two signaling cannons.

Across the
sparkling water, the
Zealot
was alive with sailor activity.
 
Dread prodded her when she recalled David's
warnings from the previous afternoon.
 
She reminded herself that she was responsible for returning an
inheritance, but it didn't ease her certainty that none of them had considered
the tenacity and connections of two British officers.
 
How difficult was it, then, to imagine them commandeering a warship
to seize a sloop bound for Havana — and, as a bonus, a Portuguese brig?

***

Her head abuzz
from red wine, her stomach full of beefsteak, Sophie declined Arriaga's offer
of tawny port.
 
The ship throbbed
beneath her like a giant sea beast.
 
With all the wining, dining, and rolling, her equilibrium didn't feel
quite as stable as it had that afternoon.

The captain
decanted port into David and Jacques's goblets.
 
"
Sim
, we encounter pirates.
 
With a decent wind, the
Gloria Maria
averages about eight
knots."
 
He closed the flagon and
offered cheroots to the men.
 
They lit
up, and the cabin became even stuffier.
 
"With a beam wind and ideal seas, we cover almost three hundred
miles in a day."

Jacques blew a
smoke ring.
 
"You outrun
them."

"Precisely.
 
Their vessels offer no match for the speed
and grace of the
Gloria Maria
.
 
She is a sea goddess."

The men toasted
the prosperity of the
Gloria Maria
and her crew.
 
Arriaga regarded his three supper guests
with faint humor.
 
"We encounter
few other ships while at sea.
 
Often we
make an entire run spotting only two or three away from port.
 
I am curious."
 
He pulled off the cheroot and exhaled.
 
Sophie squirmed, certain she'd have to go up
on deck soon to clear her head.
 
Arriaga
watched them.
 
"I am curious
whether there is a connection between all four of you and a sloop sailing ahead
and a frigate sailing astern?"

A sloop and a
frigate.
 
Sophie was too mellowed from
the wine to provide Arriaga with more than a bland expression.
 
She glanced at David's card-playing face and
watched him savor his cheroot.
 
Jacques
also betrayed nothing with his expression.
 
But she sensed the captain wasn't fooled.

David blew a
smoke ring finer than Jacques's.
 
"A sloop, you say?
 
Hmm.
 
My agent heard a rumor that
a competitor chartered a sloop out of St. Augustine yesterday morning down to
Havana."

The captain
smiled.
 
"Did you dally with his
mistress, too?"

"The
agent's or the competitor's?"

Arriaga's smile
sharpened again.
 
"And what of the
frigate?"

David sketched
a small figure eight in the air with his cheroot.
 
"I've no clue.
 
I
don't pay much attention to ships.
 
Perhaps she's that British warship — what was her name? — at anchor just
off St. Augustine."

"She is
not the
Zealot
.
 
The
Zealot
is a ship-of-the-line."

Sophie withheld
a sigh of relief.
 
Perhaps Edward and
Fairfax
would
give them up for lost.

"I haven't
the slightest idea of her mission or who might be commanding her."
 
David leaned forward.
 
"But might we get closer to that sloop,
see whether she bears the name
Annabelle
?"

Arriaga's
expression grew sly.
 
"And just how
badly do you want us to overtake the sloop?"

Sophie, not
relishing the overtones of the conversation, coughed and rose.
 
"Excuse me, gentlemen.
 
I've enjoyed the supper and company, but I
must check on my husband."

The three men
rose and bowed.
 
"It distresses me
when a passenger becomes ill.
 
Senhora
,
I hope he feels better soon."

"Thank
you,
capitão
.
 
I shall convey
your concerns."

Amidships on
deck, Sophie leaned over the port side and inhaled salty air for several
minutes until the tobacco-and-wine cobwebs cleared from her brain.
 
Rigging and sailcloth stretched.
 
Block and tackle creaked.
 
In between the Gulf Stream and the coast,
the
Gloria Maria
flew southward on a wind from the east.

A gibbous moon,
just risen, beamed a radiant road across the Atlantic and sparkled on foam
where wood met water.
 
A ghost ring
around the moon symbolized for Sophie just how insubstantial her original
motive for solving Will's murder had become, especially since Woodhouse's
Tavern.
 
To be sure, she'd find her father's
killer.
 
But in doing so, she no longer
need prove her own worthiness as his daughter.
 
Embracing the adventure had made her aware of another treasure to be
claimed.

Aft, past
lemon-yellow lantern light swaying with the ship, second mate Jorge and the
helmsman wished her a pleasant night in broken, accented English.
 
The ride aft was bumpy, and she held the
railing while her gaze followed the luminous trail of the Milky Way.
 
Even washed by moonlight, the sky seemed
populated with hundreds more stars than she'd ever noticed on land.

Was that a
light out there on the northern horizon, where the frigate had been
sighted?
 
She blinked and squinted but
saw nothing except stars and sea.
 
Unease nudged her again.
 
Portugal
was
neutral in the war, but cocky frigate commanders had
been rumored to not worry about such particulars.
 
She scanned the north horizon again, unable to shake the feeling
that something out there pursued them.

A minute later,
she strolled forward, encountering the fore watch, who also wished her a
pleasant night.
 
Splotched with
moonlight, the dark rectangle of Mathias's blankets blotted the pale deck, and
on the blankets Sophie spied the shape of his body stretched out, still.
 
"Are you awake?"
 
He stirred and sat up, and she knelt beside
him.
 
"Full belly?"

"Yes.
 
An excellent beefsteak."

"And how
is it sitting?"

"Every now
and then that sick feeling returns, but I'm much better now.
 
José the cook was right.
 
I needed a full stomach."
 
He caught her hand in his.
 
"Sit with me.
 
How was supper?"

"Elegant.
 
Not at all what I was expecting aboard
ship."

"I wager
Arriaga doesn't eat nearly so well by halfway across the Atlantic."

"No
doubt.
 
I left during the port,
cheroots, and negotiations."

"Negotiations?"

"David was
trying to convince the captain that we should overtake a sloop sighted
southward."

Mathias sucked
in a breath.
 
"The
Annabelle
?"

"I shan't
be surprised.
 
With Arriaga's bragging
about the speed of this ship, we could overtake her on the morrow."
 
Exasperation trailed her nostrils in a
stream of breath.
 
"I assume David
will engage the captain in cards to make him compliant with our request for a
change of velocity.
 
But don't think for
a moment that he accepts our story about researching sugarcane in Havana,
especially not with a frigate behind us."

She felt him
tense.
 
"Gods.
 
A mystery sloop ahead, and a mystery frigate
behind.
 
Who'd have thought the Atlantic
so well-trafficked?
 
And where are the
redcoats and the Rightful Blood?"

"Hush.
 
You shall surely tempt the Fates."

"The Fates
— bah!"
 
He stroked her cheek once
with the back of his hand.
 
"In my
next lifetime, I shall become a boulder.
 
Boulders don't get seasick."

She smiled at
the certainty in his expression, visible even in moonlight.
 
"You won't recognize me if you're a
boulder."

"Of course
I'd recognize you.
 
I've known you for
thousands of years.
 
If you returned to
the world as a squirrel, I'd create hollows on my surface for you to hide your
acorns in.
 
If you returned as a tree,
I'd roll over and shelter your sprout.
 
And if you returned as another lovely woman, I'd smooth my surface and
make it so inviting for you to rest upon — aye, nestle that firm, shapely arse
of yours right atop me —"

"You
are
feeling better than you were this morning."

"It's all
this fresh air, you see."

"Yes, I do
see," she whispered and brushed his lips with hers, where she tasted the
ocean.
 
They let the kiss linger,
metamorphose into deliberate, soft caresses that swelled the tide in Sophie's
loins until her throat and breasts pounded with it.
 
Shared air formed the sigh between them when they separated.

"You're
even more beautiful now than you were eighteen years ago," he said, low.

She
chuckled.
 
"I don't have a girl's
body anymore."

"No,
indeed, your woman's body is all gifts of life and spirit, sweat and
blood.
 
Just like Earth, the great
mother."

Mathias had
written eighteen years of poetry to her — simple, clear, and powerful poetry —
in his soul.
 
He does not hunger for
wealth of substance
, Jacques had told her the night before they arrived in
Cow Ford.
 
He hungers for wealth of
spirit...the companionship of people who appreciate his worth and accept him as
he is.
 
A partner
.
 
Someone who believed in what he did.
 
Someone who recognized the way he
transformed the poetry of his soul into masterpieces of metal and diplomacy.

She touched his
hand.
 
"How have you known me for
thousands of years?"

"You've
been in the spirit lake."
 
He
yawned.

She thought
back to the night she'd wept on his shoulder.
 
"What is this spirit lake?
 
Twice now you've mentioned it."

He sounded
groggy.
 
"Creator stands on the
shore of the spirit lake and withdraws a drop of water.
 
'What do you want to be in this lifetime?'
Creator asks the drop of water, 'a rock, a blade of grass, an otter, a
hawk?'
 
The water drop is you or
me.
 
We decide what we want to learn in
the new lifetime, and we take the form of it.
 
Rock, grass, otter, hawk.
 
When
the spirit learns what it came to learn and discharges the form, it returns to
the lake and disseminates the knowledge to all other spirits so they benefit
from the knowledge.
 
That is how I know
you, from the lake."