Savannah Heat (25 page)

“No, suh.”

“No? But the three of you are … 
friends
, are you not?” Sheridan didn’t miss William’s distaste at the use of the word in context with his daughter.

“Yes, suh.”

“Surely she would tell such friends where she was headed.”

“She just say she go with da major. He say he bring her bock here when his trip be t’rough.”

William blew a wreath of blue smoke into the room. “You’d better hope he does, Quako. Because if he doesn’t, I’m going to believe you know where she’s gone. That you’ve been lying to me. Then you and your woman will tell me—one way or another.”

Quako said nothing, just raised his massive head and squared his shoulders, his dark eyes fixed on the pair of crossed sabers on the wall behind William’s desk. The gleam was there, the unspoken hatred—his unholy wish to wrap his huge hands around the handle of the saber and thrust the blade into his master’s heart.

William saw it, too, as he always did. “That will be all,” he said coldly, “for now.”

Quako stood staring for an instant longer than he should have, then turned and strode from the room.

When the door closed behind him, William turned to Sheridan, who stood just a few feet away. “Give him a taste of the lash. His insolence may be unspoken, but we both know it is there.”

Sheridan nodded. “Trask has got to return to Barbados,” he said, getting back to the subject at hand. “He’s got to bring back the mercenaries he hired.” It had been easy to discover the path of the
Savannah
—at least as far as Barbados. Salena had stayed on the island with Lady Grayson while Trask and his men prepared to sail. But when the
Savannah
left port, Salena had disappeared.

“You’re certain she’s with him?” William pressed. “There can be no mistake?”

“With Salena nothing is ever certain. You should know that far better than I. But I believe she’s with him—yes.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Sheridan eyed his employer. He knew about William’s obsession. There were few on the island who didn’t.

Sheridan didn’t care. He was the brains behind Katonga, the man who ran the huge plantation, the man who had made it what it was today. And William was smart enough to recognize his talent. The earl paid him a kingly wage, had for the past ten years.

Soon Sheridan Knowles would have enough money to buy a plantation of his own. Let the earl have his sick fascination with his daughter—or whoever she was—Sheridan wasn’t really sure. Salena had been a hellion since the day he had met her, always interfering with his orders, always causing trouble among the slaves. He couldn’t care less what William did to the willful chit. With luck maybe he
would break her rebellious spirit and teach her a woman’s place.

“The girl’s with Trask,” Knowles repeated. “There was something about the way she looked at him. She trusts him, and she thinks he’ll help her escape.”

William’s narrow lips thinned even more. “Then we’ll be ready for them. I won’t take any chances. I want the best men you can find waiting for them in Bridgetown. Double the reward. I want her back home.”

You want her in your bed
, Sheridan thought, but didn’t say it. “What about the darkie? Shall I make certain he knows nothing that might help us?”

“Give it some time. If Salena is not aboard the
Savannah
, we’ll deal with him and his woman. The man will tell us what he knows.”

Silver hadn’t counted on missing Morgan so much. Now that she had been with him so intimately, just sleeping at night without him beside her seemed a challenge.

Sogger didn’t mind Morgan’s absence. He had staked out the place at Silver’s feet on the narrow berth, arriving well before she closed the tiny cabin door. After his nightly ear scratching, he gathered himself into a scruffy orange-striped ball and settled down to a roaring purr. As Silver lay awake, listening for Morgan on the opposite side of the door, she just wished she could rest as soundly.

Morgan seemed to have no trouble at all. In fact, he rarely looked at her anymore. Oh, he was cordial enough, almost friendly on the surface, but underneath, his disdain for her was clear. It rankled her to think that her refusal of his grudgingly offered proposal made him think her somehow immoral—but not enough to accept, to ruin both their lives. It occurred
to her briefly that someday Morgan would thank her for turning him down, but that thought was so depressing Silver forced it away.

She did, however, in the days that followed, have a serious talk with Connie Buckland, carefully explaining that she certainly hadn’t meant to lead him on and that she felt a little more discretion between them would be in both their best interests. Connie grudgingly agreed, though she couldn’t determine for just how long.

With more time to herself, Silver had a chance to renew her friendship with Jordy and even with Hamilton Riley.

“Jordy tells me your family raises cotton along the Red River,” Silver said to Ham one day as they sat beneath a makeshift canvas awning, trying to escape the too-hot Caribbean sun.

“Once my enlistment is up, I plan to return to our plantation. Evergreen will be mine one day; I hope to see it prosper.” Riley wore his uniform pants but days ago had shed his jacket. His shirt, now casually unbuttoned, fluttered softly in the breeze.

“I’m sure you’ll be a great deal of help,” Silver said, meaning it. Ham had put on a bit of weight, she noticed, filling out his slender frame, and his face was reddened by the sun. All in all, he looked more of a man.

As the lieutenant entertained her with stories of his childhood, Silver picked absently at a spot of tar that had somehow gotten on her rose batiste skirt. Considering the chaos on deck, the extra men, supplies, and even animals, she felt lucky her clothing had held up as well as it had. She glanced at the sailors high in the rigging, at others picking oakum, mending line, or repairing block and tackle. Up toward the bow, her eyes came to rest on two brawny
seamen, mercenaries Jacques had hired in Barbados, who sat naked to the waist astride a wooden chest.

“What’s going on over there?” she asked Ham. Jordy stood grinning beside the bigger of the two, a red-haired, hard-faced, barrel-chested man who always eyed her boldly whenever she saw him on deck.

“They’re boxing of a sort—open-handed. Less likely to do any permanent damage, but it smarts like blazes. Mostly it’s just to pass the time. Sometimes the men wager on who’ll stay atop the box the longest.”

“I see.” The two men finished sparring, both in high spirits. Then Jordy sat down opposite a slender man who wasn’t much bigger but looked nearly twice his age. “Surely Jordy isn’t going to try it.”

“He’ll be all right.”

“But he’s just a boy.”

“He’ll be a man soon enough. It’s all he talks about. I guess his future worries him some.” Jordy slapped and flailed, receiving like treatment, his freckled face turning red from the stinging blows. He was no match for the older man, who had obviously played the game for hours.

“It isn’t fair to pit a young boy against someone of so much more experience,” Silver said indignantly, intent on stopping the match before Jordy got hurt. Ham caught her arm.

“Let him be, Miss Jones. He’d rather take his lumps than be shamed in front of the men.”

Silver glanced from Jordy to Ham and back. Her shoulders sagged. “I suppose you’re right, but I still don’t like it.”

Fortunately the game soon ended, and Silver breathed a sigh of relief. The brawny man who had gone before him settled a beefy arm across Jordy’s
shoulder, whispered something in his ear, then laughed uproariously. It was obvious from the look on Jordy’s face the man had already won the young boy’s admiration. From the unkempt appearance of the mean-faced mercenary in his grubby canvas breeches and tattered shirt, Silver was afraid it boded trouble.

She wished she could speak to Morgan about it, but that was hardly possible under the circumstances. Damn it to hell, she’d been sure Morgan would settle down and see reason. Instead he remained distant, determined not to renew their relationship. Lately he’d turned dark and brooding, and more than a little bad-tempered.

As the day wore on, Ham excused himself from her company, and Jacques took his place. It seemed an unspoken rule that Silver was rarely left on deck alone, which, considering the way some of the men looked at her, was probably just as well.

“A fine day,
n’est-ce pas
?” The big Frenchman sat down on the deck box beside her. “The winds ’ave freshened again—we ’ave been lucky so far.”

Silver glanced at Morgan who stood near the big teak wheel in the aft of the ship, engrossed in conversation with the helmsman. “I suppose it’s all right.”

Jacques chuckled softly. “You are lonely? I did not think such a beautiful woman would be lonely with so many admirers.”

She forced a smile she didn’t feel. “I’m not really lonely.”

“It is
le capitaine
—the major,” he corrected. “I think ’e is not so ’appy either.”

“He looks perfectly happy to me,” she said petulantly.

“If you knew ’im better, you would see.” Jacques smoothed his mustache, then stroked his heavy black
beard. His powerful biceps flexed beneath his homespun shirt.

“I’m really not his type, you know. He likes his women oozing with sweetness. He expects them to do exactly what he says, whether they like it or not. I’ll never be that way.”

“Ah, but you
are
sweet,
chérie
, and Morgan knows it. ’E is attracted to you, but ’e is also afraid.”

“Afraid! Afraid of what?”

“ ’E was in love once—five years ago—with a wealthy planter’s daughter. She was beautiful. Charlotte Middleton was ’er name.” Jacques glanced out to sea, watching the swells, the tiny whitecaps that broke the surface of the water. “They were going to be married. It was only by accident that Morgan found ’er in another man’s bed.”

“Oh, no,” Silver said softly, remembering him with Lydia and knowing exactly how Morgan must have felt. “Why did she do it? If she loved him—”

“Love means different things to different people. I think Charlotte loved Morgan. But she loved ’erself more. She took ’er pleasure in the moment. In the end she may ’ave been sorry, but for Morgan it was too late. ’E does not wish to love another woman as ’e once did Charlotte, so ’e holds ’imself back.”

“He asked me to marry him.”

Jacques eyed her speculatively as if he could guess what had happened between them. Silver felt the heat creep into her cheeks.

“Why did you not say yes?”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

Jacques grinned at that. “Because you would be ’appy, not sad.”

“He didn’t really want to marry me.”

“Maybe ’e did; maybe ’e did not.
Le capitaine
is a man of great conscience. ’E will do what ’e thinks is
right. But ’e would never marry a woman unless ’e wanted to.”

“I don’t want to marry a man who doesn’t love me. In fact, I’m not sure I want to marry a man at all.”

Jacques chuckled and patted her hand. “Morgan—’e was right about one thing—you are quite a andful, Silver Jones. Whether ’e knows it or not, I believe you may be exactly the woman for ’im.”

As the day wore on, the wind began to blow, and the huge puffy clouds overhead grew dense and gray. Whitecaps breaking against the bow tossed salty sea spray into the air and dampened the unwary. Morgan only seemed pleased.

“If the seas don’t get no—any—rougher, we’ll make some real good time,” Jordy told her. “Cap’n’s real worried about his brother … guess that’s why he’s been so bad-tempered lately.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Silver said.

“Perty hard to miss,” Jordy said with a grin.

Silver didn’t answer.

“You like him, don’t you?”

“Sometimes.”

“I think he likes you, too.”

“Don’t be so sure—” She noticed Jordy’s eyes were fixed on the two rough-looking men he had been talking to earlier. “Those men you’re looking at, Jordy, they seem a bit disreputable.… Are you sure about them? I mean—”

“Big one’s Farley Weathers—they call him Stormy ’cause he’s so mean-tempered. Other one is Dickey Green.”

“Just be careful,” Silver warned. “Men like that sometimes bring trouble.”

“They’re okay, Silver. They’re just tougher’n most is all.”

Silver nodded, hoping Jordy was right and her instincts were wrong. “I think I’ll go below for a while,” she said. “Thanks for the company.”

At supper that night, Morgan didn’t appear. He had work to do in his quarters—or so he told Ham, who made his excuses for him. Disgruntled at his abandonment and beginning to get bored, Silver accepted Connie Buckland’s invitation for an after-supper stroll. It was the first time she had walked with him in the evening since she had been in Morgan’s bed.

“You seem pensive tonight, my dear,” Buckland said. “I hope nothing is wrong.” Dressed immaculately as always, his dark blue uniform spotlessly pressed, Constantine Buckland presented a picture of masculinity. He was charming and gracious—and pompous and patronizing.

“Of course not, Connie.” Silver pulled her black woolen shawl a little closer around her shoulders. The breeze had remained brisk all afternoon, the ship cutting through the water with record speed, but it felt only the least bit chilly. “I guess I’m just getting eager to reach our destination. That seems to be a common ailment among those at sea.”

Connie patted her hand where it rested in the crook of his arm. “Another week should do it. But never forget there is grave danger in Mexico. You must stay aboard the ship at all times.”

“I will,” she promised, but only halfheartedly. It would feel good just to walk on solid land again, even for an hour or two.

They strolled the pine deck, talking about Texas, the republic’s ongoing skirmishes with the Mexicans, their fervent wish to end the conflict once and for all, but Silver found it hard to keep her mind on the conversation. Instead her eyes searched for Morgan.
She cursed herself soundly, calling herself a fool. She shouldn’t give a fiddler’s damn about a man like Morgan. A man who would abandon her at the slightest provocation. Still, she did care, and she missed him.