Taming Charlotte (42 page)

It was calm as a quilt on an old lady’s bed, that water, but beneath it, things moved and lived that could bring sudden, painful death.

Patrick took a breath, held it, and slipped beneath the dinghy. Deftly he overturned it, and the outraged shouts and frantic splashes of his victims were like soft music on a balmy summer evening.

He tossed his head to shake the water from his hair and eyes, then looked back toward the three ships waiting farther out in the harbor. They were alight, and men stirred on their decks, but he had time to carry out his plan.

Singling Raheem out was an embarrassingly simple matter—he was the one drowning. His two henchmen were clinging to the side of the boat and shouting blindly for help,
certain, probably, that they were about to be devoured by some giant creature of the deep.

Patrick pulled the knife he carried from its scabbard, moved up behind the struggling Raheem, and hooked an arm around his neck. With his other hand, Patrick pressed the blade to the pirate’s throat.

In those moments, Patrick underwent the greatest struggle of all. It would have been so easy, so blessedly simple, to open Raheem’s jugular vein and watch his blood drain into the sea, thus avenging Charlotte and the precious child who would never know the glorious pleasure and pain of living.

“Trevarren,” the pirate said, when he’d gotten his breath. He was calmer now, even with a line of cold, sharp steel pressed against his throat. “My men will kill you for this, I swear before Allah.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a religious man,” Patrick replied, breathless from his exertions but unconcerned by the threat. Without withdrawing the knife, he began making his way back toward shore, pulling Raheem with him. He offered no reply to the pirate’s threat, because nothing in the world frightened him except the prospect Of living into old age without Charlotte beside him.

Reaching the beach took much of Patrick’s strength; once, such an escapade would barely have strained his energies, but his powers had been undermined by the fever, and he was still recovering.

Twice more during the long swim, Patrick stopped, debating with his conscience. Raheem was a pirate, for God’s sake, one of the most feared, even in that treacherous part of the world. He had done unspeakable things, things that would not even occur to an ordinary man. Why, then, Patrick wondered angrily, shouldn’t he kill the son of a bitch and leave him for the fish?

Raheem slouched limply against him now, perhaps unconscious, perhaps just awaiting his chance. Judging by the way he’d carried on when the dinghy was overturned, he probably couldn’t swim. Patrick could just slip away, let the pirate go under, leave him to die.

He, Patrick, would not even have to do the man violence.

He swore, released his captive, and watched without particular emotion as Raheem floated facedown in the water, making no visible effort to fight for his life.

Patrick turned and started toward shore, then stopped, swearing again. Cochran’s quote echoed mercilessly in his mind.
Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord.
Realizing he was still clutching the knife in his right hand, Patrick sheathed the weapon, swore again, and swam back to Raheem.

The pirate was just disappearing under the surface of the water; Patrick grasped him by the collar, with another curse, and went on toward shore.

Cochran was waiting there, sane, sensible Cochran. He waded in when he caught sight of Patrick and relieved him of his unconscious companion.

“I’ll be damned,” the first mate said, crouching to examine Raheem as best he could, given the darkness. “It’s Raheem, isn’t it? Why didn’t you kill him?”

Patrick was half-sprawled on the shore, gasping for breath and ready to retch up enough salt water to surround a whale. He pushed his hair back from his face and regarded his friend for several moments before finding the strength to speak. “I wanted to prolong the pleasure,” he growled.

Raheem was lying on the beach, coughing violently and swearing in his native tongue.

He spoke calmly to the pirate, in the colloquial Arabic he’d originally learned from Khalif. “You’re going to die,” he said. “One way or another, at my hand or at the end of a hangman’s noose back in Europe, you’re as good as dead.”

Raheem vomited violently, then spat, “May you burn in your Christian hell, Trevarren!”

Patrick offered no reply, but simply scrambled to his feet and, with Cochran’s help, hauled Raheem up after him.

“Look,” Cochran said, with a laugh, gesturing toward the lighted ships that had been dominating the harbor all day. “They’re leaving! Loyal souls, those pirates, just like their captain.”

Raheem only grunted at Cochran’s words, probably not understanding them, but he comprehended the sight of his three ships in retreat well enough. The pirate gave a bellow
of protest, but it was all for naught. That night he was locked up in the wine cellar and, except for regular rations of food and water, forgotten.

Charlotte ached in every pore and cell of her body, but the glorious sunshine that filled the room felt like some intangible balm. She caught her breath, remembering the explosion—had it been the night before?—and laid both hands to her stomach.

“The baby?” she whispered. She could not see anyone near the bed, but she knew she wasn’t alone.

Jacoba immediately loomed above her. “Awaken the captain,” she said to someone just out of sight—probably Mary Catch-much-fish. Then she looked down at Charlotte, her face open and kindly. “The babe is still with you, Mrs. Trevarren,” she said. “Of course, there’s no tellin’ whether the little one was harmed. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

There was a ruckus, and then Patrick appeared, looking as though he’d just returned from a mission in hell. He was gaunt, unbearably pale, and his hair was rumpled and oddly stiff-looking. His shirt didn’t sit with its usual dashing grace on his upper body, and as he gazed at Charlotte, his throat worked visibly.

Jacoba slipped away with surprising grace for a woman of her size, and the door closed quietly behind her before Patrick spoke.

He moved to the side of the bed, dropped down on his knees beside it, and enclosed one of Charlotte’s bruised hands gently in both his own. Then, to her amazement, he lowered his head to her bosom and uttered a ragged sob.

Gently, with her free hand, Charlotte touched his hair. Her heart was so full of emotion that she couldn’t speak, and tears brimmed in her eyes.

Patrick wept, the sound low and broken, for several minutes. Then, finally, he raised his head and met her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I’m so sorry—”

Charlotte was puzzled. She stroked his dark hair. “Why?”

“If it hadn’t been for me, none of this would have happened. I should have taken you straight to the authorities when you were dumped at my feet that night, but
instead I thought up all kinds of excuses for keeping you with me. I wanted you for myself.”

Charlotte managed a smile. “Was that so wrong?”

He rested his forehead lightly against hers for just a moment. “Yes. You would have been safe at home by now, with your father and stepmother to look after you—”

“Patrick,” Charlotte interrupted, annoyed. “I’m not a child, in need of a keeper. Did it ever occur to you that if I didn’t want to be with you, I wouldn’t have stayed? There were a few times, you know, when I could have left—while we were in Spain, for instance. And after the uprising, when Khalif was in power again and offered me a house in France.”

Patrick gave a great sigh, and in many ways, it was as painful for Charlotte to hear as his sobs had been earlier. She heard an uncharacteristic element of defeat in the sound. “I can’t change the past,” he said, speaking as much to himself, Charlotte thought, as to her. “But I don’t have to go on making the same mistakes in the future.”

Charlotte felt cold all of the sudden, and oddly afraid. “Patrick—”

He rose to his feet, stepped back out of her reach. She could almost see the stony barrier that dropped into place between them. “Enough. I won’t see you die for loving me, Charlotte. It’s decided.”

“Patrick!” She tried to sit up, feeling panicked, knowing he had already withdrawn from her. “Patrick!” she cried again, desperate.

Without visible emotion, he pressed her back onto the pillows. “Rest,” he said. “Just rest.”

With that, he moved like a sleepwalker to the door.

“I’ve lost him,” Charlotte murmured miserably an hour later, when Jayne was sitting at her bedside, keeping her company. “Patrick is my husband, the father of my baby, the only man I’ll ever love. And he might as well be on the other side of the world.”

Jayne sighed. “He’s undergone a few shocks lately, our Patrick. First there was the storm, then the pirates attacked the island, and you were so badly hurt that we all thought
you’d die…” She paused, smiled. “Except for Gideon, of course. He must have said a thousand prayers for your recovery, and I don’t think he ever doubted for an instant that you would get well. Anyway, Patrick is still reeling from all that’s happened. He just needs some time to assimilate everything, that’s all.”

“I hope you’re right,” Charlotte muttered, but her heart was in her throat and she had an awful feeling that, marriage or none, baby or none, her intimate association with Patrick Trevarren had truly ended this time.

In the sunny days to come, Charlotte recovered slowly, by degrees—at least, physically she recovered. All the while her body was growing strong, some vital part of her soul was shriveling up and dying.

It wasn’t that Patrick avoided her, exactly. He sat with her for hours on the terrace outside her room, reading to her from Shakespeare, even acting out some of the more dramatic or comical scenes. He brought her succulent fruit, and told her stories about his youth.

Still, for all of that, he might have been a stranger, someone hired to amuse the patient. He slept in another room at night, never kissed Charlotte, or held her, or referred in any way to the incomprehensible passion that had once blazed between them.

It was, as she had feared, over.

Gideon was a faithful support during those difficult days, and though his grief for the lost Susannah showed plainly in his eyes, Charlotte correctly guessed that he was growing closer and closer to Jayne.

Stella, who had aspired to a romance with Gideon herself, accepted the situation with surprising good grace, and set her sights on one of Patrick’s young crewmen, just as Nora had. Deborah, the youngest of the group, was content to love the harmless, dashing men who peopled the novels she loved to read.

After a month, Charlotte was back on her feet, but all the joy had gone from her life, with Patrick’s affections. She supposed she would recover someday, and make a place in
the world for herself and her child, but that time seemed far in the future.

Patrick no longer kept a vigil beside her, now that she was well and the baby was fluttering against the walls of her womb. He worked from sunrise to sunset with his men, clearing the rubble from the cane fields and preparing the ground for another planting.

One day, when Charlotte was at particularly loose ends, she wandered into the wing of the house where Gideon had his room, and paused in his open doorway.

A borrowed carpetbag sat on his bed, openmouthed, and Gideon was packing the shirts and trousers Jacoba and the others had made for him. He turned his head and smiled at Charlotte, eyes twinkling.

“Hello, Mrs. Trevarren. You’re looking very well today.”

Charlotte sighed and sagged against the doorframe. Her throat was thick and she had to wait a moment before speaking, in order to keep her renegade emotions under some semblance of control. She tried to smile. “Australia is quite some distance from here,” she said finally. “Much too far to swim or row.”

Gideon grinned, gestured toward a wing-back chair. “Come in and sit down.”

Charlotte obeyed. “It isn’t proper,” she protested at the same time. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Her friend chuckled. “Since when, sweet Charlotte, have you been troubled by such mundane concepts as propriety?”

“You’re leaving,” she said, her gazing moving once more to the satchel.

“That ship I prayed for is about to arrive.”

Charlotte had no doubt that what he said was quite true. Over the course of the past weeks, she’d had many occasions to see that Gideon was indeed on good terms with God. Once, for instance, when she’d been in such pain from her injuries that she hadn’t been able to bear it, he’d taken her hand and offered a few words, and she’d felt a little better.

“Do you suppose you could pray that Patrick will love me again?” she dared to ask.

Gideon stopped moving about the room to come and sit
facing her, on the hassock. “That would be like praying for the sky to be blue or the sea to be deep,” he said gently. “No man ever loved a woman more completely or sincerely than Patrick loves you.”

Charlotte shook her head. “He’s decided not to let himself care for me anymore, Gideon, and you know how bullheaded he can be.”

The missionary touched Charlotte’s cheek with a gentle hand. “While you, of course, are sweet and pliant and eminently reasonable,” he teased.

Charlotte made a sound that was both a laugh and a sob. “Gideon, don’t be impossible. I came to you for sympathy!”

“It isn’t sympathy you need, my dear,” Gideon said, with a philosophical sigh, leaning back and laying his hands on his thighs. “It’s patience. Patrick will come to terms with his feelings for you in time.”

“But I can’t wait!” Charlotte cried, in a frantic whisper.

Gideon chuckled. “You remind me of my sister, Elizabeth,” he said. “Once, when we were small, our grandmother gave her some flower bulbs and a spot in the garden that was to be all Elizabeth’s own. My sister planted the bulbs and then went out every day to glare at the dirt, waiting for the blossoms to appear. After only a week, her curiosity got the better of her, and she couldn’t bear the suspense any longer. She dug up those bulbs, just to see if they’d sprouted, and after that, of course, they couldn’t grow because she’d killed them.”

Before Charlotte could come up with a reply, Jayne burst through the doorway, her lovely face flushed with excitement and no small measure of dread, her dark red hair flying.