The Diamond King (11 page)

She looked back down at the child who had—at the least—lost her home, her family, her safety, and who, despite all that, was like a wolf cub, ready to defend herself against any interloper, even someone who wanted to help.

Robin had manners that made him unlikely to spit, but there was an iron in him that would make him very unlikely to accept her. He did not even try to hide the suspicion in his eyes.

Will
. Never had there been a more unlikely Will.

“Tell me about your ... captain,” she said.

Meg turned back to her. Her eyes, which had been dull with pain, then sparking with outrage, now filled with light.

Still, it was Robin who answered. “He found a way to bring us to France,” he said. “He could have left us. But he risked his life over and over again to get us to France. He found us families in Paris, but—”

“We dinna like them,” Meg said. “We wanted Will.”

Their devotion to “Will” was, she realized, absolute. She would not help herself by saying anything against him.

“How did you come to be with him?”

Robin looked at her as if she were trying to trap him.

“We heard there were ... fugitives in a certain area,” he said. “I found my way to them first, then Meg and her mother. But her mother died not long after arriving.”

“How many were there?”

“Some,” he said evenly.

“How did he get you out of Scotland?”

“He robbed the likes of you,” Meg spat.

Jenna saw the warning glance Robin gave Meg. “I will not say anything,” she tried to reassure him.

“You are a Campbell,” Meg reminded her again.

“Aye, but I am also a Scot.”

Meg made a face then, and Jenna knew it was not entirely because of her comment. It was more pain than anger or resentment.

Jenna rose and went to a table bolted to the floor and found a clean cloth. Then she filled a cup from the tap of a water barrel. She poured part of the cup’s contents on a cloth and went over to the child, offering the half-filled cup of water.

To her surprise, Meg drank greedily. Jenna wiped her face with the cloth, noticing that the child’s eyes were brighter than they should be.

The boy noticed it, too.

Jenna turned to him. “Will you ask if she should have more laudanum?”

Robin nodded and disappeared out the door.

Meg’s eyes met hers. They were clouded with pain that she’d obviously tried to hide earlier. So much bravery in a child.

And hostility. So Jenna sat silently, fearing that any more words might upset Meg and worsen the fever. She needed rest. She needed a sense of safety.

She needed prayers, even if she did not want the prayers of a Campbell.

Jenna turned away, looking around the small sick bay. It looked very inadequate. In addition to the small bed Meg occupied, there were some hammocks, a cabinet, a bag of instruments that was wide open, and a few jars held firmly in a cabinet bolted to the wall. They were unlabeled but she could guess at the contents: cannabis, dragon’s blood, rosemary, ash bark, ginger, sulphur, flaxseed, and oil.

She wondered which was the laudanum. Or opium. Both were good for pain. The poultice needed to be replaced. She wondered what had been applied. Some physicians used lint dipped in oil. Others used a bread and milk mixture.

She’d tended many small animals that she had found hurt or sick, and for a while had tended people as well. An old midwife said she had a talent for it, but her father had been horrified. News that she was a healer, combined with her birthmark, would be added proof she was a witch.

She had been strictly forbidden to even mention herbs. Still, she knew the danger of inflammation and had even seen a man die of it. She did not want that to happen to young Meg.

In minutes, the lad named Robin had returned, an older man in tow.

“She’s very warm and in a lot of pain,” Jenna said.

“I’m Hamish,” the man said with a gentle smile. “I come as close to being a doctor as anyone onboard. I really repair sails more than people.”

“Then perhaps I can help,” she said with eagerness she could not contain. She wanted so much to be useful. “Can I fix a new poultice for her wound?”

He nodded. “I use lint and oil. The oil is in a green bottle in the cabinet.” He turned back to measuring out several spoonfuls of a substance into a cup of something that smelled suspiciously like brandy.

She wanted to say something, but hesitated. She did not want to be sent back to the cabin.

Instead, she prepared the poultice and went over to Meg. The lass lay still, her body rigid like the tight strings of a harp, but she said nothing as Jenna lifted the soiled cloth covering the wound. Jenna barely kept from flinching when she saw the raw wound that had obviously been dilated to take out any material, then neatly sewn shut. Still, it looked angry and the skin around it was red. Jenna threw away the old bandage and gently placed the new poultice on the wound. She prayed once again, this time that it would draw the poison.

Meg never made a sound, but she gulped the mixture that the older man gave her.

“She will sleep soon,” Hamish said.

Jenna looked at him curiously. “Have you been sailing long?”

“All my life,” he said. “Was a cabin boy when only a lad. Learned everything I could about sails. Apprenticed with a real sailmaker, but missed the sea. Someone who knows sails and can mend them well is respected.”

“Then why did you join—”

“A privateer?”

“Aye.”

“The English impressed me when my merchant ship stopped in London. Four years on a British warship. It was hell. We were never allowed off for fear we might run off. Men were lashed for no reason. Maybe after a twenty-four-hour duty, they dinna move fast enough. I still have stripes on my back.” His voice had lowered, reverberating with intensity. “I believe it right that they pay me back for those years.”

“Does everyone on board feel that way?”

“There are a few who want the adventure, or money, but most feel they’re owed something.”

“Captain Malfour?”

“He’ll have to tell ye his own tale.”

“Will he try to ransom us?” It had been a fear of hers. If he did, her reputation would be ruined. The Honorable David Murray would withdraw his offer if it became common knowledge that she had been held by pirates. She doubted the ransom would be paid. It was truly heartbreaking to realize no one cared about her enough to secure her freedom.

She didn’t want this child to ever feel that way.

Hamish apparently saw her small shiver. “You need not fear the captain. He is a hard man, but a fair one. He does not make war on women and children. No‘ like some.” There was a familiar accusation in his voice. She wondered that so many of these strangers apparently believed her people could do the monstrous things that were attributed to them.

Her look must have been doubtful. The captain had seemed curt and indifferent to the children. She thought he had summoned her only to free one of his men for duty. “He’s very hard with the children.”

“Oh, we all know he dotes on them. He thinks they obey better if they fear him. Trouble is they do not. They know he would give his life for them. And almost has. More than once, according to the young lad.”

“I thought they helped him steal.”

Hamish grinned. “You mean you think he was training them to be thieves? Nay. He’s been trying to make Meg into a lady, but to no avail. And the lad, polite as he is, hates the British as much as the captain.”

“Is Malfour his real name?”

“Now that, my lady, is another question you will have to ask him. No one inquires too much into pasts on this ship.”

“How many ships have you taken?”

“Yours is the third.”

“Have there been women taken before?”

“Nay.”

“Then you do not know what he will do?”

“You learn quickly about a man at sea,” he said. “We’ve been wi‘ him three months, and there’s no’ one of us who wouldna die for him.”

She felt a chill run down her spine. She had thought perhaps to gain allies among the crew.

It had looked like a pirate crew. The men were ill dressed, not neatly uniformed as they had been on the merchant ship. They sported fierce mustaches, and had hard eyes and faces that glared and accused. They all wore pistols at their sides, and some had cutlasses, and spoke several different tongues. She had recognized Gaelic, of course, and French. There had also been some other odd languages. Yet the crew worked together well. Even she had noticed that.

A pirate captain—she could think of him in no other way—who ruled obviously by consent of others who looked as villainous as he. Who, according to this man, doted on children while kidnapping innocent civilians.

She wondered where he’d received the scar that so changed a face that once must have been extraordinarily handsome. Strangely enough, it did not repel her. It had been the coldness in his eyes that had done that.

“I must go,” Hamish said. “Rob will stay here and fetch me if you need anything.” He hesitated, then added, “Do not fret about your safety, my lady. The captain will not allow any harm to come to you.”

“It already has,” she said bitterly. “My betrothed is waiting for me in Barbados. He may not want a bride who had been abducted by pirates.”

“Then he is no‘ much of a mon,” Hamish said.

With that, he left her alone with young Meg, who was finally resting, and Robin, who had taken up a watchful position in a chair. He’d been silent through her conversation with Hamish, but she knew he had not missed any of it.

Meg moved restlessly.

Jenna started humming a soft song, half lullaby, half love song.

Meg’s eyes started to close. The tight grimace of her lips relaxed.

Jenna continued to sing softly. Her voice was one of the few attributes her father ever complimented, but she seldom sang for anyone except herself. Shyness over her plainness and the mark that covered her arm usually kept her hidden or in the shadows when guests attended the manor.

There had been a glade, however, where she would take a book and sometimes sing just for the joy of it.

Now just the sound of words she loved soothed her.

She finished the song.

Meg was asleep. She looked at the lad in the corner. He too had dozed off.

She leaned back in the chair and watched them, and her heart ached for both. Orphans who had only a pirate to look after them, a man whose chosen life would probably result in a hangman’s noose. England, she knew, often did not recognize privateers, particularly now that the formal hostilities between France and England were drawing to a close.

Then what would Meg and young Robin do? Or would they too be caught in a British net? They were not too young to be sent to a prison where they might die or be transported to some country as virtual slaves.

How could she let that happen?

She started plotting.

Alex hesitated outside the sick bay. He heard the song from within and cocked his head to listen.

The Campbell lass had a lovely voice, clear and strong and sweet, and the familiar Scottish lullaby reminded him of a home that no longer existed. A sharp pang of loneliness struck him.

How could they have this gentle song in common? Her family and his? The Campbells had torn his country apart.

He did not like to admit that the Jacobites might have had something to do with that tearing apart. Poor leadership. Bad tactics. Too much confidence in French promises. Desertion by clans thought to be loyal. An arrogant prince who spoke only French.

And the greatest gallantry he’d ever seen.

All over in a few hours at Culloden Moor.

He shook his head. She was a Campbell, and Campbells had been responsible for so many of his country’s sorrows. They were duplicitous, untrustworthy, traitorous.

Bloody hell.

He opened the door. The Campbell woman was sitting beside the child. Meg’s eyes were closed, her hands no longer clenched in tight balls as she tried not to cry or show how much she hurt.

The singing stopped, but he saw the woman look at Meg with such tenderness, it hurt.

She was so concentrated on Meg, she seemed unaware of his presence. Her dress was limp and soiled. She apparently had taken some time to twist her hair into a severe knot at the back of her head, and now strands fell untidily around her face. There was nothing elegant or pretty about her, and yet something ... touched him. Perhaps the raw longing in her face.

She’s a Campbell, he reminded himself. And a plain sparrow. Why then did something inside him respond to her?

She’s going to her wedding.

Her voice was strong and true. No fear in it. Or was she hiding it? Did she still fear him, afraid that he might take her virtue?

As if he would touch a Campbell.

A Campbell who sang like an angel.

“Miss Campbell.” Again, he deliberately ignored the courtesy title.

She jumped nearly a furlong despite his soft tone and whirled around to face him. Robin, he noted, was asleep in a chair across the room.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Hurting. She tries so hard not to show it.”

“She has had a lot of practice.”

“How long has she been with you?”

“More than a year.”

“What are you going to do with her?”

“Find her a home. I thought—” Why in the bloody hell was he talking to the woman?

She cocked her head, just like that sparrow he’d envisioned. Her eyes were just as bright, although they weren’t dark. Bloody hell, but that blue green color was intriguing.

“You thought?” she prompted.

“There was a family in France willing to take them both.” For the life of him, he did not know why he was explaining anything to her. “But they showed up in the hold four days after we sailed.”

Her gaze seemed to bore through him. “You wanted to get rid of them?”

“They are better off with a family,” he said, amazed at the fact she turned that against him. Apparently he was damned if he found them a home, and damned if he didn’t because that meant he was abandoning them. Why, for God’s sake, did he care what she thought?