The Rebel Pirate (25 page)

Sarah’s expression told him there would be no “we.”

They watched Mr. Cheap push the boat out into the water and climb in.

Sparhawk turned to Sarah Ward. He had never seen her face so bleak. It was his fault. A lifetime of avoiding entanglements, of keeping the women he bedded at arm’s length, had left him ill-equipped for this moment.

“I love you,” he said.

The words did not banish her despondence. They did not light her eyes with the fire he remembered from the deck on the
Sally
, when she had leveled her pistol at him, or kindle the excitement she had betrayed in her father’s keeping room before Micah Wild’s untimely interruption. But there was nothing keeping them apart now, if only he could express himself with some eloquence.

“I am sorry. My education was cut short at an early age and I have spent much of my life among seamen, and very little of it in salons. I do not have the wit to do your qualities justice, the poetry to describe what I feel when I watch you walk across a deck or sheet a sail or, God help me, aim a pistol. I should have said all this before we parted, but I was determined to give you up, to cut you loose from this mess I am in and see you safe in another man’s keeping. You possess every quality I admire in a woman, or for that matter in a man, and I will find no happiness on this earth without you.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. It was not the reaction he was hoping for.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. Admiral Graves has Ned hostage aboard the
Diana.
I have to marry Trent, or the admiral will have Ned lashed and then he will arrest me.”

“Sarah, you cannot marry Trent. He is my father.”

•   •   •

For a moment the world spun around her. Then Sparhawk’s arms were steadying her and he was lowering her to the ground, the coarse sand and small pebbles rough against her back.

“Wait here, Sarah,” said Sparhawk. “I’ll send for the boat.”

She sat up carefully and shook her head. “No boat.” She tried to fathom what he was saying. “It cannot be. Trent is—”

“Trent is forty-four,” said Sparhawk. He ran to the water’s edge to dip his kerchief in the surf and returned to drape it, cool and soothing, around her neck. “I am twenty-eight,” he continued. “Trent was fifteen when he married my mother, sixteen when I was born.”

It had to be a mistake. Sparhawk’s father had been a monster. “He cannot be the same man. Trent is everything kind and generous. He has fed and clothed my family. He shielded Ned and me from the admiral. He has offered me marriage.”

“He is very good at making himself agreeable to women. Much like Micah Wild.”

“Trent is nothing like Micah Wild.”

“Past experience indicates that you are not the best judge of character.”

“No,” she said coldly. “Apparently I am not.”

“Sarah, even if you will not have me, you cannot return to Trent. In Salem I did not tell you everything he did. Some things were too painful to speak of, but I will speak them now, even the ones that shame me, because I cannot bear to see you in his power. You have felt the scars on my back. That is what Slough did, when I refused to service him. He broke me, so that I got on my knees willingly for him, to be spared the lash. That was Trent’s doing. My mother suffered worse. When she was in jail, she begged her guards to take a message to the island parson who had married her to my father. The guards held her down and poured lye down her throat so that she might never tell her story again. The magistrates declared her a debtor and an indigent, and they sentenced her to indentured servitude on a plantation, where she died from abuse and neglect. This is what Trent did to the woman he loved, whose only sin was to refuse to collude in bigamy with him. Imagine what he might do to you if he learned of our connection.”

Sarah’s whole life had been a succession of happy worlds stolen from her. The freedom and adventure of the
Sally
had been exchanged for the constrictions of the dame school. The heady thrill of her engagement to Micah Wild had been traded for the liminal status of a half-fallen woman, used goods. The promise of Sparhawk’s little house in the North End had been exchanged for the secure certainty of marriage to Trent, which now appeared far less safe. “You were abducted on an East Indiaman. You were half a world away. How do you know what happened to your mother?” asked Sarah.

“Once I had my own ship, I requested service in the Caribbean, and tried to find her. I was naive enough to think she might still be alive. The cleric who married my parents had long since left the island, but the Spaniard who taught me swordplay and the Jewess who tutored me in Hebrew were still there, and I was able to piece together some of the story. Trent, though, covered his tracks well. The magistrates who tried my mother were dead. Killed in duels manufactured by my father. Along with the plantation owner who had bought her indenture. Two of the slaves remembered her and how she had died, and, in exchange for their stories, I bought and freed them.”

Sarah took a step away from him.

It was too neat. It had the elegant simplicity of one of Ned’s stories, of a hero and a villain locked in mortal enmity. And life, as she knew from her experience with Micah Wild, was not like that. The man who had jilted her was no stage villain. He had not climbed in her bedroom window, had not, like some rake’s progress, made fast the lock upon the door.
She
had gone to
him
, been complicit in her own seduction. She had flung her innocence at his feet to bind him with obligation when their mercantile ties unraveled. When it all went wrong, she had hidden behind the mask of victim, held her father and their fortunes ransom to the narrative of the scheming Rebel villain, and the cost—their home, the
Sally
, Ned’s freedom—had been too dear. The cunning rake and the naive virgin might make a better story, but that did not make it true.

“I do not doubt that these things you experienced happened,” she said. “That you have suffered and that an injustice has been done you. But you were twelve years old when all this occurred. Younger than Benji is now. Your understanding was not that of an adult. The testimony you heard was second- and thirdhand, and in the case of the slaves on the plantation, bought from desperate men who would say anything to escape their servitude. Even if everything you believe is true, even if Trent is a murderer, I will marry him, and gladly, to keep Ned from suffering as you did. I should go now,” she said. “I do not think Trent will be content to wait for my return, no matter what threats Mrs. Gage repeats. And they must not find the
Sally
and Benji.”

“Sarah.” Sparhawk’s voice was tinged with panic. “If I could get Ned off the
Diana
, if he was safe, would you leave Trent?”

“Please don’t try,” she said. “Take the
Sally
and Benji and leave. Ned is safe for the moment, and Graves will not be able to touch him or me if I can marry Trent before the admiral learns of our plans.”

“I cannot sail so long as you remain under that man’s roof.”

“He has not touched me,” she said. “Not once. Though he has had every opportunity. He saved me from a gang of soldiers the night we came to Charlestown, when we were looking for you at the Three Cranes. Mr. Cheap and Benji had been gone for hours. We were tired and hungry, and my father was at the end of his endurance. I would have given myself to Trent out of gratitude, and he knew it, and he did not press his advantage.”

Sparhawk shook his head. “If he spared you, it was only because he plays some deeper game. Do you know how many men he has killed in duels?”

“Seven,” she said. “He almost fought one to save me. I tried to pick a Redcoat’s pocket, but I was not so deft as on the day I picked yours on the
Sally
. The fusilier caught me. And his friends wanted to have their pound of flesh. They would have done too, but Trent stopped them.”

“That makes him fastidious, not noble,” spat Anthony Trent’s son.

“If you will not see reason, then leave,” she said. “You endanger Benji’s life by staying. Mr. Cheap’s as well.”

“If you know your family, then you will realize I did not have the power to delay the
Sally
’s sailing on my own. Mr. Cheap and Benji both voted to come back for you.”

“But they will not make me come, and they will not let you force me to come.”

“No,” he said. “They will not, but chances are they will be all for rescuing Ned. The
Diana
sailed past Noddle’s and up the creek this afternoon. If she engages with the Americans, there is a chance we will be able to get Ned off.”

She hesitated, then said, “If you can get Ned away from the Graves family, I will have more freedom to consider my course of action.”

“That is not the assurance I was hoping for,” he said.

“It is the best I can give you under the circumstances.”

He did not try to stop her from leaving. She took the path he showed her, up over the headland. She could smell smoke on the air, thought she might hear guns firing, but the dense growth on the island muffled sound and confounded her ability to decide where it was coming from. North, perhaps. At least if the
Diana
was involved in a skirmish with cattle rustlers, Ned would be relatively safe. The Americans did not have ships that could match fire with a British man-of-war.

She had wanted to go with Sparhawk so badly, her chest hurt. It felt as if a line were wrapped around her ribs, growing tighter every second, tied with a clove hitch knot to the
Sally
.

I love you.
Too late. He had not said it the night they made love, but even then, she had been prepared to go with him. His company, his wit, their mutual attraction, would have been enough for her. She had already resolved in Salem to take what life offered her, to put aside the dream of that elegant brick house and the status it would have accorded her, all false lures and vanity. With Sparhawk she might not have had the respect of her neighbors, but together they would have shared all the things that really mattered, and devil take the gossips.

Now that was impossible. And she had only her pride to blame once more. She could have argued with him that night, and if that had not worked, begged, or broken down into tears. She could have simply demanded to be taken aboard the
Sally
, and Mr. Cheap and Benji would have obliged. But she had not, because she would not allow Sparhawk to see how much he had hurt her.

The manor house was brightly lit, with candles blazing from every window. Music floated on the air, and the smell of food—more appetizing than the admiral’s breakfast—drifted through the night. She had not eaten, she realized, all day. She reached the manicured lawn just as the sun was setting, and she discovered an old-fashioned, formal knot garden and a long parterre, which led to the steps of the landside façade.

The house was old and stoutly built, part fieldstone fortress and part country manor. The doors were open, and she entered the starburst marble hall and surprised two sleepy footmen who did not expect guests to come from that direction. Sarah hesitated on the threshold of the dining room when she saw her hosts seated in the place of honor at the center of the broad polished table: Mr. Williams, Mrs. Williams, and their
cousin
, “Mrs. Martin,” who was, without a doubt, Angela Ferrers, wearing pale blue silk, the pearl-crusted mourning rings on her long elegant fingers sparkling in the candlelight.

One of the ladies in panniers looked at Sarah and shrieked. Mrs. Gage got up smoothly from her chair and emerged from the room to sweep Sarah up the stairs and into the chamber where Trent was closeted with Generals Gage and Howe.

Trent’s relief was evident on his face. They all asked her, of course, if she had been hurt. Howe thundered something about getting horses and chasing down this devil, Sparhawk.

“They are gone,” said Sarah. “And Mrs. Gage’s earrings with them.”

Trent’s eyes, she saw, settled on her neck, where her mother’s gold chain still circled her throat.

Then General Gage asked gently if Sarah wouldn’t like to speak alone with Mrs. Gage about anything that might have happened, and Sarah thanked him for his kindness but said plainly that she had not been offered any insult.

Howe was all for action, but Gage soothed him. If the rascals had a schooner, they would be well away by now. No one had been hurt, little of value had been stolen, and because the ladies had been waylaid, however briefly, turning a supper party into a manhunt would suggest that something far worse had happened to them.

The point was moot, because Sarah was not able to remember which direction she had come from, nor where the schooner was anchored. And just in case Billy Howe could not be dissuaded from riding into the night, she added, “I saw smoke and heard fire coming from the north.” Which would take pursuit in the opposite direction from the
Sally
, away from Sparhawk and Benji.

Billy Howe’s ears perked at this, but Thomas Gage shook his head. “It is a cattle raid by the Rebels. Nothing more. They want the beasts and hay off the islands, and it is, after all, their property. Admiral Graves lays some claim to the cattle, but has not paid for them yet, and he keeps his naval stores here, without paying rent to the landowners, so it is his responsibility to pursue the thieves. I warned him of their intention two days ago when Margaret’s brother got wind of it.”

Howe pointed out that warships did not have the men to chase cattle raiders across miles of territory.

“Then the admiral,” said the governor, “should take care not to become involved in disputes over livestock. I have kept the peace in Boston,” said Gage wearily, “for nigh on a year. Parliament will not send troops, only provocation. Bills and acts designed to drive the mildest yeoman farmer into open rebellion. They play into the hands of Warren and Adams and the demagogues who hunger for war, and try to taunt us to rash and bloody action. They had their day at Lexington, their ‘Bloody Butchery.’ I will not give them another excuse to expand this rebellion beyond the Massachusetts Bay.”

Mrs. Gage voiced her agreement. Billy Howe appeared shocked to discover she had a voice at all. Until she said something he liked, which was that Mrs. Loring had been asking for him. She made no mention of Mrs. Loring’s husband, who seemed an unusually broadminded gentleman. Howe decided that perhaps the best thing—for Sarah, of course—was that they should continue on with the evening.