Captain Rose’s Redemption

He scooped it up and set it on the table beside the pistol box. He lifted one pistol out of its velvet bed and held it up between them. ‘This will be our signal. When I send this to you, you’ll follow the man who bears it and he’ll provide you with further information about what is required.’

He slipped the weapon into the deep pocket of his coat, binding her to him in a most dangerous way. He laid the money in the empty space in the case and closed and locked the lid.

‘The Richard I loved wouldn’t have done this.’

He pressed his fingers into the smooth surface. ‘That Richard is gone. Vincent killed him.’

‘No, you did!’ She snatched the case out from beneath his hands and clutched it to her chest, pinning him with a look more filled with hate than any captain or passenger he’d ever captured at sea.

He flashed her a wicked smile to conceal the remorse making her harsh words sting. ‘Take heart, Cas, I could be killed long before I ever call in my favour.’

‘I hope you are.’

* * *

Cassandra swept around him and out the door, marching across the deck and to the plank joining the two vessels. The pirate crew paid her little heed while they rushed to disengage the grappling hooks and ready the ship. Overhead, the large sail filled with wind and pulled the rigging taut. Over the noise, she caught the faint clink of the coins inside the case. She should open it and throw the money overboard, but to do so would mean revealing something of their conversation and the fact that she’d accepted money from a pirate.

I did it for Dinah. The money was significantly more than she presently possessed and it would help them start over in Virginia.

She hurried to the balustrade, ready to cross to the Winter Gale. No activity marred its deck where the sails and rigging lay torn and shattered. They needed the Royal Navy ship to reach them and help the sailors repair the mainmast before they could continue.

Dr Abney stood in front of the mess, anxiously waiting for her, his full cheeks sagging with relief when he saw her approach the rails. He’d warned her about going willingly to Richard, but she hadn’t listened. She wished she had, then Richard would have remained a treasured part of her past instead of another person who’d betrayed her.

In a few long strides Richard was beside her, his mask fixed over his face, his tricorn settled low over his forehead to further shade his eyes. They stopped at the plank and he took the box from her and tossed it across the gap to Dr Abney. Cassandra held her breath, hoping the lock didn’t break open and scatter the money about the deck. Dr Abney caught the box without reaction, unable to hear or feel the weight of the coins shifting inside over the noise of the sea and the pirates.

Cassandra gathered up the sides of her skirt, ready to rush across when Richard held out his hand to help her. She peered up at him, loss consuming her as it had when she’d watched him climb the gangplank to the Maiden’s Veil in Yorktown. He’d left her with promises that he’d return to her and she’d lived off their hope for so long, until there hadn’t been any more.

‘If things had been different, would you have come home to me? Would we have been happy together?’ she asked, desperate for something in her life to have been real and good.

He closed his fingers over his palm, then opened them again, still holding it out to her, silently urging her to accept it and his help. ‘Yes.’

The wind whipped at her, making her eyes water as much as her desire to weep. She despised what he’d become, but it pained her to let him go again. It was like learning of his death for a second time, except he wasn’t dead, but achingly beyond her reach. Beneath the black silk, in the touch of yellow about his irises, there lingered something of the man who’d almost become her husband, the one she’d been willing to wait for until he’d lied about his death.

I don’t believe in that man any more.

She brushed past him, stepped up on the plank and rushed across. On the other side, Dr Abney took her hand and helped her down, staying close beside her as she wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes.

‘My lady, are you all right?’ Concern made the lines of his face deepen. ‘He didn’t take liberties with you, did he?’

‘No. He was a perfect gentleman.’ Until he’d changed into a rogue and made it clear he wanted nothing more from her than her word.

She took the pistol box from Dr Abney and made for the Captain’s cabin and Dinah. Behind her, Richard called out orders to his crew, his voice reverberating across the water even as the growing distance between the ships swallowed it. The sound of it called to her, but she didn’t look back. She refused to mourn him a second time.

* * *

Richard marched to the opposite side of the ship, unwilling to watch the Winter Gale, and yet another thing torn from him, disappear over the horizon. He gripped the rigging and leaned out over the rail to take in the salty air. Even in the stiff breeze the echoes of Cassandra’s rosewater-scented skin continued to torture him.

‘Captain?’ Mr Rush approached him. ‘We’ve caught a good wind and should outrun the Navy vessel. Mr O’Malley wants to know what course to plot.’

Richard stared out at the whitecaps breaking over the tops of the wind-driven chop, ignoring the weight of the pistol in his coat pocket. The news of Walter’s death and Cas’s appearance had hit him broadside like a wave, but he wouldn’t let it capsize him, nor would he pine for her like some abandoned dog. Let her return to Virginia cursing him. It made no difference as long as she helped him. He couldn’t be certain she would until the moment came to send her the pistol. Until then, like the rest of his past, his time with her was over. With the evidence in jeopardy, he must find another way to ruin Vincent. He’d promised his crew they’d clear their names and have a future free from the threat of the gallows. It was a promise he would damn well keep. ‘Set a course for Nassau, Mr Rush. Let’s find out if those rumours of Vincent trading with pirates are true.’

Chapter Three (#uced9615f-2791-52fb-84aa-4909a95516a0)

One month later

‘Milady, scrubbing floors is no task for a titled lady!’ Mrs Sween, the Belle View housekeeper, gasped from the dining-room door. She’d come up from the cellar and the underground passage leading to the kitchen building in the garden. The earthy scent of the lavender she’d hung in the cellar clung to her and it filled the dining room where Cassandra knelt on the floor with a bucket of warm water and a scrub brush. Cassandra’s arms burned from her effort to make the old floorboards shine again. Over the years, Uncle Walter had given little thought to the house, focusing instead on rents and the annual crops, neither of which had ever brought in enough money, as Giles had complained every quarter when her meagre payments had arrived.

‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a titled lady.’ There were few young ladies who’d left Virginia as an impoverished orphan and returned a dowager baroness. At one time the achievement had seemed like the pinnacle of success, a finger in the eye of everyone in society who’d abandoned her after her parents died and her family’s fortune was lost. It hadn’t been the triumph she’d hoped for. ‘Mother would’ve been ashamed at the way I used to sit idle at Greyson Manor. Giles never let me do more than decide on the dinners.’ Even if she’d been able to work beside him, she doubted he could have taught her much. He’d driven the estate deeper into debt than when he’d inherited it, caring more for his mistress than the careful management of his income. ‘Mother always insisted I take a hand in the affairs of Belle View. I intend to teach Dinah to do the same thing.’

Dinah played next to her with a small brush, a wide smile on her cherubic face, making more of a mess than a difference in the condition of the floors. Cassandra’s efforts hadn’t achieved much either. The scrubbed boards stood out against the surrounding dull ones, many of which were in need of repair. The carpenter was too busy fixing the barn to see to something as trivial as the unused dining room.

She glanced about the room and sighed at the faded and dusty furnishings, the best pieces having been sold off years ago to pay debts. What was left would have made her mother cry to see it. It almost made Cassandra weep, too, when she recalled the many family dinners she’d enjoyed here. Some day, Dinah would enjoy them, too.

If I can continue to make something of Belle View and to cultivate Williamsburg society. She thought of the money from Richard hidden upstairs and how much of it she’d already spent to purchase seed stock, hire labourers and pay for the carpenter’s work on the barn. She shouldn’t spend it, but hoarding it away didn’t free it from the taint of piracy or do anyone any good—not her, not Dinah, not the workers who relied on Belle View for their living. Not spending it would also make maintaining the illusion of wealth more difficult, especially if she had to go begging for loans to keep the plantation from sinking into debt.

‘Lady Shepherd, I don’t mean to trouble you...’ Mrs Sween’s brogue muddied by a Virginia twang interrupted Cassandra’s thoughts ‘...but I heard one of the field hands say Mr Marston quit this morning.’

‘He did.’ Cassandra snatched up the brush and started scrubbing again. ‘He insisted I evict the tenant farmers and commute the tenure of the indentured servants and replace them with slaves. I refused and, because I failed to “see the future”, he felt he could no longer remain as overseer.’

‘He was also being paid far less than most of the overseers around these parts.’

‘It did make his decision to leave a little easier.’ Cassandra sat on her heels and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Belle View’s numerous windows and doors stood open, allowing the breeze coming off the James River to move through the rooms and the main hallway, but it did little to lessen the oppressive humidity.

‘What will you do without him?’ Mrs Sween tucked an escaping wisp of grey hair beneath her white cap. She was stout and shorter than Cassandra with a ruddy face like a farmer’s wife. She’d come to Virginia from Scotland as an indentured servant to Uncle Walter twenty years ago and had helped raise Cassandra after her parents’ deaths. Cassandra wished Mrs Sween had been with her in London. She would’ve seen through all of the Chathams’ lies and Cassandra’s ignorance.

What about Richard’s lies?

Cassandra studied the matronly woman standing before her, wondering if she knew the truth about Richard. She was desperate for someone to speak with about him, but if Mrs Sween was ignorant of the truth, then asking her meant inadvertently revealing what had happened on the Devil’s Rose.

She glanced at the burled-wood pistol box resting on the mantel across the room. Inside, the missing weapon marred the beauty of the presentation of the pewter against the red velvet. She twisted the gold band on her finger, her stomach tightening with worry. Every day she thought about his pistol, both anticipating and dreading its return.

She plunked the scrub brush in the bucket, sending a wave of soapy water cresting over the side. She refused to live in fear here as she had in London with Giles. She’d turn Richard in before she’d allow his bargain to threaten her or Dinah. ‘I’ll manage the farmers as best I can until I can engage a new overseer. Heaven only knows how I’ll pay one.’

‘Better find a way. A place like this is too much for one person to run alone.’

Cassandra stood and wiped her hands on her old plain cotton dress, one of many she’d left in trunks in the attic before her trip to England, thinking she’d return within the year. She’d never expected such a long and heartbreaking delay. ‘At present, I don’t have a choice but to do it myself. Besides, I enjoy the work. It takes my mind off so many things.’ Like Richard.

Learning he wasn’t dead had been like having fabric pulled off a dried wound. She’d cursed him for weeks after coming home, but in the still of the dark nights, with the cicadas singing their old familiar song, his resurrection had created another, more startling feeling in her heart—hope. He was still alive and perhaps, like her place in Williamsburg society and the grandeur of Belle View, the future they’d once imagined could be reclaimed. She had no idea how it might come about but, with the memory of his lips still vivid on hers, a small part of her believed in it and him, even if he no longer wanted her and she should want nothing to do with him. Emotion had led her to make a grave mistake with one man. It was a mistake she couldn’t afford to repeat, but surrounded by the humid aroma of dirt and trees, the smells of her childhood, it was hard not to believe in the old dreams again.

‘Don’t worry, my lady, all will be well. You’ll have this place soon set to rights and Belle View will be one of the finest plantations on the James River.’ Mrs Sween rested a wrinkled hand on Cassandra’s shoulder and Cassandra smiled gratefully at her. Mrs Sween’s presence eased the loneliness surrounding Cassandra like the netting covering the portraits of her parents to protect them from the beetles. It didn’t banish it completely. Only during the brief moment in Richard’s arms aboard his ship had the isolation swathing her seemed to lift. The feeling had been fleeting, like his comfort and his shallow love.

‘Shall I take the little one to have her lunch?’ Mrs Sween offered, brushing a lavender flower off her apron.

‘Yes, please.’ Cassandra picked up Dinah and kissed her on one soft and chubby cheek, then handed her to Mrs Sween, who carried her off, promising her fresh butter and bread.

The voices of men calling to one another caught Cassandra’s attention. She went to the window, passing the large dining table dominating the centre of the room. She paused to trail her fingers over the dull and dusty top of it. Of all the meals she remembered enjoying with her parents at this table, the last stood out as the most vivid. Her father had listened while she and her mother had made plans for the upcoming holiday balls and dinner parties marking the start of Cassandra’s first season. They’d laughed and revelled in talk of dresses and dance lessons, blissfully unaware that three weeks later a hurricane would level Belle View’s crops and force the creditors to call in her parents’ debts, ruining them. A month later, the fever that often followed hurricanes had risen from the carcase-filled fields and riverbeds to claim her parents and the bright future they’d all imagined for Cassandra.

With a heavy heart, Cassandra walked to the window overlooking the back lawn. Green grass covered the slope of the land to the dock where two farmers loaded sacks of grain into the shallop tied there, the single-masted boat bobbing with the current. When she was a child, she used to watch the small boats coming and going from her bedroom window, waving to the farmers from the Shenandoah Valley who brought their crops down the James to sell at market or ship to England. Her father would greet the incoming vessels, collecting gossip and passing on information from the latest session of the House of Burgesses. He was gone, but this small hub of activity remained, although it was, like her old life here, only a shadow of what it had once been. Over the years, many people had offered to buy Belle View, but Uncle Walter had advised her not to sell, saying it would be a safe haven for her if she ever needed it. He’d never had the chance to see how right he’d been.