Beloved Castaway (5 page)

Better to depend on no one and save himself. His skills had served him well thus far, and he’d needed neither the minions of Satan nor the angels of the Lord to do the work.

With the eyes of a man trained for battle, Josiah surveyed the situation. The river lay at his back and the city ahead. On either side of the alley stood the Dumont and Sons warehouses, oversized brick buildings that offered no means of escape.
 

The girl in his arms would provide little cover should the men be outfitted with more than knives, but she might provide sufficient diversion to allow him to take the advantage.

After all, he’d certainly been distracted by her.

The two dark figures leaned together as if in conversation, then parted. One of them raised a hand in greeting but said nothing while the other seemed to cast a glance behind him to the covered load in the wagon. Still the cart rolled forward as the swaybacked horse plodded on.

Clop-clop. Clop-clop. Rattle.
 

A moment more and they’d be upon them. The time for action had come.

“Evening, mates,” he said in the slurred voice of a drunken Englishman, “have you a pint for me and me love?” He turned the woman toward them, being sure to cast sufficient light on her lace-covered attributes. “She’s a might thirsty, she is.”

“Whoa there,” a youthful voice called. The driver pulled on the reins and leaned back in the seat to accentuate the motion. The wagon slowed to a stop as the pitiful mare snorted a protest and pawed at the ground.
 

Josiah suppressed a smile. If, as he suspected, the driver was a mere boy rather than a grown man, he stood a much better chance of escaping alive.

And so did the lovely Mademoiselle Gayarre.

“Mademoiselle Gayarre?” the driver called.

Trapped.
The word sprang to mind, and just as quickly, he disposed of it. Never could a sprite of a woman and two undersized lads take Josiah Carter. He’d not allow it.

Chapter 5

So, mademoiselle,” Josiah whispered, trying in vain not to inhale the sweet scent of jasmine permeating her curls. “You’ve betrayed me.”

“I’ve done nothing of the sort,” she answered. “This is—”

“Her sister, Emilie,” the driver said. She lifted the cloak’s hood to reveal dark hair swept into a fashionable style. “Now please unhand Isabelle so we may proceed to board the vessel.”

Josiah loosened his grip but did not relinquish his hold. “We?” he asked as he scanned both ends of the alley for the escort this woman surely had lurking about. “I see none fit for boarding my vessel in this company, and the payment was for a single passenger.”

“I cannot let my sister travel alone, sir,” she said in the clipped tones of someone obviously used to giving orders. “It simply would not be proper.” Sweeping her cloak aside, she handed the reins to the lad beside her and climbed off the wagon to extend a gloved hand in Josiah’s direction. “Emilie Gayarre.”

“And your companion, Madame Gayarre?”

“Mademoiselle Gayarre,” she corrected as she turned to regard the shadowy figure on the wagon. “And my traveling companion is Mademoiselle Viola Rose Dumont, a friend of my youth. Vi, do show yourself, dear.”

Dumont? The name rang loud in his ears, along with a warning.
Flee this company, Carter. Flee while you can.
 

The aforementioned female slid the hood away from her face to reveal a mass of dark curls and an ugly purple bruise across her right cheek, visible even in the dim light of the evening. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance, Captain Carter,” she mumbled from the seat of the wagon, her gaze not quite lifting to meet his.

Josiah studied the woman openly, noting other signs of mistreatment in the dried blood decorating her lip and dotting the front of what appeared to be a pale blue frock. She certainly did not appear to have planned this trip, owing to the formal nature of what should have been a traveling garment. Had he not evidence to the contrary, Josiah might have guessed the woman was en route to a wedding at the cathedral rather than to a ship awaiting her at the docks.

“Does your father know of your intentions, Miss Dumont?”

Dark eyes widened, then shut completely. A second later the young woman recovered and offered him a weak smile, her partly swollen lip quivering. Her gaze fell on him a moment, then flitted past him to settle on the painted mural above his head, the advertisement for warehouses owned by the Dumont family. “I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else, sir. I have no father.”

A lie and he knew it. Viola Rose Dumont was the apple of her father’s eye. Two of the ships in the Dumont merchant fleet were named after the girl, and another half dozen had been sent to sea with her likeness carved into a figurehead decorating the bow.

He knew this personally, having been indentured to the elder Dumont aboard the
Viola
at the age of fourteen due to his father’s fury over some minor indiscretion, long forgotten. Dumont had been fair but tough, a mentor in some ways and a scourge in others, demanding hard work and giving little compliment in return.
 

The first year had been the closest to the fiery pits of hell Josiah had come, the second only marginally better, but he’d learned to fend for himself quite well aboard the
Viola
and other Dumont vessels. Taking this woman aboard his ship would be the best way to draw his father’s ire, given that his father and Dumont were thick as thieves and lifelong friends.

A sane man would end the nonsense and send the women packing. He allowed his gaze to fall on the taller of the Gayarre sisters, her ramrod straight backbone and pinched expression giving away the lack of courage hidden just beneath the blustery veneer of confidence.
 

Behind the imperious Emilie, the Dumont woman trembled visibly as she gathered her cloak to hide her face once more. This one held no pretense save the lie she told regarding her parentage, a character flaw that would not bode well for her should she make good her escape.
 

Finally, he beheld the exotic Isabelle.

Something about the woman set his well-honed sense of danger on guard and made him want to flee her presence. Something else bade him lean forward and push away honey-colored curls to whisper sweet words of comfort and assurance in her ear.
 

Good sense required he do neither.

“Take you responsibility for these women?” he spoke against the warmth of her skin. He felt her tense.
She feels fear at my touch. An advantage I must not lose.

Eyes the color of the green seas off the Florida Straits regarded him almost without blinking. A storm brewed behind those eyes, of this Josiah felt sure.
 

In that moment, with his knees as week as a baby’s, he knew he would give chase to brave that storm and tame those waves. For this one, he would span the seas to do her bidding.

Herein, he realized, lay the danger.
It is I who feel the fear.

Josiah covered the shock of his discovery with anger. Had he the words, he would have lashed out at the fair-haired siren and her entourage, telling the vermin in petticoats exactly how he felt about taking women aboard the
Jude
.
 

Rendered mute, however, he settled for a glare that would have sent the worst of his crew scurrying below decks in fear. Unfortunately, his best work of intimidation went ignored among the feminine group.
 

“Don’t just stand there gaping, Isabelle. You’ll swallow a fly.” Emilie’s direct gaze gave way to a look of near pleading as she stared first at each of her companions and finally at Josiah. “Now shall we proceed to the vessel? We’ve a long voyage ahead, and I’m sure the captain wishes us to be settled aboard posthaste.”

“Yes, of course,” Isabelle mumbled. “Please release me,” she added in a hoarse whisper.
 

Once again mute, Josiah allowed the beauty to extricate herself from his grasp. He watched in pitiful silence as Isabelle diverted her eyes and settled her cloak around her shoulders in a show of modesty.
 

Off in the distance, a deckhand sounded the quarter hour while a night bird called overhead. A short distance away, the
Jude
rocked at anchor, its crew oblivious to the distress of their captain. Overhead, Josiah spotted the constellation Orion, the North Star, and finally the Big and Little Dippers.

He sighed, his temper briefly under control. Peering at the stars tended to do that, albeit temporarily. It always had.

“Very well then. Shall we, Captain Carter?” the other Gayarre asked. “Please lead the way.”
 

All he’d worked for rode on this transaction; all he’d become stood in the balance. Three women for his very soul. An odd thought, he realized, yet somehow fitting. Once the women were deposited on English soil, he’d be free of them, free to sail as the owner of the
Jude
.

He would be a man without a past, a man whose future stretched wide and inviting before him. To accomplish this, he merely had to deliver three women—three well-paying passengers, he corrected—across the ocean.

A measure of benefits against possible difficulties stood before him, and he weighed each carefully. “Payment has been made for but one of you,” he said. “What say you to this problem?”

Again, the other sister stepped forward. “Arrangements have been made for our passage, sir,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes, “although I fear you must collect your payment once we reach the shores of England. I’ve made a bank draft in the amount of—”

“Impossible.” He slashed his hand through the air, waving away her objection. “I require payment in coin.”
 

Slowly the woman reached into the folds of her traveling garment. Josiah, always on guard, captured her wrist before it could disappear into the sturdy fabric. Isabelle gasped while the Dumont woman stared mutely. Only Emilie Gayarre seemed unmoved.

“I wish to offer payment of another sort,” she said, staring up at him with dark eyes that regarded him with what looked like a mixture of disdain and fear. “May I retrieve it?”

Josiah nodded and loosened his grip on her bony wrist. Trembling fingers disappeared, then quickly reappeared formed into a tight fist. Without fanfare, she thrust her hand toward him and dropped something hard and cold into his palm.

A key.

“What need have I of this?” he demanded.

Unblinking, she met his gaze. “It opens the door to a house on Burgundy Street. Perhaps someday you will require use of it.”

Josiah snorted in disgust. “Only gold and silver will pay your passage,” he said.
 

“Done.”

He gave her a questioning look, and the amount she offered nearly set him to hoping she meant it. “And where do you propose to find this sort of money, Mademoiselle Gayarre?”

“It is in an account newly opened in the name of my father and given to make a rather costly purchase.” A look passed between the sisters. “A certain Virginia planter made the deposit some months ago.”

Virginia planter?
 

Josiah’s mind reeled with the possibilities. But any number of planters lived in Virginia. What were the odds that this one, if he even existed, was the same one from whom he’d vowed to someday extract revenge?

Still, the possibility enticed him. While Isabelle Gayarre’s gold would ransom the
Jude
, perhaps her sister’s bank account would place the final nail in his father’s coffin.

Both figuratively and literally.

“Captain Carter?” Isabelle’s sister called. “Perhaps you should take the reins. If you’re agreeable to our terms, that is.”

Stifling a grin, Josiah gave the woman a curt nod. In what was possibly the most foolish of his decisions of the evening thus far, Josiah pressed past Emilie Gayarre to put his hands around Isabelle’s waist and hand her into the back of the wagon. She landed easily on the mound of canvas, then quickly scampered away.
 

Forcing his attention away from Isabelle, he turned to offer help to her sister. Shunning his assistance, Emilie Gayarre climbed aboard and motioned for him to take the reins from the cowering Dumont woman.

Josiah gripped the reins and slapped them on the back of the pitiful excuse for a horse, urging the nag into a slow forward motion. This accomplished, he slid a sideways glance at the Dumont woman.
 

“She made a misstep and fell from the lower staircase at my home,” Emilie said. “I feel just terrible about it, but with our concerns over missing our appointment with you, sir, we hadn’t the time to repair the damages.”

Damages? He cast another glance at the cowering female. Hardly the word he would have chosen, yet what business had he in caring?
 

Josiah leaned into the turn as he eased the wagon around the bend leading out of the alley. In a matter of weeks, England and these women would be behind him with the coast of Africa beckoning. How simple a life he aspired to, merely a ship loaded with cargo and a fair wind in his sails.

What cargo his hold bore, he hadn’t a care. Anything that brought a profit; anything that kept the
Jude
and its crew at sea.

Liar.

Josiah cast a furtive glance for the owner of the voice. Who dared cast aspersions on his honesty?

He was many things—a rake and a wastrel, according to his mother; and a serious disappointment to God and family, according to his father—but as yet, he’d not stooped to dishonesty.

Yet you lie to yourself.

This time he knew from whence the voice came. It was his own.

The wagon rolled on toward the dock, and with each turn of the noisily squeaking wheels, Josiah fought the urge to curse himself for a fool.
 

Any cargo save this one,
the horrific symphony seemed to declare.
Any cargo save this one.

---

Any vessel save this one,
Isabelle’s senses screamed.
Any other means to flee.