Taming Charlotte (36 page)

“I’d say it means trouble,” Cochran answered readily, and with a hint of relish. “Not from Rowling, of course—he seems like a good enough sort. I figure Raheem—or some other dung bug just like him—is probably out there somewhere, waiting to hit this island like a squall. God help us all if they’ve learned that the
Enchantress
is at the bottom of the bay. And there’ve been signs that a big storm is brewing out to sea, too.”

Patrick felt a stab of grief at the mention of his ship; he mourned her as he would a woman, or a child, or a beloved friend. For the moment, however, he had to think of practical matters; the half dozen cannon salvaged from the
Enchantress
had to be set up on the high ground behind the house, facing the bay. His wards and the sailors still recovering from the fever must be brought to the main house. Also, plenty of food and water would be required, in case of a siege by either nature or pirates.

Or both.

“Damn,” Patrick murmured, but mixed in with the
undeniable dread he felt was a sense of excitement. Even the prospect of a challenge made him stronger.

In the days to come, the last vestiges of Patrick’s illness fell away, for there was no time to languish on the veranda or in a sickbed. More debris from the shipwreck washed ashore, but there were no passengers, dead or alive, in the mix. And Patrick could feel trouble closing in, despite the calm waters of the sea and the soft, fragile blue of the sky.

A rising wind teased the tops of the palm trees, and Charlotte finally had to give up the idea of sketching, at least for that day. The pages of her drawing book fluttered so that she couldn’t concentrate, and in any case, she had other pressing matters on her mind.

The mysterious, tragic Gideon Rowling, for one. Although Charlotte felt none of the attraction toward him that Patrick could stir with a glance in her direction or the mere lift of an eyebrow, Mr. Rowling was still a romantic and appealing figure. He slept most of the time, and broke Charlotte’s tender heart by crying out repeatedly for his Susannah, and he had the thin, haunted beauty of a starving poet. He was a Christian missionary, as it happened, and he and his wife had intended to devote the remainder of their lives to the task of saving the Aborigines from damnation.

To Charlotte, it seemed a splendid undertaking, though ambitious.

Then there was Patrick, who was always in her thoughts, on one shelf or another. Charlotte hoped that the captain loved her—he did not attempt to hide his feelings when, in the warm, fragrant darkness of the tropical nights, he moaned her name and swore by all the saints that she owned his soul—and yet Patrick persisted in being difficult by day. He scowled at Charlotte whenever they encountered each other, which was a rare occurrence because he’d developed an uncanny ability to avoid her. When they did speak, an even more uncommon event, he made it clear that he still intended to relegate both her and the baby to Quade’s Harbor.

In addition, Patrick’s wards had moved into the main
house, along with the few seamen who were still ill enough to be confined. Cannon had been set up on the hilltops, and sailors and natives alike had been busy for several days, boarding up the windows of the house.

All in all, it was a lot to sort out, even for Charlotte’s agile mind.

Wandering back into the house, which seemed shadowy and somewhat oppressive now that the windows were covered, she decided to look in on Mr. Rowling. He, unlike Patrick, could always be counted on for civil conversation, though he was still quite melancholy, of course.

He was seated in the downstairs parlor, listening quietly while Stella, one of Patrick’s wards, played fairylike, oddly sorrowful music at the pianoforte. Charlotte would have retreated, seeing that her friend was not alone, but he smiled in a forlorn way when he saw her, and beckoned.

She approached, ignoring a scathing look from the pretty, dark-haired Stella, and crouched beside his chair. “Hello,” she said gently.

He touched her hair, a gesture that, made by nearly any other man on earth, would have been sure to bring Patrick’s wrath down on all their heads. “Charlotte,” he said, his voice gruff and fond. His gaze dropped to her bare toes, which were just visible under the hem of her skirts. He grinned crookedly. “Where are your shoes?”

“I’m not certain,” she confessed. “I don’t recall exactly where I left them.”

Mr. Rowling laughed, but the sound was oddly painful to hear.

Stella ended her musical recital with a crashing chord, rose from the piano stool like a geyser shooting out of the ground, and swept out.

Charlotte winced. “I’m sorry if I interrupted,” she said.

Her friend sighed. “The young lady has decided to court me, I think,” he confided, forlorn amusement shining in his eyes. “I don’t imagine there are a great many eligible men on this island.”

Charlotte looked away for a moment, because his words had brought Patrick’s image surging to the surface of her mind like some magnificent creature rising from the sea.

“It’s quite soon, isn’t it—for you to be interested in another woman, I mean?”

He shrugged. “Being interested in a woman is quite another matter from being in love with one,” he said, in grave tones. “I’ll cherish the memory of Susannah until the day we are reunited in heaven, but the great weakness of my character is that I cannot abide loneliness. I have no doubt that I’ll remarry at the first opportunity, and Stella is as likely a candidate as anyone.”

She rose from her crouching position and took Stella’s seat on the piano stool, idly spinning this way and that, just as she’d done as a child, back home in her father’s parlor. “Men are fickle creatures,” she observed, without rancor.

“And what prompts that observation, may I ask?” The question was pleasant in tone, and quietly offered.

Charlotte tried to smile, faltered, and gave up the effort. “It hardly comforts a woman, knowing the man she loves could replace her so easily.”

“We are talking about the captain now, I think.”

She lowered her eyes for a moment, but her cheeks felt hot and she knew Mr. Rowling could see her embarrassment. “Yes,” she admitted. “I could be torn to pieces by rabid monkeys and scattered all over the island in bloody bits, and Patrick would probably say, ‘Poor girl, what a pity,’ and then start looking about for someone to take my place.”

“You underestimate your station in Mr. Trevarren’s heart, I think.”

“Then you’re quite wrong, Mr. Rowling.”

“Gideon,” he corrected.

Charlotte felt tears sting her eyes and ascribed them to her pregnancy and the changes it had wrought in both her body and spirit. “Gideon,” she repeated, getting used to the name. Finally, after some seconds of awkward silence, she forced herself to meet his gaze again. There was something about him, some gentleness in his nature, that invited confidence. “I’m in a terrible fix,” she said, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands and then sniffling once. “I was married to Captain Trevarren, you see, and now I’m
not,
and there’s a baby.”

Gideon held out a hand to Charlotte, and she scooted the
piano stool closer, on its green crystal rollers, and clasped his fingers. “Go on,” he said.

She told the whole story, starting with her first meeting with Patrick, long ago and far away, in Seattle. She’d loved Mr. Trevarren from the moment of their original encounter, high in the rigging of the
Enchantress,
she confessed. She’d become his true wife, in her own heart at least, when Khalif had pronounced them married. Patrick had ended their union—a fresh torrent of tears came when she related how easy it had been for him, just clapping his hands and repeating the phrase “I divorce you” three times—but for Charlotte the ties were far more binding. Now, she confided miserably, Patrick meant to abandon and forget her.

When Charlotte finished the wretched tale, leaving nothing out except the most intimate details, she saw a new fire in Gideon’s light green eyes. A muscle tightened in his jawline. “By all that’s holy,” he breathed, in a furious undertone, “the man has gall, flouting the very laws of God!”

Charlotte swallowed, wondering if she’d said too much. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time. “I don’t think he exactly meant to do
that
—“ she began, but Gideon immediately cut her off.

“It’s unconscionable,” he declared. “Charlotte, if Patrick Trevarren won’t marry you properly and give you and your child his name, then I will.”

She felt the color drain from her face. Gideon was a fine man, good and gentle and handsome in the bargain, but wonderful as he was, Charlotte feared she could never grant him the privileges of marriage. Despite her brave words to Patrick earlier, about taking a lover and becoming notorious once he deserted her in Quade’s Harbor, she found the thought of another man touching her abhorrent.

Gideon half rose from his chair and planted a brotherly kiss on Charlotte’s forehead. Then he drew back and smiled again. “So that’s the way of it, then,” he said quietly. “Send your captain to see me, Charlotte. I’ll put the fear of God into him.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “I wouldn’t want Patrick to be
forced
into marrying me,” she whispered.

Gideon patted her hand. “Don’t fret, Charlotte. I don’t think it’s going to be necessary to use force.”

Charlotte immediately sought Patrick out and found him in his study, going over a series of charts with Mr. Cochran. The wind rattling at the windows and mourning on the roof made an apt accompaniment to his sour expression.

Can this,
Charlotte thought, with amazed resentment,
be the same man who held me so tightly last night in our bed, who took such eager solace in my body and invaded my very soul with the tenderness of his words and his touch?

“What is it, Charlotte?” Patrick asked, his tone testy, his gaze as cold as the fiercest winter. “I have things to do, and not much time.”

She stood as tall as possible in the great double doorway, her shoulders straight, her chin high. Even barefoot, her hair tumbled from a brief interval outside, Charlotte knew she was the very picture of dignity. It was a knack she had cultivated from early childhood.

“Gideon—Mr. Rowling—wishes to speak with you.”

Patrick frowned, perhaps because she’d used the visitor’s Christian name, and let the chart he’d been examining roll back into a cylinder with a whispery sound. “I’ll see him later.”

“Fine,” Charlotte agreed sunnily, with a slight shrug. She turned to walk away, knowing she’d nettled Patrick, pleased by the fact.

To her surprise, he stopped her with a single terse demand. “Where are your shoes?”

First Gideon had wondered why her feet were bare, and now Patrick wanted to know. She looked back at him, somewhat coyly, over one shoulder. “I wouldn’t think of interfering with your important business by answering such a silly question,” she said. And then she walked away.

She heard him swear and smiled as she proceeded along the hallway leading into the back of the house. The kitchen was in a separate building, and Charlotte had a sudden yen for a handful of Jacoba’s special biscuits. She hummed as she crossed the yard, hardly noticing the wind that made her hair dance and pressed her skirts against her legs.

* * *

Patrick tried not to think about the summons from his guest, the missionary who’d washed up on the beach some days before, but the caressing way Charlotte had said the man’s name echoed in his head. He couldn’t afford to plan the defense of everyone on the island while in a distracted state of mind.

He finally cursed, muttered an excuse to Cochran, who wore an irritating smile, and went in search of Rowling.

The man was in the parlor, and Stella and Jayne were both there, fussing over him, pouring his tea, chattering like a couple of tropical birds. Patrick was fond of the pair—they were like the sisters he’d never had—but just then their youthful eagerness to please Rowling annoyed him.

“Out,” he said, without preamble or explanation.

Jayne and Stella exchanged pouting glances and then left the room.

Patrick closed the doors and leaned back against them, his arms folded across his chest, his expression anything but charitable. By his reasoning, he’d saved the man’s life by offering the sanctuary of his home and the benevolent aid of his servants, and he owed him nothing more. He didn’t speak, since by his presence it was obvious that he’d answered Rowling’s summons.

The other man sighed, and Patrick was surprised and irritated to find himself wondering if Charlotte was attracted by Rowling’s delicate features and polite, gracious manner. He put the idea resolutely out of his mind.

“Sit down, please,” Rowling invited, as though this were his parlor and Patrick were there only on suffrage of some sort.

Patrick’s pride offered him no option but to remain standing. He kept his gaze leveled on the smaller man and waited, letting his thunderous mood show in his bearing.

Rowling only smiled. “Stubborn, then,” he commented, as if to himself. Because of his British accent, he sounded refined when he spoke, and Patrick hoped Charlotte had enough sense to look beyond such superficial niceties.

“My time is valuable,” he pointed out, and because of his thoughts, the words sounded sharp and impatient.

The clergyman gave another sigh. “Yes. Well, there’s
nothing for it but to launch right in, now is there? You’re taking sore advantage of an innocent young woman, Captain Trevarren, and as a man of God, I must protest.”

Patrick thrust himself away from the doors, feeling as though he’d just been slapped across the face with a glove. “Are you talking about Charlotte?” It was a stupid question, he knew that even as he uttered the words, but Rowling’s accusation had caught him so off guard that he hadn’t paused to think.

“Yes. Lovely creature, isn’t she?”

Patrick thought of the way Charlotte nurtured him every night, both body and soul, and spared Rowling an abrupt nod. “Go on, Reverend. I don’t have the day to waste.”

Rowling’s smile didn’t waver, but neither did it displace the grief so plainly visible in his eyes. “You led her to believe she was your wife, and then you got her with child. Is that not so?”