The Gun Ketch (28 page)

"Well, I didn't say that..."

"Look at all I've accomplished," she'd demanded. "Look at all I've done to make a home for us! The garden out back, the flowers, the painting and carpentry work, and the ... is there nought I have done that
does
meet with your approval, then? Must you cavil or carp and... and
sneer
... at every decision I made in your absence?"

"Caroline...!" He'd wilted at her first tears.

"I swear, Alan, you use me ill as..." she'd wept brokenly, just short of bawling fit to bust, "as ... so many b...
bears'."

And he had had to pursue her, beg at their locked bedchamber door. Then once he'd at last gained entry, had had to cosset her, to dandle, kiss and spoon her, to calm her and confess what a total ass he was to be so unappreciative, and what a treasure she was, so clever and resourceful, and how pleased he was with things, in the main.

Which had ended their first fight, that and the boisterous and healing lovemaking which had followed. Their first squall had been weathered. He dreaded a second.

God a'mercy, Alan thought, she
has
done a lot in a little over four months. With all her endeavors, who'd have
time
for an affair, I ask you?

The house was painted inside and out, and the wood trim shiny with white enamel against the interior's pale, sandy tan, or the exterior's light mint green. The roof had been patched with new shakes and tarred proof against tempestuous wind and rain. Their few carpets were clean, his dark blue settee and wing chairs were ensconced as a group at one end of the parlor area; hers had been recovered with yellow and floral chintz for another conversational grouping. His old table and chairs made a gaming area, whilst her table, eight chairs and the sideboard and cupboard were their dining facilities, and their few precious silver or silver-plate candlesticks, serving trays and tea things gleamed on display alongside the locking caddy for tea, sugar, coffee and chocolate.

The floors were spotless, the drapes new, and sewn by Caroline's hands. Their few paintings (minus his harem scene) looked grand as Government House; his portrait he'd commissioned in '83 in uniform, some Chiswick forebears, his granny Lewrie, her favorite pastoral or hunt scenes, and the sea-battle granny Lewrie'dbought him at Ranelagh Gardens, and his anonymous Grand Tour sketches.

She'd stored, away the heavy velvet bed curtains and replaced them with light, gauzy draperies to ward off insects—those that the ubiquitous lizards did not eat rather noisily in the night.

On top of that, she'd camphored every upright clothes closet or drawer, lined everything with paper-thin cedar strips, kept the house in Bristol-fashion with just one maid-of-all-work housekeeper who came by the day, a free black woman named Wyonnie. And, not content with household economies, she had put in a vegetable garden, had tilled it with the help of Wyonnie's husband ind her aged father and his equally aged mule, watered it, tended it, weeded it, to the amazement of Nassau's white society who thought her youthfully eccentric; and to the slack-jawed stupefaction of the free blacks, who had never before beheld a white woman of even the least means do a lick of work if a slave could not be put to it first.

Not content with a goodly crop of victuals such as corn, beans, pigeon peas, tomatoes and salad greens, Caroline, Heloise and Betty had ridden all over New Providence seeking
flora
to plant about the house, to screen the back lot from the main house, and to beautify it. The pale green house was now awash in an informal, lush jungle.

There were tamarinds and acacia, torch ginger and jump-up-and-kiss-me, little Tree-Of-Life bushes with indigo flowers,
frangipani
or red jasmine, cascarillas, bright yellow elder, both red and purple bougainvillea vines on trellises framing the porches and the dog-run. There were flamboyants with blooms as big as birdbaths, poinsettias and poincianas, bird of paradise, angel's trumpet and flamingo flowers in gaudy profusion. There were replanted palmettos for a hedge, and young saplings in tubs—key-lime and lemon trees, sapodillas, soursops and guavas, candle-woods and sea grapes.

And, braving the forgelike heat of the kitchen in high summer (a spotless kitchen!), Caroline had put up exotic new fruit preserves in stone crocks; an impressive selection was now ranked row upon row in the pantry. And that was on top of her cider vinegars, her dried and candied preserve slices, her...

Considering all she had accomplished in so little time, at so little cost, was daunting!

I've the handsomest, sweetest, cleverest, and (God rot your soul, Uncle Phineas) the most economical young wife on the face of this earth, Alan concluded. So why do I feel like Harry Embleton?

"So who is this Finney, then?" Alan asked, attempting to sound casual about it as he emerged from the water and sat down on the hard sand just above the lapping wavelets.

"John Finney?" Peyton Boudreau replied, opening one lazy eye from a doze. "Quite the hero hereabouts, don't ye know, haw haw! A damned rich'un, too!"

"Striking fellow," Alan allowed as he toweled down from a dip in waist-deep water, no more. Most sailors could not swim, and Alan was proof of that particular truism.

"Aye, he is," the elder man agreed. "Pity he's so low."

"Is he?" Alan inquired, relishing this "dirt" on the suitor he feared the most. He'd re-met the artist Augustus Hedley and found him to be a simpering, mincing, dandy-prat lap dog to the Nassau ladies, a flagrant "Molly," said to be exiled on remittance by his family so his predilections would not harm their reputation. Most of the others had sheered off once Alan was back. But Finney ...!

"Dublin bogtrotter," Peyton Boudreau snickered. "A product of the stews. Went for a sailor young, and drifted out here. The Lord be praised, he's a Bay Street merchant now, though. Owns ships. Has the best imported slaves. Doesn't deal with the dagos in His-paniola, he sends vessels to Africa for 'black ivory.' Imported in prime condition, too, 'stead of the usual third lost. Fancy goods from all over, the latest fashions. All the delicacies which make life tolerable. Runs packets from the Continent in all seasons, hang the winter gales or hurricanes. Don't see how he manages that, but he does. Ah, think I'll go back in and dip meself."

Lewrie watched the elegant older man rise and pad into the sea to flop on his belly and paddle about, and wondered how he could gain more information about Finney without looking foolish. Or concerned.They were on a "maroon" on Hog Island, on the white-sand beach on the nor'west shore. It was a popular amusement in the Bahamas to sail out to a deserted cay with food and "guzzle," set up a camp with furniture, cooking utensils and perhaps a pavilion, and go salt-water bathing in total privacy. Some even spent an entire day and a night, though most returned at dusk. The Boudreaus were great devotees of it, and had suggested that Alan and Caroline, with Betty Mustin along, too, might enjoy the excursion.

Caroline, Betty and the older but still impressive Heloise were down the beach a way, cavorting in the water and laughing and giggling gay as so many ducklings. They had gone into the boat in old sack gowns without stays or underpinnings, with only one underskirt. Straw hats and parasols, their oldest cracked shoes, cotton stockings and towels were the thing for the ladies. Those, and a single voluminous shift of light cotton or muslin to drape themselves in between dunkings. At present, from what little Alan could see, they were bathing nude, or with a short chemise at best!

Alan rose and strode back into the water for more information, the December sunshine almost kind for once to his back and shoulders. After hurricane season ended around the first of November, the Bahamas were cooled by northerly or westerly winds, the daytime temperatures never soared much above mild, and the nights got downright coolish if a brisk breeze was blowing off the ocean, but never shivering cold.

He waded out to chest-deep and bobbed about in the gin-clear water slightly tinged pale turquoise, ducking his head now and again.

"You said he was a hero?" Alan asked once Peyton had paddled near enough. The older man stood in the water and swiped his short-cut hair dry.

"Who, Finney?" Peyton asked, wiggling an ear clear of water.

"Yes, what did he do?"

"Privateer, sir," Peyton smiled. "A most successful privateer. Ended up with a flotilla of his own in these waters. Spanish, French, Rebels... no vessel was safe from him. 'Tis bruited about he took over two hundred thousand pounds sterling in prize money. But what sealed his repute was when the Spanish took Nassau in '82, just before the Revolution ended. You know of Col. Andrew Deveaux, the Loyalist soldier from, I'm quite proud to say, dear South Carolina of my birth?"

"I've heard of him."

"Well, he determined upon an expedition to retake Nassau, all on his own," Peyton bragged on his former neighbor. "Sailed a scratch militia here, April of '83, with what weapons they could come up with. Tag-rag-and-bobtail effort, with no help from the Crown, you see. Well, Finney threw in with him! Brought a brace of his privateers tricked out as ships of war. They rowed their so-called troops ashore and landed them. Then they had those few men lay down in the boats and rowed back out, looking empty, to supposedly embark another batch. Kept it up until the Dons figured they were hopelessly outnumbered, and they threw it up as a bad bargain, d'you see, haw haw! Quite a stunt! And with not 200 men, all told!"

"A clever fellow, too, this Finney," Alan smiled.

"Well, 'twas more Andrew's idea than Finney's, of course. Our 'Calico Jack' is shrewd, and ambitious. But I doubt he'd have thought of it on his own, don't you know. Or cared much one way or t'other if the Spanish held Nassau another year. He'd have made more profit from taking their ships, whilst his store sold them victuals and wine!"

" 'Calico Jack'?" Alan grinned with mirth. "And how did he come by that charming sobriquet? Wasn't there a Calico Jack Rackham, a pirate, in these waters long ago?"

"There was," Peyton sneered aristocratically. "Finney came by his by the tradesman's entrance, so to speak. And more prosaic. More common, haw haw."

Peyton Boudreau and his wife Heloise were splendid people in the main, though given to languid, highly cultured and snobbish, aloof airs of fallen Huguenot and Charleston Low Country nobility. No matter that their estate had fallen since leaving fabled South Carolina, they were still accounted regal pluses to Nassau society. And told damned juicy gossip with such wit and relish!

"Wasn't always rich, y'know," Peyton continued. "Had but the one packet ship, and a used-goods chandlery past East Hill Street, almost in 'Over-Hill.' Inn, chandlery, an 'all-nations' dram shop. Brokered whores out of there, too, by all accounts. Sold slop-goods and shoddy not fit for anyone but slaves and the idle poor. Little of this, then a little of that, to show a profit. Had mongers out with drays hawking his castoffs like ragpickers. But he did the best of his business in calico and nankeen cloth for use on the plantings to dress slave gangs. Condemned salt-meats, weevily flour, gin, rum and
ratafia
brandy, that sort of hard bargain, hand-to-mouth trade," Peyton dismissed, raising a cultured eyebrow significantly. "Then in '75, when the Revolution broke out, everything changed for him overnight. The Admiralty Court gave him a Letter of Marque to turn privateer, and the next thing anyone knew, he was tea-trade, nabob-rich."

"A most impressive feat," Alan had to admit, though it galled.

"For a man who started out illiterate in the gutter," Boudreau sniffed top-loftily. "By the time Heloise and I got here in '82 when the Crown abandoned Charleston, he was strutting golden as an Ottoman sultan, with that big snip's chandlery, his fancy-goods shops on Bay Street, and half a dozen privateers flying his house flag. But, don't y'know," Peyton snickered, "the brats in the streets still tailed after him chanting his cant, 'Calico, calico, who'll buy my calico! Tis Jack, Jack, the Calico Man,' haw haw!"

"Oh, poor bastard!" Lewrie smiled, relishing what chagrin that would have caused the handsome Finney.

"Then, of course," Peyton sobered, "that was before he killed three men in duels for ragging him or sneering at him. And after he and Andrew Deveaux retook Nassau, he became a veritable social lion. For a time, mind," Peyton chuckled meanly.
"Only
for a time. One may not turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, after all. For all his fame and his money, he's still 'Beau-Trap' and too ill mannered for most decent people. No manners at all, though he's said to work hard at gaining
some
small measure of refinement. Built his fine town house, hired dancing-masters, tutors in elocution, only the best tailors and such. 'Moik me a foin gennulmun, damn yuz oyes!' he told 'em, hey?" Peyton scoffed, cruelly imitating a bogtrotter's brogue. "One may gild dried dung, but all one has to show for it is gold-plated shit, after all. And, he's still tight with his old chums from 'Over-Hill.' Niggers, scoundrels, shiftless whites and whores, pickpockets, cut-throats and such. And he
is
Irish, when you come right down to it."

"He seems welcome in everyone's salon, though," Alan commented. "And people seem to accept his invitations willingly enough."

"That's the 'fly' nature of Bahamian society," Peyton guffawed. "How few of them arose from the better classes? In Charleston, in London it goes without saying, and I suspect even in his native Dublin, in the better circles, John Finney'd still not be admitted but to the tradesman's entrance. There's damned few refined folk'd set foot inside his door.
We
do not. Nor do those who aspire to true civility ever invite him. In like manner, he has never seen
my
parlor,
our
salon, sir! Nor shall he," Peyton declaimed grandly, then cocked his grizzled head to peer closely at Alan. "And why this sudden interest, young sir?"