The Winds of Fate (34 page)

The days came and went. Devon ignored her completely, making himself invisible. Claire explored the house and the island, becoming increasingly impressed with his accomplishments. The people proved industrious and happy. The island thrived, and frankly, Claire admitted, it was owed wholly to their leader.

He had their undying allegiance and respect. She began to understand his dilemma, to almost forgive the life he had chosen. By all accounts, he stood an honorable man. She didn’t know what triggered these changes in feelings inside her yet there emerged an admiration of his accomplishments despite all the hurdles life threw his way. Was there anything he couldn’t do? Nagging at the back of her mind remained a genuine frustration. Who was Devon? Pirate? Doctor? Philanderer? Benefactor? Thief? Savior?

Claire moved to the library, picked a book out. She supposed the entire collection was commandeered and graciously given as Devon put it. Abu Ajir chattered, perched on the desk. She fed him some crumbs she kept in her pocket. “You’re my only companion,” she sighed heavily. The crow croaked his regrets. Animated voices rang from the front of the house. Claire moved to the foyer.

“Lily!” She was so happy to see her cousin. Devon had out sailed the
Golden Gull
, by a week, making the journey to Paradise at an unprecedented speed. Claire stopped. Lily walked arm in arm with Robert Ames. Would Ames fault her for Jarvis’s brutal attack?

“Mr. Ames, I must tell you about−”

“Robert,” he said. “Lily has confided how Jarvis overheard and misconstrued your conversation the night the Spanish invaded Port Royale. How you tried to stop the whipping by attempting to get the governor to intervene at peril to your own life. You are very brave.”

“Thank you.” Claire gaped. If only Devon believed her. “So how have you been?” She addressed her cousin uncertainly.

“I couldn’t be more wonderful,” Lily said gazing up to Ames. The navigator returned that same loving look to her cousin with all the adoration of the world, caught on his face.

Resigned to the status of an interloper, and reeling from this new revelation, Claire backed away, clearing her throat. “I have to get a book.” Claire pivoted and returned to the library not knowing what to think. Through the door opening, she spied Robert taking Lily into his arms and with infinite tenderness, kissing her thoroughly. Claire turned, feeling a heat rise to the roots of her hair.
Lily and Ames
. Her cousin had fallen in love with him the first day she clapped eyes on him on Port Royale’s dock. And then they had worked together in the hospital during the plague. Why was she surprised? They had sailed on the
Golden Gull
for two weeks. Wasn’t that a heady formula for romance to blossom? Sunlight poured into the room. Claire stood in silence swallowed in shadow.

Lily bid her goodbyes to Ames. The front door snapped shut.

“Claire!” Lily entered the library and engulfed her in a hug. “I’ve so much to tell you.” Lily sounded so fresh and animated, beaming with happiness. Overnight, she had transformed. Gone was the tight bun, her thick dark hair fell in long graceful curves over her shoulders. Even her dress, normally austere, fell femininely appealing and her violet eyes glowed.

“Where are your glasses, Lily?” She had never seen her cousin without them.

Lily sat on the sofa and Claire joined her. “With Robert escorting me, I don’t need them. He says I have beautiful eyes and wants to see them.” Lily smiled, a slight pink touched her cheeks as she retrieved her glasses from her pocket and put them back on. “Robert has asked me to be his wife. But first he has to ask Captain Blackmon permission to sail out and obtain a minister. Claire, I am so unbelievably happy.”

“But do you think it is wise to marry a pirate? He is a man with no future.”

Lily tapped a finger on the book on Claire’s lap. “Robert was forced into circumstances beyond his control. He is a decent man. He fought for what he believed in, and to tell you the truth, if I were a man, I would have done so too. Oh Claire. Love is a gift with a cost. There is never an easy way. The risk is worth taking.”

Claire digested Lily’s unwavering devotion. “Lily, you are always the rational one. What if he is hunted down and hanged?”

“I’ll take that risk.” Lily looked at her. “What’s wrong, Claire? You’re not fooling me. Is Captain Blackmon treating you badly?”

Under Lily’s intense analytical stare, Claire wavered, unable to conceal her inner turmoil. “No-not at all.” He treated her with indifference.

Lily studied her through her spectacles for a minute longer. “Robert told me many things about Captain Blackmon. They are very close. Although Captain Blackmon never spoke, Ames had a feel for what thoughts he had. He had great difficulty turning to piracy. Resisted it like the plague.”

“I fail to see why that is important,” Claire sniffed.

“It is important. Robert told me Devon despaired, the scorn he would receive from you.”

“From me? What difference would that make?”

“With every action he committed, he thought of you. The desperate trade he embarked was his only recourse. Robert told me how awful it was for them once they escaped Jamaica. They were adrift, blundering about this pestilent archipelago, courting disaster. At any moment, they could have crashed upon a reef, been swept away in a storm, but what was worse was when the food stores depleted to nothing, and the men starved for days. No one had the skills to guide them. Robert, their navigator, so abused by Jarvis, hovered between life and death. It was Captain Blackmon’s sheer strength of will that offered hope for the men when their hour lay most grim.”

Claire inhaled, picturing the disaster they teetered on.

“As Captain Smith told us, they were picked up by Spanish pirates, enslaved and suffered cruelly. It was Devon’s pretty speech
entreating them to use his surgeon’s skills. The Spanish conceded. He dropped a drug into potions of their rum, drugging the crew then released his men and threw the Spaniards into the hold. Blessedly, Robert dropped his fever and recovered enough to help them gain a sense of where they were. With no country to call home, and escaped slaves, the men had no other choice but to embrace piracy. They demanded and with unanimous approval, voted Devon as their leader, swearing their complete loyalty to him. Devon ended yielding to pressure, abandoning himself to the stream of destiny. But I can tell you, his decision, albeit reluctant, stood the only way for them to survive.”

“Who am I to judge?”

Lily’s head snapped up. “Your life has been chaotic and you have provided for Cookie and me at sacrifice to yourself. It is time for you to be happy, Claire. It is all right to change your thinking−to risk love.” Lily clasped Claire’s hand and squeezed. “I am not budging until you tell me what is wrong.”

“He is not the man I knew on Jamaica.” Claire rose barely keeping a hold on things. “Let me show you to a room, Lily.”

“But I’m not staying here.”

Claire pivoted, her voice floundering. “Not staying here? Then where?”

Lily flushed. “You should know that Bloodsmythe and Cookie−” Lily dropped another thunderbolt. Claire swallowed. Emotions swirled. Jealousy? Desertion? Until now, she had assumed Cookie and Lily would be a permanent fixture in her life and return to London with her. The child in Claire selfishly regarded them as her own, but the adult woman in her understood to let them go. Devon had promised to put her in a port where she could travel to England. Her chest hitched. To be entirely alone? The grim reality slammed into her full force. Cookie and Lily would not be a part of her future. Everyone made choices. Claire chose to go to England. She would not hold them accountable to her decision to accompany her. She loved them too much.

Claire’s restless nature took her from the confines of the house. With a lot to mull over, she struck out through tropical jungle, following a trail and not knowing what she would encounter. The forest was very dark with little filtered light coming to the small shrubs on the ground. Her eyes followed thick strangler vines, rising upward through an over-canopy of wide trees. When she cleared the top of a ridge, her breath caught and she halted, gripped in complete awe.

Her mouth dropped open, standing atop the most enviable spot in the world with beauty beyond her wildest imagination. Hidden in this forest enclave, a waterfall tumbled down a fern softened cliff into a deep lagoon, paired by a sister waterfall farther up. Sun poured into the glade, affecting a rainbow with butterflies flitting everywhere to a melodic chorus of birds, and making her spirits soar. Beneath a blue sky, a rug of yellow, scarlet and orange flowers sparkled with the dew of morning. She filled her lungs with the fragrance and warm tropical air.

This was virgin territory, this place of magic, a world separate from the rest of the world. Had anyone ever tread here? It was so enthralling that her heart caught at the sight of it. Claire claimed it, and in her euphoria, eagerly removed her shoes then dress, stripping down to her chemise. She dove into the cool water, surfaced and laughed like a young child. Abu Ajir swooped over her and she splashed at him. “You’re spying on me, you feathered rascal.”

Floating on her back and staring at the sky, she thought of James from the Jamaican orphanage. He was like Devon, so exuberant, so resilient, as wild and natural as the gulls flying over the ocean. Claire clung to the hope of someday having her own child. She couldn’t help herself. She wanted that. Deep down, she knew she’d be good at being a mother. That hope swept further and further away. Her fantasies revolved around Devon. What he did to her. How he made her feel. Her stomach tightened, his hands sliding down her back. Her hand flew to her breast.

She must stop this madness. She must guard her heart. To bring Devon’s child into the world would be disastrous. He remained a wanted man, more-so as his reputation grew, and the Crowns of Europe amassed a high reward for his capture. Claire closed her eyes, refusing to imagine the horrible execution awaiting him. Devon would be hunted down. In no way would she allow her child to experience the crushing weight of abandonment that weighed heavily on her shoulders. To even entertain the remotest possibility of filling that void inside her with Devon would be a journey down a landscape of illusion. How would she explain to her child, his father was hung in a gibbet for the crows to feast?

After her swim, she visited her new friend, Jenny, her pregnancy progressed with no sign of labor. The poor girl had stubbed her toe and sat to nurse the pain. Claire hauled water and did other chores, insisting Jenny rest.

She walked back to Devon’s house. The trade-winds shifted, veering a towering dark mass from the leeward side of the island, shadowing her. Claire glanced at the ominous cloud, shrugging her indifference to a brewing inner turmoil swirling through her conscious mind. The tortured thoughts she tried so hard to repress always came to the same conclusion−Devon.

Another ship had anchored in the harbor, but Claire was too consumed with her thoughts to give it much notice. She sighed. When Devon finished with repairs, she’d insist on him taking her to another port.

“Claire!” Lily burst from behind.

Claire whirled, her cousin reduced to shambles, her hair disordered, and her parchment pale face brightened with tears in her terrified eyes. “What happened?”

Lily floundered in misery. “Robert went to Captain Blackmon and asked him if he could sail out to get a minister. Captain Blackmon said
no and outright forbade our marriage. I was to go to England with you, and it would be settled in a fortnight.”

Claire reeled from his flat out rejection. “Why would Devon refuse you?”

“I don’t know. He gave no reason at all. Robert is as devastated as me. However he is loyal to Captain Blackmon and will not go against his command. I found someone to love, and he loves me, and we are to be ripped apart and left heartbroken,” Lily wailed and clung to Claire.

Claire’s temper soared. “Of all the unfair, unprincipled, callous−I will take care of this. Now dry your eyes, and don’t give it another thought. This will be resolved immediately.”

Claire dug her heels into the path, intending to hunt Devon down even if it took her to the far corners of the earth. Upon entering the house, Devon’s voice rumbled in the library, apparently he was having a meeting with one of his crew. A goliath with a black patch over his eye guarded the library door. She looked up until her neck had a crick in it. Was this Jenny’s husband, the famed Wolf? His arms were crossed in front of him in a clear statement that suggested no one was allowed to enter. If only she had the strength of ten men to toss him out of the way. She frowned. Even that idea was doubtful. How would she ever get around him?