“If you'd prefer, I can have one of my men join us on the search.”
Because his offer surprised her and because she wasn't sure of his motivation, she chose to make light of his words. “Are you scared of me?”
“I thought you might be more comfortable if it wasn't only the two of us.”
His voice was deep and manly and made her very aware that despite the fact that she wore men's clothing, she was a woman beneath the fabric.
“I'm sure it will be fine. Besides, you've given me back my weapons.”
He arched a brow. “Planning on using them, are you?”
“Not unless I have to.”
His smile was as beautiful as his eyes. “Keep them close, Claire. You never know what may happen.”
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James snapped the looking glass shut and smiled. Finally things were going his way. The ship had changed its course, and unlike the last time when he'd realized they had changed direction, this time he wasn't left scrambling to make the necessary adjustments.
It had been pure luck that they hadn't lost Nate's ship that first night. He'd awoken to see it off his starboard side, nearly out of view completely, and had yelled and cursed and kept at his men all day until they'd gained some ground. Not a lot. Not enough to create a threat. Just enough to keep them in sight.
Giving his first mate clear instructions to maintain the current distance between the ships, James went below. Sunlight poked its way through the glass in fat fingers and illuminated the room. James strolled to the table and, with a sharp popping noise, yanked the cork off a bottle of rum. He poured himself half a tankard, replaced the plug, and took a seat.
From underneath his charts he slowly pulled a piece of paper, thin from the foldings it had seen over the years. It had both the color and the fragility of a freshly baked pie crust. James carefully set it before him. It was an account from his great-grandfather, written in precise script.
It was dated 1570.
I had never seen anything that compared to what I saw that night. There was so much of it. Barrels, chests, satchels. Anything, it seemed, that could be filled, was. Men, so many I lost count, transferred it from the holds of the
Santa Francesca
into those of the
Emmeline.
I half expected she would sink then, for she was loaded as I have seen no other. We worked in darkness, each of us dripping with our efforts. We were tired, we ached, yet we did not slow.
We knew the value of this treasure and we also knew the importance of what we were doing. Fool everyone and get the treasure to Spain. We all wanted it to arrive, for to leave it behind at the mercy of pirates, or worse, the British, was unthinkable. In Spain, in the hands of our king, was the only place we wanted this treasure to be.
As we watched the
Emmeline
sail away that night from that little spit of land, and as we all jumped back into our boats to go home, we all believed it would.
It wasn't until later that we learned she'd never arrived in Spain. I was sick thinking all that treasure was somewhere on the bottom of the ocean, or worse. It ate at me. I could not sleep, it was a chore to swallow any food and that which I did churned in my belly. Possessed by a fierce need to know, a need to know what had come from our soil remained with our people, I left Nombre de Dios, and my beautiful Isabella.
It took many months, but finally I learned that the
Emmeline
had stopped in Santo Domingo. She'd already been plundered by pirates when she'd arrived had been the tale. At first I believed them and my heart was heavy with the loss. But there were too many other tales, those of a torn map that had been left behind, those of a treasure hidden to keep it safe. The men from the
Emmeline
were lost, and those of us that had loaded it knew it was wise to keep our part in it a secret.
Yet I knew there were some of those men, like myself, that never stopped thinking of it. Nor had stopped looking for it. As I lay here, age and disease taking my body much before I'm ready to let it go, I wish I had found it. I tried. Every opportunity that arose, every spare minute I could spare I devoted to the treasure. Sadly, as my breath rattles in my chest, all that I have accomplished in regards to the
Emmeline
's treasure is the word of another old man.
I met him several months ago, before my health started to fail me. He was an old crippled man, given to long ramblings that more often than not didn't make any sense. He would speak of his children as though they were born into the world yesterday. He would speak of God and in the same breath, the devil. A devil with a pistol and a cat-o'-nine-tails.
He wouldn't always remember me from one visit to the next but that was of little consequence. I'd been told, in my search for the truth, that there was a man who claimed to have been on board the
Emmeline.
Though they dismissed it as nonsense, I didn't. Not after he showed me the scars on his back and certainly not when, after several attempts, I finally witnessed another moment of sanity.
The clouds that normally turned his blue eyes to gray had cleared. When he'd looked at me, when he'd spoken of the horror he'd seen, when he'd described the treasure, the casks and satchels exactly as I'd remembered them, I knew he had been on board the
Emmeline.
I visited him daily from that point on, but his moments of madness were coming in far greater number and lasting far longer. Days would pass when I couldn't understand a single word he spoke. And when I'd all but given up, was ready to go back home, he had one last moment of clarity.
“The key,” he'd said, “is in the last. Pay attention to that and you'll find it.”
Where was it? I implored. He grabbed my hand, and as his eyes began to cloud for the last time, he managed to say, “Where there's nothing to fear . . .”
Sadly I never deciphered what he meant. But I write these words with the hope that one day, one of my own will.
Well, James thought as he took a long sip of rum, none had yet. His grandmother, the only child of Isabella and Roberto, had never even tried. She'd married an English-man, luckily after her father had died, but had honored her father's desire for his blood to locate the treasure. Since she also had only one daughter, she'd waited until her grandson, James, was old enough to receive his great-grandfather's words.
Like his ancestor, James was driven to find this treasure, though not for anything as noble as country. He'd thought he'd carried the advantage, knowing that the treasure had been moved to the
Emmeline
, but it hadn't helped in his search.
There were clusters of islands throughout the Caribbean, and the area between Nombre de Dios and Santo Domingo was no exception. James gently slid the letter aside then pulled his charts closer. His fingers swept the islands between the two ports. Where any formation of islands closely resembled a line, he'd gone to the last one of the line. Sometimes, he'd search the first, as the last depended on where one's starting point was. He'd never found anything. Of course, since it wasn't hidden in plain sight, he really couldn't do much as he had no way of knowing where to look. Without the map, all he could do was search some caves.
His great-grandfather's words, about a place where there was nothing to fear, didn't help either. Pirates, weather, sickness, lack of food, lack of money. To James's way of thinking, there was always something a man could fear if he were so inclined. As for himself, he shrugged, took another sip of rum. All he could do was make plans and follow them through. Not that he didn't fight to protect what was his, but he didn't lose sleep over what he couldn't change or prevent either.
Still, that didn't change the fact that, to most, there was always something to be fearful of. How could a place exist where there wasn't anything to fear? He leaned back in his chair and considered. Since Nate had changed his heading, James could only assume it meant he'd figured out the map. Heading south, he thought.
“Where are you going?” he said, his eyes running over the chart again as frustration began to beat an impatient drum through his veins. “Where is it?”
The names of the islands rattled through his mind while his eyes drifted over them. He'd been to them all. And had left with nothing. Even this blasted one, he thought as his finger tapped Isla de Hueso. Useless scrub of land that nobody bothered to . . .
“Wait a minute.” He sat up straight, gazed hungrily at the map. “Nobody lives there. There's nothing to fear.” Which of course he'd realized before now, but with Nate heading in that direction, it gave James reason to consider it again.
As far as islands went, it was the safest. Not a lot there, he mused. Ruins, two nice beaches. Enough fruit to keep a belly from starving. But it wasn't last. Not that it was in a row either. Isla de Hueso was mostly surrounded, by a half-day's sail, by other scraps of land smaller than it was. All nothing more than shoots of tree-covered rocks that bulged out of the sea.
He slid his great-grandfather's letter closer again, and when he reread the words, he shook his head at his own stupidity. It didn't say
on
the last, it said
in
the last.
His hands thumped the table in celebration. It was on Isla de Hueso. It was the only thing that made sense. It was the only place they could have hidden such a treasure without being seen. Dammit, why hadn't he figured that out before now?
He didn't know what was in the last, or where the last was, but he didn't need to. Nate had the map. Nate would know that part. The key, James figured, was in Nate having the time to find the treasure. Then James wouldn't need the map. He could simply sail in and take the prize.
Yes, he thought as he chuckled through the last of his rum. Let Nate do the work, think the spoils were his. He didn't need to know any differently.
At least not yet.
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Nate sat heavily on the thick mattress in his cabin and groaned. How had things become so complicated?
He'd gone to Nevis determined to get the final clue to put the complete map together, to find the treasure, and to finally put the past behind him. Then he'd planned on telling Vincent that the house he'd built on Santo Domingo wasn't simply a base to use when they needed time ashore. That it was where he wanted to stay.
He loved the
Revenge
and had been more than happy to take the ship along with its captaincy. Having never had a real home, or one he could call his own since he had considered Blake's ship his home at the time, he'd cherished the
Revenge
and what it represented for him.
But it had been three years since he'd assumed the role of Sam Steele and he was beginning to want more. More than plundering and amassing wealth, though as someone who'd grown up with nothing, he didn't think there was such a thing as too much wealth. As the riches had accumulated, it hadn't changed the fact that something was missing.
Stability.
He was tired of always moving, of not having any roots. And as long as he was Sam Steele, he wouldn't have any. His taking the ship had protected Samantha but she was safe now. Nate had left enough witnesses to his plundering that there could be no doubt that Sam Steele was not Samantha Bradley, who happened to be one of the best ship makers in the Caribbean.
Nate had always planned on giving the ship back to Luke when he was done as Steele. He'd planned on going back to Santo Domingo and settling into his home.
He hadn't planned on Claire.
Nate sighed, and buried his face in his hands. Claire was going with him. She was going to be around him constantly. They'd eat, work, and sleep side by side. It was the latter that made his hands sweat.
She'd been on his ship for days now, and knowing she was close, after so many years without her, wore on his resistance. He found himself watching her on deck, watching that silly hat she wore flutter in the wind. Watching her face hunt the horizon. Watching the way her mouth moved when she spoke, the way her voice filled with passion when she was angry. He watched far more than he should and he yearned even more than that.
Nate scraped his hands over his face and looked out the window. He should have been excited, should have been ready to face this last task because it meant he was one step closer to saying good-bye to Steele. Instead he was wondering how in hell he'd be able to get through the next six days, the time it would take Vincent to sail to Port Royal and back to Isla de Hueso.
He wasn't worried about the treasure. Claire had it figured out, and though they were basing their search on a great number of assumptions, Nate knew it was right. Having near a week to find it while Vincent went to fetch Aidan was more than enough. No, that wasn't what was weighing on Nate's thoughts like a hundred-pound anchor.
It was his weakness for Claire. She struck something in him no woman ever had and it called to Nate in a way he couldn't explain. He only knew that, despite her broken promise to wait for him, despite his hurt, the minute he'd recognized her on the street, a part of him had been thrilled to see her. He didn't trust her. But he did desire her. Time hadn't lessened the want.
“That other ship is gone. We lost her about an hour ago.”
Nate looked up, surprised. He hadn't heard Vincent come down.
“She change direction?”
“No. Just fell behind.”
“I didn't hear the wind pick up.”
“It didn't.”
“Hmm.” Nate wasn't sure what to think of that. If the ship didn't change direction and the wind hadn't changed, why had they suddenly pulled ahead?