A Pirate's Possession (22 page)

“How old were you?”

“Four.”

“Dear God.”

“No,” he said with a forced laugh, “God wasn't around much. Least not in those days. Anyhow, that was our life, moving and living hand to mouth. Mostly she simply carried me along like baggage. I was always dirty, mostly always hungry.”

Even now, he could remember what it was to be hungry enough to search through the streets, the refuse other people threw out, for a scrap, any scrap, of food.

“But one night, one night she came to me, for once not wreaking of rum or sex, and promised that this new man was going to make all our sorrows disappear. It was a line I'd heard before, many times, but a boy of four tends to cling to any hope that may change his fortune.”

“What happened?”

“I was told to wait outside. Since it wasn't the first time, I occupied myself well enough playing with rocks to pass the time. But the night got colder and more time passed and still she didn't come outside to fetch me. I decided to go in, thinking I could at the least grab a blanket.”

The vision was sharp. Time hadn't dulled the edge.

“He was laying over her, his pants still around his ankles. His hands were around her neck. She was dead.”

Claire gasped, pressing her fingers to her throat.

“I don't remember much after that. He'd taken off his jacket and scabbard, left them on the table. Next thing I knew I had the sword in my hands, the man was draped over my mother, and I was covered in blood.” He looked down at his hands, still seeing them bloodied.

“My mother, in her worst drunken states, often threatened to take me to the orphanage if I spoke too much or got in her way.” He shrugged. “I figured it couldn't be worse than what I had so I took myself there.”

His eyes met hers and he felt somehow cleansed by the understanding he saw in them. He realized then that part of the reason he'd never told a soul was he'd been afraid to be looked upon as some kind of demon for having killed a man when he was only four.

Claire came to her feet, wiping a tear he hadn't realized hovered on his eye. “I'm sorry.”

“When I implied you were a whore—”

She silenced him with a kiss. A kiss that soothed as much as it inflamed.

“You knew I'd sailed the Caribbean alone. Given your past and what you already thought of me, what else were you to think?”

“You can forgive so easily?”

Her smile wrapped around his heart, drawing some of the shattered pieces back together.

“I've said some things myself I'm not proud of. Done things as well.”

“Tell me about your husband.”

Claire shook her head. “A mistake I recognized too late. I'm ashamed of my actions.”

“I murdered a man, Claire. Hard to be more ashamed than that.”

“You were young, scared. No court would blame you.”

“Doesn't matter, does it? Not when you blame yourself.”

Claire's eyes shone with her own share of condemnation. “No, it doesn't.”

“Tell me.”

“I can't.”

He caught her arm as she turned. “Why?”

“Because I was an idiot and naive, and I wish it had never happened.” Her eyes sparked when they met his. “And telling you the sorry tale won't change any of that.”

His grip tightened. “No, it won't. But it will go a long way to explaining the past. I need to know, Claire.”

Their eyes clashed. The air between them turned brittle. Claire gave in first.

“Let me go.”

She yanked hard and he released his grip. Rubbing her arms, she paced before the fire.

“You remember Mr. Litton?”

“The man who gave money to keep the orphanage going? How could I forget? He worked me hard. Never let a visit go by without tracking me down and piling more work onto me. Said I was too bloody old to be there. I knew I was but I worked for free so I don't know what the hell he had to complain about.”

“He worked us all hard. Said we needed to show him more appreciation.”

“I hated him. Hated the way he looked at some of the girls.”

Claire stopped her pacing and looked down into the flames.

“Did he touch you?” Nate asked, sick at the thought. Litton was old enough to have been her father. His jowls shook as much as his belly when he talked and his breath had always been fetid.

“He did after we were married.”

Nate couldn't have heard her right. “You married Quinn Litton?”

Claire sneered. “You're not the only one ashamed of the past. Litton told me if I didn't marry him, he'd refuse to help the orphanage any longer. Nate, he practically owned the town. Without his money, those children would have been on their own, with nothing. I couldn't let it happen.”

It sickened him to think of it, that Claire had had to face such a thing. That Litton could even consider tossing children out like garbage.

“Of course you couldn't.” And damn Litton to Hell for forcing her.

Her eyes hardened. “But it didn't matter, Nate. He did it anyway. No more than a month after we were married, he stopped giving them money. Without his help, the orphanage was forced to close and the kids were left homeless. Nate, the youngest was only three.”

“Bloody bastard,” Nate growled, remembering, too well, just what if felt like to be alone at such a young age. “Nobody did anything about it?”

“Who could? Most folks were indebted to him and too afraid to speak against him.”

Nate sighed. “Something he'd know, of course.”

She hugged herself tighter. “I was sick about it. I wanted to help the children so badly, but I had as little as they did. There wasn't anything I could do. And if I stayed in San Salvador, I'd never be free of him, so I left.”

And if Nate hadn't tucked his tail and run and instead had gone looking for her, she'd never have married and given her innocence to another man. He'd never liked Litton, but right then, Nate could have killed him.

“Has he looked for you?”

Claire shrugged. “I wouldn't know, I haven't stayed anyplace long enough, and I don't look like I did either. Still, something tells me that he wouldn't. After all, not only didn't he love me, but he got what he wanted from me as well, didn't he?” she added disgustedly.

“You married him, gave up your innocence for the sake of those children. Claire.” He took her chin and forced her gaze to his. “That he misled you is no fault of yours.”

Her chin quivered. “I should have known better. Nate, we all hated him, knew he was a vile man. Why did I think he'd be true to his word?”

His eyes sank into hers. “Did you, though? Did a part of you not realize it could all be a lie?”

“Yes,” she admitted on a sigh.

“Yet you did it anyway, because it was a chance you had to take. Claire, it's not in you to watch children suffer. I know. I saw the way you tended the young ones. You were more of a mother to them than they'd ever known. You gave of yourself to try to help them. From where I'm standing, I'd say that's the most honorable thing I've ever heard.”

Nate took her in his arms, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and held her head against his chest. He'd loved her at sixteen, and at the time he'd believed he couldn't possibly love her more. He'd been wrong. His chest was tight with the depth of emotion he felt for Claire.

She'd been through so much. She'd lost her mother, was left by her father. She'd been lied to in the worst fashion by a man that Nate had every intention of going after once the treasure was found. Was it any wonder, he thought, that she'd learned to depend on only herself?

“I'm sorry. For all the beastly things I said to you, God, I'm so sorry.”

She clung to him, cried against his chest until his shirt was warm and damp with her tears. They weren't only for the loss of her innocence, he knew. They were for the father she'd buried, for the children she hadn't been able to help. For the years she and Nate had spent apart.

There wasn't much he could do about the rest, but he vowed, as he held her in his arms, that they wouldn't be apart again.

Luck, James Blackthorn figured, was much like a temperamental woman. Sometimes she was with you, making life easier, and sometimes, when you needed her most, she wasn't anywhere in sight. He'd had his fair share of both lately.

She'd definitely been missing at the poker game and again later when his useless men had let Nate slip through their fingers. She'd come back to his side when James had figured out where Nate was heading but the treacherous bitch had abandoned him again.

Night had fallen. The sailor's moon cast a bright light on the water and guided them as they finished gliding around Isla de Hueso. There wasn't a damn ship anywhere.

He'd been so sure, thought he'd had it all figured out. Isla de Hueso was abandoned, and it was the only island in line with where Nate was headed that made any sense. Though he'd fallen back deliberately and lost sight of Nate's ship for a time, he'd done so confidently. Dammit, had that been a mistake?

“Orders, Captain?”

Horace had been James's first mate since James had been old enough to claim his inheritance and purchase the
Phantom
. Together they'd sailed the Caribbean intent on finding the
Emmeline
and any information about her. Since they clearly couldn't rely on such a quest to keep the ship afloat and the crew paid, and since piracy and privateering were too rough for James's blood—he wouldn't risk losing his neck and his ship to the scourge of the Caribbean waters—they sailed as merchantmen until such a time that the treasure was found.

It was close, he felt it. Logically, it made no sense. But instincts had led him to stay with that old man until he'd had a moment of clarity and told him about the treasure, and instincts told James now that, despite the lack of a ship nearby, the treasure was here.

He took a deep breath.

“Sail us back to that beach we passed. We'll drop anchor there. Come morning we'll go ashore.”

Seventeen

They decided the next morning to examine the chests before continuing their exploration of the shores. The sky was thick with puffy clouds, but none that threatened rain. They wouldn't have to worry about a deluge slowing them down.

“What do you suppose is inside?”

“It's treasure, true enough. Or they filled them with rocks.”

He'd brought along a hammer and he used it now on the barnacle-crusted lock of the first chest. It gave after a few hits. Nate dropped the hammer, letting it sink into the white sand. With Claire leaning over his shoulder, he opened the chest.

A ruby the size of a plum lay within a cradle of pearls.

“Oh,” Claire sighed. “Look at them all.”

Diamonds, rubies, emeralds of the richest green. Coins of silver and gold. She dug her hand through them and they slid over her skin like cool silk. A necklace caught in her fingers and she pulled it free. Her breath left her lungs in a slow exhale. Amethysts and diamonds beaded along a string of gold flashed in the sun.

Nate grinned, and took the hammer to the next chest.

“There's more yet,” he said and held out a handful of Spanish gold doubloons, each worth months of work to a common sailor.

In the third chest, among more of what they'd already discovered plus hundreds of silver pieces of eight, Claire picked out a snuffbox. It was made of copper and etched with swirling letters in a language she couldn't read.

“Why would a plain snuffbox be with this kind of treasure? Did it get thrown in by mistake, do you think?” She frowned as she studied it. Understanding crept over her like dawn on the horizon.

“The map said ‘a lone piece.' This is the only thing”—Claire gestured to the chests—“that doesn't fit with the rest.”

Nate took the box, turned it over in his hands. Seeing something in the writing, he tilted it to the light.

“What?” Claire demanded. “What do you see?”

“I know some Spanish. This word”—he ran his thumb over it—“it says ‘tomb.' ”

Claire let the meaning of that flit through her mind.

“The last bit of the clue says ‘alone at peace.' A tomb would go with that. Do you think, then, they left the chests here, enough to satisfy anyone who'd perhaps put the map together and got this far, then hid the rest in a tomb?”

Claire sighed. There were more than enough jewels and coins to lift her from a life of poverty, yet disappointment tasted bitter in her mouth. Why, she wondered, did she always seem one step behind what she wanted most?