Heather Graham - [Camerons Saga - North American Woman 02]

Silver Hawk smiled slowly, assessing her. “I’m not quite sure yet. I’ve decided that I could tame you. Perhaps I shall not ransom you at all. Perhaps I shall keep you with me forever.”

Skye gasped. “Don’t tease me!”

His fingers dug more forcefully into her arms. “Indeed, why should you think that I tease you, Skye Kinsdale? We pirates revel in debauchery and conquest. It would be most natural to return the ship … but not the maiden.”

Prologue

April 4, 1718

Cameron Hall

Tidewater, Virginia

“P
irates! Damned pirates!”

The explosive words rocked the apparent serenity of the coming night. It was sunset along the James River. Soft hues of orange and tawny yellow were falling against the moss-touched oaks and the gentle sloping grasses leading to the river. Someone hummed somewhere as they worked, and birds sang melodic songs.

“Pirates!” came the resounding thunder once more, and it seemed that a hush fell upon the day.

Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia slammed his hand upon the polished pine side table by his chair on the porch to further emphasize his fury and displeasure.
Lord Cameron leaned idly against one of the massive pillars and glanced at his friend with a wry smile. Alexander was obsessed. A bright and reasonable man, attractive in his person, dress, and manner, he was quite popular among the colonists, from the lords and ladies to the scullery maids. His eyes were intelligent and grave, and outraged though he was, he still appeared the aristocrat—from his fine white wig, the ends of it neatly curling over his shoulders, to his peach brocade frockcoat to his soft mustard knee breeches and silver buckled shoes. At the moment, though, he was lacking his customary oratorical prowess. He was fixed upon one word.

“Pirates! I say,” Spotswood repeated. He did not slam his hand against the table again, but preferred to rescue his glass of sherry before his own vitality sent it crashing to the floor. “Pirates, pirates, pirates! They will be the bane of me yet!” His eyes narrowed sharply upon his host, Petroc Cameron, Lord Cameron of Cameron Hall, and “Roc” to his friends and relations. Cameron was sharp, and like his father before him, he was a tall man, young, striking, with strong, handsome features and some indomitable presence about him that instantly attracted the eye and commanded respect. Like many Camerons, he possessed sharp gray eyes that could sizzle silver by certain light. His hair was dark when he disdained to wear a wig; this late afternoon, with the falling sun upon it, the color seemed like jet.

Even in stillness he was vital.

Now, casually leaning against the pillar and looking out to the James River, he still emitted some energy that belied his nonchalance. Humor touched his eyes, but more. If there were danger, then danger be damned. He was a man to meet a challenge.

“Sir,” he reminded his friend, “you cannot single-handedly do away with them. But I swear it, sir, we shall do our best to cast the worst of them into gibbets.”

“Bah!” Spotswood protested impatiently. “I would chain them all in gibbets by the docks as warning. A pity that chains and gibbets cost so much money, I cannot afford to display the more petty offenders!” He leaned back and looked down the broad slope of grass to the river. It was a beautiful place, this,
the Cameron estate. Strategically planned, it combined the best of an English country manor with the wild beauty of the colony. Because of the depth of the river, ships could come to the Cameron docks as if they came to Lord Cameron’s very front door. The house itself was both practical and elegant. Spotswood had been friends with this young Cameron’s father in the days when he had planned the governor’s mansion in Williamsburg, and he had often thought of Cameron Hall when he spoke with the architects. The house had been begun in late 1620s. There had been just the main hall and upstairs bedrooms then. There was a brick in the cellar in the foundation attesting to the date of the building. “With these bricks we build our house, Jamie and Jassy Cameron, the Year of Our Lord 1627. The foundation will be strong, and God granting, our house and our family will stand the test of time.”

The family had, so far, stood strong with the best and the worst of times. The eldest son always grew to be a member of the Governor’s Council. To Spotswood, they were proving to be very fine friends, indeed. None so staunch as Roc Cameron.

“Sir,” Cameron said now, “you do well against the hordes.”

Was he teasing him? Spotswood never knew. He swept out a hand indicating the paper he had just been reading and had tossed down with an incredible flourish just before he had banged the table. “There’s another article in there by a so-called wife of that Edward Thatch, Teach, Tech—whatever his bloody name is! The man marries women right and left!”

“And they live to tell of it,” Roc Cameron said gravely. Teach was a pirate who was beginning to draw attention to himself. Blackbeard, they called him, because of his ferocious facial hair. It was rumored that he hailed from Bristol, and that he had served in Queen Anne’s War, and that he had gone on to be tutored beneath the pirate Hornigold to learn a new trade as a scavenger upon the high seas. But he wasn’t the worst of the lot. “Logan is running around out there. And One-Eyed Jack. Those are the two who not only steal cargo, but are heinously careless with human life.”

Spotswood looked at him with a slow, curious nod. He sat back,
lacing his fingers together, watching his younger friend. “And then there’s the Silver Hawk.”

“And then there’s the Silver Hawk,” Cameron agreed flatly.

“We need new commissions,” Spotswood complained. “Queen Anne lies dead, and that German upon the throne—”

Roc’s laughter interrupted him and the lieutenant governor flushed. “Well, the man is a German! He’s the King of England, and he doesn’t even speak the king’s good English! What is this world coming to? Pirates ever plaguing the seas, and a king who can’t even speak his country’s English!”

“Better than a papist, sir, or so, it seems, the country decided.” Roc Cameron considered himself a Virginian. The affairs of the mother country were of concern to him only when they concerned Virginia. He was passionately in love with his land. The ultimate gentleman farmer, and a fine merchant, despite his title. That was the way with the New World, or so it seemed. A man could make great riches here, but only if a man were hard and bright and willing to work.

Spotswood loved Virginia himself. But he was an Englishman, appointed by the Crown. He might mutter about the king being a German, but still he bowed to England in all things. Queen Anne, the last of the Stewart monarchs, had died in 1714. That poor lady’s many children had all died before her, and rather than accept her half-brother—a papist—on the throne, the English were willing to look to Germany for a Protestant king. The religious issue was a crucial one. In the colonies, men tended to be more tolerant of religious differences. But even here, every man of property or means belonged to the Church of England, and he kept his vows to the church as sacred.

Spotswood sighed. Always a challenge! The Indians had beset men a century ago. Now it was the damned pirates.

“Roc—” the governor began, leaning forward. But he was suddenly cut off by a huge commotion coming from the house.

The porch lay off the grand central hallway. It was situated so that the river breeze swept from the open hallway doors in the back to the open hallway doors at the front, when the weather was hot. Now the governor and Lord Cameron heard a bellowing voice and the clump of heavy footsteps. The governor
frowned. Roc Cameron grinned and shrugged. “Lord Kinsdale, I believe,” he said dryly.

Peter Lumley, Lord Cameron’s butler and valet, appeared first. A man of about forty, he was lean and small, but straight and stiff with indignation.

“Sir, I did tell his lordship that you were engaged, and with the lieutenant governor! But he insisted—”

“That’s quite fine, Peter,” Roc said, pushing away from his pillar. He thrust back the folds of his fawn-colored frockcoat to plant his hand upon his hips. He waited. A second later a small portly man with blue eyes and wild wisps of gray hair appeared.

“Cameron! Have you heard of it! More and more debauchery upon the open seas!” He held the very newspaper that the governor had allowed to fall to the floor.