About her white neck the fabulous necklace glimmered like blood against snow. They might have been anywhere in Europe and not in lawless Port Royal.
Moonbeam had sunk luxuriously down by Carolina's feet, purring. Absently Carolina rubbed the fur just behind Moonbeam's pointy ear with her toe, and Moonbeam's purr grew louder.
The man across from her was smiling.
"I am told you loosed a jaguar once," he observed, skillfully spearing a bit of lobster.
It was but one of the many stories he had heard about her, for he had been asking discreet questions about town all afternoon and had leamed that people were eager to share what they knew about the glamorous Silver Wench.
It was then she knew where she had seen eyes like his before. They were the eyes of a cat, a big dangerous cat.
She shrugged. "Many stories are told of me-some of them are even true." He was delighted with her answer. "But about the jaguar," he urged. "Tell me about that."
She remembered the jaguar all too well. The big cat had been brought in by sea, captured somewhere in the wilds of Mexico. And captured along with the galleon that was to bear her to Havana. Carolina had first seen the proud lustrous animal exhibited on the deck of a buccaneer sloop that had sailed into Port Royal harbor.
Seen it tied and helpless but roaring its defiance at its captors.
"A female," a young buccaneer had told her casually. "The Spaniards said they caught her trying to protect her cubs."
"What of the cubs?" she had asked. "Escaped," was the prompt reply. "They shot at them but the jungle was dense and they got away. But they were young and they probably died without their mother. She might have killed someone had not a lucky shot felled her."
The signs of that "lucky shot" were there,a long gash where the shot had grazed the skull, cut through a ribbon of fur and stunned the big cat, who had then been taken alive.
"So they ran off her cubs, left them to die, and took her away to sea?" Carolina's voice had been unsteady.
"Yes. Is she not a beauty? Our captain thinks to sell her to a man in the town who holds dog fights and cock fights. Think of the sport we will have when we put her in a walled enclosure and loose the dogs on her?"
Carolina had not wanted to think about that. She demanded to see the captain immediately. "How much," she had asked him peremptorily, "for the jaguar?"
Surprised, he had named the price he hoped to get in town. "But I might get more,"
he had said with a frown.
"I will pay you twice what you ask," she said. "In gold. If you will sail me up the Cobre where I will release her."
"Release her?" The captain was obviously taken aback.
"Yes." The word was spoken crisply. "Release her."
The captain of the sloop had gnawed at his lip and thought about that. Finally he had agreed.
Kells had been gone, on the other side of the island. It was Hawks, a darkly disapproving Hawks, who had accompanied Carolina on that journey up the Cobre.
She had made friends with the big cat on the way-after a fashion. At least she had sensed a kind of wild understanding, a kinship in those lamplike golden eyes.
And when at last she had chosen a place to release the jaguar, she had insisted on doing it herself. Hawks had nearly exploded at her insistence.
"She will tum on you, Hawks," Carolina had insisted. "But she will not turn on me. I am sure of it."
Hawks was considerably less sure. He had turned menacingly to the men about him, who had watched with fascination as Carolina, the knife in her hand flashing in the moonlight, had advanced upon the dangerous animal.
"If anyone so much as breathes, I'll have his ears for it," Hawks had growled. And to Carolina he had said, "At least have a pistol in your other hand-in case she does turn on you after all!"
"All right." Impatiently Carolina had taken the pistol Hawks proffered. About her the men watched tensely. Hands crept toward cutlasses-and pistols.
"Stand well back, Hawks," Carolina instructed. "I think we're near enough to shore that she can leap over. I don't know if she can swim."
There was sweat on Hawks's brow now. He was cursing silently-and praying, too, although he would never have admitted it.
The big cat had been positioned half over the ship's rail. Swiftly, with her razor-sharp knife, Carolina had slashed the bonds that held the animal, and leaped back.
But she need not have worried. The jaguar had no thought for those on the sloop. In a single fluid bound the big cat gained the shore, disappearing into the dark wall of green jungle, black and silver in the moonlight, that almost scraped the sloop's hull.
But behind Carolina, as the cat leaped, a shot had rung out.
Carolina had swung around and without thought instinctively fired at the man who held a smoking pistol. With a look of disbelief on his face he had crumpled to the deck.
It had been a very tense moment. Hawks always sweated when he recounted it.
"There I was on the deck with a whole crew of armed men," he had said with feeling.
"And the captain's lady chooses to shoot one of them!"
The man had lived. Carolina, shooting as she whirled, had dealt him only a flesh wound.
"Why did you do it?" she had asked in an anguished voice as she stood over him while he held on to his bloody shoulder. "Why did you try to kill her?"
He hadn't known really. A lovely wild thing just released-his instinct had been to kill it.
And brag about it later. But along with the pain, he had felt shamefaced as he looked up at the Silver Wench bending over him.
"Do you think he hit the jaguar, Hawks?" Carolina had demanded. Hawks had shaken his head. "No, the shot went wild. The sloop lurched as the cat went over."
She had insisted on staying where they were, anchored until dawn. A quick search had revealed no bloody trail on shore, but there were the imprints of big pads on the marshy earth.
"I promise you," Carolina had told them all with flashing eyes, "that if anybody hunts that animal down ,If any of you so much as tell where we dropped her off-that I will ask Kells for your heads for it!"
They had shuffled their feet and looked at each other uneasily. The Silver Wench was always more than one bargained for-but she had shot one of them. And now was threatening the rest.
It was Hawks who had saved the day.
"Captain Kells will take it kindly that you have done this favor for his lady," he had rumbled. "And now we'd best get us back and leave the cat to fend for herself. I'll be buying the whisky when we get back to Port Royal. Meantime you should look to that shoulder, Roy."
"I shot you. I'll bind up the wound," Carolina had told Roy bluntly.
She never, Hawks remarked later, said she was sorry she had shot him. Indeed he was sure she was not! But she did not wish to see a fellow human suffer. A strange contradiction, was the Wench.
And now her dinner guest was asking her, "Is it true you loosed the jaguar yourself?"
"Yes," she sighed. "It is true. I have done many reckless things."
There was admiration in his narrow gaze. What a woman! he was thinking. So wild and free. What had this buccaneer ever done to deserve her?
"I am told your husband was away at the time. What did he say when he heard?"
"Oh, Kells was furious," she admitted frankly. "He made me promise that I would never again sail up the Cobre without him. Or have dealings with jaguars."
He chuckled. "I can well imagine." But then he grew serious again, studying her lovely delicate features in the candlelight, the slim white hand that held a stemmed wineglass. "But I cannot help but wonder ... why did you do it?" he asked softly.
Across the handsome table her silver eyes flashed. "Because she was beautiful and brave-and she was only protecting her own when she was caught. I could not let her die for it. And sometimes," her voice grew dreamy, "I think of her out there, stalking the blue hills, padding the jungle floor by moonlight. I think of her looking out to sea and wondering if her cubs are safe."
"Perhaps they are," he said softly. And there was an answering light in his golden eyes as he spoke.
"I like to think it," she said and took a quick sip of wine. Her voice was husky. "I like to think that she has found a mate worthy of her and that she will bear other cubs and they will love her."
And across the table in this buccaneer's house, across a forest of silver captured from Spanish galleons, a man who considered himself the enemy of everything she loved lost his heart to her. All his life Don Ramon del Mundo had taken his women lightly, almost mockingly. Women, he had believed, were for pleasure. Except the one he would one day marry, of course-she must have an enormous dowry to bring back to life his depleted estates in Spain. Now, looking at this buccaneer's beauty in her low-cut jade gown, he knew what it was to dream.
"This Kells is a lucky man," he murmured.
The sudden sincerity of his voice struck her. She looked up abruptly and caught the hot light in his tawny eyes.
"Perhaps not so lucky," she said bitterly. For was it not really all her fault, this predicament Kells now found himself in? Life had stretched forward so brilliantly for them-for a while. Kells had sought and received his pardon for buccaneering, they had planned a big wedding.
But then Kells had been the victim of a devilish plot. In England a peer of the realm-seeking to disguise his own villainies-had impersonated Kells and sunk several English ships. And once again made Rye Evistock an outlaw.
And so it was as Captain Kells that her proud lover had gone to sea again. He had caught the culprit, of course- off the Azores. But when the culprit had turned out to be the Marquess of Saltenham, who was her best friend Reba's betrothed, Carolina had pleaded with Kells to save him-and he had. Much to her present regret.
For Reba's termagant mother had mustered up paid witnesses to swear that Robin Tyrell, Marquess of Saltenham, had not even been near the ocean, much less guilty of the maraudings in question. And Rye Evistock and his lady had gone back to Tortuga once again to resume their false identities of Captain Kells and his Silver Wench, Christabel Willing.
On Tortuga it had somehow been possible to forget -most of the time-the life they should have had. But here in Port Royal it was not. Every day brought with it fresh reminders. For although Kells and his lady had been welcomed by the governor herea governor who chose to wink at the presence of buccaneers in his domain since they were a stout defense against the Spanish in nearby Cuba-Port Royal was a cosmopolitan city. English gentry came here fresh from London. Landed island gentry came down the Cobre River or sailed from other parts of the island to attend parties at the governor's house in Port Royal.
Kells and his lady attended those, too, but there was always a certain sadness in their eyes when they returned home after one of them. For such evenings brought sharply back to them all that they had lost.
Although they had never actually spoken of it-not in words--there was tacit agreement between them not to bring a child into the world while they lived under the shadow of the sword here in Port Royal. Kells, she knew, did not want to rear his sons to be buccaneers or his daughters to marry buccaneers-and what other fate could there be for the children of such as they? It was not the price on his head in Spain which disturbed him, she knew-even though, now, that price had gone up to fifty thousand pieces of eight-it was the charge of piracy that hung over his head in England, a charge that would forever bar him from holding his rightful place in the land of his birth.
They lived on the governor's sufferance here in Port Royal. But Acting Governor White would soon be replaced, and a new governor might be less friendly. It seemed they were always to live beneath the shadow of the sword.
And so they made do as best they could. They entertained buccaneers and tradesmen of the better sort, and they were frequent guests of the governor. But it was not the life they would have chosen for themselves, and they both knew it.
Carolina wrested herself back to the present. "I am surprised the friends of the man you shot did not tum on you," her dinner guest was saying.
They were back to the jaguar....
She shrugged. "I suppose they might have, had it not been for Hawks. He guards me, and he is very resolute."
"Yes," he laughed. "I have seen him."
"And then," she mused, "there is my husband's reputation. Kells is-formidable." Her voice was wistful. She was wishing he did not have to be so formidable, that he could settle into the life of the English country gentleman he was cut out to be. "But then,"
she changed the subject gracefully, "these are old stories about my various follies.Tell me about yourself, Monsieur du Monde. You must have had many notable adventures-your very name means 'man of the world.' "
Indeed it meant that in Spanish as well as in French! Ramon del Mundo's golden eyes kindled. She wanted stories, did she? Well, he would tell her stories!
And so for the rest of the evening, that sworn enemy of all things English, a man who had come to Jamaica to plan an invasion, to spy out Port Royal and learn the weak chinks in the armor of its defenses, kept up a running stream of stories that made Carolina laugh.
None of them were true, of course. Like himself in his present guise, they were a sham.
A sham meant to impress a lady.
And all the while his mind was fiercely conjuring up what it would be like to have her with him in bed, to feel that silken body turn toward him, to see that lovely face regard him with trusting eyes in the moonlight, to touch those soft lips that would be slightly parted as she melted into his arms with a sweet sigh of surrender. His temples throbbed as he imagined himself making love to her, as he felt her turn and moan in his arms-and tremble with an ardor that he would incite in her. And afterward she would whisper as she lay against his chest-"Ramon, Ramon, I never knew it could be like this!"
Yes, brave and beautiful though she was, he would bend her to his will-and she would be glad to be bent.