My Seaswept Heart (40 page)

“What prisoners?

“I don’t know. That’s all I heard.”

“That’s enough, sweetheart.” Jamie hugged her
to his body quickly, then reluctantly let her go. “Now pay me heed
this time and stay here. I’ll be back for ye as soon as I can.”
With that he turned and shoved the door open, allowing rain and
debris to blow into the room. He slammed it behind him and was
gone.

And Anne, heedless of her wet clothes, and
the thunderous roar of the storm, began to pace the small room.

Their pistols and muskets were useless.

Jamie stared down at the wet firearm in his
hand, then stuck it back in the sash across his chest. There was no
way the powder would catch the spark. Unfortunately, d’Porteau’s
crew, languishing snug and dry inside the sugar works didn’t suffer
the same malady. Jamie imagined their guns would fire just
fine.

He and the few men with him would discover
that sad truth the moment they broke through the door.

“What we gonna do, Cap’n?”

Jamie glanced over at Israel. The wily old
man was barely holding his own against the wind. Besides him, he
had five other men, and a supply of knives and pikes from the
Lost Cause
.

Jamie cupped his hands so Israel could hear.
“Be there a back door to this place?”

When Israel nodded, Jamie signaled him to
lead him to it. Before they left the rest of the men in the dubious
shelter of some rocks, Jamie lashed a sword and several knives
around his waist, clamping an extra between his teeth.

After they fought the wind and blinding rain
around to the back, Jamie struggled with the hook of one of the
shutters covering a rear window. As soon as it was loose, the
louvered wood began flailing back and forth, knocking against the
building.

It wasn’t long before the door slivered open.
Cursing a stream of obscenities worthy of his calling, a pirate
inched through the door. Huddled over against the storm he looked
left and right, then spotting the loose shutter, started toward it.
He didn’t notice anyone until Jamie tapped him on the shoulder.

One punch had him sprawled in the mud.

Jamie signaled for Israel to fix the shutter,
then he opened the door and slipped inside. He quickly settled
behind some barrels and wiped the water from his eyes. A light was
glowing toward the front of the building, and it was from there
that Jamie could hear voices. Loud voices, muffled by the wild fury
of the storm, but clear enough to recognize the slur of heavy
drinking.

Jamie worked his way from barrel to barrel,
wondering how long it would take before d’Porteau would miss the
pirate he sent to fix the shutter. He could distinguish the
Frenchman’s nasal twang now, and Jamie honed in on it as he crept
silently forward.

He was so intent upon his foe that Jamie
almost missed the shuffle of sound behind him. He jerked around,
expecting an attack from the rear, only to see a half-dozen men
crouched down and tied together. Matthew Baxter and Mort Tatum.
Jamie recognized the leaders of the settlement. The young men
likely to give d’Porteau the most trouble. They stared at him above
their gags with imploring eyes.

Circling back behind, Jamie worked quickly to
slice through the ropes, passing out all the knives. He pressed a
finger to his lips, then directed three to the left, three to the
right, and motioned for the rest to follow him.

Candlelight showed perhaps twenty pirates
sprawled on kegs, benches, and the floor. A few had tin cups, but
most simply drank from bottles and jugs. By their sound and
posture, they’d been imbibing the rum for quite a while.

Which was to Jamie’s advantage. That and
surprise. But he couldn’t help noticing the loaded pistols within
reach of most of the pirates.

His fingers tightened on the knife handle and
he watched, waiting for the other men to position themselves around
the group of revelers. Then he pushed to the balls of his feet and
leaped forward.

The pirates twisted around awkwardly, their
faces contorted in a grotesque mask of surprise. But drunk though
they were, these men were fighters. Jamie heard the first explosion
of gunfire as he grappled d’Porteau to the ground. Air left the
Frenchman in a loud
whoomph
. For all his drunkenness and
effeminate ways d’Porteau had not gained his success as a pirate by
chance. He was strong and tough and ruthless, curving his fingers
toward Jamie’s eyes like a cornered panther.

But there was too much at stake, and Jamie
was in no mood for defeat. He pummeled his fist into the sagging
jowls again and again. D’Porteau grasped for his pistol, yanking it
from his jacket and swinging it forward. The barrel caught Jamie’s
temple. Blood spurted out, the pain blinding him for the costly few
seconds d’Porteau needed to stagger to his feet and aim the
gun.

A shot reverberated through the building, and
Jamie waited for the darkness to follow. But it was d’Porteau who
fell back. His burly shoulder knocked against the table, jarring
the candle from the shallow dish where it swam in a pool of hot
tallow.

Jamie’s head whipped around in time to see
Israel standing over d’Porteau, a smoking pistol gripped in his
hand.

“I always did want to kill the bastard,” he
said before dropping the spent gun and whipping out his knife as
another adversary rushed toward him.

Jamie pushed to his feet, joining the melee.
Confusion reigned, made more hauntingly eerie by the ribbons of
smoke filtering up from the floor. The pirates had not been neat
drinkers. Flames leapfrogged from one bit of rum-soaked timber to
the next, feeding on anything flammable. When the fire reached the
kegs of rum they exploded into an inferno, sucking oxygen from the
air and shooting flames toward the roof.

“Let’s get out of here!”

It was Lester Perdue yelling, and Jamie
turned as Israel grabbed his arm. The old man doubled over
coughing, but his fingers didn’t lose their grip on Jamie’s arm.
“Come on, Cap’n,” he managed to sputter before his legs folded
under him.

Jamie caught him before he hit the floor,
tossing him over his shoulder. Lowering his head, Jamie pushed
through the smoke toward the front.

“Is anyone else inside?” Jamie yelled as he
stumbled through the doorway. The rain had all but stopped and the
wind stilled. But the sky held a strange light beyond what the fire
gave it. Jamie dropped to his knees in the mud a few rods from the
sugar works. He propped Israel against a tree trunk, then sucked in
breaths of clean, clear air. A small knot of men stood, silently
watching the flames eat up the building. Some of them turned toward
him when Jamie repeated his question.

“It appears we all got out,” Mort answered.
“Except the pirates, and Les Milkens, but he had a hole in his
chest. Wait, Captain MacQuaid.” He stepped between Jamie and the
fiery inferno. “He was dead. And that’s what you’ll be if you go
back in there.” At that moment the roof collapsed in silent
agreement, sending a glitter of sparks spraying into the sky.

~ ~ ~

The storm was over... at least for the
moment.

Anne had lived in the Caribbean long enough
to know the respite was temporary, that the backside of a hurricane
was often more deadly. But she had time, especially if she hurried.
And she didn’t think she could bear any more pacing back and forth
across the floor, wondering what had happened. She needed to find
Jamie. She needed to find Uncle Richard.

Anne hurried along the path, picking her way
around the debris. She knew the storm was bad, but she hadn’t
anticipated this much damage to the island.

In the distance she could see smoke—the sugar
works—and rushed toward it as quickly as she could. It wasn’t until
she was almost past the upended tree before she caught sight of
something beneath the fronds. Her breath coming in painful gasps,
Anne rushed forward, somehow knowing what she would find before she
fought her way through the sharp-edged greenery.

He wasn’t dead. Anne could see the shallow
rise and fall of her uncle’s chest beneath the wet waistcoat. But
his color was bad, contrasting white to the streaks of brown-gray
mud covering his face.

“Uncle Richard!” Anne tried to wake him, but
her frantic calls didn’t elicit so much as a flutter of his stubby
lashes.

And moving him was impossible. When Anne
tried she discovered his legs were pinned beneath the uprooted
palm. Though she shoved and pulled, she couldn’t budge it an inch.
Anne scrambled to her feet, determined to run for help. But before
she could her face was pelted with a fresh torrent of rain. The
wind and rain resumed in earnest and she squatted down, shielding
her uncle’s head with her body least he drown in the downpour.

~ ~ ~

She was gone.

“Damnation!” Jamie thumped his palm against
the door after checking the small cottage for Anne. He left Israel
and the others at the church, where most of the citizens had
congregated to wait out the storm. And he’d come to fetch Anne and
take her there, too, arriving here just as the fury of the
hurricane broke free again. Only to find her gone.

But where?

She wasn’t at the church or sugar works. And
it made no sense for her to go to another cottage. This one seemed
to have weathered the first half of the storm as well as any.

Which only meant one thing. Jamie shoved
through the door and into the howling tempest, not sure where he
was going, only knowing he couldn’t leave her out there. Not
without trying to find her.

He would later think of it as a miracle, but
for now he only called it blind luck as he stumbled over the tree
where she sat bent over her uncle’s still form.

“My God, Anne.” Jamie hugged her sodden body
to his. She clung to him but when he tried to pull her up,
resisted.

“I can’t move him. He’s trapped,” she cried,
her words immediately whipped away by the wind.

And nearly dead, Jamie thought but didn’t
say. “Ye get on back to the cottage. I’ll bring him.”

“No.”

She shook her head frantically and Jamie
decided he didn’t have time to argue. He worked his way through the
mud down the trunk until he could get a good hold. Then he wrapped
his arms around the smooth bark and with a grunt lifted. The tree
was heavier than he thought but he finally managed to shift its
weight.

“Pull him, now!” he yelled into the
storm.

She knew she must be hurting him as she
tugged at his body. But she had no choice. When his legs were clear
she called to Jamie. The tree trunk sank into marshy soil.

Gathering the older man in his arms, Jamie
bent his head against the howling wind and followed Anne toward the
shelter of the nearest cabin.

~ ~ ~

He knew he’d find her here.

Jamie stood watching Anne a moment, feeling
her pain, before he walked toward the burial plot. The islanders
had surrounded the simple graves with a fence of unpainted pickets,
as if they could somehow protect those who lay beneath the ground.
Or perhaps it was a reminder that civilization had once survived
and flourished on Libertia.

Bending down Jamie twisted off a tangle of
vines already encroaching under the fence.

She glanced around, giving him a sad smile
and brushing a strand of hair beneath her bonnet. “It’s time to go,
I suppose.”

“Aye.” Jamie tossed the leaves toward the
undergrowth. “We’ll miss the tide if we don’t sail soon.”

Anne folded her hands, though she didn’t turn
away from the small cross that marked her uncle’s grave. “Perhaps
it’s best he didn’t live to see his dream destroyed.”

She turned the full force of her dark eyes on
him, and Jamie could only shrug. He felt like a cad for taking her
away, yet there was nothing here for her. The hurricane destroyed
what was left of the sugar crop after the fire at the mill.

And the settlers, the believers in Richard
Cornwall’s dream, wanted to leave. Jamie was taking them to the New
World. The morning after the storm, when the sun rose in a clear
Caribbean sky they’d surveyed the damage. Then they’d buried the
dead, including their leader, and the pirates... and Arthur. After
the funerals they held a meeting and voted... to abandon the
colony.

For the sennight since, Jamie and his crew
had worked making repairs on the
Lost Cause
. It had survived
the storm better than the French ship. The morning after the
hurricane all that could be seen of the
French Whore
was the
tip of its mainmast. Debris from the wreckage still washed
ashore.

Jamie followed Anne as she walked to the
crest of the hill. From where they stood, the island lay below, a
crazy quilt of downed trees and windswept fields. Beyond, on the
turquoise bay, was the
Lost Cause
.