Beyond the Savage Sea Read online

  A hallway led past the plantation office, The door stood open. Drake stopped and glanced in. Ledgers stood neatly on shelves. A large map of Crawford Plantation covered one wall. He saw each cane field, provisions field, pasture, cattle pond, fruit grove, and building precisely labeled. He itched to take a look at the books, but they were none of his business.

  He went upstairs, into his room, and stopped, startled. His bedchamber was decked out like a tailor’s shop. Suits of clothes lay everywhere. For a moment he didn’t know what to think. Then he remembered Edwinna’s offer of her father’s suits. This was Marigold’s work. He smiled. With surprising flair for so shy a child, she’d arranged each suit scarecrow fashion, as if someone were in it, shirt tucked into waistcoat, waistcoat in coat, shirtsleeves in coat sleeves with lace cuff neatly showing.

  He examined the suits with distaste. They were a gaudy lot, bright and ostentatious. Who but a peacock would wear such garb? Peter Crawford’s taste certainly hadn’t rubbed off on his daughter. Edwinna dressed as plainly as a mud hen. He found only one suit he would be willing to wear—a black wool serge with a waistcoat of gray silk. He scooped it up, along with the shirt and breeches he’d worn yesterday, and went to the open door.

  “Marigold?” he called, certain she was out there somewhere. She materialized instantly, as if out of the woodwork.

  “Thank you for laying out the suits. It was very kind. I want this one, none of the others. You can alter it by using my breeches and shirt for measurement.”

  “Yes sir.” She was so timid he could hardly hear her voice. Poor Jeremy. He deposited the suit in her arms. “Wait, Marigold.”

  From the nightbox where he’d stowed the money purse lest he prove Edwinna right and lose it in the cane fields, he fetched a coin.

  “Do you know the young bond servant called Jeremy?”

  Her answer was eloquent. She blushed red as a ripe autumn apple. Puppy love, in all its glorious agony. She nodded.

  “Good,” he said matter-of-factly. “Then please go find him this afternoon and give him this coin. Tell him it is my thanks for accompanying me yesterday. Will you do that?”

  She nodded, her blush deepening to scarlet. She took the coin, curtsied, and ran off. Drake smiled. Well, Jeremy, the rest is up to you.

  He was about to wash when the pleasant sounds of a mother and baby playing drifted in. He followed the sounds to the hall window and looked down into the kitchen herb garden.

  It wasn’t a mother, it was Edwinna. She sat cross-legged on the ground, Tutu in her lap. They were playing a singing game in which Edwinna lifted Tutu’s hands a peg higher with each line she sang. Tutu chortled happily.

  Give her a bucket and she couldn’t carry a tune. Her soft, husky voice was perilously flat. He thought of Anne’s fine singing voice, which had charmed everyone who heard it. But somehow the effect here was...touching. Like her concern for her slaves, this was an unexpected side of Edwinna.

  The game came to an end in happy laughter. This was new, too. He’d never seen her smile, let alone laugh. Tutu threw his arms around her neck, and the)’ hugged, kissed. As he watched, her eyes closed. An expression of such need molded her features that he felt like a Peeping Tom. He left the window and went quickly to his room to wash, but he couldn’t forget that look.

  Shorn of their sweat-stained hats, Matthew Plum and his overseers gathered at Edwinna’s table for midday meal. They smelled of the sweat of their day’s labor. It was a party of diners most women wouldn’t have put up with for an instant, but Edwinna seemed content in their company.

  They were indentured bondsmen, but decent men, not convicts. There was Valentine O’Brien, a big, brawny young Irishman who was in charge of the mill; his brother, Sean, in charge of the provisions fields, the plantain groves, fruit groves, and the livestock; James McCarran., a Scot in charge of the cane fields; and Alvis Nansellock, from the boiling house.

  The talk was sugar and nothing else. Edwinna gave orders as readily as Plum. Sitting opposite her at his end of the table, Drake found it irritating that a woman should give orders to men. Still, he had to admit she listened to each man’s say, and while doing so, looked him straight in the eye. Her manner wasn’t charming, but it was forthright.

  “How many sick as of today, Mr. Alleyne?”

  Drake hid a smile as David Alleyne was jolted out of his woolgathering. He’d been lost in a young man’s daydream, his gaze on Kena as she served. David had to fumble through his pockets to find his list. He blushed furiously as he read it. Listening, Drake heard the names of strange sicknesses: dengue fever, mosquito fever, yaws, sleeping sickness. The young doctor’s genuine concern for all his patients, white and black, impressed Drake.

  Edwinna’s briskness softened during this discussion.

  “And the baby born last night?”

  “Not well, ma’am. I doubt it will live.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Drake spoke up quietly. “Do your best for the infant, Mr. Alleyne. I know what it’s like to lose a child. The sorrow won’t be any less in a slave hut.”

  David Alleyne gave him a polite, “Yes, Mr. Steel; of course, Mr. Steel.”

  Edwinna looked at him in surprise. She smiled, but it was so fleeting and done in so flustered a manner that she’d looked elsewhere before he could even return it.

  Talk at the table returned to dengue fever, and Plum tasked Valentine O’Brien with the job of inspecting the slave huts for signs of standing water. Stagnant water bred mosquitoes. Mosquitoes bred fever. Conversation had just turned to a shipment of firewood for the boiling house, which had failed to arrive and was badly needed for the harvest, when a commotion broke out in the front hall. Footsteps stomped toward them and burst into the dining chamber. The men swung about in their chairs. There in the doorway stood a fancily dressed man, clenching a silver-tipped riding crop. He was angry and plainly drunk, unsteady on his feet.

  Edwinna half rose from her chair. “Uncle, you have no business coming here!”

  Plum rose, putting his napkin down. “Now, Mr. Crawford—

  A sixth sense warned Drake, too, for he was halfway out of his chair when the man charged across the room.

  “You scheming wench. Trick me with a pirate marriage, will you!” Lifting his riding crop, he smote Edwinna so hard across the breast that she staggered backwards, clutching herself.

  Drake’s chair crashed. He sprang around the table, grabbed the man’s wrist as the crop went up to strike again. He looked up to see Edwinna with a table knife in her hand, ready to defend herself. Drake slammed the man into the wall and held him there by the throat. Reeking of rum, the drunkard cursed and writhed and swore and kicked. Plum sprang to help. Drake threw the man forward and clamped an arm around his neck.

  “Who in hell is this, Edwinna?”

  “My uncle, George Crawford.” She put her hand lo her breast. “He’s drunk. Get him off my plantation,”

  “With pleasure. Mr. Plum.” Plum snapped an order at the stunned table. First to react, the two O’Brien brothers, Valentine and Sean, sprang up. Big, brawny men, they easily subdued Crawford, each grabbing an arm with a bearlike grip. Drake stepped back, his shins aching. Crawford went on kicking and cursing, railing at Plum.

  “Plum, I’ll see you dismissed for this, without r stipend for your old age. I’ll see you run out of Barbados. The governor listens to me!”

  “Now, now, Mr. Crawford,” Plum said. “You’re drunk. Go along home. You have no authority here.”

  “This is rightfully my plantation!”

  “This is Thomas and Harry’s plantation, Mr. Crawford, and until they return, I’ll take my orders from Edwinna and from Mr. Steel.”

  George Crawford scalded Drake with a look. “You, You’re the pirate. I’ll see you hang, I promise you. The governor listens to me!”

  “Take him off the plantation, Mr. Plum. If he sets foot on it again, put him in chains.”

  “Ay, Mr. Steel.”

  The drunkard roared i
n fury. “I’ll see you hang, pirate.”

  Plum jerked his thumb, and Valentine and Sean dragged Crawford off, Plum following. He went kicking and cursing, his violent noise echoing through the house in counterpoint to Plum’s calm, “Come, come, Mr. Crawford. You’re drunk. You’ll see things more sensibly in the morning.”

  Drake glanced at the stunned men still sitting at the table. “Dinner is over,” he said quietly. The men rose instantly and stole away. Only David Alleyne waited.

  Edwinna had vanished. Drake wiped the sweat from his brow, left the room, and went upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. He didn’t find her in her bedchamber or in any of the other rooms. He went downstairs, strode past the kitchen, where servants stood in scared, whispering clusters, and went to the plantation office. The door was closed. He knocked softly.

  “Go away.”

  “Edwinna, it’s Drake.”

  “Go away!”

  He waited a moment, then lifted the latch, went in, and shut the door quietly behind him. If he’d found her crying, as would be natural in the circumstances, he couldn’t have felt more compassion than he felt now. What he saw touched him to the quick. She sat at her worktable, ledger open, quill pen in hand, bravely working as if nothing had happened.

  “I want Doctor Alleyne to have a look at you.”

  “No.”

  “Kena, then.”

  “No.”

  She wouldn’t look up at him. She went on working, copying figures and entries into the ledger from the notes that lay beside it. As she worked, her right arm moved gingerly. He winced for her. He couldn’t imagine hitting a woman in the breast.

  “That was a vile thing your uncle did to you.”

  “What do you expect?” she said viciously. “He is a man. All men are alike.”

  Uninvited, he took a chair, turned it around, straddled it, and studied her. He said gently, “No, they are not. Most men do not strike women.”

  “Men do as they wish. Since the beginning of time, they always have and they always will. Please go away.” He watched her. She worked swiftly, now and then brushing a wrist at the corner of one eye. “Please!” It touched him.

  “What do you want me to do about him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He was drunk, but that is no excuse. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with assaulting you. I could go to Bridgetown, report it to the governor, have him arrested.”

  “Do nothing,” she said viciously, then, more softly, “Do nothing, Mr. Steel. You already are in enough trouble. I won’t have more trouble brought down upon your head.”

  He breathed softly. She did not want him to interfere. He watched her work on her ledgers. Guilt pricked him. If it had been Anne or one of his children the drunken son of a bitch had touched in violence, he would have strangled him with his two bare hands. But all he’d offered to do for Edwinna was to report him to the governor. Guilt pricked him that he felt so little for her, when she’d saved his life. He owed her more.

  “Nevertheless...”

  “Mr. Steel,” she burst out angrily. “This; is a private work closet. Please get out.”

  He’d let her remarks about men pass; they’d been natural,

  under the circumstances. But this stung. He was a private man himself. And to be accused of violating privacy?

  “Very well.” He got up, went out the door, and slammed it. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be in this marriage, husband or flunky. David Alleyne hovered there, a dish of medicinal-smelling salve in his hand. He was flushed and breathless, as if he’d run all the way to his apothecary and back. Kena hovered, too, her doe eyes scared and worried.

  “Does she need me?” Alleyne asked.

  Drake strode straight on down the hall. “She doesn’t need me, she doesn’t need you, she doesn’t need Kena, she doesn’t need anyone.”

  Alone in her plantation office, Edwinna sat with her head in her hands, tears trickling down her cheeks.

  Clive Crawford came in the afternoon to apologize for his father’s actions. Edwinna had half expected it. Clive had always been a smooth one.

  When he ambled into the dimly lit windowless curing house where she was taking a count of sugar pots, she instinctively grabbed one of the pots. It was a foolish gesture. They were no longer children. He could no longer bully her. But whenever Clive came around, she felt safer with a weapon in her hands.

  Clive looked at the sugar pot and smiled.

  “That doesn’t show much cousinly love, Edwinna.”

  “What do you want, Clive?”

  “Now, now. I came to bring my father’s apology, Edwinna. He told me to tell you he is truly sorry he hit you. He’d had a wee bit to drink—”

  “He was drunk.”

  “A wee bit to drink, and he’d begun to worry about Thomas and Harry’s inheritance and got worked up, that’s all.”

  Worry about Thomas and Harry? She didn’t believe it for an instant. Strong, quick footsteps sounded on the outer stairs. Drake Steel burst in and swept them with a glance.

  “Plum said Crawford rode in. I thought your uncle...”

  “This is my uncle’s son—my cousin, Clive Crawford. He’s come to bring his father’s apology. Clive, this is my— husband, Mr. Drake Steel.”

  The two men looked at each other. Edwinna felt a surge of satisfaction. Drake was twice the man Clive was—bigger, stronger.

  “He owes her more than an apology,” Drake said, his full-timbered voice echoing in the empty curing house. “If he’d struck her temple with that hard-tipped cane, he might have killed her.” Drake saw the sugar pot in her arms. His eyes flickered. She set it aside.

  “So this is your husband,” Clive drawled. “I must say it was a remarkably convenient marriage for both of you— almost unbelievable in its convenience. Edwinna retains Crawford Plantation, Mr. Steel saves himself from execution as a pirate. The governor should look into it.”

  She clenched her fists. “We planned it for a year, Clive!”

  Drake strolled to her side and slipped an arm around her waist, as a husband might, and said calmly, “We signed the betrothal papers seven months ago. The piracy charge was ridiculous. I was traveling to the Caribbean to wed Edwinna when I was captured by pirates.”

  “That’s right, Clive.”

  Clive smiled in disbelief, nudged the sugar pot with his toe, and ambled to the door. “Anyhow, my father sends his apologies.”

  When he was gone, Drake let go of her waist.

  “Can he make trouble for us?”

  “No. He’s nothing but wind.”

  “Let’s hope to hell you’re right. I don’t relish being shackled to a boulder in the sea again.” He glanced at the sugar pots and her open ledger. “Do you want help here?”

  His arm around her waist had stirred the old fears.

  “No. I like to work alone.”

  His lips tightened. With a nod, he left.

  * * * *

  Drake wanted to write Edwinna off his books, the way he would write off a bad barrel of wine at his wine shop and take the loss. She plainly had no need of him. Their needs had been served. She had saved her damned plantation, and he had saved his life. Beyond that? Nothing. It had been ridiculous to even warm to her. Well aware [hat he owed her a year, he made himself a small calendar, a grid of twelve months at a glance. He nailed it to the wall of his room and crossed off each day as it finished, glad to be done with it.

  As the plantation geared up for harvest, he spent most of his time with Plum. Against his will, he found his fascination with sugar increasing. He longed to see the books. A merchant and an astute man of business, he had some ideas for cutting costs and boosting profits—not at the farming end in Barbados, but at the London market end, which he knew so well. But he’d be damned if he’d offer unsolicited advice to Edwinna, and he’d be damned if he’d step uninvited into that “private” work closet again.

  Over the next couple of weeks, visiting planters came to have a look
at “Edwinna’s pirate,” some of them friendly, some hostile. The hostile got under his skin by lecturing him on the slave laws of Barbados. All of them, friendly or hostile, proved to be monumental drinkers. It seemed the way of the island. Drake was astonished. They drank kill-devil rum morning, noon, or night and rode home soused, slipping about in the saddle, the despair of their body slaves, who ran alongside, trying to hold them upright. As irritated as he was with Edwinna, he sympathized with her, having to entertain drunkards.

  Then Lady Dinny Fraser came to call, and Drake’s life grew sunnier. He fell under her spell at once. She exploded onto the plantation like a keg of gunpowder, a woman past forty with garish, red-dyed hair and a smile as bright as a sunflower. He and Edwinna had just finished midday meal with the overseers when Dinny came striding into the dining chamber wearing a loud red gown, her plump hips and bosom jiggling, but with eyes so merry that the whole effect was charming. She came forward with hands outstretched for him to take.

  “So you are Edwinna’s pirate! Lord, but you are a handsome thing. Your name is Mr. Drake Steel, is it? Well, Mr. Drake Steel, I ain’t seen shoulders like yours since Irish Nick was pirating these waters. If you’re as good in bed as you look out of it, Edwinna likely lives in glory.”

  Drake couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Dinny,” Edwinna said hotly, rattled, flushing. Drake could only gaze in astonishment.

  Grabbing Edwinna and hugging the life out of her, she crooned, “Dearling! I’m so happy for you. I always said there was naught ailing you but that you needed a man.”

  Scarlet now, Edwinna struggled out of Dinny’s hug and tried to salvage her dignity. “Mr. Steel, this is my very best friend, Lady Dinny Eraser. Dinny’s plantation is adjacent to mine.”

  “Lady Eraser?” Drake took her plump hand and kissed it. It smelled, charmingly, of the horse she’d ridden.

  “Poo! Call me Dinny. Everybody do,” she said generously, her smile bright and wide. “I wasn’t born no lady. I come to this island a bond slave and married up.” She whirled. “Jumbo!” she said to the Negro who had followed her in—a gigantic, well-built young man attired in the flashiest livery Drake had ever seen, bright red trimmed with purple and green. “Jumbo, you behave in the kitchen. Don’t you be trying to kiss Edwinna’s kitchen maids. She won’t have it. Nor will I.” Unfazed by his mistress’s threat, he grinned at her fondly and went to the kitchen.