The Diamond King Read online

  The pirate captain was talking to a member of his crew. Suddenly, he turned back to the small huddle of passengers, his gaze colliding with hers as if her thoughts had summoned his attention. Just as abruptly, he turned away, seeming to dismiss her as unimportant.

  “We do not have space for females,” he said. “The three ladies will share my mate’s room. The other passengers can sleep in the same quarters as the crew. The Charlotte’s crewmen will be quartered in the brig.”

  “I object to those arrangements. I want my wife with me,” the plantation owner complained.

  “You object?” the captain said softly, even gently.

  Despite the tone of his voice, Jenna wished the man had not challenged their captor. Even she knew it wasn’t wise.

  “Yes,” said Geoffrey Carrefour, obviously emboldened by living through the first encounter and oblivious to a sudden tension among the nearby crew members.

  The captain turned to a sailor beside him, a man that looked as much the brigand as his captain. “Burke, you can show Mr. Carrefour to the brig with the crewmen.”

  The planter’s face paled. “Surely you would not—”

  “Surely I would,” the captain said. “Anyone else wish to complain about their accommodations?”

  Any objections—or requests—Jenna might have had died at that moment. She certainly didn’t look forward to sharing a cabin with Blanche Carrefour, who had avoided her since the beginning of the voyage, making it clear that she thought Scots, even Scots loyal to the English king, were beneath her. Now her life depended on the whims of a Scottish renegade.

  “Our possessions?” the plantation owner continued, plowing, it seemed to Jenna, a path to his own destruction.

  The pirate looked at him curiously, as if he were a particularly obnoxious insect. Jenna expected an outburst. Instead, he spoke rather mildly. “They will be delivered to you in due course.”

  “But—”

  The rough-looking sailor named Burke put his hand on the planter. “Come with me.”

  The planter resisted until the seaman fingered his knife. Then his face fell and he nodded, casting a forlorn look at his wife.

  Their belongings had piled up on the deck. Jenna looked longingly at hers, but she was not going to challenge the captain now, not after what had happened to Mr. Carrefour.

  No one said anything. Not even Captain Talbot, who looked as if he had lost a beloved friend as his gaze continually went back to his ship. The torn sails were being taken down and other sails hoisted on the existing masts.

  Unfortunately, the pirate turned his attention back to her. His gaze pinned her like an insect to a board. “And you, Lady Jeanette, do you have a complaint?”

  “I have many of them,” she said, “but not about the accommodations. More about piracy.”

  A strange glint came into his eyes. But the perpetual smile caused by the scar made her unable to read his expression. That made him truly frightening.

  Yet when he turned the scarred cheek away, he was uncommonly handsome. He also walked with a limp. She wondered whether it was a recent wound. But any sympathy she might have had had long seeped from her. He had probably been trying to kill whoever had injured him.

  Instead, she tried to look directly into his eyes without flinching. They were dark blue, as cold and enigmatic as the North Atlantic they had left behind.

  He turned to one of his men, an officer. “Take them to their quarters. Search the men for weapons. Check through their belongings to see whether there’s anything valuable. I’m going to check on Meg.”

  “Oui,” the officer said. Unlike the man called Burke, he looked every inch a disciplined seaman. He was a large man, neatly dressed, despite his hefty build.

  Still, she noted a silent exchange between the two, just as there had been between the captain and the sailors left on the Ami. It contrasted with the disciplined crew on the Charlotte. Although Captain Talbot was not a martinet, he had expected formality from his crew. Perhaps there was a different kind of bond between pirates.

  She absorbed everything. She wanted to remember everything. There would be a trial someday. In the meantime, she intended to keep herself and Celia alive—and untouched.

  There had been no physical threat yet, but that didn’t mean there would continue to be none. The fact that the women were being put together could bode well or ill. They would be alone without male protection.

  At the last minute before they were captured, she had taken a knife from a plate of cheese in her cabin on the Charlotte. She’d managed to wrap it in a scarf and tuck it into her corset. She was eager now to get it out, before it worked its way out of the cloth.

  So she allowed herself to be led along with the other two women. And she watched every turn as they traveled down the next deck and passed several doors. Memorizing the ship probably would not help, but then again it might.

  She wondered who Meg was. It must be a woman and, if so, that fact was encouraging. Surely one woman would not look away if …

  She decided not to think about the “ifs.”

  Their escort stopped at a door and opened it, indicating that they should enter. It was far smaller than the cabin she and Celia had had on the Charlotte. There was only one small bed. They would have to take turns sleeping or else sleep on the floor.

  She turned to the officer who had brought them here. He looked straight back at her without apology. She wondered if he disliked the English as much as his captain did. “Who is Meg?” she asked, the name lingering in her mind.

  “La jeune fille,” their escort said in French. “Hurt by a splinter caused by the shell your captain fired.”

  He looked around the room, at the neat chest and clothes hung on pegs on the door. “This is my cabin.” Obviously disgruntled at being dispossessed, he went through it, taking a pistol from a drawer, a knife from another, and then his clothes. He turned at the door. “You will stay here unless told otherwise. I’ll send more blankets.” Then he left, closing the door loudly behind him.

  Blanche Carrefour sat on the only bed.

  “Celia has been ill,” Jenna said to Blanche.

  “So have I. And she’s a maid.”

  “She has been far more ill than you,” Jenna said.

  Blanche glared at her.

  “I outrank you,” Jenna said. “Celia gets the bed until she is better.”

  “’Tis all right” Celia said. “I cannot take your bed, my lady.”

  “Indeed you can,” Jenna replied. “I dinna expect more than anyone else has.” She hesitated. “We must get along together. And protect one another.” She unbuttoned the dress she was wearing and reached inside, pulling out the wrapped knife.

  A tear slid down Blanche’s face. “What will they do to Geoffrey? What will they do to me?”

  Jenna sat next to Blanche and put an arm around her. “He will be fine. Just as we will be.”

  “But you took a knife. He said he would … punish us if they found a weapon.”

  “No one must know,” Jenna said past the rock that had just lodged in her throat. She wondered whether she had made a mistake. She remembered exactly what the pirate captain had said. Anyone found with a weapon would be locked away and their belongings forfeit. Her entire trousseau was in the trunk on deck, and even some minor jewels she’d not had time to sew into her hem.

  She thought again about what the seaman had said about Meg. A child. Why was a child sailing on a privateer? Exactly how old was she? And how badly had she been wounded? Had she been taken from another merchantman?

  She had always loved children. It was the main reason she had agreed to marry someone she’d never met. Just the possibility of having children of her own had been irresistible.

  The captain had said the child’s name with a softness that had not been apparent in any of his other words. Could it be his child?

  She doubted that.

  Blanche lapsed into sobbing.

  It was going to be a very long voyage.
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  Meg tried to hide her pain that must have been severe even with the laudanum. The wound was covered with some kind of solution Hamish had produced from a box of medicines and herbs. Alex had watched him the first several occasions when a seaman had incurred wounds. He hadn’t lost any of them. For someone without formal training, he was very good. He had gentle and steady hands, perhaps from sewing sails for so many years.

  Alex had been lucky in finding him, just as he had been lucky with Claude.

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said again.

  “I know.” Alex sat down in a chair next to the cot.

  “I really will not do it again.”

  There could not be a next time. He would search the entire island of Martinique to find someone responsible to take Robin and Meg back to France.

  He reached out and put a hand on Meg’s shoulder. “I promised myself I would keep you safe. I dinna keep that promise.” He heard the burr in his voice deepen. It always did when he felt something deeply. And, God help him, he felt this. He wished he had taken the splinter.

  She was so young and had already suffered so much. Two brothers killed by the English. Then her father. Her mother dying of a wasting disease in a cave in the Highlands. No bed. No doctor other than Alex.

  Meg tried to smile at him, but it was more a grimace.

  “Here,” Hamish said, thrusting a cup at Alex. “Gi’ her this. It’s water with just a bit of laudanum. She should not have too much, but she needs sleep.”

  Alex hesitated, then gently lifted her head and held the cup to her lips. She drank it in huge gulps and he realized she was in more pain than he’d thought.

  “It wasna Robin’s fault,” Meg said with a note of urgency.

  “I know,” Alex said soothingly. No one could stop Meg when she was determined. Some fierce avenger he was when he couldn’t control two children.

  He waited until she drifted off, then went back up on deck to make sure all their prisoners were secured. He didn’t think they would present any problems, but it was the largest group of prisoners he’d taken. They now numbered as many as his own crew.

  He found Robin sitting on a coil of rope, staring out at sea. He looked up at Alex, tears in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “She’ll be all right. Hamish’s a fine doctor.” Alex hoped that he was right. Putrefaction was always a threat, particularly in a wound such as Meg had suffered. He could not even consider the possibility of young Meg not surviving. She had such a great will to live. “Go sit with her,” he said.

  Robin looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and rose, disappearing belowdecks.

  Alex tried to concentrate on the problems ahead. He looked around the deck. The prisoners were all secured. His crew was piling on sail. He saw a sail not far away and knew the Charlotte was under way. If only they could make it to Martinique without meeting a warship, there would be a chance of making a great deal of money. He planned to avoid the main shipping lanes, but then he would risk grounding the ship on reefs.

  Claude was at the wheel with the helmsman, studying maps they had taken from their last prize.

  “How is Mademoiselle Meg?”

  “Hurting.”

  Claude frowned. “She is going to be formidable when she becomes a woman.”

  “She already is,” Alex said dryly.

  “She needs a strong woman’s hand.”

  “Aye. But there is none.”

  “There are the ladies from the ship.”

  “I do not want her learning English manners. And she would have none of it.”

  “The Scottish lady?”

  “She is a Campbell.” Alex said it with finality.

  Claude shrugged. “You are captain.” But he looked as if he disagreed.

  A Campbell would be worse than no woman’s influence at all, Alex reassured himself. “Robin will be with her,” he said finally. “Send for me when Meg’s awake.”

  Claude nodded, his eyes seeing more, Alex suspected, than he wanted the mate to see. “It was not your fault,” Claude said after a moment’s silence.

  “It was,” Alex said. “It is. It is my fault she is on this ship. I allowed her to become too … dependent on me. I will not make that mistake again.”

  “More than dependent, Captain. She cares for you.” Claude shrugged. “Not even you can control feelings.”

  Alex could damn well try, though. He was trying hard at the moment. He hurt every time he thought of Meg, the way her face had looked so pale and she had bitten her lips to keep from crying out. Damn the Charlotte. Damn himself. He should never have risked it. He wanted to change the subject. “Did you find any instruments on the Charlotte?”

  “Oui. An excellent chronometer and a telescope that is finer than ours.”

  “They didn’t see us.”

  “That was not the telescope’s fault,” Claude explained logically. “I placed it in your cabin. I also sent down the belongings of our guests.” He grinned wickedly at that.

  “Their crew presented no problems?”

  “Non, except for their captain who protested every inch of the way.”

  “Try to keep in proximity with the Charlotte,” he said. “I’ll be down in my cabin.” He hesitated, then added, “And call me—”

  “I know. When Meg is awake,” Claude finished.

  Alex went through the hatchway, taking companionway steps two at a time, then quickly walked past Claude’s cabin, where the women passengers were being quartered. His first mate would claim the second mate’s quarters.

  He reached his cabin. It had a larger bed than the other cabins in the ship. He was infinitely grateful for that. The cabin also included a table and chairs, a desk, bookcases, and a chest. As elsewhere in the ship, the furniture was either bolted down or made to swing with the rhythm of the ship.

  He usually kept it scrupulously neat, not wanting objects scattering during bad weather, but now it was piled high with belongings. This was his job. He might seize goods for the ship, but he wanted no individual pilfering.

  He started with the belongings of the plantation couple. They had annoyed him even more than the timid government officials. His greatest irritation, though, was the foolishly brave Campbell.

  A Campbell in his hands, but the fact she was a woman kept him from doing anything about it. If the captive had been a male, Alex would have been tempted to kill him, or certainly hold him hostage.

  Instead he had a Campbell female who apparently had to sail thousands of miles for a husband, a lady who was going to be trouble. He felt it in his bones.

  He shoved away the odd notion, then dug into the first of Blanche Carrefour’s trunks. She obviously believed in traveling like royalty. A compartment in her trunk revealed a drawer full of jewelry.

  It was, he told himself, no different from robbing the coaches he’d once stopped in the Highlands. Life or death was at stake then. He’d had to provide for the children.

  What was his excuse now? A future for the children? Revenge against a country that had destroyed his? More wealth for France, which had done little for the Scots except urge them into doing their battle for them, then had deserted them when they needed assistance most?

  He wondered why he hesitated. The look in the Campbell woman’s eyes. The contempt. What did that mean to him? He didn’t like the Carrefours. He didn’t like their arrogance. He did not like slaveholders, and in the Caribbean, all the planters owned slaves.

  There was nothing else of interest in their trunks, nor in the rather sparse belongings of the English officials.

  He passed over the belongings of the captain of the Charlotte. There was a measure of respect involved there. The man had tried to protect those in his care.

  He turned to the Campbell woman’s trunk. Her name was written on it in tidy handwriting. Only one trunk compared to Mrs. Carrefour’s three. Not in the mood to ask for a key, he broke open the lock. Dresses that looked new lay neatly in the trunk along with new petticoats
and other finery. Then he found what he was seeking. A pouch of jewels. Campbell jewels.

  He fingered them. He knew jewels. He’d known them when he’d been the heir to the title of marquis and his mother wore centuries-old gems. He knew good ones and bad ones.

  These were not very good. He had expected better.

  Yet the clothes were fine. And new. A trousseau. Light colors. Sky blue and a light pale green. Strangely enough, he tried to think of her in the green dress. He recalled those startling eyes. He’d never seen any quite that color, nor as full of emotion. Anger. Fear. Defiance. All three at once.

  He looked further and found five pairs of gloves, all elbow length. Several matched the gowns. Others were white or black.

  He wondered why. He had thought it strange earlier that all the others were bare-handed, even the redoubtable Mrs. Carrefour, yet the Campbell woman had kept her gloves on, even after they had been soaked in seawater.

  Bloody hell, it was none of his concern. He balanced the jewels in his hands, then put them back.

  He wasn’t quite sure why.

  Daylight faded from the cabin. Jenna paced restlessly. She hated the feeling of being confined.

  She’d tried the door several times, but it had been locked.

  Celia, oddly enough, had drifted off to sleep. Blanche Carrefour had finally agreed to give up the bed during the day if she could have it that night. Jenna had readily agreed. She didn’t think she could sleep anyway.

  She’d seen the enmity in the captain’s eyes, and she had been the object of his contempt.

  No doubt he was one of the Scots who had followed the Young Pretender. Though she had deplored the bitter reprisals against the Scots, she couldn’t understand why they had backed the pretender against their king. Trying to take the crown had been an incredibly foolish act, made in the face of overwhelming odds.

  The captain had no right to do what he’d done. She knew the English were close to signing a treaty with the French. Her father had discussed it with their English visitors.

  She also recalled that the Campbell clan was not the most liked in Scotland, particularly by traitors to the throne.

  What would he do in addition to starving them all?