a heavy wave fell with careless unrestraint over his brow. His skin shone with a bronzed, smooth, healthy glow and he looked magnificently virile and masculine.
Feeling himself undergoing her close scrutiny Stuart looked down at her. Their eyes met, his bolder and more penetrating than any man’s who had looked at her before. They openly and unabashedly displayed his approval as his gaze ranged over her face. The slow grin that followed and the gleam in his dark eyes brought a stinging heat creeping over Cassandra’s skin and her heart turned over beneath the warmth, the power of it. Realising she was staring at him with a brazenness that was immodest, she lowered her eyes. Her sudden discomfiture broadened his smile, displaying two even rows of white teeth.
‘Do I unsettle you?’ he enquired quietly.
‘No. Not in the least.’ That was not quite true, for he did unsettle her. Having no experience of men like this, she was not at all sure how to handle the incident.
‘If so, I beg your pardon. You are an extremely beautiful young woman—indeed, it would be ungracious of me to say otherwise—and I fear I have been on board ship too long. My manners appear to have deserted me,’ Stuart confessed, looking down into her eyes raised to his, bright and vivid blue—periwinkle blue, the bluest eyes he had ever seen, the pupils as black as jet. From that moment he was intrigued.
Held in his arms, she was as light as swan’s-down and he could feel every slender curve of her body, hinting at hidden delights. The fresh delicate scent of jasmine rose from her skin that was burned golden brown, which intrigued him more, since all the young ladies of his acquaintance deemed it shocking to expose one’s flesh to the sun.
But Stuart suspected this was no ordinary young woman. He sensed in her an adventuresome spirit, which had no room for convention or etiquette. There was nothing demure about her, as was the case with the young ladies who flitted in and out of his mother’s circle back in England, whose eyes would be ingeniously cast down, even among those they knew, which was proper. This young lady showed none of the restraint instilled into young girls of good family. She stared directly into his eyes. Her own glowed with an inner light and hinted of the woman hidden beneath the soft innocence of her face.
Around the slender column of her throat she wore a diamond-studded velvet band that matched her oyster silk gown. Despite the searing heat of the day and the heavy clothes she wore, she looked cool and completely at ease, not in the least embarrassed or discomfited at being carried in the arms of a half-dressed sea captain in full view of sailors and townspeople, or concerned by the capsizing of the boat, which its occupants were trying frantically to correct.
‘So—you are English,’ he said at length, his curiosity matching his growing ardour.
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Considering we are on the other side of the Atlantic in the West Indies, then I have to say it does, Mistress…?’
‘Everson.’
‘I am most pleased to meet you, Mistress Everson.’
‘I am here to visit my cousin, Sir John Everson.’
‘Is he a planter on the island?’
‘No. He is a director and shareholder of a mercantile company based in London—the Wyndham Company. Perhaps you know of it.’
‘There are few in the trade who don’t. Its commercial success has attracted understandable envy and admiration from its rivals. The Company has expressed an interest in expanding eastwards—to the Spice Islands and India, I believe.’
‘Maybe so. I couldn’t say. John doesn’t often discuss Company business with me. For myself, I had a mind to pay him a visit—to see something of the West Indies and widen my horizons. Should I find Barbados as pleasant as it’s been portrayed, then I shall be in no hurry to leave,’ Cassandra told him lightly, as if she were speaking of nothing more interesting than visiting the county next to the one in which she lived in England, instead of an island on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
‘And you live in London?’
‘More or less. I live in the village of Chelsea.’
‘Then being from Chelsea, you’ll find this climate and its people very different.’
Bathed in a tropical heat, Cassandra gazed along the shimmering line of sand. It was a vibrant and colourful scene, an unfamiliar one, with people who were strangers, not only white but black, too. These black people were slaves, of a different culture, who spoke an unintelligible language, brought over from Africa to work the labour-intensive sugar plantations.
Slavery might have economic advantages but it involved cruelty. It was a system that restricted the human rights of individuals owned by the white planters. John had explained that without slaves the plantations could not exist, which was the sad reality of the island’s success. It was a system Cassandra found abhorrent, and she was glad the Wyndham Company’s operations did not extend to the triangular route.
The triangular route began in Europe with ships loaded with trade goods bound for Africa. These goods were bartered or sold for slaves. The second leg of the journey—known as the Middle Passage—was across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, where the slaves were offloaded and sold at auctions or privately. Laden with tropical produce, the ships then returned to Europe on the third leg of their journey.
Cassandra knew that in the weeks ahead she would see slavery in all its ugliness, but today, beneath a blue sky and the white-capped sea pulsating with the forces of wind and gravity all around her, the island seemed to hold a special allure. Already she could feel herself falling under its spell. She breathed in the air of the future in the making, the strange, unfamiliar scents borne on the breeze that blew from inland, which in her ignorance of a place she had only a rudimentary awareness of she could not put a name to, but which, altogether, became the essence of the Caribbean. It was exciting and made her feel vibrantly alive and set her blood racing.
‘Oh, I think I shall come to like it very well,’ she finally replied quietly. She eased against the stranger as he continued to wade through the shallows, intensely aware of the immediate effect of her movement as she heard him catch his breath and felt his arm tighten about her waist. How was it possible that the warmth of that corded arm burned through her dress and into her flesh? She looked at his face, just inches from her own, and the bold gleam in his eyes almost halted her breath. ‘And you, sir? What is your business on Barbados?’
‘My ship, the Sea Hawk, is chartered by a mercantile company back in London—the Wheatley and Roe Company—not as successful as the Wyndham Company, I grant you, but it does well enough. I am Captain Stuart Marston, and glad to be of service.’
They had reached the shore but he continued to hold her, seeming reluctant to put her down—and it shocked Cassandra to find she was thoroughly enjoying the experience and the sensation of having him hold her so close.
She smiled up at him through her long, thick lashes. ‘We have reached the shore, Captain Marston. I think it’s quite safe to put me down now. Do you know my cousin?’ she asked as he set her down on the sand, experiencing a feeling of regret when he relinquished his hold on her.
‘No, I can’t say that I do. I did not arrive myself until yesterday.’
‘But you are no stranger to the West Indies?’ she asked, smoothing her skirts and quite unconcerned that they had been doused in seawater, for they would be dry in no time in this heat.
‘I have made frequent trips over the years—both to the Indies and America.’
‘And accumulated exciting tales to tell, I don’t doubt,’ Cassandra teased. ‘What a pity I don’t have the time to stay and listen to them. I do so enjoy tales of adventure and valour and daring-do.’
A lazy grin swept across Stuart’s tanned face, and he smiled deep into her eyes. ‘Would you make of me a braggart, Mistress Everson?’
She inclined her head in response to his disarming smile. ‘I would not be so bold, Captain Marston. Tell