heading down river towards the sea—a woman, with pale blonde hair flowing down the length of her back and dressed in breeches, her feet planted firmly apart, standing in the prow of the ship.
When the tide had receded it was also revealed that Nathaniel Wylde’s body had been cut free of the hangman’s noose at Execution Dock.
Chapter Two
A fter encountering severe storms off the mainland of South America, which severely damaged the Dolphin’s hull and forced her to put in at the first landfall, which happened to be the island of Trinidad, it was with sadness and reluctance that Cassandra, eager to reach Barbados and her cousin Sir John Everson, parted company with the Dolphin.
The burial they had given her father at sea had been a particularly poignant moment for her. She had watched through a mist of tears as the corpse of the man who had been tied to her by blood had slipped beneath the grey waters. ‘Goodbye, Father,’ she had whispered, and in the soulful wind blowing over the sea came the tempting strains of an answering farewell, strains that filled her heart, a sound heard by her alone.
And now Cassandra was glad to be moving on, to put the tragic memories of those terrible last days in London behind her. She acquired a passage on a large English merchant vessel, the Spirit of Enterprise, bound for Barbados and Antigua. During the same storms that had battered the Dolphin, the merchantman, which had been travelling in an organised convoy, since lone vessels were in danger of being attacked and plundered by pirates, had been blown severely off course, and the ship’s commander, Captain Tillotson, had put in at Trinidad to take on fresh water.
Uneasy at Cassandra being the only woman on board the Dolphin, Drum had insisted that his daughter, eighteen-year-old Rosa, accompany her. She was a quiet, comely girl, with dark features like her Portuguese mother. Drum had taken her on board when they had made a lengthy stop at Praia, his home in the Cape Verde Islands.
In desperate need of provisions, and to carry out urgent repairs to the badly leaking Dolphin, Drum was to go on to one of the neighbouring islands—an island that was a favourite haunt for pirates. Contrary to his misgivings when he had taken Cassandra on board, the sailors had taken to her like seals to the ocean, and the entire crew would mourn her departure.
Drum bore a deep and abiding love for his daughter; when the moment came to say farewell, he stood still for a moment while Rosa rested her head against him, then he patted her and said gruffly, ‘Be a good girl, Rosa, and do as Cassandra tells you.’ Promising dutifully that she would, lifting her arms she put them round her father’s neck and kissed his scarred cheek. He held her tightly for a moment and then stepped back and turned to Cassandra.
‘Try not to worry about Rosa, Drum,’ Cassandra said, aware of his concern and touched at how much feeling this hard-bitten pirate possessed for his daughter. ‘Captain Tillotson is to give us his protection until we reach my cousin. I promise to take good care of her, and ensure her safe passage back to Cape Verde. Where will you go, when the Dolphin is repaired?’
‘Who knows?’ he said with a roguish, Irish grin. ‘The ship will sail, winged by her oars, and go wherever the wind will take us.’
If Captain Tillotson thought it strange for an English woman to be travelling with just one female companion so far from home, he was too much of a gentleman to show it. However, the occupants of the Dolphin stirred his curiosity and he suspected they were sea rovers, but the captain, though fearsome to look at with his scarred face, seemed a reasonable enough individual and was clearly concerned that the young lady and her companion be delivered safely to her cousin on Barbados.
It was with the dawn on a morning in April, almost five months after leaving England, that Cassandra glimpsed the coral island of Barbados, its encircling reefs giving her a degree of security and immunity. It was a large island, hanging like a teardrop one hundred miles east of the Caribbean chain. Well situated in terms of the north-easterly trade winds and ocean currents that enabled the island to receive shipping from Europe, it rose on the horizon wreathed in a golden mist, like a mirage, bewitching, peaceful and powerfully hypnotic, and, the closer they sailed, the air blowing from inland was heavy with a thousand scents.
The ship anchored in the commodious bay at Bridgetown. The glittering waters were dotted with all manner of craft, from fishing ketches and lighters to huge merchantmen that docked at Barbados frequently. Barbados was successful in its manufacture of sugar, and Bridgetown, bustling to an ageless quick tempo, was the island’s trading centre.
The noise and colour assailed Cassandra’s senses, and the hot Caribbean sun gilded the town and warehouses that lined the waterfront in a silver glow. Everywhere disorder reigned. A never-ceasing army of bare-chested black slaves worked laboriously, driving wagons and manning the oars of the lighters—sturdy vessels utilised to transport cargo to and from the ships anchored in the bay. They were built to carry twenty to thirty tons—and in many cases passengers and cargo would be lucky to escape a drenching.
The figures on the beach were a blur in the trembling heat haze as Cassandra was rowed in a precariously laden lighter from the ship. With no room in the boat for another person or piece of baggage, Rosa had been left with no alternative but to take the boat behind. When they were halfway to the shore, the boat carrying Cassandra began to list precariously to one side as it was tossed about on the choppy water, causing the baggage to shift. Everyone in the boat realised it was about to capsize.
Overseeing the unloading of his ship, the Sea Hawk, Stuart Marston stood on the shore, momentarily distracted from watching his cargo of much-wanted metals and broadcloth being taken to the warehouses, when his attention was caught by a female occupant in one of the boats advancing towards the shore. A wide-brimmed hat with a sweeping white plume sat on top of her silvery blonde hair, and she was lavishly attired in garments that would have graced the Court of King Charles in England, yet which looked incongruously out of place on this tropical island.
Her beauty was apparent and he could not tear his eyes away from her. She seemed to exist in a shimmering pool of silver light radiating all about her. His dark gaze swept over her features appreciatively, for like all hot-blooded men he was easily moved by the beauty of a woman. Observing that the boat she was in was about to cast her into the sea, immediately he strode into the surf and began wading through the shallow water towards it.
Taken completely by surprise as two tanned hands reached out and hauled her from the boat just as it keeled over, spilling occupants and baggage into the water and causing a general turmoil, Cassandra gasped and began struggling against the person who had taken such liberty, but it was like trying to prise herself out of a steel trap.
‘Be still,’ commanded the masculine voice of her captor, his hard arms tightening about her waist and beneath her knees, ‘or you’ll have us both in the water.’
Startled by the harsh, deep resonance of his tone, Cassandra did as he ordered, torn between amusement and a certain amount of consternation, but, on seeing her captor’s handsome features and encountering an amused dark stare, she relaxed and, reaching up, placed her arms about his neck.
Smiling up at him, she let her eyes dwell on the tiny beads of perspiration, which glistened like delicate pearl drops on his brown flesh. Nothing had prepared her for the thrill of excitement that travelled deliciously throughout her body at finding herself pressed against the broad chest of such a powerfully attractive man.
‘I realise that you must have feared for my safety when you saw the boat list, and I am grateful to you for coming so swiftly to my rescue, sir,’ she murmured, feeling the hardness of his body and the tightening of his sinewy arms supporting her, and conscious of the faint scent of sandalwood, which he favoured. ‘It was extremely gallant of you. However, I can swim and the sea in this part is not nearly deep enough for a person to drown.’
‘Then I am glad I was ignorant of that fact since it would have denied me the pleasure of carrying you to the beach. Unless, of course, you would like me to put you down into the water—which I do not recommend,’ he said, the quirk in his lips deepening into an amused, one-sided grin, and his eyes sparkling with devilment, ‘for it is not unknown for sharks to swim in the shallows