Du Monde himself was a peacock this night. He was attired in violet silk, cut in the elegant French style (he had been hard put to find this suit and get it altered at short notice, but a scattering of coins had accomplished it). The Mechlin at his throat was a white froth set, unfortunately, with a dull pink stone of little value that he had borrowed from John Daimler. Still, his lilac silk stockings flashed from his well-turned calves in the candlelight, his strong thighs were encased in violet silk trousers and a burst of gold braid on his wide-cuffed coat completed his glittering appearance.
"I am sorry, but my husband has not yet returned from the Cobre," she explained. "I have had a message from him that he will not reach us in time for dinner"-Best not to let this handsome and rather dangerous-looking stranger know that the master of the house would be gone for another week!-"but perhaps you will join me in a glass of wine before dinner?"
Raymond du Monde tried to look suitably disappointed at the absence of her husband-and failed. He accepted the wine she poured but he could hardly keep his eyes from the necklaee-or the frosty tops of her round breasts so cunningly displayed in her simply cut green gown. Madre de Dios, what a woman she was! She had a breathtaking, almost virginal loveliness despite the amused challenge of her gaze.
But the necklace-oh, surely it must be a copy. In this weak light, who could tell? He could not help questioning her.
"I believe that is a famous necklace you are wearing?" he murmured as he sipped wine that gleamed less red than her rubies.
"Yes, it is the de Lorca necklace," she told him with composure. "The diamonds are from Tibet, the rubies of course are from India. You will note their slightly uneven Oriental cut."
He had noticed. He sipped his wine. "But is not the de Lorca necklace a famous Spanish treasure, owned by some great house in Spain?"
Her smile flashed. "The Duke of Lorca once owned it. It was a gift to me of the buccaneers, for a small service I was able to do them."
His golden eyes widened. It gave him a new view of the buccaneers, that they could afford to make a gift like this one! "It must have been a very great service indeed," he murmured.
Her slim white shoulders moved expressively and the necklace glittered. "Well, it was thought at the time that I might have won them all a king's pardon-but as it turned out, I did not." Her lips twisted bitterly.
"Ah, I see." He did not quite see, and he wished he dared to press further and get her version of the famous story of how the de Lorca necklace had changed hands in the Azores, but he dared not. This, after all, was a buccaneer port and he a Spaniard.
"Then you are saying that under English law you are still-?" He sought for the polite way to say it.
"'Outside the law' is the phrase you are seeking, I believe," she said with composure.
"And yes, it is quite true. We cannot return to England, and we stay here on suffrance. Jamaica is still protected by the buccaneers and my husband is-unofficially, of course-Lord Admiral of the Buccaneers."
Raymond du Monde had good reason to know it! "I have met the Duchess of Lorca once," he said tentatively.
"Really?" The delicate hand that was twirling the stem of a crystal goblet came to a full stop. "Where is she now?"
"No one knows. It seems she has gone into seclusion." Did he note a gleam in the silver eyes opposite him? If so, the lady was making no comment.
"Shall we go in to dinner?" She had noticed that his glass was empty. He rose from one of the comfortable cane-seated chairs and proffered her his arm.
Thus in gallant fashion they swept into the large dining room where Carolina frequently gave dinner parties for as many as twenty guests. Upon the long table was a bewildering array of silver, and a dozen candles in wall sconces lit up the room.
There was a huge centerpiece of fruit and exotic tropical flowers, and the windows were open to the velvet darkness and the night air that streamed in from the sea.
"Faith, I'm surprised you have your windows open with so much plate about!" he could not help remarking, for he personally considered this city a den of thieves.
She gave him a mocking look. "Few would care to steal from Captain Kells," she assured him. "He is known to bring speedy justice to wrongdoers."
A new view of buccaneering, surely!
"But we have a treat for you," she added. "We will be served tonight by the young girl you saved from harm on the street today." She nodded as the door to the pantry opened and Gilly came in.
This was an entirely new and more subdued Gilly. She wore a plain gown of indigo-blue and with it a white apron and a flowing white linen collar. Her riotous ginger hair had been combed severely back by Betts and was topped by a white ruffled mobcap.
She had been transformed, it seemed, from street urchin into neat little serving girl-but her eyes betrayed her. They nearly started from her head at the sight of Carolina's necklace and she tripped and almost lost the silver tray of soup bowls she was carrying.
"This is Gilly, whom you saved," said Carolina. "I thought you might not recognize her."
The Spaniard's gaze passed over Gilly without interest. Turning to smirk at him, Gilly caught that indifference and flushed. In other circumstances she would have stuck out her tongue at him but under Carolina's watchful eye she knew she must behave.
Her gaze went back to the necklace and she set the silver soup bowls down with a clatter.
"It is green turtle soup," explained Carolina, lifting her spoon. She smiled at him. "If you are but recently from France, you may not be familiar with it. It is a specialty of my cook's."
Raymond du Monde sampled his soup and pronounced it delicious.
"As you can see, I have taken Gilly into my house-hold as a maidservant," said Carolina when the girl had left the room. "She has been badly treated by Iife- she will get better treatment here."
A soft heart then. . . . Somehow the Spaniard had not expected this in a buccaneer's lady. "I have indeed had green turtle soup before," he said. "But none so delicious."
Carolina smiled. "Cook will be pleased."
She was studying her dinner guest as she spoke. "I have never been to France," she said. "Is it very beautiful?"
He shrugged. "I am from Marseilles, a crowded dirty port city." It was his Spanish distaste for the French that was speaking.
Her wing like brows lifted. Plainspoken for a French-man! Those of her acquaintance had usually beat about the bush when speaking to a lady.
Yet despite his French name, despite his claim to be from Marseilles, and for all the French foppishness of his dress, there was something about this Monsieur du Monde
. . . something Spanish. And she who had lived on Tortuga and seen and talked to so many Spanish prisoners there awaiting ransom or working out their ransom, had sensed that about him. After all, Spain had many dashing cavaliers-and some would consider it great sport to pay an impudent incognito call on Tortuga and dine in the home of the Lord Admiral of the Buccaneers!
Idly, she tried him on it, wondering if she could catch him out. As he bit into his lobster, she asked in Spanish, "Are you staying here long?"
Perhaps it was his concentration on the lobster, perhaps the dazzling effect this beautiful woman was having on him, but Raymond du Monde, before he could think, answered in Spanish, "Until tomorrow only."
He looked up as the words left his mouth and saw her smiling at him. Like the adventurer he was, he came instantly alert-and mounted his attack. "You speak amazingly good Spanish," he complimented her.
"So," she said dryly, "do you, monsieur-or should I say senor?"
The words hung on the empty air, pervading the sudden silence as Gilly, who had just come into the room, carrying a big platter of beaten biscuits, paused, round-eyed, and stared at Monsieur du Monde, whom the lady of the house had just indirectly accused of being Spanish.
But the dinner guest proved equal to the occasion. He flashed a smile at his hostess.
"One picks up a smattering of all languages at New Providence," he admitted engagingly. "Your own proficiency, I would imagine, came from Tortuga?"
Behind him Gilly gasped. New Providence had no buccaneer port like Port Royal, with a royal governor and a bustling trading center-only a pirate port with lean-to shacks set up on the sand. Desperate tales were told of New Providence. And Gilly knew they were all too true-she had come here from New Providence.
Carolina was still smiling but her eyes narrowed. His answer had satisfied her, for it suited the man who spoke. He could be a pirate-and perhaps a renegade Spaniard to boot. Oddly she found herself regretting that he was not a buccaneer, for buccaneers were privateers really, patriotic men who would never attack ships of their own flag or those of their country's friends. Buccaneers fought only Spain.
"So you are from New Providence?" she murmured. "Recently, I mean?" He shrugged an affirmation. "One must be from somewhere, I suppose." "I have often wondered about the place. What is it like there?"
She was challenging him, he thought. There was a good mind behind that winsome smile, those flashing silver eyes. "It is a hellhole," he said bluntly. "There are words that would describe the place in French-but they are not for a lady's ears."
"That bad?" she mocked him.
"Worse," he said with feeling, for he had heard evil stories about New Providence-stories that would truly offend a lady's ears.
"Still I am told there are some colorful people there." She sensed his withdrawal but refused to let go of the subject. "Rouge, for example?"
He guessed she was testing him, and under his lace collar he began to sweat. Who could guess what this elegant lady might know of New Providence or its denizens?
But Rouge, at least he had heard of. She was famous far and wide. "What do you wish to know of her?" he asked cautiously.
Gilly had set down the platter of biscuits and now she paused in the door and watched him brightly. "Oh, I don't know," Carolina said vaguely. "What she is like, I suppose. Accounts of her differ so." If that was true, he had a chance! "An Amazon,"
he declared flatly.
"I am told she wields a cutlass like a man."
"Not so well," he said indifferently. "She has scars where"-he grinned-"they don't show. Shall I tell you about them?" His face lit up with a wicked smile. He would fling back the elegant lady's challenge!
"Never mind," said Carolina hastily. "I just wondered-is she very beautiful? I have heard rumors."
"She does not hold a candle to your loveliness," he declared gallantly. "In fact, I found Rouge quite plain!"
With a satisfied expression, Gilly closed the door and retired into the pantry.
"Come now, I did not ask for a comparison!" laughed Carolina, tossing her head beneath that hot gaze. "But I have been told that Rouge is a queen among the pirates, that her hair is like flame, that she has many lovers, that she wears men's clothes--and I wondered what she really looked like."
"Ah, she wears men's clothes," he agreed airily, feeling that was a safe admission.
"But she has no air, no style as you do, my lady."
Carolina, hard-pressed on this subject of her beauty, changed the subject, and Gilly, who had had her ear pressed to a crack of the pantry door, strolled back to the kitchen looking smug and insulted Cook, who warned her, cleaver raised, that if she didn't hold her tongue she'd chop it off.
Unaware of the altercation in the kitchen, Carolina called softly to the cat who, fed in the kitchen by Cook, who adored her, now strolled lazily into the dining room through the pantry door that Gilly had left carefully ajar.
"This is Moonbeam," she told her guest, reaching down affectionately to pet Moonbeam's pale shining fur. The cat mewed softly in answer and began to purr.
Ramon del Mundo looked politely down at the cat. He saw a striking white Persian cat with broad paws and an enormous plume like tail, who rubbed against Carolina's skirts and looked up at her adoringly with big green eyes.
"A handsome animal," he observed. "And well named."
Carolina smiled. "It was Kells who named her." She remembered the day Kells had brought the cat home to her, a half-grown kitten and most distrustful. A failed ship's cat was Moonbeam. She had detested the sea so much-meowing and clinging to anything that she could with desperate claws-that the crew had at first named her
"Landlubber," then got rid of her in disgust.
Carolina, who shared with the kitten a preference for keeping her feet dry, sympathized with Moonbeam's dislike ofslippery decks strewn with salt spray. "It must have been terrible for her, having to lick the sea salt from her long fur all the time," she had said, cuddling the kitten. "What shall we name her?" Kells's voice had softened and he had run a gentle hand across Carolina's hair. "I thought we'd name her Moonbeam for she has a pale shimmer--like your hair." Now, dining with this new-met stranger, Carolina's face grew dreamy as she remembered-and the glow that lit her eyes as she thought of how Kells had said that made her something to behold.
Across from her, the Spaniard-pretending-to-be-a-Frenchman caught his breath at the sight and from the depths of him he envied her lawless buccaneer lover.
In the long dining room Carolina was studying Raymond du Monde's dark face, his mobile mouth, his expressive features. And especially his eyes, wicked and flaring golden in the candlelight. Eyes that commanded, mocked, eyes that could hold one pinned by their gleam. . . .
Outside, in the distance, the wild Port Royal night was just beginning. From somewhere came the homing cry of a bird and a snatch of raucous drunken song and laughter. In the eerie jungle of mangrove swamp that lay between sandspit Port Royal and mainland Jamaica, the stalking night had begun, and little creatures scurried through the dark to safety. In the jungles up the Cobre the parrots squawked sleepily and the planters sat on their porches and slapped at mosquitoes-and gave up and went inside.
But here in the elegance of her long dining room Carolina studied her dinner guest, and wondered about him, for she was inwardly sure he was not what he seemed.