“You misunderstand. She’s my daughter,” Nathan said coldly.
Pierre looked surprised. There was a very tense, silent moment while he seemed to assess the situation, his eyes shifting back and forth between her and her father. He must have realized he couldn’t have her without a fight and decided against it; he laughed and complained about rotten luck in what for him was probably as good-natured a tone as he could muster. Pierre’s tone seemed to assure her father that he knew Gabrielle was off-limits to him, but Gabrielle wasn’t fooled. She had a feeling that Pierre viewed the conversation with her father as only a temporary delay. He sailed off, but she was very much afraid this wasn’t going to be the last time she ever saw him.
Margery wasn’t shy about expressing her wholehearted disapproval of her father’s occupation. With all the nasty looks she was giving him those first few days, Gabrielle quickly found herself defending him. He was her father, after all. That he was a pirate didn’t mean she could stop loving him.
She and her father didn’t get a chance to talk until they reached his home port in St. Kitts, an island central to his sailing routes. He kept a small house there on the beach, far enough from town that he could anchor his ship offshore and row in if he had to. But he never had to. St. Kitts was an English port and he was an Englishman who’d never once fired on English ships. The French, the Dutch, the Spanish, those ships were all fair game.
His house was rather unique, like a fine English cottage that had been adapted to the warm climate, with large airy rooms and windows open to catch the breeze no matter which direction it came from. Gleaming hardwood floors, palm trees in large urns, thin, wispy drapery, these things added a touch of local color, but the furnishings were elegant and quite English in design, and everything was kept spotless by his small staff of servants who looked after the house when he wasn’t in port. The paintings on the walls were tasteful and so reminiscent of those her mother had collected that she felt right at home.
The bedroom she was given was much larger than the one she’d had in England. The old wardrobe in it was an antique with cherry wood and ivory inlays in its doors; the canopy bed had carved posts and was draped in sheer white mosquito netting. And the view of the ocean and the harbor in the distance that could be seen from her balcony was magnificent.
The dining room also overlooked the ocean, and dinner that night was a tasty local dish of stuffed crab with plantains and spicy tomatoes, served with a fine French wine. A balmy, scented breeze entered from the open windows, as well as the soothing sound of ocean waves. She had a feeling she was going to love living there. But it didn’t appear that Margery would. She spent the entire dinner glaring at the servants and insisting she was going to catch the first ship back home.
As soon as Margery took her sour looks to bed, Nathan led Gabrielle out to the beach for a walk so she could ask all the questions that had been running through her mind. He made no excuses for the career he’d taken up, but he did explain how he’d come to choose it.
“I was just a young sailor on a merchantman when we went down in a storm,” he told her. “There were only a few of us who survived. We’d been floating for days when the pirates found us.”
She thought she understood. “So you felt beholden to them because they rescued you?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a rescue, Gabby. They were merely short on hands.”
“Otherwise they would have sailed on without stopping?” she guessed.
“Exactly. And we were given the standard offer, join or get back in the water. So I joined.”
“But you didn’t have to stay with them, did you? When you reached a port, you could have gone your own way?”
“We didn’t make port, at least not one that didn’t belong to the pirates, for a long time. By the time we did, well, truth be told, I was enjoying the life. I found it exciting. So I had few misgivings about staying, and I worked my way up through the ranks until I had a ship of my own.”
“Was this before or after you met Mama?”
“Before.”
“And she never suspected?”
“Not in the least.”
“What were you doing back in England, to have met her?”
He grinned at that point. “Treasure hunting. The captain of that first ship got me addicted to it.”
“Treasure hunting in England?” she said in surprise.
“No, it was a missing piece of one of my maps that led me there. It took me years to find out that her family was known to be in possession of that last piece of it. I married her in order to facilitate my search.”
“Did you not love her at all?”
He blushed slightly. “She was a fine-looking woman, but no, my only love is the sea, lass. And she was just happy to have a husband. She’d begun to fret about it, having gone through a few seasons without catching one. I wasn’t up to her standards, of course, and couldn’t claim the same fine bloodlines that she could, but I was rather dashing back then, if I do say so myself. But I think she surprised us both when she accepted my proposal. The bloom wore off rather quickly. She was glad to see me sail off.”
That certainly explained a lot. Gabrielle had always wondered what had drawn her parents together, since they’d seemed to be nearly strangers to each other whenever he visited. That hadn’t been far from the truth. She had a feeling that while Nathan had used the marriage for his own purposes, so had Carla. She’d wanted a child and she’d needed a husband to get one. Never once, though, through the years, had she doubted her mother’s love. Even at the end, when Carla became so bitter because of her lost lover, she never took that bitterness out on her daughter.
“Did you ever find the missing piece of your map?” she asked curiously.
“No,” he mumbled. “But I stayed too long searching for it. You were conceived before I left, and you were the only reason I ever returned over the years. I never regretted that, though. You’ve been a very bright light in my life, Gabby, my one true source of pride. I’m so sorry about your mother, and that you had to go through that alone. And then for you to risk coming here to find me—that was very brave of you.”
“I didn’t feel I had any other choice.”
They’d stopped to stare out over the moonlit ocean, waves lapping near their feet. A warm breeze ruffled the hem of her skirt. His arm slipped about her shoulders, gathering her close.
