And a tall bewigged stranger with silver eyes was telling her that she was his wife!
It was too much. Too much. She longed then for nothing but home. For Williamsburg. For market square with its endless fairs, for the bowling green where she had often played and laughed with the other children. Williamsburg, with her planned and beautiful, broad streets. With the College of William and Mary, her endless bustle of students and scholars, her law debates, her fashionable and tawdry taverns…
It was her home. It was where her father had built his house, just down from the governor’s mansion begun when she had been a child. Alexander Spotswood had planned much of it himself. When she had been very little, she had watched the construction with him, and he had tousled her hair with affection. “See, child, the entry will be here, and I, your lieutenant governor, will greet most guests here. But if you are very important—and of course, Skye, you shall be that!—you may come up the steps and I will greet you in the hallway above. See here, I have shown your father. We will have the most fashionable leather to cover the walls in the hall. Then my bedchamber will be here, and our guests will be here. And as I’ve told your father, we will have the most fabulous wine cellar.”
Home would be a haven, she thought.
But she was not going to be brought home. Lord Cameron was taking her somewhere down the peninsula to his Tidewater plantation. She swallowed fiercely, watching the lamplight waver over the walls of the ship.
He meant to keep her there. At some godforsaken manor in the wilderness. Surely, it would be horrible, it would be swampland. By summer the insects and heat would be unbearable.
She shuddered and reminded herself that she planned to fight Lord Cameron to the very end. A rising anxiety engulfed her. Could she fight him? There would be no help for her when she tried to fight a lord, a powerful landowner. No one would help her, for anyone would think that she was daft, trying to fight something so very right and proper.
Then there was Lord Cameron himself.…
She shivered, wondering how he would feel if he knew the truth about her. He would loathe her, she thought.
Perhaps…perhaps he would loathe her enough to disavow her. To annul the marriage himself. Proxy marriage! They could not do that to her, could they?
Perhaps…
But then again, perhaps, if he knew, he would show her no deference. He would hate her, but he would show her no deference at all. He would not leave her at peace in this cabin.
She turned over and tried to close her eyes, tried to find oblivion in sleep. It eluded her for a long, long time. Nor were her dreams restful. She imagined him coming to her.…
The Silver Hawk.
He came as he had come to her from the lagoon, rising up with the water sluicing from his body, coming to her with firm purpose, reaching for her. His eyes blazed, and suddenly he was not her lover, but the man who claimed to be her husband.
His arms closed around her and she struggled, but he was dragging her down, deep down into the sea. She heard him whispering to her, and she didn’t hear the word. Then suddenly it came clear.
“Whore!”
She awoke with a jerk. She was fully clad and the light was bright around her and she was alone. She lay back, shivering. She did not sleep again that night.
Tara and Bess, cheerful and chattering, came to serve her in the morning. Skye was quiet, allowing Bess to talk on and on with grave excitement about the pirate’s island while she brushed and braided her hair. Tara set up a breakfast tray for her, complete with fresh eggs, brown bread, and strong, sweet tea. The girls were excited, she knew, because they were heroines. They had survived an ordeal by fire, and when they spoke about the Bone Cay, they had a rapt audience among the young sailors. Skye kept a grip upon her tongue, determined not to ruin their happiness when she was bitter and frightened of the future herself.
Because a pirate continued to plague her dreams, and because Lord Cameron entered in upon them in moments of intimacy.
When her clothing had been straightened, her hair done, her cabin neatened, Bess asked permission to go on deck. Skye freely granted it.
She remained within the cabin herself for a long time, hoping to avoid Lord Cameron. But the walls seemed to close in upon her, and she soon came topside. He was at the helm. She stood far across the deck from him with crew and rigging and sails between them. He bowed to her, his hands upon the heavy wheel. She nodded curtly in return and came portside, staring out over the water. The day was beautiful, the water was very blue, and the sky was light and powdery. She could see a distant shoreline.
“Florida,” he said softly behind her. She knew his voice, it was so like the Hawk’s. His breath touched her nape and feathered along it. She turned. He wasn’t looking at her, but at the land that lay off the hull of the ship. “A treacherous land, beautiful, and inhabited by all manner of creatures. It’s fascinating.” He smiled at her at last. “I have always loved it.”
Something about his smile drew a response from her. “I have never seen it.”
He shrugged, leaning over the helm. “Ah, but you’ve lived in London, and to many in our fair colony, London constitutes all of the world.”
“And don’t you feel that way, Lord Cameron?”
“More than anything, I love Virginia,” he said, and she felt the curious intensity in his voice. He leaned against the wooden railing at the hull and studied her as he spoke. “I love Virginia, and Cameron Hall, and the acres that surround her. The house sits high atop a hill, and from the windows and porch you can look far down the slope and see the James flowing by. You can see when storms roll in and watch as the sun rises. You can see the ebb and flow of traffic upon the river. She runs deep. All manner of commerce come to us. Tenants work much of the land, and all of them come to the docks to send their produce to England, to buy their ribands and baubles and fine dish and plate and materials. The grass upon the slope is so green and verdant that at times it appears blue. The summers are hot, but the river sweeps away much of the heat. The winters are never too cold. It is endlessly beautiful.”
“It sounds as if you speak of a paradise,” she said softly, the last word catching in her throat, for she had found her own paradise, and that on a tropical isle with bright wildflowers and endless heat and the glow of the sun upon the earth. He could not know the secrets of her heart, she thought, and yet he looked at her with a slow, rueful smile that seized her heart. “Paradise? Perhaps. It is a realm we create ourselves, isn’t it? Separate unto each and every one of us, and found where we choose to seek it.”
She turned quickly from him, watching the shoreline.
“They say that there is endless treasure buried there, upon the sandy shores,” he mused. “They’ve all played there, the buccaneers. Once it was Captain Kidd. Now Hornigold and Blackbeard and others.” He looked at her once again. “Blackbeard and Hornigold have been wreaking havoc along the Carolinas this fall. Blackbeard fought a fierce battle with a ship of the Royal Navy. He is vastly admired among men. They stand in awe of his daring.”
