“Costa,” Locke said, indicating the man. Nick and each of the crew gave the fallen man a nod as they walked by, paying homage to their comrade. The Italian had sailed for all of his fifty or so years. He’d served Nick well and Nick was surprised when he’d asked to guard the island. Mr. Costa had a wife, and he’d brought the lovely woman to the island to live. It had taught Nick that even the most hardened sailors could give up the sea for love.
“Why haven’t you buried the bodies?” Red asked, anger in his voice. Nick had the same questions, the same anger.
“You’ll see,” Locke answered. At the edge of the village, Nick turned and signaled to the men to stay. Red ordered them to circle the perimeter and keep watch, and then he and Nick followed Locke back up the rise and into the trees. The trek was not an easy one for Locke with his injured ankle, but neither Nick nor Red assisted him. They moved deeper into the woods and higher. The underbrush grew thick and the air moistened and seemed to close in around them. The world came alive with buzzes and the calls of birds and insects. In the trees, macaque monkeys hooted and thrashed branches, trying to scare the intruders away. Suddenly, Nick knew where they were going. “The cave?” he asked.
Locke was too winded to speak and merely nodded. Nick could not extinguish the flare of hope now. “You mentioned others? Survivors?”
Again, Locke nodded. Nick did not wait. With Red right behind him, the two men crashed through the thick jungle, heedless of the branches that scraped their cheeks and caught on their clothing. There was a path, but Nick did not pause to find it. He barreled through until he reached the small plateau that led to the entrance to the cave. It was well hidden with vines and bushes. Of course, the villagers would have run here to hide at the first sign of trouble. Was it possible? Please.
The sound of a cocked pistol brought him up short. Red plowed into him, and Nick held up a hand to silence the man. “It’s Captain Martingale. Don’t shoot.”
“The captain?” a female voice asked, her accent slightly French.
“We found Locke. We’ve come back for you.”
A woman stepped out of the shadows concealing her. She was the wife—or its equivalent—of one of his men. She’d been beautiful once, but now she looked thin and haggard. She all but fell into his arms, and Nick caught and steadied her. She looked up at him, her eyes full of tears, as though her long nightmare had finally ended. “Mon Dieu,” she whispered. Then she took his hand and led him into the cave.
Nick willed his gaze not to look for her, but he could not stop it. And there, so beautiful he was almost afraid he had conjured her, was Nerissa. His little Rissa.
She saw him and seemed to hesitate as well, not certain he was real. And then she ran toward him, throwing her arms about his neck and bursting into tears. “Papa!”
Nick sank to his knees cradling her. Her little body was so thin, but her hold on him was strong. Her long dark hair smelled clean against his face, and when he set her back so he could look at her, he saw no injuries. He took her in his arms again and surveyed the rest of the dark cave. A lantern was the only source of light, and in its glow, Nick counted a dozen or so women and children. Locke was the only man to have survived. Less than twenty alive from a village that had numbered three times that.
He would hear the story later. He would know the horrors these women had seen, had survived. He would take them in and make them his own, allow them to feed his hatred and his desire for revenge. But for the moment he held Rissa and thanked God and the heavens and every angel whose name he could remember.
“Papa,” he heard Rissa murmur quietly. Her body seemed to shake with sobs. “Papa.”
Nick caught the eye of one of the older women, a friend of Rissa’s mother. Both women had been rescued from the markets of some godforsaken country. The woman shook her head, and there was so much pain in that simple movement. Nick sighed, his anguish all for Rissa who had seen God knew what. After Zorah had died from sickness when Rissa was barely two, the other women of the island had adopted the little girl. But she needed her father now. She’d needed him, and he hadn’t been there.
Locke rejoined the group, and the women gathered the few belongings they’d salvaged. It was a somber march from the safety of the cave, through the woods, and down past the charred village. They skirted its ruins and the fallen, and there they caught up to the men who had come to shore with him. More reunions occurred. Too few, though. Nick wanted to yell to heaven that it was too few.
He carried Rissa as he had when she’d been an infant, never once loosening his grip on her. She buried her head against his chest and for a time he thought she slept. But perhaps she did not want to see the destruction of the village. He did not want her to see it.
Nick understood now why Locke had not tended to the dead or the lost village. He had done his duty, protecting the surviving women and children and providing food and water for them. The small group had thought of surviving, not of the dead. That was as it should be. But now that he was here, Nick would see the dead buried properly.
When he emerged on the beach, he gave orders for the men to set up a makeshift camp. Red stepped in and gave orders as to the best place to pitch tents and cook food. Nick had not seen the man’s wife among the survivors. He allowed his bos’n to take over, knowing that keeping busy would also keep the man’s grief at bay for a time. Later he would take the man aside and offer his condolences.
Nick supervised the making of the camp, still holding Rissa. He murmured reassurances to her continually. “I’ve brought food and water, new clothes for you. You’re safe now, and I’ll have you looking as plump as ever.” By the time she seemed to recover enough to begin wiggling and pushing for him to set her down, Nick glanced out at the sea. The second rowboat was being lowered, and his gaze went to the bow and the blond beauty standing there. Even if she had not been the only woman amidst the group of men, a dazzling fair-haired creature, he would have found her. His gaze was always drawn to her.
Her eyes rested on him and then dipped to Rissa. It was then Nick realized he had made another grievous error.
“HIS WHAT?” ASHLEY HEARD the wind rushing in her ears and wondered from whence the gale had come. It seemed Chante was still speaking, but Ashley could hear nothing over the storm in her mind.
A daughter? Nick had a child? Her husband had a child!
Was he even her husband? Perhaps he was already married, and their marriage was not even valid. She should rejoice, but she felt strangely ill. She was going to lose him—not that he had ever been hers. He hadn’t even thought enough about her to tell her what everyone else seemed to know. Nick had a child.
Ashley stared at Nick’s figure on shore. He was hard to miss with his confident walk and his dark hair. He carried a small child with dark skin and dark hair. The girl’s head was buried in his chest, and he held her as though she were a precious jewel. As Ashley watched, the little girl moved, and she heard Mr. Chante remark that the child was alive. The men gave murmurs of approval, but Ashley could not feel any such relief. What would she say when she met the girl? She had no experience with children.
She didn’t even like children. Maddie liked children. Maddie was always saying how dear that little boy was or how sweet that little girl. Ashley looked at the same child and saw snot running from his nose or something sticky and potentially gown-ruining on her fingers. Ashley stayed away from children.
She hadn’t even liked being a child. She’d hated how she was so much smaller than everyone else and how she had so many rules to follow. She still hated rules.
Another thought occurred to her, and she had to grasp the rail to keep upright. What if Nick expected her to act as the girl’s mother? What if she—Ashley Brittany—was to make the rules after all these years of breaking them? The wind in her ears swirled louder, and Ashley could not even hear herself think above the roar. She closed her eyes, blocking out the image of Nick and his daughter on the beach, and took a deep breath. She was not going to panic. She was not going to allow a small child to scare her. She clenched her hands and took another breath. The wind in her ears quieted slightly, and she heard chuckling.
Ashley opened her eyes to the sight of Mr. Chante laughing. He was laughing at her! This was the outside of enough. She might be mortified that Nick hadn’t told her about this child, but she wasn’t going to show it. If nothing else, she was good at hiding her pain and embarrassments. Ashley straightened and narrowed her eyes. “Is something amusing you, Mr. Chante?”
“Just waiting for you to swoon, Mrs. Cap’n.”
