Chapter 21
“Garrett!” Caroline began to shake him. He was soaked to the bone and his skin was icy to her touch. “Garrett!” He groaned, and she lifted his head into her lap. “Garrett, wake up,” she said urgently. “You have to wake up.” His hair had come loose from its queue and hung around his face and neck like wet silk.
A violent shiver racked his body. Grabbing his arm, she rolled him over onto his stomach and pressed against his back hard. He coughed and choked up water. “What are you doing to me?” he gasped weakly.
“Get up,” she pleaded with him. It was pitch black. She couldn’t see him; she could only feel his unnaturally cold skin. She knew she couldn’t drag him far, and it was still a long way to the cave entrance where Noah and Amanda waited. “You have to move or you’ll freeze,” she said. Between here and the surface lay the tight fissure of rock that could only be traversed standing upright with your back against the wall. It would be impossible to carry an unconscious man through that slender crack in solid limestone. “Please,” she begged. “You have to get up and walk.”
Garrett choked again, and his teeth began to chatter. “I’ll be all right,” he said. His voice was a strained whisper. “Just leave me alone.”
Desperate, she yanked a handful of his hair and slapped his face. “Get up, I said!”
Gasping, he pushed himself up on his hand and knees, and swore at her.
“I said, get up!” she repeated, punching his arm with her fist. “Put your arm around me and walk!” She’d lost the cord that showed the path out—she’d even lost all sense of time. All she could think of was reaching the warm sunshine above.
He staggered to his feet, and she fumbled with the heavy bag around his waist. But the ties were wet, the knots stretched tight. She couldn’t unfasten them. Instead, she reached into the bag and removed the gold and silver, one piece at a time, and dropped them to the floor. When the bag was empty, she wedged her shoulder under his arm and began to help him walk. She hadn’t gone two feet before she struck something hard. “Ouch!” she cried.
Feeling with her free hand, she found a stalagmite growing out of the cave floor, and realized they must still be in the small chamber near the pool. And if she was there, then she needed to keep close to the wall to take the correct tunnel leading out of the chamber. But which wall?
Garrett groaned again and swayed. She was afraid that if he fell, she wouldn’t get him up again. He was so cold. How could anyone be so cold and still be alive? “Your blood must have ice crystals in it,” she said.
“What?” he asked drunkenly
“Keep walking,” she ordered. She tried to remember the correct sequence of inclines and openings ahead of her. Right entrance going in, she mused. Would that be left coming out . . . or . . . It was no use. She was too frightened to use logic. She’d have to rely on her instinct.
“Just let me rest awhile,” Garrett said.
“No! We’re going to walk out of here.” Sounding braver than she felt, she took one step and then another. Please, Kutii, she whispered inwardly. We could use some of your ghost lights now. But the cave ahead of her still loomed as dark as the devil’s soul. She closed her eyes. Somehow, the blackness wasn’t as overwhelming if she didn’t have to stare into it.
Her right hand struck a solid wall. “We’re all right,” she soothed Garrett. “Keep walking. Just a little ways this way, then . . .” She remembered that the passageway was low. “Duck your head.”
The floor began to rise steeply. The incline, she thought. I remember the incline. His weight made the climb difficult, but it seemed to her that Garrett was gaining strength. He’ll have to, she cried silently. I’ll never get him through the narrows unless he can walk on his own power.
Perspiration beaded her forehead. Turn, step. How long? she wondered. Garrett didn’t ask if she knew where they were going, and that frightened her even more. The tons of rock and earth above them seemed to press down on her like a great tomb.
“That’s right, keep going. You’re doing fine,” she told Garrett.
The compressed passage was a nightmare. They crept through it an inch at a time, while demons of doubt danced at the back of Caroline’s mind, crying, What if you took the wrong turn? What if you’re leading him deeper into the mountain instead of out?
When she opened her eyes and saw the patch of sunlight ahead, she shouted for joy. “Look,” she said. “Look there!”
Garrett shook off her arm and squatted down to catch his breath. “I’m all right,” he said. “I can walk on my own.” He was still shaking, but the walking had gotten his blood moving. He was able to make the distance to the ladder and climb it on his own.
“What the hell happened to you?” Noah demanded as Garrett set foot on the grass. “Been swimming?” He began to strip off Garrett’s shirt.
“Something like that,” Caroline said. She was almost as wet as Garrett, but the hot sun on her bare arms and face soon warmed her.
Garrett sat on a rock while Amanda used her apron to dry his back and hair. Noah got the bag unfastened and threw it aside. As it struck the rock, Caroline heard a thud. She retrieved the sack and turned it inside out. A gold Ilama tumbled into her hand—the same exquisite statute that Kutii had shown her earlier.
“Oh,” Amanda said. “That’s beautiful.”
Caroline held the tiny llama up so that the sun reflected off it. “This piece I’m keeping for luck,” she said, and tucked it into her gown pocket.
“I was about to send Noah down after you,” Amanda said, looking from Caroline to Garrett.
“He fell off the ledge,” Caroline explained. “And he was too stubborn to let go of the gold he was carrying. He nearly drowned.”
“I didn’t ‘nearly drown,’ ” Garrett protested. He still had the shakes and his face was pale, but Caroline knew he was all right.
“I should have come down,” Noah said.
“No,” Garrett answered. “No sense to it. You’re too big. You’d never fit through the narrow crevice.”
And no one could have carried you out, Caroline thought. “You could have died down there,” she said. “It’s too dangerous. Let’s take what we have and leave the rest.”
Garrett shook his head. “No, two more trips will do it. One to bring back what we only got part of the way out, and another to get what’s left in the treasure chamber.”
“I don’t want to go down there again,” she said, looking around her at the vivid greens of the grass and trees, the blue of the sky, and the white of fleecy clouds.”
“Then stay here,” Garrett said stubbornly. “But I’m going. Too much depends on—”
“I’m not letting you go down there alone,” she said.
“Wait until tomorrow, at least,” Amanda suggested. “You both look like you could use something to eat.”
Garrett shook his head. “I won’t go back along the lake, but I’m bringing out what we dropped.” He threw Caroline a challenging glance. “Coming or not?”
He lit the spare lantern and started down the ladder. She shrugged and followed him. “This time, I’m not letting go of the cord,” she said.
“You worry too much, woman,” Garrett replied. And his words echoed down the long corridors and raised the hairs at the back of her neck.
On the way back to the house, Noah told Garrett and Caroline that Amanda had agreed to marry him, and that they both wanted to stay in the Caribbean.
“But you can’t,” Caroline said. She was tired and dirty and wanted nothing more than to bathe and crawl between clean sheets. She and Garrett had made the return trip to the chamber beside the underground lake without incident. There they’d found Caroline’s pack and the pieces she’d emptied from Garrett’s bag, and brought them back to the surface. Garrett had agreed to wait until the following day to make the final trip. “If you stay here,” she continued, “Jeremy won’t grow up on Fortune’s Gift. It’s his right.”
“It’s his right to grow up where I want him to,” Amanda corrected her. “Noah thinks this will be a better place for all of us. Jeremy needs a father.”
“You haven’t said anything about love,” Caroline protested. “Reed—”
“If anyone can free Reed, you and Garrett can do it,” Amanda said. She clasped Noah’s arm. “I do love Noah. He’s convinced me that we belong together.”
“We’ll miss you,” Garrett said. “There’s no man I’d rather have serve beside me on the deck of a fighting ship.”
Noah put a big arm around Amanda’s shoulders. “From now on, the only wars I’m going to fight are my own. I’ll help ye find a ship, like I promised, but I like it here.”
“I’ll give you Arawak as a wedding gift,” Caroline said. “Amanda’s due a dowry.”
“I want no handouts,” her sister said.
“We’d like Arawak fine,” Noah replied with a grin. “I could build me a new shipyard right in the cove, if you’d let us have a few acres to go with the house.”
“No,” Caroline said. “I mean I’ll give you the island. It’s the least—”
“Not for Jeremy’s sake,” Amanda said sharply. “I won’t let you—”
“For your sake,” Caroline corrected her. “For Papa and Mama. You are my sister—you’ll always be my sister, even if a little ocean divides us.”
Amanda’s eyes gleamed with liquid. “Thank you,” she said simply.
“And I’ll give you enough money to start your shipyard,” Garrett said.
“You’ll loan me enough,” Noah said gruffly. “I’ll pay back every shilling.”
“Only if I can be best man at the wedding,” Garrett agreed.
“Done.”
Then Jeremy came toddling around the corner of the house with Pilar in hot pursuit. “He walks,” she cried excitedly. “Little man walks.”
Noah caught the baby and swung him high over his head, to Jeremy’s delight. He squealed and kicked his bare feet. “My first son,” Noah declared. Then he winked at Amanda. “But he’ll only be the first of many.”
“Not too many,” Amanda replied primly, “or you’ll find yourself sleeping on the beach.”
Even Pilar and the baby joined in the following laughter. And Caroline’s distress at the thought of parting from her sister and Jeremy was eased by the happiness that beamed from Amanda’s round face.
Supper was hot conch soup, cold pork, fruit, and hot bread. Caroline ate a little of the soup and nibbled at a biscuit. She didn’t taste her wine. Her warm bath had made her sleepy. All she wanted now was to go to bed. When she wished Amanda and Noah all the best and left the table, Garrett followed her into the entrance hall.
“Thank you for what you did today,” he said.
“It was nothing,” she answered stiffly. “As you said, you would have gotten out without my help.”
“Probably,” he said, “but maybe not. I was careless, and it could have gotten us both killed. You used your head and didn’t panic.” He rubbed his cheek. “You’ve got a hard right for a woman.”
“I didn’t punch you, I slapped you.”
“Admit it. You enjoyed it,” he teased.
“It’s not funny, Garrett.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “I want you to come back to our room.” He turned her palm over and brushed his lips against the pulse at her wrist.
“No.” The touch of his lips made shivers run up and down her spine. God, but she wanted him to want her! Not just for a night—but forever.
“I won’t touch you, if you don’t want me to. You have my word of honor on it. I miss you, Caroline. It’s lonely without you.”
Her throat tightened, and her bones felt like jelly. I’m carrying our child, she wanted to tell him. I’m pregnant, and I’m glad of it. But she didn’t. She only shook her head. “It’s best if we leave things as they are,” she said. “You’ll get your boat, and I’ll get my brother.”
“Caroline, I wish it could be otherwise with us.” His gray eyes beseeched her.
“No,” she said firmly, pulling her hand back. “It’s better for us both, if we—”
“Have it your way,” he answered frostily. Turning on his heel he walked away, leaving her to ascend the wide staircase alone.
The sound of splintering wood and the shrill terror of Pilar’s screams woke Caroline from her sleep. She sat up in the wide poster bed, heart thudding wildly. Jeremy was whimpering. By moonlight, she could see that he was sitting up in the cradle with his arms outstretched for someone to pick him up.
“Amanda? Amanda, are you here?” she called.
Glass shattered downstairs, and she heard the heavy tread of men’s boots in the entrance hall. Pilar shrieked again. Her cry was cut short by the unmistakable roar of a musket.
Caroline’s door banged open, and terror spilled through her body. She leaped out of bed and stood between the cradle and the shadowy male figure in the doorway.
“Caroline!”
Her knees went weak with relief. “Garrett. I’m here.”
“We’re under attack. Come with me. Now!”
Grabbing up Jeremy, she dashed to the hearth and took down a fencing foil that hung over the mantel. “Where do we go?” she asked. From below came the crash of overturned furniture, the sounds of breaking china, and men’s coarse laughter.
“Quick! Our room,” Garrett said. “We can’t use the stairs.”
He grabbed her arm and dragged her into the hall. Pounding feet on the steps made her twist around. The window at the head of the staircase illuminated the face of a bare-chested stranger with an upraised cutlass in his hand. Garrett whirled and fired his pistol. The explosion momentarily deafened Caroline. The baby began to howl and kick. She didn’t wait to see if Garrett had hit his target, but kept running down the passageway with the terrified baby.
Garrett tore open the door to their room. “Inside, quick,” he said. She obeyed without question, and he pushed an upright chest-on-chest in front of the door and went to the corner of the room for his musket. Jeremy wailed in total panic.
Caroline put the baby on her shoulder and began to pat his back. “Shhh,” she soothed. “Shhh.”
“Can’t you keep him quiet?” Garrett hissed as he dumped a measure of powder into his pistol barrel and tamped down wadding and a ball.
Jeremy shrieked louder.
“He’s scared. If you think you can do any better than me, you take him,” she replied hotly. A door crashed open down the hall. She heard a shout, then another shot, much closer.
“The balcony,” Garrett whispered. “We can’t let them trap us in here.”
“I can’t jump two stories with a baby.”
“I didn’t say you had to. Get out on the damned balcony.” He slung a powder horn over one shoulder and strapped on a sword.
She stumbled over a footstool in the darkness.
“Caroline!”
Her hand closed on one of Garrett’s shirts, hanging over the back of a chair. Quickly, she knotted the shirt around the squirming baby’s chest, then tied the arms together to make a sling.
“In here!” a man shouted. Something heavy struck the bedroom door. Wood cracked and the door buckled.
“Caroline, go!” Garrett ordered.
She turned the handle on the French doors.
“Careful,” Garrett warned. “I don’t know how many of them are outside.” Then he raised his musket and fired through the splintered doorway. A man trying to force his way in screamed and fell.
Caroline dropped to her hands and knees and crawled out onto the porch as she heard a lead ball pierce the paneled door and ricochet around the room. There was more shouting and an ax split the door.
Garrett fired his pistol in the general direction of the pirates, then followed her onto the balcony. “Put your arms around my neck,” he said. “I’m going to lower myself from the porch and drop.”
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“Got any better ideas?”
“We could go up on the roof.”
“And be trapped up there if they fire the house?”
“Who is it?”
“How the hell do I know? Now shut up and put your arms around my neck and hold on.”
“Can’t you jump to a tree?”
“With you and that squalling brat on my back? What do you think I am?”
“If I was a man—”
“Well, you’re not. So shut up and do as I tell you!”
The chest-on-chest toppled to the floor with a crash, and Caroline flung herself onto Garrett’s back and held on with a death grip. Jeremy dangled from her side, sobbing loudly and struggling to get free.
“Get rid of that foil,” Garrett said. “You’ll kill us both.” She tossed it over the porch railing.
“Great! Now I’ll land on the friggin’ thing,” he said as he lowered himself down over the decorative woodwork with Caroline clinging to his back.
Her heart rose in her throat as Garrett swung from the landing, then dropped. They hit the ground hard, and she and Jeremy rolled away. Almost instantly, even before she’d had time to catch her breath, a barrel-chested man with a beard ran toward them from the trees. A flintlock flared in his hand.
She staggered up and began to run, snatching up her foil as she fled. She saw Garrett launch himself at the bearded man. He raised his empty pistol and brought the long barrel down to smash against Garrett’s head. Garrett grabbed his wrist and the two began to struggle.
Caroline saw two men coming over the railing of the second-floor porch. She dodged a sailor rushing at her from the front entrance steps, ran toward Garrett, and drove the point of her foil into his assailant’s shoulder.
The bearded man howled and fell back, and she and Garrett dashed for the trees with musket balls flying over their heads. They ran a few hundred yards into the jungle, changed direction, and crawled into a thicket of overgrown vines. Garrett pushed her down flat on the ground. “Keep Jeremy quiet,” he warned. He began to load his pistol again.
She put her hand over the baby’s mouth, but he continued to whimper. “I can’t,” she said.
“I’ll distract them. I want you to crawl out and—”
“No. They’ll kill you. They won’t kill me. I’m a woman with a baby.”
“Don’t be stupid, Caroline. There are worse things for a woman than death.” His hand closed around her shoulder and gripped so tightly that she felt his fingers dig into her flesh. “I want you to back out of this thicket and run like hell. Hide in the jungle, far enough from the house that they can’t find you. Find water and follow it up the mountain. Now go!” He gave her a shove, and he crawled out and ran in the opposite direction.
She heard Garrett’s flintlock go off, and she dug her way out from under a vine and ran as fast as she could with Jeremy clutched against her breasts. Suddenly, a man blocked her path.
“What ’ave we here?” he cried.
Caroline shifted the sling to her shoulder. Ignoring the baby’s howling, she grasped her foil in her hand and backed up a few steps into the shadows of the trees.
“Where to so fast, wench?” He fumbled with the button fly of his wide-legged trousers. “’Ow’d ye like to ’ave a taste of ripe beef afore the crew—”
She lunged forward and executed a perfect direct riposte, plunging the point of the foil into the left side of the scoundrel’s chest. He grabbed the naked blade with both hands and fell back onto the ground. An awful bubbling sound came from his throat, and his death cry was drowned in a tide of blood.
Caroline seized the hilt and tugged, but the foil was caught between muscle and bone. She shuddered, then shut her eyes, put her foot on the dying man’s chest, and yanked the sword free.
“What’s this?” another man shouted. He burst out of the trees and ran toward her swinging a boarding ax. She gasped in fear as the moonlight glinted on the steel blade.
A branch snapped behind her, and she whipped her head around to see a second attacker in the shadows—a giant of a man—carrying a machete. She raised her weapon to defend herself, knowing full well that against two of them she had no chance. “Stay back!” she warned.
The ax man laughed and lifted his terrible weapon over his head. The giant took one great leap forward and brought his machete down across the other man’s neck. He fell mortally wounded. The baby whimpered and Caroline turned to run.
“Wait! Miss Caroline! It’s me, Noah,” came the frantic whisper from the big man with the machete.
She sagged with relief at the familiar voice. “Thank God, it’s you.” She was numb with fright, too terrified for tears. “Where’s Amanda? Is she safe?”
“Aye. I hid her in the cave. She’s hell-bent on gettin’ to this babe of hers.” Noah wiped his machete on the grass and reached for Jeremy. “Give me the boy. He’s heavy for you to carry.”
“Garrett’s back there somewhere,” Caroline said. “We climbed down from the porch and—”
“Shhh,” Noah warned.
Harsh voices came from the direction of the house.
“I don’t know who they are,” Caroline whispered.
“Pirates, most likely,” he said. He nudged the first dead man with his foot. “You kill this one by yourself?”
Caroline nodded.
Noah laughed softly. “Guess he didn’t know what kinda woman he was facin’.”
“I think they killed Pilar and Angus,” she said.
“We got to go. There’s no time for weepin’ over the dead.”
“But Garrett—”
“Garrett will give good account of hisself—never you fear, miss. I’d be more worried about what I’d say to him, did I let you come to harm, now that I found ye.”
“Caroline Talbot!” Her name echoed through the trees. “Caroline Talbot! Come out or you’ll carry your husband’s head to his grave in a basket!”
“What’s that?” she asked Noah. The voice was strange, almost inhuman.
“Speakin’ trumpet,” the black man replied. “Masters use ’em on ships. They carry a man’s voice in the wind.”
Or through the jungle, she thought. What had he said? They had Garrett?
“Come out, woman! This is your last chance!”
Noah tugged at her arm. “Don’t listen to them. It’s a trick. Garrett will be all right.”
Caroline handed him her foil. “Take this,” she said. “Take it, and get Jeremy safely away from here. You look after Jeremy and Amanda.”
“I won’t let ye give yourself over to them,” Noah said. “Don’t be a fool. He may be hidin’, or he may be dead. You surrenderin’ yourself won’t help him.”
“Caroline Talbot!”
Jeremy began to cry.
“Run!” Caroline said to Noah. “Quick, before they catch you.” She pulled free and darted back toward the house and Garrett.