Chapter Sixteen

He will come back for me.

She woke up the next day shivering and hungry. She refused to move from that spot on the shore, despite the swirling storm clouds churning toward the land. From the water’s edge she saw the wind kicking up whitecaps. She strained her sight seeking a sail on the horizon.

High tide came and she skittered back to the edge of the woods, where massive oaks with twisted branches gave some measure of shelter from the first, splattered drops. When she saw the foam of a surge race past the high tide line she fell back even further, deeper into the woods. The twisted branches bent back under the onslaught of the wind. She realized that this was no common storm, but very much like the tropical cyclones that plagued the Indian oceans, whipping the sea into a frenzy and on land tearing all but the massive Baobab trees from their roots.

Roarke couldn’t approach land today and risk the ship being pushed into the shallows where the hull could be torn on some unseen rocks or reef. He would seek a safe, deep bay from what he could find on his map, or he’d ride out the storm’s fury on the open seas.

So she found shelter deeper into the woods, on higher ground, in the burnt hollow of an oak that seemed as old as the world. To light a fire would be fruitless, so she huddled for warmth and pressed up against the grooves inside the tree, her nose filled up with the scent of moss and fungus and the sweet scent of lightning and ocean rain. To pass the time she fumbled in the sack he gave her, turning over in her hands each of the gold pieces he’d given her—more wealth than she’d ever owned. She discovered at the bottom of her own sack an apple she’d saved for Chou-Chou.

She ate the apple and ached for all she’d lost.

Roarke will come back for me.

She didn’t sleep for a long time. She scarcely knew day from night because of the glowering clouds. When she finally did sleep, she woke to a world transformed. Sunlight slipped through the trees and glittered on the forest floor. Through the leaves she glimpsed patches of bright blue sky.

She came out of the woods and scoured the sea for any sign of a sail. She was so fixed on the horizon that she tripped over a plank of driftwood.

Only it was not the bleached gray branch she’d tripped over before. This was a sea-soaked wooden plank, cut and planed and polished to perfection.

A tremor rippled through her.

It’s nothing, she told herself. A storm like that churns the seabed and throws up old, strange treasures.

She ventured a little farther north. There were lots of cockles and a conch of a remarkable size, but she saw no more driftwood. She kept glancing back to where she’d started, not wanting to get too far, in case Roarke sent a boat. She determined to venture as far as the little spit that jutted out into the sea. Then she would turn back, start a fire if she could find anything dry to burn, and wait for Roarke’s return.

She reached the head of the spit and saw, on the other side, a deep inlet that narrowed as if it were the entrance to a river. The entrance was choked with debris and mud. With a start she noticed about a dozen people walking about on the shore, men and women, gathering things in their arms. They looked like they wouldn’t have been out of place walking the streets of Saint-Malo.

Then she noticed two men trying to straighten a tattered white sail to dry in the sun. Only then did she realize the brown mud wasn’t mud but a piling up of wooden boards.

With a cold calm, she told herself that surely there were many ships that sailed upon these seas. Many English ships must ply the route between Charles Town and the other settlements to the north, passing across these waters to deliver goods from one part of the English colonies to another. One ship’s planks, one ship’s sails, they all looked the same.

The sand bit into her feet as she stumbled closer to the ocean’s edge. Her throat contracted so that it took effort to force air into her lungs. A ringing began in her ears, so loud that she was only vaguely aware that someone had shouted in her direction. She stepped over what she knew now as a yardarm and tried not to tangle her feet in the stretched rigging.

She saw a leg jutting out from beneath the broken staves of a barrel. She saw a red, bruised, naked back, a hemp-rope belt, and the wide-legged breeches favored by sailors on merchant ships or private vessels or privateers.

“Garçon!”

The sound was a wasp in her ear. She ignored it as well as the people heading her way. She found another broken body. Crabs ran across his back as she pushed off some debris. She saw the glimmer of an ear-piercing and pulled her gaze away, unwilling to confirm if the dark gold loop belonged to the bosun. Such a piercing was common enough, she told herself. It could belong to any sailor. Yet her heart raced as she pushed away planks, though splinters dug into her hands and tore at her sagging, wet shirt. She found more broken bodies, and cutlasses and pistols and a belay pin and an enormous capstan and piece of the cathead and a metal davit and washboards and swollen salt tack and Gwynn.

Gwynn.

Black bearded and blue-lipped and swollen in the belly. A thousand memories passed through her mind. When she was young, he would let her ride his shoulders as he brought her to a seaside tavern in St. Mary’s. He would rub her head for luck as he gambled, while she gorged herself on rice boiled in milk and drizzled with honey under the table by his feet.

Swift footsteps sounded on the sand.

“Garçon, ça va?”

She whirled around and stared unseeing at the man who spoke to her—a boy, really, tall and skinny with skin that turned a flaming pink as he got a good look at her—then she pushed past him to seek more bodies.

Behind her, the boy whispered in astonishment, “Mademoiselle?”

She couldn’t suck in enough air. Roarke is alive. He would ride a plank through the storm. He would clamber upon a loose boat, drift on the sea until the waters calmed and he could row himself to the west. Right now he could be pulling up on the sand and seeking her amid the inlets. He wasn’t here, she told herself, as sea-soaked wood slipped out of her bloody hands as she overturned another plank.

The boy’s shadow fell over her. “Miss,” he said in English. “Miss, can I help you?”

She realized she was making strange mewling sounds, half-gasps and stuttered noises, as she recognized a ledger, a pillow peppered with glass, the little table where Chou-Chou had eaten the captain’s poisoned dinner.

“Etienne.” A woman’s voice, calling out in French. “Stop staring at the poor girl and go help your father.”

The sand sank under her feet as she hefted a broken section of the hull. This plank was heavier than all the rest, but she saw the toe of a shiny boot poking out from beneath. A sharp pain slashed through her shoulder as she heaved it up, a ripping of muscle that she ignored because she had to know.

This man’s shoulders were broad.

His boots, made of leather and scaled with salt.

His black-haired head, crushed under planking.

His coat, fine burgundy velvet.

The world shrank to a pinpoint of light that vanished into nothing.