Mariah's Prize (5 page)

“Is that your father’s business?” asked Mrs. West suspiciously, choosing instead to sit in the ladder-back chair.

“You shouldn’t be doing that, Mariah. You shouldn’t have to. Your father wouldn’t have wanted his daughter meddling in men’s affairs, any more than he’d want you chasing about on the wharves. It’s not seemly, Mariah.”

Mariah stared at her ink-stained fingers. How could she explain that if she didn’t do it, no one would? Even before her father’s death, her mother had never understood.

“If you truly wished to help your sister and me, you’d find yourself a husband. A widower, perhaps, an older gentleman established in his trade who would be willing to overlook your—your seriousness.”

“Mama, no!” Without looking up, Mariah began to shake her head.

“I

don’t want a husband, and I never will. Let Jenny marry Elisha. “

“Elisha won’t offer for her until he’s seen you settled first. No man wants a spinster sister in his household.” Mrs. West sighed and rubbed her temples.

“Mariah, you really must forget Daniel O’Bieme. There’s no use pining away after a man you can’t have.”

“No!” Mariah’s voice shook.

“I loved Daniel! No other man could ever mean to me what he does. I loved him, and he loved me, and I’ll never marry anyone else, ever!”

Mariah closed her eyes and tried to remember Daniel’s face, the freckles on his nose and his shy, uneven smile. Her Daniel, her only love. But why, instead, did the face in her mind have mocking green eyes and a too-perfect smile against weather-browned skin?

Her mother sighed again and gazed out the window, unconscious of the view and the way she toyed with the pearl on her wedding ring. In profile she was still a handsome woman, not yet forty, with the same golden hair as Jenny, and suddenly Mariah realized her mother meant to remarry. It wasn’t Elisha who wouldn’t want a spinster sister-in-law underfoot; it was her mother who wished to shed a spinster daughter.

Sickened, she wondered if her mother had already chosen the man to replace her father.

“If this Captain Sparhawk has agreed to sail your father’s vessel, then clearly he has an interest in you,” said Mrs. West without turning, “No man would entertain this sort of agreement with a woman unless he had hopes of an intrigue with her. When you see him again—and you will see him again, Daniel or no Daniel—I would have you wear a more comely gown. If you dress like a drab, that’s how he will see you.”

“Mama, it’s not like that between Captain Sparhawk and me!”

“What was his given name again—an angel, wasn’t it? Michael?”

“Gabriel.” Mariah’s voice still shook, and she paused to steady it.

“But it doesn’t matter. Mama. I’m too young to interest him.”

“No man ever thinks a woman is too young for him,”

said her mother dryly, “any more than they ever judge themselves too old. Besides, I was seventeen when you were born, and you’ll be nineteen this autumn, without even the prospect of a husband. Nay, Mariah, you’re scarcely too young.” “When Daniel asked for me, you said I was, and now it seems I’m a wizened old spinster,” said Mariah bitterly.

“What a wonder two years can make in my life!”

“Your age wasn’t the only reason the O’Beime boy wasn’t a suitable match for you. You deserve a finer life than some Papist Teague could offer.”

Mariah’s brittle laugh held no humor.

“Oh, aye, we Wests are of the better sort, aren’t we?”

“You forget yourself, Mariah.” Mrs. West sighed irritably as she retied the bands of her nightcap. “The Wests have been on this island since there was nothing here but mud and Indians. Now this Captain Sparhawk’s people” — “Mama, listen to me. Captain Sparhawk has agreed to sail the Revenge for us, and that is all. You heard what Mrs. Thomas said about him at the table. A man like that will likely never marry, and even if he did, he wouldn’t choose someone like me.”

“Then it will be your affair to make him choose you.” Mrs. West swung around in the chair so she faced Mariah. “Now you listen to me, daughter. You can swear with your dying breath that it’s all business between you and this man—knowing you, it likely is—but others won’t believe it. I heard well enough what Mrs. Thomas said, and I can guess what she’ll say again. Your sister and I will be shamed. You’ll be as ruined as if you did lie with him. If you ever want to be regarded as a decent woman, you’ll find a way to make the man marry you.”

“But / don’t want to marry him!” wailed Mariah.

“You should have considered that before you meddled in concerns of trade. Prowling round Thames Street, looking for privateering captains!” Her voice softened.

“I’m sorry, lamb. The world can be a harsh judge for a woman.”

“Then the world is full of sharp-tongued gossips! I-we—had no choice. Mama, else be tossed out on the street! All these papers, all these bills. Can’t you understand that Father didn’t” — “Don’t speak ill of your father, Mariah. It grieves me sorely.” She pressed the tips of her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes.

“There is a pitcher of limewater on the claw-foot table in my room, if you’ll but fetch it for me.”

“Oh, no. Mama, please.” Mariah knew the pitcher, just as she knew the thin-sliced limes that floated in the Geneva.

“You don’t need that now. You’re better tonight, I can tell.”

“I was better, but you have vexed me so that my poor head aches worse than ever. Even now, when I’m ill, you’re bent on crossing me.” Her hands were trembling as she took up the candlestick again and rose to her feet, clutching the back of the chair for support.

“You’ve been strong willed and obstinate from the morning I brought you into this life, Mariah. God knows I’ve expected little enough, but you never try to please me, do you? You never have, and you never will.”

To please her mother, Mariah borrowed Jenny’s second-best day gown, ice-blue sateen looped over a striped petticoat. But Mrs. West’s head ached too much for her to notice what Mariah wore, and she kept to her bed with the hangings drawn against the daylight. Mariah gathered the withered lime rinds from the top of the claw-foot table and took them away with the empty pitcher.

By the time she’d reached the Revenge’s wharf, Mariah wished she’d changed back into her old dark wool. Jenny was smaller, and Mariah had had to lace her stays tighter to make the pale blue gown fit. She had tied a scarf around her shoulders to hide the way the lacings pushed her breasts up above the gown’s low round neckline, but from the suggestive invitations she received along Thames Street she realized the scarf was a failure. Beneath her wide-brimmed straw that her face was red with embarrassment, and she was nearly running, her eyes steadfastly on her feet, when she finally reached the sloop’s gangway.

“Here now, sweetheart, what’s your hurry?” A bare male arm snaked around her waist and nearly lifted her off the deck. Mariah twisted around to see the man’s face, shiny from the sun and work and rimmed with a curling red beard.

“Couldn’t bear to be away from me, eh, love?

And brung me supper in a willow basket, too! “

“Let me go!” cried Mariah indignantly, but the man’s grip only tightened, pulling her face close enough to his that her that brim bent up against his forehead. She swung the basket up to strike his chest, but the man only laughed and swatted it away. All around them other men were laughing, too, and as Mariah struggled she wondered furiously who they all could be on board her sloop.

“Let me go, you great oaf!”

Suddenly she was yanked free and set down on the deck so sharply she almost tumbled back from the impact. She shoved her that brim up in time to see Gabriel Sparhawk’s fist strike the bearded man’s jaw and send him sprawling against the railing as the other men scattered out of the way.

“Why’d you go putting your dirty hands on the lady, Duffy?” demanded Gabriel as the other man held his jaw.

“Don’t you know who she is?”

“Sorry, Cap’n,” he mumbled thickly, “I never would’ve touched her if I’d known she belonged t’you.”

With his hands on his waist, Gabriel glared down at him. “That would have been bad enough, you great randy fool. But it’s worse than that.

She doesn’t belong to me. This sloop belongs to her. “

“Th’ owner?” repeated Duffy weakly.

“Ah, damn it all, Cap’n, how would I know?”

But Gabriel had already turned toward Mariah.

“Did he harm you, lass?”

Mariah shook her head, clutching the basket with both hands before her. By now she should remember the man’s sheer size and presence, but still she caught herself inching upward, striving to make the most of her own diminutive height before him.

“But who is he. Captain Sparhawk? And these other men, too. Only the Revenge’s crewmen have any right to be on board.”

“Then they belong here and no place else,” declared Gabriel, wiping his shirtsleeve across his brow. In this heat he longed to peel off the shirt and the satin waistcoat over it and work bare chested like the men, but not until after he’d met with this blasted clerk, wherever he was. He looked past the girl, wondering if the man had come with her. She didn’t have any other reason for being here, and her presence was one more irritation in a morning full of them.

“If the logbook below’s to be believed, your father sailed with barely enough men to trim his sails. A vessel this size needs eighty good hands to make a privateer out of her, men for sailing and fighting and taking prizes into port.”

A wild, whooping cheer rose up from the men at the mention of prizes, a cheer that Gabriel silenced with one black look over his shoulder. Best to let them know early on what kind of captain he was. Enthusiasm was one thing. Raving like jackals was quite another, and he was in no mood for jackals, or, for that matter, pretty, rosy-cheeked little girls like this one before him.

“I left word at several taverns that I was looking for men, and these were the best of the lot. Of course the ones that sailed with your father still have a place if they wish it. I’ll be shipping a surgeon, too, Andrew Macauly ofTiverton. Most of them have sailed with me before, but speak up if there’s any you’d like to nay say

“Oh, no, as long as they suit you.” She glanced around the circle of eager faces. So many men to find in so short a time, and the unimaginable luxury of a surgeon, too! Her father had always been among the luckless captains forced to delay voyages until he could muster a crew, and there’d never been enough money to offer the bounties that some captains did. Though she should be pleased, it stung Mariah for her father’s sake to see how readily Captain Sparhawk’s reputation alone could draw more men in a morning than her father had attracted in his whole career.

“Have you any word from your warehouse man?” asked Gabriel.

“It’s halfway to noon, and the fellow’s yet to show his face with your accounts.”

Mariah cleared her throat.

“He won’t be coming because he doesn’t exist. My father kept his own accounts. He said clerks were landlocked cheats and scoundrels, and he didn’t trust them.” “They’re also a mighty useful way to keep other, bigger cheats and scoundrels out of your pockets.” His shoulders worked uneasily beneath the sticky linen. No clerk to impress, but he couldn’t very well strip down before the girl, and his irritation grew. He wished he hadn’t had to strike Duffy. The man had only done what he wanted to do himself, and all of his resentment fell on her doorstep. “So is that what you’ve got in that basket? Your father’s ledgers?”

“Not precisely.” Lord, why had her father made this so hard for her?

“He didn’t have much use for ledgers, either.”

Gabriel stared at her for an endless moment, dumbfounded.

“So your father didn’t believe in clerks or ledgers, and he didn’t keep a crew large enough to keep his sloop afloat. He let his gunnery turn foul from disuse, and he didn’t keep enough dry powder to light his pipe.

There are no stores on board to speak of, leastways not that I could find. This suit of sails is worn thinner than the linen in your shift.

And then, of course, there’s the size of the bills his three ladies have managed to accumulate with every sempstress and bonnet maker in town. “

To Marian the only sound on the deck came from the gulls overhead. She knew to her shame that the entire crew was openly listening. How could she blame them when the flaws of her entire family were being laid out one by one like the dirtiest laundry?

“Captain Sparhawk,” she said, her temper simmering. She wouldn’t give them all the satisfaction of one more scene to add to their gossip. ‘ “Captain Sparhawk, I believe this conversation is better suited to the privacy of the cabin.”

She headed for the companionway, her heels clicking briskly on the holy stoned deck. He lunged after her, covering four of her steps with two of his own.

“Come along. Miss West, let’s see what other secrets your father didn’t take with him to the grave.” Impatiently Gabriel reached out to take the basket from her, but Mariah pulled it away.

“Nay, I’ll share nothing more with you until you apologize for insulting my father!” Bunching her skirts to one side, she started down the narrow steps with the basket looped over her arm.

“Your father!” Gabriel thundered after her.

“Sweet Jesus, woman, I’d warrant that most would say I’m the one who’s been insulted! Not one thing about this whole rotten deal’s been true, and if there was another ship that would suit me, I’d leave now and consider myself a fortunate man!”

Gabriel grabbed for the basket again, and again Mariah managed to jerk it out of his reach. But as she did she lost her balance on the steep, narrow companionway ladder and toppled backward with a shriek to the lower deck. Layers of petticoats broke her fall, but the basket nipped off her arm and upended. All around her drifted the precious bits and scraps of paper with her father’s handwriting, all her careful sorting destroyed.

“Miss West!” In an instant Gabriel was beside her, his brows drawn with concern as he offered his hand to help her to her feet.

“Dear God, how could you do this to me?” Ignoring his assistance, Mariah scrambled to her knees to gather the papers. “How could you?”