The Golden Cross (43 page)

“Keep kicking, Aidan,” he shouted, glancing over his shoulder. “Don’t quit!”

Following his glance, she looked toward the shore, then let out a tiny whine of mounting dread. A dozen natives had turned over a canoe and were steering it into the waves while at least two dozen others ran down the beach. Aidan had been so intent upon kicking that she hadn’t heard anything above the crash of the water and her own frantic breaths. Now the air filled with warbling war cries. Her heart leaped to her throat, and when she looked back again, she saw the man who had claimed her as his own riding at the front of the advancing canoe. The cut on his chest gleamed red in the early morning sunlight.

“Don’t look, kick!” Sterling commanded. Gulping down her fear, Aidan commanded her legs to work harder than they ever had in her life.

Ahoy,
Heemskerk!
” Sterling called, churning the water with his kick. “Man overboard!” His pulse quickened at the steadily increasing whoops of the natives, and through the roaring din he breathed two words: “God, help!” Summoning a deep breath, he called again:
“Heemskerk!
Captain Tasman! Ahoy!”

A score of tanned faces appeared at the ship’s railing, then a long arm pointed down toward them. The lookout’s voice seemed to rise an octave as he sounded the alarm. “Captain! It’s the doctor and the boy! And the savages in full chase, sir!”

Sterling felt Aidan shift beside him and knew she was looking over his shoulder at the approaching enemy.
God, don’t bring us this far and fail us now
.

Sterling felt a hot surge of joy when a bundle of netting appeared at the railing and fell, unfurling over the side and smacking the water with a solidly reassuring sound. He guided their makeshift raft toward the rope ladder, then kicked with the last reserves of his energy.

“Here,” he said, reaching out for the netting as they drew near. “Aidan, let go of the plank. Take the rope.”

She stopped kicking and sagged in relief against the planks as momentum carried them forward. Sterling thrust out his hand, bringing them to a halt half an instant before Aidan’s head would have bumped into the ship.

“Come on, ketelbinkie,” he said, speaking in as reasonable a tone as he could manage. “Let go of the boards. Here is the rigging, we have only to climb up.”

But Aidan’s fingers remained splayed over the edges of the first plank. “I—I can’t.”

“Come, love.” Hooking his right arm through the rope ladder, Sterling slipped his left arm around her shoulders, then
tenderly pried her rigid fingers from the board. “We’re almost home.”

Alerted by the noise, the men of the
Zeehaen
lined her deck, adding to the confusion and noise with shouting and threats of their own. Sterling silently urged Aidan to respond, knowing that soon Tasman might unleash the cannons.

Finger by finger, Aidan relaxed, then allowed him to guide her to the rope ladder. Oblivious to the cries and shouts from the
Zeehaen
and the railing above, Sterling braced his weight on the lower rungs of netting and concentrated on her movements. She had just shifted her weight to the rigging when a strong hand reached out from the murky depths and nearly pulled Sterling from his perch.

Shock jolted through him as he whirled and looked down into the sea. The huge warrior was treading water there, one hand stretched toward the rope webbing, his dark eyes intent upon Aidan. She screamed, but couldn’t seem to move.

As Sterling tensed for battle, the warrior touched the wound on his chest, then pointed to Aidan, a proprietary gleam in his eye. No one needed to interpret the unintelligible words spilling from his lips. Clearly he consider the lady his property.

“No, she’s not yours!” Sterling swung his body over Aidan’s to shield her from the savage. Mimicking the man’s gesture, he touched his own chest, then wound his hand in Aidan’s hair, tilted her head back and kissed her full on the lips.

An appreciative chorus of
oohs
and
ahhs
rose from the canoe and the Dutch ships alike. Though Sterling couldn’t see what was happening behind his back, he knew his actions would leave no room for misunderstanding. Let the world see and know that the woman Aidan O’Connor had his heart, and if any man would fight him for her, Sterling was willing.

A youthful voice broke the silence and echoed across the water.
“Sakerloot!
Captain, come quick! The doctor’s kissing the ketelbinkie—and she’s a
girl!”

Aidan did not fully understand everything that transpired in that moment. She only knew that when her life stood in dire jeopardy, Sterling’s body wrapped around her like a shield and his lips claimed hers. Suddenly nothing else mattered. She knew she was safe. Protected. And cherished.

She leaned back against the security of his strong frame, feeling the rise of the netting as her weight pulled it away from the ship. Sterling had broken off the kiss, but her face still gravitated toward his, like a flower seeking the sun. Her eyes flew open in time to see Sterling lift his fist and brandish it toward the warrior. A musket thundered from the deck, a warning shot that cracked the prow of the canoe, and the warrior in the water slipped away like a cur when someone throws a stone at it. The other warriors, daunted by the
Heemskerk’s
size and the unknown power of the musket, sat motionless in their boats, unwilling to fight.

“Quickly, darling, before he changes his mind,” Sterling murmured. In a surge of adrenaline she climbed the rope, cheered on by shouts of applause, astonishment, and approval from her shipmates.

From the deck of the
Zeehaen
, Witt Dekker stared at the drama unfolding aboard the
Heemskerk
… then managed a choking laugh at the thought of his own stupidity. He had been as blind as the others, but now all the pieces fell into place.

Clearly, Dempsey Jasper’s missing guttersnipe had given Sweet Kate the golden dress, and in exchange the harlot had provided the trickster with breeches and a sailor’s shirt and cap. And the boy’s fragile features—where had he seen them before? At the tavern, surely, if the girl and Kate were friends. Something about the ketelbinkie’s nose reminded him of Lady Lili, but that coppery hair could belong to no one but Irish Annie.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, marveling at the simple genius of the girl’s plan. Who had envisioned such a masquerade?
And why had she followed the old man on this dangerous voyage? Unless she was more intuitive than Dempsey Jasper believed, she could not know that Van Dyck’s son-in-law had put her in danger.

So if the girl wasn’t hiding from Dempsey Jasper, she had to be bent on performing her harlot’s trade at sea. The supposedly noble and honorable Van Dyck was apparently so enamored of this vixen that he had planned to keep his little hussy by his side throughout the entire expedition!

Witt felt a slow smile of admiration creep across his face. The old man had not looked like a lecher, but the cloak of gentility could cover all sorts of dark and unexpected sins.
This
one would surprise even Dempsey Jasper.

Dekker lifted his spyglass and saw the girl moving through the crowd of men on the upper deck, the doctor at her side. Of course. Now that her rich patron was dead, the flaming-haired harlot had thrown herself into the arms of the next man to cross her path. Sterling Thorne.

“Well, Dr. Thorne,” Dekker whispered, lowering the spyglass, “I hope you’re prepared to guard your little titmouse. For she will not return to Batavia.”

Dekker followed her movements until that coppery head disappeared inside a cabin. He had been hired to kill an old man and a girl called Aidan. Now half his work was already done. He could snuff out the wench’s life whenever he chose, and in the meantime, he might find the game … interesting. She was a mouse, alert and skittish, and she had every reason to be. She did not know that the cat had already sighted his quarry.

Dekker smiled as he turned toward his cabin. A sea journey of some months was a long time to pass without a woman’s company. At least now he knew where he could find a very pleasing one at a moment’s notice.

T
he ends of Abel Tasman’s moustache were bristling with indignation when Sterling and Aidan walked into his cabin. They’d been aboard half an hour, scarcely enough time to change into dry clothes and quench their raging thirsts, but immediately after commanding the ships to make sail and head out on a northeasterly course, the captain convened a meeting of the officers’ committee.

Sterling stiffened as he recognized the tribunal-like quality of the assembly before him: Visscher and Holman of the
Heemskerk
, Janszoon and Dekker of the
Zeehaen
. Heer Van Dyck, who often sat in on officers’ meetings in his role as cartographer, was unfortunately gone forever, and the old man’s beneficent presence would be sorely missed.

This
should
have been a meeting to assess the events of what Tasman had aptly named Assassin’s Bay, but the captain’s eyes conveyed little but the dark fury within him. Sterling knew Abel Tasman was less concerned with his doctor’s safe return than with his daughter’s open humiliation.

“Would you care,
Doctor,”
Tasman said now, rapping his knuckles firmly on the table before him, “to explain the events of the last twenty-four hours? We sent you ashore with six men, and you have returned with one woman—a wench with whom you actively engage in an indecent public expression of the basest carnality.”

“Hold now, Captain,” Holman interrupted, his own eyes frank and admiring as he looked at Aidan. “I’d hardly call one kiss an indecent expression of carnality.”

“This man—” Tasman’s finger shook as he pointed at Sterling. “—is betrothed to my sweet daughter, who waits for him in Batavia.”

“I beg your pardon, Captain.” Sterling lifted his chin and met Tasman’s furious gaze. “If you will allow me to speak freely, I would have you know that your daughter was less than pleased with our betrothal. I found her delightful, perfectly pleasing, but before we sailed, she told me that though she would marry me in order to please you, her heart belonged to another.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I had thought perhaps God might soften her heart toward me during our voyage. But as we left it, sir, she does not hold me in any special regard. She loves someone else—”