Unlike so many women, she was fearless in the little boat, hopping back and forth from one side to the other until he finally had to tell her to sit still or risk capsizing them. Not that he’d put any damper on her eagerness; still she leaned over the side to point out landmarks to him or jumped to her feet to help him set the sail on another tack. She’d looped the sides of her skirts up through her pockets so they didn’t flap in the wind, and she didn’t particularly seem to care that the makeshift style offered him frequent views of her charmingly plump knees as she clambered about the boat.
They’d been fortunate in their weather, too, after two days of storms that had closed the port. But this was a cloudless day that made the water so translucent and smooth that the little boat flew like the wind itself. The bright, lush green of the tropical trees and plants flowed down the hills almost to the water, and today even the misty clouds that always hung about the crest of Montagne Pelée, the tall, barren mountain that dominated Martinique’s skyline, were a light pink haze.
“So if the anse in Anse Couleuvre stands for cove, what’s the couleuvre?” he asked as she came to sit beside him. He had yet to kiss her, and he wondered what she’d do if he leaned across the tiller right now. Strange to think that he’d known her less than a fortnight. It seemed more like a lifetime. “Covered? Colorful?”
“Non, non, Josh! It means snake, of course!” She laughed merrily and clapped her hands so that he didn’t mind in the slightest that she’d corrected him. “Snake Cove. For the fer de lance.”
Josh sighed pitifully. “I’m afraid I don’t know that one, either, sweetheart.”
“Oh, but you would if one bit you!” Ceci’s eyes widened dramatically beneath the yellow-striped scarf she’d used to tie back her hair. “The fer de lance is a most evil snake—as long as your arm, mon cher!—who lies in the forest and waits to pounce on poor travelers, who die within hours from its bite if the panseur does not arrive in time to cut away the poison. And only on this island, only on Martinique. These snakes are to be found nowhere else.”
She cupped her fingers like the head of a snake with her thumb as the jaw as she moved them together. “Snap, snap, snap, and goodbye to you, my poor Josh!”
“Well, pleasant sailing and goodbye to you, too, Ceci,” he said, laughing. “I do believe I’ll keep to the beach.”
“That is wisest, true,” said Ceci, letting her snake become demurely clasped hands in her lap once again. “Though I would be surprised if this Jean Meunier will be any more gracious to us than the fer de lance himself. Papa had to give three kegs of rum to Claude Boulanger simply to learn where the man keeps himself, but if any man on Martinique can help you find your sister, it is he.”
“Jean Meunier,” repeated Josh carefully, practicing the name. Thanks to Ceci, his French was much improved, but still he didn’t want to take chances with mangling the man’s name. Too much depended on it.
“Oui, c’est bon.” She leaned back against the stern to trail her fingers in the wake. “But I suppose since you are English, you could call him by his English name, too—John Miller.”
Josh looked at her sharply. “How can he be English? The man sailed with Deveaux during two wars against the English. How could he fight against his own countrymen?”
“I’m only telling you what I know, mon cher, not why it is. Papa says Deveaux chose his men for their wickedness and greed, not for their loyalties. They fought for him, and for gold.”
Josh thought of his own father and suspected the same could have been said of Gabriel’s crews during the same wars. Why, he wondered, had this John Miller decided to sail for one captain and his flag over another? Though his father had told him a few more of his privateering stories on the voyage south, Josh sensed that Gabriel wanted to keep the past as firmly behind him as he could, and that having Christian Deveaux so tangled in Jerusa’s disappearance had made it doubly painful to him. Did her kidnappers know that about him, as well?
Ceci was the first to spot the red-roofed house, and Josh pulled their boat up onto the black sand beach beside another boat that must belong to Miller. The place hardly had the look of a pirate’s stronghold. In addition to the cheerful red roof tiles, a vine with crimson flowers had been trained to grow over the wall in front of the house, and someone had carefully outlined the walk of black sand with white shells.
But as soon as Ceci began up the path, a single musket’s blast rang out across the water. Josh grabbed her, shielding her with his body as he pulled her to the ground, while scores of parrots and other birds raced shrieking into the sky from the gunshot.
“What are you doing, Josh?” Ceci demanded indignantly as she wriggled free. “What will this man think, to see you treat me like this on his walk?”
She tried to stand and Josh jerked her back down, pulling her along with him behind the trunk of a short, fat palm.
“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” he said. “Some fool just emptied his musket at us, and I’d rather not give him another chance to improve his aim.”
“C’est ridicule!” she huffed. “This man has had word that we would come.”
Josh sighed with exasperation. “I’d say he has.”
“You are being too foolish.” Before he could stop her she darted forward to stand squarely in the path, her arms folded defiantly across her chest and her yellow scarf bobbing with impatience.
“Monsieur Meunier!” she called. “I am Mademoiselle Cecilie Noire, and I have come with my friend to speak with you. Do not dare to fire at us again, or I shall tell everything to your friend Claude Boulanger!”
“As if Boulanger would give a shake about what I do!” Miller had come out onto his porch, the musket still in his hands. Cowering behind him was a very young black woman with her apron pressed to her mouth in fear and two small mulatto children shrinking behind her skirts. “Who’s the man what came with you, Miss Cecilie?”
From the man’s voice Josh guessed he was not only English but from New England, as well, and he wondered again how he’d come to serve under Deveaux. But English or not, Miller kept the musket raised to his eye, and obscuring his face, and with a prayer that his next step wouldn’t be his last, Joshua stepped from behind the palm’s shelter to stand beside Ceci.
“I’m Captain Joshua Sparhawk of the sloop Tiger, Newport, Rhode Island,” he called, “and I’ve come here to ask for your help.”
“Damn your eyes!” the man shouted back. “Why the hell would the son of Gabriel Sparhawk need help from me?”
“If you know my father, then you know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need it.” He’d also know better than to keep a Sparhawk waiting, thought Joshua as his temper simmered. “But I’m not going to say another blasted word until you put down that gun and stop roaring at us like some penny-poor bosun’s mate!”
With an oath, Miller set the butt of the musket down on the porch with a thump. “Then come aboard, Cap’n, and we’ll talk.”
Ten minutes later they were seated in reed chairs on the porch as Cyrillia, Miller’s wife, served them mabiyage, white rum mixed with root beer. Josh’s guess had been right: Miller had been born on the Kennebec River some sixty years before, and patiently Josh first answered all his questions about politics in Boston and Portsmouth before he finally told him why he and Ceci had come.
“Took your sister, did they?” said Miller, shaking his head. He was nearly bald,