Dark Pirate

But Greg was sorrowfully shaking his head.

‘I’m sorry, my love,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t think I can do that. A simple fisherman like me doesn’t carry much money on him.’ He reached into his back pocket, drew out a shabby wallet and looked at the three one-pound coins that lay forlornly in it. ‘I’ll tell you what, though. I could sail you home. How about that, now? I’ll drop you off all right and tight in the cove at Pisky Bay.’

Rose hesitated, torn between delight and apprehension. To sail home through the sunset and catch her first glimpse of her cottage from out in those dazzling, sapphire seas! It would be perfect, absolutely perfect…And yet was it wise to trust herself to Greg Trelawney? Not that he was likely to abduct her, but there were other kinds of danger that could be more subtly threatening. Like the danger of contracting an absurd, adolescent crush on a man who was quite likely to see her day in and day out in such a small community. She didn’t want the pain or the humiliation of that. Really, it would be more sensible to refuse. Sensible! something inside her shrieked in outrage. Where has being sensible ever got you? You were being sensible waiting for Martin to propose, weren’t you? Well? In that instant Rose flung caution to the winds and decided to live dangerously.

‘Thank you,’ she said firmly before she could change her mind. ‘That would be wonderful. But are you sure it’s not too much trouble?’

‘No trouble at all, my dear. There be my boat just down there, see? Lying at anchor on the mooring.’

Rose followed his pointing finger down to the spot where a stately old ketch, with a black hull and red sails furled along its boom, lay tranquilly bobbing next to a pink buoy. By now the tide was turning and the water rippled as green as glass around the graceful vessel, making it shift and move as if it longed to be off.

‘Come on,’ ordered Greg. ‘We’ll just go down to the phone at the pub and report your belongings missing. Then we’ll be off.’

Ten minutes later their mission was accomplished and they stood outside on the whitewashed steps in front of the Smuggler’s Rest.

‘What about your luggage?’ asked Greg, struck by a sudden difficulty.

‘I sent it on ahead on this morning’s bus,’ replied Rose. ‘One of Aunt Em’s old neighbours has been keeping an eye on the cottage and she promised to take delivery of it for me. Oh, there’s one other thing, though. I must call into the clothes shop and tell the woman I can’t take that sweater and skirt after all.’

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Greg. ‘I’ll take care of it. I have to go round to the far side of the stream in any case to get my dinghy. Now, you walk down to the stone pier over there and wait for me. I’ll bring the ketch to the foot of that iron ladder and pick you up. Can’t say fairer than that!’

Rose firmly dismissed her last lingering doubts. ‘All right, thank you,’ she agreed.

Twenty minutes later they were heading out to sea with the sails flaring bright red in the slanting gold light of the sun. There was no sound but the slap of water against the hull, the singing of the wind in the rigging and the occasional noisy squabbling of a flock of seagulls. Rose found the slow dip and rise of the vessel immensely soothing and she heaved a deep sigh of pleasure. A brief smile flickered over Greg’s face but he said nothing, apparently content to enjoy the scene around them without any need for words. He was standing at the yacht’s wheel, his long, muscular legs braced apart and his sensitive fingers handling its blunt wooden spokes as tenderly as if they were alive. With his eyes narrowed against the blaze of the sinking sun and his hair blown into wild disorder by the wind, he looked like some primitive, timeless sailor, totally in harmony with the rugged coastline that had produced him. An aching, primeval need stabbed through Rose’s entire body at the sight of him standing there so virile, so confident, so untamed. I could really fall for him in a big way, she thought and then gave a soft gasp of dismay at her own unruly in- stincts. Living dangerously was one thing; going right off her trolley was quite another.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

‘Yes, fine, thank you,’ she agreed, grateful that he could not read her thoughts. Yet perhaps he could, for his eyes narrowed even further and he looked at her with that strange, assessing warmth that she had found so disconcerting on the cliff-top. Once again a tingling current of raw physical attraction seemed to pass be-tween them.

‘Why don’t you come and take a turn at the wheel?’ invited Greg, and his baritone voice was so husky, so caressing that the invitation seemed vaguely indecent.

Rose opened her mouth to refuse and then paused. She was being foolish, incredibly foolish. All this belief in nameless, animal passions lurking just below the surface might be only a product of her own fevered imagination. Greg would probably think she was crazy if she started acting like some skittish, wild creature and refusing a perfectly harmless invitation.

‘All right, thanks,’ she agreed, forcing herself to rise and clamber nervously across the sloping deck to join him. ‘What do I do?’

‘Just put your hands here on the wheel at ten to two. Then take a look straight down the centre of the ship and line up the prow with that headland over there. If she begins to fall away, turn the wheel a little to bring her back on course. Yes, that’s fine.’

As he had spoken he had positioned himself behind her, putting his arms around her and gripping her hands so that he could guide them. Harmless invitation! thought Rose despairingly. I didn’t know he was going to do that! Her senses reeled at his overpowering nearness and her heart begun to beat in a frantic, suffocating rhythm. She was intensely conscious of his towering height, the power of the whipcord muscles in those strong tanned arms that were wrapped around her, the salty masculine smell that came off in waves from his warm body. For one insane moment she wondered what he would do if she suddenly leaned back against him. The mere thought made her go rigid with panic.

‘I think you can let go now,’ she said in a stifled voice.

Greg released her, but he continued to stand just behind her so that she found it difficult to keep her attention on handling the boat. Almost before she realised it, the bow began to stray out towards the open sea and Greg had to move forward to correct their course.

‘I’ll just help you out as we go down the channel between this rocky island up ahead and the mainland,’ he explained. ‘It looks as though there’s plenty of space, but in fact there are some sharp reefs below the surface here. No, there’s no need for you to move. All you have to do is let yourself go and trust me.’

But Rose had already wriggled free of his grip and was retreating to the safety of her seat in the stern. ‘You’d better do it,’ she said shakily. ‘I’m afraid of running into disaster.’

A soft chuckle escaped him, but he did not argue with her. Rose looked out at the island looming ahead of them and tried to distract herself from Greg by examining every feature of it. It was nothing but a craggy outcrop of rock covered with bright emerald grass at the top and plummeting to wicked-looking rocky shores below. Sea-gulls whirled and shrieked above it and a mass of scudding clouds like shredded lace sent shadows chasing over its vivid green grass. Greg shaded his eyes and looked out at the restlessly heaving sea ablaze with light from the sinking sun.

‘Not far to go now,’ he announced in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Come by here and look. You see over there to starboard? That’s Pisky Bay, just around the headland.’

The land began to come closer and closer and soon Rose could see a half-moon of sandy beach framed at each end by jagged cliffs. Emerald-green water rushed past her, then suddenly they were in the bay itself with the details of the land growing larger and sharper with every passing minute. Rose could not suppress a little cry of excitement as she saw a dusty road winding between hawthorn hedges, cows grazing placidly in a green field and three or four widely scattered cottages barely visible among the trees that surrounded them.

‘Oh, I can hardly wait!’ she exclaimed. ‘Somehow I feel exactly as if I’m coming home!’

‘Well, it won’t be long now,’ said Greg. ‘I’ll just take down the sails, drop anchor and I’ll have you ashore in no time.’

He was as good as his word. A moment later the huge red mainsail came flapping down and was lashed securely around the boom, to be followed at once by the other two smaller sails. Then Greg hurried up to the bow of the yacht and there was a loud, grinding rattle as he let out the anchor chain. Then he came back along the narrow, polished deck of the yacht with the lithe tread of a hunting cat. Pausing with one hand on the entrance to the hatchway, he glanced back at Rose, his eyes narrowing in a way that made her heart beat faster.

‘Are you planning to offer me a cup of tea when we get ashore?’ he asked.

That was more than Rose had bargained for. Her whole body tensed in a useless impulse to retreat. ‘I very much doubt it, I’m afraid. I have no idea of what I’m going to find once I get inside the cottage. And I haven’t any tea.’

‘In that case, I think I’ll bring my own,’ announced Greg, calmly disposing of her objections. ‘And a few basic supplies to see you through the night.’

Before she could protest, he swung himself down into the cabin and reappeared a couple of minutes later with a knobbly looking old khaki rucksack slung over one shoulder. ‘Now, let’s get you into the dinghy and we’ll go ashore,’ he said.

It was rather unnerving to scramble down into a heaving dinghy in a straight skirt, but with Greg’s as-sistance Rose managed it somehow. Instructing her to sit down in the stern, he fitted the rowlocks into their holes and shipped the oars. Then he untied the painter and, crouching low, took his place in the centre seat facing her. With a deft movement he unshipped the oars and began to row. His powerful arms sent the tiny craft skimming effortlessly across the water, but as they neared the band of white foam where the waves were breaking on the beach, a fresh difficulty presented itself to Rose.

‘How do we get ashore?’ she asked, glancing uneasily down at her best navy leather shoes. ‘Do we just jump into the waves and walk?’

‘I do,’ agreed Greg with an unholy glint in his eyes. ‘You jump into my arms and let me carry you. And no arguments, my dear.’

Rose opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again. Obviously it was the only sensible thing to do. All the same, she wasn’t looking forward to it one bit, or, if she was, she didn’t intend to admit it even to herself. There was a sudden, exhilarating surge and they found themselves carried forward on the crest of a wave to ground on the soft sand amid a seething rush of foam. Greg jumped out, wearing his knee-high rubber fisherman’s boots, reached into the bow of the dinghy for a small anchor which he dug into the sand, then turned to Rose with a look of sly anticipation on his face.

‘Come on, then,’ he ordered as he held out his arms to her. ‘What are you waiting for?’ With as much dignity as she could muster, Rose crept gingerly towards him, then suddenly felt herself swept off her feet and into his arms. In spite of her resolution to remain calm, her body stiffened at his touch and she looked up at him with a flash of alarm. There was still amusement and warmth in his eyes, but there was also something else, a look of hungry, primitive desire that made her blood pause and then throb hotly and violently through her veins. For a moment their eyes met in wordless understanding and she could feel the tumultuous thudding of his heart be-neath the thin fabric of his shirt, then he muttered something unintelligible under his breath and began to stride fiercely towards the beach.

A moment later Rose was on her feet on the white sand, although she felt oddly unsteady on her legs. Glancing back, she saw that Greg had returned to the water’s edge and was hauling the dinghy up on the sand, out of the reach of waves. She could see the lines of strain in his body as he half carried, half dragged it across the sand, and could not suppress a twinge of admiration at his strength. Then she gritted her teeth in annoyance. She must stop behaving like some ridiculous teenager! It was absurd, undignified. Deliberately turning her back on Greg, she swung round to face the emerald-green landscape that rose in front of her, so much more vividly green than anything she had ever seen in Australia. She was still gazing at it, drinking in its unfamiliar beauty, when Greg appeared beside her and put one arm casually around her shoulders.

‘That’s your aunt Em’s cottage up there on the right,’ he said, pointing to a gabled roof barely visible above a hawthorn hedge about two hundred yards away. ‘Your new home, Rose.’

A shiver went through her as much at the pressure of his fingers on her shoulder as at the words he had spoken. Her new home, yes. But would she find happiness here?

CHAPTER TWO

FIVE minutes later Rose stood outside the front gate of the cottage and took a long breath of pure delight.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she demanded.

Greg’s eyebrows rose sceptically as he took a long, hard look at the gabled roof, which was encrusted with yellow lichen and had several of its slate tiles missing, at the peeling pink paint on the walls, at a broken pane of glass in one of the front windows, at the weathered grey wooden outhouses that leaned drunkenly away from the sea breezes.

‘I don’t know,’ he said in a troubled voice. ‘It looks as if it needs a fair bit of work done on it to me.’

‘Oh, men!’ retorted Rose scathingly, and pushed open the gate, which promptly broke loose from one of its hinges and dangled askew.

Greg gave an explosive chuckle which he hastily turned into a cough when she glared at him. Rose tossed her head defiantly. All right, maybe the cottage did need a bit of work, but she wasn’t afraid of getting busy with a scrubbing brush and some paint. And nothing could spoil the perfection of the garden even if it did look wild and unkempt. On the sunny side of the garden a variety of shrub roses rioted in colourful profusion, filling the air with their sweet perfume, while in a shady nook between the house and the hawthorn hedge a sea of vivid blue hydrangeas tossed in the breeze. A candy-pink clematis had run riot over the outhouses and was now trying vigorously to climb the drainpipe at the side of the house, while purple buddleia bushes near the front gate provided a haven for swarms of butterflies. Every other available nook and cranny was filled with summer annuals, poppies and columbines and striped petunias. What did it matter if the lawn was now knee-high and rank with weeds, or if the paving on the path was chipped and overgrown with dandelions? These things could all be fixed by someone with plenty of energy and a good set of gardening tools. Yet even Rose’s optimistic spirit sank a little when she saw how the guttering was sagging over the front porch and the steps were broken and leaning to one side. Wouldn’t repairs like that be expensive?

‘Look, the cottage is named after you,’ joked Greg, pointing to the sign over the door. ‘Rose Cottage, 1742.’

‘Actually, it’s the other way round,’ Rose corrected him. ‘I’m named after the cottage. But don’t let’s hang about. I can’t wait to see inside.’

Unfortunately, when she inserted her key into the front door, she found that it would not budge. She looked helplessly at Greg.

‘The wood is probably swollen from the rain,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Or else your aunt Em didn’t use the front door much. I could force it open for you, but why don’t we try the back door first?’

The back door was more co-operative but the results were hardly encouraging. When it finally creaked open they found themselves in a dim back porch with a strong smell of rising damp and the sound of a tap dripping persistently somewhere near by. As Rose’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she saw that the wallpaper was stained and discoloured and that some of the floor-boards were rotting beneath their feet. The first, faint misgivings began to stir inside her. All the same, she wasn’t prepared to give up without a fight.

‘Let’s take a look at the rest of the house,’ she said bracingly. ‘I’m sure it’ll be much better.’

It wasn’t. If anything, it was worse. The discovery of her suitcases in the front bedroom and a few basic food items with a friendly note from her neighbour cheered her up briefly, but her enthusiasm was soon quenched as she explored further. All the four downstairs rooms were spacious and charmingly old-fashioned with carved wooden fireplaces and small paned windows, but there were patches of damp on the walls and the only floor covering was a faded pink carpet square in the front bedroom. Most of the furniture was old and shabby without being antique, and the only indoor plumbing appeared to be a tap in the kitchen sink and a claw-footed bath with rusty legs. The upstairs rooms were no better. The stairs themselves had handsome barley-twist newels, but the treads were narrow and worn almost paper-thin in the centre and, judging by the thick layer of dust that covered everything on the first floor, it was probably years since Aunt Em had ever climbed up them. The attics were in the saddest condition of all, crammed full of boxes of old junk and with a couple of big holes in the plaster where rain had come in through missing tiles on the roof. By now, Rose’s initial euphoria had completely vanished and she could not help heaving a deep sigh as she followed Greg back down the precarious staircase. As they reached the bottom he turned back and raised his eyebrows at the sight of her woebegone face.

‘I think it’s time we had that cup of tea,’ he said.

Trying to prepare the cup of tea was the final straw for Rose, since the kitchen seemed to be circa 1742 just like the rest of the house. The only cooking equipment was a malevolent-looking rusty black wood stove set into the fireplace and an array of smoke-blackened old teapots and frying-pans. All very well if you wanted to be picturesque, but not much use if you were hungry and thirsty! And the cold tap that was still trickling dis- mally had left a trail of rusty stains on the enamel sink. Rose sat down at the scrubbed pine table, buried her head in her hands and groaned.

‘It’s hopeless,’ she said despairingly. ‘I’ll never be able to get it all repaired.’

‘Don’t talk so foolish,’ urged Greg. He grabbed one of the old kitchen chairs and sat astride it, facing the wrong way with his chin resting on his folded arms and a stern look in his eyes. ‘You’re not going to give up at the first minor difficulty, are you? You don’t have the look of a coward, my dear.’

A hot surge of rage flooded through Rose’s entire body at this criticism. A moment before she had felt like bursting into tears. Now she felt like hitting Greg, which was a definite improvement, but still rather startling. She had always thought she was a peace-loving person.

‘Minor difficulty?’ she snorted, gesturing at the chaos around them. ‘I wouldn’t call this mess exactly minor.’

Greg shrugged dismissively and his jaw set in an obstinate line. ‘It all looks structurally sound to me and there b’ain’t much wrong with it that fifteen thousand pounds or so wouldn’t fix.’

Rose gave a gasp of bitter laughter. ‘Fifteen thousand pounds! You just don’t understand! I haven’t got nearly that much money to spare. There was a small legacy that came with the house, but nothing like that amount. Oh, Greg! I’ve come all this way just for an impractical dream. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to afford to stay here.’

Greg’s dark eyes took on a keen, brooding expression as if he was giving the problem his full attention.

‘You could take out a bank loan,’ he suggested. ‘All you have to do is decide you want this cottage badly enough and you’ll find a way of keeping it.’

‘No bank manager in his right mind would lend money to me now,’ retorted Rose coldly. ‘I’m officially unemployed.’

‘Well, don’t give up too soon. Let’s make a cup of tea.’

‘How?’ demanded Rose. ‘There isn’t even any way of boiling water, as far as I can see, unless we fire up that wood stove.’

‘Yes, there is,’ said Greg. ‘There’s a gas ring over in that far corner.’

Rose was too disheartened to do anything at first, but when Greg produced coffee, teabags, tinned milk and a box of matches from his knapsack, she roused herself sufficiently to go and find some cups in the old wooden dresser against the wall. Once she had a steaming mug of hot, sweet tea and a digestive biscuit inside her, she found that she felt much better, but all their discussion produced no useful solutions. When they had washed the cups under the dripping tap, Greg moved purpose-fully towards the door.

‘Are you leaving now?’ asked Rose, her heart sinking. Greg’s glib certainty that she could find a way of restoring the cottage infuriated her. And yet she knew with a sudden twinge of dismay that she did not want him to go.

‘Not unless you want me to. I thought I’d try and find some gardening tools out in the shed and cut back a bit of that creeper over the sitting-room window. This place would look much more cheerful with a bit of sunlight in it.’

‘There’s no need—’ began Rose, but he had already gone.

She caught him up in one of the dilapidated old sheds, busily engaged in dusting cobwebs off some rusty garden tools. He handed her a pair of threadbare gloves and an old set of clippers.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to work.’

Rose looked at her watch and was surprised to find that it was now after nine o’clock, but although the sun had set, a pure apple-green twilight still lingered around the hills so that it was perfectly possible to go on working. Back home in tropical Brisbane it would have been dark by six o’clock even in the summer. As they worked it began to grow cooler. An occasional quite strong gust of wind came in from the sea. Rose took out her disappointment about the cottage and her antagonism towards Greg on the Virginia creeper and hacked viciously at the encroaching strands. At last, when the sitting-room window was quite clear and there was a large pile of green creeper clippings underneath it, Greg called a halt. Another sharp gust of wind blew in from the sea and Rose shivered involuntarily.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked. ‘I can light a fire, if you like.’

Rose gave him a shamefaced smile.

‘It’s just my thin, tropical blood,’ she explained. ‘I’m not used to a place where it gets cool in the evenings.’

‘Well, I’ll just get the fire going for you before I go,’ he offered.

She followed him back towards the woodpile that was stacked neatly at the rear of the house. A sudden unwelcome thought flashed through her mind.

‘Don’t you have a wife or a girlfriend you have to get back to?’ she asked.

He picked up an axe and began to split some kindling, producing half a dozen neat, dry sticks before he answered. Then he wiped the sweat off the back of his forehead with his hand.

‘No,’ he replied in a mocking voice. ‘I’m a completely unloved man.’

I find that hard to believe, thought Rose as she followed him inside. With those devastating good looks, the sensual, throaty voice and his aura of lazy, animal magnetism, Greg must have women swarming around him all the time. With a sudden miserable sense of self-doubt, she wondered why he was wasting time on her when she was so unmistakably ordinary. She was startled when he suddenly stretched out his hand to her.

‘Matches,’ he ordered.

She blushed in sudden comprehension as she saw the neat pile of kindling and crumpled newspaper which he had arranged in the fireplace. Hurrying into the kitchen, she retrieved the box of matches and Greg soon had a bright orange blaze crackling in the fireplace.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked abruptly. ‘I’m starving.’