Lovesong Read online

  From The World's Favorite Author of Daring Romance

  * * *

  Valerie Sherwood

  * * *

  Reckless passion, Stormswept Love

  and Thrilling Adventure

  Lovesong

  * * *

  Outside, the Trade Winds Rustled the Palms Seductively. . . .Fitful shadows raced across the moon. The night air from the Caribbean was filled with magic.

  It was then that Kells strode in.

  Carolina had heard his step in the hall and tensed, expecting his knock. But she was unprepared for the sudden way her door burst open. She was caught standing there clad only in her thin chemise—more than sufficient for the heat—before her dressing table. She had been about to comb out her long fair hair, but as the door opened she whirled and dropped the fan with which she had been cooling her damp skin.

  “Get out!” she cried, outraged. “Can’t you see I’m not dressed?”

  “Indeed I can see that.” Kells’s raking gaze passed over her, but he made no move to go. . . .

  * * *

  Books by Valerie Sherwood

  Lovesong

  Available from POCKET BOOKS

  Coming Soon

  Windsong (May 1986)

  Nightsong (December 1986)

  Most Pocket Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums or fund raising. Special books or book excerpts can also be created to fit specific needs.

  For details write the office of the Vice President of Special Markets. Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas. New York. New York 10020.

  VALERIE SHERWOOD

  * * *

  LOVESONG

  PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS NEW YORK

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Another Original publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

  Copyright © 1985 by Valerie Sherwood

  Cover artwork copyright © 1985 Elaine Duillo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-49837-1

  First Pocket Books printing September, 1985

  10 987654321

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  WARNING

  Readers are hereby warned not to use any of the cosmetics, unusual foods, medications or other treatments referred to herein without first consulting and securing the approval of a medical doctor. These items are included only to enhance the authentic seventeenth century atmosphere and are in no way recommended for use by anyone.

  DEDICATION

  To the memory of wonderful Fuzzy, our beautiful long-haired English tabby, who came into our lives walking across a stone footbridge at mother’s antebellum home “Sunset View” and chose to stay, unforgettable Fuzzy making his leisurely descent down our grand staircase at Dragon’s Lair, plumed tail waving—or his hopping ascent up those same wide stone stairs because his wide-pawed furry legs were too short to walk up conveniently! Fuzzy the philosopher, the wonderful traveling companion, Fuzzy, who could be sound asleep beside us in the car after a journey of hundreds of miles and yet would always wake up and stretch two blocks from home! To charming Fuzzy, content in town house or brick-walled garden, but perhaps happiest on the wide lawns of Thorn Hill near Charles Town, Fuzzy the gallant who fought back death so bravely, to dear unforgettable Fuzzy, loved companion of other days, this book is affectionately dedicated.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although this story of reckless Carolina Lightfoot of Virginia’s celebrated Eastern Shore and her stormy love affair with her buccaneer lover—and indeed all the characters and events in this novel save those noted here—are entirely of my own invention, I have tried to give an accurate picture of the times in which young Mistress Lightfoot lived—the glorious and exciting 1600’s.

  However, certain delightful incidents are indeed based on fact:

  Matelotage—taking a wife “sailor fashion”—really was a custom among the buccaneers.

  The Marriage Trees on the border between Virginia and Maryland really did exist—and lovestruck runaway couples dashed for that border and the parsons who waited beneath the branches just as in a later century in Scotland runaway lovers would dash for Gretna Green.

  And the remarkable scene where Fielding Lightfoot and his headstrong wife Letty clash so violently during a carriage ride, according to Eastern Shore tradition actually happened—but it was that “gallant whip,” the fourth John Custis of the great house called Arlington, who drove the carriage (his son was the first husband of Martha Dandridge, who later married George Washington) and it was his own wife Frances who gave such a famous rejoinder to his astonishing statement. Their quarrels—like those of the Fielding and Letitia of my story—were legendary and well documented in court records (they were said to pass long periods without speaking except through the butler and when at last they did speak, it was to revile each other). Indeed he had mention of it engraved upon his tombstone!

  For the first home of the stormy Lightfoot clan I have therefore, with suitable adjustments for my story, chosen historic Arlington’s setting on Old Plantation Creek and renamed it Fairview.

  Beautiful Level Green, the “new” home Fielding Lightfoot builds for his family, will at once be recognized by those who love old Tidewater houses as famous Rosewell, home of the Pages, the largest (and perhaps the finest) house in Virginia in that early day. Many years later young Thomas Jefferson, a frequent guest at Rosewell, is said to have penned a draft of the Declaration of Independence in one of its turret rooms.

  The name of neighboring Fairfield, later to be rechristened Carter’s Creek, I have left intact along with its setting. It was the home of the Burwells, and both it and Rosewell furnished governors and lieutenant governors to Virginia. The two families, Page and Burwell, intermarried. Indeed a Burwell daughter by the name of Rebecca refused the hand of young Thomas Jefferson and nearly broke his heart.

  Although both Rosewell and Fairfield may have been built slightly later than the period of my story (Rosewell is said to have been begun in 1725 and Fairfield’s date is disputed; it may have been built as early as the 1650’s or as late as 1692), they admirably fit my story. But I chose them for another reason as well—in honor of my first cousin, Page Nelson Welton, whom I hold in affection. For Page is a lineal descendant of these Pages and these Burwells—as well as the Nelsons of Nelson House in Yorktown.

  In the same manner, I could not resist whimsically renaming Rosewell to Level Green in honor of that other lovely Level Green in Hardy County (then in Northern Virginia), the home of my maternal great grandfather, Dr. Jacob Kinney Chambers, where my grandmother, a reigning belle of the Old Confederacy, was given in marriage to my grandfather, Joseph Daniel Heiskell, a gallant officer who had reluctantly surrendered his sword at Appomatox (and whose people in Hampshire County in the aftermath of the war were said to be the first to erect a monument to the Confederacy). It was from that same Level Green that grandmother rode with him to Texas.

  Rosegill, where my heroine schemes her escape, also is authentic. It was built in 1650. As with Fairfield, it is peopled in my novel with the original owners, in this case Ralph Wormeley, in whose famous library my heroine and her sister discuss the disadvantages of being a reigning belle.

&n
bsp; Although I was not able to discover the actual publication dates of those much maligned “trashy” novels so dear to the hearts of Colonial wives and daughters, The Nunnery of Coquettes, Wife to Be Let, and Harriot, or the Innocent Adulteress were all very early and were extremely popular—despite the sighs of Colonial gentlemen who felt their womenfolk would be better occupied in perusing The Compleat Housewife.

  Readers might be interested to know that Virginia’s doll, Nan White, over which Carolina agonizes, is a faithful representation of Letitia Penn II, a doll that has been called “the oldest and most famous doll in America.” Letitia Penn II was purchased by William Penn and named for Penn’s daughter Letitia, who had selected the doll as a gift for a child in Philadelphia. Together, twenty-inch-tall Letitia and her famous purchaser in 1699 crossed the seas in the good ship Canterbury—and when last I heard of her she was residing in Montgomery County, Maryland.

  And that dainty little seven-inch doll with the bisque hands and feet and composition head and black painted coiffure that Aunt Pet gives Carolina is a true replica of what has been labeled the “oldest known doll in Virginia.” With her kidskin body still dressed in its original pantalets and delicate gauze gown, now yellowed with age, she was, when last I heard, in residence at Little Berkeley, in Hampton, Virginia. Though it is of somewhat later vintage, I thought this tiny doll reminiscent enough of the times to be appropriate to my story.

  I would note in reference to the famous couplets chanted by generations of English schoolchildren, which begin with the “oranges and lemons” peal of St. Clement’s, that both St. Clement Danes and St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, are quite ancient-—they long pre dated Carolina’s time—but that St. Martin’s and possibly some of the others mentioned are of slightly late vintage. Still, I have included them because they are so beguiling.

  As for Carolina’s buccaneer lover, let me say that England holds the West Indies today by courtesy of the buccaneers, who paid for it in blood in the long war with Spain over who had the right to sail the Western Seas, the right to colonize the Americas. Rightfully these men should have been called privateers, for privateers they were—many licensed by their governments, many others unlicensed but approved. They were callously used for political expediency, hanged without mercy to placate Spanish might—but they were redoubtable men, these renegades from many lands.

  And it is of an English buccaneer and his fiery lady that I write. Let it be known that wherever I was able to find historical fact about the buccaneers, I have hewed to the line (and much is known of the articles they signed before “ventures,” of their generosity in providing fallen comrades with what amounted to a forerunner of today’s Social Security system, and of their gallantry toward women—including the ladies of their enemy Spain). Where history seems lacking, I have perforce embroidered events with my imagination.

  In my view, these much maligned buccaneers who held their strongholds of Tortuga and Port Royal at such cost are not to be confused with pirates who attacked any weaker vessel afloat. These men, without any real official backing and no government guns to aid them, took on the greatest foreign power of their day—Spain—and backed her to the wall. I think they are to be revered.

  Perhaps I can sum up in verse my feeling for the buccaneers:

  Where the sunken treasures lie, where golden

  galleons came to die,

  Mid coral reef and whited dune, a gull’s cry echoes

  to the moon,

  And who can say that in its light they do not now still

  sail the night?

  Let us toast them all once more as we reckon

  up the score

  And ferret out their faults and list their sins.

  Did they never count the cost, those who

  fought—and often lost?

  Did they balance off their losses with their wins?

  Do we honor them too much, all those English,

  French and Dutch

  Wild fellows who took on the power of Spain?

  No, I say that we do not, and here now and on

  the spot

  Let these firebrands and their ladies live again!

  Valerie Sherwood

  Table of Contents

  LOVESONG WARNING

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  THE ISLAND OF TORTUGA

  BOOK I The American Beauty and the English Lord

  PART ONE

  The Colonial Minx

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  PART TWO

  The Winning Wench

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART THREE

  The Betrayal

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  BOOK II The Belle of Yorktown

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  BOOK III The Beauty and the Buccaneer

  PART ONE

  Christabel

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  PART TWO

  Kells

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  PART THREE

  The Silver Wench

  Chapter 30

  PART FOUR

  The Scarlet Wench

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  THE ISLAND OF TORTUGA

  Summer 1688

  Entice him, tease him with your lips,

  Your sultry sidewise glances,

  But if you drive a man too far

  You then must take your chances!

  Fitful shadows raced across the moon. The night air from the Caribbean was filled with magic. The lean buccaneer took a step toward her.

  “Kells,” she warned him, “go back.”

  He paused and the moonlight that poured through her bedroom window in a pale golden shower struck full upon his face, etching the hard lines and the steady narrow gray eyes. He cut a handsome figure, tall and dark, with his white shirt with its flowing sleeves open to the waist, cutlass hanging carelessly from his belt and slapping against his lean thighs in their dark trousers. But his saturnine countenance, deeply tanned from the tropic sun, did nothing to reassure her.

  “And why should I be left out?” he demanded insolently. “Why should I not share you too? Since you promise yourself so recklessly to others?”

  For a moment she forgot that she was standing there clad only in a thin chemise and gave him a bewildered look. “What are you talking about? I have promised nothing.”

  “What of your dealings with O’Rourke and Skull? They have tossed coins for you!”

  Her color heightened at the way he said that and she answered with heat. “They tossed coins only to decide which one would take me where I wish to go. Since you will not!” she added bitterly.

  He had taken another step toward her now and she retreated warily across the stone floor. His face was again in darkness but she could see the gleam of his strong white teeth, flashing in a smile that held no mirth.

  “Kells, you cannot blame me!” she cried in sudden panic at the looming anger she saw in his face. “They promised to take me wherever I wished to go.”

  “Promised to take you. ...” he murmured. “And you believed them?”

  Her heart was hammering harder in her chest. Not only his commanding presence but something dangerous in his tone frightened her.

  �
�Should I not?” she asked stiffly:

  “You agreed to accept matelotage from them!” he exploded. “Don’t you know what that means?”

  In truth she did not, but she would not have admitted it for worlds. “Of course I know.” She tossed her fair head and the moonlight struck it into a cascade of spun white gold that poured down upon the rounded gleam of her shoulders. “It is—oh, some Spanish word that means ‘to share metal’ or some such. I had promised them gold—”

  “Whose gold?” he cut in.

  “Why—why, Doña Hernanda’s, of course!”

  His expression grew incredulous.

  “She may not have it, but she can get it!” She had hastily retreated behind a big carved chair at his advance and now her lovely face stared back at him indignantly from over the chair’s tall back. “And since they had both offered, they felt entitled to share the gold—to share the metal, I suppose,” she added lamely. She was wishing with all her heart that when O’Rourke had mentioned the word “matelot” on the quay that she had asked him what it meant instead of so blithely assuming its meaning.

  “Share metal. . .’’he murmured and for a moment she thought his expression was bemused. “Matelotage is a French word, Christabel, not a Spanish one,” he informed her grimly. “Matelotage is an old custom among the buccaneers, who have long suffered from a shortage of desirable women. It means to take a wife ‘sailor fashion.’ Two buccaneers toss a coin as to which one will marry the wench, and the loser goes through with the ceremony.”

  It rang now in her head, Skull’s snorting laugh, “Ye've lost!” and O’Rourke’s triumphant, “No, damme, I've won!” as he pocketed the coin he’d tossed—and all the while his hot green gaze had roved over her lissome body in the low-cut red silk dress she’d worn down to the quay.