But Catherine was looking at the chart. As much love had gone into it as she put into her portraits; she knew that, and she looked up at Cavendish, her eyes shining with pleasure to recognize something in him that was akin to her, and yet so different, so much like him.
"It's wonderful," she said, quite inadequately, but her expressive face told him plainly that she had quite enough imagination to know
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what those charts meant, and what they meant to him personally.
"I knew you'd like it," he said, low.
David interrupted. He had been busily unrolling an oblong piece of fine leather. On it was painted the picture of a garden in flower.
"Look, señora," he said, vainly trying to hold it straight. He let go one end, and it rolled up.
Catherine caught the end of it. "It's very lovely," she said, trying to look sideways at the leather. "You hold it, please, Captain," she said.
Cavendish obediently took hold of the leather, and Catherine stepped back to get a good view.
"It is lovely," she repeated. "I've never seen anything like it."
"May I let go now?" Cavendish asked. He was impatient, and he glanced at David. "Put it away now, David," he said.
"Aye, aye, sir," David said jauntily. He rolled it up neatly and stowed it in the storeroom. The storeroom door stood open wide, and Catherine was looking into it with unconcealed interest. She said, "Are those bells gold?"
David, whose back was turned, muttered from the small space, "They are, señora."
But Catherine looked at Cavendish. "They were church bells," she said.
"They were," was the even answer. This time it was Cavendish who had answered.
Catherine, who felt intense anger, wanted desperately to ask why he had stolen them, and at the same time knew she was not surprised that he had. "What is in that box?" she asked.
David held a heavy box in his hands, to replace it where it belonged. He straightened up, box in hand. The lid flew up.
"Look at it," he said. "You'll never see the like again."
Catherine gasped. There was a fortune of jewels within, jumbled together carelessly, the collar of pearls only partly concealing the size of an emerald lying beneath. Slowly Catherine put out her hand; she pushed aside the pearls to see a clustered necklace of rubies. The emerald gleamed wickedly.
"Madre de Dios," she said, shaking her head and turning to look at Cavendish.
He was not looking at her. He was angry, and he was angry with David; his face was set, as if he were trying to decide what to say, and David was waiting grimly for him to say it. The emerald winked in the light, and Catherine closed her fingers over it. It was smooth;
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it fitted in her palm, and with sudden fierce desire to have it she withdrew her hand from the box with the emerald clutched tightly. She flipped the lid of the box closed.
"You'd better put it away," she said.
David shoved it back in the storeroom with his foot, negligently. He closed the storeroom door. Cavendish's voice cut through the cabin.
"Leave us, David."
Catherine's eyes widened. The emerald was hot in her palm-along with her handkerchief. She sent an appealing look at David.
David answered the look. "Why, Tom," he said lightly, "must I part from the señora?"
Cavendish had taken two steps to the door.
"Leave us," he said.
David's dark eyes blazed with anger, and Catherine suddenly felt fear. But David was controlling his anger.
"I'll desert you this time, señora," he said, as if he were warning her that the next time he would not; that there was coming a time when he would act.
"We'll not talk long," Catherine said. He could not have known she had taken the emerald; he must have sensed that she didn't want to be left alone with Cavendish.
Then David closed the door. Catherine forgot David completely. Cavendish stood in front of her, and she looked straight ahead at the wide shoulders. His voice was amused.
'What did you steal, señora?" he asked.
"I?" she said, catching her lower lip with her white teeth.
"You," he said.
She raised her eyes to his face.
"You steal church bells!"
For only a second he hesitated. Then his reply came. "Only if they are of gold."
He reached out his hand and his fingers fastened over her wrist. He lifted her hand; a bit of lace and linen escaped the clenched fingers.
Slowly her fingers relaxed. Cavendish picked the emerald up. "There is a chain for it," he said.
Catherine said breathlessly, "Do you wish to know why I took it?" She spoke rapidly in Spanish, slipping into her own tongue, forgetting English.
"Y por que?" he asked.
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"Because I desired it passionately," she said, "and because it gave me pleasure to take it from you!"
"Neither is a reason for theft," he said.
Defensively she said, "You steal. Why shouldn't I?"
"Señora, since we are speaking frankly, I desire you passionately and it would give me pleasure to take you."
"That is different! I am not inanimate!" In the heat of this argument she spoke first, and then she flushed a little.
Cavendish was frowning, studying her; he knew she wouldn't take the emerald if he offered it to her, but he was going to try it anyway when she said, looking up at him with her green eyes, "I am sorry, Captain. You think ill of me, and you are right."
"I don't think ill of you!"
"I value what your Captain Havers and Master Pretty think of me," she said, in a very low voice. "So I should stay here with you no longer."
Cavendish dropped the emerald on the table, and opened the door. "We talked only four minutes," he said. He hurried her along; they emerged on the deck where the musicians were playing.
"Will you dance?" Cavendish said.
She nodded wordlessly.
They were playing a French dance that had become popular long ago. Cavendish put his arm around her; they moved easily through the intricate but slow steps; the pressure of his fingers on her waist told her when to move away from him, and when to come back.
They danced in silence. When the music stopped, and when the men struck a gay jig tune, Cavendish said, "I can't dance to that, señora."
They moved over to the rail. De Ersola joined them, out of the light, standing on one side of Catherine, with Cavendish on the other side. The two men began to talk.
Catherine was silent. She listened. Gradually she relaxed; between the two of them, she felt safe and secure. She listened, saying almost nothing, taking pleasure from their quick sentences and the just as quick smiles.
"I have a good friend who met you two and a half years ago, Captain," de Ersola said.
Cavendish grinned.
De Ersola went on, answering the smile, "I believe you held him for ransom aboard the ship Tiger? Señor Costella?"
"One thousand pounds in gold he paid me," Cavendish said.
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"He gave me trouble, sir. Off the Azores, we fished him out of the water—stark naked, swimming for shore."
De Ersola laughed. "I thought you added two hundred pounds more for that."
"I think I did," Cavendish said. "I had nothing but trouble with him, sir, and he beggared my officers at dice."
De Ersola kept on chuckling. "You must have had quite a company aboard the Tiger."
"Jesu, I did," Cavendish said. "And twenty Spanish hostages. It was summer, señor, and you should have seen Costella strolling the deck, usually almost naked and smoking his pipe."
"He comes from an extremely wealthy family," de Ersola said. "He has his own command now."