Angela Devine - Dark Pirate

‘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.’

‘There were some tins in the kitchen cupboard—’ she began, but he overrode her.

‘I can do better than that. I brought a few supplies ashore from the boat. Do you fancy some fried lemon sole?’

He did not wait for the fire to burn down but cooked the fish in an old frying-pan over the gas ring. Half an hour later, replete with delicious fish and a butterscotch pudding from one of the tins in the kitchen followed by a fresh pot of tea, they were both sitting on the lumpy sofa in front of a roaring blaze in the sitting-room. Rose’s feelings were in turmoil about Greg’s willingness to linger. She had grave suspicions about his motives and she was still smarting from his earlier comments on her cowardice, yet she was sneakingly grateful for his company. At eleven o’clock, when Greg still showed no signs of heading for home, she was just beginning to wonder whether she should raise the subject delicately when a sudden spatter of raindrops hit the window outside.

‘Looks as though we’re in for some dirty weather,’ said Greg, his brows drawing together. ‘It’ll be a chancy business sailing home in this.’

Rose got to her feet and walked across to the window. Outside it was almost dark and a strong wind was be-ginning to moan through the trees in the garden. Another spatter of raindrops hit the glass, bringing with them a rush of cool, scented air. It would certainly be a difficult task to get into the dinghy and row out to the yacht in total darkness. But if Greg was a fisherman, surely he was used to that sort of thing?

‘These be very dangerous coasts,’ he said gravely, as if he had read her thoughts. ‘I don’t mind going now if you want me to, but I reckon there’ll be some powerful bad weather tonight and there’s rocks out there that would tear the bottom out of the boat in the darkness.’ Rose shivered and looked at him uneasily. How would she feel if he really was shipwrecked all because she had sent him out into the darkness after doing a favour for her?

‘I suppose you could stay here,’ she said uncertainly.

‘That’s very kind of you, my love,’ said Greg, a shade too quickly. ‘Very neighbourly. Thanks very much, I’ll be glad to.’

Rose shot him a suspicious look. ‘I hope you don’t think…’ she began. ‘What I mean is…I don’t…’

Greg looked shocked. ‘Of course not,’ he replied in a voice full of injured innocence. ‘I never thought of such a thing.’

Rose retreated to the sitting-room door. ‘Would you like some coffee or something?’ she asked to cover her embarrassment.

‘That’d be nice,’ he agreed. ‘And there’s a packet of chocolate fudge in my knapsack.’

The evening was taking on a decidedly domestic quality, Rose decided a few minutes later as they sat drinking coffee and chewing delicious chocolate fudge. The sofa had proved too uncomfortable to endure any longer and Greg had suggested that they should sit on the sheepskin rug which he had found bundled in one of the cupboards under the stairs and brought into the sitting-room. Lounging back in its tickly warmth with the flames crackling in the fireplace and the rain drumming at the uncurtained window felt remarkably cosy, so why did she have this sense of mounting tension? She darted a swift sideways look at Greg, but he simply smiled blandly at her and took another gulp of his coffee.

‘You said earlier that you were named after the cottage,’ he reminded her. ‘What did you mean?’

‘Exactly that,’ she replied. ‘My mother grew up here, you see, and she was always terribly fond of the place. Her parents died in the bombing of Plymouth when she was only two years old during World War Two, and Aunt Em, who was her mother’s older sister, brought her up. Mum always used to talk about Rose Cottage as if it were heaven and I think calling me Rose was the highest compliment she could possibly pay me.’

Greg nodded thoughtfully. ‘You say she loved this place and yet she went to Australia. Why was that?’ he asked.

Rose sighed. ‘Well, my father was an Australian who was over here on a working holiday. She met him when she was only twenty, fell in love, ran off and married him.’

‘And the marriage wasn’t happy?’ guessed Greg shrewdly.

‘How did you know?’ demanded Rose. ‘Are you clairvoyant or something?’

Greg shook his head, but in the firelight his dark eyes seemed so piercing that she had the uncanny feeling that they could look right into her soul.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But you have a very expressive face and the way you sighed told me a lot. So what happened?’

Rose shrugged. ‘Other women. A drinking problem. She divorced him when I was eight years old.’

‘But she didn’t ever think of coming back to Britain?’

‘No. It was sad really. I think she would have given her eye-teeth to come back, but she’d quarrelled with Aunt Em about it in the first place because Em didn’t approve of my father and Mum didn’t want to admit that she’d been in the wrong. The other thing was that she didn’t want to be a burden to Aunt Em. After all, she had three kids and no real training for a job. Be-sides, Daniel was in high school and didn’t want to move and Jane was eleven and perfectly happy in Australia.’

‘So what did your mother do? How did she support you? Or did your father do that?’

‘No, he didn’t,’ said Rose bitterly. ‘He paid maintenance irregularly for about two years and then vanished. Later we heard that he was working in a mining camp in Western Australia, but I haven’t seen him since I was ten years old and I don’t want to. Mum went out to work as a cleaning lady for other people. So there you are, then, the story of my life.’

‘Not quite,’ replied Greg, rising to his feet to put another log on the fire. It went in with a crash, sending a hissing cloud of orange sparks up the chimney. ‘You haven’t told me much about yourself. What sort of job you had before you came here, what things you enjoy, who you first fell in love with and why.’

‘I’d rather not remember who I first fell in love with and why,’ said Rose in a hard voice. ‘But the rest is easy. My hobbies are reading, gardening and cooking and I have a degree in computer programming. That was my mother’s influence, I suppose. She thought it would be a steady, well-paid job, which it was. But I didn’t realise that it would also be pretty soul-destroying or that I’d come into contact with some quite nasty people.’

There was no mistaking the vehemence in her tone. All the same, Rose was startled when Greg squatted down beside her, took her hands and pulled her to her feet.