xx. Kingston, Jamaica

Laura woke to trails of fire blazing down the side of her face as gentle fingers examined the bruises there.

She tried to shift away but only managed to rock her head to one side and set bells ringing in her ears. His voice came to her, soothing as a lullaby, Laura Patrick, what did they do to you?

"Oh. It's you." She felt then the wavelets licking at her fingertips, the numbing clasp of night-cool water around her thighs. "You better shove off, your Highness; I haven't the strength to drag you out if the low tide catches you this time." It hurt to speak – it was agony to speak – but if she stopped talking she'd stop living.

Who did this to you?

"Couple of mast-hugging cockswains who thought I'd be easy – ha." Her laugh was more of a cough and she tasted blood. "Showed them, didn't I?"

His fingers whispered over her hair then down her arm and dove into the waves. He plucked something from the water and placed it to her lips.

Take, eat.

Her eyes burned with frustration and humiliation. "I can't chew it; my teeth are loose."

He fed it to her, as a mother bird does its chick, and she felt small eddies of strength spiral through her body.

"We were square and you've gone and tipped the scales again. Why'd you have to do that? I don't like being in debt."

I still want you. I want your pretty, beating heart. It is so cold in the deep water.

A number of implications to those words made themselves known to the fuzzy nether-hither-something regions of her brain and she answered as cagily as she could, "Not much I can do about that; 'fraid I don't know where my heart is at the present moment."

That is careless of you.

"Aye, but that's the way I was made and the leopard does not change his spots. I threw it at the feet of a boy and neither one of us had a care to pick it up again so who knows where it might be now."

Even though you saved his life.

"Yes. Well. There were extenuating circumstances that made matters a wee mite more complicated than that."

I will give you ten years to find it.

"What does that entail, pray tell?"

You have ten years to find your heart and become my wife, or not and die for a body cannot live without a heart. And I will give you ten years of my life because I do not like these, his fingers alighted once again on her face, and the pain wasn't as intense but still had Laura considering the merits of throwing up, on what is mine.

"And what if I don't like the sound of death or living for the rest of forever in the bosom of the ocean?"

Your boy might have kept your heart to treasure.

She hacked another laugh to death in her throat. "Well and I'm sure there must be many new and interesting sights to be seen at the bottom of the deep blue sea and I might make myself a good life there. I will agree to your terms; we have an accord, your Highness . . . and that'll never do. You need a name if you're to be staying."

What is this place called?

It took a moment to remember. "Kingston."

Then that shall be my name.

Laura snorted. "More typical that wet in water but I s'pose it'll keep you from undue attention."

-.-.-

xxi. The Voice from the Shore

So, Laura Patrick, he sang. Where is your heart?


Aye, the plot thickens very much upon us. Did I say two parts to go? Now we've two parts to go.