She could hear his heartbeat. “I’ll know soon, but if the answer is no, we’ll have all the time in the world now to practice making another.” As a captive, Clare had refused to dream of things that would never be, like giving birth to a child who was free, but if the Ancestors were kind, the dream would be fulfilled. “I love you, Dominic.”
“I love you, too, Clare.”
So they were married that following evening. All the island residents gathered on the torch-lit beach. Inside the circle of rocks, Esteban, the island’s only other true captain, would preside over the proceedings. Gaspar, who was very pleased, stood behind Dominic as his second, while Dot and Sarah, each holding a bouquet of tropical blooms, represented Clare.
As Tait began to play “Ode to Clare” on his violin and the beautiful notes filled the night, a solemn Ben escorted his mother down to the beach to where everyone waited. After leaving her beside Dominic, he took up a position next to Gaspar.
Mimicking Dominic’s teasing words on the evening Gaspar and Suzette were married, Esteban asked Clare, “Are you certain you wish to do this, Clare?”
She turned her smile on Dominic standing beside her in the sputtering torchlight and nodded. “Yes, I am.”
“Then let us begin.” In a clear, strong voice he asked, “Do you, Clare, take Dominic LeVeq to be your spouse and heart’s mate, in fair winds and in storm, in times of plenty and times of want, until the end of your days?”
“I do.”
He turned to Dominic. “Do you, Dominic, take Clare Sullivan to be your spouse and heart’s mate, and treasure her above all others in fair winds and foul, in times of plenty and those of want, until Poseidon takes you home?”
“I do.”
“Then let these words bind your hearts and your lives forever. Kiss your bride, Captain.”
The crowd cheered and Dominic gave Clare her first kiss as his wife.
Afterwards, the happy Dominic told everyone, “We have one more thing to take care of. Would Ben, Dot, and Sarah please step forward.”
The confused trio complied. Clare was confused, too, as she had no idea what he planned to do or to say.
Dominic raised his voice and said, “Let the world know that I, Dominic LeVeq, claim these three children as my own. I pledge my protection and my love to them for as long as I draw breath.”
Clare started to cry.
The children all looked surprised at the public declaration, especially Dot. He then took a moment to give each of them a strong hug, and Clare cried more tears.
When that was done, Tait began sawing away on a lively tune and the drummers joined in. Clare and Dominic and their children stood for a short while to accept the congratulations and well wishes of those in attendance, then everyone trooped back up the hill for the feast and more music and dancing.
After the meal and the celebration began in earnest, Clare saw Esteban talking with Odessa and leaned over and pointed out the two to Dominic. “Do you think they will ever reconcile?”
“Only if he grows up inside.”
“Anna told me Sarah found the missing ring in the grass yesterday. She gave it back to him this morning.”
“Once he figures out one love is better than playing the field, I hope Odessa is still waiting. If not, he may miss out on what I already know.”
“And that is?”
“Only love can make you free.”
“Very well said.”
“I think so, too.”
“Speaking of love…”
He grinned. “We can’t leave until the morning. Too dangerous to try and drive up there in the middle of the night.”
She pouted.
He laughed. “You’ll be screaming soon enough, Mrs. LeVeq.”
So the next morning, after leaving the children in the care of Anna, the newlyweds made the trek up to the waterfall. Once there, they played in the water and made love, again and again and again. And although Clare was very vocal in her responses, no one heard her but the stars in the midnight sky.
Author’s Note
I
hope you enjoyed Captured. It is the third book featuring the House of LeVeq, and could be called a prequel in that it chronicles the founding of the New Orleans clan my readers and I have come to love. To answer the oft posed question as to whether Dominic is the fabled “Old Pirate” mentioned in the other LeVeq books, Through the Storm and Winds of the Storm, he is not. That person is Esteban da Silva, Dominic’s friend and the pilot of the Marie.
The Marie, its captain and crew are loosely based on the famous pirate ship Whydah. Its captain was a White man in his late twenties from the colonial northeast, who went by the name of Samuel Black Sam Bellamy. According to historians, over a third of his crew members were men of color, including fugitive slaves, Native Americans, and free Blacks. In fact, the Whydah was a slave ship when Bellamy first attacked it and claimed it as his own. When he targeted other slavers he often offered the captive Africans on board the opportunity to join his crew. In April 1717, the Whydah went down in a violent storm off the coast of Cape Cod. Of the 146 crewmen on board, including an eleven-year-old boy, only two survived, a Welshman named Thomas Davis, who was subsequently tried for piracy, acquitted, and released, and John Julian, a half-blood Native American, also tried for piracy, but found guilty and sold into slavery—some reports say, back into slavery.
Although the career of Bellamy and his crew lasted only a year, they succeeded in taking down 53 ships, and all that plunder was inside the Whydah’s hold when it sank off Cape Cod. For over two hundred years the exact resting place of the wreck and its legendary treasure was searched for but never found, until 1984, when treasure hunter Barry Clifford located the ship’s remains on the ocean floor, near Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Since the discovery, he and his team of divers have recovered over 100,00 items, including the bell, assorted cannons, an ornate pistol, gold coins, and the leg bone of the eleven-year-old sailor mentioned earlier. As I write this, some of the artifacts are touring the country in an exhibit sponsored by National Geographic titled: Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah—From Slave Ship to Pirate Ship. You can read more about this fascinating exhibit, tour dates, and locations via the National Geographic website. Make sure you check it out when it comes to a city near you.
I’ve been wanting to do a story set during the American Revolution for some time because very little is known about the contributions made by people of African descent to the fight that freed the colonies from the crown. An estimated five thousand men of color fought on the side of the rebels. According to historian Benjamin Quarles, Negro soldiers served in the minutemen companies of Massachusetts in the early weeks of the war, in state militia of Northern colonies, and in Continental forces. At Yorktown, Baron Von Closen, an aide to General Rochambeau noted that three-quarters of the Rhode Island regiment consisted of Negroes, and when they passed in review, the men were the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in their maneuvers. Recently, in Savannah, Georgia, a monument was erected in honor of the Haitians who fought on the side of the Americans, so the next time you are in that historic city, please seek it out.
In writing Captured, I barely scratched the surface of this “lost” piece of American history, but it is my intent to do more books set in this period, in the near future. To help you get a head start on the research, here are some of the sources I used to tell the story of Dominic and Clare.
Bolster, W. Jeffrey. Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. New York: Random House, 1995.
Lanning, Michael Lee. African Americans in the Revolutionary War. New York: Citadel Press, 2005.
Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961.
Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade. The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1
440–1870. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Webster, Donovan. “Pirates of the Whydah.” National Geographic Magazine. V. 195, no. 5. May 1999.
In closing, I’d like to thank my readers for their continued support. It’s been fifteen years since the publication of my first historical, Night Song. I loved you then and I love you even more now. Be blessed and keep reading.
B.
About the Author
BEVERLY JENKINS has received numerous awards, including three Waldenbooks Best Sellers Awards, two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times magazine, and a Golden Pen Award from the Black Writer’s Guild. In 1999, Ms. Jenkins was voted one of the Top Fifty Favorite African-American Writers of the Twentieth Century by AABLC, the nation’s largest online African-American book club. To read more about Beverly, visit her website at www.beverlyjenkins.net.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Romances by Beverly Jenkins
CAPTURED
JEWEL
WILD SWEET LOVE
WINDS OF THE STORM
SOMETHING LIKE LOVE
A CHANCE AT LOVE
BEFORE THE DAWN
ALWAYS AND FOREVER
TAMING OF JESSE ROSE
THROUGH THE STORM
TOPAZ
INDIGO
VIVID
NIGHT SONG
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CAPTURED. Copyright © 2009 by Beverly Jenkins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition August 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-197631-5
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Beverly Jenkins, Captured
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