Prologue
Falmouth, Trelawny Jamaica
1789
The blazing orange sun cast its rays over the deserted patch of beach along the coast of Falmouth. Undulating palms swayed with the stirring of balmy air, hiding the pair who ran and played in the sand from the world. Beyond the overgrowth of forest lay the oppressiveness of life as they knew it; but here, they were alone and happy. The world was theirs, and they were free.
Arabella Baines giggled as she ducked under the arm stretched toward her, giving a coy smile to the man chasing her along the shore. On dry land, mounds of muslin and silk lay strewn in patches of snowy white and powder blue. Her sister would turn her nose up and huff at the sight of Arabella wearing only her shift, stays, and a single petticoat, her feet bare and sand-speckled, curls falling loose of their coiffure. The man romping along the sand with her was similarly underdressed, his coat, waistcoat, stock, shoes, and stockings abandoned.
Upon returning home, she would turn herself back into the perfect picture of a lady. Out here, however, she was not the daughter of one of the island’s largest plantation owners. Away from the eyes of others, she was an ocean goddess, a bird free to fly where she pleased, a feather blown on the wind.
Stumbling over a mound of sand, Arabella pitched forward but was caught up by a pair of hands at her waist. She fell against a firm male body, his warmth seeping through her clothes and exacerbating the humidity of the air.
“Caught you,” he rumbled in her ear before sweeping her off her feet.
Arabella’s squeals and laughs echoed over the water as he turned and tumbled them onto the sand, rolling to lay atop her. His bulk blotted out the sun, its rays framing him like a halo as he loomed over her, chest heaving with heavy breath and a wide smile lighting up his face.
Andrew Reeves was the most beautiful man she had ever lain eyes on. Tall and broad in the chest and shoulders, he was sturdily built from years of manual labor. The afternoon light glinted off brown skin baked to deep umber by the sun. He reminded her of a lion sunning itself on the sand, all golden skin and eyes, and a wide, plush mouth. His damp hair had been brushed into soft waves and clubbed into a queue when they first arrived on the beach, but now rebelled into a form more akin to lamb’s wool.
Biting her lip, she gazed up at him, caressing his stubble-roughened jaw with one hand. “What are you going to do with me?”
Long, dark lashes lowered over his eyes, and he dipped his head to capture her mouth with a groan. His kiss was fiery, desperate with longing and need. Arabella answered him with equal ardor, her skin flushing hot and the tips of her breasts going to stiff points as he pressed her into the sand. Bending her knee, she allowed his hips to fall into the cradle of her pelvis, whimpering at the feel of the hard organ between his legs. Andrew’s fingers tangled in her hair as he stroked her tongue with his, deep sounds of desire emanating from his throat.
The kiss ended as abruptly as it had begun when he tore his lips from hers with a ragged sigh.
“Drew?”
Dropping his head against her shoulder, he took a slow, measured breath before replying. “Bella, we can’t. We’ve waited this long … what’s another year or so?”
He rolled, landing at her side with a sigh. The sound was heavy with the frustration. To hear him say it might be another year before they could wed made her heart sink.
“Will it take so long? Surely, Father—”
“Has refused me for the third time,” he interjected with a grimace. “If I cannot meet his approval, we’ll simply have to wait for you to come of age. I just need a little more time.”
Turning on her side to face him, she rested a hand on Drew’s chest, stroking bare skin through the opening left by his loosened buttons, the coarse rasp of dark hairs tickling her fingertips.
“Of course I will wait, as long as it takes. There is nothing more I want than to be your wife.”
It was their hope to be allowed to wed once Drew had earned the funds to purchase shares in his uncle’s shipping company. With the security of owning part of a business, he would be ready to approach her father with an offer of marriage. He had refused Drew three times now, insisting he would not give his daughter over to a landless, penniless carpenter’s apprentice no matter how much he claimed to love her. So, Drew had made it his mission to change his circumstances.
“Your father is right to want a secure future for you,” he insisted.
“My dowry is more than enough to provide such a future. He’s simply being unreasonable.”
Drew chuckled, the sun creating prisms of gold in his hazel eyes. “It isn’t unreasonable. He wants to keep the fortune hunters at bay by ensuring the man who weds you has something to offer. It is no more than I would want for my own daughter, if I had one.”
“Someday you will have daughters of your own, and sons too,” she vowed. “I will give you as many of them as you like.”
He laid his hand over hers, pressing it tighter against his chest. Its cadence was steady and sure as he held her gaze, using his other hand to stroke her cheek and leaving behind a streak of sand.
“You deserve the best of everything life has to offer, my Bella. I intend to give you the world.”
“You are my world.”
He was on her again, lips seeking, hands roaming to the flesh constricted and pushed up by her stays. The usual flux of desire flared between them, and Arabella arched into him, silently begging for his hands on her, for what small pleasures they could share without the benefit of marriage. Drew had been adamant about saving the most irrevocable of intimacies until after they had wed. Though, he made that vow before knowing how long they would have to wait.
Neither of them had counted on her father’s continued resistance because Drew was incapable of offering her the life she was accustomed to. It didn’t matter to Archibald Abbot that she loved Drew, and had since girlhood. He didn’t care that as the half-caste daughter of a slave, her options for marriage were slim enough as it was. Her father insisted that having been bred as any other highborn lady in Falmouth, she could do better than a carpenter’s apprentice. He had introduced her to several men of means, the sons of his friends and business contacts, but Arabella had shunned them all. She was determined to hold out until Archibald either relented, or she grew to her majority and no longer needed his permission to wed. She refused to consider a future in which she didn’t become Mrs. Arabella Reeves.
The hours passed them by in a haze of slow, drugging kisses and heated caresses. As the sun began to dip toward the horizon, Drew and Arabella had no choice but to rinse their hands and feet as best they could, then help one another dress. Their stolen moments were fewer and farther between these days. Drew was much in demand as a carpenter, the plethora of ships coming and going from port requiring parts for repairs and barrels for storage.
They trekked through the wild overgrowth of jungle toward Greenhill Plantation, hands joined and comfortable silence stretching between them. Arabella’s skin still tingled from the aftermath of Drew’s attentions, her nipples tight and heat lingering between her legs. How she longed for the day they no longer needed to run off and hide to be together, when Drew would come home to her at the end of each day. She squeezed his hand with a happy sigh, and he glanced down at her, mouth cocking in a half-smile as if he shared her thoughts.