"Around here?" She looked, half-expecting to see lava flowing through the greenery.

"Oh, aye. The Caribbean is full of them; most every one of these islands is some kind of a volcano, either now or before. These springs abound. I thought you might appreciate the chance at a hot bath." He grinned, his eyes sparkling with anticipation.

"I'd love it."

"Have a care. Go in here and you'll be boiled to the bone." He put out a warning arm, as if she was going to jump in that very moment. He pointed to a waterfall at one end. Barely waist high, it gurgled over a multi-tiered tumble of the rocks. "Go in over there. The falls cool it a bit; you'll be able to linger."

"Oh, Nathan!" Cate threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. Her cheeks burning with embarrassment, she stepped away. "Thank you," she said considerably subdued.

"No worries," he mumbled, waving a dismissive hand. "God knows why anyone would want a hot bath in this foundering heat, but..."

Nathan shifted on his feet and cleared his throat. "There's a fair stand of fern over there, if you'd wish a bit o' privacy. I'll be...I'll just be over there."

Nathan moved to a respectable distance. Turning his back, he folded his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels, while whistling a nondescript tune. She undressed behind the indicated ferns and slipped into the water.

The water at the hotter end had been clear, but the water tumbling over the falls was tinged brownish-green, making the depth of the ledges deceptive. She crept in, lurching in unexpected shallows and stumbling in surprising depths, until her toes sunk into the sandy bottom. A champagne-like effervescence of tiny bubbles boiled up, giving off minute bursts of sulfur as they broke the surface.

She dived to the bottom and hung like a trout on a hot summer's day, and then pushed up, surfacing with an explosion of air.

"Oh, Nathan, this is heavenly."

"I imagined you'd fancy it," he called from amid the greenery.

"Why don't you come in?"

He chuckled. "Can't pass up the prospect of cleaning the whole world, can you?"

"One must have their dreams," Cate mused. Leaning her head back, she swished her hair from side to side, the heat brushing her temples. "C'mon. It's wonderful."

"No...I think not."

"C'mon," she urged, treading water. "I'll stay here, and you can come in over there. It's plenty deep; no one will see anything."

"You'll look." Now he was being coquettish.

"I had five brothers and was married; I've seen everything and far too many times over."

"I'm shy." Nathan's path could be tracked by glimpses of his headscarf through the leaves as he made his way around to the far side.

"Oh, come now. Modesty from a pirate? How many women have you undressed in front of, Captain? What's one more?"

His mutterings and flashes of movement revealed he was shedding his clothes. "Turn 'round."

"Oh, very well." She sighed and did so, closing her eyes for good measure. "I had no idea you were such a prude."

A splash marked his entry into the pool, a sputter when he broke the surface. Not wishing to injure his pride, she kept her eyes closed while she blissfully floated, shivering with delight as the heat swirled through her joints. Over the years-and yes, it had been years-of dreaming of a hot bath, it had involved visions of endless luxuriant soaking.

Tired but unwilling to leave, Cate found a place where she could sit on the rocks and still be immersed to her neck. Modesty was never her burden, but feeling her breasts bob, she was relieved to see her hair fanned out enough to cover her. In the discolored water, the rest of her body was but an amorphous blur.

A surge of water against her calves was a precursor of Nathan's arrival. His head broke the surface sleek as a seal at her knee.

"How is it?" He beamed with boyish anxiousness.

"It's heavenly. The water feels like it's alive." The small stirrings of bubbles had felt like tickling little fingers.

"Aye, that would be the spirit of the spring." He swiped the dripping water from his face. His lean arms braced on the rocky ledge, his braids coiled like water snakes around his shoulders.

"The natives say the bubbles are the breath of the gods of the underworld. Bloody rotten breath, I'd say." He cast a disdainful glare toward the sulfur-laden corner. "Anyway, they believe it's the breath of life."

"How can the gods of death give you life?"

"Trifles, darling," Nathan declared with a flick of his fingers. The bells in his mustache sparked in the sunlight. "Don't argue with the powers, luv, just bide and reap the benefits."

"I hadn't realized how much I missed hot water. Come to think on it, I can't remember the last time I had a hot bath."

"'Tis yours for as long as you desire." He pushed off from the ledge. The tattoos at his neck and chest were distorted by the wavelets as he tread. He gestured with his head toward the path they had taken. "Mind, I'd rather not navigate yon hill in the dark, but the day is yours, luv."

Arching sideways, Nathan dove out of sight in a flash of brown breeches. Perched on her rock, she visually followed his image as he cavorted like an otter, his bells twinkling in the bands of sunlight. He shot off to a corner, and then curved back. Spouting to the surface, he swam several passes before submerging again. He circled the bottom and rose once more at her knee.

Nathan grinned, droplets of water diamond-like in the ebony of his lashes and mustache. "I believe I've seen never you smile so grand."

"It doesn't require that much."

"Not that much, but rare difficult. You deserve all the fineries what could ever be bestowed."

"I've been fairly happy since I've been on the Morganse," Cate said in all earnestness.

Nathan beamed at that, and then sobered. "'Twould be better if we could dispense with that fairly bit."

"A feast fit for a queen, a romantic fire on the beach, coffee in bed, and now a hot bath; you're going to spoil me."

His eyes held hers, as deep and luminous as the pool itself. "One can only hope."

Nathan pushed back and disappeared to the depths. Arms sweeping at his sides, he swept off around the rocks. A slosh of water marked his exit.

Reluctant to leave the blissful heat, Cate slipped off the rock and sank to the bottom, spiraling up only when the need for air required. The heat, however, began to take its toll, her limbs going loose-jointed and heavy.

"C'mon, luv!" Nathan stood on shore, his voice muffled by the quilt held before him. Peering over the top, he shook it in offering. "Let's get you wrapped up before the meat is boiled off."

Cate rose from the pool and her legs buckled. Nathan adroitly caught her in the quilt as she crumpled. Bracing her up, he guided her to a sun-dappled spot amid the ferns and moss. Lowering her in the patch-worked envelope, he knelt in the greenery next to her.

"I'm as wobbly as a new colt," she giggled.

"Stay wrapped or you'll take a chill. Give yourself a few minutes," he said, chafing her legs between his hands. "Get the blood going again and you'll do."

Jelly-limbed and flushed with heat, Cate lay as Nathan fetched her clothing and spread them on the grass nearby. From the haversack, he produced a stoneware bottle, cold roasted meat wrapped in leaves, and discs of flat, unleavened bread from the Griselle's cook fires. His shirttail haphazardly stuffed into his waistband, he sat cross-legged before her blue-and-yellow cocoon and fed her bits of meat and bread.

With Nathan's arms resting on his legs, Cate noticed there were tattoos encircling his ankles. Their pattern was identical to the woad-colored ones at his wrists and neck, a complicated chain-like interweaving, very reminiscent of Highland designs.

"Where were you born, Nathan?"

He jerked at the unexpected question, but answered amiably. "Dover."

"England?"

A vague nod was his answer.

"Pryce said you were conceived in a tempest and born in a maelstrom."

Nathan grinned crookedly, the asymmetrical bells in his mustache drawing nearly level, as he did whenever he was self-conscious. "Good story, isn't it?"

"And the real story?"

He gave her an amber and cinnamon look as he considered how much to tell.

"Mum was Black Celt, but born in England; some said she had the way of the Ancient Ones about her, as did her mother before her. Her father was a merchant; imports from the Indies and thereabouts. When she was seventeen, he took her on a purchasing trip to see the world. She met me father then."

"He was a pirate?"

"No." Nathan was amused by the thought. He popped a piece of meat in his mouth, licking the juices from between his fingers. "A seaman, though. By the time they returned to England, she was with child and her family disowned her. Me father lingered long enough to see me born, and then was aweigh."

"Didn't he ever come back?"

"Oh, aye," he said with a half-smile around the mouthful. "Three visits, three proofs."

"Did they marry?" Cate regretted the question as soon as she asked. The shortcomings of a parent were rarely an easy thing for a child to admit, no matter the age.

"No." Nathan took no such umbrage. "Once-when I did inquire-she just said something about 'finally home' and that was all," he said, resigned to the vagaries of a sailor's lifestyle.

He fed Cate another bite of meat and bread, wiping his fingers on his pant leg.

"You have brothers and sisters? You've never made mention," she said.

"Aye, two brothers and a sister. Nothing to be gained in making mention; I haven't seen either of the boys for years, and me sister died near twenty years ago."

A shadow crossed his face as he chewed. The shoulders of his shirt were darkened by his wet hair. The neck gapped open to reveal the banner emblazoned with "Freedom" over his heart.

"Father left money, the few times he came, but there was never enough, and what with four bastards, Mum's family wouldn't help her..." Nathan fondled a bit of bread, the corner of his mouth tucked up in disgust. At length, he shook himself free of that line of thought.

"Finally, she obtained a position as a chambermaid on an estate in the country. Lord Horatio Sidwell," he announced grandly. "Life was good there: plenty to eat, warm beds, and lots of country to play in." He smiled, his distant gaze growing soft. "Mum actually laughed during that time."

Pulling the cork, he helped Cate to a drink from the bottle. It was filled with yesterday's rum punch. Compared to the heat of the day and the pool, it was refreshingly cool. As delicious as before, time had allowed the flavors to mellow further, the fruitiness overshadowing the spices.

"One day, Mum suddenly announced that we were leaving," he said, popping the cork back into place. "I think there was a falling out of some kind, between Mum and Lady Sidwell. I recall a lot of shouting. Indiscretions, as it were. Unfounded poppycock really, but we left, nonetheless. She had enough money to buy us all passage to the Indies, in search of me father.

"I loved it!" Nathan hunched forward, his long toes curling with excitement. "The ship, the sea; something had always called, I just hadn't known what. Mum said the Old Ones told her I was born for it. Rather figured, I thought," he added dryly, "seein's how me sire was a sailor, but she put great store in it."

Cate forbore asking what his mother had meant by "Old Ones." Living in the Highland, a land of isolation and strong superstitions, "old ones" came in spirit and living forms, often a fine line separating the two.

"Oh! Umm...a little...something...!" Nathan rummaged in the bag and brought out a small piece of lightweight canvas. Unfolding it, he drew out a length of knotted cord. Cate inwardly groaned, dreading another knot lesson. Surely not now!

"Wrist, if you please," he said.

He waited as she worked a hand free. Jelly-limbed as she was, finding her hand was almost too much to ask, let alone move it. Ultimately she produced one, the left, as it turned out. He passed the bracelet around, his fingers brushing the underside's tender skin as he affixed it with an intricate knot. It was identical to her necklace, except the ends were long, and adorned with bits of shell, beads and tiny silver medallions.

"But why...? She asked, fingering it.

He rubbed his finger thoughtfully along the side of his nose and finally said, "The Morganse desired you to have it."

There was no part of that which she believed, and yet couldn't find the words to point that out.

"Somehow, I think Mum thought she would find him, somehow," Nathan said, resuming his story, a obvious effort to change the subject. "What little money we had ran out quickly. She started taking odd jobs, taverns and laundry and such, while I took to fishing or stealing, whichever came first, to help keep us fed."

He drew his fingers meditatively along the drooping curve of his mustache, his eyes darkening. "Eventually, Mum took to whoring. It paid better than the other work," he said pragmatically, "'though I don't think it was any easier on her. I was left to watch the little ones."

He helped Cate to another drink, took a long one of his own, and then stretched out next to her. Cradling his head in his linked hands, he exhaled deeply several times and rocking in languid contentment. As he gazed up into the trees, his chin was lifted enough to reveal the jagged scar at his throat.

"I was too young to really know what was going on, but I knew enough to know it wasn't right," he said the branches overhead. "I could see it in Mum's eyes; hear it in her voice, when she'd ask me to take the younguns away for a bit. One night, I came back early, caught some drunken bastard beating her. Ran him through the leg with his own sword, I did. Then he started after me."

"Did he beat you?" Cate gaped.

Nathan lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "Nah, he was too drunk; between Mum and me, we chased him off." He sobered. His mouth pressed into a grim line. "Other times, I wasn't there; I'd come home in time to help wash the blood from her face."

Her heart pinched at the desperate picture he painted. "Did she ever find your father?"

"No," he said, with a distant look that revealed his mother hadn't suffered that failure alone. "Heard about him a few times over the years, but she never found him.

"Sometime along about then," Nathan said, brightening, "she met up with a man named Beecher; a customer he was, I think...originally."

A walnut eye peered over his arm and narrowed. "Now there was a pirate. Buggering, old, spawn o' the devil, he was." He swore. "He took a special liking to Mum; took us all in, found us a decent place to live-better than the shack, as I recall, at any rate."

"How old were you then?"

"Umm, eleven or twelve." Nathan shifted, arranging himself more comfortably. "Beecher took us all in-treated us like we were his own-and was good to Mum. I should have been more grateful."

"Except?" she asked, picking up the lilt in his voice.

His shoulder twitched as he avoided her gaze. "Except, I took exception to him; thought he was trying to be me father. Since I already had one..." His throat moved as he swallowed. "Then one day, Beecher announced he was taking us all away. Seemed like a great adventure, at the time. I always wanted to go to sea, again; I'd loved the trip from England so much, I couldn't wait for the next time."

"Except?"

A smile quirked a corner of his mouth, pleased by her quickness.

"The bile-laden, old blighter decided to make an example of me. Granted, I was wild and filled with rebellion, by then," he conceded reluctantly. "He tried to bring me some discipline; a few times it caused arguments between him and Mum. The other two boys were too young to remember Father, and took to Beecher, but not me; I was determined that the scabrous bastard wasn't going to replace him. Maybe he thought that seein's how I wanted to go to sea, he'd teach me a lesson, or something, I don't know," he said, shaking his head, as if still baffled. "He made the trip every kind of hell imaginable."

"Did you learn anything?"

A large flock of orange and yellow parrots flying over, chattering and squawking momentarily distracted him.