Beloved Captive Read Online Free PDF Page B

continued improvement and his mother’s entreaties kept Caleb tied to dry land poring over the accounting books rather than aboard the Cormorant adding his own entries to the ship’s log.
    It appeared that salt water indeed ran through his veins—a curse of the Bennings, according to his mother. “Well, no one but me shall know,” he said as he returned to the desk, “and I shall not speak of it once I am given leave of this place.”
    A letter to the Attorney General lay before him, and he turned his musings toward his mother. How would he explain his hasty departure? The truth stung, yet a lie was impossible. Caleb sighed as he wadded the paper and tossed it into the dying embers of the fire.  
    Leaning back in his chair, Caleb looked past the billowing curtains to the sea beyond. He’d been back in Santa Lucida less than three weeks. True to his mother’s claims, the plantation had suffered under her watch, although the fault did not lay entirely with her.  
    Where once indigo and cane fields flourished, now fields lay fallow. The fierce storm of September last had dealt a death knell to many other plantations on the island. Those who were able had booked passage and left, practically giving away their lands in the process.
    Others, such as the trusted fellow who’d acted as manager since Father died, lost their lives. Though the land suffered, at least Caleb’s mother had thrived.
    Still, without Ian Benning or John Spencer to guide her, Mary-Margaret Benning Spencer had no one to aid her in making decisions. To her credit, his mother had chosen to purchase several prime properties and now ruled over much of Santa Lucida as its largest landowner.  
    Caleb reached for the ledger he’d hauled up from his grandfather’s office on the first floor. Page after page of entries in his grandfather’s hand detailed every profit and expense, and the occasional note peppered the pages with bits of the daily goings-on at Benning Plantation. In the margins, his grandfather had jotted ideas for new ways to produce indigo and thoughts on the coming cane season.
    Despite his distaste for the subject, Caleb found it fascinating. It seemed as though Ian Benning did have considerable interest in something other than emptying the treasure chests from the vessels of honest seafarers.  
    “Would that the old pirate had chosen the life of a gentleman planter over this lunacy that still dogs my heels.”
    He closed the ledger and set it aside, then blew out the lamp. The room plunged into darkness. Slowly, the moon’s silver path snaked across the wood floor and silk carpet to puddle on the mosquito netting that covered the massive wooden bed.  
    Rather than give in to the exhaustion tugging at the corners of his mind, Caleb opened the shutters guarding his door and stepped out onto the balcony that ran the length of the upper floor. The sea breeze tossed the tops of the palms and whipped his shirt away from his body. Casting a glance about to be sure he was alone, Caleb slipped out of the shirt to let the wind cool his sunburned skin.
    His hair, already suffering for want of the barber’s scissors, tossed about, surely adding to his unkempt appearance. Caleb rubbed his chin, now soft with the growth of the beard his mother detested. In the short while he’d been at Benning Plantation, the man in the mirror had become almost unrecognizable.
    Resting his elbows on the rail, Caleb once again allowed his thoughts to wander. Were he of a disposition to allow it, he might content himself learning the intricacies of managing the plantation and forget for a time what he was missing back in Washington. What he’d seen of his grandfather’s ledgers told him it was an undertaking not lightly entered into.  
    But he was a man whose life had been dedicated to the study of the law, a man who had long ago vowed to follow in the footsteps of his father and make a career of righting wrongs.  
    He should be toiling over a law book or