Never had the Duchess of Lorca had so exhilarating a lover. And she who had revelled in every vice of the vice-ridden French Court found herself moaning in enjoyment against the hard body of the Englishman and willing him with every fibre of her being on to even more stupendous efforts.
Until at last with a sigh she slipped away from him and lay on her back, mentally comparing his performance with that of the other Englishman at the Shark and Fin - no mean lover he, either!
But now at her side a silent Diego had heaved himself up on an elbow and was looking down at her quizzically.
Even now he was regretting his impetuosity. It was as if all those nights in his buccaneering days when he had brooded about her as he stared down into the phosphorescent waters of the Caribbean had converged and overpowered him.
He had seen before him only Rosalia - his lost Rosalia, his bride of yesterday. And he had claimed her without thought.
Now that the first gust of passion was over, there was the world to reckon with.
‘Rosalia,’ he said on a half sigh. ‘I should not have taken you like this . . .’
‘Why not?’ The Duchess lay beside him with her slight figure naked to the candlelight. Her rose-tipped breasts were gilded to russet by the candlelight and golden flames danced in her dark eyes. ‘Did I ask you to desist?’
‘No,’ he said thoughtfully. And he was wondering as he spoke, why not? For surely the intervening years must have meant something to her - as they had to him.
His hand reached out almost involuntarily to touch with marvelling fingers those rosy nipples, rising and falling.
‘But it cannot be you,’ he said soberly, studying the flawless skin revealed to him. ‘For I saw you die of a sword thrust in your father’s courtyard in Salamanca.’
The Duchess laughed and rolled over so that her silken body was half atop of his own. She had in mind other delights in which she would instruct him . . .
But that light laugh had jarred him. And now, almost instantly, even as he smelled her heady perfume and felt her soft flesh pressed against him, sanity returned and he put her from him, unclasped her clutching hands from his body, untwined her slender arms and stared into her face. She was - but she could not be - Rosalia. And by the slight rejection implicit in his gesture, he was telling her that despite his sudden almost involuntary taking of her, they were no longer young lovers - other loves, other entanglements had intervened.
The lady’s husband, for example.
Realizing that now was a time for talk, just as a moment ago had been a time for sighs, Rosalia sat up in a lithe gesture that rippled the crimson velvet of the robe that had fallen away from her even though its sleeves still encased her upper arms. She allowed the robe to hang open as she spoke, intending to incite him to further passion by the sight of the smooth creamy skin of her torso.
‘What is it that disturbs you so, Diego?’ she asked in a solicitous voice. And wistfully, ‘Why cannot it be me?’
It would have been less than gallant to have told her that what disturbed him was the sudden vision of a pair of silver eyes or the trusting smile of the girl he had left at the Horn and Chestnut.
‘Because I saw you die,’ he repeated bluntly. ‘I killed a man because I saw him run a sword through your body. I saw you fall to the courtyard in your blood-stained wedding dress. Frail as you are, you could not have survived it! Yet here you are today as lovely as ever - your body unscarred.’ His puzzled eyes traced down that pale expanse from breast to hip of the woman before him.
The Duchess shuddered delicately, a movement that rippled the pallor of her stomach. ‘I did not see that terrible scene in the courtyard, Diego. They told me about it later. Much later. I almost went mad to hear it . . .’
‘Not see it?’ he exclaimed. ‘How so? For you were assuredly there, Rosalia!’
She shook her dark head and made her voice sad for his benefit. ‘No, Diego, you are wrong. I had already been spirited away. The woman you saw in the courtyard was my uncle’s mistress, Conchita - old Juana’s daughter. He killed her for her indiscretions - he believed Conchita had taken a lover while he was away. But he sought to torture you as well as her, so he had her dressed in my wedding gown, which his servants had already stripped from my back. Conchita was about my size and height, she was gagged so that she could not speak, and with my white mantilla draped over her head so as to conceal her face, across the courtyard at dusk she must indeed have seemed to be me but I was already far away.’
In truth Rosalia had watched the whole scene from the window of a nearby locked room - a vantage point from which the young Englishman could not see her. Watched in terrified silence because her uncle had told her that the heretic dog of an Englishman who had pretended to be Spanish and had wed her under that pretence must die, and that if she so much as made a whimper of sound she would die too. She had shivered to see fifteen-year-old Conchita die. She had seen the iron grillwork burst forward, seen a maddened Diego suddenly overwhelm her uncle, seen two of her uncle’s men rush forward and deal the young Englishman a terrible blow - only then had she screamed. But it was best that her tall Diego not know that. He might wonder where was her courage that she had not cried out to him earlier.
Now her pale hands were pressed against his chest. Somehow they had found their way beneath his coat and were quivering against the white cambric of his shirt. Rosalia was a very convincing actress.
‘They told me you were dead, Diego - and I fainted,’ she said simply. That much at least was true. It was only later that she had learnt the young Englishman had escaped. But by then she had had time to consider. Life with a heretic Englishman would be impossible in Spain. She had been glad he was gone and she did not have to deal with him. She did not tell Rye any of this of course.
‘Once in the convent, my future was controlled by distant kinsmen whom I hardly knew and who were deaf to my appeals.’ She sounded aggrieved. ‘I was told I must marry, that I was not to’ - she batted her eyes at him with a piteous expression - ‘to pass my life in grief and prayer.’
Caught in a crosscurrent of turbulent emotions, Rye felt her last words strike him as solidly as a blow. For no sooner had he left the embrace of his old love than a bright vision of his new love had risen up to reproach him. And now he was presented with a picture of his bride of yesterday, inconsolable, cloistered away, passing her life in grief and prayer. The thought stunned him, and he gathered her to him, cradling her, as if to shield her from a cruel world.
‘Oh, Diego!’ Stimulated by his touch, her soft voice grew wild with grief. It was totally convincing. ‘If only I had known you were still alive, I would have plunged a dagger in my breast rather than let them force me into marriage with the Duke of Lorca!’
Every word bit into his heart, telling him how remiss he had been not to make sure, hammering into him guilt that he had allowed this to happen to her. It was because of his negligence that Rosalia, with whom he had once knelt before an altar and vowed eternal love, had been coerced into a loveless marriage. Now he flayed himself. Why had he not made sure?
‘You were forced into this marriage?’ he asked hoarsely, rubbing salt into his wounds.
She nodded, blinking her dark eyes as though fighting back tears, and his arms tightened about her. ‘Yes -forced,’ she whispered. ‘And I have been miserable with him ever since. He is Spain’s ambassador to England now, Diego. That is how I come to be here in London.’
As a buccaneer, Rye had good reason to know the name of Spain’s ambassador to England, but he saw no need to mention it.
‘In what way has the Duke make you unhappy?’ he growled, pushing her away from him and frowning down into her face. It was hard for him to hold back the anger that ripped through him that Rosalia, whose dreams had been shattered along with his in far away Salamanca, might be mistreated now. For long ago though their alliance might be, he still felt a heart-tugging responsibility towards this woman whom he had loved as a half-fledged girl - a woman who ha
d gone into his arms without question this night and seemed to love him still.
Rosalia tugged her robe around her and sat shivering for a moment. Then, ‘The Duke is very - repressive,’ she said with an outward gesture of her arm that parted her robe and brought her small bare breasts again into view.
Rye ignored the display, fighting to retain logic in this scented overheated atmosphere.
‘And yet I saw you attending the play at Drury Lane this evening?’ Something I doubt you could have done in Spain, his tone implied. So he must be a lenient husband as the dons go.
‘Ah, that is only because’ - she leant forward again and her dark curls brushed his broad chest invitingly - ‘because he was not here to prevent it.’ She was trying to look innocent and almost succeeding.
‘And is he perchance in the next room wondering that he hears a man’s voice in his wife’s bedchamber?’ Rye asked grimly.
She moved pettishly away from him at that remark. ‘There is no need to fear the Duke, Diego - ’
‘I do not fear him for myself,’ he corrected her gently. ‘I fear him for you, Rosalia. A Spanish grandee is unlikely to overlook finding a man in his wife’s bedchamber!’
But he is gone,’ she said - and remembered to make her voice sound bitter. ‘He has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom! That is the reason I am allowed so much freedom of movement. No one dares protest for I say that I must go out, I must move about the town so that his captors will be able to reach me in some public place with their demands - after all, they would hardly dare come here where they would be seized!’
Rye cast a look around him. There was more than one door to the room. ‘Seized by whom?’
‘By my husband’s retainers, of course. They had mounted a guard until today, when I dismissed them.’
‘You dismissed them?’ he demanded incredulously.
‘Yes. Sancho is quite sufficient to guard me. He is the man who let you in and he is entirely trustworthy.’
‘But why did you dismiss them?’
‘Because I have now heard from his captors,’ improvised the Duchess, for Diego, found again, might prove to be the perfect solution to a knotty problem. ‘A note was slipped into my hand in the crowd at the theatre, telling me where the ransom is to be delivered.’
‘And where is that?’ he said, sensing that this might be the real reason she had sent for him. Perhaps she did not trust the people around her, perhaps she needed someone to hand over the ransom for her, someone who would have no ties with Spain but feel allegiance only to her, someone trustworthy.
‘In the Azores,’ she said.
‘The Azores! But they are far out into the Atlantic!’
‘I know,’ she said, pouting. ‘But what place more likely for a pirata to demand money than far out at sea?’
A pirate? What pirate?’
Her white teeth ground slightly. She was the picture of disdain as she spoke. ‘The abominable Captain Kells.’
If Rosalia had suddenly dashed a bucket of cold water over him, she could not have astonished him more. Rye sat at gaze, staring at this fragile elegant woman who had once held his heart in the palm of her delicate hand.
‘Not Kells,’ he said definitely, leaving the bed and rising to his feet, fastening his trousers. ‘Some other buccaneer perhaps might hold the Duke for ransom - but not Kells.’
‘Certainly Kells!’ she flashed, annoyed that Diego would dispute her statement, annoyed even more that he had not flung himself on his knees and kissed the hem of her robe and wept at his good luck in having found her again. Instead he was calmly adjusting his trousers, preparing to leave her! ‘Why not Kells?’ she demanded. ‘All London knows this Kells is really a renegade Englishman named Rye Evistock,’ she added spitefully, eager to assure him that Kells was not Irish but one of his own countrymen!
He was tempted to tell her through clenched teeth, ‘Because I am Kells and I did not take him!’ - but somehow he bit back the words. It was a dangerous admission to bandy about in the house of Spain’s ambassador - even if that ambassador was at the moment absent. He cast a sudden thoughtful glance at the door, beyond which - though he did not know it - Sancho listened. ‘Because Kells is not known to have carried his trade as far as London,’ he told her flatly.
She shrugged her indifference. ‘One place is as good as another to these piratas!’
Her sneering tone told him they were worlds apart.
‘I can bring you only danger here, Rosalia,’ he said courteously, preparing to go.
‘Oh, what of that?’ she scoffed.
‘The possibility of discovery - and disgrace - should concern you,’ he pointed out soberly. ‘But if you should have need of me, I am now called - ’
‘Oh, I know what you are called!’ she interrupted, annoyed that he should be leaving - and so soon. She had hoped for a long evening of intimate joinings! ‘Sancho has had you followed. You are Ryeland Smythe and you are staying at the Horn and Chestnut with a party of friends.’
The words, Sancho has had you followed, rang warningly in his mind. ‘Would Sancho be the heavyset fellow who squired you to the theatre?’ he asked, for he had been escorted upstairs in nearly total darkness and could not be sure.
‘Yes. A servant only,’ was the careless response.
Outside the bedchamber door, Sancho’s shoulders writhed and the tiniest of groans escaped his lips. Oh, that his mistress should use him so when his heart beat only for her!
Rye told himself that he would be careful of this Sancho and be on guard against sudden discoveries. He thought back but he could not recall an indiscretion that would bring his real identity to light.
‘How is this ransom to be delivered?’ he asked, mindful that somewhere a man who pretended to be himself was waiting - for a ransom. ‘Will your man Sancho deliver it?’
‘Oh, no,’ said the Duchess. ‘I must take it myself - when I can find a suitable ship to take me there.’ She sighed, for finding a suitable ship was indeed one of her problems.
The man before her frowned. ‘Surely Spain must have many ships at your disposal for such an important mission.’
She could hardly tell him why finding a ship to carry her was difficult. That ship must not be a warship of Spain - indeed must not be Spanish at all. For in case the Englishman at the Shark and Fin bungled it - and he might - she would have to take matters into her own hands. She had not gone this far down the road to allow things to slip now. And no tales must ever reach Spain of how the Duchess of Lorca had murdered her husband and taken off with his ransom!
Rye had only been considering the possibility of trailing Rosalia’s ship to this impostor’s secret lair. Now, taut with the possibility of something far more satisfying, he leaned forward, his grey eyes intent. ‘Is it possible that you are afraid this ransom will be seized by some rapacious grandee for his own ends?’
Her nod and sigh were answer enough.
‘For then’ - he shot at her - ‘I must offer you my services. I have a ship even now lying at anchor in the Thames and I would carry the ransom to any place you would suggest and exchange it for your husband.’
Rosalia’s dark eyes gleamed. She had known indeed - for Sancho had told her - that the man before her captained a ship now lying at anchor in the Thames - but she had thought she must bring this up herself. Now this fool of a Diego had thrown the information in her lap!
‘Oh, Diego,’ she breathed, ‘would you take me to him? Would you carry me and the ransom to the place this pirata names?’
Rye was nonplussed by this sudden request to carry her aboard his ship, but his blood was beating fast at the thought that he might be able to capture his man directly - instead of sailing endlessly in search of his tormentor. His grey-eyed gaze was steady on the beautiful face before him.
‘I will take you to this Captain Kells, Rosalia,’ he promised calmly. ‘But only you. I will not take Sancho or any other.’
‘But - ’ she began, for Sancho had figured promine
ntly in her plans. It was Sancho she had intended should carry back a story making her the heroine of a tragedy in which her husband was unfortunately killed. Sancho was her chosen witness for she could influence his tale!
But her Diego was shaking his head firmly. ‘I will carry only you to this rendezvous, Rosalia. No others in your train.’
Rosalia pouted - then she smiled up at him. ‘Not even a maidservant?’ she asked wistfully. ‘To dress me and do my hair?’
‘Not even that,’ he said, for two women would be hard to keep track of on board ship. He could keep the knowledge of his real identity from Rosalia, he was fairly sure of that - but it might be more difficult to keep a chambermaid, of whom one of his men might grow enamoured, from learning that their captain was none other than Kells the buccaneer.
‘Ah, well . . .’ she said, then flashed her brilliant smile at him again. ‘I will let you know,’ she purred, sidling up to him and putting her arms once more around his neck, as soon as the ransom arrives.’
This time he put her from him almost absently. A few minutes ago she had been Rosalia, his lost love. Now she was the wife of the Spanish ambassador, from whom many things must be kept.
‘What is this ransom to be?’ he asked.
'Fifty thousand pieces of eight.’
It was a vast sum but Spain would soon be asking that much for his own head! He gave her a quizzical look. ‘Is that all?’
She hesitated. ‘And a necklace,’ she admitted. ‘Of diamonds and rubies. From the Far East.’
If he was surprised that some faraway sea rover would have such detailed knowledge of the Duke of Lorca’s wealth that he would know precisely what to ask for, he did not show it.
‘It is worth a king’s ransom!’ she declared pettishly, annoyed by his level gaze.
Or an ambassador’s, he could not help thinking.
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