Grinning at his own humor, Spence glanced at Beau, who was shredding a sliver of wood she had gouged out of the table, then at Dante, who was still chasing beads of sweat down the side of his goblet. Pitt was staring at his hands as if he wanted to crush the heavy gold cup between them.
“Cap’n … have ye no heart’s desire waitin’ fer ye on yer return? An’ I don’t mean yer business with Bloodstone, or the Queen, or the Queen’s counsel. Is there naught … by tradition … ye normally do on yer first night home in port?”
Dante pursed his lips and raised his dark head. His eyes flicked barely perceptibly over to Beau before he smiled at Spence. “My heart’s desire, if I must name one, would be a fat, tender haunch of beef swimming in gravy, pillowed on a bed of biscuits so soft and thick and slippery with butter, I won’t have to chew. Aye, and another platter of onions roasted in garlic and mustard, served alongside a charred capon drowning in its own juices. And a pie. A gooseberry pie as high as my arm, with a crisp sugar crust and half a spadeful of clotted cream.” He sipped at his wine and flared his nostrils as if the scents were saturating his senses as he spoke. “After that, if I still had any desires, I would consider my options over a tall tankard of stout English ale.”
Jonas, whose mouth had gone slack during the recitation, firmed it up with an effort and raised his goblet in a sincere toast. “Cap’n … ye’re a bastard after my own heart. An’ blow my soul, I’d be honored to share that repast with ye; that an’ aught else ye can think of twixt here an’ Plymouth. Ye’ll stay with us there, o’ course, for as long as ye please. Beau an’ I, we’ve only humble lodgings compared to what ye must be used to, but it’s a roof an’ a bed, an’ a place to soak the salt off yer skin afore ye get on about yer business.”
Dante vaguely noted the small choking sound Beau made in her throat. “I thank you for the invitation, Jonas, but my … business … won’t allow me to dally overlong in Plymouth. Especially not if too many men recognize my face.”
“Aye, aye. Ye’ll not be wantin’ Bloodstone to hear your name too loudly, at least until ye know which way the wind is blowin’. Hell an’ all, if it helps ye stay dead awhile longer, I’ll gladly take all the credit for the San Pedro. ’Tis the least I can do,” he beamed broadly, “for one o’ the brotherhood.”
“You put me in your debt again,” Dante said genially.
“Bah! Just put a drop more wine in everyone’s cup, that’ll be payment enough.”
Beau abandoned the shredded splinter and stood. “Since you appear to be safe from attack now, Father, I think I will bid you all good-night.”
She left, promising to check the watch, and went up on deck, breathing deep to remove the smell of stale food and candle wax from her lungs. The wind was blowing briskly from the east and she imagined she could taste and smell the olive groves of Spain where they grew five hundred miles off the starboard beam. Another day or two and they would be past the northernmost tip of the country and running parallel to the Bay of Biscay. With luck they would clear the Channel in another two weeks and be dropping anchor in Plymouth Sound.
As if to challenge any doubts she might have, the Egret leapt in one graceful bound after another across the swells. The night was moonless, the sky a black velvet canvas with uncountable millions of stars painted in a wide swath over-head. Billy Cuthbert had the helm and Beau could see at a glance that the sails were perfectly set to take the best advantage of the wind. The ship was moving fast, throwing an appreciable feather of white water off her bows. Even as Beau watched, the foresails were trimmed and those on the main and mizzen were slowly turned and reset, fluttering like great bat wings until they took the wind and strained forward again.
Beau nodded to herself in silent approval. Billy had joined the crew of the Egret four years ago, a gangly, sullen orphan with no ship’s skills and bruised to the bone from an indentured life with a tavern keeper. He had clubbed the taverner on the head after taking one beating too many and stowed away, thinking he had killed the brute. Billy was eighteen now and a fine seaman, quick to learn and even quicker to smile, especially when Beau was nearby. She knew—the entire crew knew—he was smitten with her, but she had never given it any thought or credence before. And although there was only two years’ difference in their ages, she considered herself so much older and worldly wise, she could not imagine ever looking at someone with such puppyish longing in her eyes.
Plagued by restlessness she turned from the rail and swung herself into the main shrouds. She started climbing, finding the ratlines with her hands and feet, passing the huge ghostly curl of the main course, then the smaller topgallant and royal. Set higher still was the small moonraker, aptly named for anyone with the nerve to perch on the trestletree just beneath it. The sail itself was reefed tonight, probably because Cuthbert had deemed it unnecessary, and Beau found herself clinging tightly to the mast to ride out the more pronounced pitch caused by the ship’s motion.
She hailed the crewman who stood watch in the crow’s nest on the foremast and relieved him. It was not an uncommon thing for Beau to do, and with two hours, more or less, remaining until the next watch change, she waved off his thanks as he descended to his hammock below.
Seated snugly on the trestletree, forty feet above the deck, there was nothing above her but the sky and stars, no sound other than the wind humming through the sails and the distant rush of water beneath the keel. The vast belling of the sails obscured everything below except for the bright, curling tails of spume that scrolled out in the Egret’s wake. It was her favorite place on board, her private place, where she came to think or worry away from prying eyes.
Unfortunately these days, it was more difficult to get the image of someone else’s eyes out of her head. The starlight was bright enough to reflect off the surface of the water, silver in places, light blue off the crest of waves: the exact color of Simon Dante’s eyes. She had seen them glancing at her throughout the evening, throughout each evening they endured in the close confines of Spence’s cabin. Sometimes she thought she saw understanding in their depths, sometimes mockery, other times simple anger. Her own mind had been in a turmoil since she had spent that single night of bliss locked fast in his arms. Every night since, she had swung restlessly in her hammock replaying each kiss, each caress, a hundred times.
It was worse sitting at the table, inevitably drawing unfavorable comparisons with the doe-eyed Duchess of Navarre. It was a certainty Beau did not know how to flutter her eyelashes so demurely—blinking rapidly only made her dizzy. She knew how to strap herself into a corset and padded bumroll; she even knew how to walk in a wheeled farthingale without getting her toes hooked in the loops, for all the good it did her. But she couldn’t breathe in the contraptions and she couldn’t sit any length of time without turning blue, and she certainly could not abide a stiff and scratchy neck ruff strangling her throat, obstructing the path of food from her plate to her mouth.
Nate Hawethorne had expected all that and more to be endured by the woman he married. He expected refined social graces and a woman who would demur to his every opinion on any subject, right or wrong. More to the point, there were several generations of pure, aristocratic blood flowing through his veins. Far too pure and aristocratic ever to mix with the dull red offerings of the daughter of a one-legged merchant. The night Hawethorne had made that abundantly clear was also the night Beau had realized most men only wanted one thing from a woman and once they had it, they sloughed them off without a thought or care.
De Tourville’s blood ran even bluer. He had chateaus in France, estates in England, even a small duchy in Portugal if the rumors were to believed. All that on top of a healthy mistrust for women. To even think he wanted more than a pleasant diversion was ludicrous.
Even if she were willing to trade in her breeches for skirts and petticoats—which she was not—or willing to give up the sea for a life of luxury in some drafty old chateau—which she most definitely was not—or to trim her ways to suit the behavior
of a respectable young lady—a pox on any such notion!—men like Dante and Hawethorne would still run as quickly as they could in the opposite direction. She was an oddity. A misfit.
An amusing diversion, nothing more.
“Listen to me,” she muttered, gazing out over the immense, bleak beauty of the empty sea. “Just listen to me. As if it matters what he thinks of me. As if any of it matters at all. He had his fun and you had yours, now leave it at that. Just leave it!”
She gave the mast an angry slap just as the Egret took a sweeping dip. She made a grab for the reefing tackle too late to do more than feel it slither through her fingers. Her balance lost, she slid off the trestletree and fell headfirst, plunging past the upper royal and the topgallant, skidding off the taut canvas too quickly to snag a buntline and slow her descent.
The topsails, rigged to catch the westerly wind, were at a sharp angle to the main course, which was fixed and square, and she hit the wide upper yard squarely on her belly, driving the air out of her lungs with hardly more than a hollow whoomfph. Her foot hooked a line and she jerked to a halt, but she was hanging upside down with the air knocked out of her, disoriented with the stars at her feet and the sea overhead. The line, only twisted around her ankle, began to loosen as her weight depressed the sail. She thought she might have screamed but the sail belled forward again, smothering her face in canvas.
Chapter 17
Simon Dante wandered out onto the deck to relieve himself and remained at the rail, letting the breeze brush back his hair and fill the loose folds of his shirt. He braced his hands on the wood and let his head hang between his shoulders, cursing his own foolhardiness even as he wondered what hidey-hole Beau had taken herself off to tonight. He could, he supposed, hope against hope she was waiting for him in her cabin, but what point was to be gained in making a bigger fool of himself than he had already? She hadn’t been there any night this past week. She was avoiding him as she would a festering boil.
In a way, he was glad. It had given him time to clear his head and focus on the course that lay before him. She had distracted him. Unsettled him. He had been full of rage and fury, bristling with a desire for revenge when he had come on board the Egret. Isabeau Spence had lured him back into a world of softness and sexual heat, her body had lured him into its silky folds and he had lost himself there. He had not offered anything and she had not demanded anything beyond that one night. She did not want anything from him now, not even conversation, so it seemed, and that should have suited him just fine.
So why was he unable to concentrate on anything for any length of time without closing his eyes and seeing her body stretched out pale and luminous in the moonlight.? Why was he not able to look at her without his usual detachment, or fall asleep at night without first spending time staring into the darkness, craving the soft sound of her breath against his throat?
And why was he standing on a chilled, windy deck, hoping to pace Beau Spence out of his system?
He still could not rationalize his attraction to her. She was coarse and ill bred—a snobbish thought, to be sure, but one that was as ingrained as the manners and mannerisms that kept him from becoming anything but the Comte de Tourville, regardless of how hard he tried to avoid his titles and responsibilities. His former wife had been the ideal, suitable match; a dazzling beauty with impeccable social graces and a blinding ambition that would have left any man gasping in her wake. He had indeed been dazzled and blinded, and she had left him gasping at the coldness and treachery that flowed through her veins. She had made him cynical and mistrustful, wary of ever surrendering his soul to any woman again.
And yet, Isabeau Spence was not like any woman he had encountered before. If she had a thought she spoke it or wore it openly on her face. She was fiercely independent and fiercely possessive of her freedom, and he doubted there was any man alive who could tame her completely … or want to tame her completely.
He felt like a cat trapped in a cage, and he wished for stronger winds that might blow them to England’s shores sooner. The quicker he was off the Egret and away from the temptation of those golden tiger eyes, the quicker he could return to a more comfortable state of indifference. A drunken, senseless night at a brothel was what he needed. What both he and Pitt needed to clear their heads and shake them back to reality.
Dante stroked a hand along the cold bronze body of one of the demi-cannon. A glance at where the lines from the topsails were dogged told him the set without having to search the darkness above, and it was purely force of habit that made him glance up. After all, it wasn’t his ship, wasn’t his course to order, wasn’t his place to challenge the bearing of the wind….
At first he saw nothing but the pale bloom of canvas interrupting the tableau of stars and night sky. But then he caught sight of the figure of a man dangling down, swinging against the mainsail, one foot tangled around the clew lines, the other crabbing as frantically as his arms were windmilling to grasp hold of something more secure.
The scream was brief and muffled, leaving the distinct impression of the owner’s identity trembling on the air, and Dante was in the shrouds, climbing, before the sounds of the wind and the sea had completely absorbed it. He reached the stout upper yard and crossed it with hardly any thought to his own footing or balance.
“Beau? Beau! Hold fast, I’m almost there!”
“M-my—my foot is slipping!”
Anchoring himself to the mast with one arm he slid down and straddled the yardarm, reaching down, lunging for a fistful of her clothing just as the wind relented and the sail slackened. Her foot slipped free and she screamed again, a short, panicked cry that was bitten off when she felt the pressure tighten on her doublet.
“Grab my arm! Reach up and grab my arm!”
Beau managed to clutch at his sleeve. A powerful surge of strength tautened the muscles as he hauled her upward and she felt herself upended and lifted over the yardarm so that she sat straddling it with the mast at her back and the bulk of his chest in front.
Dante released her doublet in exchange for a more secure hold around her waist. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
A rapid shaking of her head was the only answer she could muster.
“You’re sure? You haven’t broken or twisted anything?”
She hesitated and he could see her turning her ankles, testing her knees and hips. She shook her head again and leaned forward, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder.
He let go of a lengthy sigh and waited for the pounding in his chest to abate. “Should I even ask what you were doing up here?”
“I … come here all the time,” she replied, her words muffled against his throat. “To think.”
“To … think?”
“To think! Sometimes I just need to get away from everybody and everything and think. Is that so terrible? So hard to understand?”
“No, but on a night like this, do you not think you could have found someplace a little less venturous? And where the devil is the watch?”
“I relieved him.”
“You—?” He swore under his breath again. “If this were my ship, and you were one of my crew, I don’t give a damn how good or valuable you are, I would—”
She lifted her head, lifted her eyes slowly to his, and he was startled to see a bright film shimmering along her lashes, starting to swell at the corners.
“—I would give you the thrashing of your life,” he said gently, “for risking your neck like this.”
“I told you,” she whispered. “I have never so much as cut my hand or … stubbed my toe … until you came on board.”
“Forgive me,” he murmured, “if I have brought this ill fortune down upon you.”
He reached up and tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, then urged her head back onto his shoulder again. “Go ahead. You can cry if you want to, I promise I will not tell a soul.”
“There is nothing to tell, because I never cry! Never!” “Forgive me again,” he said softly, stroking hi
s hand down her hair. “It must have been a trick of the light.”
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“That.”
He stopped stroking her hair and moved his hand away. “This?”
She took a small breath. “No, not that.”
He put his hand back.
“Stop 1-laughing at me.”
“I swear I am not.”
“You are,” she insisted. “You’re always laughing at me. You laughed when you found out I was a woman, and again when you were told I was the ship’s pilot. You found it amusing when I tried to shoot you on the Virago and you did not take me the least bit seriously when I said I would fillet you into tiny pieces if you kissed me. And in the cabin that night—” Her head came off his shoulder and not only her eyes, but her cheeks, were suspiciously damp.
“Yes? In the cabin that night?”
“You were laughing at my ignorance,” she whispered. “I know you were.”
Perhaps it was because of the bad fright she had just experienced, or perhaps it was the starlight playing with his powers of perception, but when she looked at him, her guard was down and the full measure of her vulnerability was suddenly, unwittingly, revealed in her eyes. The ship still pitched side to side, sliding forward and rearing back as it carved through each new swell, and he was forced to keep one hand grasped around a mast brace, the other clamped securely around Beau’s waist, but he could and did draw her even closer than she had managed to insist herself.
“No, mam’selle,” he said slowly. “If I was laughing at anyone’s ignorance, it was my own. Believe me, Isabeau … it was my own.”
A small huff of air escaped her lips, and while it might have shaped the word liar, he did not contest the charge with more words. The stars shifted dizzily overhead and the wind snatched at locks of his hair, blowing it forward so that when he dragged her mouth up to his, silky black strands were trapped between them.
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