“I admit it freely, mam’selle. I need you. I need you.” He twined his fingers through her hair and angled her face up to his so that there was no mistaking his meaning. “I need you. But not on the Scout It’s too dangerous.”
Beau pushed herself upright and saw the quick flexing of muscles across his chest. She was straddling his thighs, he was buried hilt deep inside her, and they had been dueling over the finer points of his leaving the Egret long enough for both of them to be covered in a fine sheen of sweat.
“After all my father and I have done for you, how can you just let Drake send us home with a pat on the head?”
“You’re going home with your holds full of plundered treasure.”
“A pox,” she said, sliding her hips forward, “on plundered treasure.”
He swore again and rolled his head to the side. If the bed had been an inch wider, he could have easily tossed her over and reversed their positions—and then she would have learned the true meaning of torment. As it was, she kept her knees locked firmly to his hips, and braced her hands, when he made any attempt to extricate himself, on an overhead beam, pushing down as hard as he pushed up. Moreover, she was showing remarkable control. His own fault, he supposed, for bringing her to climax half a dozen times before he found himself splayed and pinned like a starfish out of water. If it weren’t so unbelievably arousing, he might have become annoyed.
She cupped his chin in her hand and forced him to look at her again. “You said you thought it might have been one of Bloodstone’s men who ambushed you on the Bonaventure tonight.”
“When did I say that? I never said that.”
“Then you were thinking it. And if he would dare to plan an ambush on Drake’s flagship, what will he dare out in the open sea? Or in battle? Or—”
He brought her mouth down hard on his and kissed her so thoroughly, she was gasping when he let her go. Her face was flushed and her eyes were blazing with the effort it was taking to concentrate on something other than the heat beneath her.
“I will watch him very closely,” he vowed.
Panting lightly, Beau combed her fingers through the springy black mat of chest hairs, molding her hands to the shape of his muscles, following each magnificently sculpted band down to his belly. She rocked her hips back and forth, testing his limits even as she tested her own, and stopped moving a shiver shy of overestimating herself.
“We could unburden some of the gold on the pinnace that is going home anyway,” she said, still trying to find a way around all his manly logic.
“The pinnace is going, the Egret is going, and you are going. And if anyone should be unburdened, mam’selle”— his hands circled her breasts and his thumbs abraded the taut pink nipples—“it should be me, before you cause irreparable damage to the both of us.”
She reached back and let her fingertips trail lightly back and forth along his thighs. She felt him tense and stretch himself farther up inside her, giving one delicious throb when her fingers danced over an area that was already acutely sensitive to every languid roll of her hips.
“So. Now I am a burden,” she murmured.
He sucked in a breath and released it on a soft oath. He grasped her around the waist and forced two swift, hard strokes before she regained control and stopped him.
“You are not a burden,” he promised on a gasp. “But you might become a dangerous distraction in battle. I might be inclined to worry more about you than the enemy, about what might happen if I took my eyes off you for any length of time. You have seen how fast things can go wrong in battle. You saw how close your father came to losing his other leg. Good God, Isabeau”—he brushed his hands over her breasts, her shoulders, her arms, her legs— “you cannot fault me for wanting to keep you safe and whole.”
She bit back her frustration and leaned determinedly forward, her hands braced on either side of his head, her eyes a mere inch or two from his. “No one had to keep me safe or whole before you came striding into my life, Captain, and look … I am all here.”
His flesh throbbed in its fullness. “So you are.”
“On the other hand, I have seen you in battle and you are reckless. You take unnecessary chances—”
“I swear I will be the soul of discretion.”
“You play careless games with unfamiliar ships.”
“I will stand off a thousand yards and spit my shots harmlessly into the water … is that what you want?”
A shiver sent her focus down to the source of all her trouble: his mouth. “I want you to trust me.”
“I do.”
“Completely.”
“I am trying. Believe me, I am trying. But you are asking me to put aside every law of nature, society, reason, and instinct I have ever known. It might … take a little more time.”
“How much more time?” she demanded.
He looked so deeply into her eyes, she thought she felt him climb inside her. “Will the rest of our lives do, do you suppose?”
Her breath came out in a rush. His hands were on her hips, manipulating them as deviously as his words manipulated her intentions. Her pleasure started to come in dark, swirling torrents and she could not have stopped it had she even been so foolishly inclined to do so. She wasn’t, of course. She wasn’t even sure she had won any part of the argument. Later, she would worry about reclaiming the wit to challenge him again, but for the moment, the dissolving liquid heat of the moment, it was enough to hear him cry out her name and feel the power of his shuddering ecstasy fill the last empty place in her heart.
Chapter 25
Spence appeared on deck the next morning with a head as thick as a post. His tongue was furred and he declared the foot he had left in the Indies ten years ago itched as if he were standing on a nest of red ants. He was not happy, and when Jonas Spence was not happy, he made damned sure the entire crew was not happy. Even Spit McCutcheon was acting like a cat with turpentine rubbed under his tail.
Beau had no sympathy to spare for anyone. She hadn’t had but a moment’s sleep all night, and naturally, that moment had come early in the morning. When she had finally startled herself awake, most of Dante’s men had already transferred to the Scout and he probably would have happily sailed away without so much as a fare-thee-well if she hadn’t come up on deck in time.
It did not matter that she had not wanted him to say good-bye, had ordered him not to, and was sullen enough when he did to send him away with less than a glowing flush of warmth and understanding coursing through his body. The heat, the passion, the poignant promises made in the dark warmth of her cabin, had vanished, leaving nothing but harsh reality in its wake. He was leaving and she was staying behind. The rest of their lives had taken on an ugly new meaning in the chilling gray light of dawn.
Her mood was not much improved with her first glimpse of the Scout
It was a sorry-looking vessel, smaller than the Egret— perhaps a hundred tons in weight, with a battery of eight culverins and six sakers. It was adequate armament for a ship her size and character, but nothing near the heat Dante was accustomed to on the Virago—or the Egret since he had supplemented her weaponry with the demis. In the Scout he would not have much choice but to stand off and let the heavier guns of the six-hundred-ton Elizabeth Bonaventure and the five-hundred-ton Revenge and Golden Lion soften the enemy’s underbelly. And for that at least, Beau felt some smug satisfaction.
But then she remembered the Talon was also out there, bristling with Pitt’s demi-cannon, mastered by a man who would likely stop at nothing to rid himself of the specter of Dante de Tourville. Battles were perfect places for confusion, with all the smoke and noise and turbulence. Perfect places for a man who planned ambushes in the dark and had no qualms about abandoning fellow captains to the guns of enemy ships.
Drake’s fleet was already low on the horizon. Dawn had brought their canvas out in bloom and, trusting Dante would have no difficulty making up the time, had set a course due south and turned their sails into a gray, wind-d
riven sky. The Talon had been one of the last ships to get under way, almost flaunting her presence in Dante’s face. Watching her sidle past wearing her disreputable coat of sly gray paint and suit of dirty canvas, Beau could barely resist the urge to load one of the demis herself and send him off properly.
The itch to hold a gun at Dante’s temple was strong too. He looked as if he hadn’t slept much either—wonder of wonders. His temper was short and his jaw had a tendency to clench around every other word. For fare-thee-wells it was a pretty sorry thing also, with him doing most of the talking—and doing it fast so there was little room for argument—and Beau doing most of the glaring. Spence, McCutcheon, Cuthbert, and the better part of the Egret’s crew stood nearby in glum silence. There was no cheering when the last of the Virago men took to the jolly boats, not a single smile anywhere to be seen.
The leaky pinnace was also forced to watch the grand departure. The Squirrel was a small vessel of twenty tons with two masts and a row of oars as well as sail. She carried a crew of eighteen, and while there were no heavy guns aboard, there were bow and stern chasers and a row of deadly falconets mounted on each beam. They were favored by smugglers for their speed, and used by naval officers for their ability to sail quickly between warships carrying orders and relaying messages. At the moment she was nudged up to the hull of the Egret, her masts and rigging chattering like loose teeth in a widow’s head. She looked as sound and seaworthy as any other ship in Drake’s fleet, and her captain seemed happy to shout up his relief they were going home.
Spit McCutcheon’s reply sent him ducking to avoid a large splatter of phlegm.
“Cheese-assed bastard. Give him to me for a month, I’ll stiffen his spine.”
Spence snorted and watched the jolly boat make its final crossing to the Scout. His eyes narrowed and his beard-parted around a curse. “Where the devil does Yarwood think he’s goin’? An’ Loftus?”
“They wanted to fight the Spanyards,” Spit declared loudly, sending a particularity acerbic glance down to the pinnace. “An’ I weren’t about to stop them, they wanted to go. Whole damned crew wanted to go but they had space for only a couple o’ our men. If ye’ll notice the bruises on Yarwood’s face, he had to beat off a dozen others just to get one o’ them spaces.”
Spence grunted and shook his head as the Scout cast off her lines and unfurled the large mainsail. It was full of trapped rainwater and showered the deck below as the canvas flapped and shook out its wrinkles.
“Sloppy work, that,” Spit remarked disdainfully. “Sails are too loose, they should be trimmed tight, not luffin’ away in the breeze. No wonder she nearly rammed us.”
“She nearly rammed us,” Beau said dryly as she joined them by the rail, “because her helmsman is an ass. If he’s a day over twenty, I’ll have his child.”
“Bold talk for someone barely out in teats herself.”
“Yes, but at least I know what I’m doing. I warrant Mister Carleill has never been out of the Channel, if even out of port. Dante”—she looked back over the side—“will probably feed him to Lucifer for an evening meal.”
“Try to keep the smile off yer face when ye say that, lass,” Spence advised with a snort. “Might hex the poor lad.”
“I fear they may already have picked up a hex,” she said quietly. “Did you see the way the Talon prowled past, almost like a mongrel slinking outside a butcher shop?”
“Aye. Spit had a thought for a moment, he might o’ been sniffin’ after us.”
“Us?”
Spit leaned forward to see around Jonas’s girth. “Are ye forgettin’ what we have in our holds?”
“No, I’m not forgetting. But he wouldn’t dare turn away from Drake and come after us; none of them would, there were too many witnesses. Besides, they’ll have more than enough plunder in Cadiz.”
“Aye,” Spence grumbled. “Cadiz.”
“Risky business, that,” Spit muttered. “But God bless ‘em all for havin’ the ballocks to try it.”
“Twenty ships against fifty? Mortal odds. They’ll likely be blown out o’ the water.”
“Perhaps not, señor,” said a quiet voice from behind them.
Spence, McCutcheon, and Beau turned as one and stared at the speaker. It took Beau a moment to recognize the little duchess (it was difficult to think of her in any other way), for she had shed her fancy gown and cumbersome farthingale. She wore what looked like one of Pitt’s shirts and a pair of sailor’s canvas breeches that were several sizes too big, rolled at the waist and tied securely in place with a length of jute. Her eyes were rimmed and swollen, her nose was red, and her face the color of a bleached sheet. There wasn’t a curl to be found anywhere on her head; her hair had been scraped back and braided in such an obvious imitation of Beau’s, it gave all three at the rail a moment’s pause.
“Most of the ships in Cadiz have been commandeered by the governor of the province. They have their sails and their guns removed until such time as a Spanish crew can be provided, for fear they might sneak out of the harbor and desert: the King’s service.”
“How the devil do you know such things, lass?” Spence demanded.
“I am but a maid, señor. The duchess and her husband talk, and see only the walls even if I am standing beside them.”
“Did you tell Pitt this?” Beau asked.
“About the ships? Yes, señora. And about the cannon and the nets they are able to string across the channel to the inner bay.”
“Cannon? Nets?”
“The cannon on the castle walls, they are very old and have had to be fixed in place. They can only strike into the very center of the harbor. And the net is worked by two galleys, which can be sunk to seal off the entrance to the inner port.”
“An’ Drake will know all of this before he goes in to attack?” Spence asked excitedly.
Christiana lowered her eyes a moment, obviously suffering pangs of guilt, but when she raised them again, and was confronted by Beau’s curious frown, they were as proud as the tilt in her chin.
“I wanted señor Pitt to come back to me,” she said simply. “I wanted him to take me with him, but this he most angrily would not do.”
“A plague o’ that goin’ around,” Spit remarked under his breath.
“He wishes to marry me and I wish to marry him, but we are not married yet and he should not be able to tell me what I may and what I may not do.”
In all the time the duchess had been aboard, Beau estimated she had probably not sent more than two or three words in her direction, but she stared at her now, dumbfounded.
“She’s right,” Beau said, and looked at Spence. “She is absolutely right, you know.”
The two pair of tiger eyes read each other’s thoughts and brought a groan up from Spit’s throat.
“Ahh, Jaysus. Tell me ye’re not thinkin’ what I think ye’re thinkin’”.
Spence’s eyes narrowed. “I’m only thinkin’—sometimes ye have to take heed o’ the flag we fly up top. That’s England’s flag, an’ she’s in trouble, an’ that means, by my mind, we should be doing what we can to help, not slinkin’ away with our tails tucked ’atween our legs. What say you, daughter?”
“I say it is a sad day indeed when someone tells Jonas Spence where he may and where he may not sail his ship.”
Spence drew a deep breath to swell his chest. “Aye. So it would be. We’d have to put it to the whole crew. Wouldn’t be right not to; they’ve earned the right to go home an’ spend their hard-won gold.”
“Then let’s put it to them, and see what they say.”
Chapter 26
Simon Dante had early misgivings about the Scout. She was designed to be light and fast, yet there was evidence of weakness in the masts and the rudder took far too long to ponder an order before it obeyed.
Most of the guns had given Pitt cause to suspect they had been cannibalized off prize ships, for they were of varying calibers and quality, some bearing the stamp of an Italian foundry, some English,
some Spanish. He had insisted on testing them with live ammunition—a waste young Carleill had strongly opposed. Pitt was not fond of the Italian style of building their cannon in sections of banded iron and bolting them together in the trough of a carriage; two of these built-up culverins had obviously outlived their usefulness and cracked apart on the first live shot. He was able to bastard them into one almost adequate gun, but another of the cast-iron falconets he simply unbolted and let fall into the sea. Most of the powder had to be reground to a finer consistency and brought up out of the damp hold to dry out properly in the sun.
Still, it was a ship and Dante was in command again and for the two weeks it took to sail around Cape Saint Vincent, he and Pitt drilled on the guns and on the rigging, startling most of the crew into becoming, if not better sailors, at least more alert sailors. At all times of the day and even in the dead of night, a sudden roll of drums would signal the men to turn to, cutlasses, muskets, and pikes in hand for boarding and hand-to-hand-combat drill. It was Lucifer who took command of these, and in the same two-week period a good many of the men were terrified into becoming able swordsmen.
In his eagerness to reach Cadiz, Drake allowed no further delays for discussions or consultations. The Queen’s galleons were first to test coastal waters under their keels, and by the second to last day of April, dawn found the entire fleet lying off San Lucar de Barrameda, easily within striking distance of the Spanish port.
At noon he assembled his captains on board the Elizabeth Bonaventure for a final council of war and told them, in the simplest terms possible, what he wanted, what he expected from them.
“The wind is with us. The sun is behind us. And by the grace of God, we shall capture the best part of Cadiz before this night falls.”
He ordered their colors struck so as to avoid early identification from any swift flyboats that might be patroling the area. He invited Dante to go over, one more time in as much detail as he could recall, the configuartion of the harbor and its defenses. An hour, no more, and the fleet was under way, the gundecks cleared for action, the ship’s surgeons ready with their saws and pincers, their mortars and lint. Drummers stood ready on deck wiping beads of moisture from their upper lips, shifting nervously from foot to foot, occasionally dragging a hand down their breeches to dry the palms. Gunners readied their shot and cartridges, lit the slow fuses in their linstocks, and stood by the cannon, enjoying the silence and crystal-clear air, murmuring prayers, wondering if it would be the last glimpse of blue sky and foaming whitecaps they would see.
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