by Jane Feather
The last lingering threads of unease vanished into the wind and Meg yielded to the exhilaration of the moment, to the excitement of knowing that the man holding this ship on course would quite soon be devoting that strength and concentration to a quite different activity. She laughed and the sound was snatched by the wind.
Chapter 11
The weather changed when they rounded the jutting rugged coastline of Brittany, leaving the town of Brest to port as they headed into the rough waters of the Bay of Biscay. Rain clouds scudded across a gray sky and the wind was as cold and bitter as a winter gale.
Meg stood in her usual position against the stern railing, shivering into her thick cloak, her hair frizzed by the damp air. She could just make out the faint line of the French coast and thought longingly for a moment of a warm fireside, a pot of hot soup, a glass of spiced punch. Winter comforts all of them, and things that wouldn’t have entered her head yesterday, when the sun had been hot in a brilliant blue cloudless sky and the Mary Rose had skipped across sparkling waves. Today she was lumbering through them, climbing up and then pitching forward under only minimal sail.
“Feeling queasy?”
She turned at Cosimo’s voice. “No, but it’s not very comfortable.”
“It isn’t,” he agreed, coming to stand beside her. “And I’m afraid it won’t be for a while. Biscay’s notorious for its heavy seas and bad weather.”
“I wish you’d warned me,” she said, only half joking.
“Would it have made a difference?” He loosened his boat cloak, then put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him, wrapping the voluminous folds around them both.
“No, of course not,” she said truthfully, inhaling the mingled scents of his body warmed by the enclosed air inside the cloak. His shirt still smelled of soap and the previous day’s sunshine that had dried it, overlaid with a faint earthy tang of sweat from his recent wrestling with a recalcitrant helm.
“We’re sailing well away from the coastline,” she observed, wondering if closer in it would be less rough.
“For the moment,” he agreed. “I don’t want to attract unnecessary attention from French patrols. But tomorrow night we’ll be going in.”
“Why won’t it be dangerous tomorrow night?”
“It will be, but I have something to do ashore.”
It had been a day and a half since they’d left Sark, and Meg had been content to take each moment as it came, putting aside the war-related purpose of this voyage. Now she experienced that flutter of unease again. “You’re actually going ashore?”
“Just for an hour or two.”
“To do what?”
He shook his head in mock reproof. “Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies, my dear.”
“But I’m not one of your crew,” she protested. “They don’t seem to mind being kept in the dark. But I do. It matters to me what you do and why.”
His expression darkened as she’d known it would, and the warm humorous light left his eyes to be replaced by that cold blue glitter that she loathed. “You’re on my ship,” he stated. “You’ll know exactly what I want you to know, nothing more, nothing less.”
She didn’t want to quarrel and yet somehow she couldn’t help herself. “That’s not good enough, Cosimo. I refuse to be subject to the same rules as your crew. I’m your lover, I’d like to think I was your friend . . . worthy of some confidence.”
“You are both those things but that has nothing to do with it. While you’re on my ship you’ll receive the same information as everyone else,” he said baldly. “Believe me, I have my reasons.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do,” she said acidly, moving away from the shelter of his cloak. “And tell me, pray, if it was Ana standing here beside you, would you be treating her to the same lack of confidence?”
He had no answer for that, of course. “You must excuse me,” he said, leaving her standing there, the formality of his departure conveying his displeasure more effectively than any loss of temper could have done.
If Ana was with him, he wouldn’t be making this unscheduled landing at Quiberon. There was a secret courier-pigeon outpost there, manned not by the navy but by members of his own spy network. He’d sent news of Ana’s capture from Sark. His agents would have started working on finding her immediately. If there was any progress, news would be sent to Quiberon. If there was none there, the next place would be La Rochelle, farther down the coast. Each landing on the enemy coast was fraught with danger and could only take place at night, but he wouldn’t be at peace until he had some news of her.
He wasn’t ready to take Meg into his confidence at this point. She was not committed to his mission as yet. Apart from the fact that it flew in the face of his ingrained habit of keeping his own counsel, he couldn’t risk her having information that would betray him if she was forced to give it up. She wasn’t a seasoned agent like Ana, and he hadn’t had the time or the opportunity to test her strengths and her resourcefulness. That would come later with the training he would have to give her.
And then the thought occurred that perhaps there was no time like the present to initiate such testing and training. It was certainly no time to antagonize her. Meg wasn’t Ana, but he needed her to take Ana’s place. How could he know what she was capable of if he didn’t give her the opportunity to show him?
He glanced back to the stern rail but she was no longer there and he guessed she had gone below to nurse her resentment. Except that he didn’t think she was the kind of woman who nursed resentments or held grudges. She would be annoyed, but she would let him know it.
Meg was indeed back in the cabin, and she was indeed annoyed. Gus, who was showing every expression of pleasure at having some company again, hopped onto her shoulder and pecked at her earlobe. “Oh, are you lonely, Gus?”
He muttered sweet nothings in her ear and she felt some of her indignation fade. She lifted him back onto his perch and shrugged off her damp cloak, shivering in the thin silk of the gown beneath. There had been no winter-weight materials in Ana’s cupboard, which puzzled her a little. Surely both Cosimo and Ana would have been aware of the way the weather could turn nasty at sea?
Maybe in another cupboard. She hadn’t explored the cabin with any thoroughness as yet. She knelt to open the cupboards set beneath the window seats and rifled through their contents. The privateer’s undergarments, stockings, cravats for the most part. She sat back on her heels, frowning. Where were the mysterious dispatches he’d picked up from Lieutenant Murray?
Surely they’d be in the cabin somewhere. She forgot about searching for warmer garments and went over to the chart table again and its shelf of books above. Perhaps they were tucked between the volumes. She took out each book, wondering once again why the privateer’s library consisted only of dictionaries. Why in particular did he need a Latin dictionary? And a Bible? Did he conduct a Sunday service or something? But she’d passed a Sunday on board, and in port too when the crew had nothing better to do. There’d been no sign of religious ceremony then. Perhaps he was a closet Bible reader. There was an absurdity to that image that restored her usual good humor, but she still wanted to find these dispatches that were the reason for this voyage.
She lifted the charts on the table, opened the little drawer beneath. It held a fresh supply of quills, sheets of onionskin, and a handful of the tiny canisters. She knew, because he’d made no secret of it, that he facilitated courier correspondence, and, because he’d told her, that he was a courier, a carrier of dispatches himself. Important activities, she was sure, in the world of the spy, but somehow they didn’t seem important enough for Cosimo. So what else did he do?
She bent to open the cupboard beneath the chart table but it was locked, the only place in the entire cabin that didn’t yield up its contents. What secrets did he keep in there? The elusive dispatches, perhaps? But what else?
She was gazing in thought out through the rain-smeared window at the churning gunmetal sea when the door open
ed. She turned swiftly, unable to help a guilty intake of breath, aware of the open drawer behind her, the volumes that she had not yet returned to their place on the shelf.
“Looking for something?” Cosimo asked, a frown flickering in his eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “Something warm to wear.”
“In that drawer? Behind the books?” He gave her an incredulous stare as he closed the door behind him.
“No,” she agreed, resigned to what this time would be a justifiable use of the glacial look. “I was being nosy.”
“Ah.” He nodded slowly and remained with his shoulders leaning against the door at his back. “What did you hope to find?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a helpless shrug. “A clue . . . something . . . anything, really.”
“Permit me to tell you, my dear, that you’ll never make a spy if you don’t learn to cover your tracks.” He pushed himself away from the door and crossed to the chart table.
Meg skipped slightly to one side. “I wasn’t trying to spy,” she protested.
Cosimo returned the volumes to their shelf and closed the drawer of the table. He continued as if he hadn’t heard her protest, “And you should always conduct an operation when you’re certain you won’t be disturbed.”
“Without a key to the door, that would be impossible,” she retorted, disliking this schoolmasterly tone much more than straightforward annoyance.
He merely shook his head and regarded her thoughtfully. “A clue to what?”
“To you, of course. I can’t get a straight answer out of you, so I have no choice but to poke around a little.”
“You could always just accept my wishes.”
“I could, I suppose,” she said, her head tilted slightly as she appeared to consider the appeal of this. But her green gaze held a warning as she met his eyes. “But blind, unthinking obedience to your wishes was never a condition of our agreement. Had it been, I would be back on English shores by now. I’m no puppet, Cosimo, and you, in this instance, are no puppet master. You may pull the strings of your crew, but not mine.”
Cosimo wondered with some interest if she had really considered the reality of her situation. She had neither power nor freedom on his ship while they were plowing through the high seas. If she had considered it, her refusal to acknowledge it was certainly indicative of a particularly stubborn, determined nature. Qualities that he had always found appealing in a woman, and that were certainly essential for the work that lay ahead.
“What do you wish to know?” he asked, casting aside the thick, damp folds of his boat cloak.
The question . . . the capitulation . . . so astounded Meg that for a second she was dumbstruck. “Tell me about Ana,” she said finally, even as she wondered why, of all the questions crowding her mind, that one should have popped out first.
“What exactly do you wish to know about Ana?” He sat down, clasping his hands on the tabletop in front of him.
Meg cursed herself for opening such a fruitless discussion that could so easily imply some kind of pathetic jealousy on her part. She wasn’t in the least jealous of the absent Ana. But she was interested in other aspects of the missing woman’s relationship with the privateer. “Does she work with you?”
“On occasion.”
“Is she English?”
“No. Austrian.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Not yet.”
“But you expect to soon?”
“I hope to.” His countenance had remained expressionless throughout the catechism, his tone neutral, but the wall he’d thrown up was unassailable nevertheless.
Meg accepted defeat at the hands of a master. “It’s none of my business,” she said. And then she frowned as his last answer sank in.
“Are you going ashore to find out?”
He smiled, the cool neutrality of his expression transformed as the familiar Cosimo returned. “It took you a while, but you got what you wanted in the end.”
“You could have simply told me.”
“So I could.” He stood up. “But that doesn’t come easily to me. Other things, however, do. Come here.” He crooked a finger. “I have it in mind to demonstrate that even you, my dear Meg, can perform for a puppet master on a certain stage.”
And how right he was, Meg thought, as she went into his arms. But she too could play puppet mistress on occasion. Sauce for the goose was most definitely sauce for the gander.
Making love on a pitching sea was a curious business, Meg reflected some considerable time later. It required all the balance of a skilled gymnast. Cosimo had no such difficulty, but then, the sea in all its moods was his natural terrain. He held her against him, cushioning her as the motion threatened to toss her against the hard sides of the box-bed, but not for an instant did he lose his rhythm as he thrust deep inside her, bringing her inexorably closer to her peak despite the distraction of the ever moving space. In the end she relaxed and let her body go wherever the sea took it.
“That was rather like making love on the back of a horse,” she observed dreamily, running her hand down his sweat-slick back as he dropped beside her on the cot.
“When have you made love on a horse?” He stroked her belly lazily.
“Well, never, actually, but it’s how I imagine it must feel.”
“We should try it one day,” he said. With a sigh he pulled himself upright and out of the bed. “I’ve left my ship unattended for too long.” He pulled on his britches again and thrust his arms into his shirt. Then he remembered something. “What were you saying about warmer clothes?”
“That I was looking for some,” she responded from deep beneath the huddle of blankets. “It’s too cold for silk, so if Ana didn’t make provision for bad weather, I’m going to have to stay in bed until it gets warm again.”
“Well, as it happens there are garments that Ana would have worn in inclement weather,” he said, and there was a glint in his eye that put Meg on her guard.
“Where are they?” she asked suspiciously.
“In one of those cupboards, I believe,” he said with a vague gesture to the rank of cupboards under the port window seat.
“I looked there, I didn’t see anything.” She sat up, drawing the covers up under her chin.
That glint intensified. “You might not have recognized them for what they were.” He sat down to pull on his boots. “They’re a little unusual, but they will keep you warm.” He stood up again and reached for his boat cloak. “I own I’m looking forward to seeing you wear them. I believe they will suit you admirably.” He came over to the cot and kissed her hard. “Come up on deck when you’re dressed.” His chuckle carried a note of amused satisfaction that only increased her suspicions.
“Now just what is he talking about?” Meg asked of Gus, who was preening himself on his perch.
“G’day,” he said irrelevantly.
“And to you too.” Meg climbed out of the box and wrapped herself in the top blanket as the cold air hit her heated nakedness. She went to the port-side cupboards and knelt before them. As she’d found before, they contained only Cosimo’s undergarments, cravats, shirts, stockings. She began to pile them up around her and then at the back of the cupboard saw another pile. Heavy cotton shirt, long woolen underdrawers, nankeen britches, thick woolen stockings, a leather jerkin. She took them out and examined them.
A somewhat incredulous smile tilted the corners of her mouth. These garments certainly wouldn’t fit the privateer. But they would fit her. “A little unusual” was an understatement, she reflected, experimentally slipping her arms into the sleeves of the jerkin. A little large on the shoulders, a little long in the sleeves, but nothing that would inconvenience her.
She slipped off the jerkin and tossed the clothes on the cot, then knelt again to return the contents of the cupboard to their shelves. As she reached in, her fingers encountered a small hard shape. Curious, she took it out. It was a velvet drawstring pouch. Meg opened it and shook the content
s onto the palm of her hand. A small silver key. A key perfectly sized to fit the only locked drawer in the cabin.
She tossed it from palm to palm for a few seconds. Cosimo had hidden it, therefore he didn’t want anyone unlocking that drawer. Not a difficult conclusion. She didn’t have the right to unlock the drawer, another obvious conclusion. But did she have the right to discover as much as she could about the man who was her lover, on whose mercies at this point she was entirely dependent? Through her own choice, certainly, but that didn’t alter the reality. Didn’t she owe it to herself to be prepared for anything?
Meg decided that she did. She shuffled on her knees the short distance to the drawer beneath the chart table and tried the key. It fit like a glove and turned with well-oiled ease. The drawer slid open. She stared at its contents, a sudden sick dread clutching at her stomach. A row of knives, highly polished, lay on a baize cloth. There was nothing ordinary about them, nothing that might imply they would be used for a mundane purpose, like whittling wood, or splicing rope, or cutting paper or material. A stiletto blade; a curved blade like a scimitar; a wickedly serrated blade; one shaped like a cleaver; a small silver dagger with the narrow blade of a rapier.
They were knives used to kill. And they were locked away for just that reason.
Meg slammed the drawer shut, locked it with quivering fingers, dropped the key back into its pouch and thrust it into the back of the cupboard, piling the privateer’s clothes on top of it. He’d told her to look for clothes in the cupboard, so if he noticed things were put back out of order, he wouldn’t question it.
Who did Cosimo kill with those knives? She didn’t think they were used for self-defense; there was a deadly aura about them, about the way they were so neatly laid out, each one for a specific purpose. Pistols were noisy and clumsy; knives were silent and lethal.
She thought of his hands, those hands that had been on her body just a short while ago, brushing her skin, touching with knowing intimacy, so that she moaned beneath his caresses. Large, powerful, long-fingered hands that would wield a killer’s knife as unerringly as they could bring her to the heights of ecstasy.
