She looked up at the tall mizzenmast that stood before her, at the fat rolls of sail furled to the spars and remembered hearing a quote someone once said about it being a good day to die.
“Move,” he said in her ear.
“First tell me why. Why did you do it? You are a rich man, an important man. You belong to the nobility for pity sake, how could you do something so contemptible, so disgraceful, so...so dishonorable?”
“If we had a month together, dear lady, I could possibly explain my motives, but since we are reduced to minutes, suffice it to say the vast reserves of wealth attributed to the Perry name were illusionary. My father squandered nearly penny he inherited on gambling and bad investments. There was not one estate that did not come to me burdened under staggering debts, so much so, they were in danger of being sold at a creditor’s auction.”
“Money?” She stopped again and this time, turned fully around to gape at him. “You betrayed your country for money?”
“Do without it for few years, and you would be surprised how very important it becomes. And it was not my intent in the beginning to ‘sell out my country’. It began innocently enough with a few hundred pounds here, a few hundred there for information that could have been obtained a dozen different ways. No one tells you, however, when you are young and stupid and blaming all the world for your woes that once you sell your soul to the devil, he is an unforgiving bastard. He grabs you by the guts and holds on fast and even if you want to break away, he has the power to eviscerate you before your peers. By the time I realized this, it was too late to back away, so the object then became to push forward. This--” he waved a hand to encompass the Bellerophon-- “was to be my last foray into the darker side of intrigue and afterwards...well ...America is the land of opportunity, they say. I was truly hoping you would come with me.” His gaze raked appreciatively over the high bloom of color in her cheeks, the glossy tangle of her hair. “You would have made a magnificent duchess. You still could, you know, for Althorpe will never clear his name. Neither will Wessex, I’m afraid.”
“He has the dispatches. He can prove they are forgeries.”
“How? By the watermark?”
Annaleah did not think she was capable of feeling a deeper sense of horror, but when she saw the coldness of his smile, she knew she was wrong. “There was no change in the mark?”
“A rather creative piece of impromptu gibberish, I thought.”
“Oddly enough,” a familiar voice said from behind them, “we were just discussing that.”
Barrimore spun around. Emory was standing in the sunlight, his long legs braced apart to counter the gentle roll of the deck. Wessex, Anthony, and Maitland were formed up beside him presenting a formidable phalanx of grim faces, though none as grim as the one staring along the steel barrel of the gun Emory was aiming at Barrimore’s head.
The knife flashed upward and sank into the tender flesh beneath Anna’s ear.
“Back away gentlemen. Back away or Miss Fairchilde will pay a dear price for your bravado.”
“Look around you, Barrimore,” Emory said. “Where do you think you can go?”
As hushed as the crowded deck had been when they came on board, it was twice as silent now as men stopped what they were doing to watch the facing off of the nobleman and the notorious privateer. On a signal from Maitland, a line of scarlet-clad infantrymen formed up across the quarter deck rail, another mustered forward, the click of hammers being cocked on their muskets the only sound on the still air.
The blade forced Anna’s head back against Barrimore’s shoulder. She closed her eyes against the sharp sting of the edge slivering through the skin. She did not have to see the look on Emory’s face, or on the faces of the other men to know that the warmth she felt trickling down her neck was blood.
“I think I have more than enough leverage to reach shore,” Barrimore said, his voice silky in her ear.
“Even if you do. Even if you manage to get off this ship, where can you go? How long can you hold a knife to her throat before your arm tires, or you take a false step--” Emory was hissing the words through his teeth now-- “or turn your back, knowing that I will be right behind you.”
“You have an alternative to suggest?”
“We can settle it right here, right now. You win, you leave the ship unmolested with a guarantee of safe passage as far as the shore.”
“Now see here, Althorpe--” Maitland began.
“Agreed,” Barrimore said, cutting off the protest. “You and I, here and now, the victor goes free--assuming of course we have the captain’s word as an officer and a gentleman that the terms will be honored.”
Anna held her breath. The ship, it seemed, held her breath as well, for what little breeze there was died and the pennants flying high on the masts wilted and fluttered down around the oak. Anna was aware of Barrimore’s heartbeat against her back and the tension in the fingers that gripped her arm. She could not judge how deeply the knife had cut her, but it felt as though there was a veritable torrent of blood pouring down to soak her shirt front.
All eyes, however, were on the gruff face of Frederick Maitland. “Damn you, Althorpe,” he muttered, “this should be left to a higher authority.”
“On board this ship, sir, you are the highest authority. You are both judge and jury. And if you are willing to let this thing be settled here and now, I am more than willing to oblige the man.”
Maitland’s gaze held Emory’s for a long, long moment before he looked at Wessex. The earl, in turn, gave a small, less than resoundingly supportive nod.
Barrimore eased the knife from Annaleah’s throat and an instant later she was running across the deck, throwing herself into Emory’s waiting arms.
A fresh ripple of excitement spread across the deck and even before the choice of weapons was decided, the men began to back up and form a clear ring of open space.
“It should be me who fights him,” Anthony insisted. “I have already made my challenge.”
“Yes, well,” Emory lifted his face out of the crush of Anna’s hair long enough to grace the viscount with a wry smile. “If I fail, you can take my place.”
“He is an expert marksman and a master of the sword--a member of le cadré noir! I have practised with him on occasion and know the way he plies the rapier. And besides which, Anna is my sister! I should be the one to avenge the insult!”
“I am his wife,” Annaleah stated flatly, “in every sense but the final prayer. To that end, captain, may I beg another small favor of you when this business is done?”
To Anthony’s spluttered shock, and Emory’s bemused smile, Maitland swelled his chest and gave a brusque nod. “It would be both my honor and my pleasure, young lady.”
Emory was stripped to his shirt and breeches. The marquis had similarly removed his coat and vest, and was engaged in the process of testing the weight and balance of the dozen swords that had been offered for his approval.
“Can you not just shoot him where he stands and be done with it?” Anna asked, her fear for Emory beginning to dampen her earlier enthusiasm for loyalty to king and country.
He turned and looked at her a moment, the telltale shiver in his cheek belying his outward calm. He took her face tenderly between his hands and kissed her long and deep, and without a care to who was watching. When she had been duly subdued into a breathless silence, he steered her gently into her brother’s custody then took up the sword he had selected, running the pad of his thumb lightly along the keen edge. He held the tip and tested the strength of the steel, then sliced the air in several blurred flashes before nodding his final approval.
Across the deck, Barrimore finished his own series of brisk preparatory strokes. He had glanced over during the kiss and his mouth was pinched with disdain.
“If you are quite ready...?”
Both men had waived the formal rules that governed a duel, each knowing from the outset it would be a fight to the death. They moved forward into the cleared ring, t
aking casual, normal strides at first then slowly easing into the precise beauty of slow, lethal steps that moved them in a tense, watchful circle facing each other. As they prowled, they assessed the other’s stance, his grip, the position he held his blade, making minor adjustments in their own attitudes.
“Anthony informs me you are a master,” Emory mused. “A member of le cadré noir.”
Barrimore tipped his head to acknowledge the remark. “I had occasion to study under Riveaux, in Brussels, but I found his theory on defences lacking. I preferred the Italian school of Strecci, though I must say I have some appreciation for the subtle strategies put forward by the Spaniard Leopoldi.”
Emory circled, teeth and sword flashing in the sunlight. “I studied under the Celt, Turnbull. He taught me to kill or be killed.”
“Difficult to argue with that logic,” Barrimore agreed. “But it does make for some gaps in technique.”
Quicker than the eye could follow, he lunged forward, thrusting with the point of his blade, cutting with the edge as he flew back. The speed of the attack and the resultant stripe of blood on Emory’s thigh had barely registered when he was coming in again, striking and thrusting in a series of parries and ripostes that forced Emory to guard and block during every step of a harried retreat.
As swift as it had erupted, the clash ended, with Barrimore falling away and circling again, smiling as he assessed the damage he had wrought. Aside from the cut on his thigh, there was a crimson stripe high on Emory’s arm, another on the wrist of his left hand, a fourth on a knuckle that dripped blood through the scrolled figure eight of his guard. He had also lost the scrap of ribbon that held his hair tied at his nape and the thick black waves fell forward over his cheeks and neck, curling over the stark whiteness of his collar.
Behind them, the whispers swelled to a buzz as wagers were made against the outcome. The soldiers crowded the rails along the upper decks. Not a spar or shroud was empty of sailors; they even stood on the barrels of the cannons to gain extra height.
Barrimore came in again, lunging, thrusting. Steel clashed again and again as Emory blocked and parried and this time held his ground, ending the assault with an expert twist of his wrist that cross their blades and locked the points downward in a bastard guardant, a threat to nothing but the deck at their feet.
“Very good,” Barrimore said, genuinely surprised at the deftness of the move.
“I am a quick study,” Emory countered, twisting his wrist again to break the position. He took a small circular step to the side, feinting left, and when Barrimore rose to block it, he struck on the right instead, slicing through the silk of the marquis’s shirt and leaving a bright scarlet ribbon across his upper torso. He spun again and slashed down in a forehand ward, coming close enough to Barrimore’s ear to nick a lock of hair. The marquis counter-thrusted, advancing fast and hard, forcing Emory to leap sideways in order to avoid slamming into the trunk of the mainmast.
The ring of sailors fanned back to open a wider space. There were open shouts of encouragement now, and hotter wagering. Word of what was happening on board had been conveyed to the boats in the water below and although their occupants could not see either the action or the participants, there were given odds, and bets taken, each touch and slash duly relayed.
Althorpe went in on the attack, retaliating for a stinging cut on his ribs. Barrimore was good--too good to give away the smallest advantage, and Emory found himself turned into the sun, his back to the stairs with nowhere to retreat. His shirt was starting to stick to his back in patches and his face was bathed in sweat. He had a very real sense the marquis was merely playing with him, leading him here and there, wearing him down with a series of feints and thrusts that nicked at bits of flesh and did no real damage except to his pride. He tried to execute a demi volte, a clever, classical move that failed miserably and earned another mocking slap from Barrimore’s blade. And instead of finding himself clear, he was trapped on the bottom rung of the companionway, sandwiched between the two wooden rails.
Barrimore grinned and lunged, the point driving straight and true for the middle of Emory’s chest. Deflecting the blade at the last possible instant, Emory grasped the rail and elected this time to use a classic Turnbull move, swinging himself up and over, using the heels of his boots to kick the marquis full in the belly, startling him back and buying himself a precious few seconds of breathing space.
The unconventional brawler’s strike wiped the amusement from Barrimore’s face and he came in hard and furious, his blade moving in a blur. Emory was forced to retreat to the side of the ship, parrying stroke after powerful stroke with jarring blows that tore at the strength in his arm and shoulder. The open gap of the gangway was directly behind him and he veered toward it, warding off the snarled curses and beads of sweat that told him Barrimore was finished playing. He was driving with purpose now, cutting, slashing, thrusting with a master’s skill and brute power.
Emory was at the rail. He was out of room and rapidly running out of defensive moves.
He saw the glint of Barrimore’s steel coming toward him and put his left hand out to meet the thrust. He grabbed the forearm near the wrist and used the marquis’s own forward momentum to drag him close enough to trap the hand and sword under his arm. Holding fast, he made a sharp outward turn with his body, bending the captured arm fully back until it snapped at the elbow. At the same time, he pressed up behind Barrimore and with one clean slash of his sword, drew it across the front of the marquis’s neck, cutting his scream of agony short in a spray of bright red foam.
Barrimore staggered two steps forward, his broken arm hanging, his sword still hooked through useless fingers and trailing on the deck. With his left hand he groped at the severed skin and cartilage on his throat, but the life was pumping out of him faster than he could staunch it. He teetered a moment in the opening of the gangway then seemed to twist outward in a graceful pirouette, falling over the side and landing with a heavy splash in the water below.
There was a beat of silence before the ship’s crew erupted with a roar. Emory let his own sword drop and doubled over at the waist, his hands braced on his thighs as he sucked at lungfuls of air. Annaleah broke free of her brother’s grasp and skidded down the ladderway and across the deck, flinging herself at Emory a scant moment before he would have toppled forward onto his face.
“I am fine,” he gasped. “I am fine. I just...need to catch my breath.”
“You were bloody magnificent, Captain Althorpe,” Maitland declared, striding up beside them.
“Indeed,” Wessex agreed, frowning despite the raucous cheering and shouting going on around them. “But unfortunately, that only solves one of our problems.”
Emory gulped a few more deep breaths then straightened, his arm tight around Anna’s shoulders. “If you gentlemen will take one more leap of faith and allow me the time it takes to travel to Paris and back, I think I can resolve our other problem to everyone’s satisfaction.”
“What are you suggesting?” Wessex asked.
“I’m suggesting I know where the real Bonaparte is and can have him back here before anyone in the admiralty is any the wiser.”
CHAPTER 28
Annaleah sat close to the coach window and looked out at the streets passing by. She had never been in Paris before and wished they had time to take a long, leisurely ride around the city. She had to settle for Emory’s promise to bring her back one day to see all the beautiful castles and estates and palaces that had been built by generations of the French aristocracy and were now, for the most part, owned by complete strangers whose only claim to nobility was the fact they still had their heads.
She was not half so nervous as she had expected to be. The Intrepid had sailed from Torbay within two hours of Lord Barrimore’s death--barely long enough for Captain Maitland to assemble his officers, fetch his bible, and perform a hasty wedding ceremony. She had been married in a short naval pea coat and canvas breeches, with a bandage wrapped around her n
eck, and a smile as bright as the sun on her face. There too, Emory had insisted they would repeat their vows in a proper church with all the pomp and ceremony the occasion deserved, but she was just happy to be Mrs. Emory St. James Althorpe. So happy she smiled every time she looked down at her hand and saw the glitter of her aunt’s diamond ring sitting next to the flattened iron nail he had insisted upon hammering into a wedding band.
She drew a deep breath to settle herself and adjusted the delicate folds of silk in her gown. The lace fichu she wore high around her neck required a minor alteration as well to cover the angry red scab, and an impatient finger jabbed beneath the heavy crown of mahogany curls to reach an elusive itch. Had it only been a little over a fortnight ago, before her banishment to Widdicombe House, that stiff curls and scratchy lace had been the order of the day? Two weeks of undressed hair and windblown walks on the cliffs and beach, combined with the introduction to soft cambric shirts and an increasing comfort with wearing little else while in her husband’s company had definitely soured her to confining bodices and steel hair pins.
It had plainly caught Emory off guard too, after the maid and hairdresser and clothier had departed the hotel earlier that day. She had walked out of the bedroom in her filmy silken finery, her hair an elegant upsweep of glossy curls, and he had just stared. Seamus’s jaw had dropped. Both men had risen awkwardly to their feet and Anna had been hard pressed not to laugh out loud.
She had suffered a minor spate of the giggles an hour or so later when a similar transformation had been wrought on Emory--not to an elegant, well bred gentleman, but to a liveried footman in a pink satin frockcoat, tight white knee breeches and high buckled shoes. His hair had been confined beneath a powdered wig and his scowl cracked the layer of cosmetics required to tone down the incongruous bronze shade of his skin. Seamus looked only slightly less amusing, his barrel chest straining the buttons of the black jacket he wore, his own carrot red hair tamed and crushed beneath a brimmed stove top hat.
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