The Iron Rose

by Marsha Canham

  “I will know better the next time,” Varian said evenly. “I merely thought to—”

  “Save me the embarrassment in front of my sister? Believe me, she probably saw what you did and it saved me nothing but endless entendres from her tongue. She is a clever girl, our Jolly. And if I might offer a word of caution, should you ever find yourself locking blades with her, you had best give it your all or she’ll sliver you just for the insult.” He paused and smiled faintly. “She’s rather prickly in that respect.”

  “So I have noticed.”

  “Will you show it to me again? The imbrocade? It is a move I have not seen before.”

  Varian inclined his head. “Certainly. Though I could not find too many faults in your attack. You had me on my guard more than I would care to admit.”

  Dante grinned. “The devil you say. And were you speaking the truth? Did you honestly study under Alejandro de Caranca?”

  “If you knew me better,” Varian said evenly, “you would know that my word is my bond and men have died for doubting it.”

  Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest. “If you knew my sister better, you would know she is not easily swayed by a pretty face and a strong pair of arms. Whatever words you whispered in her ear while you had her beneath you will carry no weight if it ever came to a choice between you and the lowliest seaman on her crew. Speaking for myself, if I thought you intended to hurt the smallest hair on her head, I would slit you open stem to stern, tie you down in the sun, and watch the seabirds peck away your flesh until you screamed yourself into madness. Jonas would be even more creative, I’m sure, and Father … well … suffice it to say madness and death would be a blessing. Be wise and keep that in mind the next time you open your breeches.”

  Varian was accorded another flash of the handsome grin before Dante ducked back under the veil of greenery and began walking again. They went the rest of the way in silence, and by the time they arrived at the bottom of the slope, the air was purple with dusk and there were lights blazing in windows on both stories of the sprawling white house, more twinkling below in the harbor.

  Juliet had not lingered outside the cave. When she was fairly certain the two fools would not kill each other, she had left and returned down the path, too furious to trust herself not to take her sword to both men.

  Some of her anger had been vented with savage glee on the palm fronds that had got in her way on the trek down. Some continued to burn in her cheeks when she arrived at the house and started pacing to and fro, still wishing she had a pair of heads to break between her bare hands—Gabriel’s for defending her when she needed no defending, and Varian St. Clare’s because … because he was clever and deceitful and because she should have been able to leave his bed this morning with nothing more than a stretch and a yawn of satisfaction.

  He admitted he was a spy. He admitted he had come to the Indies to experience one last adventure before retiring to his castle and the virtues of wedded bliss. Was Gabriel right? Was she just part of the adventure?

  Even if she was, where was the harm in confessing it? She was more than happy to admit on her part that it was lust, pure and simple. Why complicate it further by seeking hidden motives? Why offer marriage like it was some kind of panacea? And why, by the devil’s wrath, was it perfectly fine for men to act on their feelings of lust, but when a woman ventured into those waters, she had to be redeemed instantly from the depths of the perceived sin and cloaked in respectability, regardless if she wanted to be or not? He’d looked like he had a bone stuck in his gullet when he tried to spit the words out; had she said yes, would he have spun into a swoon like his wretched little manservant?

  Juliet cursed and kicked an offensive pot of flowers out of the way. Her toes took the worst of the blow and she hopped over to the veranda to sit on the edge.

  She heard footsteps and looked up. They were just emerging from the path at the far end of the garden, Gabriel in front, St. Clare lagging a few steps behind. They seemed to be walking easily enough in each other’s company, with no evidence of the fight having continued after she left. Their clothes had dried for the most part, but the wind had played havoc with Varian’s hair, leaving it wild and shaggy around his shoulders.

  “You may check his shirt for extra holes if you like,” Gabriel said cheerfully, “but you will find him all of one piece. Is Father back yet, do you know?”

  “I’ve not gone looking, but I heard horses arrive out front a few minutes ago.”

  “Ah. In that case, I will just go along and find myself a tall glass of rum to ease the pain in my jaw. By the way, his grace has generously offered to show me that pretty little twirling fillip he did at the end.” He paused to swish an imaginary blade through the air. “And I have promised to let him feed the seabirds if he is so inclined.”

  He offered a polite bow and touched a dark curl before he continued on his way, leaving Juliet frowning up at Varian.

  “Feed the birds?”

  “With my own entrails,” he explained succinctly, “if I unfasten my breeches again without giving it serious thought.”

  Juliet sighed and shook her head with visible frustration. “There are barely ten months between us in age. I expect that makes him feel the need to play champion.”

  “I thought he showed remarkable restraint. Were our positions reversed, and I found him in flagrante with my sister …” His voice trailed off a moment. “Juliet … I meant what I said back there. My offer was genuine.”

  She frowned. “And your mouth is just as stiff with terror saying it now as then. Save your chivalrous gestures, your grace, they are not needed or wanted here. I have enjoyed our trysts, truly I have, but if you keep plaguing me with offers of marriage, I will have at you myself with a blade. Speaking of which—?”

  She held out her hand and Varian hesitated a moment before handing back her sword and baldric.

  “You realize, of course, my dear mother—who has been trying to get me to propose to someone, anyone, for the past few years—would be crushed if she knew that the first time the words actually left my mouth, they were rejected out of hand. Twice.”

  “Your dear mother should have raised a more honest son.”

  He sighed and took a seat beside her. “I have been more honest with you, Juliet, than with anyone else in my life thus far.”

  “When were you thinking of telling me you were a spy?”

  He pursed his lips. “Since the role was a small one, played many months ago, I did not think it was relevant. I am not here for any other nefarious purpose than the one I have already stated. I am not here to write down the names of your father’s fellow privateers; we already know them. I am not here to assess your power or strength; that too is quite well documented. I grant you the exact location of this island comes as somewhat of a revelation, but since the best I can estimate is that we are somewhere within a day’s sail of the Windward Passage, your lair is perfectly safe from exposure by me.”

  Juliet found the dark eyes waiting for her when she turned. “So much for Johnny Boy thinking you could not read a chart,” she murmured.

  “I am just as likely to be a hundred leagues out one way or the other but I do know the constellations that lie over the equator and we are considerably north.”

  “Is this supposed to win my trust?”

  “Would it help to nudge you closer if I told you I am also aware of the upcoming rendezvous on New Providence Island? If my dates are not as muddled as my thinking, I would estimate the annual meeting of all the privateers should happen some time within the next fortnight.”

  “Did Gabriel tell you that?”

  He shook his head. “I knew before I left London. That was where the Argus was bound.”

  “You were just going to sail into a harbor full of privateers? Demand they haul in their guns and follow you back to England like docile lambs?”

  “I was empowered to offer some excellent incentives aside from the amnesty and the pardons.”

  “Titles? L
ands? Estates? Tossing a knighthood at someone who already rules the sea is rather like tossing someone a coin to fetch their trunks, when that someone already has so many chests filled with coins, there is a lack of warehouses to store them.”

  He held her gaze a moment, then spread his hands with a helpless shrug. “In that case, I have nothing else to offer but the truth. I am not here to spy on your family. I have no intentions of studying stars and charts and landmarks with the intent to reveal the location of this island to anyone, nor do I have any tawdry ulterior motive for”—he leaned forward, kissing her hard enough to suck the breath from her mouth—“doing that. And if my proposal appeared stiff with terror, it is because you are a very terrifying young woman, and because it has confused the bloody hell out of me to see how easily you have managed to twist my entire world … everything I knew up until a few days ago to be solid and real and unchangeable … into something I hardly recognize at all.”

  He raked a hand into her hair, but while it remained there and while his eyes continued to search her face, he did not try to kiss her a second time.

  Juliet did not know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Nor did she know if she would have kissed him back or pushed him away if he had pulled her into his arms again. It was not even faintly comforting to know that she was not alone in her confusion, for if nothing else, she had assumed … she had known, dammit, that she could rely on his ingrained sense of ducal propriety to keep this thing between them on the lowest possible level of complication.

  Next, he would be spewing declarations of love, and she would be expected to know how to respond.

  She surged to her feet. “We should go inside. I am famished and my mouth tastes like seawater.”

  Varian was slower to rise, slower to clear his face and rearrange it in a less compromising expression. “If I am to meet your father, I would beg the chance to make myself a little more presentable.”

  “The clothes you wore yesterday make you look arrogant and self-serving. In truth, you will make a better impression in calfskin and cambric.”

  “I bow to your better judgment, madam.”

  “Do you indeed? Then brace yourself, sir, for the real judge and jury awaits you inside.”

  Varian had not yet made the acquaintance of either Lucifer or Geoffrey Pitt, though their reputations had certainly preceded them. The Cimaroon was possibly the tallest and broadest man he had ever seen in his life: a huge black mountain of muscle glowering in one corner of the room. His eyes were like two bottomless holes burned into his head, and when he peeled his lips back in a grin, the filed points of his teeth glinted like white daggers.

  Pitt was only slightly less intimidating. He was not as tall nor as solidly built as the other men who crowded the great room, but the bulk of his muscle, Juliet had warned, was between his ears. He was of a similar age as Simon Dante—mid-fifties—but wore fewer weather lines on his face and showed no gray in the sun-bleached waves of his hair. His eyes were the color of jade, pale green and intently focused. A man who thought to tell him a lie was a fool indeed, for although his smile was deceptively friendly, his instincts appeared to be as sharp as a blade. Proof of this was in the way his mouth drifted upward into a speculative little smile as he looked from Varian to Juliet, then back to Varian as she finished the introductions.

  “You will join us in a glass of brandy?” Simon Dante asked. “Or would you prefer to try our island rum?”

  “Brandy, thank you. I’m afraid my stomach has not acquired a keen enough tolerance for your rum.”

  Dante was also studying the rumpled hair, the damp clothes, the fresh nick on his temple, as he filled a glass and handed it to him. “You look as if you’ve had a rough time of it, lad. What new torment has my daughter been putting you through?”

  Happily, Juliet had not yet taken a mouthful of her own wine and when she coughed, it was just air.

  “She offered to show me a breathtaking view of your island, and was kind enough to take me up to the summit,” Varian said without missing much of a beat. “I must say, I am in awe, Captain, for you command the horizon as far as one can see in any direction. A pity you do not hold sway over the insects that attacked us on the way up and again on the way down.”

  “Vicious little beggars, were they not?” Gabriel agreed, raising his glass. “I was forced to use my sword to clear a path for us.”

  “You went up the mountain?” Simon looked at his younger son as if such a strenuous activity was not a common-day occurrence.

  “It was a mood.” He shrugged. “It came upon me unawares. Besides, someone had to chaperone these two. Jolly might have tossed him off the cliffs before we had a chance to hear his pretty speeches from the king.”

  Dante glanced pointedly at the bruise beginning to darken on his son’s cheek, then turned to Varian and smiled as he raised his glass. “Your continued good health, sir.”

  “And yours, Captain.”

  They drank, their gazes locked over the rims of the goblets.

  “And so you have come to offer the brethren an Act of Grace. All sins and past transgressions pardoned if they will but abide by the terms of the treaty with Spain—have I the fair gist of it?”

  “There are a few additional incentives, but yes. That would reduce the three pages of whys and wherefores in the king’s intent to a single sentence.”

  “Was this act signed by the king’s own hand? Or did he have one of his ministers do his dirty work?”

  “It was the king himself. I witnessed the signing with mine own eyes. It was signed in the presence of the Spanish ambassador as well, who then sent a copy to Spain.”

  “You have this decree on your person?”

  “Unfortunately, no. It was lost with the Argus.”

  Jonas snorted from across the room. “Convenient.”

  Varian turned and looked into the amber eyes.

  “Well, it is true. I could say I was traveling with papers to prove I was the emperor of China, but if they went down with the ship, how would I prove it? For that matter,” Jonas added, “we only have your word that you even are who you say you are.”

  “I have no good earthly reason to lie, sir,” Varian said quietly. “And my word is good enough for most men of my acquaintance.”

  “Look around you. Do we appear to be like most men of your acquaintance?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake.” Juliet, who had been sitting with a leg draped over the arm of a chair, rose and went to the sideboard to refill her wine. “Why not just fetch a pot of boiling oil and have him pick a stone off the bottom. If his flesh melts off the bone, you will know he is lying; if it remains unblemished, you will know he speaks the truth.”

  The only one who responded to her sarcasm was Lucifer, who grinned and nodded as if he approved of the idea.

  Simon gently swirled the contents of his goblet. “I am inclined to give our guest the benefit of the doubt—for the moment anyway—unless you have a damned good reason why we should not?”

  Jonas snorted. “I don’t trust him. That’s reason enough for me.”

  Isabeau came walking through the open door. “If he had brown eyes instead of blue, that would be reason enough for you, Jonas dear, when your belly is full of rum.”

  She went directly to the enormous cherrywood desk in the corner of the room and slapped down a sheaf of papers. The topmost ones were curled at the edges; some still had bits of wax stuck to the parchment where the seals had been broken.

  She joined Juliet by the sideboard and poured a full measure of wine, draining it before she turned to address her family.

  “I have been reading for most of the day,” she announced. “Aside from the manifests of crew and cargo, there were the logs—which I will get to in a moment—and an inordinately thick sheaf of personal letters entrusted to the capitán to carry home to Spain. The Spaniards are effusive, to say the least, and whine at endless length about the food, the bugs, the swamps, the conditions in port, the noise from the garrison bar
racks, how much they long to be going home, how they miss the warm plains of Seville, the breezes off the Pyrenees, the snow, the olive trees … pages and pages of tear-blotted script bemoaning their plight to lovers and mistresses and wives and families. I am ready to pull my teeth out to save them grinding together every time I read the salutation mí amor!” She paused and held out her cup for Juliet to refill. “Then there are the official reports from the commandants, from the gobernador, from the damned lackey in charge of seeing there are enough linens on the tables in the officers’ mess. And the cook! Dear Christ weeping on the cross, the poor bastard is beside himself for the short supplies of vessie. Three pages he goes on about it. Three damned pages about vessie, written in a hand that looked like it used a chicken foot as a quill! For the blood of God, what is vessie? Is it the name of a girl or something to eat?”

  When no one was able to answer, Varian ventured to raise a finger. “If I may, I believe it is the bladder of a pig, used for steaming meats and stews.”

  “Can it steam away a pounding head and bleary eyes? If so, I shall demand a crate myself. As it is, I was driven to stab the letter a dozen times to gain relief. You’ll find the shreds there, right beside a second letter from the same poor bastard, bemoaning the fact that although there were over twenty ships in Barranquilla preparing to embark for Havana to join the most glorious armada to set sail in his lifetime, alas he was not destined to be on board one of them.”

  “God bless cooks who aspire to greater things,” Gabriel mused aloud.

  “Happily for us, he was not always a cook,” Isabeau said. “Apparently his family had wanted him to become a priest, but he preferred to worship at the altar of greed instead and I gather he was banished to Nueva España by way of punishment. Believe me, I know all of his miseries and complaints, even to the state of his bowels. You must be the Duke of Harrow,” she said brightly, coming forward.