“Better?”
“I was better before.”
“I’ll have Lucifer blend up one of his special decoctions to rub into them tonight. It will make your hands a little rough for dancing, but the skin will heal faster.”
She was not the least amused by his attempted wit and her eyes flashed upward. Dante grinned handsomely and although he did see the faint hint of a blush glow through the grime on her cheeks, she did not falter or look away in discomfort. It was rare enough to find a man willing to meet and hold his gaze for more than a few seconds without faltering. With women he was more accustomed to admiring the sweep of their lashes and wondering what it was about his feet that could possibly hold their interest for such long stretches at a time. Unless of course, it was their intent to seduce him, which he did not, for the smallest instant, believe was anywhere in Beau Spence’s repertoire of tricks.
He was, in fact, becoming convinced she had no tricks at all. If she had a thought, she either spoke it aloud or wore it brazenly on her face. And those eyes, by Christ. They were starting to get under his skin, distinctly affecting the way the blood flowed through his veins.
“What are you staring at?”
He met the challenge in her voice with a crooked smile. “You,” he said simply. Then to cover himself, he added in a more matter-of-fact tone, “Your mouth, actually. You have a rather nasty cut on the corner.”
The moist, pink tip of her tongue came out to find it and Dante was thankful it was still daylight and there were men working all around them.
“Because if you were thinking of kissing me again,” she warned, “I have my filletting knife handy.”
He covered his bemusement with a frown. “The thought had not even entered my mind. I am intrigued, however, to know why you would suppose it would.”
“Because it obviously entered your mind a few minutes ago.”
“It did?” His frown deepened.
“Right over there,” she charged, indicating the tiller, “—after we cleared the galleon.”
“Ahh.” His brow cleared and his mouth curved upward at one corner. “That kiss. Surely you do not take offense at a harmless little peck on the cheek.”
“It was not a peck, it was a kiss. Nor was it on the cheek; it was squarely on the mouth.”
“A matter of poor aim, I promise you. And it was not a real kiss, not by any measure. It was more an expression of relief, or gratitude, like a handshake. Or a snapping of the fingers to show approval. Or a cheer of ‘huzzah’ to show enthusiasm.”
“It was a kiss,” she maintained flatly. “And the devil will explain you the difference if you ever dare to do it again.”
“If I ever dare do it again, I promise I will take greater pains to show you the difference between a peck of friendship and a kiss. And speaking of the devil,” he said, “our Spanish friends will be expecting to see Satan himself stalk through the gangway.”
“Then they will not be disappointed when they see you,” she retorted.
“What I meant was, your father would have met their every expectation, but since he is in no condition to go anywhere—”
“You think the honor should fall to you?”
He sighed and lifted one of her hands out of the water, inspecting the palm closely for embedded rope fibers. “As opposed to you? Yes, I do.”
“Another outpouring of confidence in my abilities?” she asked sourly.
He saw a piece of cloth lying nearby and tore off a strip to bind around her hand. “Have you ever negotiated for prize monies before?”
It took a moment for the answer to grate through her teeth. “No.”
“Are you at all familiar with the order of command and authority on board a Spanish treasure ship?”
“I cannot say I have ever cared.”
“Well, you should, if only to save you from insulting the wrong man. The feathered peacocks you see in their velvets and armor are the hidalgos—nobles and sons of nobles who were likely given command of the ship in return for some favor they have done the King. They know very little, if anything, about the actual sailing of a ship, but they like to strut about the decks, brandishing their swords and wishing death upon all the heretics of the world.
“Helping them drink wine, pray, and count their gold ducats are the priests, who know even less about currents and weather gauges, but who strut right alongside the captain-general, exhorting him to follow God’s counsel rather than the advice of any of the real sailors on board. One of the reasons I encouraged your father to attack was because the hidalgos and priests would be in such a sweat trying to outmaneuver each other and dazzle their captain-general with their brilliance, the sailors on board—well down in the ranks of authority and the only men who would know what their vessel was capable of doing—would be standing there with their hands tied, unable to act without orders, unable to mount any kind of defense whether it was tactically sound or not. The captain in charge of these sailors would have to watch his men being blown to hell while listening to the priests vow they were all going to glory in the righteous service of their most Catholic king.”
Beau’s eyes widened in surprise. “You sound as if you feel sorry for them. You pound hell out of them, destroy their ship, force their surrender … and now you feel sorry for them?”
Dante ignored her sarcasm. “The captain, were he to believe he had been defeated by a woman, would probably reach for the nearest sword and throw himself on it. The captain-general, on the other hand, would be too appalled to even deign to address you, and even if he did, whatever he said would be so insulting or so patronizing, I would likely be angered into killing him.”
“You … would kill a man for me?” she asked haltingly.
“I would kill any man who insulted a member of my crew, wouldn’t you?”
She lowered her lashes quickly. “Of course. Of course I would.”
Dante finished bandaging the first hand and drew the second out of the water, bathing it with enough gentleness to send her lip curling between her teeth and a spray of gooseflesh rippling down her arms. She could not fathom what it was about the man that made her skin hot and her throat close like a trap every time he offered a glib compliment. The fact he was standing so close, touching her, made it even worse. Her chest was constricted so tightly, she was forced to breathe through her mouth. Her blood was pounding through her temples and her feet were rooted to the spot like sticks simply because he was showing concern for her wounds, tending them himself.
She searched his face for an answer, studying the rugged squareness of his jaw, the bold straight line of his nose, the pale blue-gray of his eyes. It was indeed absurd for a man to have eyes like that, with lashes so long and thick, they lay on his cheek like silk crescents when they were lowered. And when they were raised, as they were now, the very blackness of them made his eyes dominate his face in such a way, she could not have looked away had she wanted to. She should have been mortified that he caught her inspecting him so closely and she would have been, she supposed, if her senses had not suddenly deserted her completely.
She had only had one lover—Nate Hawethorne—in all her twenty years. The son of an earl, he had paid Spence handsomely for the opportunity to sail on the Egret during one of her voyages to the Indies. He had been looking for adventure and excitement, and his enthusiasm for the romance of the sea had been contagious. Beau had lost her virginity on a beach in the Azores, and while she had felt warm and trembly when they were in each other’s arms, it was not what she would have called an earth-shattering experience. It was … warm and trembly, with a lot of sweat and stickiness to clean up afterward—mostly his.
A single glance from Simon Dante roused far more stunning responses in her body, disturbing in their intensity, unsettling in their discovery.
“Would you care to try it again?”
Beau was startled. “Try what?”
“Making a fist with your hand.”
She curled her fingers over her palm and al
though the linen strips hampered her movements, there was definitely less pain.
“Better?”
She nodded mutely.
“Good enough to defend yourself if you have to?”
She nodded again, this time with a faint crease between her eyebrows. “Are you expecting treachery on board the Spaniard?”
“I always expect treachery. In this case I am almost sure of it. You may or may not have noticed, but the San Pedro is no ordinary treasure ship. I did not see it myself until we were fairly close, but look to the mizzen top—merde, it’s gone. Someone must have worked fast to remove it.”
“Remove what?”
“A small gold pennant, mounted on the mast just beneath the captain-general’s flag. It means a member of the King’s court is on board, probably acting as an ambassador, returning from the Indies or Panama.”
“Is that important?”
“It could be. Ambassadors carry papers, documents intended for the King’s eyes only.”
“I thought you already had documents; the ones you took from Vera Cruz.”
“They are important, and revealing to be sure, but easily interpreted as nothing more than export manifests. Royal communiqués, sealed for the King’s eyes only, would surely prove interesting reading to a queen’s eyes, especially if she was searching for ways to defend her country against an invasion.” He paused and seemed to debate something for a moment before he added, “And there might be another benefit to having a member of the royal family on board.”
“To ensure our safe passage to England?” Beau guessed.
Dante’s eyes kindled warmly. “You are going to have to stop doing that, you know.”
“Doing what?”
“Being so quick with your tongue and your wit.”
“You prefer a woman to be slow and dull?”
“Not at all. But perhaps just a little kinder to a … what was it now? An arrogant, ill-mannered French bull rogue?”
Beau’s eyes, which grew as large and bright as medallions, remained steadfast on Dante’s face as the heat rose up her neck, darkening the honeyed tan of her complexion. For the first time he noticed a fine spray of freckles glowing across the bridge of her nose.
“When I said that, I … did not know you were listening.”
“Would it have stopped you from saying it?”
She considered the smile he gave her before she smiled herself, openly and frankly. “No. Probably not.”
Her smile, and the total change it wrought in her face took him by surprise again. Beneath the grime and soot and blood smudging her skin and clothes, she still managed to look fresh and far too vulnerable to be so well acquainted with the stench and violence of battle. And those eyes, God love him. They would be his downfall yet. Sparkling like new-minted gold, lashed with strands of pure silk, they were infinitely more desirable to behold with pleasure creasing their corners rather than contempt or anger … and he was not altogether certain he liked this unsubtle shift in his perceptions. Despite Pitt’s advice he would feel much safer if he continued to regard her as a doublet-clad, knife-wielding hellion who fought any suggestion of an underlying softness.
He brushed the pad of his thumb gently over the cut on her lip, wiping off the small smear of blood, then took what he hoped was a casual step back.
“Spit is calling for the grappling lines,” he said, indicating the sudden flurry of hooks, ropes, and planks being readied by the Egret’s rails. “I guess it means we have ourselves a prize.”
Beau followed his gaze, startled to see they had come within hailing distance of the smoking Spaniard. She had left Billy Cuthbert at the helm and he was gently easing the Egret alongside the treasure ship, awed, no doubt, by the sheer size and towering magnitude of what they had accomplished.
“I should help Billy,” she began.
“Billy is doing fine. You should go below and try to restore some of that ferocity I so admired the first time I saw you.”
Beau followed his gaze again and saw where the tear in her shirt had widened over the sleeveless gap, revealing more than a comfortable amount of soft, sloping flesh over her breast.
She caught up the torn flap and a second flood of heat darkened her skin but Dante was already moving away, descending the ladder to the main deck, looking every inch the pirate wolf with his sword and pistols glittering as he shouted orders for the men to stand ready by the lines.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When the two ships were within a dozen yards of each other the grappling lines were launched across the gap, the metal hooks biting into the rails and planking of the San Pedro, tethering the galleons together. Most of the fires on board the Spaniard had been doused, but there were still clouds of hissing steam and smoke rising from the debris on deck. The Spanish officers were clustered below the forecastle, rigid in their humiliation. Spit McCutcheon and his men had herded all the able-bodied seamen and soldiers together in the stern and were keeping watchful, wary eyes on them as well as on the large pile of weaponry—swords, muskets, pikes, and arquebuses that had been collected on the main deck.
The captain-general identified himself with suitable pomp as Don Alonzo de Valdez, a Knight of Santiago, Marquis of Niebla, twelfth Señor and fifth Marquis of Moncada. He had spent the last four years in the service of his most revered king, Philip II of Spain, and it was, he declared in a high-pitched voice, trembling with outrage, a blatant act of piracy to have attacked them. Moreover, it was an overt act of war against a country whose king was, at that very moment, engaged in serious negotiations with England’s monarch for a lasting peace.
Dante de Tourville claimed formal possession of the prize ship. He ignored Moncada’s initial outburst and strode purposefully onto the main deck, his eyes moving intently side to side, bow to stern, absorbing everything from the smashed superstructures to the torn and sagging rigging.
Geoffrey Pitt, Beau Spence, and a large complement of smartly armed men flanked Dante as he assessed the extent of damages to the galleon, all of them trying to look as nonchalant as their ebony-haired leader, but none quite managing to keep his excitement in check. Dante was no stranger to laying claim to captured vessels, but for most of the crew of the Egret, this was their first foray onto the deck of a surrendered Spanish treasure ship.
If the Egret had seemed dwarfed beside the huge, castellated monster, her crew members felt like urchins stumbling uninvited into a rich man’s drawing room. The rails around the decks, the trim scrolled around the bulkheads, the lavish designs that formed the molding around the doors, hatchways, and portals, were coated in gold leaf. The whole of her high stern, the panels and rails of the quarter galleries, were a solid mass of beautiful carving, all of it painted crimson and gold and resembling a church tabernacle. Remnants of a large silk canopy hung over the fore-deck with shreds of the exquisitely embroidered fabric snagged around the golden crowns that surmounted the two enormous stern lanterns.
Equally impressive in appearance were the Spanish officers, garbed in silver breastplates worn over velvet doublets and slashed satin balloon breeches. There were twenty in all, ranging in age and stature from the captain-general to his adjutants, obviously all wealthy hidalgos unaccustomed to defeat at any level, let alone at the hands of English heretics. Half a dozen priests swathed in red robes and capes stood in a cluster behind their captain-general, their hands clasped around ivory crucifixes, their eyes blazing with religious fervor. Standing in the rear, lowest in rank, was the captain in charge of the sailors. His helmet was gone, leaving his hair standing upright in sweaty spikes; his plain white shirt was stained from the filth of battle, his breastplate dented and dulled by smoke. He kept his eyes focused straight ahead, fixed on some nameless point on the horizon, refusing to so much as acknowledge the presence of the tall privateer on his gundeck.
Deciding it was too big an audience, Dante removed himself and Lucifer, along with Beau, Pitt, and McCutcheon to the massive great cabin of the San Pedro, inviting Moncada and two of
his officers to join them there and vent any complaints he might have.
For an hour the incensed captain-general vented.
Dante de Tourville, sitting in the shambles of the great cabin, propped his long legs on the grandly carved oak desk and steepled his hands together under his chin. He listened to Moncada’s shrill denunciations, barely interrupting except to signal Spit to pour more wine. Spit had found several jewel-encrusted goblets in the debris that littered the cabin, and a tall flagon of Madeira wine, which he both served and drank enthusiastically at each crook of Dante’s long, tapered finger.
Pitt, who as usual had managed to set aside his motion sickness during the heat of battle, lounged against a wall of the cabin, his arms folded across his chest as much to help keep his stomach in place as to try to appear casual. Beau, on the other hand, appeared to be vastly amused watching Dante deflect the flecks of spittle and acid vitriol that flew from Moncada’s lips. She knew her father would not have handled the situation half so well, for Jonas Spence was man of flamboyant blasphemies and great courage, but he was no diplomat. He was quite happy to take what he wanted at the end of a sword, but close him into a room with too many words and he grew impatient with his own shortcomings.
Lucifer hung back in the shadows of the doorway, his eyes fixed on the three Spaniards, the coal-black centers burning like brands. Every now and then he would caress the silver hilts of his scimitars, earning stares and nervous twitches from the two hidalgos.
Their leader, the fifth Marquis of Moncada, was a rotund strut of a man with a face like a boil of dough stretched too thin over spidery red veins. He had small, dark eyes set so close together, they seemed to touch at the bridge, and he had made a feeble attempt to hide a weak chin under an abram beard trimmed to a perfect point. He spoke in faultless, unbroken English, a deliberate counterpoint to Dante’s initial address delivered in equally flawless Castilian.
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