“Spit says you’re to go back to the great cabin, sir!” he gasped at Pitt. “There have been shots fired and the captain’s dead!”
Pitt’s response was delayed a split second before he shoved the duenna into the Spaniard’s hands. He shouted at Billy and Lucifer to stay where they were, to let no one in or out of the cabin until he returned. He drew his pistol and raced out into the companionway, taking the steps topside two at time.
Beau returned to consciousness slowly. Her limbs felt weighted, her whole body felt as if it had been submerged in some heavy liquid that would not let her rise to the surface. Sounds were distant and muffled. Someone was talking—to her, she thought—but the words were garbled and distorted, making no sense at all. She tried to turn her head and open her eyes but a dull throb of pain caught her unawares and she grasped instead at the solid wall of muscle that was holding her and tried to bury herself deeper into the warmth.
“Isabeau? Isabeau, it’s all right. It’s over.”
She knew that voice. It was not her father’s, but she knew that husky, deep voice. And something told her she knew whose arms were holding her and whose fingers were smoothing gently over her cheek and throat, trying to coax her back into the light.
“Isabeau, can you hear me?”
She groaned and nodded her head.
“It’s me, Simon, and you’re all right. You’re safe.”
“Wh-what hap-pened?” she gasped.
“You were shot, mon enfant. Moncada was attempting to play the hero and waited until I had my back turned, then …” He stroked her hair, her cheek, her throat again. “It was meant for me. I guess everyone’s aim was off today.”
“Y-your shot was deliberate,” she said weakly.
“Indeed it was. The second time too.”
“The second time?”
She lifted her head, wincing and shivering again as a stab of pain sliced through her. She could not see much beyond the breadth of Dante’s shoulder, for he was on the floor beside her and held her cradled in his lap. What she could see were two booted feet sticking out from the corner of the desk—Moncada’s booted feet, lying lax and motionless.
She looked up into Simon Dante’s face. “You shot him?”
“He did not leave me much choice.”
She blinked, but found the silver-blue of his eyes too intense to bear and looked instead at the strong, gunmetal jaw.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered.
Dante followed her gaze and reached up, touching his earlobe. The shot had passed so close, the gold loop he wore had torn a wider hole in the pulpy flesh.
“You are bleeding as well,” he pointed out. “All over yourself and me.”
Beau lowered her gaze reluctantly from his wide, sensual lips and saw the blood spattered extravagantly down his shirt. Even as she stared, she could feel a warm, wet trickle starting down from her temple again. She tried to squirm upright but Dante urged her head back onto his shoulder.
“Luckily it’s just a crease, and luckily your head is as hard as your father’s, but I wouldn’t recommend acting with too much haste just yet.”
Beau was still too dizzy to argue. The pain was fading, or she was starting to control it better, and she could hear men shouting and footsteps hurrying along the corridor. A few seconds later, Geoffrey Pitt burst into the cabin.
“Billy said there were shots. He said the captain was dead, and I just assumed … Christ Jesus! He doesn’t have a head.”
“He lost it in a moment of carelessness,” Dante said dryly. He adjusted Beau’s weight in his arms and rose unaided to his feet “I was about to take Beau back to the Egret.”
Pitt stared at all the blood. “Is she all right?”
“She will be; it’s just a scratch.” He paused and Beau could feel the strong cords in his neck shift as he looked down. “Damn little fool threw herself in front of a shot meant for me.”
“Damn little fool,” Pitt agreed, tucking his pistol back into his belt. “Saved your life, did she?”
Dante scowled. “Did you manage to find the duchess?”
Pitt nodded. “She’s hardly more than a child and terrified half out of her wits. She has two maids with her and a draconian matron, but … I would not want to see her frightened more than she is already. Unfortunately, there was only Lucifer and Billy to leave with them, so if you have everything under control here—which it seems you do—I would like to get back.”
“When you do”—Dante tilted his head to indicate the concealed cabinet—“have Billy bring all of these papers over to the Egret.”
“Charts,” Beau murmured.
“What?”
“Charts. Maps. Have him search the pilot’s cabin”—she lifted her head again—” or better yet, let me do it. A ship of this size and importance is bound to have accurate charts of every current and shoal along the Spanish coastline. If we are bound for war with Spain, the Queen’s Navy might find such things invaluable.”
Dante stared down at her, disgusted at himself for not having thought of it first. “You are absolutely right … of course. But you’ll not be searching for anything yet. At least not until you can walk a steady line.”
“I can walk … if you will put me down.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
He lowered her feet without further comment, though he kept an arm circled loosely around her waist.
Beau staggered a moment before she found her balance. A bright stab of pain sent her head on a wild spin, causing the walls, the floor, the furnishings, to slide back and forth with sickening irregularity. She put out a hand to steady her-self and it met with Dante’s chest. Luckily, she’d had nothing to eat all day or there would have been more than just her blood on the privateer’s shirt.
Dante grunted and the next thing she knew she was scooped up into his arms again and was being carried out the door and up into the daylight. A film of thin clouds and lingering smoke was obscuring the sun, but there were still two to three hours of natural light in which to work. The deck of the galleon was swarming with activity and some of the men stopped as Dante passed. Word had already spread through the ranks concerning what had happened in the captain-general’s cabin and several—including Spit McCutcheon— crowded the gangway to see for themselves that Beau was not seriously harmed.
After they crossed to the Egret by way of a steeply canted bridge of long, wide planks, Dante took her directly to her cabin. He sat her on the edge of the bed and, seeing the look on her face, stripped out of his bloodied shirt and donned another from the meager supply that had been salvaged from the Virago. He then fetched a basin of water and bathed the red from Beau’s cheek and throat, dabbing gently at the musket crease and reaffirming it to be hardly more than a cut.
“Are you certain you are not a physician?” she asked sardonically.
“No, but if you keep on as you’re going,” he said, glancing down at her hand, which was still bandaged from earlier in the day, “I may have to become one.”
“I have been eight months on this voyage without so much as a bee sting,” she remarked crossly. “You come aboard and look what befalls me.”
“Look what might have befallen you had the shot struck an inch to the left. You would have lost an eye, mam’selle, and more than likely we would have been denied the pleasure of your company for the journey home.”
She made the effort to raise her lashes, which she had kept firmly shut while he bathed and dressed her wound. “If I hadn’t moved at all, it would be your company we would be despairing.”
“I won’t even ask why you did it,” he murmured.
She bowed her head. “Even if you did, I probably would not have an answer.”
“You know”—he tucked a finger under her chin and tipped her face upward, struck once again by the unsettling combination of tangle-haired urchin and soft-lipped vixen—“if I were Moorish, you would now own my life until such time as I could repay you in kind by saving
you from mortal danger.”
“You are not Moorish,” she pointed out.
“No. But I find myself in your debt nonetheless. And I always repay my debts.”
Beau smiled crookedly. “Is that why you look like you have a mouthful of hot peppers? Because you find yourself indebted to a mere woman for saving your life?”
He released her chin, thankful she interpreted his discomfort as harboring a mouthful of hot peppers rather than a craving for something else.
"I do not consider myself indebted to a woman,” he said carefully. “Did you not say yourself—and most emphatically—that on board this ship you were just a part of the crew, no more, no less?”
The outward nature of Beau’s smile did not change, though inwardly she chided herself for having almost fallen into the trap. Such concern. Such solicitude. Fool that she was, she had almost succumbed to the oozing charm, the easy smiles, the soft, husky timbre of his voice. She had even almost succumbed to the heated lure of his body. Cradled in those powerful arms with the beat of his heart just beneath her hand, she had felt swamped by the heat and sheer animalism of him. All the time he bathed her wound she could not look up, could not move for the cool, prickling thrills that showered through her body. Her belly had turned to mush and her breasts had grown so taut and sensitive, the slightest breath chafed them raw against her shirt.
“You are absolutely right, Captain,” she said evenly. “I should have said a mere lackey. And as such, you would therefore owe me nothing, since such action as I took to save your life would have been expected of any loyal member of a ship’s crew.”
He scowled. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant.”
“But it is exactly the truth.”
Dante’s hands actually curled by his sides in an effort to supress the urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her. He was saved by the arrival of Billy Cuthbert, who came into the cabin with an armload of papers and documents taken from the San Pedro. A young, strapping lad of eighteen years, he seemed to possess unflagging strength and exuberance, neither of which amused either Beau or Dante at that particular moment.
“’Nother load as big as this one,” he reckoned, “Then two or three trips to the navigator’s cabin. Took me a quick look, I did, and blink me if there ain’t a whole library o’ maps and charts to choose from.”
“Perhaps I should go back with him,” Beau said, starting to climb down off the bed, “He won’t know what to look for.”
“I will,” Dante said, reaching out his hand to stop her. “If you’re up to it, and you want to make yourself useful, go next door and calm your father. He’s been hollering for attention the past hour, I’m told. Or you might even try getting some rest; you were dead on your feet two hours ago.”
“I’ll rest when you do, Captain,” she said firmly, “And when the rest of the crew, equally dead on their feet, get a chance to close their eyes. For now, yes, I will go to my father. I suppose he should be told he has just killed the captain of the San Pedro de Marcos.” She took a few steps toward the door, then halted and looked back. “May I ask you something before I go?”
His hesitation was barely perceptible. “You may indeed.”
“When we first went on board, why did you give your name as Jonas Spence? For the taking of so rich a prize, I would have thought you would have wanted the credit for yourself.”
“I gave my name as Jonas Spence because he deserved the credit, not me. By this time next week, all of Spain will be burning him in effigy, cursing his brilliance and audacity as a sea hawk. Priests will be lauding him as the Devil Incarnate, a Heretic Scourge upon the Holy Faith, and his crew not only deserving of God’s wrath but the wrath of every God-fearing Christian on both sides of the Ocean Sea.”
Dante caught Billy’s wide grin and winked.
“I don’t suppose it had anything to do with you not wanting word of your resurrection from the dead to reach England before you do.”
His mouth thinned with sudden irritation. “Can I do nothing right in your eyes? Can I do nothing without rousing suspicions of an ulterior motive? Must you always look for the worm in the wood?”
“If it is there, yes. I would prefer to know a beam is sound and trustworthy beneath me before I put my faith into walking upon it.”
He raised one eyebrow as though amused, but she could see a muscle jump in the tautness of his jaw.
“Then we have something in common at last, mam’selle, for I trust no one, put my faith in nothing, and walk nowhere without checking the shadows at my back.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Ye look befuddled, daughter. Is yer head painin’ ye?”
Beau had been preoccupied, pulling at a frayed edge of the bandage still wrapped around her hand. At her father’s querulous prompting she touched the cut on her temple and although it was tender, she could not say in any honesty that it was the source of her sullen mood. She was bone weary, and that did not add an excess of charm. If not for the stupid, pigheaded statement she had made to Dante de Tourville, she would have crawled into her miserable little sail closet hours ago.
The seemingly tireless Frenchman had returned to the San Pedro and, the last she’d heard, was supervising the transfer of cargo from one vessel to the other. It was not unusual for a treasure ship of that size to take a week or more to load; Dante wanted the bulk of the plunder transferred by noon the next day. With the drastic difference in the sizes of the ships—and the fact that it took nearly two hundred men just to work the sails and rigging of the huge Spanish galleon—it would not be possible to either sail or tow the vessel as far as England, and so Dante had ordered only the richest cargo be selected and stowed in the Egret’s holds. To that end Spit burst periodically through Jonas’s door waving a new list of “selections” under his nose. And Spence, with a bandage wrapped askew around his head, propped in his bed like a one-legged king, toasted each new addition to the Egret’s manifests with a fresh goblet of prime Madeira wine.
Twice he had ventured up on deck, enlisting the aid of several stout crewmen to carry him. But there was nothing he could do to make himself useful and nowhere he could go without a crutch or an arm to help him, and in truth, he was enjoying all the attention he was receiving in his cabin.
Among the more toast-worthy items Spit’s men removed from the San Pedro were barrels packed with gold plate, candlesticks, cutlery, crucifixes, gold and silver coins. One large chest was crammed full of ropes made of gold links— one hundred and fifty-three chains in all, with loops as thick as a man’s finger. There were two thousand bars of solid gold bullion and four thousand of silver, all stamped with the official seal of the treasure house in Panama. Of no lesser importance were the thirty tuns of Madeira wine, twenty of cocoa beans, and assorted numbers of indigo and island spices.
From the personal items of the officers and soldiers were swords made from fine Toledo steel, their hilts crusted with gold and precious stones. Even the plain, unadorned cutlasses were of superior quality and would have brought a tasty price from the London merchants, but these were considered of little value now and tossed overboard with the casual aplomb of men drunk on excess.
For treasure of a different sort, there were casks of salted beef, bacon, and rice; wheels of cheese and earthenware crocks of olives. A squealing platoon of pigs and sheep had been herded across the planks and there was already excited talk of a celebratory feast planned for the morrow.
“Fasten yer lovely eyes on this; it’ll shake the sleep out o’ yer bones,” Spence said, swinging a pendant hypnotically before her. Suspended in the crux of the chain was a pearl the size of a hen’s egg, the surface gleaming like a candle through frost.
“I’m told she likes pearls, our Queen Bess does. Drapes herself in ropes o’ them, even pins them in her hair. D’ye think she’ll like this? This an’ the other trinkets I’ve set aside so far?”
With a benevolence kindled by the warming effects of the wine, Spence had declared his intentions to send,
along with the jewels, the most exquisitely wrought sword, a selection of the finest plate, and the sheerest bolt of silk as gifts to his most royal sovereign.
“I think she will find a warm spot in her heart for all you send her. Warm enough to forgive you your rashness in turning your trade from simple merchantman to hell-raising pirate.”
Spence looked over and a slow, wide smile parted the red froth of his beard. “A Heretic Scourge on the Holy Faith? Is that truly what he called me?”
“Truly.” Beau nodded. “Along with the Devil Incarnate—which we knew already.”
Spence chuckled heartily. “I don’t mind sayin’, lass, twixt you, me, an’ the lanterns, this devil near fouled his breeks when he saw the size o’ that sow up close. God’s truth, I could die tomorrow an’ never know a prouder moment. Lift yer cup, girl, an’ toast the best bloody damn ship an’ crew on the Ocean Sea!”
Beau echoed his words and tipped her cup as unsparingly as Spence did, though she managed to drain hers without spilling any down her chin, and she finished without a loud, raucous growl of enthusiasm.
“Damn their zealot hearts anyway, but one thing ye cannot fault the Spanish for is their Madeira. Red as blood, sweet as sin; lies like a slip o’ crimson velvet on the tongue.” He saw Beau’s smirk and rubbed the stump of his leg with a pained look on his face. “Aye, an’ great medicinal qualities too. Almost makes a man forget the incompetence o’ some men on board this ship who would rather count their coins than carve their captain a new limb so he could get up out o’ this infernal bed!”
His shout echoed down an empty corridor, as he expected it would, and he grinned his way through another oath as he shoved the bandage back up over his ear. He shoved it too high and the ugly gash, swollen and mottled, stitched with thick black threads, caught the light.
“We do make a fine pair,” Beau said, touching her own temple again.
“Do we not, though,” he agreed with a chuff of laughter. “Aye, an’ if yer mother were here, she’d say ‘twas lucky we got cracked on the heads, for it’s the hardest part o’ both o’ us.”
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