~~
Beau emerged from the dressing room with a frown on her face. She was certain she was missing something. Although the three servants who had been assigned to help her bathe, powder herself, crimp and coif her hair, and dress her from the stockings up like some child too addle-pated to know how to lace a garter, she was convinced a crucial article of clothing had been forgotten.
“Simon—?” She had her head bowed when she came into the salon, concentrating on the combined task of easing the wide wings of the farthingale through the doorway and not tripping over the wide hoops and multiple underskirts that kept snagging her toes. “You know more about these things than I do. Would you not say something is amiss here?”
She looked up and saw a stranger standing by the window. “Oh! Excuse me, I thought you were …”
Dante turned around. He had been waiting in the salon exactly two hours, the interminable ticking of the ormolu clock relieved only now and then when he heard a muffled string of blasphemies make its way through the door of the inner chamber. Pitt had kept him company the first hour, but a summons from his dark-eyed little duchess had sent him scurrying to his own apartments. Geoffrey Pitt had not waited to return to England to marry Christiana Villanueva. There had been a Catholic priest on board the San Felipe who had agreed, for the sake of the soul of one of Spain’s daughters, to wed them.
Spence, had blustered about the delicate furnishings of the salon like a whale out of water. He had lost another finger and half an ear in the fight with the Talon, and had declared his intention to take his profits and build a small fleet of merchant ships that other captains might take out at risk to life and limb. He and Spit McCutcheon would take to the helm for pleasure only. Or when his supplies of rumbullion threatened to run perilously low.
McCutcheon had also been outfitted to attend the Queen’s presence. He had been scrubbed, shaved, and clad in a new suit of clothes that made him look like a colorful marionette. Dante could only imagine how Beau would fare in the transition. He had seen the maids and the armloads of frilly clothing go into the dressing room. He had also seen the maids stumble out hours later, their necks clammy with sweat, their caps askew, and their shoulders sagging with exhaustion.
Now she was out and the suspense was at an end. He turned when she called his name, and for a second or two the glare from the window remained too bright on his eyes to see much more than a dark blur.
“Excuse me, I thought—I thought you were my husband,” Beau said, her voice trailing off to a whisper. She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the tall, elegant figure who stood in front of the twenty-foot-high mullioned window, certain her eyes were playing tricks on her.
It was their first full day in London, the first time she had seen him not at a dockyard helping Spence supervise the repairs on the Egret or cloistered in a stuffy warehouse haggling with guild merchants over the sale of the cargo. He had waited to the last minute to come to his house in London, despite a flurry of dispatches from Drake and the Queen. He had used the excuse of a fever to delay their leave-taking from Plymouth, but the only heat he suffered from was doctored quite adequately in Beau’s arms.
Reluctantly he had come to London and even more reluctantly he had left their bed this morning to be attended by a barber, a valet, a tailor; all in anticipation of being received, feted, and berated by the Queen. To the latter he had already weathered a storm of letters regarding his insolence in marrying someone not of noble or even elevated birth. To each of those he had simply sent back a card embossed with the De Tourville coat of arms and a very large fleur-de-lis, expressing the regrets of the Comte and Comtesse that his fever was still too high to permit travel.
Spence had expected warrants any day. Dante had simply made love to his new wife and gone about his business at the shipyards.
And now here they were, a half hour’s coach ride to the Queen’s audience chamber, and Beau felt as if she ought to curtsy to him. Dante’s hair had been trimmed to within an inch of ebony perfection, his jaw scraped clean of the rough fur she had come to appreciate in more ways than one. He wore a white satin shirt beneath a midnight-blue velvet doublet, edged and banded in gold, with a row of jewel-encrusted buttons glittering down the front closure. The narrowest of embroidered collar and cuffs stood out in breathtaking contrast to the deeply tanned color of his face and hands, while his legs—long and thewed like iron—were cased in hose the same rich blue as his doublet. His shoes were made of the finest, softest leather, buckled in pure gold. The dress sword he wore at his hip was sheathed in a bejeweled buckler, the hilt an elaborate weave of scrolls and curlicues.
He looked, for the first time ever, like a member of the royal French aristocracy, like the urbane and elegant Comte de Tourville. His only obstinate act of rebellion was the wink of gold prominent in his earlobe.
He walked slowly forward, his approach drawing even more air out of Beau’s lungs, if that were possible.
His eyes were as blue as the sky as he made a deliberate, measured perusal of her hair, her gown, even the tiny rows of pearls that ornamented her belt. He had chosen the gown himself—everything, in fact, from the sheer silk drawers and corselet to the wheel-shaped farthingale with its descending layers of wire hoops. Her sleeves had enough rich cloth in them to fashion two normal shipboard shirts. The bodice was flat and rigid, narrowing past a surprisingly small waistline, dipping to an elongated V to exaggerate the flaring velvet skirts. All was in the deepest, purest black, seeded with black pearls and glittering jets. Her hair was a puff of soft auburn curls around her face, then pulled back into a coif and decorated with tiny clusters of jewels. Around her neck she wore ropes of De Tourville diamonds, so dazzling against the dusky hue of her complexion, it would make the Court’s eyes water with envy. On her finger she wore another de Tourville heirloom, an enormous pearl circled by more diamonds, reputed to have once belonged to a Plantagenet princess.
Dante could think of no one more suited to wear it.
“Mon cygne noir magnifique,” he murmured, his voice husky enough to allow a little color to leak back into her face. “I never imagined you could look so beautiful … with or without your breeches on.”
“You are just saying that to be kind.”
“My dear Comtesse”—he advanced closer and took both her hands in his, kissing each palm before he spread her arms wide and let his silvery eyes feast on all her splendor—“a blade at my throat could not make me be kind to anyone in my present mood. But it warms me to know Bess will be so envious, she will undoubtedly banish us from Court for a very long time.”
“Because of me?” Beau gasped.
“Thanks to you, my love. Moreover, her ladies will suffer to remove all of the mirrors from her sight so as not to allow too harsh a comparison to her wrinkled skin and painted white complexion. The courtiers will all be springing out of their codpieces like schoolboys. I will be forced to defend my claim a thousand times ere this night is over.”
Beau laughed and curled her arms around his shoulders, coming to him in an irreverent crush of silk and velvet. “Be silent, fool. Or put your mouth to better use.”
“Gladly.” He bowed his head, kissing her with a lusty vengeance that left her lips redder than any rouge wash could have done.
When he released her, she continued to stare up at him, her eyes so round and compellingly flecked with gold, he laughed and kissed her again. “Here? Now? What of all the hard work your maids have done?”
“I would not give it a moment’s thought,” she breathed honestly.
Well”—he gave her a husbandly peck on the cheek— “I would. Once I come out of this stuffed peacock’s costume, I stay out of it.”
Beau grinned. “I would not—”
“—Give it a moment’s thought, yes. I know. And if that is the case, I shall have to occupy your mind with other things. What were you asking me when you came into the room? You thought something was missing?”
She stood back and ran her fi
ngers over her bodice. The cut was so snug, her breasts compressed so flat, there seemed to be far too much plumping of flesh over the squared edge of the neckline. “I tried pulling up the ruff and pull down on the strands of the necklace, but there still seems to be too much of me to cover.”
Dante tried not to smile. “It is the newest French cut, I will admit, and probably too scandalous for a court of English Protestants.”
“Then why did you put me in it?”
He feathered a fingertip over the mounds of tender flesh. “So I can ease my boredom over the next few hours by imagining the pleasure of taking you out of it.”
“And in the meantime? If I bend over?”
“If you bend over, mam’selle,” he murmured. “The Court will be more than simply scandalized.”
The suddenly very young and not very assured Comtesse Isabeau de Tourville sighed and pressed her cheek against his broad shoulder. “I wish we were a thousand miles away, with a deck beneath our feet and canvas over our heads.”
Dante wrapped his arms around her briefly, then straightened with a smile. “Perhaps I can make your evening a little easier to bear by giving you your gift now.”
“Gift? What gift?”
He kissed her on the tip of her nose and led her to the window. “You have to understand she isn’t quite finished. Pitt still has to put in her teeth and Lucifer has to do something with rooster gizzards that I’m not altogether certain you want to know.”
Beau frowned and looked out the window. Dante’s London house sat on the banks of the Thames, giving him a mariner’s view of the busy river. Lying at anchor in the deeper water midcourse was a new ship, so closely resembling the golden replica of the Virago, it sent a small shiver down Beau’s spine. There had been some slight changes made in the design. Her lines were cleaner, her castles almost level with the main deck, allowing space for an extra sail on the mizzen and fore.
“I had ordered her keel laid before we left for Vera Cruz,” he explained softly. “I just hadn’t thought of a name for her yet.”
Beau followed the gracious sweep of the ship's bow and found the carved figurehead beneath. It was a woman’s head, as shockingly familiar as the one she saw in the mirror each morning, but below, it was the body of a swan with her wings outspread to catch the wind.
“My other magnificent Black Swan” he said. “Do you like her?”
“Like her?” Beau whispered. “She looks … like she could fly.”
“Indeed, mam’selle, I am told she can … with a firm enough hand to guide her.” He waited until the large golden eyes turned to him before he added, “You once told me you would not marry a man who tried to take you away from the sea. How do you feel about having married one selfish enough to want you as much for your skills at the helm as for your skills at rescuing him from his own foolish pride?”
Beau opened her mouth to reply but words, for once, failed her.
They did not fail the Queen, however, when she was in receipt an hour later of another note embossed with the De Tourville coat of arms. It seemed the comte’s fever had returned with a vengeance, and, as he advised His Most Gracious Majesty, it would not be safe for either him or his wife to attend Court until all risk of a relapse was out of his system.
THE END
or just the beginning?
read on for book two....
THE IRON ROSE
Marsha Canham
Original Copyright 2003 © Marsha Canham
Ebook copyright 2011 © Marsha Canham
ISBN 978-0-9877023-2-6
This Ebook version is dedicated to my three munchkins,
Austin, Payton, and Carter.
PROLOGUE
August, 1614
As she had often heard her father say in the moments before the first broadside was fired: it was a fine day to die. The sun was a searing white eye in a sky so blue and clear it pained the soul to stare upward too long. Staring anywhere for even the briefest split second was not an option, however, for in the blink of an eyelash there was another flash of cold steel, another shock of contact as the two blades clashed together, sliding their full length in a shower of blue sparks.
Juliet was beginning to feel the strain in her wrist. She withstood her opponent’s enraged offense as long as she could then broke away, spinning and crouching low in one fluid motion, letting instinct take over where strength was failing. A second shadow loomed behind her, the face bloodied but the eyes focussed with lethal intent, and Juliet cursed. She sprang to the side but found herself cornered, the flames of a burning spar on one side, the fat barrel of a twenty-four pounder demi-culverin on the other. The two Spaniards, desperate for their own lives moments before, saw her predicament and closed rank, crowding her against the rail. One of them muttered under his breath and grabbed his crotch. The other laughed and licked the filthy tips of his fingers in agreement.
Juliet’s sword slashed out in a brilliant flare of sunlight. The laughing Spaniard saw those fingers fly off his hand and land with a skitter of red splashes on the deck. While he was busy finding the breath to scream, she swung on his cohort and cut a wider grin on his face, one that went from ear to ear and severed the jugular clean through. She used her boot to kick him aside when he started to fall forward, then leaped gracefully over the twitching body as another snarling attacker rushed to take his place.
Juliet raised her sword, her slender body braced to meet a mighty downward stroke intended to cleave her skull in half. The impact shuddered through her arms and jarred her shoulders, bending her back over the gunwale. The savagery of the blow drew a grunt, then a curse, but she was able to deflect the blade long enough to reach into her belt with her left hand and unsheathe her dagger. The blade was eight inches long, sharp as a needle, and it went through the Spaniard’s leather doublet like a finger through lard.
Juliet barely had time to regain her balance when she caught the glint of a steel-pot helmet. The arquebusier stood just out of reach of a sword thrust, calmly balancing his weapon on a handy length of broken timber, the fuse smoking, the trumpet nose aimed squarely between her eyes.
Trapped against the gunwale, she could do little but watch as his finger squeezed the trigger to release the mainspring. She saw the serpentine lock trip forward and touch the fuse to the priming pan. The powder ignited with a small puff of smoke, lighting the main charge and sending the two ounce iron ball exploding down the barrel.
Out of nowhere, a streak of lavender violet and silver lace cut across Juliet’s path. A slash of steel knocked aside the snout of the blunderbuss just as it discharged its round and the shot went wild. The stranger’s sword glittered again, finding a vulnerable gap between the arquebusier’s iron cuirass and the exposed band of skin beneath his helmet, and the Spaniard heeled backward in a gout of bright red blood. Juliet saw the flash of a grin as her rescuer turned and extended a gloved hand to lift her away from the rail.
“Are you all right, boy?”
Juliet found herself staring into the deepest, darkest blue eyes she had ever seen. They were partly shadowed by the brim of an elegant cavalier’s hat, the one side cocked up at a jaunty angle, topped by a plume dyed the same shade of purple as his doublet and breeches.
“Boy?”
Instead of answering, Juliet drew a pistol out of her crossbelt and fired it, her finger squeezing the trigger before the surprise could register on the stranger’s face. The shot was propelled past a broad, lavender-clad shoulder and thudded into the chest of the Spaniard who was about to slay one of her crewmen at the opposite side of the deck.
The midnight blue eyes followed the shot, then flicked back to Juliet. The grin reappeared, wide and very white through a neatly trimmed moustache and imperial.
“A fine shot. And yes, I can see you are very much all right.”
He touched the brim of his hat in a salute, then was gone, leaping over what was left of the taffrail to rejoin the melée taking place on the main deck. He was not two heartbeats out of her
startled sight when a massive, ear-shattering explosion rocked her off her feet and threw her hard against the barrel of the cannon.
Juliet averted her face as a blast of heat laden with particles of stinging debris swept across the deck. A huge pillar of red and orange flame rose to the sky, and the accompanying screams of the men caught in the open seemed to take the last of the Spaniard’s resolve with them. By twos and threes the soldiers began dropping their weapons and spearing their arms upward in surrender. Some fell onto their knees, others raised their steepled hands to pray for mercy.
Juliet scrambled to her feet and ran to the rail. The waist of the galleon was a shambles, with bodies littering the deck from stem to stern. The explosion had not come from the Spaniard’s powder stores, as she had initially feared, but from the deck of the much smaller English carrack that was bound to the galleon’s hull by grappling lines.
It was this distraction, when the Spaniard had closed for the kill and boarded the English merchantman, that had allowed Juliet’s ship, the Iron Rose, to emerge almost unseen from the banks of haze and drifting smoke. She had come in under full sail and poured a series of crippling broadsides into the exposed side of the galleon before snaring it within her own cobweb of thick cables. A cry of "up and over" had sent the crew of the privateer swarming eagerly over the side to join the fray. The crew of the beleaguered English vessel, perilously near the brink of defeat, had rallied as well and now, despite the fact that the two smaller vessels were shockingly outmanned and outgunned by the behemoth warship, the Spaniards were surrendering!
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