“Even with my shoulder drooping from fatigue?”
“Even so, madam.” He almost smiled, relishing the knowledge that he had obviously pricked her vanity with his earlier criticism.
“Rest assured, you were set apart as well, sirrah.”
He arched a dark brow. “Was I?”
“Indeed. I vow I have never seen such a delicate shade of purple on a man before.”
“Ahh. I thought a kind word for my fighting prowess might be too much to expect.”
“You got yourself blown up; that hardly merits praise for your prowess.”
The light from the lantern cast a yellowish glow over her shoulders drawing his gaze downward. She had removed her heavy leather doublet and wore only a voluminous white cambric shirt that was uncommonly vulnerable to light and shadow. The shape of her breasts was visible, as was the trimness of her waist.
For a rough-cut sea urchin, she appeared to be rather provocatively proportioned.
Thankfully she moved out of the circle of light. With a grimace that suggested she was human enough to have suffered some aches and pains after the day’s activities, she lowered herself haltingly onto one knee and began gathering the papers she had scattered on the floor.
Ingrained manners sent Varian’s hand to lift a corner of his blanket but a glimpse of hair and flesh stopped him. “Understand, Captain, that I would hasten to offer my assistance, but I still find myself at a slight disadvantage.”
She waved his apology aside and put the first handful of papers on the table. For the second, she had to stretch farther afield and as she leaned forward, she tottered slightly and shot out a hand to keep from toppling over. In the end, she succumbed to the steadiness of the hard timbers and slumped down, propping her back against the desk. She noticed her goblet, which had been swept away with the rest of the detritus, and picked it up, tipping it with a sigh to show it was still empty.
“My compliments on your fortitude as well, Captain,” Varian murmured with a small grin. “I had occasion to sample your rumbustion earlier and it nearly took my knees out from beneath me.”
She kept one leg bent but stretched the other out flat. “I am not sure I trust your compliments, my lord. You tend to speak them out the side of your mouth.”
“Mockery was not my intent, I promise you. And if I seemed an ingrate earlier, I apologize again, for I am not accustomed to waking up in a strange bed, bereft of clothes, and bathed in camphor oil.”
“Really? I would have thought it a common occurrence for a man of your ilk. That is to say, all save bathing in camphor oil.”
“Oil has its merits—if the fragrance is sweet and does not singe the hairs out of one’s nostrils. And what, pray tell, qualifies as ‘a man of my ilk’?”
“A pompous, over-indulged nobleman with misplaced pretensions of greatness.”
“And you say that you do not trust my compliments, madam?”
“You took that as a compliment?” Her laugh was soft and husky. “In that case, I need say no more.”
She leaned her head against the desk and closed her eyes. It gave Varian a further opportunity to study her face in the lantern light. Without the distraction of the blue bandana, he could see she had a delicate, heart-shaped hairline that framed her features in fine auburn wisps. Her complexion, considering the mere hint of a freckle was attacked with mercury washes and rice powder, was dark enough to have scandalized every matron within a hundred mile radius of the royal court. Tanned by the constant exposure to the sea and sun, the warm bronze coloring suited Juliet Dante’s ferriferous nature well enough though, and once again he found himself wondering what she would look like with her hair spun in curls and her body clad in fine, clinging silk.
He frowned and set his thoughts on less dangerous ground, searching for some topic that might not be seen as a challenge of wits. “You mentioned earlier that you have two brothers?”
“You have a remarkable memory.”
“No husband?”
She turned her head slightly to peer at him. “What the devil would I want with a husband?”
“Companionship? Comfort?”
“I have all the companionship and comfort I need. And when I want more than that, it is readily available.”
“Ah.”
“Ah.” She mimicked the disapproving sound perfectly, then laughed again. “I have always found it puzzling that men believe it perfectly acceptable to take their pleasure where they may without guilt or recriminations, but when women do the same, they are branded whores and trulls.”
Varian opened his mouth... then closed it with an audible snapping of his jaw.
She smiled and leaned back against the desk. “I see I have shocked you again. Shall we return to more politic ground? You mentioned earlier that you thought no one would pay your ransom. Have you no family pining for you at home? No wife? No mewling children to carry on the succession of Harrows? No more brothers to take your place if you blow yourself up again?”
“No wife as yet,” he said easily. “I suppose my mother would grieve a moment for my passing, but the moment would pass quickly enough and she would be more concerned with safeguarding her own stipend as dowager. As for brothers, there were only the two. One drowned after riding his horse into a flooded river, the other was killed last year.”
Truth be told, she wasn’t really interested in knowing the petty details of Varian St. Clare’s life, but a note of obvious bitterness had crept into his voice that made her turn and look at him again.
“Most people would have said: 'he died last year'. You said he was killed?”
“He fought a stupid, senseless duel over a point of honor that could have been resolved if the two parties had just come together and talked through the misunderstanding.”
“You condone talk over action, do you?”
“I advocate logic over madness. They argued over a woman.”
Juliet’s mouth curved at the corner. “Faith, and so you have become soured against all women for all time? You have departed England with a burr under your skin and have chosen exile over the possibility of ever being tempted by some demonic young shrew in perfumed silk?”
His dark eyes narrowed slightly at the mockery, but his smile was easy enough. “Quite the opposite, in fact. I agreed to become betrothed shortly before I departed.”
“How does one “agree” to become betrothed? I would think you either were or were not committed to the deed.”
Varian answered with a grim curl on his lip. “You think Beacom can be incessant and interminable? You should have to endure an evening with the Dowager Duchess of Harrow. Seven years worth of evenings, in fact, ever since I enjoyed my twenty-first birthday. It was one of the reasons why I remained in the military. It gave me an excuse to avoid her matchmaking efforts.”
“But you have finally succumbed?”
“After my brother died, I was left with little choice. I was informed in no uncertain terms that I needed an heir and being in the same room with dear mater was like standing naked in front of a line of artillery cannon and holding up a painted target, only in this case, the ammunition consisted of young women of suitable age, fortune, and social standing.”
“You let your mother choose your intended bride?”
“It is not an uncommon practise for marriages to be arranged to suit the needs of both parties.”
“Ah, so your betrothed—rather, your about-to-be-betrothed—is rich?”
Varian frowned. “In a family as old as mine, there are certain social considerations and requirements that eliminate the luxury of deciding by sight and smell alone.”
“I am sure there are. Do you love her?”
“I hardly think that is any of your business.”
“Yet it is a simple question. Do you love the woman you are going to marry?”
“She comes of good stock with a fine lineage.”
“And is in possession of all her teeth? Great good God, you sound as if you choose your wives like
you choose your breeding stock.”
“Pray, madam, bang the other side of my head with a mallet before you tell me you believe in love.”
She stared into the shadows a moment, debating how to answer, for one did not grown up in the company of Simon and Isabeau Dante without believing in more than simple convenience. After all their years together, they could barely keep their hands to themselves and their lusty thoughts out of their eyes when they gazed upon each other.
Juliet smiled. “I want the man I marry to be uncomfortable every time I look at him. I want him unable to move when I come into the room, afraid to do so lest the air shatter and fall to pieces around him.”
“An easy fear to understand,” he said, glancing pointedly at the splinters from the broken chair.
“And if he is the right man, I will not care if he is a beggar or a king.”
“But better a king, judging by the sparkle I see in your hand.”
She looked down at the empty goblet she was holding. A tilt of her hand set the jewels that were crusted around the rim reflecting fractured points of colored light across the wall.
“The rewards of a hard day’s work,” she countered evenly. “In this case a small token from the private stores of Don Alonzo Perez, former capitán of the San Ambrosio. We took her off the coast of Hispaniola last winter. She was wormy and not worth the effort to repair or refit, but we sold her cargo for twenty thousand escudos. I kept the goblet, just as I keep some small token from every ship we capture.”
Another casual flick of her hand indicated the wire fronted case behind the chart table that held an array of extremely fine looking weapons. They were long snouted wheel-locks for the most part, some of French design featuring inlays of mother-of-pearl, but most favored the Italian style with heavy gilt ornamentation. One pair in particular caught his eye, an unusual combination of match-and wheel-lock mechanisms with both ignitions controlled by a single trigger. The alliance of the two firing systems was reflected in the decoration on the walnut stock where a naked couple were also depicted in the act of merging. He knew this detail, even though he could not see it at this distance, because the guns were his, and the last time he had seen them, they had been on his person on the deck of the Argus.
“Damnation! Those are my Brescians!”
Juliet followed his out-thrust finger. “Hardly, sir. Those are my Brescians.”
“Indeed they are not, madam. They were hand made for me by Lazzarino Cominazzo himself!”
“If memory serves, I took them off a boucan-eater named Jorge Fillarento, and if they resemble yours, then your gun maker must have made two pair.”
“I need only look at them to tell you upon the instant if they are mine or not.”
“Look away,” she challenged. “This instant or the next, it changes nothing.”
Provoked beyond any concern for his nudity, Varian flung aside the blanket and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The bruises on his hip and shoulder made him suck air through his teeth as he stood, but the pain was superseded by the angry strides that carried him across the cabin. The case was not locked and he withdrew one of the elegant dueling pistols from the rack. When he held it to the light the glare bounced off the smooth surface of the gilt lockplate where, instead of the intricately engraved Harrow crest, Varian was startled to see three unfamiliar initials etched into the metal with a flamboyant script.
“This is not possible,” he murmured. He checked the inlay on the walnut barrel and there indeed was the entwined couple, the woman’s neck and back arched as if in the throes of an intense orgasm. “You have my apologies, Captain, I was assured my guns were unique.”
Juliet, still seated on the floor, found herself almost at eye level with the earl’s groin. She had, of course, already seen all there was to see when she had examined his wounds, but there was something to be said for gravity and the way it altered the appearance of appendages that were impressive at the outset. There was also a good deal of muscled thigh to distract the eye. This close she could see the indent of taut sinews at his hip, the soft furring of light brown hairs that followed down his calves.
“Do all Englishmen take such extraordinary measures to ensure the sun does not creep beneath their collars? I vow I have never seen a body half so pale as yours nor one that was smothered under so many layers of clothing this close to the equator. The rash you bear would benefit greatly from a day or two with nothing more confining than air.”
Varian was startled into looking down. The rash to which she referred was indelicately located in the vicinity of his privy parts and under his arms. Soap, as Beacom had discovered to his unmitigated horror, did not mix with sea water, and since sea water was all that had been permitted for laundering during the six week voyage, the ducal linens had acquired an irritating salt residue. The aggravation had worsened when the Argus had sailed into tropical waters, for the infernal heat and sun offered no relief, nor did the sight of the ships crew stripping down layer by layer as the heat increased. Most of them worked barefoot, dressed in airy canvas pinafores and loose-fitting galligaskins.
Bereft of such heathenish options himself, Varian had remained in his stockings and padded trunk hose, his fashionably quilted doublets, shortcoats, and capes, itching without mercy in the silent knowledge that he cut an imposing figure on the deck. The thought of walking anywhere naked was almost as absurd as the picture he presented now, standing bare as birth in front of a woman who was inspecting his privates with a shamelessly arousing curiosity that caused his flesh to jerk.
Since it was neither the experience nor the pleasure of Varian St. Clare to have any part of his body come under such close and uninvited scrutiny, he thrust the pistol back onto its rack and started back to the bed. Her smile broadened into a chuckle, then a laugh—a sound that pricked more than just his vanity and caused him to stop cold in his tracks. Without thinking ahead to any consequences, he turned around, bent over and roughly pulled her up by her arms to stand before him.
What the devil he planned to do with her once they were eye to eye, he was not given the chance to decide, for despite the quantity of rum she had consumed, her reflexes were as fast and deadly as a cobra strike. She had a knife drawn and the point thrust under his chin before he had finished hauling her to her feet.
“You should be advised,” she said, her voice as cold as the blade kissing his throat, “there are few men who would dare touch me without a very specific invitation to do so. Even fewer who have survived calling me a liar.”
Varian tilted his chin higher in response to the dagger’s steely inducement to do so. He released her arms and spread his hands slowly outward. “Forgive my impertinence. The guns are identical to mine; it was an instinctive reaction and I have already apologized for the infraction—something I rarely do, and hardly ever to someone who is too full of rum to respect it.”
“Is that so?” she murmured, her eyes narrowing.
“Just so, madam. As for repercussions—” he clenched his jaw and lowered his chin, defying the pressure of the knife, feeling the sharp jab as the tip pierced his skin. “Considering the course our conversation has taken thus far, I find the greater concern lies in wondering if there would be consequences for refusing an invitation.”
Juliet stared for a long moment. The sheer insolence of his presumptions—that she would invite him to touch her in any kind of intimate manner—nearly drove the blade deeper of its own volition. Instead, she traced the point of the dagger down his throat to his breastbone, down through the swirls of dark hair to the hard, flat plane of his belly. When the cool steel scrolled lower and rested across the base of his manhood, she angled it so that the weight of his flesh lay across the flat surface of the blade like a plated offering.
He did not even flinch.
“You show more courage than I would have credited you with, my lord,” she said quietly.
“And you more bravado, Captain. Especially with the advantage of a knife in your hand.”
Before he could react to either action, she grabbed his arm and gave his wrist a savage twist, bending his thumb back so far the joint popped. The pain flared up his arm, doubling him over at the waist; a further twist and he was crumpling down onto his knees before her.
Juliet leaned over and pressed her lips into the waves of silky hair that covered his ear. “I have no knife now, my lord. Are my words still full of rum and bravado?”
He bared his teeth, girding himself against the agony as he reached around with his free hand and hooked his arm around the back of her right leg. He wrenched it forward, feeling the tension break and throw her off balance. A second tug brought her crashing down onto the floor beneath him, hard enough that she was forced to release her grip on his wrist and thumb.
Barely had he gasped enough breath to form an oath when another whip-like twist brought her rearing up onto her elbows. Her legs snapped together like pincers and clamped tightly around his throat, squeezing off his windpipe, trapping whatever air he had managed to suck into his lungs. He tried clawing at her thighs to loosen them but it was like trying to pry two iron bars apart. He attempted to roll, to wrest himself free that way, but she countered his efforts with a savage wrench in the opposite direction, one that locked him even tighter in her grip.
The blood started to swell behind his eyeballs. Large black splotches began spreading across his vision and his chest began to burn, his muscles to scream for air. He uncurled his hands from around her thighs but before he could slam them on the planking to indicate his surrender, a brusque knock rattled against the cabin door.
At the sound of Juliet’s snarled curse, it was flung open by a skinny lad of no more than twelve or thirteen balancing a large wooden tray in one hand, a thick crockery bottle in the other.
He hesitated a moment on the threshold, but if he thought it odd to see his captain lying on the floor with a naked man being choked between her thighs, the expression on his face did not betray it.
Pirate Wolf Trilogy Page 41
