Eva had just taken a small sip of wine and some of it spluttered over her lip. “I beg your pardon?”
“Sleep, Mistress Chandler. I’m sure you will be more comfortable in the bed rather than the chair.”
“I… no. No, the chair is comfortable enough for my needs."
"Well, if we are speaking of needs, I have several of my own and they come before charts and wells and phantom treasure ships. And they don’t include listening to someone pace back and forth across the floor."
“I promise, I will not pace.”
“Indeed, you won’t.” Before she could react, he was on his feet and had scooped her into his arms. By the time she found the wits to protest, he had deposited her onto the mattress, where he remained looming above her like an enormous dark shadow, his hair fallen forward over his face.
"You will lie here quiet as a churchmouse. You will not move, you will not speak, you will not even blink loudly or I might think you want company. Do we understand one another?”
She nodded, wide-eyed.
He snatched up a blanket and spread it on the floor in front of the cabin door.
Eva pushed herself up onto her elbows. “I cannot take your bed, Captain.”
He stretched out on the blanket and folded his arm beneath his head to use as a pillow. “One more word, Mistress Chandler and you’ll be taking something else of mine.”
She opened her mouth to protest, thought better of it, and laid back down as quietly as she could. Having so many memories of the shooting, the fire, the painful discovery of Lawrence Ross’s betrayal stirred, she doubted she would even be able to close her eyes, but she did. And the next time she opened them daylight was streaming through the gallery windows.
CHAPTER NINE
A fist pounded on the door loudly enough to make Gabriel jump out of his skin and scramble to find a sabre that was not at his side. "Eight bells," Stubs announced. "Crew wants to know if ye're foamin' at the mouth an' squirtin' yer bowels all over the floor."
Dante cursed and cradled his head in his hands. "My mouth is fine, as are my bowels.”
"Aye, well, I've brung victuals. I'll leave 'em here ayont the door."
Gabriel muttered his thanks and fisted the sleep out of his eyes, wincing as he rubbed his tender eye a little too hard. His legs and arms had stiffened overnight, and the sudden jump upright set his back on fire again, the muscles across his back screaming a reminder that some of the deeper lashmarks were still only partly healed.
He groaned, then cast a surly glance around the cabin. Daylight was streaming through the gallery windows. The air was stuffy, redolent with the lingering stink of camphor.
Dante stood and stretched the cramps out of his legs and back. He opened the door and brought the wooden platter inside, setting it on the desk and helping himself to a round biscuit. He remembered he was not alone and checked the bed, but did not see Eva curled up in the crush of blankets. She was not at the desk, not in her chair, not lurking in any of the shadowy corners. Knowing she could not have gone far, he was about to look under the bed when he happened to see his reflection in the mirror.
The gargoyle-like swelling on his cheek and eye had gone down considerably and the side of his face was not quite as blue-black anymore. The bruising, like that over the rest of his body, was more a sickly yellowish green. He rubbed his bad eye again, gently this time, to brush away the remnants of scabbing and scowled as he splashed water on his face.
He supposed he had to give Eva Chandler some credit for not screaming in horror each time she looked at him.
A flicker of something caught his attention and he looked toward the gallery windows again. A long yellow ribbon of hair was whipping across one of the glass panes. The door to the stern balcony was ajar and when he peered outside, he saw her standing at the rail gazing out over the open sea. Her hair was tied with a string at the nape of her neck, but several long strands had escaped and were playing havoc in the backwash of wind. The front of her shirt... his shirt... was filled with air, which should have rendered her shapeless but for the fact the early morning light was shining through the cloth and perfectly outlining every curve and indent.
His mouth felt suddenly dry and he would have retreated before she saw him, but the wind caught the narrow gallery door and swung it outward to bang on the bulkhead.
"Good morning Captain Dante," she said, turning her head.
"Good morning Mistress Chandler. You slept well, I hope?"
"Not very well, no, but I did sleep some. I came out here so as not to make any noise that might disturb you."
He had a vague recollection of the warning he delivered last night, but made no apologies. Instead, he stepped to the rail and drew a deep breath of the clean ocean air. He marked the size and curl of the wake scrolling out behind, and estimated the galleon's speed. Laying low across the southern horizon was the island the Spanish called Espiritu Santu, but otherwise, as far as the eye could see, the sea was sparkling and clear.
"I've been watching those creatures," Eva said, pointing to a pod of dolphins racing alongside the Endurance. "They seem quite playful crossing back and forth over the wake."
"The cook must be tossing scraps over the side. Either that or the crew is, for he's not a very good cook."
Eva smiled, and he found himself drawing in a breath. With her face gaining some color from the wind and her hair not looking like a hag's broom, she was as lovely as the sunrise itself. His experience with delicate young English beauties was limited. Most women of his acquaintance were dark-skinned, dark-haired, buxom and broad-hipped, possessing few scruples with regards to modesty or chastity.
His most recent mistress had stood over six feet tall with jet black hair and enough meat on her bones that their bouts of lovemaking were often like wrestling matches. This little esquilo was so slender he would be afraid of crushing her beneath him.
He cleared his throat and retraced his steps to the door. "Speaking of food, Stubs brought our morning meal if you are hungry."
"Starving," she admitted and turned to follow him inside. Her own breath caught in her throat when she saw his back. His shirt was stuck to his skin in patches, stained dark with fresh seepage from his wounds. She remembered seeing the lashmarks when he had stripped and changed clothes. He had recounted some of the details of the recent battle, but made no mention as to how he had come by his brutal injuries. While it was not her place to pry, neither was it in her nature to simply ignore his obvious discomfort. The scrape she had suffered in the beakhead throbbed like the devil, so she could only imagine how his back must feel.
The previous evening the ship’s doctor had left a pot of unguent outside the door with orders for him to apply it to his wounds, but he had ignored both the orders and the little jar of salve.
Despite the lure of food, she went first to the bed and stripped off one of the linen sheets. Using the jewelled dagger he had left on the desk top, she cut several notches across the top edge and started ripping the cloth into long strips.
Gabriel frowned as he watched her. "If you're planning to knot those together for an escape, it might be more effective to do it while I wasn't looking."
"I am making bandages. Some of the wounds on your back are leaking and they will keep leaking if you do not treat them with more care. Each time you take a garment on or off, or chafe the skin the wrong way, you disturb the healing.”
"You know about doctoring?"
"I know how to be practical, Captain. If your wounds fester and you take a fever, your men will blame me without troubling themselves to look for another reason.”
He arched an eyebrow.
She arched one of her own by way of a rebuttal, then quickly finished rolling up several of the torn strips. She poured some water into the washbowl and carried it to the desk along with a smaller square of linen and the pot of unguent.
"Kindly remove your shirt, please."
He assessed the determined look in her eye for a moment, then clamp
ed a biscuit between his teeth and pulled the hem of the shirt out of his waistband and drew it up and over his head.
Eva was standing less than a foot away as he did so, close enough to feel the swish of air tingling across her skin as the garment was lifted and tossed aside. From the front, he was all hard, sun-bronzed muscle, his chest furred with smooth, dark hairs. There was still evidence of bruising and some minor cuts and scratches, enough to make her wonder how a body could take such a beating and recover so quickly. When he turned, however, it was all she could do to cover her mouth with a hand to keep from gasping out loud. Whoever had plied the lash had wished to cause immeasurable pain. His back was a mess of crisscrossed welts, most delivered with a heavy enough hand to leave stripes on the flesh that would take weeks to fade. Others had been deliberately laid on top of existing welts until the flesh burst open and the underlying muscle was lacerated. These latter cuts were the ones that were not healing properly and she marvelled that he could even dress and go about his duties let alone sleep on a hard floor or sit for hours at his desk.
She could only guess how the salt water had felt when he dove into the sea to rescue her.
"Will you sit, please? Not in a chair... here, on the corner of the desk with your back to the light so I can better see what I am doing."
He huffed out a breath, but did as asked half-sitting, half-standing with one hip propped on the corner of the desk. While she touched here and there with delicate fingers, inspecting the worst of the wounds, he munched on the biscuit, alternating it with bites of cheese and a strange white fruit Eva had never seen before. She worked as carefully as she could with the dampened linen to clean around the wounds, and although he distracted himself by picking up another Spanish document and studying it, she could see his flesh quivering just beneath the surface if she touched a particularly red-raw lesion.
When it came time to apply the unguent, she thought she would faint from the smell, but it went on smoothly and seemed to melt into the heat of his flesh. If it stung even half as badly as it smelled, there was fair reason for the fine sheen of sweat that appeared between his shoulder blades.
When it was time to wrap the bandaging around his ribs, he set the papers aside and stood facing her so she could move the roll across his chest and around behind. Her arms were just long enough to allow her to transfer the roll from hand to hand before bringing it around front again, but in doing so, it brought the tip of her nose nuzzling up against the soft mat of hair on his chest. By the time she finished and tied a knot in the bandaging, her cheeks and throat were scarlet and she was experiencing a most disconcerting sensation in the pit of her belly.
It did not help matters that Gabriel Dante's eyes had been following her movements with each pass of the roll around his chest. She had the distinct feeling he had examined every hair on her head, every freckle across the bridge of her nose.
No sooner had that thought entered her mind when she felt his hands lowering and coming forward to rest on her shoulders. "Your turn now."
"M-my turn?"
"Your leg. Since you seem so concerned about leakage and festering, you really should let me have a closer look at it."
Eva blushed and glanced down. The cut on her thigh was just out of her ability to twist enough to see it. "It was just a scrape, Captain."
“One that has you twisting up your mouth every time you sit on it.”
“I am quite capable of tending it myself.”
“I’m sure you are. But it occurs to me that I should, perhaps, have been checking your entire body all along for signs of a rash. Spots could be spreading in places not easily seen through the layers of clothing.”
“I really don’t think—“
“Again with the thinking.” He sighed and before she could react, he had a hand wrapped around a healthy fistful of hair to hold her steady while he slipped the knot in the rope belt. The breeches slid down her hips and pooled around her ankles without any further encouragement.
Eva gasped. One hand flew instantly to the hem of the oversized shirt to ensure it was pulled down as far as it would go, the other caught at his wrist.
"What are you doing!"
"Stripping you naked to have a closer look… unless of course you would care to cooperate and show me the scratch on your backside.”
The threat was clearly evident in his eyes.
"All right! Leave go of me and I’ll show you."
His grip on her hair eased and Eva slowly turned. She grudgingly inched the hem of the long shirt upward until the patch of skin high on the back of her thigh was exposed. She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together as she sensed him bending over to inspect. The tingling sensation she had felt earlier flowed in liquid spirals into her belly and she had to lean forward and brace herself on the top of the desk to keep from toppling over.
Dante placed his strong, tanned hand on the smooth skin, gently squeezing a wide pinch of bared flesh.
It was too much and Eva whirled around shocked into nearly stumbling against the bank of windows as her ankles tangled in the fallen breeches. When she regained her balance, she saw him hold up a long, thin sliver of wood.
"Here's your culprit. Another day it would have given you real trouble." His smile was decidedly vengeful as he flicked the sliver aside and reached for the pot of unguent. "Best take all precautions.”
She reached out and plucked the pot from his hand. "I can manage this part myself, thank you."
"As you wish," he said with a shrug. "And by the way, yes you do."
"I do what?"
He grinned. "Have a pretty ass."
When she gasped again, he laughed aloud and crossed to where his sea chests were set against the wall. A moment of rummaging produced a reasonably clean shirt for himself and a new pair of breeches for her.
"Put these on when you are finished. I would rather not have you wandering around my ship with blood stains on your leg. My crew might not believe I slept on the floor."
He chuckled and Eva nearly threw the pot of unguent. To quell the urge, she thrust a finger into the brownish goo and reached around to smear some on her thigh. When the balm touched the shallow scratch, it took everything she had not to scream and jump up and down and squeal. Her eyes filled with tears and her jaw clamped shut. Her whole body, in fact, clenched tight with the stinging pain and she could only imagine how Dante’s back had felt as she slathered the stuff liberally over his raw wounds.
Within seconds, however, a startling thing happened. The burning faded, then vanished altogether, leaving a complete absence of any feeling at all where the unguent had been applied. She could breathe again. She could blink without seeing stars in front of her eyes. She could touch her leg and pull up her breeches without biting her lip to hold back a whimper.
Dante, meanwhile, had returned to his desk and opened one of the last remaining packets of personal letters that had been en route to Seville. His long fingers irreverently snapped the thick wax seal and, with his attention diverted toward the contents, Eva replaced the cork in the pot of unguent and emptied the basin of dirty water out the gallery door.
Not quite forgiving enough to dismiss his misguided sense of humor, she filled a plate with food and curled up in the velvet chair, determined to eat her way through the meal in silence.
Dante did not look up. His brow was drawn into a frown as he concentrated on translating the letter, the first of about ten that had been sealed inside the packet. Eva leaned forward, intending to reach for another slice of cheese, but his hand was there to stop her, his fingers grasping tightly around her wrist.
"'I regret I cannot yet return to the sweet bosom of my loving wife and family,'" he quoted slowly, "'The commandant has confided in me that the search begins again in earnest. He will not see such treasures fall into the hands of a one-eyed English aventurero.'"
Dante looked up and Eva felt a shiver slither down her spine.
"What do you think it means?" she asked, her voice barely above
a whisper.
"There are dozens of one-eyed adventurers sailing around in these waters, so it could mean nothing."
"Or?"
Instead of answering right away he smoothed the lower half of the letter flat so that she could see the rough sketch that filled one of the quadrants. Eva did not need to open the locket to know the drawing was almost an exact replica of her Spanish escudo.
"Or... it could mean the sharks have already begun circling.”
CHAPTER TEN
Gabriel spent the remainder of the morning pouring over charts, making calculations in his head, drawing sketches of wind and water currents. More than once he wished Geoffrey Pitt was on board, for the man had sailed the Carribee with Simon Dante for thirty years and his head was a vast book of knowledge, filled with facts and minutia that he could recite upon the instant. Gabriel could remember, fairly clearly, most of the rumors and legends that surrounded the mystery of the vanished treasure galleon, but solving a mystery was all in the details.
It was not aiding his concentration that Eva insisted on helping. As it turned out, however, she could read Spanish quite well, flourishes and all, so he had been able to set her the task of pouring through the sack of personal letters.
Unfortunately she was sitting directly across from him and each time she leaned forward to reach for a new document, his attention strayed from the charts to the open vee of her shirt. Twice his stealth had been rewarded with glimpses of soft, rounded curves. Once, when he had inadvertently craned his neck slightly to see further down the dusky valley, she had chosen that moment to ask him a question. He had averted his gaze so quickly he had nearly impaled his chin on the graphite pencil.
When he looked up now, she was twirling a strand of hair around her finger and when she let it go, it formed a perfect curl around her breast.
He cleared his throat and frowned. "All of the reports suggest the fleet was caught here." He touched a fingertip to the map and traced a light circle around the area west of the Biminis. "Just about the area where the lead ships would be beginning their run up through the Straits. The vanguard would have known to stay well clear of the shallow banks, especially with a storm approaching, but they also would have tried to remain where the strongest currents would keep pushing them north. Winds blow in a circular direction during a hurricane, so most of the ships in the fleet were blown west, toward the mainland of Florida. I am almost damn certain I read somewhere, in one of the reports, that the Victorio's pilot was an arrogant bastard who boasted about the ship's speed and stability. If he had tried to outrun the storm, they could have ended up on the wrong side of the eye and been swept in an easterly direction.
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