“To tell me what?” she demanded, her voice taut. “The things you have said? He did offer marriage once, and I refused.”
He caught her arm, swinging her to face him there on the empty stretch of moon-silvered sand. “And what of love, Félicité? Has he offered you love, as I do?”
She shook her head, and the anguish was plain to see in her velvet-brown eyes there in the warm white light of the moon. He caught her close with a soft groan, holding her against him.
“Ah, Félicité, forgive me.”
There was comfort in his arms, but nothing more. “That, yes,” she whispered, “but I cannot marry you. You deserve better.”
“Better? Such a thing cannot be.”
“It can. You deserve someone who can love you in return.”
“And you, Félicité, what do you deserve?”
He kissed her then, a passionless caress, a reverent touch of his firm lips accompanied by the brush of his mustache.
He drew back, his eyes bright, his mouth curving in a smile. “So long have I wanted to do that—” He stiffened, swinging his head to stare along the shore.
A man and a woman were just stepping from the shadows of the forest’s edge perhaps a hundred yards away. The woman was a dark wraith in colorless clothing, marked by the pale gleam of her shoulders and face; the man’s shirt shone with refracted light, while his hair that ruffled in the wind gleamed like old copper coins.
Morgan came toward them over the sands, while Isabella stood where he had left her. After a moment La Paloma picked up her skirts and followed behind him. The urge to run swept in upon Félicité, though it was not caused by fear of what he would do so much as it was by the transparency of her pain at his defection. Hard upon that knowledge came anger that she would let herself be so bemused, so dependent upon his continued attention, whatever form it took.
Morgan’s strides were long and quick; by the time Bast had turned, squaring his shoulders, he was upon them.
“Hold on,” Bast began with an uplifted hand.
“Hold on and be damned! What is the meaning of this?” Morgan set his hands on his hips as he demanded an answer.
“I resent both your tone and your attitude,” the Spaniard said with a proud lift of his head.
“Do you?” Morgan said sarcastically. “I thought you, Bast, of all the men on this island, could be trusted!”
“Trusted? To what end? To hold your place for you?”
“Trusted to treat Félicité as the lady she is, instead of like a common—”
“Take care!” Bast exclaimed. “You are on no very firm ground there yourself. Any treatment she receives from me must be better than she has had from you.”
As Morgan stared at him, Isabella glided to where they stood then, taking Morgan’s arm, curling her fingers around it as though she would restrain him. The Spanish-Irish noblewoman glanced from one to the other, her brows lifted in inquiry. “What is the matter?”
When no one answered, she looked to Félicité, saying with great directness, “Are they quarreling over you?”
It was Bast who answered. “It would seem so, yes. Morgan objects to my being here with her, and with reason, since I have taken the opportunity to ask her to be my wife.”
“You what?” Morgan demanded.
“You heard me.”
“So I did,” Morgan ground out. “Tell me, when will the nuptials be held? Who will perform them, and where, since there is neither priest nor chapel on this island?”
“I explained—”
“I can just imagine,” Morgan snapped, cutting across his words.
Bast frowned. “No, I didn’t mean that the way you think.”
“Then how did you mean it? I think you had better tell me.”
“Of course,” Bast said, and inclined his head as if the suggestion had been an order.
“If you will excuse us, ladies,” Morgan said, and with a curt nod toward the deserted beach behind him, swung from them. Bast fell into step beside him, and they moved away, their words drifting back, indistinguishable, blown on the wind.
Félicité lifted a brow, her considering gaze on Morgan’s broad back. There was something here she did not understand, something perhaps she was not meant to understand.
“Well,” Isabella said, “congratulations.”
Félicité turned to the other woman. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“To have two such men fighting over you is quite an honor.”
“To some, possibly; not to me.”
“Ah, you have a preference then. Why could you not have said so and saved ill feeling between them?”
“How do you know I did not?” Félicité said, her tone tart.
“When a woman has been firm enough in her answer, a suitor no longer clings to hope. Unless a woman is promiscuous, enjoying the personal attentions of two men at once, this is the wisest course.”
“You speak from the height of great experience with keeping lovers apart, I suppose?”
“As it happens, yes.”
The woman’s air of superiority was unendurable. “I would not have thought, in your present occupation, that many occasions for disappointing the men whose attention you attract would arise.”
La Paloma’s eyes gleamed more like those of a hawk than of a dove. “Let me give you a bit of advice, my dear young woman. It is never intelligent to judge from appearances.”
“You do mean something by that, I expect?”
“Oh yes, several things.”
Félicité’s nerves were so tightly stretched she wanted to scream. Instead, she retreated into frozen politeness. “Tell me about them.”
“To begin with, my position aboard the ship in the harbor is not what you think. It is an amusement only, this voyage, because of a friend whom I knew when I was younger. In a fit of whimsy, she named her ship of women after me, and it pleased me to make her — if you will excuse the expression — maiden journey with her.”
“How — interesting,” Félicité commented, her disbelief patent.
Isabella’s lips tightened. “Then there is the matter of Morgan. It was naive of you to concoct this little drama for his delectation. You will find he despises such subterfuges.”
“You think I planned that he should see me with Bast? Nothing was further from my mind! I did not even know you and he were there!”
“Come,” Isabella mocked, “you can do better than that.”
“I would most certainly not have interrupted your pleasure if I had had the least idea you were there groping in the dark.”
“My pleasure, in such a place? Allow me to inform you,” Isabella said with swelling chest, “that I am above such plebeian delights as rutting in the sand!”
Driven by a rage of jealousy, Félicité laughed. “You should try it sometime — you might be surprised. But if what you say is true, you were enticing Morgan in the wrong direction entirely, were you not? The nearest thing to a bed the island affords must be on your friend’s ship.”
“That was not my purpose, I tell you!”
“Then you should have come forward more quickly just now. You looked for all the world as though a promised treat had been snatched from your hand.”
An imprecation fell from the woman’s lips that no Spanish noblewoman should have known. “What a foul-minded little trollop you are.”
“I would not descend to calling names if I were you,” Félicité said with a lift of her chin. “Knowing something of your history, I would say there is every chance that if I began I might hit on one or two that were true.”
“Before God, why Morgan has jeopardized so much to find such a one as you, I cannot imagine, such a stupid little bitch as you are!”
“Stupid I may be about some things,” Félicité declared. “But even I understand his reasons, as should a mistress of the whores like you!”
With catlike quickness, Isabella reached out and slapped her. Félicité’s reaction was instant, automatic. The dark-haired woman�
�s head snapped back under the strength of her blow.
With a hand to her cheek, Isabella straightened. Her eyes like slits, she said, “I understand you have some facility with a sword?”
“A little,” Félicité agreed.
Isabella flung a quick look along the beach to where the figures of the two men were small with distance. “Good. It is my belief that you could profit from a salutary lesson in manners.”
“It is necessary for the person who wishes to teach a subject to have a superior command of it!”
“Are you speaking of swordplay, or manners?”
“Whichever you choose,” Félicité answered, her brown gaze level, her smile cold.
“We shall see then.”
“Yes,” Félicité said, “we shall see.”
Without a word more, they turned and moved in the direction of the encampment.
18
WHERE TO FIND SWORDS loomed as a problem. Every man on the island went armed at all times, not only with cutlass but most with pistols thrust into a belt at a diagonal across their chest. Still, would any with a blade fit to have give it up to them, even if the seamen could be persuaded from the palm forest?
Félicité thought of Captain Bonhomme, but he was gone from his place at the table and was nowhere in sight. There were, however, a score or so others wandering in from the woods, making for the bucket of rum punch. They greeted the idea of a meeting with swords between women with raucous, disbelieving glee, a comic distraction rather than a serious event. Chortling drunkenly, they began to compare blades to find two of the same approximate weight and length.
It was Valcour who served them best. Because of his wounds, he had spent the afternoon gambling with the other convalescing seamen. During that time he had acquired by dint of careful play a pair of matched rapiers, a part of the captured prizes. Slender, deadly, less cumbersome than the cutlasses offered by the others, they were more suited for women. With a polished bow, he offered the first of the two to Isabella, giving her a smile reminiscent of his old fastidious charm. The other, with less grace, he gave to Félicité.
A space was cleared by the simple expedient of bundling up the sailcloth with the plates, food scraps, pots, and platters inside and dragging it some distance away. More wood was piled on the fires, so they leaped high. Like spectators at an arena, the few unoccupied men gathered around, seating themselves on the ground. A hilarious expectancy, punctuated by the murmur of bets, gripped the audience.
Félicité in white and Isabella in black, the two women saluted each other. The blades flashed silver and gold light from moon and fires as they swept up, then down again. The swords held in slim white hands crossed, and then, with fluid, stunning grace, the contest began.
Like fog and smoke, swirling, unfurling, blending, they came together. The blades clicked and tapped, sliding upon each other with a sighing whine. The wind caught their hair, sending it flying around them, and whipped their skirts that dragged over the sand as they danced with airy grace; advancing, retreating, brown eyes and blue clashing with icy intent.
The men quieted, grew still. It was then, with gossamer lightness, that Isabella began her attack. Félicité parried in tierce with a melting, bell-like chime of blades, and the strife began in earnest.
In the swordplay of the women there was none of the gritty power that there had been between Morgan and Valcour. Still, it was no less deadly for its lightness. Isabella fought with speed and textbook precision. Félicité brought an excellence to the meeting that, combined with a certain intuitive knowledge, Isabella clearly had to take into account again and again as her follow-through and feints were prevented. Less than five minutes after the Spanish-Irish noblewoman had moved in upon Félicité, the blades clashed with a shower of yellow-gold sparks, Félicité parried, circled, and her rapier slashed through the black lace of Isabella’s sleeve.
La Paloma’s eyes blazed, then narrowed. “There may be more to you than I thought,” she said.
“Thinking can be dangerous,” Félicité answered.
Her words were nearly lost in the yelling of the pirates, and then the fighting began in earnest. They slid and scuffled in the sand, turning, dipping, reaching in and out of sword’s length, the glittering reflection twinkling over the sand, shifting in blue-white lozenges across the skirts of their gowns. For the two women there was nothing except the incessant clanging blades, the beating jar running up from wrist to elbow, and the precious drawing of breath. Parries, ripostes, contes, froissées; each trying and failing, failing and trying, to free their blades for the damaging lunge.
Blood, the men wanted blood. Though their audience had grown quieter once more, there was a sense of avidness in their breathless attention. Félicité was tiring, her anger evaporating as if it had never been. She saw in the face of the other woman something of her own regret. Their fatigue was as much from the encumbrance of their heavy skirts as from the weight of ringing steel in their hands. Their breasts heaved with the deep drawing of breaths that strained their stays, and perspiration dampened their hair. And yet they could not, would not stop. It was a thing of pride and skill, a refusal to accept the humiliation of defeat, or to allow the other victory. Brilliant female fiends, they drove each other toward a precipice of inescapable injury, or else the ultimate horror of soft and feminine death.
At the edge of her vision, Félicité caught a flicker of movement, saw beyond Isabella the stealthy approach of the French captain, saw in the other woman’s eyes the ghost of her own fleeting disquiet, and caught a hazardous flashing glance beyond Félicité’s own shoulder.
“Now!”
With that ringing masculine command, there were four blades in the arena, four glittering metallic instruments of slicing destruction. Félicité felt a blow to her rapier that numbed her arm to the shoulder, heard the squealing scrape of metal on metal. Caught on the thickness of a corsair’s heavy cutlass, her own blade was swept upward. Less than six feet away, Isabella stood similarly disengaged by the force of a cutlass in the hand of Captain Jacques Bonhomme. Turning her head, Félicité, with arm held high and sword hilt still in her grasp, stared into the emerald eyes of Morgan McCormack.
Once more Félicité glanced to Isabella. The woman lifted a brow, and moving in concert, as if the maneuver had been practiced times without number, they snatched their swords free and whirled to stand shoulder to shoulder, presenting their weapons point first toward the two men who had dared to interfere.
It would have been difficult to say which man, whether Morgan or Captain Bonhomme, was most disconcerted. By reflex action, they brought their blades up in defense, but the will to do more was absent from their blank faces.
“Shall we spit them before they regain their senses?” Isabella asked, her lips curving in real amusement. “Or shall we show mercy?”
“They — meant well,” Félicité said. “That much is in their favor.”
Around them the pirates were howling in protest, or else vociferous in their preference for the order of battle, urging that the clash continue.
It was Morgan who decided the outcome. He whipped his sword down, withdrawing, resting the point upon the sand. “I entreat mercy from you, Félicité, now and in the future.”
With a gusting sigh of relief, the French captain followed Morgan’s lead, withdrawing likewise. His gaze was filled with admiring concern as he watched for Isabella’s next move.
“Too bad,” Valcour said, strolling forward, his drawl breaking the silence. “Seldom have I seen anything more exciting. I will relieve you of my sword, marquesa, if it pleases you, and then perhaps you will allow me to lead you to a glass of punch.”
Isabella, her face slightly haggard, turned from Valcour. Her right arm trembled, but stepping back, she lifted it once more in salute to Félicité. “Mademoiselle, that was most excellently done. I congratulate you.”
“Not at all,” Félicité replied. “It was, I think, a fine lesson.”
“You are too generou
s,” the Spanish woman said, “but then I expect I am not the first one to discover that.”
Isabella de Herrara passed her sword to Valcour then, before she turned to the French captain. A smile curved her lips as she gazed into his Latin brown eyes. “I wonder, sir, if I could prevail upon you to show me to the punch bowl?”
“It would be an honor beyond my deserts.” The captain covered her fingers with his own where they rested on his arm. He leaned down, his head close to her dark hair, as he led her away.
Félicité lowered her sword arm, pushing the point into the sand, watching her brother as he glared after the couple, slowly bending the sword he held between his two hands. Releasing the hilt as her own rapier stood alone, she swung away. The seamen closed in around her, congratulating her, speaking with admiring voices of her prowess, of the grandeur of the fight and the shame of its early end. They proposed a toast to her health, but she did not heed them. Pushing through, she moved with quickening footsteps and blind eyes toward the hut.
At the last moment, she veered, heading toward the point of the cove and the stretch of the beach beyond. She crossed the narrow, forested spit of land with breathless haste, ducking under the gnarled sea pine. The deep, loose sand slipped under her feet, slowing her, then she was on the hard-packed water’s edge. Lifting her skirts higher, unseen and unseeing, she ran faster and faster. Her breath sobbed in her throat, and the scalding tears that streamed from her eyes were dried in salt-crusted tracks by the wind.
Fleeing from the pain of lost closeness, the distress of Morgan’s suspicions, the reminders of a way of life gone beyond reclaim and the confusion of dead anger, she did not hear the pursuit until it was nearly upon her. It came on with the quick thud of booted feet. To look would be more terrible than not knowing. Who else could it be except some seaman wandering in the woods who had lost his lady love and blundered out of the palm forest on the wrong side of the cove? To give chase to a running female would be as natural as for a hound coursing a deer. If he knew from her gown she was not of the cargo of the La Paloma, if she turned to tell him, what hope was there it would make a difference?
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