Across a Moonlit Sea (32 page)

“The two I knew about? I shot them, then sent dear Annalise the parts of them she loved best.”

The tension, the hard, piercing intensity, in his eyes remained locked on hers for another moment before he raised the blade and continued shaving.

Beau released the breath she had not been aware of holding and wondered if, by showing her his scars, he was testing her in some way? Deliberately giving her an opening so he could affirm in his own mind that ail women were inherently cruel and not to be trusted? A week ago she would not have disappointed him, responding with gleeful scorn, using his humiliation as a weapon to slash at
his pride like a blade. But now … all she wanted to do— and it shocked the devil out of her to admit it—was go to him, put her arms around him, and tell him it did not matter.

She could not do that, of course, for she would likely be failing a test of another kind, the rules of which she had established herself. She had been the one to insist it could last only until they set the first foot on English soil. Then he would be free and she would be free and they would go their own separate ways again, with no presumptions, no grasping demands, no obligations of any kind.

Beau looked down at her hands. Odd, how they were shaking.

She gave them something to do and tidied the papers she had already tidied once. One of the sheets fell and as she leaned over to pick it up, her eye scanned the page filled with Dante’s neat, precise script … the writing of an aristocrat, not a pirate wolf, despite how hard he tried to disassociate himself from his other life. Her own stylized script took hours to labor over and had taken years to perfect in an effort to present the Black Swan as a scholarly cartographer as opposed to a merchant’s brat in breeches.

The irony was not lost on her as she glanced absently down the page. He had translated harvest predictions, lists of oats, grains, legumes, even poultry and fowl that would be delivered to Spanish ports in the coming months. A meaningless jumble of words, especially when her mind was otherwise occupied.

Yet something caught her eye.

She wasn’t really looking for anything, or even aware she was absorbing the words off the page. She was too aware of Simon Dante’s broad back turned toward her, shutting her out.

But the word
olive
was intrusive enough to break through the thickest fog of distraction.

“Why in heaven’s name would they want to ship olives to Spain?” she muttered to herself. “The country is full of them now. Did you translate this correctly?” she asked in a louder voice. “It reads: The ship of olives will arrive in port no later than All Saints’ Day.’”

He shot her the kind of glance that would have withered most men had they questioned his accuracy after so many frustrating hours of searching through an unending maze. “There are shipments of olives, peacocks, even rosaries, anticipated with great glee. Make what you will of it.”

“Peacocks?” She leaned back in the chair and rubbed a hand across the nape of her neck. Jonas and Spit both claimed their napes prickled and their ballocks shriveled when something of great import was about to happen. At that particular moment Beau’s neck felt raw enough to scratch and her nipples had peaked so hard, they felt like hillocks of ice.

“Simon—?”

The edge of the blade was poised just below his left ear where the flesh protecting the jugular was the thinnest. It was the first time she had called him anything other than Dante, Captain, or bastard, and he did not feel compelled to move or breathe until he determined the reason.

“Have you found something?”

“I don’t know. Where are the paintings of the harbors?”

She followed the flicker of his eyes to the divided bin that held her charts. The Spanish parchments stood out from the others, and by the time she retrieved them, Dante was beside her, helping to roll them flat on the table.

Her eyes scanned the first one and did not see what she
wanted. The second offered nothing better, but the third brought a triumphant gust of air rushing past her lips.

“There,” she said, stabbing a finger downward.

Dante leaned closer. The sun was not yet full in bloom and besides the shadows he had to contend with, there was the open, gaping edges of Beau’s shirt. “What am I looking at?”

“Don’t you know what ship this is?”

His face was level with hers as he questioned her sudden smile. A great many Spanish galleons were identifiable by their size, silhouettes, and gun batteries, especially to someone who had been plundering the Main for ten years. The galleasses were all distinguishable by the rows of oars that protruded from both sides, the thousand-ton
ratas
, Portugese carracks, and—because it was in their best interest to know—the six- to nine-hundred-ton treasure ships like the
San Pedro
were as familiar to English sea hawks as their own vessels.

The ships in all three paintings, which Dante had studied as diligently as he had studied the written documents, were nondescript and identical, with no immediately visible differences aside from the artist’s attempt to give the harbor depth and dimensions; the ships in the foreground were larger, those anchored closer to shore were proportionately smaller. None showed more than a few token black gunports.

Beau looked smug. “It’s the
Sancta Maria Encoronada”

His eyebrows drew together in an undivided black slash. “How the devil do you know that?”

“Firstly—and as you’ve already remarked—because I have the patience to use a single-haired brush when I want special details; secondly, because I mark my charts with a black swan. It makes me tend to notice little things like trademarks and … peacock feathers.”

Dante followed the tip of her finger to the minute detailing painted across the stem gallery of one of the galleons in the forefront. It was a tiny fan of peacock feathers, so muted and so skillfully worked into the bold rendering of the ship itself, it would be discernible only to another artist’s eye—or to someone who knew what to look for. Even though he could see it now, so clearly it brought a curse to his lips, Dante was still dubious; but Beau had already turned her attention to the markings on one of the other sterns.

Her finger stabbed again. “Wheat sheaves: The
Santa Catalina.
And there … the
Nuestra señora del Rosario”
She looked up. “Rosaries, for pity’s sake.”

“Olives?” Dante asked, scarcely daring to look.

Beau had to search the other two paintings before she found the small, delicate leaves that formed part of the cresting on the immense, fifty-gun
Napolitana
, the flagship of King Philip’s navy.

“I am only guessing, but I would say your harvest predictions are a detailed accounting of what ships will be ready in what ports by a particular date,” Beau said. “And if that’s true”—she let the top two paintings roll themselves up again and stared at the third, the harbor Dante had previously identified—“if that’s true … my God … there are at least forty, fifty ships in Cadiz alone, including half a dozen
ratas”

Dante nodded grimly. “Any one of them capable of leading an invasion fleet.”

“Then the rumors about an armada…?”

“They were never rumors, mon
enfant
, they were truths the Queen chose not to believe.”

“Surely she will have to believe them now?”

“Indeed she will, and she will have to strike now, strike hard and fast, while the Spaniards are gathered together
like suckling pigs around a sow.” He looked down at the painting and his eyes clouded with some terrible irony she did not understand. “Cadiz, by Christ. I knew it!”

His gaze flicked past her shoulder and sought the solid gold galleon resting on the corner of the table. “If I but had my
Virago
, and a dozen ships …
half
a dozen ships … I would gladly finish what we started in Veracruz. It would my greatest pleasure to make the spider king squirm and sweat out the price of his own treachery.”

Beau ran her hands up his arms, inviting him to drop down onto one knee before her. “I have no doubt you would, Captain Dante. You seem to have a knack for making people squirm and sweat … and take the greatest pleasure doing it.”

“Do I, now?” His eyes narrowed and he smoothed his palms along her inner thighs, pushing the hem of his shirt up as he did so.

“And you
usually
see a thing through to the finish when you start it.”

“Usually? When have I failed?”

She moistened her lips and looked down at his hands where they rested, bronzed and bold, over the whiteness of her skin.

His smile turned softly wolfish. He coaxed her legs wider apart and ran his thumbs pensively through the feathery soft thatch of auburn curls, unfurling and exposing tender pink surfaces that were quick to glisten at his touch.

“Are you certain
you
would not prefer to finish watching the sun rise?”

Beau threaded her fingers through the glossy mane of his hair and sighed her answer as he lowered his dark head between her thighs.

She would have cause to think, only a few minutes later when the sound of shouts and running boots on the deck
overhead brought a rude end to their pleasure, that perhaps she had made the wrong choice. For fifty feet above them, knuckling the disbelief out of his eyes and cursing his laxness in having drifted off to sleep, the lookout was staring aghast at a fleet of warships slung out across the horizon, coming their way.

 “E
nglish,” Spence announced in awe. “They’re bloody English, the lot o’ them. I count … sixteen galleons an’ … Christ love a sinner … half a litter o’ pinnaces holdin’ in their wake. Are we at war, do ye suppose?”

McCutcheon spat over the side, but before he could offer an answer there were shuffling sounds of a commotion behind them. Both the captain and his quartermaster turned in time to greet Simon Dante, who was fastening his belt around his waist, and not two paces in his shadow, Beau, with her hair unplaited and her cheeks red as apples.

Spit snorted eloquently and caught Jonas’s eye before looking back to sea. “Appears someone’s up to somethin’, that’s a fact.”

Dante clasped a hand around the shroud lines as he joined Spence by the rail. The northern sky was still a dull gray wall behind the rapidly approaching ships and their sails resembled a low crust of dirty clouds on the horizon. They were too far away to identify by ship or master, but
there was no mistaking the low-charged English silhouettes.

“What do ye make o’ it?” Spence asked.

Dante shook his head. “I don’t know. But if England and Spain are at war, surely we would have heard some mention of it from the Flemish merchant we passed two days ago.”

“True enough.” Spence grunted. “On the other hand, there’s too damned many sails out there for a simple venture, an’ ye said yerself it took near three months o’ arguin’ to win a nod for yer two ships to sally on the raid to Veracruz.”

“So it did. Our Gloriana would rather have her nails plucked from her fingers than part with a single coin willingly. In the end she did so only because there was the prospect of vast profits to be made if we were successful. The rest of the hawks, however, were being kept on short tethers, with the exception of Richard Grenville. She was not happy to part with him, either, but he was sent in Raleigh’s place, for she did not want to lose Walter’s firepower for the sake of a few colonists who needed transport to Virginia. Nonetheless, she likely withdrew her permission for Richard to sail as soon as the ink dried on the orders telling him to leave … just as she did mine.”

To his credit Jonas kept his eyes trained on the horizon longer than either Beau or Spit McCutcheon.

“She withdrew her permission for ye to sail to Veracruz?”

“She … wavered in her decision. It is another affliction the Queen suffers: issuing an order with one hand, rescinding it with the other. In my case the papers refusing me leave to take my ships out of port arrived just as we cleared the harbor. The courier, poor lad, even took a tumble into the drink trying to deliver them.”

Spence’s barrel chest swelled on a deep breath. “A fine time to tell me there might be a price on yer head in coin other than Spanish ducats.”

“I doubt Bess would go to the extreme of a warrant. And even if she did, Bloodstone has had two, maybe three weeks by now to cool her temper with gold. In fact, knowing how much oil he has on his tongue, he probably has the entire country singing his praises as a hero, with Bess herself tossing down the rose petals in his path.”

Spence scowled. “Are there aught more wee details ye might have forgotten to tell me?”

“Nothing I can think of, offhand.” Dante glanced past Spence’s shoulder and caught Pitt’s eye. “Nothing that would jeopardize the safety of this ship or crew, at any rate.”

“Aye. An’ that would be the
whole
crew, I’m thinkin’?”

Dante’s gaze flickered back to Spence. They were both aware of Beau, who was standing nearby occupied with hastily plaiting her hair and listening to Billy Cuthbert’s report on winds and currents.