Across a Moonlit Sea (7 page)

All of the papers, letters, and documents had been in the treasure house at Veracruz awaiting the ships that would carry the correspondence home to Spain. Pitt had snatched them up almost as an afterthought, speculating
there was always something of some interest to someone who cared to know the state of affairs in Spanish-held territories. What he hadn’t counted on was finding something that would irrevocably alter the course of their destiny.

Dante glanced up. The wench was still staring.

“If you want to make yourself useful,” he said irritably, “you can start rolling these charts and stacking them in a chest.”

“I have absolutely no desire to make myself useful, Captain Dante.” She arched her brows in surprise that he would even think so. “In fact, I shall strive to be as useless to you as possible for as long as possible.”

“You are already that, mam’selle,” he countered evenly.

“Then we have nothing more to discuss.”

He looked at her, hard. “I am not happy with the way this has turned out. I have no quarrel with your father or his crew, nor do I have any nefarious designs on your ship.”

She merely stared back, her face a study in abject contempt.

He drummed his long fingers silently on the top of the desk. “Your father mentioned you have been at sea for eight months.” When she neither confirmed nor denied it, he asked, “Should I assume this was your first voyage?”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Your hands are too soft, for one thing, your skin is too fresh: You don’t exactly have the look of a weathered tar about you.”

“For your information, I have been at sea since I was twelve,” she snapped.

“A whole year?” He cocked his head in mock surprise. “I am impressed.”

“Eight years, thank you very much.”

From the instant sparks that had flared in her eyes, he guessed he had touched upon a tender subject. She had
obviously met his brand of sarcasm before, both about her choice of lifestyle and the fact that she did, indeed, have the smooth, round face of a youthling—when she wasn’t scowling, that is.

His brief victory did not taste as sweet as it should have, for his reaction was stalled somewhere between satisfaction and grudging admiration. Eight years was a long time. The sea offered no easy life and was merciless to anyone who showed the slightest weakness.

Beau was no better off. He angered her, irritated her, made her furious with his smug arrogance, but he was also an enigma. He was, after all, Simon Dante, an aristocrat, a member of the nobility with vast estates in England as well as France. He had spent the last half of his—what? thirty years? plaguing the Spanish shipping lines. For his most recent outlandish adventure he admitted to having raided Veracruz, and had fought a pitched battle with six Spanish galleons—a feat of daring and courage that normally would have had her perched on the edge of her chair, hanging on his every word.

She couldn’t ask him about any of it, of course. She couldn’t even look interested.

So she looked instead at the clutter of books littering the floor. “You can read,” she said, inflecting her voice with the same patronizing tones he had used. “I’m impressed.”

His long fingers ceased their drumming. The golden cat’s eyes were scanning the volumes haphazardly when they came to a sudden stop at one in particular. They widened slightly and an exquisite tension seemed to ripple the length of her body. He tried to follow her gaze to the book that had so riveted her attention, but when she saw what he was about she turned her head and let the mask of indifference settle over her features again.

“If you have seen something you want, by all means help yourself. They will only end up on the bottom of the ocean.”

“What I want”—her eyes shot back—“is to return to the Egret.”

“And so you shall,” he said solicitously. “Just as soon as all these charts and maps are rolled and packed away in a chest.”

Beau surged to her feet, abruptly enough to send Dante’s hand an inch or so in the direction of the pistol.

“Where is the damned chest?” she demanded.

His hand relaxed—rather, it flattened in an attempt to appear as though the movement had been unintentional, not that either one of them was fooled.

“Behind you. Empty the clothing out of the big one and stow as much of this paperwork in it as you can. My ship, too, if you please,” he added, his voice softening unexpectedly as he ran a hand lovingly over the gold replica of the
Virago.
“Perhaps if one survives, the other will not be forgotten too soon.”

“It is a … beautiful ship,” she was compelled to admit.

“The
Virago
was a beautiful ship,” he said, all but to himself. “Quick and keen, sleek as a nymph. She was the ideal companion—loyal, trustworthy, brave beyond measure in heart and soul, with a fiery temper that could set any foe running before the wind. She did not deserve”— he glanced around the wreckage in the cabin and sighed— “this.”

“You said you were set upon by six Spaniards and sank them all. I could not think of a more fitting end, if it were my ship.”

“She did us proud against the Spanish, aye. But it was an Englishman who betrayed her.”

“You were betrayed? An
Englishman
told the Spanish where to find you?”

His eyes narrowed against the memory and for a moment, the rage and fury that darkened his face was potent enough for Beau, standing half a dozen paces away, to feel its heat. She saw the subtle shifting in the color of his eyes as they went from being a pale, smoldering gray to searing blue and she remembered seeing the same extraordinary change a split second before he had grabbed at her throat. With an effort Beau forced herself to breathe, aware she had filled her lungs, so as to preempt another strike.

“Captain—?”

“Behind you,” he said, cracking his words like kindling. “The big chest. Quicker done, quicker away. That is what you want, is it not?”

Beau felt a measure of her own anger leak back into her cheeks, dusting them a soft pink. He had been betrayed. Fine. It perhaps explained his lack of willingness to place his trust in strangers. But it did not excuse his behavior in turning around and betraying Jonas Spence, who had done nothing more malicious to the crew of the
Virago
than offer them fresh water and rescue.

She turned on her heel and strode across the cabin, kicking bits of debris out of the way as she went. She muttered one of her father’s favorite blasphemies under her breath, then repeated it with more substance when she knelt beside the leather chest and flung open the strapped lid.

For almost a full minute she stared, her anger gradually receding and giving way to surprise. The sea chest was brimming with women’s clothes. Skirts, bodices, petticoats … even delicate chemises made of cloth so sheer, it was almost transparent. She plucked one, embroidered with silk floss and threads of pure gold, off the shimmering pile
and let the fabric slide through her hand, noting it was like letting water glide over her skin and puddle in her lap. She could hardly imagine wearing anything half so fine and fragile, and wondered at the kind of woman who would. Surely the smallest flaw, the tiniest freckle, would shine through. A question more pertinent to character would be to wonder what kind of man sought out such things, much less carried them halfway across the world to present to whom? A wife? A mistress?

Conscious of that very man seated across the room from her, Beau started removing bundles of garments and setting them on the floor beside her. When the chest was almost emptied, she saw something else that made her movements slow, then come to a complete halt. Tucked into one corner, nestled in a bed of silk stockings, was a silver jewel casket. The top was rounded, the base was supported on four small clawed feet; the style and filigree work was French in design, a fact not entirely betrayed by the De Tourville wolfhound and fleur-de-lis engraved on the lid.

Beau stole a glance over her shoulder, but Dante had seemingly forgotten her. He was staring out the broken gallery windows, motionless and expressionless, his raven hair tinted blue by the hazy light.

Beau lifted the casket out of the chest and rested it on her bent knees. She flicked the tiny hasp with the edge of her thumbnail and raised the lid slowly, half expecting serpents to spill out onto her lap. There were no serpents, but there was a large gold salamander, easily the length of her hand and as fat around as two fingers. The golden beast had two cabochon rubies for eyes and a glittering row of pyramid-cut diamonds winding down its spine. Its four reptilian feet were splayed possessively over a bed of loose gems—pearls, tourmalines, emeralds, and diamonds—most of them uncut and unset, but all of a size and quality that
caused a small thrill of heat to unfurl at the base of Beau’s spine.

“Why, Mistress Spence, can that be the sinful gleam of avarice I see shining in your eyes?” His voice was deep and soft and very near and Beau did not have to turn around to confirm he was standing right behind her. She could
feel
him there, looming extremely large above her, and the small flutter of heat became a disturbing downpour.

She snapped the lid closed. “I presume you want this to come with you?”

“Actually, I had forgotten about it.” A large, well-callused hand reached over her shoulder and took the casket. “I’m surprised it was missed in the search.”

“Your ship was searched? By whom?”

He either ignored or chose not to acknowledge the question, and after a few tinkling sounds of a finger raking through the stones, he handed it back.

“As I said, if you see something you want, help yourself.”

“What if I say I want the whole box?” she asked sardonically.

“Then it’s yours. If I recall correctly there are some topazes in there that, when cut and polished, should about match the color of your eyes.”

The entire exchange had been so out of character, Beau came instantly alert for a trap. She drew a deep breath and pushed to her feet, rounding on him with another healthy dose of Spence’s epithets ready on the tip of her tongue.

They died without a squeak when she found herself standing so close to Dante, she felt the brush of his linen shirt as he pulled the hem free of his belt and shrugged it up and over his big shoulders.

The sheer scope of muscle laid bare before her took her breath away along with her intentions. His arms were sculpted out of marble, smooth and hard-surfaced. His
shoulders had deep indentations where the top of his breastbone met the column of his neck. A thick, luxuriant mat of black hair covered his chest, whorling down to a silky cable’s width over his belly. A finer coating of ebony hair covered his forearms, and above the elbow the tracery of veins stood out on the bronzed surface, flexing with each movement of his hands.

The scent coming off his flesh was that of sun and sea and male arrogance. She should have known. She should have seen it coming.

“What do you think you are doing?” she asked with quiet intensity.

Dante’s eyes lingered a moment on the pout of her mouth. It had been shocked out of its usual insolence and as he watched, the flush came back into her cheeks, the color blooming softly on the sculpted crests, then flowing downward to stain the slender length of her throat. He knew he had struck another sensitive chord, physical in origin, and he wondered, for all her acid tongue and bravado, how many times she had been faced with a similar threat for which she had no defense. She was bolder than the average woman, stronger than the average woman, but she was still no match for a man who had gone several months without sheathing himself in the velvet heat of a woman’s flesh.

He lowered his hands with deliberate slowness to the buckle of his belt. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

 D
ante unbuckled his belt and slung it over his shoulder.

“It has been so long since I have felt the need to appear presentable, you will have to forgive the error. I thought this was the chest that held my spare shirts and breeches, but I see I was mistaken. Ahh. There it is.”

He moved past her, releasing her from the heat of his gaze. Beau felt it as almost a tangible loss and suffered a mild rush of light-headedness as he walked away. The blood was humming through her veins. Her belly, which had been in the process of melting down to her knees, required a concentrated effort to retrieve and she had almost succeeded when she turned to glare after him … and saw his back.

It was a mass of lines and welts and crisscrossing scars. They were not fresh, for most of the lines had been incorporated back into the muscle and were as tanned and weathered as the rest of him. But some had been severe enough, deep enough, to cut through to the bone and no
amount of time would ever smooth them or render them less visible.

Beau had witnessed floggings before. It was the accepted means of keeping discipline on a ship. Five strokes with the cat-o’-nine was her father’s usual limit, but rarely delivered with enough heart to split the skin.

Simon Dante, Comte de Tourville, had been subjected to ten, twenty times that many strokes, laid on by a vicious hand that had known no mercy whatsoever.