Pirate Wolf Trilogy (24 page)

“I’m not
afraid,” she protested weakly.

“Ye are! An’ I
blame myself for not takin’ ye back to yer aunt Mavis an’ tyin’ ye
hand an’ foot to the newel post when I should have! Look at this—”
He waved a hand around the cluttered cabin. “What kind o’ life is
this for a young wench?”

Another minute,
Beau feared, and he would be weeping into his cup. She jumped to
her feet and crossed to the side of the bed, bringing the bottle of
wine with her as she did.

“
It is
the only kind I want,” she insisted. “And if you have any thoughts
of leaving me behind with Aunt Mavis
… ever
… you
will
be wearing
your ballocks for earrings!”

“Bah!” he said
again, giving the snort less conviction this time. He held out his
cup, however, and chided her soundly when she would have filled it
only halfway.

“I’ll have to
fetch another bottle.”

“Fetch it,
then,” he grumbled, “ere a body dies o’ thirst.”

Spit had
thoughtfully brought half a dozen on his last visit and Beau took
out her knife, about to peel off the wax seal, when she looked up
and saw Simon Dante standing in the doorway.

He was just
standing there, with several rolled charts tucked under his arm and
a large wooden crate balanced in his hands. The shirt he had
changed into earlier was black, and with the dark hose, the dark
boots, the dark richness of his hair, he had simply blended in with
the shadows. Nothing in his expression indicated he had been there
long enough to overhear any part of their conversation, but all the
same, Beau felt an airless tickle pass across the nape of her neck,
like the filament from a spider’s web.

“Come in, come
in, come in,” Spence urged, having noticed Dante the same time as
Beau. “Fetch up a cup an’ join us.”

“Actually”—Dante grinned and stepped into the brighter circle of
light—“it was cups I was bringing you.”

He set the
heavy crate on Spence’s desk and started lifting out goblets, all
solid gold with jewels encrusted around the stems and bowls.
Spence’s eyes bulged when he was handed one embedded with diamonds
and sapphires as big as his thumbnail, then another studded with
rubies, tourmalines, and topaz.

“I thought, if
you were toasting your victory, you should have the proper vessels
to do it with.”

Spence beamed
and sent his plain silver cup clattering onto the floor. “Daughter,
have yer hands frozen on the bottle? Crack it open an’ bring it
here. How goes it topside?”

“The lads are
putting their backs to it. We should be well fixed by morning.”

“How well
fixed?” Spence asked, narrowing his eyes.

“A rough
estimate? Sixty thousand. Possibly as much as a fourth more,
depending on what the gold and silver will fetch in London.”

Spence’s jaw
sagged and he did not seem to notice or care as the bandage on his
head dropped down over his eye.

“Sixty thousand
… ducats?” Beau asked breathlessly.

Dante held up a
goblet and gauged the depth of the fire glinting off the gemstones
against the sparks kindling in Beau’s eyes, and handed it to her.
“I read ducats off manifests, but I think in terms of good English
pounds.”

“Sixty thousand
pounds,” Jonas whispered.

“
Enough
to gild your
Egret
in gold if
you want.” Dante laughed.

“Sixty
thousand,” Spence muttered. “Why, that would be—roughly—thirty
thousand for me, an’ thirty for the rest o’ the crew, including you
an’ yers, o’ course,” he added, snapping his head around to Dante,
“—for all fought equally hard an’ are equally deservin’ o’
shares.”

Dante raised
his goblet to acknowledge the compliment as well as Spence’s
generosity. Seeing that the bottle was now indeed frozen in Beau’s
hands, Dante lifted it gently away and poured a brimming measure in
all of their cups.

“
To
the
Egret
,” he said,
“and her fearless crew!”

“
To
the
Egret
!” Spence
roared, spilling as much Madeira down his beard as he did down his
throat. “An’ to the good grace an’ common madness o’ Simon Dante,
Comte de Tourville, bastard Frenchman, pirate wolf, an’ … have I
forgotten aught o’ yer titles, my lord?”

“Admitted
heretic and free-rover,” Dante supplied with a smile.

“Oh, aye, aye.
Well, we’re all of us heretics in the eyes o’ the foamin’ papists,
are we not? An’ though we may rot in hell for our earthly sins,
while we’re here, we’ll bloody well enjoy them!”

Beau shared the
toast and felt her head take a delicious twirl toward
weightlessness.

“Where, by
Christ’s tailfeathers, are McCutcheon an’ Pitt an’ that other black
devil o’ yours?” Spence demanded. “It was a good part their skill
on the guns won us this day, they should be here to share it.”

“Lucifer is
standing guard over the Spanish crew—God save them—and McCutcheon
could not be dragged from the cargo holds if you wrapped a
hundredweight of chain around his ankles. Mister Pitt is, I’m
afraid, in love again, so I doubt we’ll see him tonight
either.”

“Eh?” Spence
sputtered a mouthful of wine down his chin. “Did ye say … in
love?”

“
The
little Spanish duchess is quite a rare beauty, and if there is one
thing Pitt cannot resist, it is a
ravissante
dark-haired, blue-eyed young innocent who speaks
in waiflike whispers and flutters her lashes like butterfly wings.
He was smitten the instant he saw her and I doubt he’ll be much
good to either one of us over the next few days.”

“You’re still
planning to bring her to England with us?” Beau asked.

“
The
duchess
and
her little
silk pennant. A day after the
San Pedro
makes port, every Spaniard worth his salt will be after us.
A hostage against safe passage would not go amiss, here at sea as
well as at home.”

“At home? Why
would we need a hostage at home?”

“Have you
forgotten the prize ship Drake towed into port two years ago? The
spider king screamed piracy and demanded the ship be returned and
El Draque brought before a Spanish tribunal to answer for his
crimes. Coincidentally, the ship was also carrying a member of the
royal family, whose safe return to Seville was all that saved Bess
and Sir Francis from a lengthy diplomatic battle. In this case, we
not only have your sorry hide to bargain for, but mine as
well.”

The wine was
fogging Spence’s thinking. “Yours?”

“
Vera
Cruz,” Beau supplied dryly. “And Victor Bloodstone. Do you think,
Captain Dante, a youthling duchess and a few Spanish documents will
placate the Queen when you declare Walsingham’s nephew a thief and
run him through? Think you Bloodstone has not already paid her
handsomely from his profits and told his uncle all there was to
tell about what you found in the documents at Vera
Cruz?”

Dante’s
eyes narrowed. “I can assure you the Queen will claim the first
bloody thrust once she is apprised of how he came to sail so
gloriously up the River Thames, his holds bulging with
my
silver and gold. She abhors
treachery in her Court almost as much as she abhors the thought of
marriage and having to share her crown with a man.

“
As for
Walsingham, he takes pride in his web of spies and puts great store
in the accuracy of the information he receives from his hundreds of
little moles. No doubt Victor
has
already dazzled his uncle and the Queen both, by reporting
the contents of the letters we took from Vera Cruz, but since I was
the only one with any skill in translating, he would only have been
able to base his reports on what I shared with him.”

“Which was not
the complete truth,” she surmised with grudging admiration.

“‘It is the
nature of every man to err, but only the fool who perseveres in
error,’” he quoted. “Cicero, I believe. At any rate, I made an
error once in trusting someone completely and paid for my mistake
dearly.”

Beau saw the
muscle shiver in his cheek again and she recalled what Spence had
said about his wife.

“But what if it
isn’t enough?” she asked quietly. “What if a duchess and a few
documents are not enough to convince the Queen that the death you
plan for Bloodstone is not simply a vengeful, cold-blooded
murder?”

“If it isn’t, I
suppose I shall have to pray the executioner’s blade is sharp when
it kisses my neck, for I plan to kill the bastard anyway.”

Beau found
herself staring into eyes that were as cold as ice and she felt a
shiver down her spine. Impossible though she would have thought it,
the gleam intensified and a moment later, he was grinning. “On the
other hand, I may have found just what we both need to keep our
necks and our prize monies intact.”

He drained his
cup and set it on the desk, then reached for one of the thickly
rolled charts he had brought to the cabin with him. He unrolled the
sheets—there were three—and weighted the corners with gold goblets.
Beau craned her neck slightly to see over the shadows, a needless
exercise as Dante was quick to beckon her over anyway.

“Philip of
Spain has been bragging,” he said, stepping aside to give her a
full view.

Beau
looked down and for a few moments it was not exactly clear what she
was seeing. Ships, certainly. A painted forest of masts and great
gilded sterns lying regally at anchor in some unidentified
port.

Seeing her
frown, Dante slid a blunt-ended finger across the bottom of the
vellum, drawing her eye to the artist’s signature. The name meant
nothing to her, but the date beside it was very specific.

“This is …
April, is it not?” she said hesitantly. “Unless …”

“No, you
haven’t been at sea that long, and neither have I.”

He moved two of
the goblets he was using as weights and let the top painting curl
back into a roll. There was another beneath, of more masts, more
ships in a much larger harbor, and again she read the script, aloud
this time.

“
Maius
—May—
anno
1587.”

“The first port
I am not familiar with, but this one”— the pewter eyes glanced from
Beau to Spence—“is Cadiz.”

“Cadiz?” Jonas
queried. “Why the devil—?”

“The King is
showing off his fleet preparations,” Beau said in awe. “He is
showing off his armada.”

Dante grinned
again. “I told you, you were going to have stop doing that: being
so clever.”

“But …” She
looked down at the paintings. “How can you be certain these are
accurate depictions? How can you be certain it isn’t just
braggadocio and wishful thinking?”

Dante gazed at
her a moment, then ran the tip of his finger along the soft auburn
wisps of hair that curled against her neck.

I know
because of these. They’re standing on end. And because of these—”
He reached into the crate again and withdrew a thin sheaf of
papers. They had been heavily waxed and sealed with the imprint of
the King’s ambassador in Vera Cruz. With fresh wine shimmering in
his cup, he pulled a chair under the lamplight and began skimming
the pages, translating from the Spanish as he read small excerpts
that might interest his audience.

“‘Like hawks
they came out of nowhere, struck, and flew away again in the night,
with Satan himself blowing in their wings. We are told the attack
was led by the French dog,’” He paused in his reading and scowled.
“Dog? When was I demoted from a wolf to a dog? At any rate, ‘… the
attack was led by the French dog De Tourville, with some measurable
success, which, I regret to inform Your Most Royal Highness, bears
a loss to the treasury of some five hundred thousand ducats.’”
Dante stopped again. “The thieving rogue. It was no more than four,
by God, although he has put the reward for my head up to fifteen
thousand ducats. Five thousand more and I’ll be worth as much as
your hero, Sir Francis Drake.”

“Fifteen
thousand is tempting enough,” she said wryly. “Believe me.”

He swallowed a
mouthful of wine and lifted the papers again. “Then there is
this.”

“What?”

“I don’t quite
know; it’s in code.”

“Then how do
you know it’s important?”

“Why else would
it be in code?”

Beau resisted
the urge to curse and instead snatched a sheet of paper out of his
hand and scanned it quickly. “It looks like perfectly innocent
writing to me.”

“You read
Spanish?”

“
I can
read charts and currents, and
this
”
—she stabbed a
finger at the document—“looks like nothing more ominous than
weather reports.”

“Which is
precisely what they are. Weather reports, harvest predictions, wind
movements…”

“How dreadfully
foreboding.”

He took another
sip of wine and lounged back in the chair. The black silk of his
shirt trapped small puddles of yellow light from overhead and made
him look as if he had been gilded. Beau, who could still feel the
line his finger had drawn on her neck, tried very hard not to
notice how his shirts never quite seemed to be laced to the throat.
She failed miserably and found herself staring at the muscular V of
his chest with its dark, smooth mat of hair, so lush and thick, it
made her want to bury her hands in it.

“
Before
we reached Vera Cruz,” he was saying, “we had occasion to prime our
guns on a Spaniard just off Barbados. There were dispatches on
board from the King to Diego Flores, the governor of Panama. They
were also filled with weather reports and harvest predictions and I
did not think too much of it at the time … until Victor
Bloodstone”— he spat out the name with, if it was possible, more
venom than before—“advised me, through knowledge of his uncle’s
dealings with spies and so forth, that Philip of Spain has a
penchant for putting all of his important correspondence in
code.”