Pirate Wolf Trilogy (30 page)

He leaned his
hands on the rough surface of the wood, fisting them against the
urge to open it and force his way inside. Behind him the door to
Spence’s cabin was open, spilling a wide shaft of bright light into
the companionway. The slamming of the duchess’s door had caused a
noticeable break in the conversation, and he heard the scraping of
a chair as Agnes Frosthip hurriedly excused herself.

Pitt stared at
the closed door a moment longer, then pushed himself away. He
crossed paths with the duenna but ignored her glowering expression
with the same tense indifference he ignored the eyebrow Dante
raised askance. He returned to his seat and snatched up the bottle
of wine, splashing a healthy draft in his cup before glaring at
Dante, Beau, and Spence to resume whatever discussion they had been
having before he interrupted.

In actual fact,
with the duenna present, they had not been discussing anything
remotely interesting to either Beau or Simon Dante and while both
had been trying to find some excuse to end the evening, both had
been wary of the look in Spence’s eye warning them against leaving
him alone with Agnes Frosthip. But now Pitt was back and Frosthip
was gone, although there appeared to be no significant increase in
pleasure at the exchange of one surly face for another.

Spence thumped
his goblet on the table. “Damned if I haven’t dried out my mouth
tryin’ to keep that codface from going on an’ on about herself an’
her fine life in Spain. If we were any closer to the coast, I’d
gladly mount a sail on her arse an’ let her swim for it.”

“I think she
has warmed to you, Father,” Beau suggested. “Perhaps she was trying
to impress you.”

“Impress me?”
The red fuzz of his beard gaped open. “God’s liver, girl. I’d
sooner risk splinters from a pine knot as poke anythin’ she has to
offer. Aye, Cap’n, an’ ye’ve been a dread good help fer a man worth
near as much as Francis bloody Drake. Could ye not have jumped in a
time or two an’ dazzled the drone with some o’ yer wit an’
charm?”

“Neither my wit
nor my charm seems to hold any merit these days,” Dante answered
glibly, toying with a bead of moisture on the rim of his
goblet.

“Aye, well, no
wonder at that, broodin’ all the blessed day long over them papers.
Plymouth is still two weeks away by my reckonin’, plenty o’ time to
work out a code … if it’s there.”

“It’s there,”
Dante said evenly. “I just haven’t seen it.”

“Aye, well,
I’ve got better things to mull on. For one, I’ve a hold full o’
treasure to make the rest o’ my days as easy as easy can be. For
another, I’ve got a comely widow woman on New Street who should be
watchin’ the port every day about now, waitin’ for me to drop
anchor. Broad as a beam she is, but strong enough to squeeze me
till my eyes roll back in my head. An’ no teeth. Not a one. Doesn’t
waste a breath or a beat on idle prattle. Not like this one—” He
crooked a thumb at the duenna’s empty chair. “Like as not, a man
would have to stuff her mouth with flannel to keep her from talkin’
him to death.”

Grinning at his
own humor, Spence glanced at Beau, who was shredding a sliver of
wood she had gouged out of the table, then at Dante, who was still
chasing beads of sweat down the side of his goblet. Pitt was
staring at his hands as if he wanted to crush the heavy gold cup
between them.

“Cap’n … have
ye no heart’s desire waitin’ fer ye on yer return? An’ I don’t mean
yer business with Bloodstone, or the Queen, or the Queen’s counsel.
Is there naught … by tradition … ye normally do on yer first night
home in port?”

Dante pursed
his lips and raised his dark head. His eyes flicked barely
perceptibly over to Beau before he smiled at Spence. “My heart’s
desire, if I must name one, would be a fat, tender haunch of beef
swimming in gravy, pillowed on a bed of biscuits so soft and thick
and slippery with butter, I won’t have to chew. Aye, and another
platter of onions roasted in garlic and mustard, served alongside a
charred capon drowning in its own juices. And a pie. A gooseberry
pie as high as my arm, with a crisp sugar crust and half a spadeful
of clotted cream.” He sipped at his wine and flared his nostrils as
if the scents were saturating his senses as he spoke. “After that,
if I still had any desires, I would consider my options over a tall
tankard of stout English ale.”

Jonas, whose
mouth had gone slack during the recitation, firmed it up with an
effort and raised his goblet in a sincere toast. “Cap’n … ye’re a
bastard after my own heart. An’ blow my soul, I’d be honored to
share that repast with ye; that an’ aught else ye can think of
twixt here an’ Plymouth. Ye’ll stay with us there, o’ course, for
as long as ye please. Beau an’ I, we’ve only humble lodgings
compared to what ye must be used to, but it’s a roof an’ a bed, an’
a place to soak the salt off yer skin afore ye get on about yer
business.”

Dante vaguely
noted the small choking sound Beau made in her throat. “I thank you
for the invitation, Jonas, but my … business … won’t allow me to
dally overlong in Plymouth. Especially not if too many men
recognize my face.”

“
Aye,
aye. Ye’ll not be wantin’ Bloodstone to hear your name too loudly,
at least until ye know which way the wind is blowin’. Hell an’ all,
if it helps ye stay dead awhile longer, I’ll gladly take all the
credit for the
San
Pedro. ’Tis
the least I can do,” he beamed broadly, “for one o’ the
brotherhood.”

“You put me in
your debt again,” Dante said genially.

“Bah! Just put
a drop more wine in everyone’s cup, that’ll be payment enough.”

Beau abandoned
the shredded splinter and stood. “Since you appear to be safe from
attack now, Father, I think I will bid you all good-night.”

She left,
promising to check the watch, and went up on deck, breathing deep
to remove the smell of stale food and candle wax from her lungs.
The wind was blowing briskly from the east and she imagined she
could taste and smell the olive groves of Spain where they grew
five hundred miles off the starboard beam. Another day or two and
they would be past the northernmost tip of the country and running
parallel to the Bay of Biscay. With luck they would clear the
Channel in another two weeks and be dropping anchor in Plymouth
Sound.

As if to
challenge any doubts she might have, the
Egret
leapt in one graceful bound after another across
the swells. The night was moonless, the sky a black velvet canvas
with uncountable millions of stars painted in a wide swath
over-head. Billy Cuthbert had the helm and Beau could see at a
glance that the sails were perfectly set to take the best advantage
of the wind. The ship was moving fast, throwing an appreciable
feather of white water off her bows. Even as Beau watched, the
foresails were trimmed and those on the main and mizzen were slowly
turned and reset, fluttering like great bat wings until they took
the wind and strained forward again.

Beau
nodded to herself in silent approval. Billy had joined the crew of
the
Egret
four years
ago, a gangly, sullen orphan with no ship’s skills and bruised to
the bone from an indentured life with a tavern keeper. He had
clubbed the taverner on the head after taking one beating too many
and stowed away, thinking he had killed the brute. Billy was
eighteen now and a fine seaman, quick to learn and even quicker to
smile, especially when Beau was nearby. She knew—the entire crew
knew—he was smitten with her, but she had never given it any
thought or credence before. And although there was only two years’
difference in their ages, she considered herself so much older and
worldly wise, she could not imagine ever looking at someone with
such puppyish longing in her eyes.

Plagued by
restlessness she turned from the rail and swung herself into the
main shrouds. She started climbing, finding the ratlines with her
hands and feet, passing the huge ghostly curl of the main course,
then the smaller topgallant and royal. Set higher still was the
small moonraker, aptly named for anyone with the nerve to perch on
the trestletree just beneath it. The sail itself was reefed
tonight, probably because Cuthbert had deemed it unnecessary, and
Beau found herself clinging tightly to the mast to ride out the
more pronounced pitch caused by the ship’s motion.

She hailed the
crewman who stood watch in the crow’s nest on the foremast and
relieved him. It was not an uncommon thing for Beau to do, and with
two hours, more or less, remaining until the next watch change, she
waved off his thanks as he descended to his hammock below.

Seated
snugly on the trestletree, forty feet above the deck, there was
nothing above her but the sky and stars, no sound other than the
wind humming through the sails and the distant rush of water
beneath the keel. The vast belling of the sails obscured everything
below except for the bright, curling tails of spume that scrolled
out in the
Egret’s
wake. It
was her favorite place on board, her private place, where she came
to think or worry away from prying eyes.

Unfortunately
these days, it was more difficult to get the image of someone
else’s eyes out of her head. The starlight was bright enough to
reflect off the surface of the water, silver in places, light blue
off the crest of waves: the exact color of Simon Dante’s eyes. She
had seen them glancing at her throughout the evening, throughout
each evening they endured in the close confines of Spence’s cabin.
Sometimes she thought she saw understanding in their depths,
sometimes mockery, other times simple anger. Her own mind had been
in a turmoil since she had spent that single night of bliss locked
fast in his arms. Every night since, she had swung restlessly in
her hammock replaying each kiss, each caress, a hundred times.

It was worse
sitting at the table, inevitably drawing unfavorable comparisons
with the doe-eyed Duchess of Navarre. It was a certainty Beau did
not know how to flutter her eyelashes so demurely—blinking rapidly
only made her dizzy. She knew how to strap herself into a corset
and padded bumroll; she even knew how to walk in a wheeled
farthingale without getting her toes hooked in the loops, for all
the good it did her. But she couldn’t breathe in the contraptions
and she couldn’t sit any length of time without turning blue, and
she certainly could not abide a stiff and scratchy neck ruff
strangling her throat, obstructing the path of food from her plate
to her mouth.

Nate Hawethorne
had expected all that and more to be endured by the woman he
married. He expected refined social graces and a woman who would
demur to his every opinion on any subject, right or wrong. More to
the point, there were several generations of pure, aristocratic
blood flowing through his veins. Far too pure and aristocratic ever
to mix with the dull red offerings of the daughter of a one-legged
merchant. The night Hawethorne had made that abundantly clear was
also the night Beau had realized most men only wanted one thing
from a woman and once they had it, they sloughed them off without a
thought or care.

De Tourville’s
blood ran even bluer. He had chateaus in France, estates in
England, even a small duchy in Portugal if the rumors were to
believed. All that on top of a healthy mistrust for women. To even
think he wanted more than a pleasant diversion was ludicrous.

Even if she
were willing to trade in her breeches for skirts and
petticoats—which she was not—or willing to give up the sea for a
life of luxury in some drafty old chateau—which she most definitely
was not—or to trim her ways to suit the behavior of a respectable
young lady—a pox on any such notion!—men like Dante and Hawethorne
would still run as quickly as they could in the opposite direction.
She was an oddity. A misfit.

An amusing
diversion, nothing more.

“Listen to me,”
she muttered, gazing out over the immense, bleak beauty of the
empty sea. “Just listen to me. As if it matters what he thinks of
me. As if any of it matters at all. He had his fun and you had
yours, now leave it at that. Just leave it!”

She gave
the mast an angry slap just as the
Egret
took a sweeping dip. She made a grab for the reefing tackle
too late to do more than feel it slither through her fingers. Her
balance lost, she slid off the trestletree and fell headfirst,
plunging past the upper royal and the topgallant, skidding off the
taut canvas too quickly to snag a buntline and slow her
descent.

The
topsails, rigged to catch the westerly wind, were at a sharp angle
to the main course, which was fixed and square, and she hit the
wide upper yard squarely on her belly, driving the air out of her
lungs with hardly more than a hollow
whoomfph.
Her foot hooked a line and she jerked to a halt,
but she was hanging upside down with the air knocked out of her,
disoriented with the stars at her feet and the sea overhead. The
line, only twisted around her ankle, began to loosen as her weight
depressed the sail. She thought she might have screamed but the
sail belled forward again, smothering her face in
canvas.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Simon Dante
wandered out onto the deck to relieve himself and remained at the
rail, letting the breeze brush back his hair and fill the loose
folds of his shirt. He braced his hands on the wood and let his
head hang between his shoulders, cursing his own foolhardiness even
as he wondered what hidey-hole Beau had taken herself off to
tonight. He could, he supposed, hope against hope she was waiting
for him in her cabin, but what point was to be gained in making a
bigger fool of himself than he had already? She hadn’t been there
any night this past week. She was avoiding him as she would a
festering boil.