Pirate Wolf Trilogy (38 page)

“
We heard
voices. Many voices. And there are many ships in El Draque’s fleet,
many
soldados.”

“No one has
come to arrest you,” he insisted quietly, closing the door behind
him. “No one is taking you anywhere, not unless they go through me
first.”

Tears welled in
her eyes and spilled over her lashes. She wept without making a
sound and there was no movement other than a slight tremor in her
lower lip, but the tears flowed hot and fast, streaming down her
cheeks in such a quantity, they dripped off her chin and stained
the rich silk of her bodice.

“They will
know. They will discover the truth and come for me, and not even
you, señor, will be able to stop them.” She waved her hand in a
futile little gesture and sobbed pitifully. “They will kill me.
They will kill me for being so deceitful.”

“Maria—” He
moved forward, but for each step he took, she retreated an equal
distance until her back was against the wall and she had nowhere to
go. “I swear to you, on my soul—!”

She covered her
face with her hands and her slender shoulders started to shake with
sobs. “No! No! They will have me killed!”

Pitt took hold
of her wrists and tried to ease her hands away from her face.
“Maria, listen to me…”

“No! I am not
Maria! I am not the Duchess of Navarre!”

Pitt’s hands
tightened around her wrists and he had to fight himself to keep
from cursing out loud. This was the moment he had dreaded. If she
wasn’t the Duchess of Navarre, then she was indeed …

“I am only a
poor maid! A poor, foolish maid, and the Dragon will kill me for
the deception?”

Pitt stopped
trying to force her hands and simply held her wrists as he stared
down at her.

“What,” he
asked on a hoarse breath, “did you just say?”

She shook her
head with the helplessness of it all and lowered her hands enough
to look up Pitt with huge, glistening blue eyes. “It was the
captain-general’s idea. He ordered me to change places with Doña
Maria. We were the same size and he said no one could be any the
wiser. He said the duchess would be safe this way, f-from rape and
from the disgrace of being held to ransom. He said—he said it was
my duty to my mistress, to my country, to God, and that He would
watch over me and see that no harm befell me. And—and he said even
if it did, my s-soul would have earned a special place in heaven,
one reserved for only the b-bravest and m-most worthy.”

Pitt
still stared.
“You are
not Doña Maria Antonia Piacenza?”

“
No,
señor.” She sobbed, weeping harder, her eyes leaking great
waterfalls now at what she thought was the revulsion on Geoffrey
Pitt’s handsome face. “My name is Christiana and I am daughter to a
humble
soldado
who
served the King well. For his reward he was give a position in the
royal guard, and I was allowed to tend members of the royal
family.”

“
You are
not the Duchess of Navarre? You are not the King’s niece? You are
not … married to the Duke of Medina Sidonia?”

Her eyes
blinked and splashed tears on his shirtfront. “No, señor. I am only
a humble servant. And I do not know this Duke of Medina Sidonia. My
mistress was the Duchess of Navarre. Her husband was old and
wrinkled and beat me with his walking stick because I would not let
him put his hands up my skirt.”

Pitt caught the
faint scent of rum-induced courage on her breath, and he wished
sorely for a glass himself. The bottle was empty, however, and he
settled for raking both of his hands through the thick,
gold-streaked locks of his hair.

“Why … in God’s
name … did you not tell me this before?”

“I was afraid,”
she whispered.

“
Of
me
?”

“Oh, señor—”
She lowered her hands from her face and steepled them together over
her breasts. “You are so kind and brave and noble. I thought … if I
told you of this deception, you would—you would …” The words, along
with her ability to speak them, came to a faltering halt.

“You thought I
would do what?” he asked gently.

“I thought …
you would hate me for making a fool of you.”

She flung
herself forward with a miserable little wail and burrowed against
his chest. Pitt was still too stunned to react right away. There
had been signs, plenty of them, but he had misread them all. The
way she drew back and cringed from any discussions about herself.
The way she skirted questions about her family and her life in
royal circles—questions a true duchess would have flouted haughtily
to a seafaring beggar the likes of him. Even the way Agnes Frosthip
seemed to lose interest in her charge, abandoning her to the care
of an enemy brigand, should have alerted him to the fact something
was amiss. He had indeed been a fool. A blind, besotted fool.

And now she had
flung herself at his mercy, expecting—what? That he would cast her
aside as a cheat and a fraud?

Pitt
lifted one of his hands and smoothed it tenderly over the crown of
dark brown curls. He closed his eyes, savoring the softness, the
silkiness, the notion of doing something he had been wanting to do
since he had first seen her on board the
San Pedro de Marcos.
His other arm circled her waist
and he held her as tightly as he dared without fear of crushing
her.

“I should hate
you,” he whispered, his voice raw with emotion. “I should hate you
for putting me through sheer hell for the past three weeks. Do you
have any idea how difficult it has been to see you every day, speak
with you every day, drown in the scent of your skin every day,
knowing I could never touch you, never hold you, never …”

She left a
great wet patch behind on his shirt as she lifted her head and
stared up into the jade-green of his eyes. “I—I do not understand,
señor.”

Pitt swore
softly and pushed his fingers into her hair, cradling the nape of
her neck. He lowered his mouth to hers, explaining with a kiss what
he could not form into words. The shock made her gasp and she tried
to pull away, but he would not allow it. He had dreamed of it too
many times, imagined it too many times, spent too many tormented
nights wishing desperately he had the right to kiss her just once
without the shame of his own shortcomings standing between
them.

But once
was simply not enough and he kissed her twice, three times, each
with a bolder passion than the last. He kept his hand tangled in
her hair until he was certain she would not shy away, then lowered
it to the smooth curve of her throat, warming the fluttering pulse
beat he found there. She gasped again and parted her lips to his
searching hunger, welcoming the gentle rolling motions of his
tongue, then the deep, devouring thrusts that made her blood race
and her limbs tremble with weakness.

She was still
weeping. The tears were bathing their mouths and he tried once,
unsuccessfully, to temper his hunger long enough to wipe away the
dampness. But then their mouths came together again and her hands
were reaching up around his shoulders and the tears of pain and
fear became tears of unbounded joy.

“Little fool,”
he gasped at length. “My darling little fool—I could never hate
you. Not for any reason. Could you not see I was in love with you?
In love … from the very first moment I saw you.”

Christiana, her
mouth pink and swollen, buried her face in the crook of his
shoulder again. “I thought … I hoped … I prayed it might be so, for
I loved you, too, señor. So much so, I wept myself to sleep each
night with the shame of wanting you.”

Pitt was all
but deafened by the sound of his heart thundering within his chest.
He glanced at the bed, but Agnes Frosthip’s bulky form was
overflowing it, and then he felt his chest constrict with guilt
that his first thought should be so base and lustful.

His second was
relief. If it was true, if she was the daughter of a common
soldier, it meant there were no barriers standing between them. He
was free to do, say, ask, of her anything he pleased.

“Christiana …”
He stopped a moment to taste the sweetness of her name on his lips,
then released his breath on a hoarse gust. “Christiana”—he tilted
her face up to his and lost himself in the depths of the huge blue
eyes— “when we get to England, I want you to stay with me. I … want
you to marry me.”

“
I
cannot!” She gasped, her mouth slackening with shock. “I
cannot!”

“Why? Why, in
God’s name …” A thought came to him and sent his head crushing down
onto her shoulder. “Please, please don’t tell me you are married
already or I swear I will sail to Spain myself and kill him.”

“I am not
married, señor,” she cried weakly.

His lips moved
around another soundless prayer of thanks and found the tender pink
shell of her ear. “Geoffrey. For pity’s sake, call me
Geoffrey.”

“I am not
married, señor, but I still cannot marry you. I am a poor servant
and you are an hidalgo, a lord. It would not be possible, not
fitting, not proper.”

Pitt might have
laughed had her face, her eyes, not been filled with such solemn
intensity. He did smile, however, and kissed her with enough
solemnity of his own to leave her breathless and sagging in his
arms. “I am no lord, my sweet. I am the son of a gunner, a lowly
ironmonger whose only claim to nobility was his pride. If one of us
is not worthy of the other, it would be me. Me and the sin of my
own arrogance for making me always pretend I am someone I am
not.”

“
You do
not pretend,” she whispered. “You
are
noble, you
are
kind,
you
are
the bravest,
most honorable man I have ever known.”

“Then marry me,
for I also love you more than any other man you ever will
know.”

Bright, silvery
tears of joy shimmered and overflowed again, and he took them to be
his answer.

“First, we will
have to talk to the captains and let them know they will have no
hostage to give to the Queen or anyone else. Then, as soon as the
ship drops anchor, we will go ashore and find a minister—”

“A priest!” she
squeaked.

Pitt laughed.
“A priest, a rabbi, an Indian chief if need be. Then an inn with a
very large room and a very small bed so that nothing … nothing ever
comes between us again.”

He sealed the
promise with a kiss and she moaned her assent and eagerness into
his mouth. They remained that way, locked in one another’s embrace
even as the captains from Drake’s fleet of warships were preparing
to meet for a council of war.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

Beau paced the
width of the main deck, then walked back again. The sun was a round
ball of muddy orange, low on the western horizon. Clouds were
moving down from the north, vast black drifts of them bringing the
distinctly metallic smell of rain. Her father stood beside the
gangway hatch, eyeing the approaching storm clouds and his
daughter’s stormy face with equal trepidation.

Her
request to accompany him to the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
had been flatly refused. She was not
accustomed to being left behind in matters that concerned
the
Egret
, and even
though Spence agreed wholeheartedly that Dante going half cocked to
a confrontation with Victor Bloodstone could well put the entire
ship in jeopardy, he did not relent.

“
I need
ye here, daughter,” he insisted in a low, rough voice. “For if
aught happens over
there
, I want ye
to put on all sail an’ haul out o’ here like as the devil were
snap-pin’ at yer heels. I’ve given Spit orders to put guards on the
armory and powder magazine as well. The cap’n talked to his men
this afternoon, but I don’t trust anyone on a bellyful o’ rum an’
hate—not even myself.”

The
meeting on the
Bonaventure
had
been called for eight o’clock. Spence had been ready, fidgeting
awkwardly on his ill-fitting peg for an hour now. A nervous hand
constantly adjusted and readjusted the stiff white neck ruff he had
finally wrested into place. He had pruned his beard to a less
fearsome froth of wire fuzz, which only made him look like a bald
version of a portrait Beau had seen once of Queen Elizabeth’s
father, Henry VIII.

She swore
softly and on impulse went up to him and batted his hand away from
his neck ruff, straightening it herself and arranging the starched
figure-eight folds.

“Be careful and
look to yourself if anyone starts flinging shots about; you cannot
afford to lose any more parts.”

Spence chuckled
and pinched her cheek, but she wasn’t paying heed. Simon Dante was
emerging on deck. Unlike Jonas he had not made any special efforts
to dress for so auspicious an occasion, despite Spence’s offer of
anything suitable out of his own wardrobe. Dante wore the gleaming
black silk shirt that made him look like a panther on the prowl. A
wide leather belt circled his waist, notable for its glaring lack
of weaponry of any kind. Not even a dagger was sheathed at his hip.
No pistols, no sword, and for that, at least, Beau allowed a small
sigh of relief. Walking armed onto Drake’s ship might have set the
stage for trouble whether it was intended or not.

Stepping
out of the hatchway behind Dante were Geoffrey Pitt and Lucifer.
Pitt looked grim, for he, too, had been told he was to remain on
the
Egret
. Shock of
hearing about the
Talon’s
presence
had effectively blunted his own happy news regarding his little
duchess, and save for one brief visit to Christiana’s cabin, he had
spent the better part of the afternoon with Dante and the men from
the
Virago.
Lucifer,
standing black and enormous behind them, had his massive arms
folded over his chest and his twin scimitars strapped across his
back. It was obvious he
was
going with Dante and her father, and Beau did not know
whether to be comforted by the thought of the Cimaroon’s presence
at their backs, or alarmed.