Master of Paradise (5 page)

“What do you think of that, lads?” laughed
their leader. “The wench thinks she’s goin’ to come to the rescue.
Where’d you come from, deary?” he added, observing her clothing. “A
costume swah-
ray?
”

His mates laughed, the distinctive chortle of
men with havoc on their minds. Gabrielle made a few quick lunges to
move them aside, and put the blade to the newcomer’s throat just as
he was scooping out some of the burnt tar. He was Willy Wilkins,
the cruelest of the bunch.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to desist,”
she told him regretfully.

Willy looked startled by her words. For a
moment he stood fixed, tar oozing from the stick onto the rotting
floor.

Then one of his mates cried, “Heads up,
Wilks!” and, pulling a sword from its rusted hooks on the wall, he
hurled it over the heads of those gathered so it caught the feeble
light. A flash of steel and the dockman’s brawny paw dropped the
club, and reached up to grasp the hilt of the sword above his
head.

“Sorry, girlie. Looks like we’re going to
have our way with your milksop of a kinsman, after all.”

“It shall be my pleasure to disappoint
you.”

Gabrielle assumed the guard position, her
body angled sideways, her heels at right angles, her right arm in
the line of attack.

“What the bleedin’ hell is this?” her
opponent sneered. “Is this how a woman wields a weapon?”

She wasn’t surprised by his skepticism. She’d
assumed the Italian fencing stance, less familiar in England than
the French. While standing sideways to her opponent reduced her
target area, it also called for greater agility and flexibility.
But let him think what he would. She merely saluted him with a
smile.

Willy made the first thrust. She parried it
lightly, toying with his steel to get the measure of his mettle. As
she retreated, he laughed. “Take a gander at yer old mate, lads.
Crossing swords with a chit.”

As the last word escaped his lips, Gabrielle
took an expeditious lunge and cast the sword from his hand.
Open-mouthed, he watched the blade fly through the air and land,
sliding, at the booted feet of one of his comrades. She wasted no
time. As the men gaped at her, disbelieving, she wheeled, slashed
at those holding Cullen pinned to the table, and smiled smugly as
they scattered. Cullen sped to the corner to soothe the buxom
Hallie, who was sniffling over her injured cat.

The lad at whose feet the sword had landed
picked it up and swaggered forth. “Make a fool of my mate, will
ye?” he leered as his drooping blond mustache danced.

Gabrielle moved with agile feet, her sword
waggling before her, watching his every move. She could hear Hallie
crying in the corner, hear Cullen’s efforts to soothe her. The
tavern keeper bellowed his disapproval, but made no attempt to join
in. She tuned it all out as she’d been taught, concentrating on the
quick, slashing circles of the lad’s blade.

“You’ll be sorry you made a fool of my
brother,” she warned in her distinctive, smoky voice.

“I know her,” one man cried. “She’s the tart
what plays the pirate onstage.”

“Then I’ll have no trouble making short work
of her, will I?”

She never took her eyes off her opponent.
When he thrust, she angled back, awaiting her opening. He jabbed
harder and she parried, her left hand in the air to balance the
weight of her sword. He turned to his friends with a shrug, saying,
“This is too easy, lads,” when all at once she lunged and snipped
off a bit of mustache with her blade. His hand flew to his cheek
and came away with a splash of blood. Angry now, he charged and
retaliated, his sword crashing into hers, determined to undermine
her with his might. But she pranced before him, hair flying,
parrying and counterparrying as he swung with ever-increasing
fervor. In spite of the vehemence of his attack, he never once
touched her. She was too quick, too dexterous. Too animated by the
prospect of making him pay for his abuse.

She’d studied with Signor Siffredi, the same
Italian fencing master who, years before, had inadvertently readied
Rodrigo Soro for a life of mayhem on the seas. Gabrielle had done
so in the beginning as a way of meeting the physical demands of her
role. But she’d found to her amazement that she loved the noble
sport, even had a gift for it. Master Siffredi saw in her a quality
he called
Intrépido
—a rare form of courage found in only the
masters of the foil.

Gabrielle disarmed her opponent, then turned
toward his waiting companions, taking on two of the brutes.
Unhampered by cumbersome skirts, she leapt onto a table and used
her boot to kick one of the brothers against the abandoned bucket.
It tipped over, spilling tar in its wake, and from that point on,
she used her expertise to back her competitors into the sticky
mess. There, they became enraged by their ensnarement in the resin
and lost their advantage. Her years of training served her well.
While the dockmen were panting, she hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“I’ve some news,” she called out to Cullen,
laughing as one of their opponents tripped and fell over the other,
face-forward in the tar. She sliced upward, nicked the back of her
adversary’s hand, and announced, “They’ve acquiesced, Cullen. Beau
Vallon is ours at last.”

“Ours? What do you mean, ours?”

“They’ve given it over, free and clear.”

He stood with the cat in his arms, looking
decidedly puzzled. “Are you quite certain?”

“Of course. The arrangements are all
made.”

“But Gabby, why would they do such a thing?
After all these years?”

“What does it matter? The important thing is
we’ve won. Beau Vallon is finally ours.”

For several moments she couldn’t talk. One of
the combatants backed her against the bar. With her hands behind
her, she heaved herself up so she landed with her boots on the
counter. Then she put her foot in the boy’s face and kicked him out
of range.

“It’s not really like them, is it?” Cullen
called after a bit.

“I shamed them into it. Cullen, do be happy.
It’s our dream come true. Finally we can retaliate for all they did
to Mother. Her life will have meant something, through us.”

“Surely they want something in return?”

“For me to disappear and stop embarrassing
the family name, which I shall happily do. And my agreement not to
allow any further performances of
The Lion’s Revenge
. My
days of playing pirate, it seems, are behind me. And so is our life
in England.”

“But Gabby...do you really think I should go,
too?” He turned and looked longingly at Hallie. “Perhaps I
could—”

“
Of course
you’re coming with me! Do
you think I can leave you to this? I’m taking you where you’ll be
safe. Home, Cullen! Home to Beau Vallon.”

She glanced at her brother in time to see one
of the blond giants sneaking up on him from behind.

“Watch your back,” she warned.

He wheeled and was nearly overpowered.
Suddenly, they were surrounded by a host of champions who’d earlier
been content to observe the fun. They advanced with swords, clubs,
and fists, intent on avenging their chums. Gabrielle grabbed Cullen
and thrust him behind her, fighting against the odds, tiring now as
wave after wave of burly dock workers surged toward them. The mood
had changed from one of a disbelieving lark to one of
vengeance.

“But Gabby,” Cullen persisted, hardly
noticing their predicament in his distress. “There are pirates
there! Rodrigo’s hiding out somewhere near the Seychelles, isn’t
he?”

Seeing that their only hope was to run,
Gabrielle shoved Cullen toward the door.

“Rodrigo be damned!”

The Indian Ocean

FOUR MONTHS LATER

Cullen weaved his way across the bustling
quarterdeck on shaky legs. “Well!” Gabrielle greeted him. “It’s the
first time you haven’t looked green since we left England.”

He did, however, look emaciated, as if he’d
been through some excruciating convalescence. She could see his
ribs beneath the finely tailored shirt. His sandy hair seemed dull
and flat. His gentle blue eyes had the vaguely blearly look of a
drunkard on a lengthy binge.

In contrast, Gabrielle was a fetching sight
in fashionable cobalt satin, the color of her eyes. Her hair was
streaked slightly golden by the sun, so it resembled a delectable
concoction of chocolate and butterscotch melted and swirled
together by the heat.

The sea voyage had been difficult at best. It
was a momentous pilgrimage from their berth at Gravesend, twenty
miles down the Thames from London, to their eventual destination:
by way of Madeira, then across the vast Atlantic toward Brazil,
veering southeast to round the Cape of Good Hope, then to
Madagascar and on across the Indian Ocean to Mahé, the main island
in the Seychelles archipelago. A twelve-thousand-mile journey on a
twelve-hundred-ton East Indiaman with an incongruous collection of
passengers who would continue on their way to India—soldiers
commissioned to the Company army, fortune-seeking rapscallions,
fugitives from justice—their only company for five seemingly
endless months.

From all outside appearances, the
Drake
was exquisite, majestically adorned in floral gold
leaf, its rounded oak hull and oriel windows protruding from the
stem and quarter galleries, lending it a capricious splendor. But
for the most part, accommodations were closed and stuffy. Gabrielle
and Cullen, because they’d wined and dined the captain royally
before departing, and through their obvious connections, shared the
roundhouse, the more spacious and airy quarters at the far stem of
the ship. Through the use of movable partitions, it had been
divided into two cabins and stocked with sumptuous furnishings from
home. The other passengers had small domiciles without windows in
the bowels of the ship, where light and air were but distant
memories and the stench of the ship was smothering.

It had been a rough crossing with the worst
of it just behind them. Around the Cape of Good Hope, storms
buffeted them so violently, they feared the ship would turn turtle.
During this time, few passengers showed up in the cuddy for meals,
and those who did often followed them by rushing to the rail.
Cullen suffered the worst. He couldn’t keep anything down and spent
most of his voyage languishing in his cabin as Gabrielle recited
snippets of Shakespeare to raise his spirits.

But all that changed once they sailed into
the Indian Ocean. It was hot as a fired pistol, but the sweet
breezes off the African coast scented the air. The warmth of the
sun felt healing. The sea was calm, soft and rhythmic, almost
lyrical as the ship padded through the brine.

Gabrielle had never felt such incredible
warmth in all her life. While others complained of the heat, she
gloried in it. “I feel I’ve never been warm before,” she said,
tipping her face to the sun.

“It’s the first time I’ve felt good in
months,” Cullen agreed.

This region was so different from anything
that Gabrielle, landlocked in England, could ever imagine. So lush,
so inexplicably foreign, so improvidently romantic. The heat, the
very air they breathed, was fraught with sultriness and sensuality.
In these alien waters, she felt alive for the first time, like a
blossom kept too long in the shade, and suddenly bathed in
sunshine.

The destination of this voyage—the
Seychelles—was one of the world’s true storybook visions of
paradise. In the exact middle of the Indian Ocean, a thousand miles
from both India and Africa, they were a remote cluster of granite
islands—in fact, nature’s only granitic island chain—with their own
special world of flora and fauna. So far off the beaten track, they
were uninhabited until a hundred years ago. The pirates came first,
then the French took possession in the 1760s, naming them after
Louis XV’s chancellor, Viscount Jean Moreau de Seychelles. The
British took control at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Over all
the Europeans who went there, the islands seemed to cast a magical
spell.

Looking outward, Gabrielle could see remnants
of the gale they’d left behind. Storm clouds drifted on the far
horizon, the only trace of grey in a world otherwise resplendent
with rainbow hues. The water beyond the stormy stratosphere was in
turn scarlet, orange, violet, turquoise, and the most unusual and
striking shade of green. Captain Watkins called it quintillion
green. He said it was unique to this part of the world, and would
become richer the closer they came to the Seychelles. She felt in
that moment that she’d never seen color before, never been free
from the skulking, ever-threatening haze of English grey.

“I miss Hallie,” Cullen sighed, for perhaps
the hundredth time since leaving England. “I wonder if she thinks
of me, as I do her.”

“I wager she’ll be fine without you. She has
other—admirers. Were I you, I’d concentrate on the future, and not
the wishful past.”

“Except that when I think of the future, I
begin to fret about pirates.”

Captain Watkins walked by in his blue jacket
and impossibly hot black cloak and, overhearing, paused to scoff.
“Mark my words, lad, there’ll be no pirates on this trip.”

Cullen said, “We’re told Rodrigo Soro haunts
these waters. Is there no possibility of an attack?”

“None whatsoever. The Royal Navy chased the
fiend out of these waters months ago. Primarily, I might add,
because of the notoriety of your play. You’ll forgive my mentioning
it, but it proved such an embarrassment that the Admiralty could no
longer ignore the situation. Regardless, they’ve chased him into
the Amirantes. He knows better than to come anywhere near the
Company sea lanes. There’s a fleet of royal frigates waiting for
him if he does. No man, pirate or not, would be fool enough to
brave such jeopardy.”