Pirate Wolf Trilogy (129 page)

And her father! Gracious
good God, she hardly recognized him as the perfectly attired,
elegantly appointed, respectable man of business he had been in
Portsmouth. The wild mane of hair and beard aside, he was solid
muscle and strength now. His laugh was robust and heartfelt, not
the forced, politely reserved response to something he did not find
amusing in the least. He looked to be at home here in this vast
tropical wilderness of rock and underground caverns. He had found
the
Nuestro Santisimo
Victorio
, for pity’s sake; he had devised
canvas bells for storing air underwater, had turned Billy Crab from
being the timid son of a baker into someone who could shimmy up
palm trees to pluck coconuts or dive forty feet underwater to
salvage treasure. Together they had learned how to survive on
strength and wits and unimaginable courage, and she did not believe
for an instant that either man would be content returning to
Portsmouth. William, in particular, would not be able to tolerate
the starched ruffs and political intrigues necessary to pander to
the crown and hold the king’s favor.

He would never again be content to sit in an
office and watch his ships sail away to exotic ports of call.

But the question that had her contemplating
the incredible swath of stars was: Would she?

Despite the flies and the heat and dirt that
got between her toes regardless how many times she shook it out of
her boots… despite the terror of being on board a ship under
attack… could she see herself being strapped into whalebone
stomachers again, dragging around yards and yards of heavy brocaded
skirts, painting her face white, or having her hair rolled on hot
irons and tortured into a nest of tight curls? Could she see
herself tolerating the pretentiously false attentions of men like
Lawrence Ross who bored her to the point of screaming… over the
earthy, honest lusts of a man like Gabriel Dante? Could she return
to the tepid life she led back in England?

Reginald Bernard, her
father’s loyal clerk, was the only one who knew she had survived
the fire to board a ship bound for the Indies. But gently bred
young women simply did not do such a thing regardless of the
reason. Even supposing she could recover from the scandal of
letting people believe she had died in the fire, it was unlikely
she could convince anyone she had remained an unsoiled virgin after
spending time on board the
Endurance
, locked away in a cabin
with one of the most infamous privateers on the Spanish
Main.

Her gaze returned to the firepit. Rowly and
Giddings were no longer there. Dante sat alone, the rugged lines of
his face burnished by the flames. He appeared to be lost in his own
thoughts, but after a moment he looked directly at Eva as if he had
felt her eyes searching for answers.

If she should be afraid of anything, she
should be afraid of him. Not because of who or what he was, but
because he was teasing her with the knowledge that there was
something more exciting than whalebones and brocade, more exciting
than court intrigues and large gloomy castles, more exciting than
crowded streets with overflowing gutters. He prized his freedom and
lived each minute of each day as if it was to be the last, taking
full advantage of any opportunity life threw his way. He had
narrowly escaped death a few days before their paths crossed, and
again, just the other night when he turned his guns against
Muertraigo. If the Spaniard’s ships arrived at Spanish Wells within
the next day or two, as they most likely would, he would be facing
death again and spitting in its eye. Whether Fate spit back this
time or the next was the only unknown, and Dante did not appear to
waste precious time or breath worrying about it.

Could she, Evangeline Chandler, distant
cousin to the king of England, ever learn to live for just those
moments as well?

Would a man like Gabriel Dante even want her
to share those moments with him?

He tipped his head and smiled as if he knew
exactly what she was thinking. As she watched, he stood and
casually scuffed over the markings in the dirt, then walked across
the firelit clearing to the path that led into the forest.

Eva knew where he was going. Every drop of
blood that was racing through her body wanted her to follow, wanted
to sink with him into the misty waters of the pool, wanted to feel
him surging strong and potent within her.

It was a moment that would not come again,
and knowing this, accepting the consequences—regardless of the
consequences—she rose from her bed of palm fronds and followed him
into the forest glade.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

The beach was deserted, the wide strip of
sand yawned in a lazy crescent with a rocky slope framing the shore
and leading up to a higher bluff crowned with graceful palms and
tall fir trees. Nothing moving on land save the tiny swirls of sand
spun by the breeze. The skeletal remains of a broken hut was at one
end of the beach along with evidence of old firepits near the base
of the slope where former crews had landed to fill their barrels
with fresh water. Stranded lengths of twisted driftwood had
collected in a shallow tidal pool, used as perches by a small flock
of pelicans. Gulls squatting on the rocks had seen the three
tall-masted ships gliding toward the bay and they left their
crevices and nests to start screaming a welcome as they circled
overhead.

There were no visible footprints in the
sand, no signs that anyone had landed recently for water or any
other reason.

Estevan Muertraigo lowered the spyglass and
pursed his lips thoughtfully. He had been staring through the glass
so long, studying the beach from one end to the other, there was a
circular pink imprint around his eye.

“Anything?” he asked.

“The lookouts report nothing, Capitan,” said
a senior officer. “Just the flying rats and the pelicans.”

Muertraigo nodded with satisfaction. “Lower
away a boat and send a landing party ashore. I want men up on that
high point—” he indicated the position with the end of his
spyglass—“and for half a mile back along either side of the cliffs
overlooking the bight in both directions. I want ample warning if
anything moves on land or in the water.”

“Si, Capitan.”

Muertraigo glanced sidelong
at Lawrence Ross, who had remained on board the
San Mateo
, not so much by choice as
by no choice whatsoever. The Spaniard had been caught unawares once
by a cunning Englishman. He was not about to be double-crossed by
this one, especially after discovering that the lovely blonde whore
on board the Dante ship was Ross’s former fiancé. Having seen the
beauty up close, he could not believe a man would be stupid enough
to cast her aside and Muertraigo was now suspicious of every word,
every vow of assurance that came from Ross’s lips.

“Tell me again, my friend, how you were to
contact William Chandler.”

“I was to land in the bay, build a tall
signal fire on the highest point of the bluff, and he would contact
me. This leads me to believe his camp cannot be too far away.”

Muertraigo curled his lip and studied the
narrow, aristocratic face without any effort to conceal his
disdain. “On these islands, the nights are so dark you can see a
small flame from many miles away.” His ferret-like eyes flicked to
his first officer, Diego Castellano. “Why are you still standing
here? Dispatch the landing party at once.”

Within minutes a longboat was lowered away
and carried sixteen impressively formidable Spanish pirates ashore.
Since most of them had been recruited from the ranks of the
garrison at Havana, where Muertraigo had once been in command, all
of them wore metal breastplates over heavily padded doublets. Their
curved steel helmets were decorated with plumes. They wore balloon
breeches and tall boots; swords were sheathed in leather scabbards
belted around their waists, and each carried an arquebus weighing
twenty-five pounds with a barrel nearly four feet long. Slung
crosswise over their chest was a bandolier holding more than a
dozen dangling wooden pipes filled with gunpowder and shot.

They landed on the beach and while the
oarsmen dragged the boat onto the pebbled shingle, Castellano led
the wary soldiers across the sand to the base of the slope. There,
they spread out and studied the ground closely, searching for any
sign of fresh tracks or recent visitors. Six of the men were
charged with investigating the two visible caves that opened onto
the beach; the others, after sending an all-clear signal to the
ship, found a path that would take them up to the top of the ridge
and started to climb.

As much as it could be
called a path, it was only wide enough for the men to climb in
single file and wound between and around clusters of rocks and
gorse which blocked the view of the bay for brief stretches. The
bulk of their armor and weapons slowed their progress further, much
to the impatience of those watching from on board the
San Mateo
.

Diego Castellano, in the lead, had sweat
running into his eyes and soaking through his doublet. The mid-day
sun was beating down on the metal helmet and despite the woollen
cap he wore beneath, his hair was running wet, his scalp was
itching like an infestation of a thousand fleas, his face was
flushed as red as raw meat. The metal armor acted like an oven,
trapping the heat against his chest. Adding to his misery, he had
been suffering for nearly three weeks from a salt-water rash
between his thighs and the climbing was chafing the raw skin so
badly his ballocks felt like they were on fire.

Halfway up the slope he slung the cumbersome
arquebus over his shoulder. He was trying to focus his thoughts
anywhere but on his groin when heard one of the men in the rear
give out a startled cry. He turned in time to release a strangled
gasp of his own as the rocks on either side of the path appeared to
move, to detach themselves from the rest of the boulders and take
on human shape.

The arquebus slipped out of his grip and
clattered onto the ground. He had but a moment, before feeling the
sharp slice of steel through his neck, to watch in horror as the
human rocks produced daggers, using them to swiftly and efficiently
slit the throats of every man along the line.

At almost the same time, on the beach below,
the men who had been dispatched to search the caves came to a
similar, terror-struck end as the dark walls of the caves came
alive with Dante’s men.

As quickly as the Spaniards were slain,
their bodies were stripped of their armor, helmets, weapons and
scarlet breeches.

~~

Muertraigo had the spyglass stuck to his eye
again as he watched the glinting line of soldiers climb behind an
obstructing tumble of rocks. They were out of sight for an
inordinate amount of time and he was on the verge of sounding the
alarm bell when he saw them reappear. Castellano had a canteen
swinging from the end of his arquebus and Muertraigo shook his
head, cursing the officer’s lack of discipline to stop and quench
his thirst at such a time.

“They were better soldiers when their heads
were not filled with thoughts of gold,” he muttered.

“Look there!” Ross said sharply, pointing.
“On the beach!”

Muertraigo trained the
glass on the base of the slope. He had seen his men go into the
caves, but once again, they had taken their sweet time inside. Now
there was movement but not the kind they were expecting to see as
three, four fat boars came charging out of the caves at a run. The
soldiers were not far behind and while three of them ran across the
sand to keep the boars circling, two unslung their arquebuses,
setting them quickly on the fork-sticks before taking aim and
firing at the wildly screaming boars. The fattest, slowest animal
thudded snout-first onto the sand sending up a plume of dirt, after
which the men converged and finished it off with their swords.
Another one was brought to ground with a second explosive shot,
causing the crew watching from the deck of the
San Mateo
to give a rousing
cheer.

Muertraigo only grunted at the sport, for he
knew the men would relish a good meal cooked over an open fire, but
he reserved his enthusiasm until he saw Castellano wave an
all-clear signal from the top of the bluff.

“Lower the rest of the
boats,” he ordered. “Signal the
Gato
and the
Cormorant
that we will be going
ashore. They are to hold their positions and stay
alert.”

~~

High on the bluff, Gabriel Dante’s grin
cracked through the drying mud on his face. Dressed now in the
fancy breeches and armor of the dead Spanish officer, he watched
through gleaming amber eyes as the big longboats were lowered over
the side and began ferrying more Spaniards ashore. Hidden along the
crest of the ridge, his men were laying flat, their weapons loaded
and ready. A dozen coated with the slime from the cavern were on
the beach and even though he knew exactly where they were
positioned, Dante could not distinguish their bodies from the
sand.

Behind him, the makeshift catapults were
ready, carefully camouflaged by palm fronds. Supplementing their
firepower were hand cannons that Giddings had constructed from fat,
hollowed-out cane stalks, rudimentary throw-backs to the
destructive weapons used a hundred years before by the very
Conquistadors whose descendants were making ready to land on the
beach now.

Billy Crab was ready with his crossbow;
Eduardo was with him to light the rag-tipped bolts. Being one of
the most powerful men in the group, William Chandler was behind the
catapults eager to throw his strength into bending back the trees
once the slings were released.