Pirate Wolf Trilogy (23 page)

His hesitation
was barely perceptible. “You may indeed.”

“When we first
went on board, why did you give your name as Jonas Spence? For the
taking of so rich a prize, I would have thought you would have
wanted the credit for yourself.”

“I gave my name
as Jonas Spence because he deserved the credit, not me. By this
time next week, all of Spain will be burning him in effigy, cursing
his brilliance and audacity as a sea hawk. Priests will be lauding
him as the Devil Incarnate, a Heretic Scourge upon the Holy Faith,
and his crew not only deserving of God’s wrath but the wrath of
every God-fearing Christian on both sides of the Ocean Sea.”

Dante caught
Billy’s wide grin and winked.

“I don’t
suppose it had anything to do with you not wanting word of your
resurrection from the dead to reach England before you do.”

His mouth
thinned with sudden irritation. “Can I do nothing right in your
eyes? Can I do nothing without rousing suspicions of an ulterior
motive? Must you always look for the worm in the wood?”

“If it is
there, yes. I would prefer to know a beam is sound and trustworthy
beneath me before I put my faith into walking upon it.”

He raised one
eyebrow as though amused, but she could see a muscle jump in the
tautness of his jaw.

“Then we have
something in common at last, mam’selle, for I trust no one, put my
faith in nothing, and walk nowhere without checking the shadows at
my back.”

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

“Ye look
befuddled, daughter. Is yer head painin’ ye?”

Beau had been
preoccupied, pulling at a frayed edge of the bandage still wrapped
around her hand. At her father’s querulous prompting she touched
the cut on her temple and although it was tender, she could not say
in any honesty that it was the source of her sullen mood. She was
bone weary, and that did not add an excess of charm. If not for the
stupid, pigheaded statement she had made to Dante de Tourville, she
would have crawled into her miserable little sail closet hours
ago.

The
seemingly tireless Frenchman had returned to the
San Pedro
and, the last she’d heard, was
supervising the transfer of cargo from one vessel to the other. It
was not unusual for a treasure ship of that size to take a week or
more to load; Dante wanted the bulk of the plunder transferred by
noon the next day. With the drastic difference in the sizes of the
ships—and the fact that it took nearly two hundred men just to work
the sails and rigging of the huge Spanish galleon—it would not be
possible to either sail or tow the vessel as far as England, and so
Dante had ordered only the richest cargo be selected and stowed in
the
Egret’s
holds.
To that end Spit burst periodically through Jonas’s door waving a
new list of “selections” under his nose. And Spence, with a bandage
wrapped askew around his head, propped in his bed like a one-legged
king, toasted each new addition to the
Egret’s
manifests with a fresh goblet of prime Madeira
wine.

Twice he had
ventured up on deck, enlisting the aid of several stout crewmen to
carry him. But there was nothing he could do to make himself useful
and nowhere he could go without a crutch or an arm to help him, and
in truth, he was enjoying all the attention he was receiving in his
cabin.

Among the
more toast-worthy items Spit’s men removed from the
San Pedro
were barrels packed with gold
plate, candlesticks, cutlery, crucifixes, gold and silver coins.
One large chest was crammed full of ropes made of gold links— one
hundred and fifty-three chains in all, with loops as thick as a
man’s finger. There were two thousand bars of solid gold bullion
and four thousand of silver, all stamped with the official seal of
the treasure house in Panama. Of no lesser importance were the
thirty tuns of Madeira wine, twenty of cocoa beans, and assorted
numbers of indigo and island spices.

From the
personal items of the officers and soldiers were swords made from
fine Toledo steel, their hilts crusted with gold and precious
stones. Even the plain, unadorned cutlasses were of superior
quality and would have brought a tasty price from the London
merchants, but these were considered of little value now and tossed
overboard with the casual aplomb of men drunk on excess.

For treasure of
a different sort, there were casks of salted beef, bacon, and rice;
wheels of cheese and earthenware crocks of olives. A squealing
platoon of pigs and sheep had been herded across the planks and
there was already excited talk of a celebratory feast planned for
the morrow.

“Fasten yer
lovely eyes on this; it’ll shake the sleep out o’ yer bones,”
Spence said, swinging a pendant hypnotically before her. Suspended
in the crux of the chain was a pearl the size of a hen’s egg, the
surface gleaming like a candle through frost.

“I’m told she
likes pearls, our Queen Bess does. Drapes herself in ropes o’ them,
even pins them in her hair. D’ye think she’ll like this? This an’
the other trinkets I’ve set aside so far?”

With a
benevolence kindled by the warming effects of the wine, Spence had
declared his intentions to send, along with the jewels, the most
exquisitely wrought sword, a selection of the finest plate, and the
sheerest bolt of silk as gifts to his most royal sovereign.

“I think she
will find a warm spot in her heart for all you send her. Warm
enough to forgive you your rashness in turning your trade from
simple merchantman to hell-raising pirate.”

Spence looked
over and a slow, wide smile parted the red froth of his beard. “A
Heretic Scourge on the Holy Faith? Is that truly what he called
me?”

“Truly.” Beau
nodded. “Along with the Devil Incarnate—which we knew already.”

Spence chuckled
heartily. “I don’t mind sayin’, lass, twixt you, me, an’ the
lanterns, this devil near fouled his breeks when he saw the size o’
that sow up close. God’s truth, I could die tomorrow an’ never know
a prouder moment. Lift yer cup, girl, an’ toast the best bloody
damn ship an’ crew on the Ocean Sea!”

Beau echoed his
words and tipped her cup as unsparingly as Spence did, though she
managed to drain hers without spilling any down her chin, and she
finished without a loud, raucous growl of enthusiasm.

“
Damn
their zealot hearts anyway, but one thing ye cannot fault the
Spanish for is their Madeira. Red as blood, sweet as sin; lies like
a slip o’ crimson velvet on the tongue.” He saw Beau’s smirk and
rubbed the stump of his leg with a pained look on his face. “Aye,
an’ great medicinal qualities too. Almost makes a man forget
the incompetence o’
some men on board this ship who would rather count their coins than
carve their captain a new limb so he could get up out o’ this
infernal bed!”

His shout
echoed down an empty corridor, as he expected it would, and he
grinned his way through another oath as he shoved the bandage back
up over his ear. He shoved it too high and the ugly gash, swollen
and mottled, stitched with thick black threads, caught the
light.

“We do make a
fine pair,” Beau said, touching her own temple again.

“Do we not,
though,” he agreed with a chuff of laughter. “Aye, an’ if yer
mother were here, she’d say ‘twas lucky we got cracked on the
heads, for it’s the hardest part o’ both o’ us.”

Perched against
a small mountain of canvas, bemoaning the inconvenience of having
to wait on the carpenter’s pleasure, Beau supposed her father did
not want to think of how truly lucky he had been today. A step
slower and he could as easily have had the other leg shot out from
under him. She remembered all too well the night he had been
brought home in a two-wheeled cart, straight off the ship, his
flesh burning with fever, the stump of his leg a bloody, festering
mess. The doctor had not given him much hope of living through the
night and Beau, only ten years old at the time, had refused to move
from his side through the night, the next day, the next night, and
two full weeks after that. She had made her decision then and there
that if he survived, she was not going to stand on shore and watch
him sail away again. Not without her.

Beau pulled at
the threads of her bandage again.

“Do ye remember
her at all, lass?” Spence inquired softly, seeing the melancholy
expression creep over his daughter’s face again.

“Mother? I
remember everything. The way she looked, the way she smelled—like
cinnamon, all the time.”

“Aye. I used to
liken her to sunlight, hot an’ clean, an’ bright as flame. Why she
ever stayed with the likes o’ me, I’ll never know.”

“The way I have
heard you tell it, she had little choice in the matter.”

“Only because I
knew she were the one I wanted. Knew it the minute she flashed them
hot eyes at me an’ told me she wanted me too.”

“
You knew
because of the way she
looked
at you?”

“Well, that an’
a few other things.” The bandage on his head slipped down and he
nudged it back in place with the stub of his finger. “She had this
funny way o’ always makin’ my skin feel two sizes too small for my
body, an’— an’ my hair—when I had it, that is—stand up on end like
I pricked my finger on lightnin’.” He cocked an eyebrow. “There
wouldn’t be a particular reason yer askin’, now, would there?”

“No. No
particular reason.”

Spence pushed
himself up on one elbow. “Ye’d tell me if that Dante fellow were
pesterin’ ye, wouldn’t ye?”

“He isn’t
pestering me, and, yes, I would most certainly tell you if he
was.”

“
Is it
that ye
want
him to
pester ye an’ he’ll have no part of it? I’ll skewer his gizzards
just as deep for the insult.”

“No! No, it
isn’t anything like that at all, it’s just…”

“Just what,
daughter? Spit it out!”

Their amber
eyes met through the glow of the overhead lamp. They kept few
secrets from each other. Beau had spoken to him openly and freely
when she had lost her virginity and with whom she had done the
deed. Conversely, she knew all of his mistresses and his favorite
whores and exactly what it was about them that made them his
favorites.

“It’s just that
… there are times he makes me so angry I feel like I could explode.
And others …”

“Aye?
Others?”

“Others … when
he doesn’t make me angry at all, but I feel like I could explode
anyway.”

Spence pursed
his lips and gave her a long, contemplative look from the top of
her head to the scuffed toes of her boots. “Mayhap yer doublet’s
too tight.”

Beau, who had
not realized she had been holding her breath, released it on a
curse that was not as casual as Spence was expecting, and he
recanted immediately.

“Bah, I’m
sorry, lass. ’Tis the drink an’ all. Ye know I’m not good at givin’
advice on such things. For a man it’s different. He sees somethin’
he wants, he takes his ease an’ walks away with a clear head in the
mornin’. For a lass, well, what kind o’ father tells his daughter
to go an’ scratch the itch if she’s got it?”

“The itch?”

“The itch,
lass, the itch.” He waved a flustered hand in the approximate
vicinity of his crotch and scowled. “Ye’re not a virgin, for pity’s
sake, ye must know what I mean. An’ don’t go puffin’ yerself up
like a peahen tryin’ to deny it. He’s not the ugliest bastard on
this earth, an’ neither are you, an’ if he makes ye feel like ye’re
wantin’ to come out o’ yer clothes all the time, well then, ye’ve
got the itch for him, plain an’ simple.”

Beau stared and
Spence glowered an addendum. “As long as that’s all it is, is an
itch. Ye wouldn’t be expectin’ anythin’ more from him, would
ye?”

Beau’s mouth
sagged open to reply, but she was cut short.

“Because he’s
had one wife already he couldn’t tame, an’ I doubt he’d be lookin’
for another. Ye knew he was married, did ye not?”

She found her
voice and her indignation. “Yes, I knew, and I wasn’t—”

“Did ye also
know she whelped two bastards on him while he was away at sea?”

“No,” she
admitted softly. “I didn’t.”

“Aye, well,
it’s not the kind o’ thing a man like him would talk about too
freely, nor is it the kind o’ thing he would forget or forgive too
soon. Seems she got caught twice with her legs too wide an’ her
belly too full an’ tried to tell him they were his. He knew they
weren’t, bein’ as how he were away at sea both times. With the
first, I heard he forgave her an’ even offered to give the brat his
name. With the second, he disowned the lot, petitioned the court
for a divorce, an’ took himself off to sea nearly two years before
he ventured back home. It’s likely he’d keep himself well away from
any more graspin’ females for fear o’ bein’ duped again—just like
you carve a man’s liver out if he smiles at ye, all on account o’
what that nob-licking Nate Hawethorne did to ye.”

“I am hardly a
grasping female,” she said with a flush of resentment. “And Nate
Hawethorne is not the only reason I keep to myself.”

“Maybe not. But
he’s the best excuse ye can think of in a pinch. God above, girl,
ye can’t judge all men by the measure o’ Nate Hawethorne. He was a
bastard an’ led ye by the nose, promisin’ ye all manner o’ things
he had no intentions o’ givin’ ye. Use him to take yer soundings
an’ yell dry up like a piece o’ salted fish.”

“Are you
telling me I should keep the door to my cabin open all the
time?”

“No, I am not!”
He surged forward, pointing a stubbed finger at her. “I’m not
tellin’ ye in any shape or form to go out an’ jump on every man who
waves his nethers at ye, for I’ll not have any daughter o’ mine
called whore!” He bristled himself back against his prop of
cushions and glared. “But I am sayin’ it’s a hard life ye’ve chosen
for yerself an’ sometimes ye just have to take yer pleasure where
ye can find it. Bah!” He dropped his chin to his chest and swirled
the last dregs of his wine around his cup. “Yer mother would have
my ballocks for earrings for tellin’ ye such things, but it pains
me sometimes—as I know it would pain her—to see ye so afeard o’ the
very thing that gave her one o’ the greatest pleasures in
life.”