Pirate Wolf Trilogy (47 page)

“The gold? Yes,
partly it was the gold. And partly … it was you.”

“
Me? What
in God’s name did I ever do to you?”

Bloodstone’s
lips curled in derision and he laughed, “Absolutely nothing, my
dear Comte. Nothing your many righteous generations of noble blood
could even begin to understand.”

He nodded and
Horace Lamprey raised his pistol, aiming squarely for the back of
Dante’s head. He pulled the trigger and the pan flashed; a fraction
of a second later the gun jerked to one side as the hand holding it
was impaled on the mast beside it, stuck fast by a needle-thin
stiletto. The shot discharged and Dante whirled around in time to
see Beau throw a second knife and reduce Lamprey’s screams to a
gurgled hiss.

Victor’s sword
flashed and Dante moved to block it. The two blades crossed and
slid down to the hilt, sending a shower of sparks flying off the
steel. Weapons parted and crossed again, drawing sweat and curses
on both sides. The impact shuddered down their arms and Bloodstone
bared his teeth in anticipation as he bore down on Dante, seeking
to weaken the vulnerable left side of his body. He deliberately
invited the Frenchman to lock swords again, then gave his wrist a
vicious twist, bringing the blade around and up, effectively
breaking the strength in Dante’s arm. He saw his opening and took
it, leaning back and thrusting forward, following through with a
triumphant cry as he expected to feel flesh, muscle, and bone
sliding the length of his sword.

But in a move
that had been almost too swift to believe, Dante had anticipated
the strike and pivoted—with the grace of a dancer—a full circle
around and back, bringing his own blade hacking forcefully across
the base of Bloodstone’s spine. Bone cracked and flesh parted. The
cry of triumph turned into a scream of agony as Bloodstone was
split almost in half. The impact sent him crashing forward through
a broken gap in the deck rail and he fell, with Dante’s sword
embedded in his back, into the pool of flames that were now
engulfing most of the main deck.

Dante staggered
to the rail and Beau rushed forward to catch him under the arm. He
stared at Bloodstone’s body until the flames licked greedily over
it and then he looked at Beau. Her face was streaked with grime and
ash, her doublet was torn at the shoulder, and a gash on her chin
leaked blood down the side of her throat, but he thought he had
never seen anything quite so beautiful before. Stubborn,
disobedient, reckless, defiant … but beautiful enough to make his
soul ache.

“One of these
days,” he gasped, “you are going to have to start doing as you’re
told.”

Beau leaned
into his chest and buried her face against his throat. “One of
these days you are going to have to start trusting me.”

Dante pressed
his lips into the soft silk of her hair. “Yes. I know.”

The
flames were growing hotter. Men were shouting, running past them,
leaping to the safety of the
Egret
.
Pitt, Spence, and McCutcheon were calling to them, warning them
they would have to cast off in the next few seconds or run the risk
of the fire jumping across the ships.

Dante frowned
and tucked his finger under her chin, forcing her face up to his.
All of the gold and treasures in the world were right there,
shimmering up at him, brimming with emotions as raw and ragged as
his own.

“How much do
you trust me?”

“
With my
life.”

He
glanced over at the
Egret
and
murmured, “That should be just about enough.”

Heedless of his
injury, he scooped her up into his arms and hoisted her onto the
top of the rail. He climbed up beside her and, using the shroud
lines for balance, caught the length of cable Pitt swung over to
them. Most of the grappling lines had been cut and the galleons had
been pushed apart everywhere but at the bow. There, a single
umbilical cord strained between them, and as Dante curled his arm
around Beau’s waist and swept them across the twenty-foot gap,
Lucifer brought down one of his scimitars and chopped the two ships
free.

EPILOGUE

Drake’s fleet
spent the remainder of the night burning and destroying what they
could of the outer harbor of Cadiz. The next morning he took his
fleet of pinnaces through the channel to the inner harbor, where he
proceeded to burn seven of the King’s prized galleons and a score
of smaller vessels loaded to the gunwales with wine, cannon,
seasoned timber, and victuals for the King’s armada gathering at
Lisbon. Considerable damage was done and little had been suffered,
although the patience of El Draque had been sorely tested the
previous evening when confronted with the sooty faces of Spence,
Beau, and Simon Dante.

Victor
Bloodstone’s treachery, the loss of the
Talon
and the
Scout
,
had caused the infamous sea hawk to glow as red as his hair. The
audacity of Jonas Spence, following in their wake despite orders to
take himself and his cargo safely home, caused only moderately less
apoplexy, and Drake seriously contemplated confiscating the
Egret
for their impertinence. Only
Dante’s intervention, supported by a veiled threat of mutiny from
every other captain in his fleet, prevented it.

Drake
then took his small force, which now included the
Egret
, out of
Cadiz two days later, leaving a pall of smoke in their wake. Over
the course of the next six weeks he made good his promise to wreak
havoc on smaller ports, and in doing so destroyed enough shipping
and vital supplies to eventually throw the King’s plans for
invasion back a full year.

It was
also on this homeward journey that Sir Francis happened across
another of Spain’s treasure galleons, the
San Felipe.
He was pleased to attack her, especially when her
holds relinquished bullion, plate, and spices in such quantities as
to make the plunder from the
San Pedro
seem a pittance by comparison. It was, in fact, the largest
single prize ever taken by a privateering vessel, and, bristling in
triumph, Drake returned to England, satisfied his fame and fortune
were fully restored, if not at their most rousing and inspiring
level ever.

After the Queen
finished counting her share of the profits, a month of celebrations
were planned that she might properly thank her bold sea hawks for
not only leaving the King’s pride in shambles, but for infusing the
royal treasury with enough funds to start building England’s
navy.

~~

Beau
emerged from the dressing room with a frown on her face. She was
certain she was missing something. Although the three servants who
had been assigned to help her bathe, powder herself, crimp and coif
her hair, and dress her from the stockings up like some child too
addle
-pated to know how
to lace a garter, she was convinced a crucial article of clothing
had been forgotten.

“Simon—?” She
had her head bowed when she came into the salon, concentrating on
the combined task of easing the wide wings of the farthingale
through the doorway and not tripping over the wide hoops and
multiple underskirts that kept snagging her toes. “You know more
about these things than I do. Would you not say something is amiss
here?”

She looked up
and saw a stranger standing by the window. “Oh! Excuse me, I
thought you were …”

Dante
turned around. He had been waiting in the salon exactly two hours,
the interminable ticking of the ormolu clock relieved only now and
then when he heard a muffled string of blasphemies make its way
through the door of the inner chamber. Pitt had kept him company
the first hour, but a summons from his dark-eyed little duchess had
sent him scurrying to his own apartments. Geoffrey Pitt had not
waited to return to England to marry Christiana Villanueva. There
had been a Catholic priest on board the
San Felipe
who had agreed, for the sake of the soul of one of
Spain’s daughters, to wed them.

Spence,
had
blustered about the delicate furnishings of the salon like a whale
out of water. He had lost another finger and half an ear in the
fight with the
Talon
, and had
declared his intention to take his profits and build a small fleet
of merchant ships that
other
captains might take out at risk to life and limb. He and
Spit McCutcheon would take to the helm for pleasure only. Or when
his supplies of rumbullion threatened to run perilously
low.

McCutcheon had
also been outfitted to attend the Queen’s presence. He had been
scrubbed, shaved, and clad in a new suit of clothes that made him
look like a colorful marionette. Dante could only imagine how Beau
would fare in the transition. He had seen the maids and the
armloads of frilly clothing go into the dressing room. He had also
seen the maids stumble out hours later, their necks clammy with
sweat, their caps askew, and their shoulders sagging with
exhaustion.

Now she was out
and the suspense was at an end. He turned when she called his name,
and for a second or two the glare from the window remained too
bright on his eyes to see much more than a dark blur.

“Excuse me, I
thought—I thought you were my husband,” Beau said, her voice
trailing off to a whisper. She stopped dead in her tracks and
stared at the tall, elegant figure who stood in front of the
twenty-foot-high mullioned window, certain her eyes were playing
tricks on her.

It was
their first full day in London, the first time she had seen him not
at a dockyard helping Spence supervise the repairs on the
Egret
or cloistered in a stuffy
warehouse haggling with guild merchants over the sale of the cargo.
He had waited to the last minute to come to his house in London,
despite a flurry of dispatches from Drake and the Queen. He had
used the excuse of a fever to delay their leave-taking from
Plymouth, but the only heat he suffered from was doctored quite
adequately in Beau’s arms.

Reluctantly he
had come to London and even more reluctantly he had left their bed
this morning to be attended by a barber, a valet, a tailor; all in
anticipation of being received, feted, and berated by the Queen. To
the latter he had already weathered a storm of letters regarding
his insolence in marrying someone not of noble or even elevated
birth. To each of those he had simply sent back a card embossed
with the De Tourville coat of arms and a very large fleur-de-lis,
expressing the regrets of the Comte and Comtesse that his fever was
still too high to permit travel.

Spence had
expected warrants any day. Dante had simply made love to his new
wife and gone about his business at the shipyards.

And now
here they were, a half hour’s coach ride to the Queen’s audience
chamber, and Beau felt as if she ought to curtsy to
him.
Dante’s hair had been trimmed
to within an inch of ebony perfection, his jaw scraped clean of the
rough fur she had come to appreciate in more ways than one. He wore
a white satin shirt beneath a midnight-blue velvet doublet, edged
and banded in gold, with a row of jewel-encrusted buttons
glittering down the front closure. The narrowest of embroidered
collar and cuffs stood out in breathtaking contrast to the deeply
tanned color of his face and hands, while his legs—long and thewed
like iron—were cased in hose the same rich blue as his doublet. His
shoes were made of the finest, softest leather, buckled in pure
gold. The dress sword he wore at his hip was sheathed in a
bejeweled buckler, the hilt an elaborate weave of scrolls and
curlicues.

He looked, for
the first time ever, like a member of the royal French aristocracy,
like the urbane and elegant Comte de Tourville. His only obstinate
act of rebellion was the wink of gold prominent in his earlobe.

He walked
slowly forward, his approach drawing even more air out of Beau’s
lungs, if that were possible.

His eyes were
as blue as the sky as he made a deliberate, measured perusal of her
hair, her gown, even the tiny rows of pearls that ornamented her
belt. He had chosen the gown himself—everything, in fact, from the
sheer silk drawers and corselet to the wheel-shaped farthingale
with its descending layers of wire hoops. Her sleeves had enough
rich cloth in them to fashion two normal shipboard shirts. The
bodice was flat and rigid, narrowing past a surprisingly small
waistline, dipping to an elongated V to exaggerate the flaring
velvet skirts. All was in the deepest, purest black, seeded with
black pearls and glittering jets. Her hair was a puff of soft
auburn curls around her face, then pulled back into a coif and
decorated with tiny clusters of jewels. Around her neck she wore
ropes of De Tourville diamonds, so dazzling against the dusky hue
of her complexion, it would make the Court’s eyes water with envy.
On her finger she wore another de Tourville heirloom, an enormous
pearl circled by more diamonds, reputed to have once belonged to a
Plantagenet princess.

Dante could
think of no one more suited to wear it.

“
Mon
cygne noir magnifique,”
he murmured, his voice husky enough to allow a little color
to leak back into her face. “I never imagined you could look so
beautiful … with or without your breeches on.”

“You are just
saying that to be kind.”

“
My dear
Comtesse”—he advanced closer and took both her hands in his,
kissing each palm before he spread her arms wide and let his
silvery eyes feast on all her splendor—“a blade at my throat could
not make me be
kind
to anyone
in my present mood. But it warms me to know Bess will be so
envious, she will undoubtedly banish us from Court for a very long
time.”