Pirate Wolf Trilogy (55 page)

On balance it
was simply the lesser of two potential evils to take the Duke of
Harrow to Pigeon Cay and let her father deal with him. To
discourage him from making too many forays outside the cabin,
Juliet had deliberately sliced his clothes to ribbons, leaving him
nothing but a blanket and a swollen temper. Between that and
finding himself at the mercy of a ‘mere woman’, he should be
manageable for the three days it would take to sail to Pigeon
Cay.

Juliet grimaced
and flicked a piece of oakum out into the darkness.

Mere woman. She
hadn’t been accused of having many feminine shortcomings in a very
long time. One did not live on an island in close proximity to
Spanish shipping lanes without learning at a young age how to fight
with sword and knife and musket. Her father—no poor swordsman
himself—had taught her as soon as she could heft the weight of a
blade that while God could be entrusted to take care of their souls
in the hereafter, it was solely incumbent upon their own skills
with steel and powder to insure they did not join Him too soon.

It had been her
mother who had taken Juliet’s lessons one step further. Isabeau had
taught her to go for the swift and sure kill. A split second
hesitation debating the polite rules of engagement could not only
cost her her life, but the lives of the men who depended on her to
lead them. Regardless of her lineage, there was nary a crew on the
ocean-sea who would follow a woman—or man—who demurred at the sight
of blood, or who showed the smallest signs of weakness when
strength and hard, unblinking courage were demanded.

Juliet’s body
bore the scars to prove it.

She had
needed to earn the loyalty and trust of the men along with their
respect, and while most of the crew on board the
Iron Rose
would gut any man for looking
sideways at her, there had been a few over the years who thought
her fair and easy pickings on a cold dark night. Too much rum had
sent their eyes and hands wandering but they had quickly and
painfully discovered she was neither fair nor easy. She was no
swanning virgin either. It had been several years since she had
lost her innocence as well as her maidenhead, but it had been by
her choice, and on her terms.

Dominic du Lac
had been her first lover. A tall, green-eyed Frenchman with a
silver tongue and silky hands, he hadn’t been particularly
handsome, but he had made her laugh. He had picked wildflowers and
braided them into her hair, and he had insisted upon showing her,
one garment at a time, how to dress like a proper French
demoiselle. Afterwards, with equal deliberation and care, he had
shown her how to remove each article and by the time he was
finished, they had both been naked and eager to release the tension
he had so deftly created.

Dominic had
died within the month of the yellow fever but in the short time
they had had together, he had taught her wondrous things about her
body. He had introduced her to pleasures and cravings that could
not remain in mourning for long.

There had been
three men after Dominic, each special in their own way and although
none had caused any poetic flutters of the heart, they had enjoyed
her and she had enjoyed them without shame or reservation. The last
had been over a year ago and the affair had ended, as they usually
did when the sea was such a powerful mistress, with the abruptness
of a musket shot. In truth, it had been many months since she had
even seen a man who stoked her interest. Perhaps that was why she
had felt a distinct stirring in her blood when she had sliced away
the final layer of clothing and viewed the duke’s naked body.

Crisp had
initially balked at settling him into her cabin but in truth, it
contained the only real bed on board and even that was not built
for comfort. Most nights she slung her hammock on the narrow stern
gallery, preferring to sleep to the sound of the wake curling off
the stern.

She was also
admittedly intrigued. She had heard that all English noblemen were
as soft and slightly built as their women yet this one was tall and
strapping, his chest and shoulders were well defined, the flesh
taut, the muscles solid to the touch. The dark hairs that covered
his breast were thick and silky, narrowing to a finger’s width over
his belly before exploding again in a crisp nest at the junction of
his thighs.

There, her gaze
had lingered a few moments longer than necessary, for he was more
than adequately endowed. Nudity was commonplace on board a ship and
she had seen more than her fair share of men’s privy parts in all
shapes and sizes. The most outstanding appendage belonged to
Lucifer, her father’s gun captain, and while the duke’s pride and
glory was did not come within a league of such prominence, it did
raise a small tingle of speculation at the base of her spine.

A scandalized
cough from the manservant had prompted her to draw the covers above
the duke’s waist, but not before she noted that the muscles in his
thighs were as hard as oak suggesting he was an avid horseman as
well as an experienced swordsman—one who did not forego practising
in favor of a game of cards or dice.

The bruises
would heal in a day or two and he could be thankful his clothes had
provided enough padding to keep the fire from scorching through to
the skin. The lump on his head was more troublesome for there was
no way of knowing if the bone was cracked beneath. The fact he had
regained his sensibilities was no proof his brains were not leaking
and she had seen men with similar wounds emerge from battle
seemingly fit and hale only to slump over dead a few days later,
bleeding from the nose and ears.

That he was a
nobleman in and of itself did not awe her, nor would it win him any
special favor on board. Simon Dante’s bloodlines reached well back
to a time when England was ruled by wild-eyed Saxons. Being the
twelfth of this or the fifth of that would not impress her father
any more than it had impressed her, and if Varian St. Clare wanted
to keep all his skin intact, he would curb his arrogance and not
enter into any meeting with his nose thrust too high in the
air.

Juliet let the
wind take the last scrap of twine from her hand then walked
cat-like out across the yard, testing her balance against the pull
and sway of the ship. With nothing to hold her, nothing below to
break her fall, it was a dangerous game that would have brought
snarls and shouts from Nathan Crisp if he had seen her. Most of the
men who worked the yards ran their length several times a day as a
matter of course, but they were not the daughters of Simon Dante;
bringing them home smashed and broken would only earn a cluck of
the tongue and a shake of the head over their foolishness.

She went to the
end of the yard and did a graceful pirouette on the ball of her
foot. Forty feet below, the deck was all shadows and very little
substance for they ran dark, sailing without lights of any kind.
Out in the open water, on a starless night, something as small as
the glow from a pipe could be seen for miles and Juliet had
forbidden all lamps and candles above deck, and only below under
extreme caution; the gallery windows in her own cabin had been
covered with thick tarps painted black.

Faint snatches
of conversation drifted upward but for the most part, the crew was
taking full advantage of their respite after the day’s events. It
was a warm night and most had slung their hammocks on the open
deck. At this height, they resembled so many maggots rolled into
small white carapaces, pale worms against the darker boards.

Because
of the
Iron
Rose’s
superior speed,
it had been necessary to drastically shorten sail in order to keep
abreast of the much slower
Santo Domingo
. Juliet could just barely make out the ghostly tower of
sails following in their wake. Otherwise, the ocean stretched out
black and unbroken on all sides with only a faintly luminous froth
of spindrift here and there to reflect the filtered light of the
moon. If she closed her eyes Juliet could isolate the sound of the
wake breaking astern, the creak of cleats, the faint hum of the
wind straining against the canvas. She could hear the ship
breathing, feel the rhythmic throbbing of a heartbeat through the
mast. She knew the
Iron
Rose
as well as
she knew her own body and could waken out of a deep sleep upon the
instant if she sensed something was out of balance.

The ship rolled
into a wave and Juliet compensated for the movement with a
graceful, upward fanning of her arms. Her feet were swift and sure
and she reluctantly climbed back down the shrouds, pausing mid way
to secure a loose corner of sail. She could feel eyes on her,
marking her descent through the rigging lines, and when her feet
landed on solid decking, she heard the growl behind her.

“
You
know, do you not, it’d mark the death of every last one of us if
you were to slip and fall one of these nights. Your father would
hang, draw, and quarter us all, and that would be
if
we survived the keel-hauling
your brothers would mete out and
if
your mother did not pluck our ballocks off with hot pincers
and force us to roast them over a fire.”

Juliet smiled
into the scowling face of the ship’s carpenter, Nog Kelly. He had
earned his name through the number of times he had been brained by
beams and spars—blows that would have dented the skulls of most men
but which merely scrambled his wits for a few moments before he
shook it off. Despite the fact he reminded her of a perpetually
aroused mastiff who thought himself too fierce and virile to ever
be considered harmless, harmless he was. For even puffed up with
manly indignation as he was now, he could be reduced to a
flame-skinned schoolboy with a suitably inappropriate riposte on
mention of the hot-tempered wife waiting for him in port.

“Roasted
ballocks,” she mused, “are considered a delicacy, I have been told,
on some of these heathen islands, though I’ve yet to sample the
fare. ‘Twould make for a tasty meal, would it not?”

“
You
might not take the threat too seriously, Captain, but there are a
hundred men on board the
Rose
who do.”

“Ahh, but think
how much more freely you would be able to move about without all
that cumbersome flesh getting in the way.”

She left him
pondering the thought and joined Nathan, who she had spied leaning
by the rail.

“Nog is right,
ye know. Ye take more risks than ye ought. Ye’ve naught to prove to
any of us, lass. We’ve all seen ye slit a throat an’ climb a shroud
in a gale,” he paused to aim a wry glance upward, “an’ dance a yard
in the dead of night.”

“What if I am
not trying to prove anything, Nate? What if I just enjoy being able
to do these things?”

“Then you’re as
daft as yer mam an’ it’ll be up to the saints to save yer
soul.”

“Are you
implying that Mother’s soul needs saving?”

“Nay. She has
yer father to keep her honest. Though, on a second thought, he’s as
daft as her so the pair are both doomed.”

She laughed. “I
hope you are not suggesting that a good man would save me?”

“
No.”
Crisp snorted. “It’d take a
hellish
good man to do that. And like as not, he’d lose his own
soul in the bargain. Like Addle-Brain there—” he raised his unlit
pipe to indicate the carpenter. “He’s been lustin’ after ye for
years an’ look at the state he’s in. Can’t even manage to piss on a
downdraft after ye’ve said a kind word to ‘im. I warrant he’ll be
walkin’ around on three legs all night long now at the thought of
ye roastin’ an’ eatin’ his ballocks.”

Unlike Kelly,
Nathan’s tongue rarely tied in knots, regardless of the
subject.

“Since we are
speaking of ballocks,” she said, “what do you think of the
duke’s?”

He scratched
the stubble on his chin. “Well now, I didn’t have as good a look as
ye did, but I’ll wager they’re as big as the rest of him.”

“That wasn’t
what I meant,” she said on a sigh.

Crisp
snickered. “No? Then I’m thinkin’ he’ll be trouble all the same.
His tongue is too smooth an’ his answers come too quick. Glib, he
is. An’ up to no good where ye’re father is concerned, mark my
words. Cap’n Simon won’t be thankin’ ye for bringin’ him back to
the Cay.” He leaned over the rail and spat. “I’m also thinkin’
he’ll lay a few stripes across yer rump for goin’ up against a
prime warship by yerself.”

The silence
stretched for a full count of ten before the sense of triumph they
had managed to keep under tight rein for the past several hours
finally exploded. Juliet burst out laughing only a second or two
before Crisp snatched off his cap and beat in on the rail in
keeping with his hoots and hee-haws.

“
Can ye
believe it, lass? The farkin’
Santo Domingo
! The supposed Terror of the High Seas an’ we took her! By
Christ’s own cross, it won’t just be the
almirant
e
of the fleet an’ his fancy dons ye’ve aggravated. I warrant
His Catholic Majesty Phillip of farkin’ Spain will throw fits an’
open up his Court of Inquisition again.”

“Yes, but do
you think Father will be pleased?”

“Pleased?”
Crisp paused to reflect over the word. “He’ll be tickled enough he
might just let ye sail off his starboard beam the next time he goes
on a hunt.”

“Do you really
think so?” Juliet’s pleasure could not be contained and this time
when she laughed, the entire composition of her face changed. The
stern set to her jaw softened and her eyes sparkled with the
moonlight. Her lips took on a gentle fullness that was not often
conducive to barking orders and having them obeyed.