Pirate Wolf Trilogy (7 page)

Thus she stared
at the pirate wolf, part of her responding in an odd, ticklish way
to the fact that they were alone in his cabin; that he was easily
twice, if not three times, her size; and that it was doubtful a
threat against touching a single hair on her head would dissuade
him from touching anything else he wanted.

Another part of
her was admittedly curious to know what he was thinking as he sat
there returning her calm, casual appraisal with an equally detached
reserve.

As it happened,
Dante was thinking she was rather small for the rigors of shipboard
life, even if she served as cook’s mate or cabin boy. Her waist was
a trifling thing, easily spanned by two large hands. Her arm, when
he had held it to guide her belowdecks, had been taut enough to
suggest she possessed more supple strength than the average woman
of her size and build, yet nothing so ungainly as muscular. She did
indeed possess a long, slender neck. One that led to an equally
long, slender body. Breasts? Aye, she had them. Round, firm little
expressions of her femininity thrusting against the confines of her
doublet. Probably too small to give a hungry man more than a
taste.

Her face was
the true paradox. Standing in the shadows of the bulkhead, he had
carefully appraised each member of Jonas Spence’s boarding party
and not one had set off any alarms or seemed to be anything other
than what he appeared to be. He retrieved their images one by one
but could recall nothing that should have forewarned him. She had
struck him as a slim dark-haired boy who stood shifting his weight
slightly from one foot to the other, probably due to the
extravagant armory of weapons he had strapped about himself.

She was seated
across from him now. There seemed to be a similar restlessness in
her body, though there were no overt movements he could detect. The
air surrounding her was a haze of dust motes suspended in the heat
of the light streaming through the gallery windows, sparkling just
enough to mock him for having failed to see what seemed so obvious
now.

She was
no raving beauty. Her complexion was too dark for one thing, tanned
beyond any hope of redemption from rice powders or milk washes. Yet
the warm honey glow paid perfect compliment to the long auburn
lashes and dark wing-shaped eyebrows that might have looked too
bold on a more toneless palette. Her hair was gathered back into a
single glossy braid, the color as rich and deep as roasted
chestnuts. Her mouth was far too sulky for his liking, but he could
imagine how a softly formed word—if she could manage one—would send
a shiver down a desperate man’s spine. The nose was delicate, the
cheeks almost too smooth to believe they could bear exposure to
harsh elements of the weather. And her eyes. They were cat’s eyes,
molten gold, dangerously obstinate, dangerously defiant…

Just plain
dangerous.

They did
not relent by so much as a flicker—an odd enough sensation to deal
with, especially since most females of his acquaintance normally
avoided looking directly at anything above the level of his chin,
regardless how brazen or uninhibited they might be. Geoffrey
claimed it was his own fault, that he looked at women the same way
a hawk looked at its prey. But that was only because Geoffrey Pitt
tended to fall in love at the first flutter of an
eyelash.

Dante preferred
his freedom, guarded it like a crown jewel. Women were fine in
their place—preferably beneath him with their backs arched and
their limbs wrapped tightly around his thighs—but he had no room
for encumbrances in his life, no desire for any more shackles or
chains of any kind, especially if they came burdened by
emotion.

Her eyes
commanded his attention again. Lush amber-gold, flecked with every
subtle shade between green and brown, they were as bright as
polished gemstones. And direct enough to cause an unsettling
tightness in his groin. They were not the eyes of a virgin, for
they held no fear. Nor were they the eyes of an experienced
courtesan, for there was no hint of an invitation in their depths.
Again he found himself comparing her to other women he had
encountered, recalling none who could provoke, anger, challenge,
and temptation all at the same time.

He wondered
what she looked like naked.

Dante blinked
first, breaking contact.

It was a
singularly unfamiliar experience, knowing the wench was able to
break his concentration. She still had not looked away, flaunting,
it seemed, her ability to keep his level of irritation high enough
to be a distraction.

He decided the
best way to defuse her was to ignore her.

He lifted
the golden ship—his
Virago
—and
started collecting up the letters and documents beneath. Most were
written in Spanish, some bore official seals and ribbons and
flamboyant signatures belonging to governors and dignitaries in the
New World. Dante spoke six languages fluently, including Spanish,
and had translated most of the papers into his own bold script.
Some were important, some not. Some went into great and boring
detail about crops and harvests, weather conditions, even the hell
of living with swarms of bloodsucking insects that attacked day and
night in the jungles. Other documents, of more interest to a
seafaring gentleman of private enterprise, concerned the staggering
amounts of gold and silver that would be shipped to Lisbon with the
next flota. These so-called plate fleets were tempting to raiders
of all nationalities because of the enormous quantity of gold
stolen from temples and villages throughout Mexico and Panama, most
of it already hammered into plates and large sun
medallions.

All of
the papers, letters, and documents had been in the treasure house
at Vera Cruz awaiting the ships that would carry the correspondence
home to Spain. Pitt had snatched them up almost as an afterthought,
speculating there was always something of some interest to someone
who cared to know the state of affairs in Spanish-held territories.
What he hadn’t counted on was finding something that would
irrevocably alter the course of their destiny.

Dante glanced
up. The wench was still staring.

“If you want to
make yourself useful,” he said irritably, “you can start rolling
these charts and stacking them in a chest.”

“I have
absolutely no desire to make myself useful, Captain Dante.” She
arched her brows in surprise that he would even think so. “In fact,
I shall strive to be as useless to you as possible for as long as
possible.”

“You are
already that, mam’selle,” he countered evenly.

“Then we have
nothing more to discuss.”

He looked at
her, hard. “I am not happy with the way this has turned out. I have
no quarrel with your father or his crew, nor do I have any
nefarious designs on your ship.”

She merely
stared back, her face a study in abject contempt.

He drummed his
long fingers silently on the top of the desk. “Your father
mentioned you have been at sea for eight months.” When she neither
confirmed nor denied it, he asked, “Should I assume this was your
first voyage?”

“Why would you
assume that?”

“Your hands are
too soft, for one thing, your skin is too fresh: You don’t exactly
have the look of a weathered tar about you.”

“For your
information, I have been at sea since I was twelve,” she
snapped.

“A whole year?”
He cocked his head in mock surprise. “I am impressed.”

“Eight years,
thank you very much.”

From the
instant sparks that had flared in her eyes, he guessed he had
touched upon a tender subject. She had obviously met his brand of
sarcasm before, both about her choice of lifestyle and the fact
that she did, indeed, have the smooth, round face of a
youthling—when she wasn’t scowling, that is.

His brief
victory did not taste as sweet as it should have, for his reaction
was stalled somewhere between satisfaction and grudging admiration.
Eight years was a long time. The sea offered no easy life and was
merciless to anyone who showed the slightest weakness.

Beau was
no better off. He angered her, irritated her, made her furious with
his smug arrogance, but he was also an enigma. He was, after all,
Simon Dante, an aristocrat, a member of the nobility with vast
estates in England as well as France. He had spent the last half of
his—what? thirty years? plaguing the Spanish shipping lines. For
his most recent outlandish adventure he admitted to having raided
Vera Cruz, and had fought a pitched battle with six Spanish
galleons—a feat of daring and courage that normally would have had
her perched on the edge of her chair, hanging on his every
word.

She couldn’t
ask him about any of it, of course. She couldn’t even look
interested.

So she looked
instead at the clutter of books littering the floor. “You can
read,” she said, inflecting her voice with the same patronizing
tones he had used. “I’m impressed.”

His long
fingers ceased their drumming. The golden cat’s eyes were scanning
the volumes haphazardly when they came to a sudden stop at one in
particular. They widened slightly and an exquisite tension seemed
to ripple the length of her body. He tried to follow her gaze to
the book that had so riveted her attention, but when she saw what
he was about she turned her head and let the mask of indifference
settle over her features again.

“If you have
seen something you want, by all means help yourself. They will only
end up on the bottom of the ocean.”

“
What I
want—” her eyes shot back—“is to return to the
Egret
.”

“And so you
shall,” he said solicitously. “Just as soon as all these charts and
maps are rolled and packed away in a chest.”

Beau surged to
her feet, abruptly enough to send Dante’s hand an inch or so in the
direction of the pistol.

“Where is the
damned chest?” she demanded.

His hand
relaxed—rather, it flattened in an attempt to appear as though the
movement had been unintentional, not that either one of them was
fooled.

“
Behind
you. Empty the clothing out of the big one and stow as much of this
paperwork in it as you can. My ship, too, if you please,” he added,
his voice softening unexpectedly as he ran a hand lovingly over the
gold replica of the
Virago.
“Perhaps
if one survives, the other will not be forgotten too
soon.”

“
It is
a
… beautiful ship,” she
was compelled to admit.

“
The
Virago
was a
beautiful ship,” he said, all but to himself. “Quick and keen,
sleek as a nymph. She was the ideal companion—loyal, trustworthy,
brave beyond measure in heart and soul, with a fiery temper that
could set any foe running before the wind. She did not deserve—” he
glanced around the wreckage in the cabin and sighed—
“this.”

“You said you
were set upon by six Spaniards and sank them all. I could not think
of a more fitting end, if it were my ship.”

“She did us
proud against the Spanish, aye. But it was an Englishman who
betrayed her.”

“
You were
betrayed? An
Englishman
told
the Spanish where to find you?”

His eyes
narrowed against the memory and for a moment, the rage and fury
that darkened his face was potent enough for Beau, standing half a
dozen paces away, to feel its heat. She saw the subtle shifting in
the color of his eyes as they went from being a pale, smoldering
gray to searing blue and she remembered seeing the same
extraordinary change a split second before he had grabbed at her
throat. With an effort Beau forced herself to breathe, aware she
had filled her lungs, so as to pre-empt another strike.

“Captain—?”

“Behind you,”
he said, cracking his words like kindling. “The big chest. Quicker
done, quicker away. That is what you want, is it not?”

Beau felt
a measure of her own anger leak back into her cheeks, dusting them
a soft pink. He had been betrayed. Fine. It perhaps explained his
lack of willingness to place his trust in strangers. But it did not
excuse his behavior in turning around and betraying Jonas Spence,
who had done nothing more malicious to the crew of the
Virago
than offer them fresh water and
rescue.

She turned on
her heel and strode across the cabin, kicking bits of debris out of
the way as she went. She muttered one of her father’s favorite
blasphemies under her breath, then repeated it with more substance
when she knelt beside the leather chest and flung open the strapped
lid.

For
almost a full minute she stared, her anger gradually receding and
giving way to surprise. The sea chest was brimming with women’s
clothes. Skirts, bodices, petticoats… even delicate chemises made
of cloth so sheer, it was almost transparent. She plucked one,
embroidered with silk floss and threads of pure gold, off the
shimmering pile and let the fabric slide through her hand, noting
it was like letting water glide over her skin and puddle in her
lap. She could hardly imagine wearing anything half so fine and
fragile, and wondered at the kind of woman who would. Surely the
smallest flaw, the tiniest freckle, would shine through. A question
more pertinent to character would be to wonder what kind of man
sought out such things, much less carried them halfway across the
world to present to whom? A wife? A mistress?

Conscious of
that very man seated across the room from her, Beau started
removing bundles of garments and setting them on the floor beside
her. When the chest was almost emptied, she saw something else that
made her movements slow, then come to a complete halt. Tucked into
one corner, nestled in a bed of silk stockings, was a silver jewel
casket. The top was rounded, the base was supported on four small
clawed feet; the style and filigree work was French in design, a
fact not entirely betrayed by the De Tourville wolfhound and
fleur-de-lis engraved on the lid.