Teresa Medeiros (43 page)

Admiral Sir Lucien Snow belched delicately, then dabbed at his lips with a linen napkin. “I do so hate to sup early. It wreaks havoc on my poor digestion.”

As an apple-cheeked young yeoman whisked away the Admiral’s plate, Smythe traversed the length of the shadowy galley to approach the table. He fought to keep his gaze from straying to the sheet of vellum shoved carelessly aside to make room for a decanter of the Admiral’s favorite sherry.

“Permission to speak, sir?” he requested, the familiar setting stirring to life all of his dormant military instincts.

The Admiral looked mildly amused. “Permission granted.”

Smythe shot a glance toward the far end of the galley, where Claremont’s improbable messenger was being held at gunpoint by two bored lieutenants. The wiry little man’s dour bravado was betrayed by the constant shifting of his feet and the nervous dart of his beady eyes.

Smythe braced his palms on the table, leaning forward to ensure the privacy of their conversation. “Sir, need I remind you that the sun is beginning to set? Every moment you delay places Miss Lucy in graver danger.”

The Admiral took up a small silver knife and began to pick at his teeth. “And need I remind you, Smythe, that you’ve no one to blame for this debacle but yourself. After all, you’re the one who led my solicitors on a merry chase while the man was working right beneath our noses. It’s still beyond me how you failed to recognize the wretch!”

Smythe kept his face deliberately bland, knowing his employer would delight in using his own anguish and guilt as a weapon against him. “I’m not a young man anymore, sir. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”

“A pity, isn’t it?” Snow tossed down the knife and pushed his bulk away from the table, his expression so calculating that Smythe regretted rousing him to any action at all.

He was painfully aware of the drowsy curiosity of the men scattered at ease throughout the galley. Officers handpicked by the Admiral for both their unquestioning loyalty and their discretion. Just as he had been.

As his commander circled him, Smythe could not resist snapping to attention. Old habits seldom died a bloodless death.

The Admiral lowered his voice to the compelling velvet of acting-Captain-as-God. Disagreement would be tantamount to mutiny. Or blasphemy. “What would you have me do, Smythe? Claremont cares nothing for gold and you know better than anyone that I have no letter of marque to give him.”

Smythe kept his own voice just as low. “Perhaps a written confession, sir. If carefully worded and balanced against your many noble accomplishments, it might not do irreparable damage to your good name in the press.”

“Ah, my reputation for Lucy’s? Is that what you’re proposing?”

Smythe’s boundless patience began to fray. “Your reputation for Lucy’s life,” he snapped.
“That’s
what I’m proposing.”

The Admiral smiled as if gratified by his impassioned response. “Claremont won’t kill her right away. If she’s half as eager to please in bed as her mother
was, he’ll keep her alive. At least until he tires of her clever little tricks.”

Smythe stared at him, stunned by his crass words. His hands balled into fists. Fists he longed to smash into the Admiral’s smug face. But his own guilt paralyzed him. After all, it had been he and not the Admiral who had allowed his beloved Lucy to fall into Claremont’s vengeful hands.

With a gesture of chilling finality, the Admiral crumpled the sheet of vellum outlining the pirate’s demands. “I’m afraid there’s only one course left open to me. You read the newspapers before we sailed—the veiled slurs, the sly innuendos. Our little Lucy has spent three weeks at the mercy of rapacious pirates. Her reputation is already in shreds.” Smythe’s horror mounted along with the wistful regret in the Admiral’s expression. “Surely any woman who’s endured what she has at Doom’s debauched hands would choose a noble end over the disgrace of surviving such an ordeal.”

Smythe’s fist lashed out of its own accord, striking Snow across the mouth. “You heartless bastard!”

The Admiral staggered backward, knuckling blood from the corner of his mouth. Smythe lunged at him, but found himself restrained by a covey of Snow’s minions, aghast that he had dared to strike their commander.

The Admiral’s voice crackled with vicious satisfaction. “Take Mr. Smythe below and put him in chains. He seems to be suffering from some sort of brain fever, irreversible, I fear.”

Smythe struggled wildly against the arms and legs that bound him. As if from a great distance, he saw the Admiral pick up the silver knife and test its blade against his thumb, heard his jovial voice call out,
“Come forward, Mr. Digby. I’ve a message for you to convey to your captain.”

Smythe’s howl of warning was cut off by the butt of a pistol striking his temple. Blossoms of light exploded behind his eyelids. His last coherent thought as they dragged him away was
I’m sorry, Annemarie. So bloody sorry
. Then softer than a sigh of regret escaping his weary lungs—
Lucy
.

“C
AP’N! CAP’N! THE LAUNCH! SAINTS BE praised, there she be!”

Tarn’s jubilant cry sent every hand aboard the
Retribution
rushing as one man to the starboard rail. With a resigned sigh, Kevin surrendered his spyglass to his brother, preferring its loss to the loss of his fingers.

Gerard squinted into the miniature telescope, brushing a ruffled lock of hair from his eyes. The wind had risen as the sun began its lazy descent into the sea, loosening the grip of the heat to a bearable embrace.

He didn’t know whether to celebrate his triumph or mourn his coming loss. He’d never allowed himself to dream beyond this moment, which was just as well, for without Lucy, the future loomed as nothing but a bleak haze, as gray and frigid as the North Sea in winter. She would doubtlessly spend the rest of her life hating him, believing him so mercenary as to have sold her to her own father for thirty pieces of silver and a worthless scrap of paper. A bittersweet victory indeed.

A rousing cheer went up as the delinquent craft
drifted into view. It faded to pensive silence as the men, born sailors every one of them, detected something odd about the launch’s course. Instead of slicing purposefully toward the
Retribution
, it bobbed aimlessly among the rising swells, tossed this way and that by the whims of the mounting wind. The lowest edge of the sun crimped along the horizon, staining the sea a bloody orange.

“She looks to be empty, sir! No sign of Digby.”

Even before Tarn’s bewildered voice had sounded the alarm, Gerard had lowered the spyglass and given Apollo a cryptic signal. He watched with a sickening sense of dread as Fidget and Apollo lowered a second longboat into the choppy water. They threw their powerful backs into rowing, straining to catch the launch before the current could drag it farther out to sea. Tarn swung down from the rigging to add his silent hopes to their vigil.

The second craft seemed to dwindle in size as it skirted the
Argonaut
’s shadow. His men’s vulnerability beneath the hungry mouths of the warship’s cannons chilled Gerard, but he was bitterly confident that the Admiral’s vanity would insist his handiwork be appreciated before it was destroyed. Apollo held the longboat steady while Fidget snagged the smaller boat with expert skill, dragging it back toward the haven of its mother ship.

Something was lying in the bottom of the launch. From a distance, it looked to be nothing more than a bloody bundle of rags, but Gerard knew better.

He closed his eyes against a wave of numbing grief, opening them only when he heard Apollo’s footfalls on the deck. His quartermaster stood before him, Digby’s pale, limp body draped across his arms like a sacrificial offering. The naughty twinkle in the gunner’s eyes had been permanently extinguished.

Pudge drew off his spectacles to swipe the fog from them with a scarlet kerchief. Tarn snatched off his cap, mumbling a paternoster. Kevin bit off an oath that would have done the cantankerous old gunner proud. Only their captain remained utterly still, as soulless in that moment as the lifeless husk in his quartermaster’s arms.

“A knife to the belly,” Gerard said coolly, eyeing the protruding silver hilt. “Neither a quick death, nor a painless one.”

Without so much as a flinch, he reached down and ripped away the paper secured by the blade. His men hovered nearer, but Gerard did not satisfy their curiosity by reading the words aloud. They were intended only for him.

All my life I have taken great pride in refusing to negotiate with men of your ilk. Nor will I begin now
.

As Gerard crumpled the paper in his fist, the Admiral’s priggish sneer rose before him.
Men of your ilk
. It should have been laughably absurd that the man insisted on clinging to his charade of righteousness. But Gerard Claremont had just lost his sense of humor.

As the sea extinguished the rays of the sun, eerie fingers of twilight swirled around him. He no longer dreaded the dark, but welcomed it, eager to surrender to its seductive embrace. With infinite gentleness, he reached over and closed Digby’s sightless eyes for the last time, remembering when he’d done the same for his mother. What was one more death on a soul as damned as his?

When Gerard lifted his head, his crew recoiled involuntarily from his stark expression. “Perhaps the time has come to show the morally upstanding Snow just what a man of my ilk is capable of.”

Impatient to ease their feelings of helplessness at Digby’s death, his crew muttered agreement and exchanged
eager nods. But instead of giving the command for battle as they expected, their captain started for the companionway, his swagger laced with the unreachable authority of his position.

Kevin was the only one who dared to step into his path.

The brothers faced each other, both their similarities and their differences enhanced by their defensive postures.

“Don’t do this,” Gerard said softly. “She’s not worth it.”

Kevin’s jaw jutted out much the way it had when he’d been five years old and refused to repent for peeking up the milkmaid’s skirts. “I happen to think she is.”

Gerard contemplated his baby brother through narrowed eyes. He’d never struck him and had no intention of doing so now. “Out of my way, mister,” he barked. “That’s an order.”

The impersonal words cut deeper than any blow. Kevin recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “Aye, Captain,” he spat with pure contempt, stepping aside to stand at rigid attention.

Gerard dropped through the companionway into the hold to find himself no longer pursued by shadows, but in glorious accord with them.

Upon reaching the great cabin, Gerard didn’t trouble himself with keys or bolts. He simply lifted his leg and shattered bolt and lock with one well-aimed kick.

Lucy looked up from her chair at the table, blinking as if she were too dazed to be alarmed by his peculiar method of entry. She had been reading by the lingering lavender of twilight, so caught up by the past unfolding between the pages of her mother’s diary that
she’d been completely oblivious to the drama occurring right outside the porthole.

Her big, gray eyes were luminous with recent tears. Gerard steeled himself against their damp-lashed beauty. His pity had died with Digby.

His violence spent for the moment, he eased the door shut on its battered hinges, affording them a measure of privacy. Lucy rose to face him, clutching her mother’s diary to her chest. A thrill of satisfaction shot through him. This was no craven bully who hid behind nameless emissaries and took childish glee in browbeating women and gutting old men. This was a woman who boldly defied him each time he deserved it, whether for blowing smoke rings at her nose or for blindfolding her and kissing her insensible. Here at last was an opponent worthy of his mettle!

Lucy’s chin had come up, her spine stiffened. Her eyes glittered with mute challenge. Gerard adored her reckless courage, had adored it from that moment in this very cabin when she had dared to engage him in a verbal duel of wits with her body and his soul as the spoils of battle.