The Following Sea (The Pirate Wolf series) (10 page)

"I have a brother as well. Jonas is a blustery, vain fellow, and would likely break a jug over someone's head if he knew his name had not merited a squeak of recognition."

Gabriel frowned. "Hold up there. William Chandler is your
father
? I thought you said he was your husband?"

Eva bit her lower lip and cursed inwardly, having realized her mistake the moment she blurted it. "Yes. I mean no, you were not mistaken for I did say that, but yes, he is my father not my husband. When you first asked me, I... I panicked. I thought if I said he was my husband it might... well... it might..."

"Save you from being ravished by me or by the lusty brutes who crew my ship?"

"Something like that," she admitted, adding a mumbled, "yes."

He tipped his head and laughed. "My dear
Mistress
Chandler, a wedded surname, out here in the middle of the vast nowhere, means about as much as a fly speck on a sandy beach. If I or any of my men truly wanted to ravish you, I can promise you the existence of a husband would offer little protection."

"I... I was frightened."

"Well you need not fear any of my men. They would as soon touch a leper as touch you at the moment. As for myself—" his gaze settled on the oily tangle of her hair— "should I become feverish over the next few hours it will not be out of lust."

She raised a hand self-consciously to touch her face, then her hair, then to smooth her fingers along the shapeless black shirt she had been given. She had not yet seen herself in a mirror but she guessed she must present quite the bedraggled, smelly fright.

Dante laughed again. "You really must make up your mind whether you wish your appearance to appeal or discourage."

She lowered her hand even as her chin tipped up. "Yours is not exactly a countenance one would swoon over, Captain Dante. Not in a good way, at any rate."

Gabriel was taken aback. He was also glad Jonas was not present for he could imagine the gales of laughter and endless teasing that would follow upon discovering there was a female on this good earth who did not instantly melt into a puddle at the sight of the strikingly handsome youngest son of the Pirate Wolf.

"My apologies, Captain," Eva said, having bitten her tongue hard enough to draw blood. "I meant no insult. And you did mention that you and your ship have recently been involved in some sort of fracas."

"A fracas?" Gabriel snorted and uncorked the wine bottle. "A fracas involving over a hundred ships; one in which my own was lost, leaving me to make do with this—" he paused and looked around— "this floating bordello."

"It is rather grandiose," she agreed. "The captain's cabin on board the
Eliza Jane
was a third the size and had one small writing table and a berth. My own cabin was the size of that water closet, but it was adequate for my needs."

He poured some wine into his goblet and took a healthy swallow. "So. You spent six weeks in an adequate cabin hoping to do what when you arrived in New Providence? As the daughter of a shipyard owner, you must surely be aware that there are a thousand islands big and small in the Indies and several thousand leagues of water surrounding them. I am curious to know how you were going to set about finding your father."

"And likely to end it before you'd even begun. New Providence is a pesthole, filled with pirates and whores. The bidding for something as sweet and fresh and young as yourself would start the instant you stepped onto the beach. Furthermore, many of these islands are covered in jungle—thick impenetrable jungle with snakes and crocodiles with teeth as long as your fingers, poisonous spiders and leeches that can suck the strength and life right out of your flesh."

If he expected his description of tropical paradise to make her crumple into a heap, he was disappointed, for she kept her expression blank and her gaze steady on his.

"What would you suggest I do, Captain Dante? Abandon the search? Return home to the safety of England knowing that my father might be struggling on his own somewhere, possibly hurt, possibly imprisoned or enslaved in chains?”

“I didn’t mean it. And I’m certainly not going to give up just because of a few snakes and leeches. Would
you
? Would you sail away and abandon your father, or your brother, or any member of your family? Would they abandon you?"

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. He disliked arguments where he could not actually argue. Having just emerged from a battle where not one member of his family, least of all his sister Juliet, had so much as entertained the notion of abandoning him to his fate, he could understand the emotion driving the girl forward. Feisty as she might be, however, this waifish little chit was no Juliet. She was all bones and big green eyes. It was a struggle for her just to drag around the cocoon of blankets she kept wrapped around her shoulders. How would she fare with a machete, slashing her way through the jungle?

"No," he admitted finally. "I would not abandon any of my family if I thought they were in trouble. But then I was born and raised in these climes, Mistress Chandler. Battles and bloodshed were daily fare and we were all taught from an early age how to survive if we were shipwrecked on a deserted island with no food or water. These islands were our playground and all three of us grew up sailing these waters, playing cat and mouse with the Spaniards, the Dutch, the Portuguese. We speak several languages other than English so that we know when we are being offered a fair price for our cargo and when we are being told to get the hell out of port before they hand us our ballocks in a bag. No offence, little
esquilo
, but if you were to find yourself in a Spanish-speaking village, how would you go about asking someone for information?"

"
Me gustaría preguntarle si
había oído
algo
sobre mi
padre
," she answered calmly. "I would ask if he had heard anything about my father. And kindly do not call me squirrel."

Gabriel tapped his long fingers on the desk. "
Je suppose que vous parlez français aussi
?"

"
O
ui
.
Très
bi
en."

"Dutch?"

"
Een
beetje
. A little. As I mentioned, I worked in the shipping office for a while, helping with import, export manifests."

He drummed his fingertips a moment longer. So she was educated and had enough language skills to know how to ask for a map rather than a banana. But asking questions and getting answers from the right people was a whole other matter.

"Why are you not afraid of me?" he asked with a thoughtful frown.

Here, at last, was a question that gave the quickness of her tongue pause. "Should I be?"

"You have come aboard a ship full of surly men who are wary that you might be carrying the plague. You find yourself locked away in a cabin with someone who is not in the best of humor at the moment—" he fanned a hand absently at the injuries to his face—" and who might well resent being infected with whatever pox killed your ship. A man who has just come through a battle that saw his ship sunk, half his crew shredded by cannonfire, and in no mood to compare those losses to that of an absentee, wandering father. I would think it prudent to be a
little
frightened, yes?"

She gave her answer some thought before she shook her head. "I was frightened on board the
Eliza Jane
. I was terrified to think I was completely alone with nothing but death and empty sea around me. For two days I tried to work up the courage to jump into the ocean and simply end the fear, but I was too frightened to even do that. So no, Captain, I am not afraid of you. Curious, perhaps, but not afraid."

"
Curious
? About what, pray?"

"About why you risked the wrath of your crew to bring me on board. About why you put your own health in jeopardy to fetch me out of the boat and bring me here. About what you plan to do with me if we pass through the night with no ill effects."

"You told me these islands were your playground and you know them well. I expect your name and reputation are equally well known, whereas Captain Fitch was a stranger and therefore likely not to have been given any truthful answers on Fox Island, regardless who he asked. But you are... well... one of them. One of the pirate brethren and any questions you might ask would surely win a more honest answer."

Gabriel shook his head. "My dear Mistress Chandler--"

"Captain Dante, you asked me why I left Portsmouth to come on this wild goose chase. The truth of it is, I did not leave by choice. I left because I
had
no choice. Someone tried to kill me. Had I not escaped on the
Eliza Jane
, the killer would have tried again and very likely succeeded."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Her words hung in the air for a moment, twisting this way and that. While she might not have been expecting him to leap up in chivalrous outrage and tear out fistfuls of his hair, she wasn't expecting him to simply sit there unmoved, his expression unchanged. Was it because he didn't believe her, or because it was commonplace in this part of the world for people to kill one other?

His chair squeaked as he leaned forward and refilled his goblet. After a moment's thought, he filled a second one and slid it toward her.

"Someone tried to kill you? That's rather a bold declaration."

"Nonetheless, true. I was shot. I can show you the scar if you do not believe me."

Dante's gaze roved down the slender length of her body at the same leisurely speed his thumb followed a bead of wine that dribbled down the outside of his goblet. "In due time, perhaps. Do you know who shot you? Or why?"

Her nod was supplemented by a whispered, "Yes I know who, and yes, I think I know why. Or at least... I'm fairly certain I know why."

~~

Every room in the house was a shambles. Furniture was broken, the cushions cut and torn apart. Books were pulled off the shelves, the bindings ripped and the pages scattered. Her bedroom had been completely destroyed, feathers laying about like snow from the mattress and pillows. Curtains had been torn from the windows, her writing desk smashed to bits, even the heels had been broken off her shoes. It was not a simple robbery, nor had the intruder taken the trouble to make it look like one. The small box that held her jewels had been upended, the contents thrown on the floor and left there, crushed under heavy boots.

At first she could think of no reason why anyone would ransack the house top to bottom. But then a feeling came over her, an icy hand that scraped down her spine and pushed her toward the fireplace in her bedchamber. Trembling fingers touched the loose stone cherub. It scraped open, revealing the secret compartment inside, the one she had found as a child and still used to hold her most precious belongings. The letters from her father were there, along with a small brass box containing several dozen wax disks.

She removed the letters and the box and clutched them to her breast. Her relief in finding them was short-lived, however, for a moment later she became aware of the soft tread of a boot behind her. Her back was to the door and she did not see him as he came into the room. But she felt him. She felt the quality of the air change, become thicker, blacker somehow. The mad rushing in her ears, the pounding of her heart almost took her to her knees as she heard the distinct snick of a flintlock pistol being cocked into the firing position.

~~

"Mistress Chandler?"

She looked up and realized that Gabriel Dante was waiting for her to expand on her answer. The question was: how much should she tell him? How much could she trust him?

The ability to trust or be trusted is in the eyes, always in the eyes.
Her father’s words, but they were hardly comforting now. Dante's eyes were rather daunting and completely inscrutable. The color was not quite brown, not quite green, but an unusual blending of both, like tarnished gold. They were always watchful, always alert, belonging to a man who had lived too long with danger to ever completely drop his guard.

At the same time, they were clear and direct, they did not flick away or cut slyly side to side as if he was calculating the next lie to tell. Moreover, he had risked his life to bring her on board, and he had risked the wrath of a potentially mutinous crew to lock himself away with her in his cabin. He was still a pirate and she could not afford to forget that, regardless how civilized he appeared to be. But if she wanted his help to find her father...?

"Mistress Chandler? As I said before, we are going to be together for some time. You can either tell me what has you all tied up in knots... or not. The choice is yours. But it has been a very long day and I've not had the luxury of a twelve hour nap."

Hoping she would not live to regret her decision, Eva reached up and unfastened the chain from around her neck. She let the silver links spill between her fingers and pool in her palm before settling the locket on top and reaching over to offer it to Dante.