The Pirate Prince (32 page)

After two days of receiving from Lazar what she believed was called the cold shoulder, Allegra was chastened but in no wise prepared to apologize for her pitiless honesty.

She spent the first day rather pleased with herself. She had preserved her chastity, which had been her chief aim, as well as gotten the obtuse, stubborn, bullheaded Lazar di Fiore to take the first steps toward reclaiming his throne. As for the way he was ignoring her, she could only scoff at him behind his back.

Poor, spoiled prince, sulking because he hadn’t gotten his way! She had stopped him from playing with his new toy.
Well, let him sulk!
Every ship needs a compass, he’d said. He had asked her to always tell him the truth, but obviously he couldn’t take it, she thought righteously.

Then she spent another night alone.

By the second day, his cool, relentless courtesy had her a little panicky. She missed his roguish grin like the loss of a friend, and she began to brood on the danger he said he must face.

Surely he did not expect to die. He was only being dramatic when he said that so she would feel guilty for not having given in to his carnal wishes.

The most vexing part was that he would not let her into the cabin to help him work on his plans for Ascencion, the one thing she longed to do. She knew he was denying her involvement in his enterprise just to be spiteful, but she was sure that sooner or later the great blockhead would realize he needed her counsel at least on some matters.

That afternoon, she dressed in her most charming muslin day dress, tied her bonnet ribbons under her chin, and marched herself topside, intent on finding something useful to do.

Mounting the hatch, she took in the azure sky and lively indigo sea, and spied Lazar under the clouds of snapping canvas, surveying his decks from his post on the quarterdeck. Hands clasped behind his back, tricorne shading his head, he looked every inch the grand sea captain. She tried to read him but could not, for his countenance was as smooth, serene, and hard as golden marble.

She gazed across the decks at him, hanging back uncertainly as she wondered if she should go try to talk to him, but when he saw her, he turned away, pacing abeam on his quarterdeck.

She narrowed her eyes in resentment and walked instead to the ship’s waist, where she offered to help the sailmakers mend canvas. The two sailmakers working this afternoon were garrulous, good-natured men, both from French islands in the West Indies. When she said she was willing to assist them, they were happy to tell her anything.

“Why is your captain called the Devil of Antigua?” she asked, sitting with them on mounds of netting in the shade.

Pierre laughed. “Now, that is a story! Up until four years ago, the Brethren had a different leader—”

“Captain Wolfe?” she asked.

The men nodded.

“What was he like?”

They grinned, and Jacques shook his head. “Put it this way, miss. You ever seen in a church how the artists paint the Creator? Aye, Jehovah, miss. Long white beard, fierce gray eyes…”

“He looked like God?” she cried.

“Aye, but missing a leg. They say he got it bit off by a shark, fishing one day. Hunted the thing, killed it, and spat in its eye. Then fed it to his men.”

“My word,” she said, blanching as they laughed.

“Aye, he had the instincts of an old-time sea dog, but if you crossed him…”

He shook his head ominously.

“He was a madman. A cruel—excuse me, ma’am—son of a bitch,” Pierre declared, laughing. “But you had to love him. Of course, he was known to get a bit carried away with the cat-o’-nine, and that was his downfall.”

“Did Lazar kill him?” she asked, wide-eyed, remembering the mesh of scars across his poor back.

“Oh, no, miss! Cap loved that old man.”

“Loved him? Surely not.” She furrowed her brow. “Wolfe flogged him.”

“Aye, there was a match of wills.” Pierre chuckled. “Wolfe couldn’t break him, so in the end, he adopted him for his own son.”

“
What?
”

“Aye, Wolfe never had any children of his own, so he made Lazar his son. Cap joined the Brethren, see, when he was just a boy.”

“How old?” she asked, keenly recalling that Lazar would have been thirteen at the time of the Fiori murders.

Pierre and he consulted. “Maybe fifteen, sixteen? Seventeen at the most.”

Jacques laughed. “Would’ve cut your throat if you laid a hand on his supper. He’s tamed himself down a lot since then,” he added.

She immediately wondered where he had been during the ensuing years between his disappearance from Ascencion and the time he had joined Captain Wolfe.

“Are you sure you want to hear this,
mademoiselle
?”

She nodded eagerly, then the men were interrupted by a question from one of the other crewmen, concerning a torn mainsail. Furtively watching the broad-shouldered man on the quarterdeck, she only half listened to their shouted conversation.

Most of the time, Lazar stood with one fist propped on his hip, she saw, a cheroot stuffed between his fingers, while the other hand held a voice trumpet to his lips as he sang out orders to the crew in his deep, commanding voice.

He loves this, she thought.

Occasionally he sauntered to the rails and peered out over the sea with a folding telescope, picking out some road for his fleet invisible to her eyes through the glassy main.

The sailmakers turned back to her.

“Anyway, we made a raid on Antigua four years ago,” Pierre said, then the two men exchanged a grim look. “The men became crazed with blood and gold and rum. It was a bad raid. Twenty men or so started a mutiny right in the middle of it. They killed old Wolfe.”

“Cap brought the men under control and got us out of there before the navy came. Then, back at the Den, he executed those that mutinied. The men took a vote, chose him. He’s been the leader of the Brethren ever since.”

“Took a vote?” she cried in astonishment. “He was
voted
captain?”

“Oh, aye, we always vote. That’s our way,” Pierre said mildly.

She stared at him. “You mean he governs the lot of you by a democracy?”

The two men looked at each other. “Guess that’s the word for it, miss.”

She shook her head as if to clear it. “What do you think of Lazar as a leader?”

“Never was a better,” Jacques declared.

“He’s a hard one, but he’s fair,” said Pierre.

“Is he ever cruel, like Wolfe? Does he give out floggings?”

“He’d never flog a man,” Jacques said at once. “No, Cap’s got only a few rules, but if you break one, you get only one more chance, then—” He made a gun out of his hand and, smiling, pretended to shoot her in the head. “Boom.”

The silly man could not know how his gesture chilled her. Gooseflesh ran down her arm as she recalled Lazar’s firing squad and his earlier stated intention of shooting her while Papa watched.

“I wonder how many people he has killed,” she murmured.

“I don’t rightly know.”

“Ask him.” Jacques chuckled as he threaded his needle.

“Don’t you dare, miss. He’s funning with you. Cap’s a private man.”

“Ask me what?” a deep voice suddenly asked, its tone ominously polite.

All three of them blanched as they looked up to find Lazar standing on the platform above them. His smug expression told her he had overheard her prodding the men for information about him. She narrowed her eyes at his gloating look, her courage instantly rallied.

“How many people you’ve murdered, Captain, sir,” she said boldly.

“Why, Miss Monteverdi, I never bothered to keep count,” he sweetly replied. He shot his men a thunderous warning look, then wished her a polite “Good day,” and sauntered away.

Oh, I detest that man
, she thought.

That night, they passed a tense, silent dinner in the stateroom. Stealing covert glances, Allegra noticed that Lazar barely touched his plate. He drank water instead of wine and seemed completely absorbed in his thoughts.

Though this might have been due to the danger ahead, she had a sinking feeling it was her unwelcome presence that made him so quiet. After all, whatever he had to face, she couldn’t imagine anything that would truly scare Lazar except for his own nightmares.

No, he was probably regretting that he had ever taken her captive, she thought, almost sulking. No doubt by now he was utterly relieved he had not made her pregnant as he’d suggested, for then he’d have been shackled to her indefinitely, tied to her and her child because of his sense of…honor, she thought in dismay.

Why had she accused him of having no honor? Wasn’t that a bit extreme?

She stared down at her plate, aching with wonder at how it could be that they sat here like two strangers after the intimacies they had shared. He’d had his fingers inside her, for God’s sake, her breasts in his mouth. Now he wouldn’t even meet her gaze. Allegra wanted to crawl into her bunk, pull the covers over her head, and stay there for the rest of the voyage, only her bed was too lonely without him to spend any more time there than absolutely necessary.

She could not comprehend why she should be the one to feel so miserable when
he
was the one in the wrong. Nor could she fathom why she was hurt by having been cast aside when her sole aim had been to preserve her virginity.

Well, she had certainly succeeded.

Soon, she thought, when it came time for him to take back Ascencion, he would almost certainly uphold his old betrothal and marry Princess Nicolette, just as Allegra had wanted him to.

The thought made her feel considerably more awful.

She took a drink of wine, then looked up when Lazar stood, set down his dinner napkin, and excused himself from the table in a mumble. Vicar and she sat looking at each other. Abruptly Allegra threw down her napkin, braced both elbows on the table, and held her head in both hands.

“He is troubled, dear. It’s not your fault,” the old Englishman consoled her.

“I can’t take this,” she heard herself say in a taut voice. “My fate is in the hands of a man who hates me.”

“I’d hardly say he hates you.” He chuckled.

She lifted her gaze to his beseechingly.

Vicar reached over and pinched her cheek. “Ah, my dear. Don’t let him get away with anything. You stick to your guns. You’ll be all right.”

She forced herself to smile at him. “You are a kind man, John Southwell.”

“Bosh,” Vicar mumbled. Coloring a little, he took a sip of wine.

“Vicar? Have there been many young ladies he’s kidnapped?”

He almost choked on his wine for laughing. Blotting his mouth with his napkin, silvery eyes dancing, he shook his head. “Miss Monteverdi, you are the first. You are also the first female I have ever seen cause the lad to lose his temper.”

Her shoulders dropped. “That just proves all the more he despises me.”

“Is that what it proves?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye. “Don’t be too sure.”

Later she lay in bed, arms folded under her head, staring up at the shadowy planks of the deckhead. No longer could she deny the truth. She had hurt Lazar. Badly.

He was
not
a fantasy. He was a man of flesh and blood, and he had needs.

He had taught her that she, too, had needs. She missed the feel of his rough, callused hands, so sure, so gentle.

Why did I have to hurt him?

Oh, what is wrong with you?
she snapped at herself. Impatiently she shifted onto her stomach and listened to the creaking of the ship’s oaken timbers and the dull boom of the sea against the hull.

She didn’t know how many minutes passed, possibly an hour. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw only his face, the look of full absorption in his task as he kissed her in that place she had never known a person could be kissed. Just thinking of it was almost enough to make her moan aloud.

What was the sense of denying him her virginity after she had allowed him to do
that
?

In her mind’s eye she could almost feel his hands on her skin, see her own hands on his broad shoulders, tracing the sculpted grandeur of his golden chest, pulling restlessly at his lean hips, holding his hardness against her.

When she closed her eyes, distraught with longing for him, it occurred to her that there had to be some way to give him such pleasure as he had given her. How wonderful it would be to make him submit to her in pleasure for once! As a lover, Lazar had given of himself so completely, but he had never shown her how to give to him, how to pleasure that magnificent, warrior’s body.

All of a sudden she gave up trying to fall asleep. She got up from her bunk. Trembling, she quickly pulled her rose-printed muslin day dress on over her chemise, tied it behind her, and went in search of her captor who had called himself her lover. She was going to apologize before her better sense could stop her.

It was the only sensible thing to do, she told herself defensively. The man held her fate in his hands. Only a fool would vex and insult him.

She glanced in the stateroom, but it was dark and empty, and no light shone from the crack under the cabin door. Resolute, she made her way down the dark, narrow passageway and to the aft hatch. She was halfway up the ladder’s rungs when she stopped, hearing his deep, jolly laughter and herself being discussed.