The Pirate Prince (40 page)

That evening, he tackled the problem of insufficient ports to maximize Ascencion’s excellent natural harbors, with docks and warehouses to better accommodate the fishing industry, one of the country’s staple resources he meant to revitalize. He decided Ascencion should have a university, at least a military and naval academy, so that the next time invaders came—and they always did, he said—the standing forces would be well trained.

When she finally coerced him into taking a short nap, he woke up with a font of ideas about reforming the tax structure. His fingers were stained with ink, his clothes a rumpled mess, but when he cast her a weary smile from across the stateroom where they worked, surrounded by a sea of scribbled papers, she imagined he was happier than he’d ever been since the loss of his family.

Yet he was changing, being transformed by his task. With every passing hour, he seemed a little less pirate and a little more prince—or, more specifically, young king preparing to return from a long and unjust exile.

With his lack of sleep and food, he even began to look slightly different. Perhaps he had lost three or four pounds, but his face took on a look of lean intensity. A leonine calm tempered the fierce expression of his fiery eyes. His roguish swagger became a clean, collected stride. It was as if everything extraneous in him were being burned away, like the impurities from a fine sword in the smith’s furnace.

She could see that the men, too, felt the changes in him, though he still did not permit them to know his true identity. They began reacting to him differently, obeying their orders with a bit more snap in their step. Where he had captained them before with a mix of raw charisma and force, now his command deepened to true authority, mastery.

Though he now had his signet ring, unassailable proof of his identity, and would soon be joined, he hoped, by his father’s powerful and well-connected advisers when they reached the West Indies, he realized a show of muscle might still be necessary to induce Genoa to pull out of Ascencion. For that reason, he decided to include the Brethren in their enterprise, if the men were willing. He thought it not impossible to turn his pirates into Ascencion’s first royal navy.

He refused to see that there was something hilarious in the notion, though Allegra nearly fell down laughing.

Among the Brethren were seasoned captains, he retorted, shipbuilders, fearless and disciplined crews. He believed that if they joined him and took an oath to leave the life of crime, Ascencion could soon possess one of the finest navies on the seas. With the timber forests in Ascencion’s highlands, he told her, a highly profitable shipbuilding industry could also be started.

The evening they sailed into the Carribbean, she found the young king on the sea balcony, staring down into the foamy waves. He did not look up when she joined him at the rail—she had long ceased fearing that she might fall in. How much deeper could she fall?

She gathered by his brooding expression that his mind was heavily weighted.

Coming up behind him, she rubbed the broad curve of his back with a comforting caress, wishing there were something she could do to soothe the troubled look from his brow.

“Have you eaten?” she murmured.

He mumbled a vague answer. They were both silent for a moment. She ran her hand down his arm, then leaned against him, sighing when she thought of the plan he had proposed weeks ago, that they live out the rest of their lives together on some idyllic farm. Sometimes she wished, oh, she wished she had cast responsibility to the wind and said yes.

She caressed his hand on the rail, and he turned it palm upward, linking his fingers through hers.

I love you, she thought. I love you so much.

“What if they think it’s a hoax?” he said. “What if they don’t come?”

“Your father’s old advisers?” She smiled up at him with pride in her eyes. “They’ll come.”

“All the way to the West Indies? I don’t know. General Enzo will come. That I know,” he said, nodding to himself. “That old bear’s not afraid of anything. But I need Pasquale.”

“They’ll all come,” she assured him.

He stared down at the waves for a while, deep in thought, but when he turned to her, there was that lustrous, golden fire in his eyes she had come to know well.

“Why don’t you help me take a break from all this work?” he murmured, trapping her against the rail, an arm on either side of her. He lowered his head and kissed her hungrily, then captured her hand and pressed it to him, caressing the back of her hand insistently over his manhood as he asked for her without a word.

One couldn’t ignore a royal command.

She was becoming rather adept at unbuttoning his clothes, but he was fully aroused even before she grasped him.

“Naughty girl,” he breathed. “Take me into your mouth.”

She went down on her knees as he tilted his head back in pleasure, leaning in the doorway of the balcony.

They never even made it to the bed. He lifted her skirts, and he took her on the floor, both of them still almost fully dressed. On his knees, he entered from behind her, and she was ready for him. Grasping her hips, he plied her body with slow, tantalizing strokes. Again and again, he thrust smoothly, all the way in and out to his magic tip as he caressed her backside with his warm, callused hands.

She moaned for more when he paused to collect his control, for in the doorway she had aroused him to fever pitch, pleasuring him with her mouth and hands. He coiled her hair around his hand and gave it to her, relentlessly driving her to the edge of rapture.

Then he hunched down over her back, gripping her in place, possessing her there on the floor like a wild animal, and she was his mate.

His breath was harsh and fast at her ear. “Who do you need,
chérie
?”

She gasped his name again and again, arching on her hands and knees before him, ignoring the vague, separate sense of hurt that had begun to form deep in her heart, underneath the pleasure.

“Is that deep enough for you?” he asked in a hot, arrogant whisper at her ear.

She groaned, a breathless whimper, for with every stroke the tip of him kissed a spot deep in the core of her body. He squeezed her nipple hard through her dress, but when he reached down between her thighs, she lost her mind. While she was still writhing in the throes of release, he came hard and fast, ravishing her until he was spent.

Moments later, behind closed eyes, Allegra tried to absorb the rage of love that had swept her away so completely. She was scandalized by her abandoned response to him and uneasy about how completely she surrendered to him, holding nothing back. The man was not her husband, after all.

Lazar lay atop her, catching his breath.

“That was incredible,” he panted.

She lay still until he got off her. Puzzled by the dull misery that had seeped down into her limbs, she dragged herself wearily from the floor. Moving dazedly, she knelt and stared blankly at the rug.

“Allegra, what’s wrong?”

She looked up at Lazar, who was standing, tucking in his shirt as if nothing had happened.

She lowered her gaze, unwilling to complain, for she had chosen her fall of her own free will. She refused to regret.

“Nothing,” she mumbled.

“You sure?” he asked brightly.

She nodded.

He grinned. “Good.”

He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks,” he whispered, then he strode jauntily toward the door, revitalized.

Thanks?
Thanks?
she thought in disbelief.

She stared straight ahead. She would not cry. She loved Lazar, her Prince. He could use her if he wanted to.

“Hey, old man.”

Vicar peered over his spectacles in query as Lazar came sauntering over to the shade where the Englishman was stationed, as usual, with his nose in a book.

“Well, haven’t seen much of you lately,” Vicar said, his lined face a wreath of smiles—until he saw the boy, Darius, following in Lazar’s footsteps.

It seemed the boy had appointed himself Lazar’s keeper, for Darius shadowed him everywhere, serious and silent, a grim wisdom in his face incongruous with his fourteen summers.

Regarding the youth, Vicar’s face took on that frown of scholarly disapproval Lazar had learned to avoid whenever possible in his earlier years. He had the feeling Vicar was preparing to make a new project of the fierce young Darius Santiago.

Lazar privately chuckled over it, for he was quite sure this time Vicar had met his match.

“I see you brought your first royal knight with you,” Vicar remarked, looking the boy over with a critical eye, ever the schoolmaster.

Darius shot him a scowl, not realizing yet that Vicar was only teasing him.

“Ach, lighten up on the lad. He’s not used to your British humor.”

“Hmm,” Vicar replied in his most professorial tone, tapping one arm of his spectacles against his lips. “And how did the shooting lesson go?”

Lazar grinned and looked at Darius as the boy tossed his black forelock out of his eyes. He didn’t dare tousle this lad’s hair, for fear of getting his arm sliced off.

“He’s not much with a rifle, but actually he’s pretty good with a knife. Aren’t you?”

“I’ll learn,” Darius assured him, following along as Lazar helped himself to one of Vicar’s cheroots and lit it from the table lantern, as was his habit.

Vicar smacked Darius’s hand away from the box of cheroots when he reached for one in turn. Darius stared at him half in defiance, half in disappointment, until Lazar gave him his own cheroot and took another one for himself, casting Vicar an insolent smile.

Promptly, the boy burst out choking on the smoke, though he fought to hold his coughs back.

“You see?” Vicar chided him, eyeing the cheroot.

Darius swallowed his coughs with a look of pure determination.

“Perhaps instead of weapons, your teacher might next attempt a lesson in history, or literature, or mathematics,” Vicar suggested with a dour look at Lazar.

“I am already smart,” Darius informed him gravely.

“Young man, that is a very stupid attitude. Ask the captain,” Vicar said. “The captain enjoys all the arts and humanities. He can even recite poetry—or could, anyway, before those last few blows to the head.”

“There is nothing wrong with my head.”

Darius looked up at Lazar skeptically. “Poetry?” he repeated. “No.”

“I’m afraid it’s true.” Lazar clapped the boy on the shoulder. “What do you say, greenling? You saved my life—I owe you. Where do you want to go to school?”

Darius started laughing and looked at Vicar.
Now
he thought he was being teased.

“I’m serious,” Lazar told him. “I’ll pay for it.”

His laughter stopped. Instantly the boy was uneasy. He looked from one face to the other, suddenly on his guard. His fear pained Lazar.

How Malik could warp a life
, he thought.

Vicar briskly tried changing the subject. “There’s no need for formal schooling to begin one’s education. Young man, I want you to read the first chapter of this book tonight. Tomorrow we will discuss it, and I expect you to be prepared to answer questions. I shall give you a quiz, and if you fail, you shall have to help tar the deck.”

Darius drew himself up, lifting his chin with a prickly Spanish grandeur and an arrogance that was almost breathtaking. Lazar shook his head to himself, unable to fathom how such pride had survived Malik, but perhaps the boy’s bloodthirsty vengeance on the sheik had cleansed him of the shame.

The boy glanced in disdain at the book, making no move to take it from Vicar’s hand. “I have no need for book lessons,
señor
, for
I
have the sixth sense.”

“Do you, now?” Lazar said easily as he puffed on the cheroot. Somehow he could believe it. He had not heard the boy make a boast yet that he could not carry out.

Vicar was not impressed, returning the boy’s masterful stare with a smile of amusement.

“I think what our little
hidalgo
here is trying to say is that he can’t read.”

“I’ll tar the deck,” Darius said insolently. “I am not afraid of hard work.”

Lazar scratched his jaw, amused by their battle of wills—it reminded him of the old days, when Vicar first decided to join him—but he still rather thought the boy might be dangerous if crossed, and he didn’t want him cutting the old man’s throat next.

“Greenling, do me a favor,” he said as if he had just thought of it. “Go down to the galley, and find out what Emilio is making for my supper. Then go tell Miss Monteverdi, too,
capisce
?”

“Aye,
Capitán
,” he said solemnly, tossing the forelock out of his eyes again. Darius glided off, silent and mysterious as a cat.

When he was gone, Lazar looked at Vicar and could only shake his head.

“Where on earth did you find that creature?” said Vicar.

Lazar chuckled. “No, sir. He found me,” he declared.

“And won’t be letting you go anytime soon, I daresay.”

“Puzzling little fellow, isn’t he? He seems to feel at ease only when you ignore him or give him some job to do. Move too quickly around him, and he jumps away as if you’re going to hit him.” Lazar shrugged. “Well, I gave Emilio strict orders to fatten the kid up, anyway. He’ll probably sprout up half a foot once he starts eating properly.”

“Then you’d best try to civilize him quickly.” Vicar chuckled.

“I’m not sure it’s possible.”

“How’s the missus?”

Lazar’s lips pursed into a thin line of thought as he took his usual place, leaning against the capstan. For a moment he tapped the ashes from his cheroot, then crushed them out under his boot heel.

“She’s not well,” he answered at length. “Not well at all.”

“Is she feeling under the weather?” he asked hopefully. “Perhaps I shall soon be a granduncle.”

“It’s not that. She’s unhappy. I am making her unhappy. This whole arrangement is hurting her.” He touched his heart vaguely. “And it kills me.”

“You know my feelings on the matter,” Vicar disapprovingly replied as he perused his page.