The Pirate Prince (9 page)

The rebel never took her to his faction. Instead, he took her back to Little Genoa.

The city was dark and deserted now except for pockets of guards who roamed the streets or gathered in the empty square. There was a mood of tension in their sharp calls, the piercing toots of the sergeant’s whistle, the sound of marching boots and pawing horses.

Everyone’s looking for him and me
, she marveled as her captor led her along the shadows of the old Roman wall toward the gate towers—into the very lions’ den, it seemed.

On the one hand, she felt guilty for cooperating with her captor so willingly, as if she had turned against her father and joined the rebel side herself. But what choice did she have? She could not fight a man a foot taller than she and twice her weight, in pure, solid muscle.

Her stomach felt strange, kind of quivery and sick, when she thought about what they’d do to Humberto when they caught him, especially when they saw her ripped dress—ripped by Domenic—but they would think he had done it. The soldiers would take retribution on his whole village and no doubt do to the peasant girls there what they would assume he had done to her. Then the men of the village would blow up a garrison or set up an ambush of the soldiers and do horrible things to the men they caught. Retribution upon retribution upon retribution, vendetta piled on vendetta, back and forth ceaselessly, she thought wearily.

Considering the fact that Ascencion was a Catholic country whose Savior had told men to turn the other cheek, Allegra could never fathom why the medieval custom of vendetta infected all Italy like a disease, a fever of madness. The islands were plagued with it worst of all, Sicily, Corsica, and Ascencion. Though King Alphonse was all but worshipped here, no one seemed to remember or care that he had made a law against the practice twenty years earlier.

Glancing toward the palazzo, she saw that all the windows were still bright. She wondered what Papa was going to have to say about all this. She only knew he would not let the news of her kidnapping leak out among the guests.

Domenic had probably been discovered by now and carried in to see the doctor, she thought. Probably had told Papa a lot of lies about how it all happened, making himself appear blameless, then staggered back to the mistress.

Near the gate towers, the rebel turned to gaze down at her in silence for a long moment, with a strange, feverish look of pain in his dark, soulful eyes. He stared at her so long, she thought he was going to lower his beautiful mouth and kiss her. Instead he drew her into his arms, turning her gently so her back was pressed close against his front. Then he slid his left arm around her belly. Still she did not protest.

“Allegra,” he murmured, and she trembled at the deep, hungry heat of his voice. She closed her eyes as his fingers lightly brushed her neck, smoothing all her hair forward over one shoulder. The accidental caress made her fleetingly so weak she had to lean back slightly against him just to keep her balance.

When she did, he paused. She could feel his restraint in every powerful muscle that surrounded her.

“Does your ankle still hurt?”

“Just a little,” she whispered breathlessly.

He was very still, and then he caressed her deliberately. All her awareness seemed focused where he put his fingertips on the side of her neck just beneath her ear, running them lightly, slowly down the curve of her neck to her shoulder.

Her skin felt acutely sensitive and soft wherever he touched her, as if it were newly made silk being unfurled for a master weaver’s touch. She shivered uncontrollably and felt his pulse quicken in answer against her body. His mighty heart raced, and she ached to know his real name.

His fingers rounded her shoulder, coming down the back of her arm to her wrist. When he slipped his fingers into her hand for a moment, she clasped them lightly.

“Allegra,” he breathed, “I am so sorry for what I must do.”

“It’s all right,” she murmured, eyes closed, her head against the taut, supple cushion of his breast while she drifted in the spell he’d cast on her. He removed his callused fingers from her gentle grasp, trailing his hand up her arm.

She was still savoring the feel of him against her when she heard a small, metallic click.

She opened her eyes just as the stranger lifted the silver muzzle of a pistol and set it against her temple, gentle as a kiss.

She froze in his arms. “What are you doing? Oh, dear God.”

“Easy,
chérie
,” he said as he walked her out into the open toward the tower door. “Just be still, do as I say, and nothing unpleasant will happen.”

Men saw them and ran toward them, but Lazar ordered them to stay back. They obeyed.

“Now, knock on the door,” he murmured to her. “When they answer, announce yourself.”

She didn’t move.

“Allegra.”

“I can’t,” she squeaked. “I’m too scared.”

“You can do it,
chérie
,” he said, staring down the nervous soldiers.

“Stop calling me that! How can you call me that when you’ve got a gun to my head?”

She began to cry. He told himself that was good; it would add to the effect. But it made him feel desolate.

“I hate you for this!”

“Come on, honey. You can do it,” he said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you. We have to get these soldiers out of the way, that’s all.”

“D-do you promise?”

“I swear,” he whispered.

“A-all right.” Her whole little body shaking against him, she stepped forward and pounded on the massive, iron-bolted wooden door that sealed the tower. She seemed tiny in front of it, a detail that clenched his heart somehow. He pulled her immediately back into his half embrace before she had time to contemplate escaping, but she merely winced at placing her full weight on her ankle. Instantly they heard men’s voices on the other side. She announced herself in a quavering voice.

“How could you do this to me?” she whispered. “I never did anything to you. I would never hurt anyone.”

He believed it. His heart twisted like a horse with a bullet in its gut.

When she closed her eyes again, apparently straining for calm, he examined her extraordinary gold-tipped lashes. “If it’s any consolation, I would sell my soul to make love to you,” he murmured.

“I wouldn’t have you! Not in a thousand, million years!”

“I think you would,” he said.

“Oh, God, I hate you so.”

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he addressed the soldiers in a taut, amiable voice. “Miss Monteverdi and I would like all of you to step outside. Come out quietly, with your hands in the air.”

In minutes, he had emptied the small garrison, bolted himself and Allegra inside the tower alone, and further secured the door by wedging the coarse table against it, scattering the colorful playing cards the soldiers had abandoned mere moments ago.

“You are mad!” the girl screeched at him, throwing up her hands. “Do you realize you are going to hang? The minute you walk out the door, you’re a dead man!”

He tossed her a grin. “How sweet of you to care.” He holstered his pistol, then grabbed her hand, pulling her up the circling flight of stone steps, two at a time.

The air in the tower was close and old, the walls damp. They reached the garret slightly winded. He looked around at the little room perched high atop the tower, overlooking the sea. It was bare but for a crude wooden table with benches pushed back carelessly and a few lanterns, still lit, that hung from iron hooks.

He blew out all of the lanterns but one, preferring to work mostly by moonlight so as to deny the soldiers an easy target if they started shooting.

In the center of the room was the big crank for the east gate. The wheel was the culmination of an elaborate system of chains and pulleys that operated the gate. He released Allegra’s hand, stalked to the center of the room, and put his shoulder to the crankshaft. It would take two or three men to turn it with any dexterity, but he was just going to have to do it himself.

Allegra stared at him, white-faced and strangely still. At the first great groaning of the gate, she jumped.

“Who are you?” she demanded as he threw his weight against the shaft—and promptly burst open the cut on his arm.

He muttered a foul oath and stepped back to find blood spilling from the cut afresh.

“Rip off a strip from your dress,” he ordered her. “I have to wrap this damned cut, or I’ll never get the gate open.”

“Why are you opening the gate?”

“Just do it,” he said with acerbic sweetness. He took out his flask of rum and poured a generous draft onto the wound, cursing under his breath at the sting.

Allegra suddenly turned and bolted out of the garret.

“Get back here!” he bellowed. “Damn you, woman,” he panted. His arm streaming with blood mixed with rum, he dashed after her.

In a few moments, he had her slung over his right shoulder and was carrying her, kicking and punching, back up the stairs. He threw her down onto the table, snapped the kid strap off his flask, and hobbled her with it, binding her ankles with a sailor’s knot she would never figure out. She was cursing him in a convent-school girl’s version of black oaths all the while.

“Brute! Liar! Murderer! Get away from me! You are bleeding on me,” she growled, staring up at him mutinously.

“Give me this,” he muttered, tugging at the satin sash around her waist. “Should do the trick.”

“No!” she gasped, grabbing it with both hands.

He stared down at her. “No?”

She clutched the sash. “No. You will not blot your disgusting blood on
this
, Mister No-Name!”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Look, Miss Monteverdi. My arm is bleeding because of your precious fiancé, from whose, you may recall, I rescued you.”

“Remind me to thank you for that the next time you put a loaded gun to my head!” she shouted, gesturing at her temple.

“Oh, you are a vexing chit. I was not going to shoot you. Besides, my gunpowder got wet coming here—it probably wouldn’t even have fired. Now, give me this—it’s just a piece of cloth.”

“No, it’s not!” she roared.

He snapped it out of her hand and walked over to the lantern, unraveling it. Just as he was about to clean his wound with it, he realized what it was.

He stopped, staring at it. He held the length of satin up to the light.

How had he failed to see it until now?

Chills ran down his spine.

The green and black. The colors of the Fiori
.

Heart pounding, Lazar looked over at her. “What the hell is this?”

She lifted both eyebrows and gave him a nonchalant shrug.

“I asked you a question.”

“Why should I tell you anything when you won’t even tell me your name?”

He raised the ribbon in his fist. “Why are you, a Monteverdi, wearing the colors of the Fiori?”

“None of your business.”

“Actually, it is.” He turned fully toward her, hands on his hips, ignoring his bleeding arm. “Tonight you were hostess at a ball for Ottavio Monteverdi, with half the Genovese Council present.” He lifted the satin. “And you wore this.”

She thrust up her pert chin. “So what if I did?”

He stared at the brazen, unrepentant creature with a kind of awe. Then he stared down again at the satin in his hand, barely hearing the rest of her barrage.

“…But you know what? I don’t even want to know your name anymore. I don’t want to know a single fact about you. You are the most uncouth, uncivilized, un—”

Suddenly Lazar was overjoyed.

He crossed the garret to her in three steps, took her face between his hands, and stopped her insults with a jubilant kiss. Instantly her sweetness fired his senses, and he slipped his arms around her, gathering her closer with a low groan of heady pleasure.

Allegra Monteverdi could not have imagined at that moment how happy she had just made him. He could not
possibly
kill her now. She had given him an unassailable excuse to spare her.

All sailors were superstitious, and as far as he was concerned, that green-and-black sash was as good as a sign from the afterworld. No, he would torment Monteverdi some other way. Allegra would live.

He would take her under his protection and, praise God, straight to his bed.

Oh, he was going to turn her into a goddess of sensuality, he thought, tasting her soft lips like cherry wine. He would spend the passage back to the West Indies instructing and enjoying her.

Beyond that, well, he’d figure something out. He only knew he’d be personally responsible for her, because by morning her father, her relatives, and her vicious betrothed would be dead.

He shivered with desire when she slipped her arms around his neck and began tentatively kissing him back.

Oh, yes, she belonged by his side. They were bound together by her father’s crime. By morning they would be the sole survivors of their respective clans.

For this reason, he decided there and then to tell her his true identity, something he never confided to his women. This situation was entirely different. And perhaps he wanted, finally, to tell someone.

His heart pounded as he kissed her lips apart, wetting them with a slow glide of his tongue that made her moan softly. It would have been so easy to linger here, exploring her, but he held himself back in anticipation of those long nights at sea. Placing one final chaste kiss on her lips, he released her gently and pulled back, smiling at her dazed expression.

He smoothed her hair back behind her ear as he watched her sit there with her eyes closed. Then he drew her softly against him and laid his cheek against her hair.

“Allegra, I have something to tell you.”

He took a breath and held it, pressing his eyes shut tight for a moment, praying she would believe him, telling himself he was mad to trust her this way.

“I am Lazar,” he said, “I survived.”

She did not move.

Warily, he inched back and looked down at her face. Her gold-tipped lashes flicked as she opened her eyes and stared up at him.

“Lazar?” she repeated, searching his eyes. “Prince Lazar di Fiore?”