He had tempered her wild scheme with common sense. He had arranged for the capture of the Duke from his bed by stealth and by night. He had made arrangements with the greasy innkeeper of this filthy establishment, who, despite the rats that ran about and the reputation for harbouring cutthroats and thieves to prey upon sailors who came ashore, had also a reputation for keeping his given word - if paid enough for so doing. He had urged that she put out a story that while visiting in the country the Duke had suffered a wrenching fall and would be absent from the Court for some time.
Now the tall Englishman fingered the jewel of price that gleamed from the froth of lace at his throat. It was a ruby - at least it had been a ruby until he had pawned it and substituted a red glass fake. The real ruby had been a gift of the Duchess of Lorca. He wondered if she would notice the difference.
She did not.
‘We will hear soon enough,’ she told him haughtily.
Soon enough for whom? he wondered. Certainly it could not come soon enough for him! She was still quartered in her town house ‘awaiting news’ but he was quartered here in this accursed inn, in hiding from the world he knew. And his crew was becoming restive - and no wonder!
‘Then if not to the ransom, to what do I owe the honour of this visit?’ he wondered. ‘I would remind you there is danger in this charade that we are playing.’
Her light shrug spoke volumes. She had broken the bonds of convention many times, had the young Duchess. Most recently by stealing out by night in this foreign city, and thus meeting an Englishman whose carriage had chanced to careen into hers near Charing Cross. While the wheels were being unloosed they had fallen into conversation. The Englishman knew a wild wench when he saw one - and he saw one in the Duchess. When their paths had chanced to cross three nights later at a ball, it had been too much. They had danced the night away, kissed behind the hangings of an alcove. One thing had led to another. There had been clandestine meetings, wild protestations of love in the upstairs rooms of one inn and another.
That was six months ago.
Now they were engaged in a deadly plot which could bring them both to ruin and death.
It had all seemed so devilishly simple - at first. Now he could see from the way she was hesitating to bring up the next point that it was becoming considerably more complicated.
‘I have brought you something,’ she said, and produced a small vial. He recoiled from her.
‘I have told you I will not murder the old man!’
‘But if he is not dead,’ she said plaintively, ‘how can I become a widow? And a widow I must be if we are ever to have any peace. His sons back in Spain would not care where I went but my husband would pursue me until the end of time!’
There was that, of course. The Englishman considered her critically. Beauty she had and to spare. And fearlessness, there was no doubting that. She was devious and wily. But she had no more compassion than the hard stones of the country that had bred her. He would as soon be mated with a pit viper.
His caressing smile bore no trace of what he was thinking. ‘There will be some other way,’ he said firmly. ‘Something that will not, cannot connect us with the deed.’
Her white teeth flashed prettily at that implication of assassins yet to come. He was too squeamish, this Englishman, not fierce enough - for all his formidable breadth of shoulder. But he was learning. He had fallen in with her schemes thus far. And he would fall in with this one too - in the end. She pressed the vial into his unwilling palm.
‘Take it anyway, querido,' she urged in her softly accented English.
She desired most ardently to become a widow.
But not to marry this Englishman - as he thought. It was something else entirely that the lady had in mind. The Duchess of Lorca considered that she had had an abominable life - and she meant during her projected widowhood to correct that. Taken from a convent at the age of sixteen, her father dead, a guardian for her appointed by the king himself, she had found herself immediately betrothed to an elderly nobleman whose youngest son was many years her senior - indeed he had grandchildren nearly her age! And she with her budding breasts and her bright young dreams and her waist that a man could easily span with his two hands! Angry and rebellious, she had considered escape. But then the thought had flitted into her mind that married to the Duke, she would become not only a Duchess - she would be presented at the Court near Madrid. The Court would be filled with courtiers . . . and she would find someone. Someone younger, handsomer, more desirable then the grey-haired Duke of Lorca.
So she had pretended to desire the match.
She had married the Duke meekly, with eyes cast down. She had been the very soul of compliance on their wedding night. The Duke, inspired by her beauty, had called her (as Henry the Eighth had once called a bride he would later have beheaded) his ‘rose without a thorn’. She had lain by his side in bed and listened to his quiet snoring. Lain there with her young body still pulsing and unsatisfied from his too abrupt lovemaking, and stared up wide-eyed at the moon above the tiled roofs.
From that moment she had hated him.
And it had been a shock of earth-shattering proportions when the Duke had told her calmly that he did not intend to take her to Madrid with him. Far better for her to stay in the country in ‘less sophisticated’ surroundings. Indeed, he had said loftily - and meant it - the ways of the Spanish Court, strictest in all of Europe, were so loose that they would shock her.
She had wept. She had fallen to the floor at his feet in her wide-skirted black silks and thrown her arms despairingly around his knees and wailed that she could not bear to be parted from him. Not for a day, not for an hour. She would die if he left her!
The heart of the elderly Duke had been touched by such simple childish devotion. He had graciously consented to take her with him.
And once at the Court at El Escorial near Madrid, the enchanting young Duchess had flowered. She had swiftly learned the drifting walk of the Spanish Court ladies - and their graceful gestures and artful use of a flirtatious fan. She had learnt that the flattery of the elegant courtiers was just that - flattery.
Her brief exciting affairs with the numerous courtiers who had succumbed to her charms were legendary -although the Duke of Lorca was happily unaware of them. But . . . there was always the chance that he would find out. And a Spanish grandee such as the Duke of Lorca could mete out summary justice to an erring wife.
But not if he were dead!
The Duchess was determined to have her freedom.
At any cost.
This now was the cost, this devil’s pact with an impoverished Englishman who, in his conceit, thought she was enamoured of him. So much the better! He would be putty in her hands, she told herself confidently. And at some point - where and when she desired it - he would use that vial of poison.
And she would be free!
The Englishman in whose hand she had pressed the vial of poison that was to kill her husband knew nothing of this, of course. It would have amused him if he had. For it was in his mind to enjoy the Duchess’s delightful body and eventually to leave her somewhere. Perhaps in Italy, perhaps somewhere else - whenever he grew tired of her.
As he had left so many other women when he grew tired of them.
For the titled Englishman who faced her in that low-ceilinged shabby room at The Shark and Fin was also a snob. He considered Spain, for all her might, a barbarous country. He had been married once before and his wife had been not only an heiress but a flower of the English aristocracy - dead now, alas. Although he had made many rash promises to a variety of women - promises he had never intended to keep - it had never even occurred to him to replace her with someone he considered beneath his own station (and to him all foreign nobility ranked several steps lower than that of England). And certainly not with a foreigner. Especially one from England’s fiercest enemy, Spain!
Still, it was only good sense to let the Duchess think so, since she so obviously desired him. Indeed she was
moving towards him now with a certain light in her eyes. An elegant companion in bed she certainly was, and he was abruptly aware of the bed immediately behind him. He little doubted they would be tumbling about in it soon. But now he must try to discourage her from further visits that would endanger them both.
‘You could have been followed,’ he said bluntly - and set the vial aside on a table.
‘I was not,’ she scoffed. ‘Sancho kept close watch. He is very reliable. Nobody saw me leave - I went to bed early and left my bedchamber door locked. My maid will keep it locked until I return.’
‘Why do you take these risks?’ he demanded.
‘Do you not know, querido?' She flashed him a dazzling glance from those glowing almond-shaped eyes, a fierce proud look that, even though he knew her for what she was, heated up his blood. ‘It is because I love you, and I would not have anything happen to you, that I hastened here to bring you the news.’
He retreated from her a step but he came alert. ‘What news?’
She sighed. ‘You will have to go to sea again. This man Kells whom you are impersonating so brilliantly may be in England soon - and if he is caught and hanged here, all our plans would go awry.’
‘How do you know this?’
She shrugged. ‘I am out. I hear gossip. There is word in the town that a talkative woman has arrived from Virginia and spread the word that the redoubtable Captain Kells tried to marry a Virginia girl under the name “Rye Evistock”. Have you heard the name?’
‘Rye Evistock . . .’ The tall Englishman rolled the name over his tongue. ‘Yes, I think so - an Essex family, I believe.’
She nodded impatiently. ‘But his identity was discovered in time to stop the wedding. It seems he claimed to have procured a king’s pardon from the Governor of Bermuda - which means your efforts so far may have been in vain, my love.’
The man before her ripped out an oath. His chest in the ill-fitting puce coat seemed to expand with his anger. ‘I told you it was too soon for the Alicia to attack English ships!’
‘For the Sea Wolf to attack,’ she murmured, reminding him that they had rechristened the Alicia. She gave a fatalistic shrug. ‘But it might not have been too soon. These things happen, querido.'
‘What else do you know that you have not told me?’ He ground out the words.
‘The wedding was to take place in the bride’s house on the York River’ - she pronounced it awkwardly - ‘but when the bridegroom’s real identity was discovered, he escaped. The girl disappeared too and it is thought that they may have returned to the Caribbean.’
‘Or perhaps to Essex if “Rye Evistock” actually is the fellow’s real name,’ he growled.
She nodded cheerfully. ‘Just so. But his pardon will not cover any crimes committed now. So, querido, you must arrange one.’
‘I have already attacked two peaceful merchant ships to please you,’ he said in exasperation. ‘And found little enough loot for my pains. Am I to make war for a few trinkets and a silver chamber pot?’
‘Well, English merchantmen do not carry the gold of the Indies,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘And anyway, your crimes must be against England - not Spain. Although,’ she added wickedly, ‘I realize how you must hunger to hurl yourself against the treasure flota now that you are “Captain Kells”!’
The Englishman passed a weary hand over his eyes. Did this Spanish seductress really think that he had ever had any intention of going up against one of Spain’s great carracks or galleasses with their multi-storied castles fore and aft and their decks of guns? It was bad enough that he must pretend to be this Irish buccaneer who just might after all be an Englishman named Rye Evistock, bad enough that he had had to recruit men to play the parts of Captain Kells’s ship’s officers - for they too were well known by sight. Careful descriptions of them all had been obtained by the Duchess - who had pumped those descriptions from returned Spaniards who had enjoyed an enforced stay on Tortuga - even of the Silver Wench. Indeed, a stripling member of his crew, wearing a silver-blonde wig, had played that part, though not too well. Bad enough that he had been forced to voyage about off the Virginia coast, taking and sinking two small unarmed English vessels, all the time fearful that every sail that appeared on the horizon might be that of a real buccaneering vessel or - perhaps even worse - the whipping canvas of some vast galleon with guns beyond number.
All that was bad enough - and now she dared to jibe at him!
She saw the anger in his face and shook her black curls at him in reproach. ‘All this I do only that we may be together, my pet,’ she told him plaintively. ‘And now that you are warned that this buccaneer, this Kells, may shortly be among us - ’
Her chiding words had brought him up short. He had forgotten for a moment why he was supposed to be doing all this. Not for the gold - for her.
‘I will check into this matter of Rye Evistock,’ he promised hastily.
‘Yes, find out if there really is such a man and if so’ - she frowned - ‘you must find a way to capture him. To be dealt with later.’
He looked down at her in amazement. She was so matter-of-fact about ‘capturing’ a famous buccaneer who had eluded the combined might of Spain all these years!
‘I will do my best,’ he promised ironically.
‘Oh, I know you will, my darling,’ she purred. Now that their business was over, she advanced on him with that faint, delicious swagger that had heated so many other masculine breasts. Her bustline - slight by English standards but ample according to Spanish fashion - was thrust forward to make the most of what she had, and her long black skirts swished seductively across the floor. ‘I intend to go to the play tomorrow,’ she told him, looking up at him through her dark lashes. ‘Will I see you there?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said restlessly, certain her love of the theatre would endanger them both. ‘I must look into this Rye Evistock matter - it may take time.’
‘Then we must make the most of what little time we have, must we not, querido?' She smiled flirtatiously and turned her back towards him, lifting up her thick black curls from the nape of her neck with both hands. ‘You must help me with these hooks . .
She would not have liked his expression had she seen him stare at the sleek feminine back beneath those hooks which he hastened to undo. It was at the moment grim, to say the least. He would rid himself of this disastrous wench, he was promising himself even as his fingers touched the almond-pale silk of her skin. As soon as the ransom was in his hand he would rid himself of her. He would find a way to do it, even if he had to drop her off in some Caribbean hellhole. For it had come to him - and the thought had sobered him - that he was not the aggressor here; the Duchess had woven her web and lured him into it like a black widow spider.
And that was what she obviously wished to become: a widow, with her bright eyes watching mockingly from behind the swaying web of her intricate black lace mantilla . . .
His uneasy thoughts tore at him.
And then as he eased down the dress from her pale body and felt the smooth silk of her bare shoulders beneath his hands, as he let his questing palms slide down those shoulders until he found her soft slight breasts, he felt a familiar tug in his groin. With a low growl in his throat he spun her around to face him and buried his face in her white upflung throat. He slipped an arm about her shoulders and the other below her knees and scooped her up and deposited her in the bed upon the straw-filled mattress.
Lust, he had often told himself, was as good as love - and far less entangling.
Somehow he did not find it so tonight. The news the Duchess had brought worried him, the vial she had brought distressed him, the thought of going on with her into the distant future was suddenly a terrifying one.
‘What is the matter?’ demanded the soft voice of the ardent woman beneath him. ‘You - stopped.’
He realized then that he had broken the rhythm of his steady thrusting within her. His thoughts had brought him up short.
‘I though
t I was hurting you,’ he muttered.
‘Never!’ Her slender body arched up temptingly towards his.
He seized her more roughly then and got on with it. She was after all a lustrous piece, and many a man would give his strong right arm just to hold her as he was holding her now, to lie on her breast and strain the more fully to possess her. And yet, possessing her, he felt of a sudden a great loneliness and realized that he had never fully loved a woman, not even his young wife, dead these two years past. Somewhere out there, there was a woman - there must be - who would fill all voids, who would dim all others in his view. Forever.
But certainly he had never found her!
And then the Duchess’s demanding body was straining against his with mounting passion and he heard the small strangled cry in her throat as she quivered with tension, with desire, her arms wrapped round his neck. He forgot his loneliness then - perhaps all men were lonely, he thought - and abandoned himself to the lady’s undoubted charms.
Lust, after all, was better than nothing.
BOOK 3
The London Lady
Married in Fleet Street, legal or no!
Parsons all waiting, kiss me quick and go!
Though such brides are joyous, their future is dim
But Carolina doesn’t care - she has him!
PART ONE
The Fleet Street Bride
The lady in her satin gown
Her feelings now must hide
As she is carried through the town -
Naught but a Fleet Street bride!
LONDON, ENGLAND
Summer 1689
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