by Kat Ross
“You must be Miss Lawrence,” he said. His voice was deep and gruff, the voice of a man accustomed to having his directives obeyed without question.
“I hope I didn’t delay your departure.”
“Not in the least.” His blue eyes glinted as he shared a look with Jacob. “I’m well used to navigating in darkness anyway.”
She cast Jacob a puzzled look.
“Captain Dunham and I have a long acquaintance,” Jacob explained.
“Oh?”
“During the war, I was an officer with the Union Navy, dispatched by President Lincoln to catch Confederate blockade runners,” Dunham replied. “Brits, most of them, hoping to earn their fortunes ferrying contraband between Bermuda and the mainland.”
“They were wily bastards,” Jacob said. He glanced at Anne. “If you’ll excuse the profanity.”
“Oh, I’d call them worse than that,” she replied dryly.
“They’d douse all their lights and try to creep into port,” Dunham said. “The sailors were forbidden even to smoke on deck. But we’d be waiting for them, also in darkness. It was a mighty fine game of cat and mouse.”
“How many did you catch?”
“A fair number.” He sighed. “But there were too damn many of them. Five out of six slipped through our fingers.”
“I’m surprised the British were sympathetic to the South,” she said. “Slavery had been abolished for a long time by then.”
“Officially, Britain was neutral toward both sides.” The captain gave a mirthless laugh. “But they sorely missed their cotton and tobacco, so private investors bankrolled the blockade runners. The poor American consul in Hamilton had a devil of a time trying to convince the local authorities to help him put a stop to it.”
“Well, at least the right side won the war in the end.”
“That we did, Miss Lawrence.” He doffed his cap to her. “And now I should return to my duties.”
She and Jacob stood quietly for a minute, listening to the splash of swells against the hull and distant banter of the crew.
“Jorin Bekker was one of those men who financed the blockade runners,” he said. “There’s hardly a dirty little pie that doesn’t have his fingers in it.”
“He sounds deserving of Gabriel’s wrath.” Just hearing the name Bekker made her anxious all over again.
“You’re worried for him.”
Her eyes flashed. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Yes.”
Anne waited, but Jacob remained silent, gazing out at the water.
“That’s all? No blandly reassuring words? Something along the lines of, ‘Don’t worry, Anne, he’s done this a thousand times, it’ll all go off like clockwork’.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“What are the odds, then?”
Jacob considered it. His calm was starting to irritate her.
“Thirty-seventy.”
“For who?”
“Gabriel gets the seventy.”
She let out a breath. “Better than the other way around, I suppose.”
They turned as two young men emerged from one of the hatches. Both wore the dazed expression of schoolboys who’d just been turned loose from the headmaster’s study.
“It’s the fledgling chicks,” Jacob murmured, taking her arm. “Try not to scare them.”
“I’m sure Gabriel’s already done an excellent job of that,” she whispered back.
The men regained their composure as Jacob hailed them.
“Anne Lawrence,” he said, presenting her. “Mr. Jean-Michel Fanastil.”
He was the handsomest creature she’d ever seen, with kinky black hair sharply parted on the right, wide-spaced dark eyes and a mouth that belonged on some carnal statue. He even had a cleft in the center of his perfect chin. Yet there was a reserved, almost chilly quality to his gaze.
“Monsieur Fanastil,” she said.
“Enchanté,” he replied softly.
Jacob indicated the second man. “And this is Mr. Miguel Salvado.”
Where Fanastil was aloof, Salvado clearly fancied himself a swashbuckler. Wavy chestnut hair tumbled about his broad shoulders, which were encased in a coat with embroidered scarlet thread at the collar and cuffs. His boots had been polished to a high gleam. If only he’d had a plumed cavalier hat and a rapier, he might have stepped straight from a tale by Alexandre Dumas.
Salvado bowed and favored Anne with a dazzling smile. “The pleasure is mine,” he murmured in a Spanish accent.
She said something polite in return, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Where does Gabriel find these men?
Not that Anne objected. She might try to sketch Monsieur Fanastil during the journey. Both he and Salvado would look ravishing in pirate garb.
“I suppose I ought to find my cabin,” she said, when the silence grew awkward.
“Shall I escort you?” Jacob asked.
“There’s no need.” With all the concern for her welfare, one would think she had a pack of ravening jackals at her heels. “I can find my own way.”
The men bowed and bid her goodnight.
Anne asked a sailor for directions to her quarters, where her valise waited on the bed. The cabin was small but tidy, with a built-in table and shelves. Anne took out her charcoals and idly began sketching what she remembered of the ceffyl dwr.
I ought to cable Sidgwick once we reach Paris, she thought. He must have a mountain of assignments for me by now.
But she was also starting to despise the idea of letting Gabriel go to Brussels without her.
His war is not my war. Now repeat that a hundred times.
When Anne was a child, she’d met Alexander of Macedon during his siege against Queen Neblis. He conquered half the known world and seemed indestructible, yet he’d died at the age of thirty-two – not from an enemy’s sword but a fever.
Vivienne would say the gods punish hubris. If that was the case, Gabriel certainly had it in spades.
Anne looked down and realized she’d made a mess of the sketch. It was a smudged blob with what looked like tentacles and a duck’s bill. She crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. Her hand began to move almost of its own accord, sketching the stark outlines of trees, a road, and a dark tunnel leading to an unknown destination.
When it was done, she stared at the drawing for a long moment.
Then she tore it into tiny pieces and stuffed them into the bottom of her valise.
5
The next morning, Anne found Jean-Michel Fanastil and Miguel Salvado on deck arguing about poetry. Salvado insisted it had to rhyme to be any good, but she could see immediately that this was a long-running provocation. They both looked in high spirits.
“Good day, gentlemen,” she said with a smile, joining them at the stern rail.
The men murmured greetings.
“You are a friend of D’Ange,” Salvado said, a slight question in his voice.
So Gabriel had told them nothing.
“Oh yes, for ages. I first met him through my brother. They’re great chums.”
He nodded. “I see.”
“My brother had … borrowed a certain item from him some years ago. A cross. I came to return it.” She glanced at the crucifix around his neck. “You’re a religious man, I see.”
“Yes, we’re both Catholics,” Salvado replied. His skin was a light golden brown, his eyes a slightly darker shade and fringed with curling lashes. They glinted with the self-aware mischief of a professional troublemaker.
“Gabriel said you come from Santo Domingo, yet you’re fluent in English,” Anne said.
He grinned. “My blood is Spanish, black, Indian and who knows what else. I learned to speak many languages so when I go to heaven, I can converse with all my glorious ancestors.”
Jean-Michel Fanastil silently shook his head. He understood enough to get the gist.
“If you don’t mind poor grammar and a worse accent, we can switch to Creole,” she s
aid. “So Monsieur Fanastil is included.”
“He speaks French, too.”
“I’d like to try Creole. It’s a lovely language.”
Salvado nodded happily. “Mwen pa pran swen.” I don’t mind.
At first, the conversation was halting, but Anne improved with practice. Fanastil appeared astonished that she knew the language at all, and warmed considerably when she expressed her great admiration for the Haitian revolutionaries. They discussed their favorite poets and he recited some of his own works, ignoring Salvado as he attempted to pantomime the “gentle breeze swaying the branches of the mango tree” and the “bloodied scarlet breast of the rosegaster.”
They were an oddly endearing pair, one so serious, the other a buffoon, although Anne sensed it was an act they slipped into out of habit. Both wore pistols at their hips and she didn’t doubt they’d spilled blood. Gabriel had no use for untried boys.
Eventually, the conversation turned to politics. Salvado explained that he was from a middle class family who became embroiled in the upheavals following the Spanish withdrawal from Santo Domingo. In those tumultuous years, he told her ruefully, there were twenty-one changes of government and at least fifty military uprisings. Eventually, Salvado’s father was forced to take his family into exile in Haiti, which is where he met Jean-Michel.
“I took him under my wing at school,” Salvado said. “You should have seen him then. Skinny as a bruja’s shinbone and twice as ugly.”
“It’s the only reason I tolerated you,” Jean-Michel retorted. “As long as you were standing next to me, I was only half as ugly.”
“You remind me of a married couple,” Anne said, shaking her head. “Eternally bickering.”
“No, no,” Salvado said solemnly. “I am married to my pistol, and Jean-Michel to his pen.”
“They say it’s mightier than the sword.”
“It’s mightier than his sword, that’s for certain,” Jean-Michel remarked with a bland expression.
Anne gave them a puzzled look. “Are you comparing penises? Truly, a better simile would be some species of soggy mushroom.”
Salvado threw his head back and roared with laughter. Fanastil made a choking sound.
Suddenly, they both sobered up. Anne turned to see Gabriel watching them from the quarter deck, where he stood with Jacob Bell and Captain Dunham. He gave a brief nod and the men relaxed, but before he turned away, she saw the ghost of a smile on his face.
Anne was lying in bed reading one of Jacob’s books when a tap came on the door.
“It’s open,” she called.
Gabriel stood there, holding her parasol. “You left it up on deck.”
She smiled. “So I did. Thank you for bringing it back.”
He hovered in the cabin door.
“Do you want to come in?”
Gabriel hesitated.
“I won’t bite. Not hard, at any rate.”
His lips quirked. Gabriel moved inside, shutting the door behind him. He sat on the edge of the table and scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “This beard is prickly,” he muttered.
“Shave it off.”
“I can’t. Not until it’s over.”
She closed the book, leaving one finger between the pages to hold her place. “That’s your disguise? A beard?”
He gave a Gallic shrug. “It’s a start.”
Anne waited in silence. She sensed that whatever Gabriel had to say wouldn’t be rushed.
“Fanastil and Salvado like you,” he said quietly.
“And I like them. I think you’ve chosen well.”
Gabriel stirred restlessly. “Many men have passed through the ranks over the years. They must have the greatest integrity and intelligence. They must be willing to kill without hesitation, but they must also have compassion. The combination is rare. And now I find myself constantly questioning my own judgment.”
Anne knew he was no longer talking about Fanastil and Salvado.
“Constantin, you mean.”
He looked at her sharply. “Yes. I can’t stop thinking about him.” Gabriel stared out the porthole at the dark sea. “It’s like a thorn in my foot.”
She studied his stark profile and wished she could offer the comfort of an embrace, but that wasn’t why Gabriel had come to her. He only needed someone to listen.
“I can imagine,” she said softly.
“I’m not sure you can. We were together for more than four hundred years, Anne. He was always a harsh man, but he believed in our cause with all his heart. Or so I thought.” Gabriel let out a sigh. “I’ve gone over it so many times in my mind, trying to identify the moment when I lost him. But I can’t. He must have despised me and I never suspected a thing.”
Anne had only met Constantin once, very briefly, at the Monastery of Saint George. She remembered a large, bearded man with an intense gaze.
“Can he change his form?”
Gabriel gave a terse nod. “I taught him. And he’s mastered it completely. He could teach others. Necromancers who serve Bekker. I can’t allow that.”
A chill crept up her spine as she remembered the children Adrian had savagely murdered in Romania. Gabriel had been hunting him when he crossed paths with Anne.
“Every man is a moon and has a side which he turns toward nobody: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it.” She gave a faint smile. “Mark Twain said that. It’s true. We all have the face we present to the world, and then we have the hidden face. The dark half.”
He met her eyes with a slight frown. “I don’t hide anything.”
“And you’re exceptional in that regard, Gabriel. But most people aren’t like you.”
He was quiet for a moment. “It’s no use talking to Jacob or Julian. They can’t think clearly. They only want Constantin dead.”
“I thought you did, too.”
Gabriel’s eyes flared. “Oh, I do. But I want to know why first.”
“You may never know,” she said gently. “And you may have to live with that.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You need to learn to let things go, Gabriel. You carry your grudges around like millstones.”
“I’ve forgiven you, haven’t I?” he said roughly.
She smiled. “I don’t think you have.”
He drew a long breath through his nose, exhaled. “It’s hard,” he muttered.
“I know. But sometimes not forgiving is harder.” She wiggled her bare toes, thinking. “Doesn’t the Bible say something about turning the other cheek?”
“I prefer Deuteronomy 32:35. ‘Vengeance is mine, and retribution. In due time their foot will slip; for the day of their disaster is at hand, and their doom hurries to meet them.’”
Anne laughed. “It has a ring to it.”
Gabriel’s lips twitched, his mood lightening. “Doesn’t it?”
“Hmmm. But don’t those who take up the sword perish by the sword?”
He frowned. “I thought you were an atheist. How do you know all these Bible verses?”
“I can still read fiction.” She gave him a saucy grin.
“‘I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh.’ Also Deuteronomy.”
“Sounds very Old Testament.”
“It is.”
Anne leaned back against the pillow, regarding him through half-closed eyes. “You’re aware that was written an insanely long time ago by people wandering around the desert with names like Habakkuk and Zephaniah?”
“Your point?” he replied crisply.
“Some things are unknowable, Gabriel. And you can let them haunt you forever or you can dig a hole and bury them deep.” She paused. “And then you can walk away and never look back.”
He gave a brief nod. “It’s late. I should let you rest.” He rose and strode to the door.
She sat up. “Gabriel?”
He turned back.
“Do you feel any better?”
He studied her for a moment. “Yes,
” he said quietly. “Goodnight, Anne.”
The dream came back that night, and most others for the next week, leaving her wan and tired when she woke. Gabriel knew something was wrong. He brought food he’d made himself to her cabin, dishes he knew she liked, and asked if she was ill.
Anne described the dream, though in the light of day she felt a little foolish. It wasn’t even a proper nightmare. Nothing happened. She just walked and walked. It was the feeling that accompanied the dream more than the setting itself. Desperation mingled with nameless dread.
She confessed her fear it was a premonition, although of what exactly, she didn’t know. When Gabriel asked if she’d ever experienced such a thing before, she said no. It wasn’t exactly a lie … but it wasn’t the whole truth either.
At least he seemed more like his old self. His appetite returned and he gained back the weight he’d lost, the sun burnishing his skin to a healthy glow. She knew he still fretted about Constantin, but his laughter came as easily as his temper. It made Anne’s heart glad.
Gabriel took supper with her each day. He asked questions about the ceffyl dwr and other magical creatures she had come across in her travels, listening closely to the answers with childlike wonder. It was one of the things she loved about him. Despite the harshness of his vocation, Gabriel lacked an ounce of cynicism. When Anne exhausted her repertoire of tales, he coaxed her into games of chess, though between the listing of the ship and her own distraction, they rarely managed to finish one.
Mostly she passed the time reading the books she’d borrowed from Jacob. When she desired fresh air, Jean-Michel Fanastil and Miguel Salvado were usually on deck and they made amusing and witty company. Anne didn’t ask if they planned to take up the chains, but she suspected their talents lay elsewhere. When she passed the half-open door of their shared cabin one day, Anne saw hard cases stacked against the wall and smelled the odor of gun oil.
Julian Durand she avoided.
She prayed for foul weather, but the skies remained clear, the wind steady.