Across a Moonlit Sea

by Marsha Canham

  There was no bed. A scorched heap of twisted planks indicated where it must have been, and to judge by the size of the empty space, it had been considerably larger than the functional cots on board the Egret.

  “There,” Dante said, pointing to a large ladder-back chair. “Sit.”

  Beau stood where she was and planted her hands on her hips. “You may have been able to convince my father you would have killed me if he didn’t obey you. But I doubt very much if you would kill him with quite as little compunction, so you will excuse me if I don’t quake in fear each time you bark.”

  Dante walked around behind his desk and glanced up at her from beneath the black slash of his brows. “You’re probably right. I wouldn’t kill him over such a trivial annoyance as you refusing to do as you’re told. But it might make me angry enough to break off his kneecap. Or smash his good ankle. He already walks with a limp and I suppose it is possible for a captain to go to sea with two crippled limbs … but I have never seen it done, have you?”

  Beau opened her mouth. She shut it again. And sat.

  Dante’s mouth curved at the corner as he set the pistol on his desk and eased his big body into his own chair. He had some difficulty keeping the relief off his face as he was able to take the weight off his wounded leg; even more so as he stretched it out in front of him.

  Beau allowed herself a brief glance at the bandaged calf, sincerely hoping it was festered and crawling with maggots. She focused on his face again and had the same wish, embellishing it with slashes and open sores, runny pustules, and loose, rattling teeth. It gave her some comfort to feel the presence of the thin, finger-sized knife concealed at the small of her back, and to know that if he did, indeed, lower his guard for a second, she would make short work of his mocking smile.

  In the meantime she took advantage of his discomfort, staring at him calmly and steadfastly with what her father called her “smotheration eye.”

  For a legend, she decided, he was sorely lacking in appeal His face could have been hewn out of rock for all the character it boasted. It was, in fact, dark and foreboding, more suited to a devil or a satyr than a man who frequented Court and rubbed toes with nobility. It was true he had the high, smooth brow of an aristocrat but the effect was blunted by the thick black waves of his hair. Trimmed by an uncaring hand, it curled in uneven lengths over the collar of his shirt and blew about his temples and throat as if he stood in a perpetual wind. And something she had not noticed until now: in one of his earlobes he wore a gold loop, a common enough adornment for seafaring men who did it to ensure they always had the price of a decent burial—or a tall cask of ale. Yet on a man of Dante de Tourville’s supposedly exalted stature, it seemed a cheap and tawdry affectation. Aside from being a titled lord, did he not also boast at being one of the most successful privateers on the Main?

  It was said even Sir Francis Drake had begun to look over his shoulder, fearing the pirate wolf’s exploits were beginning to surpass his own. And while Drake had the Queen’s ear, he was also short and squat and bowlegged; no match for a villain who exuded virility. If it was true Simon Dante enjoyed private suppers with the Queen— private enough to call her Bess!—then nothing he did or said to a mere merchant trader would earn more than a perfunctory reprimand.

  Beau’s attention shifted to the broad chest, the long, muscular arms, the strong, square-tipped hands that had already shocked her with their power and savagery. He was a beast in his prime and Beau had encountered enough of them, most so full of their own potency they could not fathom how anyone could resist falling under their spell and into their beds.

  Beau could resist. She was under no fainthearted delusions as to what someone like Dante de Tourville wanted from a woman, or, once he had it, how quickly he would deem her soiled and dispensable goods. Beau had learned that unpleasant lesson the hard way, having had a man fill her eyes with stars and her body with pleasure, only to discover he preferred to take a virgin to his marriage bed and have a wife who simpered and fawned over his every whim, who fainted at the mere mention of blood, and who would never dare challenge his opinions—whether she had the wit to understand them or not.

  Beau, on the other hand, was her father’s daughter. Having lost her mother’s influence at an early age, she had been raised by a man full of blasphemies who called a fool a fool to his face and damned the consequences. Spence had honestly tried to settle her with a spinster aunt who had, in turn, tried to instill the rigid values of young womanhood on her recalcitrant charge. But the first time the Egret had set sail without her, Beau had stood in the parlor, wired into a farthingale and stiff velvet skirts, shouting such obscenities, her poor beleagured aunt had swooned into a dead faint.

  The second time he had sailed, she had stolen a single-masted skiff and followed, battling the strong currents and errant winds of the English Channel on her own, catching him three days later, half dead from fatigue but stubbornly refusing to be turned around and sent home. The crew had been amused. Spence had been enraged enough to order her into the tops, determined to break her spirit by making her stand watch in stormy weather until she begged to be relieved. Beau had remained there, lashed to a trestletree for seven days and nights, and in the end it had been her father’s guilt that begged her to come down.

  That was eight years ago and she had been a member of the crew ever since. During that time she had dined with pirates and lords, kept company with princes as well as scoundrels, and not once had she met a man who could melt her resolves or cause her a lingering moment’s worth of regret for the course she had chosen. And except for that one brief lapse—a lapse she now credited as a necessary learning experience—she had not fallen into anyone’s bed or under the spell of any man’s charm, however roguish, virile, or darkly handsome he might be.

  Thus she stared at the pirate wolf, part of her responding in an odd, ticklish way to the fact that they were alone in his cabin; that he was easily twice, if not three times, her size; and that it was doubtful a threat against touching a single hair on her head would dissuade him from touching anything else he wanted.

  Another part of her was admittedly curious to know what he was thinking as he sat there returning her calm, casual appraisal with an equally detached reserve.

  As it happened, Dante was thinking she was rather small for the rigors of shipboard life, even if she served as cook’s mate or cabin boy. Her waist was a trifling thing, easily spanned by two large hands. Her arm, when he had held it to guide her belowdecks, had been taut enough to suggest she possessed more supple strength than the average woman of her size and build, yet nothing so ungainly as muscular. She did indeed possess a long, slender neck. One that led to an equally long, slender body. Breasts? Aye, she had them. Round, firm little expressions of her femininity thrusting against the confines of her doublet. Probably too small to give a hungry man more than a taste.

  Her face was the true paradox. Standing in the shadows of the bulkhead, he had carefully appraised each member of Jonas Spence’s boarding party and not one had set off any alarms or seemed to be anything other than what he appeared to be. He retrieved their images one by one but could recall nothing that should have forewarned him. She had struck him as a slim dark-haired boy who stood shifting his weight slightly from one foot to the other, probably due to the extravagant armory of weapons he had strapped about himself.

  She was seated across from him now. There seemed to be a similar restlessness in her body, though there were no overt movements he could detect. The air surrounding her was a haze of dust motes suspended in the heat of the light streaming through the gallery windows, sparkling just enough to mock him for having failed to see what seemed so obvious now.

  She was no raving beauty. Her complexion was too dark for one thing, tanned beyond any hope of redemption from rice powders or milk washes. Yet the warm honey glow paid perfect compliment to the long auburn lashes and dark wing-shaped eyebrows that might have looked too bold on a more toneless palette. Her hair was ga
thered back into a single glossy braid, the color as rich and deep as roasted chestnuts. Her mouth was far too sulky for his liking, but he could imagine how a softly formed word—if she could manage one—would send a shiver down a desperate man’s spine. The nose was delicate, the cheeks almost too smooth to believe they could bear exposure to harsh elements of the weather. And her eyes. They were cat’s eyes, molten gold, dangerously obstinate, dangerously defiant. …

  Just plain dangerous.

  They did not relent by so much as a flicker—an odd enough sensation to deal with, especially since most females of his acquaintance normally avoided looking directly at anything above the level of his chin, regardless how brazen or uninhibited they might be. Geoffrey claimed it was his own fault, that he looked at women the same way a hawk looked at its prey. But that was only because Geoffry Pitt tended to fall in love at the first flutter of an eyelash.

  Dante preferred his freedom, guarded it like a crown jewel. Women were fine in their place—preferably beneath him with their backs arched and their limbs wrapped tightly around his thighs—but he had no room for encumbrances in his life, no desire for any more shackles or chains of any kind, especially if they came burdened by emotion.

  Her eyes commanded his attention again. Lush amber-gold, flecked with every subtle shade between green and brown, they were as bright as polished gemstones. And direct enough to cause an unsettling tightness in his groin. They were not the eyes of a virgin, for they held no fear. Neither were they the eyes of an experienced courtesan, for there was no hint of an invitation in their depths. Again he found himself comparing her to other women he had encountered, recalling none who could provoke, anger, challenge, and temptation all at the same time.

  He wondered what she looked like naked.

  Dante blinked first, breaking contact.

  It was a singularily unfamiliar experience, knowing the wench was able to break his concentration. She still had not looked away, flaunting, it seemed, her ability to keep his level of irritation high enough to be a distraction.

  He decided the best way to defuse her was to ignore her.

  He lifted the golden ship—his Virago—and started collecting up the letters and documents beneath. Most were written in Spanish, some bore official seals and ribbons and flamboyant signatures belonging to governors and dignitaries in the New World. Dante spoke six languages fluently, including Spanish, and had translated most of the papers into his own bold script. Some were important, some not. Some went into great and boring detail about crops and harvests, weather conditions, even the hell of living with swarms of bloodsucking insects that attacked day and night in the jungles. Other documents, of more interest to a seafaring gentleman of private enterprise, concerned the staggering amounts of gold and silver that would be shipped to Lisbon with the next flota. These so-called plate fleets were tempting to raiders of all nationalities because of the enormous quantity of gold stolen from temples and villages throughout Mexico and Panama, most of it already hammered into plates and large sun medallions.

  All of the papers, letters, and documents had been in the treasure house at Veracruz awaiting the ships that would carry the correspondence home to Spain. Pitt had snatched them up almost as an afterthought, speculating there was always something of some interest to someone who cared to know the state of affairs in Spanish-held territories. What he hadn’t counted on was finding something that would irrevocably alter the course of their destiny.

  Dante glanced up. The wench was still staring.

  “If you want to make yourself useful,” he said irritably, “you can start rolling these charts and stacking them in a chest.”

  “I have absolutely no desire to make myself useful, Captain Dante.” She arched her brows in surprise that he would even think so. “In fact, I shall strive to be as useless to you as possible for as long as possible.”

  “You are already that, mam’selle,” he countered evenly.

  “Then we have nothing more to discuss.”

  He looked at her, hard. “I am not happy with the way this has turned out. I have no quarrel with your father or his crew, nor do I have any nefarious designs on your ship.”

  She merely stared back, her face a study in abject contempt.

  He drummed his long fingers silently on the top of the desk. “Your father mentioned you have been at sea for eight months.” When she neither confirmed nor denied it, he asked, “Should I assume this was your first voyage?”

  “Why would you assume that?”

  “Your hands are too soft, for one thing, your skin is too fresh: You don’t exactly have the look of a weathered tar about you.”

  “For your information, I have been at sea since I was twelve,” she snapped.

  “A whole year?” He cocked his head in mock surprise. “I am impressed.”

  “Eight years, thank you very much.”

  From the instant sparks that had flared in her eyes, he guessed he had touched upon a tender subject. She had obviously met his brand of sarcasm before, both about her choice of lifestyle and the fact that she did, indeed, have the smooth, round face of a youthling—when she wasn’t scowling, that is.

  His brief victory did not taste as sweet as it should have, for his reaction was stalled somewhere between satisfaction and grudging admiration. Eight years was a long time. The sea offered no easy life and was merciless to anyone who showed the slightest weakness.

  Beau was no better off. He angered her, irritated her, made her furious with his smug arrogance, but he was also an enigma. He was, after all, Simon Dante, an aristocrat, a member of the nobility with vast estates in England as well as France. He had spent the last half of his—what? thirty years? plaguing the Spanish shipping lines. For his most recent outlandish adventure he admitted to having raided Veracruz, and had fought a pitched battle with six Spanish galleons—a feat of daring and courage that normally would have had her perched on the edge of her chair, hanging on his every word.

  She couldn’t ask him about any of it, of course. She couldn’t even look interested.

  So she looked instead at the clutter of books littering the floor. “You can read,” she said, inflecting her voice with the same patronizing tones he had used. “I’m impressed.”

  His long fingers ceased their drumming. The golden cat’s eyes were scanning the volumes haphazardly when they came to a sudden stop at one in particular. They widened slightly and an exquisite tension seemed to ripple the length of her body. He tried to follow her gaze to the book that had so riveted her attention, but when she saw what he was about she turned her head and let the mask of indifference settle over her features again.

  “If you have seen something you want, by all means help yourself. They will only end up on the bottom of the ocean.”

  “What I want”—her eyes shot back—“is to return to the Egret.”

  “And so you shall,” he said solicitously. “Just as soon as all these charts and maps are rolled and packed away in a chest.”

  Beau surged to her feet, abruptly enough to send Dante’s hand an inch or so in the direction of the pistol.

  “Where is the damned chest?” she demanded.

  His hand relaxed—rather, it flattened in an attempt to appear as though the movement had been unintentional, not that either one of them was fooled.

  “Behind you. Empty the clothing out of the big one and stow as much of this paperwork in it as you can. My ship, too, if you please,” he added, his voice softening unexpectedly as he ran a hand lovingly over the gold replica of the Virago. “Perhaps if one survives, the other will not be forgotten too soon.”

  “It is a … beautiful ship,” she was compelled to admit.

  “The Virago was a beautiful ship,” he said, all but to himself. “Quick and keen, sleek as a nymph. She was the ideal companion—loyal, trustworthy, brave beyond measure in heart and soul, with a fiery temper that could set any foe running before the wind. She did not deserve”— he glanced around the wreckage in the cabin and
sighed— “this.”

  “You said you were set upon by six Spaniards and sank them all. I could not think of a more fitting end, if it were my ship.”

  “She did us proud against the Spanish, aye. But it was an Englishman who betrayed her.”

  “You were betrayed? An Englishman told the Spanish where to find you?”

  His eyes narrowed against the memory and for a moment, the rage and fury that darkened his face was potent enough for Beau, standing half a dozen paces away, to feel its heat. She saw the subtle shifting in the color of his eyes as they went from being a pale, smoldering gray to searing blue and she remembered seeing the same extraordinary change a split second before he had grabbed at her throat. With an effort Beau forced herself to breathe, aware she had filled her lungs, so as to preempt another strike.

  “Captain—?”

  “Behind you,” he said, cracking his words like kindling. “The big chest. Quicker done, quicker away. That is what you want, is it not?”

  Beau felt a measure of her own anger leak back into her cheeks, dusting them a soft pink. He had been betrayed. Fine. It perhaps explained his lack of willingness to place his trust in strangers. But it did not excuse his behavior in turning around and betraying Jonas Spence, who had done nothing more malicious to the crew of the Virago than offer them fresh water and rescue.

  She turned on her heel and strode across the cabin, kicking bits of debris out of the way as she went. She muttered one of her father’s favorite blasphemies under her breath, then repeated it with more substance when she knelt beside the leather chest and flung open the strapped lid.

  For almost a full minute she stared, her anger gradually receding and giving way to surprise. The sea chest was brimming with women’s clothes. Skirts, bodices, petticoats … even delicate chemises made of cloth so sheer, it was almost transparent. She plucked one, embroidered with silk floss and threads of pure gold, off the shimmering pile and let the fabric slide through her hand, noting it was like letting water glide over her skin and puddle in her lap. She could hardly imagine wearing anything half so fine and fragile, and wondered at the kind of woman who would. Surely the smallest flaw, the tiniest freckle, would shine through. A question more pertinent to character would be to wonder what kind of man sought out such things, much less carried them halfway across the world to present to whom? A wife? A mistress?