Across a Moonlit Sea

by Marsha Canham

  Dante pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Did I hear you say I have been asleep for three days?”

  “Two full days and an hour or so shy of the third,” she obliged, glancing out the windows. “The sun is almost touching the horizon now.”

  “Three days,” he muttered, massaging his temple with a thumb and forefinger. “Merde! My head feels as if it has a thousand drummers inside.”

  “No small surprise, considering what you drank as your last meal.”

  He glared up at her. “How are the rest of my men?”

  “They are well-fed and well-rested.”

  “And Lucifer? He has not killed anyone yet?”

  “Is he likely to do so?”

  “His moods can be … somewhat unpredictable.”

  “Between being with Mister Pitt during the day and sleeping across your door at night, he seems to be well-enough behaved. He does not talk much, does he?”

  “He does not talk at all since the Spaniards cut out his tongue.” He ran his fingers through his hair, then down onto the cleanly shaved stripe on his jaw. “Did it not occur to you to ask if I wanted a bare chin?”

  “If you didn’t, you should have scrubbed out the vermin before you collapsed in my bed.”

  He grinned carelessly. “Since you started the job, would you care to finish it?”

  She glanced sidelong at the faint stirring in his groin. “No, thank you. You appear to be enjoying the attention too much.”

  Still grinning, he reached down and drew the blankets up over his hips. “Forgive me if I have insulted your sensibilities.”

  Bright tiger eyes flickered back to his face and he had to admit she was a lovely creature with her hair curling damply around her face and her cheeks dusted a soft pink.

  “Do not flatter yourself into thinking you have anything I have not seen a hundred times before.”

  “Flattery was the last thing on my mind,” he assured her.

  “Oh? Dare I guess what was the first?”

  “It would probably disappoint you to know it was food. And a stoup of water to remove the dry rot from my throat.”

  “Cook sent ale.”

  “I would prefer water … if you wouldn’t mind.”

  She released another huff of exasperation and went out into the corridor, returning a few moments later with a wooden ladle brimming with water.

  Dante was sitting on the edge of the bed, his long legs hanging over the side, the blanket draped across his loins. He accepted the ladle graciously and drained it in a few deep swallows, savoring the coolness and the taste despite the fact it bore the woody taint of oak from the barrel.

  Beau watched him drink, watched the movement of his throat as he swallowed. Her gaze drifted down to the broad, well-muscled shoulders and arms, then across the luxuriant mat of hair that covered his chest. She skipped deliberately over the area covered by the blanket, although what lay concealed beneath was warmly impressed on her mind.

  “Cook has changed the bandages on your leg twice. The wound seems to be healing well.”

  Dante glanced at his calf and gave his foot and ankle a turn. “Aye, it feels markedly better. I thank you.”

  Casually awarded, his gratitude deepened the stain in her cheeks.

  She cleared her throat. “The captain will want to know you are awake; I should go and find him.”

  “Wait,” Dante said sharply, putting aside the ladle. She reacted warily to the tone of command in his voice, and remembering Pitt’s suggestion, he softened his expression and attempted a look of disarming humility.

  “I know we started out on the wrong footing,” he said, “but you must understand I was at the point of desperation and not in possession of my full senses.”

  Beau narrowed her eyes, thinking he looked like Clarence the cat after he had been caught stealing fish off the cook’s plate.

  “My only thought at the time was for the safety of my men and for salvaging what we could from the Virago”

  “My father boarded your ship in good faith. His only thought at the time was to rescue you and your men before your ship sank. Even now he has ordered our stores of food and water be given freely to your crew, though we suffer shortages ourselves.”

  Dante gritted his teeth but kept smiling. “I have already apologized to your father and attempted to explain—”

  She cut him off. “Would an apology and explanation from Victor Bloodstone serve to cool your anger?”

  “We are hardly guilty of the same crimes.”

  “No? We found your ship foundering and on the verge of sinking and my father’s only crime was showing concern for any possible survivors. Yet you threatened him with killing me, you took command of his ship and crew and forced both to accept the unwanted burden of your heavy guns. You have turned the Egret from an honest trading vessel into a warship and dispatched her on a hunt for another warship with no thought to the consequences.”

  “The consequences are that you will be better able to defend yourselves in hostile situations.”

  “Our situation will become hostile only if we succeed in finding the Talon. Or if we are found by another vessel and your presence here on board is discovered.”

  Muscles folded over powerful muscles as he crossed his arms. “Would it ease your mind if I promise to throw myself overboard should the latter occur?”

  “There is no need for such promises, Captain. I shall do it myself if I think the safety of the Egret, her captain, or crew is compromised.”

  “All by yourself?” he asked with an easy smile.

  “I am stronger than I look, sir. Better men than you have discovered it to be so, to their disappointment and loss.”

  “And what about your disappointment?”

  “Mine?”

  “Yours … that they were not strong enough to match you.”

  Without warning, Dante rose from the bed. The blanket fell to the floor, but he paid it no heed as he stalked forward the two long strides it took to bring him directly in front of her. Not knowing what to expect, she tried to stumble back, but her retreat was blocked by the chart table. She raised the stiletto instinctively. Dante was anticipating the move and managed to grasp her wrist, twisting it sharply enough to startle the knife out of her fingers.

  He raked his hands into the damp thickness of her hair and forcibly tilted her head up, and, after supplementing his challenge with a mocking grin, lowered his mouth, brutally crushing her lips beneath his.

  Beau was outraged. Her body burned with anger, her senses exploded with a corresponding fury. Her hands were trapped against the marble-hard surface of his chest and she tried to push herself free, but it was like trying to push against a stone wall. She opened her mouth to scream a curse, but he only took advantage and filled it with his tongue, thrusting with hard, deep strokes that were as shocking as they were enraging. His grip was firm, his hands twined tightly through her hair. His mouth was brutal and possessive, chasing after each cry, each attempt to twist away from the forced intimacy.

  Only when he chose to end it was she able to wrench herself free. When she straightened and faced him again, it was with the gleaming threat of another smaller, thicker blade grasped firmly in her hand.

  “You son of a bitch!” Crimson faced, she rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, removing the wetness. “How dare you!”

  “I dared,” he said calmly, “because you challenged me to.”

  “I … did not!”

  “You most certainly did. With those big brassy eyes and that lovely, luscious pout of a mouth. Perhaps you weren’t aware it was a challenge, or perhaps you are simply accustomed to men who find your stubbornness and rudeness intimidating. But only a fool would misread it as anything else.” His gaze fell to the knife and his voice became a lazy drawl of menace. “What’s more, I would suggest you put that away before I mistake it for a challenge of another sort—or have you forgotten my promise if you ever drew another weapon on me?”

  “I have not forgo
tten,” she said tautly, quivering with fresh outrage. “Nor have I forgotten you are not a man bound by conscience or burdened by an overabundance of honor.”

  “You are forgetting patience,” he added succinctly. “Of which I am quickly running short.”

  Beau ignored the warning flecks of blue smoldering in his eyes and turned angrily to gather the charts she had initially come to retrieve. He watched, a vein throbbing noticeably in his temple as she circled behind the table to collect her brushes and pots of ink.

  “I’ll have someone tell the captain you’re awake,” she said crisply, and headed for the door.

  “Isabeau!”

  She stopped and glowered back over her shoulder. “I have not given you permission to call me that. My name is Beau. Just plain Beau.”

  His eyes took in the soft cloud of her hair, the kiss-swollen lips, and the two hardened nubs that crowned her breasts and pushed impudently against her shirt.

  “If I have discovered nothing else, I sabeau” he said quietly, “I have discovered you are anything but plain.”

  “Just as I have discovered, Captain Dante, that you are no different from any other bandy-legged rooster, so impressed with what you have between your legs, you expect every woman on earth to be sweating and panting to have at it. Well, I am loath to disappoint, but I have seen better”—she cast a disdainful glance down his thighs—“and had better without becoming the smallest part damp across the brow. And if you ever … ever dare to touch me again, I will fillet you in such small pieces, the sharks will have to search the entire ocean to find a solid mouthful!”

  With fury snapping in her eyes, she whirled and exited the cabin, giving the door a resounding slam behind her.

  Chapter 8

  With the weather clear and a brisk north-by-northeast wind blowing steady, the Egret made good time through the remainder of the week, skimming over the waves like a frisky foal. The survivors of the Virago had been understandably withdrawn the first few days and preferred their own company, but as their health returned, so, too, did their spirits. Most, like their captain, vowed certain death to the master and crew of the Talon if and when they caught them, and when all the treacherous details became known to the crew of the Egret, it stirred equally strong sentiments in every quarter. To abandon any ship in distress was to do the unthinkable. To leave so famous a ship as the Virago and her crew as sacrifice to Spanish predators put every man’s blood to the boil and had more pairs of eyes than those belonging to the lookouts scouring the distant horizons for sight of the fleeing vessel.

  Dante de Tourville had appeared on deck to the cheers of his own men and those of the Egret Spence was there to greet him and celebrate his recovery with a cask of rumbullion, inviting both crews to toast the brave memory of the Virago and her daring forays against the papist plague. The pirate wolf had been harassing the Spanish Main for the past decade and there were a good many adventures to recount. It became a pattern of sorts after that, for the men to set their work aside for a time each day and gather on the main deck to share a tot of brandy or ale and listen to the adventures of the Virago. Some had the Egret’s crew poised on the edges of their seats, their eyes round as medallions; others had them clutching their sides and rolling with laughter.

  “You would think he walked on water,” Beau remarked dryly after a particularly loud outburst of ribald humor.

  “Who?” Spit McCutcheon stood beside her on the forecastle deck looking down over the daily gathering.

  “The valiant Captain Dante, who else? Is there some other icon on board with a halo and crown of thorns on his head?”

  She turned away from the rail and leaned over her charts again. The sea was relatively smooth and she had been able to take a fair reading of their latitude from the astrolabe. It was a simple instrument used to measure the altitude of the sun or a particular star. It consisted of a large graduated ring of brass fitted with a sighting rule that pivoted at the center of the ring. Suspended vertically by the thumb, the rule turned about on its axis so that the sun could be aligned and the altitude read off the ring. It was less than accurate in heavy seas off the deck of a rolling ship, but in smooth waters with little heaving, it fixed approximate latitudes and, to an experienced navigator, an estimate of leagues traveled and those yet to come before reaching port.

  Beau’s working charts were divided into grids drawn over rough sketches of the oceans and continents; a series of small x’s marked their progress against the readings she took off the astrolabe and the last sightings of known landmarks. It was with a twinge of satisfaction she studied her figures now and added another small x a good deal north and west of the Canaries.

  Five days into the chase, they had covered roughly ten degrees of latitude.

  “Almost two hundred leagues,” she said, smiling up at Spit.

  He only grunted, distracted for the moment by the sight of a white streak of fur racing down the main deck, followed in hot pursuit by the axe-wielding Cook. When they disappeared from sight, his attention wandered back to the cask of ale that had just been unbunged, prompting him to hitch up his breeches and run a dry tongue across his lips.

  “I’d say that were cause to join the celebrations, then.”

  Her smile tightened, then faded on a sigh. “Go ahead, if you like. I can take the helm and finish out your watch.”

  “Aye, an’ yer father would tail me out for shirkin’ my duties.”

  “Considering he is in the midst of the crowd, I doubt he could justify punishing anyone for laxity.”

  “Still an’ all, I were lashed once. It wasn’t a treat I’d like to share again. Five strokes, I had, an’ it left me raw enough to feel I were layin’ on a bed o’ red-hot coals.”

  Beau thought of the marks crossing Dante’s back; it must have been like a foretaste of hell.

  Spit peered slyly in her direction. “Cap’n Dante, now, he took his shirt off the other day an’ set one o’ the younger lads to pukin’ his biscuits over the side o’ the ship. Aye, it were just lucky for him the wind was blowin’ in his favor.”

  “I have seen the marks.” Beau pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I wonder what a man has to do to earn so many lashes with the cat?”

  He snorted. “On some ships? Might as well ask what a whore has to do to get laid.”

  Beau glanced sidelong at the gunnery chief. “I’m sure I don’t know the answer to that, either, Spit. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  The crusty old tar looked embarrassed—for all of two seconds. “Warrant it ain’t up to me to be enlightenin’ ye on the whys an’ wherefores o’ somethin’ like that, lass. Warrant ye should be lookin’ for someone with a stouter heart an’ a stiffer pole than mine to be givin’ ye lessons.”

  “Too old and withered to instruct me, are you?”

  “Too old to handle yer father’s fists, more’s the like. Now, enough o’ yer heathen talk—tease a poor man’s pride, for shame. Why don’t we both slink on down an’ catch a dram or two?”

  Beau stared over the rail a moment, then shook her head. “There should be at least one sound and sober head on board.”

  Spit scratched at the white bristles on his jaw and crooked a rheumy eye in her direction. “Ye don’t seem to hold an overly high opinion of ’is lordship.”

  Beau shrugged. “I hold no opinion of him whatsoever.”

  “An’ here I figured ye to be one o’ the first in line to listen to the exploits of the Virago. Ye were always crowdin’ the edge o’ the quay whenever Drake put into port.”

  Beau looked at Spit in shock. “Surely you do not compare this—this displaced Frenchman to our own Sir Francis Drake? You, who did not even recognize his ship or his pennon when you first saw it?”

  Spit grumbled and scratched harder. “I recognized it well enough afterwards. It were just … in the heat of the moment, it temporarily deserted me.”

  “There could be an inferno of flame and smoke surrounding the Golden Hind and no one would fail to recognize her.
Neither would they need to gather around a capstan to hear tales of Sir Francis Drake’s adventures. What schoolboy does not know he was the first Englishman to sail his ship around the world? The first—and only one—to sack San Domingo and Cartagena—two of Spain’s best defended cities in the Indies—not to mention being the first to cross Panama on foot and stand where he could see both the Atlantic and the Pacifica at the same time! You dare compare him to an arrogant, ill-mannered French bull rogue who cannot even steer his ship through a gale!”

  Sometime during Beau’s diatribe, Spit’s eyes had widened out of their creases and tried to direct Beau’s to a point over her shoulder. They flicked again now, with a more meaningful intensity, and Beau whirled around, the question dying on her lips when she saw Simon Dante lounging casually against the rail, his arms crossed over his chest, his mouth curved into a smile. It was impossible he could have missed a word she’d said, for the argentine eyes were dancing with amusement.

  Beau had been adroit in avoiding the company of the pirate wolf over the past few days, managing always to be at one end of the ship if he was at the other. Mealtimes were a challenge, for Spence insisted his daughter share his table with Dante and Pitt. But she had been able to rise to the occasion by changing her watches and inventing plausible reasons to be at the helm.

  Seeing him from a distance did not prepare her for a face-to-face meeting. His jaw was clean shaven, revealing a sharp and angular profile that would have put the noblest aristocrat to shame. His mouth, clear of the concealing black fur, proved to be wide and generous in shape, blatantly sensual, easily provoking memories of their audacity. His hair gleamed like polished ebony under the sunlight and fell in thick, silky waves to his shoulders. There were still faint smudges under his lower lashes, but they only emphasized the startling color of his eyes and lent him a more dangerous air, as if he preferred to stay always in the shadows while he observed the rest of the world.