“Bruja!” he rasped, though of course he’d seen it coming. “Sangre de Cristo, Jayne. With family like yours, who needs enemies? A father who’s blind to his own child’s rape, a cousin who exploits your misery. And then, I take it, Elizabeth herself turned against you.”
Jayne’s beautiful face shuttered tight, eyes pinned to the ceiling as though she refused to see anything else.
“My royal cousin flew into a blind rage, as she ever does when one of Dudley’s infidelities comes to light. She cursed and wept and threw things, summoned him before her to shriek imprecations. I don’t know what he told her, exactly, but she left the interrogation convinced I’d set him drunk on purpose, then stolen into his bedchamber naked or something like. She thought I’d taken advantage of him while his heart was broken after Elizabeth herself refused his suit.
“In the end, Lord Robert was banished or fled to his country house until the Queen’s wrath subsided. Lettice stole away to join him there, where they later married in secret. My brother blamed me for the incident, while my father buried his head in the sand and prayed the storm would pass over. No one spoke a word in my defense.
“As for myself,” she finished steadily, as though reciting a schoolroom lesson, “I had once been a royal pet. When my mother passed, the Queen showed me great kindness, and I dared to hope for a fair hearing. But Elizabeth refused to hear a word of it. She could not bear to look upon my face—the woman who’d enjoyed what she could not.
“She banished me in disgrace not only from her court, but from her country. She personally arranged my marriage to Antoine de Boulaine—a distant relation twice widowed, with a reputation for keeping his wives in their places. She said it was fitting that I take a traitor’s name.”
“That was the first Jane?” He cudgeled his memory for what he knew of English history.
“The first Jane,” she explained, “was the unhappy wife of George Boleyn, Anne’s brother. It was Jane Boleyn’s false testimony that sent Anne to the scaffold for adultery and treason. Elizabeth told me I should bear that name so that all men and women would know me for a conniver and betrayer.”
Appalled, Calyx stared at her, pierced with a sentiment he rarely allowed himself—compassion. For a pirate, sympathy was a mawkish emotion, useless as wings on a fish, and dangerous as a lit candle among gunpowder.
Now, seeing the shimmer of tears in Jayne’s aquamarine eyes, he wanted to throw something. He wanted to sail straight to England, ride down Robert Dudley and gut the man like the rabbit he was.
Elizabeth Tudor, Jayne’s godmother, had behaved like a spoiled girl instead of the great Queen she purported to be. As for two-faced Lettice Devereux—now Lady Leicester, he supposed—she deserved a good spanking.
Even Jayne’s brother and her own father, the very men who should have protected her, had cast her to the wolves. He felt like punching both of them.
All for the sake of the innocent, dream-shattered girl who’d once been Jayne Carey.
As he stared down at the woman lying beside him, with God knew what blazing in his face, she pushed into a sitting position and clutched the furs against her breasts. He was left with a view of her slim back, lissome and graceful, pearly skin gleaming against sable furs.
With her face hidden, she was harder to read. But she’d earned the right to a moment’s privacy after that litany of tragedies. He gripped her shoulder and squeezed gently, offering comfort she could shrug off if she wanted.
Her hand lifted to touch his. Yet she continued to gaze away. The fleeting suspicion crept through him that she was concealing something, some critical piece of the story yet untold. But the pain etched in her features and shimmering in her eyes had not been feigned.
“Jayne,” he said huskily.
When she spoke, her voice was clipped and brittle—Spanish again, warning him to keep his distance.
“Perhaps now you can appreciate, capitán, why the prospect of my royal cousin’s demise causes me little distress. Even pious King Philip shows more kindness and affection to his kin than Elizabeth shows to hers. Cousin Lettice has been exiled from court since she married Dudley, and I am still forbidden to set foot on English soil. But Lord Robert himself was quickly restored to favor.
“If you sail up the Thames and anchor in the London Pool, I’ll stand in the bow and cheer.”
If she’d met his gaze while she said it, he might have accepted her words at face value. Instead, he stared at the graceful curve of her spine and wondered what she wasn’t saying.
She said little of her marriage or the child who’d evidently sprung from it, but that was her right. No doubt she held back other painful truths about the family who’d failed her. He’d done the same with his own sordid past, telling her nothing of the charge of illegitimacy leveled by his bastardo of a father.
It was not as though they were truly intimates, Jayne and he, confiding their deepest secrets as the sea rocked them to sleep. She’d confided in him only when he forced her hand. At best, if he believed her, they were uneasy allies: the Tudor Queen’s disillusioned cousin and the Spanish pirate.
Allies for now, until he carried out his hidden agenda—assuming his rendezvous with Thomas Knyvett, High Sheriff of Norfolk, played out as planned.
The hell of it was, if Jayne truly did seek Elizabeth’s downfall, they stood squarely on opposing sides.
Chapter Eleven
Jayne sat cross-legged on the sun-drenched deck, her lap draped in canvas sail, and mended a jagged tear with neat stitches. She could never have managed this shipboard chore in a corset and farthingale. Clad in the silk shirt, leather jerkin, breeches and boots Calyx had procured for her, she found this new freedom of movement a revelation.
If he could see me now, Antoine would faint. Smiling with satisfaction, she tucked a stray curl beneath her jaunty cap.
She’d feared the attention such brazen attire would attract from the Arcángel’s crew and her complement of dangerously bored soldiers. In truth, few of those swinging in the rigging or grumbling about their duties paid her any heed. No doubt she passed for a page or grumete, an apprentice lad learning the sea trade.
For those who did notice, either Diego Domingo or the ship’s contramaestre—the gruff old salt whose work she assisted—was quick to intervene. She suspected Calyx had issued orders for them to mind her while he tended ship’s business elsewhere.
By now, every soul aboard knew their captain had taken a new mistress. If her reputation were not already in tatters, this latest scandal would surely finish the job.
I am not his mistress, she thought fiercely as she wielded her needle. Never mind that I spend my nights in his bed. I am biding my time, no more.
This morning had been progress. After a delectable mug of bitter chocolate sweetened with honey and cinnamon from Calyx’s personal stash of spices, he’d given her the run of the ship.
By now, the Portuguese coast was a dark blot against the horizon—seemingly out of reach.
Still, soon or late, her moment must come.
She did not dare trifle with the weather, not with Calyx’s suspicions so fresh. She’d deflected his questions last night by tossing him the meaty bone of her family history. But she harbored no doubt he would soon resume his interrogation.
Now, feeling the kiss of open air against her skin, she knew a storm was brewing. She could sense it in the way the white-tipped wavelets danced around the hull, the crackle of unseen lightning in the air, the energy coursing down her spine. The elements would soon unleash a full-blown tempest.
Nearby, a furtive movement caught her eye. As she watched unseen, a wiry figure in the impeccable rig of a tercio officer slunk from the companionway. He glanced cautiously about, then dropped silently through the hatch into the cargo hold.
Her eyebrows lifted. The lower decks contained the gunroom and powder store—both well-guarded—and the ship’s supplies of food, water and rum. She could imagine no legitimate business such a man could have there.
Over the snap of canvas, the distant ring of shouted orders and the splash of water against the hull, she discerned a faint tapping. Somehow the noise sounded furtive.
Operating on instinct, the sixth sense that had always served her, she barely hesitated before she shimmied down the ladder.
When her boots hit the floorboards, the wood creaked. Instantly the tapping halted.
Slowly Jayne circled, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light streaming from the hatch. Around her loomed the shrouded bulk of stacked barrels. She’d landed amid the ship’s supply of drinking water. From somewhere tinkled the steady patter of water against wood.
A powerful sense of caution gripped her. If she were discovered, she could claim no legitimate business here. Worse, she’d strayed from the protective eyes of Diego and the contramaestre. But the half-formed idea that had drawn her into the hold abruptly took shape before her.
What if one of these barrels was empty? Rolled over the side, it would float. What if she waited until nightfall, lashed herself to a barrel and—
The tarry sweetness of opium flooded her senses. The back of her neck prickled.
By instinct, she pivoted toward the ladder—and collided against a wiry body. From behind, an arm snaked over her shoulder and pressed a blade to her throat.
“Careful, muchacho,” an unfamiliar voice hissed. “You would not wish to cut yourself.”
Jayne froze, her pulse and heartbeat spiking, as the deadly edge fitted snugly across her throat. All her senses sharpened to razor keenness. She felt the plushy softness of a crimson sleeve, the brush of hot breath against her ear. Without moving, she could just glimpse the pale linen of a bandage around her assailant’s hand.
She had found the tercio officer, though not in the manner she’d intended.
“Bueno,” he breathed in her ear. “Now tell me why you followed me down here, muchacho.”
Jayne swallowed past her dry throat, the blade lodging uncomfortably against her larynx. Clearly her assailant had no notion of her identity, a tiny advantage she must hoard.
She pitched her voice low and replied in gutter Spanish.
“Por favor, señor, I wasn’t following nobody. The primero, Don Diego, he send me down to check the barrels, si?”
“Don Diego is an idiota,” he sneered, the blade digging harder into her throat. “Does he think I fail to notice when he sets his galley rats to spy on me? Does he think I fail to realize how his godless capitán schemes to be rid of me? First that hellcat attacks me, then his incompetent cirjano nearly kills me with brutal treatment! And now, muchacho, there is you.”
By now, Jayne knew him. Diego’s warning echoed in her mind.
“Cats and children are the kind of foe our good Duque prefers—and women, for that matter. Take a word of advice from your amigo here and steer clear of Naldo Luis de Nicanor.”
Clearly the man was up to some villainy. Reveal that she knew his identity, and she would never climb that ladder alive.
“Por favor,” she whimpered. “The primero, he’s waiting for me just above, señor. If I keep him waiting, it’s ten lashes with the little cat, si?”
“Ah, that would be a pity,” the Duque breathed. “We could not have that happen to such a tender young boy.”
To her horror, his free hand slid around her waist and roamed across her torso. The journey stilled abruptly when he encountered the swell of her breast.
A new tension invaded the sinewy form pressed against her back. Jayne gritted her teeth and cursed in silence.
“What have we here?” her captor murmured. His hand slid beneath her jerkin and fondled her, weighing her breasts through the thin silk shirt, rolling fear-tight nipples familiarly between his fingers. “Are you a runaway servant disguised as a boy...or are you the capitán’s new puta?”
Jayne fought down a surge of nausea. She trembled with the need to fling off this odious creature. But his dagger was still lodged beneath her jaw. If she moved, she was a dead woman.
Even her magick was useless here, in this enclosed space. She’d lost her tenuous link to the elements.
Keep your wits about you and think! Walsingham says your wits are your greatest ally.
Better to claim the protection of Calyx’s name than have this monster believe her a nameless runaway no one would ever miss. She dropped her gutter Spanish for the elegant diction of the King’s court.
“I am the Comtesse de Boulaine, señor, aboard this ship at the personal invitation of the King of Spain. Shall we call this a simple case of mistaken identity?”
A cruel laugh rasped in her ear.
“I call it good fortune, querida. I am the senior officer aboard this vessel, two hundred Spanish blades at my command. Perhaps it is time to enjoy the benefits of this command.”
His fingers closed around her nipple and twisted cruelly, bringing an involuntary cry to her lips. His breath quickened in her ear.
“I am second cousin to the King of Spain, did you know that? Yet, while I lay bleeding on his cirjano’s table, that filthy pirate stood over me and sneered!” A fine spray of spittle struck her ear. “One good turn deserves another, querida. I want those charming and ever-so-convenient breeches you’re wearing down around your ankles.”
Nausea roiled through her belly, cut by a bracing flood of anger. God’s Eyes, she had not survived Robert Dudley’s drunken assault and years of Antoine de Boulaine’s fumbling intimacies only to be raped in a cargo hold by a weasel whose breath reeked of opium and garlic!
Naldo Luis de Nicanor might be panting in her ear, yet he was not entirely oblivious to the tension thrumming through her.
“Do not even think of screaming,” he hissed, fingers clamping her nipple in a vise that brought tears swimming to her eyes. “I am already trembling to sample the sweet pleasures you share with your capitán, si? If you startle me, my knife-hand might slip. That would be such a pity.”
He accompanied the threat with another painful pinch that made her gasp. Her nipple was throbbing, making it difficult to plan.
Screaming would be risky, for certain. Nicanor could slit her throat and vanish before help arrived. If Calyx himself appeared, the ferret behind her would dance in her blood and laugh.
When he’d loaned her this attire, Calyx had not been fool enough to arm her. Despite the searing intimacies they shared in his bed, she knew he did not trust her. Fortunately, she’d contrived to borrow a cutlass from the contramaestre, ostensibly to cut the tough thread for the sail. That blade was now sheathed in her borrowed belt.
Jayne might spy and steal in the line of duty, but she had always drawn the line at murder. For the Duque de Nicanor, if the alternative was rape, she was prepared to make an exception.
Deliberately she let her body slump, defeated, in his arms.
“Don’t hurt me, señor,” she whimpered. “I’ll do as you say.”
“Bueno.” The sharp blade against her throat eased a fraction, enough for her to swallow down the bitter taste of fear. “Do it quickly.”
Moving carefully to avoid startling him, she fumbled at the waist of her borrowed breeches. The cutlass was sheathed at her hip. Waves of terror and resolve flooded through her. Wiping damp palms against her breeches, she planned her attack.
One breath to draw the cutlass. Another to stab the meat of his thigh.
Her cold fingers closed around the hilt.
An unearthly howl split the air—the piercing wail of a damned soul in Hell.
“Qué diablo?” her captor cried.
A dark mass dropped through the open hatch to land on Nicanor’s unprotected head. Flailing wildly, he reeled back with a yell. Jayne scrambled away from the deadly blade. Heart hammering like a drum, she unsheathed her cutlass and gripped it fiercely before her, frantic eyes searching
the shadows. An ungodly cacophony of curses, shrieks and yowls filled the hold.
The Duque de Nicanor staggered through a swath of light, arms wrestling with a patch of darkness spread across his shoulders. He’d dropped his dagger when the creature fell on him. Swiftly Jayne kicked it out of reach.
“Este gato es el diablo!” Nicanor shrieked. “Help!”
This cat is the Devil. In sheer disbelief, Jayne stared at the creature clinging to his back, coal-black and bristling, tail lashing, eyes flaming gold and green.
With a convulsive heave, the Duque flung the clinging animal from his shoulders. She caught a glimpse of his scratched and bleeding face, eyes white-rimmed with terror, before he swarmed up the ladder as though Lucifer himself had risen behind him. The cat, surely the largest Jayne had ever seen, streaked after him.
The pair vanished, a trail of maledictions and bloodcurdling howls trailing in their wake. Jayne slumped against a bulkhead. As the fear-driven strength ran from her limbs, her knees turned to jelly.
“The infamous Behemoth, I presume,” she said faintly.
The captain’s cat. Named for the Angel of the Deep, she recalled, who also presided over gluttony. Indeed, this Behemoth did not appear to miss many meals.
“Very amusing, capitán,” she murmured.
With shaking hands, she sheathed her cutlass and straightened her jerkin. No doubt Naldo Luis de Nicanor would not seek her out again in a hurry. She would certainly not be fool enough to follow anyone else who might be skulking about the hold.
On the ladder she hesitated, torn between the clean daylight above and the lure of the mysterious below. Clearly Nicanor harbored quite a grudge against Lord Calyx. What mischief had he been about—?
A powerful grip closed around the back of her jerkin and hoisted her through the hatch. Squinting against the inferno of sunlight that dazzled her eyes, Jayne struggled madly. She barely managed to get her legs beneath her as the unseen power released her.
“By the Goddess, I should have known,” a voice murmured in antiquated English. “Whenever catastrophe befalls this vessel, there do I find thee, Lady Jayne Boleyn.”
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