They stared at each other.
“I doubt my men will choose to sit idly by while you burn the William Porter.”
“Look about ye, lad. Yer fair outnumbered.”
The Duke swore. “This is why you wanted me here.”
“Yer the only man I trust with me daughter.”
The Duke held his gaze. “What makes you certain I wouldn’t throw her overboard the moment the wind takes me beyond sight of Morgan’s Mound?”
“Yer a man of principles.” Beau Billy laughed softly. “Ye might wish to throw her over—but ye won’t.”
“God’s teeth!” After a moment, the Duke raised his head. “Why is it so important that she sails now, on my ship?”
“Yer task is to get her to England, not to know her business lest she chooses to tell it.” Grinning, Beau Billy listened carefully and concluded the Duke’s cursing lacked originality. He’d heard better from old Mother Galway or from Blu for that matter. A friendly sneer curled across his lips. “Considering yer reputation, I’d not have thought ye’d tremble at transporting a mere mite of a gel.”
“It’s who that girl is.” The Duke regarded him across the rim of his tankard. “You still have a price on your head in England.”
Beau Billy threw back his head and laughed. “They’s a purse over me cap in more places than England, lad! Name any country that pleases ye, and ye can safe-wager a time when they all wanted to stretch me neck.”
“No doubt. But there’s renewed interest in Beau Billy Morgan in England. Certain men have raised the price on you and on other known pirates.”
“After a dozen years?” Beau Billy felt a swell of pride. For the past decade he hadn’t ventured far from the Mound, hadn’t plundered a ship since his retirement. That he was still remembered in England pleased him immensely.
“Privateers are earning huge profits for our backers. Men who can’t afford the initial investment, or who have invested unwisely, are agitating against known pirates with the intent of igniting public indignation against sea plunder. Once public outrage has been inflamed, the next step is to expand that outrage to include privateering. If certain politicians cannot share in the profits, they wish to prevent anyone from doing so. It begins by hanging a few pirates.”
“I grasp where yer lode is pointing,” Beau Billy said after a moment. “Yer uneasy regarding a connection between ye and me daughter.”
“I’d not welcome a link that blurs the line between privateering and piracy.” The Duke met his eyes. “Frankly, from your point of view, I’d not think you would welcome an easy trail either. Your daughter could be in danger if her identity becomes known.”
Leaning back and gazing across the hall, Beau Billy considered. There were two, perhaps three hundred residents on Morgan’s Mound, all of whom would be aware Blu had shipped with the Duke. Plus the Duke’s crew.
Additionally, he had enemies on both sides of the water who would leap to betray him the moment they learned of the government’s renewed interest. Mole, he had taken care of. Perhaps the pieces of Mole’s scurvy body would surface about the islands, perhaps the fish would see to the evidence. But he couldn’t dispose of all his enemies.
The most serious consideration was Blu. That she might be imprisoned didn’t trouble him. English law would not punish a daughter for a father’s crimes. But she could be used as a tool against him.
Still—Mouton would be with her. Moreover, if he kept her here and didn’t send her to England, what sort of future might she expect? He well knew how a woman ended on Morgan’s Mound. Blu would end on the beach with the whores, her standards forgotten, growing old before her time. She would never know the second half of her heritage, would never understand another way of life was possible, perhaps desirable.
“Me daughter goes to England,” he said finally.
“The risk is considerable. They could take her, wield her against you.”
Beau Billy met his young friend’s eyes. “Then I take the gallow grass. Ye’ve seen the Mound, Duke, ye’ve seen the life here. If ye had a daughter more precious than gold, would ye keep her here? Nay, lad. Ye’d move the moon to give her something better.”
“Aye. But not on my ship.”
“Aye, lad. On yer ship.”
They stared at each other, then smiled, and in the end, they were laughing.
“They should hang you well and good riddance,” the Duke said, standing. He finished his bub and extended his hand to Beau Billy.
“Perhaps they will, lad.” Beau Billy gripped the Duke’s hand then raised his tankard in a salute. “Ye’ll sail the morn after next. With a fat purse, fresh provisions, and me daughter and her party.”
Still smiling, the Duke stepped outside, away from the smoky rum-soaked air drenching the great hall. The night was warm and softly seductive, a night created for whispered words and tangled bodies. Walking across the dark sand toward his ship, he thought about the girl, Blu. With some distance between the events in the hut and now, he could view the incident with more objectivity. Lord, what a story it made. The gentlemen at his club would weep with laughter.
Once inside his cabin, he removed his jacket and waistcoat and crossed his boots atop his desk. After lighting a thin dark Caribbean cigar, he blew a stream of smoke toward his opened window.
He would take her to England, he had already made the decision. Not because Beau Billy’s threats concerned him, but because he agreed she had no future here. Why that mattered, he could not have explained. But something about her had reached him. The moment she stood naked before him, her childlike enthusiasm, charming now that he recalled it, or that peculiar business about supping—something.
Laughing softly, he drew on the cigar and shook his head. God help her in London. He couldn’t imagine where she planned to fetch up or how she would manage. Then he remembered the wound on her shoulder and the glint in her dark eyes and he suspected she would manage just fine. He would do better to pity the men she would encounter.
~ ~ ~
Because she didn’t wish to risk meeting the hedge-bird Duke, Blu rose at dawn and rowed out to the salvage ships with the divers. It didn’t ride well with her character to avoid a confrontation, but this situation was unique. It wasn’t every day she offered a man her virginity, a gift she could give but once, only to have him refuse her. The rejection was humiliating.
A man less scab-headed and more gentlemanly would have allowed her the opportunity to correct her error. But not His High and Haughty Lordship, the Duke. One tiny mistake and he washed his elegant hands of her. Well, he could just go bugger himself. He had trigged out on the opportunity of a lifetime, she thought sourly. She would have been good at rogering, she felt it in her bones.
Chewing a thumbnail, she turned brooding eyes toward the long boat approaching the wracker. Monsieur sat in the prow, small tufts of hair blowing loose from his wig in the sea breeze. He sat almost regally, as was his way, but more stiffly now than was usual, as Monsieur was terrified of water.
Smiling, Blu shielded her eyes from the sun and noticed Monsieur’s small hands were clamped to the boat like talons. Then her smile faded as she realized there was but one item that would force him to brave the water. Herself.
Turning her face away, Blu hugged her knees to her chest and leaned back against the mast, watching the huge lead-encased bell that hung just above the water. The salvage-master shouted and the winch squealed, lowering the bell another foot. If the bell entered the water correctly, a large pocket of air would be trapped within. The pocket of air allowed the divers to remain underwater on the wreck site for longer periods, as they could surface within the bell for another lungful of air.
The long boat bumped the side of the wracker at the same time as the bell successfully entered the water. Monsieur’s enormous powdered wig appeared above the railing as the divers, naked but for the belts of heavy stones around their waists, sailed from the deck into the water, following the bell. In the ensuing silence, Blu turned her gaze
upward to watch the long tails circling against the sky. She preferred their cries to the lecture she was certain to receive from Monsieur.
Monsieur picked his way across the rope-strewn decks to stand beside her. “A wracker is no place for a lady,” he sniffed, the sound ripe with disapproval.
“I’ve seen naked men before.” But not last night, to her everlasting regret. Scowling, feeling low and hipped, Blu plucked at the net piled beside her.
Monsieur meticulously spread his lace-edged handkerchief over the planking, then sat on it and mopped the sweat that trickled from beneath the edges of his wig.
“Henceforth, you must refrain from referring to naked men. A lady never makes reference to nakedness. If one absolutely must refer to naked persons, one phrases it with delicacy. One says a state of undress.”
Speaking of the diver’s nakedness made Blu aware of it. Watching as the next line of divers went over the side, the sun glistening on the fat with which they oiled their bodies, she thought their nakedness natural and beautiful. Most were Indian slaves captured from the pearl fisheries off Cubagua and Margarita Island. But some were men she knew well from the Mound. She didn’t think any of them were as beautiful naked as the Duke would have been.
“I think naked bodies are beautiful,” she said, knowing the statement would shock Monsieur. Everyone on the island enjoyed shocking Monsieur. Like Blu, they offended Monsieur for the pleasure of observing his outrage.
As expected, his thin shoulders stiffened and his eyes flared behind his goggles. His nostrils pinched to the point of meeting. Everything about him crackled with indignation, his sun-faded brocade jacket, his starched and yellowing stock, even his wig, which had long ago matted and fuzzed beneath the unrelenting assault of sun and humidity.
“Blusette! Such statements are unacceptable! Lady Katherine would never, no never, address such an indelicate topic.”
“Bugger Lady Katherine.”
Monsieur trembled with shock. Spit bubbled from his sputtering lips.
“I won’t go. I don’t want to meet her.” She stared at the deck between her toes. “Why should I want to be a lady like her?”
“Lady Katherine is your mother!”
“She threw me away. Like spitting out a rotten tooth.”
“You must—”
“For what purpose?” Flaring at him, she narrowed her eyes and her voice rose. “So I can marry an arrogant buffer like that hedge-dog Duke. A fine one he is! No, thank you. I’d rather roger a wrack-diver.”
“Which brings us to the topic of last evening.” Monsieur’s lips thinned. He removed his goggles and polished them against the tops of his breeches. “I am much annoyed that you did not confide your intentions to me before proceeding willy-nill. You might well have ruined yourself. You may thank God it did not happen.” Replacing his spectacles, he lowered his head and stared at her over the rims.
“God’s balls! Is there anyone in the Bermudas who hasn’t learned of my humiliation?”
“Fate protected you. The evening might as easily have ended in your disgrace.”
“My disgrace? That is precisely how it did end! I’m still as bloody virginal as a newborn.”
“For which you may thank providence. My dearest Blu, I cannot impress upon you enough the value of virtue. A true lady does not bring damaged goods to her marriage bed.”
She threw up her hands. “I am not a lady and I don’t wish to be one. Neither do I wish to marry. And what man prefers a shoe just off the last? He wants a shoe broken to comfort. Beau Billy says so. And finally, I haven’t noticed any sailor asking any woman if she’s damaged goods before he nips into her hut!”
“You must cease at once to judge the world by Morgan’s Mound. Out there”—he waved a hand toward the sparkling turquoise waters—“is a world you cannot now imagine. Filled with civilized items and civilized people. To enjoy them best, you must avail yourself of the prevailing culture. You, too, must become civilized.”
“I am civilized.”
“No, my dear, you are not. And much of the blame must be laid at my door for I have failed you.”
Blu inhaled deeply, drawing the fruity scent of Monsieur’s perfume into her lungs. She patted his hand, her annoyance softening to affection as she recognized his distress. “You haven’t failed me, Monsieur.”
“I have.” He gripped her hand and looked to the sea. He drew a breath. “In France I served the Marquis de Lavobère. I was gentleman in waiting to his first gentleman in waiting. Once, while in his service, we stopped at Versailles.” Though he had told this tale before, he looked to see if she was properly impressed. Her eyes rounded and her mouth formed a tiny circle. Satisfied, he went on. “We remained two days and twice I glimpsed the King from afar. Once a man has glimpsed a king, he can never again be the same man he was. The glimpsing alters everything.”
“Few men can claim to have glimpsed a king.”
“Exactly.” After a silence, his chest collapsed in a long exhalation and he spoke again. “When I was captured by Beau Billy, I misrepresented myself as grander than I was. Now, of course, your father knows the tale, but at the time I presented myself as a gentleman. Beau Billy believed me, as I was dressed above my station and I had assumed the airs of a man who has glimpsed a king. Instead of killing me, your father spared my life and held me at ransom. By the time it was apparent the Marquis de Lavobère would pay no ransom, I had observed your father had a small daughter, one who was growing as wild as the vines.”
“I remember.”
“You were too small to remember. To resume the tale, I bartered my life in exchange for tutoring you. But the pirate had more honor than I. It was a jest, you see. I saw no point in educating an island child. Certainly I could see no need for you to learn etiquette.”
“Did you think to trig it?”
“Ah yes. When I had been on the Mound for three years, I saw my opportunity. But where would I go? To what or to whom would I return?” He blinked at her through his goggles. “For the first time in my life I was happy. Beau Billy and Mouton and all the others—they treated me with respect as a learned man. Need I add, this respect had been lacking in my former life. More importantly, I had come to care for you.”
“Oh, Monsieur.”
“So I stayed, even after Beau Billy offered my freedom. As for you, my dear, I taught you all I know of history and politics, of literature and art. But the social graces—I failed you there. Perhaps because I gradually forgot the niceties myself, perhaps because I was too shortsighted to comprehend you would ever have need of such knowledge.”
“How lacking am I?”
“Very lacking. You will sail off to England and your mother no more cultured than a sand flea. The social arts are an enigma to you. Fashion is unknown. You possess no artful graces. Your ignorance is such that you cannot even grasp the importance of such arts.”
‘If I’m to be such an embarrassment, perhaps I should not sail to England. I should remain here.”
He smiled at the sly hope in her eyes. “We sail on the morning tide. Your woeful education is not to be abandoned, but enhanced.”
Blu shot upright. “On the morning tide? We sail for England tomorrow?” Her mind raced. “With the Duke?”
“His Lordship has agreed to accept our party.”
“Like bloody hell!”
“A lady doesn’t—”
“This one does. And this lady is not going to ship with that whore’s son, the Duke.”
“Your father has decided,” Monsieur stated calmly. “Everything is arranged.”
“Bloody boar on a plank!” Blu struck her fists against the planking and tears sprang to her eyes. “Must I accept this too? Isn’t it enough that I’m forced to leave the people I love? Forced to go to a mother I despise? Must I also be forced to sail with the source of my humiliation?”
“I urge you to consider who else among your father’s acquaintances could sail to the gates of London town without risking immediate arrest. Suc
h men as usually put into Morgan’s Mound carry a prize over their heads. His Lordship is far and again the safest and most logical choice.”
Despite her agitation, Blu conceded Monsieur was correct. Judged from her father’s perspective, the Duke was the only possible choice for the task. Realizing this, she cursed herself that she hadn’t sliced his scurvy throat when she had the opportunity.
“I won’t go,” she stated firmly, knowing the statement was as lame as old Mother Galway.
“I’ve packed your things. Our chests are in the warehouse.”
“What things?” She loathed herself for asking.
“The gowns and hats and slippers I set aside for you. I think Lady Katherine will be pleased.” He frowned. “Of course we cannot know for a certainty how recent the styles are until we arrive. We can only hope.”
“Gowns? And hats? God’s teeth!”
They lapsed into silence as Blu blinked rapidly against the tears stinging her eyes. She was sailing to England on the morning tide and there was naught she could do to prevent it. Well. Beau Billy could banish her to England, but he could not force her to become a lady. She was herself and that was good enough.
After a time, the lulling motion of the wracker drew the tension from her shoulders. She lifted her hair off her neck so the breeze could cool her skin. And finally, eventually, she resigned herself to an unwanted fate. She would remain in England only as long as it required for Lady Katherine to despair of her and send her home. It shouldn’t take too bloody long.
Feeling better, she turned her head and rested her cheek on the top of her knees.
Monsieur was picking his nose. She watched with fascination, admiring the fastidious precision of the process. Even Lady Katherine, that paragon of ladyship, would have been impressed by Monsieur’s elegance.
Lady Katherine. A shudder of revulsion convulsed Blu’s body. She had no need of a mother who had abandoned her. Especially she had no need of a woman who fit Monsieur’s description of a lady. Such a pallid vaporous creature would not be a woman Blu could admire under the best of circumstances. And these were not the best of circumstances.
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