Pirate Wolf Trilogy

by Canham, Marsha

  “Ye’re offering to help us sail the Santo Domingo to a safe port?”

  “I have under my command fifty-two able bodied seamen who have no wish to be stranded in the middle of the ocean with the bloody Spaniards, sir.” He looked at Juliet. “With respect, Captain.”

  She studied the unfortunately scarred face and decided she liked Lieutenant Jonathan Beck. He was earnest and outraged over the uncivilized behavior of the Spanish, grateful for his life and the lives of his men. But could she trust him? Having just boasted his knowledge of every aspect of a sailing ship, would he not be able to chart their course? Remember landmarks? Guess their position with reasonable accuracy from the sun and stars? Pigeon Cay was unique for a number of reasons, any one of which would identify it to someone familiar with the area. Moreover, she knew for a fact there was a reward of ten thousand gold doubloons on her father’s head. A spectacular fortune for a man who made a shilling a month in the service of his king.

  “Captain,” he said, reading the hesitation in her eyes. “I am not unaware of the success your father has had in keeping his whereabouts in these islands a well-guarded secret. You have my word as an officer in His Majesty’s Royal Navy that neither myself nor any of my men will jeopardize that secrecy in any way.”

  Juliet gave nothing away by her expression, but at length, she shared a long and searching look with Nathan Crisp. He, in turn, shrugged. “That’s why ye’re the Captain. You make the decisions, I only do as I’m told.”

  “I could only wish,” she said dryly. “Very well, Lieutenant Beck, I accept your offer and your word of honor. As for your men, I am not unappreciative of the strain it might put on their loyalties once they are back in London. In fact,” one auburn eyebrow made a casual hook upward, “for each man who agrees to join my crew of his own free will—however temporarily—and signs articles stating as much, I’m prepared to offer them a full crew’s share when the prize is tallied.”

  Beck opened his mouth to protest, then clamped it shut again. Signing articles on board a privateer whilst still legally bound to the English navy, was equivalent to desertion and the penalty for that was death. In effect, it would turn them into pirates, and for an officer to sanction such an agreement was tantamount to mutiny, treason, freebooting, and whatever other charge the naval council would throw at him if it ever came to light.

  As a deterrent, however, going on account would certainly guarantee the silence of any man who signed. They had all heard the whispers concerning the cargo the Santo Domingo carried in her holds, and for a sailor—half of whom had been pressed into service—even a tenth of a crewman’s share would represent more than they could earn in a dozen lifetimes. A full share would likely beyond any of their wildest dreamings.

  “I would naturally have to put it to the men,” he said, his eyes narrowing with new respect for the captain’s cleverness. “But I can foresee no immediate impediment.”

  Juliet held out her hand. “In that case, welcome to my crew, Mr. Beck.”

  He was an inch away from extending his hand to seal the relationship when he blew out a puff of air and curled his fingers into a ball. “On second thought, there, ah, might be one slight impediment.”

  Juliet retracted her hand and rested it on the hilt of her sword. “And that would be... ?”

  “That would be Varian St. Clare, his grace the Duke of Harrow. While I am not privileged to know his business in these waters, I do know he came aboard carrying documents that bore the king’s seal. He is no common sailor, nor is he under my command. The bond I extend for my men would therefore have to exclude his grace and if his grace is excluded then I cannot guarantee the willingness of my men to sign your articles. In other words—”

  “No need to hit us on the head with a truncheon, lad,” Crisp said. “We see the way the boat is driftin’.”

  “Where is he now?” Juliet asked wearily, beginning to regret ever seeing a flash of lavender velvet.

  Crisp tilted his head. “We had him shifted over to the Iron Rose, like ye ordered.”

  “I did? Oh, yes, I guess I did. And these documents he brought aboard?” Juliet inquired of the lieutenant. “You have no idea what they might be? Or where they might be?”

  Beck glanced inadvertently over the rail as if he could see where the Argus rested on the bottom of the ocean. “I expect they are with the rest of the captain’s papers, for I believe he entrusted them into Captain Macleod’s care.”

  Juliet exchanged the smallest flicker of a glance with Crisp. “It would seem, then, the solution is obvious. You and your men, Mr. Beck, will remain on board the Santo Domingo under Mr. Loftus’s command, and his grace the duke will remain in ignorant bliss on board the Iron Rose. We need three days of fair wind and clear sailing, sir, and for that I promise a share of the prize as well as passage to the nearest British port after the Santo Domingo is in a safe anchorage.”

  Lieutenant Beck brought himself to attention. “In that case, Captain, I shall put the news to the men and we can begin to make ourselves useful at once.”

  She smiled. “See that you have that cut on your forehead tended first or you’ll bleed to death and be no use to me at all.”

  Beck flashed a grin, the first she had seen since he had departed the Argus. It took ten years off the lieutenant’s face and made his disfigurement all the more unfortunate.

  When he was gone, she turned to Crisp and forestalled any objections that might be forming on his tongue.

  “When we come within sight of the Cay, we will invite Mr. Beck and his crewmen to go belowdecks.”

  “A full crew’s share?”

  “They deserve it. They played as big a part in bringing the Santo Domingo to her knees as we did. And you saw the holds, Nathan. We can afford a little catholic charity.”

  He offered up a grunt. “I still say ye should just heave this lot overboard. It would save us all a deal of trouble.”

  Juliet followed his gaze to the huddled groups of Spaniards. Captain Aquayo and his officers had been spared the indignity of being tethered together, but they were under heavy guard in the stern. Most of the light was fading from the sky, but Juliet had no trouble locating the one pair of piercing black eyes that had not stopped staring in her direction since she and Nathan had climbed to the tall forecastle deck.

  Juliet’s shots had blown away the bottom halves of the maestre’s ears, the lead balls cutting so close to his face they had left red scorch marks on his cheeks. The right lobe had been severed cleanly, the left had hung by a shred of flesh until his angry, groping fingers had found it and torn it off. His head was swathed in strips of blood-stained linen now that left little more than his eyes free to vow revenge.

  “Might also have been for the best if ye’d just shot the bastard clean through instead o’ toyin’ with his affections,” Crisp noted dryly.

  “Ah, but this way he’ll remember me each time he looks in the mirror.”

  “I’ve a feelin’ he’ll remember ye anyway, lass. With or without the ear bobbin’.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Varian St. Clare groaned the groan of a dying man and forced himself to roll his head toward the source of light that glowed red through his eyelids. His mouth was coated with a sour fur, his tongue was so swollen it felt like it might burst. His head was pounding, his ears were ringing incessantly and whoever it was who had the nerve to be talking and laughing nearby would be shot the instant he could lay a hand to a pistol.

  He groped in the vicinity of his waist, finding nothing but skin. He ran his fingers over the ridge of his hipbone and dragged them across the hard surface of his belly, skimming upward as he felt more flesh, hair, and a thumping heartbeat beneath his breastbone.

  He was alive, though he was still not certain if that was cause for celebration.

  He was also stark naked, covered by a thin, scratchy blanket. No sooner had he determined this, then more battered senses came into play, making him aware of a burning sensation on the side of his left
buttock. That, combined with the pungent smell of brimstone made him brace himself before he dared open one dark blue eye.

  Half expecting to find himself surrounded by sulphurous flames, attended by a hoard of leering, grinning demons, he peered through the merest slit of his lashes.

  He was not in hell, nor was he on board the Argus. He had been in Captain Macleod’s great cabin on many occasions and this, with its huge brass wheel suspended from the ceiling, was not the smallest part familiar.

  He opened his eyes wider and his search for explanations ranged farther afield. Most of the cabin was in heavy shadow, for although there was a lantern suspended from every spoke of the brass wheel, only one was lit casting its soot up to smudge a ceiling already thick with lampblack. There was no way of telling if it was day or night; heavy sheets of canvas had been hung over the bank of gallery windows that spanned the rear wall of the cabin.

  A glint of metal drew his eye to the leaded cross pieces on a wire-fronted bookcase, then to another beside it lined with shelves that held an impressive array of pistols and powder flasks. The two cases appeared to be the only extravagance in a room fitted with an enormous desk, a chair, and a small washing stand nailed to the floorboards. The bed he was lying on was little more than a shelf set into the bulkhead. The mattress was barely wide enough to accommodate his shoulders and so thin he might as well have been stretched out flat on a board.

  Moreover, he was not alone in this strange and spartan cabin.

  Beacom was seated on a narrow bench at the end of the bed, his head drooped forward so far his chin touched his chest. Bowed over the desk were two men, one of whom was studying a map and scratching notations on the border while the other man watched, nodding occasionally to himself as if mentally comparing the jotted computations with those he had apparently made himself. He was short and burly with a face like a terrier chewing a mouthful of wasps. The one doing the jottings was taller, leaner, and wore a faded blue bandana over a single long auburn braid that hung halfway down his back.

  A memory stabbed through the pain in his skull and took Varian back into the heat of battle where he recalled seeing the same lad with the blue bandana cornered against the rail by three Spaniards. The boy had been holding his own, wielding a sword like a brilliant young master, and Varian had only felt the need to intercede when an arquebusier thought to take unfair advantage.

  He remembered that much. He also remembered leaping back on board the Argus in time to be blown to hell and gone when the deck had exploded beneath his feet. After that... nothing but flashes and glimpses. Something about a dagger. The ship going down. The boy again.

  There had been something odd about the way he spoke, too. Something about the way he looked... ?

  Varian’s experienced eye travelled along the lad’s slender form and hovered over the rounded curve of the hip, the tightly molded doeskin breeches, the crux of the thighs where there was neither a bulge nor a codpiece allowing ready access to one.

  His gaze shot back up to the face beneath the blue bandana and confirmed a rather shocking suspicion: it was a female. Her head was tipped forward in concentration and the light was directly above her, casting most of her face in shadow, but there was no doubting his instincts. The boy was female—the same female in the same tight breeches and leather jerkin he had seen fighting on the deck of the galleon!

  If there was the smallest doubt that this was the same person, it was dispelled at the sight of the elegant Toledo sword she still wore strapped about her waist, the tip of which bumped against the heel of her boot when she took a step around the desk. It was as splendid a weapon as his own blade, which had been made by a master craftsman and presented to him as a token of appreciation by King James himself.

  Varian willed himself to take another long, slow look around the cabin. This time, when he turned his head further in an attempt to see what lay in the shadows behind him, such a violent stab of pain shot through his skull he could not stop a sharp gasp from breaking through his lips.

  “Oh! Faith and happy day!” Beacom’s shadow cut across the lantern light, blocking both it and the couple standing at the desk. “My lord, his grace the duke, is coming to himself again!”

  Varian attempted to speak but his throat refused to emit more than a dry croak.

  “Captain!” Beacom clasped his hands in an appeal directed across the room. “Might I trouble you for a dram of wine? I expect his grace is sorely in need.”

  “It’s there on the sideboard.” The burly man waved a hand. “Help yerself.”

  “I thank you, sir. You are too desperately kind.”

  A grunt acknowledged the compliment before he returned to his charts.

  A moment later Varian felt a few drops of sweet red wine trickle through his lips. He let it fill his mouth and run down his throat and what he did not sputter out on a ragged cough, he swallowed with avid appreciation. When the cup was empty he lapped the air insistently for more, but Beacom was cautioned against it.

  “Unless you want him puking it all up again,” said a feminine voice. “Wait a few minutes. If he manages to keep that down, he can have another. He has taken a stout knock on the head and if the skull is cracked or the brain is swollen, you will only be wasting my good Malaga.”

  “My skull is fine,” Varian rasped. “Where the devil am I? Where is Captain Macleod?”

  “Captain Macleod is dead, your grace,” Beacom explained quickly. “The Argus, I’m afraid, is lost. Gone. Sunk beneath the sea.”

  “Sunk, you say?” Varian frowned and struggled to squeeze out more memories.

  “We were attacked by a vile Spanish warship,” Beacom recounted. “You were injured when the powder magazine on board the Argus exploded. You knocked your head on a beam as you flew through the air and, ah—” he leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper— “your shoulder and left buttock were severely bruised. Right to the very bone, I dare say. The captain applied some dreadful concoction of camphor oil and turpentine, claiming it would numb the flesh and help it heal faster.”

  “Nothing is numb, dammit,” Varian hissed through his teeth. “And you have yet to tell me where we are and who the devil that woman is that she should dare tell me I can or cannot have more wine.”

  The auburn head came up under the lantern light, causing the bandanna to glow a pale, luminous blue against the darker shadows. “You are presently on board my ship, sir, in my bed, and as captain, I can tell you any damned thing I wish to tell you.”

  “Captain?”

  “Captain.”

  “Your ship?”

  “My ship,” she nodded. “The Iron Rose.”

  Varian closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He thought it highly preposterous—and unlikely—for a woman to be captain of any ship, much less one that had defied the might of a Spanish galleon.

  “If the accommodations fail to meet with your approval,” she murmured dryly, bringing his eyes open again, “Mr. Crisp, here, can always sling a hammock in a sail locker for you and your servant.”

  Since the pounding in his head did not allow an appreciation for either humor or sarcasm at the moment, Varian decided to savor the lingering taste of the wine—which he recognized as being a damned fine vintage and nothing at all like the sour claret the captain of the Argus had enjoyed by the barrel full. “You say this is your cabin?”

  “It is.”

  “Then I shall assume it is the best the ship has to offer and accept it graciously.”

  The girl lifted her head and her eyebrow at the same time. She set the stick of charcoal she had been writing with on the desk and stared at Beacom, who instantly wilted against the wall.

  “Your man informs us you are a duke.”

  “The twelfth Duke of Harrow to be precise. Varian St. Clare at your service, mistress... ?”

  “Captain,” she said, correcting him. “Captain Dante... to be precise. The twelfth duke, you say?”

  “We tend to live short lives,” he snapped. “
Dante?” Though he whispered the name, it set off such a violent hammering in his head that he had to set his teeth against a shiver. “Do you pretend to tell me the infamous rogue known as the Pirate Wolf is a mere woman?”

  The question and his manner of asking it brought her out from behind the desk this time and Beacom’s eyes rounded almost out of their sockets. His face engaged in a flurry of contortions, most of them intended to warn Varian, by means of elaborate movements of the mouth and eyebrows, not to test the patience of the woman who was now slowly crossing the room and approaching the side of the bed. When she threw a scowl in his direction, the frantic pantomime ceased and he looked up at the ceiling, but when she looked away again, he laced his fingers together in a desperate plea for his master to hold his tongue.

  “I pretend nothing, my lord. My name is Juliet Dante and the rogue to whom you refer so capriciously is my father, Simon Dante.”

  “Your father?”

  “So he told me,” she said evenly, “and I have no reason to disbelieve him.”

  “Well of course that was not what I meant.” Varian raised a hand to massage his temple. “It was merely a response to the astonishing notion of a woman such as yourself captaining a fighting ship.”

  “You English do appear to be having a difficult time grasping the notion,” she agreed wryly. “But I am curious to know what you mean by ‘a woman such as myself’. Just what kind of woman might that be?”

  He stopped rubbing his brow and stared at her a moment. It was her eyes that warned him—eyes that sent the fine hairs across the back of his neck standing on end. Aside from the extraordinary silver-blue color, they were bold and direct, inviting him to expand on the insulting platitude only if he had absolutely no desire to see another sunrise. They were situated above a nose that looked as if it had been broken at some time, for it tipped ever so slightly to one side. The face itself, although wanting a good scrub, was a surprising blend of characteristics, from the large, expressive eyes to the firm chin, neither of which suggested she was someone to be trifled with.