He pointed to the two brothers seated on a narrow berth against the wall. Alf's throat was bandaged and his eyes were glazed from the amount of rum Podd had been generously distributing, but it was Ferg who lifted his panniken in a toast.
"She saved me brother, Cap'n. 'Ee was dead sure as I'm sittin' 'ere. Doc Podd said as 'ow 'ee should 'ave been… would’ve been if she 'adn't touched 'is neck an' stoppered the blood.”
“Healin’ hands, she has, Captain," Podd declared. “Healin’ hands.”
Before Eva could object, Ferg called for a rousing toast to "The Mermaid!" which was instantly echoed by a dozen others.
Shaking her head, Eva wiped her hands on the cloth she had tied around her waist and used the back of her hand to brush the sweat off her face, leaving a clean streak through the grime on her forehead. "Is it over, then? Have we won?"
"We outshot and outfoxed the bastard," Dante murmured, feeling somewhat off-balance again. "So it is over, yes. For the time being, anyway."
She smiled as the men gave another cheer, but then her eyes flicked over his face, chest, and arms.
"Are you hurt, Captain? You have blood on your doublet."
He followed her worried glance to his shoulder. "No. No, I am intact. Stubs said you were in the surgery and I thought... well... I thought the worst rather than the best."
Podd was roaring for another toast and hoisted the bottle, having to tilt back to catch the last few drops. He tipped too far and, with one arm windmilling, crashed over like a felled log onto the floor. The Kowall twins leaned forward to look, chuckled together, and settled back again.
Dante had not taken his eyes off Eva. He saw her laugh along with the twins... along with the rest of the men who were watching and listening from the corridor, and he realized she had won them over. The 'jinx' was now the 'Mermaid' with the soft touch and healing hands, and he suspected he would hear no more grumbling about tossing her overboard.
He turned to go and she stopped him again. "Captain Dante...?"
He paused and glanced back.
"I do thank you for your concern."
His mouth curved at the corner and he offered a small, but elegantly executed bow before disappearing back into the darkness of the companionway.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dante did not immediately return to the quarterdeck. Curiosity lured him to his cabin instead. The boards were down over the gallery windows to block the light and he lit a lamp, setting it on his desk as he studied the chart that showed the best details of the reefs and chasms flanking the islands of Espiritu Santu. The north and southern sections were solid, but the midsection was comprised of hundreds of little islets and atolls, as if some giant hand had dropped the island and the middle had shattered into pieces. Those pieces formed a maze with channels that ended in solid rock, stretches of sand and mangrove swamps, making it impractical as well as hazardous to navigate in daylight, let alone blinded by fog and darkness.
Gabriel's mother had charted some of the coastline and inlets but there had simply been too many to do them all. And until the morning sun burned away the fog, he had no idea if the Endurance was close to land or sitting on the shelf of a reef, or if they had gone in a huge circle and would find themselves laying a hundred yards off the beam of one of the galleons.
Dante spread the chart flat and ran his finger over the broken midsection of Espiritu Santu.
His own experience with the islands was sorely lacking. But he had heard about the sandy estuaries, the tidal swamps, the deep blue holes, and enormous caverns formed in the limestone rock.
He poured a goblet of rum and sat back in his chair, mulling over the events of the previous day and night.
Pigeon Cay was a three day sail south. If this bloody calm lifted, Gabriel could make for the Cay and return with more ships and more men. No doubt his father would be eager to contribute to the demise of the man who had cost his wife her arm.
On the other hand, if a ship the size of the Nuestro Santisimo Victorio had disappeared into one of the bights and remained undiscovered for the past twenty years, there was an equally fair chance Muertraigo and his galleons could be swallowed into the maze of inlets and passages and not be found either.
Could he risk letting the bastard get away?
He took a sip of rum and continued to stare at the chart, letting his eyes drift closed… for just a moment.
~~
Eva was not sure where she should go when she was finished wrapping the last bandage around the last wound. After washing her hands and face in a bucket of water, she was still hot and sweaty, so she went up on deck hoping for a breeze to cool her skin.
The shock of seeing nothing was startling. The fog was a thick blank wall of gray water droplets that clung to her skin and clothing; the air was tainted with lingering scents of gunpowder and wet canvas. The two inch thick cast iron barrels of the cannon hissed as they cooled, and rigging lines dripped puddles on the decking. She shivered not so much out of any relief from the mustiness below but because she could not see anything apart from a hazy, cloudy circle of faint light that glowed around a single shuttered lantern that sat deep in the belly of the gundeck; a tiny beacon used by the ghostly figures of the crew to gain their bearings.
"Spooky, ain't it Miss?" Eduardo's eerily disembodied whisper beside her nearly sent her jumping out of her skin "Ship could drift right to the edge of the earth an' we'd not know it. A man could spit over the rail and hit a dragon in the eye."
Eva smiled, for chartmakers who did not know what lay past the horizon simply wrote on the side of their maps: “Beyond this place there be dragons”.
"I thought London fogs were thick, but this...!" She shook her head in awe.
“I never been to London,” Eduardo confessed. “Cap’n Dante says I’m not missing much, but I think I would like to see it anyway. I never seen a proper castle or a moat. Is it true the rain freezes and turns white in winter?”
“Yes, it’s true. And if you catch it on your tongue it melts and turns back into water. Children roll it into big balls and make snowmen, but it’s so cold, you need gloves or your fingers freeze.”
The boy was intrigued and clearly wanted to ask more questions but he saw Eva attempt to stifle a yawn.
“You want I should walk you back to the Cap’n’s cabin so you don’t get lost in the dark?”
“Thank you, Eduardo, if it’s no trouble.
He touched her arm and led the way to the aft hatchway, then down and along the companionway to the cabin in the stern. He tapped on the door but there was no answer.
“Must still be topside, Miss, but I’m sure he’d say: try to get some rest. You earned it.”
She sighed and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “Thank you Eduardo. You as well.”
The boy melted away into the darkness and Eva entered the cabin, the door making no noise as she closed it behind her. She was thankful to see a light on the desk and did not see Gabriel at first. He was slumped over, his cheek resting on one hand, the other curled limply around the stem of a goblet. His dark hair was tumbled across his brow, his mouth was completely relaxed, not a smirk or scowl to be seen.
An odd, shivery kind of tingle spun its way down her spine and pooled in her belly. It was not long ago that those lips were on her body and those hands were firm in guiding her toward an immense pleasure that had caught her as unaware then, as the small pleasure she was discovering now, watching him sleep.
She had been warned countless times by tongue-clucking matrons that “doves were not to be despoiled before marriage”, yet she did not feel the least bit despoiled. The tender ache between her thighs was a constant reminder of what she had given to this man… although, in that regard… she was not entirely certain she had given as much as she had taken.
She glanced from Dante to the bed and debated tiptoeing past and trying to reach it without waking him. She barely lifted a foot when his head came up off his arm.
“Who goes there?” he asked
, shielding his eyes from the lamplight.
“Forgive me, Captain,” she said quickly. “I did not wish to disturb you, but I did not know where else to go.”
He drew a deep breath and scratched the nape of his neck, blinking to try to clear away the haze of sleep. His right cheek bore the imprint of his cuff in red lines and his hair was stuck flat to the side of his head. The latter he remedied by running his fingers through the thick mane. The former made him look slightly comical, though Eva dared not laugh.
“Thank you,” he said, “for what you did for my crew tonight. They’re a hard-headed lot of bastards but not without gratitude. And I rather like the appellation of ‘Mermaid’. It suits you.”
“Better than squirrel?” she murmured.
“Much better. And… since the crew seems to have accepted the fact you’re not carrying the plague or the flux, we can see about getting you a cabin of your own… if you like.”
Eva’s smile faltered a little. “Whatever is most convenient for you, Captain.”
"What would be most convenient," he said with a scowl, "is for a wind to come up and blow this cursed fog away. I would feel a thousand times better if we had some steerage. Until then there is nothing much I can do except keep crews in the boats rowing and sounding the depths, hoping we do not run aground."
"You think the Spanish will come after us?"
"I think Muertraigo is not going to take the insult we delivered lightly.” He leaned back and propped his arm on the chair, casually stroking his lip with a forefinger. "No thanks to you, however, I have been sitting here not pondering how to make good our escape, but rather how to see what they are about and follow them."
"Thanks to me?"
"To your baker's son, actually." The amber eyes were steady on hers, watching her face for a reaction.
“Billy Crab?” she whispered. "I don't... understand.”
"What exactly did Billy say in the letter about your father nearly being caught by the Spanish?"
Eva's head spun for a moment and her hand rose instinctively to curl around the locket. She realized, guiltily, that she had not spared a thought for her father all night and certainly had not expected Dante to squander one either. "Only that he and my father were nearly caught once or twice at one of their wells."
"One of their wells? Was that exactly how he said it?"
"Yes. Acutally... no. To be precise, he said the Spaniard's wells, but I just assumed—" She stopped and her frowned deepened. "Why are you grinning? Did I say something amusing?"
"Come and look for yourself."
Eva approached the big desk and walked around behind it, standing next to Dante's chair so she could peer down at the chart. It was all lines and squiggles and arrows showing currents and a myriad of roughly drawn islets in the middle of two larger blotches of land.
"What am I looking for?"
"Just look. And read."
She was far too tired for riddles but she did as directed and noted a few of the scattered names written beside bays and little clusters of peaks which she presumed indicated towns or settlements: Bay of No Hope, Rugged Isle, Gull Island, the Sleeping Giant.
Her gaze flicked back and she leaned over, the better to read the chartmaker's elegant writing in the dull lamplight.
Her lips moved, once, twice before any sound came forth. "Spanish Wells."
She turned her head and found their faces were close enough she could see the tiny flecks of gold that lightened the color of his eyes, making them nothing so ordinary as brown or hazel. "You don't really suppose... that it could be...?"
"It is one of the very few accessible places in these islands to get fresh water. Most of the other sources have too many obstacles, like forests and hills, to make them practical."
"You think the wreck of the Nuestro Santisimo Victorio could be there?"
He shook his head. "No. She would have been found long before now if she was. However. If your father went to Spanish Wells to replenish his supply of fresh water, it could mean they were within a few miles distance."
"A few miles?”
He read the disappointment on her face and smiled. "Better than a few thousand miles of open ocean. What puzzles me, however, is how Muertraigo knew to begin his search in the bight."
"The bight?"
"The passage, if you will. There are two that bisect this chain of islands. Here—" he pointed to one, then the other. "And here."
She followed the motion of his finger as it traced across the chart and once more felt the tingle ripple down her spine. She shook herself inwardly and frowned to focus her attention on the chart again.
“You said it would be the coincidence of all coincidences if that was the reason he was here.”
“And so it would be,” he nodded. “Which is why this could all be mere conjecture.”
The amber eyes were waiting for her as she turned and looked at him again. "But you believe me now,” she said in on a husky breath. “You believe my father may have found the treasure galleon."
"Let us just say… I am admittedly intrigued."
Excitement sent a soft flush into her cheeks. "Intrigued... is better than not being interested at all.”
"Sometimes, not being interested at all... is safer."
She had the distinct feeling he was not referring entirely to her father or to the Nuestro Santisimo Victorio. Her gaze drifted down to his lips... which were altogether too close and distracting. Her body was suddenly awash with alternating cool and warm rushes of sensation and she knew she ought to move before her knees gave way and she ended up in his lap.
She straightened and took what she hoped was a discreet step away from the desk. She faced the gallery windows, but there was nothing to see but the sheets of planking that covered the banks of glass. She clutched the locket again and turned it over and over in her fingers, torn between trying to conjure her father's face to remind her why she was here in the first place... and trying not to remember how it felt to have Dante naked and wedged snugly between her thighs.
And then he was suddenly there, standing behind her. She could feel the warmth of his body even though they were not touching.
“You never said if you wanted Eduardo to find you that other cabin.”
She closed her eyes. Was it only a day ago she had wondered whether to trust him or not with knowledge of the escudo? Now she was willing… eager… to trust him with so much more.
“No,” she whispered. “No, I do not.”
There was a long, silent pause, and as it stretched out she crumpled a little inside, wondering if he would laugh or simply reject her out of hand. She thought of all the times she had discouraged Lawrence Ross’s advances by not even obliging him with a paltry kiss on the cheek.
“Or I could go… if you want me to make my bed elsewhere.”
She heard a sound very much like a low growl and then she was in his arms. He spun her around and his hands were pushing into her hair, holding her head cradled in his palms while his mouth put to rest any lingering doubts she might have as to where, exactly, he wanted her to make her bed.
~~
Eva stretched and purred, then sought to curl up tight against Gabriel’s big body… only it wasn’t there. She lifted her head and found him in the shadows attempting to find his breeches and boots. After staring at his naked flanks for a very long moment, she settled back onto the rumpled bedding with an exaggerated sigh.
“Go back to sleep,” he said, glancing over at the sound. “It is nowhere near dawn.”
“Then why are you awake?”
“Because, Mermaid, I am the captain and this is my ship and the bell for the ghost watch just sounded, so I think I ought to relieve Stubs or he’ll steer us into a bank of rock out of spite. Where the devil is my other boot, can you see it?”
Eva rose on all fours and crawled to the edge of the bed. She spied the boot under his desk but sat back on her heels and said nothing, content to watch him search. He had very long legs, splendidl
y taut and powerful. His waist was trim and his belly flat, and the pale wrapping of bandages around his midsection only emphasized the breadth of muscle across his chest and shoulders.
She smiled and shivered deliciously, then smiled again.
Dante looked over. She was kneeling at the edge of the bed, her hair spilling every which way around her shoulders. The pale, firm rounds of her breasts peeked through the curls, the nipples ruched into tiny pink buds.
“For someone who was uncertain of whether she knew how to seduce a man or not,” he murmured, “you seem to have acquired the knack rather quickly.”
“If I have, the fault is yours, Captain.”
He dropped the one boot he had located and approached the side of the bed. “Indeed? How so?”
She had to tip her face up to meet his gaze, but then her eyes slowly meandered down his body until they came to a halt at the junction of his thighs. She tilted her head to the side, the fascination not yet waned as she watched his flesh start to rise and swell. A fingertip traced lightly down the hard, flat surface of his stomach and followed the narrow strip of fine dark hairs to the explosion of darker, tighter curls.
“You are a very good teacher,” she whispered as she kept tracing, circling, exploring, teasing.
She saw the quiver passed through his belly as he threaded his long fingers in her hair and forced her to look up again.
Despite how they had spent the last two hours her cheeks darkened with shy young blood, for those eyes that normally guarded his every thought were telling her how beautiful she was, how much he wanted her
“On second thought,” he mused, easing her back onto the bed, “Stubs can wait.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Eva did, eventually, manage a few short hours of sleep. It ended abruptly when the hull of the ship struck something solid and she was nearly thrown off the bed onto the plank floor. She was alone, Dante had been gone long enough that the sheets held no trace of his warmth.
She rubbed her eyes and looked around the cabin in a panic, not knowing what had caused the ship to shudder and groan so loudly. Her first thought was that they were under attack again, and the spike of fear lasted as long as it took her to leap out of bed and dash to the gallery windows. She raised one of the heavy boards and fastened it to the hooks, dreading what she might see through the glass.
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