A Pirate's Wife for Me (39 page)

Once again, the two men froze.

"Perhaps one of you gentlemen could tell me why we are at odds?" She tried for cordial, yet she managed to sound sarcastic.

Sir Davies laughed shortly. "Did you think I would welcome the Prince of Cenorina, come to take back his throne?"

"Who?"
What was he talking about?

Taran bowed. "Such a pleasure to see you again. I can't quite remember … who are you? The governor of Cenorina? An English nobleman? No! You are nothing more than a tutor, a usurper, and a filthy murderer."

Why had he ripped off his disguise? Why hadn't he denied Sir Davies's accusations? Cate cleared her throat. "I am confused. What are we talking about?"

Sir Davies arm tightened. "And this beautiful woman is your wife. You always did have good taste. Oh, wait. No, you didn't. When you were young, you would rut with anything that moved, even the pigs."

"I learned debauchery at your hands, tutor of mine, and I paid the price."

They were ignoring her. Ignoring her as if she was a pawn and they were the … the kings. Black and white. Bad and good. Well defended and defiant.

Sir Davies asked, "However did you manage to survive the pirates?"

"Better ask whether the pirate captain managed to survive me." Taran seated himself and waved his pistol negligently. "I am rather more lethal than I used to be."

"It doesn't matter." Sir Davies used the point of his blade to nudge at her chin. "As long as I've got this knife under your wife's chin, I hold all the trump. Isn't that right, little prince?"

Frustration grew in Cate. These men knew each other. They spoke to each other. They taunted each other. But they spoke in riddles. "Why do you keep calling him a prince?"

Sir Davies was focused on Taran, and answered absently, "Because he is Crown Prince Antonio Raul Edward Kane of Cenorina, long-vanquished heir to the throne."

"No, he's not!"
He wasn't. That wasn't his name at all.

"Yet I rise from the dead." Taran gestured with his sword.

Why didn't he deny it?

"I had no idea I would be lucky enough to have the Princess of Cenorina as my housekeeper." Sir Davies stroked her jaw with one cool finger.

"I am not a princess."
They had both run mad.

Sir Davies squeezed her throat once, hard. "She's quite the little flirt, your wife."

"I am not little."
Even without his grip on her throat, she felt as if she was on the verge of suffocation … she was going to kill Sir Davies. Or Taran. Or both.

Sir Davies never took his gaze away from Taran. "Your mother, the queen, will never approve the marriage."

"She does not," Taran acceded.

"But then, your mother, the queen, is under my control."

A faint smile touched Taran’s mouth.

About this, Cate was absolutely certain. "His mother is in England. I saw her there. I met her there."

Sir Davies held her close, and she felt the tremor that shook him. "No. I assure you, Queen Sibeol is here in the fortress tower."

Cate could not breathe. She could not.

Sibeol.

With absolute certainty, Sir Davies spoke her name.

Sibeol.

Taran’s mother was Sibeol.

Cenorina's queen was Sibeol.

Cate had thought the woman at the inn behaved with the imperiousness of a queen…

The room took a spin. Cate fought to get breath into her suddenly constricted lungs.

That brand on Taran’s chest. She understood now. Sir Davies had done it. He had used the king's seal to brand the king's son.

All the pieces of the puzzle at last fell together: Taran’s misery in Scotland, his determination to succeed in war and in diplomacy, his reluctance to marry her and then his insistence on marriage. His disappearance. Sir Davies selling him to the pirates…

"You are telling the truth," she said thinly. "Taran is … not Taran. He is the Crown Prince of Cenorina."

Sir Davies stiffened. Pulled her closer. Pushed the point of his knife into the skin above her jugular vein. "You didn't know."

She looked at Taran. At her handsome, perfidious, seductive husband. "No. I didn't know."

"No, she didn't know." Taran wasn't looking at her, though. All his attention was focused on Sir Davies.

"You didn't
really
marry a housekeeper, did you?" Sir Davies asked. "You didn't
really
stain the proud name of Kane with a common working girl?"

Neither of them paid Cate a scrap of attention. And she was done. Done with their stupid rivalry, with their pretense that she didn't exist or didn't matter, with their irritating masculine superiority. She was
done
.

She said, "No, Sir Davies, Taran did not stain his proud name by joining it with a serving girl." Her voice shook — with anger.

But Sir Davies thought she was going to cry.

Taran was taken aback. "What are you—?"

She overrode him with a voice that soared with crackling emotion. "But I thought he might. When I thought he was a mere pirate captain, I thought he might wed me and give our child a name."

"Our child?" Taran’s eyes were popping out of his head. "We're going to have a child?"

"As if you didn't know, you blackguard!" She pressed her hand to her belly. "And now, instead of being a prince, he'll be a bastard — like
you,
you lying hound of a … pirate!"

Sir Davies started cackling, quietly at first, then with more vigor. "You led the girl on, Crown Prince Antonio Raul Edward Kane."

She sniffled and hid her dry face in her cupped hands.

Sir Davies patted her shoulder — ah, if only he comprehended how thoroughly she had duped him — but he spoke to Taran. Only to Taran. "You learned the lessons of dissipation I taught you, and now you have surpassed the master. You, sir, are a cad."

She lifted her utterly dry face from her hands, looked at Taran, and in her weakest, most feminine voice she said, "Yes. He is." Then she slammed her elbow into Sir Davies's stomach just below his sternum. He wheezed, and when he doubled over, she smashed his face with her knee.

Sir Davies fell backward, cracked his head on the desk, and slumped to the floor.

She stood over him, breathing hard.

He didn't move.

She gave him a kick in the side.

He flopped over.

My God. Blowfish would be so proud. She was magnificent in her own protection…
Too bad she had to defend herself. Too bad her husband spent the whole scene exchanging banter with the villain who held a knife at her throat.

Too bad she had trained Taran to have absolute faith in the fact she could take care of herself…

Leaning down, she plucked the knife from Sir Davies's fingers. To his inert body, she said, "You, sir, are a buffoon, and yet you
dare
threaten me. You
dare
mock me. You
dare
laugh at…" She looked up at Taran.

By the flame in her eyes, he knew the depth of her fury. Awe, respect and caution washed through his veins, and he tried to lighten the atmosphere. "So you're not expecting a baby?"

"What do you care if I am?" She advanced on him. "It all makes sense now.
Queen
Sibeol.
Crown Prince
Antonio of Cenorina. The names, the titles make sense now, a horrible, humiliating sense. The deference with which my brother had treated you. Your leadership. Your languages. Your knowledge. Your determination to rescue Cenorina from the usurper."

Taran kept his pistol trained on Sir Davies — he would be a fool not to — but he watched Cate move toward him with one stiff, affronted step after another, growling like a cat who had been teased too often.

"You are Crown Prince Antonio Edward Raul Kane of Cenorina." It was an accusation.

"Crown Prince Antonio Raul Edward Kane," he corrected. "You switched two of the names."

She growled again.

Hastily, he confirmed, "I am."

"And you
married
me? I am not the commoner Sir Davies imagines, but I am not of royal blood." She reached Taran, stood before him, proud and tall and angry as hell. "When you regain your throne, do you intend to cast me aside?"

"You are my wife." As a precaution, he grabbed the wrist that held the knife. He spoke with sincerity and utter possessiveness. "You will be my wife until the day you die, or I die, and all the world can go up in flames before you ever get away from me. You are
mine
."

He should have paid more attention to the hand without the knife, for she lifted it in a fist and punched him in the nose.

He felt the bone crack. Blood spurted.

He dropped her wrist, staggered backward, grabbed his face. "Damn it, Cate, why did you do that?"

"Revenge." She stalked toward the door. "Your wife I may be, but you'll have to catch up with me to keep me."

This was not the time or the place Taran would have chosen for this confrontation. But all unwittingly, Cate had revealed him. Now she stood in mortal danger, and he could do nothing but to beg her for help. "Cate, you can't leave."

She flung herself around to face him. "Watch me!"

"Remember what you promised."

She paused, her hand on the doorknob, her back to the room. To him.

"Remember," he said. "The beacon. The prisoner."

Her spine straightened. Without looking, she said, "I will keep my promises."

He turned back to Davies, determined to finish the traitor.

Davies was conscious. He was on the move. He reached up on the desk, grasped the short, sharp knife he had used to open the letters. He held it balanced on the tips of his fingers. He threw the knife.

At Cate.

Cate, who was opening the door. Cate, who had her back to them both.

Taran shouted and flung himself forward, shooting as he leaped.

He missed Davies. The knife whistled past his shoulder.

Cate turned.

The blade buried itself in her arm up to the hilt. The shock made her stagger.

"Caitlin!" Taran reached for her.

She looked down at the knife. She looked up at Taran. She offered him the dagger Davies had held at her throat.

Taran dropped the useless pistol and took the hilt.

"Finish him." She walked out and slammed the door.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Taran drew his cutlass and faced Davies.

Davies dragged himself to his feet. His face was bloody. Like Taran’s. His nose was broken. Like Taran’s. He dabbed a lace handkerchief against his skin.

Not like Taran. Taran didn't give a damn about his broken nose, the blood, the pain. He anticipated the taste of sweet, slow revenge.

In a fury, Davies looked at the crimson that stained the fine linen. "That bitch!"

"Yes." Taran loudly turned the key in the lock.

Davies looked incredulously at him. "You love her."

"I do. And for hurting her, I'm going to make you suffer." Taran watched Davies sidle around the edge of the desk and unsheathe his sword from its scabbard.

"My dear little student, you won't kill anyone today." Davies pointed the long, narrow
épée
at Taran. "As always, your sword is half the length of mine."

Taran threw back his head and laughed. "Ah, but my sword is sturdier. Sharper. It has been christened with blood in many a battle. And I wield it so much better." He ran. He leaped onto the desktop, kicked the inkpot into Davies's face, and while Davies sputtered and gagged, Taran said, "Thanks to you, my dear tutor, I am no longer a gentleman. I am a pirate." He gripped Davies's own dagger in one hand and his cutlass in the other. He looked down at his erstwhile tutor. "I fight to win."

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Cate found herself standing in the entry,
in pain, committed to two missions — and facing young Fortunato.

He held his oak cudgel high over his head. But he looked at her uncertainly, as if he didn't quite dare strike the female who ordered his meals served and his uniform cleaned. "Mrs. Tamson, you're hurt!"

"Yes. And this" — she gestured at the knife protruding from her arm — "makes me less than my usual good-natured self."

"You're not usually that good … natured…" He seemed to realize that was not the thing to say to an angry, agonized female.

She extended her hand. Her good hand. The one that wasn't attached to an arm with a knife. "Give me that."

He hesitated.

In the sharp tone that made young footmen jump, she said, "Give me that!"