Heather Graham (27 page)

“I will swear to him—” Geoffrey began.

“I don’t think he has any doubt about your honesty,” she said, frowning slightly. “He knows Pierce was innocent. He has promised to help me, but … but he has also warned me that it will take time. It doesn’t matter. I will give him time. I will give him a year. If he hasn’t done something by then, I swear I’ll—” She broke off.

“You’ll what, milady?” Geoffrey queried.

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. Trap Jerome somehow.” She shivered, quickly sweeping her lashes over her eyes, not wanting him to see her distress. It still hurt her so very badly that Pierce had died hating her.

“I shall go to the king immediately, milady. And if you’ve any need for me, I shall be near.”

She nodded, and hurried from the garden to the hall, making her way quickly to the room she had stayed in when she had first come to the castle. She was about to try the door when she heard Garth call out softly. “There you are, milady. I’d seen to it that your things were prepared for the evening, then I began to worry that I had not seen you.”

She shook her head. “But where—”

“My lady! Your late husband’s quarters are granted to you now, of course.”

“Of course,” she murmured. She followed Garth in silence.

Fires blazed warmly in both chambers of the suite. She stared about, then carefully, calmly, thanked Garth for his kind service, and said that she needed to rest. She lay upon the great bed in the room and stared at the fire.

Memories flooded back. Silent tears slipped from her eyes. Tonight! she told herself. Tonight she would cry, she would let the tears come. And then no more. She had to think of her child. She would clear the babe’s father’s name, she would find vengeance somehow!

But first she would go home. Go home to Virginia, and there lick her wounds, and find strength again.

But for the night …

The flames flickered in the fireplace. Her tears continued to fall. And her memories continued to haunt her …

Geoffrey Daraunte had not seen his monarch closely since the day they had returned to England from the long years abroad, when Charles had been greeted joyously by the English people, invited back as king. But Charles had a strong memory, and when Geoffrey fell quickly upon a knee, Charles was equally quick to raise him up again. “Your Majesty!” Geoffrey declared fervently.

Charles smiled slightly at the passion in Geoffrey’s greeting. He’d always liked the French.

“Rise up, old friend!” Charles told him. “I am not a man to forget the past, and I’ll not forget your service to me. Now, tell me—”

“When we came to the manor, they were dead, Your Majesty, I swear it.”

“And you were with Lord DeForte every moment?” the king queried.

Geoffrey faltered. “He bid me wait at the door—but he did not kill either Lord or Lady Bryant, I swear it, Your Majesty! He hadn’t the time, nor the disposition. May the great God above us—”

“Geoffrey, Geoffrey!” the king murmured, stopping the flow of passionate denial. “I believe that Pierce was innocent; you need not convince me. I know that he did not kill Bryant.”

“You know—”

“Any man who knew Pierce DeForte knows that he did not kill Bryant. Ah, yes, it was possible that he might have! I feared it, feared it greatly. But he didn’t do it. He’d not have stabbed the devil in the back, he’d have made the man face him.”

Geoffrey stared at the king, puzzled. “Then—”

“In time we’ll manage to prove the truth. I want to know whatever else you know about that night.”

Geoffrey shook his head, more confused than ever. “My Lord DeForte commanded that we ride in different directions. He meant to return to his lady, I see now. I rode north, toward Castle DeForte, and so some of the men ordered to arrest him followed me in his stead. I had prayed earnestly that I had given him some time. But they found him eventually. Some men say that she summoned the law herself, but that is not the truth, I’d swear it, Your Majesty—”

“I’m not doubting the Lady Rose’s loyalty to her lord, either, my good fellow. I want to hear more.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “But I wasn’t there, Your Majesty. He fought the men who were ordered to take him. He bested them, but he did not take their lives. He bested them all, but there were just too many. And then …”

“And then?” the king encouraged the man.

“Then he perished in the water.”

The king stroked his cheek. “But his body still hasn’t been found …”

“You think that he is alive?” Geoffrey demanded. His voice was so rich with hope and anguish that Charles wished he hadn’t spoken. “Don’t ever say such a thing to Lady DeForte. Don’t give her such a thread of hope to cling to. But …” He shrugged, then patted Geoffrey on the shoulder. “Very little is impossible in this world, my friend!” he said. “But if you do discover the Lord DeForte alive somewhere, warn him that he is a fugitive in this country. Warn him that Jerome is smart, and that he is more—he is evil. Warn him to move very carefully, to keep his head very low if he is in England, or if he returns to England. And if you should ever discover that he is alive, you may tell him one more thing.”

“And that is, Your Majesty?”

Charles paused just a moment, his hand set lightly upon one of his boxwoods. Then he glanced at Geoffrey. “Tell him that his king loves him well, and has not forgotten him, or forsaken him. Tell him that for me.”

“Oh, aye! Your Majesty!” Geoffrey, warm and effusive once again, fell down upon a knee, this time kissing Charles’s hand.

“Up, my good man!” the king commanded him. “And not a word about this to the Lady Rose, do you understand?”

Geoffrey rose. “Not a word! And I will serve you, Sire, I swear it, until—”

“If you would serve me, look out for the Lady Rose. Keep her from trouble. Now, that is order enough for any man.”

THE CAPTAIN’S NAME WAS
Roderigo Suarez de la Luz, Pierce learned, and an English pirate had seized a ship his father had been aboard years before.

Roderigo’s father had never returned from that venture, and so the captain had taken his revenge by plying the English coastline for Englishmen to seize and set to work upon his own vessels. He was, for all appearances, an honest merchantman. And he did trade. Cloth and metals from the finest craftsmen in Europe to the Americas, exotic fruits, rice, tobacco, and cotton from the colonies back to Europe. Along the way, though, if he happened to come across a foreign ship, especially an English one, he trained his cannons on her, boarded and burned her, and ransomed the crew and passengers, if any survived.

Pierce never saw any of the action that took place during those encounters. He was always locked below deck in a small, stuffy storage room. He could smell the smoke and feel the heat of the flames.

He could even hear the screams of the dying, but there was nothing he could do except throw himself against the door that was bolted from the outside. It was his prison. He shared the hellhole with three other men, Jay Chanbee, taken when his ship went down off Bermuda, and Sean Drake and Joshua Townsend, both bought from abductors on the docks by the English coast. Jay was an older man with a brown, weathered face and a near stoic acceptance of his present misery. Both Sean and Joshua were sturdy, healthy youths who had set out to port to seek adventure. Signing on with Roderigo had not been their idea of how to travel the seas. Sean’s hatred for Roderigo had grown to an obsessive level, but Pierce, who had learned that Roderigo was exceptionally fond of using a lash against his prisoners, felt his own loathing increase daily. When they weren’t forced to man the anchor or the sails, they were kept chained in their small prison, the four of them, living on what scraps the cook cast them, sharing one bucket for the necessities of life, and breathing the stink as the endless days passed.

Working the ship kept Pierce’s muscles honed; his growing friendship with his fellow prisoners helped him keep his wits.

There was only one man with any decency amongst their jailers. He was Manuel Vaquez, the cook’s helper. It was he who had kept Pierce alive through the first awful weeks, and it was he who did his best to see that the prisoners were fed bread that was not too filled with weevils. He succeeded in convincing Captain Roderigo that the prisoners must be allowed to dump their own waste, lest the entire ship smell like a garbage barge and some awful infection catch hold and kill them all.

Despite his murderous disposition, Roderigo was a fanatically clean man, very aware of his personal appearance, and certainly much more determined on cleanliness than many an Englishman Pierce knew. It was thanks only to Manuel, he thought, that any of them had survived.

How odd. He had always thought that he would die with a sword in his hand. Now he seemed fated to rot to death in a stinking cell that wasn’t a full eight feet square.

But on one exceptionally hot night when they sailed off the coast of Bermuda, fate took an unexpected twist.

He had already been shoved back in his prison after the day’s endless work, but Sean, Jay, and Joshua were still abovedecks. Moments later he heard shouts, and he knew that a ship had been sighted. Then Sean was thrust back into the hold, trying his best to flail at his jailer.

“It’s an Englishman! Another bloody Englishman! I can see her flag flying, I can see her figurehead!” he cried, despairing. He fell against the wall, sinking to the floor. “Christ above us! I can see her bloody name! She’s the
Princess of Essex,
straight out of London harbor.”

Every muscle and cord within Pierce’s body began to tighten and burn.

The Princess of Essex …

She wasn’t just English. She was his own damned ship!

“She’s mine!” he told Sean.

“What?”

In the countless hours he had shared with his fellow prisoners, he had eventually told them not only his real identity, but almost exactly what had happened to him—leaving out only a few details regarding Rose. So, though Sean frowned for a moment, he quickly realized what Pierce was telling him.

“She’s your ship? You own her?”

“Aye, and I might well know her captain and her officers!” he said bitterly. He slammed his shackled wrist against the wall. “Those butchers will slaughter them, just as they have done with so many others.”

“How do we stop it?” Sean demanded broodingly.

At risk to their own lives, Pierce thought. But in the dim light in the hold, he could see that Sean was smiling recklessly.

“We might well die!” Pierce warned him.

“What kind of lives are we living here?” Sean asked.

Pierce mulled over that for a moment. It was one thing to risk his own life—he was certainly presumed dead at the moment anyway. But the others’ lives were not his to gamble with.

“They’ll have to bring Jay and Joshua back,” Sean said.

“We’ll both have to be ready.” He hesitated a moment. “Have you ever killed a man before?” he asked Sean.

The young man shook his head. “But neither had I ever been abducted and beaten and enslaved before!” he said angrily. “Tell me what to do, and I will do it.”

“Speed is going to be essential. And you don’t have to strangle the fellow to death, just be damned certain you’ve got him unconscious. I’ll take the sailor with old Jay, and you deal with the one with Josh. Get your chains around his fast and twist, cut off his breath before he can summon help.”

“We’ll still be shackled.”

“A good, strong sword can free us,” Pierce assured him. “Look to my lead. I will not let you down,” he vowed. He prayed that he could keep his word.

God had to be with him tonight. And if not with him, with the innocent men aboard the
Princess of Essex,
sailing her way through the sea, so very unaware of the pending disaster.

They heard the first boom of cannon before the hold door opened. For a moment Pierce feared he would lose his balance with the sudden list of the ship, but when the door opened, he quickly saw that Jay was being delivered back to the hold, and Josh right behind him. He bunched his muscles and leapt forward, aware that his own life and the fate of many men rested in their first reckless attack.

His arms locked around the man trying to thrust Jay forward. The man inhaled to cry out. Pierce wound his chains tightly around the man’s neck and he let out a gasping sound instead.

“
Qué pasa—
” the second man began.

He went no further. Sean was neither old nor experienced, but he was quick and intelligent and had long been abused. He whipped his arms and chains quickly about the sailor, and he, too, was dragged down. In seconds both the Spaniards lay silent on the hold floor.

“We’re launching a mutiny?” Jay said incredulously. “The four of us against … how many of them?”

Sean was ignoring his friend. He leaned down, wrenching a cutlass from one of the Spaniards’ scabbards. Awkwardly he gave it to Pierce. “As good a sword as I can manage, Lord DeForte. Free me, and I will serve you as long—or as short—as I may live.”

Pierce met his eyes and smiled crookedly.

He swung the cutlass hard. Metal crashed against metal. Sean cried out with delight as the chains binding his wrists were broken. He fell to the floor, lifting his feet to offer up the second set of chains that bound him.

“Well, by the saints! I imagine I’m in on this as ’tis!” Jay declared. “Have mercy, DeForte! Give me leave to take a sword against these Papist swine!” Within minutes, Pierce had them all freed. Jay swore that he’d return the favor, he was experienced with a blade. Pierce thought himself a brave man, yet the temptation to close his eyes while Jay wielded the cutlass was strong.

Yet in minutes, he, too, was free. He knelt by the Spanish sailors, taking their arms. He kept the cutlass and a pistol, passed a knife to Jay, a second pistol to Sean, and a finely honed dagger to Josh.

The others were looking to him for guidance now.

“Even with the cannon firing, we have to bring them down one by one, lock them in here. If the
Princess
is engaged in battle, so much the better. Her captain is Judson Becker, a fine old salt if ever there was one. He’ll lead these bastards on a merry chase!”