Pirate Wolf Trilogy (6 page)

Spence cleared
his.

“
The way
I see it, Cap’n, ye’ve another six, maybe eight hours, topmost,
before yer ship goes belly down. If I were you, I’d start talkin’
fast. Ye talk
bold
enough,
there’s a certainty, but if ye want our help, ye’ll have to
convince me there’s a fine enough reason for givin’ it.”

Simon Dante
searched the captain’s weathered features with eyes that had lost
none of their cold intensity. “I’m genuinely sorry, Captain. If I
had an hour to spare, I might be able to convince you we aren’t
demented fools, but as you already determined, time is of the
essence. You say you want a fine enough reason to order your men to
help us?” He reached around to the small of his back and, quicker
than she could react to avoid it, held a pistol out at arm’s
length, pressing the nose flush against Beau’s temple. “Will this
do?”

CHAPTER
THREE

Dante exerted
just enough force to depress the skin at Beau’s temple. His finger
was curled around the pistol’s serpentine trigger and the look in
his eye was the same one Beau had had while she held the knife at
his crotch.

“I don’t have
time for explanations, Captain Spence. When we have transferred the
guns safely, I promise you all the explanations will come. For now,
I need my guns on board your ship and will do it with or without
your help. Your daughter, I am sure, would like to keep the top of
her head, so if we have no more little impasses to conquer, I would
suggest we reach some kind of an arrangement now.”

Beau started to
slip her hand down for her dagger but a warm strong grip clamped
around her wrist, stopping her.

“Sorry,” said
Geoffrey Pitt. He had anticipated the move and had come up with
surprising stealth behind her. “Not this time.”

He removed the
dagger from her belt along with her pistols and cutlass, then
leaned over to extract the stiletto from her boot. Dante watched,
his brow arched in a cynical curve as a third small knife was
noticed and taken from the collar at the back of her doublet.

“Any more?”

“You’ll find
out if you turn your back.”

“I’ll find out
sooner if I have you stripped and searched.”

Beau set her
teeth and lifted the lower edge of her doublet to remove the blade
strapped to her hip.

“A trusting
soul, indeed,” Dante murmured.

“
With
good reason, it would seem,” she countered evenly.

He offered a
twist of a smile in rebuttal and turned to Spence. “Well, Captain?
Do we have your cooperation or not?”

“Ye have my
daughter’s head under a gun, what choice do I have?”

“
None,”
Dante agreed coldly. “Mr. Pitt will return to the
Egret
with you while you make ready
with the winch and cables. Since there is no need for any of the
rest of your crew to know our special terms, Lucifer and a few of
my men will go along as well, just to make certain everyone works
with a smile on his face. Your men can remain here, of course, to
help prepare at this end.”

Spence glared
at him a moment, then looked at Beau.

“She will stay
with me, naturally.”

“Ye touch a
hair on her head—” Spence warned softly.

“I’ll not touch
anything,” Dante insisted. “So long as she behaves.”

“Father—do I
have your permission to slice out his liver if I get the chance?”
Beau asked with casual disregard for the pistol denting her
temple.

“
That
probably would not qualify as behaving,” Pitt muttered at the back
of her neck.

She ignored his
sarcasm—ignored him completely, in fact—and waited expectantly for
her father’s reply.

It was Dante
who gave her the answer.

“Lucifer will
be keeping your father as close company as I will be keeping you.
My liver goes, his liver goes; simple as that. Mr. Pitt—?”

“Aye, on my
way.” He tucked Beau’s pistols into his own belt as he passed.
“Without a wind, we’ll have to tow the ships close enough together
to hook on grappling lines.”

Dante
nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll set the men to work dismantling the
guns and carriages. You—”he nodded in Spit McCutcheon’s
direction—“do you know your way around cannon?”

“Enough to blow
ye off the edge o’ the earth if I had ye in my sights.”

“Good. You’re
in charge of the dismantling.”

Spit thrust his
tongue into his cheek and folded his arms across his chest.

De Tourville
sighed. “Captain Spence?”

“Do it, Spit,”
Spence ordered, his eyes narrowed. “He’s right—there’s no harm in
takin’ on valuable cargo.”

McCutcheon
glared for as long as it took him to lean forward and project a wad
of phlegm onto the deck, missing Dante’s boot by the width of a
nose hair.

“There is shot
and powder—if the saltwater hasn’t ruined it—below in the
magazines. It will have to be transferred as well. And did you say
you had a cask of fresh water on the jolly boat?”

“I did,” Spence
said through a snarl.

“I’m sure it
will be much appreciated for the hot work ahead. Mistress Spence,
if you would care to come with me, I will see about clearing my
cabin of logs and charts.”

The invitation
was peremptory. Beau was given little choice but to accompany the
pirate wolf as he wrapped his fingers around her upper arm and
guided her to the after hatchway. While they were still in
sunlight, she glanced back over her shoulder, catching her father’s
eye a step before he disappeared through the gangway hatch. He was
flanked by Pitt and the Cimaroon, neither one allowing him the
opportunity to convey a strategy to her, if indeed he had devised
one yet.

“You won’t get
away with this,” she declared savagely. “My father has friends in
England. He has friends in Court who will not tolerate an act of
blatant piracy against one of their own kind.”

“
Well,
the next time I am supping with Bess, I shall be sure to inquire
who they are. Watch your head, the ceiling has caved-in in
places.”

She was shoved
through the hatchway and found herself smothered almost immediately
by the dark, musty haze. No light penetrated the gloom save for the
few slivers that showed through cracks in the splintered timbers.
Half the steps on the ladderway were broken or missing altogether
and she would have stumbled on the unfamiliar footing if the iron
fingers had not remained around her arm.

The stench of
old smoke was cloying in the narrow passageway. Dante ordered her
straight, then to the left through an arched doorway and she was as
relieved to leave the gloom behind as she was the smell of decay
and death.

The captain’s
great cabin was as cluttered and strewn with wreckage as the rest
of the ship, yet there was evidence to suggest it had once been
grandly appointed. There were carved oak panels on the walls with
brass fittings and candle sconces. One entire wall had once been
lined with wire-fronted bookcases, the shelves filled with books
bound in leather and embossed in gold. Most of the volumes lay
scattered across the floor; some were stacked in piles where a path
had been cleared around the massive gumwood desk.

Spanning the
full width of the cabin, canted inward to follow the shape of the
ship’s stern, were the gallery windows. Most of the hundreds of
small diamond-shaped panes had been shattered, and over
everything—floor, chairs, shelves, walls—there lay a fine white
coat of glistening glass dust. Only on the desk had there appeared
to be any effort made to keep the surface clean, and then only
because the top was littered with charts, maps, navigational
instruments, and writing materials. A solid gold replica of a
galleon in full sail was being used as a paperweight to hold down a
sheaf of documents badly stained by smoke and saltwater.

There was
no berth
. A scorched
heap of twisted planks indicated where it must have been, and to
judge by the size of the empty space, it had been considerably
larger than the functional cots on board the
Egret
.

“There,” Dante
said, pointing to a large ladder-back chair. “Sit.”

Beau
stood where she was and planted her hands on her hips. “You may
have been able to convince my father you would have killed me if he
didn’t obey you. But I doubt very much if you would kill
him
with quite as little
compunction, so you will excuse me if I don’t quake in fear each
time you bark.”

Dante
walked around behind his desk and glanced up at her from beneath
the black slash of his brows. “You’re probably right. I wouldn’t
kill him over such a trivial annoyance as you refusing to do as
you’re told. But it might make me angry enough to break off his
kneecap. Or smash his good ankle. He already walks with a limp and
I suppose it is possible for a captain to go to sea with two
crippled limbs… but I have never seen it done, have
you?”

Beau opened her
mouth. She shut it again. And sat.

Dante’s mouth
curved at the corner as he set the pistol on his desk and eased his
big body into his own chair. He had some difficulty keeping the
relief off his face as he was able to take the weight off his
wounded leg; even more so as he stretched it out in front of
him.

Beau allowed
herself a brief glance at the bandaged calf, sincerely hoping it
was festered and crawling with maggots. She focused on his face
again and had the same wish, embellishing it with slashes and open
sores, runny pustules, and loose, rattling teeth. It gave her some
comfort to feel the presence of the thin, finger-sized knife
concealed at the small of her back, and to know that if he did,
indeed, lower his guard for a second, she would make short work of
his mocking smile.

In the meantime
she took advantage of his discomfort, staring at him calmly and
steadfastly with what her father called her “smotheration eye.”

For a legend,
she decided, he was sorely lacking in appeal His face could have
been hewn out of rock for all the character it boasted. It was, in
fact, dark and foreboding, more suited to a devil or a satyr than a
man who frequented Court and rubbed toes with nobility. It was true
he had the high, smooth brow of an aristocrat but the effect was
blunted by the thick black waves of his hair. Trimmed by an
uncaring hand, it curled in uneven lengths over the collar of his
shirt and blew about his temples and throat as if he stood in a
perpetual wind. And something she had not noticed until now: in one
of his earlobes he wore a gold loop, a common enough adornment for
seafaring men who did it to ensure they always had the price of a
decent burial—or a tall cask of ale. Yet on a man of Dante de
Tourville’s supposedly exalted stature, it seemed a cheap and
tawdry affectation. Aside from being a titled lord, did he not also
boast at being one of the most successful privateers on the
Main?

It was
said even Sir Francis Drake had begun to look over his shoulder,
fearing the pirate wolf’s exploits were beginning to surpass his
own. And while Drake had the Queen’s ear, he was also short and
squat and bowlegged; no match for a villain who exuded virility. If
it was true Simon Dante enjoyed private suppers with the
Queen—private enough to call her Bess!—then nothing he did or said
to a mere merchant trader would earn more than a perfunctory
reprimand.

Beau’s
attention shifted to the broad chest, the long, muscular arms, the
strong, square-tipped hands that had already shocked her with their
power and savagery. He was a beast in his prime and Beau had
encountered enough of them, most so full of their own potency they
could not fathom how anyone could resist falling under their spell
and into their beds.

Beau could
resist. She was under no fainthearted delusions as to what someone
like Dante de Tourville wanted from a woman, or, once he had it,
how quickly he would deem her soiled and dispensable goods. Beau
had learned that unpleasant lesson the hard way, having had a man
fill her eyes with stars and her body with pleasure, only to
discover he preferred to take a virgin to his marriage bed and have
a wife who simpered and fawned over his every whim, who fainted at
the mere mention of blood, and who would never dare challenge his
opinions—whether she had the wit to understand them or not.

Beau, on
the other hand, was her father’s daughter. Having lost her mother’s
influence at an early age, she had been raised by a man full of
blasphemies who called a fool a fool to his face and damned the
consequences. Spence had honestly tried to settle her with a
spinster aunt who had, in turn, tried to instil the rigid values of
young womanhood on her recalcitrant charge. But the first time
the
Egret
had set
sail without her, Beau had stood in the parlor, wired into a
farthingale and stiff velvet skirts, shouting such obscenities, her
poor beleaguered aunt had swooned into a dead faint.

The second time
he had sailed, she had stolen a single-masted skiff and followed,
battling the strong currents and errant winds of the English
Channel on her own, catching him three days later, half dead from
fatigue but stubbornly refusing to be turned around and sent home.
The crew had been amused. Spence had been enraged enough to order
her into the tops, determined to break her spirit by making her
stand watch in stormy weather until she begged to be relieved. Beau
had remained there, lashed to a trestletree for seven days and
nights, and in the end it had been her father’s guilt that begged
her to come down.

That was eight
years ago and she had been a member of the crew ever since. During
that time she had dined with pirates and lords, kept company with
princes as well as scoundrels, and not once had she met a man who
could melt her resolves or cause her a lingering moment’s worth of
regret for the course she had chosen. And except for that one brief
lapse—a lapse she now credited as a necessary learning
experience—she had not fallen into anyone’s bed or under the spell
of any man’s charm, however roguish, virile, or darkly handsome he
might be.