Page 14

Beau arched an eyebrow. Without waiting for anyone’s decision—or permission—she dipped her knife to the wound, dug until the point found something solid, then pried it out with a quick jerk of her wrist.

Dante roared and Pitt swore. Spence jumped forward to pin the captain’s shoulders to the gun carriage, while Pitt grabbed his wrists to keep him from lunging at Beau. She, quite calmly, held up her knife, displaying a four-inch-long sliver of oak impaled on the tip.

“Christ Jesus,” Dante spat. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

“No,” she replied. “But I am going to enjoy this.”

She flicked the bloodied sliver to the deck and bent over the wound again.

There was fresh blood welling to fill the hole in the muscle, and with a few efficient strokes she cut away the old scabbing and squeezed the swollen flesh until the pustules were all drained and the blood ran clear red.

Spit held a lantern over her head while she worked.

Thomas Moone, despite his tender leg, fetched a pannikin of vinegar to wash away the purulence, and Spence, being more practical by nature, ordered someone to fetch a stone crock from his cabin along with a couple of pewter cups.

When the crock came, he used his teeth to remove the wax bung and filled one of the cups to the brim.

“Wrap yer lips around this, Cap’n Dante. Yer gut will burn so fierce, ye won’t even remember ye have a leg. All at once now, mind. Don’t waste time dippin’ yer tongue or ye might regret it before ye start.”

Dante’s long fingers curled around the cup and Beau met his eyes briefly, suspecting it was her throat he regretted he could not be squeezing instead.

The knife flashed again and Dante tossed back the full measure of amber liquid.

Spence, who had filled himself a cup as well, smacked his lips with relish as the liquid fireball plummeted into his belly.

Dante had to suck at a breath and steady himself until the shock of the flames receded.

But Spence had been right; he paid no heed to what Beau was doing to his leg, he cared only if he had a throat and gullet left at the end of the burn.

Spence chuckled inwardly and asked, with all the innocence of a babe, “Care for another?”

“If I were you,” Dante rasped, “I would be trying to find some way to throw me and my men overboard. I doubt I would be tending wounds and offering to share a draft of rumbullion … unless of course it was poisoned.”

“The thought crossed my mind, lad, believe me. But in this case, ‘twould be a waste o’ good Indies Gold to sour it with poison.”

“So it would,” Dante agreed, holding out his cup for a refill. “God’s teeth, but it does have a keen bite to it.”

“Brewed by the brown-skinned heathens on Tortuga who drink the stuff like water an’ only have to piss on a piece o’ wood to start a fire.”

Dante drained the second measure and let his head fall back on the support of the wheel.

His gaze strayed down to Beau, caught as she was in the glow of the lantern light.

Over the course of the long afternoon and evening, a fine mist of hair had escaped the restrictive confines of her braid, framing her face in a soft reddish halo.

She had removed her doublet sometime during the day, betraying softer, fuller breasts than Dante had originally envisioned.

Her shirt was laced tight to her throat, but he could see where curves and indents formed impressions beneath the cloth, and where the plump, firm strain of young flesh stretched the cloth flat.

“I suppose you drink this like water as well?” he asked dryly.

“I don’t gasp and wheeze like a child when I do,” she said brusquely, and finished binding his calf snugly with a wide strip of cloth.

He grinned unexpectedly and reached for the crock himself, filling his cup and handing it to Beau. Without wavering her gaze by so much as an eyelash, she took the cup and swallowed the contents, displaying the same hearty degree of appreciation Spence had.

Jonas chuckled aloud this time. “That’s my little black swan. Sooner pluck her own eyeballs out with a dull stick than refuse a challenge.”

“Why does it not surprise me?” Dante murmured.

“No reason it should,” Spence agreed, “unless ye’re a poorer judge o’ character than I make ye out to be.”

De Tourville offered up a faint smile. His leg was throbbing dully but the outpouring of sweat had stopped along with the tremors in his hands and arms. The rum had warmed his belly considerably and he had no great urge to move or retreat from the cooling night air.

He could have slept then and there quite happily and left the explanations to the morning—or to Geoffrey Pitt—but he knew the captain of the Egret deserved better.

“Is there somewhere we can go and talk in private?” he asked Jonas.

“My cabin. If it’s still my cabin, that is.”

"It is your cabin, sir. Your cabin and your ship, and you have my heartfelt apologies if I made it seem any other way. Mister Pitt will join us, if you have no objection, and your navigator, if he can be spared. We lost our pilot and most of our instruments in the storm that blew us to hell and gone; with the fighting and the drift and the heavy cloud cover we could be within hailing distance of Cathay and I’d not know it. ”

“We’ve been plagued by the same cloud cover, but near as we can fix it, we are a week south o’ the Canaries, thereabouts. Another three after that, with luck, an’ we’ll be home.”

Dante nodded, deliberately avoiding the glance Pitt shot his way.

He did not refuse the hand his first mate offered to help him up, however, and after testing his weight on the wounded leg, he found the pain vastly diminished.

He still swayed unsteadily on his feet. Fatigue and two cups of Indies Gold on an empty stomach put his head into such a spin, when he squinted upward and tried to focus on the darkness overhead, he saw two north stars twinkling brightly off the bow.

Jonas started to lead the way along the deck toward the stern of the ship. “Beau—will ye not see if Cook has aught in the way o’ hot victuals in the stewpot? Bring along a biscuit or two as well; a man can think an’ talk better when he isn’t listenin’ to his belly rub on his ribs.”

Beau planted her hands on her hips and glared mutinously after her father.

“I’m not an errand boy either,” she muttered, watching with hot, flashing eyes as the three men ducked through the after hatch.

Her last glimpse was of Dante’s flowing white shirt as he lagged behind, favoring the newly bandaged leg.

“And a gracious you’re welcome’ to you too,” she snorted.