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“What,” he asked on a hoarse breath, “did you just say?”

She shook her head with the helplessness of it all and lowered her hands enough to look up Pitt with huge, glistening blue eyes.

“It was the captain-general’s idea. He ordered me to change places with Dona Maria.

We were the same size and he said no one could be any the wiser.

He said the duchess would be safe this way, f-from rape and from the disgrace of being held to ransom.

He said … he said it was my duty to my mistress, to my country, to God, and that He would watch over me and see that no harm befell me.

And… and he said even if it did, my s-soul would have earned a special place in heaven, one reserved for only the b-bravest and m-most worthy. ”

Pitt still stared. “You are not Dona Maria Antonia Piacenza?”

“No, senor.” She sobbed, weeping harder, her eyes leaking great waterfalls now at what she thought was the revulsion on Geoffrey Pitt’s handsome face.

“My name is Christiana and I am daughter to a humble soldado who served the King well. For his reward he was give a position in the royal guard, and I was allowed to tend members of the royal family.”

“You are not the Duchess of Navarre? You are not the King’s niece? You are not … married to the Duke of Medina Sidonia?”

Her eyes blinked and splashed tears on his shirtfront.

“No, senor. I am only a humble servant. And I do not know this Duke of Medina Sidonia. My mistress was the Duchess of Navarre. Her husband was old and wrinkled and beat me with his walking stick because I would not let him put his hands up my skirt.”

Pitt caught the faint scent of rum-induced courage on her breath, and he wished sorely for a glass himself. The bottle was empty, however, and he settled for raking both of his hands through the thick, gold-streaked locks of his hair.

“Why … in God’s name … did you not tell me this before?”

“I was afraid,” she whispered.

“Of me?”

“Oh, senor—” She lowered her hands from her face and steepled them together over her breasts. “You are so kind and brave and noble. I thought … if I told you of this deception, you would …” The words, along with her ability to speak them, came to a faltering halt.

“You thought I would do what?” he asked gently.

“I thought … you would hate me for making a fool of you.”

She flung herself forward with a miserable little wail and burrowed against his chest. Pitt was still too stunned to react right away.

There had been signs, plenty of them, but he had misread them all.

The way she drew back and cringed from any discussions about herself.

The way she skirted questions about her family and her life in royal circles—questions a true duchess would have flouted haughtily to a seafaring beggar the likes of him.

Even the way Agnes Frosthip seemed to lose interest in her charge, abandoning her to the care of an enemy brigand, should have alerted him to the fact something was amiss.

He had indeed been a fool. A blind, besotted fool.

And now she had flung herself at his mercy, expecting—what? That he would cast her aside as a cheat and a fraud?

Pitt lifted one of his hands and smoothed it tenderly over the crown of dark brown curls.

He closed his eyes, savoring the softness, the silkiness, the notion of doing something he had been wanting to do since he had first seen her on board the San Pedro de Marcos.

His other arm circled her waist and he held her as tightly as he dared without fear of crushing her.

“I should hate you,” he whispered, his voice raw with emotion.

“I should hate you for putting me through sheer hell for the past three weeks. Do you have any idea how difficult it has been to see you every day, speak with you every day, drown in the scent of your skin every day, knowing I could never touch you, never hold you?”

She left a great wet patch behind on his shirt as she lifted her head and stared up into the jade-green of his eyes. “I … I do not understand, senor.”

Pitt swore softly and pushed his fingers into her hair, cradling the nape of her neck.

He lowered his mouth to hers, explaining with a kiss what he could not form into words.

The shock made her gasp and she tried to pull away, but he would not allow it.

He had dreamed of it too many times, imagined it too many times, spent too many tormented nights wishing desperately he had the right to kiss her just once without the shame of his own shortcomings standing between them.

But once was simply not enough and he kissed her twice, three times, each with a bolder passion than the last. He kept his hand tangled in her hair until he was certain she would not shy away, then lowered it to the smooth curve of her throat, warming the fluttering pulse beat he found there.

She gasped again and parted her lips to his searching hunger, welcoming the gentle rolling motions of his tongue, then the deep, devouring thrusts that made her blood race and her limbs tremble with weakness.

She was still weeping. The tears were bathing their mouths and he tried once, unsuccessfully, to temper his hunger long enough to wipe away the dampness.

But then their mouths came together again and her hands were reaching up around his shoulders and the tears of pain and fear became tears of unbounded joy.

“Little fool,” he gasped at length. “My darling little fool. I could never hate you. Not for any reason. Could you not see I was in love with you? In love … from the very first moment I saw you.”

Christiana, her mouth pink and swollen, buried her face in the crook of his shoulder again. “I thought … I hoped … I prayed it might be so, for I loved you, too, senor. So much so, I wept myself to sleep each night with the shame of wanting you.”

Pitt was all but deafened by the sound of his heart thundering within his chest. He glanced at the bed, but Agnes Frosthip’s bulky form was overflowing it, and then he felt his chest constrict with guilt that his first thought should be so base and lustful.

His second was relief. If it was true, if she was the daughter of a common soldier, it meant there were no barriers standing between them. He was free to do, say, ask, of her anything he pleased.

“Christiana …” He stopped a moment to taste the sweetness of her name on his lips, then released his breath on a hoarse gust. “Christiana—” he tilted her face up to his and lost himself in the depths of the huge blue eyes— “wh en we get to England, I want you to stay with me. I … want you to marry me.”

“I cannot!” She gasped, her mouth slackening with shock. “I cannot!”

“Why? Why, in God’s name not?” A thought came to him and sent his head crushing down onto her shoulder. “Please, please don’t tell me you are married already or I swear I will sail to Spain myself and kill him.”

“I am not married, senor,” she cried weakly.

His lips moved around another soundless prayer of thanks and found the tender pink shell of her ear. “Geoffrey. For pity’s sake, call me Geoffrey.”

“I am not married, senor, but I still cannot marry you. I am a poor servant and you are an hidalgo, a lord. It would not be possible, not fitting, not proper.”

Pitt might have laughed had her face, her eyes, not been filled with such solemn intensity.

He did smile, however, and kissed her with enough solemnity of his own to leave her breathless and sagging in his arms. “I am no lord, my sweet. I am the son of a gunner, a lowly ironmonger whose only claim to nobility was his pride. If one of us is not worthy of the other, it would be me. Me and the sin of my own arrogance for making me always pretend I am someone I am not.”

“You do not pretend,” she whispered. “You are noble, you are kind, you are the bravest, most honorable man I have ever known.”

“Then marry me, for I also love you more than any other man you ever will know.”

Bright, silvery tears of joy shimmered and overflowed again, and he took them to be his answer.

“First, we will have to talk to the captains and let them know they will have no hostage to give to the Queen or anyone else. Then, as soon as the ship drops anchor, we will go ashore and find a minister—”

“A priest!” she squeaked.

Pitt laughed. “A priest, a rabbi, an Indian chief if need be. Then an inn with a very large room and a very small bed so that nothing … nothing ever comes between us again.”

He sealed the promise with a kiss and she moaned her assent and eagerness into his mouth. They remained that way, locked in one another’s embrace even as the captains from Drake’s fleet of warships were preparing to meet for a council of war.