Page 57

T he rain fell in sheets. Only those who held the watch or those who enjoyed a good drenching in fresh water ventured out from under cover.

All but the closest galleons were obscured behind the heavy, steady curtain of rain and then only the faint, watery blots of yellow from their stern lanterns were visible through the downpour.

Beau had retreated to her cabin. Her pistols had become wet and she had removed them hours ago. Her sword was a nuisance, slapping her thigh as she paced, so she had removed it as well. Her boots had become more of a squishing aggravation than they were worth, so when she paced, she paced barefoot.

Dante and Spence had been gone more hours than she cared to think about.

Five, to be precise, and while she had no idea how long a council of war took on board a ship, the longer they were away, the more likelihood there was of trouble.

Periodically, she went up on deck, thinking she could see more clearly if she stood in the rain rather than trying to peer through it.

Twice she had encountered Geoffrey Pitt on the foredeck, his hands raised like visors over his eyes, his hair, clothing, body, soaked to the bone.

There was not much wind and thankfully, no lightning.

Only a sodden blanket of clouds overhead and the hailing sound of billions of drops of rain striking the surface of the sea, harsh and unrelenting.

Earlier, in the eerie, charged moments before the skies broke open, the Egret —indeed, all of the ships in Drake’s fleet—had had their mastheads and yardarms bathed in the dancing, blue-white currents of Saint Elmo’s Fire.

Beau had seen the phenomenon only once before, and she stood in awe like the others, knowing it would have been taken as a good omen by Drake, who would undoubtedly use it to convince his captains their mission was sanctioned by God.

Some of the older tars, she knew, regarded it as the touch of the devil, and in this instance, with the Talon lurking out in the darkness somewhere, she was not inclined to disagree.

“You should go below; you will catch your death!”

Beau jumped halfway out of her skin before she recognized Pitt climbing up behind her on the foredeck.

It was the third time she had left her cabin and the third time Pitt had greeted her with almost the same warning.

He looked half drowned himself. His yellow hair was plastered to his forehead and his clothes clung to his skin in dripping folds.

“It is foolish for both of us to be out here,” he reiterated. “Can you see anything at all.?” she asked, ignoring the comment.

He gazed out into the blankness and shook his head. “We could be drifting into a whale’s mouth and I wouldn’t know it.”

It wasn’t the answer she had wanted to hear. Their own huge lanterns guttered and flickered and sent up enough clouds of hissing steam to turn the light opaque, but some of it glistened off the contours of her face and showed her concern.

“He will be all right,” Pitt assured her. “If he were going to start his own private war, he would have done it by now. We would have heard the alarm bells or seen a sulphur flare … or something. Go below, Beau. I’m sure you will be the first one he comes to see when he gets back.”

Beau blinked against the weight of the rain and searched his handsome face a moment. “I just … didn’t expect to be so worried.”

“None of us ever does, until it happens.”

“But … I never wanted it to happen. Part of me still doesn’t. Part of me just wants everything to be simple again, like it was before.” She stopped and agonized over the admission, not even absolutely sure what she was admitting.

Pitt saw her shiver and put his arm around her shoulder, drawing her against what little heat he had to spare.

“I am truly sorry, Beau, but when you love a man like Simon Dante, nothing is ever going to be simple again, believe me.”

Beau looked up at him through the rain, but there was no point in arguing or denying the charge.

“Nothing?” she asked forlornly.

“Nothing. But if it is any consolation, I would say you have managed to confound the hell out of him, too, he’s just too proud to admit it.”

“I wouldn’t be too proud to admit anything right now,” she said with honest misery in her voice, “if he would just come back.”

“He’ll come back; I promise you.”

Beau peered one last time through the driving rain and mist, then touched Pitt’s arm to thank him.

She was about to descend the ladder to the main deck when she saw a blur of movement near the gangway.

She stood poised with one bare foot on the top rung and her hands gripping the rails, watching as something big and black swelled over the lip of the decking and rose to what seemed like monstrous proportions.

It curled over and rose again and Beau was opening her mouth to scream when she caught a glimpse of light reflecting wetly off the curved blades of Lucifer’s scimitars.

“Mister Pitt! They’re back!”

“I’m right behind you,” he said, too gentlemanly to push her off the ladder, but not too rash to vault over the rail and skid to a landing on the slippery deck below.

Lucifer grunted when Pitt arrived by his side.

He was bent over, trying to haul a deadweight up the wooden steps on the hull.

Beau held her breath. She covered her mouth with her hands, scarcely daring to watch as, together, the two men pulled Jonas Spence up the last two rungs and dumped him in a sprawl across the deck.

Beau fell onto her knees beside him and lifted his head onto her lap.

His eyes were closed and his mouth slack, but at the feel of a welcoming lap beneath him, he raised his eyelids and beamed up into the rain.

“Ay-y-y-ye, an’ a jolly wee lass she were, she were; a jolly wee lass, wi’ a hand up her … eh? Beau? Is that you, girl?”

“Father?”

“Blow my ballocks, who’d ye think it were?”

She sat back on her heels—driven back, more’s the like—by the overpowering smell of rumbullion on his breath. “You’re drunk.”

“Aye, lass. Drunk an’ useless.” His head flopped back on her lap.

“Too useless to be any good to the likes o’ Drake an’ his lot, so I’ve been told.

Sendin’ us home, he is. Says we’ll be doin’ him a favor, takin’ his sick an’ his sour home.

Watchin’ over his wee pinnace. Aye. His wee pinnace.

’At’s what he has, all right. A wee pinnace fer a wee man. ”

Beau looked at Lucifer. “What is he talking about? What has happened?”

“What’s happened,” said a voice from the top of the gangway, “was that we had a hell of a time loading him into the jolly boat, and an even more hellish time finding the right damned ship.” Dante sighed expressively, his breath as thick as the mist, and held out his hand.

“Lend a poor, drowned sailor a helping hand, mam’selle? ”

Beau surged to her feet, heedless of Spence’s head bouncing down onto the deck again.

“We were worried sick about you. Pitt and I were both worried sick about you. We have been back and forth—" she punctuated both words with angry swipes of her hand— “in the cold and the rain! We have been watching and waiting and worrying about all of you. We thought you were dead!”

Dante pulled himself up the final few steps. “Would it please you any to know I might very well have been? Black as it is, I damned near walked into a loose spar. Lucky for me, Lucifer saw it in time and swung it back.”

“Did he hit anything on the return?” Pitt asked casually.

“He may have. We had our hands too full of Spence to check.” He looked at Beau. “I’m sorry if we worried you. And I’m sorry if your father is drunk, but he did not take too kindly to Sir Francis insisting he take the Egret home.”

“I suppose you did everything in your power to argue in our favor.”

“I happen to agree with him,” Dante said quietly, “for the reasons I told you before. And a few other concerns I may not have mentioned.”

Beau stood in the rain, trembling against the cold, her fists clenching and unclenching as she glared at him. “Your reasons don’t interest me, Captain. Neither do your heartfelt concerns.”

She spun around and ran through the hatch, cursing when she stubbed her toe on a step, swearing vociferously when she slammed the door to her cabin shut behind her.

She limped the length of the room twice before she thought to return to the door and slide the iron bolt into its ring, but she was a split second too late.

Dante pushed his way inside like a strong wind, shedding water with every step.

“My reasons may not interest you, but you’re going to hear them anyway.”

She offered up an anatomically impossible retort as she presented him with her back.

Dante reached out a hand, thought better of it, and raked it through the heavy, wet waves of his hair instead. “Are you not even interested in knowing if I saw Victor Bloodstone or not?”

“I am assuming he was the ‘spar’ who hit you on deck.”

“As a matter of fact, he wasn’t; he was long gone by then.”

“Gone?” Her head turned, barely enough to notice. “You didn’t kill him?”

“No. I didn’t kill him. I stood closer to him than you and I are right now—much closer, dammit—but I did not kill him. I wanted to. I did … in my mind … a dozen different times, a dozen different ways, but I kept hearing your voice in my ear saying ’don’t be a fool’ ‘don’t be a fool.’”

“You’ve never listened to me before.”

Dante’s throat worked for a moment, but the words would not come, could not come, and his hand, still threaded into his hair, started to wilt down by his side .