Page 43

“ Merde! Well, my friend, it appears we will have to find a new home.” Lafitte scanned the smoking ruins. “Look at what they have done to us.”

“You just said this was Claiborne’s doing?” Rose said. “Perhaps he did it without General Jackson’s knowledge to make himself seem loyal to the American cause.”

The black eyes drilled into her. “And if the British capture New Orleans, he will speak out the other side of his mouth and flavor this attack in such a way as to say he did it to support the Crown. In either case, what would you have me do now?”

“I would expect you to fight to keep your home,” Rose said.

“My home? I have appealed to Madison, to Jackson, to anyone who would listen because I would like to make it my home!” Lafitte was practically shouting and the veins in his neck were bulging. “To do so, I was willing to give my support to the defense of New Orleans!”

“Are you still willing?” She asked calmly.

“Willing? Willing ? Willing to do what?”

“If I can arrange a face to face parlay between you and General Jackson, would you still be willing to support him?”

Lafitte scoffed and looked to Fonteyne. “Is she mad? Have you brought a madwoman back with you? Is this puta seriously suggesting she can arrange a meeting with General Andrew Jackson?”

Fonteyne cast a curious glance at Rose. “I have come to believe she is quite serious when she says she can do something.”

Lafitte looked from one to the other and threw his hands up in a gesture of disdain. “ Sacre bleu! You are both mad.”

Rose ignored him and turned to the men on the beach. Duardo was among them and when he saw her raised her hand, he came forward.

“I need you to take a message to Uncle Andrew. I don’t want to risk exposing the Cygnet to any patrolling gunboats, so you’ll have to find your way through the bayou to New Orleans.

Tell him I am here with Lafitte and he is willing to meet.

If my uncle agrees, we can arrange the meeting somewhere on neutral ground between here and the city.

” She turned and arched an eyebrow in Lafitte’s direction. “Would you be agreeable to that?”

Lafitte was too stunned to do more than stare.

“I will take that as a yes,” she said, then turned back to Duardo. “Have one of Lafitte’s men guide you through the bayou.”

Duardo nodded. “What if the general will not come?”

“You have your darts, do you not?”

He grinned, touched his brow and hastened away. When Rose looked back, Lafitte and Fonteyne were both staring at her now.

“ Uncle Andrew?” Fonteyne asked after a full minute.

“Long story,” she said with a dismissive sigh.

“But I have known him most of my life. He and my father are close friends as well as allies in this war. Had the king of pirates given me the opportunity to mention this when I came to him a month ago, we could have avoided a good many misunderstandings and saved a good deal of time.”

Lafitte waved a hand furiously to encompass his destroyed stronghold. “How can you expect me to lend support to the Americans when they have done this to me? How do I know it wasn’t Jackson who ordered the attack?”

“You said the attack was on Claiborne’s orders. Then it happened before Jackson even arrived in New Orleans.”

“They fly the same flag! How can I be certain Jackson will even want my help?”

“Because he is not a fool and only a fool would refuse it,” Rose said calmly.

“Most of the Continental Army is in the north fighting to reclaim Washington. And while the men who follow Jackson are loyal to a fault, neither he nor they know the swamps and bayous that surround New Orleans. They would not know how to defend it if the British send their fleet of warships straight up the Mississippi, whereas I’m guessing you would. ”

Lafitte snorted. “A fleet of warships would not make it over the shallow waters of the delta. Any vessel with a draught of more than eight feet would become bogged in the mud.”

“There, you see? I doubt the general would know that.”

Lafitte scowled. He pushed himself to his feet and limped a distance away then limped back, leaning heavily on the forked stick. He was muttering under his breath in Cajun, clearly not convinced or comfortable with the direction the conversation had taken.

Fonteyne patted a pocket for his tobacco pouch. “The British could ferry their soldiers through the bayou and land them on the Menteur Road. It leads straight up into the city.”

“A dolt with a hundred men could block that road,” Lafitte tossed over his shoulder as he paced. “The British would be forced into the swamps where the fevers and flux would get them if the snakes and alligators did not.”

Rose frowned. “General Jackson was not well when I saw him on my last blockade run through to Charleston. He suffers from dysentery and has aged a decade in the past few months. Yet Madison sends him from one end of the country to the other without rest, knowing he is the only truly capable general he has. And Jackson goes because that is who he is and because he loves this country and will give it his last breath if it is asked of him. Which I fear might happen if he fails to defend the city and the British break through.”

Lafitte stopped to look her straight in the eye.

“You are very good at wheedling and cajoling, little Rosie of the red hair. Are these the same guiles you used to convince my best and most cynical captain you were honest and trustworthy? Surely the simple act of opening your thighs to him was not the only trick you used?”

Fonteyne tossed his tobacco pouch aside and in two long strides had Lafitte’s shirt collar bunched into a fist and had lifted the shorter man onto his tiptoes.

Lafitte gasped as the air was cut off. His eyes bulged and his hands flailed against the iron-hard tension in Sebastien’s arm.

Two of his men stepped forward to come to his aid, but Rose brushed the edges of her coat aside and drew her pistols, quickly discouraging the pair from interfering.

Fonteyne brought his face close enough to Lafitte’s that his spittle landed on the crimson cheeks. “She convinced me she was honest and trustworthy by being honest and trustworthy. Which is more than I can say for most of the bastards you rely on to speak the truth.”

He released Lafitte with a jerk of his hand, nearly sending the coughing, choking pirate king onto his ass in the sand.

“We brought your damned ship back to you,” Fonteyne added through a scowl. “If you decide to tuck tail and run for Galveston, you’ll have to rename her Poltroon .” He turned to Rose. “Come along, we’re obviously wasting our time and breath here.”

His footsteps crunched angrily over the sand but before he could disappear into the gloom, Lafitte shouted after him.

“Wait! Wait , you insufferable batard !”

Fonteyne paused, turned, and put his hands on his hips.

Lafitte straightened his collar and coat front.

He muttered a few more oaths then nodded his head curtly in Rose’s direction.

“You must surely understand that all of this …” he waved a hand again to encompass the smoldering ruins, “has been almost too much to bear. And so far I have heard nothing from General Jackson that would persuade me he would even be of a mind to seek my help despite my infinite knowledge of the city and surrounding terrain. Having said that, I cannot speak for the willingness of my men to fight for the Americans. But—” he paused and frowned, then scowled and moved his tongue from one side of his cheek to the other.

“ But , if you can arrange this meeting, I will listen to what he has to say.”

Fonteyne looked at Rose. “Fair enough?”

Rose uncocked her pistols and slid them back into her belt. “I suppose it will have to be.”

“Your relationship to General Jackson was a rather crucial piece of information you neglected to share,” Fonteyne said as they walked back along the shoreline.

There were fires lit around the bay, the orange pyres surrounded by shadowy figures cooking, eating, drinking. Longboats continued to travel to and from the ships and Rose’s gaze tracked them as they cut through the silvery streaks on the surface of the water.

“I didn’t mention it sooner because I wasn’t entirely certain I could trust you,” she said honestly. “Not completely.”

“I see.” Then, after a pause, “Dare I ask what moment turned the tide in my favour?”

She smiled slightly. “The moment you told me you liked the way I laughed.”

“Ah. Perhaps I should have told you that sooner.”

She sighed and stopped to warm her hands before one of the bonfires.

“I doubt it would have made a difference. I have never given my trust easily. A flaw in my otherwise predictable and completely guileless character, I suppose. Though I should think you, of all people, would know how difficult it is for a woman to gain the trust and respect of a ship full of men whose first thoughts are usually ‘aye, she’d be a fine cunny to take to bed’?

And how much trust and respect she loses when she does take a man into her bed?

I could not afford to look soft or vulnerable or, God forbid, weak.

I could not afford to give the smallest appearance of letting a man take control of my ship …

or of me. I have fought too hard and long to be where I am right here, right now. ”

“I have seen the scars on your body and I know exactly how hard you have fought. But sometimes that fight can be shared. On equal terms. The devil knows I’ve never said that to a woman before, nor have I ever met a woman —” he hesitated as if tasting the words on his tongue before saying them— “that I would feel proud to say it to.”

Rose felt something hot and stinging welling in her eyes but refused to believe it was tears. She hadn’t shed a tear since that morning five years ago when she woke up alone in her bed and assumed Fonteyne had taken what he wanted and left without a word.

“Look at me,” he commanded quietly.

She blinked away the threat of wetness, then slowly turned.

His eyes were waiting, staring into hers with a gentle fierceness that took her breath away.

“I’m not sure what else I can say or do to make you believe that I don’t want to control you.

I don’t want you to feel obliged or obligated to accept without argument a word I say or an order I give.

And I absolutely do not want to change single thing about you.

I want you just the way you are: obstinate, prickly-tempered, and stubborn enough to drive a sane man quite mad.

All I ask is that you share whatever small part of yourself you are willing to give me. ”

Rose stared up at him for another long moment. His jaw was as rigid as granite, his gaze burning with intensity that suggested a wrong word or a refusal would crush him.

“I am neither obstinate or stubborn,” she whispered. “I merely make a decision and stand by it.”

Some of the tension in his jaw eased. “I left out argumentative and annoying as hell at times.”

She slid her hands slowly up his chest to his shoulders. “Said the pan to the kettle.”

“Suggesting the perfect match,” he said, lowering his mouth to within a breath of hers. “As Dulcinea was to Quixote.”

“Good Lord, please don’t tell me you’ve read Cervantes.”

His arms went around her waist and he drew her close against his body. “Do I not espouse the errant knight?”

“The errant pirate, perhaps.”

A heartbeat before his mouth covered hers, he murmured, “I’ll settle for that. For now.”