Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion (12 page)

And she was indeed alone. Her father was dead. The servants at home weren’t expecting her for another fortnight. The guildsmen saw her leave in the company of gentlemen. No one would even miss her. No one except…the beggar.

Some guardian he’d turned out to be, she thought waspishly. He hadn’t kept her safe for a single day. Unless…unless that had been his intent.

But of course! She felt like a fool. The beggar was part of it.
He
had sent the Spaniards after her. He probably worked for the Spanish gentleman. They’d planned it from the beginning.

The scrape of a boot sounded overhead. Men’s voices wafted down, muffled at first by the wooden planks of the deck. Then the hatch door abruptly lifted. Moonlight streamed in like bolts of the sheerest silk. Linet pressed her eyes shut, pretending sleep. It took all her willpower not to open them when she heard the squeak of the wood ladder as a man descended into the hold.

He shouted to the men above in Spanish. Then he said something she could translate easily, for she’d heard it so many times.

They were casting off.

He climbed up again, and the hatch fell closed with a grim finality. Linet began grappling wholeheartedly with her bonds, a scream building in her throat. Harold cast pitying glances her way. He’d no doubt already spent hours in that fruitless pursuit.

Moments later, covered with beads of sweat and rope burns from her struggles, she felt the ship jerk free from the dock. She looked over at Harold in dread. As the vessel rocked slowly out to sea like a grand old lady, Linet alternately prayed for and cursed the beggar who might, or might not, be their salvation.

At the foot of the docks, Garth closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross. Holden cursed. Robert stared in open-mouthed wonder, for once at a loss for words.

They watched in silence, helpless, as the
Corona Negra
carried off Duncan de Ware as inexorably as a shark with a seal in its belly.

“I knew I should have gone,” Holden snarled, clenching his fists in frustration.

“What will we do now?” Garth asked.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Robert said, sighing. “Lie like the devil.”

“What?”

“Oh, I know the word is foreign to you, Garth, but there’s no other way. Your mother and father will worry themselves ill if they discover the truth.”

“He’s right, Garth,” Holden said. “This is our fault. It’s up to us to follow him, to get Duncan out of this mess.”

Garth looked decidedly uncomfortable. “So we’ll lie? What will we tell them? That we’re all going off on pilgrimage?”

“We’re not all going off anywhere,” Robert replied. “You and Holden will tell them that Duncan and I escorted the wool merchant home.”

“You’re not following him alone,” Holden decreed. “It’s too dangerous.”

Robert clapped him on the shoulder. “I’d far rather die at the hands of sea reivers than face your father’s wrath for losing all three heirs to his title.”

Holden’s lips thinned, but he had to agree.

“There’s a ship bound for Spain in the morning,” Robert said. “I plan to be aboard her.”

“How do you know El Gallo is going to Spain?” Garth asked.

“I don’t,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a risk I’ll have to take.”

“I don’t like this,” Holden sulked.

Robert nodded. “I know.”

Holden clasped him by the elbow.

There was a moment of silence. Then Robert flashed his biggest grin. “You just can’t abide someone else getting all the glory, can you, Holden?”

Linet blinked against the brilliant flood of light as the hatch creaked open. It was day. They must have sailed all night.

“So you are among the living, eh?” someone said. The accent was thick and nasal.

She glared toward the intruder as fiercely as she could.

The man laughed. “Ah, you
are
full of fire,
doncella
, thinking to burn me through with those pretty eyes!”

She tried to show neither trepidation nor revulsion as the man descended to the bottom rung. He was oily and rumpled, his velvet surcoat too fine to have been acquired honestly. His hair was flattened to a nondescript shade from lack of washing, his eyes sunken from too many years of heavy drink.

He suddenly dropped down beside her. She gagged at the stench of onions on his breath. He ran one grimy finger beneath the rope across her shoulder.

“It would appear one of our men may have a future as a weaver, eh, wool merchant?” he said, chuckling at the maze of ropes around her. “But we are far from harbor now. There is no reason to keep you trussed up. You would not be so foolish as to fight while I hold a knife, eh?”

He drew forth a nasty-looking jeweled dagger, no doubt pilfered from a nobleman. Her breath caught in her throat, but she managed not to flinch as the man sawed at the ropes, his blade a hair’s breadth from her skin. When her arms and legs were free, she stretched them out slowly, wincing in new pain as the blood coursed through them.

“Sombra wishes to see you now,” the Spaniard informed her, helping her to her feet with one bony paw.

Sombra! She knew that name. But then who didn’t? Sombra, the scourge of the seas, the flesh peddler from Spain. But it was rumored he was dead. Dear God, was it not true? Was she in the clutches of that demon? Shaking off the dizzying thought, she forced herself to straighten, summoning up the strength to confront her captor.

Perhaps she could reason with the man. Sombra had been a noble once. Perhaps she could use her merchant’s wits to bargain for her life. She’d faced far worse, after all. She had faced El Gallo and triumphed.

Flicking aside the man’s hand, she reached behind her head to untie her gag.

“He wishes to
see
you,” the shipman sneered, “but I am not so certain he wishes to
hear
you.”

As soon as the gag was off, she nodded to Harold. “What about my servant?”

“Ah, shark bait?” he snickered. “Perhaps you should be more concerned with your own destiny,
doncella
.”

Linet stiffened. The Spaniard waved his dagger before her. The jewels winked ominously, but she refused to recoil from the friendly threat.

“I would advise,” he confided in a loud whisper, “that you do not ask Sombra such a question, or you may learn the answer sooner than you wish.”

The Spaniard hauled her up the steps to the deck. She was momentarily blinded by the sun as she poked her head out of the hold. But the cool, salty breeze was refreshing, and she drank it in eagerly.

Suddenly, black leather boots stepped into her field of vision, boots that looked to be Cordovan. Her gaze traveled upward. Black hose, surcoat, sleeves, girdle—the fine raiment hung upon a painfully thin frame she instantly recognized.

“Don Ferdinand.”

“Sombra,” he said with a curt nod, “if you please.”

Linet felt sick to her stomach. Sombra. Don Ferdinand was Sombra. The nobleman in whom she’d blindly placed her trust was one of the most savage villains to scour the seas.

Of course she could see it now, now that she had the benefit of hindsight. He looked gaunt in the harsh light of day. His face bore the signs of a life of debauchery. Dark circles haunted his narrowly spaced, beady eyes, eyes that fixed on her with predatory intensity. Tiny scars crisscrossed his face like badly tangled threads on a loom. There was a cruel twist to his thin lips today, an unnerving precision in the cut of his beard and the lank, inky hair that clung to the sides of his head. He looked, she thought with a shudder, as sleek and unruffled as a raven.

“How lovely to see you again,” he said, his accent butchering the words.

She parted her parched lips to deliver a caustic retort, but the words stuck fast in her throat. Behind Sombra, like a whale sneaking up on an eel, loomed another familiar figure. El Gallo. This must be
his
ship.

“What have you to say now, my thieving little merchant?”

Linet’s heart hammered away at her ribs. But it would do no good to let them see her fear. Men didn’t respect you unless you spoke to them as equals. Despite her fluttering pulse, she stepped brazenly out onto the deck before them and burst out with the first thing that popped into her head.

“You’re going to a lot of trouble over a few barrels of Spanish vinegar.”

“What!” El Gallo exploded.

Sombra’s nostrils flared once. He held up his hand to calm El Gallo. “She is mine,” he hissed.

Linet had hit her mark. El Gallo boiled with anger over the reminder of his lost wine.

“Leave her to me,” Sombra said.

El Gallo muttered something foul under his breath but followed Sombra’s advice, disappearing into his quarters.

Sombra forced his features into a semblance of nonchalance. “Grapes always grow back,
doncella
,” he assured Linet silkily, gaining control, his lips curving into a disingenuous smile. “Flesh, however…” He let the sentence dangle before her like an executioner’s axe. He seemed almost disappointed when she displayed no fear of him.

She hid it well. She was terrified. It was only pure will that kept her knees from giving out and her face unperturbed. She’d been so confident at the docks, facing El Gallo with her royal letters of marque rippling proudly in the English wind.

Where were they now? Out here, adrift, far from the arm of English law, the papers might as well have been chaff on the breeze. Here she was completely at the reiver’s mercy. Even now she could feel the crew members’ gazes slithering like snakes up and down the length of her, and for once, she was glad she had only a minimal knowledge of the Spanish tongue. She had no desire to know what crude remarks they whispered to one another.

Bloody hell—here she was, not a year yet from under her father’s protection and already in the clutches of criminals. If only she’d listened to that overbearing beggar.

If only she’d listened to me, Duncan thought as he peered down through the rigging with his one uncovered eye. And if only she’d curb her tongue now. The little merchant had mettle, that was certain. He only wished she would keep it to herself. There she stood, as cocky as ever, her eyes challenging, her hair blowing as freely as a pennon of gold, like a holy saint dropped onto a ship full of demons.

He knew better. Only the handmaiden of the devil could cause so much trouble.

He rubbed his weary eye beneath the patch, gripping the ropes with his legs as the ship swayed gently, wondering for the hundredth time how he was going to get them out of this. God’s wounds—he was but one man against a horde.

Below him, Linet had said something that amused Sombra. The whoremonger threw his head back and cackled heartily. Linet, however, didn’t share his levity. She glared at him with eyes of stone.

“What do I want?” Sombra echoed with a garish grin. “How about a little of this?” He reached out a gloved hand and gave her breast a taunting caress.

Duncan ground his teeth together. He could have split the ship in two with the powerful bolt of rage that seared through him. But Linet was already moving to defend herself, quickly slapping the bastard’s hand away.

Fortunately Sombra didn’t take offense. It was rumored that the Spaniard had little appetite for women himself. He apparently only wanted to humiliate Linet. And he’d succeeded. Linet’s face was as pink as a ripe peach. Sombra’s grin widened. He wouldn’t have been so smug had he stood face-to-face with Duncan.

“No,” Sombra leered. “I do not like skinny little girls. I have friends in Spain, however, who do. Wealthy friends.”

Linet’s bravado faltered briefly, and Sombra fed on her fear.

“Ah, yes,” he purred. “My friends have rather…exotic tastes. Don Alfredo, for example, has a fondness for the whip. De Blanco likes to perform for an audience. And there is Lady Marietta, sweet, virgin-loving Lady—”

Linet clapped her hands to her ears.

Sombra laughed. “Tomorrow we begin your instruction. You see, my friends prefer their mares…tamed to the hand. Meanwhile, enjoy your last day of freedom.” He gestured grandly to the ship. “Ah, and be advised that I am no stranger to inventive punishments should you prove uncooperative.”

Linet felt as if she were adrift in a nightmare. Surely this couldn’t be happening. At a nod from Sombra, the shipman beside her climbed into the hold and hauled Harold up. The poor old servant’s legs could barely support him, his tunic was in tatters, and he flinched against the bright light. For a moment, her gorge rose, for Harold’s back was crossed with the nasty slashes of a recent flogging.

“Of course,” Sombra said, “I would not wish to mar the precious flesh of a beautiful woman.”

Without warning, he lifted his gloved hand and cracked the back of it hard across Harold’s mouth.

She gasped.

Harold moaned, and his head fell forward. Tears gathered in her eyes. She felt as if she’d been struck herself. Never had she witnessed such cruelty. But after the shock of the Spaniard’s brutality wore off, she turned upon Sombra with eyes as hard as emeralds. She hated him, more than she’d ever hated a man before.

High above the sordid scene, Duncan faunched at the bit like an eager warhorse. He yearned to rip the patch from his eye, cut loose a rope from the rigging, and swing down to kick that villainous swine in black overboard once and for all.

But the moment wasn’t right. Aye, he had the blade at his hip, and he had the skill. His brother Holden might have tried to take on the whole ship full of reivers—Holden was as reckless as he was brave—but then Holden didn’t possess half the wiles Duncan did.

Even now a bold proposition worked its way into his head. Perhaps his accidental journey could prove worthwhile after all. If only Linet and Harold could hold out, there might be a chance he could snare El Gallo and Sombra in their own greed. He smiled grimly. At this moment, there was nothing he longed to see more than both bastards swinging from an English gallows.