Pirate Wolf Trilogy (87 page)

The
Avenger
had led
the fleet of privateers out of New Providence, setting a brisk pace
north, skirting any islands that might have Spanish ships
patrolling their waters. Following close on his stern, flanked by
the
Iron
Rose
and the
Christiana
, was
the newly appropriated
Dove
,
whose crew had been given the choice of either submitting to their
new captain—Isabeau Spence—or being sold to the Portuguese to work
the cane fields. It made for an impressive sight to see nearly
forty ships sailing out of port, all flying the Union Jack on their
mastheads. Only once before had Simon Dante seen such a sight, and
that had been on the eve he had sailed out of Portsmouth with
Francis Drake to defend England against the threat of another
Spanish fleet.

~~~

True to her
prediction, Juliet was kept so busy during the daylight hours that
she rarely gave a thought to Varian St. Clare. It was more
difficult after dark, when she ran out of excuses to retire to her
cabin, but there too, after the third night, she could almost fall
asleep without having to fight the urge to run her own hand down
between her thighs.

Before they
reached Frenchman’s Cay, two of the captains broke away to set up
their own ambush near the tip of the chain of islands. Captains
David Smith had his own score to settle with the Spaniards and
together with Captain Peter Wilbury, had bid to take up the first
position. The combined guns from the five ships in their group
would announce the arrival of the plate fleet as it entered the
Straits. Dante’s guns would in turn give warning to the next
ambuscade and so on all the way up the fifty mile span of the
Devil’s Teeth.

Juliet
dropped anchor mid-afternoon in the shallow water less than half
mile off the tiny island. The
Santo Domingo
lay alongside the
Rose
while the
Avenger
,
the
Christiana
, and
the
Dove
took up a
position behind Spaniard’s Cay. Simon Dante, Pitt, and Juliet rowed
ashore with their quartermasters and chief gunners to walk the
length of the beach. They surveyed the slope of the dunes with an
eye to digging the gun emplacements, checking to see if the channel
between the two cays was as they remembered. They were pleased to
see a thick line of trees less than fifty feet from both
beaches.

Out of
the
fifty-two cannon the
galleon had originally mounted, four had already been removed to
replace guns on board the
Iron Rose
. Thirty culverins, twelve demi-culverins, and six
eighty-pound mortars would be broken down and transferred ashore,
divided equally between the two islands. There was a good deal of
back-breaking work ahead, but there too they had the crew of
the
Dove
to
supplement the labor force as well as the extra hundred men who
would eventually man the batteries.

“It should take
two weeks,” her father said grimly “with all of us skinning our
knuckles and blistering our backs. At first light, we’ll send some
hunting parties out to scout for rocks, cut down trees, fill sacks
with sand for constructing defences. I also want search parties to
walk the entire perimeter of both islands to make sure there have
been no unpleasant changes since our last visit.”

Pitt concurred.
“It wouldn’t hurt to put a couple of pinnaces in the water too,
maybe check the outlying islands on either side.”

“If memory
serves, only one of these two islands has a source of fresh water,
the other—” Juliet pointed to the beach on the opposite side of the
passage— “is barely three miles long.”

“We’ll need
lookouts,” Simon said, noting the arrival of the next boatloads of
men on the beach. Isabeau had come across on one and when he saw
her, a sly smile stole across his face. “I will volunteer Beau and
I to check out Spaniard’s Cay, while you, Juliet—” he waved at one
of the men coming up the beach— “take one of the lads with you and
find a good vantage point above these trees.”

“Aye, Father.”
She turned, expecting to see Lucifer loping up behind them, or at
the very least, one of her own crewmen armed to the teeth with
pistols and powder horns.

Instead, she
saw Varian St. Clare striding up the beach, his dark hair blown
about his face, his long legs forcing Isabeau Dante to almost run
to keep apace. He wore a plain white shirt and dark breeches. His
sword was strapped to his hip and he wore crossbelts that held a
brace of pistols snug across his chest.

His steps
slowed as he approached the small group at the water’s edge. After
nodding to Simon and touching a finger to his brow to acknowledge
the smile on Geoffrey Pitt’s face, he walked right up to Juliet,
took her hand and started walking toward the trees without so much
as a by your leave.

She was so
startled, she actually followed him half a dozen steps before she
dug her heels into the sand and stopped.

“Where the
devil have you come from? You’re supposed to be on a ship bound for
England!”

“
Unlike
his daughter, who is too mulish and pig-headed to listen to reason,
I was able to convince your father I would be of better use here.
In fact, we got along rather famously after we started sharing some
of our anecdotes about the stubborn,
willful
women in our lives. After hearing about
the very first meeting between your mother and father, I can see
you came by your threat to geld me honestly. And is it true you
were such a nuisance when you were small, that your brothers
trussed you up like a chicken and hung you by your ankles off the
end of a bowsprit?”

Juliet,
open-mouthed, glanced back at her parents, neither of whom looked
the least abashed.

“
We saw
the
Gale
leave,” she
said, turning back.

“So you did.
Lieutenant Beck was not entirely pleased to take my place, but he
could see the need and recognized his duty. Beacom was only too
thrilled to accompany him and offer his services on the voyage
home. Not only that, but he has taken some private letters back to
England explaining my decision to remain here. Now then, shall we
go along? We have a fair climb ahead of us and only a couple of
hours of daylight left.”

He gave her a
brief smile then started walking, the sand sounding like crushed
egg shells as he strode toward the trees.

Juliet stared.
After another full minute, she glanced back at her parents a second
time, but they had already headed off, hand in hand, toward one of
the boats. Geoffrey and Nathan were talking together, the latter
grinning and scratching his chin as if he should have known
something had been in the wind.

By the time she
looked back at the trees, Varian had put several hundred feet
distance between them and she had to walk smartly to keep him in
sight. She made no overt effort to catch up to him. Her thoughts
were spinning too fast to even believe he was there, let alone that
her father had spent more than an hour discussing gun deployments
and defences without giving her so much as a hint there was
anything afoot.

Anger put a new
snap in her stride as she began closing the gap. The island boasted
one tall peak and several smaller ones that stretched out several
miles in length, descending like the knuckles on the spine of some
ancient creature. The path, if it could be called such, was jagged
and steep in places, with terraces of long grasses and tangles of
bush in between that had not seen a human foot for centuries. The
vantage, as they climbed nearer the top, was as dominant as the one
from Pigeon Cay, giving a sweeping view of the surrounding area.
The water shone like a rippled sheet of pewter beneath the sun,
stretching out across the Straits for twenty leagues before it met
the coast of Florida. To the north, the next island in the chain
was visible as a vaporous blue haze linked underwater by a high
shelf of reef. To the south, Spaniard’s Cay rose like the hump of a
dolphin’s back, the summit mostly rock surrounded by a ring of
trees and pale pink sand.

Juliet had lost
sight of Varian, but knew he could not be too much farther ahead.
She passed through a narrow belt of long, lush grass and was about
to climb the last ten feet or so to the uppermost ledge of rock
when she saw him. He was leaning against a boulder off to one side,
his long legs crossed at the angles, his arms folded over his
chest.

“Why have you
stopped? We haven’t reached the top yet.”

“I think this
is high enough, don’t you?”

“High enough
for what?”

“To clear up
any misunderstandings that might be between us.”

She glanced
around, not so much to assure herself they were alone but to save
her eyes from being trapped by his. “I’m sure I don’t know what
you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?
When I came up the beach back there, do you have any idea how close
you came to being thrown down in the sand and ravished there and
then, before your mother, your father... before God Himself?”

“They would
have killed you if you’d tried.”

He smiled. “I
doubt that. In fact, it was your mother who suggested I just drag
you off into the bushes and keep you there until you came to your
senses. She said that was the only way your father managed to
convince her she could be stronger with him than without him.”

Juliet narrowed
her eyes warily. He had removed his crossbelts and pistols, she
noticed. They were on the rocks beside him alongside his sword and
baldric. “She said that, did she?”

“She also said
you were very much like her—sometimes to her sorry regret. That you
are always so damned determined to prove you don’t need anyone’s
help getting through life, that you sometimes forget that other
people do.”

“Are you saying
you need my help?”

“Call it a
character flaw. The need to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Although I think need is perhaps too strong a word. Desire might be
better suited. The desire to understand you and the need to
understand myself.”

“What are you
having trouble grasping? You came here to do your duty to the
crown. You have done it. Two weeks ago you were eager to see the
last of us, to get back to your England and your rolling green
hills and well-ordered life.” She waved an arm, vaguely indicating
the stretch of blue water. “You had your chance three days ago to
leave. You didn’t take it. And now you need my help to understand
why you did not?”

“Oh, I know
damned well why I did not. You see, I have spent the past
twenty-eight years of my life wandering around without any real
purpose, without any real ability to stray off the path that was
chosen for me, the one that was set out in a straight line from the
day I was born. I said I became duke by default and that part is
true, but ten years ago, had you stood me beside my two brothers
you would have been hard pressed to tell the three of us apart. We
dressed the same, talked the same, were educated by the same
tutors. I expect we even made love the same, for were all taken to
the same brothel for our initiation into the earthy delights of a
woman’s flesh.

“My older
brother studied politics because that was what he was expected to
do. My middle brother learned finance and the law so that the
family business would stay in the family. I joined the army because
that’s what third sons do. We even—all of us—agreed to marry women
that were chosen for us because, while you had at least seen love
up close and knew it existed, we were never exposed to anything
so... earthy and uncivilized. Our parents were polite the two or
three times a year they attended the same balls and court
functions. They never touched, never—God forbid—smiled. When Father
died, Mother’s first priority was assuring we all had the proper
wardrobes. I had absolutely no idea love could produce actual
physical pain. Not until I watched you stand on top of Pigeon Cay
with your arms outstretched, vowing you would one day sail over the
horizon to see if such things as dragons truly existed. Do you have
any idea how truly pitiful a moment that was for me? There I was
wondering if there had ever been an instant in my life that I
actually believed such a thing as love existed, while you were
convinced there were mythical creatures lurking just beyond the
horizon, waiting for you to discover them.

“I think that
was the very first time I knew what the pounding in my chest was
all about. It was the moment I fell in love with you, though there
were occasions afterward that made me think: ah, that was the one.
Or: no, perhaps that was it. I have had three days and three very
long nights to think about it, you see, and... I guess I was hoping
you had been just a tiny bit miserable about sending me away.”

She stared at
him, watching his lips move, hearing the words he was saying. And
she had followed them right up to the point where he said he loved
her. That was where her mind had frozen, where every single thought
had slammed to a halt.

“I realize you
made it quite shockingly clear from the outset that all you wanted
was a pleasant diversion,” he added, somewhat uncomfortable under
her stare. “I just thought... I assumed... ”

When she
continued to stand there, saying nothing, he sighed and pushed a
hand through his hair. “Of course, that would be assuming a great
deal, would it not? It would assume you gave a damn one way or
another, that you didn’t just send me away because you’d had your
fill of me, but because you were afraid it wasn’t just a diversion
anymore.”