Teresa Medeiros (33 page)

“You’re a bloody disgrace to the pirate profession, Doom,” he muttered, drawing a corner of the counterpane over her.

She snuggled into it, burrowing deep. As he leaned over her, Gerard ruefully reminded himself to give the cabin’s key to Apollo with strict instructions
not
to give it back.

L
UCY AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO THE unlikely sound of singing—a charming French
chanson
set to a sprightly island tempo.

She opened her eyes to discover the
Retribution’
s behemoth of a quartermaster depositing a steaming tray on the table. “Breakfast?” she muttered, knuckling her eyes.

“Lunch, missie,” he gently corrected. “The bells rang noon over an hour ago.”

Noon! Scandalized by her sloth, Lucy sprang out of the bed before remembering she had no schedule to adhere to, no one to displease with her laziness. She fell back on the feather mattress, indulging herself with a languorous stretch and a feline yawn. Apollo disappeared out the door, whistling now instead of singing.

Lucy paused, mid-yawn, shaken by a half-remembered dream. A dream where Gerard,
her
Gerard, had tenderly tucked a blanket around her and brushed her lips with the beguiling warmth of his own. She glanced
down, realizing she
had
been wrapped in the counterpane when she awoke.

Derided by her logical mind, she shook off the fanciful notion. She had simply drawn the counterpane over her when she became chilled and concocted the dream from hopeless wishes. But all the logic in the world couldn’t banish the wistful ache in her heart.

Apollo reappeared, lugging a brass-banded trunk with negligible effort. “The Captain sent these for you.”

Lucy sat up, her heart beating faster. Not Gerard, but “the Captain.” The omnipotent creature of command who wielded ultimate power over her future and her fate.

She crept out of the bed and sidled toward the trunk, trying to feign indifference, but failing miserably. “What is it? The severed heads of his former captives?”

She’d already determined that Apollo was a man of few words, but he shot her a chiding look before reaching into the trunk for a bundle of cloth. He unfurled it over his chest, shaking out the most stunning gown Lucy had ever seen.

She gasped with pleasure. She would have sworn herself devoid of feminine vanity, but in that instant she was beset by a primitive covetousness, a yearning to feel that exquisite mesh of turquoise satin and cream lace against her skin. Its richly jeweled hues spoke of another, more passionate era, and bleached the chaste white of all her Grecian-styled gowns to insignificance.

“Oh, my,” she breathed in awe. “It’s certainly fine, isn’t it?”

Apollo smiled, encouraging her to run a reverent hand over the miniature pearl buttons studding the puffed sleeves.

“May I?” she shyly asked.

He relinquished the gown to her loving hands. Giving in to her instinctive urge, she held it up to see how it would fit.

Her delight faded as rapidly as it had come. Her feet and another six inches of cabin floor were swallowed by the voluminous hem. The gown had obviously been tailored for a woman much taller than she. And given the yawning cavity of the bodice, much more shapely.

I’ve heard Doom’s tastes run to women with a little more meat on their hones
.

Gerard’s own scathing denouncement mocked her. What had she been thinking? That prior to her abduction, he had gone to the effort and expense of having a wardrobe tailored for her? She cast the overflowing trunk a disparaging glance. These were obviously the castoffs of other women he’d
entertained
aboard ship. If they were any indication of the voluptuous creatures ordinarily at his beck and call, he must find her unappealing indeed.

She gazed down at herself, feeling particularly gawkish and angular in the masculine attire.

Lifting her chin, she let the glorious gown fall into a heap at her feet. “You may tell your captain that my own gown will suffice. I’ve no interest in the attire of his former whores.”

Apollo looked so crestfallen that Lucy felt a twinge of guilt. He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut as if dire consequences might result if he spoke.

Injured pride fueled her disdain. “You may also tell him that if he thinks to buy my cooperation with a trunkful of pretty baubles, he’d best think again. Contrary to what he may believe, I’m not some timid mouse to be bribed with a hunk of cheese.”

As if suddenly remembering he’d forgotten to set
the sails or some other such essential task, Apollo wadded up the gown he’d previously handled with such care and tossed it in the trunk.

He slammed the lid and hefted it to his shoulder. “Very well, missie. I shall deliver your message to the Captain.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lucy replied. She felt a little ridiculous curtsying in a pair of breeches, but believed she’d retained enough of her dignity to afford to be gracious.

Apollo fled the cabin at a dead lope. Lucy knew a brief moment of hope that he might forget to secure the door, but the twist of the key and the thud of the bolt sliding into place was unmistakable.

Abandoning one’s self to one’s emotions certainly made one hungry, she thought, going to the table. Besides, she was going to need all of her strength and cunning to cross wits with
Captain
Claremont.

She drew the napkin from the tray. A squeak of impotent rage escaped her, for sitting on the earthenware tray was a tall, foamy mug of milk and a beautifully sliced chunk of cheese.

Gerard’s demands on her time did indeed prove to be less stringent than the Admiral’s. If not for the terse inquiries into her well-being delivered by Apollo each morning, she might have suspected he’d forgotten her existence altogether.

She found herself wildly bored with her own company, forced to endure the monotony of days at sea trapped in a cabin that seemed to shrink with each passing hour. She continued to sleep curled all alone in the middle of the immense bed.

Her restless study of the horizon revealed no landmarks and no hint of pursuit. Or rescue. No opportunities for escape presented themselves, each of
Apollo’s departures underscored by that same damning slam, click, and thud. Her temper grew shorter, but she quickly found that being rude to Apollo had no effect. Her cross words simply rolled off his well-oiled hide like water. She thought in a fit of pique that he and Smythe ought to have been brothers.

On the third day, she was reduced by tedium to correcting the havoc she’d made of the cabin. She scooped a book off the floor only to hesitate, beset by curiosity as to what sort of book might hold the interest of a man like Gerard Claremont.

She ran her fingertips over the title tooled in the morocco-bound cover, beguiled by its rich texture—
Captain Singleton
by Daniel Defoe. It took only the briefest perusal to determine the book was a novel thinly disguised as the autobiography of an infamous pirate.

Her lip curled in a delicate sneer. The Admiral had taken singular delight in deriding novels, insisting that something that had never really happened couldn’t possibly be of any import. Her scorn faded at the memory. The Admiral had taken delight in deriding a great many things—including his daughter. Pricked by a spirit of defiance, she plopped down cross-legged on the floor and began to read.

She was still in the same position four hours later when Apollo brought her lunch. She ate absently, nibbling on dry biscuits and salted beef while turning pages with her other hand. She had unwittingly found what she’d been seeking between the unlikely pages of a book—escape. The hours melted away as she was transported to exotic climes by the thrilling adventures of the rogue captain.

She finished the novel the following morning, turning the last page with a wistful, but satisfied, sigh. She gently returned it to its rightful place on the bookshelf,
then pawed through Gerard’s bound atlases and charts until she discovered two more Defoe novels.

She devoured the first and was lying on her stomach on the bed halfway through the second when Apollo entered with supper. She laid the book aside, careful not to ruffle its fragile pages. She’d already noticed the disturbing tendency of Defoe’s tarnished heroes to take on Gerard’s likeness in her imagination, but the most recent incarnation of Gerard as the noble castaway Robinson Crusoe and Apollo as his loyal Friday was too much for her to digest on an empty stomach.

She watched Apollo arrange her supper tray with sharpened curiosity. The rich histories of Defoe’s characters had given her pause, made her wonder what drove men to the paths they took. As always, Apollo’s big-boned feet were bare and her gaze was drawn to the ugly scars ringing his ankles.

He turned to go. She bounced to her feet. “Stay!” Realizing how peremptory the command must have sounded, she twined her hands together and offered him a tremulous smile. “Stay, please? Share supper with me. I’m … lonely.” Until she said the words aloud, Lucy didn’t realize how true they were. Gerard’s defection had left her with no one.

Apollo hesitated, then surprised her with a graceful bow. “I am honored to accept the missie’s gracious invitation.”

As he folded his large frame into a chair, she took meticulous care dividing her supper in half. She could imagine how shocked her father would be to see her breaking bread with a man he would consider little more than a savage. She smiled, inordinately pleased by the thought.

Apollo was dazzled by his hostess’s impish grin, the first he’d seen from the girl since her rejection of the captain’s trunk. He had delivered her scathing message
as instructed that day. Gerard had laughed until he’d been forced to swipe tears of mirth from his eyes.

“Where are you from, Apollo?”

Lucy’s innocuous question caught him off guard. Thus far, she had shown no interest in anything but her own churlish complaints. Perhaps she only longed for the comfort of a human voice. Apollo knew how damning protracted silence could be.

“I come from the Zulu clan,” he replied, breaking off a dry chunk of biscuit and dipping it in the thin paste of water and flour that passed for gravy. “I was taken from my home in my nineteenth summer and carried to Santo Domingo where a French plantation owner purchased me.”

Apollo’s voice was melodic, eloquent, the voice of a natural-born storyteller. His precise diction proved him to be a man who loved the English language more for having come to it late. Food forgotten, Lucy propped her chin on her hands to listen.

“My master was a good man, an enlightened man. Instead of sending me to the fields, he educated me—taught me to read and write in French, Latin, and English, taught me the manners of a gentleman’s gentleman, spent hours discussing the arts and philosophy with me.” Apollo chuckled. “Rousseau and Christ were his undoing. ‘Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.’ ”

Apollo’s rendering of the noble words that had unwittingly sown the seeds of the French Revolution sent a shiver down Lucy’s spine.

“If this Christ, whom he was so eager for me to embrace, had died to set men free, then why was I not free? I finally forced him to concede my point.” Apollo’s face clouded. “His resolve came too late. Before he could petition the governor for my freedom,
the slaves revolted. He was murdered by a neighbor’s field hands. He died in my arms.”

Lucy found herself perched on the edge of her chair. “What was left for you to do? Join the rebellion?”

Apollo shook his head. “If I learned only one lesson at my master’s feet, it was that violence can only beget violence.”

An odd philosophy for a pirate, Lucy thought, but chose to keep her own counsel.

“The rebellion was squelched. I was arrested and imprisoned. The authorities were afraid of me—some of my size, others of my education. The slaves revered me for the same reasons. The governor would have had me hanged along with the other captured slaves, but he feared making a martyr of me would only incite another rebellion, bloodier than the first. So they locked me away and waited for the outside world to forget about me.”