The Following Sea (The Pirate Wolf series) (15 page)

"Aye sir." The boy turned and bolted back down the ladderway.

"Stubs, have the master gunner, Giddings, order all able hands on deck and gun crews at their posts, but tell them to keep low and do not open the outer ports until I give the word. Master Rowly!"

The helmsman stepped smartly forward. "Aye, sir!"

"How much speed can you give me?"

The bristled face creased deeply with concern. "She's bottom heavy an' slow to give ye what ye want... much like my fourth... or were it fifth wife?" He chuckled, snorted. "Sails were set all wrong but I've had the lads working on the rigging. Strung some new lines, loosened some cleats and pins so we have a bit o’ play. Even so, she'll not move above four knots, not in this lack o' wind."

"I want six."

"Impossible, sir! We've used every trick we know to adjust the sails shy of takin' the yards apart pin by nail and rebuilding them!"

"Six knots, Master Rowlandson." Dante clapped the stout Scotsman on the shoulder to cut short another protest. "Do your best."

"Sir!" Eduardo was back, panting and out of breath. "The lady won't open the door. She says them were your orders, to keep it locked. Says she has a loaded gun and knows how to use it."

Dante closed his eyes briefly, realizing that Eva would have no way of knowing what 'trouble' had brought him on deck. "Very well, I'll fetch it myself. Stubs...?"

The quartermaster was already relaying Dante's orders to the gunners. They, in turn, swarmed to obey, stowing any loose objects like casks, buckets, and hammocks. Each cannon had a crew of eight men, the youngest assigned to fetch shot and powder, loading the former into the brass monkey's that crouched beside each monstrous gun. Buckets of sand and ash were filled and placed beside the gun carriages, ready to be spread across the decking to keep them from becoming slippery with blood. Pikes, grappling hooks, and cutlasses were stacked against the gunwales
.
The Dante colors of crimson and black were lowered and those belonging to the former Spanish commander were run up in their stead. The main foresail was quickly furled and tied and twenty men working in unison replaced it with the canvas sheet bearing the Catholic red cross. The sail was riddled from shot, like a sieve, but from a distance it might pass.

~~

Dante left the remaining preparations in Stubs hands and returned to his cabin. He rapped twice on the door and rattled the latch. "Let me in, if you please."

"Who is it?"

"The captain of this ship, madam, now open the door and let me in before my boot does it for you."

He heard the bolt sliding through the lock and this time when he tried the iron latch, the door swung open. Eva was standing in the middle of the cabin. Her eyes were wide and dark, her face pale as snow apart from two burnished spots high on her cheeks. The pistol she was holding was aimed straight and true for the center of his chest; the serpentine hammer was cocked, the pan brimmed with powder.

For a very long moment, neither one of them moved.

"Eva," he said gently, "you are perfectly safe, you can put the gun down."

"The boy said there was trouble on deck," she whispered. "I heard a lot of footsteps and shouting. You were gone so long, I thought..."

"I can imagine what you thought, but I can assure you the crew has other things on its mind than feeding the sharks. The trouble young Eduardo referred to is four Spanish galleons on our beam."

"Spanish galleons?"

Slowly, by inches, she lowered the pistol. Her hand, steady up to then, started to tremble as if the weight of the gun had suddenly become too much to bear. Dante stepped quickly forward and caught the heavy weapon before it slipped out of her hand, and in the next instant found himself being hugged by a quivering, shaking armload of femininity. He wrapped one arm around her while he uncocked the pistol and deposited it on the desk, then he wrapped his other around and held her secure against his body.

"I didn't know what to think," she said, her voice muffled against the padding of his doublet. "I had visions of the door bursting open and men dragging me to the rail and tossing me overboard."

He unwrapped one arm and tucked a finger under her chin to tilt her face up to his. Her eyes were huge and dark, shimmering with tears, so full of fear it made his heart trip and skip over a beat.

What he did next was not planned, nor was it likely the wisest thing to do, but it seemed like the
right
thing to do at the moment and so he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her.

Eva gasped softly at the touch of his lips. Throwing herself into his arms had been purely a reaction to the relief she felt seeing him standing there instead of angry crewmen come to throw her overboard. Feeling his lips on hers, she should have flinched back, should have pulled away, but instead, her hands tightened around his shoulders and she kissed him back. It was only when he pulled away himself that she realized what she had done.

She touched shaking fingertips to her lips and felt her blush grow hotter.

"I am so sorry, Captain. I... I don't know what came over me. I don't usually act so... so foolish."

He smiled crookedly, not entirely certain what had come over himself. "No need to apologize. I'm just glad you didn't shoot me when I came in."

"Oh." She glanced at the gun on the desk. "Yes, well… I didn't know what to expect. Or who to expect. And I am truly tired of playing the helpless victim and I vowed not to be dragged out of here without putting a hole in someone first."

Dante arched an eyebrow, recalling his first impression of Eva Chandler, seeing her sitting with her back stiff and her ankles primly touching. He had envisioned her in a courtly drawing room sipping tea out of tiny cups. After only two days in her company he was coming to realize there was more to this slender wisp of a girl than he had supposed.

His thoughts were interrupted, thankfully so, by the sound of a commotion in the companionway. Eduardo came into the cabin with another lad, the pair carrying a heavy sea chest between them.

“Master Stubs said to bring it here.” Eduardo puffed out a breath as they set the chest at the foot of the bed. He opened the wooden lid and began laying out various articles of clothing: white silk stockings, pleaded scarlet-and-black slashed trunkhose with a red peascod doublet that descended in a deep vee in front and ended with an aggrandized codpiece striped in gold. Two embroidered sleeves along with a starched white neck ruff were added to the pile, as was a velvet pillow cap with a long white feather.

“Cap’n is going to look a treat in these,” Eduardo whispered through a giggle, holding up the ribboned garters used to tie the stockings.

“I heard that,” Gabriel said, looking up from the entry he was making in his logbook. “And I will expect both of you to be all prettied up with just as much pomp and frivolity. Off with the pair of you now. Be on deck in ten minutes looking like Spanish blow-boys.”

The lads ran out, managing to hold their laughter in check until they had exited the cabin.

“You’re going to dress up like a Spaniard?”

Hearing the softly whispered question, Dante set his quill aside and raked his fingers through his hair. His eyes sought hers and held them long enough for her to feel as though he was sliding under her skin and coiling through her body.

"There are four well-armed ships out there. I've fought against ill-weighted odds before but not without taking heavy casualties. And never in a strange ship that handles like a pig, with cannon that are in a fixed position and sails that..." He stopped and sighed, having said all this before. "Our best chance lies in duping them. With luck they'll accept us as one of their own and go on their merry way."

"And if they don't?"

"If they don't," he mused, "we may all be in for a hot time."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Is there anything I can do?"

A slow smile spread across his lips. "With regards to what, Mistress Chandler? Manning one of the cannon? Climbing the shrouds with a blunderbuss? Or perhaps waving a bit of lace and appealing to their gallant nature to simply sail away and leave us unmolested?"

As soon as he saw the flush in her cheeks he regretted the sarcasm, but the last thing he needed to worry about in the heat of battle was Evangeline Chandler being cut in half by a twenty-four pound lead shot.

"If you truly want to help," he said in a gentler tone, "you can fill up those pillowslips with my log book and charts in case they have to go over the side. And then make sure they
do
go over the side rather than falling into Spanish hands. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Good." He stood and walked over to the bed to inspect the garments Eduardo had laid out. With a sigh of resignation, he stripped off his shirt and flung it aside. The stark whiteness of the bandaging around his back stood out against the bronzed skin of his arms and shoulders and Eva was somewhat pleased to note there were no pink stains leaking through the linen. Not wanting to be caught staring, she retreated to the far corner of the cabin as he stripped off his breeches...
did he not know the meaning of modesty
?... and started dressing in the Spanish garb.

When she thought a suitable time had lapsed, she peeked over her shoulder and saw that he had pulled on the white stockings, the scarlet balloon-shaped trunkhose, and was standing at the washstand shaving most of the thick, dark fuzz from his cheeks and jaw, leaving a neatly trimmed, pointed imperial on his chin.

When he was done, he donned the stiff peascod doublet and fastened the score of gilded buttons up the front. It was a snug fit but emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the trimness of his waist. Next came the sleeves, which needed to be fastened to the rolled padding on the shoulders by means of tapers threaded through a series of eyelets. There were a dozen of these ribbons on each sleeve, few of which he could manipulate on his own.

Gabriel debated calling Eduardo back but then he felt cool fingers brushing across the muscles of his bare upper arm and saw Eva beside him, quietly lacing and tying the tapers. He tried not to look too uncomfortable—indeed he wondered why he even gave it a second thought—each time the nimble little fingertips skimmed his flesh. It was far from being the first time a woman had dressed or undressed him, yet he was conscious of standing taller and keeping his eyes focussed straight ahead.

After the sleeves were attached, she helped him with the stiffly goffered white ruff that went around his neck. When she picked up the pillow hat, the feather drooped precariously on a broken stem. While he muttered over the tightness of the ruff, she searched through the chest until she found a thick indigo plume to replace the bent feather and after he raked his hair back and set the cap on his head, he stood back and spread his arms wide so she could assess the results.

"Well? Think you I could pass for a puffed up Spanish peacock?”

Eva felt an odd tingling spread outward from her belly, for in truth, he looked quite magnificent. The swelling around his eye was barely noticable and the bruises on his cheek had faded enough to blend with his deep tan. The scabbing had come off the slash that ran down the side of his cheek, leaving a pale pink line that traced the square, rugged jawline. His lips, which had been mostly hidden by the beard, were full and shaped like sin itself, and while he still bore the physical evidence of having been in a battle recently, he now clearly looked like the victor.

She lowered her eyes quickly and nodded. "You look quite regal,
Senor
Capitan
."

Eva moved slowly to close the door behind him and lock it. Something in the way he had said
safe enough here
made her run the tip of her tongue across her lower lip, as if she could still taste the remnants of their kiss. Something else made her nibble on the same lip and glance over at the sea chest. It had contained the former captain's finery, but while looking for the feather, she had discovered something else folded carefully and packed at the bottom.

~~

"They're definitely comin' to have a closer look," Stubs said as Dante joined him on deck. The barrel-chested quartermaster looked comical in an oversized doublet and trunkhose that made his legs look like two spindly sticks. He wore a striped cap that kept slipping off the bald side of his head and drooping over his eye.

Eduardo, dressed like a Spanish cabin boy, handed Gabriel his spyglass. Two of the ships were close enough to fill the magnifying lens completely and showed tiny figures moving about on deck. Another two hours, if their speed held, the lead galleon would be within hailing distance.

The wind was sporadic and untrustworthy, and, as Gabriel carefully swept the glass across the westerly horizon, he could see why. They were running parallel to the rocky coastline of Espiritu Santu. The irony was not lost on him that they were in the Tongue, the passage where
La Fantasma
had possibly met her end when she had been blown off course by the hurricane.

That thought made him stare harder at the four galleons. He was not a man who believed in coincidences, yet they appeared to be pushing themselves into his face so he had to at least acknowledge them. First the girl with her improbable story of the coin and the search for her missing father. Then the letter found in the packet of correspondence bound for Spain, hinting that another search was about to begin for the lost treasure ship. And now four galleons, well away from the normal patrol lanes, were on a course straight down the Tongue.

Neither of the two lead ships showed battle damage, making it unlikely they had been part of the recent conflict. They both showed multiple open gunports, however, so they were suspicious bastards, whoever they were.