The Pirate Prince (19 page)

“The bulldog girl,” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It was Nicolette—the youngest. But never mind that.”

“Yes, of course, Princess Nicolette!” she exclaimed. “I just read about her debut ball in the newspaper Aunt Isabelle sends me from Paris. It was a lavish affair.” She sighed. “I wonder who she will marry now. They say she is a great beauty.”

“To be sure. Please, continue.”

“He liked to play practical jokes on people. Hated to study. He was an outrageous braggart, but charming enough to get away with it. An excellent shot for a young boy, and”—she considered for a moment—“according to Mama, he was known to delight in teasing young ladies until they broke down in tears.”

“You’re right. That sounds nothing like me.”

She was silent, unconvinced herself until she shoved the doubt angrily away. She refused,
refused
, to be drawn in by his game, because if she believed he was the real Lazar, she would have to accept that Papa had been a real traitor. She could not bear even to think of it.

“Well, I can certainly assure you, whoever you are,” she declared, “if Prince Lazar
were
alive, he would certainly not be sailing about in a pirate ship, terrifying people.”

He studied her in amusement. “Why is it that you blush when you speak of him?”

She lifted a hand to her cheek, taken aback. “I am not blushing.”

He smiled. “Oh, yes you are.”

He began sauntering toward her, and she could tell by the way he was looking at her all of a sudden that he knew. He’d guessed.

The devil.

“I seem to recall your referring to him in the tower as ‘my Lazar.’ Why is that?”

She blushed deeper red as he prowled slowly toward her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “I did no such thing.”

“Do I detect a little schoolgirl’s dream tucked away in your most secret fancy, my sweet?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He gave her a fond, chiding look with a hushing motion, a finger to his lips, as if he wouldn’t dream of telling her secret.

“I must come clean with you, Miss Monteverdi. You have found me out. I am an imposter, just as you said. I am merely an outlaw of the seas, looking for something different to do to amuse myself. The coup didn’t work out the way I’d planned, but it’s of little consequence. I still made off with the treasure.”

“Yes, I know. You took all my father’s gold.”

“That’s not the treasure I mean.” Meaningfully, he lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.

She blushed, refusing to be beguiled by his flirting. “Well, I’m glad you finally decided to be truthful with me. Thank you for respecting me at least that much.”

“Miss Monteverdi, my respect for you knows no bounds. To me, you are on the highest pedestal.”

“What lies you speak.” She shook her head as she studied him skeptically. “So, you thought you’d go from being a pirate to a prince, eh?” She fought the urge to smile at his dashing cockiness. “Nothing like starting off small. But you are an Ascencioner, aren’t you? Your accent.”

He nodded.

“And I was right,” she continued, encouraged. “You are the son of a gentleman?”

“Indeed.”

“Obviously you are well educated.”

He gave her an ironic bow. “Vicar has much to do with that.”

“Well!” She folded her arms over her chest, greatly satisfied to see that she had been right all along. Knowing she had seen through him from the start made her feel much more equipped to deal with him.
But how had he known about the tunnels?

And why had the sight of her green-and-black sash changed his whole demeanor that night?

“What am I to call you?” she asked.

“I’m sure you can think of all manner of select epithets, but my name actually
is
Lazar.”

She puckered her brow, about to protest.

“I was, er, born a few months after the prince—I was named after him,” he said. “My parents were staunch royalists.”

“I see.” A bit too warmed by his dark-eyed gaze, she looked away to study her hand where it braced her against the wood.

She had to admit his explanations made sense, but he had given in much too easily. It was almost as if he had cast the whole issue aside just to tell her what she wanted to hear. The pain she’d seen in his eyes that day on the wall had certainly been real.

“No wonder you couldn’t bring yourself to execute my family,” she said, attempting to prod him into revealing more, “considering your vendetta was all a hoax. They all might have died for your whim.”

His eyes flickered with amusement as he declined to rise to the bait. “Do you know why I spared them, Allegra? Because you asked me to. It pleases me to do what you ask.”

She blushed and muttered, “You are mad.”

“Now then,” he said. “About this fantasy of yours.”

“For heaven’s sake, do not speak of it!” She saw he could barely stop himself from laughing at her.

Oh, she loathed him.

He approached her once more, his midnight eyes dancing with mischief. Mere inches away, he braced his hands on the lintel above her, hemming her in. She watched him warily.

“This Prince of yours and I,” he said confidentially, “we share the same name, at least, similar coloring, and we are of an age. The only difference is that he is dead, and I, you see—I am alive.”

“That you are,” she said, feeling a trifle feverish.

“It is a distinct advantage, you must admit. So, my little dreamer”—he lowered his right hand and traced a design on her shoulder, sending shivers down to her toes—“why don’t you simply put this vivid imagination of yours to use, and pretend I’m he? I would so like to fulfill your fantasies, and perhaps,” he murmured, “exceed them.”

She had to admit his eyes sparkled exactly like her Prince’s as he lowered his lips coaxingly toward hers.

“It won’t work,” she forced out breathlessly as he edged closer and deliciously closer still.

“Why not, my darling girl?”

She stared up at him as his big hands moved around her waist and drew her body gently against his. Somehow she could not stop her hands from sliding up his lovely chest.

“Because.” She faltered. “You kiss like a pirate.”

“Not always,” he whispered, smiling a little at first when he kissed her. He brushed his lips over hers, back and forth, with a silken caress as soft as a butterfly’s wings. The dizzying pleasure of it parted her lips slightly, then he lingered, breathing her breath, giving his own to her.

He moved on. Weaker every second, she held perfectly still as he kissed the corner of her lips, her cheek, her brow. When his lips grazed her ear, he paused to whisper to her.

“I have a fantasy, too,
chérie
, of a beautiful girl who saved my soul. What would I not do for her?” He lowered his head, and for a moment he just stood there, drawing his smooth, clean-shaven cheek up and down gently against hers, but she could feel the turmoil inside him.

“What is it?” she asked, cradling his head against her. “What ails you, my friend?”

A tremor moved through him at her caress. He kissed her throat, her ear. Lightly he gripped two handfuls of her hair as he burrowed his face in the crook of her neck. “Help me, Allegra,” he whispered. “I am so unhappy.”

She stroked his weathered cheek and held him. “What would you have me do?”

He paused. “Love me.”

Neither of them moved, and then she trembled.

Her strength fled. Her eyes closed, and she leaned back against the doorframe, waiting for him to consume her, knowing it had been her fate from the moment their eyes had met through the fire. She clung to his shoulders as his lips skimmed her throat.

“Love me,” he murmured, running his hands slowly down her sides to her hips and back up again. She felt his fingers take down her hair and sift through its length, heard him whisper that it was like silk as it fell softly against her neck and shoulders. Her ivory combs were in his hands, then she heard them drop to the floor. When the ship rocked, the combs slid right over the planks and fell to the bottom of the sea, but she did not care, for he returned to taste her lips. He lingered against her mouth once more, unmoving, breathing her, letting her simply feel the enormity of the magic between them.

By sheer force of will, she pulled back, senses reeling. She turned her face away from him. “No, no, I do not want this. I cannot do this,” she breathed, heart hammering.

“Do what,
chérie
?”

She withdrew from all his tenderness, pressing her head back against the doorframe in wordless distress.

“What can’t you do?” he asked softly, stroking her neck. “I will help you.”

She dragged her gaze up to his, at a loss with so much sweetness from this man she was determined to despise, this beautiful, troubling criminal who had planned to kill her.

“I cannot go near the edge,” she whispered, her gaze pleading. “If I fell in—it is so deep—I cannot swim.”

He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm, for a long moment simply gazing down at her as if there was so much he wanted to say, he didn’t know where to begin.

He shook his head.

“I would still save you,” he said.

Then he gave her back her hand and quietly left her there on the balcony, alone with all the vast and empty sea.

CHAPTER TEN

“She’s in love with me,” Lazar announced, strolling to the canvas shade under which Vicar sat writing in his logbook. The older man looked up.

Lazar took one of Vicar’s cheroots out of the silver box and lit it from the nearby lantern he was working by. He straightened up again and puffed, relishing the moment.

Vicar checked his watch, then stared up at him. “Two hours ago I believe you said she hated you.”

“Oh, she hates me, all right.”

“Beg pardon?”

Lazar lounged back on the capstan, watching his men at work and feeling rather smug. “I am in competition with myself,” he said slowly, “for the lady’s heart.”

“I wasn’t aware it was her heart you were after.” Vicar made a final notation, then snapped his logbook shut. He looked up at Lazar, one silvery brow lifted.

“I am not an utter barbarian,” Lazar said indignantly.

“Are you telling me your intentions toward Miss Monteverdi have become honorable?”

“Of course not.”

“Oh,” Vicar said in dry disapproval. “Very well. I will rise to the bait,” he grumbled. “How are you in competition with yourself for the same woman?”

With a slow, lazy grin, Lazar examined the cheroot. “Miss Monteverdi harbors a secret fascination with the dead crown prince,” he said. “She loves him and hates me.”

“I see.” Vicar began laughing quietly and scratched his head. “What are you going to do?”

He exhaled a smoke ring, considering, then watched it vanish. “I’ve decided to let her go on seeing me as the Devil of Antigua for now.”

Vicar watched him with a keen light in his eyes. “Why? Surely you could bed her faster if you simply convinced her you are the last of the Fiori.”

“I know.” Lazar nodded, then gazed up at the sails. “But it was the only way I could put her at ease. And…would you think it very strange if I said I want her to want me for
me
? Not for my namesake, not for some romantic ideal…I don’t know.” His voice trailed off as he frowned toward the horizon.

“I suppose it would gratify any man’s vanity to win the desire of a woman who has every reason to detest him.”

“It has nothing to do with vanity.” Lazar shot him a scowl, then turned away. “It’s just that—well—can you imagine how disappointed she’s going to be when she realizes the truth?” he burst out angrily.

“Disappointed?”

“Do I look like anybody’s prince to you?”

Vicar was patiently silent.

“How keenly she makes me feel the discrepancy between what I am and what I might have been,” he said softly at last, gazing down at the cheroot in his hand. Then he rolled his eyes, disgusted with himself. “Figures only
I
could give myself serious competition for a woman,” he muttered.

“You’re not that bad, Fiore.” Vicar chuckled. “Not as bad as you might have been, anyway, if I hadn’t come along to keep you in line. Perhaps you should tell her about some of the obstacles you’ve faced. Put things in perspective for her.”