The Pirate Prince (2 page)

One man alone was to blame for stealing the life that should have been his. He had a score to settle, by God, and that was the only reason he’d come. He had no further business in this place.
Signore
the Governor had seen to that. But now the don would pay.

Aye, legend said it was not on Sicily, not on nearby Corsica, but here on this isle that the ancient tradition of
la vendetta
had been born. Monteverdi would soon come to know it.

The waiting, the scheming, the biding his time for a full fifteen years, would be over. By dawn he would have his enemy in his grasp to mete out to him the measure he deserved. He would slay his kin, take his life, lay his city to waste.

But the most exquisite torment must come first.

The traitor must suffer as he had suffered. The blood justice he had hungered for, for so long, would be complete only when Monteverdi stood by in chains and watched him snuff out the life of the one creature he loved best in all the world—his innocent young daughter.

When it was done, Lazar would sail away, and he would never lay eyes on his kingdom again.

Even if it broke what remained of his heart.

Hands clasped behind her back, a polite, attentive smile fixed by willpower on her face, Allegra Monteverdi stood in the ballroom with a small group of guests, wondering if anyone else could tell that her fiancé was slowly getting drunk.

It was rare for the governor’s right-hand man to succumb to intemperance, or any other vice for that matter. She was merely glad he wasn’t being loud or sloppy about it—but then, the Viscount Domenic Clemente was incapable of doing anything with less than impeccable grace and elegance.

Must have had a spat with the mistress, she thought, eyeing him askance as he stood talking with some ladies, and emptying his wineglass again.

With detached admiration she noted how his pale gold, lightly powdered hair gleamed in its neat queue under the crystal chandeliers.

The wine was having an interesting effect on him.
In vino veritas
—in wine, truth, the old adage said, and she was curious to catch a glimpse of the inner man the polished viscount hid, for their wedding was just a few months away and she could not escape the feeling that she still did not know him at all.

Furtively, she studied the man whose children she would bear.

When Domenic noticed her gaze, he excused himself from the ladies and crossed the room to her with a cool smile.

Rather than turning him sentimental, the wine brought out an edge in him, Allegra thought. There was a sullen, pouting tilt about his mouth. The crisp, aristocratic angles of his face became sharper, and his green eyes glinted like the points of emerald blades.

Arriving at her side, he flicked a speculative glance over her body, and bent to kiss her cheek.

“Hello there, beautiful.” He smiled at her blush, brushing her bare arm with his knuckles, the Mechlin lace of his sleeve tickling her.

“Come, young lady. You owe me a dance,” he murmured, but just then the guests’ conversation grabbed Allegra’s attention.

“Rabid dogs, I say,” one venerable old gentleman declared, speaking loudly over the music. “These rebels! Hang ’em all, if it’s the only way to make ’em mind.”

“Hang them?” she exclaimed, turning to him.

“Whatever is the trouble with the lower orders these days?” his wife complained, a persecuted expression on her doughy face while blue diamonds dripped from her neck and earlobes. “Always complaining about something. So violent, so angry! Don’t they see if they were not so lazy, they’d have all they need?”

“Lazy?” she demanded.

“Here we go again.” Domenic sighed. Beside her, her betrothed bowed his head, covering his eyes with one hand.

“Quite right, my dear,” the old man endeavored to instruct her. “As I always say, they need merely to put their backs into their work and stop blaming everyone else for their troubles.”

“What about the latest round of taxes?” she replied. “They haven’t bread to put in their children’s mouths.”

“What, taxes? Oh, my!” the fat lady exclaimed, peering at her through her monocle in a mixture of puzzlement and alarm.

“There is talk, you know, of a peasant uprising,” another lady told them in a confidential tone.

Allegra drew breath to explain.

“Darling, please, don’t,” Domenic murmured. “I am so weary of smoothing ruffled feathers all night.”

“They will kill us all if we don’t watch ’em.” The old man sagely nodded. “Like rabid dogs.”

“Well, pay them no mind,” Allegra said gaily. “ ’Tis only starvation makes them cross. Would you care for some cakes? A marzipan? Some chocolates, perhaps?” Eyes sparkling with anger, she gestured one of the footmen over, then stood back and watched them feed like high-priced pigs.

Coiffed and powdered, bewigged and brocaded, her father’s guests cooed over the exquisite display of confections, sweets, and pastries on the servant’s silver tray and began consuming them, powdered sugar sprinkling down the front of their satin finery.

Domenic looked down at her with a long-suffering expression. “Darling,” he said, “really.”

“Well, it’s true,” she tartly replied. These elders of the
ancien régime
were past reforming, their heads hopelessly muddled under their white wigs, their hearts shriveled like dried prunes. The spirit of the age was change—bold youth—glorious new ideals! Their kind would be swept away like dust.

“How about that dance?”

She couldn’t help but smile at him. “You’re just trying to distract me so I won’t speak my mind.”

He gave her a slight, narrow smile in answer and leaned down toward her ear. “No, I’m just trying to get my hands on you.”

Oh, dear. Definitely must have quarreled with the mistress
. “I see,” she said diplomatically.

Meanwhile she noticed the doughy duchess whispering to the woman beside her. Both women sent pointed looks her way, eyeing the green-and-black sash she wore with her high-waisted gown of frothy white silk.

If they didn’t comprehend her gown in the new pastoral style inspired by the ideals of democracy, then the fact that she was wearing the green-and-black must utterly, she supposed, confound them.

She lifted her head, unwilling to be intimidated. Perhaps no one else in this room gave a fig whether or not the peasants were starving outside the palace walls, but she did, and if the only voice she was permitted to give her protest was the wearing of the old Ascencion colors, she would do it and be proud.

She had taken the idea from the glamorous and savvy salon hostesses to whom Aunt Isabelle had introduced her in Paris. They wore red-white-and-blue sashes to express their sympathies with the American Colonials during their war with England. Upon arriving here six months earlier, Allegra had adapted the practice to suit Ascencion’s situation, but here, she found, women with political opinions were frowned upon, especially when those opinions ran counter to the established government in power.

Her father’s government.

“Governor!” someone cried pleasantly just as the man of the hour came ambling into their midst.

While her father was greeted by a chorus of cheers, Allegra tensed, knowing he would be displeased with her if he, too, noticed her green-and-black sash.

On second thought, she told herself, why worry? Papa never noticed anything she did.

“
Salute
, Governor! Here’s to another fifteen years,” the guests chimed, raising their wineglasses to him.

Governor Ottavio Monteverdi was a brown-eyed man in his middle fifties, of medium height, still rather fit except for a respectable paunch. Though his manner was always slightly tense, he handled his guests smoothly, seasoned by decades of civil service.

He nodded thanks to one and all in his restrained way, then nodded to her and glanced up at Domenic.

“Congratulations, sir.” Domenic shook the hand of his future father-in-law, the man whom he was being groomed by the Council to one day replace as Governor of Ascencion.

“Thank you, my boy.”

“Are you enjoying your party, Papa?” she asked, touching his shoulder fondly.

Instantly his posture stiffened. Chastened, Allegra lowered her hand in embarrassment.

At Aunt Isabelle’s cozy, elegant house in Paris, where she had been raised for the past nine years since her mother’s death, everyone was demonstrative of family warmth, but here she was still trying to learn that displays of affection only made Papa uncomfortable.

Ah, he distressed her so, this nervous, gray-haired stranger, she thought sadly. Such a tidy, meticulous man, held together by the tenuous knowledge that all the odds and ends on his desk were in their exact, proper order. After the thrill of finally getting to live under the same roof with her one remaining parent, she found her father only wanted to keep his distance from her, she supposed because she reminded him too much of Mama. She felt his suffering, though he never spoke of it. Somehow she had to reach out to him. That was the reason she’d gone to such lengths as his hostess to make his civic anniversary a happy occasion.

He offered her a tense smile, but when his gaze homed in on her green-and-black striped sash, he froze, paling.

Allegra turned red but offered no excuses. Domenic withdrew, leaving her to fend for herself this time.

Her father gripped her arm at once and turned her aside. “Go to your room and remove that immediately,” he whispered harshly. “Damn it, Allegra, I told you to burn that thing! If you were anyone but my daughter, I could have you jailed for insurrection.”

“Jailed, Papa?” she exclaimed, taken aback.

“Have you no sense? Your little show of rebellion is a slap in the face to the whole Council and to me!”

“I meant no insult,” she said, marveling at the intensity of his anger. “I’m only expressing my opinion—I
am
still entitled to my opinion, aren’t I? Or have you made a law against that, too?” She wished she hadn’t said it the moment it slipped past her lips.

His brown eyes narrowed. “Would you like for me to send you back to Paris?”

“No, sir,” she said stiffly, lowering her gaze. “Ascencion is my homeland. I belong here.”

His grip eased. “Then mind when you are under my roof, you will follow my rules, and while you are on Ascencion’s soil, you will abide by Genoa’s laws. Charitable efforts and good works are all very well, but I’m warning you, lately you have been verging on acts of open civil disobedience, and I am losing patience with it. Now, go change that thing, and
burn
it!”

With that, he turned away, his whole demeanor metamorphosing back to that of the pleasant host. Allegra simply stood there, stunned.

Jail me?
she thought, watching her father exchange the usual social blandishments with the cluster of guests.
He’d never jail me—surely!

Domenic glanced down smugly at her as if to say, I told you so.

She turned away from him with a scowl. “I’m going to my room. I’ve got to
change
my sash,” she muttered with furious sarcasm. She was certainly not going to burn the royal colors of the Fiori.

“Allegra.” Domenic captured her wrist softly.

She glanced up and found him watching her, his gaze strange with that too-keen focus, his eyes the overpowering green of the steamy woods after a hard summer rain.

“Your father’s right, you know. Perhaps he doesn’t appreciate your intelligence and your spirit as I do, but I agree with him completely that your youthful fervor is…well, let us say misguided. Get it out of your system now, because I won’t tolerate it either.”

She glared up at him, a tart rejoinder on her tongue, but by force of will she swallowed it. If she was truly going to serve her country, she needed to marry Domenic. She could put up with his mistress, his smooth condescension, his belittling of her work disguised as harmless teasing. She forced an obedient smile instead, biding her time, promising herself she would teach him some respect once they were wed.

“As you wish, my lord.”

Gratification flickered in his green eyes.

“Go upstairs, my pretty bride,” he whispered, tracing her bare arm again, though Papa was still standing right there. She blushed, glancing over to see if her father had noticed, then she looked back up uncertainly at Domenic.

He was getting quite drunk, she thought, noting the empty wineglass in his hand.

“Go,” he urged her softly. There was something predatory in his slight smile as he nodded toward the door.

Furrowing her brow, she turned and walked away, wary, puzzled, and still stewing about his high-handed manner.
Youthful fervor is misguided
, she thought, mentally mimicking his condescending tone.

She stopped to check on the chamber orchestra in the corner. The musicians were presently taking a short break and tuning their instruments. She praised their performance and cheerfully reminded them to have something to eat before the night was done.

In the hallway, she breathed a sigh of relief at the feel of the cool draft wafting along the marble floor. Rather than go up to her room directly, however, she went down the dimly lit servant hall to the kitchens. The ovens had finally cooled, but the familiar smell of garlic roasting in olive oil always hung in the air.

She reminded the weary staff to package the food left over from the party for the pension houses and orphanages she regularly visited, then she ordered a portion brought to the jail, though she knew Papa would be angry if he found out.

This done, she turned to leave, but something made her pause. She crossed the kitchens to the wide supply door, which had been propped open with hearth bricks to admit the cool night air.

Silks billowing softly in the languid breeze, she came to stand in the doorway, where she gazed down longingly at the square. The festival she had designed for the rest of the populace was gradually winding down.

Oh, she yearned to go out there and be with her countrymen, with their rough-and-tumble ways, their loud laughs, their sparkling dark eyes. Perhaps they were crude, she thought, but at least they were genuine.