The Pirate Prince (22 page)

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many
—

The chime of the clock broke into his reading. Domenic Clemente looked up.

Two in the morning.

He set his well-worn edition of Machiavelli lovingly aside and stood. With a leisurely stretch, he left the villa and strolled out for a bit of night air to clear his head.

One week earlier, Little Genoa had been sacked and burned, Monteverdi had flung himself to his death, Allegra had been kidnapped, and he had come to power. The island had been in constant chaos since—fires, riots, wars of villagers against soldiers. The guests from the anniversary feast, as well as most of the Genovese nobles, had bundled up their families and fled.

With his having come into the governorship with a broken wrist, a black eye, and no fiancée, the crisis that fell into his lap was made all the more complicated by the rebels’ efforts to seize power.

The funny thing was, Domenic mused, he had captured a few rebels, and, with a little torture to persuade them to talk, all had admitted that the man who had carried out the destruction of Little Genoa was not one of their own. No one from any of the existing factions knew him or could explain his whirlwind of destruction, nor his disappearance.

It was beginning to look more and more as though the black-eyed ruffian who had abducted Allegra was in fact not one of the rebels of Ascencion at all. Poor little Allegra had never been a traitor, as he’d first thought.

Domenic was most contrite.

He was sick of his mistress again, and he wanted his fiancée back. Indeed, his reputation depended upon his showing that he could protect Allegra and avenge her by bringing to justice that ruffian who had kidnapped her.

Pistol in his left hand—for he didn’t dare leave the house unarmed anymore—his right forearm splinted and hanging in a sling against his chest, Domenic wandered down to the stable to say hello to his fine Arabian horses. When he stepped back out into the glistening dark, he heard someone following him.

He paused for only a moment, and then he smiled to himself and kept walking.

About bloody time
, he thought. He was ready. He’d been ready for a week now. Too ready. Since the night he had realized he was being stalked, he’d been going half mad with waiting.

Hellfire, how many assassins had that black-eyed savage sent after him? He’d already killed one, but the man had died before Domenic could interrogate him.

Before him rose the hulking shape of the elegant villa. Two lanterns on either side of the grand entrance gleamed their cozy welcome, but he didn’t need their light. Nighttime had always sharpened his senses. He heard, or rather felt, the man stealing up cautiously behind him, still several yards away. He smiled to himself as he played the tantalizing game of waiting for the precise moment to turn the hunter into the hunted.

He whistled a slow minuet and admiringly held up the smooth silver muzzle of his pistol, which gleamed in the bright pallor of the moonlight. All his awareness was trained upon the shadow stalking him. Lucky for him, he was an equally good shot with his left hand.

When he heard the soft, deadly click of a gun being cocked, he whirled, pistol in his left hand, and fired into a man-shaped pool of shadow, dropping the mercenary like a quail a second after the man had squeezed the trigger. The bullet whizzed past his head. Domenic’s eyes widened with thrill as he felt the hot breeze whir by, harmless. He heard the gasp as the body fell. The gun clattered down onto the pebbled drive. He ran toward the enemy, the weight of his pistol swinging as he ran, propelling him eagerly forward.

He came upon his gasping victim, seized him, and dragged him into the light.

“Who is your leader? What is his name?” he demanded.

The man didn’t want to tell him anything. Domenic shook him with his left hand.

“Tell me!”

“Devil,” the big thug rasped, grimacing as he clutched his streaming chest.

Domenic paled.

“What do you mean, you filthy wretch?” he demanded, hauling him upward by the collar.

“The Devil,” he whispered.

“He is not the devil,” Domenic scoffed. “He is a man. He bleeds.”

The man looked almost surprised, then laughed at him, his eyes glazing with the first flutter of death’s wings around him. He wheezed and shuddered.

“Don’t you dare die yet, you son of a bitch. I want answers!”

But in the next moment, the mercenary was quite hopelessly dead.

He shoved the body away in disgust. Good God, now he had blood all over him.

“The devil,” he repeated. “Satan? Beelzebub?”

It was better than the story spreading like wildfire among the rioting peasants, that that black-eyed savage was none other than Prince Lazar di Fiore, come back from the dead.

Believing they’d caught a glimpse of the last surviving Fiore, the people already hated him, their new governor, even more than they had hated the old one. But the Viscount Clemente was not a man to tolerate any insolence.

It was enough of an insult to have to conduct the island’s business from this country house, because that ruffian had burned the governor’s mansion to the ground.

Cleanup was still going on down in Little Genoa and would probably take another two months, about the same length of time his doctor had said it would take his wrist to heal. At least, thank God, there had been no need to amputate his hand.

Domenic kicked the body, bellowed for his servant, and stomped back into the villa in a foul humor. When his servant came flopping out of his sleeping closet, Domenic slapped him and sent him out to get rid of the body.

Attack me again, he thought urgently, staring out at the dark landscape. Next time he’d be sure to take them alive.

He would get to the bottom of this. Prince or no, by God, he would not give up his power to anyone now that he had finally achieved it. But he could not defend himself against this mysterious enemy until he captured the men sent to kill him.

When he learned his foe’s identity, why, he thought, that black-eyed savage was going to be sorry he had ever set foot on Ascencion.

Lazar assigned himself to the night watch, knowing that if he lay beside Allegra tonight, he would not be able to stop himself from making love to her. Since the previous afternoon’s exquisite torment, his frustration was extreme, and the last vestiges of the sulky crown prince in him took the denial with ill grace.

Presently dawn was hatching, a glimmer of gold cracking open along the dark egg of the horizon. He was leaning against the wheel, bored, tired from having been up all night, and restless, with nothing to do but plan possible strategies on when, where, and exactly how to bed Allegra.

It was better than brooding on the knowledge that they were about to cross the zero longitude, dead north of Al Khuum. It was the closest to that place he ever cared to go again. He pushed it out of his mind.

The night had been warm, but it was cooler now. Humidity haloed the moon, waning just past full. Lazar wondered if Allegra was sleeping, if she had missed him beside her. Then he growled at himself. What the hell was wrong with him?

He could not recall ever having reacted so idiotically to a female before, aside from one infatuation with the savvy older woman who had relieved him of his virginity at sixteen. By now he could barely remember her face. In the ensuing years, he’d had women all over the world. In his quest to forget his demons, he’d become something of a connoisseur of female flesh, but what he felt toward Allegra made his past exploits seem uncomfortably shallow, and he could not remember even one about whose opinion of him he could care less, so long as they had spread their legs for him.

He still barely understood what perverse impulse had driven him to hide his true identity from her on the sea balcony yesterday, almost as if he were ashamed of something.

She would have started believing him if he’d stuck to the truth, he thought. Only, to his chagrin, he was not eager to have his little captive sit in judgment on him and tell him how miserably he was failing to live up to the great Fiore namesake.

All he wanted to do was bed her and hopefully get her out of his system, because his preoccupation with her was beginning to alarm him. He assured himself he would grow bored with her soon.

On the other hand, he was beginning to wonder who among his Martinique friends was worthy of her.

At dinner last night, after their interlude, she had spent the whole meal blushing and staring down at her plate. He had watched her from across the white expanse of the tablecloth like a starved man, contemplating the idea of sweeping Emilio’s five-course meal off the table and taking her right then and there. Vicar had sat there, vastly amused, meanwhile, turning his head back and forth like a spectator at a match of lawn tennis, delighting in Lazar’s misery and trying valiantly time and time again to make polite conversation.

If Lazar was unprepared yesterday for her first, shy touch on his disgusting, gnarled back of all places, the unfolding fire of her passion consumed him. She was fierce yet sweet, demanding yet pure, her sexual enthusiasm artless and unmasked, hiding nothing. She had wanted him, welcomed him into her arms, between her legs, and the knowledge filled him with such absurd joy, it was almost satisfaction enough.

Why? he wondered.

She wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever pursued, at least not in the ordinary sense. She was the offspring of his enemy, and he worried that to feel this way toward a Monteverdi was a direct insult to his family. But she was brave and honest, and her idealism made her seem to him so naive, so vulnerable, that he ached to keep her safe.

Something in her clear, contemplative gaze mystified him. There was a quality of wistfulness in her eyes that moved him, a secret, sad wishing for something that repeatedly drove him to make an idiot of himself just to see her smile.

He had never deflowered a virgin before, but he would smooth the path before her as he led her over the threshold from child to woman.
His
. Then she would be his, he thought, as he’d known she must be from the first moment he’d seen her there by the firelight, little lost kitten.

Tears, he thought, still awed. For those moments, she had let him inside of her in a way that was infinitely better than crude penetration.

She had yielded her passion beautifully, but he would continue to move slowly, coaxing her to give up all the treasure of her trust to him, the one thing in the world no pirate thief could steal.

“Hello,” said a soft, hesitant voice behind him, breaking into his thoughts.

He turned around in surprise and saw her lithe silhouette approaching across the quarterdeck.

“Well, here comes my kitten,” he said broadly, casting her a sleepy smile. “You’re up early.”

“I have coffee for you.” She moved toward him carefully because of the ship’s slight swaying. “Here’s a piece of biscotti, if you’re hungry. You’d better take it,” she said hastily, making a little sound of pain that told him she had just spilled the coffee on her fingers. “I couldn’t find the sugar, just the cream.”

He stole a kiss as he took the clay mug from her. “
There’s
sugar enough for me.”

“You are such a flirt,” she mumbled.

He smiled over the steaming coffee, sensing her blush in the gray half light. He decided to push his luck. “Biscotti?” he inquired.

“Here.” She held out the small plate toward him.

He looked at the wheel in his left hand, the coffee in his right hand, then gave her his best smile. “Would you mind terribly,
chérie
?”

“Oh,” she said, flustered again, but she took the thick slice of hard almond bread and carefully dipped it in the coffee, then slowly lifted it for him to take a bite.

He wanted to laugh aloud at her demure hesitation.

She looked at the sails and cast about nervously for a topic of conversation. “My, what a wonderful supper last night! Your Emilio is a fine chef.”

“Glad you approve,” he said as he finished chewing. “He attended the di Medici school in Tuscany. I am fondest of Italian cuisine.” He wished he had a free hand to give her backside a meaningful pinch when she turned to examine the mizzenmast.

“I confess I am astonished at your gourmet tastes,” she said.

“We hedonists take our pleasures very seriously. Bite?”

She turned back to him and repeated the process, dipping the biscotti into the coffee. Her fingertips were dangerously close to his mouth this time. There were a few moments of companionable silence between them as he sipped his coffee, and she gazed up at the limp breeze moving the expanses of sail above them.

“How beautiful your ship is,” she mused.

He said nothing for a moment, watching her. She turned back to him with wonder sparkling in her eyes.

“Come,” he said suddenly. “You shall steer her.”

“Me?”

“You, Miss Monteverdi.”

“But I don’t know how to do that!”

“I’ll teach you.” She fed him the last bite of biscotti, and he nipped playfully at her fingers, then switched his coffee into his left hand, propping his wrist against the wheel’s spindle. With his free hand he drew Allegra in front of him to the wheel.

“It’s simple,” he told her. “Just hold here.”

He arranged her soft hands on two of the spindles at ten and two o’clock. This left his own hand free to wander down her hip, but he snatched it back at the last minute, stepping away from her.

It would be expressly unwise to go groping at the girl now that she was finally starting to trust him. He went over to lean against the curving top of the hatch and watched her as he drank the coffee.

“Am I doing it?” she asked in amazement. “Is this right?”

He chuckled. “You’re an old salt.”

She lifted up on her toes as she peered at the open sea ahead, her face alight with a grin.

“Next you can tar the deck,” he suggested.

“Lazar!” she scoffed, then hastily amended, “I mean Captain.”

He smiled to himself at her accidental use of his name. “Mind that iceberg.”