The Pirate Prince (23 page)

She looked over and gave him a delicate snort.

Aye, he thought. He was getting to her.

Though she only stood at the wheel for about a quarter hour before the helmsman came on duty to take over for Lazar, steering the huge ship was a thrill Allegra knew she would never forget. She marveled at Lazar’s trust in her not to wreck it, and was so pleased that she allowed him to watch the sunrise with her, which was the reason she’d dressed and come above so early.

Presently the captain was insisting that the best view was to be had from the crow’s nest, the tiny platform precariously balanced on the very crest of the mainmast. It had to be a hundred feet in the air above them.

“There is no way you’re getting me up there,” she declared, but when he smiled at her that way, he eroded her fears to nothing, like the salt sea smoothing the furrows of ancient shells. She might still have refused him in her terror of such heights, but then he dared her.

“Dares are for children,” she replied crisply.

“Quake-buttocks,” he said softly.

She narrowed her eyes. “We’ll see who’s a coward!”

The next thing she knew, she was climbing the ladder, and he was right behind her, swearing on his honor that he was not looking up her dress.

He had made her take off her shoes, because the satin would be too slippery on the rungs and ropes. Her bare feet clung to the hemp, and she found herself surrounded by huge white sails that billowed gently and made soft, rhythmic sounds like the flapping of angels’ wings.

She forgot her fear in wonder and excitement. She had never watched a sunrise at sea before, nor shared her most sacred ritual with anyone.

The climb was not easy, but the trick was to keep looking upward, she found. Once she was past the mid-top, looking down at the deck made her nervous, though Lazar’s presence helped her feel safe. She hurried so they wouldn’t miss a moment of the sky’s new-flung glory.

Terror struck when she reached the crow’s nest, a round platform with nothing but a low bar to hold on to. Once more Lazar steadied her until she hugged the great pine mast. She had not expected to feel as though she were riding the pendulum of a gigantic, upside-down clock. She gripped one of the wooden racks nailed to the mast. Lazar explained that these were for rifles, because in battle sharpshooters were stationed there. She barely heard.

“I don’t think I can get down again,” she whispered in wide-eyed dread.

He told her not to worry as he vaulted up beside her, cavalier as ever. He moved to hold her, but she stared, stricken, into his eyes.

“Don’t touch me. I’ll fall!”

He lifted his hands away in token surrender. “As you wish.”

They faced the east. Feeling the loveliness of the breeze up here above the sails and seeing that her life was perhaps not in as much immediate dire peril as she’d thought, she forced herself to relax a bit and settled more snugly against the mast.

Lazar turned to her and caressed her knee. “Are you all right now,
chérie
?”

She nodded. “Sorry. I guess I am a bit of a quake-buttocks after all.”

“Not a chance. You called the Devil of Antigua a skulking thief to his face. Most men would never dare.”

She cast him a glance that was part gratefulness at his attempt to bolster her courage, and part wince at the memory of those terrible moments on the wall.

He gazed at her for a moment, then leaned toward her and offered her a chaste kiss on the cheek. “Good morning, Allegra.”

She put her head down, blushing fiercely. “Good morning, Captain.”

He seemed to fight the smile upon his lips, assuming a businesslike air. “Now then, on with your ritual. Tell me what is so important about this sunrise.” Dangling his legs over the side, he laid his hands one atop the other on the low rail, then rested his chin on them.

“One morning when I was seven, my mother woke me up very early and dressed me and took me to a hilltop near our house. We watched the sun rise, and I remember that she cried.”

He turned and gazed at her in silence, the growing light sculpting one side of his chiseled face in an orange glow.

“I didn’t understand anything at the time, but over the years I’ve pieced it together,” she explained. “I was five when the Fiori were killed, and I think Mama had been grieving for them all that time. Should I not speak of my family to you?” she asked suddenly.

“Your father paid his price,” he replied. “Go on. I like to hear about your life.”

“My father tried to comfort Mama, but”—she paused—“they were never close. I’m sure he had no idea how to cope with her grief. Not just her friends but her whole existence had been destroyed. For years she was like a woman in a trance. Her health was poor. She never went out. She cried often and paid me little enough mind.”

He touched her knee again, caring warmth in his eyes.

“Oh, I don’t mean it in complaint. I had an excellent nurse,” she said hastily, smiling through the faint pang.

He tilted his head, gazing at her.

“I believe that on the day we watched the sun rise, my mother finally overcame her loss. She saw that she still had some semblance of a life, still had a child who needed her. She turned to good works after that and slowly built up her health again. After Mama made up her mind to live again, at least until her next fit of melancholia, she possessed an aura of strength. Calm, steady poise.”

“Like you.”

She was taken aback. He smiled at her.

“She must have been remarkable,” he said.

“When she was well.” Allegra nodded, too choked up suddenly to answer and afraid that if she spoke at all, she would cry out to him,
Why did she leave me? What did I do wrong?

“And we are watching this sunrise, I take it, because
your
whole former existence was destroyed. I destroyed it,” he said as he met her gaze, “and now you must forge a new beginning. Is that right?”

She nodded slowly, looking into his eyes.

After a moment he turned back to the eastern horizon. “I’m glad you’ve decided there is hope.”

“There is always hope,” she said automatically, swiping away a tear, then bitterly added, “unless you take your own life. My mother and father both gave up, Captain, and for that I shall never forgive them.”

He was silent for a long moment. “Sweetheart, have you ever wondered if your mother’s death wasn’t suicide? After all, your father had a lot of enemies.”

She turned to him, round-eyed. “What are you suggesting? That she was—murdered?”

He only stared at her with a steady, searching gaze.

“Lazar, if you know something I don’t, you must tell me.”

He shook his head, reaching out to brush her cheek with his knuckle. “All I know is that the world is a darker place than you suspect, little one. I don’t think your mother would have willingly left you alone in the world, no matter how unhappy she might have been over the death of King Alphonse.”

She turned away. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because she did leave me on purpose, Captain. She abandoned me to join her friends in the grave. She didn’t want me, and my father didn’t want me, either. That’s why I was pawned off on my aunt Isabelle, and, by God’s grace, I was loved. But that doesn’t mean I ever felt I belonged. Now, if you don’t mind, may we change the subject?” she said stiffly. “Your family, for instance.” She decided to see if Vicar’s explanation for his vendetta matched Lazar’s own story. “How did you lose your family?”

Lazar was silent for a long moment. “They were murdered.”

She closed her eyes. “I am so sorry.”

He barely shrugged.

“When did it happen?”

“Eons ago. Yesterday.” He shrugged. “I was a boy. You know the story, Allegra,” he said with faint, self-mocking bitterness. “D’Orofio Pass, on the night of the great storm. Ten minutes past ten o’clock, June twelfth, 1770.”

She stared at him. “I don’t understand. Yesterday you said you were a pirate.”

He did not meet her gaze but stared straight ahead while the breeze sculpted his shirt around him. “You be the judge, Allegra. What do you see when you look at me?”

She stared at him, motionless. “You are quite seriously telling me you are King Alphonse’s son?”

For a few minutes there was silence as he simmered with an inward, brooding stare toward the horizon. Allegra awaited his reply with heart pounding, trying to read in his face any sign of the truth.

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” he said at last. “I’m just a man, and you’re a woman. That’s all that matters between us.”

“If God put you on this earth to rule and protect Ascencion, so help me, it matters a great deal.” She stared at him. “If you are he, you cannot deny your destiny and leave your people to suffer. You cannot defy God’s will.”

“There is no God, Allegra.”

She lifted her eyes to the bleaching sky and let out a long breath, holding her exasperation in check.

“If you are he, why did you have us leave Ascencion?”

Lazar sat there, inscrutable, utterly remote.

She tried another tack to test him. “How did you get away from the highwaymen?”

“They weren’t highwaymen. They were trained assassins, your father hired them, and it was just dumb luck.” He stared intently at the rising sun so long she thought it would blind him. “No,” he said. “No. It was not luck. My father gave his life so I could escape. Would that it were not so,” he added in a low voice.

“Oh, now, don’t say that,” she murmured softly, reaching out to touch his arm, but he pulled away, staring toward the east. She shook her head at him in distress, not knowing what to believe. “How I wish there were something I could do for you.”

“Sleep with me,” he replied, never breaking his stark, forward stare.

“That is not the answer.”

“It is for me.”

“Well, look at you!” she burst out. “Whoever you are, you are a lost soul! Why don’t you seek a proper answer to what ails you? Look at this life of yours! You are strong and smart and brave—why do you settle for so little? You could have so much more—”

His low, cold laugh cut off her words. “Clever, high-minded Miss Monteverdi. There is that scorn again. I’m coming to know it well.”

“Scorn? What are you talking about?”

“Your scorn for me, my haughty little captive. Your contempt. That’s why you wouldn’t let me make love to you.”

Her jaw dropped. “Impossible man! Is that your conclusion? What am I to say to you? It is not scorn I feel for you; it’s terror!”

He finally looked at her.

“Terror?” he demanded, then scowled. “No.”

“Yes, you terrify me! Pardon me if I am not eager to give myself to a man whose intentions toward me range from murdering me to seducing me, perhaps getting me with child, then casting me off in a strange place with nothing and no one to turn to! I’m sure it would be very nice for the moment, but one of us must be sensible here! You terrify me,” she went on recklessly, “because you are so selfish and wild and so hard to resist. I am not a toy for your amusement! My life is not a game! I have feelings. I have rights. I have a heart!”

He shrugged. “You made an oath.”

“Yes, but what choice did you give me? What would anyone have done in my place?” she demanded. “What would you have done?”

“Why, I’d have run away,
chérie
,” he said, a terrible, black note in his voice. “I’d have let them perish and saved my own skin.”

“No, you would not.”

He turned on her. “Ah, but I did. That’s precisely what I did, and there’s your prince for you.”

Her eyes widened.

He looked away again at the sea. “You’re not terrified of me. You’re terrified of letting yourself care for me, and I can’t say I blame you. People who love me usually end up dead. But you see, I’m not going to give you any choice. You belong to me now whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t like it, not one bit!”

“Try to escape,” he suggested coolly. “Go ahead. See what happens. Give me one excuse to take what I want from you, even if it is against your will. I want you that much. Too damned much.” He turned without warning and kissed her, flattening her back against the pine mast.

Instantly, she was petrified—she knew she was going to fall to her death, break her head on the deck a hundred feet below, all for his kiss, which made her senses reel. Lazar did not give a damn, obviously. His mouth consumed hers with relentless, fiery passion.

“And are you terrified now, Miss Monteverdi?” he asked roughly, but he did not permit her to answer. His hard, angry kisses shoved her closer and closer toward an inward edge. His need invaded her, ever deeper.

She would not fall to him. She gripped the rails, dizzier and dizzier. Her stomach plummeted with desire, her fingertips tingled for the velvet of his golden skin, but she refused to touch him.

The paradox of it!
she thought wildly. The perfect knight of her fancy, transformed to a demon lover she could not escape.

Extreme, intense, dangerous man
. He was dangerous in more ways than she could fathom, and her body was trembling for him, for his hands, for his kiss—she craved his very lawlessness.

Lazar pulled back, panting. “Now tell me that’s not the answer.”

She couldn’t say a word. Her mind was frayed. He steadied her against the mast as he released her. For a moment she pressed her head back against the rough wood, closing her eyes in an effort to regain her senses.

Watching her, he let out a soft, bitter laugh. “Aren’t you glad I spared your life?”

She gazed at him, trembling faintly, then she looked off toward the southern horizon as she forced out a long, furious exhalation.

They sat, not touching, as the sun rose.