The Pirate Prince (24 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

What a damned debacle.

He wished he had never laid eyes on her. He supposed he might have seen this coming had he been using his head, instead of other regions of his anatomy, in his dealings with Allegra Monteverdi. Now his involvement with her was all tangled up with his groin and his solar plexus, and he did not know what to think.

He hated self-doubt above all things. It was so much better not to give a damn, just to be dead inside. How dare she try to tell him his duty?

It was early evening. Nothing glorious had happened after the sunrise. There were no new beginnings, nor did he want one. God’s truth, he should have forced himself on her the first day and been done with the wench, he thought in disgust.

Lazar wandered over to his sea trunk and dug around inside for a shirt among the haphazard order of his clothes, then sought comfort from a bottle of fine French sherry, pouring himself a generous draft. He meandered out to the balcony to stand in the shade of the stern’s gilded overhang, where he watched the frothy V of his ship’s wake perpetually unfolding.

It was cruel of her to torment him so, he decided in a full royal sulk. She was picking away at old scabs so they bled afresh.

She had touched off a war inside him, and today the first shots had been fired, the moment she made him admit aloud for the first time in his life that Father had fought off the killers long enough for him to escape—had sacrificed himself—under the presumption that Lazar, his heir, would survive and hold the line.

Not survive and—what had she said?—
go sailing about in a pirate ship, terrifying people
.

You cannot deny your destiny
, she’d said.

Watch me, he thought, and took a drink.

This morning up there on the crow’s nest, she had made him admit to himself, if not to her, that he was reneging on his father’s dying wish. On the destiny to which he had been born, and the duties and responsibilities for which he had been groomed until the age of thirteen, when the world ended.

He was exactly the things she said he was.

He was a coward. He was a vain, selfish desperado, living a pointless life of no use to anyone. He hated her for having seen the truth and could not fathom how she’d done it. She was just a baby, after all. Formidable kitten. Clear-eyed angel. He resented her for disturbing the familiar peace of his misery. She had no right. She was a Monteverdi, for God’s sake. She annoyed the hell out of him, and he wanted her so badly he was almost blind with it. He had to have her.

Soon.

Lord, the physicians said it was unhealthy to live with this inward vortex of pent-up lust curling in his belly like a serpent of flame.

Damn, he needed sex. No. He needed her, but after this morning’s argument, satisfaction looked all the further away. If Miss Monteverdi scorned him for piracy, she would never forgive him for what he was in truth, a prince who had turned his back on his people. He could never explain to her why he could not return to Ascencion. It was a secret he would take to his grave. Pointless even to think about it.

It was all bloody pointless, and it hurt like hell.

He glowered at the bright sea in mute rage and nearly finished the bottle of sherry, drowning his pain in the numbness and indifference it bestowed. Half an hour later, he was drunk and glad of it.

An excellent drink
, he thought slowly as he slouched back into the cabin and sat down in the armchair with a sense of exhaustion. It was so much wiser to take nothing seriously.

He leaned his head back against the chair, his mind full of the bad place.

His brain grew clouded and strange whenever he thought of Al Khuum. Every memory he had of the place came back to him through an opium haze, for Malik had found the perfect way to make his most troublesome slave stay put.

Get the boy addicted to opium. Brilliant.

Strange thing was, sometimes he still craved it. He curled his lip in self-disgust with a bitter, forward stare, then finished the last swig from the bottle and held his head in one hand.

He noticed how the lengthening afternoon shadows were full of curious colors, maroons and olives, deep purples, earth browns. The bedraggled ship’s cat perched on his desk, peering at him curiously with phosphorescent green eyes.

“What do you bloody want?” he asked it.

The cat ran, sensing his black mood.

He shut his eyes, his skewed mind full of Al Khuum, zero longitude. Zero hope.

How pretty it was, high white arches, brightly colored tiles, lovely hell, the splash of the alabaster fountain—a relief just to hear it in the endless desert afternoons. The muezzin’s eerie warbling calling the faithful to prayer, and the silken, gliding music of the oud in the cool pitch of night, Malik’s pistol at his temple, forcing him to his knees.

A shudder racked him, and he squeezed his eyes shut more tightly against the memory.

What Allegra would think if she knew what really had become of her beloved young prince, he thought, a crazed, slight smile flickering over his dry lips. He wished he still had his signet ring, for he’d have loved to shove it down her throat.

He’d had actual proof once, proof of his high birth. Long, long ago.

His signet ring with the onyx lion rampant, whose eye was a ruby taken from the hilt of Excelsior, in ancient Fiori tradition. The setting had been left empty on the sword so that when it was his turn to ascend to the throne, it would be replaced, the design made whole again, and in the years to come he would have taken a jewel from the hilt of the broadsword and set it in a ring for his heir.

But the circle had been broken.

His ring, the last vestige of his real self, had been stolen from him, along with his faith, his pride, his self-respect. Sayf-del-Malik, who was called the Sword of Honor, now owned it, a trophy of the boy prince his corsairs had fished out of the sea, half-dead, and brought to Al Khuum.

No matter what it cost him, he was never going back there.

Allegra let out a sigh and wearily rubbed the back of her neck, noticing that the lantern was burning low. In her quest for the truth, she had spent the day, as Lazar had suggested, in the cramped, dim storeroom, poring through boxes of the dusty files he had stolen from her father’s offices. Over the past few hours, she’d learned more about the stranger who had been her father than if they had both lived out the rest of their natural lives on Ascencion, seeing each other every day.

She didn’t much like what she found. It was salt in the wound so soon after his death to learn that Papa had been taking bribes, diverting funds, and sending dozens of alleged young rebels to jail or execution on scant evidence.

These discoveries certainly strengthened Lazar’s claim that Papa had indeed betrayed King Alphonse to gain wealth and position for himself and had hired assassins to carry out the bloody task, men he had later hanged for the very crime he’d paid them to commit. In this light, Papa’s suicide practically seemed an admission of guilt.

But how could she wrap her mind around the thought? And how could she accept that her fierce pirate captor was none other than the true lost prince of the great Fiori?

Lost indeed, she thought with a sigh. She shoved the heavy wooden crate back onto the lowest shelf and stretched her arms and neck, making her way topside for some fresh air.

It was a breezy evening, and the lingering light of sunset tinged the ivory sails pink. She glanced at the quarterdeck, then at the helm, but the captain was nowhere to be found. She had not seen him since they had quarreled that morning. Now she supposed he was probably somewhere below, preparing to take the night watch again.

Vicar was reading aloud from the Bible to half a dozen of the crewmen under the canvas shade on deck. She joined them and listened, smiling shyly at the men, who all made room for her, tripping over themselves to be polite.

While Vicar read about love from the Gospel of John, Allegra’s mind drifted. She had a fair idea why the captain was no longer spending the nights in bed with her. While she appreciated his chivalry, she found that the vastness of the sea weighed heavily on her when he left her alone. Oddly enough, she missed the anchor of his warm body bowing the mattress, the comfort of his deep, steady breathing, for at night the solitude of the sea was enormous, and the ship’s creaking sounded like the moaning of trapped ghosts.

At length, she bade Vicar and the others good night and made her way below, still troubled and deep in thought. Hungry, she stopped by the galley. Since Emilio wasn’t cooking this evening, she rooted around for something light to eat and assembled a small bowl of fruit. She still didn’t see Lazar, and she glanced into the sailors’ gallery to see if he was in there, checking the cannons, but he wasn’t. Mr. Harcourt had told her that they might run into enemies tonight as they passed the Strait of Gibraltar.

She entered the stateroom, devouring a juicy peach. When she knocked on the cabin door, there was no answer. She went in and promptly found the captain fast asleep, huddled in a great lump on the far edge of the bed.

She smiled in spite of herself and silently closed the door behind her. Her gaze fell upon the empty liquor bottle. Frowning in disapproval, she set her peach and her bowl of fruit on the desk and crossed to open the balcony door. She also pulled open a few window panels in the hope that a breeze might revive him. She glanced at him as she passed the berth where just the day before he had introduced her to what Mother Beatrice would have called the temptations of the flesh.

With one big arm, he hugged his pillow. His face was toward her, eyes closed, as he slept peacefully.

The sight of him wrung her heart somehow even as it enticed her senses. So much pure male beauty. So much weariness and hurting. How innocent he looked. This man would never intentionally hurt anyone, she thought. He was a good man, though hard, and if he struck out at the world, it was only because he was in pain.

Dear Jonah
, she thought with a sad, fond smile,
wake up. Somewhere your destiny awaits you
.

He slept on.

She returned to her fruit bowl and ventured to the threshold of the balcony. Tossing the peach pit out into the waves, she began on the ripe red cherries. She was gazing out at the silvery streak of some flying fish over the water when Lazar made a strange sound from the bed behind her. Curious, Allegra turned around and gazed at him.

He was still sleeping, but fleeting expressions of anger or pain echoed from the realms of dream, playing over his tanned face, a dark flicker over his brow, a silent protest on his lips. She watched in fascination for a moment, wondering if she should wake him.

He murmured, “No, no,” then fell silent again, sleeping soundly.

Munching idly, she watched him sleep for perhaps a quarter hour.

If she were another woman, she thought, she’d have cast care to the wind and crept over to his bed. Caressed him. Awakened him. Lain with him—and not just for the sake of getting it over with.

Love me
.

She was not blind to the fact that nothing pleased him more than when she initiated any physical contact between them, as if he were starved for it, which she knew full well he was not. Not he. But it was true—he loved to be touched, held, loved, as if this was his reassurance—and a part of herself she had never known existed was coming to light with an aching need to give this man whatever he required.

Oh, maybe he was right, she thought, licking off the cherry juice staining her fingertips. Maybe the simple comfort of touch
was
the answer to what ailed them both, for words caused as many problems as they solved.

Go to him
.

She swallowed hard, set her bowl aside, and told herself he needed the rest before his shift.

Judging it a violation of his privacy to keep gawking at him this way, she began looking around the cabin for the copy of Mr. Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense
that Vicar had lent her. She decided to read topside by the waning light of evening until the captain had readied himself and left the cabin.

She was hunting for the book on the cluttered desk when Lazar bolted upright in the bed and screamed.

He woke up midway through the scream and cut it off, gasping, wild-eyed with panic.

Allegra stared at him in astonishment. He stared back at her with terror in his eyes, looking suddenly very young and very lost, as if he wasn’t sure where he was.

He jerked, startled, when a man pounded at the door, probably thinking she’d murdered him. “Everything all right in there, Cap?”

Lazar flinched, turning his head toward the door. “Aye…aye,” he gasped out, raking a hand through his short hair as his chest heaved.

Heart pounding, Allegra came around the desk, staring at him. “Are you all right?”

“Oh. Ohhh, Christ,” he groaned. He sank back on his pillow and threw a forearm over his eyes. He was rather mortified, she guessed.

“Are you all right?” she repeated.

He didn’t answer.