The Pirate Prince (43 page)

All of a sudden, he moved like lightning.

He began wrecking the cabin, destroying everything the battle had left unbroken. He threw an unlit lantern through the remaining stern windows so the last glass panels shattered. He hurled the desk chair. It exploded against the wall. He tore the door off his locker with a roar and punched the looking glass, instantly bloodying his knuckles.

Allegra watched him in amazement, lifting her hands protectively around her head, startled out of her tears. His whirlwind was all around her.

“Why? Why him, too? It’s not fair!” he thundered. “
I lost everything!
It’s not fair! What did I ever do?” He toppled the washstand; he seized the wooden chair again and slammed it over the desk with a roar. “I want a reason, God damn it! What did I ever do?
Nothing!
”

Shards of wood flew up, a splinter scratched his cheek, and the papers they’d worked on so carefully over the past few days went scattering.

He did not pause until his fury was spent, and all that was left of the chair was a wooden stump in his hand, like a club.

There was a long silence filled with Lazar’s ragged panting and the astonished pounding of her heart.

“Get out of here, Allegra. Get far, far away from me,” he said in a low, dangerous growl.

“W-why?” she asked, frightened by his display of fury and the bitterness in his face as he stared at the floor.

Running his fingers through his hair, head bowed, he started to laugh with infinite sadness.

“Because I don’t love you,” he said with a smile at the floor, shaking his head wearily, “and I don’t want you.”

She stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“Dead serious.” He looked over at her with a stare like a lightning bolt. “Get. Out.”

When she stood there, unmoving, gazing at him in bewilderment, he lifted the wooden club and stalked toward her. “Get out of here. Get out!” he roared.

She screamed as he chased her all the way out into the passageway as if he would beat her with it.

“Stay away from me, you hear?” he bellowed down the dark, smoky passageway. “I don’t want your blood on my hands! I don’t want you, not for my wife, not even for my whore! Stay out of my life!”

Sobbing, she fled in terror to the deck, leaving him below.

Later that day, he performed a brief and torturous ceremony, commending Vicar’s wrapped, weighted body with the others to the placid green eternity of the sea. Men sobbed. Somehow he refrained. He was their captain. The man in charge, Father and Captain Wolfe both would have agreed, could afford no weakness.

He assigned Allegra the second cabin for her quarters permanently. He avoided her frightened glances and the hurt look in her eyes. She was alive. He had that much to be thankful for. Now all he had to do was find a way to let her go.

Soon, he prayed, she would get over him. He had no wish to get over her, nor any hope of doing so. His only resolve was to stay as far away from her as possible before the curse on him snuffed out her precious life as he had once planned to do himself, incomprehensible as that thought was. Even if he had to make her hate him, he would protect her from the curse that was himself.

The boy came silently to the doorway of the wrecked cabin after supper, tears on his smooth face as he apologized, twisting the knife in Lazar’s heart, for having failed to save Vicar. It appeared the child really did have the sixth sense. Darius explained that he had gotten one of his bad feelings about the cargo hold, and though Allegra was willing to come with him, Vicar had refused. Lazar merely sat there in the half light of evening, listening to him, knowing he must be heartless to this lad, too.

“
Capitán
, I tried to save him,” Darius whispered. “I-I know I failed, but please don’t send me away. I have nowhere to go and no one to go to.”

“Sorry,” he replied without expression. “I have no use for you.”

He could feel the boy staring at him for a moment, then Darius vanished into the shadows.

Lazar sat in the growing dark, staring at nothing.

Now that he had finally shouldered his punishment of solitude, soon, he thought, he would assume the ultimate burden of the crown, his to bear alone.

Well, he could lose himself in work. He was not like Allegra, he reflected as he took a drink of brandy.

Self-sacrifice only made a hedonist like him bitter.

She couldn’t believe he had called her a whore. He hadn’t meant it. Surely. He had been out of his mind with grief.

But that’s all he sees you as
, whispered the insidious voice of her conscience.
It’s what you’ve chosen to become, and now you must live with the consequences
.

How could he say he did not love her? Of course he loved her. He had merely been upset.

That night, huddled in her bunk in the second cabin, where Vicar had lived, Allegra was still shaken by the way Lazar had turned on her. She knew he was devastated by the loss of his friend, but his behavior was beyond the pale. He should have turned to her for comfort, not struck out at her. It was so unlike him.

Anxiously she awaited the sound of his light knock on the door, certain he would soon come begging forgiveness, seeking the comfort she knew he needed so much. Though he deserved a good lecture for his behavior, she intended to forgive him the moment he apologized. She felt so lonely, shaken, and hurt by his unwarranted attack that she only wanted to feel his arms around her.

The hours passed, and still she waited. The next thing she knew, she was waking up, and it was morning.

Maybe he knocked and I slept through it, she thought as she quickly dressed.

Sure he did, whore
. She flinched at the cruelty of her own bullying conscience and went in search of him.

No doubt by now he had calmed down a bit. He would have come to apologize already, but maybe this morning ship duties kept him away, she thought.

She would not even require a verbal apology of him, she decided. If she could just look at him and see his rueful, crooked smile of apology from across the decks, she could relax in the knowledge that everything would be all right, but she had the iciest feeling in her bones that things were never going to be all right again.

When she went up on deck, she understood at once why he hadn’t come to her.

Of course, she thought in relief.

The pirate island, Wolfe’s Den, appeared on the horizon just two hazy leagues away, a large, green-shrouded rock baking under the summer sun. They were about to dock, and Lazar was overseeing that task.

The crew was in surprisingly high spirits. Allegra saw Lazar at the rails, peering through his telescope while consulting, and dispensing orders to the men who stood around him. She made no move to approach him.

No, she thought, let him come to me. But she kept him in sight from the corner of her eye.

Mr. Donaldson told her that though the island was partially surrounded by a coral reef, the crew was so familiar with its passage, they could have maneuvered
The Whale
into her berth blindfolded. They cheered from spars and rigging, capstan and lines, as
The Whale
nudged into her home berth at last.

The gangplank crashed down, and the men swarmed onto the dock. Immediately they set about mooring, tying the vessel with huge ropes to the dock’s weathered posts. Gulls dodged and swirled overhead. Pelicans got in everyone’s way, begging for fish, and were shooed off.

Since Lazar had still obviously not noticed she was there, she decided to make her presence known. She even had an excuse. She didn’t know what he wanted her to do—if there were quarters for her somewhere on the island or if she should leave her things on the ship.

Steeling herself, she joined him on the quarterdeck, standing at a safe distance. “Lazar?”

“May I help you?” He did not look at her. He continued standing at the rails, scanning the crowd of men.

She stared at him without comprehension. Did he blame her for Vicar’s death somehow?

“I want to know what I am to do,” she said, striving to remain calm.

“Do? I’m sure it’s of no consequence to me,” he said.

The blood drained from her face. “What’s wrong? Why are you treating me this way?”

He finally glanced at her, his face hard as sculpted bronze. “Didn’t I mention our affair is over?” He looked away quickly, squinting toward the beach. “Never fear, I shall provide for you. You’ll have a house, servants, a carriage. I think it would be best for everyone if you returned to Paris, don’t you?”

“Lazar, what are you talking about?”

He clenched his jaw for a moment. “We can’t be together anymore, Allegra, not at all. It’s over.”

She drew back as if he’d struck her. “Why?”

He seemed to consider. “Because it’s not what I want anymore.”

She reached out and gripped the rails to steady her sudden sense of faintness. “Have I done something to displease you?”

“No, I’m afraid I am merely bored with you. Besides, my wife might not like it. Surely you hadn’t forgotten I am to marry Nicolette?” He said the other woman’s name like a caress.

“I have not forgotten,” she forced out.

“Well, then, what do you want from me? I said I’d cover all your expenses.” He glanced at her again. “You don’t like the Paris option. Well, let’s see, what else can we do with you? You might allow Captain Landau to become your protector. He has a reputation for satisfying his women—you know the French. That should keep you happy.”

“How dare you talk to me this way!”

“How dare I? I’m about to become the king. I can do whatever the hell I want, and I can certainly talk to you any way I feel you deserve. I don’t require you anymore.”

Her head reeled with disbelief. She could only stare up at him, horrified, flabbergasted.

“Lazar.”

“Yes, Miss Monteverdi?” he asked in an annoyed, long-suffering tone.

“What are you doing to me?”

“Getting rid of you, I suppose.”

She suddenly felt sick to her stomach. “Why?”

He gave an insolent, one-shouldered shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess now that I’ve had you in every possible position, the thrill is gone. Our voyage together is over, is it not?”

She couldn’t speak. Shaking, she looked down at the deck as if the script were there, telling her what she might possibly say.

“Oh, my Lord,” she said barely audibly, turning away. “This isn’t happening.” Closing her eyes, she covered her face in her hands for a brief moment, struggling to collect her composure, whispering to herself in disbelief, “What shall I do?”

“I said I would provide for you.”

“I don’t want
anything
from you,” she wrenched out. “Except to know what I have done that was so unforgivable that you would betray me—”

“Nothing.” He studied the open sky. “Please, don’t make this any more awkward than it already is.”

“
Awkward?
” she nearly screamed.

“Try to understand this is the way it has to be.”

“Is it because of Al Khuum? I would never tell
anyone
your secrets—”

“I know that.”

“—because I love you.”

Woodenly he nodded as he gazed at the mast. “Aye, I know that, too.”

The most horrible thought of all dawned then, the reality of it finally piercing her disbelief.

“Lazar, don’t—don’t you love me?” she forced out.

He appeared unable to speak, a trapped, desperate look in his sea-black eyes. She stared at his golden skin, his muscled chest and belly she had caressed so many times.

“It’s over. I don’t want you. Stay out of my life.”

Without another word, he crossed the quarterdeck and walked away without looking back.

That night Lazar went walking in the dark tropical forest beyond the clearing in which the pirate village was situated. The teeming, primordial jungle hemmed him in with its palm trees of all shapes and sizes, trees hung with brown-husked coconuts, green bananas, half-ripe mangoes. There were scrubby pines and oak trees overgrown with twisting vines. Birds with long plumage flitted from branch to branch through the darkening canopy, their piercing, raspy calls filling the moist, hot air. The smell of the soil was pungent and heavy in his nostrils.

He felt utterly bereft. His mind was weighted; his muscles ached with a kind of dull constant misery. His heart sat like a lump of charcoal in his breast.

He went up to the lookout point atop some overhanging rocks and leaned against the cannon that was secured there. For a long time he stayed there, gazing out over the dark hillside, the fading sky and calm sea. Below, he could see the village, with its stone kitchen building and smattering of thatched-roof huts. Small bonfires winked to life in the common area as the men huddled together to mull over the uncertain future.

The normal course of events upon returning from a successful mission or raid was for the men to have a huge feast, carouse like lunatics, and drink themselves into a general stupor, but the battle had resulted in heavy losses.

Tonight it was quiet down in the village, the atmosphere tense. Fitzhugh’s ship wasn’t back yet, Morris said he feared Russo had gone down in the storm, and there was talk that the British were on the verge of discovering the location of Wolfe’s Den.

And, Lazar supposed, the men didn’t know what would become of them with the way he’d been treating them all since Vicar’s death. It was hard to make himself give a damn for his decimated crew and ravaged ship when he had lost the man who had been like a father to him and had had to give up the only woman he would ever love.

He made his way back down the mountain and came to the edge of the village. He meant to skirt around it to avoid the men, with their fearful eyes and their plague of questions, but he heard a conversation that made him pause as he passed in the shadows.

“I want to go home,” said the ever-reliable Mr. Donaldson.

The purser sat with Mutt, Andrew McCullough, and Mickey the Bean at the fire. All four swigged from their flasks in dejection.

“Where would you go?” Mickey asked him. “Where could any of us go where we wouldn’t be hanged? Our families won’t have us. We’re doomed, my friends,” the redheaded youth said bitterly. “Cap has forgotten us.”