Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (62 page)

“We have only recently learned of it ourselves,” I said. “It is my father’s doing.”

He frowned at that. “We thought it might ’ave been the French. None on the Queen say they know the how or why o’ it, but I don’t trust the lot o’ ’em. Why would yur father do such a thing?”

“Because… He disapproves of my lack of discretion in taking a matelot, and he dislikes my sister’s choice of a groom.”

“Bloody Hell,” Liam said with a sad shake of his head. “Ya would think ya wronged ’im somehow.”

“He feels we have,” I sighed.

“That be a sad thing.” Then he sighed and shrugged. “Better this than the French, though. Men would be more likely to take money from one of their own to do a deed than from some damn… lord.” He gave me an apologetic grimace.

I snorted. “I am no longer a lord. I am denouncing my inheritance in order to save my matelot. If my father’s concern is that I am dragging the title through the mud, then he should be less concerned if I have no title. Of course, my father can be a hateful and conniving man, prone to vengeance, and he might not care. And… we have learned the offer of the prize money came from several men about town. They have supposedly not told anyone the source of it.”

He sighed heavily. “What will ya do?”

“We plan to sail. We cannot cower like rabbits in a hole, and we feel the best tactic will be to lure our opponents out. And, we hope to be safer amongst the Brethren than here ashore, amongst bored planters’

sons and hired brigands.”

“Aye, aye,” he said with a somber nod. Then he sighed. “Ya be needin’ me ta sail, then.”

My gaze, which had been wandering as we spoke, passed over Agnes, and I frowned. All here would go save the women.

“Perhaps not,” I said quickly. “We are leaving much of value behind, and it would be a relief to have someone we can trust to watch over them.”

“Ah,” Liam said with surprise. “Yur sister, huh?”

“Aye, and my wife and child.”

He frowned.

I smiled. “Much has occurred in your absence.” And so I set about telling my own tales of our last weeks in Port Royal, leaving very little out save the circumstances of Gaston’s estrangement from his father.

When I finished, he was shaking his head and smiling with bemusement. “Bloody Hell, it be no wonder ya want to get back to sea. It be safer there. But what with Theodore, an’ your wife an’ babe, and yur sister an’ her babe, an’ all bein’ in danger even a little, I’m not sure I be man enough to do it; at least not without more hands an’ eyes than the Good Lord saw fit ta give me.”

“Do you know of any others we might trust who do not wish to sail, or at least do not express great exuberance for it?”

He frowned and nodded thoughtfully. “Aye, Julio an’ Davey. Playin’ a slave again wore hard on Julio, an’ ’e’s been speakin’ o’ settlin’ down an’

plantin’, and Davey loves him fierce and ’e’s a bit tired o’ the sea ’imself.

An’ the damn diseases they got in Porto Bello ’ave left ’em wary. An’ then there’s Nickel an’ Bones. The rovin’ life o’ a buccaneer don’t suit Nickel, an’ he would learn another trade – though ’e don’t want ta go back ta Bermuda and join the clergy, neither. An’ Bones, well ’e would be right happy holdin’ up a wall wherever ya prop ’im.”

“The only one of that number I do not trust is Davey,” I sighed.

Liam shrugged. “Ya only see the worst o’ ’im ’cause that’s all ’e shows ya. Ya scare ’im, an’ he be filled with envy at all ’e thinks ya ’ave.”

I sighed. “Men in envy of my life often set out to ruin it.”

He thought on that and grinned. “Davey na’ be an ambitious man.

An’ Julio can keep ’im in line. I’ll vouch fer ’im.”

“Then I leave it to you to make the offer. We can pay you all for your troubles.”

He made a disparaging noise and awarded me a chiding look before shrugging. “I don’t care. The others might, but damn ’em if they ask for more than they need.” He considered me speculatively. “What should I be tellin’ ’em?”

“Whatever you feel you must. I will trust your judgment.”

He took a deep breath and smiled grimly. I remembered well that he had often been concerned he was perceived as too much of a gossip to be trusted.

“Thank ya,” he said.

I considered those about the atrium again. I thought it likely what I had just set in motion would leave us with far fewer pawns than perhaps Pete had counted on in the field, but it gave me great confidence we would have something to return home to.

Gaston had not returned, and I looked about in time to spy Henrietta hurrying up the stairs with a steaming kettle.

“I believe Sarah has begun to birth,” I said.

“Truly?” Liam asked as if it were a horrific thing.

“Aye, someone should fetch Striker and Pete,” I said.

“I will,” Liam said. He stood and went to speak quietly with first Julio and then Nickel. Julio assured Davey he need not go, and the three of them headed to the door .

“Where ya off to?” Alonso called after them, in English that sounded suspiciously like Liam’s.

“Ta go fetch our damn captains and more rum,” Liam said with forced cheer. “Striker’s wife be birthin’.”

This brought a round of cheers and a startled look to Agnes. She closed her sketch book and scurried up the stairs.

I stepped from the shadows and called after her, “Come and fetch me if I am needed.”

She nodded as she hurried across the balcony, and then she was gone into Sarah’s room.

There was movement beside me, and Alonso threw a heavy arm across my shoulders. I did not attempt to shrug him off.

“And how are you?” I asked without turning to regard him.

“Fine, truly fine,” he breathed, turning the air redolent with rum.

“And how have you been?”

“Truly fine,” I said, and pulled away to return to the seat beneath the balcony I had occupied while speaking with Liam.

He followed, and took the other chair, stretching his long booted legs before him and leaning his wide shoulders against the wall. His months roving on a Brethren vessel had stripped away the paunch his indolent life as a Spanish colonist had begun to give him. And he was shorn now, his great curling mane of mahogany hair reduced to a thick wavy carpet of velvet upon his skull. It suited him. He looked as handsome as he had when first I laid eyes upon him.

“You do not look fine,” he noted in Castilian. “You forget how well I know you.”

“You forget how little you knew of me when we professed to know one another well,” I said with a grin.

He appeared pained. “Si, of certain things, perhaps; but I do know you, Uly.”

I sighed. “Then you should know me well enough to not call me by a name I have long discarded. I am no longer a hapless wayfarer in search of my home – heroic or not – so Ulysses no longer suits me.”

“You will always be Uly to me,” he said. “In my dreams.”

I shook my head in bemusement. “It truly pains me that you feel I am so fickle that you might actually succeed with your suit: you a man not prone to foolish fancies.”

“Ah,” he said with a knowing smile. “But you are ever a man of such things. You are prone to romance; and it is true, it is a thing sorely lacking in my life. Why should I not seek to address its absence?”

I sighed. “You should seek to address its absence elsewhere.”

“But is not my troth romantic?” he asked with a grin.

“In the manner of fools everywhere, perhaps.”

“And how is your matelot?” he asked.

“Well enough.”

“I have learned more of the customs here in these West Indies,”

he sighed. “I understand that men do not dally and tryst as we did in Florence: they hold only to one man. At first I thought it boring, but now, I see where it might possess other possibilities.”

I smiled and shook my head, not sure if I wished to see where he was going with this line of thought and not truly caring. “It allows for a great many possibilities; jealousy such as you cannot comprehend being one of them.”

He shrugged. “I believe we have already witnessed that between you and your man, have we not?”

I was minded of the eyes upon us on our voyage home from Porto Bello. Rumors of my duel with Gaston, and the cause of it, had spread among the fleet in variations too numerous to count; so all thought they knew our business, when of course none had any understanding at all.

And then I was minded of dueling with Christine this day. I was not fit to seriously spar with Alonso any more than I had been to engage her, even though the wine had since drained from my head.

“You have glimpsed but a shadow on the wall; silhouettes seen through the gauze of a curtain: no more than that,” I sighed. “One of the possibilities of matelotage is the privacy of intimacy. I will not discuss it with you. You, of course, will think what you will. I have larger concerns.”

He frowned. “Such as?”

I decided that though I did not wish to spar, aiming a pistol at his head and telling him to back away was very much within my abilities.

“My father has threatened our very lives,” I said, and turned to regard him.

His brow tightened; and though he attempted to appear confused, he knew of what I spoke. I did know him as well as he thought he knew me.“He has offered a prize for the death of my brother-in-law and my matelot,” I continued. “I have not yet been able to tell him I am willing to renounce my title in order to end the matter, and he does not yet know that Gaston is no longer estranged from his father, and now holds a title of his own. I fear either that information will reach him after an attempt is made upon us, or it will fall on deaf ears when it does. And it is no matter if it reaches him or not, truly, as once such a thing is offered, it is very hard to rescind it.”

“So what will you do?” Alonso asked, his face serious and his gaze on those still seated in the middle of the atrium.

“We will kill whom we must,” I said calmly. “Or we will die.”

He awarded me a perplexed frown, but would not meet my gaze.

“You feel your father wishes for your death as well?”

I smiled grimly. “If Gaston dies, I will take my life. How is that for a romantic notion?”

He flinched, and at last met my gaze with speculative eyes, but he said nothing.

My smile widened. “If you ever intend to win your troth, I suggest you insure nothing happens to either of us.”

“U… Will, how could you…” He seemed sincerely appalled, but I did not believe it.

I stood. “You forget, I know you very well; and, I know what we are both capable of. Even if you would not wield the blade yourself, I know you would lose no sleep over turning a blind eye to someone else doing it. You would consider it a fine turn of fortune.” I leaned close to whisper. “I killed for you, and I very likely would have sacrificed myself to save you. And I did not love you a tenth as much as I love him. So, if you know me: know that. And, if you love me: love that.”

I saw pain and then anger in his eyes. There was a time – I could not deny it – when it would have pained me greatly to have hurt him. I turned away before he could see I remembered that.

I joined Dickey, Davey, Rucker, and Bones at the table. Christine had moved from the shadows some time ago to sit with them. Rucker and Dickey were curious, and glanced to the place where Alonso still sat. Christine awarded me a smug knowing look that said someone had made mention of whatever they thought they knew regarding my relationship with the Spaniard. Davey’s gaze was accusatory, and I considered smashing the rum bottle I had picked up over his head.

Instead, I took a pull and sat with them, pasting a smile upon my tired face.

“Is all well?” Dickey asked.

“No one has died as of yet,” I said. “On the other hand, the people who need to die have not as of yet. So it appears we are in limbo.”

Rucker chuckled appreciatively, and Christine looked away with a troubled frown, but the others regarded me expectantly, awaiting my explanation of such an utterance.

I was rescued from having to make that explanation – or at least decide what and how I should make it – by the arrival of Striker and Pete, Liam’s party, and a number of men from the Queen, including Cudro, and to my surprise and Dickey’s delight, the Bard. The expectant fathers hurried upstairs, and Cudro descended on me to pull me to my feet and into his arms for an embrace that caused my spine to protest heartily.

“And here is my matelot, Ash,” the big Dutchman boomed proudly when he released me.

I grinned at Ash and embraced him. Except for his beak nose, he looked little like the sallow-faced planter’s son we had met less than a year ago: the one who had little understanding or use for matelotage.

He now seemed as proud of it as his partner. I was pleased for both of them; Cudro had at last found someone youthful and pleasing enough to take on; and Ash had been able to prove he was any man’s equal, as he was now a captain’s partner.

The Bard was next in my arms.

“So you have decided to set foot on land? Has our ship sunk?” I teased.

He awarded me his usual sardonic grin. “Nay. I thought since Striker was having a baby, I should witness it with my own eyes, else I would never believe it. And Striker says all the excitement has happened here, anyway. We’ve been missing it at sea.”

“Aye, well… aye,” I chuckled. I looked about and found myself surrounded by fine friends. “We have discovered trouble here, and I am afraid it is my doing.”

“We’ve known you were nothing but trouble since we first sailed with you,” the Bard said.

“I suppose that is true,” I said with a shrug; and then I realized that it was true. Gaston and I were ever the source of trouble, and yet these men had stood by us time and again.

“Well, let me tell you of this latest patch, then,” I said and sat.

They all found seats; and I proceeded to tell them all I had told Liam. I once again omitted the details of Gaston’s estrangement from his father; and I also did not make mention of Jamaica’ s dubious parentage.

I did include Pete’s chess analogy, but as most of them did not know the game, I was forced to simplify it somewhat.

As I spoke, I saw Julio and Nickel speaking with their respective partners: in the end they all nodded at me when I happened to gaze upon them – except for Davey, who frowned and sighed. Christine also spent a great part of my tale glaring at me or the table. The others laughed or stared off in contemplative silence by turns, depending on what I was relating at the moment.