Seize the Fire (21 page)

"Yes, sir. Ten weeks out of Salem, sir, bound for New South Wales."

Olympia met Captain Fitzhugh's dismayed gaze. He looked as if he would say something, or as if he thought she should say something. His left fist curled into a ball and he tapped it against his thigh in an agitated rhythm.

"Port Jackson, Miss Drake," he said suddenly. "That is the harbor at Sydney."

She felt as if all the breath for words had left her lungs. He stared at her. Olympia looked back helplessly. She had only to give some sign, she knew. A smile, a nod, and he would stay below and answer this new ship's overture with a polite rebuff, responding with flag signals only in the merest military courtesy, as he'd done several times before on this voyage.

But she had no sign to give. It was all too sudden; her life now seemed to go in fits and starts, weeks of boredom and then momentous decisions that had to be made in an instant, and she only knew what she didn't want, and nothing of what she wanted.

She was a coward, afraid to commit herself either way. The moment seemed to stretch, a frozen tableau: the lieutenant awaiting Captain Fitzhugh and Captain Fitzhugh awaiting her. Another shout drifted down from above, slightly louder through the open door.

"Well," Captain Fitzhugh said at last. He cleared his throat gruffly. "I'll come up, then."

He made a stiff bow in Olympia's direction and walked out the cabin door.

Olympia huddled in her cloak. Another deck, another sunrise at sea, this time with freezing wind on her cheek and the American Stars and Stripes instead of a familiar Union Jack snapping at the peak of the foremast. The
Phaedra
rolled remorselessly at her anchor, her upper rigging shivering and whining in the icy gale. The harsh profile of the island to windward, a barren and dismal gray lump on a barren and dismal gray sea, did nothing to protect the ship from the bitter and steady breeze.

Captain Webster stopped his slow pacing to bid her good morning. He was a garrulous and kindly old man who had already, in the week since she'd left
Terrier,
given Olympia the life histories of his singularly uninteresting son and daughter, and was well into the second rendition of his children's detailed résumés.

"A brief stop for water, Miss Drake," he said over the wind. He moved around so that he blocked the gale from her face. Olympia smiled gratefully. "It may take a day to replenish our casks, but I deem it a prudent measure before we attempt the Horn."

"Where are we?"

"The Falklands." He turned and pointed. "This here is New Island. That's Swan, and off beyond her—the big one you can just see all along the horizon—is English Maloon. Delightful place, ain't it?"

In all the world Olympia could not imagine a more terrible desolation than this. She'd grown up amid the bleak geography of the fens, but there at least had been life—vibrant life and color in the huge circling flocks of waterfowl. Here there was nothing but a single albatross, looking lonely and miserable as it floated up and down on the windswept surface of the swells with its head tucked under one folded wing.

"Do you think so?" she asked in surprise, and Captain Webster laughed.

She glanced at him, confused, and then realized he had been making a joke. She smiled belatedly, trying to be polite. "It is inhabited?"

"My Lord, no. Who'd care to live on godforsaken rocks like this, child? There's nothing here but tussock grass. Sealers and whalers come and go, but no one cares to stay long."

Olympia looked past him to the hill which rose away from the harbor, blanketed with a strange hummocky texture of drab olive green. Even the whitecaps were gray. The wind whipped them into long smears across the choppy sea. Her eyes stung and her ears burned with cold, and she couldn't even feel the tip of her nose. But it was a choice between the icy fresh air and the stifling bilge-stink below, so she stayed on deck in the leaden light, watching the crew lower a boat to land.

"Now, what the dickens is that?" Captain Webster exclaimed as he frowned toward the eastern horizon, where the sun was watered to a dull silver glow by the overcast sky.

Across the grim low hills of Swan Island, the horizon showed a rising billow of white. It looked like a cloud to Olympia, but the captain stared at it with intensity. The mate moved up behind them, squinting toward the sight with equal concentration.

"What do you think?" Captain Webster asked abruptly. "Smoke, sir," the mate said. "That's what I think."

"Sealers?"

The mate shrugged. "Maybe, sir." He paused, then added slowly, "Not many seals left here, I wouldn't think."

Captain Webster tugged at his beard. After a long moment, he said, "Call back the boat."

"Aye, sir."

The mate turned away, hailing some of the crew. Captain Webster remained frowning at the ascending white mass on the far horizon. "It's not on Swan, I don't believe," he murmured. "Farther away than that. The other side of Maloon, perhaps."

"Is it another ship?" Olympia asked.

"Hmm?" He turned around, lifting his bushy eyebrows as if he'd forgotten she was there. "Ah. Miss Drake. Wouldn't you wish to go down out of the wind?"

"No, thank you. The smoke—is there some danger?"

He chuckled, patting her shoulder. "We shall stay well clear. There's just a little worry of renegade Spaniards in these parts. But no doubt it's only some of my own stalwart Yankee sealers, camped apart and sending signals to one another. Prudence, prudence—that's my maxim, Miss Drake. We shall investigate with caution."

Olympia was forced to retreat to the cabin while the ship weighed anchor and made sail again. Mustafa sat in a shivering huddle of blankets, sipping coffee and mumbling something in his own language. The maid Sheridan had hired for her—years ago, it seemed now—lay snoring on a rumpled berth.

Olympia thought of the
Terrier,
and Captain Fitzhugh's neat cabin. She thought of the pretty terrace on Madeira that looked out over the gardens and the sea. She thought of her room in Wisbeach, and of Fish's cottage, cozy and clean. She tried to remember the princess who had set out on this insane journey, who had made each decision that had brought her to where she was, and could not. She didn't feel like a princess anymore, or a radical, or an advocate of the Rights of Man.

She just felt numb. And stupid.

So incredibly stupid.

She sat down with a sigh. Mustafa slid to the floor and pressed his forehead to her knees.

"We will find him, O Beloved. Have no fear." Olympia did not answer. She didn't think they would find him. She didn't know what she would do if they did. Leaning her shoulder against the bulkhead, she closed her eyes, her head swaying with the motion of a ship going someplace…any place…she no longer cared where or why, or what would happen when she got there. They were all day following the smoke. Olympia returned to the deck, watching the rocky coasts of several islands slip slowly by.

The ship left one group behind and struck out across a great, gloomy bay, still chasing smoke from the dark shape on the far horizon.

"By my soul, I believe that's coming from the Anacans," Captain Webster said, lowering his eyeglass. "Who would camp on those rocks?"

The chief mate rubbed his lip. "Not Spaniards, sir, wouldn't think. Not by choice. There's no anchorage, and too much reef. Nor it ain't likely to be sealers, neither. Place ain't big enough to be worth the effort."

Captain Webster took an agitated pace around the wheel. He came back to where Olympia and the mate were standing by the rail. "By golly, there's some poor soul wrecked in that awful place. You tell me there's not."

The mate looked troubled. "Maybe, sir."

"We'll have to find out."

"It might be a trick, sir. An ambush."

The captain raised his glass again, peering for a long time at the desolate little cluster of minor islands that hung off the larger coastline. "Can't see a thing," he said. "No sign of a vessel. Where would an ambush be?"

"I dunno, sir. I dunno."

"Well, I think we must go and see." Captain Webster closed his eyeglass with a snap. "If we won't take a bit of risk on behalf of our fellow mariners, we can't hardly call ourselves Christians—can we now, Miss Drake? But I think I'd like you to stay below with your servants, if you please."

Olympia obeyed. She sat dismally considering the possibility that her days would end at the hands of Spanish smugglers, which was not at all what she'd hoped for out of life. Just as the dusk was beginning to obscure the far corners of the cabin in murky blackness, Captain Webster's hoarse voice gave an ebullient roar of satisfaction as he thundered down the stairs.

"Great news, Miss Drake!" he cried. "We've come to the rescue of your countrymen!" He pulled her up from her seat with one white-haired, gnarled hand. "It's a wreck, all right—British frigate cast on the rocks. A good many survivors, from what I can see of 'em on the shore. Thirty at least. They're bringing the officers off now, and some fellows who look to be marines from their uniforms. You can come up, if you like."

Olympia and Mustafa hastened behind him on deck.
Phaedra's
longboat was just arriving back from her mission of mercy onshore. While the carpenter rigged a ladder, Olympia and everyone else leaned over the rail, trying to see into the boat through the deep twilight. The men huddled there were only vague figures, but they halloed and waved with wild enthusiasm. Olympia found herself waving back, jumping up and down in excitement along with everyone else.

The first of them came scrambling on deck, a short, heavyset man in a tattered blue coat that was torn at the shoulder seams but still carried the tarnished epaulettes of a captain. He grinned and spat and pumped Captain Webster's hand while the crew crowded around.

The rest clambered aboard, ten newcomers in all: a bearded and scraggly band in spite of their scarlet uniforms. It was almost full dark by the time the last tall marine reached the top of the ladder and swung his boots nimbly over the rail. He leaned back over the water and gave a hand to a sailor from
Phaedra
who followed him. Then he straightened and looked up, the only clean-shaven one in the group.

Olympia blinked. She gripped Mustafa's arm. The tall marine returned the
Phaedra
crewman's friendly clout and swung around into the lantern light, grinning.

His elated gaze met Olympia's.

The grin froze and faded from his handsome face. They stared at one another with the tumult of greeting passing around them.

"Hell," said Sheridan Drake. "Bloody hell."

Rage.

Olympia ached with it; she blazed and quaked with it. She felt as if she radiated it, as if everything she touched should burst into flame.

Until this moment, she had not thought he was alive.

Not really. Not in the face of all Mustafa's certainty. She'd listened, she'd acted, but in her heart she'd not believed. She'd been waiting for a miracle, unwilling to accept his death, unable to accept his betrayal. She'd moved in a blind, numbed, foolish fantasy, somehow believing that she could find him, and when she found him, he would be the man she'd always thought.

Now she stood staring at him—at his hell-angel face, the smoky eyes and beautiful sulky curve of his mouth shadowed in the swaying lamplight—and knew the truth.

The hero she'd loved with all her being had not died. He'd simply never existed. This person…this thief, this liar, this fraud—this was not Sir Sheridan Drake. Love shifted and shattered and exploded in fire, burned to ashes and rose again as something else.

Hate.

She squeezed her eyes closed. When she opened them he was still there, still watching her with that lazy lift to his brows, so familiar that she wanted to choke. He moved toward her, and she hated him so much that she could not make her limbs work to turn away or flee or even speak.

"Come to spread democracy among the benighted penguins, Princess?" he murmured.

"You
bastard
," she spat the foulest name she knew, and wished she knew one fouler.

He glanced away from her, toward Mustafa, who took it with a queer calm, this unexpected end to the hunt. Sheridan held out his hand toward his servant, palm upward. Mustafa shuffled his feet and bobbed twice, and then to Olympia's enraged astonishment slipped the string of pearls from the folds of his robe and blankets and put it in Sheridan's palm.

"Just a
moment!
" She sprang forward, grabbing at the necklace, but all she met was his empty hand. "Give it to me! What are you doing with that? They're mine!"

Sheridan frowned at her. "Hush," he said. "Let's not stir up a fuss, ma'am."

"I will! Where is it? Where are all the rest? I'll—"

"Shut up!" he hissed. "Everything's safe enough."

"Then give it back to me! Do you think I'll whisper on
your
account? To protect a sneaking thief!"

"For God's sake—"

"Captain!" she cried, frantic with fury and drawing every eye around them. "Captain Webster! I suggest you take custody of this man for stealing!"

Captain Webster turned from his conversation with the others who'd come aboard. "What's this?"

"He's taken my pearls." Olympia grabbed Sheridan's arm and in her passion actually managed to drag him a step toward the captain. "Right in front of my face—he's got them there in his pocket. And after stealing all my other jewels in Madeira!"

"Stealing your—" Captain Webster frowned, hooking his thumbs into his waistcoat. "My dear Miss Drake, are you serious?"

"Yes! He tricked me in Funchal and took every bit of jewelry I had. And he just now took my pearls right out of my—out of Mustafa's hand. Search his coat and you'll find them."

"Now, don't upset yourself, miss." The captain brushed back a thin strand of his windblown gray hair. "This will be some misunderstanding. These poor fellows have been here a month and ran out of food several days ago. They may not make much sense, eh? What's your name, lad?"

Sheridan leaned on the rail. He crossed his arms and regarded Olympia with a dark smile and a hint of exasperation. "Drake. Sheridan Drake, sir. And I see that this female has been passing herself off as my sister again."