The Pirate Prince (17 page)

His kindness frightened her. She did not trust him.

“The sea is a vast and lonely place,” he mused in a low voice.

“Strange words from a pirate,” she replied in a tone like a small steel knife.

“Allegra.” He sighed. “Don’t judge me when you know nothing about me.”

“I know plenty,” she said in cold, quiet tones.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

But I will bleed for you, won’t I?

She turned and looked up at him, feeling as though she were seeing him for the first time.

Why, the man looked practically civilized. When had he donned a cravat and waistcoat? she wondered. His clothing was in impeccable taste even by Parisian standards. He was bareheaded under the leaden skies. His black hair made his eyes look black, too, beneath his long, heartbreaking lashes.

He glanced down almost hesitantly at her, distress in his marvelous, warm eyes. “I am worried about you, Allegra. I don’t want to see you lose yourself in grief.”

“I shall be cheerful, then, to amuse you,” she said, looking swiftly at the waves again to mask her panic at his gentle concern.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said softly, gazing down at her.

She refused to look at him. His animal beauty unnerved her, especially after that sinful fantasy born of laudanum—that he had undressed her, slipped his warm, callused fingers inside her—but it was his undemanding patience, his careful, determined gentleness, that terrified her most.

If he had raped her, it would have been simple to hate him. Why it was not simple already, she could not guess. He had stolen everything she owned, burned down her home, torn her away from her family, made havoc of her formerly bright future. He had ruined her, and he had dared,
dared
claim to be her beloved Prince.

She didn’t know who he was.

He had destroyed her life for no apparent reason but his own selfishness and his wanton lust for destruction, and soon he would make use of her body. Her heart, her mind, her inner self, were the last things she still owned, and she vowed he would not have them.

He was subtle, trying to conquer her with soft words, comforting touches, and that haunted look in his eyes that seemed the very answer to her loneliness, but she refused his every attempt. She did not trust him, this thief, this fraud, and she did not trust herself around him.

He sighed again, studying his hands where they rested on the rail. “Soon we’ll pass Gibraltar. May run into a fight there. The Atlantic crossing should take about a month, depending on the winds.”

“May I ask where we’re going?”

“You may ask anything you want,
chérie
. The West Indies. Home.”

She bit her lip against the urge to point out that it was certainly not home to her. “What if I don’t want to go to the West Indies?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Ascencion.”

He forced a patient smile. “Tell me anyplace else you want to go, and I’ll take you there on a holiday once I’ve concluded my business with my, er, colleagues.”

“A holiday.” Allegra studied him dubiously, refusing to fall for this lie. “Perhaps it’s time you told me exactly what it is you want of me, Captain.”

She refused to call him Lazar.

He merely gazed down at her for a long moment. “Allegra,” he said, “I am not going to hurt you.”

She folded her arms over her chest as she stared up at him, feeling small with the way he towered over her. “Too late.”

“Be fair. You haven’t heard my side of the story yet.”

“Nothing you can say will bring my father back to life.”

“I did not kill him, Allegra.”

She clenched her arms more tightly as her lower lip began to tremble.

“You scared him out of his senses. That’s the only reason he would do such a thing. It’s the same as if you had pushed him off the side yourself. Don’t touch me,” she said swiftly when he reached toward her face.

He touched her anyway, cupping her cheek. “I am not the one to blame. But you must come to that realization on your own. I’m not going to force you to face the truth about him, or about me.” He lowered his hand. “I took all the files and official documents from the governor’s office, so when you are feeling up to it, perhaps you’ll wish to look through them. Then maybe you’ll see that your father was not…ah, a nice man.”

“I know he wasn’t a nice man,” she said through clenched teeth. “But that doesn’t mean he betrayed King Alphonse, and that does not mean you are the Prince.”

“I’m not going to argue with you. You’ll find the truth on your own, in time,” he said gently. “I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. Do you understand?”

She tore her gaze from his, refusing in the nick of time to be enticed by his efforts to make her drop her guard. “Do you realize I have nothing now? What am I to do? I have no one.”

“You have me.”

She gave a bitter laugh and looked at the sea.

“I will take care of you.”

“To be sure.”

He gazed down at her in distress. “I know how it feels. I lost my family, too.”

“Yes, I know, the great Fiori,” she replied caustically, swiping away a tear before he saw.

He studied her, at a loss. “Don’t you remember how it was between us that night when we were in the tunnels? We were getting along fine until I told you my name. Why is that?”

“We were getting along fine until you put a gun to my head!” she shouted.

He shook his head. “You knew I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“I knew no such thing! You’re a madman! There’s no telling what you’ll do!”

He arched one brow at her, then glanced over dryly at his men, a few of whom had turned, in curiosity, at her outburst. “I told you, you have nothing to fear from me. If you will try to trust me a little, I believe we can get along together quite suitably.”

“I will never trust you.” She clenched her jaw, for even as she said it, she knew it was not entirely true. He still inspired in her an illogical sense of safety. But she sealed her lips and avoided his gaze, refusing to soften toward him. Everything she’d lost was his fault, and she could not, would not, believe he was her Prince.

He searched her face with a deep gaze, alight with promises. “I have not forgotten how you stared at me through the fire, Allegra, and how you welcomed my kiss.”

“That was before you made my father k-kill himself!” she wailed.

“You know that is a lie. I won’t disguise the truth—yes, I wanted Monteverdi dead, with good reason. In fact, first I wanted to kill you and make him watch. That’s the sole reason I followed you in the square that night and ended up saving you from Clemente—I had no interest in you but as a pawn in my revenge, but then…” He faltered. “I just…couldn’t.”

She stared up at him. “Is this supposed to reassure me?” she asked incredulously.

“I’m merely trying to be honest and show you, you have nothing to fear from me anymore.” He looked impatiently at the mast. “I know you don’t understand. I don’t understand it myself, but somehow you have changed everything.”

He shot her a searing look, then lowered his head.

“You are mine now. Understand that. We are bound together by your father’s crime, whether either of us likes it or not. But I will not hurt you, Allegra. I swear it on my mother’s grave. The graves of the great Fiori,” he muttered in sarcasm as he stalked off, brushing past her.

In baffled silence, she turned and watched him go. She gazed at the powerful expanse of his wide shoulders and his lean, tapered waist as he marched off in princely affront, descending down the hatch.

He was a fraud. He was not Lazar di Fiore.

Her father had not been a traitor to King Alphonse all this time. And Mama had not killed herself over something that had been all Papa’s fault.

Lazar walked into the stateroom adjoining his cabin, an airy space that served as both dining and sitting room. Vicar looked up from his book when he slammed the door. Lazar paused by the door for a moment.

“I am going to strangle her,” he announced, and then he walked over to the liquor chest and poured himself a brandy.

Behind him, Vicar chuckled. “Ah, rejection. A new experience for you, eh, my boy?”

Lazar tossed back his drink and turned to face his grinning tutor as Vicar whisked his spectacles off and tucked them in his breast pocket.

“She hates me.”

“Welcome to the world of mortal men.”

Lazar regarded him dryly. “Truly, I am undone by your sympathy.” He sighed, looking down into his empty glass. “At least she’s out of bed.”

“She has begun to rally?”

“With a vengeance.”

“Good,” the older man said, nodding. “Try to be patient with her, lad. She needs to be angry for a while. It would be unnatural if she weren’t.”

Lazar gave a bored, one-shouldered shrug and set his empty glass down. “I liked her better when she was drugged.” He moved impatiently toward the porthole, scowling. “How do I deal with her, Vicar? I feel as though I can do nothing right with her.”

The Englishman merely laughed.

“Why do you sound so delighted?” he mumbled, staring out the porthole. “You enjoy seeing me suffer?”

“Immensely. I have never seen a woman get to you this way.”

“What way?” Lazar studied the waves, wondering when they had become so blue. In the sky, there were the most wonderful clouds piled in the west where columns of sunlight had begun to pierce through the morning’s overcast.

“I say, Captain, is your hearing bad?”

“Hmm?” Lazar turned and looked inquiringly at Vicar, who shook his head at him in amusement.

“I just asked if you recovered the family heirlooms you sought in Little Genoa’s treasury.”

“Ah, yes!” Lazar exclaimed. “Just a moment. I’ll show you.”

He went into the cabin, unlocked the safe, and withdrew his father’s ancient broadsword and some of his mother’s finer pieces of jewelry. Lovingly he examined the necklace of diamonds and purple amethysts, which had matched the color of her violet eyes.

Vicar admired the fortune in jewels, then Lazar unwrapped the long package swathed in sackcloth.

“Excelsior,” he said in a hushed voice.

He grasped the hilt of the mighty broadsword and slid it from its jeweled sheath. The wide, double-edged blade gleamed gold. The sword was even heavier than a cutlass. He gave the precious sheath carefully to Vicar to examine it, then took the hilt in both hands, arms straight and low.

“The first king of the Fiori, Bonifacio the Black,” he told Vicar, “cut down the invading Saracens with this sword. A couple hundred years later, the French Crusaders who built the original keep at Belfort tried to take over the island. That time it was King Salvatore the Fourth who put down the insurrection. This blade beheaded twenty rebel knights.”

Vicar shook his head in wonder.

“Ascencion, you see, has been invaded by practically every people on the face of the earth. Most have left their mark one way or another. Although originally,” he added with a crooked grin, “it was a penal colony of the Roman Empire where the most dangerous criminals were sent to live out their lives in hard labor in the marble quarries.”

Vicar chuckled. “Your earliest forebears.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Planting his feet in fighting stance, Lazar swung the blade experimentally from side to side, giving it a light flick at the extremes of the arc so that it sang through the air.

He was awed by the feel of it in his hands.

“When I was a boy, I couldn’t even lift it,” he said. “It made my father seem to me all the more like a god.”

He remembered that the old reports he’d collected had stated that Excelsior had still been in Alphonse’s hand when his body had been found at the scene of the slaughter. For a moment Lazar was silent, and the sword lowered in his grasp until its deadly tip touched the worn Persian rug.

Just as they reached D’Orofio Pass, Mama gathered little Anna, sleeping, on her lap and sat back against the velvet squabs. “My!” she said. “How that sea tossed! Thank heavens we all are safe.” The words had barely left her lips when the first shouts sounded
.

“Lazar?” Vicar said as if from a great distance.

They came out of nowhere, guns and knives. Father, shouting orders at the guards, barreled out of the carriage with Excelsior drawn, and for a moment the masked men were afraid of him
.

He remembered that look on his father’s face, his sudden stillness, as the king realized before anyone else did that they all were dead. Father turned his head and looked him in the eyes amid the chaos all around them.

Survive, he said, and hold the line
.

He obeyed, fleeing as fast as he could just as the first one swung out with his knife at Alphonse while another dragged his little brother, Pip, from the coach and killed him right before his eyes, cut his throat. He had stood there staring for a second, frozen with cold horror, then Father bellowed,
Run!

So he did.

Ran and ran with bile in his throat, heard the guards and the footmen and the ladies-in-waiting die like animals behind him. When he made out his mother’s screams, he stopped and turned back, but then they came crashing after him through the briers. He fled through the lightning and storm, forgetting in his terror that he headed straight toward the sea cliffs
….

Presently, as Lazar held the royal sword that had been in his family since the Dark Ages, he was filled with so strange and uncanny a premonition that he had to put the weapon down on the polished dining table.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled to Vicar, then went into the cabin and out to the sea balcony beyond, beneath the overhanging stern. He braced both hands upon the railing and lowered his head, his eyes shut tight.

A part of him was still a bewildered thirteen-year-old waiting to wake from the nightmare. A part of him was still running.