The Pirate Prince (44 page)

“That new admiral wants our blood,” Andrew said.

“Aye, and he’ll get himself a title and country house for it,” Donaldson muttered. “I wish Vicar was here. He’d know what to do.”

They fell silent, then Mutt, the head carpenter, spoke.

“You mustn’t worry, lads,” he said in his low, halting voice. “Cap will stand by us. He always has. No, Cap would never leave us to hang…but I confess,” he added, “ ’twould be nice to have a place to grow old, not here on this old rock. I’d get meself a wife, I would, like Cap done—”

The others started laughing at him.

Lazar gazed at their familiar faces, illumined and etched by the bonfire’s glow, with a tug at his heart. They were good, decent men, he thought, loyal men, and they deserved better than this desperate, meager existence. They might choose not to support or even believe him, but the time had come to at least offer them the choice.

He strolled toward them out of the shadows, idly brushing off a mosquito. They greeted him and offered him some rum. He shook his head and put his hands in his pockets.

“Men,” he began, “I have something to tell you. It’s about Ascencion. It’s…well, it’s a long story, and I guess it’s time you heard it….”

He sat down and told them.

He watched the wonder steal over their faces and the fatigue and defeat fall from their shoulders as he told them his story, and before long there were a hundred men listening. By the time he came to the part about the vendetta for which he originally commanded their fleet to Ascencion, the whole company of the Brethren was there, listening in utter silence, watching him intently.

“For me, I’ve made up my mind,” he said. “I must go back. Join me, and if we are victorious—and by God we shall be if we make our stand together—each of you will have my thanks, a proper home, a new start—”

But the thunderous roar of cheers the men had unleashed drowned out his last few words.

They were with him. Lazar stared around in amazement. His spine tingled with the first intimations of what it might be like to rule, truly and legitimately—but then his heart sank.

Without Allegra to share it with him, it was meaningless.

A week passed, and still she couldn’t seem to make herself believe it.

He had betrayed her. The dearest friend she’d ever had. Her Prince and pirate and the husband of her soul and her king. Wolfe’s Den was a tropical paradise, but Allegra was apathetic to the lush beauty of its pink beaches and silvery waterfalls, blue lagoons and primordial woods. She was sick, sick, sick to her stomach constantly.

Two of King Alphonse’s legendary advisers arrived another week later, but she was in too much of a stupor to care. She only noted that both old men recognized Lazar on sight, weeping with joy to have found him. Father Francesco, the archbishop, seemed a kind, grave soul, but the golden-eyed, hawk-nosed prime minister, Don Pasquale, was cold and insidiously clever. Allegra took the hint swiftly that Don Pasquale intended to despise her forever on account of her father’s treachery.

She didn’t care. She stayed away from everyone.

Captain Landau often came to sit with her, trying to draw her out. He was friendly, gallant, witty, and attentive, but she was incapable of conversation. How could Lazar have suggested she become this man’s lover, do with Landau what she could ever do only with him?

Surely he hadn’t meant it. She was half tempted to make him believe she’d taken him up on his suggestion just to try to make him notice she was still alive.

The last week before they left the Carribbean, there was one more new arrival, a lone, mean-looking mercenary whom Lazar had left behind on Ascencion to kill Domenic.

Why exactly Lazar had wanted to kill Domenic was not clear to her. Perhaps for the simple reason that he didn’t like him. Or maybe, at the time, he had been merely indignant that Domenic had tried to rape her—rather amusing, in light of what he had done to her himself, she thought.

The rough-looking thug brought back a challenge to Lazar from Domenic to return and face him, and a demand that he bring Allegra back safely.

Jeffers said Domenic ruled Ascencion with an iron hand and a cruelty to the people worse than Papa had ever enacted upon them. She heard whispers that before the other mercenaries were killed they had been tortured extensively in Domenic’s effort to learn more about Lazar.

Apparently, Domenic was out for Lazar’s blood, clamoring to bring the Devil of Antigua to justice. She knew Domenic didn’t care whatever about her, despite his demands to have her back, but she could well imagine his pride had been wounded by the fact that Lazar had carried off his betrothed and everyone knew it.

Well, she thought dully, if she didn’t get her monthly soon, he was going to have even more to be embarrassed about.

Already two weeks late, she forced herself to believe it was merely the effect of all the strain she had been under. The alternative, now that Lazar had cast her aside, was unthinkable. The sensible, prudent, tediously moral Allegra Monteverdi could not become an unmarried mother, surely. She would never be able to face anyone she knew again. No, it was just the shock and worry, she told herself.

As for the king, he looked terrible. Lazar had aged years since Vicar’s death. For the few weeks they remained at Wolfe’s Den, he was gaunt, haggard, and broodingly quiet, but faster than she would have thought possible, he had his ships repaired and transformed his pirate horde into the first royal navy of Ascencion. At last, the ships were loaded, and the Brethren left Wolfe’s Den for good.

Under the green-and-black of the Ascencion flag, Lazar’s magnificent warship, festooned with long billowing streamers in every color of the rainbow, led its small fleet proudly in formation as Ascencion’s first royal navy crossed the Atlantic once more.

Allegra was surprised that Lazar made her travel with him aboard
The Whale
. If he thought she was going to resume her former duties as his harlot, he was sorely wrong, but he never approached her. The voyage together was torment. There was no possibility of her attempting to get on with her life at this point, because they were trapped together on the ship, forced to cross paths every day.

She remained in a kind of dull-minded trance, barely able to believe how hard it was to learn not to touch him. She’d grown accustomed to the smallest brush of his hand on hers, a quick hug, a soft caress. All of it, gone. He scarcely even made eye contact with her.

She decided to return to her on-and-off plan of becoming a nun. She had no feelings about it one way or the other, all the emotion wrung out of her like water from a sponge. She only knew she never wanted another man in her life ever, ever again, and she hoped if she stayed close to God, perhaps eventually she could rise above her sense of shame about having been Lazar’s whore.

She felt guilty, she felt angry, but she could not escape the sense that in some vague way she had been tricked. Staying away from Lazar was not difficult, since he spent his nights on a simple hammock slung on the stern, sleeping under the stars and the open sky, making the most, she supposed, of his last days at sea.

She tried to divert herself with small tasks, but her time stretched out before her, void hours of staring or sleeping, meaningless, like everything. She felt sick all the time and observed herself with bitter amusement going into a decline over Lazar di Fiore—the man whom she had denied nothing. The man who had taken everything away from her and left her with nothing but perhaps a child in her belly that she did not want.

She was even more stupid than her mother, she supposed. At least King Alphonse had been worth it.

She missed her aunt Isabelle terribly. Aunt Isabelle would have known what to say and do.

Her worry grew. How could she become a nun if she was with child? She would have to throw herself upon her uncle and aunt’s charity for the rest of her life, bring home her embarrassment under their roof, for she would rather die than ask Lazar for help.

Yet if she turned to Uncle Marc and Aunt Isabelle, their two little daughters’ reputations would be tarnished forever with such a ruined woman in their home. She tried not to go into a panic over the situation, however, because there was still hope that her monthly would come. She prayed. She tried to feel those miserable cramps, but halfway into August, they still hadn’t arrived.

Favorable winds carried the fleet swiftly to the mouth of the Mediterranean, where they were met by twelve Austrian ships, which in turn escorted them to moor across the straits from Ascencion in one of Corsica’s sheltered bays. From then on, there was an endless procession of visitors who came to pay Lazar homage, all overseen by the eagle-eyed Don Pasquale.

She kept her place in the background, remaining all but invisible while the dignitaries brought the king unimaginable gifts and bowed nigh double before him, not daring to meet his fiery black eyes. And he, she saw with deepening misery, accepted it all as his due, as if he had been born to it, which of course he had.

Maybe he would be a cruel, tyrannical king after all, she thought. She hated him. She loved him. They avoided each other. But she took any chance she could to study him furtively, this man who had wreaked his vengeance on her so thoroughly.

He was grave and dignified; he always seemed to know exactly what to say and do, and his keen gaze missed nothing. The lines of his face seemed hewn of granite, belying his mere eight-and-twenty years. The black of his eyes was as deep and inscrutable as the night sea. He awed all who came to see him. Already the weight of rule bore down on him, but it would not crush him, she knew, for he was made of rock.

September 3 was the last night they spent aboard, roughly four months since the night of her father’s anniversary feast.

It had been a long day, with a steady stream of visitors, and as she finally went into the stateroom on her way to the cabin, she could see the strain telling on the king.

The last of their high-ranking visitors went, bowing backward, out of the stateroom, anxious not to commit the great insult of turning their backs on him, and Lazar let out a wordless, muffled growl as soon as they were gone. He jumped up to pour himself a snifter of brandy.

“You’re doing fine,” Allegra conceded in grudging reassurance. It had been days since they’d spoken at all.

“I feel like a bloody stage actor,” he muttered. “A very poor one, at that.”

She wanted to say something bitter, but she couldn’t.

She wanted to say she was proud of him, but she wouldn’t.

“No,” she sighed instead. “It’s all real.”

He considered this for a moment, swirling the brandy absently in the glass. When he took a drink, she lowered her hungry gaze, remembering with a pang the brandy-flavored taste of his kiss on her tongue.

“I’ll be happier when I’ve got Clemente in custody. I could use a good fight. All this civility is making me lunatic.” He sighed as he sat down again and put his head back against the chair, eyes closed.

She stood there, uncertain of what she should do. Fool that she was, half of her wanted to go to him. More than half, really.

“Allegra?”

Hope leaped alive in her heart, and unbearable, immediate desire. She knew that note of longing in his voice. “Yes?”

There was a searing silence.

“What is it, Lazar?”

“I miss you so much,” he breathed, holding perfectly still, eyes closed.

“Do you want to make love?” she asked softly, holding her breath, but she could not, would not, go to him.

He swept his long-lashed, midnight eyes open and lifted his head to hold her in a tortured gaze.

Burning all bridges, she crossed the stateroom in five steps. The next thing she knew, she was being lifted in his arms, and they were in his bed, tearing off each other’s clothes with feverish, shaking hands. Neither of them spoke a word, then he was inside her, urgent, desperate, and deep. She hooked her arms under his, holding on to his massive shoulders while he took her in a storm of tenderness, grazing her brow with his lips.

She bit her lip until it hurt, rather than tell him she still loved him. Her love was in her every caress of his smooth, warm, golden skin, but she would not give him the words.

When he lowered his head to suckle her breast, she began to weep silently as she lay petting his velvety hair.

Lazar, Lazar, my heart is broken
.

When he heard the ragged breath of the sob she fought to steady, he paused. Slowly he came up to her face again and kissed her tears. He cupped her head and kissed her cheeks, her brow. She cried harder at his meaningless sweetness, never making a sound. When he kissed her throat, she closed her eyes and wanted to die.

She didn’t know how she could proceed, as if her mind, her heart, were folding in on itself. She was collapsing, though she already lay in his arms. If only he would say he loved her. She would forgive him. She would take him back in a heartbeat. If only he wanted her back.

What a mistake it had been to come into this room with him, she thought as he rode her slowly, gently, as if he could console her with his skills as a lover. All the progress she’d made to forget him was obliterated, the wound of losing him opened afresh.

Yet he made her forget, for the moment. Somehow he brought her body to the edge of a rapture all the sweeter for the knowledge of how fleeting it was, never to return. With a deep, anguished, almost grief-stricken cry, he flooded her womb with his essence.

Then he lay atop her for many hours, not leaving her body or the bed. His head on the pillow beside hers, he stared at her, caressing her skin in the darkness, twining her hair around his fingers.

They never said a word.