“I will, Adam. I will.” Anthony laughed. “There’ll be no irate papa beating down my door.” He looked down at his man’s creased expression, teasing, “There never has been as yet.”
“Aye, well only the Lord knows why not. An out-an-out rake is what y’are,” Adam declared roundly.
“Nonsense,” Anthony scoffed. “I take my pleasure when it’s offered like any other red-blooded male.”
Adam sniffed at this and Anthony kept his counsel. It wasn’t so much that he intended to bed Olivia Granville as that it was inevitable. And he knew that on some level she knew it too.
What he didn’t know was what it would mean in the greater scheme of things. The riches liberated from the Spanish galleon would go a long way to swelling the coffers of the Royalist insurgents and their Scots backers as they broke the uneasy truce that had been in place since the king’s imprisonment, and brought war once more to the English countryside in one last attempt to secure the king’s sovereignty.
In this enterprise, Cato Granville was the enemy. At the moment, he was not at Carisbrooke Castle, but he would be back. The renewed fighting by the king’s supporters and the news of his undercover negotiations with the Scots would harden His Majesty’s jailers. They would try to move him off the island and back to London. Before that happened, Anthony intended that King Charles would take safe passage to France on Wind Dancer.
Just where Olivia Granville would fit into his planning remained to be seen.
“You got any idea what was on that ship the wreckers brought down the other night?” Adam inquired. “Mighty rich pickin’s, I’d guess. You think you got the word out all right?”
Anthony’s face was wiped clean of humor. “Oh, yes, the word’s out, Adam. However rich the pickings, the goods have no value if they can’t sell ‘em. If whoever controls them knows there’s a discreet buyer, he’ll make contact. I don’t know what we’ll get, but I’ll lay odds it’s good. The ship was a merchantman.”
He gave a harsh laugh and Olivia would not have recognized this man. His eyes were gray iron, his mouth twisted. There was no vestige of the softness or amusement she had come to expect. “Why not let someone else do the work for a change?” he said.
The setting sun was throwing a great palette of colors across the western sky, and the lively water beneath Wind Dancer‘s bow was pink and gold. The good rich smells of cooking came now from the rekindled fires in the galley. The hardness left Anthony’s countenance as quickly as it had come. He was remembering his promise to the newest member of his pirate crew.
“What d’you have for our dinner, Adam?”
“A leg o‘ mutton on the spit,” the older man said begrudgingly. “An’ what ye took from the Spaniards’ table. A fine show o‘ pastries and some of that there manchega cheese.”
“Then we’ll dine in an hour. My Sleeping Beauty should be awake by now.” He nodded at Adam and left the quarterdeck.
Adam shook his head. His master was so many different men, and it astonished Adam how he was able to keep them all separate, each in its own compartment. It had much to do with his growing, Adam knew, but it still chilled him even through the deep love he felt for the man he’d nurtured and served since Anthony had entered the world on that demon-ridden night twenty-eight years earlier.
Chapter Three
Olivia awoke refreshed from a dreamless nap and was for a moment disoriented, then she heard the cry of a seagull and smelled the fresh salt tang on the air and remembered. She smiled slowly at the renewed prickle of excitement that crept over her skin. Fatigue had caused her to question the magic that now embraced her. But she was no longer tired and this strange new world was filled with wonder. Lord Granville’s daughter was the aider and abettor of pirates. Of course, one could say that she’d been kidnapped by a pirate and was held captive on his ship on the high seas. One could say that. And it would be the perfect truth. Except that she had no desire to be anywhere else, and it seemed she had acquired a shockingly keen desire for further adventuring. Her appetite for piracy had merely been whetted by the encounter with the Spanish galleon.
She had more in common with Portia than she’d realized, Olivia thought with a soft chuckle. Her father’s illegitimate niece had a penchant for soldiering and had been married on a battlefield in britches with a sword at her hip. Olivia was beginning to see the appeal in such wildly unconventional behavior. Hitherto she’d simply assumed that Portia was unique, a law unto herself. What Portia did had no relevance to what ordinary people did. But maybe not. Or maybe her uniqueness was rubbing off on her friends. Or maybe Olivia herself was not ordinary either, she just hadn’t known it until now.
Grinning to herself, Olivia pushed aside the coverlet and sat up, sniffing hungrily. The most wonderful scents of roasting meat were coming from somewhere, setting her juices running. She glanced curiously around the cabin, wondering what it could tell her of Wind Dancer’s master.
Not for a moment did it occur to her that she might be invading his privacy as she began to explore. There were charts on the table, with a sextant and compasses. She peered at the calculations written in the same bold hand that had drawn the lines of her back. The calculations fascinated her mathematician’s mind, although to understand them would take some study.
She examined the books on the shelves set into the bulwarks. An interesting assortment. Poetry, philosophy, some of her own favorite classical texts. The ship’s master had an intellectual mind, it seemed. She looked at the chessboard set out on a small table under the window. It looked as if he was in the middle of a game, unless it was a chess problem he was working on.
Olivia bent over the pieces, frowning. She moved the white bishop to king four, and stood frowning at the board. Then she gave a little nod of satisfaction. She’d been right. It was inevitable that white would now mate in two moves. Not a particularly difficult problem, she thought.
Humming to herself, Olivia turned back to the chart table. Idly she opened a drawer beneath the tabletop. There were papers, a thick pile of them, facedown in the drawer. She took them out and laid them on the table. They were drawings, pencil sketches. It seemed the master of Wind Dancer was a draftsman who found objects for his talent wherever he looked. These seemed to be entirely of his crew.
She gazed fascinated at the series of sketches. Some of the faces she recognized from the time she’d spent above decks. Jethro, the helmsman, appeared several times. In some of the drawings, men were working on the ship, sewing sails, splicing rope, climbing rigging. In some they were playing, dancing, laughing, listening to one of their fellows strumming a lute, his back against the mast. And then there were three or four where naked men stood beneath a pump on the deck, the water glistening on their skins, laughter in their eyes.
Olivia had spent far too much time among the texts and illustrations of ancient Greece and Rome to be embarrassed by depictions of male nudity. But it seemed to her that this artist had no small talent for anatomy. The human form obviously intrigued him, judging by the number of small sketches of a hand, a foot, an ankle, the turn of a thigh. But the faces too were full of life, depicted in just a few lines, and yet an entire moment was captured in the tilt of a head, the slant of an eye.
“In general, when my work is not in plain sight, it’s not for anyone’s eyes but mine.”
Olivia hadn’t heard the door open. She looked up with a gasp, the drawings fluttering to the table, one or two sliding to the floor.
The master of Wind Dancer stood in the cabin doorway, and his expression had lost its habitual amusement. A deep frown corrugated his brow and his eyes were annoyed.
“I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to pry,” Olivia said, flushing. “The drawer wasn’t locked or anything.”