She heard hard, swift footsteps in the companionway and felt a new surge of panic. She stuffed herself deeper into her hole in the wall. In a last-ditch effort she even blew out the lantern. Better rats than Goliath.
Her ears were ringing from hours of cannon fire just over her head, but it seemed, distantly, that an angry voice was calling her name. She could not remember having told Goliath her Christian name, but that was of little consequence as she heard doors being slammed all down the passageway.
Suddenly the door burst open. Her breath heaved impossibly fast.
“Allegra!”
She realized the very hem of her dress was hanging over the edge of the shelf. She yanked it in. Wild-eyed, she covered her mouth with her hands to keep from crying out. There was silence, then slow footsteps sounded in the little storeroom, one, two, three. She could not help the terrified, tiny sound that overflowed her lips.
The man who had come for her bent slowly down. She saw his eyes, sea black, furious and gentle all at once as he gazed at her. She stared at him, not daring to move.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said sadly. Lazar held out his hand to her. “Come out. It’s all right now,
chérie
. Come out of there,” he coaxed her.
At the soft, civilized tone of his voice, what was left of her composure shattered. There was no strength in her, nothing left. She began to cry without holding back.
He reached into the hole where she was and gathered her up. She spilled resistlessly into his arms and clung to his hard shoulder as to a lone rock in an angry sea. He cradled the back of her head with his big hand and held her to him like a babe. She breathed in the scent of him as she sobbed, rum and sweat, smoke and leather, gunpowder, blood, and the sea. She wanted to be back in her convent school, in bed by nine, Mother Beatrice dousing the candles. She wanted no part of this man, but it was too late. The smell of him was deep in her lungs, on her skin, in her hair.
“Shh,
chérie
,” he was saying softly as he walked slowly up and down the dim passageway, rocking her gently and murmuring soft, kind nonsense. “Poor baby, you’re all right now, sweetheart. I’ve got you now,” he whispered, and she knew it was true. He had her now.
She was his captive.
She realized by the red glow behind her eyelids that he had taken her out into the sunshine. Somehow he had climbed up the ladders of the companionways without her even realizing it. He was so strong. Too strong. She burrowed her face closer against his neck.
“There you are, my brave girl,” he murmured. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened so I can decide how painfully Goliath deserves to die.”
She shook her head, never looking up.
No more death
.
“Allegra.” He paused. There was murder in his voice. “Did he rape you?”
She shook her head again, refusing to talk.
“Did he hit you?”
She nodded, yes.
“In the face?”
She opened her lips against his salty skin to answer, “Stomach.”
“Are you badly hurt?”
She didn’t think so. She shrugged and held him tighter, refusing to open her eyes or loosen her arms’ tight hold about his neck. “I still hate you, but please don’t put me down yet,” she whispered.
He chuckled sadly, softly in reassurance.
She felt his stride change as he walked with her in his arms. She heard creaking noises, and she sensed their entry into shadow again. When he spoke again, his voice was deep and unbearably gentle.
“You can look now, angel. You’re in my cabin, on my ship. You’re quite safe here. My friend will look after you until I return—John Southwell, of England. He’s a gentleman, used to be an Anglican priest, in fact. Just call him Vicar—everyone else does. I trust him as I trust myself,
capisce
?”
She kept her eyes screwed up tight as she clung to him.
“Oh, Lazar,” she whispered on a breath that was dangerously near a sob, “please don’t leave me again. I have never been so frightened in my life.”
He squeezed her tighter for a long moment, then she felt him set her down on a deliciously deep mattress, but he didn’t put her out of his arms.
“
Chérie
, I have things to do,” he said softly. “Get some sleep. You’ve been through hell. We’ll talk later. I promise.”
“Is my father all right?”
“He’s just fine.”
“May I see him?”
“No,
chérie
. You stay here and rest.”
She still didn’t want to open her eyes. She had a feeling she was in his bed, her head cradled on his pillow. Her mind protested at the situation, but exhaustion, practicality, and her instinctive sense of safety in his presence were forces too powerful for mere propriety.
At last she reluctantly opened her eyes and found herself gazing straight up at him. She was instantly absorbed by the vision of his bronzed, chiseled face just above hers. Lazar had removed his skullcap, and she saw that his close-cropped, jet-black hair was thick and velvety. She could only stare. By daylight he was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen, even though she knew now what he was.
Goliath’s witless henchman had told her that on the other side of the world, Lazar was known as the Devil of Antigua—the cursed, the damned. Slayer of innocents. Burner of cities. Feared even among the Barbary corsairs, who called him
Shaytan
of the West, the Devil of Antigua feared neither God nor man, it was said. His vessel was a sleek seventy-four-gun warship called
The Whale
.
The Devil of Antigua was evil incarnate. It was common knowledge.
He was gazing down anxiously at her, a world of feeling in his soulful, chocolate-brown eyes. There were flecks—no, rays—of gold in his irises, she saw in wonder. He caressed her cheek with one fingertip, then tucked the fine linen sheet over her.
“Goliath is about to pay a very dear price for what he’s done to you,” he whispered a trifle hoarsely. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You will stay here and rest, and this time do not disobey me, for I won’t have you getting into any more scrapes. I fear you have used up all your rescues.” He offered her a warm, crooked smile.
She reached up and hugged him to her, just to keep him a little longer, for he made her feel so very safe. His laugh was rich and soft as he returned her embrace.
“There you are, now. No one’s going to hurt you or frighten you anymore, Allegra. You place your trust in me,
capisce
? I’m going to take very good care of you,” he whispered as he petted her hair back. “Be a good girl till I get back.” He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, pausing to whisper by her ear, “
Then
you may be as naughty as you please.”
To her amazement, her stomach fluttered at his words. After all she had been through, he still knew exactly how to make her newfound desire stir. She watched him rise with natural grace and stride toward the cabin door.
Ah, she loved the way he walked, she thought with a sigh, that warrior strut.
There could be worse fates than to be held captive by such a man, she thought in exhaustion. Perhaps her sojourn as his hostage wouldn’t be so bad. Clearly, after having rescued her twice now, he would not hurt her. It would only be a day or two until Papa amassed the ransom he would demand. She’d probably be ruined, true, but at least she wouldn’t have to marry Domenic or any of Papa’s other tedious Genovese lords.
She looked around at the elegant space he called home, a large, bright cabin that gleamed with a colorful array of polished woods. Whoever he was, the captain had good taste, she thought, but for all its offhand luxury, the cabin displayed little of the orderly spit-and-polish she’d have expected of a mariner’s quarters. Everything looked as though he expected an elaborate staff of servants to materialize at any moment and clean up after him.
His berth, where she lay, was a giant bed built into the bulkhead, but it had a cozy feel, tucked behind deep-blue velvet curtains, which were presently looped back behind the two carved pilasters. The bed linens were rumpled, and a red satin blanket was kicked into a ball near the corner of the mattress.
A large leather storage trunk stationed at the foot of the berth was piled high with a careless mound of his clothes. A fine satinwood washstand with claw feet was nearby, nailed to the floor.
In the center of the cabin, a comfortably faded medallion rug of dark blues and reds adorned the polished wooden planks. Upon it stood a massive mahogany desk cluttered with books, half-furled scrolls and navigational charts, a pair of brass dividers, a table globe, and a sandglass. There was one ponderous oak armchair, upholstered in a dark wine brocade. On it, a tattered orange cat missing the tip of one ear was absorbed in the task of licking its paw.
Spanning the bulkhead opposite were cherrywood lockers to hold the captain’s belongings, and bookcases with etched glass doors, but the back wall of the cabin comprised the stern of the ship and was lined with beautiful diamond-shaped windows, some with brightly colored glass. In the center of this wall was a narrow door leading to a balcony beyond and all the wide green sea.
Lazar had paused in the doorway and was holding a low-toned conversation with the man who stood there, staring up at him as if he had sprouted two heads. This, she gathered, was John Southwell, or Vicar, the friend he had mentioned. She turned onto her side and studied him sleepily, sinking ever deeper into Lazar’s sprawling goose-down mattress.
Vicar was a lean, distinguished-looking older gentleman with a book tucked under one arm, long, gray-white hair pulled back in a neat club, and small spectacles perched on his aristocratic nose.
“Monteverdi’s daughter? I—I am speechless!” he exclaimed.
“Well, look at her,” her captor murmured, glancing in at her. “She’s priceless. What else was I to do with her?”
Vicar swept off his spectacles and tucked them neatly into his breast pocket. His deep-set, silver eyes were keen and penetrating as he glanced over at her.
Allegra’s toes curled with pleasure under the light sheet. No one had ever called her
priceless
before.
The small, intimate smile Lazar gave her from across the cabin pulled a sigh of contentment from the depths of her being. At her sigh, Vicar turned and stared back up at Lazar in what appeared to be utter disbelief.
Lazar turned back to Vicar, still slightly smiling. “Give her a small dose of laudanum to help her sleep, and see that she doesn’t get into mischief.”
“As you wish,” Vicar replied, shaking his head to himself.
“Are you a pirate, too, sir?” she asked with as much grace as the question garnered.
Lazar chuckled while Vicar stared at her, taken aback.
“My dear lady, no!” he replied with an urbane chuckle. “I’ve been the Devil’s prisoner now for, what, eleven years?”
“Prisoner,” Lazar scoffed. “Don’t mind his ploys for sympathy,
chérie
. He’s a wily old frigate bird. I can’t seem to shoo him away.”
Lazar told her that Vicar had been a professor at the Oxford University, in England, before their paths crossed. That sounded very interesting to her, but she was too tired at the moment to give a fig.
After Lazar had gone, Vicar stood in the doorway, staring at her. Then he marched over to her side and thrust out his right hand.
“Miss Monteverdi, I would like to shake your hand,” he declared.
“Oh? Why?” she asked, acquiescing with a sleepy smile, too tired to move any other part of her body.
Vicar crouched down to her level next to the bed. “Somehow you have bewitched our young captain, Miss Monteverdi. I don’t know how—divine Providence, I daresay, but oh, I have been waiting for something like this to happen for the past ten years! He might at last be free of this
obsession
!”
“Lazar has an obsession?” she asked idly, eyes closed. “Oh, with ladies, I suppose you mean. Yes, he is quite the charmer.”
“No, indeed, Miss Monteverdi, his obsession is with vengeance. Now, you must come at once. There is no time to lose!”
She dragged one eye open and regarded him skeptically. “Huh?”
“My dear lady, what would you dare for the people you love?”
She eyed him warily, her head too heavy to lift from the pillow. “Is this some scholarly dialectic, sir? For I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours—”
“No, no, it is a matter of the utmost urgency! Miss Monteverdi, Lazar is a man balanced on the very razor’s edge between good and evil. You may be the only one who can reclaim him before he is lost forever!”
It took several moments for Vicar to explain what Lazar intended, and then Allegra still did not entirely believe it, but enough of the pieces fit to dissolve her fatigue in a rain of cold fear.
Calmly Vicar assured her that if she did not act at once, her whole family would die at Lazar’s hands for the sake of some vendetta the pirate had against her father.
“What wrong did my father do him?” she cried as she jumped out of his berth. Knowing Papa’s dictatorial ways, she found it all too easy to believe that Papa had dealt Lazar some terrible injustice.
Vicar pursed his lips for a moment, then took pity on her. “His family was murdered. Your father was responsible.”
She froze, staring at him. The most horrible thought of her life flashed through her mind, striking nausea into the pit of her stomach.
What if he
was
Lazar di Fiore?
Could the rebels’ worst public accusation against her father be true—that Papa had betrayed King Alphonse?
Never could she believe such a thing, never.
“Who is he, Vicar?” she whispered hoarsely. “What was his family that my father destroyed?”
“I am not at liberty to say, my dear. Lazar will tell you what he deems best in time. For now, I fear you must make your decision blind.”
There was only one way to decide. “Let’s go!”
They went. As they ran, she wondered briefly why Lazar had chosen to spare her, but the answer required little thought. She realized now it had never been his intention to ransom her, not if he planned on leaving her whole family dead. The very thought made her skin cold with dread.