muscles ached as he strained against the rudder. He would not let it win! Not the sea, that pitiless mistress. Not the black emptiness that always threatened to swallow him. Salvation lay ahead, if he could just fight hard enough. But as he felt at last the blessed yielding of the rudder under his slippery grasp, a terrible sound split the sulphurous air. The crack and splinter of wood.
Balthazar shook the wet strands of hair from his eyes, staring up at the damaged mainmast of his ship. It listed, wavering in the gale. Soon, all too soon, it would crash to the deck, driving a hole through the wounded ship that would take them all to the bottom.
And atop the mast perched his father. Ermano Grattiano, dead these seven years by Balthazar’s own hand, clung to the splintered wood like a demented bat from hell, his black cloak and white mane of hair flying wildly in the wind. Even from that distance, his green eyes glowed, and he held out his bejewelled hand beckoningly.
“I told you that one day you would be mine, Balthazar,” he shouted, his voice clear and ringing over the howl of the storm. “We are one flesh and blood; you cannot escape me. You have killed my body, but I will always be with you!”
Balthazar shouted out his own fury. In his burning anger, he climbed the slippery, tumbling mast, not feeling the cold or pain. He was intent only on destroying the evil within himself, once and for all.
But Ermano only flew higher, ever distant, ever beyond reach. At last the mast fell entirely, sending Balthazar plummeting towards the battered deck—and certain death.
But he did not land in the cold sea. The waves did not rise up to claim him at last. He fell back on to a soft bed, amid a tangle of sheets and blankets.
He opened his eyes, staring wildly up at the dark wooden beams bisecting a whitewashed ceiling. The stench of lightning was banished by a warm, soft breeze from an open window.
This was not his cabin aboard the Calypso. There was no constant pitch and sway of waves, no watch bells or shouts from the deck. For a moment, he could not remember what had happened, he was still caught in the nightmare. In the storm, which had been all too real. And his father, who lived now only in his mind.
He tried to roll to his side, and the sudden stabbing pain in his shoulder reminded him. They had come ashore in Santo Domingo, seeking comfort after their travails in the Mona Passage. The battle with Diego Escobar and his pirate lot, the storm that damaged the mast and crippled them. They sought warm, dry beds, drink, food free of rot and weevils. Perhaps a pretty woman. What he had found was Diego, and his dagger.
“Damn the man’s eyes!” Balthazar cursed, as hot needles of pain shot down his arm. Diego had fought them on the seas, where Balthazar was greater and Diego knew he had no chance of victory. So, he had crept to Hispaniola and waited like a spider for his moment.
Ermano Grattiano might indeed be dead, but there was never any shortage of villains waiting to take his place. Diego was proving to be one of the more determined. Revenge was a potent motivation for anyone; it could even drive a man to piracy and murder. Balthazar knew all too well about revenge.
As he lay back on the bed, the rest of the night came flooding back to him in waves of vivid colour and noise. The flashing dagger, the shouts and commotion of running feet and utter confusion. The explosion. And the woman who peered down at him, her brown eyes filled with sparkling anger, concern and…
And what? He, who had spent years at sea and in rough ports learning to read men as if they were nautical charts because his fortune, his very life, depended on knowing their nefarious plans and deepest desires, could not read her face at all. Her eyes were a beautiful veil, opaque as fine Seville lace. Perhaps her life, too, balanced on knowing the thoughts of others while always hiding her own.
What had she read of him, as she stared down at him in that cacophonous tavern? As she tended his wound so carefully? And where, by all the gods where, had he seen her before?
Suddenly, there was a soft rustle of sheets, and that face was above him as she leaned over him. She must have been sleeping beside him in the bed, for her hair was loose, a river of wild curls over her shoulders, and she wore only a thin white chemise. The candles had burned out, and she was lit by the faint, chalky moonlight streaming from the open window.
He frowned as he stared up at her, studying her in the shadows. That sense of recognition was still there, but it was like a dream that faded with the dawn. The more he grasped for it, the more elusive it was. Yet it was still there, as tantalising as a Venetian perfume.
She was not beautiful, not like the courtesans of his youth, or like Marguerite, Nicolai Ostrovsky’s French wife. Golden, charming creatures of light and air. This woman, his physician tonight, had a thin face with high, sharp cheekbones, a long nose, full lips, and brows like silken raven’s wings. She obviously did not hide from the tropical sun, for her cheeks and nose were scattered with freckles. Her slim hands, slightly rough from work, had been calm and quick as they tended to him.
Not a pampered lady, then, but not a dockside whore either. He had surely never tupped her, or danced with her at some Venetian ball. But still that feeling persisted. She was not a stranger.
She reached out and gently touched his brow with one of those hands, her fingers cool and steady. The sleeve of the chemise fell back to reveal a thin wrist unadorned by any jewelled bracelets or rings. She smelled of clean water and soap, of ale and some rich tropical flower. Sweet and exotic, strange and familiar, all at once, like the islands themselves.
She smoothed back his tangled hair, her touch resting lightly on his cheek. His rough beard, the product of long days at sea, surely abraded her skin, yet she did not draw away. Her dark eyes watched him, gleaming like obsidian in the night.
And Balthazar felt the most unaccountable, irresistible urge to turn his face into her touch, to kiss the soft inside of her wrist, just where her lifeblood beat so strongly. To taste the palm of her hand with his tongue, until she gasped and that veil was torn away. Until she showed him her true self.
But he merely watched her, warily waiting to see what she would do.
“Do you feel feverish?” she said softly. “You are a bit warm. I should change your bandage.”
He felt the ripple of tension in her arm, as if she would pull away, and he reached up to gently grasp her wrist. To hold her touch to him, just for a moment more. It seemed so very long since he had touched a woman, inhaled her essence, felt her softness. It was a refuge, one he knew could not last.
A refuge in a mystery, for he still could read nothing of this woman!
“What is your name?” he said urgently, his hand tightening on her wrist. Here, wrapped in the velvet of an island night, alone with her, it seemed vital he know her name.
“I told you. I am Señora Montero.” Despite the Spanish name, the impeccable cadence of her Spanish words, he could hear a different accent lurking just beneath. A slight, unguarded music that was not there before, emerging only because she was tired.
It was almost like his own accent. Venetian, even after years of sailing the Spanish Main.
“What is your given name?” he asked.
She smoothed her touch along his cheek, her fingertips lightly skimming the line of his jaw. Feathering over his lips.
He captured the tip of her finger between his teeth, tasting her at last. She tasted of salt and flowers, like something deep and needful.
