Twenty-Three Degrees, Sixteen Minutes

Part 01

 

It was dark, but the darkness wasn't a problem; it was, if she cared to be honest, her only hope. She drew the darkness around her like a cloak, like a friend. Indeed, it had its soft, velvety aspect, like a freshly-made bed or a newly-laundered nightgown or the nose of a sweet-natured donkey--

Footsteps.

She ceased respiration upon the instant, straining her useless eyes, as well as the ears that had brought her the unwelcome news, to detect the intruder. Well, to be absolutely accurate, she was the intruder, and she had no idea what they'd do if they found her. She was fairly certain she wouldn't be lashed to the mast--and lashed, now that it occurred to her--but it assuredly wouldn't be pleasant. The steps faded, clunking away (perhaps heading below to a beckoning bunk), and she cautiously let the breath issue from between her parted lips, a bit dizzy with the relief.

It seemed she'd been crouching for days, but she knew it to be a fraction of that time--certainly long enough for the novelty of the waves lapping against the sides of the ship to become routine, then wearisome. Well, it had been her doing, this finding herself crouching in the darkness, afraid to betray her presence by the slightest sound. And if some form of payment were to be exacted, well, she supposed she could pay it. It was better than sitting home not knowing, wasn't it?

She sighed without a sound. And the adventure had started with such promise--an impromptu, yet fervent vow that so filled her heart there'd been no room for sense. Impractical. Impulsive. Very like her. She would have slapped herself for her folly, except that it would be so loud.

A few hours before, she had been crouching in the darkness at the dock, studying the ship and wondering how in Hades she was going to get aboard. The crew was loading supplies in haste, and she feared the to-and-fro would come to an end before she could think of a way to get herself aboard. Perhaps it would have been prudent to acquaint herself with the methods of a stowaway before lighting out, but it wasn't precisely as though she'd had time. Her eyes had run down what she could see of the vessel: climb up the rat-lines? Oh, certainly, in a skirt. Nail herself into a box and have the box fetched aboard? That would've taken far more planning, but... she hadn't had time. Bribe someone to smuggle her aboard? Not with the captain's fearsome temper; besides, she'd left without a real in her pocket. Nicely handled, that.

A diversion, perhaps. She was wondering how many additional centuries she'd have to spend in Purgatory if she set fire to something when she became aware of a presence next to her. Whipping her head round, she came face to face with Coquin, the little urchin who haunted the harbor at Haven. Coquin was staring intently at Intrepide, where sailors were shouting to one another and walking supplies up the gangway.

It didn't appear as if the girl were going to speak, so Brandy turned her head again to peer at the ship. The two of them studied it for a moment, then Brandy overcame her sudden, irrational reticence to whisper softly, "I was thinking to slip into an empty barrel and nail it shut."

Coquin shook her head, not taking her eyes from the vessel. "That never works," she murmured, her voice professionally low. "Intrepide maintains an inventory, and Mingeaux's reliable about checking it."

"Crawl up the rat-lines?" Brandy suggested in hope.

Coquin shook her head again, and in a diffuse glimmer of light Brandy could see her smiling. "She's well balanced--you'll pull her off stride, and they'll come to check what's wrong."

"Thus finding the rat," Brandy sighed, defeated. She thought of something else. "We could set the dock afire."

To her astonishment, Coquin took her seriously, but she shook her head in a decided negation. "Mingeaux'd spot that in a second. She'd have 'em search the ship and the dock." She thought for a moment. "Could you provide 'em with a case of Madeira as a bon voyage and then just... forget to get off?"

Brandy considered it carefully. "Have we time for me to get back to the tavern before she sails?"

Coquin scanned the dock, counting Intrepide's crew and making a careful note of their rhythms. She shook her head, and Brandy's courage plummeted. "I take it you've no money?" Coquin ventured.

Brandy shrugged, and Coquin let out a soundless breath. "It's not like you could bribe any of 'em, anyway--they work for Mingeaux."

"Is she so damnably virtuous, then?" Brandy inquired in a doleful voice.

Coquin turned to her for the first time with a grin. "How important is this?"

The breath left her in a rush. "Oh, more important than anything. If she sails away, I'll--I'll never see her again..."

She wasn't talking about Intrepide, and Coquin knew it. Coquin cocked her head in Brandy's direction. "Will you let me guide you?"

"Can you?" Brandy breathed. "I can't pay you--"

Coquin mugged a bit. "How could I take money for reuniting you with your handsome lover?"

It was the remark of a much older person, and Brandy was lost for a moment in a dizzying rush of wonder until Coquin studied her with the same critical air she'd applied to the loading on the dock. "That rosy-pink skin," Coquin murmured critically, and Brandy blushed, giving her the truth of it. "Hard to hide. Well, playing Dominguez for a fool has become so simple as to be tiresome. It's time for a real challenge."

And there, crouched in the darkness behind some oaken barrels, Coquin whispered and gestured to Brandy, sketching out their plan.

In the darkness of the gunnery-deck, Brandy stretched her aching back, as much as she dared. She had followed Coquin down the dock to a crawl-space leading to a little lean-to just past the rear of the customs-house, where they put together a little bindle of the things she'd need: a flask of water, a wide-mouthed jar to use for slops, some bread, a bit of soap--"It's always handy, you can never tell," Coquin had argued persuasively--a flint and steel and twine and some fishhooks in case they marooned her. At the prospect of the latter, Brandy's heart had beat more quickly, but there was no time to be apprehensive; they were on their way.

They skulked and circled back to the dock, where Intrepide was still loading, but there was less traffic going up the gangway. Their shadows melted in the uncertain light, and Coquin led her from pool of shadow to pool of shadow, moving like a sprite. There were long periods when they moved not a muscle, and at one point Mingeaux and Giuliana were within a few feet, talking in low voices about their destination and how best to proceed. Brandy was a bit light-headed when they moved on, and she realized it was because she had been holding her breath.

Slowly, by inches and quarter-hours, Coquin and Brandy stole aboard the ship, down the passageway, and into the gunnery-deck, just below a glass viewport. Brandy was so occupied in not tripping over the shrouds or coming to the attention of the crew that she settled in behind one of the cannon with a distinct feeling of dreaminess. The darkness, the quiet, the urgency of their mission, undertaken in silence, and her sudden closeness to Coquin, whom she'd known only slightly until the girl took the greatest of risks for pure adventure, seemed unreal.

In ethereal silence, Coquin eased open one of the gun-ports, whispering a few last-minute instructions: she'd know they were out to sea, and thus outside the range of the ship returning to Haven, when the ship began to roll in long waves. She was to remain silent until then, alert for every noise. And she was to remember why she was doing this, no matter what.

Brandy murmured her thanks in the lowest voice she could, and Coquin slipped wraithlike over the side, her figure scarcely discernible in the gloom. Brandy heard a tiny splash, almost like one of the harbor wavelets gently impacting the side of the ship, and then she reached out to close the gun-port, making as little noise as she could muster. She was able to cover the noise, for at that moment, someone up on deck gave the command to weigh anchor, and the rattling of the anchor-chain echoed through the ship.

And when the ship left her mooring, moving with the grace of a dancer out of the harbor, Brandy experienced a sense of excitement that became exultation. She looked through the viewport up at the stars, swaying and pitching as the ship headed for the open water.

Very late in the night, she was able to open the viewport without a sound, stretching up on her toes to dump the jar, and she made a late supper of some of her bread and water, enjoying the feel of the cool sea breeze on her face. She felt as alone and unmolested as the queen of the moon. She shut up the viewport and settled back into place, studying the stars with a slight smile, as if they were old friends come along on her voyage. Minute succeeded minute as the ship made its way to sea, and she held herself upright, thinking, It's working.

 

She had been dozing toward morning, but the sounds of the ship coming to life awakened her, rattles and thumps and low voices and the splashing of slops being heaved overboard into the long swells that Coquin had told her would indicate they were on the open water. In the rosy light of dawn glimmering through the viewport, she looked round muzzily at her little throne room. Her back was too sore to alleviate by moving, and she couldn't have stretched out her legs because of the cannon. She combed the sleep out of her eyes and ran her fingers through her untidy hair, longing for a pan of water to wash up in. She still had half the bread, and she had been very conservative with her flask of water.

She looked up at the viewport, noting the increasing golden color, and thought she probably wouldn't need it.

The smell of something good frying wafted through the air, and she was abruptly, powerfully hungry. At that moment, the door to the gunnery-deck swung open, and she dove beneath the cannon, peering out between the wheels.

Naturally, it was DiFalco, come to inspect the guns. She scratched her belly unselfconsciously and proceeded to a surprisingly disciplined examination, starting at the opposite end from where the stowaway crouched.

Brandy wiped her mouth hastily, gathered up her little bindle, and, clutching it to her like a shield, got stiffly to her feet.

DiFalco lifted her head at the movement, and Brandy stood without speaking, apprehensive and dignified. Their eyes locked, and DiFalco was the first to look away, calling uncertainly up the steps, "Mingeaux!"

* * *

"Something special," Nilsson beamed, "just for you, Captain."

The unappetizing bowl plopped down in front of her, and Jameson stared at it in quiet consternation, making a subtly frantic attempt to determine its nature. It might be anyth--

"Porridge," Nilsson announced, rocking a bit on his heels (always a hazardous habit on shipboard, even when they were safely docked).

Jameson cocked her head at it, attempting to justify the description. "With?" inquired Thomas, raising an eyebrow.

"Ah," Nilsson said smugly, dishing up another bowl and presenting it with a flourish to Thomas. "You get to the heart of the culinary arts, Mr. Thomas. I found some lovely little berries on the lee side of the island, right where the beach curves into the woods." His Scandinavian accent turned it into voods. "I saw a bright glimmering and said to myself, 'Ah, Nilsson, old boy, this will make a fine breakfast for the Captain and the crew."

"How thoughtful," Jameson said with apprehension, darting a look at Thomas. "And the... the blue part?"

"That's the clever touch," Nilsson told her expansively, making a gesture with his wooden spoon to urge them to eat up. "I found a bird's nest that the mama bird had temporarily aban--"

"Captain!"

The interruption was just in time, and Jameson took a moment for a completely undetectable sigh of relief when Emilie dashed into the common-room. "Slow down, dear heart," Jameson said by reflex.

Emilie skidded to a stop beside the Captain's chair. "Brandy's run off!"

"What?" Jameson set the spoon down with finality, the alleged porridge quite forgotten. "Run off? Run off how?"

"And where?" Thomas added. Mr. Nilsson was staring at Emilie, his eyes round and his mouth open.

"Mistinguette knows--" Emilie began.

"But she's not telling," said Torres heavily, walking into the common-room and taking off her hat. She sat at the table and gave Thomas's porridge a doubtful look.

"She ran off from the tavern last night," Emilie burst out, scarcely able to contain her excitement.

"Which she owns," Thomas pointed out. "Thus, it can hardly be regarded as 'running off'."

Jameson, reflecting on what he knew of the phenomenon, nodded gravely. In the silence, Torres picked up the narrative. "Brandy's nowhere to be found this morning."

Jameson exchanged a baffled look with Mr. Nilsson. "Where would she go?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Emilie asked, her voice containing a hum of thrill. At their inquiring looks, she exclaimed, "Intrepide!"

"Er," Thomas replied.

"What else could it be, Mr. Thomas?" Emilie went on. "She went to follow Captain Carlisle!"

Ah, God, Jameson sighed to herself, of course, she's probably right. Torres put her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her fist, gazing at Emilie fondly. "Hopeless romantics," she said, "here we go again."

* * *

Brandy stood with her best approximation of queenly demeanor, heart a-hammering, trying not to twist her hands together. Of a sudden she became conscious of Giuliana's silver necklace, a weight on her breast as she tried to catch her breath.

The response to DiFalco's call was immediate; Mingeaux clambered down the steps to the gunnery, stopping instantly at the sight of the tavern-mistress, as if she had grown into the deck like a tree. For a moment, all was silent and still, then Mingeaux uttered a breathy, shocked gust of a sigh.

As if that wasn't bad enough, another set of bootsteps right behind her announced the arrival of the captain. She halted behind Mingeaux, one hand up on the wall, one knee bent as she ceased walking, to stare stupefied at Brandy.

The silence was succeeded abruptly by an impressive chorus of bellowing. The cacophony commenced with Mingeaux berating DiFalco, who was doing her best to deny complicity. Giuliana's contribution was a panic-driven, rapid-fire questioning of Brandy, whose attempted explanations rose in pitch and volume.

The din had reached approximately half the level of the chorus of the damned in hell when they were joined by the only person who had not yet offered a loud and definite opinion on the situation. The calm, composed figure of Hester Brundage, dressed in roomy trousers and a loose shirt and wearing a large sun-blocking hat, moved slowly down the stairs, looking for all the world as if she were going for an idle stroll along the grounds of a plantation. The racket rose about her as she descended the steps with apparent unconcern, slipping an arm nonchalantly into Giuliana's.

Astonished beyond measure, Giuliana stopped talking and turned to look at Hester, who was making a shushing gesture, finger against her lips, to DiFalco. As Hester wound Mingeaux's arm around her waist, the first mate's torrent of words dried to a trickle, and Brandy came to herself to find that her mouth was open, but incapable of sound.

"It appears Intrepide has another visitor," Hester remarked, in French. "And I think I know who you must be." She made her way around the guns and took Brandy's hands. "You're Mingeaux's Brandy."

It was the first time Brandy had seen her awake and lucid, and she was struck with the appearance of the woman before her. Exposure had ravaged her--the healing skin was ample proof of the ordeal she'd undergone recently--but her face was warm and sympathetic, lively and alert. Hester's eyes were kindly, a dark gray that looked almost like marble in her blasted face. Someone genuine and likeable looked at her out of those eyes, and Brandy found herself irresistibly drawn to the woman whose damaged hands held hers with such delicate determination.

In the silence, Hester said gently, "We find ourselves in the same position--guests of these fine people, dependent on their hospitality, even though the idea wasn't precisely theirs. They're good people, they've taken a homeless woman in without a backward glance, nor any thought of payment... perhaps we can make ourselves useful to them, eh?" She glanced behind her to the captain, whose face was alternately pale and flushed. Hester turned back to Brandy and placed a gentle sun-scarred hand underneath her chin. "Child, you look weary. I'm only in a borrowed bed myself, but perhaps I can offer it to you...?"

"There's an empty cabin next to Spinelli's," DiFalco said with gruff courage.

Giuliana sighed, making a feeble gesture in the air. "The captain's cabin is available to Mlle. Tavernier," she said finally.

Hester gave her an approving look, as if she'd just passed some sort of test. "Thank you, Captain, that's very gracious of you. May I help get the young lady settled?"

"You shouldn't be out of bed yourself," Mingeaux pointed out. It sounded as though they'd had the discussion before, and frequently.

Hester turned to her, pleading prettily. "Just a few minutes?"

Mingeaux looked at Giuliana, and Giuliana looked at Mingeaux, and both of them wore similar expressions.

"Very well," muttered the captain, with a singular lack of grace, and Hester smiled down at the tavern-mistress.

"Time for you to get to your rest, eh?" she asked, linking Brandy's arm with her own and leading her up the stairs. "I warrant you've had a dull time of it, shut up here with only the cannon for conversation. And they weren't in a speaking mood, though it's not a cause for much regret..."

Her voice ran on, inconsequential and soothing, and they made the journey to the captain's cabin as if they were on a promenade through a fairy landscape. Giuliana unlocked the door, and it was with an odd sense of disconnection from reality that Brandy followed Hester in. She was captivated by the sight of the green, foaming sea smacking forcefully against the wall of glass at the rear of the cabin. Behind her, she heard Hester whisper a comment to Giuliana. By the time she had turned, Giuliana was nodding brusquely and withdrawing, and Hester shut the cabin door.

She continued to speak in soothing tones as she got Brandy undressed, then fetched soap and water and helped her sponge the grime of the gunnery from her skin. As Brandy dried herself with a caressingly soft towel, Hester rummaged in the captain's sea chest, pulling out a luxurious long nightshirt that looked well-loved. She helped Brandy slip it over her head, then poured her a bit of watered-down wine and tucked her gently into the captain's bed. Brandy turned her head to watch the play of wind and wave through the glass wall, and was in dreamland in seconds.

* * *

"So where has she gone?" Emilie persisted.

Mistinguette unfolded the wet tablecloth and gave Emilie a sidelong look ponderous with annoyance. "To the devil, for all I know."

"You sound certain of that," Jameson remarked, taking up the end of the tablecloth while Mistinguette rummaged in her apron for a clothespin. A capricious zephyr caught the tail of the cloth, tossing it up toward the blue sky, and Jameson snatched at it. Below them, the hill fell away toward the harbor, and the little town of Haven straggled haphazardly down the hillside toward the docks.

Mistinguette shrugged and pinned the cloth to the line. "Leaves me all the profits from the tavern."

"Mistinguette, you're her best friend!" Emilie's impatience sputtered like the flume in a gale, and Mistinguette calmly bent to the laundry basket to pull out another tablecloth. "How can you be so--so--"

Jameson put a damp, calming hand on her shoulder. "Dear heart," she said gently, "it's none of our business."

To one side, by the kitchen garden attached to the tavern, Thomas and Tessa watched the little scene with interest.

Mistinguette turned to snap at Emilie, "If I knew, I'd tell you, wouldn't I? D'you think I want her in the clutches of that arrogant six-foot blue-eyed she-demon?"

Jameson was taken aback by her vehemence. "I assume by that that you mean Captain--"

"Carlisle, that English heathen, with her unending waterfall of sterling and her high-topped boots and her pretty little ship and her talent for seducing impressionable young virgins," Mistinguette fumed. "Oh, aye, she's the one I mean." She shot an assessing look at Emilie. "And you, little missy, are mighty fortunate you didn't run afoul of the lady before your old playmate did."

Jameson attempted to deflect the storm. "Mistinguette, I've met her, and I must say my impression of her is quite different from the opin--"

Mistinguette whirled on her. "And has she stolen away your partner, Captain?"

Jameson glanced away from Mistinguette's fury. Her eyes, for some reason, rested on Sabamin Tessa, who stood straight as an arrow, the breeze fluttering the sleeves of her shirt. "I'm sorry," Jameson said quietly.

"Oh, Mistinguette, so am I," Emilie said, throwing her arms impulsively around the neck of the tavern-keeper. Mistinguette gave her arm a grudging pat. "But if we only knew where she--"

"I don't know," Mistinguette interrupted, looking somber. She turned her head to gaze out at the sea, calm from this distance. "My girl could be anywhere," she murmured, "and I can't help her..."

Emilie tightened her grip and looked out to sea, the wind catching her short blonde hair. "We might as soon find her by shooting the stars," Thomas remarked, and Jameson nodded in defeat.

Tessa glanced at him. "Shooting... the..."

There was an implied question in her voice, and Thomas added in distraction, "A navigational method that relies on comparing the locations of the stars with..." Struck by a sudden thought, he broke off and looked at her.

* * *

"She what?"

A hand slammed onto the ornate, highly-polished desktop, and Dominguez winced as it flexed. The handsome man at the desk spun out of his chair and turned to the tall window behind him with a swirl of coattails.

The low growl, when it came, thrummed with menace. "When?"

"Well before dawn, Excellency," Dominguez replied.

"Before dawn." The light gleamed on the polished-looking black hair as Aristide nodded unseeing out the window into the brilliantly-lit town tumbling down the steep hill. "And it took you until now to let me know?"

He whirled, and Dominguez kept his feet nailed to the floorboards; it was like facing a starving tiger. "You know, Dominguez, some of my servants are atrophied neither in the brains nor the stones." Dominguez tried to keep his face impassive, not that it was easy. "You've let that maddening bitch slip out of the harbor."

"Excellency, there was no legal--"

"I am the law in this misbegotten town, you pox-balled excuse for a constable!" Aristide's fine lips curled in disdain. "Let there be no mistake about that. If I want her detained, then detained she shall be." Aristide took a step across the gleaming marble floor, considering. "And if I wanted her stripped naked, beaten senseless, and thrown into the basement to await my... pleasure... then it should be done." His eyes were looking at something not of this world as he stopped before a pedestal that held a small bronze statue of some pagan goddess with a sword in her hand. He reached out for it, and Dominguez saw the glitter of the jewels on Aristide's manicured fingers as he tightened his grip around the waist of the figure. "And if I wanted her dead..."

Aristide's hand closed, his knuckles growing strained and bloodless. In the silence, Dominguez watched as Aristide struggled to master his passion. His hand loosened abruptly, and Dominguez stared in astonishment at the dents in the statue. A trickle of sweat crept from Dominguez's hairline.

"Well." Aristide turned, and the cruelly handsome face was smooth, without a trace of anger. "Well, well, well."

Dominguez didn't dare reach up to wipe away the sweat.

"As you have lost her," Aristide said mildly, as if remarking on the weather, "it's your job to go after her." He crossed the floor to a map-table, and Dominguez stepped forward cautiously as Aristide unrolled a chart. "The ship's in the harbor," Aristide said, nonchalantly indicating a point on the chart. "You can start loading immediately."

Dominguez saw what he was pointing at, and the sweat began to prickle along his eyelids.

"A lovely voyage in a cloudless spring is hardly what a miserable failure like you deserves," Aristide said casually, "but that'll leave you well-rested to fend off that infernal woman."

"Excellency," Dominguez whispered, "are you certain that's where she's headed?"

Aristide's aristocratic brows drew together, and his face turned murderous in the shadow of the fine lace curtain. "Oh, aye," he murmured grimly, "that's where she's headed." He seemed to plunge into a reverie then, but after a moment, he shook himself free and turned to Dominguez. "And you're to stop her. With your worthless life, if necessary."

Dominguez saluted, trying to work some spit into his parched throat. Aristide waved a fine bejeweled hand in dismissal, and Dominguez made his way to the heavy mahogany door, gleaming with brass and opulence.

He was almost out of the room when Aristide called his name. Dominguez stuck his head back inside, trying not to betray his reluctance.

Aristide's smile was purest charm, all white teeth and crinkly eyes. "Surely I needn't warn you," he said lightly, "not to fuck this up."

* * *

"Do you see the horizon?" Jameson asked.

"Yes," Tessa whispered. One of her eyes was screwed shut, the other peering intently through the eyepiece of the sextant.

"And the sun?"

"Yes."

"Now rotate the mechanism until the bottom of the sun is in line with the horizon."

Carefully, as if the sextant were a precious diadem, Tessa complied. Thomas watched from the deck of Discovery, pocketwatch in hand, as Jameson and Tessa stood on the dock. Torres and Emilie leaned on the rail next to Thomas. Emilie had a strip of paper wrapped around the rail, ready to record the numbers with the pencil she held in her other hand. Torres had the almanac open.

It lacked a few moments of noon, and they were teaching Tessa to shoot the sun.

It was a remarkably pragmatic thing, and one Jameson should have thought of herself. What better way to use her keen mathematical mind than to start with navigation? Well, she told herself wryly, watching the tall blonde absorbed in her task, it wasn't as though she hadn't had other things to occupy her mind.

"There," Tessa murmured, the quiet fervor of a contemplative in her voice. The wind stirred her fine blonde hair, and her exquisite profile was etched sharply against the glitter of the sunlight on the waves. The strength in her hands wasn't apparent until she was doing something that demanded deftness, like now.

"Good," Jameson said in soft encouragement. "Good. Keep it there."

Thomas had an eye on the pocketwatch. "Ten seconds to noon," he said, counting down until he said quietly, "Mark."

Cautiously, delicately, Jameson reached up to touch the side of the sextant. Her hand was trembling a little, and she had some difficulty attributing it to her abbreviated breakfast. She made certain the mechanism was tight enough and whispered, "Now make a note of the angle."

Tessa swung the sextant from her eye like a practiced mariner and read the angle off the side, her voice clear and strong. She turned uncertain blue eyes on Jameson. "Is that correct?"

"Indeed," Jameson replied, nodding with relief. Behind her, Emilie scribbled the number on the paper pressed to the rail.

Now all that remained was to refer to the almanac and put it together. It lacked only a few numbers and some calculations, but Thomas, hands clasped behind his back, cut out the tiresome part by prompting, "So that makes our latitude..."

Without hesitation, Tessa's lips parted to give him the number.

Jameson caught her breath in shock. The silence on the dock was total; even Torres held her tongue. In the stillness, Tessa's face took on a troubled look. Her eyes never left Jameson's face, and the sculpted look of her gave Jameson the dizzying impression that she was standing close to a statue, but one that breathed and spoke and walked and...

Spoke. She'd just said something else, and Jameson pulled herself together to answer, even though she had no idea what it was. "Well, Torres?"

"Dead on, Captain," Torres answered, sounding thunderingly impressed, but Jameson never knew whether she was smiling because she couldn't tear her gaze from the vision standing beside her on the dock. Tessa's rangy blonde beauty was framed by a landscape in blues--the gently moving sea, the sky scattered with shreds of cloud, the snug indigo silken vest that concealed her form so well--and the look of quiet triumph on her face was a wonder.

"She didn't so much as ask for a reference," Torres said, thumping the almanac closed and turning to peer over Emilie's shoulder at the paper.

"I--I noted the positions from the almanac before we began," Tessa replied, as if trying to justify herself. "Wasn't that right?"

Distracted, Emilie nodded. Jameson gave Tessa a smile she hoped was reassuring, but her fingertips were tingling and her legs were trembling. "I suppose," Thomas remarked, "that for some people, one reading must be sufficient to memorize information beyond possibility of loss."

"Oh, well done, Miss Tessa." Jameson felt a bit dizzy, and it wasn't entirely the noontime heat or the dazzle of the sunlight on the waves. Tessa was the only one who didn't appear to think she'd done anything exceptional; indeed, she seemed almost apologetic.

"I have a question," Tessa began tentatively.

"Anything," Jameson breathed, clasping her hands as if in prayer. She caught herself in annoyance and squared her shoulders, tried not to look goose-struck. "What is it?"

"This is indeed a delicate maneuver," Tessa said, gesturing toward the sextant, which she held before her like a queen holding an orb. "How is it possible to get an accurate sight from the deck of a pitching ship?"

Torres burst into laughter and galumphed down the gangway to join them. "That's where those long, long legs of yours are going to come in handy."

Emilie awakened from her trance and hurried after Torres. "Hey--hey, wait for me..."

Jameson smiled up at Tessa's questioning face. giving her a gentle pat on the shoulder. "As they note, it's as much art as science. You'll have a number of advantages--chief among them is keen eyesight, but your height will also give you more options for keeping yourself stable. You're as graceful as a dancer, and that'll help..." She dried up again, looking into eyes as fresh and blue as an early-morning sea. My God, did Tessa have no conception of what she'd just done?

Emilie reached for the sextant, and Tessa turned it loose with care. Emilie slipped the sextant into its case, and Torres pounded Tessa on the back in congratulation. "That's not nearly as goddamned impressive as being able to do the calculations in your head."

"They're not that challenging," Tessa said, as if she doubted Torres's sincerity.

"Oh, Mlle. Tessa," Emilie groaned, fastening the clasps, "please don't make me sick with envy."

Torres draped an arm around Emilie's neck and grinned up at Tessa. "She turns such an unflattering shade of green."

"That's just seasickness, you beast," Emilie retorted.

"That's a relief," Torres shot back. "I thought it was me," and Tessa laughed.

They're becoming a team--At that moment, Jameson became aware of something pulling at her sleeve. She looked down, and two stubborn dark eyes peered up at her. "Coquin," she said, relieved that it wasn't the kraken, not that anything would have been much of a surprise. "You're just in time for the navigation lesson."

"I have to talk to you, Captain," Coquin murmured, her face serious. "Permission to come aboard?"

It took Jameson a moment. "Of--of course," she stammered, putting her arm around Coquin's thin shoulders and leading her up the gangway to Discovery.

* * *

Someone was knocking in her dreams, and after a few moments, Brandy realized she was no longer dreaming. She sat up in bed and called, "Come in."

She shook her head to clear it, fearing who the visitor was, and congratulated herself on her prudence when Giuliana stepped carefully over the threshold. The cabin, though by far the most spacious she'd seen aboard a sailing vessel, got a lot smaller with the imposing presence of the captain. The blue eyes, smoldering with some emotion Brandy thought she could identify without challenge, bored into her, and finally Brandy turned her head to look out the window, cursing the flush she could feel spreading over her face.

"Did you sleep well?"

The courteous question fell into the silence with the ponderousness of a brick, and Brandy cleared her throat. "Very." She remembered her manners, even as she watched the waves slap and foam against the glass window, and added, "Thank you."

The silence went on for some time, and Brandy became absorbed in the rhythm of the sea undulating gently against the glass.

"Is it, then, so hard to look at me?"

Startled, Brandy turned her head. Giuliana was laying her hat on the desk bolted into the wall. She sat heavily in the chair at the desk, her hands dangling over the armrests.

"Hard? No," Brandy said. "In fact," she went on, with thoughtless imprudence, "up to now, looking at you has been one of the chiefest pleasures of my life..." The look on Giuliana's face made her eloquence dry up. She crawled a bit of the way across the bunk, reaching out, half-aware, for Giuliana's hand. "Captain, I owe you an apology for my rashness, which has put the crew and your mission in considerable--"

Giuliana held up a strong white hand, and Brandy stopped. Miserable, she swung her legs over the edge of the bunk and watched her feet dangle several inches from the floor. "I've just handed you a humongous problem, haven't I?" she said in a tiny voice.

There was a gleam in the captain's eye. "Say, rather, mademoiselle, that you've merely attended to a detail I was too rushed to consider."

"Hm?" Brandy said, her attention caught by the way the light bounced off the deep-blue irises of the captain's gorgeous eyes. She also looked weary, and Brandy was certain she'd had a great deal to do with that.

"There's the matter of the magical night you promised me," Giuliana said, one corner of her mouth turning up in what couldn't possibly be anything but a smile. "I wasn't courteous enough to accept your gracious and most heavenly offer, for which I owe you my sincerest apologies."

After a moment, Brandy realized that her mouth was open, and she shut it. "I--I see," she said, subdued. "So you think--" She made a series of gestures with her hands, not at all certain what she was attempting to convey.

"Mam'selle," Giuliana murmured warmly, "I must confess that the sight of you largely negates my ability to think."

Brandy was on her feet and across the cabin, and Giuliana swept her up in her arms before either of them quite realized it. Giuliana's lips pressed against Brandy's, and Brandy broke away for a moment to gasp, "I thought you'd be so angry..."

"Oh, I assure you, mam'selle, you're not mistaken," Giuliana replied, her voice rumbling deep in her chest, where Brandy could feel it through the waistcoat and her nightgown.

"But--" Brandy's hands worked their way into the captain's hair, which was thick and luxuriant and smelled like the sea, and Giuliana responded by planting a series of sizzling kisses down her neck.

"D'you know what we do to stowaways in these parts?" Giuliana whispered, and her teeth crept into the kissing just enough to get Brandy's attention.

"No--I mean--" Brandy replied, half out of her mind, trying to move so that Giuliana could get to just the right spot, if only either one of them had any idea where it was.

"You, my girl--" Giuliana interrupted, her breath warm on Brandy's neck, "are in for--a very--very--serious--thrashing..."

"Oh," Brandy breathed, her fingers tangling in the captain's hair as she drew her closer. Giuliana's hand slid with lightning insistence up the nightgown, and Brandy caught her breath in a little hiccup as Giuliana cupped her breast. "C--can it wait until we're out of bed?"

Giuliana caught up Brandy's hand with her own and pressed a kiss into her palm. "Whatever for?" she asked lightly, leading Brandy toward the bunk and reaching for the hem of the nightgown as they moved with an awkward, insistent grace.

This time, Brandy knew, there would be no knock on the door. The cloth swept up over her back, and a delicious wave of goosebumps followed. It was going to be something of a problem to keep kissing Giuliana while she was having her nightgown drawn over her head, and Brandy didn't feel entirely equal to a difficult task. Giuliana, bless her, took care of it with breathtaking ease, and Brandy found herself pressed against the soft feather-bed in the bunk, Giuliana settling in beside her and over her, their lips drinking from one another.

"Giuliana," Brandy gasped, as the captain's hands roved her bare flesh. She wanted to strip Giuliana naked and dive into her, but all she could manage was to hang on, gripping the captain's shoulders as the kissing and fondling went on. Her breasts came alive under the expert touch, and she found herself wanting to press her body against her lover's so hard that they wouldn't be able to pry themselves apart. Even the pitch and roll of the ship added to it, moving them together precisely when it was most thrilling and pulling them apart when they needed a bit of distance; it was as if the cosmos itself was part of her body, an infinite expansion of the exquisite sensation of being here, centered in Giuliana, her lover's body melting along her limbs.

Giuliana seemed just as captivated as she was, and when she raised her head to look into Brandy's eyes, Brandy felt her passion gather itself into a tight knot centered south of her navel and north of her knees. Oh, she said, was all she could say, and Giuliana buried her lips in Brandy's flesh again, pushing the beautiful silver necklace out of the way to nuzzle at her breasts, whispering Ah God, ah God over and over until it became the sweetest music she had ever heard.

She would never know what it was that made her hold up a willful hand and push at Giuliana's shoulder. The captain was not inclined to desist, and it took some determination. "For God's sake," Giuliana exclaimed in impatience, lifting her head finally, "what is it now?"

"Oh, my beautiful darling, I know, I know." Brandy cupped the captain's face in one hand and drew the sheet over her nakedness, as well as she could, with the other. "I want you as much as you want me." It made her dizzy to admit it, and she thought to herself, So this is womanhood. "But I think we ought to talk."

"What?" Giuliana sat up, outrage and frustration clearly painted on her flushed face.

With her elbows out of the way, it was easier to gather the sheet around herself. "Talk," Brandy said firmly.

Giuliana closed her eyes. Her fists waved a moment, aimlessly, and then she said through clenched teeth, "Horse-racing, euchre, or Caribbean politics?"

Brandy resolved not to laugh. "What was on that paper you drew from your coat pocket at the tavern last night?"

Giuliana's eyes popped open.

"I have a right to ask," Brandy said, a touch defensive. "Whatever it was, it took you from my side after I'd just made an offer I've never made to anyone."

Giuliana levered herself into a more comfortable position and pulled at her shirt-collar, which had become disarranged somehow. "And you think it must've been a billet-doux, do you?"

"No," Brandy said baldly.

"No?" Giuliana parroted, looking about as clever as a cart-horse.

"No," Brandy said, sitting up and wrapping the sheet about her. "You told me you'd refused Genevieve Ste. Claire what I fully expected her to ask of you." She concocted a silent but fervent mental curse for the irritating blonde, then went on, "The paper you took from your pocket wasn't scented, and it was too light to have any money in it. If it's not perfumed or gilded, it's not Ste. Claire; she hasn't anything to lure a woman other than poison or gold."

"Hm," Giuliana replied, not looking at Brandy's face.

"Giuliana," Brandy said patiently, resettling the sheet so that it was a bit less revealing, "please pay attention, can't you?"

"You ask a difficulty, my dear," the captain sighed, "but as I am your lovesick swain, you may do with me as you will."

"Later," Brandy said shortly. "There's only one thing that could've torn you from my side." Giuliana wasn't entirely attentive, even yet, and Brandy sighed, "Perhaps I flatter myself."

"Not without reason," Giuliana said, shaking herself awake. "You were saying--only one thing?"

Brandy nodded decisively. "I think someone's told you where your sister is."

Giuliana stared at her, incapable of reply.

* * *

Jameson drummed her fingers against the table in the common-room aboard Discovery. "So Dominguez is loading up Aristide's ship for immediate departure."

"He's going after Intrepide," Emilie said instantly.

Coquin nodded, taking a drink from the mug of watered ale Mr. Nilsson had set before her. She wiped the foam from her mouth and said to Emilie, "It must be."

"Why must it?" Tessa asked gently. She gave Jameson an apologetic look, as if she hadn't intended to interrupt, but Jameson made a conciliatory gesture.

Coquin turned to her, addressing her remarks practically to the ceiling. "Aristide's got something Captain Carlisle wants."

"Her sister?" Torres asked, her eyes narrowing.

"It has to be," Emilie said, and her excitement was palpable. "It has to be!"

"Oh, wonderful." Jameson ran a hand over her face. "And Dominguez is going loaded for bear."

"Or 'pretty little ship'," Thomas added by way of clarification.

Jameson raised her eyes to the pyramid-shaped lightports in the ceiling. "Can he truly intend to blow her out of the water?"

"Sooner that than lose Mam'selle Carlisle," Torres pointed out.

"Why is this one woman so important?" Jameson wondered aloud.

"She's alleged to look very like the captain," Torres said with a grin.

Jameson raised an eyebrow. "Some day, you must tell me where you acquired your notions of romance." She thought an instant, then added, "Belay that." She sighed herself into wakefulness, turning to Thomas. "Well, are we ready to leave port?"

He nodded. "On your command, Captain."

"Then I suppose we'll be returning the favor of skin-saving, unarmed and ill-prepared as we are."

"We can do it," Emilie cried, with all the fervor of the young believer in the improbably miraculous.

"There's one vote, at least," Jameson said dryly. "I'll have to ask the rest of the crew if they object to the possibility of getting irretrievably punctured without recourse to vengeance."

Torres's reply was swift. "You know what we'll tell you."

Jameson got to her feet and bent to look Coquin in the eye. "Coquin," she said firmly, "D'you have any idea where he's headed?"

Coquin nodded decisively. "An island called--"

 

"--Persephone," Giuliana said heavily, tapping the paper with her index finger.

They were gathered in Intrepide's topside salon after the noon meal, the sun flooding through the windows ringing it on three sides. The chart lay spread on the table, secured by map-weights. Atop it lay the paper Giuliana had acquired in such a novel fashion from Mlle. la Méchante. It bore a single line in English, in a fine scholarly hand: She's on Persephone.

Mingeaux shrugged, turning to Spinelli and DiFalco. "There is an island by that name."

Spinelli nodded eagerly. "And Aristide owns it."

Giuliana's brow darkened at that, and Brandy patted her arm in silent support. Miss Brundage frowned and leaned over the chart, peering nearsightedly. "Can you show me?"

Spinelli ran a finger out from a latitude marker at the edge of the chart, then followed the line until it crossed a minuscule dot. "There."

Miss Brundage leaned further over the chart, threatening to topple, and Brandy stifled a giggle at the thought of her losing her balance and sprawling gracelessly across the map. No one else shared her amusement; they all looked deadly earnest, and Brandy swallowed her laughter.

"Here's Haven," Miss Brundage murmured, tapping it with one finger. Mingeaux reached around her to put her own finger on the chart, marking the place, and Miss Brundage scanned for something else, her eyes only inches from the parchment. "Here's the transshipment island--it doesn't bear the name the sailors gave it," she added, flashing a bit of a grin at Mingeaux, who smiled back at some private joke they didn't share with the others. "And here," she announced finally, "is the aptly-named Persephone."

Brandy wanted to ask what made the name so appropriate, but the human silence in the salon was oppressive. The rush of the sea and the wind made it impossible to hear so much as Giuliana's breathing, and she wondered what the captain was thinking.

Mingeaux straightened and nodded at the chart, arms crossed, one hand to her chin. "It fits. It fits. Here you have an easy day and a half sail from the transshipment island to Persephone, which is, in turn, only a day or so out of Haven. Easy to find, if you know where it is; off the shipping lanes, so it's easily concealed."

"You have a great affinity for finding places to hide," Miss Brundage remarked, with an air of teasing, and Brandy saw something novel: Mingeaux blushing.

"It may come in handy," Giuliana commented without a hint of humor, and Brandy, lust-addled and larkish, realized abruptly just how serious this was. "Spinelli, can you get us there?"

"Aye, Captain," said the pilot confidently. "With the Captain's permission?"

Giuliana waved her away, and Spinelli saluted and left the salon to plot their course. Giuliana lifted her eyebrows at Mingeaux. "Saluting now, is it?"

Mingeaux shrugged diffidently, smiling. "If one respects one's captain."

Giuliana nodded, looking back down at the chart. "Now all we need is a way to get her off that hunk of rock."

DiFalco opened her mouth, and Mingeaux interrupted before she'd gotten half the breath to speak. "DiFalco, we are not letting off ordnance within a mile of the Captain's sister. I promise you, you may orchestrate a celebratory salute with every gun we carry after she's safe aboard."

"We could send a party of sailors ashore to fetch her with muskets," DiFalco said.

Brandy laughed, and every head turned toward her. "Sorry," she said, subdued.

"No, no, I'm certain your keen mind has seen a liability in that approach," Giuliana said, folding her arms over her chest. It made Brandy want to salute. "Well?"

Brandy gestured feebly. "It's only that... that... well, your sailors. They look like... like sailors." Giuliana looked unenlightened, and Brandy went on, "If Aristide has guards on the island, he's certainly not going to allow armed cutthroats to land without having something to say about it." DiFalco brightened at the description "cutthroat", and Mingeaux snorted in derision. Giuliana was looking frankly skeptical, so Brandy added, "Something explosive."

"I have a suggestion," Miss Brundage interjected.

Giuliana didn't look precisely patient, but she replied politely, "I should be most grateful to hear it."

* * *

Despite Thomas's assertion that the ship was ready to leave on the instant, it was deep into afternoon before Discovery left her berth at Haven for the open sea. They were almost two hours behind Dominguez. As they pulled out of the harbor, Emilie spotted a commotion on the wharf, and Jameson, raising the glass to her eye, saw a detachment of Dominguez's soldiers pounding down the dock, muskets held ready. The hangers-on at the port gathered as the captain of the detachment waved his arms around, yelling at them.

Jameson could easily guess the text of the sermon. "Well, well, well," she murmured to Thomas, standing beside her. "It appears Aristide didn't intend to grant departure privileges to just anyone."

"So much for the notion that we were struck by a sudden fit of fossil-lust," Torres commented, leaning against the rail and wrapping her hand around one of the shrouds. "He'll wonder how we knew."

Coquin, to Thomas's left, stared at the soldiers in apprehension, and he put his arm around the girl's shoulders, pulling her close to his side in an unmistakably fatherly gesture. "In that case," Thomas added in a clear voice, "we have done well to add our young navigator to the crew."

"Aye," Jameson said fervently, crouching before Coquin. "And here she'll stay till it should please her to join a different ship."

"I'll never join another ship," Coquin shot out in a growl.

"Well said!" clapped Torres. "P'raps you can take over in the galley. God knows we could use it."

"I wouldn't wish apprenticeship to Mr. Nilsson on our newest crewmate," Jameson said without thinking. She grinned sheepishly at Thomas. "Not the first day, at any rate."

They lofted more canvas as soon as Jameson dared, and in next to no time, Berthe, taking her turn in the crow's nest, had spotted what looked like a sail.

* * *

Mingeaux caught up with Hester on the shady side of the ship. She was perched on the ledge that ran along the stern, her back against the wall of the wheel-house, her unbound hair streaming to one side in the wind. The breeze snapped at the long sleeves of her shirt, and her too-long trouser legs were tucked into soft knee-length lace-up boots. She was looking out to sea, humming serenely to herself.

"May I join you?" Mingeaux called, and Hester came to herself in an instant, patting the ledge in front of her. Mingeaux didn't dare sit on it, lest it pitch her into the sea unawares, so she leaned against the ledge, placing her hands to either side to steady herself against the well-kept wood. Hester looked out to sea again, the charming marbled eyes fixed on some distant point or none at all. Her hands lay idle in her lap, and one leg swung into space, keeping time with the tune she was humming. How does she keep her balance like that?

Hester turned to her after a moment, the mild gray-eyed gaze giving Mingeaux's heart a little skip. She looked infuriatingly healthy, and that gave Mingeaux even less reason to forbid her the dangerous mission she'd proposed. She tried to marshal her arguments, vowing to herself an eloquence that would surpass the most honeyed words that ever dripped from her lips.

"I take it," Hester said, raising her voice over the suck and hush of the waves, "that you've come to talk me out of it?"

Mingeaux thought about it for a while, biting her lip and staring at the deck. "No. That is--" It was no use; all her carefully-arranged rhetoric had fluttered away like a handful of rose petals in a stiff breeze. She turned to Hester, who was still watching, head to one side, exposing a beautiful tanned expanse of skin at her throat. "Yes."

Hester smiled sadly and directed her gaze to her hands.

"You must understand," Mingeaux added hastily. "I--"

"Do," Hester said, leaning forward to place a gentle hand on Mingeaux's lips. "I do understand, my angel." She drew back a bit, and Mingeaux wanted to snatch up her hand and press ardent, emotional kisses on it. "You think it a dreadful risk of the type only you and the Captain should undertake. You're certain I'll be captured and spirited away to some lurid dungeon, where things will happen that will give you years of nightmares and the tellers of brothel-tales much fodder for encouraging jaded imaginations." She shrugged, the too-large shirt rising and falling in the wind like a winding-shroud. "Or else I'll have some entertaining new bullet holes to go with the scars Apollo's already left me, or perhaps we'll have no luck but bad and you'll end up heaving my lifeless carcass over the si--"

"Don't," Mingeaux whispered, pain blossoming in her heart. She took up Hester's hand in her own--it seemed small cradled there, small and delicate and far too precious to risk.

"Doesn't it sound ridiculously improbable?" Hester asked sensibly. "Be honest, now."

"Hester, I could watch ninety-nine percent of the human race march up to Aristide's front door and spit right in his eye, and never turn a hair. But this--this is you..." Miserably, Mingeaux buried her lips in Hester's palm.

"Come, come, my angel." Hester's other hand crept into Mingeaux's hair, a soft, reassuring caress. "Where's your faith in your boss?" Mingeaux was a bit confused, and Hester laughed her wonderful lively laugh. "I meant the one who outranks the Captain." She moved her hand, soft and comforting, to the side of Mingeaux's face. "Your handsome nemesis couldn't kill me the first time, and I doubt he'll succeed with Intrepide's crew behind me." She smiled into Mingeaux's eyes.

"The Captain's sister is not your responsibility," Mingeaux muttered stubbornly. "The Captain and I should be the ones who--"

"Oh, aye," Hester replied with an airy laugh. "A six-foot tattooed woman can hide anywhere in the Caribbean, especially when she's accompanied by another six-footer who looks exactly like their captive."

Mingeaux sighed, remembering that, in all the continent, Hester was the only one on their side who would recognize both the Carlisle sisters by sight. Curse the luck; she'd have to think of something else. Eagerly, she began, "Your hands--"

"I'll wear gloves."

"Your face--"

"Mingeaux," Hester said, her tone maddeningly schoolteacherish, "these are the tropics. It would be difficult to find a fair-skinned woman whose face wasn't sunburnt."

Mingeaux placed a series of tiny kisses on the back of Hester's hand, trying to think.

"I appear," Hester said, "to have run you quite out of arguments."

"I should know better than to argue with a woman." Mingeaux shook her head impatiently. "'Tisn't as though I've ever won."

"There are benefits," Hester replied vaguely, tracing the outline of the tattoo over Mingeaux's mouth with her thumb. "Why should you and the Captain have all the fun? Honestly, it's as though you believed one had to reach a fathom in height to swashbuckle. D'you know what I'd like?"

Mingeaux shook her head soberly.

Hester's hand skimmed over the designs on her brow, and a skittering sense of ticklish expectation followed her caress, drenching Mingeaux in emotion and sweat. Hester said, almost too low to be heard over the noise of the waves, "To redeem the promise I've been too ill to appreciate."

Mingeaux's mouth went dry.

"Tonight," Hester added.

* * *

Jameson and Thomas were watching the same thing through separate spyglasses: a little corsair, light and fast, with crimson-colored sails. They were still too far away to read the name on the stern, but Jameson had no doubt whatsoever as to her identity.

"That's her," Coquin affirmed, pointing at the yacht as if they didn't know where it was. "That's the Sang du Diable."

There was a moment of silence, each one of them wondering, Now what? Inevitably, it was Torres who intruded on the quiet.

"What a stupid name," she said.

* * *

Mingeaux's heavy tread approached the mess, and Brandy saw Hester's eye flash with some unnameable emotion. The door opened, and Mingeaux stepped carefully over the threshold, sweeping her tricorne from her head and hanging it from a peg on the wall. "About an hour out," she announced abruptly to the captain. "Be too dark to make landfall, time we get there."

Giuliana sighed. "Those damned reefs. Can we find a place to spend the night?"

Something about that question appeared to make Mingeaux mighty nervous, and she stammered, "Er--yes---that is, Spinelli already has a berthing in mind, Captain."

Hester folded her hands as if in prayer and looked at her lap. "Good," Giuliana said. She glanced at Hester and added lightly, "D'you think DiFalco would object to taking your watch tonight?"

Mingeaux gaped at her. "Oh... er... thank you, Captain, but that's not necessary--"

"Like hell," Brandy muttered under her breath, eyeing Mingeaux's lover, who was struggling not to blush. Ignoring her embarrassment, Hester lifted her head and gave Brandy a serenely grateful look, and Brandy realized that she liked her very much.

* * *

They were drawing closer to the Sang du Diable, and Jameson shut up the spyglass with a gentle, yet decisive snap. "Right," she said. "Strategy conference."

Fourteen eyes studied the ship, growing ever closer in the approaching twilight. Tessa stroked the side of the sextant absently, and Torres frowned at their red-rigged quarry as if it could tell her how best it might be captured.

Jack Sere had joined them on deck, and he considered and discarded several ideas in a flash, making for a display that would have been entertaining in a less-critical situation. "Perhaps we could sneak over under cover of darkness and remove the linch-pins in her rudder," he suggested finally.

Torres whistled in admiration and looked tempted, and Jameson had to stop it before it went any further. "Mr. Sere," she said severely, "we want to slow them down, not condemn them to death!"

"Maybe just one?" He looked so hopeful.

"No. I absolutely forbid it," Jameson told him.

Undaunted, Jack turned to Torres. "Can you do a rain dance?"

"I am going to knock your teeth so far down your throat you'll need a torch and a windlass to get them back," Torres growled.

"Make another suggestion," Thomas advised him, "only this time try to incorporate some practicality."

"Stop being so mean!" Emilie exclaimed, taking Jack's arm. "At least he's making a suggestion. I have yet to hear plans from the rest of you!" Abashed, she flushed. "I--I'm sorry, I haven't any right--"

"Quite right," Jameson interrupted. "Emilie's precisely correct. Don't challenge anyone's ideas; they might not be practical in themselves, but they might lead us to something that is."

There was another silence, and Torres drummed her fingers ominously against the rail, glaring at Jack.

"We could send over a fire-boat," Thomas said.

The approval was near-universal. Jameson's mouth dropped open in stupefaction. When she could speak again, she sputtered, "Set her afire? Oh, certainly, why not burn her to the water-line? Even better, we'll just ram her amidships, cut her in two, and sink with her to the bottom of the ocean to be sure we've done a proper job. That'd solve all our problems." Torres looked like she was considering this seriously, and Jameson threw her hands into the air. "Are all of you besotted with bloodlust?"

"It would be easier," Jack mumbled grudgingly.

"Mr. Sere," Jameson said, "pray save the battle-readiness for a more worthy target. We're merely looking for a diversion." She glared at each of them in turn, emphasizing her point. "Not a massacre."

Ballard, the chemist, scanned the deepening twilight. "Our young Navy friend," he said, "has given me an idea."

Within half an hour, multicolored rockets were fizzing from the deck of Discovery. They only got more noticeable as the sun sank and darkness swallowed the sea.

 

"What the hell are they doing?" Sastre, the captain of the Sang du Diable, demanded for the hundredth time. Beside him, Dominguez was chewing on the ends of his mustache.

"Sastre," Dominguez said finally, "there's no reason why they'd be setting off those rockets unless they wanted to get our attention."

"Sí, claro," Sastre replied in exasperation, training his glass on the Discovery again. "The question is why." He peered into the gloom. "They set off a fusillade without bullets, and after each volley, they turn in our direction to see if we've reacted."

"They're scientists, not soldiers," Dominguez objected brusquely, waving a hand in dismissal and hoping he was right. "They're not attacking; they know they'd have no chance against an armed, ably-commanded corsair." He gnawed at his mustache again. "So they must be trying to signal us."

"Could the boss have sent them to intercept us?" Sastre grunted.

Dominguez stared at Discovery, shrugging helplessly. "What else?"

"Bien." Sastre turned to him, looking especially grumpy. "We're in the shallows near the berthing point, and we couldn't make landfall at Persephone in the dark anyway." He looked around him; with the coming of night, the sea had calmed. "We can send out a boat, see what they want."

Dominguez nodded, but he looked far from happy.

 

The little lantern bobbed its way across the short distance to Discovery's night berth, in the shallow water stretching some distance from a little smuggler's island not far off the shipping lane. It took some doing to keep Emilie's excitement and Torres's bloodthirst under wraps long enough to lure their pigeon into the snare. The man shouting up at them from the bottom of the rowboat finished presenting the Captain's saludos and asked to come aboard, con permiso, and Jameson did a beautiful job of simulating concern for their safety as three of them scrambled up the Jacob's ladder.

She followed it up with a nicely-feigned astonishment at the identity of their visitor. "Why, Commander Dominguez! Or are we to address you as 'Captain' now?"

"'Commander' will suffice, thank you, Captain," Dominguez replied, with an edge. Behind him, his thugs aligned themselves in a defensive posture, scowling. "So you weren't sent to fetch us back?"

"Fetch you back?" the captain asked, making a fluttery, helpless gesture of incomprehension. Tessa watched from the rail, her face utterly impassive in the light of the deck lanterns. "I wasn't aware you'd taken to the sea."

"Then why the devil are you setting off rockets?"

"Be--because Mr. Ballard has been working on some new colors, and we thought we'd test them to see if they were visible at twilight," Jameson answered. That had been a particular inspiration of Jack Sere's, and she blessed him for it silently.

"And you were directing them toward us for what reason?" Dominguez asked, folding his arms over his chest. He really did look fierce, but he was lit for drama and it wasn't as though he was handsome even at the best of times, the poor fellow.

"Commander," she said, as if resenting the implication of underhandedness, "we were testing our new rockets, which we hope to be able to use for ship-to-ship signaling at some point. It could prove invaluable to distressed ships needing assistance. And, as you yourself have proven, they're very effective."

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"Testing our rockets," she repeated slowly, leaning toward him as if she found him hard of hearing.

"Right here? Right now?" Dominguez looked exceptionally skeptical. The thugs matched his expression of doubt. "I find that highly coincidental."

"Coincidence is a relatively rare phenomenon," someone said.

Apprehensive, Jameson looked around. Tessa was picking her way through the shrouds, moving cautiously until she could stand next to Jameson.

"In fact," Tessa added, "what is often considered coincidence is merely the intersection of a number of variably likely factors." She pointed out to sea. "We're on a recognized shipping lane, near a commonly-used overnight berthing-point, and the captain's experimental protocols clearly called for a firing test at twilight. As we found ourselves near our berth, and as twilight approached--" She spread her hands, as if the conclusion were evident.

"Who in the name of the elephant's balls are you?" Dominguez spat.

"Sabamin Tessa," she said, placing an elegant hand on her chest and giving him a courtly bow. "At your service, monseigneur."

"She's a mathematician," Torres pointed out, her glee evident.

"Mathematician," Dominguez fumed, giving Tessa a glance designed to intimidate. "Atheist, more like."

"As you're here," Jameson interjected in haste, "may we offer you supper?"

Dominguez gave Tessa a long, searching look. It started at the tips of her toes and worked its way up her trousers, past her vest, and into her face. She stood with no more self-consciousness than a calculating-machine, waiting patiently until he was through.

"I think," he said grudgingly after a time, "that it would be better to host you over at my ship."

It was on the tip of Jameson's tongue to ask innocently, Oh, is it yours? Fortunately, something wiser got hold of her mouth before she could. Inspired, she said instead, "And perhaps we could return your hospitality afterwards by demonstrating our signal-rockets."

* * *

Mingeaux turned up the wick in the lantern, and her cabin filled with a pearly light. It was her own cabin, but she felt oddly like an intruder. She turned slowly, wondering a little at what she would see.

Hester stood in the middle of the cabin, hands clasped together over her nightgown (actually an old shirt of Mingeaux's). Her hair streamed loose over her shoulders, a cascade of silvery darkness, and she looked a bit nervous. The light lay in gentle pools along the skin Mingeaux could see, highlighting places she thought she might like to lay her lips for a year or two. There was one particular spot, there where her neck blossomed into her shoulder, that looked like it would be the perfect resting-place for the palm of Mingeaux's hand, and that led her to speculations about other places that might welcome her.

It was a situation that called for something debonair, reassuring, something that would let Hester know how she felt about her, how long she'd been waiting and how magical she knew this night would be.

"I've trimmed the wick," Mingeaux blurted out, "and we ought to have hours of light."

Hester raised startled eyes to her. "I beg your pardon," Mingeaux added hastily, "I don't know what I'm--"

"You're so beautiful," Hester murmured, and her eyes dropped as she looked at the floor. She was still for a moment, then her hands clenched together.

"Hester--"

The gray eyes, fringed in startlingly dark lashes, came up to meet hers again bravely. It looked like an effort.

"If you'd rather not--" Mingeaux began.

"No," Hester hissed, and Mingeaux's eyebrows drew together in concern. "Can't you see how much I--" Hester shook her head, looking impatient. "I've made an assumption, and--"

Mingeaux took a step forward, catching Hester's chin in her hand. "That I would want you?" Hester lifted her fingers to stroke the back of Mingeaux's hand, her eyes huge in her pale face, courage warring with fear. "That I would find you breathtaking? That my desire would threaten to sweep both of us overboard?"

"It can't be," Hester whispered. "I've never been good enough to deserve a... a miracle like you."

"Miracles don't happen where you look for them." Mingeaux ran her fingers delicately over Hester's brow, feeling the cool warmth and soft firmness of her skin. The sensation almost brought her to her knees in worship. "I never thought I'd feel this way again..."

Hester closed her eyes, looking pained. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry I'm not--"

"You're you," Mingeaux said, slipping her hand around Hester's waist. "My mermaid, my gift from the sea." Her other hand traveled slowly up Hester's arm, to her shoulder. "In all my time of questioning God, I never dreamed the answer would be you." Hester gave a little gasp as Mingeaux's hand slid over her body, and she ran her hand with gentle insistence up Mingeaux's shirt. "So..." Mingeaux said, trying to keep hold of the thread of the conversation at the moment she discovered how perfectly that one spot at Hester's shoulder was crafted to fit her hand. Ah, I knew it, I knew it, and her soul sang with solemn gratitude.

Hester's lips, soft as a withered rose, touched the hollow of Mingeaux's throat, which was about as far as she could reach stretching on tiptoe. Mingeaux gathered her close, bending to pick her up. Hester made a lovely weight in her arms, and Mingeaux turned toward the bed. Hester twined her hands around Mingeaux's neck as if they had practiced it a thousand thousand times. Their lips met, and Mingeaux forgot where she was--and, more crucial, what she was holding. Before she could drop Hester, she broke the kiss. When she pulled away, Hester's eyes were half closed, and she opened them with the hazy attitude of someone who was trying to remember her own name.

"I have to put you down," Mingeaux murmured, smiling gently into the heavy-lidded eyes.

"It's your cabin," Hester replied, burrowing closer to kiss the bottom of her chin.

"Ah, God, you're going to drive me insane," Mingeaux replied.

"I can stop," Hester offered, following the outline of Mingeaux's jaw with her mouth. Mingeaux was about to reply when Hester added, "I'm fairly certain I can, anyhow."

It struck Mingeaux as improbably funny, and it took all her strength to lower Hester into the bed without mishap. Hester flung an arm over her head, patting the pillow.

"Join me?"

"With all my heart," Mingeaux said, maneuvering carefully to stretch out on her back next to Hester.

"I'm not entirely sure it's your heart I'm after," Hester replied, eyeing her. Mingeaux put out an arm for Hester to snuggle against, but instead she rolled over onto Mingeaux's chest to unbutton her shirt. Mingeaux caught up Hester's hand, and Hester went still for a moment, then said mischievously, "Well, I've got to find it before I know whether I'm interested in it, don't I?"

"My heart?" Mingeaux inquired.

"Ayuh," Hester answered, sticking her tongue between her teeth as she worked away at the buttons. She seemed a great deal younger than Mingeaux had surmised, which was vaguely surprising.

"Please, allow me," Mingeaux offered, catching Hester's hands. She pulled her close for a kiss; as their lips met, she felt Hester tremble. "Darling," she whispered, placing her hand in the alluring hollow of Hester's shoulder, "are you cold?" At the same time, she felt the pulse under the hot flesh of Hester's throat, light and fast, hammering away.

Mingeaux sat up, displacing Hester from her chest with as much delicacy as she could manage. "Not cold, then." Hester buried her face in Mingeaux's shirt, clutching it in both hands. "Terrified."

There was no answer, and Mingeaux's heart sank to where Hester would never find it. She ran her hands through that miraculous silvery hair, combing it gently with her fingers, trying to think. Moving as tenderly as she could, Mingeaux put her hands on Hester's arms, trying to get her to sit up. "Hester--please--"

The woman in her bed wouldn't meet her eyes. It was awful, but it had to be said. Mingeaux gathered up her courage. "Is it that you think you owe me this?"

There was a flash of horror in Hester's face, and she turned to Mingeaux in desperation. "Owe you? Oh, no, my dear, how could you think that?" She threw her arms around Mingeaux's neck, clutching her tightly enough that Mingeaux had to take care for her continued respiration. "I fully intended to abuse you horrendously," Hester said into Mingeaux's shirt.

"Beg pardon?" Mingeaux inquired. "I could've sworn you said--"

"I'm a coward," Hester said in a rush. "A vicious little coward."

"Unlikely," Mingeaux said, trying to get Hester to look at her. "You were crossing the Caribbean in a rowboat with no oars when we met. You were damned near halfway there, as I rec--"

"Oh, Mingeaux," Hester whispered, her eyes filling with tears. "I want you so badly..."

"It's evident that only one of us considers this an insurmountable difficulty," Mingeaux answered, trying to put her arms around Hester. "I'd like to know why..."

"I'm a fraud," Hester said miserably.

"Come, at least you're working your way up from 'coward'," Mingeaux pointed out. Hester laughed, and the tears spilled down her cheeks. Mingeaux wiped them away with her index finger. "Beautiful women don't usually weep when I take them to bed..."

"You see?" Hester said, and there was a note of hysteria, mingled with laughter, in her voice. "You've--you've been all over the world and had every kind of woman--"

"Mam'selle, I feel compelled to correct your mis--"

"--and now you're stuck with... with me."

"Hester," Mingeaux said reasonably, "could you be a bit more specific about your complaint?" Hester looked up at her, blinking a bit, and Mingeaux wiped away more tears. "Let's see if we can put a fence around the real problem. Have you run away from the farm, leaving your husband and children without their champion milker just before the summer fair?"

"No," Hester said, a little smile wisping over her face.

"Ah, good, because that gets messy when they come to fetch you back." Mingeaux put a finger to her chin, as if thinking. "Stolen any crown jewels from a corrupt and brutal monarch?"

Hester shook her head decisively, looking delighted. "Not that clever, but it's a capital idea for a new profession."

"Aye, keep it in mind," Mingeaux agreed equably. "It'll come in handy. Virgin?"

The blood drained from Hester's face, along with the expression.

"Aha," Mingeaux said, her voice quiet. "I believe we may have narrowed it down."

Hester turned her face away.

"How in God's name could you find such a thing a reason for tears?" Mingeaux asked.

Hester sat up, clenching her fists, the hem of the shirt falling in captivating ruffles around the tops of her soft-looking thighs. "How in God's name could you welcome someone with no experience to your bed?"

"Because," Mingeaux said, trying to keep her hands from reaching for Hester, "I find you very beautiful, and my appreciation for you has become physical in a way that happens all too seldom and should be celebrated, in my opinion."

Hester turned away again, mumbling something. Her hair fell into a graceful wave, and Mingeaux attempted to consign her lust to the deepest part of the ocean, where she hoped it would prove less of a distraction. "Beg pardon?"

"I'm afraid--"

"Then let me care for you," Mingeaux said, as tenderly as she could, considering the situation.

"--that I'll disappoint you," Hester added in a shamed whisper.

The silence had gone on for some time when Mingeaux's brain finally unfroze enough to tell her Say something now, fool. "Oh," Mingeaux said, rising to her knees and enfolding Hester in her arms. "Oh, no. Never that." She brushed the hair from Hester's face, kissing her softly on the forehead. "My darling one, how long have you been thinking this way?"

Hester raised her eyes to Mingeaux's, not answering.

"Most women," Mingeaux said carefully, "would be proud of coming to a lover untouched."

"I am not 'most women'," Hester retorted sharply.

"Indeed not," Mingeaux agreed. "Thank the Creator Spirit. Although it does appear the rest of humanity has been cheated." She tightened her arms around Hester, trying to reassure without smothering. "Well, then. It seems we're to exchange experiences. Shall we begin?"

She felt the stiffening of Hester's muscles. "My dear," she whispered into Hester's hair, kissing the top of her head. "It doesn't have to happen tonight, nor anywhere near it..."

"We may not have a tomorrow," Hester said, and the stalwart resolution in her tone made Mingeaux flinch.

"I don't share your pessimism, but still that doesn't mean--"

"Don't I get a choice? If it's my body?"

Mingeaux sighed; this was going to take some time. "Of course. You're in charge of your every action."

"Even when--"

"Even then," Mingeaux interrupted, pulling back to sit up against the wall. "That's lesson one. You won't lose control, no matter how tempted you think you'll be." She patted the featherbed, and Hester crawled across the now-disarranged covers, the shirt tightening and loosening in maddening waves over the body she'd been dreaming of. Mingeaux closed her eyes briefly; it was going to be a very long night.

She slipped an arm around Hester's shoulders, and Hester nestled under her arm while Mingeaux tried to find a way to put it with both delicacy and truthfulness. "Do only those things that feel agreeable to you," she said finally, making a vague gesture with her free hand, "but don't hesitate to do them. Agreed?"

Hester glanced up at her, then took her hand and ran her cool, soft fingertips over Mingeaux's flesh, raising goosebumps. Hester examined Mingeaux's hand with minute care, as if each separate cell of her were under a microscope.

"I would never have known," Mingeaux murmured into the silence.

Hester gave her a quick, appraising look, then returned her attention to Mingeaux's hand.

"That's how good you are," Mingeaux added. "You look confident."

Hester didn't address that. "Your hands are so strong," she commented softly. "And yet you have the touch of an angel."

"You're easy to touch," Mingeaux replied. They were speaking in near-whispers, but Mingeaux had no trouble hearing her.

"I see," Hester said with a tiny, private smile, turning Mingeaux's hand over to look at the underneath.

"I hope you do," Mingeaux said, lifting her hand cautiously, as if Hester's face were a rare butterfly that might flit away. "I hope to show you."

Her hand traveled up from Hester's jaw to her eyebrow, tracing the side of her face, and Hester's dreamy eyes slid shut for an instant, opening again slowly, like a pampered flower in a well-tended garden.

Mingeaux pushed herself away from the wall, and Hester met her halfway, and they were on their knees facing one another when they kissed. Only their lips came together, and Mingeaux had to ball her fists against her thighs to keep from grabbing at her lover. Hester broke the kiss with a little sharp inhalation, and there was a lovely smile just beginning to come to light on her face as she ran her hands over Mingeaux's shoulders.

"How does that feel?" Mingeaux asked, reaching out to touch Hester's face.

"I can see why they call it 'mortal sin'," Hester remarked, somewhat beside the point. Her eyes were lively, watching her hands as they roamed over the front of Mingeaux's shirt, and she flicked them up from time to time to see the reaction in Mingeaux's face.

That reaction was a fiery pleasure. Mingeaux squeezed her eyes and her hands shut to keep from going mad. It was going to be difficult to keep this a bland tutorial, at least on her part. She uttered a low groan, and Hester's hands froze.

Mingeaux's eyes flew open, and she grabbed at Hester's hands, frantic. "Don't stop," she begged, leaning down to capture Hester's mouth with her own. She didn't know whether to talk or kiss, so she did both. "Don't ever stop--please, keep on, keep your hands on me forever, let me touch you, I want to feel every inch of you, inside and out--"

Hester gasped against her mouth, her hands crushed in what must surely have been a painful pressure against Mingeaux's chest. It sounded like she was trying to say Yes yes yes, and she struggled to pull her hands free. Mingeaux figured that out in time to keep from breaking her bones, and Hester's hands went to work on her, darting back and forth, trying to find a way past the clothing, past the skin, plunging elbow-deep into her very soul.

Mingeaux popped open the buttons on Hester's nightshirt with an unseeing efficiency that would have astonished her, had she been able to think. She slid the soft cloth away from Hester's shoulders, and Hester made a noise against Mingeaux's tongue.

Mingeaux tumbled her into the featherbed, her hands seeking on their own, finding the places on Hester's body that elicited moans and gasps and undulations of pure pleasure. It had been so long, and they were already so deeply concerned with one another, and Mingeaux forgot all about going slowly, being tender, saving some for later; she charged blindly into the sumptuous luxury of Hester's flesh.

They never stopped kissing, unless it was to take a breath, and Mingeaux's body went on without her, learning everything about Hester in a flash of insight equal to standing in the glory of God. Hester's hands undressed her with the same unthinking speed, and Mingeaux pulled away just long enough to haul her arms out of her shirt and toss it to the floor.

They fit together seamlessly, Mingeaux's hip finding the perfect place between Hester's thighs, and they moved together without awareness. Mingeaux ran her hands up over Hester's breasts to rest on either side of her face, and she settled her mouth on Hester's with a remarkably unhurried urgency. Hester's throat moved as she swallowed, and Mingeaux placed a hand over Hester's neck, rubbing her skin as firmly as she dared in the same rhythm Hester was using against her hip.

Hester's hands slid into Mingeaux's trousers a half-inch at a time, moving down inexorably from her sweating back. Mingeaux was surrounded, welcomed, as she slipped her hand between Hester's thighs, and she wanted to stay there forever, knowing without having to ask that it was what Hester wanted too. Hester's head went backwards, sinking into the pillow, and the noise she made almost carried Mingeaux off to paradise right then and there. Mingeaux tried to keep her balance, but it wasn't easy; Hester was moving unconsciously, without restraint, the sound of her breathing becoming a continuous song of fulfillment, little by little, note by note. Mingeaux reached down blindly with her mouth, capturing what of Hester's skin she could with her lips and suckling.

Hester was saying something, but Mingeaux swam back into consciousness far too late to catch it. "Yes," she hissed against Hester's breast, her face sliding in the sweat pouring from their skin. Yes, my beauty, yes, show me, and Hester ran one hand, fingernails first, up through the sweat on Mingeaux's back, clutching her between the shoulder blades as the blazing tracks of passion flew over Mingeaux's skin. The two of them held one another down as they moved toward something Mingeaux could only dimly recognize as climax.

She covered Hester's mouth firmly with her own, less to muffle the sound than to absorb all she had to give, and the two of them flashed like a lightning storm, crackling with power. It almost turned Mingeaux inside out, and she gave herself to it, her soul diffusing through Hester's body, not caring overmuch if the tender vulnerability of it killed her.

A long time later, Mingeaux was aware that she was rubbing her face into Hester's belly, moving slowly to soak up the moisture between them with her tongue. Hester's belly heaved with her attempt to catch her breath, and gradually it occurred to Mingeaux that she might be lying too heavily on her. She tried not to pull away abruptly, but she feared for Hester's life.

Hester was watching her, her dark marbled eyes huge and a little fearful. "All well?" Mingeaux whispered, and Hester's answering nod made her breasts jiggle a bit, just enough so Mingeaux dove for them like a falcon sighting prey.

After a moment, Mingeaux thought herself discourteous, so she raised her head again. Hester reached for her with a hand that moved with boneless grace, running it through her hair, stroking as gently as a mother soothing a babe to sleep. The lamplight lay softly on her skin, gilding the moisture, transforming Hester into a work of art.

"You're beautiful," Mingeaux murmured fervently. It seemed an utterly inadequate assessment, but her brain wasn't up to a contest of eloquence just then.

Hester gathered what little strength she had left to remark, "You didn't tell me it would be both of us."

Mingeaux stretched onto her side a little, reaching to brush the damp tendrils of hair from Hester's face. "Always. It will always be both of us."

Hester's eyes closed. "I'm so glad, my darling." She sounded sleepy. Her eyes opened, fixing on Mingeaux's. "I don't know that I can do that again," she said, her voice small, apprehensive, and rough. "Ever," she added, as if she thought it needed explaining.

"Shh," Mingeaux said, smiling into her eyes as she ran her hand through the tangles in Hester's hair. "Rest." It was just about then that she realized where her other hand was, and she bit her lip in consternation, trying to think of a dignified way to get them untangled.

"I'd like to get you something to drink," she offered finally, and Hester put her arms around Mingeaux's neck, burying her face in her shoulder. The shyness was so unlike Hester that Mingeaux was charmed all over again, which led to inevitable thoughts of how to talk Hester into delaying her drink for a while. Settle down, she told herself firmly, you've a delicate task ahead.

Hester cooperated without a word, although she kept her face in Mingeaux's shoulder, and Mingeaux soon found herself with two free hands. "Let me fetch you some water," Mingeaux whispered, and Hester nodded tightly. Mingeaux levered herself carefully over Hester, and she would have gotten away if she hadn't happened to glance down at Hester's sculpted hipbone, glorious in the lamplight. Mesmerized, Mingeaux ran two fingers down Hester's hip, and Hester growled at her.

Startled, Mingeaux looked up. Hester's eyes had gone blurry. She went for Mingeaux with a move that looked remarkably like the spring of a tigress, and Mingeaux found herself on her back, pinned beneath Hester, who had a death-grip on her wrists and her face pressed between Mingeaux's breasts.

"Your water--" Mingeaux began.

"I'll drink you," Hester announced to Mingeaux's left breast, beginning to lap with her tongue. "It's my turn."

* * *

Not the least advantage of a fiendish plot, Jameson reflected, was that Sang du Diable had a much better cook than she did. She was idly wondering how he contrived a lump-free sauce in the middle of the ocean while Ballard and Jack set up the frame for the rockets. Carting them over from Discovery had taken a boat of their own, and Jameson supposed they'd find out soon how good Ballard's effort at damp-proofing the powder really was.

The sea was like glass, the wind practically undetectable, and she wondered if they could come up with some other diversion if this one didn't work; conditions were ideal for a spectacular show of illumination, completely uncontaminated by hazard. It was full dark, only the lights from the deck lanterns illuminating their activities. The light tossed odd shadows here and there, and she was grateful; no one could see the black thread Ballard attached to the framework. He crossed by Jameson, placing a hand on her shoulder as if whispering some instruction to her, but really to pass her the end of the thread. She looked until spots appeared before her eyes, but she couldn't see the thread running up to the frame; it was as visible as the unmagnified egg of a sea urchin.

"Who's assisting, Ballard?" Torres called, pushing Emilie in front of her.

"Mr. Sere," Ballard called.

"Emilie looks better in tights," Torres pointed out, and Dominguez almost ripped half the mustache from his upper lip.

"Torres," Emilie said in mild reproof. She turned to Dominguez with firm intent and changed the subject. "The sails are lovely, Commander. How do you get them so red?"

"Emilie," Torres said by way of instruction, "they're supposed to be imposing, not pretty."

Dominguez growled something under his breath.

"Are we almost ready?" Jameson asked.

"Almost," Ballard said, stooping to fiddle with something on the framework.

"We're almost ready," Jameson said courteously to Dominguez, who crossed his arms and drummed his fingers against his bicep with no attempt at subtlety. Beside him, Sastre peered this way and that, seeming fascinated.

"It's not going to set us afire, is it?" Sastre inquired, but not as if he had much concern.

"Doubtful," Thomas assured him. "Mr. Ballard's expertise is beyond question."

"To satisfy your insatiable intellectual curiosity, Emilie," Ballard said, sounding a bit absentminded as he checked the fuses, "the sails are dyed with a tincture of ferric oxide and a couple of other compounds..." He frowned at something briefly, then his face cleared, and he said, "Ah!" with the unalloyed happiness of a child. He picked up a piece of the fuse and continued, "You have to have a tint, a fixing solution, something to resist rot in a marine environment, and..."

"Are we ready yet?" Dominguez interrupted, with a singular lack of courtesy that surprised no one.

"Jack, would you?" Ballard asked, handing the bundle of fuses to Jack. Jack's hand trembled a bit as he lay them gently into the curved clay tile they used to keep the sparks from the deck.

"I wish we'd had time to dope the sails," Torres muttered, and Jameson seized her arm just above the elbow, fixing a smile on her face. She placed her carefully between Emilie and Thomas.

"Stay right there," Jameson said brightly. "You'll have a wonderful view of the rockets." She groped unobtrusively in her pocket for the end of the black thread, and sighed subtly with relief when she found it.

Ballard lit one of his showy phosphor punks, quite a captivating sight on its own. Sastre leaned forward, his mouth agape, and Dominguez directed his gaze toward Polaris, not as if he were interested.

Ballard touched the end of the bundle of fuses with a flourish and an intonation of "Hocus-pocus!" As the fuses caught, Jack hastened to steady the tile. He really was very brave, Jameson thought.

When the fuses had burned down to within an inch of the rockets, Jameson gave the thread a twitch. Nothing happened, and she jerked it a little harder. The thread moved toward her like spider silk, floating in a casual manner over her hand, and she realized with horror that it had gotten loose from the framework. She glanced behind her at Torres, Thomas, and Emilie, all of whom realized instantly what had happened.

The first rocket went off; Ballard, true to his showmanship, watched it launch on a perfect, if unintended, trajectory, betraying not a care in the world. Dutifully, the Sang du Diable sailors followed it with their eyes, intoning "Ooh!" in unison. Jack had gotten to his feet, and he stared at the framework in consternation.

Ballard stuck his hand in his pockets, admiring the flight of the second rocket. Jack turned toward Jameson, worry painted clearly on his far too honest face.

They had only seconds. Torres grabbed Thomas on the one side and Emilie on the other, pulling them into place as a screen. "Jack!" she hissed.

Jack turned to Torres, who reached up with one hand, squeezed her breast in lewd invitation, and mouthed a kiss at him. Horrified, Jack stumbled backwards, his boot-heel catching in the framework, bringing it down with a clattering crash just as the rest of the rockets exploded into life.

In a heartbeat, they were engulfed in pyrotechnics, ducking the flame-spurting rockets as each followed its own erratic, idiosyncratic track. Jack scrambled to his feet, beating out the sparks on his sleeve. A firework skidded in circles on the deck, and Ballard, with a series of authentic-sounding oaths, chased it around, trying ineffectually to stomp it out. Above him, one of the rockets had caught in the mainsail lines, and flames licked upward to the vibrantly-red cloth, turning redder as the flame reduced it to ash. Captivated, all of them watched in silence as the sail burned.

"Fire!" Sastre screamed, and the rest of them bolted into action.

Ten horrible, nerve-shattering minutes later, both crews were dripping with sweat and sea-water, and there was a significant hole in the mainsail, along with much damage to the lines holding the tatters to the mast. Dominguez turned to Jameson, his face as red as the sail had been before they'd started their demonstration, and his tirade would no doubt have made her feel awful if it had been delivered in English. As it was, she was able to translate enough, and guess at enough, to realize that they'd succeeded in delaying an exceedingly important errand.

Dominguez stopped for badly-needed breath, and the silence descended, along with flakes of formerly-red sail. "I forgot to mention," Ballard said sheepishly, "that tinting sailcloth crimson can also make the cloth highly... uh..." Jameson raised her eyebrows at him, and Ballard squeaked, "Flammable."

Jameson gave vent to her pent-up excitement with a roar. "How I wish you'd seen fit to mention that beforehand!" She turned to Dominguez. "Commander, no words can express--"

"Then don't," he snarled.

"--how deeply mortified I am that our attempt to demonstrate an obviously imperfect technology--"

"Spare me, Captain." Dominguez swept a handful of ash from his hair, looking uncannily like one of the devil's own, and stalked away. Sastre was staring at the hole in the sail, whispering something that sounded like a prayer to the saint in charge of hopeless causes.

"We've a sailmaker aboard," Jameson said, "and I'd gladly offer--"

"Thank you!" Dominguez spun on his heel, and she could see blood in his eye by the light of the deck lanterns. "You've done quite enough damage for one night, one voyage, and one lifetime!"

"I'm only trying to help," Jameson said stiffly.

"You know what would help?" Dominguez inquired, his voice grating. "To see your misbegotten wake disappear over the horizon!" He jabbed with a finger in the general direction of Polaris.

"Very well," Jameson said, clasping her hands together like a chastened housewife.

Jameson got her group together, each hastily grabbing some bit of gear on their way to the Jacob's ladder. Dominguez appeared ready to explode with fury. As they scrambled with much rush and little grace down the ladder to Discovery's boat, Dominguez spat, "Women--at--sea!"

* * *

Brandy had been dozing off and on in the captain's bed. A soft chiming of bells on the deck, telling the time, awakened her, and she raised her head into darkness. The sea, gentled by the shallows, rushed toward the glass window as if embracing the ship, little trails of phosphor outlining the waves.

Giuliana wasn't there.

Sighing, Brandy climbed out of the bed, threw a wrap around her shoulders, and left the cabin, shutting the door cautiously behind her. She climbed the stairs, carefully avoiding so much as a trace of speculation about what was happening in Mingeaux's cabin. Topside, the wind swept into her face; for once, it wasn't threatening to blow her hair right off her head.

DiFalco saw her and stood up for a stretch. "Evening, signorina."

"DiFalco," she nodded politely. "Has it been quiet?"

"Mostly," DiFalco replied, with a diffident shrug and a charming smile.

Brandy wasn't about to pursue the matter. "The Captain--?"

"Studying the chart as if she wanted to burn it into her brain," DiFalco said, jerking her head toward the salon. Brandy murmured a thank-you, gathered her wrap closely so that it wouldn't tangle in any of the ropes, and picked her way across the deck.

The ship tossed with the rhythm of a sigh on the subdued water, which was lighter in the shallows, over the wide sandy stretch extending some distance from the unknown island they were headed for. Anchored securely, Intrepide rode nothing more ominous than a soft night, curly white wavelets tickling past her hull, the wind a warm zephyr too gentle even to whistle through the rigging. The sea was a comforting light green, and the stars burned steadily overhead in an indigo sky that made her think of her poetry.

A light burned in the salon, and in the glow through the windows she saw Giuliana bent over the chart, one elbow propped on the table, her cheek resting on her fist, her other hand brushing rhythmically over the spot Brandy just knew had to be Persephone.

Ah. It was obvious that there'd be no kissing tonight. Well, there were other ways of proving one's benevolent intentions, and she'd already had plenty of practice at going without. She slipped through the door, and Giuliana glanced up at her without surprise, but with a slight smile.

"Were you coming to bed?" Brandy asked.

Giuliana looked down again, the smile still on her lips. "Not just yet."

Brandy tried to keep her disappointment hidden, berating herself for her selfishness. She pulled a chair over to the table, wincing at the noise it made, and sat down. Belatedly, she remembered her manners, and she blurted, "May I join you?"

The smile got broader as Giuliana looked up at her again. "Be my guest."

Brandy was a bit shy, and she wasn't quite certain what to do with her hands. She folded her arms, but the décolleté of her nightgown might have made that look like an invitation. Or a demand. She folded them in her lap instead, then stretched them out along the table and clasped her hands together. The silver necklace lay warm and gleaming against her breast, and she drew courage from what it reminded her of. She really does care for me, Brandy thought, she's just got something else on her mind at the moment.

"It's a beautiful night," she began tentatively.

"And a beautiful woman waiting for me in my cabin," Giuliana finished, "so what am I doing up here?" She sat back, one hand touching the chart, and regarded Brandy with warmth in her blue eyes.

Brandy had to look down. "I--I wasn't--"

"Brandy," Giuliana interrupted. "You haven't been the least rude."

"I was--"

"Or forward, for that matter," Giuliana said, getting up to walk toward her. She crouched by Brandy's chair, putting a tender hand on her arm. "You're very kind to come and hunt up the woman who jilted you, in fact."

"I wouldn't consider it jilting, precisely," Brandy replied, her tone a little lofty. "It better not be," she added under her breath, and Giuliana favored her with a laugh.

"That's the spirit," the captain said. "It would be a shame to toss me from the field after all the work you've put in to me, wouldn't it?"

Brandy looked at the chart again, smiling. The little dot with the tiny writing that said Persephone caught her eye. She turned to Giuliana and said stoutly, "You will find her, Giuliana. I know you will."

The blue eyes, hooded in pain, turned toward the chart, and Giuliana brushed her fingers over the word that held so much potential for hope and heartache. "I can hardly bring myself to believe..."

"Then let me," Brandy said eagerly. "Me and Mlle. Brundage."

Giuliana looked at her sideways, teasing a little. "They hang spies in this part of the world, you know."

"Not beautiful rich women, they don't," Brandy retorted, and Giuliana laughed again.

"Well then, I shall happily make you the richest women in the Caribbean, for you are already the most beautiful." She took up Brandy's hand and kissed it with the delicacy of a courtier.

"I'm not after your money," Brandy shot out, before she could think, "I'm after your--" She stopped herself just in time.

Giuliana quirked an eyebrow at her. Brandy's blush crept up from the neckline of her nightgown. "Oh, do go on, mam'selle," Giuliana said. "You were just about to get to the most fascinating noun."

"I'm sorry," Brandy replied sheepishly. "You'll have to excuse me, I was raised in a bar."

The laugh became a guffaw, and Giuliana got to her feet to sweep Brandy up in a warm embrace from behind. "Don't ever change," the captain murmured into her ear, tightening her arms around Brandy's shoulders. "Promise me that."

"Promise," Brandy whispered, closing her eyes against a sudden spell of faintness. She patted Giuliana's arm, then patted the table next to her. "Come on, then, sit down and talk to me."

"Talk?" the captain inquired. Although she couldn't see it just then, Brandy knew the eyebrow had come up once more. "About what?"

Brandy turned her head and looked into the deep blue eyes. "About Lucia."

* * *

Jameson had some trouble keeping the giggles of her away party under control as they rowed their way back to Discovery, trying to look morose and penitent. Tessa was at the rail to hand them over the side, clasping Jameson's arm warmly and hauling her aboard with grace and surprising strength.

Jameson called the pilot to her. "Can we weigh anchor and sail?"

"In the dark?"

"Well," she asked reasonably, "will we run into anything?"

The pilot didn't have much of an answer, and instead beckoned the boatswain. "We're sailing." The boatswain nodded and whistled to collect the crew.

"Thank you," Jameson said, glancing behind her to the now Sang-less Diable. "I think they'd appreciate it."

"Destination?" asked the pilot idly.

"Let's see how close we can get to that island," Jameson said. "We might be able to link up with them." They were well out of earshot of the eerily silent red-sailed ship, but it never hurt to be careful.

"Scarlet sails," Torres snorted, wrapping her arms around her and leaning against the port rail. "As if that's not bad luck looking for a spot to roost. Can you believe that dickhead?"

"Torres," Jameson said patiently, willing away a threatening headache. She wanted to get below, have a stiff brandy, and quiver quietly in her bunk for a while. Instead, she looked around to thank Jack for his service; he had disappeared. "Has anyone seen Mr. Sere?"

Ballard was lighting his pipe, as if he hadn't had enough pyrotechnics for one night. "Scarpered below the instant he got over the rail," he replied, jerking his head in the direction of the door to the crew's quarters.

I don't blame him, Jameson thought, glancing at Torres with a wary, apprehensive appreciation of her quick thinking. Jack's fabled clumsiness had, for once, turned in their favor; she thought it likely that he'd try to throw himself into the sea and drown in mortification before she was able to thank him properly.

Emilie, next to Torres, was gazing up into Torres's face, positively moonstruck with wonder. Torres laughed a feral laugh, threw her arm about Emilie's neck, and headed for the stairs.

"Captain," Tessa said behind her. Startled as by nothing in that whole adventurous evening, Jameson whirled, missing decapitation by the rigging only through providence.

"Well played," Tessa said, the admiration audible in her voice.

"It's hardly an honorable thing," Jameson replied, "but it isn't as if we had much of a choice." Soberly, she studied Tessa's face, the strong planes outlined in the lantern light. "I don't want you to think that that's the way decent folk solve their differences."

"Agreed," said Tessa, accepting the ethics lecture with a bow. Jameson nodded politely and headed for her cabin, her sinews stiff in the aftermath of exertion and excitement. She stopped when she heard Tessa call softly across the deck.

"In chess, we refer to that move as 'The Three-Sided Forest'," Tessa said with an unaccustomed flash of humor, "but I am considering renaming the gambit 'Crimson Sails Alight'."

Jameson didn't turn; it would have been far too easy for Tessa to see her smiling. "Good night, Miss Tessa," she replied, thinking of the brandy.

* * *

Intrepide was armed to the topgallants, but it wasn't obvious as they rounded the southern side of the little island set like an emerald in the sapphire sea. A long expanse of snow-white sand circled her on three sides, rising up to a sharp volcanic cone in the center, now softened and made welcoming by the healthy greenery that had crept up it. The north side of the island fell away steeply from the crown of the cone, terminating abruptly in fearsome-looking cliffs inhabited largely by fat, contented-looking seabirds. Idyllic, certainly; one could happily pass away eternity in this spot, roaming the beaches, prowling the forests, idly dropping things into the sunken center of the volcano in a vain attempt to get it started.

There was no sign of human habitation save a tidy little private harbor on the western side, from which a long road snail-tracked up the hill to an imposing building gleaming with ostentatious prosperity among the trees.

Mingeaux lowered the spyglass and handed it to Giuliana, pointing with the other hand. Giuliana aimed the glass at the minuscule warehouse perched on the end of the dock. Nailed to the front door was a shield bearing the coat of arms of Aristide.

 

Belowdecks, in the captain's cabin, Hester and Brandy were preparing for their mission. They had gotten to the portion of the programme that involved frequent, explosive exhalations of breath.

"That looks like it hurts," Brandy said, eyeing Hester.

"I assure you," gasped her fellow spy. "Go on," she said to DiFalco, who wrapped her hands one more time round the laces.

Brandy winced as DiFalco jerked. "Are you certain I don't need mine tighter?"

Hester grabbed at the edge of the table, steadying herself. "No, my dear, no one expects young girls to engage in this foolishness by choice, and you're too fast to catch a second time." She was having a bit of trouble getting enough air to speak. "It's only older women who must needs behave as though life had only increased their capacity for foolhardiness."

"You can't breathe," Brandy pointed out, concerned, "and your face is getting red."

"That'll be enough, DiFalco," Hester wheezed, and the gunner obediently did up the laces on her corset. "Thank you." She groped her way to the closet door, stood up painfully, and stretched herself within the confines of the tortuous garment. After a moment, something seemed to settle into place, and Hester drew in a multi-gallon breath.

"That's better," she said with a smile, turning to Brandy. "You'll find," she went on with more ease, "that after getting into the corset, the rest is anticlimactic."

Until, she might have added, they see you in your rigout. As it was, when Giuliana came below to check on them, her eyes widened at the sight of Brandy; from that point, she was fairly useless at offering last-minute advice. It was a damned shame, Brandy thought, to waste the primping on something as sordid as espionage. Then again, she was fairly certain Giuliana would let her keep the dress...

 

On a lovely, golden morning, a pretty little private yacht made a mooring at the minuscule wharf representing fifty percent of the buildings on Persephone. Sailors from the yacht made the ship fast, then began fiddling with the rudder. Meanwhile, two women emerged, parasoled, gloved, and gowned, and strolled idly up and down as they chatted.

"I'm sorry about your mother," Hester murmured, and Brandy shot her a startled look. "She must have been quite a woman," Hester went on. "Mingeaux speaks of her with both respect and love, and her standards are better than sterling."

The mention of her stepmother, coming as it did from her new lover, made Brandy go crimson to her hat-brim. Hester laughed. "Well, my dear," she said merrily, "I'm glad to see one of us is genteel enough to blush. I'm afraid I'm just too happy this morning to bother with it."

Brandy laughed and took her arm. "I'm glad for her--she needs to be in love."

"Aye, well, she doesn't know me well yet," Hester said, her gray eyes sparkling in the sunlight. "I think I'm safe enough till she figures it out."

"I'm glad it's you, too," Brandy said, squeezing Hester's arm with real affection.

"Not the least of the benefits is that she has a daughter who can distill spirits--" Hester began, then shaded her eyes with a gloved hand to peer up the dock. "And here they are, right on schedule, to greet the invading army."

Brandy followed her gaze to where a detachment of armed men was making its way down the road from the house.

 

To Giuliana and Mingeaux, peering out at them through a slitted gunport, it was like watching someone become possessed by a spirit. Hester drew herself up as the men trudged down the dock, and the corset and the silk and the picture hat swirled into a portrait of unassailable privilege as their friend disappeared and someone quite different took her place.

The men stopped in front of Brandy and Hester. They weren't in uniform, which was a bit of a surprise to Mingeaux, who knew Aristide's love of ostentation. They looked like gardeners, complete with substantial work clothes liberally covered in some kind of stubborn dirt, but the muskets they carried gleamed with care and looked entirely capable of mayhem.

"This is private property," growled one of the men in island-accented French. "You'll have to leave."

Hester ran her eyes down his musket, not as if she considered him a threat but more in assessment. "And a good morning to you too, Captain," she replied. "I am Mrs. Regina Harvey, of the Philadelphia Harveys, and this is my ward, Mademoiselle Georgine."

"Right, and I'm Queen of Prussia," he muttered in scant encouragement. Hester's eyes flashed. "You have to leave," he added.

Brandy paled. For a moment, Hester, dangerously silent, practically quivered in genteel fury. Then she laughed a charming, silvery laugh, which made her twice as alarming. "Certainly not. Whatever do you mean, 'leave'?"

"This is private prop--"

"Now hear me, my little captain," Hester interrupted, snapping her fan open and stirring the air around her face with highborn haughtiness. "My vessel has acquired some tiresome technical difficulty, barnacles or something, and I have no intention of leaving this place until it's repaired or replaced or otherwise made mutable. In addition, I can assure you I have no intention of taking direction from a plebeian little functionary playing tinpot Napoleon on an insignificant speck of sand in the middle of the sea."

"Lady--" he said, but his attempt to counter her torrent of highly original French went no further.

"If you were the sort of person from whom one took command, you would certainly not be wearing... whatever you call that." She took another scan, and her lip lifted, just a fraction, in evident scorn. "We shall speak of your manner of greeting visitors at a later time. Meanwhile, for your impertinence, you will have the pleasure of considering the true meaning of the word 'service' while you are fetching our dinner."

Goggle-eyed and open-mouthed, he stared at her. So did Brandy, except that she was more subtle about it.

"Go," she said, indicating the direction with her fan.

Giuliana, leaning over Mingeaux's shoulder in the gunnery, murmured, "Your lady has a formidable manner."

"You've no idea," sighed Mingeaux absently. After a moment, she remembered how she'd spent the night, and she whipped her head toward Giuliana, who regarded her with a studiously polite expression. In a moment, the little drama on the dock had again captured their attention.

The man in charge appeared ready to burst a blood vessel. "Get stuffed!" he bellowed at Hester.

For an instant, she did nothing but flare her nostrils. Then she drew Brandy away by the arm, setting her a little distance away from the guards. She came back, her steps snapping with determination, and Mingeaux wondered what was coming next.

"What, Monsieur," she asked in a tone like a venomous snake, "is your name?"

"Vason," he replied, looking as though he was reconsidering his last statement.

"Well, then, Monsieur Vaseux," she said, stopping inches from his face and lowering her voice, "I don't believe you can have any idea whom you're addressing. I'm not one of your tavernmates, nor have I lost money to you at cards. I also very much doubt that M. Aristide, the owner of this lovely tropical hideaway, would appreciate your discourtesy to an... influential friend."

For the first time, the man seemed to hesitate. The guards behind him exchanged a glance.

Hester broke the impasse by stamping her foot prettily. The men jumped. "Kept waiting on the dock like a common brigand!" Hester exclaimed, her indignation apparent. "And insulted to boot! It is high time these islands learned something of the courtesies which civilized society has long since perfected."

One of the guards leaned over to mutter to the other, "Oh, aye, she's a friend of Aristide's, all right."

"I have no orders--" Vason stuttered.

Hester stuck one hand on her hip and resumed fanning with the other, scattering disapproval all over the dock. "And I, Monsieur, have no interest in hearing your tiresome prattle about 'orders', which is usually followed by equally wearying discourse on 'fortifications' and 'cannon'. My ward and I are weary, and our ship is broken. Must I pay you for lodging us, you tatty person?"

Vason took a step back.

"So be it," she said. A deadly note had crept into her voice. She dug into her reticule and brought out several reales. "This ought to be enough for the people at your fort to locate some sort of capon to roast, along with some well-aired and vermin-free bedding."

Stupefied, he took the money. "I--I cannot permit you to lodge at the house--"

"You infernal bore! D'you think I have any interest in the stores of smuggled rum or stolen jewels or beautiful quadroons or whatever else you have hidden from your master? I don't care to know which servant-girl the butler is chasing round the parlor, I am looking for dinner and a place to lodge! Lock the doors which must needs be locked and put us up in the more benign areas!"

Stunned into insensibility, Vason nodded, miserable even after he peered at the wink of gold in his hand. "Give me an hour to put the house in order."

She'd gotten her way, but that in no wise meant she was mollified. "I should halve that, for your impertinence and further instruction, but your uniform (such as it is) convinces me you know no better. Get to it, then."

Hester spun on her heel, taking no further notice of him, and walked back to Brandy. "Come, my dear," she announced in an artificially courteous voice, "we shall wait on the ship until our rooms are prepared. I realize the cabins are somewhat close, but we'll have a well-aired place to siesta, at least." They made their way leisurely up the gangplank, and Mingeaux watched the guard climb the hill toward the house, his attitude of resigned defeat visible even at a distance. A flash of sunlight winked from the parapet.

"Did you see that?" Mingeaux murmured to the captain.

"I certainly did," the captain replied, sounding terrifically impressed.

"I meant," Mingeaux clarified, "that someone has trained a glass on us from the house."

 

It took longer than an hour, and Hester was in a mood for vengeance by the time their party, supplemented with two of Intrepide's crew to act as bodyguards, was permitted to ascend the hill. She occupied herself during the long climb to the house by instructing M. Vaseux in the proper manner of running a great house. It threatened Brandy with a fit of the sniggers every time Hester called him that, but she had to admit it was appropriate.

She had plenty of time to educate him, it turned out, as the trek was a long one. Brandy had a good long soak in the waters of aristocracy herself, and she was certain that the never-ending walk would end with her being able to run Versailles with no more trouble than if it had been her mother's tavern. Adelaide and Spinelli, accustomed to hard hours and difficult labor, were winded and fatigued by the time they reached the sprawling palazzo in the hills. Brandy's admiration for Hester, corseted and heel-shod and prattling without cease and yet still breathing, grew.

From the moment her dainty foot hit the porch, Hester took over the house, commanding servants and issuing orders and generally running anything even remotely amenable to human control. She even gave Vason a couple of knife-edged compliments with her agreeable surprise that all was not entirely ghastly.

He showed them into a lovely, sunswept parlor which caught the cross-breeze, imparting a delicious, welcome coolness to the room. It seemed a lovely place to take morning coffee barefoot and wrapped in a loose shift. Brandy sat straight as a ramrod, because of the corset, on a delicate little chair, while Hester took a substantial settee obviously set aside for the master of the house. It looked like a throne; from the moment she settled into it, it became one.

It was evident that Vason became more nervous the longer they stayed, and each runner from the yacht, announcing this or that delay in the repair of the rudder, only increased his apprehension. He attended their every move, zipping from the parlor to the porch to the parlor to the hall like a particularly fretful hummingbird. He excused himself frequently to go into a series of rooms whose entry involved much unlocking and relocking of doors, and when he had to be away from them he left three guards in their presence. As the day crept inexorably toward afternoon, Hester made his terror complete by inquiring serenely about tea. Brandy saw the malicious satisfaction in her eye as M. Vaseux damn near threw an apoplexy right in front of them.

He fetched the tea in on a substantial silver tray, set it on the table before his unanticipated boss, and prepared to leave again on his endless round of locking. As she was idly stirring her tea (which was excellently fragrant), Hester asked him casually, "Tell me, Monsieur, who is the lady of the house?"

Brandy heard the hitch in his breathing from across the room. Vason's hand tightened on the doorknob. "Lady?" he squeaked feebly, obviously engaged in a fervent but vain search for a plausible denial. Brandy watched in quiet glee; she could see him sweating.

"Come," Hester laughed, "'tisn't as though a man would have the grace to put together a house such as this. Leastaways, not a man like Aristide, or..." (And here she looked him up and down.) "...you, I perceive. This place bears the light touch of a woman."

"You're correct, Madame Harvey," said a quiet voice behind them.

Hester and Brandy got to their feet and turned. Behind them stood a woman in a gorgeous island gown that revealed her throat and sculpted collarbones. Her hair was dark and gathered softly at the crown of her head, and her dazzling eyes, as blue and shadowed as the sea, regarded them quietly. She was exquisite--as exquisite as Giuliana, in fact. And that, Brandy thought in stupefied consternation, wasn't a bad comparison, because the woman before them looked enough like Giuliana to be her sister.