3. Chapter 3
Chapter three
Tristan braced his forearms upon the rail of HMS Resolute.
Brighton rose beyond the harbor in white terraces, bright fronts, and sloping roofs, all of it washed in morning glare.
Windows flashed in the sun. Chimneys smoked.
Carriages lumbered along the front. Somewhere among those pale houses, behind some blasted curtain or painted door, the Moon Goddess existed away from him.
He closed his fist around her bracelet. The stones bit lightly into his palm. He turned his hand and watched them wink between his fingers.
At sea, a man could always find a prize.
A sail appeared on the horizon, a course was calculated, canvas was crowded, guns were run out, and sooner or later it revealed itself—merchantman, frigate, privateer, enemy, neutral, worth pursuit or not worth the powder.
Meanwhile, society scattered a woman among terraces, chaperones, calling cards, and rooms where everyone smiled while concealing something.
He did not even know her name.
The ignorance sat under his ribs like a hook.
His palm flexed once, remembering the narrow give of her waist, and his mouth went dry with the memory of her parted lips.
He should have pressed closer when she swayed.
He should have kissed her when her mouth opened for him.
It was not by hesitating that he had boarded and taken over fifty prizes in a year.
Behind him, planks creaked under a familiar step.
Lorenzo della Rocca, Conte di Brianza, crossed the quarterdeck with a folded paper in one hand and enough morning brightness in his face to annoy any reasonable man.
At five-and-twenty, he had black hair cropped short in the naval fashion, blue eyes too bright for English weather, and a mustache he cultivated, expecting authority to sprout from his upper lip.
He had their father’s height, their father’s eyes, and none of the old duke’s English restraint.
The boy had arrived one year ago with empty pockets, excellent boots, and a story about temporary ruin that had smelled faintly of opera.
While officers had drifted away after the war ended, Lorenzo had stayed at his elbow with Italian complaints, unsolicited advice, a mother who wrote letters full of blessings and recipes, and that warm, maddening insistence on family.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” Tristan said.
Lorenzo sighed with theatrical despair. “Would it kill you to call me brother, fratello?”
“You are Lieutenant della Rocca. And I’m Captain or Your Grace.”
“Cold. Very cold. England has ruined you more than I feared.” Lorenzo unfolded the paper and offered it with a flourish. “I have finished the assessment of the ship. HMS Resolute will be ready to leave for Naples in two days.”
Two days.
The bracelet cut deeper into Tristan’s palm.
Brighton, which had a moment ago looked merely irritating, became a map of possible losses. Two days to find a woman without a name, without an address, without anything but a bracelet and the memory of her looking at him as if deciding she wanted protection of him or from him.
He opened his palm a fraction, and the sun glittered over the tiny stones. She was somewhere in Brighton, and he would be damned if he left before he tasted her lips.
“This old carcass is not ready to cross a millpond,” Tristan said.
Lorenzo looked from the ship to Tristan’s face.
“The Resolute is old. Underfed. Badly painted. Offended by her own rigging. This is not the same as unfit. My aunt Beatrice is eighty-three, underfed by choice, badly painted by candlelight, and offended by all mankind. She still manages to terrify four provinces before breakfast.”
“Your aunt is not sailing to Naples.”
“No, which improves our chances of arriving alive. But the principle holds. Are you sure you are not finding fault with the ship because you have a bee in your breeches?”
Tristan gave him a cold look. “The right expression is a bee in your bonnet, and if you cannot nail a single English idiom, you should stop trying to speak them.”
“We have sailed worse than HMS Resolute. This would not be the first time the Admiralty assigned you the worst vessel in the fleet and then looked surprised when you made it famous. Do you remember the Ajax?”
“The Ajax was at war.”
“The Ajax leaked like a sieve and stank of bilge from stem to stern. What about the Speedy? No proper galley, cracked mainmast, damp powder… Yet the Sea Wolf sailed her to victory.”
Tristan exhaled through his nose. Yes. He had. Back when the war still meant something. When each prize he took might have led to command, rank, recognition.
Fool. That hope lay somewhere in the Atlantic.
A commotion rose from the quay below.
Tristan turned, scanning the crowd. A cart had overturned near the landing stage. Men shouted. A woman in a blue bonnet lifted her skirts away from spilled fish. His heart sped. But it was not her.
His hand closed on the rail until the weathered wood pressed lines into his palm.
“You will love Italy, fratello. I promise you.” Lorenzo had come closer.
“Not the way Englishmen love Italy, with guidebooks and bad digestion, but truly. Naples will see you. The court will admire you. They will not be like this cold-hearted England, measuring a man until he is small enough to tolerate. Once they know the great strategist you are, the victories you won at sea, the risks you took, you will be celebrated. Let’s go at once. ”
Tristan looked away.
Too young. Lorenzo had not yet learned that what impressed men was not merit, but influence.
Was that what the goddess had gone chasing last night?
The rear admiral with his orange toupée and his gang of favorites.
Lord Hill with his influence in parliament.
Men who had never needed to cut a line or board a deck because they cut prize money from others.
“The Admiralty has done this once too often.”
Lorenzo stilled. “Assigned you a poor ship?”
“Handed me a floating insult and called it duty. Send her back to Plymouth for refitting.”
“That will take several weeks.”
Tristan opened his hand. The bracelet lay across his palm, glittering with cold little sparks.
Several weeks. More than enough time to find a woman without a name.
“So be it.”
“But that won’t do at all,” Lorenzo said. “If we leave now, we arrive in time for the hunting at Capodimonte. I made plans. There is fishing in the bay, and my cousin has a summer ball, and my mother has already instructed three aunts and at least one terrifying godmother to approve of you.”
“A calamity narrowly avoided.”
“You are not listening.” Lorenzo stepped closer, his voice losing its polish.
“You should see it, Tristan. The bay in the morning. Vesuvius. The light on the water. The streets. The music. The people shouting because they are happy, angry, hungry, in love, who knows? Everything there is alive. You have been walking around this frozen island as if life were a punishment one must endure with correct posture. Come home with me.”
Home?
Tristan gritted his teeth. “I will stay in Brighton until Resolute is fit to sail. You will accompany the ship to Plymouth, Lieutenant.”
The gulls screamed overhead. Below, the harbor resumed its noise with obscene cheer—water slapping stone, sailors laughing as if nothing of consequence had broken on the quarterdeck.
Lorenzo stared at him, mouth parted, eyes wide.
Tristan didn’t regret it. He was doing Lorenzo a kindness.
Better to cut this foolish family bonding before it took root.
If Lorenzo meant to have any future in the Navy, he would learn now what every captain learned sooner or later—weight dragged men under.
Affection made hands slow. Kinship was no use aboard a warship if it taught a man to hesitate when a line had to be severed.
Lorenzo folded the assessment paper carefully, smoothing the crease with his thumb. When he looked up again, his face had closed into courtly brightness, the worst kind, the kind that made no claim at all.
“As you command, Captain.”
The title should have pleased Tristan. It had been what he demanded. Lorenzo bowed with perfect correctness. Then he turned away to carry out the order.
Tristan watched him go across the quarterdeck.
His brother’s shoulders remained straight.
His steps remained light. Only once, near the ladder, did Lorenzo pause as if he might turn back and make some ridiculous remark about English cruelty or Italian tragedy or the moral failure of men who refused summer balls.
He did not.
Tristan looked back at Brighton.
The bracelet had bitten crescents into his palm.
He opened his hand and watched the stones catch the sun again.
Somewhere in this bright, deceitful town, she moved beyond his reach.
He had delayed the ship. He had bought himself time.
He had cut away the one man who wanted to stand beside him in Naples, and he told himself the deck was clearer for it.