22. Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Tristan ran for the quarterdeck with the cannon’s echo still breaking inside his skull. Marguerite followed, light-footed and breathless.
“Sail ho!” The cry fell from the masthead.
“Where away?” Tristan called.
“Larboard quarter, sir. Fine on the quarter. Carrying a press.”
The glass was in his hand before he asked for it. Vale knew him well enough for that. Tristan raised it and found the other ship against the dazzle of the afternoon.
Too much canvas. Royals, topgallants, topsails drawing hard, the whole pale mass coming up behind them with a confidence that had no business in peacetime. Then the hull lifted on a swell, clean-lined and built for speed.
A privateer’s brig. A lean two-masted hunter made for chase work. She carried enough guns to cripple a heavier ship and more men than comfort allowed. She did not need to match the frigate gun for gun. She needed only to catch her, rake her, throw grapnels, and come over the side.
The halyard jerked along the stranger’s mainmast. Up went their flag, hauled hand over hand until it reached the peak. It streamed shut in the wind, then the cloth cracked open. The French tricolor fluttered, a skull at its center.
“Sarkouf,” Tristan said.
The name moved over the deck like a fuse laid to powder. Men repeated it under their breath, old hands first, then younger ones who had only heard the stories.
“Who is Sarkouf?” Marguerite asked.
Her cheeks were still flushed, a few strands escaping her braid. One damp curl against warm skin, and the deck seemed suddenly full of things that could be broken.
Lorenzo cursed in Italian. “Only the most bloodthirsty corsair to sail under French colors.”
“But he cannot mean danger to us.” Marguerite looked from Lorenzo to Tristan. “The war is over.”
“It seems he has not received the memorandum,” Tristan said, and his voice held because it had been trained to hold. His pulse had already changed tempo, slowing into the hard, heavy beat that came before battle.
Another shot fell short, striking the water and throwing up a white burst that spread and fell back into the sea. A ranging shot. Sarkouf was measuring him.
Measure me, you bastard. Measure the wind, the run, the angle. Measure everything except her.
Marguerite shifted beside him, and her sleeve brushed his cuff.
Instead of her pale skin, Tristan saw blood on muslin.
Saw her hair caught in broken wood. Saw Sarkouf’s men dragging her up through the companionway.
His stomach dropped so violently he mistook it for the ship falling out from under him.
He had too much aboard. This weight was warm against his side, breathing in salt air and looking at the oncoming ship as if danger were some manly confusion that might yet be soothed by a diplomatic phrase.
“Go below,” he said.
Her chin lifted at once, that brave little movement he had come to recognize as the first signal of approaching defiance. She was about to tell him she was not afraid.
Damn you, Marguerite. I am.
The terror must have shown somewhere in his face, because her expression changed. He took her hand. He had no time to hold it. No place on the quarterdeck for the absurd press of her fingers in his, but he took it anyway. Her hand fit too easily in his.
“Marguerite, I—” I love you. The words lined up on his throat. Too large. Too late. He stopped them behind his teeth. They struck there, trapped and dangerous, like a round shot that had failed to clear the muzzle.
Her eyes searched his. His chest felt as if a hand had closed inside it and twisted.
“Lock the cabin door,” he said finally.
She stared at him for one breath, then another. “And if you need me?”
Need her? Christ. He needed her already. He needed her breathing. Needed her below. Needed her safe. Needed her gone from his sight before fear made him useless.
He caressed her cheek. “If I need you, Maggie, the ship is already lost.”
Her lips parted, and he thought she would argue. Then she touched his sleeve.
“Then do not lose the ship.”
“I don’t intend to.”
He watched her go. Her skirts vanished first. Then the pale turn of her face. Then nothing. His eyes remained fixed on the empty companionway long after she had gone, as if the wood might be made transparent.
Enough. If he were to save her, he needed to stop acting the lovesick fool.
The deck around him sharpened cruelly—sun on brass, tar underfoot, the hot-metal tang of fear before gunsmoke, men waiting for him to become the Sea Wolf again.
Tristan lifted the glass again and fixed it on Sarkouf’s ship.
She was gaining. The privateer had the cleaner hull, the longer spars, the lighter burden, and a captain who knew how to spend wind like coin. She came on under a press of canvas, the white of her royals sharp against the blue, her bow lifting and falling with predatory grace.
“Shall I beat to quarters, my lord?” Vale asked.
Tristan heard the hunger behind the question. The beat began under the deck. Clear for action. Hammocks up. Guns cast loose. Powder monkeys down. Sand on the planks. The ship stripped of peace and returned to her true profession.
A pitched battle was possible. Tristan could shorten sail, run out the guns, and let Sarkouf come within reach. The frigate was old, but she was not helpless. His men were hard-trained. His officers knew their work.
But if Sarkouf disabled them, if one lucky shot took a mast, if the privateer came alongside and grappled, the matter would no longer belong to guns. The deck would be swarmed by Sarkouf’s men.
And below, behind a locked cabin door, Marguerite would be vulnerable.
His mouth went dry. The deck beneath his boots seemed to narrow until all command, all calculation, all glory led to that door.
He could lose a mast. He could lose guns.
He could lose men and carry their names afterward like a shot in the flesh.
He could not think of her there with strange hands on the latch and still breathe like a captain.
“No,” he said.
Vale stared. “My lord?”
“We do not clear for action.”
The answer moved through the deck. They had expected the Sea Wolf to bare his teeth. He took the blow of their disbelief standing. Let them taste disappointment. Pride had weight. Reputation had weight. He would cut both if he must.
His grip tightened around the glass until the brass bit his palm. “We run.”
Vale’s brows drew together.
“We run. And we make him believe he can catch us. Sarkouf has the legs of us,” Tristan said.
“He knows it. I want him to be certain of it. Hoist every sail the Resolute can carry. Courses, topsails, topgallants, royals. Studding sails if the wind will take them. Let him see us crowding canvas like frightened merchants.”
Vale glanced up at the spars. “She’ll strain hard. The foretopmast is not young.”
“Brace it. Hawsers to the mastheads. I want the sticks stayed as if we mean to drag Naples to us by the roots. Shift what weight you can forward and low. Secure the guns. No loose gear on deck. If she heels, I don’t want half the ship rolling into the scuppers.”
“Aye, my lord.”
The master moved at once, shouting orders forward. Men sprang into motion, grateful now because the ship had been given something to do.
Sarkouf gained.
Every man aboard could see the privateer swelling behind them, no longer a sail on the quarter but a ship with teeth. Her bow lifted clean over the swell. Her canvas shone white in the falling light.
Tristan stood by the weather rail as the old frigate trembled under the added sail.
He felt the strain of her through the soles of his boots, the pull of canvas, the complaint of masts, the long groan of timbers asked to remember they had once been young.
The hawsers sent aloft held. For now. The braces were manned.
The clewlines and buntlines were ready. Every hand who needed to know had been told, and every hand who did not had been given work enough to keep fear from festering.
“Range?” he asked.
The master had his glass up. “Closing fast, my lord. If he keeps his present course, he’ll have our quarter before full dark.”
If Sarkouf reached their quarter, he could rake them. One lucky broadside through the stern, and the cabin would become a box of flying glass and splintered oak.
Tristan lowered the glass.
The sun had dropped low, staining the edge of the sea with brass. Another quarter hour and the sun would set. He needed that darkness, but not yet. First, he needed Sarkouf committed.
“Steady as she goes,” he said.
The helmsman answered, “Steady, my lord.”
The frigate leaned, canvas drawing hard. The foretopmast quivered under the press, held by the extra hawsers as a wounded man might be held upright between two friends.
“She will not bear it long,” the master said.
“She needn’t.”
Lorenzo came up beside the after rail, silent for once. He looked from the privateer to Tristan, then toward the companionway where Marguerite had vanished.
Tristan did not follow his gaze.
If he looked there, he would think of her below. If he thought of her below, he would see the cabin door, the lock, the stern windows, the line of shot that might pass through all of them before any man could shout warning.
“Mr. Vale.”
“My lord.”
“Pass it again. No man moves before my word. Every sail comes in together. I want no hero, no eager fool, no saint anticipating me by a heartbeat.”
Vale turned and carried the order in a low voice. It moved down the deck like a fuse laid in powder. Men set their feet. Hands closed around lines. Faces lifted toward canvas, then toward him. The whole frigate seemed to gather itself around his silence.
Sarkouf came on.
Closer.
Closer still.
Through the glass, Tristan saw men lining the privateer’s forecastle. He saw the flash of metal at her rail. He saw Sarkouf on the quarterdeck, dark against the pale crush of sail, one hand raised as if he already held Tristan’s surrender between two fingers.
A signal broke from the privateer, bright flags snapping up her halyards one after another.