26. Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Marguerite stood at the rail and watched the Neapolitan felucca approach them across the blue water. It was a pretty little vessel, its white sail catching the sun.
“Now we will finally be able to disembark?” she asked Lorenzo.
She already knew the answer. The envoy would come aboard, sniff at the ship, deliver the court’s invitation, authorize the frigate to enter Naples properly, and open the door she had been knocking upon since Brighton.
Lorenzo stood beside her, one hand resting on the rail. “Yes, carissima. If that is what you want.”
Yes. What she wanted.
Behind the felucca, Naples rose from the curve of the coast like something invented by a painter who had never known English weather.
Vesuvius stood beyond the city, blue and purple against the hard brightness of the sky, its dark cone softened by distance.
The city spilled beneath it in pale tiers, cream and ochre and rose, roofs and domes and church towers descending toward the water.
Even the air seemed different. Warmer. Looser.
Less moral. It slipped over her face and throat, under the edge of her bonnet, through the fine muslin at her wrists, and promised to reach the bones if one allowed it enough time.
She had imagined this warmth for years. Naples had been the answer to every cold room and every unpaid account.
Naples had been marble under bare feet, lemon trees in courtyards, music through open windows.
Naples had been the Italian husband waiting beneath orange blossoms, incapable of English restraint.
Marguerite kept her eyes on the coast, waiting for her heart to leap toward it. Instead, it kept turning back to the quarterdeck, where Tristan stood near the helm.
He always seemed most himself when occupying the place from which he could bear responsibility alone.
His coat was dark against the brightness, his posture severe, his eyes fixed on the approaching felucca.
A duke, a captain, an ambassador, a man who had outwitted a corsair and then retreated into silence as though victory had cost him something he did not intend anyone to see.
Why, of all the catastrophes available to a sensible woman, had she fallen in love with an Englishman?
A hollow ache opened beneath her breastbone, spreading slowly outward until her ribs felt too small to hold it. She had given too much again, and now look at her, arriving in Naples empty. Utterly spent.
The coast before her glowed with all the warmth she had ever wanted, and still she felt cold inside, as if some private winter had crossed with her and would not disembark.
Perhaps the issue had never been England.
Perhaps she was the sort of woman who could stand before the Mediterranean, before sunlight poured over marble and sea, and still feel cold and empty.
She had no feeling left. No clever little store of untouched selfhood she might open and say, there, you see, I kept enough back for the next negotiation.
She had given all of it. Again. Not because Tristan had demanded it.
Not because he had tricked her. Not because he had promised what he had not meant to give.
That would have been easier. One could condemn a villain. One could survive anger.
No, the unbearable fact was that he had been sweet. He had given her keys, hot water, and safety. He had carried her, listened to her, touched her as if her body were a country he wished to learn. He had tried, in his own way, not to take more than she offered.
And still she had offered everything.
Perhaps the Italian husband, if she found him, would discover what Tristan had discovered. That she was weight. That she carried too much hunger inside her. That she could not be kept without costing more than she was worth.
The felucca drew closer.
“Well,” she said, though she was not certain to whom she spoke, “when one has given everything one has, one arrives at the next negotiation with the power of the reckless who have nothing to lose.”
Lorenzo glanced at her.
Marguerite tried to smile and found the expression too heavy to lift properly.
“A pity,” she added, “that I feel neither powerful nor reckless.”
The felucca came alongside at last before she could make any other unseemly confessions.
A ladder was lowered, men shouted in Italian, and soon the Neapolitan envoy climbed aboard with the air of a man doing a favor to inferior wood.
He was short, round, and magnificently overdressed for a ship, with a waistcoat embroidered beyond reason, a hat tucked beneath one arm, and a lace neckcloth arranged so elaborately that it might have been attempting independent diplomacy.
Behind him scrambled a thin secretary carrying a leather folio, several rolled papers, and the expression of a nervous puppy entrusted with state secrets and prone to damp paws.
The envoy’s gaze traveled over the deck, and his mouth tightened.
Marguerite felt the insult in the slight lift of his nostrils. It didn’t require much insight to realize the envoy thought the frigate was shabby.
Marguerite’s spine straightened. The ship was old.
Yes. Harsh. Often rude. Occasionally murderous to footwear.
But it had carried them. It had outrun danger.
It had held hot water, hidden cushions, moonlight, fear, laughter, and the unbearable intimacy of being cared for.
No perfumed court minion with embroidery migrating up his chest had the right to sneer at it.
The envoy said something in Italian.
Lorenzo stiffened beside her. The easy humor left his face, and color rose along his cheekbones.
Marguerite turned to him. “What did he just say?”
He looked at the envoy, then at Tristan, then back at her. His jaw worked. He said, “What a decrepit old tub. This new ambassador must be another nameless fool sent south by mistake.”
Heat replaced the cold inside her. Lorenzo moved as if to advance on the envoy and give him a very well deserved lesson in politeness.
Marguerite caught his arm. “No.”
His eyes flashed. “He insulted my brother. And you would have me do nothing?”
“I would have you do nothing useless.” Her fingers tightened on his sleeve. “Insults will not change how he thinks. They will only allow him to think it louder.”
Lorenzo’s mouth parted, then closed.
Across the deck, Vale conducted the envoy toward Tristan, who stood waiting on the quarterdeck with the unsmiling patience of a man prepared to accept discourtesy because he had already survived worse forms of enemy fire.
The envoy bowed just enough to be correct and not enough to be gracious.
The secretary fumbled with papers. Tristan inclined his head, formal, contained, and horribly alone.
Lorenzo’s voice dropped. “It will be just like the Admiralty.”
Marguerite did not look away from Tristan.
“They will give him the cold shoulder,” Lorenzo said, “and he will be miserable and angry for the rest of his life.”
She could see it too clearly. Tristan entering that court as a nameless foreigner. They would hear one slight, repeat it in three drawing rooms, embroider it by supper, and by morning, he would not be the Sea Wolf or the Duke of Stormhaven. He would be the nameless Englishman with the old ship.
And Tristan, who had learned to survive by cutting away softness before others could mock it, would harden. He would meet disdain with silence, pride with iron, insult with contempt. He would be miserable. Worse, he would call that misery strength.
The thought struck some place inside her that had not yet gone numb.
Well, then. It was not as if she could do anything.
She had her own arrival to consider. She needed to send a courier to the marchesa, dress properly, discover which doors had closed since her last letter, and reopen them without seeming to knock.
She needed to step into Naples not as a woman fleeing England, not as a discarded mistress, not as cargo from a frigate, but as Marguerite d’Ailes, who had friends, knowledge, poise, and a future.
She had to conserve what remained of herself because what remained was not much.
Her gaze moved back to Tristan, all alone . . .
If Elsie could see what her mind was doing right now, she would say that only Marguerite could stand before the city of her dreams, hollow as a blown egg, and still begin calculating how to spend herself for someone else.
Marguerite looked back toward the coast. Some version of herself might still be made from sunlight, introductions, and enough determination.
Yet the idea of stepping ashore and leaving Tristan to be received badly, wounded in the place he pretended not to possess, made the emptiness inside her shift.
Her breath deepened by a fraction. Her hand loosened on Lorenzo’s sleeve. What she was about to give him had not been negotiated. There was no clause for it. No promise. No return. No midnight, no key, no whispered vow against her skin, no guarantee that he would know, or even thank her.
And yet she could not seem to care. That, she realized, was the strange mercy of having given everything. One could no longer be bankrupted by generosity. She loved him. She had lost him. Both things were true, and still she could leave him a little more whole than she had found him.
She straightened. “Lorenzo, I must disembark.”
His brows shot up. “But—”
“No buts, Lorenzo. Now.”
“Carissima, the envoy has only just come aboard. The formal invitation must be completed, and the harbor authorization—”
“Then you will have to find me a boat before bureaucracy achieves consciousness.”
He stared at her. “Where will you go?”
“To the city.”
“What will you do?”
Marguerite looked once more at Tristan.
The envoy was speaking now, gesturing with one jeweled hand toward the city as if Naples belonged entirely to him. Tristan listened with his severe face, understanding the words perhaps, but not the thousand little meanings beneath them.
Poor man.
Poor, impossible, beloved man.
Diplomacy, unlike wayward pirate dukes, she knew how to handle.
“I will do some diplomacy in the city,” she said.
Lorenzo’s face changed slowly. First confusion. Then comprehension. Then something like admiration, though he tried to hide it beneath worry. “Maggie.”
“Do not make me sentimental, Lorenzo. I have a schedule.”
“You cannot simply appear in Naples and rearrange the court before dinner.”
“Of course not.” She adjusted her gloves. “One must begin before lunch if one wishes to enjoy the full effect by supper.”
His mouth twitched. “You are doing this for him.”
The words should have embarrassed her. Once, they would have. Once, she would have corrected the record at once, produced a graceful alternative explanation, wrapped generosity in strategy until no one could accuse her of tenderness.
Instead, she let the truth stand between them in the sun.
“Yes,” she said.
Lorenzo’s eyes softened.
She lifted a finger. “If you pity me, I shall push you overboard and claim the envoy’s secretary did it.”
“Understood.”
“And if you tell your brother, I shall deny everything.”
He gave her one of his sweeping bows, but the performance could not quite hide the emotion in his face.
“As you command, carissima.”
Her legs felt unsteady, but she moved before they could file a complaint.
The deck was warm beneath the sun. The air smelled of tar, salt, oranges from somewhere unseen, and the first breath of Naples.
Behind her, Tristan’s voice sounded low and formal.
She did not turn back. If she looked at him now, she might lose the clean edge of purpose and become again only a woman emptied by love.
She had arrived in Naples spent. How ironic, then, that spending was the one thing she still knew how to do.
Only this time, she would not spend herself to be kept.
She would spend herself because she loved him, and because love, when stripped of negotiation, was not poverty after all.
It was a gift.