Fires of Delight (11 page)

“No. I admire the Americans for their combative spirit, as much as I loathe the British for their contemptuous arrogance. But I am a man without politics. Selena, I’m forgetting my manners. You oughtn’t to be standing. Here, take my chair. Or take a seat on the hammock.”

He half-rose, but she waved him down. “I’m fine. I’ll just”—she wandered over to the map table—“walk around…”

The last thing she wanted to do was get trapped in that hammock!

“How can a person be without politics in times like these?” she asked. “Have you declared a plague on both their houses? You’re French, aren’t you? How do you feel about your own country?”

“France? She means nothing to me. She is simply the place where I was born.”

“But…but your country has given us so much…General Lafayette, for example, who came to us in our hour of darkest need. And Comte de Grasse, who is sailing now from Haiti to aid Washington at Yorktown.”

“Ah, Haiti!” Beaumain said lovingly.

“You are familiar with it?”

“That is where I make my home. Off the coast, that is. I own an island. St. Crique.”

“You
own
an island?”

He laughed. “I took it for myself and so far no one has managed
to get me off. But as for your Lafayette and de Grasse and the others, I spit on them!” He seemed genuinely angry. Selena was surprised. He did not appear to be a man easy to anger. “I despise them,” he continued, puffing his cigar furiously now. “They are of the nobility that is destroying France.”

Selena thought of this luxurious ship, and looked about the well-appointed cabin. “I would think,” she observed, “that you are no stranger to the finer life yourself.”

Jean Beaumain laughed again, but bitterly this time. “Not quite,” he said. “I was born the son of a fisherman on the coast of the province of Côtes du Nord, hard by the English Channel. In our part of the country, everyone obeyed a certain
vicomte
, whose name is Chamorro”—the intensity with which he spoke this name sent shivers through Selena—“and woe betide him who did not. One had to pay him fifty percent of whatever one earned. You could not hold a job, not even the lowest, stinking sort of job, without his approval. A man could not even
marry
without his permission because, you see, the nobility in France are in league with the clergy. They have you nailed down and shut up tight from the moment of your birth until you are laid in the ground. It is a common practice, or did you know, for the clergy not to bury the dead until a grave tax has been paid.”

“My God!” exclaimed Selena. Even when Scotland suffered under the British yoke, things had not been
that
horrendous. “But you are here, free—” she began.

They were interrupted by the steward, who entered with a steaming kettle of succulent beef stew and a bucket containing a jeroboam of champagne. He set it on the small dining table, also laying out glasses of cut crystal, fine bone china, heavy silver.

“Let us partake, Selena,” Beaumain said, seating her.

Be careful
, Selena warned herself.
Perhaps he is simply putting you off your guard with his talk
—interesting though it was to her. Or maybe there was a drug in the food or the wine.

No, hardly the wine. Before her eyes, the steward uncorked the wine with a resounding pop, poured some into both glasses, and withdrew.

Beaumain himself ladled stew onto Selena’s plate, then onto his own, and began to eat with relish.

So did she. From the first mouthful, all other considerations were subjugated to an overwhelming, resurgent hunger. The
bread, hardtack, and cheese that she’d shared with Royce, good as they had been in comparison to prison fare, could not come close to this stew. The chunks of beef were juicy, butter-soft. Potatoes, onions, carrots, and peas complemented the meat, and the champagne teased her palate.

Go slow, go slow…

Yet she had to eat, to drink—the cannonball she’d wisely left mostly untouched at the Nest of Feathers—and it had always been thus. Sometimes to her chagrin—the plum pie for example—but more often to her satisfaction, Selena indulged her appetites. She saw the wisdom in the ancient country air: “…there be no drinkin’ in the grave.”

Nor anything else.

“So what will you do with me,” she heard herself asking, filled to satiety and bold with the wine, “after you’ve taken your debt?”

Beaumain wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked at her with amused appraisal.

“You’re certainly welcome to remain aboard. We sail for the Caribbean in the morning.”

Haiti. Of course. And Royce was planning to sail to the Caribbean soon as well.

But he would now—she reasoned—be making his way to the
Selena
in Newport. He would probably expect her, if she could, to join him there.

“I had really planned to go to Newport,” she said lightly. “Perhaps you could take me there?”

“You don’t know how you’ll feel about that at dawn, now, do you?”

He had the male look in his eyes now, powerfully.

“Tell me more about this Chamorro whom you mentioned earlier,” she said, buying time.

Once again, the man’s mere name stirred Beaumain. Selena saw clearly in his eyes what she’d sensed at the tavern: something vulnerable, haunted, and ruined. It was startlingly out of character, given his bearing and charm. But it was there.

“Yes…” he said slowly, his concupiscence for the moment ebbing. “Well, Vicomte Chamorro was, in every way, our lord and master. But I was something of a renegade from the time I was a boy. By young manhood, no risk was too great. I set fire to the priest’s house when he refused to bury my penniless grandmother.
I stole freely from the gardens and orchards of Chamorro’s château. I lied about the size of my fishing catch, saved the money, and began to make plans of my own.

“And I was never caught.
I
was never caught But once, in my absence, Chamorro and his men came to our house. They accused my father—who knew nothing about what I’d done—of falsifying the catch. He denied it and begged for mercy, but they cut off his ears and his nose, and came hunting for me.

“But, learning of this, I gathered friends of mine from Côtes du Nord who felt as I did, and commandeered one of Chamorro’s sloops. He has a great fleet of ships; he is a merchant prince. Using this small ship, we surprised one of his merchantmen just as it was entering the channel, took the ship, then took and sold everything aboard. It was the foundation of my fortune.”

Selena felt pleased at the way he had ended his story, but Jean Beaumain seemed gloomy. Perhaps the maiming of his father—she recalled the impunity with which Oakley had threatened to slit her face—was a wound that could never be erased.
That burden would explain
, she thought then,
his haunted look in repose
.

“I can never return to France,” he said. “Not that I care. Chamorro is alive and powerful, and my father is dead. I will settle with Chamorro in due course…but for now I am sometimes a privateer, sometimes an outright pirate, and occasionally—as on this trip to America—I am a legitimate shipper of ivory and spices and furs.”

He still seemed downcast. Selena arose from the table and walked about the cabin, wandering over to the map table.

“What are all these red flags for?” she asked.

He looked up. “Those are the locations at which Chamorro has been sighted.”

Selena looked at the flags again. Morocco. Zanzibar. Cape Hatteras. Cape Horn. New Zealand. Nippon. And she began to realize that the big, usually good-humored Beaumain, the French peasant lad become a millionaire, was driven by some tremendous desire to track his nemesis to the edges of the world.

She did not understand then, not completely, just why this should be true. Nor could she, with his origins and apparent unconcern for his homeland’s political fate, be sure he could conceive of her own desire to return to Coldstream Castle.

“Now,” said Jean Beaumain, arising from the table and casting
aside his lugubrious reverie, “the night still holds pleasures for us.”

He came quickly across the floor and took her in his arms. “Give us a kiss.”

He slipped his big arms around her, began to wrestle playfully, seeking her lips. She was still wearing the boy’s jacket that Penrod had given her, and was afraid that Beaumain would feel the bag of jewels and sovereigns in her pocket. Best to take it off. Yet the thin shirt she wore beneath the jacket afforded scant concealment, and Jean was unlikely to be gentled by the outline of her breasts and nipples beneath the fabric.

Still, it would give her a moment to think. He said he didn’t want money; he wanted
her
.

But would one of the jewels buy him off?

Considering that, she said, “Let me hang up my coat at least?”

His answer was a grin of delight. He let her go.

“Of course. Hang everything up, if you like.”

She slipped out of her jacket and, to her mild surprise, he reached up and extinguished the big glass-chimneyed lantern by which the cabin was illuminated. She heard him undressing as she found a peg for her coat. She stood there, unmoving.

“Selena?”

“Mr. Beaumain,” she replied formally, “I know I owe you a debt of gratitude—”

“You surely do, madame.”

“And I wonder if there isn’t some way…some
other
way…that I can repay—”

“Hey! A deal’s a deal,” he chortled, tracking her by the sound of her voice and embracing her again. He was naked and ready. And strong.

“What?” he asked, lifting her into the air and swinging her up and onto the hammock. “You’ve still got your clothes on. We can’t have that…”

Seeking her lips with his own, he tore open the filmy shirt and started to tug at her breeches, laughing happily as he did so. Obviously, he was one of those men who thoroughly enjoy sex in the sporting sense. It wasn’t serious at all for him, or darkly passionate, or possessed of great meaning. For him it was fun, as a toy might be to a boy.

Just as obviously, given his forthright nature, he felt that her protests were mere coyness, adding to the fun.

“Please, Selena,” he said, “I can’t wait.”

It was like dealing with a big, happy, overgrown child eager to arrive early at a county fair.

He had one hand inside her breeches now and he’d found her mouth. She resisted, and kept on resisting, but to her amazement Selena found herself liking the kiss. Probably because it was almost impossible not to like him, even under these circumstances, she had trouble finding words to dissuade him. During the struggle she continued to offer, her hand closed around him. He gasped, relaxed, and loosened his grip on her.

“Oh, Selena, that’s—”

Good
. She stroked and caressed him, lightly, quickly, up and down, now and then pausing at the end to bestow a special squeeze.

“Oh, Selena, stop—”

But she didn’t, and very soon his great excitement and need gathered force, sending vast pulsing showers into the air.

“Give me a moment, Selena,” he said lazily, snuggling next to her, “and then we’ll—”

“But this is all I can do.”

“What?”

“Just now,” she said. “At this time.”

“Oh, I
understand!
” he said, after a pause. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

This was as good a time as any, Selena thought, to try another ploy. He was temporarily—all too temporarily, she feared—sated by her expert ministrations, and sympathetic as well.

“I have to tell you that I’m…betrothed,” she said. “I’ve promised myself to another.”

Jean didn’t like that, and there was even a bit of jealousy in his voice when he asked, “Who?”

“Royce Campbell,” she told him.

Long pause. “Royce Campbell, the gunrunner?”

Royce is much more than that
, she wanted to tell him. But she held her tongue. Jean was the kind of man who believed all women should put him first in line, as if it were simply the nature of things.

“Royce and I were trying to slip out of the city when we were
separated tonight. Now I must find a way to go and meet him in Newport.”

Beaumain was silent, miffed at this turn of events.

“You love him?” he asked finally.

“Oh, yes, more than anything.”

“I’ve heard a great deal about him. The man would do
anything
to turn a dollar.”

“That’s not true. The aid he’s given the revolutionaries cannot be measured in money.”

“I’ll bet,” Beaumain replied scornfully. “But, look, I will tell you one thing. Jean Beaumain does not need a woman who favors another. There are all too many who favor him!”

“I know there are. You’re a very desirable man, and a gentle one too.”

He leaned up on an elbow and looked at her in the waning darkness. It was close to dawn now, and outside the
Liberté
, first faint rays of day were lancing upward into the eastern sky. “Is that what you really think?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Selena truthfully, but aware too that things were beginning to work to her advantage. “If I weren’t in love with Royce, it would be difficult not to be smitten by you.”

Those words pleased him. “Is that right?” he asked. “Is that right? Well, how do you plan to get to Newport, then?”

Selena decided that it wouldn’t hurt to try. “I was hoping I could persuade you to take me there.”

He laughed. “You’re a woman filled with hope. But I must return to St. Crique.”

“It won’t take long. Only a few days’ sail.”

“If the wind is good.”

“I’ll pay you well.”

“Hah! What will you pay me with, pray tell?”

Selena slipped out of the hammock, went to her jacket, found the pouch and withdrew one of the jewels. She held it in the dim light coming through the windows. A sapphire, blue and exotic at dawn.

“This,” she declared, walking back to the hammock and handing it to him.

He examined it carefully while Selena fastened the few shirt buttons he hadn’t torn off, and slipped back into her jacket. When she looked at Jean again, he was still in the hammock, studying
the gem, and she saw, around his waist and along the back of his shoulders, shadowy markings on his skin. Possibly these were tattoos, but she could not see clearly, and when he noticed her looking at him, he immediately pulled a fur covering over him.