Virgin Star (20 page)

"Aye. Kingston," Richards told her, standing guard at her side. "One of England's finest and the captain's good friend."

"I am surprised," she confessed, watching as the boisterous table erupted in friendly laughter. "And the other gentlemen?"

"Ham is our navigator, don't you know? Kyler is captain of the—"

"No. The men clad in a gentleman's dark velvet."

"Don't let that fool you, miss! Lord Marshmaine may look the dandy, but the man is regent magistrate of London's constables, and probably possesses the only fortune larger than ‘ole George's. And then the young Lord Winifield Scott there is William's son-in-law."

"William?" She did not know who that was.

"The king's brother, miss. You see," he bothered to explain, "the company here was not randomly chosen for an evening's amusement."

Men of authority and position. She watched with heightened interest. Dark-clothed waiters bustled about the table. Several minutes passed as everyone seemed to be talking at once. She watched three women approach from across the room and surround the table. "Who are they?"

"The ladies? Ah, Molly's girls."

She tried not to be scandalized by the idea of women serving strangers in bars. She knew this happened: that all unworthy women abandoned by men were shred of dignity and forced of necessity to serve men to whom they had no familial relationship. It was a Western way. It was not the Oriental way: no woman, servant, or lady would ever serve men that were not members or honored guests of the house where she belonged. "They are serving women of this bar room?"

The question at first confused young Richards, and he brushed an errant curl from his forehead. Either Shalyn was greener than a rain washed field in sunlight or she had landed here from a foreign country or both.

"Aye." He smiled. "Like barmaids, they are."

Shalyn had not heard. Her attention was riveted

on those beautiful women: their indecently loosened hair and rich gowns with shockingly low-cut bodices over the ample swells of their bosoms. Laughter erupted from the table as the wanton women swarmed around Seanessy like bees to a blossom, bending over as if purposely to display their charms to his gaze. Even when they were not, she felt a twinge of embarrassment for their humiliation. To sacrifice one's dignity for want of coin...

Laughing at something, Seanessy lifted Mary onto his lap. With no small horror, Shalyn watched as he kissed the woman.

Color rose in her cheeks as she turned it over in her mind. True, he had just pressed a kiss on her own lips, but at least he had not done it in public view. Why would he do this to a woman? Did he have no feelings? It was the cruelest denunciation of a woman's chastity and dignity. Making her little better than a prostitute—

A prostitute? She looked back up. In the mirror, she saw the woman's rosy cheeks as she laughed. She certainly did not seem to mind. The admiral fitted his hands around her friend's derriere, laughing as well.

Dear Lord, they were prostitutes; the concubines who visited his home were not enough. The captain, indeed all the men at the table, cavorted with prostitutes ...

Something in her nature prevented from her judging these women and the men who gave them coins, for the desperateness of her own circumstances made her realize how far one might trespass to survive and be safe.

Butcher and two other men appeared and approached the table. They exchanged words and laughter before Butcher took one woman's arm and led her out of the room, disappearing with a number of others. For several long minutes and more Shalyn watched with fascination and awe the lively scene at the captain's table. The novelty of Englishmen's boisterous recreation struck her. The English were so loud, so crass, so blunt! No hidden depths or secrets behind the surface facade, and this seemed so strange—that one would put one's whole person up for public display and scrutiny.

The idea seemed at once foolish and barbaric and yet-—

Yet it was also deliciously compelling...

After nearly an hour, Butcher reappeared with the prostitute. She couldn't hear what he was saying but he seemed pleased—very. Seanessy laughed and raised a crystal glass for a toast. She could not make out the words but the table erupted in laughter. Seanessy grabbed the pretty woman's arm and pulled her down for another public kiss as he swept a bill into her bodice.

Merciful mother in heaven...

For a long while nothing interrupted the riotous amusement of the party. A dull ache began to throb in her head from her injury. She ignored this, sitting perfectly composed in her chair. Laughter erupted every few seconds from various tables. The noise seemed to rise; the musicians gave up trying to compete. It was hot.

"May I trouble you for some water?"

Richards quickly flagged down a waiter who served her at once. She finished the water and felt relieved. She was certain she was unaccustomed to so much noise and commotion. She needed to transcend it. A religious chant emerged in her mind. The noise became a backdrop in her head as the chant grew louder in her consciousness. With it she relaxed, easing the tension from her body—

Suddenly like a great burst of arctic wind, the Duke de la Armanac swept into the room. Shalyn stared straight ahead into the mirror and a tingle of alarm shot up her spine, alarm owing to a magnificent and imperial presence that seemed to absorb the space around him, as if in fact he were larger than life. With hands on hips, he surveyed the crowded room with his dark gaze. In those first few seconds she noticed everything and all at once: that he was handsome and devastatingly so came as a surprise; she had not expected it. He wore fine traveling clothes: black boots and pants, a white silk and lace shirt, and a black, red-silk-lined cape, tossed carelessly over one shoulder.

Yet nearly everyone was drawn to the unnatural fury in his dark eyes. Raven-black hair, brushed with gray, was combed back from sharply chiseled features, accented by a pointed goatee. He had dark brows and eyes; a large fine nose, and a perfect mouth, except for the hard lines around it—lines that suggested a conceit and arrogance more monstrous than Seanessy's, and until she saw it, she wouldn't have believed this was possible in a mere mortal being.

Twelve armed men rushed in behind him, fanning out in a practiced line of defense. Shalyn's keen expertise spotted five warriors from this group who had been trained to the Oriental arts, as Seanessy called it. That there were so many used by a French duke was a surprise until she recalled the connection to the Chinese opium trade.

Silence rushed like a wind through the crowded hall, disappearing in the whispered amusement of the Englishmen. Seated at the four tables, other members of the duke's guard were not amused, but alarmed, as they quickly stood at attention. Richards stood at alert, not the only man present to suddenly withdraw a pistole. This silence escaped the captain's table, where Admiral Kingston finished an amusing anecdote about the publisher Taylor and his newest mistress, and the table burst into laughter, profane against the new stillness and silence that was the room.

She didn't realize she held her breath until it was released in a rush. Even in those first few moments she could not stop the comparison of the two main players here, for Seanessy had that same unnatural arrogance. Yet Seanessy's arrogance was and always would be altered by an ever-present devil-may-care amusement complimented by an unmistakable greed and lust for life.

One by one, the men at the captain's table quieted and turned to see who stood there. Shalyn gasped as she caught sight of the reckless sedition in Seanessy's gaze. She half expected the Duke de la Armanac to shoot Seanessy for the impertinence suggested by his careless manner: the amused grin as he turned, the hands brushing back his long hair, then clasping his head from behind, and the worst, his long booted feet on the table,

"Well." The rich timbre of Seanessy's voice called out. "If it isn't the grand Duke de la Armanac himself!"

The duke removed his expensive white gloves and snapped his fingers. A man leaped forward and nodded toward the blond captain. "And you, sir, are Captain Seanessy, I presume?"

His voice matched perfectly his appearance: regal, authoritative, and unmistakably taxed as he folded his gloves in his belt before returning his hands to his hips. Shalyn could hardly believe Seanessy's response, though, the very light of amusement in his eyes, as if this were all great fun. He merely nodded to Butcher, who rose and crossed the room to where Shalyn sat transfixed.

"At your service, Your Grace," Seanessy said with

a great show of obsequiousness. Without bothering to rise or indeed even drop his large booted feet from the table, Seanessy named the other men seated around him, "Please allow me the pleasure of introducing the gentlemen here: Lord Marshmaine, Constable General of London, Lord Winifield Scott, Admiral Kingston, his officers Crowely and Billings, my captain Kyler, and my first officer Hamilton."

The duke first said nothing as his dark eyes traveled over each of the men at the table, understanding at once the message in the presence of the constable, the admiral, and the King's own brother's son-in-law. A show of British brutality and power, which neither alarmed him nor interested him except as it meant he would have to absorb the loss of his finest ship without due compensation.

The fine dark eyes stopped but briefly on the oddity of Hamilton—a Negro man seated as an equal with whites, who then dared to raise a cup to his honor—but he made no response, past the slightest narrowing of his gaze. He drew back slightly as if cushioning the affront. The English were so barbaric and crass with their liberal abolitionist sentiments!

"Your Grace," Seanessy continued in the same outrageous manner. "Allow me to offer our sincerest expression of sympathy upon hearing about your terrible misfortune today. You did receive my condolences, did you not?"

Condolences that came the way of three trained guard dogs wearing ridiculous red ribbons and Swiss mugs around their necks as they devoured a leg of lamb each, then the most enraging part: a bouquet of flowers on his bed, a blunt warning that there was no one and no place, either private or public, this outrageous rogue would not try to reach. The two large men at his side stepped forward, but the duke held them back with but a slight lift of his hand and shake of his head.

"A terrible crime," the admiral was saying. "A fine seafaring clipper like that—blown sky-high! Marshmaine," he asked loudly and pointedly, "I do hope you are trying to find the culprits?"

Marshmaine replied, "Oh, I assure you I am doing my British best, Admiral."

The Duke de la Armanac held himself quite still; all his fury was unleashed in tightening lips and the quiet thrust of a demand: "What is the meaning of this?"

"The meaning?" Seanessy questioned. "Why, I'm not sure I know, Your Grace. I have no idea what the meaning is of fine seafaring ships being blown to hell. It is alarming how it seems to be going around these days; my own dear brother suffered the exact same fate not long ago."

The duke absorbed this with a quizzical look. "Your brother?"

"Oh, you know him, Your Grace. Lord Barririgton. I believe you recently entertained the Lord and Lady Barrington at your island estate. Apparently you rather boldly, if not rudely, made him an offer for our Malacca shipping enterprise?"

It was an Irish grin Seanessy gave him; full of mischief and the devil's own humor. Shalyn slowly rose from her seat, to stand between Butcher and Richards. She could see the strange effect of Seanessy's words as they turned over in the duke's mind, resulting in an expression of skeptical disbelief. "You?" He seemed torn between laughter and outrage. "You claim a familial relationship with Lord Barrington?"

"I see you are surprised, Your Grace. The truth is we were brothers in heart—long before we learned it in fact. Suffice to say, we are half-brothers. It is a well-known secret that Lord Barrington maintains the land and wealth of the Barrington title, while drawing his actual blood from an illicit mating between a rebel priest and his good mother, Lady Alicia Barrington, the same as my dear mother, Mary Seanessy—"

"Good God, man!" The dark eyes widened with obvious shock that anyone, even this outrageous captain, would trespass so far from the conventions of society as to publicly announce such a vulgar piece of family genealogy. "If you will kindly spare me these details of your sordid paternity."

"As you wish, Your Grace:," Seanessy relented easily. "The part of our admittedly notorious past that I hope interests you is simple and it is this: there are no persons living I love more than Lord and Lady Barrington. Nor is there a limit to my unqualified and unparalleled affection. I might put it in trite sentimental banalities: I would be happy to die a thousand deaths for them. Which is why I hope you can be coerced to exercise your own efforts in preventing any more of these, ah, explosions."