Dark Before the Rising Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

crew of that fine ship had taken the poor wee thing to their hearts. Had they not taken pity upon her, taking her with them when they’d sailed for the Indies, she most likely would have died either at the hands of her former kidnappers or of the fever, for she had collapsed soon after boarding the Sea Dragon .
    By the time they dropped anchor in St. John’s Harbour, Antigua, Lady Rhea Claire had not only made a full recovery, she and the captain had fallen in love. In fact, according to Longacres, it had been love at first sight, so the charge of kidnapping the lass from Charles Town was as false as dicers’ oaths, and by that Longacres would have sworn. And if justice was to be done, Longacres had been heard to declare, then the crew of the Sea Dragon ought to have been knighted for their uncommon act of kindness, and certainly not questioned like criminals.
    Actually, Kirby remembered the affair in a slightly different manner. For one thing, the first encounter between the captain and Lady Rhea Claire had been anything but love at first sight, and although the voyage to Antigua had been fraught with nothing more dangerous than sun-filled, balmy days, the atmosphere on board had been stormy.
    Of course, he couldn’t truly blame Longacres for his wrong assumptions, for the coxswain hadn’t been privy to certain information. And now that Kirby thought about it, he would just as soon not have known the real story himself.
    And if there was anyone to lay the blame on for the predicament they now found themselves in, thought Kirby, then it would have to be the Spanish foretopman who’d long ago survived the sinking of his ship in a hurricane. All aboard had been lost except for the cursed foretopman, including the galleon’s cargo, a hold laden with chests of gold and silver newly minted in Mexico City. Not satisfied with merely escaping with his life, the Spanish foretopman had decided to press his luck further, and throughout the following years he had looted the ship of some of its fabulous wealth. His conscience troubling him, however, he had confessed his misdeeds in his last will and testament. Years later that document ended up in a card game in St. Eustatius in which the captain of the Sea Dragon was holding the winning hand. Perhaps because the information revealed on the parchment had been a dying man’s last confession, Dante had considered it worth the journey to Trinidad. And in the ruins of a plantation overgrown with jungle, he discovered a strongbox containing a map. The sunken galleon’s location was clearly marked.
    Because secrets like that are hard to keep, and because many a man had dreamed of finding a fortune in sunken treasure and would have stopped at nothing to get it, Dante and the crew of the Sea Dragon had not been alone in their search. Many were after the misbegotten gold from the conquistadors’ El Dorado.
    And that was why, when the captain of the Sea Dragon had discovered the trespasser in his cabin, the prized treasure map spread across a table, Dante thought Lady Rhea Claire Dominick just another conniver out to get her hands on the fortune. The captain had found it hard to believe her outrageous tale about being kidnapped, and even harder to believe that she was the daughter of an English duke. It seemed obvious that she was a street urchin who’d been sent on board by a rival treasure hunter to find that map.
    Her feeble explanation that she had accidentally stumbled across the map that had been so cleverly hidden from all of Charles Town had been yet another far-fetched tale meant to confuse the captain.
    They’d had very little choice. The girl having seen the map, Dante couldn’t risk turning her loose. So she had sailed to the Indies with them, and only Kirby, Alastair, and the captain had known the real reason why she went with them.
    Soon, however, when Lady Rhea Claire had recovered her health, it became clear that she was indeed the