Pirate Wolf Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

has been hell, sir.”
    Beau
took the two water pipes
she carried and handed one to a grateful sailor. The second, she
held until she sliced away the wax seal with her dagger, then put
it into the blond man’s shaking hands. His eyes, she noted, were
the color of jade, narrowed against the painful glare of sunlight.
They bore dark, purplish circles of fatigue beneath and his mouth,
like that of his leader, looked dry and cracked from
thirst.
    He was the only
other one, aside from the Cimaroon, not dressed in the long
breeches and rough canvas shirts of the common tars. His shirt,
beneath the heavy soiling, was made of fine linen, his hose were
woven, not sewn, from unseamed wool. His hands, though strongly
shaped, had not worked a lifetime on ratlines or canvas sheets, and
the boots he wore were cut in the Spanish style, molded snug to the
calf with a folded leather cuff. Moreover, he had the distinct walk
of a landlubber, not the easy, rolling stride of a man accustomed
to holding his balance in stormy seas.
    Not like
the other one, the dark-haired one. He was every inch the seafaring
villain, from the square, jutting jaw, to the well-developed arms
and upper torso that suggested his preferred place in battle would
be feeding thirty-pound iron balls into the snouts of the bronze
monsters that crouched along either side of the gun deck. His face
was all planes and angles, dominated by a straight nose and a firm,
uncompromising mouth. It was not a face that betrayed emotion too
readily or parted with trust too often. Pale, humorless, cold, his
eyes had not stopped moving, assessing each man in Spence’s group,
starting with the burly captain himself and ending with the
prune-like visage of Spit McCutcheon. None appeared to have raised
any hackles, yet he had not set aside his muskets. He lowered one,
to avail himself of a long, deep swallow of water, but he kept the
second tucked under his arm, his forefinger resting a twitch away
from the trigger.
    He murmured
something to the tawny-haired fellow, who nodded and grinned at
Spence with the ease and charm of a courtier.
    “Your ship,
Captain Spence. She looks to be sound and steady. A welcome sight,
you may believe.”
    Spence swelled
his chest. “Aye, she’s a sound beauty, all right. Eight months
we’ve been at sea an’ only hauled over once for a scrapin’.”
    “You met with
no trouble from the Spaniards?”
    “We looked for
none. As I said, we’re honest merchants goin’ about honest
business. Honest enough to share our names as well as our water,”
he added, glancing pointedly at the shadowy figure against the
bulkhead.
    “You are
absolutely right, Captain Spence,” said the blonde, hastily
stepping forward into the sunlight again. “We have been
unconscionably rude.” He thrust out his hand. “My name is Pitt.
Geoffrey Pitt. Honored to make your acquaintance. And you truly do
have to forgive Captain Dante his manners, not that he ever had any
great excess to boast in the first place.”
    “ Dante?”
Spence’s fiery eyebrows speared together over the bridge of his
nose. “Not … Simon Dante?”
    Geoffrey Pitt
attempted to look surprised. “You have heard the name before?”
    “ Heard
the name?” Spit McCutcheon echoed the question with a slackened
jaw. “Christ Jesus on a stick… is there a warm-blooded man on
either side o’ the Ocean Sea who has not heard the name o’ Simon
Dante? As a fact, where we just come from down in the Caribbee, we
were told half the bloody Spanish fleet was out scourin’ the Indies
for him—that’s why we were able to slip in an’ out again without
drawin’ too much notice.”
    “Well, as you
can see,” Pitt acknowledged with a little too much strain behind
his smile, “they found us.”
    Spence
turned on the stump of his wooden heel, his eyes widened out of
their creases as he surveyed the wreckage strewn about them. “Then
this—this is the Virago?”
    He did
not attempt to keep the awe out of his voice.