“Awkward,” Cloud repeated quietly. “If you try getting her to cooperate with those charges as leverage, she’ll laugh in your face.”
“Actually, Captain, the matter has already been decided. The President wants to meet Alex Danty and he chose us to arrange a meeting. We’ve chosen you. We had no idea you knew the captain, but you’ve convinced me that you do. Your knowledge will help you bring her to us even sooner than we anticipated—perhaps before war is declared. The President needs support and if the public discovers Alex Danty is on our side the issue won’t be so unpopular.”
That was when Bennet pulled out the order. “Here it is, Captain. You’re to leave within the week. Mr. Madison considers it vital that you return as soon as possible. No one else, other than your superiors, knows about the decision to find Alex Danty.”
Cloud reflected on their fevered approach to the imminent war. It did not seem consistent with any of Madison’s policies to order him to go after Alex; yet, that was what he was expected to do. He pulled out the orders and examined them. Signed by the President and his superior, Commodore Craig. Sighing, he put them away.
Perhaps, if he had never mentioned Alexis’s connection with Jean Lafitte, they would not have persisted with the idea of meeting her. He had never intended to tell them he was aware Alexis had met the notorious pirate shortly before she’d begun her hunt for Travers. At some point it had slipped out—probably when Bennet, in a rare moment of insight, had guessed he was in love with Alex Danty, and had accused him of forgetting his loyalty to his country. He had wanted to slap the man’s insipid grin right off his face. He loved Alex Danty, but he would never let her stand in the way of what was required of him. Just as she had not let him stand in the way of her goal. And he had tried. Oh God, he thought, how he had tried.
As soon as Lafitte’s name was out, Alexis’s fate was sealed. He had tried to avoid being given the assignment, but they would have none of it. His men would think he had betrayed her, just as Alexis would.
He never wanted to see Alex Danty again until she had had her vengeance, until she had put to rest the thing that drove her. But now their goals clashed. He was going to be at war and her personal war could not block his way. He only hoped she did not kill him before he had a chance to reason with her.
Cloud stared at the fire. He sat down in a high-backed chair, tilted it, and propped his legs on the table. So much he had told them, he thought, and so much still remained. The things he omitted were never far from his consciousness, just as Alex was never out of reach as long as he was willing to retrieve the memory.
He ran his fingers through his copper hair as he recalled the sight of Alexis on the very edge of the cliff. On the very edge of her sanity, he had thought at the time. Her face was smeared with blood; her golden hair, more crimson than gold. He never knew how she found the strength to speak, let alone raise her fierce countenance skyward. But she had, and Landis and he had never heard anything more chilling. There was a moment on the cliff when he thought she had ceased to be human, a moment when she took on an appearance that was almost ethereal. He had heard Landis tell someone later that she was like an angel, an avenging angel; and Cloud, having been there, was forced to agree with that assessment. Alexis Quinton had died on the crow’s nest that day, and Alex Danty had been brought back to life.
At first he fought against her continuous presence in his mind. There had been other women since Alex but they only made him want her back. There was no other woman for him, and he could never have her completely until she had finished with Travers.
And then there was the matter of her second vow, the vow that only Landis and he heard that day—a vow they had never shared with anyone. It was the one Cloud knew he would have to fight against. He loved Alex Danty, and with the last of her strength she had sworn she would never love anyone again.
A crimson spark leaped free of the crackling fire. The red glow of the burning embers was all his tired mind needed to vividly recall the events of that day and the weeks thereafter….
Alexis finished her oath and let her head drop forward. Trembling, she raised herself to her feet and took a step away from the edge of the cliff. Her mind was swimming and the rhythm of the tide was the same as the throbbing in her brain. She knew she was about to faint; she thought how absurd her promises would seem to the two men behind her if she slipped over the hillside.
Cloud stepped forward, gathering her in his arms before she fell to the ground. He carried her into the house and laid her on the sofa in the drawing room. It was when he went in search of cloths and water for her back that he saw Francine’s body lying beneath the window in the dining room. He fought another wave of nausea and tried to remember when her death could have occurred. He was suddenly very grateful to the limey who had rendered him unconscious.
Cloud returned to Alexis with a basin of water and bandages and began to clean the blood from her back so he could examine the extent of her wounds.
Landis watched, shaking his head so his graying hair fell across his forehead in places. “Travers wasn’t easy on her. The man has to be insane to go after a girl that way. He cut her deep. What are we going to do with her?”
“Do with her?” Cloud asked, surprise surfacing in his voice. “We’re taking her with us, of course. There’s nothing for her here. The British will have made a shambles of her father’s business. Her husband’s dead—”
“Her husband? You mean the man she almost got herself killed for was her husband?”
“I believe so. When I talked to Quinton’s secretary, he informed me that George’s daughter had an anniversary today. This is obviously the daughter and that was her husband. Her mother is in the other room. Did you see what happened to her?”
“I didn’t see it when it happened, if that’s what you mean. Here, let me do that,” Landis said, as he watched his captain try to clean Alexis’s wounds. “You may be my commander, but you’re making a mess. Take some of the cloths and dip them in water and clean yourself up. You’ve got a nasty gash on the side of your head. How did it happen?”
Cloud moved aside and made room for his first officer. He had forgotten about his head until Landis mentioned it. He wet a few cloths and did as Landis suggested.
“Slug creased me,” he explained, walking to the far side of the room, where he sat down again, facing a window. He could not watch Landis working on her, remembering too well what it had felt like when Landis had worked on his back. He was glad she was still unconscious and he hoped she remained that way until most of it was over.
“You were lucky,” Landis observed. He worked gently on Alexis’s raw flesh. If she survived these wounds, he thought, he would not want to be in Travers’s place for anything in the world. He did not doubt the sincerity of her promises for one minute.
“Luck, nothing. She saved me. That sailor had me dead and buried. She pushed him just as he fired. If she had been a second earlier I wouldn’t have been hit at all.”
“Or a second later and I’d be burying you.”
“What about Allen and Briggs?”
“Dead.”
“Damn,” he said softly.
Landis winced as he cleaned the last of the blood from Alexis’s back. “I don’t know if she’s going to live, Tanner. She’s just a bit of a thing. Come and look. He did a hell of a job and she’s lost a lot of blood.”
Cloud forced himself to get to his feet and walk over to the sofa. The marks were indeed deep and she would always carry the scars—if she lived.
