He eased in fully. Their breath mingled. Buried deep, he held still. No thrust. No demand. Only the impossible wish to remainwhere leaving could not reach him. The aftershocks pulsed through him, deeper now, quieter.
She was still with him. For this breath. This one. This one.
A cannon blast tore through the cabin, a concussion that split the air open. The windows rattled in their frames. The bed lurched beneath them. Marguerite jolted under him, her hands seizing his shoulders, and Tristan’s whole body locked around her.
A second blast came.
Closer.
The frigate answered with a shudder through every plank. Shouts broke overhead. Boots pounded. A bell clanged once, then again, frantic and metallic. The outside world, which they had sworn did not exist, burst into the cabin with powder smoke, splintered silence, and the hard language of war.
Tristan lifted his head. Marguerite looked up at him, eyes wide, lips parted. The captain returned before the man was ready to let go.
He withdrew from her with a sound that felt torn from his ribs, then caught her face in one hand and kissed her hard, because he could not afford tenderness and had no time for goodbye.
Chapter twenty-two
Tristan ran for the quarterdeck with the cannon’s echo still breaking inside his skull. Marguerite followed, light-footed and breathless.
“Sail ho!” The cry fell from the masthead.
“Where away?” Tristan called.
“Larboard quarter, sir. Fine on the quarter. Carrying a press.”
The glass was in his hand before he asked for it. Vale knew him well enough for that. Tristan raised it and found the other ship against the dazzle of the afternoon.
Too much canvas. Royals, topgallants, topsails drawing hard, the whole pale mass coming up behind them with a confidence that had no business in peacetime. Then the hull lifted on a swell, clean-lined and built for speed.
A privateer’s brig. A lean two-masted hunter made for chase work. She carried enough guns to cripple a heavier ship and more men than comfort allowed. She did not need to match the frigate gun for gun. She needed only to catch her, rake her, throw grapnels, and come over the side.
The halyard jerked along the stranger’s mainmast. Up went their flag, hauled hand over hand until it reached the peak. It streamed shut in the wind, then the cloth cracked open. The French tricolor fluttered, a skull at its center.
“Sarkouf,” Tristan said.
The name moved over the deck like a fuse laid to powder. Men repeated it under their breath, old hands first, then younger ones who had only heard the stories.
“Who is Sarkouf?” Marguerite asked.
Her cheeks were still flushed, a few strands escaping her braid. One damp curl against warm skin, and the deck seemed suddenly full of things that could be broken.
Lorenzo cursed in Italian. “Only the most bloodthirsty corsair to sail under French colors.”
“But he cannot mean danger to us.” Marguerite looked from Lorenzo to Tristan. “The war is over.”
“It seems he has not received the memorandum,” Tristan said, and his voice held because it had been trained to hold. His pulse had already changed tempo, slowing into the hard, heavy beat that came before battle.
Another shot fell short, striking the water and throwing up a white burst that spread and fell back into the sea. A ranging shot. Sarkouf was measuring him.
Measure me, you bastard. Measure the wind, the run, the angle. Measure everything except her.
Marguerite shifted beside him, and her sleeve brushed his cuff. Instead of her pale skin, Tristan saw blood on muslin. Saw her hair caught in broken wood. Saw Sarkouf’s men dragging her up through the companionway. His stomach dropped so violently he mistook it for the ship falling out from under him.
He had too much aboard. This weight was warm against his side, breathing in salt air and looking at the oncoming ship as ifdanger were some manly confusion that might yet be soothed by a diplomatic phrase.
“Go below,” he said.
Her chin lifted at once, that brave little movement he had come to recognize as the first signal of approaching defiance. She was about to tell him she was not afraid.
