Behind him, planks creaked under a familiar step.
Lorenzo della Rocca, Conte di Brianza, crossed the quarterdeck with a folded paper in one hand and enough morning brightness in his face to annoy any reasonable man. At five-and-twenty, he had black hair cropped short in the naval fashion, blue eyes too bright for English weather, and a mustache he cultivated, expecting authority to sprout from his upper lip. He had their father’s height, their father’s eyes, and none of the old duke’s English restraint. The boy had arrived one year ago with empty pockets, excellent boots, and a story about temporary ruin that had smelled faintly of opera.
While officers had drifted away after the war ended, Lorenzo had stayed at his elbow with Italian complaints, unsolicited advice, a mother who wrote letters full of blessings and recipes, and that warm, maddening insistence on family.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” Tristan said.
Lorenzo sighed with theatrical despair. “Would it kill you to call me brother, fratello?”
“You are Lieutenant della Rocca. And I’m Captain or Your Grace.”
“Cold. Very cold. England has ruined you more than I feared.” Lorenzo unfolded the paper and offered it with a flourish. “I have finished the assessment of the ship. HMS Resolute will be ready to leave for Naples in two days.”
Two days.
The bracelet cut deeper into Tristan’s palm.
Brighton, which had a moment ago looked merely irritating, became a map of possible losses. Two days to find a woman without a name, without an address, without anything but a bracelet and the memory of her looking at him as if deciding she wanted protection of him or from him.
He opened his palm a fraction, and the sun glittered over the tiny stones. She was somewhere in Brighton, and he would be damned if he left before he tasted her lips.
“This old carcass is not ready to cross a millpond,” Tristan said.
Lorenzo looked from the ship to Tristan’s face. “The Resolute is old. Underfed. Badly painted. Offended by her own rigging. This is not the same as unfit. My aunt Beatrice is eighty-three, underfed by choice, badly painted by candlelight, and offended by all mankind. She still manages to terrify four provinces before breakfast.”
“Your aunt is not sailing to Naples.”
“No, which improves our chances of arriving alive. But the principle holds. Are you sure you are not finding fault with the ship because you have a bee in your breeches?”
Tristan gave him a cold look. “The right expression is a bee in your bonnet, and if you cannot nail a single English idiom, you should stop trying to speak them.”
“We have sailed worse than HMS Resolute. This would not be the first time the Admiralty assigned you the worst vessel in the fleet and then looked surprised when you made it famous. Do you remember the Ajax?”
“The Ajax was at war.”
“The Ajax leaked like a sieve and stank of bilge from stem to stern. What about the Speedy? No proper galley, cracked mainmast, damp powder… Yet the Sea Wolf sailed her to victory.”
Tristan exhaled through his nose. Yes. He had. Back when the war still meant something. When each prize he took might have led to command, rank, recognition.
Fool. That hope lay somewhere in the Atlantic.
A commotion rose from the quay below.
Tristan turned, scanning the crowd. A cart had overturned near the landing stage. Men shouted. A woman in a blue bonnet lifted her skirts away from spilled fish. His heart sped. But it was not her.
His hand closed on the rail until the weathered wood pressed lines into his palm.
“You will love Italy, fratello. I promise you.” Lorenzo had come closer. “Not the way Englishmen love Italy, with guidebooks and bad digestion, but truly. Naples will see you. The court will admire you. They will not be like this cold-hearted England, measuring a man until he is small enough to tolerate. Once they know the great strategist you are, the victories you won at sea, the risks you took, you will be celebrated. Let’s go at once.”
Tristan looked away.
Too young. Lorenzo had not yet learned that what impressed men was not merit, but influence. Was that what the goddess had gone chasing last night? The rear admiral with his orange toupée and his gang of favorites. Lord Hill with his influence in parliament. Men who had never needed to cut a line or board a deck because they cut prize money from others.
“The Admiralty has done this once too often.”
Lorenzo stilled. “Assigned you a poor ship?”
“Handed me a floating insult and called it duty. Send her back to Plymouth for refitting.”
