The Captain's Vengeance by Dewey Lambdin

Author:Dewey Lambdin [Lambdin, Dewey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780312315504
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Published: 2004-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Shameless!" Helio de Guilleri spat, still seething after what she'd done; had been seething since she and that lout, a common sailor, a despicable Englishman, had left the Pigeon Coop hours before.

"Do quit stomping about, cher," Charité lazily scolded, covering another weary yawn, "or Madame D'Ablemont below us will be angry and send the concierge after you. I told both of you that someone had to sound him out, to see if he was dangerous to us. And I did," she concluded, with a well-hidden, secretly pleased grin.

"Oh, please!" Helio snapped, angry enough to want to seize her and deliver a good shaking. "You debased yourself!"

Charité paused over her light breakfast of melon, strawberries, and rolls, fixing him with an imperious glare, one elegant brow cocked in vexation. "If my good name, and our family's, worries you so much, mon frère, why is it only now that you deplore my nighttime prowlings, when you were more than aware of my nature before?"

"Nom d'un chien, Charité!" Helio barked. "The man is a lowly, a common . . . Anglo-Saxon. An Anglais! A Protestant Anglais!"

"Ah!" Charité responded, as if her brother had announced a revelation. "So ... I am only to 'play' with dashing and proper Creoles of good family, cher? Is that what you demand? I am always the soul of caution and discretion, and so I was with him. Besides, he believes I am a Bonsecour, so no gossip will touch the de Guilleris."

She switched from a frostily arch coo of annoyance to a twinkly merriment the next moment. "I had the courage and skill, and the allure of my sex, to beard him when you never could, and I think him harmless to us. Alain Weelooby," she said, butchering the name, "was a British Navy officer, but he was court-martialed and found guilty of theft, in their Impress Service, now a mere hired hand with Panton, Leslie. He is a widower, an embittered lifelong failure, just scraping by, though he dreams of making a fortune at last in the Americas," she told them, outlining all she had learned from him in the wee hours. It was almost hilarious to her to see the stricken looks on her brothers' faces as she laid out his bleak biography.

"He will go north on the river, leading his company's shalopes, or help guard their pack-trains," Charité blithely informed them. "He has read all about the 'Noble Savages,' the Indians, and is panting to see them! The usual printed lies, and Monsieur Rousseau's idiocy," she sneered between sips of café au lait.

"So he says," younger brother Hippolyte objected, a skeptical frown on his face. "But, what is an Anglais Navy officer doing here, just months after we took one of their prize ships? It doesn't sound like coincidence to me! Panton, Leslie is said to have ties to the British government, even if the Spanish let them come and go as they please. Everyone knows that. They might have sent a clever spy."

" Cher Hippolyte," Charité replied with barely patient scorn in her voice.

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