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High Seas Stowaway
Amanda McCabe
Indulge your fantasies of delicious Regency Rakes, fierce Viking warriors and rugged Highlanders. Be swept away into a world of intense passion, lavish settings and romance that burns brightly through the centuriesPirates, passion and danger on the high seas!Balthazar Grattiano, captain of the infamous ship Calypso and renowned seducer of women, has just walked into the one tavern in all of Hispaniola he should have avoided. For Bianca Simonetti, his sworn enemy, is the owner – and she has vengeance on her mind. But before she can take her revenge she is captured by this rogue’s kiss.Her only chance for retribution is to stow away on his ship for a passionate adventure which will either kill them – or bring them together once and for all! Special bonus story inside Shipwrecked and Seduced
A stowaway. Balthazar had not time to deal with such annoyances. Not now, when his thoughts were full of Bianca.
“Mendoza!” he shouted. “Turn back to Santo Domingo. We have a knave to set ashore.”
Balthazar reached down to grasp the lad by the collar of his doublet, knocking his cap askew. One long, dark brown curl escaped, falling along a startlingly graceful neck.
The stowaway shoved Balthazar’s hand away, standing up straight as he/she pulled off the cap. Bianca glared up at him, shaking her hair free over her shoulders.
“You cannot turn back, Captain Grattiano,” she said. “The wind is against you.”
As Balthazar stared at her in utter astonishment, he heard someone roar with laughter. “Looks like we have a new crew member, captain.”
“I can swab a deck or mend a rigging rope with the best of them,” Bianca declared. Her words were bold, but her eyes—her eyes still held that deep caution. That distance.
A distance that had suddenly grown much narrower.
Balthazar caught her against him, his lips coming down hungrily on hers as his crew broke into raucous cheers.
HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY
“Smell the salt spray, feel the deck beneath your feet
and hoist the Jolly Roger as McCabe takes you on an
entertaining, romantic ride.”
—RT BOOKreviews
A NOTORIOUS WOMAN
“Court intrigue, poison and murders fill this
Renaissance romance. The setting is beautiful…”
—RT BOOKreviews
A SINFUL ALLIANCE
“Scandal, seduction, spies, counter-spies, murder, love
and loyalty are skilfully woven into the tapestry of
the Tudor court. Richly detailed and brimming with
historical events and personages, McCabe’s tale weaves
together history and passion perfectly.”
—RT BOOKreviews
High Seas
Stowaway
By
Amanda McCabe
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Amanda McCabe wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class.
She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA
, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook. Visit her at http://ammandamccabe.tripod.com and http://www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com
Previous novels by the same author:
TO CATCH A ROGUE
(#ulink_ac158d3d-5be8-56b0-ae11-82ef102e046b) TO DECEIVE A DUKE
(#ulink_ac158d3d-5be8-56b0-ae11-82ef102e046b) TO KISS A COUNT
(#ulink_ac158d3d-5be8-56b0-ae11-82ef102e046b) A NOTORIOUS WOMAN
(#ulink_e342eb6d-a86c-5c91-a68f-b899c92c5b17) A SINFUL ALLIANCE
(#ulink_e342eb6d-a86c-5c91-a68f-b899c92c5b17)
* (#ulink_860dc800-bcef-5565-9edf-8255f8026f47) Linked by character
^ (#ulink_860dc800-bcef-5565-9edf-8255f8026f47) Linked by character to HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY
Prologue
Venice—1525
He was there.
Bianca Simonetti stared down from her narrow bedroom window, peeking through the merest crack in her curtain to the young man who stood on the narrow walkway far below. Though she could see little but his pearl-trimmed red velvet cap, the glossy fall of his dark hair on his shoulders, she knew it had to be him. Balthazar Grattiano.
For no one else in all her fifteen years had ever made her heart beat as he did. It pounded now in her breast, the rush of nervous blood loud in her ears. Her very fingertips and toes tingled with hot, nervous life whenever she just looked at him!
She knew that she was far from the only female in Venice he affected this way. His dark green-gold eyes, muscled shoulders and elaborate codpieces were the subject of many whispered, blushing confidences from patrician salons to two scudi brothels all over the city. Bianca heard much of it, for all those women, countesses and whores alike, came to her mother with their secret desires.
Maria Simonetti, long a widow with her own household, was the most gifted fortune-teller and tarot-card reader in Venice. She could not practise her trade openly, of course; Venice was not the strictly religious enclave Madrid was, but no one wanted to court charges of witchcraft. So, the lower stories of their house were let to a dressmaker and a wigmaker, while Maria told her fortunes in a back room, discreetly draped and curtained.
But everyone in the city knew, in their own unstated way, of Maria’s gifts. The women especially. They came seeking a glimpse of their future, assurances about their husbands or lovers or businesses. They came in tears, in hope, even sometimes in elation. And, very often, they came with anxious questions about Balthazar Grattiano. They never noticed Bianca, sitting so quietly in the shadows, and she heard them all.
Balthazar was handsome, one of the most handsome men in Venice. That was obvious just to look at him, of course. He was rich, the only son of the fabulously wealthy and powerful Ermano Grattiano. He was also now nineteen, of an age to marry, to take on the responsibilities of a patrician gentleman. Yet he did not seem inclined to do any such thing, preferring to spend his time with courtesans, gambling, drinking, or, most shocking of all, watching the ships being built at the Arsenal.
Bianca heard all this, heard the whispers of his great “inventiveness” in bed, his mystery and elusiveness. Heard the blushing pleas—would he one day marry her? Make her his exclusive mistress?
But Bianca knew more than his good looks, his riches, his sexual prowess. She looked into his luminous dark green eyes and saw a longing to match her own. A deep, endless pool of vast sadness.
She did not have her mother’s gifts. The cards were just painted pasteboard to her, the future a blank. But from her infancy she had been taught about people. Had seen them come and go in her mother’s house, heard their deepest fears and wishes, their goodness and their malevolence. She could read them, in her own prosaic way. When she first saw Balthazar, first looked into his beautiful eyes, she saw not the smug satisfaction expected of such a privileged young man. She saw only that sadness—and that swirling pool of anger.
In her everyday life, she would not expect to meet anyone like Balthazar Grattiano. They were not of the same status, and their lives did not overlap. Her mother did not mind Bianca listening to fortune-telling sessions. Maria was open about the realities of life, but she was also protective. Bianca was not allowed to go dancing with young men, or even to leave the house at night. Especially during this season of Carnival. She heard only about the masked, wine-fuelled parties from her mother’s visitors.
But Balthazar’s father, the powerful and fearsome Ermano Grattiano, had recently begun coming to the house, seeking card readings from her mother. Maria sent Bianca away when he was there, but she heard from the maidservant that Ermano, who had buried three wives, wished to marry again. He was passionately desirous to have more children, and was convinced Maria could tell him the right lady to bear those babes, convinced the cards would reveal his wife, his destiny.
Balthazar sometimes came with his father to these sessions, always waiting outside on the walkway. That was when Bianca first saw him, one day as she came home from the market. He leaned against the peeling stucco wall, wrapped in a rich fur-trimmed cloak, a book open in his hands.
Bianca, too, loved to read, a strange accomplishment for a young woman. She also learned languages, English and Spanish, and account-keeping, to run her own business one day. A bookseller on the Rialto sometimes loaned her volumes, yet never enough to satisfy her vast desire for knowledge. Her curiosity as to what such a handsome, well-dressed man was doing reading outside her house overcame her usual shyness, and she asked what the book was.
He glanced up at her, and that was when she saw it—that great sadness, that barely leashed fury against she knew not what. He never seemed to turn that anger on to her, though. Instead, he smiled, and showed her his volume on navigation, surprised she could read the Spanish words. After that, whenever Ermano would come to discover more about his destined bride, Bianca would slip down to talk to Balthazar, to see what he was reading, to talk about the strange glories of the world outside Venice. The wonders of England, Spain, France, Turkey—even the new islands beyond the seas.
Bianca had never heard anyone speak of such things, and she was fascinated by this new vista of great lands. Fascinated by Balthazar himself, by this tiny glimpse of wishes and dreams hidden so deep beneath a glittering and careless façade. By this burning desire to run away, to soar free into some unknown fate.
But it frightened her, too, this view outside her narrow existence. This strange, wondrous young man.
“Why,” she asked him once, “would you want to leave Venice? You have everything here.” She could not imagine then that anyone could desire more than riches and fame, an old family name, which Balthazar possessed in abundance. Could not imagine someone would desire more than Venice, which was all the world and more, a sparkling golden place on the water. She herself would surely one day marry and raise a family, help run her husband’s business, and be bound to her home and duties. Her only consolation was that it would be here, in Venice.
Balthazar—he had no need really to go out and seek his fortune, as those who travelled to the New World did. It lay at his very feet, wherever he walked. Money, glory, love. How could he want to leave it all?
But he merely smiled at her, that sweet, sad smile, his beautiful eyes old. So very old. “Come with me, Bianca,” he said, taking her hand. It was the first time he had touched her, his fingers cool and strong over hers. She shivered at the sudden rush of pleasure, the joy even such a casual, innocent caress had on her senses. She held so tightly to him, not caring where he led her. She would surely walk into the very flames of hell, if it was with him.
But he led her not into brimstone, only to the edge of the nearest canal, where his father’s gondola waited. People hurried past them: maids with their market baskets; serious patricians in their black robes, intent on affairs of state; satin-clad courtesans who smiled and giggled at Balthazar. Bianca saw, heard, none of them. It was as if she was wrapped in a silent, sundrenched spell. In the presence of Balthazar, his warmth, his clean, seawater scent, that blocked out the noise and fury of the everyday world.
“You see this water?” he said, gesturing to the canal below them.
Bianca nodded absently. Of course she saw the water! She walked past it every day on her errands. It was like every other canal in Venice. Smelly, perhaps, but unremarkable. A way to get around.
“No, really look at it,” Balthazar said, tugging on her hand, and she glanced down. The water was still with no gondolas passing to churn its waves, an iridescent swirl of blue, purple, green, a greasy black. A few bits of flotsam bobbed about, bottles, scraps of vegetables, a dead rat or two. Winter was coming on swiftly, and the usual sweet-sick smell was muted.
“What am I looking at?” Bianca whispered, making him laugh.
“We see here only the surface of the city,” he said. “The beautiful churches and palazzos, the jewels and silks, the riches that are the envy of the world. But beneath that beauty…”
Bianca watched the slow swirl of the water, the blend of dark rainbow colours that concealed garbage and decay deep beneath. “Dead bodies? Chamber pots?”
Balthazar glanced at her, his brow raised. The sunlight caught on the fine emerald in his ear, dazzling green-yellow set in elaborate filigree. The jewel was also a concealment. Balthazar, too, was like the waters of Venice, like the city itself—beauty masking dark depths.
“Exactly, Bianca,” he said quietly. “Death and decay. Dishonesty at every turn.”
“But can you really run from such things?” she asked, thinking of his books of travel and adventure, of new lands. “They are surely always with us. We are only ourselves, no matter where we go.”
“True enough,” he said. “We can only try to make amends, to find truth. To purify our own souls. Only then can we be free of what lies beneath, what we never dare reveal to the world. We can only seek the truth, at any price.”
The truth at any price. Balthazar fascinated her more than ever at that moment, but also scared her. For an instant it was as if she glimpsed his very soul, so dark and labyrinthine, as hidden as the waters’ depths. It was only a glimpse, a fleeting moment, before all was concealed again behind his smile. He held her hand even tighter in his and led her back home, gallantly kissing her fingertips before she fled back to the safety of her own chamber.
It had been many days since that last encounter, and Bianca had only glimpsed him for quick instants. It was truly Carnival now, and he was occupied with his own social obligations. Ceremonies and festivals, banquets, balls—lounging in velvet-cushioned gondolas with beautiful blonde courtesans. Bianca had seen him thus with the notorious Rosina Micelli, his head tipped back against the gold-embroidered cushions, eyes closed in decadent pleasure as Rosina whispered in his ear, her jewelled hand stroking his hair.
He and his father had not been back to Bianca’s home until today. Rumour had it that Ermano was courting the perfumer Julietta Bassano, and Balthazar was occupied at the brothels and gambling halls. Bianca peered down at him now from her window, unsure what to think or do.
Even though she had not spoken with him in days, she had thought of him at nearly every moment. Turned his cryptic words about decay and truth over and over in her mind until she was dizzy with it. She longed to ask him what he meant, craved one more privileged glimpse into his hidden heart. Wanted to show him her own.
Yet at the same time she wanted nothing more than to run from him! From those dangerous truths he offered like emeralds.
Bianca let the curtain fall back into place, turning to the small, precious looking glass on the wall. She was too thin, with curling dark brown hair that refused to lighten no matter how much lemon juice she applied. Her cheeks were hollowed, her eyes too large for her face, her shoulders bony, and she had no bosom to speak of. But now, as she thought of Balthazar Grattiano standing so close outside, her pale skin glowed pink, her brown eyes were bright.
Yes, he was a strange and frightening person, unpredictable, unreadable. Not like anyone else she had ever known. If she were wise, she would stay far away from him, from all the dangerous Grattianos. Yet Balthazar made her feel alive and excited; he was like the heat of the sun on a grey, drab day. And she was powerless to turn away from that wondrous light.
Soon enough, he would be gone completely from her workaday orbit. No matter what he said about freedom and truth, about the wide new world, he would have to marry a fine patrician lady and take on his own responsibilities. Take his fearsome father’s place of great power and influence. There was no escaping one’s true place in life, for either Balthazar or her.
She had to seize the few moments left, when she could see him, talk to him. Maybe even touch his hand again. Such beautiful, fleeting seconds would have to last her for a long time, once she was married to a respectable tradesman with no dark depths to his soul. No mossy green eyes that burned her very heart with their intensity.
Bianca smoothed her brown curls back, securing them as best she could with combs and pins. She discarded her apron, wishing she had time to change into something finer than her blue-striped work dress. But there was not a moment to lose, if she wanted to speak with Balthazar before his father finished hearing the message of the cards.
She spun around and dashed out of her room, hurrying down the back staircase. The house was quiet today, as their tenants were off to watch a play in the Piazza San Marco and the servants were at market. From her mother’s small room at the end of the corridor, Bianca could hear the hum of voices. Her mother’s tone was low and soothing, as it always was. Ermano Grattiano’s was strained, argumentative, angry. So foolish of him. Didn’t he know by now one could never quarrel with the cards?
Bianca snatched a blue wool cloak from its peg by the door and slipped outside, not bothering to change from her thin house slippers. Balthazar was still there, leaning against the wall. He did not read today, just watched the quiet walkway, his handsome face unreadable, his arms folded over his chest, as if he was deep in thought.
But perhaps his air of indifferent mystery was merely a product of too much Carnival, Bianca thought wryly. Of too much dancing and wine and debauchery. Their dressmaker tenant had told her all about a grand masked ball at the Piazza San Marco that had gone on until dawn. No doubt Balthazar had been there, too, with Rosina Micelli.
She longed to ask him about it all, to ask if the distant revelry she listened to from her window was as glorious fun as it seemed. Ask if he loved Rosina, or one of the other blonde courtesans. But she could not. She just leaned next to the wall beside him, and eventually he silently held out his hand to her. She slid her fingers into his cool, ungloved clasp, feeling the weight of his jewelled rings against her skin, the tenuous silken thread that was their connection.
“Do you not want your cards read, as your father does?” she asked.
Balthazar laughed harshly. “My father is a great fool, always thinking his future will change simply because he wills it so.”
“You don’t think we can change our future?”
“Nothing ever really changes, does it, Bianca? We all go on in the same way, day after day, trapped. I don’t need the cards to tell me what my life holds.”
Bianca gazed up at him in silence, at the smooth, perfect beauty of his face that concealed so much pain. Perhaps he was right not to see what the cards revealed about him, just as her mother was right not to tell Bianca’s fortune no matter how much she begged. Hope in the unknown future was sometimes all poor mortals had.
“What of the world in your books?” she asked.
“What of it?”
“Surely the future is anything but predictable there. Especially in those Spanish lands over the sea. It’s a new world, is it not, where a person could be or do anything. Discover a life that is wondrous strange, and old ways have no place. We—you—could be whatever you wanted. Not even the cards could say what.”
He smiled at her. “No more Balthazar Grattiano?”
