Page 57 of A Dance with the Wayward Duke
“Brace it. Hawsers to the mastheads. I want the sticks stayed as if we mean to drag Naples to us by the roots. Shift what weight you can forward and low. Secure the guns. No loose gear on deck. If she heels, I don’t want half the ship rolling into the scuppers.”
“Aye, my lord.”
The master moved at once, shouting orders forward. Men sprang into motion, grateful now because the ship had been given something to do.
Sarkouf gained.
Every man aboard could see the privateer swelling behind them, no longer a sail on the quarter but a ship with teeth. Herbow lifted clean over the swell. Her canvas shone white in the falling light.
Tristan stood by the weather rail as the old frigate trembled under the added sail. He felt the strain of her through the soles of his boots, the pull of canvas, the complaint of masts, the long groan of timbers asked to remember they had once been young. The hawsers sent aloft held. For now. The braces were manned. The clewlines and buntlines were ready. Every hand who needed to know had been told, and every hand who did not had been given work enough to keep fear from festering.
“Range?” he asked.
The master had his glass up. “Closing fast, my lord. If he keeps his present course, he’ll have our quarter before full dark.”
If Sarkouf reached their quarter, he could rake them. One lucky broadside through the stern, and the cabin would become a box of flying glass and splintered oak.
Tristan lowered the glass.
The sun had dropped low, staining the edge of the sea with brass. Another quarter hour and the sun would set. He needed that darkness, but not yet. First, he needed Sarkouf committed.
“Steady as she goes,” he said.
The helmsman answered, “Steady, my lord.”
The frigate leaned, canvas drawing hard. The foretopmast quivered under the press, held by the extra hawsers as a wounded man might be held upright between two friends.
“She will not bear it long,” the master said.
“She needn’t.”
Lorenzo came up beside the after rail, silent for once. He looked from the privateer to Tristan, then toward the companionway where Marguerite had vanished.
Tristan did not follow his gaze.
If he looked there, he would think of her below. If he thought of her below, he would see the cabin door, the lock, the sternwindows, the line of shot that might pass through all of them before any man could shout warning.
“Mr. Vale.”
“My lord.”
“Pass it again. No man moves before my word. Every sail comes in together. I want no hero, no eager fool, no saint anticipating me by a heartbeat.”
Vale turned and carried the order in a low voice. It moved down the deck like a fuse laid in powder. Men set their feet. Hands closed around lines. Faces lifted toward canvas, then toward him. The whole frigate seemed to gather itself around his silence.
Sarkouf came on.
Closer.
Closer still.
Through the glass, Tristan saw men lining the privateer’s forecastle. He saw the flash of metal at her rail. He saw Sarkouf on the quarterdeck, dark against the pale crush of sail, one hand raised as if he already held Tristan’s surrender between two fingers.
A signal broke from the privateer, bright flags snapping up her halyards one after another.
Vale read the flags, his mouth hardening before he reached the end. “He orders us to stop.”
“He means to come aboard,” Lorenzo said quietly.
