She couldn’t tell if he was being truthful, but she didn’t care at all about the pirate crew. She only asked, “And did they tell you, Captain, what became of those who’d been aboard the Bellewether?”
He had told her already, she knew. He had said that when Big-Headed Tom took a ship, he killed everyone on it. But some of those men had been sailors she’d known, and she wanted to be very sure.
“No.” The Spaniard’s eyes levelled on hers with a blend of directness and sympathy. “No, they did not tell me.” But his voice and his expression told her he had known, as she herself knew.
Lydia looked down, and thought of all the men who’d started on that voyage several weeks ago, and would not now be coming home—the brothers and the sons and husbands—and she found the knowledge very hard.
Del Rio said, “But I am happy to have brought the Bellewether back to your house.” He helped himself to one more piece of apple pie and added, “And to have as my reward this pleasant company and such a banquet. This one here with the apples is particularly excellent. My compliments, se?ora.”
“They are owed to Violet, not to me,” she told him.
“To Violet? Ah, your cook. Then I will have to have her tell my cook the way that this is made, I think.”
The fact that he’d referred to Violet as their cook—as someone skilled at what she did, and not a piece of property—made Lydia increase her good opinion of him, and she offered, “Those are apples from our orchard, Captain. I am sure that we could spare you some.”
“You have an orchard here?” He looked up from his plate and took a keener interest. “Because I still have room within my hold if you would like for me to take your harvest for you to the markets. They would bring a handsome price for you.”
“But not at English ports,” said Joseph.
The Spaniard turned to him. “I’m sorry?”
“You have said you will not sail to English ports,” was Joseph’s clipped reply, “and it’s against our laws to send provisions to be sold at any other.”
“Ah. Because there is a war, you mean.” A casual wave of the fork in his hand dismissed such things as trifles. “There are many neutral ports where I could carry your apples, if you would prefer it.”
Her brother asked, “Neutral in whose view?”
His voice held a challenge and Captain del Rio’s gaze shifted to match it, and it was like watching a sword blade of steel sliding out of a decorative scabbard.
“Your king views the ports of my country as neutral, se?or,” he replied, “and since you seem to hold him in such high esteem I am sure you would share this view?”
Lydia looked to her father, who seemed unaware how the mood of the table had changed, so she hastily stepped in herself.
“It’s kind of you to make the offer, Captain, but my eldest brother carries a commission to supply our troops at Albany, and always sends a good part of our harvest there directly. What remains, we use ourselves. Though I am certain, as a token of our gratitude,” she told him with a pointed look at Joseph meant to make him hold his tongue, “we could at least give you a bushel as our gift, so that your cook may make you pies.”
His eyes returned to her, and with relief she watched the challenge in them change and warm again to gallantry. “They will not be as good as these, I think,” he said. “But I would be most pleased, se?ora Wilde, by such a present.” He took his cup in hand and faced her father, his good-natured smile resurfacing. “Although I think before we have done anything, we need to find a place to put your ship.”
? ? ?
They beached the Bellewether that evening, when the tide was at its highest in the cove.
She did not see it done. However well-behaved the Spanish captain and his first mate might have been that morning, Lydia had reasoned she could not expect the same of El Montero’s crew. And having seen a ship careened before, she knew it would take many men to haul the battered Bellewether into the shallows and run her aground upon the sand, then drag her further up beyond the water’s reach and tilt her so she lay half on one side.
And while all those men were at liberty down in the cove, she’d decided her presence would be a distraction—if not for the men, for her father and Benjamin, who’d feel the need to look out for her safety.
She stayed instead with Violet, in the house. Her father had instructed Joseph to remain there also, saying it was simply to protect the women, even though they all were well aware it was to spare him the uncomfortable experience of being thus surrounded by a group of strange men—armed men—speaking in a foreign language. Joseph had accepted this arrangement with a nod, and gone upstairs to pace his chamber.
Both of their French prisoners had kept within the house as well. Mr. de Brassart settled in the parlour with a book as he so often did, but Mr. de Sabran stayed planted firmly in the kitchen with his chair drawn up to one side of the hearth, watching the closed door and windows as though he were waiting for trouble.
Violet at last said to Lydia, “He’s vexing me, now. I can’t do my work with him under my feet.”
While she sympathized, Lydia knew there was no way to easily shift him, and if she were perfectly honest she wasn’t inclined to. Although she disliked and distrusted the French, she was forced to admit that his sitting there made her feel safer.
And when heavy footsteps approached and a shadow passed outside the window and there came a knock at the door, she looked first to Mr. de Sabran and waited for his nod before she crossed over to answer it.
French Peter stood on the threshold, his red woolen cap in his hands.
It occurred to her she did not know his last name. Her mother had known it, and greeted him always as Mr. Whatever-it-was, but to Lydia he was French Peter and only that, and tonight all of a sudden that felt like a failing. She could say no more than, “Good evening.”
French Peter, returning the greeting, asked after her father. “I must . . . there is something I need to discuss with him.”
Lydia told him, “He’s down at the cove. There are quite a few men down there now. Spanish sailors. They’ve brought back a ship of my brother’s and now they’re careening it, so you may want to wait.”
“No. Thank you, no. I will find him and speak to him now.” And he thanked her again, put his cap on his head, and before stepping back from the threshold spoke past her and into the kitchen, addressing the man who still sat to the side of the hearth. He said, “Bonsoir, Marine.”
And to her surprise Mr. de Sabran replied almost pleasantly, “Bonsoir, Monsieur Boudreau.”
She asked her father later on that night, when both French officers had taken to their chamber and the rest of them were readying themselves for bed upstairs, if he had ever learned French Peter’s surname.
“It is Bowdro, I believe,” he told her.
“Boudreau?”
“Very possibly.” He laid his waistcoat neatly on the clothes-press without asking why she wished to know.
She was not certain what she could have told him. Only that it shamed her slightly knowing that a stranger had observed French Peter’s name when she had not.
Benjamin, already in his bed and half asleep, said, “His arrival was well-timed tonight. I might have lost an arm if not for him.”
“Not quite an arm,” their father answered dryly.
“Well, I might at least have had a bruise,” amended Benjamin. “That spar was twice as tall as me. French Peter caught it as if it were no more than a sapling.” Then he seemed to catch himself as though he’d heard what he’d just said, and in the silence that fell afterwards he rolled himself more tightly in his blankets. “Anyhow,” he finished, “I am glad that he was there.”
Lydia hoped it was not all a wasted effort, and she told them so. “It sounds as if there’s little of the ship that may be salvaged.”