High Seas Stowaway. Amanda McCabe

sun, a sea of yellow, white and red that arced down to the harbour and up the hillsides. It could almost have been any seaside settlement in Spain, with its dark red roofs, the bell tower of the new cathedral, and the forest of masts crowding the sheltered port. But just at the edge of town, at the very boundary of a tenuous civilisation, the dark jungle waited.

      Santo Domingo had not been Balthazar’s first choice of a haven. It was too settled now. His years of sailing the seas, of being his own master, had made him too fond of solitude. Of the rougher, wilder ways of the smaller, further-flung islands, like his own Vista Linda. There no one cared about his past, his family name. Almost everyone else had secrets to hide, secrets even darker than his own. He earned any respect on his own terms, as Captain Grattiano.

      Even though he had a licence to trade in Santo Domingo, the administrative capital of the Spanish Antilles, Balthazar preferred other ports for his trade. Only the damage to the Calypso forced him here, but now he was glad they had come. For here he had found Bianca.

      Most of his youth he had tried to forget, to drown under the salt waves of his new life, but there had been brighter flashes of light in Venice. Bianca Simonetti was one of them. Utterly unlike any other woman he knew, she was not one of the silent, haughty patrician ladies his father urged him to marry. Or like the beautiful, artificial courtesans he spent so much time with. He liked her intelligence, true, but he had also wanted to kiss her on those long afternoons outside her mother’s house. To sense the awakening of her hot sensuality and know it was his alone.

      She had wanted him, too. He saw the flush of her cheeks, the quickening of the pulse that beat at the base of her slender throat. But she was young, and innocent. For all his careless debauchery, something in him could not bear to dim that glow inside of her, those idealistic dreams that he himself had never known.

      He had been old and damaged. Bright innocence could never survive in his father’s house. Only by striving to equal Ermano in cunning and cruelty had Balthazar lived at all, but it had made his heart twisted. Bianca was not like that. She was a small, shimmering pearl, its perfection tucked away in a dark casket where only he could see it.

      Balthazar thought of the woman who kissed him last night. She had Bianca’s dark eyes, her lush lips, but the bright hope had vanished. Was the girl he once knew hidden there, somewhere deep beneath the hard, cool surface?

      As he watched out the window, he saw her coming up the street, a heavy basket over her arm. A wide-brimmed hat shielded her face, but he was familiar with her body now, with the shift and warmth of it against his, and he recognised it in the way she moved. She wore a plain brown gown, the square neckline revealing the edge of a white chemise and a modest expanse of sun-browned skin. She wore no jewels, and he wondered what she would look like in loops of pearls, chains of emeralds.

      And nothing else. Aye, he thought with a smile, chains of jewels framing her bare breasts. Looping down past her navel, her flat belly, just touching her womanhood.

      Bianca stretched backwards, her hand at the small of her back as she wiped her boots at the doorstep. Even the prosaic movement had an unconscious grace to it, but also weariness. He wondered again what had brought her here, to this life in a Santo Domingo tavern.

      She pulled off her hat and wiped her wrist over her brow. As she tucked a loose curl back into her knitted caul, she glanced up and her gaze met Balthazar’s. For a mere instant, her expression was unguarded, her eyes wide and startled as a doe. She seemed younger in that moment, unsure and vulnerable.

      Then her armoured visor dropped back into place, an unreadable mask. She gave him a brusque nod and hurried through the door.

      Balthazar turned from the window, finishing the lacings of his shirt. Mendoza had brought the clean clothes and toiletries from his cabin, and promised to bring more men back the next day to fetch him to the Calypso. For once, his crew dared to override his orders and refused to let him walk Santo Domingo alone. Diego Escobar had not been apprehended, nor had he come near the ship. He was still out there, filled with that seething, murderous fury.

      Nor was he the only one, Balthazar thought as he heard Bianca’s light footsteps on the creaking stairs. The innocent desire from years ago might be vanished from her eyes, but he had seen there something he knew all too well.

      Anger. Simmering anger directed right at him.

      She opened the door with just a soft click, no ferocious slams or bangs. She did not look at him, just hung her hat up on a peg and turned to the small looking glass. Her cheeks were flushed a pale shell-pink over her high cheekbones, the only sign of emotion.

      She tucked her loose curls back into the net, and he remembered how her hair had looked last night. Long and tumbled over her shoulders, a mass of wild dark curls.

      “You are awake,” she said. “And dressed, too. You must be feeling better.”

      “Mendoza brought provisions from my ship,” he answered, as cautious as she. “I won’t trespass on your hospitality much longer, Señora Montero.”