catch a frog or snake, take it back to his room, and
perhaps surprise Armand with the creature in his bed.
He remembered looking back at the chateau as
he’d made his way toward the nearby creek. He’d
seen the light in Armand’s room still burned. His
brother was probably reading, and if Madame St Cyr
caught him, he’d be in big trouble. He couldn’t see his
brother Julien’s room from that vantage point, but he
suspected Julien was fast asleep. Julien usually followed
the rules. Madame St. Cyr always said, “Sébastien,
why can’t you be more like your brother, Julien?”
He’d been on his way back from a successful foray
at the creek, two plump frogs in his pockets, when
he’d seen the torches and heard the singing. He’d
hidden in the trees, waited to see what would happen,
and had been shocked when the peasants set the
chateau on fire. He’d run straight into Gaston, who’d
been coming from the stables, and Gaston had pushed
him back into the trees.
“Not that way, Monsieur le Marquis!” Gaston had
been out of breath, his eyes frantic with panic. “If they
catch you, they will kill you.”
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“But ma mére and my brothers! I must go and help
them.” He fought Gaston, but the groom held him fast.
“They will have to help themselves. You and I will
escape, and we will find them later, no? We will all be
reunited later.”
“No!” Bastien struggled, but Gaston pulled him
away, hid him in the trees, and when one of the
horses from the stables came upon them, Gaston and
he rode for a city far from Paris. On the way, Bastien
realized the situation in France was far more serious
than he had known. His parents had told them there
was some trouble with the lower classes, but he had
not understood they wanted him and his family dead.
Gaston told him they would need to leave France
in order to survive. He’d promised they’d return when
order was restored, and find the rest of Bastien’s family.
And so they’d found themselves in Cherbourg, and
Bastien found himself standing before Captain Vargas.
And here Bastien stood now. He looked at his old
friend. “Have I ever told you I’m grateful for what
you did that night? I’m grateful you saved me.”
“Are you?” Gaston gave him a hard look. “I some-
times think you wish you had died with them.”
Bastien flicked ash into the water. It was true. There
were days he wished he’d gone back, even if it meant he
would be dead now. “I felt like a coward for running,”
he said. “I feel like a coward for leaving them.”
“Then perhaps it is time you stop running. You
were a boy then. Now you are a man. Perhaps it is
time you seek the truth of what had happened that
night. Perhaps it is time you stop looking for ways to
die and start looking for how you can live.” Gaston
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Shana Galen
shrugged. “Eh, bien. You know what is best, Monsieur
le Marquis.” He moved away, and Bastien stared
after him. The old man moved stiffly, hunched over.
It would not be long before he, too, was gone, and
Bastien would be truly alone.
So perhaps the old servant was right. Bastien wanted
to know what happened to his family—even if it meant
the death of his favorite fantasy. Even if it meant he
found out, without doubt, he was the last Valère.
He smelled cherries even before he saw her, and when
he turned, she was standing tentatively behind him.
Perhaps the time had come to start living.
He studied her, knew she was probably waiting for
him to order her below decks. Instead, he signaled
Ridley. “Mr. Ridley, inform Mr. Khan and the crew
I’d like to set a course for France. I have business
there.” He saw Raeven’s eyebrows wing upward, but
she didn’t speak.
“Yes, Cap’n. Doan mind telling you some of the
men not goin to like dat.”
“Tell them they’re free to disembark in Brest, find
another ship. There’ll be ships aplenty in those waters
right now, taking advantage of the truce.”
“Yes, Cap’n.”
me for a meal?”
Her brows winged up yet again, but she nodded.
“I’d like that.”
“Good.” He took her hand. “I have a story to tell you.”
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Fifteen
“I don’t know what this is,” Raeven told Bastien
an hour later, “but it’s delicious.”
Bastien nodded, sipped more of his champagne.
She suspected he’d saved it to celebrate the defeat
of Jourdain and had probably imagined sharing it
with his quartermaster, Maine. She would never buy
that dinner and wine for Percy. The celebration and
victory were bittersweet for both of them. She looked
about the wardroom. It seemed empty with only the
two of them.
But at least the food was delicious. It was some
sort of fish, spiced and seasoned in a way the cook
on board the Regal would never have managed.
Salviati, the Shadow’s cook, might not be much on
presentation, but he more than made up for it with
taste. She forked up another bite, noted Bastien was
not eating.
“I think there are crepes for dessert,” he told her.
She smiled. “How very French. Speaking of
France…” The subject had to be raised at some point.
“What changed your mind?”
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His sipped the champagne again. “I said I had a story.”
She laid down her fork, reluctantly, and reached
across the table to take his hand. “I’d like to hear it.”
He poured more champagne for both of them. “I
am a marquis. Actually, I might be a duc. I might be
the duc of Valère.”
Raeven nodded. She didn’t doubt his claims, not
anymore. Anyone could look at him and see noble
blood flowed through his veins. She, on the other
hand, was a sailor’s daughter through and through.
Nothing special. “Valère.” She tapped her finger to
her chin. “That name sounds familiar.”
“Gaston mentioned it to you, I’m sure. We’re
an old family—we were an old family. Now I’m all
that’s left.”
She felt his hand tremble slightly and squeezed it
tightly. “What happened?”
He told her. He told her about his kind father,
a man who was gentle and giving. A father very
different from her own, but someone she could see
loving. She wished she might have met him. He told
h
er about his mother—how beautiful she’d been, how
playful, and how strict. “She never let us get away
with anything,” he added. “Somehow, she always
knew what we were up to.”
She smiled sadly, wondering what her own mother
would have been like. In the portrait her father kept
in his cabin, she looked gentle. She looked like the
kind of woman who would have pulled Raeven onto
her lap and kissed away all her hurts. As it was, no
one had ever done that for her. She’d never been
neglected, but she’d never felt cherished. She watched
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the tender way Bastien twined his fingers with hers,
thought of the way he held her at night when he
thought she was asleep, the endearments he whis-
pered to her. He had never told her he loved her, but
he made her feel cherished.
“And then there was Julien.” Bastien smiled, and
she could see the little boy in him, see the admira-
tion he held for his older brother. “He was always so
serious, so dedicated to his studies. He was a little duc
from the day he was born. I wasn’t the best student—
too distracted thinking about all the fun things I could
be doing to pay attention to our tutors.”
She laughed because she’d been the same way. The
hours she’d spent in her father’s cabin with tutors had
seemed like months when the sun was out and the
wind blowing. She would have rather swabbed the
decks than be forced to learn Latin and Greek, which
was probably why her grasp of the classics was so poor.
“But Julien always helped me with my studies. He
had infinite patience. I didn’t realize it at the time, but
I can see I must have been a trial to him.”
“You’re a twin,” Raeven said. “What about your
twin brother?”
Bastien laughed. “We looked exactly alike, but
otherwise we couldn’t have been more different.
Armand was quiet and serious. He actually liked to
read and preferred to stay indoors rather than run
around and play. I remember him with his nose in
a book. He was the tutors’ favorite. He spoke four
languages by the time he was ten and had read all of
Homer—in the original Greek.”
Raeven blinked. She hadn’t even read Homer in
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English. In fact, she wasn’t certain if he was the one
who had written about Aeneas or Helen of Troy. She
always got them confused.
“It sounds like Julien was something of a cross
between you and Armand.”
Bastien nodded. “Exactly so.” He was speaking
in French now, and she didn’t know if he realized
he’d switched. He sounded comfortable speaking in
French, but the more he reminisced, the more she
heard the aristocrat in his voice. Sitting across from
her—his shirt open at the throat, his hair long and
carelessly pulled back—he looked every inch the
pirate rogue. But in his straight nose, the high cheek-
bones, the arch of his brows, she saw the aristocrat.
She saw the marquis.
“Julien and I would play pirate, but Armand
never wanted to cross swords—fallen tree limbs, in
actuality—with us. He’d rather read about pirates than
play like one.”
“And now you no longer play pirate. Tell me your
play pirate name wasn’t Captain Cutlass.”
He gave her a quick grin, and she groaned and
rolled her eyes. But when she looked back at him, his
eyes were unfocused, and she could tell he was far, far
away. “When I was a child, sleeping in a hammock
on the gun deck and feeling homesick—more home-
sick than I can express because I had no home to
go back to—I used to pretend they were still alive.
I used to dream they’d escaped and were waiting
for me.”
She felt her throat close up and hot tears sting her
eyes. She would not let them fall. He would not want
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her tears, but she stood and went to him, put her arms
around him. He pulled her onto his lap and cradled
her as though she were the homesick child.
“Maybe they did escape, Bastien. Gaston thinks
there’s a chance.”
Bastien shook his head. “I saw the chateau burn.”
His voice rumbled in his chest where her ear pressed
against his heart. “No one could have survived that.”
“Did you see your father pulled out? You know he
did not burn. Did you see him carted away to Paris?”
“No.” And she could hear the sliver of hope in
his voice.
“What if others escaped without you seeing?
Perhaps your brother Julien, or Armand…”
She felt him stiffen and prepared for him to set her
aside, but he continued to hold her. She looked up
at him.
“I’ll go back and make inquiries, and I’ll put this to
rest,” he said, his gaze meeting hers. “The only ques-
tion is what to do with you.”
She twined her arms around his neck. “I’m going
with you, of course.” She said it as though it were
fact, but she knew it was nothing of the sort. And to
her horror, she felt fear well up inside. Fear of losing
him. What was wrong with her? Was she turning into
a lovesick ninny?
She drew her arms down, but he pulled them back.
“I’d like that, Raeven, but what about your father?”
Yes, what about her father? Was she leaving the
admiral to take up with Captain Cutlass? And if she
was, could she live with herself if her decision resulted
in the destruction of the Shadow and its captain?
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“He’ll come after us—you, I mean. He’ll try to
destroy you.”
“I can outrun him. The question is, do you want
me to?”
He was looking into her eyes, and she could feel her
heart pound at the intensity of his gaze. “What are you
saying?” she asked.
“Raeven, don’t play games.” He spoke in English
now, his voice chiding and his accent surprisingly light.
“I need you to say it,” she whispered.
He traced a finger down her cheek, kissed her
nose. “I want you to stay with me. I want you to be
my wife.”
She hadn’t anticipated the last, and a tremor of
shock tore through her. He laughed. “You didn’t
expect that.”
“No. I—why? Because I can fire a cannon?”
He laughed again, and she wished he would stop,
because she suspected he was laughing at her. “Among
other things. I can always use another gunner.”
“I see.” She tried to wriggle
out of his embrace, but
he pulled her close.
“And because you’re beautiful and intelligent and
almost as good as I am with a sword.”
“Almost!” She fought to escape his arms, but he
laughed and held on. “I’ll fight you right now, and
then we’ll see who’s better.”
“You can challenge me back in our cabin,” he
whispered in her ear.
The our was not lost on her, but her back was still
up. How like a man to think he was always better at
swordplay. Still, if he continued to nuzzle her ear in
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that way, she might be willing to put the discussion
on hold.
“Why do I want you as my wife?” His hand slid
over her back, cupped her bottom. “I wanted you in
my bed the first time I saw you.”
She waved a hand at him. “Yes, yes. You told
me—when you pulled the cap off my head. But you
said something about marriage.”
“Did I?”
She pushed away from him. “Never mind.” She
struggled to rise, and when she did, she watched in
horror and fascination as he dropped to one knee
before her. “What are you doing?”
“Proposing.” He took her hand and she tried to
snatch it away, but he held on tightly. “Mademoiselle
Russell, I hope I am not too bold, but would
you allow me the honor of asking for your hand
in marriage?”
It was a formal proposal, one she might receive
from any gentleman of the ton, but he grinned the
whole time as though making a mockery of it. She
didn’t quite know what to think. Was he serious?
She feared, for all his melodramatics, he was
deadly serious.
“I…” she began and didn’t know what to say.
Finally, she settled on, “Why?”
“I believe I made a promise to myself in the
marketplace in Gibraltar,” he said, still on one knee,
still holding her hand. “I realized I’d met my match,
and I’d better marry you before you killed me.”
“I was never going to kill you. Not after Brest, at
any rate.”
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“And why is that?” His grin was cocky, and she
almost didn’t tell him.
“Because I wanted you to kiss me too badly. You
couldn’t very well kiss me if I slit your throat.”
“Not to mention, you’re afraid of blood.”
“I am not!”
He laughed. “Raeven, the floor is hard, and my