Victoria Janssen - The Duke and the Pirate Queen

The clink of coins carried even better than the sound of voices. It was clear Maxime was in danger. Imena didn’t wait to hear more. She eased soundlessly over the boat’s side and slithered down ropes until her foot touched water. She took a series of deep breaths as silently as she could, then slid beneath the cold water, keeping one hand on the boat’s hull as her guide.

She had to go to Maxime, and quickly. But first, she would need to find Chetri.

AFTER SYLVIE LEFT HIM, MAXIME CALLED FOR A bath in his quarters, but it did not make him sleepy as he’d hoped. He sent the servants away and spent several hours at his desk, reading the accounting for the past couple of days and then placing his seal on various permissions, customs documents and requisitions to supply the castle. All had been meticulously prepared by his aunt, Lady Gisele, and two of her children, whom she was presently training in the fine art of bureaucracy. He tried not to think about how little he was actually needed here; no longer was he necessary to distract Julien’s attention from the business of the duchy, because now everything was legal, open to inspection.

Being a duke felt more like extra bonds than the freedom he’d thought the position would represent. He was tempted, sometimes, to run. To head down to the docks and take ship for elsewhere.

He moved to a tray of letters already opened and ready for him to peruse. As he’d feared, Julien hadn’t waited for his formal refusal of Diamanta; another envoy was on the way.

Maxime glanced at the piles of legal texts he’d assembled. He would need to shift a few of his secretaries to that duty, for copying documents if nothing else. Because no one was watching, he put his head in his hands for a few moments and allowed himself to curse at length. He didn’t want to do it, but he would start in on the legal tomes tomorrow. For now, he composed replies to some of Camille’s letters, and to a personal one from Henri, whom he was beginning to consider a friend, as well. He briefly considered sharing his worries about marriage with Henri, but what could the boy tell him in return? Henri was barely twenty, and though acknowledged as legal consort to Camille, his situation was vastly different from Maxime’s.

When he’d finished, he wiped off his signet ring and laid it in its dish along with the carved stamp that bore the same design, an octopus curling around the initial letter of his name. He blew out the lamp, tossed his robe over the back of his chair and walked naked into his bedroom. The floor, heated by piped water from the hot springs, soothed his feet. Sometimes he stretched out upon the warm tile, with a pillow to prop his head, and reviewed the day’s work in his mind. Today, though, he planned to go straight to bed. Perhaps sleep would organize his thoughts on Imena Leung and how he could entice her to listen to his point of view.

His bed, with its intricately carved wooden canopy, loomed in the dim light of a single yellow lamp. The servants had carefully tidied the heaps of goose-down-filled bedding and pillows and attempted to straighten the mountain of leather-bound books and encased scrolls stacked near the bed’s head. Despite their efforts, the pile leaned dangerously and soon would create a landslide of reading material in five languages.

It didn’t matter if the room was a mess. He rarely entertained anyone in here. He preferred the baths and the adjacent chambers; it was safer that way, easier to keep his partners at a distance. The only woman he’d fucked in his own bed was Camille, and he didn’t count her, exactly; they’d known each other for such a long time that she didn’t seem like a mere sexual partner, and besides that, he’d known she was in love with her stable boy, Henri. It had been safe to have her here, safe to let her see his things spread about. He’d known she wouldn’t ask more of him than he was willing and able to provide for her.

Strangely, after he’d shared this room with her, and they’d finally consummated their relationship, he’d known they were finished as lovers. It was as if a string, pulled tight for decades, had finally snapped, and his burning desire for her had flown away with it. He was grateful they’d had other commonalities between them, and remained friends.

He ignored all the books, even a half-finished legal treatise on marriage laws and the manual he’d lately been reading on stellar navigation. It was written in the court language of the Horizon Empire, and though like all the aristocracy of his duchy, he’d studied the language since boyhood, it was rough going, with technical vocabulary that wasn’t usually required for normal trade relations. He was still trapped in the introduction. He had hoped to ask Imena to help him; she’d been trained in stellar navigation and he suspected she would have a gift for teaching it.

He blew out the lamp before sliding wearily between soft cotton sheets. He’d been awake since the dawn, waiting for Imena’s visit. He closed his eyes and the world tilted into sleep.

He woke to a familiar touch and scent—Imena. Groggily, he smiled. He didn’t mind her in his rooms. He didn’t mind her here in the least. Her callused hand clamped over his mouth. “Get his feet, Seretse,” she said.

Maxime struggled to blink awake. A sailor had a firm grip on his ankles, and another grabbed his shoulders as Imena removed her hand from his face. “Quiet,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t struggle.”

He hadn’t thought she played these sorts of games, but he was willing to go along, even when the two sailors laid him on a cinnamon-scented wool carpet and proceeded to thoroughly wrap him within its folds. He tried to lift a hand to clear fabric away from his face only to find it trapped. “Imena—” In the other room, he heard his door open.

“Quiet! Chetri, did you find the courier?”

“Aye, Captain. Here she is.”

Maxime heard a laugh, quickly muffled, then Sylvie’s voice. “Well, well, Captain. You want him after all. I never would have thought you’d have your muscled crewmen carry him off.”

“Listen carefully, Sylvie,” Imena said. “Chetri, go with Seretse and Kuan.”

Maxime relaxed. Imena clearly intended to tell Sylvie her plans for him. She might play games, but she didn’t plan to put his entire castle into an uproar. He remembered the envoy from King Julien that would be arriving in the next day or so and began to struggle. Someone, probably Imena, kicked the carpet with a bare foot and said, “Get him out of here!”

He realized even a complicated game like this one would be unlikely to last more than a day and a night, and if the envoy arrived during that time, someone would send him a message. He had quite a lot of work to do, but courting his future wife was work, as well. He relaxed into the spice-scented carpet—the sensation of soft wool all over his bare skin reminded him of pleasurable encounters of the past—and let the crewmen carry him from his rooms and out into the corridor. They exited, he thought, through one of the side entrances and loaded him, still wrapped in the carpet, onto a cart. He heard a pony snort. Two men climbed onto the bench seat, shifting the cart’s weight, while the remaining man, probably Chetri, stayed in the rear with him. Maxime could just sense the weight of Chetri’s hand on the outside of the roll of carpet; the hand rested just over his genitals. Maxime grinned, wondering if Chetri was intended to be part of the evening’s entertainment, as well. If Imena had no objections, he certainly wouldn’t raise a protest.

Soon he smelled the sea. Chetri and the two crewmen slid his carpet from the cart and carried him down the dock, their feet slapping hollowly on the boards. He almost protested when he felt a cargo sling being adjusted around his carpet, but closed his mouth when he remembered his role. She’d told him to be quiet, so quiet he would be.