I was fitted with a dress at a Parisian couture house a day later. It was a rushed affair but I could not imagine anything turning out more beautiful. I looked at myself in the ice blue satin gown, my hair drawn up into a love knot on my head with tendrils of hair escaping in wisps. The hairdresser had surrounded the love knot with tiny roses. She said it was a shame about my tanned skin. A lady's skin should be pale as cream. She wondered how I had become so brown.

Just to shock her, I told her that it was hot on the ship, that sometimes I took my shirt off and went naked like the men. It was true. They barely noticed any more.

I wished that Michel could see me like this. What would he think? Would his heart pound wildly as it had that day we said goodbye?

I was to find out sooner than I thought.

I will never forget looking up from a sip out of my champagne, my gaze locking with a pair of jade green eyes that stared at me from across the crowded room.

It was him. Michel. Even in my dreams, in my imaginings, he had not looked this good, this vital, graceful and overwhelmingly masculine. He was not dressed in his Naval uniform. He wore civilian formal wear like Jean and the other men, and though he should have appeared plain and unadorned, the cut of his clothes made him seem far more desirable and elegant than anyone else in the room. I think he was the only man, other than Jean, who did not sport powder or a wig.

Instead of shiny coloured satin and tumbles of lace, he wore a severely tailored coat of deep midnight blue velvet and a cream silk shirt with high collar and cravat. His shirt ruffles were plain below the wide cuffs of his coat, his breeches black. His only bow to fashion was his vest, of black and silver brocade. He wore little in the way of jewellery, just a diamond stick pin and a signet ring on his left hand.

His face was every bit as handsome, even more so since he had entered his thirties. His face was paler than it had been in Tripoli, if anything, making his eyes seem darker green, more velvety. His lips were just as beautiful, though. If anything they belonged on an angel, most incongruous framed as they were by the heavy quality of his beard shadow, showing dark even now in the early evening.

>From where I stood I could see the small silver scar the bisected his thick right eyebrow, his only visible flaw. And that only added a rather rakish appeal that I'm sure set the ladies hearts a flutter.

As much as I wanted to stand there and gawk at him, I wanted to pick up my skirts and run. I wanted to rip off the damned stays that I was wearing so that I could breathe again. My entire body was hot. I knew my cheeks had to be flaming. I raised my fan to my face and flapped it not caring if it was unseemly.

Jean was suddenly back at my elbow.

" You look slightly warm, love. It is a crush."

" Yes." I hoped like hell I wasn't sweating. " I'd rather be at sea."

He laughed. " I think you're part mermaid, lass. And so lovely I'm amazed no one tried to abscond with you."

" Oh, someone did, but I told him that I was the pirate here. I do the absconding."

" Keep your voice down, love. We are travelling incognito."

I smiled, feeling somewhat more stable. At least my knees had stopped knocking. I told myself he did not know me. He just noticed my height. I was as tall as any of the men here. Everyone was gawking at me, wondering who the tanned giraffe was.

" Have you seen him yet? "

" Who?"

" The Marquis de Balzaques. I heard some news about him. This is his first party in a year. He used to throw one every other week. They've been in mourning for the older brother, Paul Stephane. Paul has been disconsolate since he lost his older son, his namesake. He had no heirs so Michel will inherit the title now. He has taken a year from the Navy. They say he may never go back though he loves it as well as you or I, my love."

" Michel," I whispered. " Michel Samuelle."

" Yes. That is him. Speak of the devil. Here he comes now. Probably to arrest me. Love, you seem rather pale."

" The stays. I'm not used to them."

I was thinking, if he smells of pears and lemons and ginger I will die. I will faint right here in front of him. Dead away.

Please, I prayed. Do not let him know me.

And if he does know me, let him pretend he doesn't.

And then I thought: I would hate that. It would mean that he despises me. That I am nothing more than a woman he found desirable one lonely night, a girl he wanted sex from without the complications of love.

Once. One night he gave himself to me. And I to him. Long ago. Two years without him seemed like twenty. I looked down at my gloves, glad that they hid the scars and the callouses on my hands.

" Michel! My friend. I trust that you are well."

" I am well, Jean. Thank you. No price on your head in France, I trust? "

" Ah well. One never knows. That's why I am travelling under my alias. Let us keep that our secret."

I could feel his eyes on me. I had to look at him. I had to lift my eyes. I did, only to see that he was looking at me. I dropped them again quickly, my face flaming. I was shaking too hard, too moved by the husky timbre in his voice. I kept hearing the things he had said to me in the heat of passion. I could almost feel his bare skin against mine, his hands on me, his mouth--

" I was sorry to hear of Stephane Paul."

" Yes. Thank you. It has been difficult for my father. They were very close. We are officially out of mourning now."

" I owe you another felicitation. Your son. He is how old? "

" Adam is six months."

My heart fell into my stomach.

I chewed my lip and twisted the spines of my fan until it snapped and I gasped in dismay. He pretended not to notice. I knew he was looking at me. I could feel his eyes caress the side of my face, my neck, the thrust of my breasts against the too tight ball gown.

" Oh, how rude of me. Kit, forgive me." Jean said with his usual aplomb. " Captain Michel Samuelle, I have the pleasure of presenting Miss Nikita Black."

" How do you do, " I managed, giving him a rather graceless curtsy. I raised my eyes to his. He gave me a smile that did not reach his eyes. It was as forced as mine.

" Miss Black," he murmured, bowing over my gloved hand. He raised my hand to his lips, shocking me. I yanked it back far too quickly. It burned from the heat his lips, even through the cloth.

Just then a beautiful, slender girl, perhaps a few years older than I joined us.

" Darling. So this is where you have disappeared to. Your father and stepmother are looking for you. I think they believe that they will turn around and you will have climbed onto one of your horrible boats, never to be seen again." She raised up on her dainty toes to kiss him .

She had a sweet smile, his Elena. If I had thought before that I could hate her, I knew then that I was wrong. I did envy her luck. Her smile was agreeable, her laugh engaging, her manner flawless and friendly. She was adorable.

She possessed exotically dark hair, as shiny and smooth as a raven's wing and eyes the colour of jet. Her features were as fine as those of a classical painting, her skin like honeyed silk. She was a treasure to behold, just as he was. They made a beautiful set.

I felt like a tall, gawky goose in my quickly made blue satin beside her in pearl encrusted lace. I took her tiny hand and mine seemed to swallow it and yet it made little difference to her. She was kindness itself.

I wanted to hate her. I wanted to hate them both. But my heart was moved by her joyousness in just being close to him.. She loved him. She couldn't keep her hands or her eyes off him. And they shared a child. A son.

How I wished that I were her.

I wished that I could dance. Poor Jean. His toes would be black and blue but he was very nice about it. Walter had tried to show me the day before, but said that I danced like a bull in a china barrel.

Michel did not ask me to dance. I was afraid he might and then I was sad that he did not. And then relieved that he did not, because I would have not been able to think or breathe or speak if he touched me.

I managed to escape the room after supper, which was served at midnight, a most ungodly hour to be stuffing one's face with delicacies. No wonder half the ton complains of dyspepsia. I was exhausted and in pain, my ribs pressing into my lungs, my feet hurting in the soft soles shoes. I think I was starting to sweat under my arms and was quite certain my face was as purple as the backside of a Madagascar baboon.

On the pretense of powdering my nose, I escaped from Jean, who had joined the other men in the games room for cards and brandy. I found my way through the ballroom, through a pair of French doors which led out to the garden.

I was breathing far easier as I walked quickly through the paths looking for a place where I might sit and be alone. I had considered asking Jean to call for the carriage to take me back, but I did not want to spoil his obvious pleasure in being with polite company.

Why hadn't I pressed him for details before I came? I had no idea this Marquis, this Paul Samuelle, could be Michel's father. It seemed too cruel that the fates could throw us together now. I was just considering myself happy. I was forgetting him.

I found an open stone house in the midst of the gardens, surrounded by ornamental yews and statuary. I perceived it to be some sort of gardening ode to the Temple of Aphrodite in perfect miniature. I had seen pictures of the temples of Greece in Walter's books. Jean had said we could sail there soon.

It was pretty and the walls were lined with stone benches. I sank down in relief , unlacing my slippers and tugging my bodice into a more comfortable position. I dug my bare toes into the grass floor and sighed.

My, God, he was wealthy. And all this would be his someday. I wondered if he cared. If he even thought about his good fortune.

How ridiculous I must have looked to him two years ago. How disgusting and poor. It made me shudder to think of it, of his telling me to take a bath. As if I did not know what I was to him.

I wondered who his son looked like? Small and dark and full of mischief as she was? Or tall and well-built and tawny like he?

A sound from the entrance to the little stone temple startled me. I looked up to see him standing there, his hair silvered by the moon. It was too dark to read the expression on his face.

I hastily got to my feet, but he blocked the door and I found myself with my back to the wall like a cornered animal. I wanted to tell him to go away, to leave me alone.

I wanted to ask him to kiss me, to touch me as I had dreamed of his doing.

It took him two steps to cross the space, take me in his arms and press his open mouth to mine. He pushed me up against the wall, his hard thigh wedged between my trembling legs. The mere touch of his fingers on my arms, causing me to quiver, heat and desire suffusing my body.

He lifted me so that I was hovering above him, so that he had to bend his head back, up into the kiss, and so that I straddled his hard thigh. It was strange that he wanted that, to be beneath me. Strange and so beautiful.

The kiss seemed to build from there, as a fire builds, a spark, a trickle of smoke, a finger of flame and then a raging fire that threatened to consume us both. I wrapped my arms around his wide shoulders, burying my fingers in the thick locks of hair at the back of his neck.

It wasn't until his hand cupped my bare breast, which had somehow escaped my bodice, that I realised what we were doing. I found the strength to tear myself away, to push at his hard chest with all the grit I had, just to get him away from me. I almost tumbled over as he released his hold. I had to use the wall to support myself.

I could hardly draw a complete breath.

" Why did you push me away?" he had the nerve to ask.

" What?"

" You seemed to be enjoying that." He ran his fingers through his hair. He was visibly shaken.

" How could you be so cruel?" I said, my voice cracked and strained, low enough that others in the gardens would not hear us. I touched my swollen lip. Blood came away on my white satin glove.

" Me? Cruel? And you don't call coming here and flaunting yourself with your pirate lover cruel?"

I was flabbergasted by that. " I didn't flaunt myself. I had no idea that you lived here."

" I don't live here. This is my father's home."

" I don't care who lives here! I want nothing more than to leave and if you will step aside I will do just that."

" What is he to you?"

" Who?"

" Don't be obtuse. I meant Jean Lafitte. Are you fucking him. Kita? Is that how you finally got your fine ship?"

I launched myself at him. I'd have scratched his eyes out if I'd had any fingernails. He grabbed me by both wrists. I was a strong woman, far stronger than most, but no match for him. His fingers dug into my forearms, his arms locked like steel bars.

" Calm down," he said.

" Me? You're the one who started this. You're the one making accusations. You're the one who accused me of fucking him to get my own ship."

" Seems logical knowing you."

" God, I hate you! As if you have any right to accuse me of anything, you rutting pig." I tried to kick at his shins.

" I offered you a home once. I would have given you anything."

" Under your wife's nose. Your beautiful, sweet wife. The mother of your son."

He had the grace to wince.

" Let me go."

" If you will speak to me. If you will let me speak to you, calmly and rationally."

" I can't be rational. You make me feel insane."

He jerked me against his chest. " You do the same to me, Kit Black. For two years not a day has gone by that I have not thought about you. I have dreamt of you. I have paced the floor wondering if where you were, if you were well, if you were even alive. And then I meet you and you can't even bring yourself to look into my eyes."

He went on. I could feel his breath, hot against my ear. " I was starting to accept that I had lost you forever, that I could finally forget and let the past lie buried. I looked up and there you were. Do you know that I look for you everywhere? In crowds? I see a pair of blue eyes and I paralyse. I went back to Tripoli and looked for you. I even search for you at sea. Miles from nowhere, expecting I'd see you combing your hair, singing to me like Lorelei on the rocks."

" I sing like shit."

He gave a scornful laugh.

" I think you ought to think about your wife."

" I have tried. God knows I have. I should have gone against their wishes. I should have hurt her then. It would have been easier. You're right to hate me, Kita."

I wanted to comfort him. What did I know of society? What did I know of duty to one's father. I was of a completely different class. I did not understand him or his pain. He did not understand me or mine. All I knew was that I wanted nothing of his pampered life. I wanted no part in hurting his wife.

" Let me go, Michel. You're hurting me."

He loosed his grip immediately, stepping back from me. " I'm sorry. I am sorry for hurting you. I am sorry for what I said. I am not sorry that I kissed you. I will not apologise for that."

" If I had let you, you'd have taken me against that wall. And it would not have mattered because I am nothing to you but a whore."

" That is not true."

" That is what I see as true, Michel Dante Sebastian Samuelle. It is my truth."

" I love you," he said softly.

That took the wind out of my bloody sails.

" I love you. Nothing will change that."

I never thought to hear those words from anyone let alone him.

I heard his wife calling him then, her tone lilting, amused, as if he were playing a game with her, a game of hide and seek.

" Michel? My darling? Michel? "

" Go to her, " I hissed urging him with a small shove. " I will stay here and leave later. No one will know we were together."

He nodded. " Yes I Kita "

" Just go."

" Thank you."

" I don't want your thanks. I am protecting her, not you."

He sighed and reached out to touch my cheek with the backs of his fingers. I did not back away from his touch. I closed my eyes, feeling the tears thicken my throat.

" Michel? " she called.

He ducked out of the small structure.

" There you are, my darling. What have you been doing? We have to get upstairs. The wet nurse will have fed the baby by now, but he doesn't like sleeping in your papa's nursery. Come, he only calms for you. I do so hate to be stuck up there forever when everyone else is having fun. "

" You have fun. I will see to him."

" Thank you, my darling. Why were you out here? "

" I was hot and stiff. I needed to relax. "

" Your friend, the handsome dark haired man was looking for that strange girl. For a moment I wondered if she might be with you. Isn't that ridiculous of me? "

" Totally, my dear. Let's not have Adam wait any longer."

" Did you think she was beautiful, Michel? Everyone was looking at her and talking. She was so large for woman. I like narrow shoulders far better on a lady. She walks like a boy."

I did not listen to his reply.

" I wondered where you'd gotten to last night, Kit."

Jean caught me crying. I was polishing Michel's sabre, debating on returning it to him. I had mulled it over all night while I relived that kiss, those harsh words he had uttered to me.

I brushed away the tears with the back of my hand, trying to hide the sabre beneath the polishing cloth.

" He gave you that, did he? "

" Yes. I didn't steal it. We knew each other in Tripoli. It was not a long relationship."

"Yet, he gave you that. He adored his grandpere, Kit. That sabre meant the world to him."

I swallowed hard. Oh, just what I needed to hear. " I am thinking about giving it back."

" Don't do it. Did you love him? "

" I don't think that's any of your concern."

He sat beside me lifting his face to the sun. " He was always a handsome devil, a little on the shy side though."

" The shy side," I scoffed. " Ha!"

" Yes. He was. Rather overshadowed by his demanding and cold father. His brother could do no wrong and frittered away every damned day of his life with his father's blessing." Jean shook his head. " Michel joined the Navy to get away from them. His grandfather bought him the commission before his death. While he was at sea his mother died of a heart ailment. They tried to blame that misfortune on him, too. His leaving overset her. He's not the hard hearted aristocrat you believe him to be, Kit. And he married Elena because it was expected of him. "

" I understand that." I sighed. " Will he go back to it? To the Navy? "

" When the babe's a little older, he will. Elena is unhappy about it. With the rumours of war he may have to sooner than he thinks."

" I hope I never see him again."

Jean laughed. " I see right through the bitter show of bravado, Lady Pirate. He gave me something to give you."

He held up a sealed missive. I looked at the rather awful black script and shook my head.

" Take it."

I took it. I had no intentions of reading it.

" You're being very hard-hearted."

" I have to be. Did you come here to discuss business or matters of the heart? I wanted to discuss Greece. Would it be possible to winter there. The Grinning Moon needs some work done on her. I hear the Greek ship builders are better than anyone."

" Yes. I think that would be possible. I know a woman in Greece I'd love to see again. Her hips are wide but my God, her bre "

" Enough, Jean. Wide hips, eh? I suppose those are better on a female than wide shoulders." I was still stinging from Elena's comment.

" If it pleases you, I will meet you there. I have to stop in Africa first. I have business there."

" I wish I could change you mind about the slave trade."

" It's a business like any other, my dear. It is far too lucrative to give up."

After he left I dropped Michel's letter to me into the sea and watched the water swallow it down.

On the way back from Italy to Grande Terre I experienced my first run of bad luck as a privateer. My crew became ill with typhoid and I lost ten good men. I became ill myself, fortunately not with typhus, and Walter was forced to nurse me for weeks while Seymour took my duties as captain.

I was still weak and tired when we pulled into Grade Terre with our cargo of Italian marble, earmarked for Jean's villa. It was a good month of rest and decent food until we could set out for Amsterdam to trade fruit for tulip bulbs, of all things. I was becoming quite the little errand girl for Jean.

I was writing in my journal when Seymour knocked on my cabin door.

" We've picked up a man overboard, Captain Kit. He's a Frenchman. From a ship called The Lorelei."

" How is he?"

" Well, all things considered. He has burns to his feet and hands. They were set upon by a British man-o-war. The ship was flying French colours. A captain by the name of Zalman. I've heard of him. They say he's a right weasel."

" I'll talk to the man."

The boy's name was Pierre. He had survived eight hours of swimming in the Atlantic. Our ship's sawbones wondered if he might lose one of his feet.

" You've nine lives, lad."

" Yes, sir I mean, ma'am. I'm very hungry."

" We'll feed you when you're fever is down. What happened? "

He explained that he had jumped after the ship was set ablaze. Most of the men were dead

" Did your Captain die? "

" They took him. They wanted to interrogate him, I'd expect. Captain Samuelle was a fine man, ma'am."

My heart leapt in my chest.

**********

" You want to do what? " yelled Walter. " Board a British war ship?'

" We'll do it at night. I'm sure they are docked not far from here. They'll have sustained a lot of damage according to Pierre. I know we can do it."

" It's insane. Samuelle is likely dead, lass. They'll have tortured him or "

" I have to try, Walter. I have to save him."

" Strange thing to do for someone you supposedly hate."

We found the English Man-o-War docked in the Carolinas. Most of the crew were drunk, including the night watch. They were easily taken.

I gave instructions to find the prisoner. I tried not to let my voice quaver as I said it. I prayed that he wasn't dead.

I don't think that Captain Zalman expected to be awakened by a masked woman holding the tip of her sabre to his exposed privates. He was on his back in bed, a drunken frowsy doxy curled up beside him.

" Jesus, " he gasped. He tried to sit up and then thought better of it.

" No, not Jesus. My name is Kit Black. And if you move, Captain Zalman," I lifted his flaccid penis with the tip of my sword. " I will cut it off." A little trickle of blood flowed down into his pubic hair.

At the sound of his scream, the doxy beside him awoke. She pulled the blankets up as far as she could and began to emit a high pitched wail. " Get out of here," I told her. " Was it worth it, then? He's got the smallest part I've ever seen."

The whore just picked up her clothes and ran.

" Let me dress."

" No. I think not. I plan to parade you out in front of what's left of your men."

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down in his skinny neck. " Why are you doing this? You have broken all the rules of engagement. We are a docked ship."

" You broke the rules of engagement when you flew the French colours to trick the Lorelei."

He swallowed. " Party's over, Captain." I moved the sabre, allowing him enough inches to rise to his feet. " Slowly now. We're going to go to the deck."

" You are an unnatural female," he muttered.

I poked him in his skinny buttocks drawing more blood, making him squeal. " Move."

The flogging technique is referred to as Moses Law. A man is lashed shirtless to the mizzenmast and given forty lashes minus one. The name came from the number of lashes that Christ received from King Herod as related in the bible. It rarely results in death, if the ship's surgeon is allowed to treat the wounds directly following the beating.

Michel had been given at least that many lashes with a cat-o-nine tails, the ends of which had been dipped in tar studded with musket balls. A vinegar and salt bath had followed to add further punishment. He smelled as if he'd been pickled. Add these insults to the musket ball that had grazed his temple during the battle and a deep sabre cut to his thigh, the man was lucky to be alive at all.

The ship's surgeon told me later that the salt and vinegar was a blessing. It tended to have an antiseptic effect.

Walter and Mentz, my gunner, supported Michel's lank body between them. His head was lolling from his shoulders. I tried not to think of anything but the blessing that he still lived. I would think about what might happen in the days to come later.

For now I needed all the strength I could muster and looking at him injured and helpless like that was making my stomach heave.

" He's near death, Kit."

" Get him to the ship."

" What's to be done about that one? " asked Seymour.

" We'll take him to the Grinning Moon with us. Do we have a cat-o-nine tails? "

" No. That's barbaric. Least that's what you said, Kit."

" I've changed my mind. Let's borrow his, shall we? Get it, Charlie." I nodded at another of my crew.

" Yes, ma'am."

I looked over at Zalman. He was pissing himself. The coward.

My men threw the body of the man I'd had killed overboard on the same night I waited for the man I loved to die.

Andrews, the ship surgeon, a man I did not completely trust for his penchant for rum and the bleeding cup, did little to assuage my fears for Michel's life. He was waiting for me outside my cabin where I'd had Michel taken.

" He's been in this condition for a few days, Captain." He recited off the list of Michel's injuries: the damage to his back from the cat, a musket ball crease to his temple, a dislocated shoulder and a cut to his thigh, which had appeared bad at first because of the amount of blood that had soaked his breeches, but now seemed to be not so deep as feared. The threat of infection was there, said the doctor, but he was most worried about Michel's lungs. It seemed that he may have received a dunking as well and aspirated fluid. " He doesn't sound good. I'm pretty certain he'll not see the night through, Captain."

I closed my eyes and breathed deep. My vision seemed to blacken around the edges.

" I think we should bleed 'im, but Walter said "

" You bleed him and I'll have you keel-hauled."

" I'm the doctor here."

" You tell me what to do to treat his wounds and Walter and I will do it."

I had not seen him close up yet. Walter was still there hovering over him. He lay face down in my bed, a sheet pulled up over his hips. I looked at his back, that beautiful, long back, the sight of the cuts and bruised purple flesh, some of it black and puckered.

I remembered how he had been, the feel of his smooth, tanned flesh beneath my hands, the skin taut and smooth, the muscles hard. I remembered how my fingers had splayed along the curve of his spine, the ridges of muscle that covered his ribs.

" My, God, Walter," I breathed.

" I've seen things like this before, Kit. He's a strong lad. He barely cried out when we set his shoulder."

I squatted down beside him, leaning in to look at his face, gaunt and so pale beneath a heavy shadow of beard. A gasp of wonder caught in my throat as I saw the medallion he wore around his neck on a simple leather thong. My father's grinning moon.

" He wouldn't let us cut if off him. Said he'd kill us. We thought it best for his peace of mind to leave it be. I recognise it, lass."

" Yes." Tears blurred my vision." You can leave us now, Walter. I'll stay with him." I touched a strand of russet hair at the back of his neck. He'd cut it much shorter. The ends were matted with blood and sweat.

" Sawbones says to keep putting the vinegar cloths over his back. He fights a bit when they go on. It burns something fierce."

" You've had this done to you, Walter? "

" Aye, in the Navy, lass."

I took his hand which lay beside his head on the pillow. His fingers curled around mine, an involuntary gesture, I'm certain. " Set a course for Grande Terre. We'll take him to Jean's villa."

His hand was gripping mine with extraordinary vigour. I leaned in and kissed the back of his hand. It was hot and dry against my lips, the tiny creases of skin stained with his blood and dirt. " You'll live, my love. I swear it."

I spent the night changing the bandages on his back, listening to the rumble and rasp of his breathing become inexorably worse. The sheets clung to the sweaty contours of his buttocks and legs. Walter washed so many sheets and hung them out to dry, the ship must have looked more like a floating laundry than the Grinning Moon. I took with Walter, placing the wet cloths over his back, now a mixture of turpentine and water. Wringing the cloths made our hands bleed, our muscles ache. It seemed a cool cloth would go on only to become hot and bloody a few seconds later.

I did not see how he could live. Just the pain of the turpentine on his flesh was enough to kill him, I thought. At first I had to straddle his hips just to get the cloths on him, he bucked and fought so much in his delirium, calling out things that must have had to do with the battle he'd fought with the English ship, calling after his men. He called out the name of his son a few times. And my name.

He called my name out often in the beginning.

After a time he hadn't the strength to move, to fight us. It was hell trying to get water into him. He would cough and sputter afterward. He looked at me once when we rolled him over to check his thigh and give him water, his jade green eyes glazed and unfocussed. His parched lips moved as if to tell me something, but I could not understand what he said. After that he did not open his eyes or speak again. Andrews said he was too weak. He would die by morning.

Yet, he did not die.

He hung on to life all of the next day, too. Walter Seymour and I kept up the endless task of keeping him cool. By nightfall I could hardly see from exhaustion. My nostrils were full of the smell of blood and turpentine that permeated the small room. Even when I would go up on deck and swallow huge gulps of air into my lungs the reek of illness and imminent death was there as if it had invaded my flesh as well.

He continued to cough. It was agony for him to breathe and horrible to hear. I would count his breaths. I'd watch him take an agonizing breath that made his shoulders shudder and his chest suck in and I would await the next. If it did not come I would slap his cheek to get him started again.

I began to pray that he would die so that he would not suffer like that any more.

In the morning Andrews was amazed that he had hung on another night despite the rattle in his lungs. Walter smiled, his voice proud. " The lad is a fighter."

The wounds on his back were oozing, but the blood seemed clear of infection. We began to apply alum to the wounds to keep them clean and dry. Walter remarked that with the white powder all over him he looked like something ready for the oven.

That night I fell asleep on the floor beside his bed, my legs folded under me, my head on the mattress. I awoke at dawn to the strange sensation of his fingers tangled in my hair and the sound of sea birds and the men calling out on the decks. I could not hear the rumble of his congested lungs.

I closed my eyes again. Do not be dead, Michel. Do not leave me. Not now.

My hand inched over to touch his arm. The skin was cool and clammy. The muscles beneath his skin bunched and flexed beneath my fingers.

I lifted my head. He was peering at me with one misty green eye.

I smiled at him. He looked rather roguish with his head swathed in a white bandage, the growth of dark beard on his face.

" Kita?" he said, or rather, croaked like a frog.

" Yes. It's me," I pulled my hair out of the grasp of his fingers.

" Where am I? "

I got up on my aching, trembling knees. " My cabin. On the Grinning Moon."

" The Lorelei? "

" She's gone. We saved one of your men. Pierre."

He closed his eye. When he opened it again, a single tear escaped.

" Don't leave me," he managed.

" Don't worry, Michel Dante Sebastian Samuelle. I will not leave you," I managed. I laid my hand against his cheek. It was cooler. His beard prickled the palm of my hand. " Go back to sleep, my heart. I shall be right here."

His progress was slow but steady after that day. By the time we were within days Jean Lafitte's villa he had improved to the point where he could take my arm and walk on the deck of the ship. Some of the colour had come back into his face, but he was still far too thin and gaunt and he moved like an old man because of the stiffness in his back muscles. I think he despaired of ever being his old self again but he did not speak if that or of his pain.

If I thought I loved him before, I realised it was nothing compared to the way I felt after having looked after his needs, spent hours of time in his company. I think it crystallised for me while he was still very ill, but a short time after the crisis point had passed. He was sitting up in the bed at that point, though not for long periods, because it caused his back to ache. I was reading to him from one of Walter's vast collection of books, Candide, a book by Voltaire.

I was struggling with it because, though I read well, I am a little nervous of reading to others and some of Voltaire's words confused me. I became frustrated after a particularly difficult passage and frowned, slamming the book shut with a thwap, to find him smiling at me. He looked so beautiful, his hair dark against the white pillows, his shoulders still wide if not a little thinner. A more romantic figure I'd never seen with the linen bandages strapped around his body. His eyes were shining with love. It was so apparent that it made me want to burst into tears. Something I did a lot lately when I knew that I was alone.

I would miss him terribly when he went. More than I had before. It was different now. I had yearned for him before, but I had not really known who he was.

I had helped to save his life. I had willed him to live. He had become my dear friend, not by light of that rescue, but from the things that had happened since. I was intimate with every part of his life now. We were joined with a bond stronger than the sexual encounter we'd once had. We were not lovers at this moment, but we loved each other in a way far more profound. I knew what he was thinking, needing just by looking into his eyes. It was a fact that would never change.

Just as it would never change that he would go home again to Elena and his son. I would not go with him and he would not ask me to do it, because he knew what my answer would be. I would never share him with another. He understood why.

If I gave myself to him again it would be with the knowledge that it was the last time.

" What are you thinking about? What has you so riled ? "

I flushed. " That I can't read worth a damn."

He smiled. " You do a lot of other things well. I think you could likely best me with that sabre. I've heard the tales of the daring, dashing Captain Black."

" All tales. They were heartily impressed with my poking Zalman in his lily white ass."

He laughed. He knew that I was no lady. " Did I thank you? Did I ever formally thank you for getting me out of there? "

" You don't have to thank me. I would have done anything to save you, Michel."

" I know that. I think it's time I give up my commission. I don't want my son to be without a father. He's going to grow up and I'll never have known him. I don't want to be a mere memory that he keeps. I don't want to be some portrait at the top of the stairs."

" Then don't be. Go home to him." Go home to her.

He nodded. " Do you ever think of having children of your own? "

I blushed. " I don't expect to."

" I think Jean would marry you." His eyes searched mine.

I just stared. " We are friends. I told you before after you so rudely asked last time I saw you. Do you understand that? I have no man in my life. No one else." I had not meant to add that.

He gave me this look, this look that begged me to say more. I did not say more and the silence hung in the air between us, tremulous, like a leaf hanging on to a wind-torn branch.

He would not stay. I would never go with him. His son came first and that was how it had to be. I would never love him as much if I knew he could even consider the alternative. " You need sleep, Michel. You've coughed a lot today."

He sighed deeply and closed his eyes. I stayed there until I was sure he slept. Then I rose to my feet and covered his bare arms with the quilt, letting my fingers stray on the warm smooth skin of his forearms. So smooth, so hard, so male.

And not mine.

I will not have a man again, just the wind and the sea and a ship called the Grinning Moon.

I stayed away from the villa for a few days after we took him to Jean on the pretext of having things to do. A missive was to be delivered to his family in Paris informing them that he was alive and recovering. Jean told me that he expected to return to them in a few months if all went well. I could feel my heart shrivel in my chest.

I would drop by the villa every few days, stopping in to see how he was doing. Though he was improving, his spirits seemed down at times and often we would have stilted conversations about the weather and Jean's propensity for ostentatious architecture and material goods. His hair had grown, though it was shorter than before when I had known him in Tripoli, and it gleamed with health now. He was dressing in loose shirts and tight black breeches and Hessian riding boots that belonged to Jean. My handsome Michel looked even more the gentleman pirate than Jean did.

Looking at him stole the breath out of my body.

It was not easy, not that it ever had been. Something ponderous always stood between us. We both knew exactly what it was. We knew what the ending of the story would be.

I wanted to stay away from him, to pretend that we could remain friends, until the night before he was to leave. He'd sent a servant to the guest house of Jean's where I often spent the winter months. He wanted to come and see me before he left for Paris.

The note he sent to me was imperious and demanding . He was put out with me, it seemed. At first I bristled and then I found myself laughing. He is like that sometimes and it is part of what I love about him.

I agreed that he should come.

I did not know what I should do. I remember pacing my room thinking about what I should wear. The question of how I ought to arrange my hair almost drove me to scream. Me, who never cared what she looked like.

In the end I just braided it and let it hang down my back. I wore the loose, cinched shirt and the breeches I always wore. I wanted him to remember me the way that I always looked the way that I would always be, raised as a boy, but very much a woman. A woman who loved the sea and the salt wind as much as he.

I think we knew it would happen the moment our eyes met. I turned and I started to cry and found myself locked in his arms.

" Don't do this. Do not cry," he said against my hair. " I came here to berate you for your coldness. I came here to beg you to come with me. I know you will not."

" You are right. "

" I love you. You must know that." He kissed my eyelids, caught a tear on his tongue.

" I love you, too. I have loved you since that first day. I will never love anyone but you." I pulled his face to mine. He gave me his mouth. The kiss was not fiery as it had been that night at his grand home in Paris, but it was achingly erotic and full of passion. It seemed that it would never end, that we could not get enough of each other. It was a good-bye kiss from two who could not bear to say good-bye. A kiss borne of loss and longing.

" Let me stay, Kita. One night and then I promise I will go home and never contact you again. But if you ever need me, I swear I'll come to you. I swear it."

I nodded and led him by the hand to my room.

We said little about his leaving after that. I carefully stripped him of his clothes, taking great care not to hurt his barely healed scars. He divested me of mine, smiling over my tight breeches, carefully pulling off my boots, the ones he had given me, still polished and fine. He left my billowy shirt on, open and gauzy, my breasts and the rest of me displayed in a way so lascivious that made me want to tug the panels closed.

" For me," he said softly, stilling my hands. "I love the way you look. Just looking at your body makes me want to go mad. Split my skin."

I bit my lip and tried not to moan at the way he looked at me, his eyes half closed, his mouth, the exact pink of a conch shell, slightly parted, his breath coming in gasps.

I dropped to my knees and pressed my mouth to the long mark on his thigh. He sighed and buried his hands in my hair. I pressed my mouth to that part of him that throbbed for my touch. He groaned and his head dropped back. He hung onto the post of the bed with one hand.

I did stop after a time. He said he was still too weak to hold himself up. We fell to the satin coverlet and just looked at each other, smiling. I tried to memorise his face, every nuance of it. I tried to imagine him as he would be in years to come with white at his temples and more laugh lines around his eyes. I touched his cheek, his dear smooth cheek and smiled. How I would miss that. Seeing him grow old.

He opened my shirt and kissed my breasts, his tongue hot and wet and ravenous. How am I going to give him back, I thought? How will I ever find anything like this again? How could I want to?

He sank himself into my body and I wrapped my legs around him. I could feel his heart hammer against my breasts. I was afraid I'd cause him pain, but he told me he did not care. He was beyond that. Beyond everything.

Once, I told myself as my release spread over me like hot, sweet waves. Once cannot hurt. Elena would never know. She owed me this much for bringing Michel back to her.

When I woke late the next morning he was gone. I ran like mad to the launch thinking to stop him. For a moment thinking that I could give up my values, that perhaps I could share him, be his whore, what ever he wished.

Jean's ship was just a speck in the distance. I watched, heartsick, whispering his name, until it disappeared over the horizon.

*********

I thought that nothing could stop my life at sea. I was wrong. I put the life of a lady buccaneer behind me the day I fainted on the deck of the Grinning Moon.

As Walter so succinctly put it: we can't have a pregnant privateer.

The first thing I did was swear Jean to secrecy. His eyes almost popped when he saw me big with child. He agreed, but soon after he disappeared from Grande Terre for parts unknown. Seymour took over the Grinning Moon, turning it into a successful merchant ship. He married a woman from Brussels that same year.

Walter and I settled in New Orleans. It was his wish to open a bookstore. It sounded boring to me, but I came to love the musty shop, the piles of books though which my eight month old daughter would climb and hide. She was ready to walk and chewing everything.

She was so like her papa, my little Lorelei. Alternately demanding, sweet, charming and beautiful, with his russet tinged brown hair and his long lashed green eyes. Looking at her made my heart turn over.

Walter had been ill one Saturday morning, nursing a cold and a sore leg. Lorelei had finally gone off to sleep in her cradle in the corner, her thumb in her mouth, exhausted from keeping her mama running after her.

A woman and a little boy came into the shop. I looked up from the cradle and smiled. " No need to be quiet. Nothing wakes her."

The little boy grinned at me. There was something endearingly familiar about him. I guessed him to be five or so.

" I am looking for books on dogs. My papa says I might have a dog of my own some day."

" He is obsessed." sighed the woman. " No more than two, mind."

I showed him the few I had. " They are not that good. No drawings I'm afraid. I know where I might get one with tinted plates if you can return tomorrow."

" You have to speak directly into the boy's ear, ma'am. He has lost some hearing due to red measles." She leaned toward me. " Lost his mother at the time. She did not recover."

" I am sorry," I said. " Can I bring them to you tomorrow? "

The boy grinned, showing several gaps where his teeth had fallen out.

" We'll be leaving for home Tuesday, ma'am." She gave the address. " That's most kind of you."

I found the books, several large volumes. Walter was still ill so I closed the shop and set out for the address in the French Quarter, Lorelei sharing her basket with the books.

A butler answered the door. I told him my reason for being there. He said, in an imperious manner only butlers can achieve, that he knew nothing of it and that the master was too busy to be disturbed by a trivial matter. His tone set Lorelei to howling. She was wet and starving anyway.

" May I please sit down here and nurse her while you go and ask your master if he will see me?" I had no intention of leaving the expensive books. The quality always tried to flit off without paying.

" I can't "

" What is your name?" I drew myself up to my imposing height.

" George."

" Well, George, I plan to do it anyway." I sat down and began to release the buttons of my bodice."

He raced off, I assumed, to find the master.

I tucked Lorelei under my shawl, smiling down at her as she voraciously attacked her mid-morning repast. I had to be careful. The little devil would often bite me with her new teeth, smiling quite sweetly afterward.

" Ah, my sweet one, you've never had your meal in such a fine establishment." She looked at me with serious eyes.

Someone was standing there looking at us. He was not saying anything, just staring. George was a bit of an old pervert. Without looking up I said: " Unless you want a kick in the backside, my good man, best leave my child and I to our business."

" And why doesn't that surprise me, coming from you, Kit Black."

I lifted my eyes and met a pair the exact same hue as that of our daughter. He came to me, pushing the lace of my shawl aside. Lorelei pulled back from my breast, looked at him and smiled, her chubby fist reaching out to him. He touched her cheek with a shaking finger.

" I looked for you. Everywhere. I couldn't find Jean. They burned his villa. Did you know?"

" He's disappeared."

" You're the girl from the bookstore. Adam couldn't stop talking about the lady with the yellow hair who was bringing him a book about dogs. I didn't even think that it might be you. " He shook his head.

" I know about Elena."

" She was dead. She died before I got home. And Adam, I came so close to losing him, too."

"I'm glad he's fine now."

" I never expected this," he said. " I thought I would have to wonder the earth to find you and God throws you into my lap. Both of you. Lord, my love, she is so beautiful" There were tears in his eyes. " Our daughter."

" Yes, she is beautiful, so very like her father."

I write these words on a fine ship heading for France. My stomach is queasy because I am expecting our third child. My husband is at the helm teaching our son, Adam, how to steer.

He smiles at me, the same smile that I fell in love with so many years ago that morning in Tripoli when I exchanged my sister for a pair of boots and a sabre. He is exactly as he was then, give or take a few scars, far too beautiful for a mere mortal.

I woke in med-lab. My eyes hurt. Actually my entire body hurt. Walter was there with me. He grinned and ruffled my hair. " You were on a trip Tim Leary or Hunter S. Thompson would have been envious of."

" Aye, I was," I said with a grin.

" Aye?" Walter asked.

" Is he alright? Michael."

" They've got him going out on another mission already. He leaves at noon. He's off to Libya."

" Tell him to be careful. You never know when you might meet a pirate." I drifted off to sleep again.

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