"What… did… you… do?" she angrily demanded, breathing slowly but hard enough to flare and collapse her delicate nostrils.
"Shot both of them," Rubio gruffly confessed, nose-high for his motives, his actions, to be questioned. "Just before we gathered at your house to leave. They were not gentlemen!" he haughtily declared.
"Oh, you arrogant… stupid…" Charite raged, surprising all of them by leaping at Rubio to hammer her fists on his chest, driving him towards the starboard bulwarks; surprising them, too, by loosing a sudden flood of tears amid her ire.
"Rubio didn't kill him, the Anglais I mean, Charite!" Jean-Marie cried, trying to seize one of her arms as Helio went for another. "He put a scare on him, was all. He ducked too quick for a clean shot, he got off three shots at us, and got away! Helio and Hippolyte did for that El-isson. He and his men were dirty Americain spies, and I wager your Anglais pig is one, too, so…"
"Pompous, idiot. Vain and jealous!" Charite shrieked just as they peeled her off the startled Don Rubio, squirming and kicking at his shins in vain. Don Rubio Monaster went as pale as a winding-sheet, slack-jawed in astonishment at her reaction. In that instant, he realized he'd never possess her, that all that had passed between them had been "kissing cousin" teasing. Another, a despicable other, held her heart, and Rubio suddenly despised her, hating that Anglais with an equal revulsion-could have shot her as gladly as he'd shot at the Englishman. A new weapon, the man's agility and return shots; to get that close yet fail because he didn't use his old Jaeger rifle, hadn't been familiar with the Girandoni! His own righteous action had slain his hopes and dreams… and someone would have to pay!
Charite calmed, much too suddenly for any of them to credit, as if the eye of a Gulf storm claimed her rage. Her arms went out at her sides to fend off those who held her, nodding in grim understanding… brought her hands prayerfully together under the tip of her nose, to think… to bide.
"Tres bien," she finally muttered. "Very well. You enrage the Americains to find who shot their leader. You enrage the British merchant company, and they will try to avenge Alain," she bleakly sketched for them, clearing her too-tight throat several times.
"We can deal with any-" her brother Hippolyte disparaged.
"No! Mon Dieu, you have even wakened the Spanish!" she retorted. "Better you had… but it is much too late for second thoughts or sense, is it, messieurs?" she accused. And, like the gust-front of an ouragan, her icily controlled rage sent a frisson of Arctic chill over the bloodied deck. "Zut, putain! Goddamn your foolishness! You have put everything we've worked for at risk. You may have just destroyed our most cherished dream!"
It was too much for her. At last Charite Angelette de Guilleri hitched up a wracking sob, unable to master it, and girlishly dashed at her tears. Damned if she'd weep in front of them, but… she spun on her heels and ran aft for the looted Spanish captain's quarters for a precious space of privacy.
"Hmmm… well then," Capitaine Lanxade said, breaking their stricken tableau. He twirled one end of his mustachio, frowning as he listened carefully. It was much too quiet, suddenly. Even the rowdy, brawling, drunken buccaneers had been silenced by her unseemly cries, her attack on that arrogant, half-dago fop, Monaster.
Fierce and merciless as they could be, Le Revenant'?, buccaneers were sailors after all. Simple folk for the most part, they carried their emotions close to the skin, could slay a longtime shipmate over trifles in a drunken rage, then weep for days over the deed once they sobered up. Superstitious- even religious when all else failed-they'd been appalled to have a woman aboard ship at first, for that was as dangerous as whistling on deck, which might summon vengeful wind at such disrespect for the old sea gods.
Yet Mlle Charite had proved so entrancingly lovely to behold, so sunnily dispositioned, that she had endeared herself to them, and their string of successes with her aboard had made her almost a talisman, the scrappy mascot that brings good luck.
And didn't she handle a smallsword or light hanger as well as a man? Wasn't she a passing-fair shot, also? They could eagerly, and had eagerly, raped and murdered women passengers or slaves aboard some of their prizes, but this young girl of theirs was different! She was sacrosanct, not to be groped, touched, taken, or even spoken of by any hand in a scurrilous manner. What upset her, then, upset them, and if they got angry enough over the sight of their "cet jeune fille" raging in such a brokenhearted way, so contrary to her usual demeanour, then those who caused it stood in peril of being chopped into stew meat!
All Lanxade could hear for several long moments were the creaks and groans of the two lashed-together hulls, the slats and bangs aloft from un-tended yards and booms, and the drum-slapping of freed rigging. Then there came a faint growl and rumble of displeasure from several sailors, and he and his old mate Boudreaux Balfa shared a queasy look. From their long experience of dealing with the fractious and unpredictable sort of men who'd go pirating, they both feared that there would be trouble over this… even before the revelation of the shortage of expected loot.
"Women!" Don Rubio said with a lofty sniff, as if he had never placed much hope in so frail a vessel. "Were she not so foolish, she might eventually come to understand…"
"Shut up!" Lanxade harshly barked at him, taking sides in front of his men so they wouldn't end up turning him to chutney. "You men! There's tons of silver to be shifted, oceans of drink to salvage. Get back to work, before a British or Spanish man-o'-war interrupts us!"
"Mais oui!" Balfa quickly seconded. "Let's gather our spoils, mes amis. Allez, vite, ah-yee!"
The de Guilleri brothers, with cousin Jean-Marie, wandered off to commiserate with poor old Rubio, closely grouped about him to give their condolences for the vagaries of brainless girls.
Lanxade and Balfa drifted forward towards the prize schooner's forecastle and belfry, where they could confide in each other, casually stepping over the odd stripped and looted body that hadn't been tossed overside, as if they were no more than ring-bolts or coils of rigging.
" Un emmerdement, Jerome," Balfa said in a raspy voice. "We've really tromped through de shit dis time, by Gar."
"We need to get this ship off the sea and out of sight, vite," Lanxade muttered from the corner of his mouth, a confident grin plastered on his phyz for the crew's sake.
"Get de lads drunk an' stuffed wit' meat, too, before dey start cuttin' dose bebe' t'roats, too. Our crew likes her."
"Boudreaux," Lanxade said, leaning on the lee bulwark cap-rails and gazing out to the empty southern horizon, where even more trouble might pop up, all guns and officiousness. "Do you remember what it was we said, back at the Dry Tortugas? About showing these amateurs what real piracy looks like?"
"Hmm, ouais," Balfa said with a shrug, trying to recall.
"Two million dollars won't go that far with our lads," Lanxade fretted. "Not with Bistineau, Maurepas, and that goddamned Rebellion Fund of theirs each taking a cut, what is due our very young, stupid… employers, too, n'est-ce pas ? How are your shivers, mon vieux?"