He let his face soften and crease into a knowing smile.

"The seas are up, the prize ship's motion," Lanxade told them with what might have seemed to be infinite patience. "Nothing goes as quickly or smoothly as you wish aboard ship, messieurs, mademoiselle."

Poseurs! he silently accused, though the girl was most fetching-even if she was the most bloody-minded of the entire bunch!

His employers dressed the part: jackboots and baggy sailors' slop trousers, colourful shirts under long-tailed and gaudy old-style waist-coats that they wore open; waist sashes crammed with pistols or daggers under the waist-coats; broad satin or velvet baldrics bearing costly short swords or swept-hilt rapiers; wide-brimmed hats adrip with egret plumes… As if they'd tricked themselves out in fanciful garb and beauty spots and face powders for a pre-Revolution costume ball!

"One would wish, though, M'sieur le Capitaine Lanxade, that it goes competently, n'est-ce pas?" the young woman sweet-archly replied with an elegant lift of one brow, a leering smile at one corner of her sweetly kissable mouth, and a mocking salute with her wineglass.

Arrogant, wanton slut! Lanxade thought, unable to keep his eyes from caressing her curves, her slim legs on display for all the world to see in over-snug breeches and silk knee stockings, her decolletage made prominent by a tight and waist-hugging buttoned waist-coat, just long enough to flare over the tops of her hips like a corset. Worst-named cunt in all Creation… Charite… Angelette… de Guilleri!