Free Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure by W A Hoffman

seem to take to the buccaneer life quite well.”
    I smiled in return. I had only seen the man a handful of times, and always while dressed like a proper English gentleman. “Aye, Governor Modyford. It is a pleasure to see you.” I bowed in return. “I am sorry it is under such circumstances.”
    “Ah,” he shrugged, “I was in town anyway. What is this about, my Lord? I understand you were assaulted by the French.”
    His gaze found its way repeatedly to my neck, and I wiped at the area his eyes seemed drawn to and discovered it as not errant blood that held his attention, but the mark Gaston had given me.
    I snorted and shrugged. “I do not believe they intended such bloodshed, but aye.”
    Modyford pointed at the body of the stout man, which had been laid, uncovered, outside the door, as the room within was crowded. He spoke with amusement. “Was there not some other altercation involving you shooting a man in the eye? An escaped bondsman of yours, was it not?”
    I was surprised he remembered, and then I remembered that was another burden of nobility: to be notable whether one was a great man or a great pissing idiot. “Aye, his name was Creek, and I still view the matter as unfortunate.”
    “Aye, bondsmen are expensive to replace,” Modyford said with a shrug.
    I suppressed a sigh. “Creek was a drunkard who had fallen in with some very foolish fellows. I did not wish to shoot him, but… the situation unfolded much as today’s did. When we disembarked at the Chocolata Hole, we were approached by this man.” I gestured at the dead man at our feet. “He was eyeing my matelot in a manner I did not like. He informed his fellows, in French, that Gaston was the man they were seeking, and then he rudely addressed him. Our good friend Pete struck the man and admonished him for his rudeness. At which point, the man ordered his fellows to attack us. Though in thinking on it now, I realize they did not draw weapons. I was not aware of that at the time, though, I merely saw that we were set upon. And Pete, Captain Striker, Gaston and myself did as any buccaneer would do in a like situation: we prevailed.”
    This brought appreciative chuckles from most of my listeners, but I was distracted from gauging their sidelong looks at one another by the eerie sound of my words being repeated in French. Vittese had apparently joined us, courtier at his heel. I looked toward the sound, and froze with surprise such that I doubt I kept it from my features.
    Vittese was indeed there, and the courtier, but he was whispering in another man’s ear. This man bore a great resemblance to my matelot, though not in coloring or build: as he had blue eyes and did not appear to be red-headed, though I could not be sure beneath his wig, but as he was not powdered, it was evident his eyebrows, and even his long lashes, were golden and not red. He was also slimmer than Gaston, and at first I thought it might be due to frailty of age or illness, as he leaned upon a cane and appeared many years older than my father. But then I saw that my perception of his age was misled by the great many lines upon his face. They were not the deep and trenchant etchings of a man in his dotage, but the fine feathery web about the mouth and eyes a middle-aged man receives for a life spent smiling and frowning, and simply expressing emotion with his face – a thing I think my father did everything in his power to avoid, and not because it would help him cling to the vestiges of youth. Even now this man was smiling, not seemingly maliciously at my surprise, but a fox’s grin of perpetual amusement at the world. His smile danced in his eyes, though they were narrowed a little in speculation. I had only rarely seen Gaston with a similar expression, but so many details of their faces, in the little angles formed by muscles and the bones beneath, were the same that I could well imagine my matelot gazing at me as this man did now.
    “I must apologize,” he said