Fortune Trilogy 1 - Fortune's Mistress (4 page)

He squirmed so that her bottom slid into the hollow of his groin. Lacy felt her face grow hot. “You’re enjoying this,” she hissed.

“I’ve made some escapes before,” he murmured, “but never any quite this interesting.”

Vexed, she drove her elbow into his chest. “Lie still,” she snapped. “Keep your hands to yourself.” His deep chuckle made her insides seethe.

When Ben had promised to meet them with a undertaker’s rig, she’d not expected that she’d have to hide in a coffin. Her first instinct was to refuse, but Alfred had given her little time to argue.

“Don’t be so damned finicky,” her older brother had said. “Lucky for you the coffin was empty when Toby stole it for us. Now, get in, before we all end up in Newgate.”

Alfred had wedged one corner of the coffin open with his pipe so they could breathe, but being in so confined a space still made goosebumps rise on Lacy’s skin.

“Actually, I didn’t expect a box at all,” James rumbled. “I thought they’d dump us in a hole and scatter quicklime over us.”

“Will you stop wiggling!” Lacy had prided herself on never being a coward, but she had to admit that being jammed in here with this big pirate was as terrifying as being caught in a riptide. She’d never been a woman to hanker after men, but Godamighty! His arms and shoulders were masses of coiled muscle and his thighs were rock-hard. She swallowed a lump in her throat and tried to keep from thinking of her bottom pressed so intimately against his loins. Her chest felt tight and she struggled to breathe. Damn Alfred and Ben for this madcap scheme! Why couldn’t they have stolen a hay cart?

She was increasingly aware that her single petticoat and her thin linen shift and stays were small insulation against his growing interest in their situation. Her chemise and petticoat had ridden up to mid-thigh, and her legs were completely bare. Despite the dampness of the September evening, she was overly warm. “Can’t you control that?” she demanded. “No gentleman would take advantage—”

“I can’t help it,” he answered in a strangled voice. It was obvious to Lacy that he was not only enjoying her embarrassment, but also laughing at her. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been this close to a woman.”

Lacy’s mouth was dry. She could feel his huge staff stiffening beneath her buttocks. “Think of something repulsive,” she suggested. Actually, her own inclinations seemed to be following his; her thoughts were beginning to be deliciously impure.

“Having your brothers discover us in a compromising position?” he suggested.

“Worse than that.” Her head was lying in the crook of his neck, and one of his muscular arms was twined over hers. “Think of rotten eels.”

James nuzzled her hair, and unfamiliar sensations of heat began to churn in the pit of her stomach. “Your mane’s so red,” he continued, “it’s a wonder it doesn’t light up our chamber.” He raised a hand, took a lock of her hair, and rubbed it between his fingers. “It’s clean too.” He inhaled deeply. “How the hell do you have clean hair?”

She tried to ignore his fingertips moving in slow lazy circles on the inside of her right elbow. He was touching her so lightly it could have been her imagination ... but she knew it wasn’t. “Don’t do that,” she said, slapping his hand away.

“You smell of soap,” he murmured huskily.

“I traded my other petticoats for clean water.”

“Soap,” he repeated. “Where did you find soap in Newgate Prison?”

“The warder’s daughter favored my ribboned barrel pad.”

“A little longer stay and you’d have walked out the gate as naked as you were born.”

She smacked his other hand. “If I’d been hanged and dumped in that quicklime pit, I’d have needed no clothes, would I? Hell is hot, they say. No need for three petticoats in the devil’s kitchen.”

Suddenly, the wagon stopped. Fear raised the hair on the back of Lacy’s neck and she nearly forgot James was beneath her as she lay motionless, scarcely daring to breathe. A man with a heavy Yorkshire accent was questioning her brothers. Lacy knew there was more than one horseman because she could hear the animals’ iron-shod hooves against the cobblestones.

“Chained together, ye say,” Alfred mumbled meekly. “Ain’t seen none like that. Bad business, pirates. Do I catch sight of any, I’ll call the watch, I will.”

“Spread the word,” the Yorkshire man said. “There’s a reward for the pair, dead or alive.”

Lacy heard a shout and the rattle of steel, then the horses clattered away down the street. Ben clucked to his own team and slapped the reins over their backs. He began to sing softly.

Lacy sighed with relief. “God help us,” she whispered to James. “That was close. They were soldiers from the prison, certain. I’ve heard that Yorkshire man before.”

“Mmm,” James agreed. “Too close. I’ve no wish to be skewered like a roast duck on a pike.” He shifted his weight under her. “Could you do something for me, I wonder?”

“What?”

“You’re so heavy, I’m suffering cramps. Could you turn over, do you think?”

For an answer, she gave him another sharp jab in the ribs.

 

Sometime later the wagon stopped again. Alfred and Ben jumped down, opened the double side doors, and pushed back the lid of the coffin. “Out of there,” Alfred ordered. “Quick now.”

The moon was a dim crescent, the sky a bowl of swirling clouds hanging close to the earth. Lacy smelled the river, inky-black beyond dark muddy banks, and heard the sounds of the swift-running water. The Thames was an open sewer, but still the churning current smelled sweet to her nostrils. Rivers ran to the ocean, and the ocean meant freedom.

She gripped her arms and shivered with joy in the damp night air. Then she chuckled softly as she remembered the old saying.
A Cornwall girl has salt water in her veins instead of blood.
“S’truth, I reckon,” she whispered.

“Shhh,” Alfred warned. “What are ye babbling on about?”

A shadowy figure whistled from the water’s edge. James moved close to Lacy and put an arm around her protectively.

“There’s Toby with the boat,” Ben said as Lacy opened her mouth to protest James’s action.

Alfred glanced at James. “We’ve no way to get that collar off Lacy or we’d leave ye here, pirate,” he said roughly. “As it is ...” He shrugged. “We’re bound downriver and hence to Cornwall. Are ye wi’ us?”

James made a sound of derision and rattled the chain that linked him to Lacy. “Have I any choice?”

“What of the wagon?” Lacy brushed James’s arm away.

“Toby will take it out of the city and leave it somewhere,” Ben explained. “No need to show the watch how we got ye free.”

Without wasting time, the four made their way down to the boat. Toby threw a line to Alfred, then wished them luck and headed up to the wagon. James caught Lacy firmly by the waist and swung her into the boat, then vaulted in behind her. Ben took the tiller; Alfred pushed the two-masted pink clear of the dock and leaped on deck.

“Hie yerselfs forward,” Alfred said, as the current swept the small boat out into the river. “Conceal yerselfs in the cabin, and take care not t’ damage the goods.”

“Is she seaworthy?” James asked Lacy as they moved toward the low deckhouse.

“The
Silkie?”
Lacy sniffed. “I’ve crossed the channel in her in a storm that would turn your stomach inside out. She doesn’t leak, and she leaps over the waves like a dolphin. Hellfire and damnation, man. A good sailor could take the
Silkie
to the China Sea and back.”

“What goods are they shipping?”

“Best not to ask.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “We pay no tax on it, I can tell ye that much.” She led the way through the hatch and down two steps to a cramped cabin, too low for James to stand upright.

“Ouch,” he protested.

“Watch your head,” she said. “Come this way, will ye.” She tugged at the chain and felt her way along the cuddy wall until she found a stack of blankets. “I dare not strike a light,” she explained. “We’ll have to make do in the dark.” She didn’t need to see; she knew every inch of the Silkie. And because she was familiar with the cabin, she knew she needn’t fear being alone with the pirate. If he made a wrong move, she could put her hand on a filleting knife wedged between a crock of dried fish and a tin of salt.

James crouched down and felt the contours of a small cask, then another and another. The casks were covered by sailcloth, but the canvas didn’t hide the odor. He sniffed. “It’s brandywine,” he said. “French brandywine, or I miss my guess.” He began to chuckle. “You’re a pack of smugglers.”

“Aye,” Lacy admitted, “we do our share, among other things.” She handed him a folded blanket. “But a pirate has little room to talk, even a gentleman pirate with a false name. Are ye complaining of our company, then? If ye are, I’ll have Alfred—”

“Damn me, wench, must you be so argumentative? You must drive your husband mad.” He sat on the blanket and stretched out his long booted legs. Lacing his hands behind his head, he leaned back against the stacked brandy kegs.

“I’ve no husband, nor do I want one,” she replied testily. She made herself as comfortable as possible on the other blankets. There was a narrow bunk along one wall, but if her nose didn’t lie, that space was packed with cheese.

“A spinster, hmmm?”

She ignored the insult. “Are ye so high-nosed ye cannot offer proper thanks to those who’ve saved your worthless skin?”

“Not a bit of it,” he answered softly. “It’s a fine ship, and a fine crew.”

“Aye, buccaneer, that it is. And don’t ye forget it.”

“Oh, I’ll not forget,” he promised.

Lacy drew a thick wool blanket up around her. She’d told Ben to make certain that there were clothes aboard for her, but they could wait until morning. God, but she was weary unto death. She pressed her face against the hull of the
Silkie
and listened to the breathing of the river.

Her heart sang like a dancing wind against full sails. She was free of Newgate and free of the shadow of the gallows. And as soon as she could get this cursed iron collar off, she’d see the last of this clip-nit pirate with his honeyed words and cocksure manner. Tomorrow, she promised herself. She’d be rid of the rascal tomorrow if she had to kick him overboard herself.

T
he sound of church bells brought Lacy upright as far as the chain binding her to the pirate would allow her. She blinked and rubbed the raw spot where the iron collar had cut into her flesh. It was still very dark, too dark for her to make out James’s face by what little light came in through the open hatch, but his heavy, regular breathing told her that he slept. She shivered. Even deep in slumber, his nearness was unnerving. He was too big and powerful—too potentially dangerous. Even knowing she could reach the knife to protect herself, she’d no wish to let down her guard and sleep.

She wasn’t certain if she’d dozed off for seconds or minutes, but she could hear the low murmur of Ben’s voice. Even though she couldn’t see her two brothers, she could picture Ben hunched over the tiller at the stern of the boat. Alfred would most likely be sitting beside him, in his usual silence, his long-stemmed pipe glowing red against the blackness of the Thames.

Something soft and furry brushed Lacy’s bare ankle. Her heart leaped, then she chuckled as she recognized the faint purring of a cat. She reached down to stroke a knobby, ragged head. “Poor old puss,” she murmured. “You’ve had a hard time of it, haven’t ye?” Where the cat’s left ear should have been was only a nubbin of scarred skin, and her sensitive fingertips felt fresh scabs and matted hair. She continued to fondle the stowaway, and further inspection proved the cat’s sex—male—and the fact that he’d left a good portion of his tail somewhere in his colorful past. “How did ye get aboard the
Silkie?”
she wondered aloud. “And what shall I call ye, sir?”

The cat nipped her thumb lightly and curled up in the warm spot behind her right knee.

“You’ve the arrogance of old King Harry,” she mused. “I’ll call ye Harry, if you’ve no objection.” The cat buried his head against her. “Harry it is, then,” she whispered. “Just don’t let Alfred see you. He makes crab bait of cats.”

“What’s amiss?” James whispered. He sounded fully alert.

“Nothing.” She gave Harry a pat.

“Be still then. I’ve had little enough sleep in the last few months.”

“Aye, sir,” she answered sarcastically. “Whatever you wish, sir.” How dare he speak to her as though he were her better? A common pirate? Damned if he didn’t think highly of himself, she thought.

Frowning, she leaned back against the brandy casks. The movement of the boat had changed while she’d concentrated on the cat. Now she realized that they were caught up in a turbulence. The bow of the
Silkie
slapped against a curl of rushing water. The tide was going out, but this sucking, rolling motion was something more. She glanced up at the hatch, wanting to go on deck but knowing she would only endanger them all. Then she heard Alfred’s voice.

“I’ll take the tiller.”

“Aye,” Ben answered. “Best ye do so.”

Lacy held her breath. Ben was a fine waterman, but Alfred was better. If Ben was willing to relinquish the tiller to his brother, then the boat was in trouble.

The
Silkie
quivered like a horse before a jump, and the small patch of sky Lacy could see through the hatch was blotted out above by the looming bulk of London Bridge. Ah, she’d not really slept. They’d come aboard near the Custom House, so the
Silkie
had gone only a short distance down the river.

“Use your oar to push off from the archway!” Alfred shouted. Lacy heard the scrape of wood against stone.

“Harder, man!”

The stern spun sideways and the bow dove, then rose and shot forward into calmer water. A single star twinkled through a gap in the clouds, and London Bridge was behind them.

Lacy breathed a sigh of relief. The bridge. She’d nearly forgotten. The treacherous currents under the London Bridge were legendary. Rivermen on the Thames were licensed to carry passengers and, she supposed, to pilot larger vessels up and down the waterway. Ben and Alfred had traveled the river before, but they weren’t all that familiar with the tides and they certainly possessed no license.

Other ships crowded the river below the bridge. She could see the forest of masts against the moonlit sky. But Lacy knew from experience that the
Silkie
carried no light. She slipped as silently as an eel along the surface of the muddy Thames, carrying them ever farther from Newgate with each passing minute.

The damp night air was filled with the scents of tar, mud, and rotting wood. Lacy sniffed, catching a faint smell of cinnamon. Voices echoed across the water, and from the deck of one three-masted square rigger came the wailing lilt of a sailor’s hornpipe.

Thoughts swirled in Lacy’s head, and her chest grew tight. Within seconds, her perceptions of the world around her altered radically. She began to feel as though she were struggling in deep water, unable to swim or even to think clearly.

No! She swallowed hard and balled her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms. No, she wouldn’t let it happen now. She’d not go into a trance—not again.

For a minute, it seemed she’d taken control of her senses and prevented the seizure. The giddy sensations retreated, and the hardwood deck beneath her became real again. She smelled the acrid scent of pitch and heard the notes of a hornpipe clearly through the mist.

Cautiously, she took another breath. Since she’d been arrested, she’d only suffered one vision, and that one had been so queer—so different from her other spells—she’d supposed she was taken with prison fever. Always before, she had returned to full consciousness with a knowledge of incidents that had yet to occur played out in vivid detail of color and sound. It was her curse, a witchy legacy from her gypsy mother—an inheritance that had brought Lacy naught but pain and trouble all her short life.

Damn me, but I’ll not succumb this time! she vowed. I’ll fight the
seeing!

The last incident in the prison had left her with confused images, faint and without accompanying sounds. Perhaps she was outgrowing the weakness now that she’d reached her mid-twenties. She pinched her arm hard to keep herself from slipping under.

Cursed gypsy blood! She’d never known her mother. Red Tom, her father, had never referred to the woman by name. She was always that “damned gypsy witch.” How her parents had met or where her mother was now, she didn’t know. Her father had left her with his elderly parents on a farm until she was eight, and of an age to be of use to him and her half-brothers in his trade.

She’d loved the farm, loved the planting and the reaping, loved the change of seasons that brought a new round of chores yet kept a solid sameness. And she’d been enchanted by the animals. Her first memory was of riding the great gray plowhorse as her grandfather tilled the rich earth.

She had a way with living creatures; even the wild things let her mend their hurts and walk among them unchallenged. Once, when she was barely six, she’d ridden a dairy bull that had gored three men. Innocently, she’d slid off a fence onto the piebald beast’s back and spent the better part of the morning scratching its neck. Her grandfather had been frightened half to death when he’d found her with the animal, but the only harm she’d suffered was a bruise she’d gotten when she tumbled off the bull’s back and landed on a rock.

She’d had the spells even then; she couldn’t remember ever not having them. She’d sink into a trance and witness an event hours or days before it actually happened. As a young child, she didn’t have the wisdom to hold her tongue. Instead, she eagerly told anyone who would listen what was about to happen.

It was her grandmother who had taught her the danger of letting others know about her witchy gift. “Hush,” the old woman had said. “Hush, lest they take ye away and burn ye for a Satan worshipper.”

Whenever the trances had come upon her, her grandmother had hugged her against her ample breasts and rocked her, and her grandfather had prayed the devils away. Gypsy witchling or not, bound for heaven or hell, she was of their blood and they loved her.

That life had ended when Red Tom came to fetch her home. In one day’s span, she went from being the darling of a household to the bottom-ranked hand in a wrecker’s crew. No more warm mugs of milk and being tucked into a soft featherbed with a lullaby and a prayer. Sleep after that came when and where she could find it—most likely with the hounds, for they’d not mock her for her manners and delicate sensitivities.

Red Tom had handed her over to the care of his woman, a slovenly fisherman’s daughter with four children of her own. She was the first of many stepmothers Lacy was to know. Some were kind and others cruel, but none stayed long, and none cared for her as her grandmother had cared. No one brushed her hair or saw that she had decent clothes; no one cared if she came to meals or stayed awake all night. And all of them, to a woman, were afraid of her.

And why wouldn’t they be afraid? She could do what no normal human could do; she could see into the future. And sometimes, whether she wanted the power or not, she could save lives or cause them to be lost.

When Lacy was fourteen, she had prevented Dame Walters’s aging father from burning himself up in his bed when she’d gone into a trance and seen him drop his pipe onto the blankets. She’d told Dame Walters to run home at once and see to him. Sure enough, the graybeard had fallen asleep, heedless of the smoldering quilt. Dame Walters had thrown water on the fire and the old man had escaped without harm.

Still, Dame Walters had never acted the same toward Lacy again, and she’d gone out of her way to avoid eye contact. Lacy had lost one of the few friends she had in the village. It didn’t matter if Lacy’s magic was white or black, it was all to be feared.

Witchling. Gypsy get. Devil’s jade. They called her that and more. Her half-brothers, Ben and Alfred and Beatty, had made the evil-eye sign against her and taunted her. Even Red Tom had been afraid. Men said of him that he was bold enough to spit in the devil’s eye, but Lacy had seen the doubt in his gaze and felt the hesitation in his touch. He was as superstitious as any other seafarer, and her gypsy sight scared the wits out of him.

Her witch power had kept her from being beaten by her father, but it hadn’t kept her from doing as she was told. He’d brought her to learn the wrecker’s life, and learn she did. Her only school was the sea and the rocky beach. She’d been eight when she’d lured her first sailing vessel to destruction on a hidden shoal.

Red Tom had used her curse when it suited him. Sometimes, she’d see ships or coming storms in her visions. In time, she learned to hide the spells and keep her
seeing
to herself, as long as they took possession of her when she was alone. When it happened, she lost track of time. She didn’t know if she lost consciousness for seconds or an hour. Alfred had told her that her eyes closed, and it looked as though she were asleep, but she didn’t know if that was true. Sometimes, though, if the spell was brief, no one noticed.

The trance that had occurred inside her Newgate cell had been quick. She had snapped back into the real world with a hazy image of a strange, red-hued barbarian in her mind’s eye. His ebony-colored hair had been long, nearly to his waist, and his eyes black as night. His nose had been broad and his lips thin, his black eyes slanted and oval, not round like the eyes of a normal man. And his face had borne peculiar tattoos from the line of his chin to the craggy ridges of his high cheekbones.

The vision had troubled her, but it had not returned. She had begun to believe that perhaps she had dreamed the bronzed man. Usually her sight showed familiar people and places. Like the trance that had brought her to the foot of the gallows ...

In early summer, she had warned a village widow woman not to allow her only son to go fishing on a seemingly calm day. The boy was only twelve and his mother’s hope and joy. But the mother had ignored Lacy’s advice and let the child go. When a storm arose suddenly and the boat capsized, the grieving mother accused Lacy of murder by witchery.

Even the threat of Red Tom’s revenge couldn’t save her that time. She’d been dragged before a local squire, then carried to London and thrown into Newgate. Her trial had been a mockery of justice. No one listened to her; no one cared that she had tried to save the child’s life, not take it. Nothing she could say prevented her from being sentenced, first to be branded with a W for witch, and then to be hanged by the neck until she was dead.

Lacy touched the burn scar on her forehead. It still hadn’t healed; it was sore and raised. If she closed her eyes she could still see the red-hot iron descend toward her face. She hadn’t screamed when the heat seared her flesh. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she knew her cries of pain would give the sadistic warder pleasure. And she wouldn’t give them anything ... not willingly. She’d cheated them of her neck, so far.

God alone knew where she would go or what she would do. She couldn’t go home. Even among wreckers, a convicted witch was too dangerous to hide. The king’s men would hunt her, and the devil’s mark on her forehead would be her undoing. She hadn’t thought past getting away from the executioner. Perhaps the New World ...

Lacy flinched as the sinking feeling returned. She opened her mouth, but no sound came from her throat. Her mind felt as though it were being sucked down a funnel. With a final shudder, she gave a sigh and went limp. Her eyelids closed and the spell seized her.