My Lady Pirate (18 page)

“Poor Colin. I hope you went easy on the lad.”

“By God, Gray, how could you neglect your command when we are in such a state of crisis,

of
peril?
”

Gray’s teasing humor instantly evaporated. “Sir, I can assure you I have
not
neglected it. I have frigates strategically stationed and a suitable squadron patrolling the Windwards to ensure their safety. Contrary winds, and the fact I was conducting some business with the governor of Jamaica, kept me damnably ignorant of both your
and
Villeneuve’s arrival, who, by God, will have a hard time causing any trouble in
my
waters, I can assure you! And as for the women?” He relaxed, grinning once more. “Why, sir, I
am
a sailor . . . with sailorly appetites, I might add.

They are nothing but . . . amusements, as I am to them, and they know it as well as I. Things get boring out here in the tropics, as you well know.”

“The Pirate Queen did not seem
amused.
I hope you intend to bring that poor girl more happiness than it appears you have already brought her!”

“Have no fear of
that,
milord. Following my business with you, and my fleet, I’ll have Colin take me to her island so I can claim her and rectify the situation immediately.” He raised his glass and gave a sly grin. “Her days of plundering the Spanish Main are, I can assure you, about to end.”

“I should damn well hope so,” Nelson snapped. “Should the Admiralty in London learn of

your
antics,
it’d be disastrous enough, but if you were to involve yourself with a pirate, they’d waste no time demanding your resignation regardless of how many laurels your career boasts.”

“All the more reason to put an end to Her Majesty’s piratical pursuits,
now.
”

“Well, for your sake I wish you luck. I may be going blind, but my sight is not yet so

hampered that I missed the very obvious animosity the lady bears you. If I may offer a

suggestion, it is that you tell her the truth about who you really are.” The feisty little admiral tightened his lips and shot Gray a condemning look. “A
traitor,
” he spat. “I’ve never heard of anything so damned
preposterous
in my life.”

“Well, caution was in order. Had she known my real identity, she might’ve sold me off to

Villeneuve. I was not about to take that risk, so I bluffed her into anger, and bringing me to you.

I’m sure that
Monsieur
Villeneuve is a most gracious host, but I’ve no desire to partake of French hospitality firsthand, thank you.”

“Yes, as
always
the dice fell in your favor.” The admiral sipped his champagne, his sharp gaze studying Gray over the bold bridge of his nose. His expression was grudging, perhaps even admiring. “Well, run your command as you wish, Gray, you’re more than competent, but in future I beg of you,
please
employ more discretion concerning your piratical
romps.
God help you
and
the Navy should word ever get back to London.”

“Have no fear of that, milord. My men are loyal to a fault and rather enjoy the diversion my er,
antics,
afford them. They would not dare breathe a word of it. But enough of me. You did not put three thousand miles under your keel to seek another bout with malaria, or to pay a mere social call to the commander of the West Indies Station.” Tossing down his rum, Gray rose from the chair. He refreshed their glasses and took a seat across from the admiral, his jaunty insouciance gone, and in its place the focused sharpness that had won him the order of Knight of the Bath, the accolades of his men, the respect of his peers, the position of high command that he now so enjoyed. “We have maybe another hour before my captain arrives? Enough for you to fill me in on what circumstances brought you out of the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic. Pray, let’s use it to discuss how we’re going to find this French fleet you have chased three thousand miles into
my
waters!”

Their gazes met. The admiral looked at his companion, so calm, so cool, so utterly at ease with himself and the situation. The confident officer across the table from him had come far since that blustery day he’d been a terrified young midshipman. Nelson sat back, and released a heavy sigh of relief. Then he looked up, and met the steady, challenging gaze of the man who had once been his student.

The man who was now his peer.

Nelson smiled, feeling his troubles dropping away into the wind. “I thought you would

never ask.”

Dawn found
Kestrel
on a northerly course, the breeze thrumming through reefed topsails and over spray-flecked decks. Her crew still slept, but Maeve had spent a restless night on deck, watching the miles widen between her little command and the British fleet, now a line of twinkling, distant lights stretching along the horizon. She’d seen the stars go out one by one, and the sky fading from black to indigo to a deep, brooding gray. By the time the sun hauled itself out of the sea in a fiery sphere of blazing crimson, Lord Nelson’s mighty force had disappeared from sight completely.

The admiral, if he had not done so already, would be rigging the halter from
Victory's
lofty foreyard now, and Gray, she thought sadly, would be standing on deck, waiting for the Articles of War to be read, waiting for the noose to be placed around his neck,
waiting to die.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and ripped her gaze from the horizon, empty now and

bleak as her heart. She felt lonely. Deserted.
Abandoned.
Her teeth bit savagely into her bottom lip.
Do not think of him,
she told herself, and gripped the tiller so hard her fingers went numb.

He was a traitor to his country. He was a traitor to his navy.
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
He was a traitor to you.

The wind strengthened. She lashed the tiller and strode forward, the mild, salty breeze

tearing at her tangled hair and sending it streaming out behind her. She felt it caressing her skin, sending her clothing rippling against flesh that
he
had touched, kissed, loved. She walked faster, as if she could banish the memory, and went forward to haul over the jib. But as her hands closed around the salt-stiff, thrumming line and hauled it tight, her gaze fell upon the sad coil of rope nestled in the nook of the bow, dark with blood that was drying in the fronds of golden hemp.

She shut her eyes, trembling.

Maeve stood there for a moment, torn and miserable. She glanced around, guiltily, assuring herself the deck was still empty; then she ducked into the bow, leaned down, and picked up the bloody rope with which they had bound her pirate lover. Her fingers closed around it, feeling the blood,
his
blood, sticky against her hand.

Anguish tore at her throat. Her fingers bit into the hemp. She raised her arm, pulled it back, and gathered her strength to fling the bloodied rope far off into the sea.

She couldn’t do it.

Clenching the rope in her fist, she stormed back to the tiller and stared off over the tossing, brilliant waves.

In another hour Gray—the traitor—would be dead . . . thanks to her.

She squeezed the rope until the harsh fibers pricked her palm. Then she dropped it beside the tiller and wiped her blood-smeared hand on her skirts. The stain was embedded. She wiped

harder, cursing the stain, cursing him, and fighting to keep her emotions in check. She flung her hair over her shoulder and turned to haul in the mainsheet, her lean, muscled arms bringing the boom swinging back to centerline and then arcing out over her head.
Kestrel
tilted upright, then onto the opposite tack as Maeve pushed the tiller over. Spray dashed over the weather bulwarks, streamed in bright, glistening trails down the varnished deck. Maeve turned to follow
Kestrel's
swirling wake through the lively swells, tracing her course back to the pure, cloudless horizon . . . to the British fleet . . . to
Victory
— And to Gray.

She shut her eyes. She could see it, even now . . . Lord Nelson, condemning the traitor to death for selling out to Villeneuve . . . Lord Nelson, standing imperiously on the massive quarterdeck of
Victory
as Gray’s lifeless body swung to the roll of the ship, his black hair moving in a macabre death dance on the wind . . . Lord Nelson, snapping out the order for the corpse to be cut down and dropped into the sea with curt finality.

No!

Kestrel
hit a swell and spray dashed over the gunwale and through the weather shrouds, slapping Maeve’s face, trickling down her cheeks, dampening her tangled hair. Her throat

constricting, she shut her eyes and ran her tongue over her lips, tasting salt water that, far, far over the horizon, already embraced her Gallant Knight in death.

But no, he was
not
her Knight, he was nothing but a scoundrel, a traitor, a rogue!

“I should’ve listened to myself,” she muttered, and swiped angrily at her eyes with the heel of her hand, her fingers tightening around the tiller until her knuckles threatened to split. “I should’ve
listened
and not let myself open my heart to him! I wanted a fine and gallant officer for my Knight . . . an officer . . .
like my father.

More spray dashed against her face, trickling down her brow, her cheeks, her lips.

“I should’ve known better than to accept anything less than the real thing.” She picked up the blood-soaked rope and drove her short nails into it, feeling the hemp stabbing painfully into the quicks. “Oh . . . what am I to
do?”

Go back for him.

But no, it was too late. He would be dead by now, and
she
had killed him.

“Captain?”

Her head jerked up, and she saw Orla standing there with a tankard of coffee in her hand.

Maeve dropped the bloodstained rope and swiftly kicked it aside, her face flaming.

“Are you all right?” Orla asked, handing her the coffee.

“Of course I’m all right. Why the hell shouldn’t I be?”

Black eyes met gold. “I’m sorry, Maeve, about the pirate.”

“Yes, well. . .” Maeve’s foot drove against the rope, savagely, desperately, angrily. “He meant nothing to me anyhow, was just a scoundrel like all the rest. By now he’s probably naught but a corpse on Nelson’s foreyard and good riddance to him!”

She looked down, pretending to study the compass and blessing the curtain of chestnut hair that fell, swirling about her face. She blinked and a fat tear splashed onto the glass. Angrily, she dashed it away, and, feeling the rope pressing against her toe, finally shoved it brutally away in a fit of temper.

“Blast it to hell, why did he have to wash up on
my
shore?”

Orla watched the proud shoulders crumple in defeat, saw the tears that leaked silently from beneath Maeve’s clenched fingers. Quietly, she took the tiller and corrected the schooner’s course, then reached out to put her arm around her captain’s shoulders, hugging her in friendship and understanding.

“Such things are not always ours to decide, Maeve.”

“I killed him, Orla.”

Orla bit her lip, her eyes tragic.

“I should have been more forgiving!”

“You
did not cause him to desert the Royal Navy,” the other woman gently reminded her.

“And if Nelson has executed your pirate, that was
his
decision, not yours.”

“I know but—” She shook her head, recovering, and dashing the tears from her eyes. “Oh,

blast it all! Put the damned ship about, I’m going back.”

“It’s probably too late, Maeve.”

“I don’t bloody well care, I’m going back!”

“Captain!”

It was Aisling, racing up from the hatch, barefoot and waving a straw hat.

Maeve spun around. “Hell’s teeth, Aisling, you scared the bleeding
devil
out of me—”

‘Captain, I went into your cabin to steal a piece of paper—you don’t mind, do you?—and I

looked out the windows and guess what I saw?”

But before Maeve could vent her irritable response, Aisling was excitedly pointing to the cluster of islands in the distance, mere splotches of purple and green crowning a turquoise sea.

“Look!” The girl thrust a spyglass into her hand, and jumped up and down in excitement. “See?

A merchant ship, Captain! Crippled and ripe for the plucking!”

Maeve put the glass to her eye. Distant reefs, no more than purple smudges on a ruffled,

blue-green sea, filled the spherical field. Waves paraded toward her, disappeared beneath the bottom edge of the glass. The shoreline of an island hove into view, a glittering expanse of blinding white sand crowned with fringed palm and pine. Beneath her feet,
Kestrel
surged up, surged down—Maeve steadied the glass against the pit of her shoulder and looked to see the fat merchantman Aisling had sighted.

“D’you see it. Captain?”

Oh, she saw it all right. A merchant ship, hove to in the lee of a tiny island, with a black flag of pirate ownership streaming from the only one of its three masts to still remain standing.
El
Perro Negro's
flag, she thought, on a note of savage, reckless malevolence. The merchantman was obviously his prize. But
The Black Dog
's infamous brig itself was nowhere to be seen, and the big merchantman, conquered, crippled, and shot through with holes, was unguarded and as vulnerable as a sheep that had strayed from its flock and now found itself facing a lone and ruthless wolf.

The Pirate Queen’s eyes narrowed, and her lips curved in a dark smile. El Perro Negro. Her rival, her enemy, one of the vilest pirates ever to sail the Caribbean; their hatred of each other was mutual and deep, seeded the night Maeve had found his skulking brother raping a helpless young barmaid in a Barbados tavern while a hundred men cheered him on. Her own shouted challenge, a quick fight between cutlasses, and Maeve had run the scoundrel through, inheriting both the barmaid as a crewmember, and the lasting enmity of el Perro Negro.

“You have damned good eyes, girl,” she said, slamming the glass back into Aisling’s hand