My Lady Pirate (19 page)

just as her crew came running up from below.

“Don’t I?” Aisling grinned, her face bright in the sunshine. “Enolia tells me that all the time!

Are we going after her, Captain? Are we?”

“Aye, let’s steal her from the bleeding bastard before he comes back!” cried Tia.

“Then skewer him to his own gunwales and feed him his guts on a fork!”

Maeve threw back her head and gave a hearty guffaw. But then she thought of Gray—

wickedly sinful, darkly handsome—Gray, and the dreams she’d had of plundering the seas with him at her side. What a thrill it would’ve been to have him with her now . . .

But no. Gray was dead.

Her laughter died abruptly, to be replaced by a raw, choking ache that manifested in a blind need to fight, to maul, to steal, to
kill
—

“Shall we go after her, Captain?” Aisling prompted.

“Aye, why not?” she muttered, buckling on her sword belt and flinging her ponytail over her shoulder. She drew her cutlass and flexed her arm, letting the blade sing through the air with quick, vicious strokes. “I’m in the mood for a good fight. Now, aloft with you, Aisling, and give a holler if you see el Perro Negro’s brig returning. We’re going in.”

Grabbing a pistol, the girl bounded up the shrouds and soon appeared in the crosstrees, a slight figure stamped against the mast, a network of angled lines, and a cerulean sky devoid of cloud.

“Your orders, Captain?” Enolia asked, as the crew ran to their guns and sail stations.

“Run up the flag, and ready about,” Maeve commanded, and a moment later, the little

schooner was coming across the wind, her long bowsprit aligning on the crippled merchantman.

###

El Perro Negro's brig was well-hidden behind the pines of the island’s headland, and with the blazing sun behind it, there was little chance of
Kestrel
's sharp-eyed lookouts spotting the ship. But his men had no such encumbrances—and had certainly seen
Kestrel
the moment the schooner had come into view.

Now, in the wake of the lookout’s shouted warning, el Perro Negro’s crew—a scanty one,

what with the fact that half of them had been left aboard the crippled merchantman until they could return with enough men to sail both ships back to port—raced to the rail.

“She’s after our merchantman prize, I’ll wager,” snarled Renaldo, the first mate. He

smashed a fist against the rail. “The bitch!”

“Well, she ain’t going to get it! That whoring slut owes me. In fact, I think I’ll add her pretty schooner to my collection, as I’m feeling the need to play
admiral
today.” Stuffing a fistful of half-cooked chicken into his mouth, el Perro Negro wiped a hand across the back of his lips and belched, dispelling fumes of rum and stomach rot. “Given that we have such an abundance of
almirantes
in these waters lately, that is. Get the tops’ls up, Renaldo, triple shot the guns, and put a fire under your ass, I’m in no mood to tarry, ye hear me?”

The ship hit a jarring swell and from belowdecks came an agonized cry.

“What the hell was that?”

‘The merchie’s captain,” the mate growled, in disgust. “Took a ball in his gut durin’ the fight so we brought him off the merchie and stuck him below. Ain’t naught but a pup, must be all of twenty summers by the looks of ’im. But ye know these English—start ’em young, they do.”

“Kill him then, and put the son of a bitch out of his misery,” el Perro Negro snarled. “That noise is giving me a damned headache!”

Renaldo, dagger in hand, went below, and a moment later the young English captain’s cries of pain crescendoed into a high scream of agony that abruptly ended. El Perro Negro smiled.

Throat-slitting was Renaldo’s specialty. Well, he had his own specialty, and it involved
blades
of a far different order.

The trees of the island still shielded the Pirate Queen’s ship from his own deck-level eyes, but in a moment they would burst around the headland and surprise would be theirs. In his mind’s eye he pictured her schooner, swooping down on the merchantman prize,
his
prize
,
with the wind in her topsails and the spray bursting from her bows.
The Pirate Queen.
Trying to take what was his. El Perro Negro spat a wad of phlegm on the deck and ground it in with his shoe.

That thieving
puta
would get her due today, by God—

“All done,
Capitan,”
Renaldo said, joining him once more and wiping the flat of his bloody knife on his trousers.

“ldiota,
have Jacky and Pig-Eye throw him overboard! I don’t want his carcass fouling my decks, ye hear?” Moments later, the young man’s corpse was hauled topside, blood still dripping from the slashed throat, the gentle eyes open, staring, accusing. El Perro Negro spat on the deck once more and turned away as the body was heaved overboard with all the ceremony of slops into a pig trough.

“Any more
trash
to be disposed of, Renaldo?”

“That’s the last of ’em,
Capitan.
And if ye ask me
,
’tis better off we are for killin’ ’em.

Should Admiral Falconer get wind of this, our asses would be—”

“I didn't ask you, so keep your damned opinions to yourself.”

“Aye . . . sir.”

“Are the guns ready?”

“Aye,
Capitan.”

“Good. Now heave to, and let’s give
Her Majesty
time to get her claws into our merchie. I want to catch her by surprise, away from her own ship and on our prize’s decks.” Thick lips curved in a black, evil smile. “I never thought I could use a captured merchant ship as a lure. But without that schooner under her, the Pirate Queen doesn’t have a chance.”

He ran his tongue over his greasy lips in anticipation. He’d long had an itch to get his hands on that incredible schooner
—and
her notorious lady captain. Thoughts of the latter thought brought saliva welling into his mouth, and a stiffness to his groin that only hardened as he watched the schooner’s mastheads, their tips just thrusting above the tree-tops, come to a slow, graceful stop.

Shouts, calls, gunshots, the boom of a cannon—she would be boarding the prize, now . . .

“Come on, my pretty,” el Perro Negro murmured, reaching down to stroke his swelling

penis through his trousers. He thought of her as he’d last seen her, beautiful, savage, standing proudly at her helm with her hair blowing out around her. The memory alone made him ache

with lust, and he shivered in anticipation of her lying beneath him, beaten, while he pumped and slammed and drove into her. Soon, he vowed, she’d be warming his own bed, crying out in

passion and pain, yes,
pain,
before he plunged a knife into her heart and sent her the way of the dead English
capitan
—

From beyond the trees of the island he heard the boom of another gun, female shrieks of

bloodlust and challenge, the furious shouts of the handful of men he’d left to guard the

merchantman, and now, the distant ring of steel against steel as Maeve Merrick and her band of she-wolves boarded his captured merchantman. The Pirate Queen, apparently, was wasting no time.

“The insolence of the bitch!” Renaldo snarled indignantly. “Doesn’t she realize
the Black
Dog
wouldn’t stray far from ’is prize?”

“Maybe the
bitch
wants to be bred, eh?”

Renaldo’s eyes turned sly. “Aye, well they don’t call ye the Black Dog for nothin’!”

El Perro Negro threw back his filthy head and laughed. “Aye, and now, I think, it’s time for this dog to go a-ruttin’. Ready about, Renaldo, and let’s go in.”

The Spaniard grinned as the brig fell off into the wind and far beneath him, water began to sing against the hull. And then he reached down, pulled his pistol from its scabbard, loaded it with ball and powder—and waited.

###

One salvo from
Kestrel's
starboard guns had sent the few men el Perro Negro had left aboard the captured merchantman scurrying for cover, and, in the ensuing melee, the Pirate Queen brought her schooner right up to the crippled merchantman, grappled her ship to it, and, cutlass in hand, led her yelling, whooping, shrieking crew over the side.

The first man came for her as Maeve leaped onto the merchantman's deck, and she saw only

the black mouth of his pistol before a ball from Enolia’s own weapon felled him.

“To me, ladies!” she cried, and whirling, met the next charging shape, a heavy, bearded

wretch with sores of disease clinging about his lips.

She thought of nothing but swinging her cutlass . . . her daddy . . . revenge upon the fates that had stolen her happiness . . . and Gray as she whirled to meet her opponent’s savage thrust—

Gray.

The clattering blow sent pain shooting the length of her arm, but she was strong, lithe, and able; spinning, she pirouetted, her bare feet light and graceful, the smoke stinging her eyes and burning her nose. The pirate swung for her. She feinted, and sent her own blade chopping viciously into his ribs. Blood sprayed up and out, and he fell, screaming, to the deck. She dived for the next filthy wretch and hacked her sword against his arm as he tried to jerk a pistol up into her face; it exploded near the side of her head, numbing her ears, bits of black powder hitting her cheeks and stinging her eyes.

Gunfire, screams, curses, the stench of sulfur and sweat, spilt blood and the stink of fear.

Back and forth she swung, blindly, savagely, angrily, the sweat running down her cheeks, the scene fading into a thick and smoky din through which she caught only glimpses . . . of Tia, ramming a boarding pike into a pirate’s gut, of Enolia, beating back a huge wretch with a missing ear, of Aisling and Sorcha fighting back-to-back, pistols blazing— A man came for her, his dagger arcing down toward her shoulder, and he fell as a volley

from Lucia’s blunderbuss caught him in the back. Out of the smoke came another . . . another . . .

another . . .

Gray
. . .
oh, Gray
. . . Tears now ran freely down her sooty cheeks, and she didn’t care, didn’t care any more if she lived or died, didn’t give a damn about anything, except what she had lost.

“CAPTAIN!”

She whirled and saw el Perro Negro himself charging through the smoke. Instinctively she

charged forward to meet his attack—and felt her feet go out from under her on the slick and bloodied deck.

The Pirate Queen went down, and the last thing she saw before her head cracked against the gunwale was fire, flashing from his pistol . . .

Then, all went dark.

Gray had departed for H.M.S.
Triton
, leaving Lord Nelson's Mediterranean Fleet, baking under the hot Caribbean sun, to thread its way north through the jewel-like West Indian islands in a desperate search for the elusive combined Franco-Spanish fleet. The sea begged tranquility, but there was no rest for the anxious English admiral who had crossed an ocean to find—and fight—that missing enemy.

Now, Nelson was pacing his quarterdeck, thinking of Emma, the coffin he’d left back in

London, and the new battle plan he’d worked up to
annihilate
that fellow
Veal-noove,
when a cry from the masthead broke his obsessed reverie.

“Deck there!”

Captain Hardy stood with the sailing master at the massive, double-spoked wheel. He

glanced at Nelson, took off his hat to dab at his sweaty brow, and squinting against the blazing glare, looked aloft. “Report, masthead!”

“Sail closing fast to windward! It’s a schooner, sir!”

Snapping his fingers, Nelson called impatiently for the nearest midshipman. He plucked the lad’s spyglass from his hand and raised it to his good eye, identifying the little vessel at the same time that Hardy voiced his thoughts.

“It’s the Pirate Queen’s ship—by God, what happened to it?”

Cursing the milky film that glazed his sight, Nelson stared hard through the glass until the eye watered in pain and protest. “She’s been hit, and hit hard,” he said worriedly. “Heave to, Captain Hardy, and prepare to receive her commander.”

Moments later, the little schooner was safe in
Victory’s
lee and swallowed up by her massive shadow. Nelson strode to the rail and looked down to the deck far beneath him. He saw shot-torn sail, broken spars, and a mere stump where the topmast had been, not unlike the useless remains of his right arm.

A fair-haired girl scurried out from beneath the shadow of the schooner’s torn and flagging mainsail. “Admiral Lord Nelson! Please, sir, you must help us!”

He grabbed a speaking trumpet from Hardy and crawled atop one of
Victory's
massive cannon so he could lean far out over the nettings. He felt Hardy’s steadying hand on his arm, sensed the protective press of his officers surrounding him. But before he could respond, the girl, no more than ten or twelve summers by the look of her, burst into tears. “Do you have a good surgeon aboard, milord? Our captain’s been hurt and I think . . . I think she’s dying!”

###

Dear Captain and Mrs. Merrick:

Lord Nelson paused, pen in hand, staring at the sheet of vellum on the desk before him. He brushed his chin with the end of the feather, then jabbed the quill back into the inkwell and began to scribble.

It is my most woeful duty to inform you that your daughter, Maeve, has been seriously
injured in hand-to-hand combat with a Spanish pirate. Although you may take comfort in the
knowledge that she fought most gallantly, as of this writing my surgeon is working desperately to
save her life. Should she live, she will remain the guest of the British Navy until my fleet can
return to Europe, where I will personally ensure that she reaches the safety of England. It
therefore is my wish to—
He paused, pondering Colin Lord’s words. The young captain had said the girl had run away from home, that her grieving parents had thought her dead; what if she recovered, and hated him for his interference in matters between herself and her parents? Nelson shrugged. The boldest measures were always the safest. He dipped the pen into the inkwell and continued:
—invite you to Merton, my home in Surrey, England, where your daughter will be under the
care of Lady Hamilton. Godspeed.