My Lady Pirate (37 page)

It is time you learned the difference between fantasy and reality.

He reached up, raked a hand through his hair, caught his thumb on the gold earring—and

nearly ripped it out on a wave of disgust.

Suddenly, there was nothing remotely alluring about pirates.

Nothing at all.

###

On a futile hope that a similar, forgiving note might come from the man she loved, the Pirate Queen decided to remain with the British Fleet for another hour and no more. She went on deck and, as though to defy Sir Graham’s distaste for her prowess at the sport, engaged in a savage sword fight with Enolia that nearly killed the both of them. Then, trembling and exhausted, she collapsed in the shade of the gunwale and sullenly nursed a mug of cool ale.

Nothing.

She took out her dagger and pared her fingernails.

And still, no message came.

That was it, then. To hell with him. She got to her feet, slammed the mug down, and stormed to the tiller.

Orla met her along the way, her eyes worried.

“Put the ship about, we’re going back to the island,” Maeve snarled.

“But Maeve—”

“I said,
put the ship about!
” she shouted, and after a hesitant, mutinous pause, her friend went forward, calling for
Kestrel'
s foresail to be raised.

All along the deck, she saw her crew staring at her as though she’d taken leave of her senses.

Maeve spun around and seized the tiller, drumming her fingers on the smooth wood in angry impatience. Up went the big foresail, and she felt her heart breaking with every inch the long, swinging gaff crawled. Sail spilled to the wind, shook itself out, thundered and fluttered in the early morning sunshine. Shadows swung to and fro over the deck with every swing of the great assembly of spar and canvas.

Still, no boats putting out from HMS
Triton,
no alarmed figure appearing on the

quarterdeck, no signal, nothing.

She felt raw, wrenching pain clawing at her chest.

“Put up the main,” she ordered curtly, and as her crew ran to the halliards and began to haul up the throat and peak, she couldn’t help glancing over at HMS
Triton.

Movement.

A flag, rising skyward . . . another . . . another.

“Captain! Sir Graham is signaling!”

“Sir Graham can go to bloody hell and rot there ’til his balls turn black.”

“We have to get the signal book Captain Lord issued us so we can see what he’s saying!”

Aisling cried, grabbing her sister and racing below.

More flags soared up the great warship’s masts.

“Hurry up, damn you!” Maeve shouted to her hesitant crew.

She stared over at
Triton
—and saw a gun port opening along that massive, towering side.

The snout of a cannon crawled out into the sunshine, its hungry mouth trained on
Kestrel
.

“Just who the bleeding
hell
does he think he is?” she snarled, even as another port opened, and yet, another. She turned just as the Irish girls came running forward, the signal book in their hand. “Give me that damned thing!”

And there, the last flag, fluttering angrily from the big man-of-war’s mast.

She flipped through the pages, noting the meaning of each flag even as another gun poked

out of the warship’s sides . . . and another.

And closed the book with a furious snap.

“What’s he saying, Captain? What’s he saying?” She stared at the big ship, the colorful

array of flags waving in the wind.

“He says,” she muttered, on a dark little laugh, “that if I so much as even
think
of sailing off, he’ll blow us out of the water.”

“Oh, Captain, surely he wouldn’t do
that
!”

But Maeve remembered the admiral’s shocked and stricken face after she’d saved him from

el Perro Negro . . . and wasn’t so sure.

It had been seven days since they’d caught up with the sugar convoy, two weeks since Sir

Graham had ordered
Kestrel
to remain with his fleet, and a half hour since Sir Graham had joined Colin Lord for dinner in the flag-captain’s cabin.

The atmosphere between them was strained and tense, for with every league the British

fleet, the convoy, and Gray’s few warships drew closer to Europe, with every league the little schooner
Kestrel
hovered mutinously at its fringes, with every league of sun and rain and wind and salt they put behind them, Sir Graham’s normally jovial mood had evaporated into a dark and simmering silence that no one—with the exception of Nelson and Colin—dared to disturb.

Courageous to a fault, diligent in his pursuit of every detail, in possession of a keen

maritime acumen, and guided by an unflappable sense of fairness, duty, and insight, Colin was by no means stupid, and should have known better than to broach the subject of Maeve Merrick.

Yet Gray saw it coming; it was there in Colin’s eyes, in the faint puckering of his fair brows, in the way he was fidgeting and shifting the pillow beneath his thigh to take the weight off his leg.

Gray picked up his napkin and dabbed at his lips. “Leg bothering you, Colin?”

“Not really, sir. It itches beneath the cast, but otherwise, healing quite nicely, I daresay.”

“Good. I’d hate like hell for anything to happen to you. You’ve been the best damned flag-captain I’ve ever had.”

“Thank you, sir.” Distractedly, the younger man pushed a piece of roast beef around on his plate, making a dollop of gravy in its center. “Though sometimes, I wish I’d chosen a different career . . . something that preserves life, rather than destroys it. Forgive me, sir, but I’ve seen enough of death and killing to last a lifetime, I’m afraid.”

Death and killing.
“Aye, so have I,” Gray drawled, and glared out the window, where he could just see the distant shape of
Kestrel
hugging the horizon, as if poised for flight. He had no doubt she would have been long gone, if not for the fact he’d ordered his frigates to keep an eye on the schooner and put a shot across her bows if she tried to escape.

The flag-captain finally looked up at Gray. “If I may speak, sir?”

Gray raised his wineglass—he was no longer drinking rum—sipped it, and motioned

impatiently. “Be my guest.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking, sir, about that time you came to me and asked, in a roundabout way, the best way to, er, go after the heart of the Pirate Queen . . .”

The admiral’s fingers tightened around the stem of the glass.

Colin, unflappable and unfazed, ignored the sudden tension, merely pushing the beef around and around on his plate. “Well, forgive my bluntness, sir, but I think you’re behaving like a hypocrite.”

Gray’s glass slammed down on the table so hard it shattered into a thousand pieces. Wine

went everywhere, and servants came running.

“Damn you, I’ll have you watch what you say to me!”

Colin lifted his head, regarding him steadily. “I merely speak the truth, sir, as I see it.”

The admiral glared at him, bristling with anger, his shoulders very stiff beneath the proud epaulets.

Colin did not back down. “You loved her when she would not have you, when you thought

her nothing but a little girl playing at being a pirate queen. She was a source of amusement to you, a . . . fantasy.”

Sir Graham’s swarthy countenance went dark with fury.

“Forgive me, sir, but you’ve put this ship in peril with your orders to fly pirate flags, your unconventional habits, and your expectations that my crew and I turn a blind eye to your doings.

We have done so, sir, because you are a fine commander and we have nothing but respect for you. But I cannot respect a man who conducts his behavior under a double standard.”

The admiral lunged to his feet on a snarl of fury. “You’ll watch your damned tongue,

Captain Lord
!”

The young captain put down his fork, placing it just so beside his plate, and looked calmly up at his commanding officer. “Sir, if I may ask you a question . . .”

A muscle jumped along the admiral’s jaw, and Colin saw his hand fisting with suppressed

wrath. “Out with it,” he bit out, through clenched teeth.

“If it had been
I
who’d thrown that dagger and saved you from el Perro Negro’s bullet, would you have rejected me as you have her?”

Steady eyes of purple-gray met angry ones of dark cobalt. Sunlight drifted through the stern windows, struck gold in Colin’s hair, glanced off the tassels of Gray’s epaulets.

“I repeat, sir, would you?”

The admiral’s nostrils flared. “You are a
man,
by God!”

“So?”

“That’s bloody different!”

“I take that to mean it is permissible for me to defend those I love, even if it means killing someone, just because I am a man? That if I were a woman and had just saved the life of a high-ranking officer, it would be less than heroic? Sir, you cannot sit there across from me and tell me that if the situation were reversed, and Maeve’s life had been the one in peril, you would not have done the same as
she
did. You cannot, for that matter, tell me you did not want to kill el Perro Negro yourself when you saw him strike her unconscious, and, I daresay, you
would
have killed him if only the opportunity had afforded itself.”

“That’s a damned stupid question,
of course I would have
! ”

“Precisely my point, sir,” Colin said, returning his attention to the beef.

Gray merely stared at him, helpless against the younger man’s logic. Angry because he had no defense against it. Feeling his temper rising . . . rising . . .

The flag-captain continued in his calm, infuriating way. “You may think she should be soft and feminine, pampered and sweet, a
lady
in the accepted sense of the word, but she is what she is, sir, and acted with those qualities that, in a man, would have been applauded as heroic.

Courageous.” The gentle eyes looked up at Gray, silently condemning. “I’m sorry, sir. But I think you are unfair to reject the woman you love just because she defended that which
she
held most dear.”

The admiral’s fist crashed down on the table. “You think it’s unfair, do you?” he roared.

“Aye, sir. I do.”

They stared at each other, neither willing to give ground—and, for a brief, terrible moment, Colin thought his superior was going to strike him. Then, Sir Graham’s chest rose on a great, shaky sigh, and he sat heavily down in his chair to glare sullenly out the stern window.

“Sir?”

“You’re a damned cunning bastard,” the admiral growled, and without another word,

attacked his own supper.

###

for
Kestrel
to close with the flagship, and, wearing his best uniform, decided to make peace with the Pirate Queen.

His officers saluted him as he strode grimly past them, but he knew the gossip would be

flying the moment he left the flagship. And as the barge cut through the heavy swells, the spray drenching his fine uniform and soaking the smart, handpicked crew, he saw them grinning and exchanging silent comments, saw their amused gazes flickering between the little schooner and their dark and angry admiral.

“Row, damn you!” he roared, and gripped the gunwale so hard it nearly broke off in his

hand.

The schooner’s black side loomed before, then above him. High above his head, her two

sharply raked masts thrust toward the sky. Gray waited for the barge to hook onto the little ship’s main chains and, grasping the ladder that Aisling and Sorcha tossed eagerly over the side to him, began to climb.

He was halfway up the schooner’s side when he happened to glance up and saw the bell-like mouth of a blunderbuss staring him in the face.

“Halt right there, Admiral,” came Maeve’s low, angry voice. “Or so help me God, I’ll

shoot.”

Gray merely set his jaw and on a dark smile, continued climbing.

“I’m warning you, Gray!”

Beneath him, he heard one of the barge crew gasp in alarm . . . another, choking back an

amused snigger.

“Dammit, Gray, don’t make me hurt you!”

He reached up, seized the cold metal of the weapon, and with one savage jerk, yanked it

from her hand and flung it into the sea.

And kept climbing.

Up he came, his hat now level with the schooner’s gunwale, his progress never faltering.

A cutlass thrust itself before his nose. “I mean it, Gray!”

Never pausing, he knocked it aside and began to haul himself up and over the gunwale. She tried to step on his fingers as he reached for a hold. He grabbed her ankle. She pulled her knife on him. He snared her wrist and threw the weapon aside. She screamed every curse she knew at him.

And he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, to the wild cheers of her own traitorous

crew.

Small fists beat at his chest. Her bare foot slammed against his shin. Her angry protests vibrated against his mouth, and her knee came up on a vicious swing to connect with his groin.

Gasping, he doubled over in agony, his hat tumbling from his head and his vision going

black around the edges.

“Admiral!” Aisling and Sorcha caught him as he fell, their hands beneath his elbows.

“Admiral! You all right?”

He stumbled to his feet, shook his head to clear it, and recovered in time to see Maeve’s stiff, silk-clad back just disappearing down the hatch.

“I’m fine,” he ground out and, pausing only long enough to retrieve his hat and slam it back down on his head, went after her.

The fierce Enolia tried to bar his way with her cutlass, but he kicked it aside and kept

walking. Down the hatch he went, after Maeve. He strode right up to the door of her cabin, seized the latch, and yanked.

Locked.

“Open the door, Maeve.”

“Rot in hell, you wretch!”

“Open the damned door, Maeve.”

“I said, go to—”

He raised his foot, drew back, and with all his strength, kicked the latch. Once, twice—and then the door crashed open under the force of his blows and he was in the cabin and striding angrily across the tiny space.