The Pirate Lord (4 page)

Though he reddened at her use of his Christian name, he bobbed his head. “His lordship paid me well to look after you. And if lookin’ after you means lookin’ after a bunch of convict women, I suppose I can manage it.”

She took one look at his stoic expression, so like his brother’s, and she relaxed. It was exactly the sort of thing Hargraves might have said…and done. “All right, it’s a bargain. But I’m going to hold you to your end of it, Peter.”

He gave a solemn nod as he clapped his hat back on his head. “Long as you hold to yer end, miss, I’ll not fail you. You’ll see.”

When he headed for the door she said, “Peter?”

He paused. “Yes, miss?”

“It seems to me that Jordan bought the very best man he could find.”

Peter’s ears pinkened. “Thank you, miss. I’ll do my best by you, I will.”

After he left, she dropped into a chair, relief coursing through her. Now she wouldn’t have the entire burden of worrying about the women.

Suddenly, the trip that lay before her seemed a little less daunting, a little less grueling. Maybe everything would be fine, after all, thanks to Jordan’s forethought. And if she and Peter could keep the ship from becoming a “floating brothel,” who knew what they could accomplish in New South Wales?

T
he tropical sun dusted the palm trees with its fading light as Captain Gideon Horn of the
Satyr
and the ship’s cook, Silas Drummond, climbed up the path through the crowded market of the town of Praia, which was carved in Santiago’s mountainside. Santiago was the last and largest of the Cape Verde Islands that Gideon and his men had visited. They’d gone to the smaller islands first, thinking they’d have better luck finding what they wanted, but they’d been wrong. And now Gideon feared they wouldn’t find it even on Santiago.

So he’d decided instead to buy provisions to carry back to Atlantis Island. If Praia couldn’t provide them with what they really needed, there was no point in staying here any longer.

He scanned the nearest stall, where a grinning native
woman wearing a crumpled straw hat offered bolts of dyed cotton and called out to passersby in the bastard Portuguese the islanders used.

“How much?” Gideon asked in English, then waited while Silas, who spoke a little Portuguese, translated.

The woman shifted her eyes to him, her grin fading at once. First she rubbed the sweat from her brow with indigo-stained hands. Then she let forth a veritable torrent of words, gesturing to Gideon with jerky motions.

His burly translator chuckled. “She says if the ‘American pirate’ wants the goods for his lady, he’ll have to pay dearly for ’em.”

Gideon scowled. “Tell her I don’t have a lady and am not likely to have one soon.” Then, before Silas could get out a word, he added, “How did she know who I am, anyway?”

Silas talked to the woman animatedly for a few moments. Apparently she found Gideon’s presence at her bamboo stall alarming.

When at last Silas faced Gideon, he was tugging on the ends of his heavy brown beard. “Word travels quickly on the islands, Cap’n. It seems they all know that the notorious Pirate Lord and his crew are here. She took one look at that saber tucked in your belt, and figured you were him.” He looked thoughtful. “Maybe that’s why we’ve had little luck gettin’ what we want from these damned islanders. When they found out who we were, they started hidin’ their young women.”

“Maybe.” Gideon shot the stall-keeper an ingratiating smile that didn’t seem to mollify her one bit. “Confound the woman! Tell her I don’t want her cloth after all. What good does it do us if we can’t get any women?”

Silas nodded solemnly as Gideon spun on his heel and headed for the docks. After muttering a few words to the stall-keeper, Silas hurried after Gideon, moving with surprising speed on his wooden leg. “So what do we do now, Cap’n?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to talk to the crew. Maybe
some of them have had better luck today than we have.”

“Maybe,” Silas said, though he didn’t look hopeful.

They strode down the rock-strewn paths of Praia in silence. Gideon was barely conscious of the scowling man at his side. This whole scheme was pointless; he should have seen that from the beginning. It just couldn’t work.

He was still telling himself that when Barnaby Kent, his first mate, rushed up the mountain path toward them. “You’ll never guess what’s come into port!” he cried.

Barnaby was the only Englishman Gideon had ever allowed to join his crew, but he’d never regretted it. The man was a gifted seaman, even if he dressed like a dandy.

“What is it?” Gideon asked as Barnaby drew to a halt in front of them, gasping. It must be something fantastic to excite Barnaby enough to hurry. The man generally strolled languidly about, surveying everything and everybody with a jaundiced eye.

Barnaby bent over and planted his hands on his thighs as he sought to catch his breath. “A ship…has come into port…one that might interest us.”

Gideon groaned. “We’ve been through all that, Barnaby. We’ve got enough blasted jewels and gold and silver to fill a warship. It’s women we need, not more prizes.”

“Aye, sir.” Barnaby straightened, then took out his handkerchief and mopped his face. “And this ship has women. Lots of women. All for the plucking.”

Gideon and Silas exchanged glances. “What do you mean?” Gideon asked.

Barnaby had finally caught his breath and now he spoke quickly. “It’s a convict ship from England—the
Chastity
. It’s carrying women to Australia. There’s fifty or more women aboard, from what I could gather, and they might just fancy being rescued, if you know what I mean.”

Glancing down toward the crowded harbor, Gideon rubbed his chin. “Convict women, you say?
English
convict women?”

“I know what you’re thinkin’, Cap’n,” Silas put in, “but it don’t matter if they’re English. English women will do as well as any others. The men don’t all hate the English as much as you do, you know.”

When Gideon glowered at him, he added hastily, “Not that I don’t understand why you hate ’em. I do. Truly, I do. But these here women…they ain’t like the kind of English you don’t like. They’re just poor sods like the rest of our crew, who got handed a raw deal from the first. They’ll suit the men just fine, much better than these uppish island girls who think themselves too good for a bunch of pirates.”

“But we don’t have much time,” Barnaby said, wisely staying out of the entire discussion about the English. “The
Chastity
sets sail in the morning. She only put in here tonight for provisions.”

Ignoring Barnaby, Gideon focused on his normally grumpy cook, who had no personal stake in the scheme. Silas disliked women and had sworn never to take up with one. “Do you really think this will satisfy the men?”

“Aye, I do,” Silas said. “I truly do.”

Barnaby straightened his cravat with a knowing look. “It’ll certainly satisfy
me
.”

Gideon hesitated. But he really had no choice. This was the best opportunity to come along in the past few months. And a convict ship would be easy to take at sea. Convict ships were never well armed.

“All right.” When his two closest friends looked relieved, he went on. “Barnaby, find out all you can about the ship—what guns it carries, its dimensions…anything we need to know to take it. And for God’s sake, try to be subtle about it. Luckily, we’re moored in another harbor, but do what you must to keep the
Chastity
’s crewmen from hearing that a pirate ship’s in port.
Keep them drunk, even if you have to pay for their drinks the whole night. We don’t want to spook the prey.”

As Barnaby hurried back toward the docks, he turned to Silas. “Round up the crew. Tell them we sail at first light, and I want them on board tonight.” When Silas bobbed his head and started off down the rock-strewn path, Gideon called out, “And make sure they know why, so they don’t curse you for it.”

After they were gone, he gazed down at the harbor to where a ship with a demurely draped female figurehead squatted in the water. The
Chastity
. It had to be. Though he saw no sign of the women, he imagined they were kept in chains below when they were in port.

The
Chastity
’s crew was scrambling about, obviously eager to finish furling her sails before they went in to Praia to drink and gamble and whore. Good. With any luck, they’d play right into Barnaby’s hands.

He assessed the ship as best he could from the distance. Square-rigged, three-masted…and obviously sitting heavy in the water. He didn’t see many guns from here, and he counted twenty-odd crewmen, far less than the sixty-three men in his company. He couldn’t ask for an easier prize.

Ah, yes
. A smile touched his lips.
You’re a beauty, my dear, and carrying a very valuable cargo. It’ll be like plucking grapes off a tree
.

He could hardly wait for tomorrow.

Petey climbed out on the royal yard, his body performing the task of furling the sky sail. But his mind lay elsewhere, on the puzzle that was Miss Willis.

Two weeks had passed since his conversation with the little miss, and she still insisted that he look after the women every night. She’d even convinced the captain to put him on duty there permanently. He’d hoped he could stop once the men realized he meant business,
but Miss Willis didn’t trust anybody, that one. She wanted him there every night.

Wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, Petey threaded the line through the block and inched back along the royal yard. It wasn’t as if his lordship hadn’t warned him that the miss would be a mite troublesome. Petey had known to expect that. At least she’d held to her part of their bargain. There’d been no more confrontations between her and the sailors, thank God. It almost made up for the sleepless nights he spent, watching after the women on the orlop deck.

Actually, it hadn’t been so bad, leastways, not after the first night. The first night, the women had been a mite wary of him, and the children had stared through the bars, all goggle-eyed to see a sailor hook his hammock up betwixt the cells. It hadn’t been a quiet night, neither. Sailor after sailor had stuck his head in at the hatch, though the captain had commanded them to stay above decks unless they had business below. Once they’d understood that Petey intended to make them follow captain’s orders, they’d stopped trying.

After that night, the women had suffered his presence in silence. Some had even ventured to thank him. Indeed, there was one little lass, a sweet young thing named Ann, who’d offered him some of her supper. Considering that the women made better use of their rations than Cook did, he’d been happy to take a bit.

Of course, the crew resented his interference, but he didn’t care. His real employer, the earl, was paying him three times his pay as a sailor. For that sum he’d fight the lot of them if he had to.

Thankfully, he’d only had to trounce one man, and the man had been drunk. Though the other sailors had tried to make his life a misery, what they thought would be misery to him wasn’t. The first mate sent him up to the royal yard as often as he could, thinking to punish him. Petey was a logical choice, of course, because of his small frame, but furling the sky sail wasn’t a happy task
for most sailors, seeing as how it was so dangerous.

What the first mate didn’t know was that Petey liked being up in the rigging, where he could feel the fine salt wind dust his ears and see the grand ocean spilling out around him on a fair day like a fortune in sparkling diamonds. Now that they’d left the cold drear of England far behind, he was more than happy to sweat beneath the tropical sun. Besides, he’d rather do dangerous tasks than dirty ones like tarring the lines.

Looking down, he spotted the small group of women scrubbing the decks. The convict women had been put to work in shifts, and they didn’t seem to mind, since it meant being allowed above decks. He watched a moment. They were really putting their backs into it. At least it was them and not him.

He glanced around at the other men, who watched the women with only a bit of interest. After spending last night in port at Praia, the men were still sated enough from whoring not to feel an urgent need come upon them when they looked at the convict women.

But it wouldn’t last. Petey knew that only too well. And strangely enough, two weeks of protecting the convicts had made him regret that soon they would have to suffer the sailors’ advances again.

“Hey, matey,” called the sailor who was posted as lookout in the crow’s nest. “I gotta take a piss. Will you relieve me for a minute?”

Nodding his agreement, Petey clambered along the rigging to the mast. He took the spyglass from the sailor and replaced him in the crow’s nest. He scanned the horizon, then surveyed Santiago as the
Chastity
cleared the last outcropping of rock. It was a perfect day for sailing. Though the
Chastity
would reach the deadly calm of the Equator in a day or two, today a playful wind filled her sails, pressing her south along the coast of Africa.

He settled back against the wood curve of the crow’s nest, his thoughts returning to little Ann. Welsh, she
was, judging by her speech. And a pretty Welsh woman, too, with creamy skin and teeth white as ivory. He wondered what she could’ve done to end up with that crowd of criminals. It didn’t seem right.

Maybe it was because of lasses like Ann that the earl’s sister risked so much to help the convicts. She tormented the captain something sore to improve their conditions, and she spent every waking moment down in the orlop deck, learning them their letters. Only two weeks out of London and the women already talked about Miss Willis as if she were a bloody saint. He sighed. Maybe she was.

Picking up the spyglass, he searched their surroundings again, taking in the sweep of water and benign clouds with a practiced eye. He’d just made a complete span of the ocean and was scanning the islands they were leaving behind when something arrested his gaze. Focusing the spyglass in closer, he drew a sharp breath.

A ship had emerged from the windward side of Santiago. She’d come out of nowhere, and the sight of her gave him an uneasy pang. It was as if she’d been lying in wait for them. To be sure, it looked as if she were approaching the
Chastity
. His heart beat faster. A sailor knew to be wary of meeting another ship at sea, especially one that slid out from behind an island.

“Ship to starboard!” he called down to the first mate.

The first mate sauntered beneath the mast. “What sort of ship?”

Petey trained the spyglass on the ship. He watched until the distant blur of sail and timber separated itself into a right good schooner, bristling with guns. The sight of so many guns alarmed him. This was no merchantman, to be sure. He scanned the outline for a flag but could see none.

“Well, Petey?” the mate called up impatiently. “What do y’ see?”

“I’m tryin’ to make it out. ’Tis a fast schooner. Two masts. Lots of guns.”

The first mate scowled, obviously all too aware of what that might mean. “The flag. What’s the flag?” His cry was seconded by the captain, who’d already been called on deck by the bosun.

Petey swung the spyglass along the ship’s fearsome flanks again, until finally he saw a flag being hoisted. “Hold a minute! They’re hoistin’ the flag now!” That in itself was a bad sign, for most ships sailed with their flags hoisted.