“And he was carrying children the last time you encountered him?”
His eyes went cold. “Yes, and he dumped his cargo when we got within range.”
“What do you mean?”
“He threw the captives overboard. It’s a common practice amongst slavers. When we stopped to help those we could, he of course was able to sail away—laughing at us, no doubt.”
Clare shook her head at such heartless cruelty. “Were you able to rescue them all?”
“Only a few. Some of the smaller children were being transported inside cooper’s barrels that went straight to the bottom. Them we couldn’t save.”
She now understood why the captain wanted to hunt down this particular slaver. “What will you do if you catch him?”
“We’ll see when the time comes.”
The stony set of his features said he already knew the answer, and she shuddered in response.
He told her, “I recommend you stay here while the fighting is going on.”
“Of course,” she responded. “I’ve no wish to be in the way.”
“Bon.”
Being alone in the cabin with her made Dominic want to forget about the outside world and spend the rest of the voyage cajoling her into letting him explore the taste and sweetness of her lips, but the desires would have to wait. Vanweldt took precedence for now.
Clare could tell by the way his eyes were blazing down into hers that Vanweldt wasn’t the only thing on his mind. Mixed feelings coursed through her. On the one hand, he represented danger and a way of life she found reprehensible, but on the other hand, she was attracted to him in ways she had yet to understand. Even though she didn’t wish to be, the burgeoning awareness was impossible to ignore. “You will keep yourself out of harm’s way?”
His lips curved upward. “Anything for you.”
His teasing tone made her shake her head with muted amusement. “I merely want to be certain I get home to Savannah. Nothing more.”
“You don’t lie very well,
petite,
but your concern will be my armor.”
He reached out to stroke her cheek, and unlike last night, Clare did not back away. Although she steeled herself not to react, the slide of his warm finger against her trembling skin made her eyes close and her heart pound.
“I will send someone to sit with you, once we overtake Vanweldt.” The heat in his gaze was almost palpable.
“That isn’t necessary.”
“It is to me. I don’t want to worry if you’re safe.”
His nearness was making it difficult to keep her breathing even. “Thank you.”
“I’ll return later.”
Giving her one last affectionate look, he departed, leaving her alone with her jumbled emotions.
An hour later, the
Marie
closed in on the
Amsterdam.
The Dutch ship took issue with the encroachment and fired seventeen of its twenty-five guns. Although the balls fell short, it was the moment Dominic had been waiting for. “Fire!”
Fifteen long-range cannons fired as one, striking the
Amsterdam
on its port and stern, and exploding with brilliant colors of gold and red.
“Fire!”
A second volley barked, this time hitting the deck and toppling the masts down onto already screaming, dying men. Even as the
Amsterdam’
s answering cannons continued to boom, fires flared from its bow to its stern and the ship was beginning to take on water, but Dominic was offering no quarter. “Ready the chains! Fire at will!”
The
Marie’
s cannons thundered again, this time sending bar and chain shot hurtling towards the target. The halved cannonballs, held together by an iron bar or lengths of reinforced chain, reached their destination as whirling dervishes of destruction that splintered the
Amsterdam’
s remaining mast and ripped the sails and riggings to shreds. Shards of wood, some as long as a man’s arm, pierced limbs, faces, and eyes, plunging the defenders into screaming chaos.
In the aftermath of such carnage, most ships were ready to surrender, but the
Amsterdam
seemed to be an exception. No white flag could be seen waving from the burning deck, even though some of her crew were jumping overboard into the chilly ocean water. “Lower the longboats!” Dominic ordered.
The boats would rescue all who wished it, and Dominic doubted any of them would refuse. With all the blood and turmoil in the water, sharks would be arriving soon.
The longboats hit the surface, and while the crewmen from the
Marie
rowed out to rendezvous with the deserters, Dominic called up to his pilot, “Put us closer, Esteban!”
“Aye!” the pilot replied.
As the
Marie
came alongside the crippled vessel, bodies could be seen lying on the burning deck and draped over the splintered, severed masts. Cannonballs were capable of decapitating ten to fifteen men at a time during a battle, and some of the dismembered dead bore evidence of that grim truth.
“Prepare to board!”
Token pistol fire was returned by the other side, but grappling hooks sailed from the
Marie
like nests of metal-headed snakes and held the
Amsterdam
fast.
“We have less than an hour before she sinks!” Dominic informed his crew. “Find out what she’s carrying. I’ll find Vanweldt!”
His men swarmed the burning boat. Armed with short swords, cutlasses, and clubs they took on what remained of the opposing crew. With his linked pistols hanging around his neck and a short sword in his hand. Dominic fought his way through the smoke, stepping over the dead and wounded as he searched for the enemy captain.
“Where’s Vanweldt!” he barked at an injured man covered with blood and powder lying on the deck.
The sneering man coughed and spat, “To hell with you, LeVeq.”
Dominic grabbed him up and stuck a pistol in his mouth. “Shall I send you ahead to reserve a seat for me?”
The man’s eyes widened with fear.
Dominic drew the weapon free. “Where’s your captain!”
“His quarters,” he snarled. “Below deck.”
Tossing the man aside, Dominic angrily strode away.
He met no resistance below decks, and when he reached the door, he didn’t bother to knock. He kicked it in, shattering the wood and the lock that was supposed to keep intruders like him out.
Upon his entrance, the fear and surprise in the eyes of the two men inside put a sharklike smile on Dominic’s face. Pistols turned ominously their way, he asked, “Going somewhere, Vanweldt?” Trunks and valises were set out on the bed. Dominic had interrupted the slavers’ attempts to fill them all with gold and other booty. The man beside him was the mute giant Yves, the captain’s bodyguard. At six feet, eight inches tall and over three hundred pounds, Yves was no smarter than the average flounder, but could tear a man apart as easily as most people tore apart a chicken wing.
“Bastard!” the Dutchman swore. “I should have killed you the last time we met.”
“But you were too busy throwing children to the sharks, then slinking away like the cur you are rather than fight with any honor.”
Yves made a move to advance, but was stayed by a warning touch of his captain’s hand. In the eyes of many women, Paul Vanweldt was a handsome man. He was of Dutch and African descent, but in the eyes of those he stole from the Mother Continent, the slaver was an abomination. “What’s in your hold?”
“You tell me.”
The ball fired from Dominic’s pistol exploded in Vanweldt’s shoulder, and he let out a scream, clutching his injured flesh. His eyes widened in disbelief.
“That appears to be the wrong answer,
non?”
Yves took another menacing step forward, only to have Dominic promise, “One more step and I’ll shoot you and then him in the balls.”
Yves stopped, his ugly dark face blazing with hatred.
Dominic saw Gaspar enter the room. The quartermaster was holding two large-bore pistols.
“Thought I’d come join the party,” he said to Dominic, but his attention and his guns were focused on the men across the room.
“The more the merrier. How goes it above?”
“We’re mopping up. I sent some men to the hold. No captives.”
Dominic’s eyes had never left Vanweldt. “Then we may let him live.”
“I vote no.”
“I’ll take that into consideration. Let’s go above, gentlemen. After you.”
Up on deck, the air was thick with the mingled scent of smoke and gunpowder. The fires had been doused, leaving behind a blackened and shattered deck stained with blood and littered with the dead, broken masts, and pieces of tattered sails.
Vanweldt surveyed the damage with wide eyes, then turned to glare at Dominic, who responded by saying, “Maybe you should have been up here commanding your crew instead of trying to save your loot.”
Vanweldt promised coolly, “The next time we meet, LeVeq, plan to die.”
“Who says there will be a next time?” He turned to Gaspar. “Get our men back on the
Marie.”
“What about the cargo in the hold?”
“Let it go down with the ship.”
Vanweldt stared in stunned disbelief. “There’s a fortune down there!”
“I don’t care. My only intention is to sink this ship. I’d kiss the Devil himself before making a profit from anything carried in a slaver damned by the blood and souls of dead children.”
Dominic called to the surviving members of the Dutchman’s crew, “Anyone who wants to join the
Marie
is welcome to sign the articles. Otherwise, I’d unlash the longboats and take to the oars. By the next bell, our cannons are going to send this whore straight to the bottom.”
Filled with the memory of those screaming, drowning children, the stone-faced Dominic walked back to board the
Marie.
In the wake of his exit, Vanweldt, Yves, and the remaining crew scrambled to get to the longboats before it was too late.
“Come on, miss, before he sees us.”
Clare left the spot where she and the Cherokee Washington Julian had secretly watched the battle, and slipped back down the stairs to the captain’s cabin. Once they were safely back inside he told her, “He ever find out I let you watch, he’ll maroon me for sure.”
“And that means what, exactly?”
“Back in the old pirate days, a man who disobeyed orders could be voted off the ship and taken to a deserted island and left there. They’d be given a pistol and enough food and water to last a few days.”
“And then?”
“You were either rescued by a passing ship or you died there—thus the pistol. In case you wanted to put yourself out of your misery.”
Clare shuddered faintly. “I will keep our secret.”
“Good.”
Clare liked Mr. Julian. In the time they’d spent together during the hours-long battle, she’d learned that before the European slave trade settled on Africans, peoples like America’s Indians and other natives in places like South America had been enslaved first, only to die by the thousands under the harsh conditions. His Cherokee clan had been arrested and sold into slavery a generation ago for refusing to turn over their land to newly arrived English colonists in upper Georgia. After a series of escapes and recaptures, he escaped for good ten years ago.
As they took their seats at the table to renew their game of backgammon, he said to her, “Every man on the
Marie
is an escapee from something—slavery, the British Navy, debt, family, unjust accusations.”
“And the captain?”
“His brother, Eduard.”
Clare knew the captain and his brother were at odds over their father’s estate but wondered if there was more to the story. Having no answers she looked down at the game board in front of her and let go of the tension and excitement brought on by the battle she’d just witnessed. She knew the captain wanted revenge on the
Amsterdam,
but to let the valuable cargo sink with the ship was something she wouldn’t have believed a man like him capable of had she not heard and seen the drama unfold for herself. It came to her that once again, her preconceived notions of what LeVeq was because of how he made his living were deeply flawed, or at least seemed to be.
The captain entered a while later. “Thank you, Mr. Julian. You may leave us now.”
“Aye, sir. I enjoyed our visit, Miss Clare.”
“As did I. Thank you.”
After his exit, Dominic walked over to where she sat and asked, “All is well?”
She nodded. “And you?” There were blood and smudges of black powder on his red coat. Similar stains could be seen on the blousy white shirt he wore beneath. She noticed a cut on his throat. “You’ve been cut. Your neck is bleeding,” she said, rising to her feet to get a better view.
His fingers went to the wound as he walked over to the mirror atop the armoire. “A gift from one of Vanweldt’s men. I’ll live.” He felt the weariness of the day begin to take hold.
“It should be cleaned and dressed.”
“Right now, I just wish to sit.” He was exhausted and wondered if he might be getting too old for the spirited life of a privateer. He felt good about sending the
Amsterdam
to the bottom, though. Depriving Vanweldt of his profits was an added boon.
“Then come and sit and let me clean it. You don’t want a poison to settle in.”
“Clare—”
“Sit, Captain.”
Her firm tone garnered a weary smile, “Yes, ma’am.” He took a seat in the chair Julian had vacated.
“Where are your medicinals?”
“James has whatever is available, and I am not going to bother him for such a small prick.”
“You’d rather wait until your neck swells up like a gourd, I suppose.”
He studied her for a long moment. “I didn’t know you had a stubborn streak.”
“You don’t know a number of things about me.”
“Sassy, too.”
“Only with you it seems.”
That made him smile. “All right, if I go and get a plaster from James, will you stop bedeviling me?”