Heather Graham - [Camerons Saga - North American Woman 02] (15 page)

“I’ve thought all along that you really need a good thrashing!” he swore.

“No!” Skye screeched, straining to raise herself from his lap. She bit his thigh. His hand landed harshly upon her posterior section and she cried out, tears stinging her eyes with the humiliation. She twisted around in time to see his hand rise again. “Stop, please!”

“You bit me! You stomped on me, and then you bit me! Apologize!”

“I can’t!”

He was about to pull her skirt up for more intimate contact with her flesh. Crimson, Skye squirmed her way from him so that she fell to the floor at his knees. She stared up at him, dazed. “Please, stop!”

“Apologize!”

“All right! I’m sorry that I bit you!”

She lowered her head, despising herself for having apologized to a pirate. He stood up, and she saw his boots as he walked by her.

“I’m sorry I bit you!” she cried out, adding softly, “I wish that I could have boiled you in oil.”

He was back beside her, lifting her chin. The silver in his eyes danced and the devil’s smile was back upon his lips, so sensual that she trembled with warmth even as she swore that she hated him.

“I cannot wait to return,” he told her very softly. “We can explore all of these secret yearnings of yours.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but he had already turned away and was gathering his papers again. He swung back to her, his eyes narrowed. “Behave, Skye. I am warning you.” His long strides brought him to the door. He swung about and stared at her hard one more moment, and then he turned to leave. She never heard the doors close with such a shattering force before.

Despite his warning, or forgetting it, Skye leaped up and raced to the window seat at the port side of the ship which faced the island. She hesitated there, wondering why he was so determined that she not open the drapes, then she set her hand upon the material, just to peek out. She shivered slightly. They were close to the shore, and she could see a great deal very clearly. All manner of persons lined the docks! Fishermen hawked their catches while a curious array of men and women walked the streets. Two scantily clad women looked down from a shanty balcony to beckon laughingly to a tall lad below. Barrels lined the steps before the thatch-roofed dwelling. Arm in arm, a man and woman lumbered along, then fell, drunk, upon each other in the street. Dandies strutted about in brocades and velvets. They wore knee breeches and silver-buckled shoes and silken hose and scarves and magnificent plumed hats. And yet some of these very dandies walked with near-naked seamen. They wore eye patches, and many a man had a stump for a leg.

She gasped suddenly, realizing that the finery was most probably ill-gotten gain. These were not gentlemen that she observed, but pirates, and probably the very worst of the lot. The Silver Hawk had come here to do business.

Just as the thought passed her mind, she drew back quickly, letting the drapery fall.

A longboat was moving out, away from the ship. The Silver Hawk was within it along with a dozen or so of his men. She
had no desire to be caught by the man. She did not know quite what he would do to her, but she did not care to discover what it might be. Not after everything that had just passed between them. He would do anything, she thought. Dare anything …

He would come back. To her. No matter what she did. And she did not know how long she could bear the emotions and sensations that he brought raging within her.

She inhaled deeply, thinking of the island.

The lure of the place fascinated her. She waited impatiently, biting her lip, until she was sure that the longboat had reached the docks. Then she looked out again.

A second longboat had left the pirate ship. There were a good forty or so of the Hawk’s men going to shore. She didn’t think that he sailed with a crew of more than fifty or so. Few men would have been left aboard.

The Silver Hawk must have believed that no man would molest his property in the pirate haven.

Skye drew the drapery once again. The sun was setting, and the shantytown did not appear so tawdry or so dangerous. Someone was lighting flares to line the docks and the distant beach.

The longboats had reached shore. Someone came up to the Silver Hawk, offering him a silver horn to drink from. There was suddenly a burst of revelry upon the shore and men crowded around him.

She let the drapery slide back into place. A slow, burning heat had set fire deep inside of her, and she longed to leave the Hawk’s cabin. Leave this atmosphere dominated by his presence. Her cheeks flamed as she remembered his words that he might decide to keep her. Then he had told her that no woman was worth much in silver or gold.

Perhaps all pirates felt that way. Somewhere here she could strike a deal. She could promise a sailor a huge quantity of money for her safe passage to Williamsburg.

But she couldn’t even leave the cabin! she reminded herself. She was locked in. But she wasn’t alone. Someone was with her. She knew it. Robert Arrowsmith? She hoped fervently that it was that young man left behind to guard her.

She was being absurdly reckless! she warned herself. She was waltzing into danger. The island was not populated by gentlemen. It was inhabited by cutthroats and rakes. They might not offer her help, but only the gravest danger!

But what danger could be greater than this she already faced? Lying with a man who threatened her with much more than the sins of the flesh as night after night passed by. Oh, indeed, he threatened her very belief in herself, he threatened her dignity and her pride, and assuredly, her very soul.

She leaped to her feet and paused a bare second. Then she hurried to the door and knocked strenuously upon it.

She would see him hang! she swore to herself. Indeed, she would see the Silver Hawk dance from a rope, so help her God!

The pub was called the Golden Hind in honor of a man that many of their brotherhood deemed to be the greatest pirate of them all, Sir Francis Drake. It sat far back from the market; to the left lay the sands of the beach and to the right were the docks where a man could purchase almost anything he desired. A ship could be repaired here, knives could be honed, weapons acquired. Flesh could be bought as easily as a fillet of fish, and even a murder could be negotiated if a man so desired. But there was honor among thieves, for the men here had their own twisted code of ethics, and upon the island, a pirate’s property—stolen though it might be—was sacred.

Usually. But private wars did arise.

And this night, since his adventures with One-Eyed Jack, Silver Hawk knew he might be called upon to defend himself. He had, however, made his intent to take the
Silver Messenger
clear, and so he was the man with the right to the spoils. Jack was the offender, and a man was expected to slay an offender.

Tonight the Golden Hind was in raucous full swing. Fiddlers played upon a dais, rum flowed freely, and it seemed that the best names in the business were all in attendance. An up-and-coming man who was rumored to hail from Bristol—Edward Teach, who was known more notoriously as Blackbeard—held court at a far rear table. A man nearing forty, or so the Hawk determined, he was known for being ruthless, though
not so deadly as the late Captain Kidd. Anne Bonny, her youth fast fading, sat nearby with her own grouping of louts. Whores freely strode about, pocketing the loot tossed about by the drunken pirates.

William Logan, a lean, mean bastard with blackened front teeth and a steel claw for a right hand, sat at a table with a few of his henchmen. A dark-haired whore perched upon the arm of his chair, but Logan gave her little attention. He stared broodingly at the Hawk.

“There’s one to give us trouble,” Robert Arrowsmith murmured as he entered at the Hawk’s side.

The Hawk shrugged and took his place at a center table along with his men. He frowned, noticing that a man hastily entered the establishment and came up to William Logan, stopping by his side and speaking hastily. It disturbed the Hawk, though he wasn’t sure why. Some sixth sense of danger sounded an alarm, but he held his ground.

What was going on? The question would have to wait.

Captain Stoker, sometimes called the “governor” of the island, sat before him and his men. He was an older man, bearded and graying, but he was built like an old Saxon warrior, and had a body to reckon with in a fight. He was grave as he spoke to the Hawk.

“There’s some as don’t like the idea o’ Jack bein’ dead, and you know that rightly. We’re not out to murder our own number, Hawk, and that’s a fact, it is.”

The Hawk leaned across the table, skewering a piece of roasted lamb from a trencher in the center. His eyes met those of Captain Stoker. “Jack was well aware that the
Silver Messenger
was mine. I laid claim to her back here in March, the very day we learned that she had set sail from England!”

“Jack spoke of it first—”

“Jack mentioned the ship, sir. He was interested in the Spaniard,
La Madonna
, out of Cartagena, at that time!”

“Still—”

The Hawk slammed his knife, meat and all, into the table, and stood. “Listen to me well, me hearties!” he called, his voice ringing out. The music ceased. In seconds, the room came silent. Every man and woman looked at him, some with
trepidation, and some, the Hawk knew, like Blackbeard, with interest. Some would respect his stand, and some would whisper behind his back. “One-Eyed Jack is dead, that is a fact, and that he died by my sword I do not deny! But I did not seek his death, he desired the fight, for he disturbed what he knew to be my intention, my prize. He died in combat with me, and me alone. He died by the very rules we all know here within our hearts. If any man here—or woman”—he interrupted himself, bowing to Anne Bonny—“cares to dissent with my words, I am ready to listen. Face me now, for whisperers will know my wrath!”

A fist slammed against the table. William Logan stood. The Hawk faced Logan. They had grappled once before, in this very room. Logan had wanted an English ship, and the Hawk had seized it first. They had dueled here with cutlasses.

And Logan had lost a hand before Captain Stoker had stepped in to end it all.

Logan wanted blood now.

“The ways that I sees it,” Logan said, “Jack was already aboard the
Silver Messenger
. He had claimed the ship for his own. He had done battle, and he had taken the prize.”

The Hawk planted a boot atop a bench and leaned forward casually. “He knew the prize was mine. The ship was not secured when I came aboard. Jack could have given way, and sailed clean and free. He chose to fight. And he died.”

“So you’re saying, Captain Hawk, that one of our brotherhood has the right to another prize?”

“It was my prize.”

“His prize—that you seized from him.”

“The overfine logic is yours, sir.”

“What’s logic?” a drunken whore whispered, and hiccuped.

Logan bowed low to the Hawk. “Logic, sir! As you will have it!” He turned, and with his men in tow, he exited the establishment.

No one else moved for quite some time. Then a young pirate, an Englishman, rose and spoke quietly. They said that his name was Richard Crennan, but whether that was true or false, no one knew. Men left their homes to seek their fortunes, dreaming of riches. Most of them thought to return to
their homes one day, and so they seldom used true names, or gave out true facts regarding the towns from which they had hailed.

The Hawk liked young Crennan. He was a gentleman pirate, so they said, and hailed from a good family somewhere. Like the Hawk, he made money on his hostages, and disdained murder.

“I say that this matter is well and done!” Crennan called out. He raised a pewter mug. “We all know the Silver Hawk. He laid claim to the
Silver Messenger
out of England, I know well, for I was here, in this very room, when he did so. He did not betray our articles of brotherhood! He fought a fair fight. I say, gents, that that is that!”

“Here, here!” came a voice. It was Blackbeard, the Hawk saw. The man was a bloody cutthroat, but a strong ally nonetheless.

Hawk turned to Anne Bonny. “Madame, I crave your opinion?”

She smiled. Once, he thought, she had been a young thing. With dreams similar to those dreams that haunted other young maidens. He did not know what had drawn her here.

“I saw, Captain, that you have presented yourself well. The matter is done, and the facts established.”

“I thank you, Mistress Bonny!”

He sat again. The proprietor made an appearance again, bringing wine and bread and more lamb to the table. “Hiding out lest there be trouble, eh, Ferguson?” the Hawk inquired, amused.

“Captain Hawk, I tell you, the roof is thatch, since you fine sirs do continually see fit to duel and set fires. My tables are ramshackle, easily replaced. My hide, though tough, is not so easy to replace, and so, good sir, yes! I disappear at the slightest hint of trouble.”

The Hawk laughed and poured more wine for Captain Stoker. “Ease up, Cap’n! The matter is settled now, and peacefully at that.”

“Logan will not let it lie. Already, he seeks to carve your heart from your body, you know!”

The Hawk waved a hand in the air. The musicians began to
play again. A harlot shrieked with glee as a seaman poured a trickle of wine into the valley of her breasts. Laughter rose, and the night was made merry once again.

The Hawk picked up a pewter goblet of wine. “He will simply never have a piece of me, Captain, you needn’t fear.”

“I fear this warfare among us, for it will bring destruction down upon us.”

Robert Arrowsmith glanced quickly at the Hawk. “How?” the Hawk asked with an easy smile. “Why, I hear tell that the governor of North Carolina is in league with a certain one of us! A man to be bribed, so they say. We, in this our Golden Age, shall reign forever.”

Stoker shook his great head broodingly. He shrugged. “In the Carolina waters, perhaps, we find a certain safety. But in Virginia that damned Lieutenant Governor Spotswood seeks us out like bloodhounds!”

“So they say.”

Stoker smiled, finding some amusement in the matter. “He will have to intrude upon Carolina to destroy us, though, eh?”