Authors: Miranda Jarrett
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General
He heard a little
shush
and a snap as she opened her fan. "Oh, bother and stuff, Captain! You've spent the past fifteen years of your life with a tankard of rum near to hand, and precisely how often have you toppled so far into your cups that you began to see apparitions? You're stubborn and you're horribly accustomed to having your own way, but my goodness, you're also far too sensible to be a drunkard. Captain Fotherill, now, there was a man who could disappear into a bottle for days at a time!"
Nick frowned in spite of himself. No one had ever called him sensible before, particularly not a female, and it didn't sit well with him. Privateers were supposed to be reckless and daring and wallowing in rum, not bloody
sensible
.
"You're rum and the hot sun and this blasted ruddy gash on my forehead," he said doggedly. "You're not real, and you never have been."
She sighed. "Very well then, my dear captain, you've left me little recourse but to prove you wrong."
At that Nick's eyes crept open. What the devil was she about, anyway? Did she really mean to—
The water rushing over his head was so cold it made him gasp, and he lunged to his feet, swearing, as the empty pewter pitcher crashed to the deck before him.
"There now, Captain Sparhawk, was that real enough for you?" asked Lily as Nick sputtered and shook the water from his hands. "I vow it seems a bit like a parlor trick, but if it serves to convince you—"
"You've convinced me of nothing, ma'am, except that you're a damnable nuisance, and I want you gone immediately!" Nick was too angry to pretend to ignore her any longer, and he glared at her, sitting on his bunk with her legs crossed and hands linked casually around her knee as if she'd every right to be there. "Go on, shove off!"
"Oh, pish." Idly she circled the toe of her shoe, the lantern's light glinting off the square paste brilliants on the buckle. "I told you before that I've no intention of leaving. I can't, you see, not until I've accomplished what I've been sent here to do. It would, of course, make things vastly more agreeable for us both if you'd try to be a bit less like an old bear and cooperate instead."
She wasn't real, he told himself fiercely.
She was not real
. She couldn't be, and plague take him if he couldn't prove it. With a growl that was very much like a bear's, Nick scooped up the now-empty water pitcher from the deck and hurled it at the bunk directly where Lily sat. But as the pewter pitcher flew through the air, she raised her fan. The pitcher stopped in midair, hovered for a moment and then settled itself once again on the table.
"Parlor tricks," said Lily with a contemptuous little sniff as she smoothed the feathers of one wing. "I've refilled it for you, though, to save you the trouble."
Nick glanced at the pitcher, but refused to give her the satisfaction of looking inside. Besides, he had the uncomfortable conviction it would be filled, just as she'd said. "You've caused me trouble enough already, ma'am, and if you don't—"
"Nick?" The door to the cabin opened and Gideon cautiously stuck his head through it. Behind him, cowering in the shadows of the companionway, was the boy with Nick's supper. "Nick, you old rogue, are you all right?"
"Of course I'm all right!" he shouted with exasperation. "At least as well as I can be when I'm being hounded by this
creature!"
"What creature, Nick?" Slowly Gideon pushed the door open, his gaze sweeping around the cabin before pointedly coming to rest on Nick's soaked shirt. "The boy here heard you railing on fit to burst, and when you didn't answer his knock for supper, he fetched me. Was there someone in here vexing you?"
"It was that infernal strumpet with the wings again!" declared Nick, standing to one side to point to the bunk where Lily sat behind him. "I swear, Gid, she's becoming a bloody nuisance!"
Gideon looked, and frowned, and looked to Nick again. "A strumpet with wings, you say?" he asked doubtfully. "You've seen her before, Nick?"
"Damnation, stop looking at me like I've lost my wits! If I can see her, than you bloody well can, too!"
But neither Gideon nor the boy did; that was clear enough from the doleful looks on their faces. Swearing, Nick swung around to face the now-empty bunk.
"Almighty heaven, Lily, show yourself! Now, ma'am!
Now!
"
"Lily?" asked Gideon warily, his fox-colored brows raised with skepticism. "Like the name of the brig? You're seeing the poor lass herself?"
"Aye, damn her, and she's playing me false now, hiding herself away to make me look the fool!" Nick tugged his wet shirt away from his chest. "How do you think I came to be this way? Lily did it, that's how, dousing me with that entire pitcher of water to prove she could!"
Gideon lifted the pitcher from the table with both hands and held it, testing its weight. "It's full, Nick. To the brim."
Nick roared with angry frustration. "That's because
she
refilled it!"
Gideon set the pitcher back on the table and sighed. "If you've seen her, Nick, well then, that's fine," he said carefully. "Barker said you were pushing it too hard this afternoon, and maybe he was right. Best to rest now, eat your supper here and turn in early."
"Hell, Gideon, I'm still your captain, not some puppy needing a nursemaid!" Furiously he slashed his hand across the table and once again sent the pitcher sailing through the air. This time, though, it struck the deck with a resounding clank that turned into a gurgle as the water spread into a puddle.
Avoiding Nick's stony gaze, Gideon gave the cabin boy's shoulders a shove. "Swab that mess, lad, and be quick about it."
"Nay, leave it!" countered Nick angrily. Blast Gideon! Friend or not, he was only the lieutenant, and he had no right to be giving orders in the captain's presence, even orders about wiping up spilled water. "And leave
me
, both of you. Out!"
Immediately Gideon stiffened to attention, his eyes wary yet wounded. "Aye aye, Captain Sparhawk," he said curtly. "Come along, boy, you heard the captain. Out!"
Without turning to watch them leave, Nick heard the cabin's door latch shut. He'd done it now, hadn't he, ripping Gideon's head off like that. He'd done it right royally, and over what? Furiously he kicked the empty pitcher across the deck and into the bulkhead, swearing at his own temper even as he couldn't contain it.
"I'm sorry, Captain Sparhawk," said Lily softly behind him. "I didn't mean for that to happen. I'd every intention of explaining how only you can see me, but somehow we've never quite had the time."
With a groan halfway to a sigh, Nick dropped heavily into his chair. "It doesn't matter now anyway," he said with disgust. "Doubtless the word's already racing tween decks about how the captain's gone daft, hearing voices and talking to the figurehead and quarreling with his own shadow. Fine sort of courage that will give the men. Aye, who wouldn't want to follow a raving lunatic into battle?"
"The ungrateful wretches! They wouldn't truly believe that of you, will they?" she asked indignantly. "You're supposed to be one of the very best American privateers, and certainly the luckiest. Why, you've made the fortune of every man in your crew! Not a morning passes but that every last governor in the Windward Islands has merchants clamoring for your neck, you've brought them that much grief by capturing so many of their ships!"
He looked to where she was sitting now, on the center of the carved desk, her skirts spread over the top and her wings resting on the back. Strange how he was beginning to feel resigned, if not exactly pleased, to having her there.
"So my reputation's spread from the Caribbean heavenward?" He smiled bleakly. "Perhaps next you can whisper a word to the keeper at Bedlam on my behalf."
"I can do better than that, Captain," she said eagerly. "I'll give you a way to regain your crew's confidence."
"Keep it." He shook his head. "I don't want your help."
"But I don't see why—"
"Because I'm American, and you're English," he said roughly. "Or at least you were once. Our countries are at war, mind? Maybe it don't bother you, helping the enemy like this, but I sure as hell don't forget how many friends, good friends, I've lost to English guns and swords since this infernal war began. What of the first master of this brig, eh? Don't it concern you at all that he's dead?"
"Captain Fotherill? Mourn
him
? La, no!" She narrowed her eyes and and wrinkled her nose as if she'd smelled something foul. "He, sir, was an odious, mean-spirited, cowardly cheat of a drunkard, who took advantage of my father's trust and inexperience in privateering ventures. Whether a gentleman's British or rebel makes no difference to me, and it never has. Consider you who took care to shift Mr. Fotherill into the path of one of your cannonballs."
"
You
killed him?" asked Nick, incredulous.
"More correctly, you did," answered Lily sweetly. "I merely made certain he was standing in the proper spot."
Nick frowned, remembering how neatly she'd stopped the flying water pitcher. It would, perhaps, be in his best interest not to quarrel with Miss Lily. "I thought angels were supposed to do good."
"For good people, yes, we do. And you, Captain Sparhawk, have it in yourself to be a most excellent gentleman, with a proper bit of guidance. The dear Lord knows you're already handsome enough."
She smiled, a smile that could outshine the sun, and Nick caught himself wondering what she'd been like when she lived. Nothing but trouble, likely. Women like her always were.
"How did you die, anyway?" he asked sourly, intent on putting distance between them. It was bad enough to be having a conversation with her; beyond bearing for him to start taking her compliments to heart. "Did you drive your poor old father to horsewhip you to save the family honor?"
Her laughter rippled through the cabin. "Nothing so fearsome, nor 'tragical,' as the sailors say. At Sir George Carruthers's Christmas ball I insisted on dancing outside in his garden in the new snow. It was a lovely night, the snowflakes like crystals as they fell, but I caught a chill and a fever and died, just like that." She smacked her palm on the top of the desk with emphatic finality. "Just like that! The only true tragedy was that I missed the next ball on Twelfth Night."
She swept her fan shut and tapped the last blade twice against her lips. "I
might not be precisely what you expect, but I've always been vastly fond of
gentlemen, and that is why you've been
…
given
, shall we say, to me."
He glowered at her, his green eyes dark beneath his drawn brows. "I don't consider myself 'givable,' especially not to you for haunting or whatever it is you're doing to me. What's to separate you from a common ghost, anyway?"
"What's to separate
you
," she said archly, "from a common, thieving pirate?"
That took him by surprise, and almost made him smile. "I've a commission from the Continental Congress that makes me honest, but I doubt that that's what you're steering toward."
"Indeed I'm not! In your way, you mean to do good, both for what you believe and for your fine, new rapscallion country. And I'm here to do the same." A glow of triumph crept into her smile. "You're my first real challenge, Nickerson. I may call you Nickerson, may I not? 'Captain Sparhawk' seems so dreadfully cold and cumbersome."
He sighed deeply, realizing that the luckiest Yankee captain in the Caribbean had just lost again. "Will it make any real difference to you what I wish?"
She shrugged her wings with charming nonchalance, all the answer that Nick knew he'd get to that particular question.
"But I do wish you well, Nickerson. You'll see." She leaned forward off the desk to study their course on the charts spread across the table. "I've plans—oh, such plans!"
Abruptly Nick rose, moving to stand between her and the charts. "I won't have you interfering with my orders or with how this vessel is sailed."
"And I vow I won't. I only wish to offer you the chance to redeem yourself in the eyes of your crew, just as I promised. If you'll but consider this course I've suggested here—"
"Damnation, ma'am, I won't have it!" Across his chart now ran a bold red line to the northwest, a course no sane privateering captain would ever choose, and once again her audacity infuriated him. "I'm still captain! You keep your lubberly suggestions to yourself, and let me be!"
"As you wish, Captain Nick." She settled back on the desk with a sigh, uncharacteristically contrite. "But if you truly wish to decide whether I'm real or not, sir, you'll follow my course for, oh, eight hours. If by then you've found no other ships to tempt your piratical inclinations, then you'll know for certain that I'm nothing but the rum-induced will-o'-the-wisp you claim. But I don't believe you shall."
Nick scowled down at the ugly red line that disfigured his immaculate charts. As if he'd ever waste his time on such a misguided course! The crew would mutiny for certain.
"The devil take you, Lily Everard," he grumbled to himself. "The devil take you straight to blazes where you belong."
But still she heard him, and laughed. "I fear I've already been taken by the other side," she said merrily, "and before I'm done you'll be mightily glad I was."
"I
t's a rebel pirate, miss, no mistake," said the captain of the English ship
Commerce
as he squinted through his spyglass at the horizon. "And they're gaining on us so fast we might as well be standing still."
Beside him Rose Everard clutched the rail more tightly, her fingers trembling inside the black gloves. The Americans were gaining on them, and there was no use pretending otherwise. Even without a spyglass, she could now make out the shape of the enemy ship that had been chasing them since dawn. To think that they'd come within four days of St. Lucia after a hard twelve-week passage from Portsmouth only to fall prey
to
pirates!
"Are you certain we cannot escape them, Captain Richards?" she asked, thankful that shouting over the wind hid the fear she was certain must mark her voice. "We must be close enough to some island that would give us sanctuary."
Unhappily Richards shook his head, his gaze still fixed on the American ship. "Nay, Miss Everard, we're not, not since the French jumped on the rebel side against King George. We're still days away from St. Lucia, or even Anguilla, and they'll catch us long afore then. My poor
Commerce
doesn't have a chance, miss, not after beating clear across the Atlantic and not against a ship like that one. That Yankee's built for hunting, fast and mean as a gray-bellied shark."
"I should like to see for myself, Captain Richards." Rose held her hand out for the spyglass. "If you please?"
Richards looked from her outstretched hand to her face and back again, and doggedly shook his head. Even facing into the chill wind off the water, he was sweating, his weathered cheeks shiny and flushed.
"Nay, Miss Everard, you belong below," he said glumly. "I only let you come topside because you begged so, but now you've seen your sight, and I'll ask you to go below again to your cabin. I'll have enough to answer for from your father without having you on deck with rebel guns trained our way."
"Please, Captain. I wish to see them before they capture us." She forced her mouth into a smile, looking up at him from beneath the curving brim of her black straw hat. She'd never have her sister's effortless charm with gentlemen, but because Captain Richards was a friend of her father's and equally old, he didn't expect much in the matter of flirtation. "Please, Captain Richards. Then I promise I'll go below."
Yet still Richards shook his head. "You're a lady, Miss Everard, and a pirate ship like that's a fearsome sight."
"Less fearsome now at a distance than when they capture us, as you claim they must." Rose's smile faltered. All of her twenty years she'd prided herself on being calm and capable. Why should this be any different? She swallowed hard, raising her chin with determination.
She tried not to remember the dreadful tales from Aunt Lucretia, horrifying stories of the rebel sailors who called themselves privateers, but were in truth no better than pirates. How could they be otherwise, her aunt had asked in a horrified whisper over her needlework, when they thumbed their noses at His Majesty and took their commissions from the anarchists and rogues pretending to be a government? One had only to read the papers to know it all. Torture and rape and murder, pillage and robbery: nothing was too low for such knaves.
And now, thought Rose as her smile disappeared entirely, she'd learn the truth for herself. No wonder her hands were shaking as she took the spyglass from the captain and lifted it to her eye.
Unfamiliar with the glass, Rose struggled to steady the heavy brass cylinder long enough to focus it. First she saw only blue sky, then the white-tipped waves of the sea, and then, finally, she found the stern of the American ship, the blue, red and white striped flag of the fledgling country flying briskly from her jackstaff.
The brig was exactly as Captain Richards had said, low and mean as a shark as she bore down upon them. Her deck was thick with men, and though her gunports were still closed for the chase, Rose knew well enough what lay behind each neat square on the brig's side. How could she not? The war had so inflamed her father that this year he'd begun outfitting privateers himself, and Rose had had to listen to endless discussions of this gun's merits versus that type of boarding ax.
And, of course, the profits he hoped to make. She could never forget that. Patriotism was all well and good, but for Papa, the profits would always come first, where for him they belonged. Profits and prestige, position and power. Would she be making this journey now at all if he believed otherwise?
Carefully Rose shifted the glass along the brig's black-painted sides, forcing herself to think of something else. Pirates or not, even Papa would have to admit the Americans knew how to sail. The brig sliced like a knife through the water as she edged closer and closer with a speed and deadly grace that the poor
Commerce
could never dream of matching. Soon, too soon, the Americans would be within range to open those gunports, and then—merciful heaven, let these men not be the savages Aunt Lucretia swore they were!
"I know I must strike to them, though it pains me worse than death to do it," said Richards angrily beside her. "And, well, forgive me, miss, if it weren't for you being on board, I'd sooner damn their heathen souls to the devil where they belong than surrender my
Commerce
into their filthy hands!"
Rose didn't answer. She couldn't. She'd just discovered the brig's figurehead through the glass, and it was taking every last bit of her concentration simply to remember to breathe.
"How they found us in these waters I'll never know," continued Richards, too caught up in his own outrage to notice Rose's silence. "I've never seen a Yankee ship this far to the east, blast their impertinence! It's almost as if they'd been led to us, and—"
"They're not Americans," blurted Rose.
Richards frowned and shook his head. "Of course they are, missy," he said, testy at being interrupted. "You've the glass, and you can see their flag plain as the sun. And why else would they be chasing us, eh?"
"I don't know," she said slowly, her voice half-strangled in her throat. "But that privateer is British, not American."
Richards sniffed. "Forgive me, Miss Everard, but what would you know of the matter?"
"I know because that brig belongs to my father." Rose handed Richards the glass so he could see for himself, her own eyes too blurry with tears to look any longer. "She's the
Angel Lily
, and if you don't believe me, you'll find my sister's face on her figurehead."
"That's not possible," snapped Richards as he swung the glass to his eye. "Not possible in the least."
But Rose knew it was. Father had paid extra for the carving and gilt on that figurehead, wanting a fitting tribute to his elder daughter's beauty, and the likeness to Lily was extraordinary, the effect breathtaking.
Exactly the way Lily had been while she lived.
"By thunder, it
is
the
Lily!"
exclaimed Richards. "They must have captured her and made her their own, the thieving jackals!"
The brig was near enough now that Rose could make out the figurehead's white gown as it dipped in and out of the waves. The sight of her sister's image in the hands of the enemy was a hideous, unimaginable joke.
"But they can't do that!" she cried, her anguish real, as she seized Captain Richards's sleeve. "They've no right, none at all!"
Yet as she spoke the other ship's gunports flipped up in unison. She saw the burst of flame and the smoke from the first gun an instant before she heard the dry, percussive sound of the firing across the water. All at once the
Commerce's
mainsail flew apart, the severed lines whipping like snakes as the taut canvas shredded into streamers in the wind and the massive spar splintered and dropped to the deck with a thunderous crack.
With the careful balance of sail and wind broken, the
Commerce
's bow
pitched crazily downward, and Rose's feet skidded out beneath her. She shrieked
and grabbed the rail with both hands, her black skirts swirling around her in
the wind as she struggled not to be swept along the canting deck and over the
side. Wildly she looked for someone to help her, but Richards had joined the others running and sliding away from her and toward the wreckage of the mainmast. Waves crashed and broke over the side and across Rose, white foam washing like soapsuds across the pine planks, and as slippery as soapsuds, too, beneath her leather-soled shoes. Her sodden skirts and petticoats were dragging her down, heavy as lead to tug against her weakening hold on the rail.
God help her, she was going to die as surely as had Lily, drowned if she wasn't killed first by cannon fire, and not one of those bloodthirsty American savages in her father's ship would lift a finger to save her!
"Miss Everard!" Richards's arm circled her waist to steady her, his shout filled with fear and concern. "Are you harmed, miss?"
He was trying to lead her toward the companionway, but she refused to abandon the security of the rail just yet. Slowly the ship was beginning to level herself as the crew cleared away the wreckage and trimmed the remaining sails, and she'd much rather wait until she could walk on her own with dignity than lurch along with his assistance.
"Thank you, no, Captain Richards," she huffed breathlessly, "though it's certainly through no wish of those—those
jackals!"
"I told you you should have gone below, miss, indeed I did, but you would not listen." Bunched beneath
his other arm was the
Commerce
's flag, faded and frayed after their long voyage, and much like the woebegone resignation on Richards's own face at the thought of surrender. "If that warning shot had gone awry—"
"
Warning
shot!" exclaimed Rose indignantly. With the immediate danger of being killed gone, at least for now, her anger swelled to fill the gap left by fear. "That was a low, murderous shot meant to kill us all! Those Americans were mean-spirited cowards to steal my father's ship and then turn his very own guns on
me
, and so I shall tell them, the first opportunity I have!"
Richards looked beyond her, his eyes bleak. "Then ready your words, missy," he said grimly, "for here come the bastards now to hear you out."
Swiftly Rose turned in time to see the first Americans climbing up over the side, and without stopping to consider the consequences she pulled herself free of Richards's support and marched across the deck to the red-haired man who appeared to be their leader. Dressed in breeches instead of sailor's trousers, a long green coat with pewter buttons and a reasonably clean shirt, he looked more like a prosperous shopkeeper than a bloodthirsty pirate.
"Who are you, sir?" she demanded.
"Gideon Cole, ma'am, your servant." He smiled and lifted his three-cornered hat to her with a courtly little bow, as if a pistol in his belt and a battered cutlass in his hand were nothing more than gentlemanly props. "Dare I ask, ma'am, if I have the pleasure of addressing the fair wife of the captain of this fine vessel?"
"You may not dare, sir, nor will you find any pleasure at my expense," she said tartly. "You presume entirely too much."
She lifted her chin a fraction higher, challenging him to contradict her. Everything he said was meaningless honey, she thought fiercely, treacly nonsense that he'd pour before any woman he chanced to encounter. She knew well enough how she looked, bedraggled and sallow in salt-stained mourning, just as she knew that men who made pretty speeches to her never meant a word of it. She wasn't Lily and she never would be, and she deeply mistrusted anyone who pretended otherwise.
But instead of his accepting her reproof, the man's smile widened to a grin, his dark eyes teasing beneath his rust-colored brows. "Then you must be the master's daughter, eh? Gone to sea with the old gentleman?"
"She's Miss Rose Everard, the only daughter of Sir Edmund Everard," said Richards warmly as he came to stand beside her, "and you'll treat her like the lady she is or answer to me, damn your eyes!"
"I've no intention of doing otherwise, sir," said the American, ignoring the other captain's hostility just as he'd ignored Rose's. He narrowed his eyes, studying her so closely that she felt herself blush. "Not a wife, nor a daughter, nor a widow despite those weeds. You're English, no doubt there, and a lady. Somehow you seem deucedly familiar to me, Miss Everard, but I can't conceive of a way we might have met."
"Nor, sir, can I, because I'm quite certain we haven't." Impatiently she brushed a loose lock of hair back from her face. Heaven only knew where on earth—or in the sea—her hat was by now. "You listen to me, Captain Cole, and if you—"
"I'm not the captain, miss," interrupted Cole. "I'm only the lieutenant, here to take this gentleman's surrender and make you all our prisoners."
"You'll do nothing of the kind until I speak with your captain!"
Richards took her arm and stepped in front of her. "Best to hold your tongue with this rascal, miss," he cautioned. "Better you let me handle him."
But Rose wriggled around him. "Don't you go surrendering to him, Captain Richards," she said warmly, "at least not until I've spoken to his so-called captain!"
Cole laughed. "Oh, aye, how he'd like to hear that! Nickerson Sparhawk a so-called captain!"
"Well then," snapped Rose, "I'll oblige us both and tell the man so to his face!"
"Ah , Miss Everard, don't!" pleaded Richards, his spirit suddenly gone. "Don't sully yourself quarreling with the likes of him!"
Rose sighed impatiently. "I am not quarreling. I'm merely attempting to retrieve what by rights belongs to my family, and I can do that only by speaking with this Mr. Sparhawk."
"Let it go, miss!" Richards begged, his flag forgotten beneath his arm. "The man's Black Nick Sparhawk, and he's captured a score of ships if he's taken a one! There's not a more wicked, desperate Yankee sailing these waters, miss, and we'll all be lucky if we get clear with our lives!"
Rose looked at Richards's flushed, frightened face and frowned. She supposed she should be as terrified by this
pirate
as Captain Richards seemed to be, but somehow she found it difficult to be frightened of a grown man who let himself be called such a ridiculously schoolboy
nom de guerre
. For all love, she thought with disgust, if
he
fashioned himself Black Nick, then why didn't
she
start calling herself White Rose?