Authors: Miranda Jarrett
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General
Slowly she shook her head, sorry to distress Captain Richards but determined to do what she must. "Forgive me, Captain, but I feel I have little choice but to speak to the man."
Cole laughed again. "You'll have the devil of a time doing that, miss, with you here and Captain Sparhawk—" he waved "—there."
"Then he must come across here to me, to the
Commerce
," she answered promptly. "Unless, of course, he's too much of a coward."
"Oh, you'd find him brave enough," Cole said softly, the expression in his eyes changing subtly as he watched for her response. "But what of yourself, miss? If you wish so much to speak to Captain Sparhawk, would you be willing to go across to him?"
"Damn your impudence!" cried Richards. "I won't allow it!" Roughly he shoved Rose to one side and lunged at Cole, his fist tensed and ready to strike. But he never reached the lieutenant; he didn't even come close. In the first instant he'd begun to move two of the American sailors had jumped to stop him, each seizing one of Richards's arms to drag him unceremoniously backward. As he struggled against their hold, his boots scrambling against the deck, one of the Americans flipped the pistol in his hand and raised the butt to hit the older man's head.
"
No!"
shrieked Rose. "Don't hurt him, please! He was only trying to protect me, that was all!"
The sailor stopped, looking to Cole, whose infinitesimal nod was command enough to spare the English captain.
But not Rose. "So tell me, Miss Everard," he said again, his eyes cold and all traces of his earlier good humor gone. "Do you wish to speak to Captain Sparhawk so much that you'll go to him, or shall you stay here and keep silent?"
Her heart pounding at the sudden violence, Rose stared down at the deck, struggling to sort her thoughts. Because of her impulsiveness, Captain Richards had suffered, and would suffer more if she unwittingly erred again. Yet beyond Cole's shoulder she could see Lily's familiar face on the figurehead to remind her of why she'd spoken in the first place.
Lord help her, she only wanted to do what was right!
Slowly she bent to gather the English flag from the deck where Richards had dropped it in the scuffle, folded the faded fabric into a neat packet and held it out to Richards, his eyes still pleading with her in silence. As she'd hoped, the sailors released his arms so he could take it, and with a last, troubled smile for the
English captain, she turned again to the American lieutenant. Her father, she knew, would expect no less.
"What I have to say to Captain Sparhawk will not wait, sir," she said, her voice sounding far too loud and brittle to her own ears, "and I'll be much obliged if you will take me to him directly."
She'd only wanted to do what was right, yet as she was rowed across to the
Angel Lily
, she couldn't help but wonder what under heaven that might be. Cole had stayed behind on the
Commerce
, as had all the other Americans who'd come with him except for the two huge, stone-faced men sitting opposite her at the boat's oars. One was a Yankee with a queue that reached his waist and bare arms covered by inked designs, the other an African, his face cruelly scarred by some long-ago knife. Neither man looked at her as the boat flew across the water, and neither spoke except to hail the brig as the boat drew close. The
Angel Lily
was larger than the
Commerce
, her glistening sides rising up from the water like a black, curving wall of oak.
"You knows th' cap'n's rules on th' chits, Ned," called a man over the side high above them. "Can't keep her on board, even if she do be a prize."
Raucous laughter greeted his words, and Ned and the African both grinned as Rose's cheeks grew hot with shame and indignation. Automatically she shot to her feet, wobbling with the motion of the boat.
"I am not a chit, sir," she shouted back at the man's face overhead, "but an English lady and a loyal subject of His Majesty King George."
Someone on the deck made a loud, disrespectful noise, followed by more laughter and a handful of oaths, and Rose gasped with outrage. Her aunt had been right. Americans were little better than savages.
"If you are quite done," she shouted when the laughter faded, "I should wish to speak with your captain directly."
But before anyone answered the boat bobbed against the brig's side, and ignominiously Rose toppled backward into the seawater that had gathered in the bottom of the boat. Close to tears with humiliation and dread, she climbed back to her bench, her skirts soaked, and waited for more of the laughter that she knew must come again at her expense.
But to her surprise, it didn't. Instead Ned tugged on the front of his knitted cap and held his hand out to her. "Bos'n's chair's ready for you, miss," he said gruffly. "Mind yerself, now."
"Thank you," said Rose with a little sniff, and gingerly she climbed into the makeshift sling that would preserve what was left of her modesty as it lifted her swaying to the deck. Balanced in the bos'n's chair, she felt like some market-day acrobat, as she swung precariously up into the air. It seemed odd to be able to see the
Commerce
from a distance rather than to still be walking her decks, and with a pang of homesickness for the other ship, Rose noticed that a new American flag now flew at the masthead. So Captain Richards had finally surrendered, she thought bitterly; nothing she could say now would be able to change that.
She was level with the main deck now, and with a final pull on the line she was lifted over the side. She smiled her thanks to the man who held the chair steady while she climbed down, but he was as careful to avoid her eye as the men in the boat had been at first. Her smile faded as she noticed the same reaction all around her; although she sensed that every seaman on the deck was watching her, not one was actually looking
at
her, and beneath their furtive scrutiny she'd never been more self-conscious, or more uncomfortable, in her life. Nervously she touched her hair, wishing again that she hadn't lost her hat.
"So you've come a-calling, have you, Miss Loyal Subject of King George?"
The man's voice boomed out over the deck, deep and effortlessly commanding. It was a voice that instinctively made Rose want to hop to attention, the same way it undoubtedly did everyone who heard it, but instead she forced herself to count to five, then five more, before, slowly, she turned to face Captain Nickerson Sparhawk.
To face him, and to stare. There were no gentlemen in Portsmouth like this. There probably weren't any in the entire rest of the world. He was immensely tall with shoulders and a chest to match, and even clothed though he was, Rose was acutely aware of the strength and energy that his oversized body contained. His hair and brows were black as tar—the black, guessed Rose, by which he'd earned that foolish prefix—and so was the beard that darkened his jaw. In the middle of all that black his eyes were an astonishing green, pale yet brilliant as they studied her with an intensity that made her blush from her toes clear to her cheeks. No wonder he'd succeeded so as a privateer, she thought stupidly. One look from those eyes and his enemy would simply turn to jelly where she stood.
Yet that wasn't quite right. The enemy would most likely be male, a
he
, not a
she
. And the only jellified
she
right now was herself, Miss Rose Everard, spinster. She could have counted to a hundred in the time she'd let slip past here gawking on his deck. She blinked, forced herself to think once again and finally remembered to speak.
"Good day, Captain Sparhawk," she said as briskly as she could. "I am Miss Rose Everard of Portsmouth in Hampshire, and I have come to speak to you concerning this vessel, which, you should know, belongs to my father, Sir Edmund Everard."
"Oh, hell," he said with disgust he didn't bother to hide. "Miss
Rose
Everard. Why the devil didn't I guess?"
A
ghost, thought Nick furiously as he stared at the woman before him. She had to be a ghost.
But how could she be a ghost, too, when the ghost, the real ghost, was the one she so resembled? She must be the living version of the ghost or angel or whatever Lily was, which would make this girl—what?
Lily's sister: he'd settle for that. If he considered it any further he'd lose his mind or his temper or most likely both. The wonderful prize Lily had promised, the improbable course on the chart that he'd reluctantly followed, the chase and the shamefully easy capture of the English merchantman: every bit had been somehow contrived by Lily to bring her sister here.
It wasn't even as if she was Lily's twin. Far from it. This girl was smaller, not even to his shoulder, with dark hair drawn severely back from her pale, serious face, and though the shape of her eyes was similar to Lily's, their color was only a faded gray version of her sister's brilliant blue. Mourning wasn't supposed to be attractive, but the hideous black gown she wore drained her cheeks of any color and hid whatever feminine roundness she might possess beneath its stiff, salt-stained folds. She had none of Lily's laughing merriment, none of her teasing charm, but somehow the similarity was still intangibly, annoyingly there, in the shape of her face and the way she lifted her chin to talk to him.
And in how
much
she talked.
"There's not much guessing involved in it at all, Captain Sparhawk," she was saying. "It is merely the simple truth. I expect by now you've rifled through the
Angel Lily
's papers enough to recognize my father's name, and it wouldn't take a great scholar to determine the rest."
Rose sighed. She hadn't expected the man to be gracious, or even civil, but she had hoped he'd at least listen. But he wasn't. He wasn't even pretending to hear what she said, instead staring at her with an ill-humored scowl.
"It's the simple truth, sir," she said again, hoping repetition would make it sink in. "And this vessel—"
"You're Lily's sister," said Nick abruptly, closing the distance between them. Before she could react he took her chin with one hand and turned her face up toward his. "You can't be anyone else."
Instantly Rose jerked away, the heat from his touch burning into her skin. "How dare you?" she gasped. "How
dare
you?"
And without a thought for the consequences, she reached up and slapped him as hard as she could.
Nick didn't flinch, even though his face stung like hell. All he'd wanted to know was if she were real, or if somehow he was imagining her, too. He hadn't meant to set her off like this. Now he knew every man on deck was watching and waiting for him to toss her over the side at the very least for striking the captain. Damnation, why did she have to hit him before the entire crew?
"Insolent creature," he said sharply, loud enough for them all to hear. "I should have you strung up for that."
But she was still too furious to care. "I'll do it again if you dare touch me!"
"Damnation, I had to know if you were flesh and blood!"
Her silver eyes flashed her scorn. "Whatever else would I be? Tea cakes and India tea?"
"Nothing half so sweet, I'll wager." If he wasn't careful he'd be babbling next about seeing angels in his cabin. "Good day to you, ma'am, and back you go to your ship."
"Not yet, I'm not." She gave a little shake to her fingers, still smarting from the impact of slapping him. She might as well have struck a rock covered with nettles as this man's face. "And you've absolutely no right to be issuing orders to me."
"You forget yourself, ma'am, just as you forget that I'm the captain of this vessel."
"You're not
my
captain." She glared up at him, wishing he'd back away. He was still too near for her comfort, his sheer size and undeniable maleness a more potent threat to her equilibrium than the pistols thrust into his belt or the sword at his waist. No wonder she was finding it so difficult to behave in a reasonable fashion. "And I'm not yet a married woman, so I'll thank you to stop calling me 'ma'am'."
"
Miss
Everard, then. Why am I not surprised,
Miss
Everard?"
Rose flushed. "Where is Captain Fotherill? I wish to speak with him so we might settle this business directly."
Nick made a rumbling noise deep in his chest. As far as he was concerned, there wasn't any business left to settle, except to send her back to the other ship. "You'll have a blessed hard time of it. Fotherill's dead."
"
Dead
?" repeated Rose incredulously. "Captain Fotherill's dead?"
Nick looked down his nose at her, satisfied that at least in this he'd have the final word. "Aye, miss, dead and gone with the fishes."
"Oh, the poor man!" She had met Captain Fotherill only once, on the day the
Angel Lily
sailed, but though she hadn't known him well, she did regret his death, for it was going to make her task that much the harder. "Poor Captain Fotherill!"
"Poor man, hah," said Nick contemptuously. "Fotherill took a dozen of my lads when he died and a share of his own with them. More than a score of good men lost because your blessed Fotherill preferred to waste his powder on long shot rather than haul in and close for a decent hand-to-hand."
"I see," said Rose, though she didn't. "What have you done with the rest of the Englishmen? You didn't kill them all, did you?"
"I'm a privateer, ma'am, not an executioner, no matter what you English might think. When I sent my own sloop into Charles Town for repairs, they took Fotherill's men to the prison there."
"Charles Town?" she echoed faintly.
"Charles Town," he repeated firmly. He was explaining too much, more than she deserved. Blast the woman, he was beginning to chatter as much as she did. "In South Carolina. Where, I can assure you, your countrymen will be a sight better cared for than the Americans your King George has taken."
"They're traitors," she said defensively. "They're treated as they deserve. Or have you forgotten that my king was also yours not so long ago?"
"I remember it every morning upon waking, ma'am, and thank the Lord for change." He smiled, pleased he'd discovered exactly the way to irritate her the most. She looked a hundred times more appealing with that flush in her cheeks, and it would be a perverse challenge to keep it there. "That could be why so many of Fotherill's old crew decided to toss in their lots with us. A taste of our kind of freedom can do that to a man. Or does that make them traitors, too?"
She took a deep breath, wishing he hadn't smiled and confused her wits. "I'm not going to quarrel over politics with you, Captain Sparhawk. You'll believe what you please because, after all, you're a rebel, too."
"Thank you," he said dryly, reaching for her elbow to guide her toward the side. "Now back to the boat."
But Rose shook him off. "I suppose, Captain Sparhawk, being a rebel is why you've behaved so dishonorably by capturing the
Angel Lily
. Privateers aren't supposed to attack other privateers, and that's exactly what you did to poor Captain Fotherill."
Nick's smile lost some of its gleam. Pride kept him from confessing that Fotherill had attacked him, not the other way around, and that the Englishmen had come horribly close to winning.
"Any vessel that sails under a British flag is fair game," he said, dodging the truth, "just as we Americans are always in season for your gunners. Doesn't make one whit of difference whether it's a doryman or another privateer."
"But that can't possibly be true!" said Rose indignantly. "It's not fair!"
"This is a war, Miss Everard. It's not supposed to be fair."
"I still don't believe it. My father is a cautious man in matters of business and trade, and I can't conceive of him taking on such a risk, especially with such a costly vessel that is named for my sister!"
Nick frowned, staring at her for a long, unbelieving moment. He wasn't the mad one. She was. "Your father's caution doesn't figure in it at all," he said. "He may have his eye on his ledger book, but the rest of us are here to fight a war. The rules haven't changed much since the Greeks, unless your Admiralty Board's taken on a few other petticoat despots to alter them to suit you."
Rose stiffened. "Foolish nonsense like that won't change the facts. You've unfairly captured the
Angel Lily
, and I'm not leaving until you admit it."
"I'm not admitting anything, and you're leaving regardless." This time he took her arm before she could wriggle away. Lord, she was thin, he thought, nothing but little bird bones inside her sleeve. "Come along."
"No, I'm not!" Stubbornly Rose tried to pull away, but her efforts were as ineffectual as a child's against a parent's will, and, humiliated, she felt herself being almost carried across the deck. She struggled harder, raising her voice. "I'm not leaving, I say!"
"And I say you are.
Now
." She was light as a thistle and nearly as prickly, thought Nick with grim satisfaction as he pulled her across the deck, and he'd rejoice to see the last of her. So much for Lily's grand plans. He'd show
her
he was still the master.
But as soon as Nick reached the side to send Rose back to the boat, Gideon slung his leg over the rail and clambered onto the deck.
"Everything's squared away as you ordered, Nick," he said with a hurried, haphazard salute as three more Yankee sailors followed him up the rope ladder and over the side. "We stowed the English in the hold with nary a squawk, jury-rigged the mast and sent them on their way. I left Hibert in command, as you said, and he'll have her in Charles Town in two days if this wind holds."
Nick looked across to where the
Commerce
had been, and then to the east, where she was already making good progress with the wind at her stern.
"Damnation, Gideon," he demanded, "why did you have to be so bloody quick about it?"
Gideon looked at him strangely. "Because that's the way you always want it. The faster Hibert can get her into Charles Town, the faster the prize courts can declare in our favor and sell her off, and the faster we'll all be paid off. Your orders, Nick," he said defensively. "And damned good ones they are, too."
"Well, they're not much good to me now, are they? Now they've stuck me with this wretched woman!"
Gideon folded his hands across his chest, tucking his hands beneath his arms, and frowned. "I thought that was what you wanted. You kept her long enough."
"What
he
wanted!" sputtered Rose indignantly. "What of my wishes in the matter?"
Nick ignored her. "I wasn't keeping her, Gideon. I was trying to send her back."
"Why the devil would you?" asked Gideon. "Do you know who she is, Nick?"
"She's a damnable pest, that's who!"
Gideon stepped closer and lowered his voice so that Rose and the others couldn't hear. "She's the last surviving daughter of Sir Edmund Everard, the man who built and owned this brig, and she's gold to us, Nick. Nay, better than gold." Gideon glanced at Rose before he edged closer to Nick and lowered his voice. "Can't you see the value of keeping her with us? Her old man's a grand, rich lordling back in England, and now with her in your hands you can make him dance to whatever tune you play."
"A lord's daughter, you say." Nick frowned, rubbing the back of his neck as he considered. "If she's very dear to him, she could be worth five hundred guineas to us. Maybe six."
"Oh, aye, six, no mistake." Gideon's grin returned with renewed eagerness. "And she won't be the most disagreeable prisoner we've ever had aboard."
Nick shook his head, still not completely convinced. The girl did look harmless enough now, standing by the rail to stare after the last of the
Commerce
. Could the ransom her father would pay bring the happiness that Lily was always promising?
He rubbed his neck again and sighed uneasily, trying not to think of the other Everard sister. "Still and all, Gideon, you know I can't abide women on board. And this one will be a trial, a regular trial, what with her sis—her shrewish ways."
Nick glanced at Gideon, praying the other man hadn't noticed how close he'd come to saying Lily's name again.
"That little mite a trial?" Gideon's eyebrows rose skeptically. "You'll scarce know she's aboard. And if you spare her a thought at all, just remind yourself of that six hundred guineas I asked from her father's business people in the letter that went with the ship for Charles Town."
Nick glared at him. "Didn't leave a blessed thing to chance, did you?"
Gideon flushed beneath his tan. "I figured Miss Everard was the same as any other cargo we'd taken, Nick. Your orders are always for me to dispose of the goods as I see fit." He shifted uncomfortably. "I only meant to make things easy for you, Nick, that was all. I didn't want you bothering yourself over nothing right now."
But Nick knew what Gideon really meant. It didn't matter that Nick had just led them to the richest prize they'd taken in months; Gideon and all the others still believed their captain was mad as a hatter. And so, in some ways, he did himself.
"I don't think Miss Everard would take to being called cargo," he said wearily. "And for your trouble, Lieutenant Cole, you will give our lady prisoner your own quarters."
But at that moment an excited cry rose from the lady prisoner, and together Nick and Gideon wheeled around toward her.
"My trunk!" cried Rose, leaning over the side. "Oh, please, pray, take care with that!"
With a final, protesting squeak from the hoist-pulley, the trunk was lifted clear of the rail and, with a sailor's guiding hand, thumped to the deck. Rose ran to kneel beside it, brushing away the drops of seawater from its hide-covered sides.
"I can't begin to fathom what manner of foolish presumption this is, bringing my trunk clear over here after me," she said crossly, as much to the trunk as to the men behind her. "Why ever would anyone go to the trouble of doing such a thing?"
Grumbling to herself, she used the edge of her skirt to begin blotting the worst of the water spots. With the trunk's elaborate pattern of brass nailheads, it was better suited for traveling by carriage or coach than by sea, and the constant damp of the voyage had rotted bald patches into the hide despite Rose's best efforts. Carefully she worked her way around one side and the front, but when she reached the second side she stopped with a gasp.