The Pirate Captain (77 page)

“Belay that caterwauling, you shrieking strumpet!”

“Nathan…?”

“Out!” he barked, whirling around on Cate.

“But…?”

“Out!” Nathan shouted, with a swipe. He spun back around toward the woman. “Stay on the floor or stay on the bunk, but stay you shall! C’mon!”

Nathan seized Cate by the arm and propelled her into the salon, not stopping until she was seated at the table.

“Blood box, Mr. Millbridge,” he called as he pulled up a chair at her knee.

Nathan took the arm that until then Cate hadn’t realized she had been cradling. She made to look at it, but he determinedly brushed her aside. Crescent-shaped and bright red, blood welling from a few places, the bite was on the inside of her forearm, just above her wrist. It stung horribly, throbbing in unison with her heart, still racing from the struggle. It had been a long time since she had been bitten: a foul-tempered Highland pony. This one was no worse, but Nathan was taking the offense as serious, muttering dark comments under his breath as he inspected. He looked up apologetically when Cate winced. As his long, tar-grimed fingers probed, an identical mark could be seen on his wrist.

“You, too, hmm?” she said under the sobbing coming from behind the curtain.

A corner of Nathan’s mouth twitched. “Not the first and most probably not the last. I’m obliged to admit, however, it has been a time. Tea, Mr. Millbridge, if you please” he said without looking up as the blood box was delivered.

Dabbing the sweat from her temples, Cate was about to insist she wasn’t of a mood for tea. Hospitality, however, was the last thing on Nathan’s mind. Fetching the brandy bottle, he poured a bit into pot when it came. He dipped in a bit of cloth and proceeded to clean the wound.

Biting her lip against the sting, Cate stared at her blood box and mentally sorted through its inventory. Chamomile? Valerian? Lavender? She was reasonably prepared for ship-related emergencies, but woefully lacking in preparations for hysterical women.

“We can’t just leave her in there,” she said to the top of Nathan’s head.

He shot her a look from under his brows. “Why not? I’m not compelled to be nice. Pirate.” The last word was offered up as a multi-faceted explanation.

“She’s your responsibility.”

“No,” Nathan said with slow emphasis. “She’s a hostage.”

“Little difference. Ouch!”

“Sorry. Here, hold this.” Nathan directed her hand to the compress. He rose and began rummaging through her box. “You’ll not be going back in there with yon she-devil,” he warned darkly, pausing to glare over the lid.

He grunted in satisfaction at finding the jar of salve. “It cures everything else, let’s hope it works against rabid animals.”

Cate sucked in at the sting of the salve, and again when the bandage was tied off with a little more force than might have been intended. The incessant crying was beginning to make her head pound. She prided herself on having faced many an emergency—dare she say, disaster?—with strength and grace. Fire, war, destruction, disease, horror: she had endured them all. Hysterics was quite another thing. Knowing how disturbed most men were in the face of a crying woman, her sympathy for the Morgansers deepened. It was harrowing, and they had endured it most of the day.

Cate frowned, straining to think of what might help. “She might need…”

“To be left lying as any vicious beast should.”

“We can’t just leave her. We have to do…something.”

With a glare daring her to object, Nathan grabbed the bottle and poured an additional dollop into the pot. “Serve the wench, if you must,” he said and shoved the pot across the table toward her.

“Shh! She’ll hear you.”

“Much more the better. Then she’ll know if she doesn’t drink this, it will be bilge water and sea biscuit for the next fortnight! And if she does you harm again, I’ll slap her in irons until we’re rid of her cursed carcass!” He raised his voice incrementally until he was shouting at the end, and all aimed at the curtain.

Balancing pot, cup, and light, Cate went back around the curtain to find the hostage had indeed overheard. She sat chastely on the bunk, her large blue eyes meeting Cate as she set everything on the bedstand.

“Who are you?” she asked querulously in a voice torn by tears and screaming.

“I’m Cate. Who are you?”

“Prudence.” She sniffed hugely. “Prudence Collingwood.” Sniffing again, her fingers flexed at the folds of her skirt in suggestion of a curtsey. Glancing toward the curtain, she leaned to whisper, “Are you a prisoner, too?”

“Umm, not really.” Cate said, posing an encouraging smile.

“Were you stolen? Did he take you from a ship? Are you a prisoner? Are you his slave?”

“Slave?” Cate’s smile wavered. The child certainly had a vivid imagination. “I think not.”

“They’re pirates!” Prudence wailed into her hands. “They’re going to kill me!”

Melting into a new crescendo of crying, Prudence launched at Cate and threw her arms around her neck. The force drove them both to the mattress. Grappling to escape the death grip, Cate managed to sit up and gather the girl in her arms. Rocking and murmuring little nothings, Cate strove to console the child. It was difficult to admonish the girl too stridently. Her fears were real, as evidenced by the trembling body. Cate recalled suffering many of those same terrors, although she preferred to think she had faced them with a little more alacrity.

Prudence’s sobbing eventually subsided, leaving her sniffling and hiccupping.

Hot water!
The idea came to Cate as a desperate inspiration. Any woman feels better after washing.

Freeing herself from Prudence’s clutches, Cate poked her head out around the curtain. Nathan and Pryce milled about the salon, Kirkland and Millbridge lurking in the margins, all looking thoroughly anxious.

“Hot water?” she asked.

In less time than she thought it possible to reach the galley and return, an arm came around the curtain—no mistaking Nathan’s—to hand off a ewer of steaming water. Murmuring vague nothings to Prudence, Cate sponged the tear-reddened face, while praying for the water’s palliative effects. Seen more clearly, Prudence proved to be a lovely girl. Glossy, dark brown curls surrounded an oval face with piercingly clear blue eyes, a bow-shaped mouth, and…

“How old are you?”

Prudence looked to her lap and toyed with the silk of her skirt. “Sixteen.”

“And you’re to marry Lord Creswicke?”

The level of disbelief in Cate’s outburst jolted the poor girl. Tears welled and her chin began to wobble dangerously. Prudence’s “Yes,” came out in a wheezing squeak.

She possessed rounded, doll-like features that rendered her much younger than her years. Still, sixteen was excessively young, by Cate’s standards. True enough, she had witnessed marriages at far younger ages while growing up, and in the Highlands. She had disapproved of those, too. In the face of another hysterical onslaught, Cate swabbed the wetness from Prudence’s face and helped her blow her nose on the towel.

“How about some tea?” Cate asked brightly.

Tea certainly had its curative qualities, but Cate was putting her money—and her sanity—on the brandy.

Seeing Prudence propped up, tea was served. The small, bow-shaped mouth drew up in disappointment at the cup. “I usually take mine with lemon and milk.”

Once assured there was neither, she balked when met by the brandy. The loud, admonishing sound of a male throat clearing came from behind the curtain spurred her to drink. Within moments, her stomach gurgled, and she blushed. Lest she cause further embarrassment, Cate went about straightening the room for a bit longer, before inquiring when Prudence had last eaten.

“Not since breakfast. I was too scared, what with the pirates chasing us,” she said, shooting an accusing look toward the curtain.

Cate was sympathetic, but there was a glaring flaw: it would have been late afternoon before the
Capricorn
would have sighted the
Griselle
. Youth and terror, however, had a way of clouding one’s perceptions.

“Aye, food is always the best means to tame the savage beast,” came a disembodied, graveled voice.

At length, a tray was brought. Millbridge—judging by the footsteps—stopped short of the curtain, and refused to approach further. Finally, it was slid under the curtain. The ever-reliable Kirkland had produced toast, a couple of boiled eggs, and slices of cold meat, which Prudence ate with the enthusiasm of the young. A full stomach, combined with tea, kidnapping, crying, and brandy took its toll, and she soon drooped. Chanting assurances of her safety, Cate tucked her up. She promptly fell to sleep, curled up like the little girl she was.

Somewhat haggard and tear-sodden, Cate tiptoed out. Nathan sat quill in hand at the table, Pryce standing across. They looked up with anxious trepidation, Nathan arching a brow.

“She’s sleeping,” Cate whispered.

“Praise God!” Pryce sighed in a hush. He slumped in relief. “A true worker of miracles, ye are, sir. The woman is relentless. Never knowed a soul what could caterwaul like that.”

“She’s no woman,” Cate hissed and leaned closer to whisper lower yet, “Did you see her? She’s a child. She’s only sixteen years old.”

One was compelled to wonder how the men hadn’t taken notice.

Nathan sat back and scowled. “I knew our Lord Creswicke had appetites, but I had no idea he had
that
one.”

“He must be almost twice her age,” Cate said.

Nathan snorted. “And near half again.”

“What kind of a man would marry a girl…?”

“A man looking for connections and money,” Nathan finished, coldly. “And our dear Lord Creswicke seeks both.”

“My God, doesn’t the man have enough already?”

Nathan snorted again, more derisively. “The word ‘enough’ doesn’t exist in his vocabulary.”

“Aye, pirate he is!” Pryce put in, with his own level of disdain. “No matter how much there be in the hold, yer still mauradin’ for more.”

Nathan grew contemplatively distant. He jerked and shook himself. “Other than the watch, the men have gone ashore. Do you wish to remain or go?”

The thought of an evening ashore was appealing. On an inexplicable surge of motherly instincts, Cate declined with great regret. “I think it best to stay aboard, tonight.”

Nathan nodded, surprisingly without comment. “Very well, I’ll remain. Mr. Pryce, you’re to go ashore and tend the men.”

Nodding a brief salute, Pryce left.

Nathan looked up from under his brow, one lifted wryly. “Slave?”

“No secrets on a ship, hmm? Your reputation precedes you.”

His mouth curled in distaste as he glanced toward the curtain. “Most decidedly and certainly not with mere children.”

Cate sank into a chair. Until she sat, she hadn’t realized the ache in her back. Standing on deck waiting, and the argument with Nathan had taken its toll. The bite on her arm throbbed, and her head pounded, as if she had been the one crying. The quietude of Thomas’ candlelight supper seemed a lifetime ago.

Resting her head on the back, Cate watched Nathan. He took great pride in his charts, each one a piece of artwork in and of itself. She had spent many an hour watching him pore over them, assessing positions or plotting a new course. But they were currently at anchor.

“What are you doing?” she asked at length.

“Adding a reef; hadn’t spotted it, until today.” Nathan frowned in concentration, an ink-blotched finger tracing the outlines on the parchment. “This island here is actually two. There’s a small pass here. A storm could have taken it out recently, but it’s there, nonetheless.”

“What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her temples while he sketched.

“Middle watch was just rung. ’Tis midnight,” Nathan added, knowing Cate's inability to follow ship’s time. He paused to look up, the candlelight catching the cinnamon in his eyes. “You’ve had a full night.”

“It would appear I’ve next to find a place to sleep,” she said, fatigue dragging her voice.

“I’ll pass the word to ready one of the cabins below,” he said, standing.

A rapid sequence of images flashed through Cate's head: dark, dank holds, snoring men swinging elbow to elbow in hammocks, the smell of pitch and gunpowder.

She halted him with a raised hand, still rubbing her temple with the other. “Don’t bother. I don’t think I could sleep down there.”

“Why not? We’ll make sure it’s nice and clean.” Tease touched the graveled voice.

“No windows, no air, no thank you.”

“Then how about the deck? Weather glass says fair and the sky agrees.”

Too tired to resist, she allowed Nathan to guide her outside, her arm in one hand and the bottle in the other. Two of the anchor watch stood on the forecastle, so they sat, side by side, with the foremast to their back.

The moon was a bare sliver hanging just above the island’s crown. Its thin light allowed the stars to shine like fairy dust, their tiny rays colliding. As he and Cate shared the bottle, Nathan pointed out the constellations and told Greek fables, Nathan Blackthorne-style, in his gravel-gruff voice, and with his own quirky mix of Roman, Greek, pagan, Norse, Hindu, and the mythologies of a world travelled, all heavily dosed with love and lust. She had never realized stars could be so bawdy. They sat shoulders touching. His voice vibrated through her, the soft rumble of his laugh echoing in her bones. The lamps gilding his profile, hands illustrating and punctuating every tale, there was an elegance about him. If she closed her eyes—no challenge there, for she could barely keep them open—she tried to imagine him not as a pirate, but before life had taken its toll.

At some point, the fables faded, and they talked of everything and nothing, dreams and hopes, regrets, fears, ambitions, and grand plans, Nathan painting verbal pictures of things real and things imagined, things he had seen and things no one would ever see. Chilled by the night air, Cate snuggled closer, a head suddenly too heavy coming to rest on his shoulder. Drowsy, she was vaguely aware of his arm slipping around her shoulders and her head brought down to pillow on his chest.

“Welcome back.”

Shrouded in the gauzy margins of sleep, it was murmured so faintly, she wasn’t entirely sure if she had heard it or dreamt it. And yet, the stirring of her hair and the rumble of his voice under her ear seemed proof it had been real.