The Pirate Captain (92 page)

The snap of a twig was her only warning, before a hand shot around and clamped over her mouth. She was driven forward to the ground with a
whomph!
. The force of her assailant coming down on top of her knocked the air from her.

Stunned, her clarity of mind returned with the wind rushing back into her lungs. The two tumbled and thrashed, the fingers at her mouth gouging her face. His wild eyes inches from hers, he seemed roughly her size, but wiry and considerably stronger. His breath hot on her neck, she was engulfed by the smells of rum, arousal, and fish stew.

The knife in her pocket was unreachable in her tangled skirts. She clawed, gouged, elbowed and kneed. The hand drew back and clouted her across the face, and then clamped back over her mouth. She was punched once, and then again in the stomach. She drew up her knees and curled into a defensive ball. The hand at her mouth gave a cruel wrench and flipped her on her back. He rose up and drove a knee into her gut. The pinpricks of light swirled before her eyes and her ears buzzed.

The hand loosened a fraction, and Cate bit down, until she felt the grind of bones between her teeth. He yanked free and swore. It was enough of a distraction for her to slam the flat of her palm against his ear. He yelped and swung out, his fist catching her in the jaw. Her vision reduced to a tunnel, the pinpricks now a beehive as oblivion loomed.

Don’t pass out! Don’t pass out!

He came down on top of her. His hips grinding against hers, his eager hardness prodded against her legs. With limbs gone as heavy as sand, she shouted at herself to do something as he pried at her knees. She wanted to scream, but like in a dream, couldn’t. Against bands of iron that seemed to have seized her chest, she drew a breath and forced it out through frozen jaws. The result was but a pitiful mewling moan.

A shadow fell over them. Thinking it was another one came to join in, Cate tried again to cry out, but with the same pathetic result. The shadow shifted and a human form separated from the trees. She caught only a fleeting glimpse, but there was no mistaking Nathan’s outline as he loomed over them. He moved and a band of moonlight fell across his face to reveal an expression of somewhere between black rage and dead calm. So preoccupied with fumbling with his flies, her assailant didn’t look up, until Nathan drew back a foot and drove it into his belly.

The force sent the man tumbling into the dark. Nathan kicked again and again, rolling his victim, until he flopped like a rag doll. Standing over him, Nathan calmly drew his pistol, aimed, and fired. There was a crack, a blue spurt, a faint retort, and the acrid smell of gunpowder. The body bucked once, sending leaves and dirt scattering, and then went still.

So effortless, so quick, so clean, and a man was dead.

Heavy running and crashing brush marked Thomas’ arrival, pistol in one hand and sword in the other. In one glance, he assessed the scene. Stowing his weapons, he moved to the lifeless form, and poked it with the toe of his boot, until the face came into the moonlight.

“He’s one of yours,” Nathan observed dispassionately, stuffing his pistol back into his belt.

“Aye, pity,” Thomas sighed, equally impassive. “He was my best f’c’stleman. Leave him lie.”

Nathan came back to where Cate huddled on the ground. He helped her to stand, steadying her by the waist when her legs wobbled dangerously. Too stunned to cry, she stumbled next to him as he took her back toward the friendly light of the fires, Thomas’ heavy step behind them. She was sat on something—a keg or an up-ended log—near enough to the gangs of men for comfort, yet far enough for privacy.

“Get something to drink,
now
!” Nathan bellowed.

A water gourd arrived shortly, filled with bumboo. She hated rum, but the spices made it palatable, and she was most definitely in need of a drink. Cate fumbled, nearly dropping it, obliging Nathan to hold it while she sipped.

“I’m fine.”

Nathan’s mouth quirked. “Aye, as you keep insisting.”

Nathan steadied Cate by the arm as she continued to sway. Blinking stupidly, she probed through her fogged mind, trying to recall having said anything. She felt, more than heard, people speaking, their voices no more than dull thuds in her ears. She could hear Thomas fuming somewhere near, pausing periodically to peer over Nathan’s shoulder at her.

The bumboo went to work in short order. Cate’s head cleared sufficiently to put one thought in front of another. With it, the numbness gave way to sensations. The night air grew fingers of ice. Shock jolted through her body in rolling waves. Her face throbbed. The muscles in her abdomen spasmed at every breath. She twitched and jumped at hands that weren’t there. Nathan’s coat was wrapped about her shoulders, but she continued to quake. She hunched it higher and drank deeper, in hopes the blessed numbness might return.

In jerky, abrupt moves, Nathan plucked leaves and twigs from her hair and clothing. His inscrutable mask firmly in place, he checked her over again and again, confirming for himself that she was indeed fine. While he saw to her physically, it was notable that he didn’t look at her directly. The most unnerving, however, was his silence. Swearing, chiding, berating; anything would have been better than nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. At last, two different words.

“No worries, luv.” Nathan intently snugged the faded coat about her. “It would have been now or it would have been later. If a man’s taken a notion, there’s naught to be done about it.”

“I knew he was a treacherous bastard, but I had no idea…” Thomas said, looking on over Nathan’s shoulder. “Hell, I would’ve killed the son of a bitch ahead of time, had I known.”

“It’s all right,” she said, mechanically. It seemed almost laughable to kill someone for what they
might
do.

Cate reached for the gourd with a quivering hand to take another drink. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s no sorrow for a man’s beastliness. Put your mind to now you’ll be safe. No better protection than a dead suitor,” Nathan said bitterly. “I’ll represent you were the one to kill him, if you like. No better insurance, aye?”

Fuzzy as Cate might have been, it still seemed severely wrong to take advantage of a man’s death. Yet, from the moment she had been knocked to the ground, she wanted nothing more than for the bastard to be dead, and had taken cold satisfaction at seeing him prostrate in the leaves.

“Tell them what you will,” she said shakily. Weariness struck her like another punch from her assailant.

There was a protracted silence. Thomas churned back and forth in the wavering margins of the firelight.

So much like Brian
.

Eloquent with fury, Thomas snatched at his pistol, and then his sword, driven by the need for action. Finally, he picked something from the ground and hurtled it into the night. Swearing, he did so several times more, and then resumed steaming back and forth.

“Dammit to goddamned fucking hell! I knew this would happen,” Thomas extolled to the night sky. He spun around to stab an accusing finger at the two of them. “This wasn’t the first, was it?”

Nathan looked to the ground. “No,” Cate finally said.

Thomas swore in something like Germanic. He stalled to glare down at Nathan. “And it will happen again.”

Nathan looked briefly up into the voice of doom. Not unlike herself, Cate could see him mentally calculating the odds of that very thing. Twice in less than a month she had been attacked, and twice he had been obliged to kill, four other men dying in conjunction with the first attack. A man had died just now, only because she had needed to pee. She scanned the throng of men scattered down the beach, rendered faceless by distance and darkness, and wondered how many more she had doomed to their deaths when she had agreed to remain on the
Morganse.
How many more would Nathan be obliged to kill? Only a few hours ago, he had said something about the price he had been paying since her arrival. How much longer, before he said “Enough?”

Thomas looked to her, the blue eyes gone to steel. “By the gods, I will do it,” he said with the same vehemence as earlier that day. Then he rose abruptly and disappeared into the night.

“You can yell at me now, if you like.” Cate spoke in the spirit of precipitating the berating she knew was to come. How could he not blame her?

Fondling the gourd, which she still couldn’t manage, Nathan looked up from under the dark dashes of brows and snorted. “Would it help? Would it make any difference? Which would you prefer to hear: what the hell were you doing; silly woman; why don’t you do as I say? Which one?”

“How about ‘This was your fault?’”

The corner of Nathan's mouth tucked up grimly. The firelight glinted on copper hairs in the plush of his beard as he looked to the ground.

“No, not that one. ’Tis another I’m saving that for.”

“You?” Cate looked down at the crown of his hat. There was no room to place any more blame. Nathan had taken it all and was thoroughly flogging himself.

“Do you see another? You aimed to be away from all this, and I—” he said.

“I said I wanted to stay,” she said levelly. “It’s not your fault.”

She winced inwardly. It was so unfortunate that the most sincere sentiments come out as hollow-sounding platitudes. And yet, in many cases, there was wretchedly little else which wouldn’t sound equally false.

Thomas appeared again, considerably more composed. He squatted next to Nathan and peered up at her. “You gonna be all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” It had been dubious earlier, but now she was coming around to actually believing it.

Thomas quizzically looked to Nathan, who shrugged in deference and said, “A gentleman never argues with a lady.”

Thomas rose, leaving Cate and Nathan alone once more.

“Don’t tell Prudence,” she said.

Nathan made a face. “Why?”

“There’s no call to alarm her.”

He made a sarcastic noise. “Bloody high time she learned what the world is about.”

“Not this. Not yet.”

Nathan carefully searched Cate's face. His eye twitched, perceiving much and opting to question none. There were many lessons that awaited one so young and naïve. What it was to live among the predators was a lesson best left for another day.

Cate considered her own future, and a glum one it was. It was easy to envision Nathan shackling her in the most literal sense of the word, lest she wander, and justifiably so. Independence came at a price.

She felt hollow and fragile, like a soap bubble, likely to shatter at the slightest touch. And yet, she wanted nothing more than to be held; she needed the solid firmness of safety, to know not every touch was to be feared. The one she needed it most from sat hunched at her knee, much of the same condition: in need of assurance that he had done right. And yet, the gap between them was too vast for either to reach across and give what the other so desperately needed.

And so, they sat together, and yet so very apart.

At length, she shifted in discomfort. Nathan scowled with renewed concern. It was the ultimate embarrassment—the ultimate payback—but it couldn’t be helped.

“I really need to go to the privy.”

###

As Nathan had forecast, the next day was fair and the
Morganse
made weigh out of the bay. She pressed on to the designated exchange point on a t’gallant breeze, her bow wearing a collar of white froth against the deep blue water.

The
Morganse
arrived at the Straits with the last rays of the retiring sun gilding her sails. Following at no great distance astern, the
Griselle
veered off to take up her post on the opposite side. It was a large cove in which the
Morganse
settled on her kedge to lay in wait, crouched like a great cat. Stealth, however, was neither vessel’s intent: both desired to be seen.

As such, the two ships spent the night and the largest part of the next morning, waiting…and waiting.

The tension aboard the
Morganse
was palpable. Her people moved mechanically, their conversation brief, laughter forced. Nathan paced circuits around the quarterdeck, calling frequently up to the lookouts on the mastheads, “I’ll slit the eyelids of the first slaggardly lout found napping!”

There was another source of tension, however, a source even more daunting: Prudence.

The girl ricocheted from pacing the cabin and staring for protracted periods out the aft gallery, to breaking into verbal tirades about everything and nothing. The impatience and intolerance of youth being what it was, she went outside. Advancing down the decks, her prattle parted the men like a prophet parting the Red Sea.

In the peace of Prudence’s absence, Cate sat before the stern windows idly fondling her embroidery. Her thread was gone. Now, she could only dream of what she would stitch next.

The determined clump of boots broke her thoughts. She looked up as Nathan, Pryce close in tow, skidded to a halt at the cabin door and planted his hands on his hips.

“Do something!” Nathan cried.

Thinking he had been injured, Cate leaped up, looking for blood. Finding none, she assumed it must have been one of the crew. She reached for her blood box, but her path was blocked by Nathan.

“You’ve got to do something about the Plaguing Princess,” he said. “The men are fit to start jumping ship before the glass runs out.”

“Aye, sir,” Pryce chimed over Nathan’s shoulder. “She’s babbled since afore the sun’s cleared the gun’l, with nay so much as a breath’s break. Not a moment’s peace fer anyone.”

“Except one,” Nathan dryly interjected. “Beatrice had the wherewithal and good sense to escape; hasn’t left the crosstrees since. The hands are cross-eyed in pain what with holding their water.”

“Aye, sir,” Pryce put in eagerly, looking a bit strained himself. “Yammers away she does, right afore the pissdale.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Cate said. “You do it every day before everyone.”

“Not amid a dozen questions,” sputtered Nathan, eloquent in his indignation. “A man needs to concentrate.”