The Pirate's Debt (The Regent's Revenge Book 2) (21 page)

Only that I love him and fear I will never see him again . . .

Charles stepped menacingly closer, his massive arms seeming larger and larger, clearly capable of snapping lesser, weaker men in half. With every footstep to close the distance between them, the brigand ignited her primitive instinct to run.

Chloe swallowed the palpable regret rising in her throat, praying resourcefulness didn’t fail her now in the face of these insurmountable odds. Her mind reeled, and her breath caught, trapping frantic winged creatures in her chest. Revenge was a necessary evil in gothic romances. No matter the challenges in any book, vengeance solicited death. The only question was whose.

She bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood, determined to ensure neither Jane nor herself would end up like Matilda. If they were going to get out of this inn alive, she needed to access her quick mind, to employ the ingenuity Pierce had taught her.

Carnage frowned, disgust marring his face and making him look more hideous and frightening than she’d first supposed. “And
ye
? Where have ye come from?”

Oriana shook her head, warning her not to answer. “
These
lads are helping this woman,” she said on Chloe’s behalf.

“Yes, my father is a baron in Exeter and I am traveling with my maid and my escorts to join my husband.”

His stare raked over her covetously. “Propertied, eh? Ye’ll find rank does ye no favors here.”

She raised her chin, defiantly. “I’ve never asked for special treatment in my life.”

“Ye will not get it, even if ye do,” he said.

He took another step toward her. “After this, I won’t ask again,” he warned. “Why. Are.
Ye.
Here?”

His breath assailed her nostrils, a foul, nauseating stench.

“I’m Lady Chloe—” She stopped before providing her last name.

Holy Charity, if I reveal that I am a Walsingham and this man is a smuggler familiar with revenue men, will I be jeopardizing our lives
if
he links me with my brother?

“Markwick,” she finished.

“Markwick, eh?” He didn’t believe her. She’d hesitated too long.

“’Tis true,” Jane said, unable to hide the tremor in her voice as she came to her mistress’s defense. “She
is
Lady Markwick, and I am her maid. We are on the way to Penzance.”

“Penzance?” Fire erupted in the fiendish ebony eyes that gripped Chloe, making them gleam like opaque buttons. “That’s a long way to travel alone.”

Her heart leaped. “Oh, but as I said, we are not alone. My husband has hired these men to escort me.”

Carnage motioned several men forward. “I still don’t believe ye. I saw a boat leave the Regent’s ship. There could only be two reasons
he’d
send a boat ashore. One, he meant to spare the crew he’d rescued from the
Mohegan
.”

Owens raised his hand to his waist, his fingers teasing the handle on his pistol.

“Or two,” Carnage continued, “there was something, or
someone
, the Regent didn’t want to come to harm.” He looked Jane over, then devoured Chloe with a critical squint. “Either one of these puts ye in serious danger. Both mean good luck for me, o’ course.”

Chloe put her hand in Jane’s and glanced down Carnage’s injured arm and froze.

Both mean good luck for me.

Good luck? No, a hellish rain of despair! The
Mohegan
. Lightning. Perilous rocks. Screams for help. Flashes of bludgeoned sailors haunted her mind. Was Markwick bleeding? Had Carnage killed him? Was the man she loved alive? Was her brother?

With his fingers looped through the belt crossing his chest, the remorseless, frightening Captain Carnage motioned to his men. “Ye saw ’em row to shore. Ye know where they came from.”

“Aye, we do,” one of the men replied. “Reported it to ye, we did.”

Oriana’s color paled, making Chloe wonder if she even knew of what her brother was capable. “These people have nothing to do with what happened out there. That’s why they were sent out of harm’s way. Let them go, Charles.”

Oriana’s interference instantly drove Carnage wild, and he turned his wrath on her. “She’s the leverage we have, don’t ye understand? I can use her to finish off the Regent once and for all. He will come for her. And when he does, well . . . that will be the end of him.”

“He’s alive?” Chloe’s heart leaped in her chest, but she realized her blunder too late. She’d spoken aloud.

Amusement flickered over Carnage’s face. He had her. He had what he needed to trap Markwick and he knew it. “Not for long.”

“What are ye thinking?” Oriana shouted. “Murder is a crime. I cannot let ye commit such an unspeakable act here. I cannot.”

Carnage ignored her. He snapped his fingers at Clyde.

Clyde let out a growl and wrenched Kelly’s arm far behind his back. Kelly struggled, yanking his arm in an effort to free himself as Clyde forced a knife into Kelly’s side. The other boatswain jerked reflexively, stiffened, and then let out a gut-wrenching, desperate gasp for breath.

“No!” Chloe cried. She bolted forward, but Owens snagged her arm, holding her back as Carnage’s laughter filled the room.

Clyde withdrew his dagger from Kelly’s side and wiped the blade on Kelly’s coat, letting go of the seaman, whose lifeless body slid to the floor.

“Charles!” Oriana’s soul-stirring wail proved right then that the woman knew nothing about her brother’s evil bent. “What have ye done?”

The distraction allowed Madden and Jenkins to move into action. They rose, each brandishing a pistol and blade in their hands, crouching like soldiers, training their weapons on anyone who moved as they backed away from the bar.

“What’s to become of us, m’lady?” Jane sobbed.

“Oh, Jane!” Chloe hugged her close, wanting Carnage to think she was scared out of her wits. “Do you still have the dagger I gave you?” she whispered in her maid’s ear.

Jane nodded.

“Hand it to me.” As they shifted positions, turning toward each other, the dagger passed into Chloe’s palm and she handed Jane the spoon. “Stab anyone who comes at you in the eye.”

Owens put his arm in front of Chloe and Jane. “Get behind me.”

They did as he said, and he pulled the pistol out of his trousers and aimed the muzzle at Carnage’s face, acting as a human shield.

“He plans to outwit me, men,” Carnage shouted.

The inn rocked with laughter.

They were backed into a corner. Chloe looked to Madden and Jenkins for help, but they were cut off on the other side of the room.

Owens must have realized it, too. He cocked the trigger. “I’m taking these women out—”

“No,” Carnage said as one of his men knocked the pistol out of Owens’s hand. The gun discharged, cutting into one of Carnage’s men. That man fell to the floor as Chloe buttressed Owens’s back until he could regain his footing, but Owens wasn’t fast enough. His attacker caught him by the arm and punched him in the stomach, forcing him to his knees.

In disbelief, shock, and horror, Chloe implored Oriana with her eyes.
Save him,
she silently pleaded.

Carnage’s cynical laughter echoed off the rafters. The rag-mannered man pointed at Owens. “Ye aren’t like those two, trained for hand-to-hand combat.” He arrowed his finger at Madden and Jenkins, who now struggled to stay alive, outnumbered by several men. “But ye do have one thing in common: there is murder in your eyes. I ’spect ye intend to settle a score. Be that your aim?”

Owens’s attacker forced him to stand. Carnage grabbed Owens by the chin, inspecting him. “You’re not one of the Regent’s men.” Carnage contemplated Owens some more, then slanted a glance at Kelly’s dead body. “Ye were aboard the
Mohegan
, weren’t ye?”

Debilitating alarm coursed through Chloe’s veins. She sucked in a breath, praying she’d nodded off while reading one of her books and that this was all a sick, preposterous dream. But the
Mohegan
, Fiske’s abandonment, Kelly’s death, and Owens’s inability to protect them proved she wasn’t dreaming. No pinch afforded rescue now.

Owens struggled to speak. “You’re a . . . cold-blooded killer.”

“No witnesses, Captain,” the man holding Owens reminded Carnage.

“Aye.” Carnage’s eyes hardened as he touched his chin reflexively. He regarded Owens and then peered around the boatswain to Chloe and Jane. Slowly, he unsheathed the dagger at his waist. “And that will never change. No—”

“Stop!” Oriana shouted, inserting herself between her brother and Owens. “He won’t say anything to anyone. Will ye, Mr. Owens?” She looked over her shoulder at Owens to gain his promise. “Ye see? I run an honest establishment, Charles. No more blood need be shed this night.”

Carnage growled fiercely. He grabbed hold of Oriana, fisting his fingers in her hair and wrenching her head so far back that Chloe thought the woman’s neck would snap. He stroked her face with his blade, drawing imaginary shapes here and there but not cutting her skin. “Be thankful ye look exactly like our beloved mother.” Lantern light reflected off the silver blade as Carnage drew the dagger’s tip down her neck, this time nicking flesh here and there.

Oriana moaned painfully, her green eyes wild as a stream of crimson trailed down her neck and between her breasts.

“Do
not
interrupt me again,” he ground out. “You’ve got as much to lose this night as I do.” He kissed her forehead, then shoved her away.

Oriana landed against a table, knocking over a few chairs before scrambling to hide behind the bar.

Carnage approached Owens, his mouth twisted in a mocking sneer. “No witnesses.”

Chloe took a step toward Owens, too, but Jane squeezed her arm, trying to stop her. “Let go. We have to do
something
.” Chloe’s voice cracked as she settled her gaze on Carnage.

His eyes glinted wickedly, crowing over her discomfort.

Owens wasn’t going to get another reprieve. Zounds! She couldn’t stand idly by and watch the boatswain—whose only crime was trying to keep them safe—be murdered before her very eyes. She stepped forward, arm poised with the dagger behind her, intent on surprising Carnage and stabbing him in the heart, if the man even had one.

Jane grabbed her arm again. “No, m’lady,” she said, whispering near her ear. “He’ll kill ye.”

Carnage grinned triumphantly, watching them like a bird of prey. But she wasn’t deterred. She broke away from Jane.

Without another word or any hint of humanity left, the smuggler slit Owens’s throat before she could reach him.

“No!” she screamed. She raised her hand and covered her mouth to keep from becoming violently ill as blood jettisoned from Owens’s neck, exposing the dagger she’d been hiding. She was forced to watch helplessly as the boatswain gurgled horribly, struggling to breathe, then his body slid to the floor in a sickening pool of blood.

A rage filled Chloe like none she’d ever known. “My God,” she growled. “What have you done? This is not how my book ends!”

A REPORT has arrived that Captain W and the
WINDRAKER
interrupted a SERMON by Parson T several weeks ago, recovering TEA, TOBACCO, and SPIRITS beneath St. Martin’s. In response to a lack of PASTORAL diligence, a boisterous NOISE erupts from
Sherborne Mercury
!

~
Sherborne Mercury
, 13 August 1809

Walsingham’s feet hit the
Fury’s
deck, and he moved into action so suddenly that he caught Markwick off guard, giving him no time to react. “You claim to love Chloe, and yet after her ship was attacked by Carnage, you sent her to the bastard’s lair?”

“I’ve been there many times. Curse my soul, I didn’t know!”

Walsingham cuffed him, righted him, then hit him again. Pain seared Markwick’s face as Walsingham’s fist hit bone, knocking his head sideways. Markwick shook his head, trying to rid himself of the sting of Walsingham’s assault. But he didn’t fight back. Walsingham was right. He’d done those things without realizing he was putting Chloe in danger, of course, but he’d still done them.

He cupped his chin, working his jaw, then waved off the men who were lumbering behind Walsingham, ready to clobber him over the head in Markwick’s defense. “Hold where you are,” he told them.

His men nodded, calling off their advance, but stood by, ready to provide assistance.

Walsingham peered over his shoulder, then slowly raked his stare over Markwick. “Damn it, man!” Veins bulged out of his face as his rage and impatience mounted. “She loves you! She’s always loved you. Do you know what you’ve done?”

Pye shouted then, organizing Walsingham’s bedraggled crew before the mainmast. The ragtag lot of wounded and able-bodied seamen assembled. Pye called names one by one, listing each man who stepped forward on the ship’s roster.

Pain seized Markwick’s back as the ship’s rail cruelly dug into him. “It was not intentional, Wall, I swear it. I love her, too,” he admitted. “Let’s go get her. Together.”

Walsingham narrowed his eyes, distrust warring with friendship. “I’ve been shot at.” He said it as though that act was a daily occurrence. “I’ve lost valuable men, and now my ship, because of pirates like you.” Here, he built up to the most major unforgivable offense. “I will never forgive you if I lose Chloe, too.”

He blinked. “You bastard! Did you not hear what I just said? And do you not recall that my men risked their lives to save Chloe, her maid, and the rest of the
Mohegan’s
crew?”

“Aye, we did,” Quinn said loudly.

“I put my men in harm’s way for you, too! I had no way of knowing what would happen to
my
ship when I sailed to intercept the
Viper
. I did everything I could to keep
her
from blowing
you
out of the water.”

“And a fine job he did of it,” Pye agreed.

Walsingham drew back his fist to hit Markwick again. “I ought to kill you for deceiving me. You’ve been playing me false for over two years.” His face contorted with rage as if he itched to pummel Markwick into a bleeding pulp. Then he lowered his balled-up fingers, flexing and tightening them as if the maneuver pained him. He yanked Markwick close to his face, his mouth mere inches away. “But I’m not a fool. I’m man enough to admit that if you weren’t who you are, Chloe wouldn’t be alive.”

Markwick grimaced. “Still, no one is safe while Carnage is free to do what he pleases.”

Walsingham reduced pressure on Markwick’s neck and cut him loose. Markwick scrubbed his fingers through his scalp. He turned and slammed his fist down on the rail.

“Deck there!” Arnold hollered down from the crosstrees above. “A light, sir.”

“Heading!” Walsingham and Markwick replied at the same time.

“On shore, Cap’n. Dead ahead. Signaling, sir.”

A disruptive murmur enveloped the deck, and Pye closed his logbook with a resounding
thwack
. “Do ye think it is one of our men, Cap’n?”

“It could be a trap,” Quinn confided.

“Does it make any difference?” Walsingham offered, releasing Markwick to jerk his coat back into place. “Carnage. Has.
My
. Sister. And he will kill her just to spite us, every one.”

Men began to talk at once, and a loud outcry ravaged the quarterdeck. Markwick held up his hands to quiet them. “We’re still afloat. And I intend to make that whoreson pay for what he’s done. But I’ll need your help. Are you with me?”

“Aye!” The crew raised their fists and pumped the air.

“To repay our bravery and courage under fire, Carnage will try to make an example out of Lady Chloe and her maid. Will we allow it, men?”

“No!” they shouted.

Markwick grinned at Walsingham and moved to the masthead, hopping onto a crate as determination and anxiety pumped through his veins. The thought of any harm coming to Chloe tore at his insides, but he would channel the agonizing torment to save her. “Chloe—”

“And Jane!” Quinn reminded him, earning Walsingham’s silent scrutiny.

“Need us to band together as one—
Fury
,
Mohegan
, and
Windraker
combined! Now, who sent Carnage’s ship to the locker?”

His speech was rapidly enlivening them. “We did, sir!”

“Who can—and
will
—get Chloe, Jane, and our men out of the Roost alive?”

“We will!”

“Who will make Carnage pay for the murder of innocents?”

“We will!”

“Then let’s show Carnage what real pirates can do!” Markwick challenged them. “Are you with me, men?”

“Aye!”

Quinn moved to the masthead and began handing out boarding pikes. Men were opening crates and distributing firearms, marlinspikes, and cutlasses.

He turned to the men assembled on the quarterdeck. “Board the launch. We’ve got no time to lose.”

The
Windraker’s
bedraggled men reported for duty first.

Markwick’s crew
suspiciously inspected Walsingham’s men.

“What are you waiting for?” Markwick yelled, his emotions spiraling out of control.

“You heard your captain!” Walsingham ordered, armed and ready at Markwick’s side. “Do I have to remind you that Carnage will kill my sister if he finds out who she is?”

Markwick, however, prayed that Carnage wouldn’t discover Chloe was a preventative man’s sister. If the wrecker suspected she was in love with the Regent and assumed he loved her, he wouldn’t think twice about murdering Chloe to get back at Walsingham or Markwick for attacking the
Viper
, sinking his ship, and killing his men.

Dear God! Markwick staggered backward, grabbing on to the rail. Life without Chloe was inconceivable. Neither of them had even begun to live yet. Was he just like his father after all, ruining people’s lives and promoting misery in the hearts of men? Walsingham would never forgive him if something happened to Chloe, and if the duel on the Downs was any indication, the revenue man was the only friend he might have left.

He raked his hands through his hair. “Move men! Move!” he commanded as he followed Walsingham and twenty men down the battens. “Hurry.”

“We won’t allow Carnage to hurt our captain’s lady!” Brady, one of the
Fury’s
gunners shouted as Markwick arrived to stand beside him in the launch.

“Nor Jane!” Quinn’s lethal tone mirrored the way Markwick felt inside.

With every particle of his being, he wanted to kill anyone who touched the woman he loved, namely Carnage. And devil doubt it, he would!

He trundled over the thwarts and raised his voice again, bracing the shoulders of several members of his crew. “We’ve done things to help make the poor rich. Backbreaking work—
good
work—though we were forced to escape the
Windraker’s
notice.” He assigned Walsingham a crooked brow. “But Captain Walsingham has chased Carnage to the Roost and back. He knows the man’s ways and can lead us well.”

Walsingham gave Markwick a consolatory nod.

“Listen to him.” Markwick gazed into the troubled, confused faces of his men. “If anything happens to me, follow Walsingham’s orders. To victory!”

Walsingham nodded again, then bellowed. “Now row!”

Oars clunked against gunwales as the launch headed
toward shore. The quiet assault gave Markwick the opportunity to consider a lifetime’s worth of castigation and regret. He sat at the bow, penitent, his mind spinning with emotions he couldn’t control, desperation coursing through his limbs. He clenched his fists, itching to kill, to maim, anyone who’d touched Chloe, aching for vengeance as his heart seized with unquestionable panic.

She was innocent, a bloom arching for the sun, eager for warmth and the nourishing unseen rays that feed a fleeting petal. And what had he done to earn her love? Nothing. He’d refused to accept what she offered—herself. He’d denied himself a woman so trusting and loyal that she’d fought like a heathen when he’d forced her to sail to her doom.

He’d done this!

He pictured her in his bed, her body molded against his. She fit him perfectly, her rounded bottom and full breasts divinely made to sate a man’s hunger. And yet he’d fought his baser instincts to make her his due to his friendship with Walsingham and his oath to Blackmoor. Where had that gotten him? No better off than when he’d started. Except now, he didn’t have Chloe, and if they were too late he might never know what they could have shared if he’d only been willing.

He closed his eyes, trying and failing to blot out the nauseating images lumbering through his mind. Since he’d taken on the yoke of the Black Regent, he’d seen more horrific reminders of the depravity of humanity than his father had ever supplied. Now this?

If Chloe died, he’d be worse than his father. No greater horror existed than that.

Waves slapped against the hull as they moved toward the shore. In them, he heard his father’s cackling laughter. Oars ground against the gunwale, denying him any modicum of peace from the irony drilling into his soul.

Pain knifed through him. Chloe was as tenacious as the day was long. Her beautiful soul drew him in, and the irresistible dimple in her cheek only enhanced her allure. But it was her violet eyes glowing with passion that drew him like a moth to a flame. She was gullible, exasperating, fascinating, stunning. Devil doubt it, the most precious, kindhearted soul he knew. He had to save her.

“Thirty feet, sir,” Quinn announced, manning the tiller next to Walsingham at the stern.

“Steady, men,” Walsingham said. “We have no way of knowing what awaits us on shore. Be ready for anything once we hit the beach.”

“Twenty feet.”

His senses revived, Markwick placed a hand on the hilt of his cutlass. Soon his feet would touch the ground and God help the man who’s harmed a hair on Chloe’s head.

“Ten feet.”

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

The launch touched the seabed, and Markwick’s pulse drummed a deafening beat as he examined the shadows littering the water’s edge. Seeing nothing unusual, Walsingham motioned for them to leave the boat.

Soundlessly, oars were withdrawn from their oarlocks and stowed inside the hull. Some men slunk slowly into the knee-deep water and began to wade to shore. Others pulled mooring lines to secure the craft from the tide. Others still, like Markwick and Walsingham, lifted their weapons, fully prepared to hack a trail up the cliff through as many men as needed to reach the Marauder’s Roost.

Quinn dropped to one knee in the sand, reading a trail that led away from the shingled beach and up the cliff top. He rose, took several steps, then stopped abruptly, taking another knee and reaching for something Markwick couldn’t see.

He moved forward to join him. There he spied Fiske’s motionless body, his stomach gutted, his unseeing eyes wide.

“Did his best to fight ’em off for us, he did.” Quinn lifted Fiske’s hand, which was locked on a bloody blade, and inspected it.

“Poor devil.” Markwick scowled. “Leave him. We’ve no time to lose.”

Walsingham joined them. He flagged several men to move on ahead. “Make haste. I’ll lead reinforcements once our boat is secure.”

Markwick turned to go, but Walsingham stopped him. “Save her or you will have hell to pay.”

“I swear on my mother’s grave I will find her or die trying.” Markwick braced himself for what he would find when he reached the summit. His heart hung suspended by a thread that threatened to break.

Walsingham nodded. He couldn’t hide the tremor in his voice as he turned back to the men who were working to tie the launch. “Quickly, men.”

Markwick took a deep breath and looked to Quinn. “Let’s go.”

They raced up the cliff, veering through passages too narrow to navigate by twos and scaling the jagged face that moved upward at a steep incline. How had Chloe and Jane managed to hike up the distance from the beach to the Marauder’s Roost? It was a miracle they hadn’t fallen to their deaths.