The Rebel Pirate (14 page)

Sarah took a step away from the blond Redcoat with the cold eyes, but the fusilier whose pocket she had picked moved to cut off her retreat.

“Leave the girl alone,” said a voice resonant with the unquestioned authority of the quarterdeck.

Sarah turned toward the speaker and saw that it was the naval officer she had earlier observed taking his meal and reading his paper. He was standing in front of his table now, his posture relaxed, but it was a deceptive stance. His hand rested lightly on his hanger sword, an implied but not overt threat.

“Your purse fell out of your pocket when you mauled the lady,” he said. “I suggest you apologize.”

“I will not,” said the fusilier captain.

“That is Trent,” said the boy with the cruel eyes, the one who had wanted to teach Sarah a lesson. A note of caution had entered his voice.

But the fusilier didn’t hear it. “I don’t care who the devil he is. He can go hang. She’s a pickle pocket. A pock picket. Pox on it, you know what I mean.”

“Pickpockets do not dress in travel-stained silk petticoats and lace,” said the man called Trent. “
The lady
is one of the Loyalists the army is in Boston to defend.
You
, sir, are three sheets to the wind, and dropped your purse. Apologize and we will say no more of it.”

A space formed around the fusilier officer. He looked to his friends for support but found none. Finally, he muttered, “My mistake.”

That was good enough for Sarah, but she didn’t move. She did not know where, just yet, to run.

“Good night, gentlemen,” said Trent. His tone was not unfriendly, but he spoke with a remarkable formality, such as only sea captains and other tyrants like the Grand Turk or Great Mogul could project.

The fusilier’s friends took the hint and filed toward the door, but the captain could not resist a parting shot. “Thieving little slut,” he said under his breath.

Steel whispered softly against wood. The sound stopped the soldiers in their tracks. They turned to observe this Trent, whose blade, sharp and well oiled, was now half unsheathed.

“For the love of God, Fairchild,” urged the cruel-eyed boy, “
apologize
. Again. Trent has killed seven men in duels. He has never lost.”

A look of sick realization passed over Fairchild’s face, as detail triggered memory. “I misspoke,” he said. “Apologies.”

A moment later the taproom was empty save for the Wards and their mysterious savior.

“Thank you,” Sarah said.

“Not at all. Forgive me if I am taking a liberty, but you and your family appear to be in some distress. May I offer my assistance?”

“You already have,” she said. “And my older brother will be back shortly. He has gone in search of a friend, a naval officer,” she added, hoping it might afford her some protection from further offers of
charity
.

“Then perhaps you and your father and the young man will do me the honor of sharing some small repast while you wait.”

It might be an innocent offer, but she could not, under the circumstances, take the risk. “No, thank you.”

He cocked his head. “Why do you assume that my intentions are less than honorable?” he asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.

“Because you said that the lieutenant dropped his purse, but you know he did not.”

“Ah. Yes. And you suspect that I only saved you from rape so I could blackmail you into my bed.”

“Something like that.”

“I flatter myself there are easier ways to get a pretty girl under me.”

He was rich and handsome, so that was very likely true; yet she was still wary. “Perhaps you have sordid tastes,” she said, unable to help herself. It was the first real kindness she had been shown in two days, and she spurned it like a beaten dog.

“Or perhaps I saw you defend your brother from the pederast earlier and have spent the evening hoping for an opportunity to make your acquaintance. And offer you my aid, without insulting you with my charity.” He smiled. “If so, it seems I overplay my hand. I’d rather you take me for an officious philanthropist than a crafty seducer. By and large.”

She wanted to believe it. She had been awake for more than a day and a night, and had eaten nothing in forty-eight hours; and there was her father huddled in a corner suffering the pains of his rheumatism.

If she accepted this man’s offer and Benji and Mr. Cheap did not come back—and the chances were looking smaller with each passing hour—she must also accept his advances. She could not pretend naïveté and cry off, not after attempting to pick pockets in front of him.

Such an act, even born of desperation, would put Sparhawk out of her reach forever.

The flexible ladies of Salem would tell her it was a good bargain. He was not only clean, he was handsome. Slighter perhaps than Sparhawk, whose perfection had printed itself in her memory, but just as well-proportioned and just as lean. Rich, almost certainly, to judge by the embroidered silk waistcoat and clocked stockings, and quite senior in the service to judge by the amount of bullion he wore. He was older than she, but his exact age was impossible to determine. There was no silver in his thick black hair. He wore a signet ring on his left hand, but it was the only jewel on his person. He had the robust physique of youth but the sun-crinkled eyes of a seaman. He might be a weathered thirty or a youthful forty.

If the circumstances were different, she expected she would find him attractive.

“Allow me to propose this,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “I have a chamber spoken for upstairs—don’t look so alarmed. I had intended to repair there and take my dinner in private, but did not. Perhaps your father, who appears to be a seafaring gentleman of some years, might enjoy resting there for a few hours. There is a good bed and a fine chair for the young man. And you and I can sit here in the taproom and await your brother.”

She longed to accept. If she did so, if Benji did not return, and this man propositioned her later, she would be in no position to refuse. She must make her decision knowing this.

Appearances, of course, could deceive. Micah Wild had been wholesomely handsome and selfish as sin. James Sparhawk had been too gorgeous to be good; yet he had treated her with nothing but affection and honor. The man before her was as striking as James Sparhawk, if not as sublimely beautiful, and he projected an aura of confidence and command.

It occurred to her then that there was a certain freedom in poverty and obscurity. Micah’s machinations had been about her money and the
Sally
. There was nothing she had to offer a rich and powerful man now besides her body, and there was only so much use one man could make of it in a single night.

She made her decision. “Yes. That would be acceptable.” Not the most gracious of thank-yous, she conceded.

“You still don’t trust me,” he said. “Is it customary in these parts for a man to proposition a lady with her father in the room?”

“Yes,” she said. “Quite. It is called a betrothal.”

He laughed out loud. “So it is. Landlady,” he called. “Ah, Mrs. Brown. Please help the gentleman . . .”

“Captain Ward,” Sarah supplied.

“Captain Ward, up to my room. His son will assist you.”

“Very good, Captain,” she said through clenched teeth, plastering a false smile across her face. Abednego stirred only briefly as they led him to the hall.

Sarah turned to confront her dubious benefactor. He pulled out a chair for her and she sat. It was cushioned, unlike the bench along the wall where she had spent most of the day, and she could not resist sighing with pleasure at the very feel of it, molding to her bones and curves.

“You have a lovely smile,” he said. “I am glad to be the cause of it.”

“The cushion is the more direct cause,” she said, “but I have you to thank for that, Captain.”

He pursed his lips. It would be a womanish gesture on anyone less masculine, but his square jaw and wide, expressive mouth were undeniably male, and undeniably appealing. After her experience with Wild, she had thought her appetite for physical passion forever extinguished. She had been wrong. James Sparhawk had brought desire roaring back to inconvenient life in her.

And now he was missing.

“We have not been properly introduced,” said her rescuer. “My name is Anthony Trent.”

“I’m Sarah Ward, Captain Trent.”

“Alas, I am commander of nothing bigger than this table at the moment. I brought the
Charybdis
over from Portsmouth, but the navy yard fitted her out so shoddily that we had three men at the pumps at all hours, and when we dropped anchor in Boston, her keel split. The Americans will not sell Admiral Graves the necessary lumber to repair her, and she is, I fear, a lost cause. That is my sad story. What is it that brings you to Boston?”

“Rebels confiscated our cargo of tea and burned our house down,” she replied baldly.

“I am so very sorry,” he said. “In England it is believed that all the trouble is in Boston, that these riots are instigated by saucy boys and slaves and city rabble, and that the country people are not infected with sedition. And that it will take only a firm hand, a little hardship, to bring them to heel. This is what Parliament believes, because no one in Parliament has ever been to America. It is a peculiar notion, that a people who have tamed a wilderness should be so much softer than native-born Britons. Ah, Mrs. Brown.” The publican’s abandoned wife had returned. “Will you bring Miss Ward some supper?” Trent asked. “And a glass of brandy. Or would you prefer small beer?”

“Tea, if they have it,” Sarah said. He had proved himself an observant and dangerous man. She must keep her wits about her.

“I’m so sorry, Captain, but we’re done serving. There’s nothing but bread and butter.”
For the likes of these,
her tone indicated.

“There was rabbit on offer at dinner. She will have some of that. Hot. And a pudding. The brown one that you served earlier, with cream. And the same for her father and the boy,” said Trent. His tone brooked no argument.

“Of course, Captain,” said Mrs. Brown, with a smile that told Sarah he would be charged double for it.

The rabbit, when it arrived, was hot and succulent, the meat falling off the bone into a puddle of rich buttery sauce. The pudding was cornmeal scented with nutmeg and cloves and sweetened with molasses that lingered on her tongue.

She licked her sticky lips, and Trent shifted in his chair. He intended to seduce her then. The pudding, she thought with giddy resignation, might just have been worth it. Mrs. Brown cleared the dishes and brought the brandy. Trent poured her a glass and pushed it across the table.

“Go ahead,” he said. “You need it.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said.

He smiled. “If it had been my aim to debauch you, I would have approached you earlier, when you were tired and hungry and afraid for the boy and your father. It would have been easy then, to press a glass on you, and other things.”

He was right. She drank the brandy.

To her surprise he did not take the opportunity to move closer to her when they repaired to the bald velvet wing chairs by the fire, nor did he pour her a second glass. Instead, he asked her about what kinds of books she liked to read—novels, she admitted—what her house in Salem had been like—old but well loved; her eyes watered when she described the keeping room and parlors, gone now—what Ned’s schooling had been so far—Latin, mathematics, geometry, a little Greek—and if he would go for a sailor.

She discovered that Trent had been married and widowed, had no living children, was somewhat older than she had estimated—forty-four, in fact—and feared he might not get another ship in North America, as there were no seaworthy vessels to be had in the squadron.

Then there was a ruckus at the door. Mrs. Brown had locked it for the night. When she lifted the bar and opened it a crack, Benji burst through in an agitated state, bellowing for his sister. He took one look at Trent, Sarah, and the empty brandy glasses and reached for the sword that no longer hung at his hip.

The conclusion he leapt to made her angry. Her stupidity with Micah Wild colored even how her own brother saw her.

“The captain was kind enough to offer Father his room and intervene with the innkeeper when she might have thrown us out,” Sarah said. She had no intention of mentioning the Redcoats or her attempt at petty thievery. She hoped Trent wouldn’t either.

He didn’t. Instead he said, “It is your sister who was kind, to keep an old salt company through a dull evening. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Trent.”

Her benefactor offered Benji his hand.

Sarah saw recognition in her brother’s keen eyes—though none of the fear those young officers had exhibited—and something else: calculation.

“I thank you, then, for your care of my sister,” Benji said. “I had gone to find my friend, Ansbach, but his ship, the
Hephaestion
, is anchored out in the harbor, and it took me all day just to discover this.”

“And will he help us?” Sarah asked. They were in desperate straits if he would not. They could not get into Boston to seek the king’s protection from Micah Wild and the Rebels. Sarah had just antagonized yet more of the king’s officers, and they were defenseless and friendless in a half-abandoned town where only predators roamed at night. They had no safe place to lay their heads.

“I paid a fisherman to take a message to him, but I did not receive a reply,” said Benji. “I fear there is no help for the widow’s son.”

He said it pointedly, as though Trent should take some meaning from this doggerel, and evidently, Trent did.

“Charles Ansbach is like a brother to me,” said her rescuer. “I am certain that he would wish me to open my home to you, and that he would do the same if he were to encounter friends of mine in distress.”

Trent arranged rooms for them for the night in the Three Cranes, as everyone agreed that Abednego should not be moved until morning, and there was the matter of passes to be obtained from the governor. And Sarah still held out a faint hope that Mr. Cheap would return.

Her room at the Three Cranes was clean and private with a stout lock on the door, but she could not sleep that night, worried about what had become of Sparhawk and what Trent might expect from her in exchange for his kindness. But in the morning, seeing her father already much restored, she quelled her own misgivings about the sort of man who would invite a pickpocket into his home. If she had not spurned Micah’s advances, their own home would still be standing.