The Rebel Pirate (5 page)

Ned looked uncertainly at Sparhawk.

“I already know your names, Sarah.” It was the first time he had used it. He’d never thought the name pretty before. “I take it the
Sally
is your namesake. Is that what you prefer to be called?”

“No.”

“Sarah, then.”

“Altogether too familiar.”

“I’m not some old retainer. I can hardly call you Miss Sarah.”

“You may call her Miss Ward,” uttered Ned, with a gravity beyond his years. “But you mustn’t offer her any insult. Then I would be obliged to call you out, even if you did save my life.” A very adult speech, Sparhawk thought. Then the boy added, “Though you would probably win. I am not the swordsman my brother is.”

“Just as well,” advised Sparhawk. “Fancy sword work is not much use in the navy. It’s all hacking and slashing when you board the enemy.”

“I believe we have already had this conversation, Captain. He won’t be entering the navy.”

“No. Not as a common sailor,” Sparhawk agreed. “Although he is a very good hand.” The boy beamed. “But he could go far as a midshipman. I did.”

“You were not a colonial.”

“I was an orphan.” Or at least that was what the world thought. “I had no interest save that of the captain I served under.” That part was true enough.

“But you were still English. It makes a difference.” She gently lifted Sparhawk’s arm and directed the boy to slide a length of muslin under it. Together they wrapped his wrist, using the wooden splint to provide stability, and when they were done he had to agree that he felt altogether more comfortable.

Too comfortable. She dismissed Ned, shut the cabin door, and placed her hands on Sparhawk’s fall front.

He used his good hand to stop her. “There’s no need,” he said.

“I am
not
giving you my ration of grog, so to speak. Your skin is cold to the touch, and your wet breeches are soaking the bed. They must come off, and we must get you warm.”

“Give me a blanket, then. An unmarried girl shouldn’t have to do such a thing.”

She raised one golden eyebrow. “There’s no one else to do it, and you don’t know for a fact that I’m not married.”

“Yes, I do. Mr. Cheap is too old to be your husband, and no sane man would let his wife go to sea on a smuggler’s ketch alone, particularly if she looked like you.”

“Flattery does not sway me, Captain Sparhawk.”

“It isn’t flattery. You’re a charming creature, and I have been on station for three months. The combination produces a rather predictable result.”

His meaning penetrated. “Oh.”

“It would be best if you left me to my own devices now,” he said. “Unless you’re going to offer me your ration of grog . . . so to speak.”

•   •   •

He was teasing, of course. His battered arm had claimed all of her attention up to that point. It was a bad break, but she had known better than to let him see that on her face. It must be set, well and quickly, or he would lose the use of his hand.

But he was as comfortable as she could make him now, and it was impossible to ignore the fine proportions of his body: the broad chest, defined pectorals, narrow waist, and strong, muscled thighs.

He was a very well-made man.

And inconveniently heroic.

It might at one time have been possible for James Sparhawk, master and commander of His Majesty’s brig the
Wasp
, to take more than physical notice of fashionable Sarah Ward, heiress, but misfortune and her own mistakes had altered her prospects irrevocably. A man as accomplished and respected as Sparhawk, no matter what side Sarah took in the present squabble with Parliament, was forever beyond her reach.

She handed him the blanket. “No grog,” she said, as much to herself as to him, because grog
was the only thing they could share, and if she had been able to resist temptation before, everything would now be different. “But I am very grateful to you for saving my brother. Even if it is your fault that he was in the water in the first place.”

She only half meant it. She knew that Sparhawk’s actions had been necessary. It was what her father would have done.

“It seemed a great pity,” Sparhawk said lightly, “after you turned pirate in order to save him, to let the boy drown.”

He made light of his heroism, but Sarah was a mariner’s daughter and had been bred to the sea. She knew the risk he had taken. Few sailors troubled to learn how to swim, because they understood it was unlikely to save them. Chances were that if you went into rough water, you drowned.

She fetched the
Sally
’s log from his bedraggled coat. “You have earned this, at least,” she said, and laid it on the bed beside his good hand.

He let out a deep breath. For the first time since their escape from the
Wasp
she thought about what James Sparhawk would face when he returned to Boston. He had been separated from command of his ship. It was very possible he would be court-martialed.

In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.

And heedless of the danger—both the immediate prospect of drowning and the looming threat of court-martial—he had braved the churning sea and saved Ned. There could be nothing between them. The gulf separating them was too wide for a legitimate connection, and a liaison would only drag her family further into disrepute. She could not give him what he—what
she
—wanted, but she owed Sparhawk something. “The man you want,” she said. “His name is Micah Wild.”

“Thank you,” Sparhawk said. “This will make my reception in Boston a good deal more welcoming.”

If Micah Wild learned of her betrayal, it would make her reception in Salem a good deal less so.

Sparhawk slept deeply. It occurred to him only upon waking that he had done so in a dead man’s bed.

His arm felt stiff and heavy. He was not in pain, exactly, but he ached. His body, clearly, needed more sleep, but something had woken him. That was when he realized that the
Sally
was riding at anchor.

The ship’s log was still lying next to him on the bed. He had lost the schooner as a prize, but he could still return to the admiral with important evidence against the traitors who had been conspiring with the French. If the gold reached Boston, it would further mitigate the circumstances of his capture, and he might escape with only a reprimand. He ought to feel a measure of satisfaction. Instead, he felt unsettled about the girl.

The door opened. It was only when Lucas Cheap entered that James realized how much he had been hoping to see Sarah again.

The grizzled pirate had a brown coat and a crumpled hat in one hand and a jug of water in the other. “You’ll get your fancy blue coat back, but for now you’re to wear this.”

Cheap left him to wash and dress.

The coat was threadbare copper velvet with tarnished gold lace. The wide gored skirts were thirty years out-of-date, and the lavish embellishment eclipsed the martial splendor of Sparhawk’s uniform.

Unexpectedly, for he was not a small man, it was a trifle long and a whit roomy through the shoulders.

He tried the door and found it unlocked. He navigated the main deck successfully in the gloom, but the ladder was tricky with his bound hand, nothing in his stomach for twenty-four hours save seawater and grog, and six yards of figured velvet swirling around his knees. The coat, he fancied, demanded a certain swagger that was difficult to pull off with a broken arm. That he cared so much about his appearance while in the clutches of Rebel smugglers was a testament to the allure of Sarah Ward.

When he emerged on deck it was to a heavy morning fog. There were no lights, and the crew worked in disciplined silence. Sarah stood at the side, wrapped in a heavy wool boat cloak, her honey gold hair piled like silk yarn in the hood, bright against the tar black rigging.

Sparhawk had bedded more than his fair share of beautiful women; brought many of them aboard his vessels, either out of convenience or because his paramours pretended an interest in the workings of a man-of-war. Rarely did such interest last beyond their first faltering steps on deck. Never did the color of the sun filtered through canvas or the quality of light reflected off the water burnish their beauty more brightly. More often the roll and pitch of the ship robbed their bodies of grace and the wind disarranged their careful coiffures.

Not so with Sarah Ward. Aboard the
Sally
she was a jewel in a setting, shown to best advantage by wind-filled canvas and pitch pine spars.

Mr. Cheap observed Sparhawk studying the girl once more, but this time he did not flash his gold-toothed smile. Instead, he dug Sparhawk’s silver gilt button out of a pocket and flicked it high into the air, then caught it. A little something to remember you by, Captain.

Sparhawk took the hint and looked away. They were anchored beside a small island, low and rocky, with bursts of color—wildflowers, he presumed—and noble stands of trees. He turned back to Sarah Ward with what he hoped was an expression of polite interest rather than lecherous perusal. “Where are we?”

“Anchored off Misery Island, near Salem.”

“It doesn’t look particularly miserable.”

“Try being stranded on it for three days in December, during a storm.”

A brisk wind was blowing off the place. “The idea does not appeal.” He buttoned his borrowed coat against the chill.

Her eyes fastened on his injured wrist, where his muslin bandages peeked out from the velvet cuff like a froth of antique lace. “I am sorry about your coat,” she said. “But it would not be safe for you—or us—if you were seen in it. I promise you shall have it back.”

Less one silver button, he feared.

The girl went on. “There is a doctor in town who is a friend. Ned will fetch him to our house.”

“That will not be necessary,” Sparhawk said. “Put me ashore in the ship’s boat, and I will make my way to Boston and have the break attended to there.”

“It cannot wait that long. And you cannot ride or bounce along in a carriage—if you could find one—until the bones have been set.”

“I am not as fragile as all that, Miss Ward. And you promised to release me.”

“In one piece. Thanks to your heroics, I cannot do that without the assistance of a physician,” she said, in the same steely voice she had used yesterday while holding a pistol on him. “If the wrist heals badly, you will be crippled for life.”

“And if I delay, the admiral will want to know what I was doing, and whom I was with. He will want to know more about you and Mr. Cheap and Ned and the
Sally
than I am inclined to tell. You must let me go, for your own sake, Miss Ward.”

Cheap, Sparhawk felt sure, was all for tipping him over the side and being done with him, but Sarah shook her head. “You saved Ned. We are in your debt. You will allow me to discharge it by bringing you to a doctor who can set your arm.”

“Or you will order Mr. Cheap to break the other arm, I take it?”

“If necessary,” she said.

And Sparhawk had no doubt the rogue would do it for her.

Cheap had called her a lady, but such a term only diminished Sarah Ward. Honor, in ladies, was defined by what they did not do. Honor, for Sarah Ward, meant keeping her word and paying her debts and protecting her family.

Cheap guarded Sparhawk with his pistol while Ned and Sarah climbed into the boat. Sparhawk got himself down with rather more difficulty and took a seat on the bench. He watched with fascination as Ned loosed the sail and placed the line in his sister’s hand. Her other was already upon the tiller.

She piloted the little cutter with the ease of a born sailor. Sarah Ward looked the way Sparhawk often felt on the deck of the
Wasp
—in tune with the canvas and wind.

Cheap caught him staring again, and flashed that gold-toothed smile. Sparhawk turned to study the riverbank. He had never been to Salem before. He knew only that the port was firmly in the hands of the Rebels and that before the trouble it had been growing obscenely rich.

Rosy dawn light burned away the fog as the boat made its way upriver, and James saw that it was not a city of brick like Boston. The riverbank was crowded with brightly painted clapboard houses. The sky was a crazy jumble of rooflines ancient and modern, steep and shallow, cedar and slate, and the shore below bristled with a network of private docks and small boats that bobbed gently in the current. It reminded him, with the warm light, bright colors, and flowing water, of Venice.

A town built around the sea, and its commerce. Around domestic and foreign trade. With docks and warehouses handy for merchants who wanted to avoid customs duties.

Sarah had not exaggerated. The admiral
did
drink Dutch tea. Smuggling was
a way of life in America. It had been for fifty years. The colonies would have failed without it. Parliament had been passing laws for decades designed to skim all the profit out of American trade, mandating that colonial goods could be sold only to British merchants—so that British merchants could sell them at a profit to the rest of the world—and that Americans could buy only British goods, cloth and copper and household necessities. At prices that would keep them in perpetual debt, beholden to the English mercantile agents to whom they were forced to sell their fish, their lumber, their abundant rice and grains. It was but a step removed from serfdom, and anyone who thought the colonists—Englishmen themselves—would stand for it was a fool.

For decades the Americans had for the most part been sidestepping these laws, bribing customs agents and sailing under false papers or into the Dutch free ports to trade their goods. It was a thoroughly corrupt system, grown out of corrupt laws, but it had worked. Sparhawk did not care for politics, but even he could see that suddenly trying to enforce crippling tariffs that had been largely ignored for half a century was madness on Parliament’s part.

Here was the result. There was hardly an inch of riverfront unclaimed by private wharves—a smuggler’s best friend—until a great empty expanse loomed up on the left. It was the first brick house Sparhawk had seen in Salem, and it dominated the waterfront. It was three stories tall, five windows wide, and capped by a gaudy copper roof; the green paint on the shutters still looked wet and fresh. An abundance of carved wooden ornament crusted the brick: pilasters and swags and flowers and pineapples, executed with the greatest skill, if not the most restrained taste. And that was just the back. He could only imagine how elaborate the façade might be. A wide manicured lawn and garden ran down to a pebbled beach—the stones white, regular, and carefully raked.

“Good God,” Sparhawk exclaimed. “What nabob lives there?”

“Micah Wild,” Sarah said tonelessly.

Ned opened his mouth to speak, but Sarah shook her head, and Sparhawk’s earlier, disturbing suspicions became certainties. There was more to Micah Wild’s treachery than a chest of French gold.

•   •   •

Sarah did not want to speak of Micah Wild. Even now, she could not look at his house—the house he had built for her—without feeling her chest constrict. She must have a serious word with Ned about the virtues of discretion. Their older brother’s troubles and her relationship with her former betrothed were none of Captain Sparhawk’s business. And pity was the last thing she wanted from him.

They reached their tiny dock before the river really began to stir. She dispatched Ned to the doctor and bustled Sparhawk into the house as quietly as possible. He was obviously in pain—though he refused to admit it—and she hoped that he was too exhausted to notice the condition of her home.

If he chanced to look in the parlor, he would see that the pale floors were scarred with nail holes and dotted with tufts of wool from the missing carpets. The windows were naked, but damaged plaster marked where the cornices had hung. The pier glasses—sold, like everything else—had printed ghostly shadows on the walls. Only her bedroom and her father’s were still properly furnished. Ned slept on a trundle in the keeping room.

Sparhawk did notice, of course. He could hardly fail to. Even the wallpapers had been stripped and auctioned, leaving the chilly hallway leprous and scabbed. He stopped her halfway up the stairs, placed his good hand lightly over her cold fingers on the banister, and said, “Sarah, what has happened here? You said you owed this man Wild money. This is more than debt.” His eyes traveled over the naked walls and bald floors. “This is desperation.”

“There are worse things than penury, Captain.”

“Yes, but most of them take root there. It is shocking what you will do for a heel of bread if your family is starving.”

He spoke as if from experience, but poverty was different for men. They could support themselves with the work of their hands, sign aboard a merchantman, load and unload cargo at the dock. Women had fewer choices, and if they were reduced to selling their labor outside their home or the confines of a family business, it was often assumed that they sold themselves as well. Still, Sarah would have taken work as a maid or a seamstress and been grateful for it; but thanks to Micah Wild, who had let it be known that he did not want to see his former betrothed scrubbing floors or taking in sewing, Sarah had no choices at all.

She longed to talk to someone about her situation, but there was no one who would understand. Micah hadn’t just jilted her. He’d taken her best friend and confidante from her at the same time. Benji had been away; Ned, too young to comprehend; and her father, too ill to burden with her unhappiness. Her neighbors and friends and school companions were kind but distant, afraid, as well they should be, to put themselves on the wrong side of Micah Wild.

There were things she could not tell Sparhawk, but the bare outline of her story, at least, she could share. “When my father was appointed an agent for the East India Company tea, he thought he saw a safe and legal way to invest his money. A way to ensure my future.”

“So he put his entire capital in the tea,” Sparhawk guessed.

“Yes. When the tea was destroyed in Boston, Wild and a gang of ruffians—they called themselves a Committee of Safety—announced that they would hang as traitors anyone who sold tea in Salem. It’s in a warehouse—two shiploads bought and paid for by my father—down at the dock, rotting.”

“The
Sally
is an extraordinarily fine vessel,” Sparhawk said. “Your father could have leased her out to anyone. Why this Wild?”

“We had already borrowed money from him to keep ourselves afloat. My father would not sign the Rebel articles, so no one would invest in a new voyage with him. Except Micah Wild. He lent us the money to cargo her.”

“And if I had not stopped you,” Sparhawk said, “you would have come home with your musket flint and your French molasses and paid Wild off.”

He was looking up at her with great intensity, his desire to be her champion plain on his face. He would not rise so quickly to her defense if he knew the rest of her story, but she was not obligated to tell it. There was nothing to stop her, just at that moment, from basking in the warmth of his regard.

“Yes,” she agreed. “We would have paid Wild off.” Their fortunes would have been restored, but her reputation could not be repaired.

“What will this man do?” Sparhawk asked. There was no mistaking the concern in his voice. It warmed her, though there was nothing he could do to help.

“Wild is a daring smuggler, and much admired in Salem. Only Elias Derby has more ships or money. And Micah is our own Sam Adams and John Hancock combined. The rich merchants and rabble on the docks love him equally well. He stirs the crowd with appeals to high ideals and common greed. They tarred and feathered a customs agent at his urging. And he has presided over beatings of Loyalists who will not sign the Rebel articles.”

“And you fear what he will do to your family.”