The Lost Gentleman
Margaret McPhee
IS SHE HIS DOWNFALL OR HIS REDEMPTION? Kate Medhurst’s days on the high seas are numbered with the fearsome Captain North on her tail. Once captured, pirate Kate knows she should fight him – should hate him – but she cannot.Captain North is no gentleman – at least, not any more. But his vow to regain his honour has given him a fresh start. Until he confronts Kate and everything changes. Because suddenly breaking his vow seems a small price to pay to save the woman he loves… Gentlemen of Disrepute… Rebellious rule-breakers, ready to wed!
The breath caught in Kate’s throat. She knew who he was. She should have known the minute she set eyes on him.
Kit took the pistol from its holster, turning it in his hand so that he was holding the barrel as he offered her the handle. She inhaled a deep steadying breath, staring at it for a moment before she accepted it from him.
He opened his coat, exposing his chest.
‘Close your eyes if it makes it easier.’ He guided the muzzle to press it against his heart. ‘One squeeze of the trigger and it is done.’
She stared at his heart with determination in her eyes but he could feel how much the pistol’s muzzle trembled against his chest.
The moment stretched between them.
‘Do it, Kate,’ he urged.
AUTHOR NOTE (#ulink_c5a65cd1-5d4a-5fc1-837f-9249139bb8cc)
Kit Northcote (Captain North) and his fate have been present in the background throughout the Gentlemen of Disrepute mini-series. If you are wondering what has happened to this particular disreputable gentleman in the years he has been missing, THE LOST GENTLEMAN will give you the answer.
Kit is undoubtedly flawed, but I hope you will agree that he is a worthy hero, nonetheless, and that he deserves Kate Medhurst as his heroine.
Kate is not your average Regency woman! In writing a romance about pirates set in an era when women were seen as the weaker sex I had a lot of fun turning certain preconceptions on their head.
I sincerely hope you enjoy reading Kate and Kit’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it!
The Lost Gentleman
Margaret McPhee
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MARGARET MCPHEE loves to use her imagination—an essential requirement for a scientist. However, when she realised that her imagination was inspired more by the historical romances she loves to read rather than by her experiments, she decided to put the stories down on paper. She has since left her scientific life behind and enjoys cycling in the Scottish countryside, tea and cakes.
For Nicola Cornick,
whose wonderful Regency romances inspired me to write, and whose company is as wonderful as her books.
With grateful thanks.
Contents
Cover (#u93d998b0-fe83-598f-a03e-fb978da5def4)
Introduction (#u79a3337a-b248-5ad1-9801-e6b2c7af3278)
Author Note (#ub4f079e2-4a54-5ae6-b383-6844c2ef19b4)
Title Page (#u7c7e0114-920c-50f4-86bc-973f604b5fbe)
About the Author (#u28bac464-d821-51be-bbae-0036623389fd)
Dedication (#uf72efc86-76ef-5698-90e2-5fa741cc078b)
Chapter One (#u82493e82-d50b-58f1-ac90-86098baa1afd)
Chapter Two (#ufc87615c-6690-51a0-bdd8-422b4b9e3073)
Chapter Three (#u7eac209d-c7f3-5a64-9e0b-bbbd425c5b4b)
Chapter Four (#ub4710bff-fab2-50aa-89af-fb5d190571f1)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_a0f0017b-9633-5888-8196-d4e1bcb6151e)
May 1812—Caribbean Sea
The sea was a clear green-turquoise silk, rippling and sparkling with crystal-flecked waves. The sky overhead was vast and expansive; the type of sky that only this part of the world held, a vivid never-ending blue, cloudless. It was only ten in the morning, but the sun had already unfurled its bright strength, bleaching the oak of the small American pirate schooner Coyote’s wooden deck pale and baking it.
Kate Medhurst could feel its warmth beneath the bare soles of her feet and was grateful for the shade of the dark awning that stretched over this section of the quarterdeck—that and the cooling sea breeze. It sent the dark silk ribbons of her straw bonnet flicking and dancing against her neck and the muslin of her black skirts hugging her legs, but Kate noticed neither. Her attention was fixed solely on one thing—the ship coming into view in the distance.
There was the sound of a raven’s caw, a slightly sinister call, out of place here in the middle of the ocean.
‘A raven on the mizzen mast. A portent that our luck is about to change,’ one of the men murmured from the deck before her. Kate knew the superstitions the same as every man on the ship. But unlike them she did not touch her forehead, making the sign to ward off evil. She did not believe in such omens, but superstition was a very real thing to most of those who spent their lives on the waves, so she did not mock them.
‘For the better,’ she said, ‘if what is coming our way is anything to go by.’ Through the spyglass she held to her eye she followed the course of the large black-hulled merchant schooner, struggling against the wind.
She snapped the spyglass shut and turned to Tobias, standing by her side. He was a tall man, over six foot in height, with a skin lined and weathered to a nut brown and hair that hung, from beneath his tricorne, in long matted braids interwoven with beads and feathers. His nose was flat from it having been broken in too many drunken fights in the past. With his looks and his faded, frogged frock-coat, Tobias was the very image of what one expected a pirate captain to be, with a temperament to match. He was still staring up at the raven with a vicious look in his eye.
‘She’s flying the Union Jack, but I cannot see her name.’ Kate spoke not to Tobias, but the small, sturdy older man standing on her left-hand side—Sunny Jim. The bandanna wrapped around Sunny Jim’s bald head had once been red, now it was a grubby faded pink, pale in comparison to the mahogany-darkened leather of the skin of his face and neck. She passed him the spyglass. ‘Can you?’ She frowned, knowing the name of every British ship she had ever attacked.
Sunny Jim frowned even more than usual, shaking his head as he passed the spyglass to Tobias for appearances’ sake. ‘Not yet, ma’am.’
‘What does a name matter?’ Tobias asked as he peered through the glass.
‘Probably nothing.’ But it bothered her more than the large black bird that still sat on the mast top watching them.
At the sight of the ship, Tobias grinned, revealing his missing front teeth. His gold-hoop earring glinted in the sunlight and reflected golden dots of light to dance upon the tattoo inked upon his neck. ‘Nice,’ he hissed.
‘A straggler from the merchant convoy that passed at dawn, no doubt,’ she said.
‘Fallen behind, all alone, without the protection of those mean, son of a gun, Royal Navy frigates.’ Sunny Jim almost managed a smile. ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. We can’t leave her out there all on her own now, can we?’
‘We certainly cannot,’ Tobias agreed. ‘We should slit their English throats.’
‘There will be no slitting of throats.’ Kate exchanged a glance with Sunny Jim, then shot Tobias a fierce curbing look.
Tobias’s upper lip curled. ‘You are too soft on them.’
‘Not soft at all,’ she countered. ‘Hit them in their pockets and leave them alive to bear the pain and witness to the fact that America’s seas are just that. America’s. It is enough.’
‘And supposing I disagree?’ He looked at her with angry challenge in his eyes.
‘Again? You seem to be disagreeing with me over much these days. This is not the time to be having this discussion. We will deal with it when we get back to Tallaholm. For now, you are on my ship, under my command and you do as I say.’
‘Do I? When so many think I am Coyote’s captain?’ He stepped closer, trying to intimidate her.
‘You do, you young cur,’ Sunny Jim said with soft deadly menace and pulled his cutlass free from its scabbard. ‘You would do well, Tobias Malhone, to remember that you’re a nobody playing a part. There’s only one true captain of this ship and, for all your fancy coat, it ain’t you. So if the Captain says it’s enough then it’s enough. Comprendez?’
Tobias gave a sullen nod and backed off from his challenge, for now. ‘If you say so, Captain.’ He placed just a slight sneering emphasis on her title.
‘I do.’ She met his gaze unflinching. ‘Are you going to be a problem for me today, Tobias?’
He looked at her for a long second before answering. ‘No.’ He sneered at her. ‘Not today.’
She understood well the implication. Not today, but another. But unbeknown to Tobias, the problem would be gone by then. ‘Then we can get on with the job at hand. They are low in the water line.’
‘Heavily laden with cargo,’ said Sunny Jim.
‘Our favourite kind of merchantman.’ She turned her gaze from the prize to Tobias. ‘Make ready. Let us see if we cannot lighten the merchantman’s load a little to speed her on her way.’
‘Aye-aye, Captain,’ Tobias said softly and without the cynicism this time. He grinned almost to himself, then spoke more loudly to the men who stood poised and waiting, ‘Take her about, boys, we’ve got a date with an English merchant schooner.’
There was a raucous cheer of approval, before the small loyal crew raced to action. Kate pushed her worries over Tobias to the back of her mind for now and watched from her place beneath the awning, with Tobias standing ahead, giving the small orders. The black canvas sails unfurled to catch the wind and the ship began to move.
‘Hoist the flag,’ she commanded.
A smile curved her lips as Coyote sped towards her prey.
* * *
Kit Northcote, or Captain North as he now went by, snapped his spyglass shut and slipped it into the pocket of his faded leather coat. The coat had once belonged to a pirate, now it was worn by someone markedly different—someone leaner, harder, honed; although he still wore the black shirt beneath, the shabby buckskin breeches and his tall boots.
‘They are coming.’ His gaze was fixed on the distant ship.
‘Is it La Voile?’ Reverend Dr Gabriel Gunner, his friend, asked.
‘The hull is a single black-striped sienna brown, the sail is black, and she is flying the Stars and Stripes as well as La Voile’s own flag.’
‘A skull with a mouth that is the smiling curve of a cutlass painted red with dripping blood. He is artistic. You have got to give him that.’
‘I will give him more than that when he arrives.’
Gunner laughed. ‘The captain is going to get the nice little surprise that he deserves. Does he think he can just keep attacking British merchantmen and get away with it?’
‘I expect that is exactly what he thinks.’
‘Do you know that La Voile is thought to be single-handedly responsible for reducing British transatlantic trade by almost twenty per cent? How can that be? How is it even possible?’ Gunner asked. He was tall and surprisingly slender for a man who had spent many years at sea. Freckle-faced and with hair that in colder climes was red, but now in the bright sun of the waters off the Gulf of Mexico was golden beneath the straw hat he always favoured. He had clear, honest blue eyes and long bony fingers that could wield a prayer book, scalpel and cutlass with equal precision.
‘La Voile operates under the protection of both a pirate overlord and authorities who turn a blind eye to his illicit actions. He has one vessel and a small loyal crew—low costs, tight control. He hits fast and hard. Takes what cargo he wants and leaves the merchantman and crew intact and in situ—a novel concept in the pirate world. He’s clever. Clever enough to hit only easy targets and leave the big well-defended jobs to others. Clever enough to find the inevitable stragglers every convoy leaves behind. And clever enough to avoid being caught despite the best efforts of His Majesty’s navy.’
‘Lucky for us,’ said Gunner.
‘Very lucky,’ agreed Kit and thought of the astronomically large sum they were being paid to do this job.
La Voile’s ship, Coyote, was no longer a speck on the horizon. ‘My, but he is fast.’ Gunner spoke aloud what Kit was thinking.
‘Almost as fast as us,’ said Kit.
Gunner smiled. ‘Do we take him dead or alive?’
‘Alive,’ said Kit. ‘The bounty is higher. They want to make an example of him and hang him in irons themselves. Be gentle with this particular American pirate, Reverend Dr Gunner.’
‘If you insist, Captain North.’
The two men exchanged a wry smile of understanding.
The crew on the deck hurried about as if in panic, feigning a ship that was trying to escape the jaws of a predator. The Union flag fluttered from the jack, its red, white and blue crosses and diagonals clear in the Caribbean sunlight. Men appeared as if they were trying to adjust sails.
‘Is everything ready?’ Kit asked.
‘Exactly as you specified.’
Kit gave a nod and, slipping the spyglass from his pocket once more, studied the black-sailed Coyote as she closed the distance.
‘Interesting,’ he murmured and focused on the three figures standing at the ship’s helm beneath the black awning. ‘They appear to be arguing over a woman.’
‘A woman?’ Gunner screwed his face in disbelief.
‘And a respectable looking one at that.’
‘A hostage?’
‘She is neither bound nor gagged.’
‘Abducted,’ pronounced Gunner.
‘More likely.’ Kit could see the distinct threat in the body language of the taller pirate towards the woman. The sunlight glinted on the steel of both men’s half-drawn cutlass blades.
‘Is La Voile one of them?’
‘I believe so. Look for yourself.’ He passed the spyglass to Gunner that he might study the three figures.
‘How big a fall in the bounty if we deliver him dead?’
‘Enough.’
‘You convince me, but I cannot deny that I would prefer a more personal approach to the spilling of his blood.’
The two men stood together on the deck of Raven and waited for La Voile to step into their trap.
* * *
It was the sight of the captain of the merchant schooner that sent the first shiver of apprehension rippling down Kate’s spine. There was something about the dark steady focus of his eyes that reminded her of the unnerving stare of the raven that had sat overhead on the mizzen mast not so long since. She pushed the absurd thought from her head and tried to ignore the unease that hung about her like a miasma in the air. This was a hit, just like any other, she told herself, but her eyes checked again for long guns, despite the spyglass having already told her they were absent.
‘Not a gun in sight,’ said Tobias as if echoing her thought. ‘Not a hint of resistance. They are yielding just like all the rest of the British yellow bellies. Cowards! For once I wish they would give us a real fight!’ He spat his disgust on to the deck.
‘Unarmed and faced with our long guns pointing straight at them? Don’t be a fool, Tobias. We should be thankful that their common sense makes things easier for us,’ she said.
Coyote’s long guns had that effect on the British merchant ships Kate selected, allowing an easy progression to locking the two ships together by means of grappling hooks before throwing down the boarding planks. The nameless ship was no exception.
Kate’s crew followed the same procedure, the same routine they were so practised at they could have undertaken it with their eyes shut. She watched the Tallaholm men disappear down the merchantman’s ladders to her cargo deck. All they had to do was take their choice pick of the goods being carried and Coyote could sail away. Same as ever she did. Easy as taking candy from a baby. Yet that same unfamiliar apprehension and anxiety pulled again at Kate, stronger this time.
Her gaze scanned over the merchantman’s deck, finding nothing out of the ordinary, before returning to the ship’s captain once more. There was something about him, something she could not quite figure out. She examined him more closely. He was lean of build with that stripped, strong look that came from years of hard manual work. She could tell by the way his shabby faded coat sat on his broad square shoulders, from his stance, and the way the shadows cast from his battered old tricorne hat revealed sharp cheekbones and a chiselled jaw.
Under his hat his hair was dark, and his skin had the golden tanned colouration of a man who had spent time at sea. Beneath his coat she could see a shirt and neckcloth, both black as any pirate’s. Buff breeches were tight on muscular legs. On his feet he wore leather boots that had once been brown, but were now salt-and sun-faded to a noncolour that defied description. The long scabbard on his left hip was empty. Its sword lay with the other weapons her men had taken from him and his crew, thrown in a paltry pile on the deck before them. The tip of young John Rishley’s sword hovered close to the captain’s chest, should any of his crew decide to defy their captors. John had proven himself a valuable member of Coyote’s crew, but Kate still wished Tobias had sent an older, more experienced member of her crew to hold the merchantman’s captain.
All of these thoughts and observations took place in seconds, her gaze absorbing it in one swift movement before returning to his eyes. Dark eyes beneath the brim of that hat. Eyes that were looking right back at her. The shiver ran over her skin again. Someone walking over her grave, her grandmother would have said. She did not break the gaze, because it was his eyes that were ringing every warning bell in her body. There was something about those eyes of his. What was it...? As she stared into them, she realised.
The captain did not look like a man who was nervous for his life or his livelihood. There was nothing of fear in him, not one tiny bit. His stance was relaxed and easy, too easy. There was an air of quiet, almost unnatural calm that she could sense even across the distance that separated them—him on the deck of the merchantman, her watching from beneath the awning on Coyote. What she saw in that resolute, unflinching dark gaze of his was cold, hard, very real danger. She glanced at Tobias.
‘Something is wrong. Get the men out of there.’
‘What...? Hell, woman, nothing’s wrong.’ Tobias was looking at her in disbelief, as if she had run mad.
‘Do it,’ she insisted.
He glared at her but, at last, grudgingly gave the command.
But it was too late. In that tiny second everything changed. It happened so fast that there was nothing she could do. One minute the situation aboard the merchantman was quiet, controlled, run of the mill, the next, all hell had broken loose. The British produced weapons, and such a host of weapons that she had not seen aboard any mere merchant schooner before. They fought, hard and fast and with an expertise that surpassed Coyote’s crew. It was over almost as soon as it had begun. Easily handled, so that within a minute her crew on the deck of the merchantman were lying face down on its deck; all save young John Rishley, who was being held like a shield before the dark-eyed captain, the boy’s head pulled back to expose his pale vulnerability. A cutlass now glinted in the captain’s hand, as the wicked curve of its blade pressed against the youngster’s throat.
‘Sweet heaven!’ Kate whispered beneath her breath as her blood ran cold at the sight.
At that moment the rest of the British emerged from the schooner’s lower deck and cargo hold. Her men, who had ventured down there for the prize, were being led, bound and gagged.
It was not a situation in which Kate had ever found herself before. Her mind was whirring, her eyes flicking this way and that, seeking a means of escape for them all, but there was nothing. No way out—not with the merchant captain’s blade hard against John Rishley’s throat, if the man really was just a merchant captain, because Kate had seen a lot of British merchant captains, but never one like him. The boy was nineteen years old. Kate knew his mother and his sisters, too. His Aunt Rita taught Sunday School back home in Tallaholm. And Kate had sworn to them that she would do all she could to keep the boy safe. Now a British blade was pressed to his throat and the sight of it stirred such dark terrible memories that almost paralysed her with fear.
He frogmarched John Rishley before him, crossing the boarding plank over which Coyote’s crew had walked without the slightest suspicion of what was awaiting them on the other side. A lanky fair-haired fellow, who wore the robe and collar of a priest, followed in his wake.
‘When did you add abducting women to piracy, La Voile?’ The merchant captain’s gaze was fixed on Tobias. His English accent sounded foreign to her ear, but even so she could hear there was something educated about it. His voice was low-toned, serious, unemotional.
They thought her abducted? She opened her mouth to tell him the truth, to step up to the mark and own responsibility, for everything about him told her he was not just going to let Coyote and her crew go. There was a blade at a boy’s throat. This was serious. The masquerade was over.
But Tobias stepped forward first. ‘Who the hell are you to question me?’ he growled, donning the role of the captain he was coming to believe he really was.
As she and Tobias and Sunny Jim watched, the raven flew down from its perch high on the top of the mast, to land gently upon the merchant captain’s shoulder. He did not bat an eyelid at the raven’s presence. The bird sat there quite happily, preening its black feathers that shone blue in the sunlight, as if it were his usual perch.
The breath caught in Kate’s throat. She felt her heart kick, then gallop fast. Her stomach dropped right down to the deck beneath her feet. Not a merchant captain, after all. She knew who he was. She should have known the minute she set eyes on him.
‘He is the one they call North.’ Her throat was so dry that her voice sounded husky. Because she knew in full the implication of the man standing before them with his sword ready to slit John Rishley’s throat—for her crew, and for herself.
‘Lord help us!’ Sunny Jim whispered on her left-hand side.
She could hear the murmur that spread through her crew, could see the widening of their eyes, could hear someone beginning to pray.
Lord help them indeed.
Those dark eyes turned their attention to Kate. Now that she knew who he was she could have retreated from that gaze, but her pride would not let her.
‘At your service, madam,’ he said, and gave her a tiny bow of his head before returning his gaze to Tobias. ‘Let the woman go.’
Tobias laughed. ‘You can have her...if you leave my ship.’
‘I will leave your ship.’ North smiled and it was a smile that was colder and more cutting than other men’s glares. ‘You are the pirate La Voile?’
‘I’m La Voile, all right.’
‘Good,’ said North. ‘I would not want to take the wrong man.’
‘Like hell am I coming with you!’
North pressed the blade harder against John Rishley’s neck. ‘You want me to slit his throat while you watch? Or will you yield to spare him?’
Kate had to press a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out. Her heart was racing. She felt sick with fear and horror and rage. As her hand tightened against the handle of the long knife hidden beneath her skirts, she felt Sunny Jim’s grip around her wrist.
‘Don’t!’ he whispered fiercely. ‘Let him think you abducted. There’s too much at stake, Katie.’ The old man’s slip of the tongue, to use her girlhood name, showed just how serious the situation was. His crinkled pale blue eyes stared meaningfully into hers, reminding her of exactly how much was at stake both here and back at home in Tallaholm.
‘Go ahead. Slit it.’ Tobias grinned and shook his head, an excited expression on his face. He glanced down at the long blade of his cutlass, as if watching the way the sun glinted on the sharpness of the steel. Then suddenly with a great swing of his cutlass he ran at North, yelling, ‘But I’ll never yield to you, you English dog!’
‘No!’ Kate screamed, knowing Tobias’s foolhardy action would cost John Rishley his life.
It happened so fast that she could not have told how. One minute John Rishley was North’s shield, the next he had been thrown, alive and well, into another British grasp and a single slash of North’s blade had felled Tobias. She could see the dark stain spreading rapidly across Tobias’s chest, see the blood growing in a glistening pool on the scrubbed wooden deck beneath him.
Shock stole her breath.
The silence that followed was deafening. The seconds seemed to stretch.
Nobody moved.
Nobody spoke.
Kate stared. Tobias’s eyes were still wide open, dead and unseeing, staring with the same shock that she felt freezing like ice through her blood.
The priest, who seemed to be North’s second-in-command, walked over to where the body lay. Crouching down, he touched his fingers against Tobias’s neck.
‘Dead as a doorpost, I’m afraid,’ he pronounced softly, and gently swept the man’s eyes shut before murmuring the words of a final prayer and getting to his feet.
‘More is the pity. But we’ll take him dead just the same.’ North gave a nod.
With incredulous horror Kate watched as four of the British crew lifted Tobias’s body between them and carried it across the boarding plank to the bigger schooner.
North’s eyes shifted to where Sunny Jim’s hand still held Kate’s wrist. ‘Release her to us.’
‘And if we don’t?’ Sunny Jim demanded. His grip was gentle for all the ferocity of the part he was playing before North.
North’s gaze flicked coldly to Tobias’s lifeless form before returning to Jim’s. ‘We’ll kill every last man amongst you.’
She did not doubt North’s assertion, neither did anyone else. Every pirate and privateer who sailed these oceans had heard the stories of North the Pirate Hunter.
Sunny Jim’s eyes slid momentarily to Kate’s in veiled question. He would fight for her to the death, they all would, but she could not allow that, not all these men who had served her so loyally.
‘I am not worth one man’s life, let alone thirty,’ she answered. ‘Surely you see that?’ Words that could be those of a prisoner held against her will.
But Sunny Jim’s expression was stubborn. He had known both her grandfather and father and he was not a man to cut and run.
‘Give us the woman and the rest of you may go free,’ said North.
‘You think we would believe a story like that?’ Sunny Jim sneered at North.
‘You should—it is the truth. I have no interest in bringing in Coyote and her crew as a prize. My commission is purely for La Voile.’
She felt the hope that North’s words sent rippling through her crew. They did not fully believe him, but they wanted to. She knew it with a certainty, because she felt the same way, too. North could not be trusted, but, if he wanted, he could kill them all anyway and take her just the same.
Sunny Jim knew it, too. But still he wavered.
‘You must yield me to them,’ she said, as if pleading with her captor, when in truth it was the command he needed to hear.
He gave a nod, his gentle old eyes meeting hers in understanding and salutation. ‘If you want her so much, take her. And let us pray you do not lie, Captain North.’ In the role he was playing Sunny Jim threw her hard towards North.
The force of it made her stumble and almost fall, but North caught her and in one movement swept her behind him.
‘Oh, I do not lie, Mr Pirate. You need have no fear of that.’ She could hear the ironic curve on his mouth as he uttered the cool words.
But he was not smiling when he glanced at the priest. ‘Escort the lady to safety, Reverend Dr Gunner.’
The priest gave a nod and when he gestured ahead, she had no choice but to follow him, leaving behind Coyote and safety, and step with feigned willingness across the breach that divided her world from his.
* * *
On the British ship Kate stood by the bulwark, her grip so tight upon the rail that her fingers ached, watching them, watching North, watching what would come next.
Those crew who had been captured upon North’s ship were returned across the plank to Coyote. All of her men were lined up there, on their knees, most still bound and gagged. There was nausea in her stomach, an icy dread in her blood.
‘Will he kill them?’ she asked the priest, her eyes lingering on the scene on Coyote’s deck.
‘North does not lie. He will not take their lives, ma’am.’
But priest or not, Kate could not trust the words.
North moved.
Her heart missed a beat.
But he did not spray the deck red with blood as she feared. Instead, true to his words, he sheathed his cutlass and walked away, leaving them there as he returned to his own ship. In less than a minute all physical connections between the two ships had been severed, the boarding plank and pricey grappling hooks sent plummeting into the waves without a second glance.
As North’s ship manoeuvred carefully away from Coyote, Kate’s gaze held to Sunny Jim’s, but neither of them dared show one single sign. Behind her she could hear the creaking of the rigging and the crack of unfurling canvas and the movement of men busy at work. And before her, the distance of the ocean expanding between them as North took sail.
She was aware that North and the priest were somewhere behind her, but Kate did not look round. She just stood there and watched while the wind seemed to speed beneath North’s sails to leave Coyote further and further behind.
Until, at last, the dark shadow fell across her and she knew that North had come to stand at the rail by her side.
One second. A deep breath.
Two seconds. She swallowed and hid all that she felt.
And only then did she turn to face the man who was the infamous pirate hunter North.
* * *
Those dark eyes were looking directly into hers with a calm scrutiny that made her nervous.
‘North, Captain Kit North,’ he offered the unnecessary introduction. ‘Under commission from the British Admiralty to bring in the pirate La Voile.’
The hesitation before she spoke was small enough not to be noticed. ‘Mrs Kate Medhurst,’ she said, using her real name because it would mean nothing to him and because successful deception was best attained by sticking close to the truth.
He took her hand and just the feel of his fingers against hers made her shiver.
‘You are cold, Mrs Medhurst, now that our speed increases.’
She hated that he had seen it, that tiny sign of weakness, of fear. ‘A little,’ she agreed by way of excuse.
Before she could stop him he slipped off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders.
She could feel the warmth of him still upon it, smell the scent of him too much in her nose—leather and soap, sunshine and masculinity. It surrounded her. It enveloped her. Bringing him close to her, making it feel like a gesture of intimacy that she did not want to share with any man, least of all him. She itched to tear his coat from her, to dash it at his feet, this hard-eyed handsome Englishman who was her enemy in more ways than he could imagine. But Kate knew she could not afford to yield to such impulses of emotion and controlled herself as carefully as ever she did.
‘Thank you,’ she said, but she did not smile.
‘You are safe with us.’
Safe? The irony of the word would have made her laugh had the situation not been so dire. ‘Even if I am an American? And there is—’ she hesitated in order to choose the word carefully ‘—disharmony between our two countries?’
‘Even if you are an American and there is disharmony between our two countries.’ There was the smallest hint of a smile around that hard mouth. ‘You are welcome aboard Raven, Mrs Kate Medhurst.’
‘Raven,’ she said softly. Of course.
‘The name of the ship.’
The name that, had she seen it, would have made all the difference in the world.
‘They said there was no name upon your ship,’ she said.
‘La Voile was not meant to see it.’
‘It was a trap,’ she said slowly, her blood chilling at the extent of his cold calculation.
North smiled. ‘The name would have tipped him off.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I am sure it would have.’ And knew it for the certainty it was. ‘Why take just La Voile and not Coyote and the rest of her crew? Why leave behind the greater part of the prize?’
‘I am not interested in prizes. My commission is for La Voile and only La Voile.’
‘I did not realise he was so important to the British. Surely compared to Jean Lafitte, he is just small fry?’
‘He is a big enough burr and one with the potential of becoming a rallying anti-British figurehead, much more so than Lafitte. Admiralty wish to cut off the head and leave the body in place to tell the tale, leaderless and ineffective. Which suits me. One man is easier dealt with than an entire crew and ship,’ he said.
‘So it seems.’ But things were not always as they seemed.
Her gaze held his for a moment longer, looking danger in the eye and seeing its ruthless, dark, infallible strength. She swallowed.
The tiny moment seemed to stretch.
‘Reverend Dr Gunner will escort you below to a cabin where you may rest. If you will excuse me, for now.’
She shrugged off his coat and gladly returned it.
A bow of his head and he was gone, moving across the deck to speak to his men.
Kate felt the tension that held her body taut relax, letting out the breath she had not known she was holding.
‘Mrs Medhurst...ma’am.’ The priest moved forward to her side.
One last glance of hope and longing out across the ocean to where Coyote and safety had diminished to little more than a toy ship upon the horizon.
The priest saw the direction of her glance and misconstrued it. ‘You really are safe with us.’
‘So Captain North reassures me.’ But if North were to realise the truth of who she was, of what she was... Captain Le Voile, as she always thought of herself. Such a subtle difference from La Voile, but one that was important to her. Le Voile or La Voile, it made no odds when it came to North. Either way she was the pirate captain of Coyote whom he sought.
You really are safe with us.
Kate gave a smile of irony. For what place could be more dangerous than aboard Raven with the deadly British pirate hunter who had been sent to capture her?
It was a sobering thought. She forced it from her mind and, with a nod, followed Reverend Dr Gunner below deck.
Chapter Two (#ulink_9456bce1-cd2d-55ab-9d1a-dbdf34920af3)
‘I put her in my cabin. I’ll sleep on the deck with the men—naturally.’ Within Kit’s day cabin Gunner was lounging in a small wooden chair. The priest pulled a silver hip flask of brandy from his pocket, unstopped it and offered it to Kit as a formality. They both knew that Kit would refuse.
‘There’s a cot in the corner—you are welcome to sleep there.’ Kit was seated in his own chair behind the plain mahogany desk.
‘Are you suggesting I could not manage a hammock?’ Gunner downed a swig of brandy.
‘A man does not forget such things,’ said Kit and thought of the past years and all it had entailed for them both.
‘He certainly does not.’ Gunner grinned. ‘They will bury us in those damned hammocks.’
Kit smiled. ‘No doubt.’ He moved to the large rectangular window, looking out over the sea. ‘How is our guest?’
‘Resting. She has a remarkable resilience. Most women would be suffering the vapours at the mere suggestion of the ordeal she has endured. But maybe the shock of it has not hit home yet. Delayed emotional response following trauma—we have both seen it.’ Gunner came to stand by his side and met his gaze meaningfully. They both remembered the horrors of the year in that Eastern hellhole.
‘Has she any signs of physical hurt?’
‘None that I could see. I did explain I was a physician and enquired whether she had need of any assistance, but she declined, saying she was well enough.’
‘A lone woman amongst a crew of pirates... How well can she be?’ said Kit.
Gunner’s mouth twisted with distaste. ‘I am rather glad that you killed La Voile.’
‘I am not. They would have taken his life just the same in London.’ And Kit would have welcomed the extra money that would have paid.
‘Always the money,’ said Gunner with a smile.
‘Always the money,’ agreed Kit, and thought of what this one final job would allow him to do. All the waiting and planning and working, and counting every coin until the target was in sight, and the time was almost nigh. He pushed the thought away, for now. ‘I will have the day cot set up for you and space cleared for your possessions and clothes. If you will excuse me, I have got work to do.’
‘And always work,’ said Gunner.
‘No rest for the wicked.’ There was a truth in that glib phrase that few realised, Kit thought wryly. No rest indeed. Not ever. ‘La Voile is dead, the job is done. We go back to England and claim our bounty.’
‘And Mrs Medhurst? We cannot touch port in America. We’d be running the gauntlet with the flotilla of French privateers and pirates patrolling their coast. Even with all Raven’s advantages, she cannot match such numbers.’
Kit smiled. ‘We will drop the woman at Antigua when we victual. Fort Berkeley there will organise her return home.’
‘A good plan. But it has been so long since we were in the presence of a respectable woman, one cannot help speculate how her presence would have lifted the journey home. It would certainly have kept the men on their best behaviour.’
‘You are too long from home, my friend,’ said Kit drily.
Gunner gave a smile. ‘Perhaps.’ He was still smiling as he left the cabin, closing the door behind him.
Kit returned to his desk and the navigational charts that lay there. But before he focused his attention on studying their detail he thought once more of Kate Medhurst with her cool grey eyes: proud, appraising, wary and with that slight prickly hostility beneath the surface.
Disharmony between our two countries. He smiled at that line and wondered how a woman like her had come to be abducted by a shipload of pirates. And even more, how she had fared amongst them. For all the strength of character that emanated from her, she was not a big woman. Physically she would not have stood a chance.
Maybe Gunner had a point when it came to La Voile. Kit thought of his blade slicing through the villain’s heart. Maybe it was worth the gold guineas that it had cost him, after all.
He gave a grim smile and finally turned his attention to the charts that waited on the desk.
* * *
Kate forced herself to stop pacing within the tiny cabin in which they had housed her. She stopped, sat down at the little desk and stilled the panic roiling in her mind and firing through her body. Stop. Be still. And think.
Her eyes ranged over the assortment of medical books, prayer books and the large bible on the shelf fixed to the wall above the desk. On the desk itself were paper, pen and ink and a small penknife. She lifted the knife and very gently touched a thumb to test the sharpness of the blade. The priest kept the little knife razor sharp, potentially a useful weapon, but it was nothing in comparison to her own. The feel of the leather holster and scabbard, and their precious contents, strapped to her legs gave her a measure of confidence.
She would not hesitate to use either the knife or pistol on North if she needed to. Not that she thought it would come to that.
Coyote would come for her. It is what she would have done had one of her crew been taken. Regroup, rearm, follow at an unseen distance, then come in fast for the attack. Sunny Jim would do the same. She knew her men—they would not abandon her.
They would come for her and it was vital that Kate be ready. All she had to do was watch, wait and keep her head down. Not today, perhaps not even tomorrow, but soon. It was just a matter of time before she was back once more on her own ship, maybe even with Captain Kit North as her prisoner. She smiled at that thought. The Lafitte brothers, the men who oversaw most of the mercantile, smuggling, privateering and pirate ventures around Louisiana, would pay her well for him. With North off the scene it would be a great deal safer for them all. She smiled again, buoyed by the prospect.
She pleaded fatigue that night so as not to have to join them for dinner, eating instead from the tray he sent to her cabin. Coyote would not come tonight, and as for North... An image of him swam in her head and she felt nervousness flutter in her stomach...she would defer facing him until tomorrow.
* * *
But of North the next morning there was no sign. It was the priest, Reverend Dr Gunner, who sat with Kate at breakfast and the priest who offered her a tour of Raven. She accepted, knowing the information could be useful both to Coyote and to all her fellow pirate and privateer brethren.
‘I could not help noticing that Captain North was not at breakfast.’
‘North does not eat breakfast. He is a man of few needs. He takes but one meal a day.’
‘A man of few needs... What else can you tell me of the famous Captain North?’
‘What else would you like to know?’ He slid her a speculative look that made her realise just how her question had sounded.
‘All about this ship,’ she said.
Reverend Dr Gunner smiled, only too happy to oblige.
Raven was bigger than Coyote, but the lower deck was much the same. There were more cabins and the deck contained not cargo, but long guns. Better gunnery than Coyote carried. So much better that it made her blood run cold. Two rows of guns, some carronades, others long nine pounders, and a few bigger, longer eighteen pounders, including two as bow chasers, lined up, all neat on their British grey-painted, rather than the American red-painted, wheeled truck carriages and secured in place by ropes and blocks. There were also sets of long oars neatly stored and ready for use, something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
‘You are oared,’ she said weakly.
‘They do come in handy at certain times when the wind does not blow. And we are sufficiently crewed to man them easily enough.’ The priest smiled. ‘We are also carrying extra ballast to make us lie low in the water,’ he explained. ‘To give the illusion we are heavily laden with cargo.’
‘You were deliberately posing as a merchantman.’
‘Captain North’s idea. He said that when you have a whole ocean to search for La Voile the easiest thing would be to have him come to us. He said it would work.’
‘And it did.’ A shiver ran through her at North’s cold, clever calculation and how easily and naïvely she had stepped into his trap.
‘It did, indeed, Mrs Medhurst,’ Gunner agreed with an open easy smile as he led her into a room that was lined with wooden and metal hospital instruments.
Her eyes ranged around the room as he spoke, taking it all in, and stopping when they reached the huge sealed butt in the corner. The sudden compassion on Reverend Dr Gunner’s face and his abrupt suggestion that they progress to the upper deck confirmed the butt’s macabre contents: Tobias. She was relieved to follow the priest up the ladder out into the fresh air and bright sunshine. But the relief was short lived.
North was already out on deck, taking the morning navigational reading, chronometer, sextant and compass clearly visible; a man absorbed in his task. The blue-sheened raven sat hunched on his shoulder, as if it were party to the readings.
His shirt was white this morning, not black, and he was clean shaven and hatless, so that she could see where the sun had lifted something of the darkness from his hair to a burnished mahogany. It rippled like short-cut grass in the wind. In the clarity of the early morning light his golden tanned features had a harsh handsomeness that was hard to deny. But even a rattlesnake could look handsome; it did not mean that she liked it any the more.
North saw her then, cutting those too-perceptive eyes to her in a way that brought a flutter of nerves to her stomach and prickle of clamminess to her palms.
He gave her a small nod of acknowledgement, but he did not smile. Indeed, his expression was serious, stern almost. Nor, to her relief, did he make any movement towards her. Instead he turned his attention back to his measurements and calculations.
‘Do not mind North,’ said Gunner with good humour. ‘It is his manner with everyone. He is a man who takes life too seriously and works too hard.’
As she followed the priest over to the stern of the ship, her eyes scanned the ocean behind them and saw the distant familiar shapes of islands across the water, but nothing else.
She leaned against the rail, feel the cooling kiss of the sea breeze, noticing both its strength and direction as she watched the frothy white wake Raven left behind her. Just looking at the ocean, just being on it, never failed to comfort her. Her gaze dropped to the tall lettering that named North’s ship, tall and clear and stark white against the rich black paint of the stern. Raven.
‘There was no name upon this ship when the pirates approached.’ She looked at the priest with a question in her eyes. ‘I am sure of it, sir.’ But was she? Had such a basic mistake brought her to this situation? ‘At least, I thought I saw nothing and I sure was looking to see who you were.’
‘Do not doubt yourself, madam. There was no name for the pirates to see. Look more closely.’
She walked toward the stern and leaned over it to examine the painted name, and saw exactly the device North had used. ‘There is a long black plank, like a frame fixed above the lettering.’
‘Largely invisible from elsewhere. It can be flipped down to cover the name.’
‘How clever.’ So clever that it frightened her.
‘It is, is it not? North is clever.’
‘How clever?’ she asked, needing to know the full measure of the man who was her enemy.
‘Do you know anything of ships Mrs Medhurst?’
‘I do,’ she admitted with a nod. ‘Both my father and grandfather were shipwrights and sailors. There have been sailors in my family for as far back as can be remembered.’
He smiled. ‘Then look up at Raven’s sails and rigging.’
She did as he bid and what she saw stole the words from her tongue. Gone was the tatty patched ordinary canvas found on many merchant schooners, and in their place was a large spread of pristine-looking sails. She felt the prickle of cold sweat at the sight.
‘And our hull is longer and sleeker than most ships of this size. North’s own design. The combination of the hull design and the sail spread allow us uncommon speed and manoeuvrability, making us faster than most pirate ships.’
‘I did not see any gun ports either for the guns below.’
‘Optical illusion.’ Reverend Dr Gunner smiled again. ‘We are carrying eighteen big guns, as well as several small swivel guns.’
Compared to Coyote’s arsenal of eight guns.
‘Our men are drilled to fire one-minute rounds. And—’ he could barely contain his excitement ‘—we have a special powder mix that extends the range of our shot.’
‘Oh, my!’ she said softly.
‘Not to mention our personal weaponry.’ He pulled part of the enormous cutlass from the scabbard that hung from his left hip, to expose a small section of the silver shining blade. ‘It is a special high-tensile steel from Madagascar. There is nothing to match its combined hardness and flexibility. And we carry an armament that would kit out an army. We are the very best, or, depending on whose point of view one takes, the very worst of what sails upon these seas. We can best any pirate.’ He smiled again.
Kate thought of Coyote out there somewhere behind, following Raven. ‘I see.’ She forced the curve to her lips, but inside her stomach was clenched with worry and there was a cold realisation spreading through her blood.
‘Wonderful, is it not?’
Wonderful was not the word Kate was thinking to describe it. The priest was awaiting her reply, but she was saved from having to make one by the arrival of a call that rang out from the crewman in the rigging.
‘Ship ahoy!’
It was the words that until only a few minutes ago Kate had been praying to hear. Now, in view of what Reverend Dr Gunner had just told her, they left her with mixed emotions.
* * *
‘South-south-west.’
Kit scanned the horizon in that direction and saw the tiny spot. Raising his spyglass to his eyes, he trained it hard upon the ship and focused.
He heard the familiar tread of Gunner’s boots strolling over towards him. He heard nothing of the woman, but knew she was there from the reassurances Gunner was speaking to her.
They stood there quietly by his side, the woman between him and his shipmate. Gunner, not wanting to interrupt Kit’s concentration, stood content and quiet in his own meditations.
The silence stretched.
It was the woman who broke it.
‘What do you see, sir?’ she asked.
‘A schooner.’
‘Is it the pirates? The same pirates...?’
He snapped the spyglass shut and turned to look at her. ‘It is difficult to say at this distance.’
He felt that same slight prickle of tension and hostility that emanated from her.
‘Mrs Medhurst is understandably a little nervous,’ Gunner said. ‘I have tried to convince her of our superior strength, but...’ He smiled and gave a shrug of his shoulders.
‘Rest assured, ma’am, if Coyote is fool enough to come after us with vengeance in mind, then, as I am sure Reverend Dr Gunner has already pointed out, we will have disabled her before she is within range to fire her own guns. She has only eight small ones, mainly four and six pounders, nine if you include the swivel gun on the rail, to our eighteen larger.’
‘How can you know that?’ She looked pale in the bright morning sun.
‘I have a very good spyglass.’ He smiled. ‘And I counted.’
She swallowed and did not look reassured.
‘Calm your nerves, ma’am, if La Voile’s crew threaten violence they will go the same way as their captain.’
He saw the flicker of something in those eyes trained on the distant ship before she masked it, something that looked a lot like fear, there then gone.
‘Have I convinced you, Mrs Medhurst?’
‘Yes, Captain North, I do believe you have.’ Her eyes held his and she smiled, but it was not an easy smile. ‘May I?’ Her eyes flickered to the spyglass in his hand.
She could not have known what she was asking. A sea captain did not lend his spyglass lightly. But she stood there patiently waiting, with those Atlantic grey eyes fixed on his. There was no sign of any fear now. She seemed all still calmness, but he sensed that slight tension that underlay her. Her hands were steady as she accepted the spyglass and peered through it, adjusting its focus to suit her eyes. She looked and those tiny seconds stretched.
At last she closed the spyglass and returned it to him, their eyes meeting as she did so.
‘Thank you.’ Her American lilt was soft against his ears. ‘If you will excuse me, gentlemen. I think I will retire to my cabin for a little while, if you don’t mind.’
They made their devoirs.
His eyes followed her walking away across that deck to the hatch, the gentle sway of her hips, the proud high-held head. Despite the faded black muslin, chip-straw bonnet and bare feet, she had an air about her of poise and confidence.
‘She is afraid,’ said Gunner softly.
‘Yes,’ agreed Kit, his gaze still fixed on her retreating figure. She was afraid, but not in the way any other woman would have been afraid. There was a strength about her, an antipathy, and something else that he could not quite work out.
He glanced up to find Gunner watching him.
‘Is it Coyote?’ Gunner asked with just the tiniest raise of his brows.
‘Without a doubt,’ replied Kit smoothly.
* * *
Kate closed the door of the cabin behind her and leaned her spine against it, resting there as if she could block out North and the situation she found herself in.
If La Voile’s crew threaten violence, they will go the same way as their captain. North’s words sounded again in her mind, and she did not doubt them, not for an instant. Not because of rumours or reputations, but because she had seen the evidence with her own eyes.
Her men were coming for her. And they would most definitely threaten violence. Raven’s sails made her fast. But not faster than Coyote.
Sunny Jim was an experienced seaman. He would see the change in Raven’s sails, but he would not see anything that was designed to stay hidden. Not the long-range guns or their number, or the fact Coyote would be hit before she could fire a shot. Not the weaponry aboard, or, worse than any of that, the mind of the man who was a more formidable enemy than any fireside tale foretold.
He would not realise that Coyote did not stand a rat’s chance against Raven.
Have I convinced you, Mrs Medhurst?
He had more than convinced her. She had seen the cold promise in those eyes of his, the utter certainty.
Fear and dread squirmed in her stomach. She thought of Sunny Jim and of how much she respected the old man who had been her grandfather’s friend. She thought of young John Rishley and how he had his whole life to live in front of him. She thought of each and every man upon Coyote. She knew them all and their families, too.
‘Sweet Lord, help them,’ she whispered the prayer aloud. ‘Make them turn back.’
But they wouldn’t turn back. She was their captain. They were coming. She knew it and North knew it, too. If her men reached Raven, their fate was sealed and the knowledge chilled her to the bone.
She couldn’t just let it happen. She couldn’t just let them sail unwittingly to their deaths.
So Kate sat down at the priest’s little desk and she thought and she prayed, but no answer came. And then she remembered the distant islands and how all of the attention of North and his crew would be on Coyote growing steadily bigger. The first tiny hint of an idea whispered in her ear. She knew these waters, all of their layout and what was in them and on them. Any good Louisiana privateer or pirate did. And Sunny Jim was a good Louisiana pirate, too.
It was not the best of plans, she knew that. It was risky. It could go wrong in so many ways. But it was the only plan she could think of, and she would rather take a chance with it than sit here and let her men sail to their doom. Anything was better than allowing their confrontation with North.
Pulling up her skirts, Kate unbuckled the leather straps of her holsters and hid them with her weapons beneath the cot. Then she smoothed her skirts down in place, and, with a deep breath, made her way to the upper deck to wait for the right moment.
* * *
‘We need to veer to the north,’ said Kit. He stood on the quarterdeck with Gunner, the two of them pouring over the navigational chart that covered this area. With one of his men dedicated to watching Coyote full time, Kit could get on with navigating Raven through these waters. ‘Regardless of what the charts say, we do not want to be too close to that cluster of rocky outcrops, or what lies beneath.’
Gunner gave a nod. ‘One cannot always trust the charts and it is better to be safe than sorry.’
‘Bear to larboard, Mr Briggs,’ Kit gave the command to his helmsman. Raven began to alter course ever so slightly, taking her in a broader sweep clear of the rocks.
‘Clearly visible in daylight, but at night, in the dark... I bet there have been more than a few gone to meet their maker by that means.’
The two of them mulled that truth for a few minutes in silence as they watched those dark, jagged, rocky bases ahead. Kit would not mind meeting his maker. Indeed, over the years part of him had wished for death. But not quite yet.
His gaze wandered to Raven’s bow, to where Kate Medhurst had stood for so long, staring out at the ocean ahead of them. Now the spot was empty. He scanned the deck and saw no sign of her.
‘Where is Mrs Medhurst?’ His eyes narrowed with focus.
‘She was right there...’ Gunner stopped. ‘Maybe she wanted some shade from the fierceness of the sun.’
‘Some shade...’ Kit murmured the words to himself and in his mind’s eye saw the dark awning fixed across Coyote’s quarterdeck. Something about the scene niggled at him, but he could not put his finger on why.
‘Probably returned to her cabin.’
‘When the cabins are like sweat boxes and there is shade behind us?’ Kit raised an eyebrow and met Gunner’s gaze. ‘How long has she been gone?’
‘No idea. Could be two minutes, could be twenty. Some time while we were engaged with the charts.’ Gunner was looking at him. ‘Call of nature?’
‘Perhaps.’ But he had a bad feeling. ‘Better to take no chances.’ They both knew he was responsible for her safety while she was aboard Raven.
‘Has anyone seen Mrs Medhurst?’ Gunner asked of the crew.
‘Lady went below some time since,’ Smithy answered from where he was holystoning the deck.
Kit and Gunner exchanged a look and went below.
Kit gestured his head towards Gunner’s old cabin that, for now, belonged to Mrs Medhurst. Gunner nodded and went to knock on the door.
There was only silence in response. Gunner opened the door, then glanced round at Kit with a shake of the head.
‘The head?’ suggested Gunner. ‘I will let you check that one.’ He grinned.
‘You are too kind.’ But Kit didn’t balk from it. He headed to the bow and knocked on the door that led out onto the ship’s head. There was no one outside. But folded neatly and tucked in behind the ledge was black dyed muslin. Kit lifted it out and Kate Medhurst’s dress fluttered like the black flag of a pirate within his hand.
‘What in heavens...?’ Gunner shot him a worried glance.
The two men looked from the dress outside to the open platform of the head.
‘She cannot possibly have... Can she?’ Gunner whispered in horror.
Kit stepped out first on to the ledge of the head with Gunner following behind.
‘Hell!’ Kit had not cursed in eighteen months, but one escaped him now. For there in the clear green water a distance from Raven was Kate Medhurst, swimming smoothly and efficiently with purpose. Oblivious to the two men that stood watching her, and oblivious, too, to the sinister dark shape beneath the water out near the rocky outcrops.
Kit and Gunner’s gazes met and held for a tiny fraction of a second and then they were running full tilt for the upper deck.
Chapter Three (#ulink_83cd3d53-c3ab-59a8-9e51-369220a5ac52)
The water was colder that Kate had anticipated and the distance to the rocks looked further in the water than it had done from up on Raven. The cotton of her shift was thin, but it still caught around her legs and swirled in the water enough to slow her progress. But the dive had been seamless and quiet and she was a strong enough swimmer, taught by her father when she was still a girl. He had seen too many people drown and insisted that it might save her life one day. It might save several other lives, too, she thought wryly, if she made it to those rocks unnoticed and was able to flag down Coyote when she passed.
Each stroke of her arms, and each kick of her legs, was careful and as smooth as possible, trying to avoid any splashing or noise that would draw a stray glance from Raven as she cleared the shadow of the ship.
Quiet and smooth.
Breathe.
Keep going.
The three-line mantra whispered through her head. She did not look up and she did not look back. Instead, she kept her focus fixed firmly on the closest of the group of tiny rocky islands that lay in a direct line ahead. All she had to do was swim to it. North and his crew’s attention would all be to the larboard and stern. Kate was starboard and swimming clear. She would have to be real unlucky for them to see her.
Quiet and smooth.
Breathe.
Keep going.
And then she heard the shouts.
Her heart sank.
Keep going. They had what they thought was La Voile’s body; it was enough to secure their bounty. They did not need her. And North was an Englishman and a scoundrel to boot. He would not come back for her, but sail right on.
But the shouts grew louder, more frantic, so that she could no longer pretend she did not hear them. She glanced behind and saw what looked like every man on the ship crowded on to the upper deck. And there, at the stern, she could see North, his coat stripped off to expose his white shirt beneath, busy with a rope. The black-robed priest was by his side helping him and she knew in that moment, whatever else North was, he was not a man who sailed away and left a woman in the water.
She stopped swimming and trod water, knowing that to swim on would only make things look worse for her. One last glance at the tiny rocky islands and freedom. A movement flickered at the side of her eye. She shifted her gaze and saw across the beautiful clear green water the tall grey dorsal fin heading directly her way.
Time seemed to stop. For a tiny moment she froze, then turned and swam as fast as she could back towards Raven and North and all that she had fled. Her enemy had turned, in one split second, to her only hope. She could feel the beat of her heart and the cold sensation of terror as all of her life flashed before her eyes in a multitude of tiny fast frozen scenes. Ben and little Bea. Wendell. Her mother and father. Sunny Jim. Tobias with his dead unseeing eyes. And North. Why North, she did not know, but he was there with that sharp perceptive gaze of his.
She did not look back. She did not need to. It did not matter if North sent the jolly boat down. In maritime stories people always swam fast and made it to the safety of the boat just in the nick of time before the shark reached them. And she wanted so much to believe those yarns right now. But the truth about sharks was that one moment they were two hundred yards away and the next they were right there in your face. They could swim real fast; faster than any man, and faster than a boat could be rowed. If you were in the water and they wanted you, then your time on this earth was over. Those who survived only did so because the shark let them, so her grandfather said. And he should know since he was one of those that did not taste so good to sharks. They took his foot, but not the rest of him.
Fear was coursing through her body, fatigue burning her muscles like fire. Her breathing was so hard and fast that she could taste blood at the back of her throat. She knew the shark must be right there, but she would not yield, not when she had so much to fight for. Not when Ben and little Bea still needed her.
Something big and hard bumped against her, knocking her off course. She pushed it away, flailing beneath the water, holding her breath, eyes wide open to see the big dark shape. The lazy flick of its tail was so powerful that she felt the vibration of it through the water. Her head broke the surface, her mouth gasping in great lungfuls of air as she watched the enormous white-tipped dorsal fin head towards Raven’s stern.
Something landed in the water between her and the shark. Something that was swimming towards her. Something that was North. She stared in disbelief.
A few strong strokes of his arms and he was there before her.
‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.
‘Stealing a shark’s meal.’ He pulled her to him. There was no smile upon his face, but there was something in his eyes that did not match the deadpan voice.
They stared at one another for a tiny moment and she felt as if he could see everything she was, all that she kept hidden from him, from her men, from all the world. As if her very soul was naked and exposed before him. As if he were not North, and she Le Voile. As if he were not British and she American. As if he were just a man and she just a woman with raw honesty and attraction between them. Making her forget about Wendell, making her forget about everything she had sworn, everything she was. All of this revealed, stark and sudden and undeniable in the tiny moments left of their lives. It shocked her, the depth of it, the absurdity of it in this situation.
Someone shouted a warning from Raven’s deck.
Beyond North, where he could not see, the shark circled and came heading straight for them.
‘It is coming back,’ she murmured to him. The dorsal fin disappeared as the shark submerged for attack. Her eyes held to North’s for her last moment on this earth.
North’s arm gripped around her waist. ‘Hold on tight,’ he whispered into her ear, then turned his head to yell, ‘Now!’
She gasped as they were suddenly yanked hard out of the water and suspended in mid-air, swinging precariously. Below them the great jaws of the shark snapped shut as it sank beneath the waves once more.
Only then did she notice the rope around North’s waist that was hauling them slow and steady up to Raven’s deck.
She closed her eyes to the image of the shark and held tight to him, her body pressed to his, her legs wrapped around him in the most intimate way. Nothing mattered other than that they had made it to safety.
She was alive and she could feel the beat of her heart and his. She breathed the freshness of the air and the scent of him where her cheek was tucked beneath his chin. North’s arms were strong around her, securing her to him. His body was warm after the coldness of the ocean. He was strength. He was safety. And by holding to him she was holding on to life.
Her breath caressed his neck. Her lips were so close to its pulse point that she could feel the thrum of his blood beneath them, so close that she could taste him. She was alive, and so was he. And she clung all the tighter to him and to the wonder of that realisation.
But at that moment the voices of the men intruded and she felt her and North’s merged bodies being guided as one over Raven’s rail.
They were safe.
The ordeal was over.
Her face was so close to North’s that she could feel his breath warm and moist against her skin, their bodies so close as to be lovers. Breast to breast. Heart to heart. Thigh to thigh. In a way no other man had ever been save Wendell. She stared up into his eyes, frozen, unable to move, unable to think.
Wendell.
She tried to right herself, but North maintained his grip around her and she was glad because her legs when they touched the solidity of the English oak deck had nothing of strength in them and her head felt dizzy and distant. Somehow the rope was gone and North was sweeping his dry coat around her and lifting her up into his arms, as if she were as light as a child.
‘Let me take her from you, Captain. I will carry her.’ Reverend Dr Gunner’s voice sounded from close by, but North did not release her.
‘I will manage,’ he said in his usual cool way. ‘It is your other skills that are required.’
She did not understand what North meant, but the faces of the men were crowded all around, staring at her, and exhaustion was pulling at her, and it felt such an uphill struggle to think. Every time her eyes closed she forced them open. She knew she was over North’s shoulder as he descended the deck ladder. When she opened her eyes again she was lying on the cot in the cabin they had given her. North was standing over her and Reverend Dr Gunner was there, too, in the background.
North’s hair was slicked back, dark as ebony and sodden. Seawater had moulded the cotton of his shirt to the muscular contours of his arms and his broad shoulders, to the hard chest that she had been pressed so snug against. Only then did she see the scarlet stain on his shirt.
‘You are bleeding.’ Her eyes moved to meet his.
‘No,’ he said quietly, and gently smoothed the wet strands of hair from her face. ‘Rest and let Gunner treat you.’
Before she could say a word he was gone, the door closing behind him with a quiet click.
Gunner opened up a black-leather physician’s bag and stood there patiently. Only then did she understand that the blood was her own.
‘You are a physician as well as a priest?’
‘Priest, physician, pirate...’ He gave an apologetic smile and a little shrug of his shoulders. ‘I never could quite decide.’ He fell silent, waiting.
Kate gave a nod of permission and laid her head back against the pillow.
* * *
Up on the quarterdeck, having changed into dry clothes, Kit stood watching the distant ship creep closer. It was discernible as Coyote now without the need for the spyglass.
He thought of Kate Medhurst lying bleeding and half-naked upon the cot. And he thought of her in the water, her body so slender and pale against the large dark silhouette of the shark. And the way that, even as he dived from Raven’s stern, the scarlet plume had already clouded the clear turquoise water. And more than any of that he thought of that look in her eyes of raw, brutal honesty, exposing the woman beneath with all her strengths and vulnerabilities, and the sensations that had vibrated between them. Desire. Attraction. Connection. Sensations with a force he had not felt before. Sensations that he could not yield to even if what had just happened had not.
As he watched Coyote, his eyes narrowed in speculation. He was still thinking about it when he heard Gunner’s approach and glanced round.
‘It is an abrasion only.’ His heavy leather coat hung over his friend’s arm. Gunner chucked it on to the floor and spread it out to dry in the sun. ‘The shark’s skin has grazed one side of her waist—from beneath her breast to the top of her hip. And the palms of her hands, too, where she must have pushed against it.’
‘How deep?’
‘Mercifully superficial,’ Gunner replied. ‘She will be sore for a few days, but she will heal.’
Kit gave a nod.
‘What I do not understand is what on earth she was doing in the water.’ Gunner shook his head as if he could not understand it.
‘Swimming,’ answered Kit.
‘Surely not?’
‘You saw her.’
‘Maybe she fell.’
‘She did not fall. Her dress was removed and neatly folded.’
‘Not necessarily,’ countered Gunner.
‘She might have removed it for other purposes.’
‘Such as?’
‘Bathing.’
‘With no means to reboard the ship?’
‘A woman might not think.’
‘Kate Medhurst certainly doesn’t strike me as woman who might not think—quite the reverse. I would say, rather, that she has a shrewd intelligence lacking in many a man.’
‘I concede you may have point there. She was not bathing,’ said Kit. ‘She was swimming. With purpose. Away from Raven.’
Gunner nodded. ‘But there is nothing out there save those rocks. Even if she reached them, what would have been the point?’
‘The rocks are not quite the only thing out there.’ Kit’s gaze shifted pointedly to the horizon and the small dark shape of the pirate ship that followed.
‘You cannot seriously be suggesting that she was trying to escape us to wait for them.’
‘I am not suggesting anything.’
‘But you are thinking.’
‘I am always thinking, Gunner.’
‘And what are you thinking?’
‘I am thinking we need to discover a little more about Mrs Medhurst and her presence upon Coyote.’
* * *
When Kate woke the next morning she thought for a minute that she was aboard Coyote heading back to Tallaholm and Ben and Bea, and her heart lifted with the prospect of seeing those two little faces again and hugging her children to her. But before her eyes even opened to see the truth, the sound of English voices faint and up on deck brought her crashing back down to the reality of where she was and what had happened. She remembered it all with a sudden blinding panic: Coyote and Tobias and North; and the shark; and that North had saved her life by risking his own.
Yesterday seemed like a dream. She might not have believed it had truly happened at all were it not for the ache in her body and the prickle of pain in her side every time she breathed; a dream in which she could not get the image of him appearing in the ocean between her and the shark out of her mind. What kind of man jumped into the water beside a ten-foot shark to rescue a woman he did not know? Not any kind of man that Kate had ever met.
She thought of the way he had pulled her to safety with no concern for himself. She thought of how she had clung to him, in a way she had never been with any other man save Wendell during their lovemaking. But most of all she thought of the gentleness of his fingers stroking the sodden strand of hair away from her cheek. Such a small but significant gesture that made her squeeze her eyes closed in embarrassment and guilt. She thought of Wendell and the memory reminded her that she hated the English and she hated North. She had to remember. Always. She could not afford to let herself soften to him. Because of Wendell and because of who she was.
Yesterday had been an aberration caused by the shock of the shark...and the rescue. This morning she was back to her usual strong self. She was Le Voile. With images of Wendell, little Ben and baby Bea in her mind, she hardened her resolve.
On the hook of the cabin door hung her black dress, her newly dried shift with its faint bloodstain and her pocket. The sight suddenly reminded her of the rest of what she normally wore. Her heart missed a beat. Throwing back the bedcover, and unmindful of her nakedness or the way her newly scabbed side protested, she sprang from the bed and got down on her knees to check her hiding place under the cot, but the holstered weapons were still there just as she had left them. With a sigh of relief she sat down on the bed. And thought.
North was not stupid. He was going to ask questions. About what she was doing in the water. And the thought frightened her. But one of the best forms of defence was attack and so Kate had no intention of just sitting here waiting meekly for the interrogation.
On the washstand in the corner, someone had sat a fresh pitcher of water, brandy and some fresh dressings. Kate wasted no more time. The dressings Gunner had applied had stuck to the dried clotted blood. She eased the mired dressings from her side using the water and dabbed the fresh flow of blood with the brandy, ignoring the sting of it. The wound made wearing her holsters an impossibility. Much as she would have felt more comfortable with them in place she left them where they were. Then, she quickly dressed, tying her pocket in place beneath her skirt, and fixing her hair the best she could with her fingers and the few pins that remained. She stood there, looking into the small peering glass fixed to the wall, for a few moments longer. Calming herself, waxing her courage and determination, readying herself. One final deep breath and she went to face North.
* * *
‘Come in.’ Kit did not raise his eyes from the open ledger before him when the knock sounded at the door. He was expecting Jones the Purser with a list of the supplies needed. It was the silence that alerted him to the fact that it was not Jones that stood before him. He marginally shifted his gaze and caught sight of a pair of feminine bare feet peeping from beneath the hem of the black dress he had hung on the back of Kate Medhurst’s cabin door.
‘Mrs Medhurst.’ He set his pen down, rose to his feet and bowed, as if they were in a polite sitting room of one of London’s ton. ‘Take a seat, please.’ He waited until she lowered herself on to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk before resuming his own seat. ‘I did not think you would be recovered enough to be out of bed today.’
‘I am very well recovered, thank you, sir.’ Following yesterday’s lapse, her armour was back in place. Her head was held high with that slight underlying hostility that was always there for him. There was the same expression in her clear grey eyes, politeness flecked with strength and defiance, wariness and dislike.
Most women would have still been abed, waiting for Gunner to dress their wounds. Kate Medhurst had not waited for Gunner...or for him and his questions. The grazes on her hands were the only visible evidence of what she had endured the previous day.
‘How are your hands?’
‘Healing.’ She held out her hands before her, palms up for him to see, a gesture of revealing herself to him, a clever tactic given that he suspected that, aside from yesterday, Kate Medhurst had revealed nothing of the truth of herself.
‘And the rest?’ His eyes held hers.
‘The same.’ She did not look away.
He let the silence stretch, let that slight tension that buzzed between them build, until she glanced away with a small cynical smile.
‘I came to thank you,’ she said, taking control of the situation and looking at him once again.
‘For what?’ He leaned back in his chair, watching her.
She raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated quizzing. ‘For rescuing me.’
‘Is that what I did?’ he said softly. Rescuing her...or preventing the escape of a prisoner.
The ambiguity of the words threw her off kilter for the tiniest moment. He could see it in the frisson of doubt and fear that snaked in those cool, unruffled eyes of hers, before she masked it.
‘How else would you describe it, Captain?’ she asked.
‘A lunchtime swim,’ he said.
Despite herself she smiled at that and averted her gaze with a tiny disbelieving shake of her head.
He smiled, too. And then hit her with the question. ‘What were you doing in the water, Mrs Medhurst?’ His voice was soft, but the words were sharp.
Her eyes returned to his. The hint of a smile still played around her lips. ‘Swimming. At lunchtime.’
‘As I suspected,’ he said.
They looked at one another, the amusement masking so much more beneath.
‘Tell me about Kate Medhurst.’
‘What do you wish to know?’
‘How she came to be aboard Coyote.’
‘In what way do women normally found upon privateer or pirate vessels come to be there?’ she countered.
‘Were you abducted?’
‘Abduction is a delicate question for any woman.’
She was good. ‘As is the question of allegiance, I suppose.’
‘I do not know what you mean, sir.’
‘I am sure that you do.’
She said nothing. Just looked at him with that calm unruffled confidence that hid everything of what was true or untrue about her.
‘Where are you from, Mrs Medhurst?’
‘Louisiana, America.’ She said it with defensive pride, wielding it like a weapon. ‘And you?’
‘London, England.’
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly at his answer.
‘Why do I get the feeling that I am not your favourite person?’ he asked.
‘Delusions of persecution?’ she suggested, and arched one delicate eyebrow.
He laughed at that. And she smiled, but the tension was still there simmering beneath the surface between them.
‘I don’t expect you can take me home to Louisiana,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Too dangerous for you?’ she taunted.
‘Most definitely.’
‘So, Captain North,’ she said in a soft voice that belied the steel in her eyes, ‘what are you planning to do with me?’
‘We are for Antigua to replenish our water and stores before our journey to England. There is a British naval base there, they will arrange your transport home.’
‘Thank you.’ She gave a single nod of her head.
The conversation had been conducted on her terms. Now she terminated it at will. ‘If you will excuse me, sir...’ She rose to her feet.
And as manners dictated he did the same. He waited until she reached the door and her fingers had touched to the handle before he spoke again. ‘I had presumed you would be happy to travel with us to Antigua. Is that the case?’
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Why, indeed?’ he asked.
The quiet words hung in the air between them.
Her eyes held his a moment longer and the tension seemed to intensify and rustle between them. About unanswered questions, implications and the physicality of yesterday.
‘Good day, Captain North.’
‘Good day, Mrs Medhurst.’ Her bare feet were silent upon the floor. The door closed with a click behind her.
He stood where he was, his eyes fixed on the closed door. In his mind he was seeing the one moment when Kate Medhurst had let her mask fall, in the ocean faced with death. Then there had been nothing of poise or polish or clever tricks. Only a pair of dove-grey eyes that had ignited desires he thought long suppressed. Eyes that made him remember too well the press of her half-naked body against his and the soft feel of her, and the scent of her in his nose. Eyes that were almost enough to make a man forget the vow he had sworn...as if he ever could.
He sat back down at the desk and, picking up his pen, curbed the route his thoughts were taking. He wanted her, he acknowledged. But he could not have her, not even were she not hiding something from him. Not even if she were available and she wanted him, too. He thought of that vow, forged in blood and sweat and tears.
A knock sounded at the door, pulling him from the darkness of the memory. This time it was Jones, and Kit was glad of it.
Kate Medhurst was not being entirely truthful. But whatever it was she was hiding, she and it need have no bearing on his returning La Voile to London.
* * *
The afternoon was as beautiful as the morning. Every day was beautiful around this area, except when hurricane season came. Kate did not have to feign that she appreciated the view as she stood at the stern, watching the crystal-clear green waves and the intense warm blue of the sky so expansive and huge...and the distant speck of a ship against its horizon.
North was on the quarterdeck, issuing commands to his men. Her muscles were still tense, her blood still rushing, her skinned palms still clammy from their confrontation in his cabin that morning. Part of her wanted to stay hidden below decks in her cabin, not wanting to face him, but Kate knew she could not do that. Coyote was coming. So she stood on the deck, brazening it out, watching Sunny Jim struggle to catch them, and breathed a sigh of relief that Gunner seemed to be right about Raven having the superior speed.
As she watched she thought of North’s cabin, a cabin that she would have mistaken for that of an ordinary seaman had it not been for its larger space. Everything in it was functional. There were no crystal decanters of brandy on fancy-worked dining tables, no china plates or ornamentation, no crystal-dropped chandelier as she had expected. Everything was Spartan, functional, austere as the man himself. He did not seem given to indulgences or luxuries. Maybe that was why the men liked him. Or maybe they were just afraid of him. She slid a glance at where he stood with his men, seeing the respect on their listening faces, before returning her gaze to Coyote.
There was no tread of footsteps to warn her of his approach, nothing save the shiver that rippled down the length of her spine as North came to stand by her side, his body mirroring her own stance, his gaze sweeping out over the ocean.
‘Enjoying the view, Mrs Medhurst?’ The Englishness of his accent, cool and deep and dark as chocolate, sent a tingle rippling out over her skin.
‘Indeed I am, Captain North.’ And she was, now that there seemed little danger of Coyote catching Raven.
Those dark eyes shifted to look directly into hers. Watchful, appraising, making her feel as though he could see through all of her defences, all of her lies, making her remember who he was, and who she was, making her shiver with awareness that his focus was all on her.
She glanced down, suddenly afraid that he could see the secrets she was hiding, her eyes fixing on his feet that were now as bare as her own and the rest of his crew’s. Her mother always said you could tell a lot about a man by his feet. North’s were much bigger feet than hers, tanned and unmistakably masculine, with long straight toes and nails that were white and short and clean. Strong-looking feet, grounded and sure as the rest of him. Their feet standing so close together, and bare, looked too intimate, as if they had just climbed from bed. The thought shocked her.
She swiftly raised her eyes and found him still watching her. He smiled, not the arctic smile, or the cynical one, but one that told her he knew something of the direction of her thoughts and shared them. Swallows soared and swooped inside her stomach and her cheeks burned hot. Kate was horrified at her reaction. And North knew it, damn him, for the smile became bigger.
With an angry frosty demeanour she turned her attention back to the horizon and focused her thoughts on Wendell and his sweet kind nature: her husband, her lover, the only man for her. She thought of what men like North had done to him and the weakness was gone. Touching the thin gold wedding band she still wore upon her finger, turning it round and round, she drew strength from it and did not look at North again.
The two of them stood in silence, contemplating the view, watching Coyote.
She hoped that he would leave, go back to the work he was normally so busy with, but North showed no sign of moving.
The scene was beautiful and peaceful, but as they stood there seemingly both relaxed it was anything but ease that hummed between them; or maybe the tension was just all in herself.
‘She makes for interesting watching,’ he said eventually, his gaze not moving from where it was fixed on Coyote.
‘I wasn’t watching her in particular,’ she lied.
‘No? My mistake. Pardon me.’ He flicked a glance at Kate.
‘Have you identified her yet?’
‘We have.’
Her eyes met his.
‘La Voile’s pirates.’ He paused. ‘They are following us.’ He waited for her reaction.
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Why indeed?’
She kept her nerve. ‘Vengeance? Or maybe to reclaim their captain’s body.’
‘Maybe,’ he agreed, and shifted his gaze to Coyote.
‘But they will not catch us, will they? Not with Raven’s superior speed. I mean...we are quite safe from them...are we not?’
‘Oh, rest assured we are safe.’ He smiled at her, the small cool dangerous smile. ‘But Coyote is not.’
She felt the cold wind of fear blow through her bones. ‘What do you mean, sir?’ She worked hard to appear cool, calm and collected.
He glanced pointedly at Raven’s sails. Her gaze followed his and she saw to her horror that they were reducing the sail. Raven’s speed was already dropping.
Her heart missed a beat. Her stomach dropped to meet her shoes.
‘You intend to let them catch us!’ She stared at him, feeling the horror of what that meant snake through her.
‘Not entirely. Just to let them get within range of our guns.’
‘Why?’ she whispered.
‘Raven is fast, but not fast enough that Coyote will not fathom our direction to Antigua. Better a confrontation out here under our terms than risk her stealing upon us at anchor in the night.’
‘She would not...’ Antigua was a British naval base, filled with warships that Coyote normally avoided. But given the situation she was not sure that North was not right.
‘Not when we have finished, she will not,’ he said grimly.
She felt the blood drain from her face. When she looked again at the distant horizon Coyote was already a little larger. She kept her gaze on her ship rather than look at him, so that he would not see the truth in her eyes.
It took all of her willpower to stand there beside him, watching her men creep slowly closer to their doom, and betray nothing of the feelings of dread and fear, impotence and anger that were pounding through her blood. Instinctively, her hands went to her skirt, reaching for the weapons that were not there. Instead, she forced them to relax by her sides.
Glancing across at North’s profile, she saw that he watched Coyote with cool, relaxed stillness. Only his dark hair rippled in the wind.
‘What is the range of your guns?’ she asked, her heart beating fast with the hope that she had overestimated Raven’s range of fire.
‘Our eighteen pounders have an effective penetrating range of five hundred and fifty yards,’ he answered without looking round.
Far greater than the two hundred and eighty yards that Coyote’s six-pounders could manage. She felt sick. Her mind was thrashing, seeking any possible way to stop the impending slaughter. But short of putting a gun to North’s head... Her gaze dropped to the large scabbard that hung against his leg, and the leather holster above it...with the pistol cradled within. It was a much larger weapon than her own, but she could manage it all the same...if it was loaded. She glanced up to find his gaze was no longer on Coyote, but on her.
‘I hope that pistol is loaded,’ she said.
He smiled as if he knew it for the question it was. ‘Always. But it will not make any difference to Coyote’s fate. Bigger guns are already aimed and waiting.’
She swallowed, her mouth dry as ash, her heart thudding hard as a horse at full gallop. Coyote would see the guns, but she would not realise their size, or the special powder, or their range. She would not know what she was sailing into before it was too late.
Raven was barely moving now, making the distance between the two ships diminish fast. Too fast. Even with the naked eye, no one aboard Raven could doubt that the identity of the closing ship was anything but Coyote. Every second brought her closer.
Kate’s fingers found her wedding band again. Oh, God, please stop them. But Coyote kept on coming.
‘Eight hundred yards!’ came a shout from the rigging.
She bit her lip, trying to stop herself from crying out. Stood there still and silent as a statue while her mind sought and tunnelled and tried to find a way out for them all.
‘Seven hundred yards!’
She thought of Sunny Jim. She thought of young John Rishley. And the rest. All of them men from Tallaholm. Men with wives and children, with mothers and fathers, and brothers and sisters. Men who would lose their lives trying to rescue her.
‘You can’t just kill them!’ The words burst from her mouth.
‘Why not?’ He turned to look at her, his calmness in such contrast to the rushing fury and fear in her heart.
‘For the sake of humanity and Christian charity.’
‘You care for the lives of the men who abducted you?’
‘Some of them are barely more than boys, for pity’s sake. Have mercy.’
‘Your compassion is remarkable, Mrs Medhurst.’
‘Reverend Dr Gunner is a priest. He will tell you the same as me, I am sure. Where is he?’ Her eyes scanned for Gunner.
‘He is on the gun deck,’ said North, ‘making ready to fire.’
She could see the fifteen horizontal red-and-white stripes and the fifteen white stars against the blue canton of the American flag and the skull and smiling cutlass of her own flag.
‘Six hundred yards!’ the voice called, followed by another from over by the deck hatch, ‘Ready below, Captain! We fire on your command.’
‘Do not!’ Her hand clutched at North’s wrist. ‘If you sink them, they will all die. And no matter what they have done, they are just men seeking to make a living in difficult times.’
He looked at where she held him so inappropriately. Her fingers tingled and burned with awareness. She loosened her grip, let it fall away completely. ‘Please,’ she said quietly.
Their eyes locked, their bodies so close that she could feel the heat of his thighs against hers.
‘I do not intend to kill them,’ he said with equal softness to hers. ‘Only to disable them.’
‘Five hundred and fifty yards and in range!’ the call interrupted.
North turned away and gave the command, ‘Fire!’
Her heart contracted to a small tight knot of dread. She heard the echoing boom of a single long gun and watched with horror as the iron shot flew through the air towards its unsuspecting victim.
But the round shot had not been aimed at Coyote’s hull. Instead, her foremast was cleaved in two, the top half severed clean to fall into the ocean. Canvas and rigging crumpled all around. The men on deck rushed around in mayhem.
Her hands were balled so tight that her nails cut into her skinned palms. She did not notice that they bled as she braced herself for the echoing cacophony of shots that would follow, standing there knowing that she owed it to Coyote and her men not to look away, but to bear witness to their valour. She waited.
But there was only silence.
Kate glanced round at North in confusion.
‘She is, no doubt, too small to carry spare spars and canvas, but these waters are busy enough that they should not have too long to wait for help. Either way Coyote shall not be following us into port, or anywhere else for that matter.’ He paused, holding her gaze. ‘If you care to check, you will be relieved to see not a pirate life was lost.’ He passed her his spyglass and stood watching her.
She looked at the spyglass, knowing she should not accept it. But she could no more refuse than she could stop breathing. The responsibility of a captain to her ship and men ran deep. So Kate took the spyglass and checked for herself the damage to the men and the ship.
North was right. There were no casualties.
‘Let her run with the wind,’ he commanded his men.
‘Aye-aye, Captain,’ came the reply as they ran to increase the sails.
Kate returned the spyglass without either a word or meeting North’s eyes. She was aware of how much she had betrayed, but all she felt right now was wrung out and limp with relief for her men. She offered not a single excuse or explanation.
‘If you will excuse me, sir.’
He did not stop her, but let her walk away without a word.
Because they both knew that she was not going anywhere other than her cabin. They were on his ship. At sea. He could come and question her anytime he chose. And that there were questions he would ask, she did not doubt.
Chapter Four (#ulink_ebb2fc0e-5f8d-50df-9967-e83b4dfea32f)
Within his cabin Kit sat at his desk, the paperwork and ledgers and maps upon it forgotten for now. Gunner sat opposite him, leaning his chair back on to its hind two legs and rocking it. The afternoon sunlight was bright. Through the great stern window the ocean was clear and empty, the disabled Coyote long since left behind.
There was a silence while Gunner mulled over what Kit had just told him of Kate Medhurst’s reaction up on deck earlier that day.
‘Women are the gentler sex. Their sensibilities are more finely honed than those of most men,’ said Gunner, ‘but...’ He screwed up his face.
‘One might have expected a degree of either fear or animosity towards the boatload of ruffians that took her by force and held her against her will,’ Kit finished for him.
Gunner nodded. ‘It is possible she has an unusually meek nature.’
I hope that pistol is loaded? Kate Medhurst had looked at the weapon like a woman seriously contemplating snatching it from its holster and holding it to his head.
He thought of the essence of forbidden desire that whispered between the two of them, the barely veiled hostility in those eyes of hers and the way her body had responded so readily to his.
He thought of her plunging from Raven’s head and swimming so purposefully towards those rocks. And of their interaction in his cabin, with her skilful deflection of his questions to reveal nothing of herself.
‘I would not describe Kate Medhurst as meek.’ Intelligent, determined, formidable, capable, mysterious, courageous and passionate, most definitely passionate. But not meek. ‘Would you?’
‘No,’ Gunner admitted.
‘Mrs Medhurst was not so unwilling a guest upon Coyote.’
Gunner’s gaze met his. ‘You think she is lying about being abducted?’
‘She never told us she was abducted. We made that assumption. Mrs Medhurst did not correct it.’
‘But you saw how the pirates treated her.’
‘La Voile would have given her to us easily enough. The rest did not wish to yield her.’
‘She was afraid of them.’
‘She was afraid, but not of them...for them.’ He thought of the desperation that had driven her to grab his wrist, to plead for the lives of those men. ‘There is someone on Coyote that she cares for, very much.’
‘A lover.’
Kit thought of the way Kate Medhurst touched so often to the gold wedding band upon her finger. ‘Or a husband.’
Gunner looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘You think it was not La Voile’s body his crew were intent on retrieving. You think it was the woman.’
‘It would explain much.’
‘But not what we saw between her and La Voile on Coyote’s deck that morning.’
‘Does it not? If we remove our assumptions, what did we see, Gabriel?’ Kit asked.
‘An argument between two men over a woman,’ Gunner said slowly. ‘The other pirate...’
‘It is a possibility.’
‘The only fly in the ointment is her mourning weeds.’
‘Are they mourning weeds? A ship that flies a black sail is not in mourning.’
Gunner looked at him and said slowly, ‘A pirate’s woman might dress as a pirate.’
Kit said nothing.
‘And if she is a pirate’s woman?’ Gunner asked.
‘It makes no difference. As long as we have La Voile’s body she is not our concern. We offload her in Antigua in the morning. Let them ship her back to Louisiana. We have bigger things to think of.’ Like getting La Voile’s body back to London. Like returning to face what he had left behind. ‘Post a guard on La Voile’s body in the meantime.’
‘You think she is capable of sabotage?’
‘I think we should not underestimate Kate Medhurst. I will breathe easier when she is gone.’ And he would. Because every time he thought of her, he felt desire stir through his body. She was temptation, to a life he had long left behind, to a man he no longer was. And that was a road Kit had no intention of revisiting.
* * *
The purple-grey-green silhouette of Antigua loomed large before them. The haze of the early morning would burn off as the day progressed, but for now the sun sat behind a shroud that did not mask the brightness from the daylight. Within the rowing boat there was no sound other than the rhythmic creak and dip of the oars and their pull of the water. No one in Raven’s small party spoke.
The wind that was usually so mercifully cooling seemed unwelcome at this hour with the lack of sun, making Kate’s skin goosepimple beneath the thin black muslin. Or maybe it was just the sight of North in his place at the other end of the boat.
His eyes were sharp as the raven’s perched upon his shoulder and strayed her way too often, making her remember the lean strength in his body, and the scent of him, and the feel of his skin against hers...and the way he had stroked the hair from her cheek. Making her feel things she had never thought to feel again; things that appalled her to feel for him of all men. And she was gladder than ever that this was the end of her journey with him.
But there was a small traitorous part of her that, now she was safe, wondered what might have happened between them were it not the end. Just the thought turned her cold with shame and guilt. She pushed it away, denying its existence, as much as she denied the tension between them was not all adversarial. And turned her mind to wondering as to her crew and Coyote’s fate.
North was right, these waters were rife with Baratarian pirates and privateers; one of Jean Lafitte’s boys had probably already found and helped the stricken ship. Sunny Jim knew what he was doing and would get them all back safe to Tallaholm, and she felt better at that thought.
* * *
‘Something is not right,’ Kit said softly to Gunner as they stood before Fort Berkeley on the island not so much later. Jones the Purser and five ordinary seamen who had rowed across with them had stayed in the main town, St John’s, to procure water and the list of required victuals. Kate Medhurst stood just in front of him, surveying the yellow-washed walls of the fort that guarded the entrance to English Harbour. She was more relaxed than he had seen her, now that they were about to part company, her secrets intact. He wondered what they were. He wondered too much about her, he thought, as his eyes lingered on the way the wind whipped and fluttered the thin black muslin of her skirt against the long length of her legs. He turned his focus back to the fort and what it was that he did not like about it.
Gunner gave a nod. ‘I get that same feeling.’
‘No guard outside the gate.’ His eyes scanned, taking in every detail.
‘And apart from the lookout in the watchtower, not another soul to be seen,’ murmured Gunner.
‘Silent as a graveyard, and a gate that should be opening, demanding to know our business by now.’
Kate Medhurst glanced round at him, as if she was thinking the same.
‘Wait here with the woman, Gunner. If I am not back in fifteen minutes—’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Kate Medhurst interrupted, as if she did not trust him.
‘Maybe Mrs Medhurst has a point,’ said Gunner. ‘You should have someone at your back.’ He touched a hand lightly to his cutlass.
Eventually they were admitted through the fort’s gate by a lone marine in a coat faded pink by the sun and taken to see the admiral. The distant dry docks were empty, not a man could be seen working in the repair yards, not a man on the tumbleweed parade ground. Within the yellow-painted building every room was deserted. Not one other person did they pass along those corridors and staircases lined with paintings of maritime battles. And for all of that way there was a faint smell of rancid meat in the air.
‘It’s like a ghost town,’ Kate Medhurst whispered by his side and she was right. ‘Is this normal for a British fort?’
‘Anything but,’ replied Kit softly.
‘Something is definitely off.’ Gunner’s quiet voice held the same suspicion that Kit felt.
He shifted his coat so that his hand would have easier access to both the pistol holstered on his hip and his cutlass and saw Gunner do the same.
The marine eventually led them through a door mounted with a plaque that read Admiral Sir Ralston.
The office was large and more grandly decorated than many a ton drawing room. Ornate, gilded, carved furniture filled it, along with a massive sideboard that looked as though it might have been brought from Admiralty House. There was a large black-marble fireplace, although the hearth was empty save for a pile of scrunched balls of paper which were clearly discarded letters. The windows had roman blinds of indiscriminate colour, pulled halfway up the glass, and were framed by fringed curtains that might once have been dark blue, but were now somewhere between pale blue and grey. From the ceiling in the centre of the room hung a crystal chandelier. But despite all of this faded opulence there was an unkempt feel about the place.
The great desk was littered with a mess of paperwork and documents. A thick layer of dust covered the window sill and every visible wooden surface. It sat on the back of the winged armchair by the fireplace and turned the ringed, empty crystal decanter and silver tray that sat on the nearby drum table opaque. It hung with cobwebs from the chandelier. But the two things that concerned Kit more than any of this were the stench of rum in the room and that the man that sat on the other side of the desk was not Admiral Sir Ralston.
‘Acting Admiral John Jenkins, at your service, sir. I am afraid Admiral Sir Ralston died a sennight since.’ Jenkins was younger than Kit, no more than five and twenty at the most, with fine fair hair that stuck to a sweaty brow, red-rimmed eyes and thick determined lips.
‘I am sorry to hear that, sir. My condolences to you and your men.’
Jenkins gave a nod and gestured to the chairs on the other side of the desk. ‘Take a seat. May I offer you a drink?’ He produced a bottle of rum from the drawer of his desk.
‘There is a lady present, sir,’ said Gunner.
‘Beg pardon,’ Jenkins said and sat the half-empty bottle on top of a book on the desk. ‘How are matters in London?’
‘I have no idea.’ Kit had no intention in wasting time in small talk. ‘What has happened here?’
‘We are awaiting reinforcements. They are due any day now.’
‘You have not answered my question. Why do you need reinforcements?’
‘We have lost almost all the men.’
‘How?’
There was a silence while Jenkins stared longingly at the rum.
‘What happened to the men, Jenkins?’
‘Dead,’ he said, and did not take his eyes off the bottle. He reached a hand to it and began to absently pick at the wax near the rim. ‘It will have us all in the end. Every last one of us, you know.’ He smiled softly to himself.
Cold realisation stroked down Kit’s spine. He understood now, not the detail, but the gist. Too late. He was here now, and more importantly so were Gunner and Kate Medhurst.
‘Get up,’ he snapped the order to them by his side, already on his feet. ‘We are leaving.’
‘What?’ She looked aghast. ‘But—’
‘I said we are leaving. Now.’
‘So soon?’ interrupted Jenkins. ‘You are welcome to stay and dine with Hammond and me.’ He smiled at Kate and walked round to their side of the desk. ‘It would be a delight to have the company of a lady at our table.’ He offered his hand to Kate.
Kate moved to accept, but Kit grabbed her hand in his and pulled her away from Jenkins, placing himself as a barrier between them.
‘Captain North!’ she protested and tried to break free.
‘They have a pestilence here,’ he said harshly to her. ‘A pestilence that infects both men and women.’
She ceased her struggle, shock and fear flickering in her eyes.
‘Which disease, sir?’ Gunner asked Jenkins, the scientist and physician in him coming to the fore.
‘Yellow Jack.’
‘May God have mercy upon your souls, brother,’ whispered Gunner.
‘Amen to that,’ said Jenkins.
‘What were you thinking of, admitting us?’ demanded Kit. ‘You know the drill when it comes to pestilence.’
Jenkins smiled again and this time it held a bit of a leer. ‘Hammond said you had a woman with you. A white woman. An English woman.’ His gaze travelled brazenly down Kate Medhurst’s body to rest on the small bare toes that peeped out beneath the hem of her dress.
In a prim angry gesture she twitched her skirt to cover them. ‘American,’ she corrected with a look of disgust that Kit could not tell whether it was due to Jenkins’s appetite or the fact he had mistaken her as English.
‘How many of you are left?’ Kit shot the question at him.
‘A handful.’
‘How many infected?’
Jenkins gave a shrug.
Gunner slid a look at him. They both knew there was nothing they could do, that it was too late.
‘Quarantine the place. Let no one new in and no one infected out. Burn the bodies of the dead,’ said Kit. It was the most he could offer. He pitied Jenkins. He wanted to help and were he alone he would have stayed, for all the difference it would make, but he was not. He had Gunner and a shipful of men to think of. And he had Kate Medhurst.
‘It is too late for that.’
Kit met Jenkins’s eyes and said nothing. Given his own past he could not condemn any man for a weakness of character, especially not under such circumstances.
‘I pity you, sir, but your attitude is despicable,’ said Kate Medhurst quietly.
‘I suppose that means a mercy shag is out of the question?’ Jenkins said.
Kate did not flinch. ‘As I said—despicable.’
‘And dead,’ said Kit as his hand tightened upon the handle of his cutlass. He controlled the urge to pull it from its scabbard and hold it against Jenkins’s throat.
Gunner was already on his feet, poised for action.
‘But not by our hand,’ finished Kit, then, to Kate Medhurst and Gunner, ‘Move. We have already spent too long in here.’ Not trusting Jenkins not to attempt some last, defiant, contemptuous action, Kit kept his eye on the man until they were out of the office and making their way back down the corridor. Moving quickly, they retraced their earlier steps across the deserted yard and through the gate.
The hired horse and gig still waited where they had left it. In silence Kit picked up the reins and began the drive back to St John’s.
* * *
‘So what happens now?’ Kate asked the question after ten minutes of driving during which no one had uttered a word. She was more shaken by what had happened at the fort than she wanted to admit. A whole garrison, wiped out by Yellow Jack.
One summer, when she was a child, Yellow Jack had come to Tallaholm. Some were taken, some were spared. Kate had been lucky enough to recover. She remembered little of it, but her mother still spoke of how terrible that time had been and how she had nursed Kate. I sat by your side and bathed your body with cold stream water all the nights through to cool the fever. It made her all the more anxious to get home. But she was very aware that there was no British navy ship here on which she could hitch a ride.
She saw the glance Gunner exchanged with North and a little sliver of apprehension slid into her blood.
‘You heard what he said. Your country is sending reinforcements and that will encompass not only the fort, but those frigates that patrol the waters near to Louisiana,’ she said.
‘No doubt.’ North did not look round at her, but just kept on driving, eyes forward, expression uncompromising.
‘Indeed, many of the British naval frigates in this area use English Harbour as their base. It’s just a matter of time before one comes into port.’
‘True. But that time might be weeks or even months.’
‘Unlikely,’ she countered.
‘Very likely, given that word of the pestilence will have passed through the fleet.’
‘I’ll wait,’ she said stubbornly.
‘But I will not. Raven leaves Antigua tomorrow, Mrs Medhurst.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I am not asking you to delay your journey.’ Indeed, the sooner he was gone the safer she would be.
He pulled gently at the leather reins wrapped around his hand and brought the horse to a stop. Only then did he look at her, his gaze meeting hers with that searing strength that always made her shiver inside. ‘You are a woman, with no money, no protection and no knowledge of the island. Are you seriously suggesting that you wait here alone?’
That was exactly what she was suggesting, but when he said it like that it made it sound like the most idiotic idea she had ever had in her life; when she knew that honour belonged to her decision to attack an unnamed ship with a raven circling its masts.
‘Next you will be telling me you are planning on staying at Fort Berkeley with Jenkins.’
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