Sea of Ruin

by Pam Godwin

  “I know.” Ashley reached over me and rested his hand on Priest’s thigh, his thumb stroking the burn scars. “Priest rejected her at every turn,” he said to me. “She desired him so badly she didn’t care if the affair ruined her. But neither he nor I wanted that.”

  “Arabella was a spitfire.” Priest chuckled. “Christ, I miss her.”

  A quiet moment passed between them before Ashley continued. “My sister was in her twenties and still unwed. She refused every offer, waiting for Priest. By this time, Priest and I were sixteen and eighteen, respectively. We were young, restless, and strung tight with sexual energy, of which we put to use on the local girls.”

  “But we spent most of our time alone in this manor, especially during the winter months,” Priest said. “Curiosity and tedium brought forth…experimentation.”

  “You touched each other.” I smiled softly, captivated by this side of them.

  “Aye.” Priest nuzzled my neck. “Hands reaching into trousers. A few strokes here and there. It felt good. Never awkward. We both preferred females, but more than that, we preferred each other’s company. When those interactions led to opening our breeches and spending our seed together, it didn’t bother us.”

  “Did Arabella know?” I asked.

  “No.” Ashley moved his hand to my face, clearing away a few wispy curls. “I overheard her talking to her lady’s maid, plotting how she was going to sneak into Priest’s room that night and seduce him. I knew my sister. She would’ve succeeded.”

  “So little faith in me,” Priest drawled.

  “She was wearing you down. You said so yourself.” With a straight face, Ashley said, “I ate an orange, swished the juice through my teeth, and smeared it on my lips.”

  “Oh no.” I gasped. “You didn’t.”

  “He did.” Priest chuckled. “The arsehole sneaked into my bed and put his mouth on me. Sucked my cock right down his throat. No one had ever done that before, and I only lasted—”

  “Less than a minute. I daresay he embarrassed himself.” Ashley smiled a rare smile, holding my gaze. “My tenacious sister crept into his room an hour later to find her dear Priest nursing a vile rash on his groin. Needless to say, she believed he had syphilis and thereby swore him off once and for all.”

  Just like our ruse with Arabella.

  “You’re an evil genius, Ashley Cutler.” I leaned forward and kissed his sculpted lips.

  “The evil part is right.” Priest gave a halfhearted grunt. “I still don’t trust his mouth near my cock.”

  I recalled what I knew about Ashley’s carnal nature, his unseemly manners. The first time he was intimate with me, he brutally took me in my backside. Before that had been a string of merciless spankings.

  “Do you spank Priest?” I fought a smile.

  Priest tensed behind me. “I’d like to see him try.”

  All right. That answered that.

  “What happened with Arabella?” I asked.

  “She found another fellow to besiege. A fisherman. Of course, my parents did not approve.” Ashley looked at me with his heart in his eyes. “He didn’t show her the same respect Priest had. She got pregnant, banished from society, and you know the rest.”

  She’d died in childbirth.

  “I was twenty when it happened. This house wasn’t the same without her.” Ashley idly stroked my collarbone. “So I left. Joined the Royal Navy, much to the despair of my parents.”

  “And me. I demanded he stay.” Priest lifted on an elbow and curved a hand around my waist. “We fought about it. Beat the hell out of each other right here in this room.” He cut his eyes to Ashley, narrowing them to slits. “He fucked me that night. It was our first time…” His nostrils widened. “The prick fucked me and walked out. I didn’t see him again for a year.”

  I looked down, my chest aching and heart raw. That seemed to be a habit of Ashley’s. The first time he’d fucked me, he’d left. Though he hadn’t made it past the door of his cabin.

  “You must have kept in touch over the years,” I said.

  “We wrote to each other.” Exhaling, Priest rolled onto his back. “Without Ashley, I had no job here. Over the following year, I hopped from ship to ship, doing various work, making my way to the West Indies, and looking for my father. That’s how I found a brother I didn’t know I had.”

  “Reynolds.” I smiled.

  “Aye. We joined a pirate crew. Ashley called upon me between wars. Sometimes we met here. Other times, we reconnected in ports along the Western Ocean. Those infrequent visits were all he offered me.”

  Until Nassau, when Ashley wrote Priest out of his life completely.

  “During those times,” Ashley said, “it was more important than ever that we kept our distance. You were making a notorious name for yourself, Priest. And I was an officer in the navy and—”

  “You were my best friend.”

  Priest had every right to be furious. He’d been rejected by both Ashley and me. Yet, as he lay beside me, his fingers absently twisting through my hair, he seemed content. Peaceful.

  It became suddenly apparent why he had a sheer lack of interest in hoarding spoils and ships from his plundering at sea. He had all the wealth he could ever need right here.

  All he truly wanted, what he needed, was someone he could take care of. And perhaps someone to do the same for him.

  “You told me on your ship,” I said to Ashley. “that it had been two years since you bedded anyone. It was Priest, wasn’t it? In Nassau? He was the last person you were with?”

  “Yes.”

  “And before that?”

  “I don’t recall. Commanding His Majesty’s Ship and fighting in wars didn’t allow time for such affairs. Meanwhile, Priest spent the past fourteen years fucking every skirt that crossed his path.”

  “Until I met Bennett.” Priest cocked a brow, its sharp downward tilt highlighting the languid dip of his eyes. “There will never be another woman for me.”

  My heart squeezed and expanded. “When you told me you loved two people, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t think it was possible. But I was wrong. Clearly.” I picked at the ticking on the bed and lifted my eyes to Ashley. “I should ask you about your visit in London, but the only thing I want to know is if you saw your betrothed.”

  “Yes. I called on her. That is what’s expected. Had I not, I would’ve been interrogated and harassed by every meddling lady in society.”

  Anger and jealousy coiled up my spine as I rose to a sitting position. “What’s her name?”

  “You intend to kill the lovely girl?”

  I struggled in my rioting emotions when it came to these two men, but I did not struggle in this.

  “Yes.” I met him stare for stare. “If you marry her, I will gut her. A knife in the belly. Thrust. And twist. No hesitation. So I should hope that while you were in London for three damned weeks, you had the wherewithal to break off the betrothal.”

  “I did no such thing.” He grabbed my throat and in the next breath, had me on my back with his weight atop of me. “I was in London to explain why I didn’t arrest the despicable pirates Bennett Sharp and Priest Farrell whilst they were in my grasp. With a ship full of witnesses, I had to spin lies and exaggerate truths to avoid a court-martial and demotion. I was not in London to deal with personal matters.”

  “Break off the engagement.” I pushed against his chest, a useless effort. “Tell him, Priest.”

  “I’ve been telling him for years.” Frustration simmered beneath Priest’s voice as he stood from the bed. “Let it go, Bennett.”

  “I will not—”

  “For now.” He tipped his chin at Ashley, his eyes fixed on me. “We have a gift for you.”

  Ashley grabbed my hand and drew me up. All at once, the mood shifted. The men exchanged a look, and something akin to excitement passed between them.

  “What?” I asked, impatient. “What is it?”

  “A surprise. We need you dressed for it.” Ashley ushered
me toward the bathing chamber as he said to Priest, “It was important to me to be here for this. Thank you for waiting for me.”

  “I told you I would.”

  Their cryptic conversation prompted a fleet of questions from my mouth, of which they ignored. We bathed, dressed, groomed, and broke our fast in the dining hall. All the while, I pressed them for answers and was only met with irritating smiles.

  I’d learned early on that the meals at Ashley’s manor were unhurried, leisurely affairs. Servants drifted around the table, setting out silver platters of cured bacon and kipper, boiled eggs, kidney offal, blackberry flummery with whipped syllabub, and scores of produce from the manor’s gardens.

  As the kitchen maids answered to the demands of the dining table, they stole heated glances at Priest. He’d mentioned that the staff had been employed here for most of their lives. Now that I knew he’d been employed here with them, I could only assume that he’d bedded every maid at least once over the past twenty years.

  I couldn’t care a whit. He was mine now. I had his loyalty, and it seemed that he had theirs.

  “You trust them.” I nodded at the door as it closed behind the last kitchen maid.

  “Unquestionably,” Priest said. “They know what I am. But before I was a pirate, I was their friend. Their kin. Still am. No amount of reward will turn their allegiance.”

  “They’ve known about Priest’s relationship with me since it began.” Ashley leaned back in the chair. “They would defend us with their lives.”

  Relief descended, and more questions bubbled up. “When you captured me, you truly didn’t know about my relationship with Priest?”

  “No.” Ashley released a slow breath. “I had no idea. When you fell into my custody, it was pure coincidence. Or fate.”

  As I finished the remainder of my meal, he talked through his change of heart over those first couple of weeks. Yes, he’d initially hunted me with every intention to turn me in and further his career. But he’d agonized over the idea every day. By the time he’d taken me into the wardroom and shown me the sketch of Priest, he’d already decided. He’d only wanted to track down Priest for help in staging a believable escape for me.

  Once I had all my answers, he read from a newspaper, catching up on the day’s news, while holding a tedious conversation with Priest about his business in London. Given my huffing and their twitching mouths, I knew they were deliberately dragging out the anticipation for my surprise.

  Eventually, Ashley stood and held out his hand to me. “Shall we?”

  They took me to my ship.

  The manor sat high on the cliffs, overlooking the private bay. Rather than navigating the rocky paths to the shore below, Priest and Ashley led me through a maze of winding stairs and tunnels beneath the estate. The glow of a torch led the way. At the lowest level, an exterior door opened to a dock and a waiting jolly boat.

  And across the bay sat Jade in all her glory.

  The shadows of her soaring masts fell across the nearby cliff, her yards clewed as she patiently waited to weigh.

  She was a fighter. A survivor. She’d faced off against a warship with twice her weight in guns. When my father had seized her, she was the only galleon in the Spanish treasure fleet that hadn’t sunk in the hurricane. She was spitting fire and laughing at the storm, he’d said.

  As Priest and Ashley rowed me toward her mighty stern, I couldn’t stop staring at her sleek lines and winking gun ports, admiring, smiling. Despite myself, I felt a shimmering surge of pride.

  My crewmates greeted me with revelry. Cheers, whistles, and rib-crushing hugs carried me across the upper deck. Amid the fray of merriment, I lost sight of Priest and Ashley. The sailors swarmed me with smiles, the air leaden with sweat, brine, and sunshine, as they pulled me through the throng, spinning me this way and that.

  A huge pair of hands caught my face, and hard wet lips smacked hard against mine. When I leaned away, Reynold’s glittering brown eyes smiled back.

  “Your brother will kill you for that.” I laughed.

  “And I shall die a happy man.” He gripped my arms and held them out. “Pray, Captain, look at you!”

  I wore a blue gown that clewed up at the hips, exposing the striped seaman’s trousers and black boots beneath. The corset accentuated curves and musculature that hadn’t rounded my frame a month ago.

  The jade stone dangled from my throat. A brace of knives hung about my waist, along with my compass and cutlass. I hadn’t fully regained the strength required to wield such a weighty weapon. But my father’s blade belonged there, on my hip, close at hand.

  “Your hat, Captain.” The cabin boy stepped forward, holding out the three-cornered hat.

  I jammed it on my head and tilted up my chin to meet his eyes. “D’Arcy, I daresay you’ve grown a fathom since I last saw you.”

  Twin stains of scarlet bloomed on his smiling cheeks.

  Three months ago, Reynolds had pushed me over the bow and tossed me onto a path I would’ve never imagined. A lot had changed since I last stood on this deck as Captain Sharp. But my favorite things had remained exactly the same.

  “Captain.” Jobah strolled toward me, his long arms drawing me into a hug. “Welcome home.”

  I squeezed him tight and rose on my tiptoes to put my mouth against the black skin of his cheek. “I know about the compass.”

  His laughter rumbled through me, and I shoved him away. Shoulders back and spine straight, I tried to stand before him as his captain. But he couldn’t stop laughing.

  Neither could I. “Next time, I’ll punish you.”

  “Yes, Captain.” The bloody bastard didn’t believe me. Not for a second.

  I looked at Reynolds, sobering. “Thank you for waiting for me at Harbour Island.”

  “Anytime, anywhere, Captain.” His eyes drifted over my shoulder toward the companionway. “Priest and Ashley are waiting. You must be here for your surprise.”

  “Evidently.” I started to turn then glanced back at Jobah and Reynolds. “Are you coming?”

  They shared a smile, and Reynolds said, “We wouldn’t miss it.”

  Moments later, I stood in my cabin and stared at the tiny scroll on the desk.

  “That’s not the surprise.” Leaning against the wall beside Jobah, Priest rubbed his whiskered jaw. “Go ahead. Every man in this room has already peeked at it.”

  I glanced at Jobah, Reynolds, and Ashley, their blank expressions giving nothing away.

  “I had my reasons for not telling you about the map,” I said to them. “It was my most safely guarded secret. I presume Priest told you its history.”

  Reynolds glanced down at his boots and nodded. “While we sailed from Harbor Island to the island of the birds to get you back, he told the crew everything.”

  The moment I’d made the map known to Madwulf and his pirates, it was no longer a secret. Priest had done the right thing.

  “Good.” I drew in a breath and snatched the scroll from the desk.

  The room fell silent as I unrolled the strip of parchment that was no wider than my thumb. Squinting, my eyes swept over the tiny image of a map at the top.

  The island of oaks? Christ, the print was so small I would need a magnifying glass to read it. “I can’t—”

  “Oak Island. It’s near the Sholes of Acadia,” Jobah said. “I already plotted the course, Captain.”

  “Acadia? Isn’t that north of the Great Western Ocean?”

  “Far north. Between New England and Newfound-land.”

  “What the hell was my father doing all the way up there?” I scanned the rest of the parchment, finding detailed descriptions of the treasure’s hidden location on the island. “Have any of you ever been this far north?”

  A chorus of No’s resounded.

  “Well, then we’re in for an adventure.” With a thrill in my blood, I gestured at the gold hoops in Reynold’s ear. “If we succeed, you won’t be needing those.”

  Like most pirates, he wore the ornaments a
s a means to pay for a respectable burial at sea when he died.

  “You’ll have gold on your fingers and dangling about your neck,” I said.

  “Aye.” He flashed me his barracuda smile.

  “When do we sail?” I looked directly at Ashley.

  He glared back, and I knew he wouldn’t consent to join us. Not easily. Before we departed, he would learn to never say No to the fury of a woman.

  “We’ll sail when you’re ready, Captain.” Priest clasped my hand and led me out of the cabin. “First, we have something to give you.”

  I followed him through the lower decks, down hatchways, and deeper still, until we arrived at the bilge.

  My stomach hardened. The last time I stood here, Priest was down below, clapped in irons, his hands blistered, because I’d cruelly exposed him to oranges.

  “Is it my turn?” I laughed, a strained, humorless sound, and met his eyes. “Are you going to shackle me down there and stroke yourself while I watch?”

  “Jesus.” Reynolds coughed into his fist.

  Jobah chuckled, and Ashley arched a brow.

  “As much as I love that idea…” Priest brought my hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles. “Your present is of a very different nature.”

  He glanced at the brace of knives around my waist, confusing me. Then he opened the hatch and led me into the bilge.

  At the bottom of the ladder, I didn’t know what I expected to find. But as I turned and lost my breath, it wasn’t this.

  Madwulf was chained to the wall.

  Alive.

  My heart luffed, turned about, and plowed into a vicious storm. I drew the cutlass from the brace around my hips, my wounded arm trembling beneath the weight of steel, as I growled at the monster before me.

  “Easy, Goldilocks.” Ashley stood at my back, close enough to breathe against my ear. “Ipswich didn’t keep him alive for two months for you to strike him down in one swing.” His voice dipped, deliciously dark. “Savor it.”

  Madwulf hung from chains, nude, mutilated, and glaring out of pained, bloodshot eyes. His mouth gaped and drooled as he screamed garbled nonsense. No tongue. His ears were gone. As were his fingers, toes, and one entire arm.