“Please,” he whimpered. “I caused no injury to any of you. I was…I was caught. I was tangled in the sheets.”
“You played dead, you mean,” Logan said bluntly.
“I…I…”
“Who sent you?” Red demanded.
“I, um…that fellow. The bald man over there. He paid us all. He found us back at Ha’penny Hattie’s, and he paid us to follow him down the alley. That’s all.” He slipped to his knees, looking up beseechingly, his hands folded in desperate prayer. “I was just drinking me rotgut there, I swear it, and the money…as you can see, I’m not a prosperous man.”
Red was about to turn away in disgust.
“But you are a lying one,” Logan said, catching the fellow by his shirt collar and dragging him relentlessly to his feet. “Who paid the bald man?”
“I don’t know!” the skinny man screeched.
“You do,” Logan said flatly.
“He’ll kill me!” their captive implored.
“He’s dead,” Brendan pointed out.
“No, no, not the bald man…”
“It’s all right,” Red said. “I know who sent him.”
Their captive’s eyes were all but bulged out of their skeletal sockets. “I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell you!”
“He may kill you. I definitely will,” Logan threatened softly.
Red shook her head. “Don’t bother. It was Blair Colm.”
Logan stared at her sharply, and she had no idea what was going on in his mind as he watched her. It seemed for a moment as if time had stopped.
“Oh, God!” the skinny man screamed, going limp.
“Is he here? Is he somewhere near here?” Red demanded.
The man slumped down again, but Logan dragged him back up. “Answer the captain,” he said.
The fellow just shook his head, moaning.
“Answer,” Logan persisted menacingly.
“I—I…no. He’s headed north. He’s heading up to the Carolinas.” He looked up at them at last. “He’s…he’s no pirate, you know. They welcome him at fancy tables. He’s free to sail wherever he chooses and…kill and loot at will. Because he does so for the governors and the Crown, and he’s somehow…” He shook his head. He was no longer hoping to hide anything from them. Maybe he wasn’t even hoping to survive anymore. “I have never known another man so utterly ruthless and brutal. He’s invincible, and you might as well kill me now, and I can only pray you will do so mercifully.”
“How will he know you were hired by the bald man?” Red asked.
“He’ll know,” the terrified man whispered. “There is talk. There is always talk. Tomorrow they will be talking about the fight tonight.”
“How did he hire you? Was he here recently?” Brendan demanded.
“No…months ago, he paid the bald man. One-eyed Joe. That’s what I heard. And he promised a great reward. That’s all I know. I swear it.”
“Fight?” Hagar snorted. “Intended execution, more like.”
“No one thought Red Robert would go down without taking a few men with him,” the fellow said mournfully. “That’s why there were so many of us. This island is hell, my friends, and in hell, people always talk, and there is nowhere to run.”
Hagar looked at Red. “We can’t take him with us. The man is a coward.”
“I was caught in the sheets!” the fellow implored.
“Can’t trust him,” Peg-leg said.
“We have to kill him,” Hagar said.
The man began to moan softly again.
“Oh, shut up,” Brendan snapped.
A door opened somewhere nearby. People were beginning to venture out.
“Pick up the good weapons,” Red said quietly, and Peg-leg and Hagar hurried to do so, before those who had cowered in their rooms above could come down and, like vultures, prey upon the dead.
Red turned. A man was working at one of the fallen assailant’s boots.
“I don’t have shoes,” he said simply.
Red nodded. “Aye, then, take what you need—except the weapons. The weapons are ours. And see to the bodies.”
She started walking slowly away.
“What about him?” Brendan called after her.
She turned, not sure what to say. She couldn’t order the man’s death. He was right; he was probably a dead man anyway. He was hardly trustworthy. But he couldn’t really hurt them in any way.
Before she could open her mouth, he cried out, “Wait! I can cook. I’m a good cook. Meals are wretched at sea, but I can keep meat fresh longer than any man alive, I can mix grog, and I know a recipe that keeps away the scurvy, too.”
“Any man can make grog,” Hagar said. “Rum, lemon and water.”
“But mine is the right combination. Keeps the growth from the water, makes it good and sweet for drinking. And I know spices and herbs. Take me on as a cook. Please,” he begged.
“He’ll hide in any battle,” Hagar warned.
“He can hide down by the guns, then,” Red said. “Are you capable of priming and loading a cannon.”
“I am.”
“What’s your name?”
“O’Hara. Jimmy O’Hara. Once an Irishman, never an Orangeman. No country of my own.”
She lowered her eyes for a moment. Time had passed, years, and this was a different world….
“Take him on,” she said.
When she started walking quickly toward the wharf, unwilling to stay ashore and determined to take the tender back to the ship, she found Brendan by her side.
And Logan Haggerty on the other.
Hagar and Peg-leg brought up the rear, Jimmy O’Hara between them.
And now, even as the rain fell harder, the alley came alive. All those who had cowered in their rooms above were down in the street.
The bodies of the fallen would be picked clean of whatever coins and trinkets, pipes and tobacco, they might have been carrying in their pockets. Boots and clothes, if in any kind of repair, would be stripped. She could only hope the bodies would be buried, as well.
Most probably they would be, she told herself. The residents wouldn’t want to live with the smell once the sun rose in the morning and the stench of decay set in.
“Where are you going?” Brendan asked softly. “I thought you had taken rooms.”
“The men may enjoy their shore leave, as promised. I’m returning to the ship. Tomorrow we’ll take on supplies. Then we’ll head north.”
“And what about O’Hara?” Brendan asked.
She shrugged. “We’ll see if he can cook.”
“But he tried to kill you,” Brendan reminded her.
“No. He came along because he needed money.”
“What if he plans on poisoning us all?” Brendan asked quietly.
She smiled. “Well, we have Lord Haggerty, don’t we?”
“Ship’s taster,” Logan said, not glancing her way.
“Red…” Brendan began.
“Don’t worry. I don’t believe he’s a poisoner. Neither does our good captain,” Logan said, then looked at Red at last. “I strive to please.”
She stared back at him for a long while. She liked the man, and she hated that she did. Pirates’ honor, indeed. Logan had his own code. He could have escaped tonight. Instead, he had fought for her, and fought well and hard.
“Ransom or no, we will set Laird Haggerty free in the Carolinas,” she said.
He was still staring at her.
“You have earned your freedom,” she said simply.
He smiled slowly. “Have I?” he asked softly. “Perhaps I played this game tonight because I knew the other side would lose.”
“We’d not have found you without Laird Haggerty,” Brendan said. “He threatened Sonya, and then a drunk, to find out where you’d gone. And he was the marksman who killed their leader.”
“You might have missed—and gotten me,” Red said.
“I don’t miss,” he assured her.
“Too bad he isn’t a pirate, eh?” Bren
dan said, and stepped between them, slipping an arm around both their shoulders.
“Too bad,” she mused dryly.
And too bad that she was.
Better than her other options, she thought, then wished she had never set eyes on Laird Logan Haggerty and his ship.
LOGAN SAT ON DECK, idly tossing bits of dried fish to one of the ship’s cats, a tabby he’d grown quite fond of. The animal was called Rat because he was so efficient at ridding the hold of the creatures who would otherwise ravage their food stores. Rat had a harem of females who did his work with him. He was a huge beast, never afraid, and most of the crew steered clear of him. Rat had an affinity for the captain, though, and Red could pick up the cat and he would purr. The animal was as loyal to their captain as the best hound could ever be.
As were her men.
Those who appeared to have come from some kind of finer life, and those who seemed to have been born swabbies.
Peg-leg was in the captain’s cabin. Logan had just finished repairing a tear in the mainsail and was about to tar a gap in the hold, but even prisoners were given a luncheon break.
Especially prisoners who had been offered further shore leave but had chosen to return. In fact, being quite fond of his health, he had resisted the entertainments offered by Sonya and her fellows, and had been pleased to return to the ship. Their supplies were being loaded even now, and he had to admit that their new cook, Jimmy O’Hara, seemed to have a good idea of how to buy salt and store meat and the rest of their provisions. He’d tasted the fellow’s grog, and it was damned good and even left a fellow with a stable mind. Such a man could be a valuable asset, for he’d heard of far more pirate attacks for simple necessities than he had for gold. Pirates could not put into any port. Meat went bad easily. Weevils tore apart wheat, bread and rice.
A cook—one who could keep food from spoiling aboard ship—was as valuable as a carpenter.
Jimmy had set up a grill on the deck, where he had prepared filets of local fresh fish for the crew. He hadn’t lied when he said he had a way with seasonings. Old rice and fresh fish had been turned into a meal fit for a king. If a few weevils had made their way into the rice, they’d been masked by the parsley and saffron the cook had acquired.
Logan been feeling ridiculously content and sated when he had first sat down to play with the cat and rest a spell. But now the lethargy was gone. He was alert, his senses heightened, as he listened to Red discussing her plans with Peg-leg.
“We’ll lose the lead we have,” Red said.
“Captain, I told you before, we’ll be sinking to Davy Jones’s locker if we don’t take the time to keep our ship afloat,” Peg-leg said.
There was silence.
“You should have taken Laird Haggerty’s ship,” Peg-leg said with a sigh.
“No. This is a finer ship, and better equipped with guns. She was already a pirate vessel.”
“Black Luke’s vessel,” Peg-leg muttered.
“Black Luke’s vessel,” the captain agreed. “She has speed and guns. She can hide, she can outrun almost anything out there, and she can dare the shallows where most others wouldn’t have a prayer. No, she’s our ship.”
“Then we need to keep her in shape,” Peg-leg insisted.
Again there was silence.
Red’s regret was almost palpable when she said, “As you wish. But now we’re freshly loaded—”
“And I can brace the cargo when we haul her ashore,” Peg-leg assured her. “You’re not forgetting what you saved me from, Red, and not forgetting that I’d lie down and die—give up me good leg, if need be—for you.”
“I know, my friend, I know,” Red said softly.
“’Cause you’re far from a fool, lass,” Peg-leg said.
Lass?
Did the entire crew know that they were sailing beneath a woman? Curious. Most pirates thought it was bad luck to keep a woman aboard. Oh, they had slipped through here and there, those females seeking something they could not find in the regimented life their sex was condemned to on land, but most of the time, if discovered, women were not welcome.
But this was unlike anything he had heard of before.
This was…
Red Robert.
He winced. He had thought that, even if he wasn’t blindly, insanely in love with her, he loved Cassandra. He did love her. Of course, he loved her. There was everything to love about her. She was beautiful, kind, patient, and she had a gentle personality that was still lively and fun. He enjoyed her company. She was so right for the life he had envisioned for himself….
And at this moment, he couldn’t recall her features.
It was insane. He certainly wasn’t seduced by any other woman, definitely not a hardened soul masquerading as a pirate. No, it was no masquerade. Red was a pirate. He had seen her command her crew. He’d fought her. He knew she could be tough, even ruthless.
But he’d seen her eyes, as well.
He’d seen the pain that slipped past the armor. What caused it?
And why in hell did he care?
He had kept his honor, as she had kept hers. He would be released. She would play out her charade until the day came when she was killed. And by then he would be a free man. With luck, perhaps even a rich one. Ready to marry. To return to Scotland and claim his ancestral home….
Did he really still want that life?
Yes. He owed it to those whose blood had been shed for it. Even if now the possibility of reclaiming his birthright would not come with arms, war and trumpets, but with a simple act of unity, forged because the rightful Scottish queen was the rightful English queen, and parliaments agreed.
His muscles tensed, as they so often did when he let himself think of the past. He understood the hatred. Oddly enough, the man both he and Captain Red so despised would not understand.
Blair Colm had no soul. He lived for his own selfish pleasures, for money, power and his creature comforts. His heart was ice, and he had no qualms about killing children, women, the sick, the weak or the elderly.
He enjoyed the pain of others. And despite that, it was true that he could walk about the colonies a free man. If someone were to take a knife to his throat on the streets of Richmond or Charleston, that someone would hang for murder. He’d often thought about that himself, afraid that he would not be able to help himself. That he would attack the man and kill him with his bare hands.
And then hang for it.
Then again, perhaps it was not so hard to believe after all. In his own homeland, women still went to the stake to be burned as witches, and men could still be hanged for stealing a mere loaf of bread or a few coins. As recently as the “Glorious Revolution” that had raised William of Orange to the throne of England, they were hanging witches in the northern American colonies. It was a harsh world. Perhaps it was no surprise that a monster like Blair Colm could so freely roam the streets.
Or that pirates could actually have a stronger sense of honor than so-called honest men.
He wondered why that all seemed so clear to him now.
They were still anchored outside New Providence. The storm that had broken last night was gone. The misting rain had become a deluge during the late hours of the night, but now the sky was crystal blue and beautiful, and the sea was sweetly calm.
The breeze was gentle, like a soft kiss against his cheeks.
And all he had thought he knew about the world had changed.
He wasn’t seduced, but he was intrigued. Or perhaps obsessed.
No, he told himself. It was no such thing. It was just curiosity to know what had driven the woman to such extremes.
“Curiosity killed the cat, so they say,” he whispered softly to Rat. The cat had been extremely cautious of him at first. Hostile, actually. But Logan had gone out of his way to befriend the beast.
Why?
Because the cat and the captain were close?
The door to the captain’s cabin was opening. Peg-leg came out, and saw him there. The man’s e
yes bulged, and Logan knew Peg-leg was afraid his conversation with Red had been overheard.
Logan laid a finger across his lips.
Peg-leg frowned and quickly closed the door behind him.
“What are you doing here, man?” Peg-leg demanded, but since he was whispering, afraid of being overheard by the captain, his bluster didn’t carry much force.
“Resting,” Logan said, and smiled.
Peg-leg wagged a finger at him. “You…you didn’t hear…” He paused and let out a gruff sigh. “What did you hear?”
“Nothing I didn’t already know,” Logan said softly.
Peg-leg swore.
“There’s no problem,” Logan assured him.
“But there is!”
“Oh?”
“Now we have to kill you, and we all like you, Laird Haggerty.”
Logan couldn’t help but laugh. They weren’t going to kill him.
She would never allow it. She hadn’t even been able to condemn a man who had been hired to kill her.
“Stop that,” Peg-leg implored, still whispering.
Logan sobered; the man was genuinely upset.
“I will never tell. On my soul, on my honor, before God,” he swore.
Peg-leg eased back, his balled fists relaxing.
“Do all men aboard know the truth?” Logan asked.
Peg-leg hesitated, then nodded.
“You cannot understand….”
“But I would like to.”
Peg-leg looked around. The men in view were busy at simple tasks. Silent Sam was adding a layer of varnish to the mainmast, while two others were busy repairing the portside rail. A man was up in the crow’s nest, sanding the wood in preparation for a new coat of paint.
“Come,” Peg-leg said.
Logan arched a brow.
“I’ll tell you the story of Red Robert.”
CHAPTER FIVE
PEG-LEG HAD BEEN gone for several minutes, and still Red continued to stare at the door, frustrated.
She was certain that if they just sailed at full speed…
But she knew she had put off the necessary job of careening the ship because she had been too determined for too long that her quarry was just over the next horizon. It was almost as if he knew where she was and was careful to stay a step ahead.
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