The bastard had called out her name. In the middle of the most glorious demonstration of erotic skill he was ever likely to experience, the rum-soaked bastard had groaned Courtney Farrow's name! It had taken every last ounce of Miranda’s willpower not to grab his most prized possession and twist until she had broken it off at the root! Instead, she had lain there, fuming, seething, boiling until he had dropped off into a fitful sleep; then she had gingerly pried herself loose, snatched up the first garment she could lay a hand to, and departed, tossing a scathingly obscene gesture at the sleeping form.
Her anger was no less virulent when she arrived at her own cabin—a tiny, dingy thing Shaw had assigned to her, no doubt so he could keep his bed free of any encumbrances. She tore the shirt from her back as if the very scent it carried had scalded her skin. Not satisfied with merely removing it, she clamped her teeth to the hem and savaged the linen, continuing the destruction until all that remained was a small pile of shredded strips. Those she kicked, and in her fury, her toe slammed into the side of the wooden bed. Her mouth formed a perfect oval of pain, and the amber eyes smarted behind a film of tears.
“Bastard!” she cried when the pain subsided and she could speak. “Swine! Filthy, lecherous pig! You want the little bitch that badly, you can have her! Take her! Do whatever you want with her if she will let you. You deserve each other!”
Muttering and swearing, she yanked her sea chest open and found a clean blouse and skirt. She took a narrow leather strap and buckled it around her upper thigh, then fit a razor-sharp dirk into the empty sheath. A second pearl-handled dirk went into the waistband of her skirt; and with a toss of her raven hair, she left the cabin and moved stealthily toward the stairwell that led below. She was not exactly certain which storeroom had been converted into a cabin for Falworth's use; she only knew that Garrett had decided it best to segregate him from the rest of the Eagle's crew, who were securely locked away in one of the cargo bays on the lower deck.
Miranda headed swiftly for the orlop deck where there were large lockers for stowing cables and extra canvas. Most had been emptied, their contents transferred to the Falconer or used to make temporary repairs to the Eagle's own yards and rigging. The air was dank and thick with the smells of tar and pitch. As she rounded a corner, she saw a guard seated on a cask placed between two locker doors. He was awake, engrossed in picking the maggots out of a stale biscuit. A single candle flickered in an iron lantern, the flame throwing off a weak circle of yellow light.
She patted the dirk at her waist, and as an afterthought, loosened the thong over her breasts so that the cloth gaped. She moved forward, the swish of her skirt causing the guard to glance up in surprise.
Harry Pitt’s mouth went slack as he looked into the gaping cotton blouse. In his throat, a partially swallowed crumb of biscuit took three bobs of his Adam’s apple to clear.
Miranda stepped confidently into the light. “I want to see the prisoner.”
Pitt wiped the back of his hand across his mouth to remove a shiny layer of grease. He stared at her dumbly as if he did not recognize the language she spoke.
With a deep breath, Miranda repeated the request. “I need to see the Yankee lieutenant, the one you brought to the captain's cabin earlier this evening.”
Pitt’s eyes flicked beside him to the door on the left.
“Ye do, do ye?” The ugly, pockmarked face screwed up suspiciously. “What for?”
“That is my business,” she said coolly.
“Capt’n Shaw know ye’re here?” The yellowed eyes were stripping her naked as his hand wiped slowly across his mouth again.
“The captain has his business with the prisoner; I have mine.”
“That so?” Pitt grinned. “Still, he might be right peeved if I was to let jest anyone wander in and out as they pleased.”
Miranda sidled closer. “And rightfully so, I suppose. But that is only because he does not want everyone to know.”
“Know what?”
Miranda widened her eyes innocently. “Why, about the gold, naturally. If everyone on board knew the Yankee was paying for his comforts with a chest of gold...well, the captain would have to share it, would he not? 'Tis in the articles signed when you joined the crew.”
Pitt’s eyes jerked up from the shifting cotton. “Gold ye say?”
Miranda held a finger to her lips. “A thousand ingots, hidden somewhere on the Yankee frigate, or so he says.”
“ ‘Ow do ye know about it?”
She indicated the door with a disdainful roll of her eyes.
“He tried to use it as a bribe to buy his escape.” Miranda moved a slinky step closer, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight. “I was hoping I could...persuade the lieutenant to tell me where the chest was. I mean, if Garrett was planning to take it and keep it for himself, why should someone else, equally enterprising, not do the same thing?”
Pitt licked his thin, parchment-like lips. “Man is caught stealin’ or hidin’ prize money, ‘e’s keel-hauled.”
She smiled and placed her hands on the sweat-stained chest. “The man who helps me,” she murmured huskily, sliding a hand down to his groin, “will feel as if he has been keel-hauled, but believe me, he will live to swim another day.”
Pitt swallowed hard.
“What is wrong, Mister Pitt? Do you not believe I would reward a man who helped me?”
His mouth went slack as the nimble fingers gripped the loop of his belt and jerked him forward. His eyes rolled down and his hands came up to grasp the creamy olive shoulders. Her hand thrust once, twice, and he gasped as he went up onto his toes. She stepped quickly back before the claw-like fingers could clench into her bare shoulders again, then watched impassively as his bony fingers curled around the pearl handle of the dirk and tried in vain to dislodge it from where it protruded from his belly. The groan of surprise was low and drawn out as he crumpled to his knees. He teetered a moment, his eyes wide and staring at the blood-spattered hem of Miranda’s skirt. Then he pitched forward onto the floor.
Miranda waited until the hideous twitching stopped before she leaned over and retrieved her knife, calmly wiping the blade on his shirt sleeve before she tucked it back into her waistband. She searched his pockets and found a ring of brass keys, one of which fit the door on the left.
Otis Falworth was already on his feet, and judging by his expression, she guessed he had overheard the proceedings in the hall.
“Good God,” he murmured, staring at the body and the growing puddle of blood.
“Never mind God,” she said archly. “Drag him in here out of the way.”
“Are you mad? Someone is bound to find him.”
She straightened from her search of the guardpost, adding a long-snouted pistol to her arsenal.
“I do not intend to be here long enough to worry about anyone finding him. I am...we are getting off this ship tonight.”
Falworth stared at her blankly. “Tonight?”
“We can leave through one of the gun ports. It is a short swim to shore and once there we will be well hidden by weeds and brush. Garrett is taking the Falconer out of the bay tomorrow. This is our only chance.”
“Chance to do what? Go where? We are in the middle of nowhere.”
“This nowhere has villages and ports. I know enough of the language to get us by.”
“But...there are nomads, and Berbers.”
“There are also fishing boats and men to sail them,” she snapped, planting her hands on her hips. “I am leaving this ship. Are you coming with me or not?”
As she turned on her heel and started to walk away, his hand shot out and grabbed her by the arm.
“All right, all right. I will go. Wait until I pull the body into the cabin and cover it.”
Shortly thereafter they were hurrying along the darkened passageway. At the foot of the aft stairwell, Miranda held a finger to her lips to warn him to silence. They were directly below the hatch leading up to the gun deck. On either side of the hatch, st
rung between the shattered remnants of the cannons and trunions, were the hammocks of the sleeping crew. The likelihood of one of the men waking was a risk they would have to take, but it was the only way off the ship.
“You are mad,” Falworth declared in a whisper after he had poked his head above the coaming. “There is ten feet of open deck to cross, and the moon is streaming through the ports like rays of a beacon.”
Miranda smiled, her eyes gleaming with excitement. “You once told me you were willing to risk anything to have me, my lieutenant. Were those just the words of a lustful man, spoken in heat?”
Falworth studied her face, faintly visible in the waxy half light that spilled down the stairwell. Her lips were slightly parted, moist and dark. Her breasts pushed at the cloth of her blouse, the distended nipples reminding him of everything she was offering.
“I will even go first, my lieutenant,” she breathed. “You can follow, or you can remain here.”
With a swirl of her skirt, Miranda darted up the steep ladderway, hesitating at the top for a moment before the slender calves climbed out of sight. Falworth stared up the ladder, his tongue sliding desperately across his lips to try to moisten them. He rubbed his palms slowly on his breeches to try to dry them. He had not bargained for this.
“Damn,” he murmured and moved forward, his hands on the guide lines, his foot lifting to the first rung. But a movement in the shadow behind the stairwell distracted him and his foot missed the step, falling heavily to the deck.
“What the—?”
The sight of Adrian Ballantine, half-naked, dripping wet, looming out of the shadows sent him stumbling back from the ladder altogether.
“Stay where you are," Adrian warned, his voice an ominous slash in the darkness. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Adrian! Where did you come from? How did you get off the Falconer?”
“The how is not important,” Adrian murmured. “The why might interest you, however.”
Falworth glanced up the ladderway but there was no sign of Miranda. “Good God, man, nothing matters now except that we are both free and we have a chance to escape. Come with us. I have bribed the girl to help me get ashore.”
“No,” Adrian snarled quietly, one hand reaching for the scruff of Falworth’s neck while the other pressed the cold edge of a knife into the arched throat. “You are going to come with me.”
Falworth resisted only until the knife kissed deeper. “Yes! Yes! Whatever you say.”
Adrian directed him back into the darkness of the companionway, and Falworth heard a soft creak, as if a door was being pushed open. It was a sail locker, empty of most of its spare canvas, but not completely unoccupied. The stub of a candle was sitting in a lump of wax on a shelf, the light too weak to do more than define the shadows. One of those shadows proved to be the sprawled body of a corsair, his limbs askew, his head bent at an odd angle to his shoulders.
Falworth licked his lips again. “Are you planning to tell me what this is all about? We are on the same side, for God’s sake!”
The knife moved, and Falworth felt the sharp prick of the blade as the point sliced into his flesh.
“Which side is that, Lieutenant?” Adrian asked harshly. “Whichever side happens to pay the most?”
Falworth gasped and tried to suppress the panic rising in his chest. He became aware of something warm and wet sliding down his neck, soaking the collar of his shirt.
“Please,” he croaked, “I can explain.”
“Explain why you sold out your crew? Your ship? Explain why you have been feeding information to the enemy all these long months?"
Falworth's eyes widened. "No. No, you do not understand. That was not me. I only said that to Shaw to gain his confidence."
The knife bit deeper; the blood began a steady trickle. “Your cousin at the Admiralty office, was he your source?”
“Yes, but—”
“The name,” Adrian spat, his eyes as cold and flat as steel.
“W-Winthrop. Charles Winthrop! But he hardly knows more than I do about the traitor! Whispers. He only heard whispers about someone they referred to as the 'Englishman'. But that was it, that was all he knew; all that I know."
“So you never dealt with Farrow directly?”
Falworth almost whimpered. “I never dealt with Farrow at all! And if you would just set the knife aside and let me explain—”
Adrian shoved Falworth against the wall but did not ease the pressure on the knife. The tip sliced deeper and the blood flowed faster, mingling with sweat to turn the collar of his shirt pink.
Falworth’s hands splayed against the wall. His fingers brushed something round and solid—a truncheon—and he clutched it in desperation.
“I can get you off this ship,” he gasped. “I have Shaw convinced I can see him safely through the Straits and into open water."
"Of course you can...with the proper sea codes and signal flags."
"I had no intention of letting him escape! I would have turned him over to the navy as soon as we reached Gibraltar.”
“Of course you would have,” Adrian agreed dryly.
Falworth blinked the sweat out of his eyes. It was pouring from his brow and temples and it flowed between his shoulder blades like a stream. Adrian leaned ever closer and lower his voice.
“Tell me about Alan.”
“A-Alan?”
“You implied you knew something about his death, that it was more than an accident.”
Falworth’s eyes bulged from their sockets and his fingers curled tighter around the truncheon. “I was lying! I know nothing more about your brother’s death than you do. It was an accident! A cleat swung loose and—”
“And crushed his skull; yes...after it somehow managed to put a neat little puncture mark through his chest, through his heart.”
“A p-puncture?” Falworth was genuinely taken aback. “You mean he was stabbed?”
“You tell me.”
“I do not know! I swear I do not! And I will be damned if I take the blame for it!” The truncheon came up in a wild swing directed at Adrian's head.
Too late, Falworth saw the gleam in the steely gray eyes and realized that Ballantine had been waiting for him to try something exactly that stupid. The ball of Adrian’s knee drove into Falworth’s wrist and forearm, the force of the blow snapping the bone and causing the truncheon to fly out of his grip. At the same time, the knife was pressed deep into his throat and drawn slickly through sinew and tendons, severing the jugular and the hard cartilage of the windpipe before Falworth could gasp either surprise or pain.
A sickening gurgle and hiss of escaping air were the only sounds in the small compartment. Falworth’s mouth worked convulsively, and his eyes bulged in horror and disbelief, but Adrian had already stepped away. Without the support of Ballantine’s arm, Falworth’s body slipped slowly down the wall, his head jerking with the thick gouts of blood.
Adrian’s expression showed no reaction, but his fists were trembling by his sides, and his belly muscles ached with the tension. After several moments, the urge was still great within him to slash the knife again and again until there was nothing left but pulp, but a few deep breaths brought him back under control.
He had no idea how long he and Falworth had been in the sail locker. Surely most of the men would have nearly all been evacuated.
Ballantine’s eyes flicked to the stub of the candle, then to the body of the corsair sprawled beside Falworth on the canvas. There had been a strong odour of rum on the man's breath and a quick search produced a full jug of the strong spirits. The locker, as it happened, was also less than a dozen paces from the main powder magazine.
Adrian splashed the contents of the jug onto the folded sails. He unstuck the candle stub from the shelf, unmindful of the hot tallow dripping down his fingers, and after a cautious glance out into the companionway, he threw the candle onto the soaked canvas. The rum caught instantly with a quiet whoosh. The thirsty yellow and orange flam
es raced across the canvas to the two bodies, spilling down over them like a waterfall of fire.
Adrian closed the door and dribbled more of the rum down the narrow companionway that led to the powder magazine. Satisfied, he dashed back to the ladderway that led up to the gun deck, but before he could put his foot to the bottom rung, a shadow detached itself from a niche and blocked his path. The shadow held a pistol, cocked and steady, aimed squarely between his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-One
Courtney’s eyes slitted open, and she groaned softly. She was lying on something that smelled of damp earth and rotting vegetation. Her clothes were wet and clammy against her skin. Her hair was soaked, matted with bits of mud and clinging weed. Trees were swaying gently overhead, and she wondered why she could see them so clearly. An attempt to sit upright brought another discovery; her hands and ankles were bound securely, and a wadding of cotton was stuffed in her mouth. The ache in her jaw forced her to remember the last fleeting moments on board the Falconer. She had been talking to Davey Dunn, talking about the man who had betrayed Duncan, then something about gold...and then Ballantine had loomed up out of nowhere, knocked Davey unconscious, and punched her in the jaw!
It was the last thing she remembered: a ball of rock-hard knuckles. She had no idea where she was or how she had got there. She had to assume that, in his lunacy, Ballantine had kidnapped her from the Falconer, had tied her and gagged her and deposited her in the bushes. But why? Was he hoping to use her as a hostage? As leverage to persuade Shaw to release his men?
With a surge of fury, Courtney tried to scream but produced only a deep, muffled wail that caused more pain to her nose and throat from the vibration than the paltry sound was worth. She squirmed and thrashed to test the strength of her bonds, but there, too, accomplished little more than to increase the throbbing in her shoulders and legs.
She lay back, panting through her nose. Was it her imagination or did the hollow thrum of the pounding surf sound close? Had Ballantine carried her over the crest of the slope that surrounded the cove? The brush was too dense to see through, the trees too close to determine if the ships were visible or even within shouting distance.
Wind and the Sea Page 35
