by Fiona Monroe
And by the time they got back to Scotland, presumably James would be safely married to Lady Arabella Grenfell, and the Duke could hardly unmarry his daughter, however little he approved of her new sister-in-law.
"Very well," he said, at last.
She had the uncomfortable feeling that he could see through her prevarications and half-truths, though in reality he could know nothing about her.
"I will confer with my men and we will decide on a course of action," he continued. "In the meantime, I hope your ladyship will not find us inhospitable—but I fear you will have to be confined, for your own safety."
"You will not throw me into a dungeon, sir?"
He gave a short laugh. "My ship is a little ill-equipped in that department. A comfortable cabin will have to suffice instead. I am sure my First Mate won't mind vacating his in favour of Lady Elspeth Dunwoodie."
He turned from her as fresh shouts came distantly from outside.
"Wait here," he said curtly, as if she had a choice about it, and darted out.
He did not lock the door behind him, and she found that she by no means wished to lie there wondering what was happening as she had been forced to do during the attack. She jumped to her feet, feeling them remarkably steady, and opened the door.
As she did so, she heard the distinctive sound of a girl's scream. Across on the Heron, the huge black pirate was carrying the shrieking, struggling form of her maid Birnie, a clear two feet above the deck. Her legs were kicking and she was battering the man with her fists, her blows seeming as ineffectual as a small child's.
"Don't hurt her!"
Elspeth had called out before she had time to think whether it was a good idea, and ran recklessly across the deck of the pirate ship to the boarding plank. There, she hesitated, but only for a moment. She was in time to see the pirate Captain just jumping nimbly off the other end, and she followed with cautious haste, holding her arms out to either side.
Birnie was flailing desperately in the pirate's implacable grip, and her struggles seemed to be causing the watching men great amusement.
"Stop it!" she shrieked, almost losing her footing on the plank, lunging forward. "Leave her alone!"
The pirate Captain grabbed and caught her, or she might have plunged straight into the watery depths. "I told you to stay where you were!" he hissed.
Elspeth shook herself free of him and ran towards her maid and her captor. "Put her down!" she cried as commandingly as she could.
The pirate gazed down at her from what seemed to be an impossible height, his expression switching from laughter to something stony and dangerous. With surprising gentleness, he lowered Birnie to the deck.
The terrified maid rushed at Elspeth, sobbing. Elspeth held her protectively.
"I just wanted her to stop her noise," said the pirate, in the kind of booming voice his frame promised, but in an accent so strange that she was not confident she understood him properly. He took a step towards her, looming. "But see, I don't take no orders from no white—" and he used a word she did not know at all—"no more."
"Back off, Washington," said the Captain, sharply. He stepped in between them, and though the large pirate did not move his ground, he shifted on his feet and folded his arms. "Who is this?" he asked Elspeth.
"My maid. Birnie." Elspeth tried, pointlessly, to shield the girl with her body, while keeping her arms wrapped around her. "Leave her alone, it's not her fault." And then she realised that this made no sense.
"Where did you find her?" the Captain asked the men.
"She was hiding under the blankets in one of the big cabins," said Lummock. "Where we found the lady's things before. We went back in acause we heard a noise."
"All right," said the Captain. "It's a girl, you've all seen girls, this show is over. This is Lady Elspeth's maid and she is to be treated with the same respect as her mistress. Hands off, all of you, you hear?"
There were mutterings, and sharp words in unknown tongues, but the Captain put his hand on Elspeth's shoulder and steered her back towards the boarding plank. Birnie cried and shook some more when it became apparent that she was going to have to negotiate the narrow beam.
"Hold my hand," said Elspeth firmly. Resolutely quelling her own fears, she guided the girl across, with the Captain close behind her.
Aboard the pirate ship once more, he took them both below decks and into a cluttered cabin much smaller than his own.
"I'm locking you in this time," he said, shortly. He made to go, then turned back and pointed a finger at Elspeth. "Lady Elspeth. Let's be clear about this. Until your friends come up with a ransom, you are my prisoner. My crew paid a high price for a single piece of booty, and you are only valuable so long as you are alive and unharmed. I intend to make sure you stay undamaged, and if I give you an order for your own safety—like stay put, when I tell you—then I expect you to follow it. Do you understand?"
"I could not let them harm my maid."
"I would not have let them harm her. Did I not tell you, I don't allow my men to treat ladies with dishonour? Not unless they fancy a bit of dishonour themselves, mind you." He grinned suddenly.
Elspeth faced him stonily, but her stomach gave a flutter.
His expression darkened again. "You don't want to provoke the President. I'm Captain, but he is Quartermaster, and that makes him more or less my equal on board ship. Have you visited your cousins in Barbados before?"
"No, never," she replied, puzzled by the abrupt change in topic. "I have never been abroad before in my life."
"Then you would not understand. Washington ran away from a British sugar plantation. He was a slave, to put it bluntly, most of his life. He does not take kindly to fine Scottish ladies, with lily-white complexions, telling him what to do. He barely tolerates me telling him what to do, and I'm his Captain, and I've been working on the complexion for decades. Be careful."
"I did not mean to offend," said Elspeth, stiffly.
"Then do what I tell you in future, or believe me—daughter of a Marquess or not, I won't hesitate to turn you over my knee and wear out my sword-belt on your pretty behind. You have been warned."
Birnie gave a small gasp, and put her hand over her mouth to suppress what Elspeth suspected was a giggle.
Elspeth's cheeks burned, and she glared at the closed door for some time after he had locked it firmly behind him.
"It too risky to approach Barbados," said Washington emphatically. He said everything emphatically, but this time he was banging the map table with his fist to underscore his point. "We don't know even these people got money. We don't even know who these people be. Who we send to negotiate? Not me, for sure."
"I'll handle the negotiations, obviously," said Roderick, wearily. At least he was confident of his ability to talk on equal terms with gentlefolk; but he had forgotten, in his first scheme to try and get a ransom out of Lady Elspeth's relations in Barbados, that the President would be most reluctant to go anywhere near the island. It was far outside their usual hunting grounds. He did not want to imply that Washington was afraid of sailing near his former home, because that would be an insult to his courage, but he suspected that if there was one thing the President genuinely feared, it was recapture and re-enslavement. That would never happen—the men would defend him to the death and he would never allow himself to be taken alive—but it was a spectre in the air.
"Waters round there crawling with Americans too," Washington added, with another thump on the map. The table juddered. "We want to end up like those poor bastards on Ilha de Perolas?"
"We cannae take her all the way back to Scotland," said Stirling, nervously. "I mean... can we?"
"We shouldn't need to," said Roderick. "Yes, Washington, going to Barbados has its risks, but those are nothing compared to the dangers of a voyage across the Atlantic, then running into the full might of the British navy when we get there. We are a single small ship and there's no disguising we're a pirate vessel. We would be somewhat conspicuous, believe me, o
n the Scottish coast."
Washington threw his hands in the air. "All too much trouble. I say we keep 'em. You have her ladyship, I want the other one."
Stirling responded with a dirty chuckle. "Can I have a go when you're finished?"
Roderick wasn't sure he was being serious, but he knew he had to nip this kind of talk in the bud. "Enough of that. Both of you. Nobody is laying a finger on—especially not the Lady Elspeth, but nor are you to defile her maid, am I clear?"
"We been at sea seven weeks and more," said the President, folding his arms ominously. "Two pretty faces fall in our laps, what you expect the men to do?"
"I expect them to recognise that the daughter of the thirteenth Marquess of Crieff is a prize as valuable as any we have ever taken, and behave accordingly."
"No man understand above half the words you say, you know that, Captain?"
At least the incomprehension was mutual, then. "It's called an education," said Roderick shortly. "I can't help it."
"We all has our disadvantages."
"The Heron is a decent ship in good condition. We haven't got room in our hold for its cargo, but we can sail it to La Guiara and try to sell the wood there."
"Wood," said Washington, in a tone of deep disgust.
"It's worth coin, to the right buyers. No, listen—then, we have possession of a genuine merchantman, and we can use that to approach Barbados, without attracting undue attention from the American patrols on the way there, or alarming the British when we get there."
"No cannons on merchantman," said Washington.
"That doesn't matter! We won't be going there to attack anyone, only to ransom a prisoner. Stealth is more important than armaments."
"I don't like it, man." Washington shook his head slowly.
Roderick glanced at Stirling, hoping that he might speak up in support, but his First Mate just looked puzzled. He was staring at the map of the northeast coast of South America as if it held an answer, rubbing the back of his neck.
"All right," said Roderick, with as much authority as he could muster. "We're agreed on sailing the Heron to La Guiara and offloading the cargo. Once we're there, we'll agree on a final plan of action and put it to the men." He rolled up the map with a snap. "In the meantime, I'm serious about leaving the ladies alone, and I expect you to help enforce that, Mr President."
"Can't no man hold back the tide of nature. You no man to talk. Was you dipping in the Pearl King's booty got us run off Ilha de Perolas."
Roderick had ceased to argue this one. He only said, "And if we hadn't, we'd probably have been strung up by the Americans. Make sure we've got everything that can easily be picked up off the Heron, and get started on making an inventory. I'm going to talk to her ladyship again. If we're going to Barbados with her, we need to know as much about these cousins of hers as possible."
He had put Lady Elspeth and the maid in Stirling's cabin, as promised, though he had not yet broken this news to Stirling. It was a sad chaotic mess within, most certainly not fit accommodation for a lady, but at least it was private and had a sturdy lock on the door.
When he returned, Lady Elspeth was perched delicately on the very edge of Stirling's bunk, presenting as delightful a picture of natural poise and inbred refinement as he had ever seen. She was, without question, a beautiful girl. Ravishing, was the word that came unfortunately to mind. Her expression was open and sweet, her eyes were huge in her face and a clear pale blue, and even in what must be to her a distressing circumstance, there was a play of a mischievous smile around her wide but pretty mouth. Despite a reddening of the tip of her nose that betrayed an unwise number of hours spent on deck, her skin was milky-fair and very clear. Her loveliest feature, Roderick thought, was her hair, which was a true golden blonde and had fallen from its pins to cascade around her shoulders in gleaming waves. It was many years since Roderick had seen a girl with hair like that.
He remembered the Marchioness of Crieff. He had seen her with his own eyes at least once, and he even recalled some gossip about her; that she had married the middle-aged Marquess as a very young lass, a match considerably above what she might reasonably expect, on account of her beauty. By the time Roderick had glimpsed her, at some ball in Edinburgh, she must have been past forty herself, and was the mother of numerous children. But she was still strikingly lovely, with a tall graceful figure and the same fair colouring as her daughter. Lady Elspeth was doubtless very like her, and in the first full bloom of youth.
Even the soft lilting tones of his homeland were not something he had heard in a woman's voice for far too long.
The other girl, the maid, was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up to her chest. As he opened the door she flinched, and cowered back. She was pretty too, in an entirely different way from her mistress; she was petite, and had a dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked wildflower look. She had probably sprung from the depths of some peat-smokey blackhouse in the wilds of Aberdeenshire.
It was worth a try. "My apologies, miss, we have not been introduced," he said very courteously in the Gaelic, directly to the maid, and bowed. "Might I ask your name?"
She looked at him with as much astonishment as if he had sprouted flowers from the top of his head. "E—Eilidh Birnie, please, sir," she stammered, though in English.
"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Birnie."
Lady Elspeth too was looking at him in amazement, though her expression seemed to be mingled with reproach and distaste. Either because he had spoken in the Gaelic, which was considered a solecism by certain kinds of aristocratic or socially aspirant Scots, or because he was addressing her maid as though she were something like an equal in rank. Roderick well understood this, but it amused him to flaunt propriety in front of the great lady. He was a pirate. He was supposed to be a social anarchist.
Having made his obsequies to the maid and stirred things up, he turned again to her mistress. "We are nearly ready to set sail again, your ladyship. I trust you and your maid will be comfortable in here for the time being."
She wrinkled her perfect little nose. "Whose cabin is this?"
"My First Mate's, Stirling."
"I should appreciate clean sheets on the bunk."
He laughed. "I shall make enquiries of my housekeeper, your ladyship."
"Thank you," she said calmly, and he realised that she hadn't realised he was joking.
"We need to make port at La Guiara first of all, but I hope it won't be long before we are able to restore your ladyship to your friends in Barbados. In what part of Barbados is their estate, and what is their name?"
The same wary look came into her eyes as before, when he had mentioned her Barbados cousins. "Sir—Captain—Scot, did you say?"
"Aye, madam."
"M-my cousins in Barbados have never seen me. I do not believe they are wealthy. You intend, you said, to demand a ransom for me."
"We would be poor adventurers if we did not, your ladyship."
"Then you had much better take me back to Scotland," she said in a rush. "My father—or my brother the Earl of Atholl—would pay a handsome price for my safe return. That, I can swear to. I cannot answer at all for my friends in Barbados."
"Scotland is a long way from here, Lady Elspeth. And a dangerous journey for men of our stamp."
"But you—you are a fellow countryman. Are you not?"
"It would be idle to attempt to deny it, you may hear it in my accents even after all these years. What of it? Do you not understand that I may have good reasons for not wanting to go anywhere near my homeland?"
She seemed about to say something, and was gazing at him with sharp curiosity. She stopped herself, then repeated, "My father would see that no harm befell you, if only you would return me safely home."
"Excuse me, your ladyship, but important a man as the Marquess is, I doubt he can circumvent the law of the land. Besides—I didn't say that my only reason for not wanting to return to Scotland was fear of arrest."
"Then what is your other?"
&nb
sp; "Tell me the name of your cousins in Barbados."
She hesitated, looked aside, then said, "MacDonald."
"And where in Barbados do they live?"
"I have no idea. Why should I know that? I know nothing of Barbados or any of these West Indies. I was being carried there in the Heron and when the ship docked, a carriage would have met me at the port and taken me to them, I assume. But I know nothing more about it. You might have asked Captain Cardrew, who was escorting me, but you killed him, didn't you."
"Not personally."
She stiffened her shoulders and continued to stare aside. "I can tell you nothing more."
"Do you not have letters from your cousins?"
"Not with me. No. They are in the bureau in my sitting-room at Dunwoodie House. Oh sir—as you are a gentleman, take me home!" She turned her eyes to him at last, and they were wide and filled with tears.
It was an appealing sight, as she surely knew it must be. Unfortunately, he had many things to consider besides fine eyes in a lovely face, bedewed with tears or no.
"Once we set sail," he said, "I will unlock this door and you may go up on deck to take the air if you will, but do not allow any of the men to engage you in conversation. If anyone tries, come and find me and tell me. Do you understand? Both of you?" He cast a glance at the maid. "It would also be best if you stay together. I'm not saying I don't trust my men, but—" He didn't trust his men. "It would be wise not to put temptation in their way."
Lady Elspeth looked if possible even more dignified, and the little maid put her hand over her mouth and blushed.
