Copyright 2013 Amy Bright
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Jaycee DeLorenzo / jayceedelorenzo.com/sweetnspicy/
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Publishsed by Amylynn Bright at Smashwords
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
About the Author
Dedication
For Pop ~Who taught me how to tell stories and is possibly the best story teller I’ve ever known even if I know that ninety percent of ‘em are complete BS. I love you.
And oddly, Tommy Lee Jones who played one of my favorite movie pirates.
Chapter One
July 25, 1718
Another huge wave crashed into the ship sending Roselyn careening to the other side of the cramped cabin. The captain had ordered the lamps extinguished the minute the waves became robust and the rain began to pound against the windows in earnest. Now in the pitch black night, everything that hadn’t been bolted or tied down was flying around the room. Including Roselyn.
The prow of the ship dove into the trough of another wave. Her trunk slid across the planks of the floor and slammed into her back, knocking the wind from her lungs. The lady’s maid who’d accompanied her on this voyage had disappeared to her own quarters early in the storm, wanting to be sick in private. Before the storm became truly ferocious, the captain of the British merchant vessel had come to her cabin several times to inquire into her welfare. Though she hadn’t seen him in several hours now, she could just faintly make him out along with the rest of the crew shouting orders to each other over the roar of the wind and sea.
Roselyn struggled to her feet, working desperately to gain the bed before another wave hit. If she could manage to stay on top of the bunk she might not be so pummeled by the objects careening around on the floor. She clutched at her stomach and moaned. If everything would just hold still for a minute….
She reached the mattress, but was thrown off by a violent upheaval to starboard and bashed her head against the far bulkhead. This time the ship didn’t immediately right itself, and she remained dazed in a heap lying half on the wall. She reached up and felt her fingers become slick with the blood oozing from her tender temple and cheek. Roselyn pressed her hand against the wound and winced.
The cabin door burst open. Roselyn was confused when the door seemed to open from the floor. From his strange angle, the captain whipped his head around in the darkness, searching for her. Roselyn didn’t know what to make of her topsy-turvy world.
“Miss Weldon!” the captain hollered into the room. “Roselyn, are you in here?”
“Umph,” she grunted. “I’m over here.” She attempted to right herself but the canting of the room and the gash on her head made her woozy.
“You need to get up and come with me right away.” The captain scrambled across the slanted room and grabbed her by the arm. Rough fingers dug into her flesh when he yanked her off the floor.
“Ow!” she complained as he dragged her towards the door. “What’s happened? Is the ship on its side?”
“Not exactly.”
The two of them made it out the doorway and into the hallway leading to the deck. She realized with dawning horror they were slogging through water midway up her calves.
“Is the ship sinking?” She tried to control the terror that was taking root. Up to this point, she’d done a fairly good job of it. Even while being thrown around the cabin with the wind howling, she had managed to keep some semblance of calm.
The captain didn’t answer her; whether he didn’t hear her or was too concerned with steering her out onto the deck, she didn’t know. The sailors staggered on the heaving deck, lowering skiffs and rowboats, their faces taut with fear and terrified determination. She was accustomed to organized activity on deck where the well-worn sailors moved with confidence, but this night they scrambled about verging on chaos. Their show of fear only served to panic her more.
She pulled on the captain’s arm until he turned around. “The ship is sinking isn’t it!” she screamed over the wind. “Oh dear God, we’re sinking.”
Roselyn was in full blown hysteria now. The blood coursing down her face and neck, which had caused such dismay before, was nearly forgotten and replaced by a premonition of the mighty British ship sinking and her body afloat and lifeless, tossed endlessly by the relentless waves.
“I can’t swim, Captain. Oh dear God, I can’t swim.” Her voice was a reedy scream as she clawed against his hand to free her arm from his powerful grasp. She was desperate to get away from him and return to the imagined safety of the cabin. Even an upside down cabin was better than a rowboat to her hysterical mind.
“Get in the boat. If you get into the boat you won’t have to swim.”
“No,” she shrieked. “That boat’s too small.” She dug in her heels and sunk into a squat to make it harder for the captain to drag her towards what she knew in her heart was certain death.
In an obvious demonstration of his fear and desire to get her across the deck and into a lifeboat, he slapped her–hard–across the face.
Roselyn inhaled sharply but stopped struggling. With wide eyed horror, she allowed the man to lead her to the boat. In a desperate attempt to take control of the chaos, he thrust her towards the boat and hurried off in the opposite direction.
“Come on, miss.” A grizzled old tar took her by the hand and wiped at the blood on her face with a rag. He spoke with a heavy accent making it difficult to understand him as he yelled over the wind. “The skiff is da best place for ya, if dis ole bitch goes down, we’ll be wantin’ ya safe and ou ‘o the drink.” With surprising gentlemanly solicitousness, he handed her into the boat. Roselyn clutched at the man’s hands not wanting to let go. She looked around frantically at the men running past and tried to locate her maid, but she was nowhere to be found. The wind whipped her black hair around her face gluing the long strands to her cheeks and forehead with the blood and making it nearly impossible to see anything.
A deafening crack followed by several loud crashes and the huge ship groaned under the weight as more water dumped on deck. Roselyn was doused from head to toe with frigid, salty water. Her scream wasn’t heard over the roar of the sea and the creaking of the wood as the ship came apart. The deck listed severely and, to her horror, several men lost their grip on the rails and fell into the ferocious sea. She grasped at her ancient sailor, terrified that he might also fall into the churning wate
r and abandon her to a dreadful fate.
Roselyn could only wonder in mounting panic where her missing maid could be. It was clear to her now that this mighty merchant ship was sinking and her only hope was to stay in the tiny row boat and pray.
Time was running out. Another big wave or two and the crumbling ship would go under the sea and never re-emerge. The old sailor cut the lines holding the smaller boat to the deck. The skiff slid and the enormous wave he’d prophesied came and lifted the skiff into the water, turning the enormous ship fully on its side.
For one chilling moment, Roselyn thought for sure the old sailor would be lost, but she grasped whole handfuls of his shirt and hauled him on board just before the small vessel crashed broadside into the roiling ocean. Their tiny craft was drawn away from the sinking ship almost immediately and it tossed about in the water. Each time the skiff crested the top of a wave, they looked around wildly for a sign of the sinking ship or other survivors, but they saw no one. Eventually, even the remains of the ship were lost to them.
Roselyn sat on the bench at the stern of the row boat and peered out into the moonless night for signs of other survivors. She screamed out names into the horrific darkness until her voice gave out, her throat too sore to keep up the vigil. The sailor operated the oars and steered into the waves, doing his best to keep them upright.
She realized she didn’t even know his name. Hours later, while the sun rose on the calm sea, Roselyn lay curled up in the back of the boat. Her dress was heavy with water and ruined by salt. Her hair lay stringy and loose down her back. The sea washed the blood from her face and hair. Salt stung the cuts and abrasions until she was simply too numb to feel it. Her sailor lay slumped over on his side, seeming as weary and shocked from the ordeal as she was. When the sun rose, a giant fiery ball emerging from the watery horizon, Roselyn acknowledged to herself that it was the most beautiful sunrise she’d ever seen.
She was alive.
Granted, she was adrift in a tiny boat in the great Atlantic Ocean with a nameless stranger who saved her life, but still, she was alive.
That thought brought a faint smile to her lips as she finally fell into exhausted sleep.
Chapter Two
July 26, 1718
The man stretched out on the quarter deck naked from the waist up, his fingers laced together behind his head. His raven black hair curled over his forehead and fluttered in the breeze while he lay there, eyes closed, taking in the sun. The crew milled about the deck. They’d completed all of the work which needed to be done to bring the ship to rights after the horrendous storm that blew the previous night. It was tradition on the ship to allow for a day of rest and celebration after surviving a storm of such magnitude.
“Cap’n.”
The relaxed man kept his eyes closed and willed the voice to go away. It wasn’t often that he allowed himself the opportunity to do absolutely nothing. A ship this size, with a crew of one hundred and fifty men, kept a sea captain busy.
“Cap’n,” the voice more insistent this time.
He stretched his long legs, flexed his naked toes and re-crossed his ankles. “Yes, Mr. Blake?” He did not sit up. He didn’t even sound especially interested.
“There’s a boat to starboard, Cap’n,” the quartermaster informed him.
His interest level climbed a bit. “Whose flag are they flying?”
“No flag.” The older man’s voice slurred slightly from the rum he’d already consumed that day.
The captain opened one eye and looked at his quartermaster. “No flag? What kind of ship?”
“Not a ship, it’s a boat. A dinky little row boat.”
That was interesting enough information for the captain to open both eyes and sit up. “Is anyone in it?”
“Can’t tell. Davy spied it from the nest.”
“You have the glass?”
The captain stood, rising to his full height of an inch or so over six feet. The quartermaster handed him a long spy glass. The two men stood at the starboard rail and looked out over the wide expanse of sea. After only a second or so scanning the water, the captain located the row boat. It was a small vessel, the size of a lifeboat, bobbing in the relatively calm sea. He trained the glass on it, and though he couldn’t see anyone, there was a flutter of what could have been material.
“All right, let’s go get it.” The captain handed the glass back to Mr. Blake who ran down the wooden steps shouting orders to trim the sails and come about.
Curiosity had a firm grip on the captain now. It wasn’t difficult; boredom was a side effect of life at sea counteracted only by brief moments of thrilling battles and hellacious storms. Granted, the life of a mariner was one of complete freedom and adventure, but being the captain of this particular ship, it was also a life of wealth and advantage.
The great three-masted ship, Neptune’s Revenge, cut through the waves then turned starboard toward the tiny boat bobbing in the distance. Handsome Jack, the infamous pirate captain, stretched his arms languidly over his head. He rolled his head on his neck and arched his back to complete the stretch.
The ship had been at sea for three months on a return voyage bound for Nassau, the port in the New Providence pirate paradise. The cruise had been unimaginably successful. The original food stores had dwindled, the precious vacated space taken up by a bounty of captured gold coins, jewels, and other riches from the merchant and passenger ships the pirate and crew boarded and conquered. Oddly enough, the booty that had excited the pirate the most was a barrel of crisp green apples taken off a Spanish galleon just days before.
He took a bite of one of those apples as his ship come alongside the small boat. Two people were aboard but neither responded to the yells and shouts rained down on them from the rails of Neptune’s Revenge. At a nod from the captain, one of the younger sailors leapt off the side of the ship. He made a perfect swan dive and came up next to the row boat.
“It’s a lady and some old sea dog,” the young man hollered up to the captain.
“Are they alive?” Jack yelled back down.
The lad rocked the boat a bit. The old man moved his arm and the lady moaned. “Aye, they be in bad shape, but they live.”
“All right, then. Bring ‘em up.”
The captain ordered a basket lowered. The two occupants were raised, one at a time. Finally, the boat was lifted and secured to the side of the ship. Jack made his way through the gawking crowd of seamen. Lying on the deck was exactly what the boy reported. An old man with a rough beard and missing teeth, his breeches torn and his shirt ragged around the hem, lay unconscious on the teak deck.
But it wasn’t the old man the rest of the crew ogled. Jack shifted his attention to the woman. He could see a hint of her beauty even after spending time adrift in a row boat in the open ocean. Her face was young, and he estimated she couldn’t be more than nineteen. Her full, bow shaped lips were chapped from the sun and dehydration; her hair, though matted from the wind and the salt water, was jet black and long. Not much could be said about her figure underneath piles and piles of silk and petticoats, but her corset alluded to a small waist and her breasts showed promise.
“Take the man below and get some water into him,” the captain ordered. He knelt and picked up the girl, her weight greatly enhanced by the soaked dress. Without it she probably weighed only seven or eight stone. Once the thought entered his head, he found it hard not to think of her without her dress on. Obviously, this had been a longer trip than he thought if a waterlogged woman-child could arouse him.
The quartermaster looked upon the captain with amusement. “Can I assume you’ll take care of the lady yourself, Jack?” He waggled his eyebrows in a suggestive manner.
“Thank you for your concern. I surely can’t leave her with you sea dogs.”
“Sure you can, Cap’n,” Blake assured him in his best English accent, “We’re all right well be’aved society gen’lmen, doncha know.”
Jack flashed a smile and responded to his officer
’s jest in kind. “I’ll just take her to my cabin.”
“I bet you will.” Blake roared with good natured laughter. The quartermaster turned to supervise the other survivor’s transport below decks.
Jack’s cabin boy was in his quarters when he kicked open the door. The room, neat and tidy, was spacious and well appointed. He lay the young woman on a massive bed made up with a satin coverlet and pristine white silk sheets over a feather bed and down quilts.
“Bring a pitcher of fresh water and a couple more apples,” he told the cabin boy. “When she wakes, she’ll want to have a warm bath, so bring in the tub, too.”
“Aye, Cap’n.” The boy gave a quick salute and trotted out the door.
Jack took in the woman who lay on his bed. A welcome sight for sure, but she was clearly a lady, and not some floozy from a nearby port.
He glanced about the cabin deciding what he should do, and then back at the girl. Woman, he corrected himself, looking over her body again and mentally adding another year or two to the estimate he made of her age earlier. He leaned over her to assess the damage. There was a gash on her head that would need tending. Her temple was bruised, but the salt had cleaned the open wound and the bleeding had stopped so he didn’t think stitches would be necessary. The dress was going to have to go. It was ruined and still wet and eventually, he knew from experience, the salt would make her itch.
He rolled her over on her side and worked on the buttons down her back. There were a lot of them and each was very small. After fighting with six of them he uttered a curse and then simply yanked the rest of them off by tearing the dress straight down the back.
The sound and the sudden feeling of being jerked around brought her back to consciousness and the young woman screamed.
The Sea Rose Page 1
