Under Her Brass Corset

by Brenda Williamson

  Jasper hurried down to his storage cabin. “Damn.” He shoved objects out of the way to get to a trunk in the corner.

  Abigail flew into the room, out of breath. “You didn’t answer me. Can’t we go faster?”

  “No. Ironically, we’re too weighted by everything that makes this ship fly.” He swept the gadgets off the trunk lid and flipped it open.

  “That makes no sense. If we’re too heavy to go fast in the water, we should be too heavy to float in the air.”

  “Air has currents to carry us. Water resists.” Jasper tossed coats, gloves, rubber hoses and other items out of his way in the trunk.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Get your boots on and make sure that map stays hidden. And put on a coat just in case something happens to me.”

  “Happens to you? And what does a coat have to so with hiding the…He’ll take me, won’t he?”

  “I have to believe he wouldn’t be cruel enough to leave you on my ship alone. And I don’t want him getting any lewd thoughts about you in that attire.” He grabbed the heavy leather gloves first and tugged them on, aligning the concealed built-in pistols for easy extraction. A shake and twist of his wrist hit the slider and sent the barrel out of its sleeve, exposing the loading chamber. One shot each. Not sufficient weaponry in a battle, but good for the defense of up close and personal danger.

  “Do you really think those are necessary?” Abigail stood at his side.

  “Would you please do as I ask?” He retracted the guns, stooped down and pulled out small pistols, swords and knives, making his way to the bottom of the trunk. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Abigail not moving. He got up and put his gloved fingers against her cheek. “Don’t fret. I won’t let him take you. Just get your boots on and a coat to give me less worry.”

  She nodded and hurried away. He watched for a second as she rummaged in the cabinet.

  “Is this all right?” She swung his cloak around and draped it over her shoulders.

  “Yes.” He gave her a confident smile and went back to the weapons in his trunk.

  “What’s that?” She sat on a stool and worked stockings onto her feet and up her beautiful legs.

  “A modified multicylinder gun, working much like the American Gatling.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Gatling gun was a weapon used in the American Civil War. Its rapid-fire mechanism makes it very useful for one man to outnumber a few. I’ve made modifications that allow me to hold it.”

  “Can’t we reason with Mr. Teach? Explain to him my claim to the map is more legitimate than his?” She hooked and drew the laces tight on her boots, then stood. “What if we just lie and tell him I lost the map?”

  “You can’t reason with Eric. He won’t care about your claim, and he certainly won’t believe you lost the map.”

  “Then why did you suggest I throw it in the water?”

  “Whether he believes you have it or not is one thing. But if he gets his hands on it—” He said no more and handed her the small, double-barrel derringer he had confiscated from her when he’d put her to bed. “Put this in your pocket and only take it out if your life is threatened. You do know how to fire a gun, don’t you?”

  “Of course I know how to use it. It’s my gun. I’d ask how it is you got it, but I don’t want to remember that whole incident with the cat food leading to my inebriation.”

  Jasper carried his weapons and prodded Abigail to the steps.

  “Wait.” She went for the stairs to the lower level. “I need to get my father’s watch and my house key.”

  He understood her sentiment in regard to the watch. The house key baffled him.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “My mother gave the watch to my father. Her words are engraved on the back. I can’t lose it.”

  “And the key?”

  “If I don’t lose the house to the bank while I’m away, how will I get in upon my return?”

  If their circumstances weren’t so dire and Abigail’s expression not so serious, he would have laughed. Instead he grabbed her by the arm. “They’re safer in the cabin.”

  She nodded in agreement and they returned to the upper deck.

  Eric’s ship was closing in on them.

  “How can he move so fast?” Abigail knelt next to Jasper as he loaded the gun.

  “His clipper is lighter in weight than this brigantine relic.” He had heard about Eric’s mechanical abilities, and it worried him to see the adjustments in action. “Plus, he has apparently made improvements with the addition of a steam engine.”

  “Drop your sails!” Eric’s voice thundered through a megaphone.

  Jasper ran to the rigging and kicked the lever to hoist his final sail. “Drop my sails, he says.” He hurried to the quarterdeck and turned the wheel.

  Abigail joined him. “What are you doing?”

  “Pull.” He grabbed her hand and put it on one of the handles. “I’ll show him a thing or two about pirating.”

  Together they forced the rudder to turn sharp. His ship came around just as he expected, sending the stern in a collision course with Eric’s bow.

  “We’re going to crash.” Abigail gasped, letting go.

  “That’s the idea.” He reached around and made her take hold again. “That’s his disadvantage with the newer vessel. We’ll do more damage to his ship than to mine. Pirates don’t always get to sail up along another ship and jump aboard. Sometimes we had to do a little maneuvering to keep them from fleeing.”

  “And if that didn’t work?”

  The ship jolted upon impact. A thud, a crack of wood, but the crash didn’t work as planned. Jasper looked over at Eric, half infuriated the man had had the sense to reinforce his hull and half intrigued by the forethought.

  “It worked most times, but if not, then we blew them to smithereens with our cannons,” he answered.

  “Is that what we’re going to do now?”

  “Oh, if only I had me but one cannon and some chain shot. I’d make splinters of his ship’s broadside. However, I have nary a single cannon onboard. I haven’t had need of one for a long time.”

  “When and why would you have had one of those?”

  “We’ll talk of that another time.”

  “You fool,” Eric shouted, flinging his megaphone away.

  “What is he doing?” Abigail asked.

  Jasper locked the wheel in place. “He’s getting ready to open fire.”

  “But he’s…Is he taking his hand off?”

  “He lost his arm up to the elbow near the end of the American Civil War,” Jasper said, recalling the day well when he went to Eric’s rescue at the urging of Eric’s grandfather. “A sword fight.”

  “He couldn’t have been very old.”

  “I think seventeen, maybe twenty, I don’t know for sure. He’s always been an overconfident brat.” Jasper put a hand to her shoulder. “Eric killed the man that did that to him.”

  “That must have been very traumatizing.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for him, Abigail. He’s not here to be your friend.” Jasper watched Eric lift a Gatling similar to his.

  “What’s he doing now?” She moved to the bulkhead.

  Eric’s arm rose and leveled with Abigail. A single shot pierced the air. Jasper rushed forward, seeing Abigail fall back. Then a blaze of bullets peppered the side of his ship as he dragged Abigail to the far side of the helm. His heart pounded. Fearing he had lost her, before knowing her the way he wished, he bent over and shielded her from any more harm.

  “Abigail?” He ran his fingers along her collarbone, looking for the wound.

  She swished her hand in front of him as if to wave him away. Then she grabbed his forearm. Her eyes wide with shock, she struggled to sit up.

  “He shot me! That son of a bitch tried to kill me.”

  “Stay down.” Jasper forced her to lie back. He turned her head, checking her shoulders. “Where are you hurt?”

  “
Here.” She pulled his hand down the front of her body to the dent in the brass corset.

  “No hole,” he said with a relieved sigh. “It ricocheted.”

  “Yes,” she whimpered. “But it still hurts like bloody hell.”

  He bowed closer. With his eyes shut, he put his forehead against hers. For one thankful second, his thoughts formed into words. “You’re all right.”

  “I am,” she answered with a comforting stroke along the length of his arm.

  He didn’t want to draw back from her, but Eric’s cease-fire forced him to rise.

  “I want that map, Blackthorn.” Eric’s voice boomed without the aid of a megaphone.

  “I destroyed it,” Jasper growled loudly.

  “Liar!” Eric aimed his gun arm again.

  Jasper ducked and made his way toward the steps. “I want you to get belowdecks. It’s the safest place for you,” he told Abigail.

  He moved quickly to where the Gatling lay and picked it up. Then he lifted and swung it toward Eric’s ship. Silencer tubes kept the shots quiet pops as he cranked the handle. Eric shot back. His gun, having special modifications, not only let him shoot while attached to his arm, but with a rapid succession like a repeater rifle.

  From the heat of his constant firing, Jasper’s sound suppressors deteriorated within minutes. The noise became deafening and the temperature of the metal too much to handle. He cast it aside, mentally taking note to make adjustments to the weapon in the future. Eric also discarded his weapon and reattached his artificial hand. He shouted orders to his crew for cannon fire.

  “Go now.” Jasper motioned for Abigail to get below.

  The first cannonball hit the deck. He watched Abigail scuttle back from the splintering floorboards, and he rushed to push her down into the passageway.

  She refused to go. “No, I can help.”

  Eric continued lobbing explosives at them.

  Jasper glanced at the gauge on the steam engine for the sails. “I think we have the wind,” he told her. And then a sharp, painful sting in his chest silenced him.

  He staggered back, reeling from the impact of a small-caliber bullet. He saw the pistol in Eric’s hand, and his gloating smirk as if the shot was a show of his marksmanship. Damn him.

  “Captain!” Abigail’s cry immediately alarmed him.

  Had she too become a victim of Eric’s gunfire? One look at her crawling forward told him she had only observed his calamity.

  “Stay down,” he demanded. Dying from a gunshot wound wasn’t possible for him, but Abigail didn’t know that. He wished he could tell her.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “I’ll be all right. Just turn the handle on the wing hinge,” he instructed, unable to move to get it himself until his wound healed more.

  “But Captain, you’ve been shot.” She came to him instead of the device.

  “You have to get the sails unlocked. Go crank the small handle.” He nodded toward the one he meant. “Then push the plunger to divert the pressure of the steam into the engine.”

  “What if…I can’t handle this ship myself. Not on the water and especially not in the air.”

  He shook her hand off his arm. “You can do anything you set your mind to, Abigail. Now go before Eric destroys too much of the ship and we sink.”

  After an initial look of surprise, she scampered away. With a hand to his chest, he took a deep breath. The healing of a major wound was a much slower process than a scratch and he didn’t have time to lounge about waiting. Over the minute it took Abigail to finish what he asked, he regained most of his strength. Then he picked himself up from the deck. He stumbled toward the mast, flipped the lever and cranked the mainsail. The ship moved forward and lifted off the sea. They were airborne—they were safe. Yet a sharp cramp in his mending ribs bent him over in pain.

  “Let me help you.” Abigail stood at his side, her arm wrapping around his waist as if her petite frame had enough strength to hold him up.

  “I’m all right.” He moved toward the starboard side and looked down at Eric waving a fist at him.

  Another volley of cannonballs exploded. Though they never touched his vessel, the percussion disturbed the flow of air. The shift in the currents beneath them rocked the ship violently.

  “They didn’t reach!” Abigail’s squeal of triumph made him forget there was the danger of them nose-diving back into the sea. “What a bastard he is for trying to kill us like that.”

  Still wobbly from the pain of the wound battering his ribs, Jasper collapsed to the deck.

  “Captain.” Abigail knelt down to him. “Are you badly hurt? Let me see.” She tugged his shirt open.

  “I’m fine.”

  She slid a warm hand over his chest, stirring the hairs around his nipples.

  “You were shot. I saw it hit you.” Her face crinkled in puzzlement. “But all I see is a small red mark here.”

  Her innocence drove him crazy with desire. He grasped her hand, pulling her fingers from the gentle caress. Her concern for him weakened his resolve. He turned her palm up and kissed the center.

  “This is going to be hard for you to understand, but I’m—” He mentally fished around for the right words to tell her about the healing powers of his body—how a bullet couldn’t kill him.

  “I thought I was going to lose you.” She leaned down and hugged him. “I don’t know what I would have done if you were killed.”

  About to confess his secret, Jasper went pensive. Abigail’s statement highlighted the hole in his plans. His immortality came with some bad aspects. Someday she would die while he lived forever. Compared to the four hundred years he had survived, the longevity of their relationship would be nothing. The prospect of watching her die pulled him from everything wonderful he had been letting himself think of doing with her.

  Then her other hand made the same sweeping inspection of his torso. He cupped her face and felt himself losing his mind to a forbidden love. Everything he had ever dreamed of having lay under her brass corset. From infant, to child, to woman, Abigail had grown into a valuable treasure the pirate in him coveted and the man appreciated. He wanted her, body and soul—to love and to cherish. How did he deny the fulfillment to his deepest wishes for the sake of her happiness and his sanity?

  “Abigail, I—” He tried to reject her affection. But her inspection turned into an arousing taunt to his stamina. Her featherlight exam of his abdomen moved low along the waistband of his breeches. His hand floated up as if it had a mind of its own. He ran his fingers over the brass corset, following the curve around her breast, remembering when he spent a month hammering the metal into the perfect shape of a woman. No model other than the vision of her in his head was his guide. How did he know it would fit her shape like another layer of skin?

  “I should check the sails, and the fuel, and the coordinates and—”

  “I’m so glad you’re not injured…Jasper.” She purred his name, hugging him again, threatening to shatter his willpower.

  He got up from the deck and helped Abigail to her feet. Then he let go immediately to avoid changing his mind about telling her of his almost unending existence. He had to stay strong and protect himself from falling in love.

  Chapter Six

  Abigail had watched the captain come within an inch of kissing her. Lust had glowed from beneath his heavy-lidded eyes. His arms around her had tightened so briefly, she wondered if she had imagined it before he hurried off to the sputtering sounds of his steam engine.

  She looked over the ship’s side at the remnants of wispy gray smoke from the cannon blasts. The stench of gunpowder permeated the air and clung to the smashed wood on Captain Blackthorn’s ship.

  “The mainsail is torn,” the captain called, lowering it. “I’ll keep us in the air as long as possible. We’re not far enough away from Eric. He can still catch up to us on the open sea. But we’ll have to land. If you would go below, Miss Thatch, and see if we have any hull damage, that would be most helpful. Especially
check the windows in our cabin for cracks. The water pressure can make them burst in if they’ve been weakened.”

  Miss Thatch? She moved to the passageway opening and looked back at the captain throwing debris over the side. Had she done something wrong? The formality of his tone almost overpowered the rush of goose bumps up and down her arms. She tried to stay focused on the way he said our cabin.

  After her ill-fated affair with Randolph she had reason to scoff at people who claimed love at first sight. Now she wondered if it was possible to meet someone and feel as if he were made just for her.

  Abigail checked the cabins on the first level down. She found nothing wrong with the walls. In the lower cabin, she examined each pane of glass in the hull.

  “All well here.” She sighed. Then remembering the cat, she started looking around. She checked under the desk and behind. “Here, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty. Where are you?”

  A sound drew her to the upper bunk. She stepped up on the lower mattress to get higher and found the feline curled up in a ball on the pillow.

  “You don’t look very disturbed by all this.” She ran her hand over the cat’s silky white fur. “Does the captain get into these predicaments very often? I imagine he does. He seems to lead that sort of life.”

  “Are we water sturdy?” the captain yelled down to her.

  Abigail hurried up the stairs, getting closer before calling back to him, “I think so.”

  Her stomach grumbled and she peered into the galley with all the pots and cooking utensils.

  “Food.” She sighed, and hunted the cupboards only to find a stale loaf of bread.

  She broke off a piece and took a bite. A strong sour smell assailed her nose and she tried holding her breath as she chewed.

  “Good, you’ve thought of getting something to eat.” The captain entered the small kitchenlike area. “I should have fed you before now. Cat nibbles and whiskey is hardly a proper feast. Although I can’t say I know exactly what makes for a decent meal these days.”

  She watched him open a barrel while she gnawed on the dry bread.