Cadha's Rogue (The Highland Renegades Book 5)

by R. L. Syme

  Her features closed and her hands tightened on the wheel. “I was only being polite.”

  “Well, I don’t wish to discuss my family, and you don’t want to reveal yours, so let’s just remain strangers.” He walked across the deck and checked all the riggings to make sure she hadn’t loosed or ruined something while he’d been sleeping.

  “I’m sorry I asked about your family.” Her voice was suddenly soft and Valc’s hands tightened on the ropes. He hated being rude to her, but their trip was short, so it was best to keep their distance.

  “You should get some sleep,” he said. “The sun will be…” Valc turned to the starboard side to point toward the sunrise. But there was no sun. There was light, though. Coming from… where?

  He whirled around and found the source of the light, but not where he’d expected it. The peek of the bright heavenly body lay behind them. Valc rounded on Thora.

  “What have you done?” He scrambled up to the wheel and found his nautical charts spread on the ground beside, his magnetic compass laid out.

  Thora managed to look puzzled as she kept her hand steady on the wheel, but Valc wasn’t fooled. He hadn’t left the charts there, and he certainly hadn’t left out his compass.

  His voice dropped without his intention. “I told you to hold course.”

  Her chin poked out. “I don’t take direction well.”

  “How long?” Valc fisted his hands under the long sleeves of Greta’s dress. “When did you change course?”

  She didn’t answer, but Valc saw all he needed to see when he looked across the bow and rested his eyes on the flickering signal fires of old Roman battlements. The all-too-familiar white tower of Scarborough Castle thrust up into the early morning sky, and gray smoke plumed over it.

  Was there a chance they hadn’t been seen?

  Valc wrestled the wheel away from Thora and spun the rudder around, then thought better of it. Perhaps a sudden turn would rouse the guard’s suspicion. Then again, if they hadn’t been spotted yet, it wouldn’t matter, either way.

  His every instinct cried out to turn and run. Scarborough was a royal castle, and one the King did frequent. Given the volume of smoke, there was a good chance the royal guests were in residence.

  And even if they weren’t, there were enough men garrisoned there to make his life hell. Valc decided for an easy, wide turn. It would take them closer to the bay than he liked, but it would keep them from looking like they made too sharp of a retreat.

  He tried to breathe through the pounding of his heart, and he almost succeeded when Thora tried to re-take the wheel. She shoved at him, pressing her side into his, ferociously.

  “Don’t turn now. We’re almost to the current.”

  Valc pushed back. “There is no coastal current here.” He strained to keep his voice pitched high enough while he struggled against her. “Whoever told you that is no real sailor.”

  Her face reddened and her mouth set. She pushed at him harder. “Yes, there is. My Papa would never lie to me.”

  “I’m telling you, I have sailed these waters my whole life, and there is no coastal current.” Valc finally managed to push her all the way off the wheel, but she still stood close enough to wriggle against him. “I don’t know who your father is, but he can’t be much of a man if he fills your head with such lies.”

  Her body went slack and Valc’s balance wavered. He righted himself and winced. He’d hurt her, probably, but it couldn’t be helped.

  He heard the thunk of her punch almost before he felt it. Valc careened across the stern and landed on the rail, sliding on the charts and nearly splitting his legs. He hit the deck hard and heaved breaths in and out. Blood dripped from his nose onto the dark, slick wood and he grasped at the loose shawl that draped down his arm.

  Cadha’s knuckles throbbed where she’d punched Greta’s face and her tense muscles froze when the old woman’s shawl fell away. Only it appeared that Greta wasn’t an old woman, at all. Cadha’s heart rumbled and cracked.

  Beard, square jaw, rugged face. She was a he.

  Cadha scrambled around, looking for the sword she’d seen stashed under the old woman’s head while she had been sleeping. She finally found it, propped against the hatch down to the hold. With a brandish, she went on the defensive.

  “Who are you? And what have you done with Greta?”

  He peered up at her and wiped at his nose. “I am Greta.”

  Cadha parried forward, bringing the tip of the sword closer to his face. “Who are you, sir?”

  “Will you put the sword down, Thora?” He held up one hand. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  For a moment, she relaxed, but as soon as he moved again, she took her stance. “I asked you for your name, sir.”

  “Valc.” He yanked the hood down and a shock of long, thick hair spilled over his shoulder. His face was strong and wide, and when he stood at his full height, his shoulders were broad. Imposing. How could she not have seen this before?

  Cadha dropped the sword and it clattered on the wooden deck. She backed across to the railing and held on to it, the wheel between them.

  “I’m Valcymer Vanhorn.” He took one of the spokes of the wheel and guided it around to the position he’d held before she punched him. He was still determined to go back out into the open sea.

  “Why would you pretend to be an old woman?”

  His lips pressed together and whitened, as though he held something back. “Greta is… a friend. I borrowed her dress and pretended to be her because… well, we need the money, for starters.”

  “And how does your friend Greta happen to own a trade ship? Even one as small as this?”

  “The ship is my own.”

  “And how, precisely, did you come to acquire it?”

  “Perhaps we could put a cease fire on the questions, Thora?” Those big, dark eyes settled on her and Cadha’s heart fluttered. Thora. She was lying to him, as much as he to her.

  Judge not, and all that.

  “So I’m just expected to quietly go along with a man who pretends to be a woman in order to get me alone in the open sea?” She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. “Nefarious rogue, you are.”

  He spread his hands wide, indicating the deck. “Yes, and my nefarious plan was to seduce you while staying ten feet away at all times and keeping my costume secured.”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but couldn’t make words come. It did seem unlikely that he had intended to seduce her, if he’d never planned to take off his costume. To be completely fair, he had yet to even touch her. They hadn’t even shaken hands.

  “I’ll give you that, at least. You weren’t completely without scruples or morals.”

  He offered a sarcastic bow. “How gracious of you to say so.”

  “You can take off that dress if you’d like.”

  “I’ll keep it on for the time being, if you don’t mind.” His jaw set again. “If you’ve awakened the royal guard with your little trip to the coast, or if there are pirates in the bay, I’d rather be Greta than Valc.”

  Cadha turned toward the land, now hard off port. They were headed back to the open sea. The water seemed to wait around them, grey and still and silent. Only their tread disturbed the surface.

  The coast, as he’d called it, was likely England, and judging from the look on Valc’s face when he stared at it, the city or the castle held some sort of danger for him.

  “The royal guard?” she asked, suddenly catching those words among his last hurried insult. “Which royal guard?”

  “That’s Scarborough Castle.” He pointed across the quarterdeck. “And the battlements across that hill, those are a lookout.”

  “What are they looking for?”

  He chuckled and rubbed his jaw. “Us.”

  She rounded on him. “Why are they looking for us?”

  “Not us in particular. But people like us. Let’s hope it’s too early in the morning for them to have spotted us.”

  A long plume
of smoke rose from the castle and the people moving around the walls looked more like ants than humans. The boat may have been far enough into the marine haze to avoid being spotted.

  “People like us? Do you mean, people like you?”

  “Darling, you are people like me, aboard this ship.”

  She shivered at his familiarity and cuddled her body in her arms. “I’m not like you.”

  Valc sighed. “Tell yourself whatever you like.”

  “You should have been honest with me.”

  “You should have trusted me.”

  Cadha stalked to the bow and sat against the rail, as far away from this strange man as she could be without going belowdeck. The ship wasn’t a large one, and she didn’t anticipate there would be anything but shallow storage in the hold. Still, it might have been worth braving whatever was down there just to get away from him.

  Chapter Seven

  Whipping winds woke Cadha before the sun was full overhead. Her back cinched when she tried to stand and she groaned.

  “Not used to sleeping on the ground, are we?”

  Valc stood over her, leaning against part of the rigging, feet on the rail, smiling like a fool. Her belly did funny things when he smiled like that.

  She held a hand over her eyes, blocking out both the sun and most of his face. “I’m not an animal.”

  “Or a sailor.” Valc jumped onto the deck and the silly dress billowed around him. “No matter how well you swing the rig.”

  Cadha shook her head and tried to ignore his jibe. He liked getting a rise out of her, and she wasn’t going to indulge him. “I never claimed to be a sailor.”

  Valc’s boots thumped across the deck. His swagger was suddenly male, rather than the gallumping stutter step that he had affected as Greta. She wished he’d take the dress off so she wouldn’t have to be confronted with his lie each time she looked at him.

  She had liked Greta—not known her well, of course, but liked her. Valc, on the other hand, was brash and rude and untrustworthy. How could he ever have hidden those things while pretending to be a woman? The world’s greatest actor.

  “Thora,” Valc called.

  For a moment, Cadha didn’t respond. She stretched her aching legs and tried to ignore the cramp in her back.

  “Thora,” he repeated. When he took a step toward her, she remembered. She was Thora.

  “You don’t have to yell,” she said. “I can hear you.”

  “And yet you don’t answer.”

  “You sound like my father.”

  “That’s the second time today you’ve compared me to your father.” Valc took hold of the wheel. “I take it he isn’t the reason you left Hoorn.”

  Cadha stiffened. “Is that what you so urgently needed to ask me?”

  “No.” He slipped a loop of rope over the wheel to keep it on course. “When we reach Wick, I will send you to shore in the pinnace. While the wind is at our back, I have rigged up the wheel so I can show you how to use the ship’s boat, and then how to hook it into the hoist when you return.”

  “I know how to row a boat.” She couldn’t keep the sass from her tone. Her mother would have been mortified.

  “Congratulations. That wasn’t what I meant.” He stood alongside the overturned small craft hanging near the starboard bow. “It’s going to be hard to get this down, with just the two of us, so we may be a little farther out at sea than you have been before, to row in.”

  Cadha drew her eyebrows together. “Why? Surely there’s a dock at this place. This ship is small enough…”

  “It’s not about the size of the ship.” Valc put a hand on the keel of the small boat.

  “Right. The motion of the ocean, and all that.” The words had escaped her lips before she thought of the company—she’d been enjoying the banter and lost herself.

  Valc’s mouth fell open and Cadha squinted through the heat she could feel welling in her cheeks.

  “Oh, don’t patronize me,” she said. Distraction wasn’t working. His eyes rounded even more and he didn’t speak.

  “I never said I was a lady, Captain.”

  That word landed harder than her joke and Valc backed away. “Don’t call me that,” he said.

  Cadha picked at the ropes on the pinnace as her companion retreated, pulling the dress over his head. He threw the material at the base of the ship’s wheel. His breeches were tight, underneath all that fabric, and he wore only a creamy tunic, which appeared to hang open, though he faced away from her.

  Her tongue darted out to wet suddenly dry lips. “I assumed, since this was your ship, that you were the Captain.”

  “You should never assume anything.” Valc leaned onto the railing at the back of the quarterdeck. The wind blew his hair out behind him and she could sense the contained anger he wouldn’t loose.

  A strange desire to console him caught Cadha off guard. She imagined touching his hair and stroking his back and… perhaps seeing the cut of his shoulders under his shirt made her think about him in a different light. She shook herself out of the fantasy.

  “I don’t understand why you refuse to go ashore.” She crossed the deck. “What if something happened to me?”

  His laugh was short, mirthless. “I have ways of making money.”

  She stood behind him. “So, my only value to you is monetary?”

  “How would I know? I know nothing about you or your value to me.” Valc spread his hands wide and pressed his weight into the railing. “Tell me, Miss Thora, whose surname still remains a mystery. You never disclosed the precise nature of your business in Scotland. We’ve been on this boat long enough, and there are no more ruses between us.”

  Cadha paused. Thora. Somehow, since she knew his name, it seemed wrong for her to continue lying to him. “Would you believe me if I told you it was all for love?”

  He shifted around, a wry smile on his face. But he froze quickly, his eyes following something through the air. Valc made a quick grab for her and hauled her into him just as something thunked near them.

  Cadha’s heart knocked around inside as she fell toward Valc’s chest, then to the hard deck. Beside her head, sticking out of the dark wood, was a red-tipped arrow that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  And then, with a loud plunk, another joined it.

  Valc breathed hard against Thora’s face, trying to distract himself from having her body pressed against his, and from having her lips only a whisper from his. Of course, the arrows helped.

  He’d seen the first one, but when the next one hit the wheel, Valc knew they weren’t misfires. Someone was close enough to see them.

  “Where are the arrows coming from?” Her breath was hot against his skin and Valc could feel a familiar stirring slither through his body.

  He rolled Thora so they were both on their side and then yanked her to her feet. They scuttled behind the pinnace and he ventured out to one side. Just beyond the port bow, he could see sails. They were far enough away that he couldn’t see much, but the archer—whoever he was—was well within range. Another arrow landed.

  “There’s a ship coming at us. I can’t quite make it out without being in sight of the…” another thunk, “archer.” He pulled back, completely behind the boat.

  “Who are they?” Thora’s eyes were wide and white-ringed.

  “I can’t tell.” He took her hand and something rushed through him like a storm. He had to find a way to save her from this.

  “What should we do?” she asked.

  “You stay here. I’m going to go…”

  Thora’s fingers on his arm stopped him. “Go, what?”

  “Attempt to pacify the pirates.”

  Valc stood and stripped off his shirt. Thora’s eyes shuttered up and down his body and Valc felt only a momentary sense of guilt for desecrating the innocence of a virgin. Add it to his growing list of sins.

  The sword had been discarded along the deck and he found it just as another arrow landed. Valc waved his arms and stuck his shirt on
the end of the sword, sending it back and forth like a flag.

  The arrows stopped.

  “What happened?” Thora’s voice rang out from behind the pinnace.

  “We just surrendered. It was our only option.” He kept the shirt in the air and walked to the starboard bow. The other ship was close enough, Valc could see some of the crew hanging off the rigging, cheering.

  He stood with his flag up and tried to think of a way to get Thora out of this. The ship could have been any of a number of privateers who sailed these waters. Colin Bruce, Sneades, Wyatts, Brecht de Witt. He was no match for them, on his own, and privateers were unpredictable when it came to women.

  Once the ship was close enough, they tossed ropes across to Valc, and he pulled the rig to loose the mainsail. The giant merchant ship came about to nestle in alongside his small cog. His only choice was to fancy step. They’d never outrun or outfight a crew like this.

  Perhaps he could give them money and supplies, and they would be gone. He hoped that was all they would want to take.

  Something tugged at his insides when he considered Thora. He would defend her if they threatened her. He would protect her with his life. She would survive.

  Once he had secured their ships together, Valc retreated to where Thora remained on the deck, behind the pinnace. She took his hands as he sat, although she looked considerably calmer since the assault stopped. “What’s happening?”

  “They’re going to board us.” Valc squeezed her hands. “I will do everything I can to convince them to leave us, but we are still too close to the coast to be really safe from these renegades and privateers.”

  She winced. “Wouldn’t it be better to try to out-run them? Surely we’re lighter and smaller.”

  “If I had a real crew, but I don’t. I only have… you.” He pulled her closer. “Stay here until I call for you.”

  Thora wrestled against his hold. “No, you don’t understand. I can do the talking.”

  “Just trust me, Thora. Will you do that?” He narrowed his eyes and took her face in his free hand. She opened her mouth to argue, but some deep shadow crossed her eyes and she pressed those beautiful lips together.