creatures. Get it over with. Gray, he thought. Get it over with now.
He couldn’t.
But there was Nelson. There was Villeneuve. There was his country.
He had no choice.
She pulled back, her eyes reverent and adoring as she gazed up at him. Harden up, man. But doing so was the most difficult thing he’d ever done in his life.
“Do you believe, Gray . . . that we could ever have a future together? That you could ever lo
—I mean, have feelings for—a hardened pirate queen like me?”
He looked at her and forced a smile that tore at the deepest part of his heart. “You mean, love you?”
She looked away afraid and unable to meet his gaze and face a possible rejection. “Aye.”
“I am already in love with you, Maeve,” he murmured, steeling himself. “. . . Though I can’t say my mistress on Barbados will be very happy about it. . . .”
He caught himself, trailing off as though he hadn’t made the mistake on purpose. If he could have spared her, if he could have afforded to take the gamble of confiding the truth to her, if he could have lain down and died—he would have.
But he couldn’t. All he could do was wait for his deliberately cruel words to pierce her to the very center of her heart and bring about the effect he desperately needed.
Her lips froze against the side of his jaw; then, she pulled back as if stunned, as if someone had just slapped her across the face.
“What did you say?”
He felt himself breaking up inside, all of his hopes, his dreams, falling to his feet like a shower of lifeless ashes. She was everything he’d ever wanted; she had trusted him, and now he had to betray her.
And desert her.
His throat constricted and the blood ran cold through his veins, sieved through his heart like ice water. If only he hadn’t seduced her, begun to fall in love with her . . . but dear God, she 'd said she was taking him to Nelson! He hadn’t thought she’d end up wanting to keep him here . . .
“Gray—” her voice was a bare whisper. “Did you say what I think you just said?”
“’Twas nothing, madam,” he said lamely, and looked away, as though unable to meet those
stricken, shocked eyes. “Merely a slip of the tongue . . .”
“A slip of the tongue?” She stared at him, her face paling to white in the darkness. Already, she was pulling away. Already, the fragile threads of trust and hope had been severed,
irretrievably broken. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Gray?”
He shrugged. “All men keep mistresses,” he said, blithely.
“Well, I hope to God you don’t still intend to keep one after”—smudges of color stained her white cheeks—”. . . after this!”
“After what?” he said, with forced innocence.
She stared at him, disbelieving. “After . . . making love to me . . .”
“So. What difference does that make?”
She flinched as if struck, too dazed by his callousness to find the anger he prayed would come, the anger he was depending upon to get him off this damned island and back into the service of his country. “Doesn’t what we just did mean anything to you?”
“Look, Maeve—”
Her voice rose. “Doesn’t it?”
He heard the waves lapping against the schooner, her schooner, and felt more wretched than he’d ever been in his life. The night was suddenly too big, too cold, too empty, and it grew more so as she unfastened her arms from around his neck, slipped down into the water, and began to put distance between them.
“Look, Maeve,” he began again. “I’m just a sailor. God knows, I want you, yes, but I”—he
steeled himself to utter the cruel words—”I like variety. You understand, surely?”
She shook her head disbelievingly. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
Get angry, he thought, desperately. For God’s sake, don’t make me hurt you more. “Doing what? There’s nothing wrong with keeping a mistress, most men do . . . Look, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll keep my activities with her a secret—”
“How can you be so vile, so wretched, so cruel? Damn you, I—I trusted you!”
He grinned, although the gesture cost him another shred of his heart. “Really, my dear, why are you so vexed? She’s just a dalliance—”
“A dalliance? Is that what you think of me? A dalliance?”
“Now, Maeve, darling—”
“Don’t you now Maeve darling me!” she cried and swung her open palm against his jaw with all the force in her body.
He stood there and allowed her to slap him. He saw the fire blazing now in her eyes, hot
angry fire that burned him to the core.
“Did you feed her with pretty words, too? Did you worm your way into her bed and play her like a violin and then betray her, too, you slimy bastard? You vicious dog! You deceitful, cunning, filthy blackguard—”
“Maeve, you’re being unreasonable,” he said, grabbing both her wrists. Her knee came up, and if not for the drag of the water, would’ve damaged him beyond repair. “I can’t see what you’re getting all upset about; it’s perfectly acceptable for a man to keep a mistress—”
“It’s not acceptable to me!” she raged, tearing free of his grip. “I knew you were too good to be true! I knew you couldn’t be what I wanted you to be, what you seemed, no matter what I wanted to believe! Why the hell didn’t I listen to myself?”
Unexpectedly, her other hand came up and slammed against the side of his jaw hard enough
to make him see stars. He staggered and she yanked herself free. “Bastard!” she cried. “May you rot in hell!”
She struck off, not for the shore as he would have expected but for the schooner, as though it was her only friend, her only comfort. Shaking his dazed head, he dived after her, but she had a head start on him, and moments later was scaling the vessel’s side, her hair streaming down her bare back, her legs flashing white in the darkness. He was a scant five feet behind her. Lunging upward, he grabbed the rope ladder and began hauling himself up the side of the ship, the water rushing down his own naked shoulders, his back, and into the sea.
Her feet pounded hollowly over the deck above him. “Get away from me, you snake, and get
the hell off my ship!”
She half dived, half fell down the hatch, just as alarmed voices rang out from the shore.
“Captain?”
Splashes, curses, lights, shouts, and from the beach, the crack of a pistol, shattering the night.
Gray lunged over the gunwales and onto the deck.
He had no time to survey the double rows of guns, no time to admire the neat readiness in which she kept her vessel, no time to examine this singular little warship from up close, for at that moment his quarry came flying up from the hatch, a blunderbuss in her hands and pointed straight at him.
She fired.
The explosion blew the night apart, brilliant orange-and-blue flames roiling from the lock and a split-second later, the barrel. How she missed him at such close range Gray never knew, and he had no time to ponder it as he dived for cover, landed on his elbows, and crashed heavily against the stout carriage of a cannon. His mind screamed with pain, and then there was nothing but a horde of dark shapes above and around him, and an array of swords, rapiers, knives, and cutlasses all pointed at his heart. He rose up on one elbow, cursing under his breath, and supporting himself with one hand. Someone kicked him in the ribs; someone else slammed a foot into his shoulder and shoved him onto his stomach with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. A bare foot drove between his shoulder blades, and he heard the sounds of a gun being loaded, felt the cold press of its gaping mouth as the Pirate Queen jabbed the blunderbuss hard into his spine.
He let his forehead rest against the deck and shut his eyes, his lashes brushing the varnished planking.
From above came an ominous click as she drew the weapon to h
alf cock, and the tight,
choking sounds of her harsh breathing.
She brought the gun to full cock.
“Don’t, Maeve.” A voice said quietly. “You’ll regret it.”
“The only thing I regret, Orla, is—is—that I even l-let this d-d-dog near me.”
The blunderbuss was withdrawn. Another foot slammed into his ribs.
“Get up.”
Slowly, he did so, acutely aware of his own bare state. His ribs, his back, his elbow ached, but nothing could match the anguish in his heart over what he had done, what he had had to do.
A dozen angry women faced him, cutlasses drawn, pistols leveled, eyes fierce. Their bold
eyes raked his nakedness and dismissed it with contempt. He saw the small, spritely Irish woman with the elfin face shielding Maeve’s naked body with a piece of sailcloth.
Then the tall African stepped forward, majestic, fierce, angry. The others gathered behind her, watching her. Her skin was darker than the night, her eyes blazing. She let her gaze roam contemptuously over his nakedness, but he drew himself proudly up, refusing to quail beneath the savagery in her eyes.
“Whatever you did to her,” the woman said in a dark, ugly whisper, “believe me, you’ll pay for it. “ She jabbed a pistol into his chest and shoved him roughly toward the bow. “Move,” she ordered, with the authority of a general. Gray obeyed, aware of her eyes nailing him between his shoulders; he felt the press of her pistol in the small of his back and knew she would like nothing better than to blow his kidneys out. Had he gone too far in trying to enrage the pirate queen?
Would he pay for this with his life?
He walked toward the bow and when he could go no farther, paused, standing straight and
tall and silent.
He did not turn to face them.
“On your knees!”
Eyes straight ahead, he muttered, “Go to hell.”
Her booted foot drove into the back of his knees. He crumpled, falling against the windlass and gritting his teeth against the pain. One of the pirates held a cutlass against his throat, and unable to move, he could only lie helpless as they lashed him so tightly to one of the bow chasers that blood rose from his wrists and trickled down his arms. Someone hurled his clothing, picked up from the beach, at him. Then they stood back, and Gray, grimacing in pain, looked up to see the Pirate Queen standing above him.
She had dressed. Trousers, a loose shirt, a leather vest, and a cutlass completed her attire.
Her hair was wild, her eyes blazing with hatred and betrayal.
“Bastard,” she snarled.
He waited. Silence all around as she contemplated his fate.
One of the two little Irish sisters tugged at her sleeve. “What are you going to do with him, Majesty?”
“What I should’ve done from the very first, feed him piece by piece to the fish. But I will take him to Nelson and let him do the honors.”
She stared down at him. Then she turned away, calling for the anchor to be weighed and
leaving him to his own misery.
Take him to Nelson.
He’d gotten what he wanted. But it was a hollow triumph, and as the anchor came in and he lay soaking in the brine and seawater the incoming cable brought with it, he could only wonder if such a victory had been worth the price.
Chapter 12
Draped with a blanket, his small fist curled around the miniature that hung slackly from his neck, the exhausted admiral lay in his swinging cot, dreaming.
The mighty, thirty-five-hundred-ton Victory swung gently beneath him, the tallest of her three masts reaching two hundred feet into the heavens to scrape at the twinkling stars, her massive decks piled tier upon tier above a waterline that lay stories beneath her poop deck. But her admiral was no longer the debt-plagued, guilt-ridden, haggard hero, hope of a nation and pride of a navy; he was the intrepid, twenty-three-year-old captain of the dashing frigate Albemarle, and he still had both his arms, the sight in both his eyes, and a terrified new midshipman who was balking at a lieutenant’s orders to go aloft.
They were in the North Sea and the lad, thirteen years old and the newest addition to that cheeky group, stood huddled in the shadow of the mainmast, his expression miserable, his mouth a taut slash of terror in a face that was pale with seasickness. He was trying in vain to look brave in front of his peers, but it was a blustery day, with a fast-running sea and a stiff wind to make the twenty-eight-gun frigate jump and lunge like a racehorse. Captain Nelson glanced at the new midshipman, the youngest of his “children,” as he liked to call them, and took pity on him.
The poor lad. This one was too tall, even, to huddle. Cheerfully swinging his spyglass, he walked up to the wretched boy and touched his shoulder. “Such a woeful face, my fine fellow!
Might I ask the cause for it?”
The boy’s throat worked and he turned frightened blue eyes upon his captain. Tears swam
there, but his jaw, too young to even meet a razor, came up and his eye never wavered.
“Homesick, sir. And . . . and—” Admitting fear of going aloft, of course, was not a manly thing to do. And poor little Gray, fresh from the weepy good-byes of six adoring sisters and his parents, in his very first ship on his very first voyage, was trying very hard to act like a man.
Tall, gawky, and all arms and legs, he towered over his captain by at least a head.
Nevertheless, Nelson placed his body in front of the wretched boy’s and turned him so that his tears would be shielded from the possible malice of the other youths. Gray sniffled and looked up, his face going paler still at the sight of thick, boiling clouds sailing above the snapping pennant at the mast.
“I can’t do it, sir,” the young voice quavered, “I want to but I’m”—he looked away, his
features flushed with shame—”I’m scared.”
Nelson smiled. “Well now, my good fellow! I would not ask you to do anything that I
wouldn’t instantly do myself. What do you say we go up together?” He grinned, pretending that he had only just hit upon this idea of challenging a young recruit to go aloft when in fact it was a method that he often employed, and with unfailing success. “We shall call it a race. Yes, a race!
Whoever gets to the top first, wins.”
The boy’s dark eyes widened. “But sir . . . you’re the captain! You’re not supposed to climb aloft!”
“What I am supposed to do, my good man, is my business. Now, do we have a race or do we not?”
The lad stared at him.
“Well?”
The lad gazed up at the tall masts, the bulging sails, the streaming, snapping pennants.
“Sir . . . do you think that pirates”—he said the word with awe, and a peculiar reverence—”used to go aloft very much?”
An odd question, Nelson thought, taken slightly aback. He pursed his lips and gave the
matter some thought. “Indeed, young man, I’m sure they did.”
The lad reflected on this for a moment, obviously torn between the challenge his captain had issued and his own fear of those dizzying, swaying heights. The dark blue gaze, determined now, swung to Nelson’s once more. “Very well then, sir,” he said solemnly. “I will race you . . . But would you mind very much if we took the mainmast?”
Nelson raised a brow. “The mainmast, my good fellow? And why is that?”
“It’s the tallest of the three, sir. If I’m going to go aloft, I should wish to defeat the strongest enemy first. Then, the others will seem insignificant in comparison.”
Nelson, infinitely pleased, threw back his head with rare laughter and clapped the boy
between his sharp, angular shoulders. “Very well then, Gray, the mainmast it shall be!” He gave his sword to a lieutenant, slung his telescope over his shoulder, and strode to the lee side, his body easily absorbing the roll of the deck. “Ready, young man?”
From the weather shrouds—safer and easier to climb in a stiff wind than the lee shroud
s
Nelson had discreetly chosen—the lad faced him, pale-faced and terrified but determined to measure up to the proud uniform he wore. “Aye, sir. I am ready.”
“Well then, let us be about it!”
Nelson vaulted atop the gunwales and seized the tarred shrouds. Cheers erupted from the
deck below, for him, for his determined opponent, and hand over hand he climbed, his watchful, paternal eye on the youth ascending the shrouds, some thirty feet away and directly opposite him. The boy’s smart uniform was already streaked with tar, his unruly black hair standing out like wings beneath his hat. They climbed higher, and the wind got stiffer, colder, biting through Nelson’s uniform and chilling him to the bone. The boy was still with him. Nelson slowed, pretending to tire, for it would not do to arrive at the maintop before his young protégé. They lost each other behind the great main course, then emerged above its yard; calling encouragement, and now so high above the plunging deck that the steeply angled shrouds were nearly apexed, Nelson glanced down. Sure enough, there was the customary sea of upturned faces, drifting in and out of the shadows of clouds.
He glanced to windward and paused, pretending to wipe nonexistent sweat from his brow.
The boy was almost there . . . A few more feet . . .
And then—
“Beat you!” the lad yelled triumphantly, scrambling through the futtocks and appearing in the maintop just above him. Nelson clapped his hat firmly down and tilted his head back, hard-pressed to conceal his own grin of triumph. The youth’s face was flushed with pride, and he was breathing hard; but he had conquered his fear and made the climb, and for Nelson, that was all that mattered.
“So you did, young man!” he exclaimed, laughing, and pulled himself up to sit beside his
happy charge. “By God, I am only ten years your senior, yet you make me feel like an old man!
Huzzah for you, my good fellow, I am thoroughly embarrassed!”
In effect, he was thoroughly pleased, and proud.
“Thank you, sir! You were right, there is nothing to it!”
“Indeed, young fellow. How a person must be pitied who fancies there is any danger in
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