Now, in the wake of the lookout’s shouted warning, el Perro Negro’s crew—a scanty one,
what with the fact that half of them had been left aboard the crippled merchantman until they could return with enough men to sail both ships back to port—raced to the rail.
“She’s after our merchantman prize, I’ll wager,” snarled Renaldo, the first mate. He
smashed a fist against the rail. “The bitch!”
“Well, she ain’t going to get it! That whoring slut owes me. In fact, I think I’ll add her pretty schooner to my collection, as I’m feeling the need to play admiral today.” Stuffing a fistful of half-cooked chicken into his mouth, el Perro Negro wiped a hand across the back of his lips and belched, dispelling fumes of rum and stomach rot. “Given that we have such an abundance of almirantes in these waters lately, that is. Get the tops’ls up, Renaldo, triple shot the guns, and put a fire under your ass, I’m in no mood to tarry, ye hear me?”
The ship hit a jarring swell and from belowdecks came an agonized cry.
“What the hell was that?”
‘The merchie’s captain,” the mate growled, in disgust. “Took a ball in his gut durin’ the fight so we brought him off the merchie and stuck him below. Ain’t naught but a pup, must be all of twenty summers by the looks of ’im. But ye know these English—start ’em young, they do.”
“Kill him then, and put the son of a bitch out of his misery,” el Perro Negro snarled. “That noise is giving me a damned headache!”
Renaldo, dagger in hand, went below, and a moment later the young English captain’s cries of pain crescendoed into a high scream of agony that abruptly ended. El Perro Negro smiled.
Throat-slitting was Renaldo’s specialty. Well, he had his own specialty, and it involved blades of a far different order.
The trees of the island still shielded the Pirate Queen’s ship from his own deck-level eyes, but in a moment they would burst around the headland and surprise would be theirs. In his mind’s eye he pictured her schooner, swooping down on the merchantman prize, his prize , with the wind in her topsails and the spray bursting from her bows. The Pirate Queen. Trying to take what was his. El Perro Negro spat a wad of phlegm on the deck and ground it in with his shoe.
That thieving puta would get her due today, by God—
“All done, Capitan,” Renaldo said, joining him once more and wiping the flat of his bloody knife on his trousers.
“ldiota, have Jacky and Pig-Eye throw him overboard! I don’t want his carcass fouling my decks, ye hear?” Moments later, the young man’s corpse was hauled topside, blood still dripping from the slashed throat, the gentle eyes open, staring, accusing. El Perro Negro spat on the deck once more and turned away as the body was heaved overboard with all the ceremony of slops into a pig trough.
“Any more trash to be disposed of, Renaldo?”
“That’s the last of ’em, Capitan. And if ye ask me , ’tis better off we are for killin’ ’em.
Should Admiral Falconer get wind of this, our asses would be—”
“I didn't ask you, so keep your damned opinions to yourself.”
“Aye . . . sir.”
“Are the guns ready?”
“Aye, Capitan.”
“Good. Now heave to, and let’s give Her Majesty time to get her claws into our merchie. I want to catch her by surprise, away from her own ship and on our prize’s decks.” Thick lips curved in a black, evil smile. “I never thought I could use a captured merchant ship as a lure. But without that schooner under her, the Pirate Queen doesn’t have a chance.”
He ran his tongue over his greasy lips in anticipation. He’d long had an itch to get his hands on that incredible schooner —and her notorious lady captain. Thoughts of the latter thought brought saliva welling into his mouth, and a stiffness to his groin that only hardened as he watched the schooner’s mastheads, their tips just thrusting above the tree-tops, come to a slow, graceful stop.
Shouts, calls, gunshots, the boom of a cannon—she would be boarding the prize, now . . .
“Come on, my pretty,” el Perro Negro murmured, reaching down to stroke his swelling
penis through his trousers. He thought of her as he’d last seen her, beautiful, savage, standing proudly at her helm with her hair blowing out around her. The memory alone made him ache
with lust, and he shivered in anticipation of her lying beneath him, beaten, while he pumped and slammed and drove into her. Soon, he vowed, she’d be warming his own bed, crying out in
passion and pain, yes, pain, before he plunged a knife into her heart and sent her the way of the dead English capitan—
From beyond the trees of the island he heard the boom of another gun, female shrieks of
bloodlust and challenge, the furious shouts of the handful of men he’d left to guard the
merchantman, and now, the distant ring of steel against steel as Maeve Merrick and her band of she-wolves boarded his captured merchantman. The Pirate Queen, apparently, was wasting no time.
“The insolence of the bitch!” Renaldo snarled indignantly. “Doesn’t she realize the Black Dog wouldn’t stray far from ’is prize?”
“Maybe the bitch wants to be bred, eh?”
Renaldo’s eyes turned sly. “Aye, well they don’t call ye the Black Dog for nothin’!”
El Perro Negro threw back his filthy head and laughed. “Aye, and now, I think, it’s time for this dog to go a-ruttin’. Ready about, Renaldo, and let’s go in.”
The Spaniard grinned as the brig fell off into the wind and far beneath him, water began to sing against the hull. And then he reached down, pulled his pistol from its scabbard, loaded it with ball and powder—and waited.
###
One salvo from Kestrel's starboard guns had sent the few men el Perro Negro had left aboard the captured merchantman scurrying for cover, and, in the ensuing melee, the Pirate Queen brought her schooner right up to the crippled merchantman, grappled her ship to it, and, cutlass in hand, led her yelling, whooping, shrieking crew over the side.
The first man came for her as Maeve leaped onto the merchantman's deck, and she saw only
the black mouth of his pistol before a ball from Enolia’s own weapon felled him.
“To me, ladies!” she cried, and whirling, met the next charging shape, a heavy, bearded
wretch with sores of disease clinging about his lips.
She thought of nothing but swinging her cutlass . . . her daddy . . . revenge upon the fates that had stolen her happiness . . . and Gray as she whirled to meet her opponent’s savage thrust—
Gray.
The clattering blow sent pain shooting the length of her arm, but she was strong, lithe, and able; spinning, she pirouetted, her bare feet light and graceful, the smoke stinging her eyes and burning her nose. The pirate swung for her. She feinted, and sent her own blade chopping viciously into his ribs. Blood sprayed up and out, and he fell, screaming, to the deck. She dived for the next filthy wretch and hacked her sword against his arm as he tried to jerk a pistol up into her face; it exploded near the side of her head, numbing her ears, bits of black powder hitting her cheeks and stinging her eyes.
Gunfire, screams, curses, the stench of sulfur and sweat, spilt blood and the stink of fear.
Back and forth she swung, blindly, savagely, angrily, the sweat running down her cheeks, the scene fading into a thick and smoky din through which she caught only glimpses . . . of Tia, ramming a boarding pike into a pirate’s gut, of Enolia, beating back a huge wretch with a missing ear, of Aisling and Sorcha fighting back-to-back, pistols blazing— A man came for her, his dagger arcing down toward her shoulder, and he fell as a volley
from Lucia’s blunderbuss caught him in the back. Out of the smoke came another . . . another . . .
another . . .
Gray . . . oh, Gray . . . Tears now ran freely down her sooty cheeks, and she didn’t care, didn’t care any more if she lived or died, didn’t give a damn about anything, except what she h
ad lost.
“CAPTAIN!”
She whirled and saw el Perro Negro himself charging through the smoke. Instinctively she
charged forward to meet his attack—and felt her feet go out from under her on the slick and bloodied deck.
The Pirate Queen went down, and the last thing she saw before her head cracked against the gunwale was fire, flashing from his pistol . . .
Then, all went dark.
Chapter 15
Gray had departed for H.M.S. Triton, leaving Lord Nelson's Mediterranean Fleet, baking under the hot Caribbean sun, to thread its way north through the jewel-like West Indian islands in a desperate search for the elusive combined Franco-Spanish fleet. The sea begged tranquility, but there was no rest for the anxious English admiral who had crossed an ocean to find—and fight—that missing enemy.
Now, Nelson was pacing his quarterdeck, thinking of Emma, the coffin he’d left back in
London, and the new battle plan he’d worked up to annihilate that fellow Veal-noove, when a cry from the masthead broke his obsessed reverie.
“Deck there!”
Captain Hardy stood with the sailing master at the massive, double-spoked wheel. He
glanced at Nelson, took off his hat to dab at his sweaty brow, and squinting against the blazing glare, looked aloft. “Report, masthead!”
“Sail closing fast to windward! It’s a schooner, sir!”
Snapping his fingers, Nelson called impatiently for the nearest midshipman. He plucked the lad’s spyglass from his hand and raised it to his good eye, identifying the little vessel at the same time that Hardy voiced his thoughts.
“It’s the Pirate Queen’s ship—by God, what happened to it?”
Cursing the milky film that glazed his sight, Nelson stared hard through the glass until the eye watered in pain and protest. “She’s been hit, and hit hard,” he said worriedly. “Heave to, Captain Hardy, and prepare to receive her commander.”
Moments later, the little schooner was safe in Victory’s lee and swallowed up by her massive shadow. Nelson strode to the rail and looked down to the deck far beneath him. He saw shot-torn sail, broken spars, and a mere stump where the topmast had been, not unlike the useless remains of his right arm.
A fair-haired girl scurried out from beneath the shadow of the schooner’s torn and flagging mainsail. “Admiral Lord Nelson! Please, sir, you must help us!”
He grabbed a speaking trumpet from Hardy and crawled atop one of Victory's massive cannon so he could lean far out over the nettings. He felt Hardy’s steadying hand on his arm, sensed the protective press of his officers surrounding him. But before he could respond, the girl, no more than ten or twelve summers by the look of her, burst into tears. “Do you have a good surgeon aboard, milord? Our captain’s been hurt and I think . . . I think she’s dying!”
###
Victory, June 10th, 1805, off St. Lucia
Dear Captain and Mrs. Merrick:
Lord Nelson paused, pen in hand, staring at the sheet of vellum on the desk before him. He brushed his chin with the end of the feather, then jabbed the quill back into the inkwell and began to scribble.
It is my most woeful duty to inform you that your daughter, Maeve, has been seriously injured in hand-to-hand combat with a Spanish pirate. Although you may take comfort in the knowledge that she fought most gallantly, as of this writing my surgeon is working desperately to save her life. Should she live, she will remain the guest of the British Navy until my fleet can return to Europe, where I will personally ensure that she reaches the safety of England. It therefore is my wish to— He paused, pondering Colin Lord’s words. The young captain had said the girl had run away from home, that her grieving parents had thought her dead; what if she recovered, and hated him for his interference in matters between herself and her parents? Nelson shrugged. The boldest measures were always the safest. He dipped the pen into the inkwell and continued: —invite you to Merton, my home in Surrey, England, where your daughter will be under the care of Lady Hamilton. Godspeed.
I am, most respectfully,
Nelson and Brőnte.
Brőnte was the name of the dukedom given him by the grateful King Ferdinand of the Two
Sicilies—it still seemed odd, sometimes, to use it as part of his signature. Leaving the letter on his desk, Nelson nodded to the marine who stood guard outside his cabin, and, purposefully made his way down through the decks.
“Afternoon, milord.”
“Blessings, sir.”
“We’ll catch that bugger Villeneuve soon, sir, an’ that’s no mistake!”
Nelson nodded in his kind and quiet away, acknowledging the humble greetings of the
seamen who spent their lives packed like sardines on these crowded gundecks, the sons of
England who were all that stood between Britain and Napoleon’s tyrannical ambitions. He
continued downward. A ship’s boy, carrying a pail, passed him, nodded reverently, scurried off into the darkness.
“Easy there, young fellow.”
He kept going. He felt the ocean pounding against Victory's massive timbers, then there was only muffled, shadowy gloom as he descended down past the waterline and entered the grim
domain of the surgeon.
“Dr. Beatty.”
“Sir.”
“How is your patient?”
“Holding, sir.”
Nelson nodded quietly. The girl had been bloody and unconscious when Victory’s seamen had carried her aboard and down to the surgeon’s area, where Dr. Beatty and his mates had spent the last two hours desperately trying to save her young life.
She was only a girl. Nelson clenched his fist in helpless rage. Just a girl, by God.
He began to pace, his face anxious as he passed in and out of the dim glow of a lantern. “Is she going to live, Beatty?”
“I don’t know, milord. The wound itself is not serious, as the ball merely pierced her side and went clean through—but it’s the head injury that concerns me most. Granted, she’s a game little thing, but one can never tell with these sort of injuries—”
“That is not what I asked you!” Nelson snapped. “Is she going to live?”
“Prayers, milord, would not do her any harm.”
Nelson continued to pace. He tried not to look at her, but the soft fall of red-chestnut hair spilling over the table beckoned his eye. She was just a girl who had run away from home on the same day the Battle of the Nile had been fought, a girl who had brought Gray back to him, a girl who had done the navy a greater service than she might ever know.
A girl who deserved to live.
He went up to her, and stared down at her face, pale with shock and loss of blood. He had seen death too many times in his life not to recognize the signs. The shallow, labored breathing.
The faint blue tinge to the lips. The pale, ethereal skin that looked more fragile than tissue paper.
The girl’s lashes fluttered. He saw a tear welling up at the corner of one closed eye, seeping out from beneath the fringe of dark lashes to begin a halting, rolling path down one cheek. Her lips moved. Another tear followed the first, this one tumbling down the opposite cheek.
“Milord . . .” Her voice was the merest whisper, but she knew that he had come, knew that he was there. “Please . . . don’t leave me. . .”
Something caught in the little admiral’s throat. He swallowed hard. Then he reached out to take the girl’s hand.
It was dry, callused . . . cold.
Like death.
“Please . . . don’t leave me,” she repeated. “I don’t want to die alone . . . “
“Damn me if I’ll let you,” Admiral Lord Nelson snapped, and squeezed her hand.
“I tried . . . tried so hard to . . . survive . . . you’ll tell my father, won’t you? I want him . . .
to be proud of me . . . “
Nelson’s mouth tightened. He looked down at the lovely, still face that now, unguarded,
looked all of ten y
ears old, the hair, matted with blood, sweeping in damp, sweaty tumbles off her forehead.
Hardy entered, stooping almost double to fit beneath the gloomy deckhead beams. The
admiral glanced up and bestowed upon his flag-captain his most penetrating glare. He placed the hand he held under the blanket and, with an impatient gesture, led Hardy out of the range of Maeve’s hearing.
“Thomas.”
“Sir?”
“There is a letter lying open on my desk. Seal it and put it with the rest of the mail to be delivered at the next landfall we make. And is Triton still within signaling distance?”
“No, sir.”
“Then please dispatch our fastest frigate to recall her. Tell Captain Colin Lord to bring his admiral back to me, immediately. The girl is dying, and there is only one man who has a prayer of saving her. One man who might convince her that life is worth living. One man, by God, who has the power to command her to live when I cannot!”
Hardy’s eyes searched the anguished face of the little hero. “Sir?”
But Nelson, tight-mouthed, was looking at the girl.
“Her pirate,” he said softly. “Rear Admiral Sir Graham Falconer.”
Chapter 16
HMS Triton's grandest cabin did not belong to its captain, but to another, more powerful man, who outranked not only Colin Lord but the thousands of men in the more than forty ships that made up the Royal Navy’s West Indies Fleet.
That man sat in the cabin now, a chart of the Windward Islands spread out before him, the ship’s sailing master and captain looking over his shoulder and glancing bleakly between
themselves.
On a black snarl, Gray shoved the chart away and sent his fist crashing down on the table.
“Bloody hell, that damned island is not even charted!” he raged, lunging to his feet and pacing the sunlit chamber with the restless energy of an angry panther. “By my reckoning it’s near Barbados. Barbados!” He glared at the frightened sailing master. “You mean to tell me you don’t know of one miserable, stinking island a stone’s throw from Barbados?”
“Sorry, sir. As you can see, it’s not on the char—”
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