My Lady Pirate

by Danelle Harmon

  “Pardon me, sir, but the captain extracted from me a promise to leave him here. He didn’t want to desert his men, sir.”

  “Of course,” Sir Graham said, in complete understanding, “but he extracted no such promise from me. I am his admiral and I want him moved to my cabin as soon as possible, is that clear?”

  He reached out, curved his arm beneath Captain Lord’s neck, and lifting the lolling head, adjusted the crumpled and bloodstained coat that served as a pillow. It was the young officer’s own, the tassels of one sad epaulet lying against his cheek. With paternal tenderness, the admiral smoothed the damp hair away from the young man’s brow and gently lowered his head back down.

  “Will the leg be saved, Ryder?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I did all I could for him, but the ball did break it quite badly . . . shattered it, in fact. At the very best, he’ll have a limp. At the very worst—”

  “Never mind, Ryder, I do not wish to hear the very worst.”

  “Aye sir.” He looked at the admiral’s shoulders, slumped with fatigue and grief, yet still proudly reassuring beneath the bright epaulets that crowned them. Aye, it was a sad thing about the young flag-captain, but didn’t Sir Graham realize or care that his actions had saved them all, including the whole convoy? Didn’t he realize or care that he had met, and beaten, nearly impossible odds?

  That he had outsmarted Villeneuve and a Spanish admiral besides?

  Apparently not.

  “What is the dead count up to, Ryder?”

  “Thirty-three, sir,” the surgeon answered. “Not including the master’s mate. I don’t expect him to last the day.”

  Sir Graham nodded wearily. He pulled the sheet up to Captain Lord’s chin and dragged

  himself to his feet. His face was stubbly with new beard, his shirt, so fine and bright before the battle, now torn and smudged with blood and soot. He looked nothing like an admiral, yet he looked everything like one. For a moment, he stared blankly at the ship’s timbers, started to rake a hand through his dark hair, and let his arm drop to his side.

  “Sir?”

  “Carry on, Ryder. Summon me if my captain’s condition worsens—”

  “Sir Graham!”

  The admiral glanced up as a midshipman burst into their midst , his cheeks flushed with

  having run down several decks to reach this hellish hole. The boy snapped off a hasty salute and blurted, “Lieutenant Pearson’s respects, sir, and there’s something he thinks you should come topside to see!”

  Gray looked at the pile of covered bodies and felt the last of his spirit draining out of him.

  Villeneuve.

  He took a deep, bracing sigh. “My compliments to the lieutenant, Mr. Fay, and I will be up shortly.”

  The midshipman fled the room. Gray stood for a moment, steadying himself for the

  inevitable sight, knowing already that Villeneuve had discovered his ruse and returned to finish the job. He looked at Colin, shattered beyond repair; he looked at the dead and the dying, who would never fight again; he thought of Maeve, and her heartwarming refusal to leave him in those last moments before he had turned his ships to face the enemy. But even the possibility of hope where she was concerned failed to rouse his spirits, and he despaired of being able to muster the confident optimism he knew he must summon, if only for the sake of his men. Their captain was down, out of action, and in all likelihood crippled for life; they had lost a frigate, had lost a lot of good men, and now, with Villeneuve coming back to sweep up the pieces . . .

  He nodded to Ryder, picked up his hat, and trudged up through the hatch to the next deck, too dispirited to notice that with each level it got brighter and brighter, the darkness falling away behind and beneath him, the sunlight probing through, weak at first, now getting stronger, stronger, stronger— Cheering.

  He heard it, at first just as a dull, muffled din, now an unmistakable roar bursting from a thousand raw throats throughout what remained of his fleet.

  The admiral hauled himself up the last hatch, out onto a quarterdeck blazing with sunlight—

  and stopped in his tracks.

  Their backs to him, several hundred wildly cheering men lined the rail, the hammock

  nettings, the shrouds, the yards, standing atop cannon and out on the catheads. Some were throwing their hats to the sky, others dancing with excitement, and in the shadow of the

  mainmast a ship’s boy was weeping openly.

  Someone turned, saw him, and a hundred sailors cleared away to make a path for their

  admiral as he stepped up to the hammock nettings.

  “There, sir,” Lieutenant Stern said, hoarsely, and handed him a telescope. “Look.”

  Gray raised the glass to his eye. He looked far to the west and saw it, even as the cheering grew so loud his head rang, even as the realization of what he was seeing made his eyes begin to water with strain and emotion. For there, hull up on the horizon was a ship, a magnificent, mighty ship, with an invincible fleet spread out around her in a glorious array of power and majesty and strength.

  Nelson.

  And Victory.

  And there, leading them—a tiny, mothlike speck nearly dwarfed by the magnificence of that formidable array—was Kestrel.

  Chapter 27

  A sailor through and through, Maeve refused the bosun’s chair and, looping her skirts up

  and over one arm so they wouldn’t tangle in her legs, scrambled up Triton's side the minute Lord Nelson returned to Victory.

  She’d waited all morning for Gray’s business with Nelson to conclude so she could go to

  him, impatiently pacing Kestrel's deck and watching the sun blaze down to scorch the deck planking until the rigging oozed tar and the very guns baked and sizzled in the heat. Now, as she scaled the massive wall of the big warship’s tumblehome, she tried not to look at the angry gouges the French and Spanish shot had struck in the wood, tried not to envision her beloved admiral, standing unprotected on the quarterdeck as H.M.S. Triton had sailed into battle—and tried not to think about what awaited her in the moments ahead.

  Her nerves were tight. True, he had proclaimed his love for her before dispatching her to find Nelson, but that had been a desperate moment. Now that the dust had settled, that last scene in his cabin with his mistress was all she could think about.

  He might have died. And she had mistrusted him, deserted him when that woman came into the cabin. She had let him down.

  She almost turned back.

  Almost.

  Don’t repeat with Gray, the mistake that you made with your family. Don’t run and hide and allow yourself to believe the worst. He deserves the chance to explain about that woman. Trust him. Believe him. Give him the benefit of the doubt, give him a chance, go to him and give him your love.

  Then she was through the entry port and a moment later, standing on the warship’s broad

  quarterdeck, and there was no turning back.

  A lieutenant, his hat tucked under his arm, had stepped forward to receive her. He was a

  round-cheeked redhead with an equally round belly, and he blushed like a schoolboy at sight of her. Clad in a satin gown purple enough to please any monarch, gold earrings kissing her

  shoulders, a straw hat atop her head and her long chestnut tresses caught by a dark purple ribbon, she looked sweet, soft, and feminine . . .

  As long as one discounted the choker of sharks’ teeth around her neck, the cutlass in her hand, and the wicked, gleaming dagger strapped to a bejeweled belt about her waist.

  “Please don’t ogle, Lieutenant, it makes me damned uncomfortable.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, it’s just that—well, we don’t have ladies aboard very often, you see,

  and . . .”—he flushed and gulped, staring at her bare feet—“well, you look quite fetching, ma’m, and, uh, well . . .”

  “Never mind me,” she snapped, looking about her. “Where is your admiral?”

  “Sir Graham is in his cabin with the
flag-captain, Miss Merrick.”

  “Captain Merrick.”

  “Yes, of course, forgive me, Captain Merrick, sorry, ma’am—”

  “Or you may call me ‘Majesty.’ But since I am here as the commander of a ship, I would

  prefer ‘Captain.’”

  She saw several men smirking and elbowing each other at the young officer’s obvious

  discomfort.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, I mean Majesty, do forgive me, I meant to say Captain—”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Lieutenant! If you cannot manage any of that, simply ‘Maeve’ will do!

  Now where are your senior officers?”

  “Captain Lord has been seriously wounded, ma’am.” The lieutenant looked down at the

  deck. “The admiral is with him now.”

  Maeve's eyes darkened with alarm. “Wounded? Take me to them, immediately.”

  The lieutenant looked around as though for orders, but he was the most senior officer

  present.

  “I said, now, Lieutenant!”

  “Yes, ma’am. Of—of course.”

  She straightened her spine and followed him aft, her heart beginning to pound all the harder.

  I ought not to have come.

  She thought of Nelson as his bargemen had rowed him back to Victory not fifteen minutes ago, how he’d looked up and waved his hat at her, his melancholy little face breaking into a smile of reassurance as though he knew of her fears and trepidation.

  He’s going to reject me, he’s going to send me away, I know he will. He's had too much time to think, too much time to see that I’ve done nothing to make him respect me enough to love me

  —

  All too soon, they were standing at the door of Gray’s cabin. A marine, sober-faced and

  severe, stood just outside. “Admiral’s not seeing anyone,” he growled, staring straight ahead.

  “He will see me,” Maeve snapped before she could falter, and pushing past him, shoved open the door, closed it in his face, and strode into the cabin, blinking away the sunspots.

  Stillness. Thick, cloying quiet. No movement, no sound, nothing. Only the gentle wash of

  the sea around the great ship’s rudder, far, far below her.

  “Gray?”

  After the blazingly bright sunlight, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the

  comparative gloom of the cabin. She saw her cousin, lying on the same sofa on which she had convalesced and looking about as close to death as a person could get without stepping over into the hereafter. She saw a cat nestled against his blanketed feet and staring at her, its jaws open in an angry, threatening hiss. She saw a roll of bandages on a table beside him, a half-empty glass of brandy, the bottle, and there—the admiral himself.

  Asleep.

  She froze, torn between an absurd and cowardly urge to flee before he could waken—and

  going to him.

  He was slumped over the table, his brow resting on his forearm, his black hair loose around his shoulders, his sleeves pushed up to the elbows in a futile attempt to escape the heat. His fine naval coat lay over the back of a chair, his hat on the table beside his arm. A stack of papers was spread out around him, and a pen lay in his relaxed fingers, dribbling ink all over the reports and dispatches he’d been working on when exhaustion had finally done him in.

  There was fatigue in the lines of his face. A sizeable cut on the back of his hand. Blood on the edge of his cuff.

  “Gray,” she said softly, and tiptoeing forward, stood over him. Time stopped. The world

  went away. Holding her breath, she slowly, hesitantly, reached out, her fingers coming to within an inch of his shoulder before halting in uncertainty.

  The Pirate Queen swallowed, hard, overcome by emotions she couldn’t name or recognize.

  She hadn’t thought a mighty admiral could look vulnerable, but this one did. She hadn’t

  thought a man who commanded a fleet of battleships and the lives of thousands of sailors could look so defenseless, but he did. She didn’t think the sight of her Knight in such a state would rouse such a magnitude of love and fierce protectiveness in her breast—but it did.

  For a long moment, she stood there, listening to the soft sounds of his breathing and holding this special, private moment next to her heart. Sir Graham, alone. Sir Graham, defenseless. Sir Graham, vulnerable.

  Sir Graham— hers.

  A half-finished report lay beneath his wrist, three paragraphs of the worst handwriting she’d ever seen in her life sprawled across the page before the words faded off into a black dribble of ink. Her brows snapped together in indignation. Why didn’t he employ his secretary, his clerks, to write the blasted thing? He was an admiral, for God’s sake, with a whole staff of personal servants to attend to such menial matters!

  And then she saw that it was no report at all, but a letter—a letter to her, full of the outpourings of his heart, an apology about the woman, and declarations of the utter, infinite magnitude of his love for her.

  A thick knot of emotion lodged in her throat. She sucked her lips between her teeth,

  carefully slid the paper out from under his wrist, took the pen from his lax fingers—and on a deep, poised breath, touched his shoulder.

  He jerked awake, blinking, his eyes momentarily unfocused and confused. “Maeve?” He

  stared up at her, but Maeve glanced at Colin and put her finger to her lips. “Don’t worry, he’ll never hear us. I got him foxed so he could get some relief from the pain . . . Good God, am I seeing things?”

  Touch me, Gray. Hold me. Comfort me. I need you.

  “Of course you aren’t seeing things,” she snapped, tossing her head and retreating behind the safety of her customary bluster. She picked up his hat with the point of her cutlass and flung it at him, her eyes flashing. “You’re a damned fool, Gray!”

  He stared at her in bewilderment, clutching the hat to his chest.

  “And I’m a bigger one,” she added, sullenly. She bent her head, examining the wire grip of her cutlass, suddenly unable to meet that dark stare. “I’m sorry for doubting you.”

  He didn’t move, and she wondered if he was allowing this awkward silence on purpose so

  she would have no choice but to fill it with something. Anything.

  The tactics of an admiral. She was becoming wise to them.

  Her head snapped up. “I had to come back, you know. After all, you are my Gallant Knight.” Then, she slammed the cutlass against the top rung of an empty chair, the resounding crash echoing through the cabin. “But I’ll tolerate no more long-lost lovers on your part, is that understood?”

  Guiltily, she glanced at Colin, but her cousin remained still and unmoving. As for Gray, he was looking slowly, pointedly, at the sword buried in the rung of his chair, his brow lifted in silent amusement.

  Maeve immediately saw her predicament. “Oh, shit.” She tried to pull the heavy blade free of the wood, but it was stuck fast. She gripped the hilt of the blade and tried to jerk it up and down—to no avail. Sweat dampened her brow and her face went a deep, blazing red. “Oh, shit!”

  He rubbed his chin, as though trying to mask a grin. “Need some help, Majesty?”

  “You laugh and I’ll ram this thing up your—”

  “Uh, uh, uh, Maeve, that’s no way for a monarch to talk.”

  “You think it’s funny, do you?” She put her bare foot against the seat of the chair, gripped the cutlass, and yanked with all her might, her skirts jerking with every erratic, furious lunge.

  “Bloody hell! Son of a—”

  “Here.” He put the hat down on the table. Then he stood up, tall and handsome, his head

  nearly touching the deckhead above and a wicked smile lighting his face. “Allow me.”

  “I can do it, damn you!”

  He merely lifted a skeptical brow, gently stepped in front of her, and grasping the hilt of the savage weapon, patiently rocked it back and forth until it quietly eased free.
Then, with a flourish and a bow, he presented it to her with all the chivalry that he, a gallant Knight of the Bath, could muster.

  “Your sword, Majesty.”

  He was grinning, that dimpled, wolfish grin she’d come to know so well. Humiliated, she

  glanced at the still-motionless form of Colin Lord, and snatched the cutlass away from him.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re quite welcome.”

  “I’ll . . . replace the chair.”

  “There is no need.”

  “No, I insist.”

  “I said”—a faint smile of admiration and approval curved his mouth as he studied her

  ladylike garb— “there is no need. There are other ways of paying me that would suffice just as well.” The smile grew slow, lazy, hot. “Better, in fact.”

  He stepped forward.

  She stepped backward.

  He moved closer.

  She puffed out her chest and forced herself to stay put.

  Then, very slowly, the admiral reached out, took the cutlass from her suddenly boneless

  hand, and laid it carefully, deliberately, across the table beside his hat. His hands closed around her elbows, skimmed up her arms, and, as he drew her into his embrace she felt her defenses crumbling, her body melting. “Oh, Gray,” she murmured, and went into his arms with all the desperate gratitude of a lost child who has suddenly been found.

  He kissed her deeply, his hand catching in her hair, his arm a steel band around her waist.

  She drove upward, clinging to him, her tongue hot against his, her heart wanting to weep with gratitude that he had been spared. Finally she drew back, her eyes misty.

  “Leaving you to fight Villeneuve was the hardest thing I have ever done. I thought I’d never see you again. I thought you wouldn’t have a chance against all those ships—”

  He set her back to stare down into her eyes, his expression ripe with humor. “Come now, my dear,” he said softly. “Do you have as little faith in my abilities as all that?”

  “For God’s sake, Gray, you were vastly outnumbered; you could’ve been killed!” she said,

  angrily.

  “And you could have left me to my fate.” His thumbs smoothed her hair from her temples, and his eyes went soft and dark with wonder. “And yet . . .”