The Dukes of War: Complete Collection

by Ridley, Erica

  “Anchor’s down, Cap’n,” came Barnaby’s voice from somewhere behind them. “Should I lock the siren in your cabin?”

  “She knows what to do.” Steele cupped a hand to her face for a heartbeat longer than necessary, then strode off without a backward glance.

  This time, Clara wasn’t fooled by his apparent indifference. Steele didn’t stride off without a word because he didn’t care about her.

  He didn’t trust himself with words because he did.

  Chapter 16

  Clara watched the first scouts lower a rowboat to the water and head for shore.

  She watched as they returned, bubbling over with excited babble, and declared the island free of men and full of treasure.

  She watched as Steele helped his crew lower an even larger rowboat from the middle of the main deck. The rest of the men set off for the island to help cart back the treasure.

  She was still there, watching, when the sun began to sink behind the darkening clouds. In a few more hours, it would set completely. But darkness was the least of her worries. The first scouts had returned within minutes. Where was Steele? Why hadn’t he—or anyone!—returned to the ship, with or without the blasted gold?

  The young swabs who had stayed on deck to help haul up the spoils leapt to their feet, pale-faced and sweating. They rushed to one of the remaining rowboats and began lowering it to the water.

  Clara’s heart thudded in panic.

  “Where are you going?” she stammered. “Aren’t we supposed to stay on the ship?”

  “Something’s wrong,” one of the swabs replied.

  “H-how do you know?”

  “They’re not back,” another swab said ominously. “They always come back.”

  Cold fear ripped through her and she clutched one of the swab’s arms. “I’m coming with you.”

  He shook his head. “You stay here. We’ll be right back.”

  “What if you can’t come back?” Her hands shook. “What if no one does?”

  “Then lock yourself into a cabin with as much ammunition as you can find,” said the other swab. “If the Corsair finds you…”

  She swallowed. If the Corsair found her, she’d be dead.

  “What if the bullet misses its mark?” she asked desperately.

  “Keep a pile of loaded pistols,” suggested the first swab.

  “Don’t miss,” said the other.

  Clara bit back a hysterical laugh. If the Corsair and his crew commandeered the Dark Crystal, it wouldn’t matter how much ammunition Clara had managed to hide herself with. It took several moments to load each bullet. Moments a terrified stowaway would not have.

  “Bring him back,” she ordered the swabs as they lowered themselves into the rowboat. There was no need to speak his name. “We need him.”

  They nodded. “That’s why we’re going.”

  Clara took a deep breath and raced to the gunroom before their rowboat was out of sight. They’d left her alone, but not without artillery.

  The heavy cannons would have to stay where they stood, but the mess deck also held the sailors’ hammocks, and their stores of weapons.

  She grabbed an eyepatch from one satchel and fit it over her forehead like a tiara. She spied a row of cutlasses against another wall, and selected the lightest of the bunch. Resourcefulness wouldn’t matter if her weapon was too heavy to wield. She fashioned a belt with a loop for the handle out of a strip of leather and hung the blade from her hip.

  If she didn’t strike terror into the hearts of the Corsair’s men, perhaps they might still die of laughter.

  She retrieved her pistol from her traveling bag and then perched at the rail to wait for signs of the crew.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  As the sun finally set, she felt less like an obedient stowaway and more like a sitting duck. If something had happened to Steele and his men—something that was seeming more likely by the moment—then the Dark Crystal had just become a floating target. An irresistible beacon for the Corsair and his plundering crew.

  She had to get off this ship.

  If there was any chance she could rescue Steele, do something—anything—that might save them all, then she had to try. Before it was too late.

  She gathered her courage and set about figuring out how to lower the last of the rowboats into the water. She prayed she would arrive in time. That Steele was still alive. She’d rather die defending him than surrender herself to the Corsair.

  As it happened, setting the boat into the water was the easy part. Getting herself from the third deck of the ship into the tiny rowboat bobbing with the waves was an entirely different matter. She ended up having to use leather gloves and get herself into the boat using the same ropes she’d used to lower it.

  She caught her reflection in the water and could barely recognize herself. Had she thought she looked a fright from the wind? Clara was now unrecognizable, even to herself. Everything was stained or torn or cockeyed. Or all three.

  Nonetheless, she was grateful for the full moon. Now that she was in the boat, the next step was rowing it. Which turned out to be a far greater challenge than the crew had made it appear. Despite several resting periods of increasingly longer stretches of time, her arms were ready to fall out of their sockets by the time she reached the island.

  And she didn’t see the Dark Crystal’s rowboats anywhere.

  Since no one was watching, she hiked up her skirts and tucked the hems into her makeshift leather belt so she could drag the rowboat as close to the shore as possible.

  Her boots were waterlogged but serviceable, so she let down her hems and crept toward the large outcropping of rock jutting up from most of the small island. The entirety of the land wasn’t much larger than Covent Garden. Then again, people came to bad ends in Covent Garden’s infamous Dark Paths all the time. Small and concentrated didn’t make anything less dangerous.

  Muffled voices emanated from somewhere within the rock and she froze in place. Was that her crew? Or the Corsair’s?

  Hands trembling, she slipped her eyepatch down to cover one of her eyes. If she was going to have to enter a cave, she certainly didn’t wish to do so blind. The moment the patch was in place, she slid on a slippery stone and caught herself against the face of the rock. She swore.

  As it happened, having one eye covered played havoc with one’s depth perception.

  Moving much more carefully, she inched forward. If the voices didn’t belong to Blackheart’s crew, she would have to be far stealthier.

  Up ahead, she spotted a crevice in the rock. It was obviously not the entrance—she doubted a man could fit between the tall dank slabs—but it was certainly an entrance. And since she had yet to come across the other boats, much less the crew, she might as well slip inside to see if it led anywhere.

  As soon as she did so, darkness swallowed her.

  Terror ripped through her thundering heart. Panicking, she tore her eyepatch off her head…and was immediately rewarded with dim, but distinct, vision. The crevice led deep into the rock, each branch splintering off into another, most too small for even her to slip through.

  She untied the cutlass from its leather strap on her hips. Primarily to prevent the metal blade from clattering against the stone walls, but also for some measure of protection. Only a fool would fire a pistol under these conditions. She’d be more likely to shoot out her own eye in the ricochet than to wound the Crimson Corsair.

  Better to be safe.

  After following the narrow tunnel through countless twists and turns, light shone ahead. She all but burst out of the skinny passageway onto a thick stub of a ledge, her gasping lungs bursting for a breath of fresh air.

  Vertigo assailed her as she realized she balanced two stories above a large open cavern covered in jagged rocks—and filled with sparkling piles of gold and opulent colors.

  The Corsair’s treasure.

  Her breath caught in wonder. Half a dozen chests encircled a table stacked high
with silks, trinkets, and hills of gold. A single torch protruded from the cavern wall and the doubloons glittered in its orange light.

  But that wasn’t all. A cold sweat rippled down her spine. Yellowed bones cluttered the stone floor, providing a broken and grisly barrier around the treasure.

  The murmur of voices once again echoed through the walls, and she dropped to her stomach to hide herself from view.

  As the whispers grew closer, the speakers came into view. The crew. Relief coursed through her. Steele was right there at the front of the pack. She frowned and peered over the ledge.

  Instead of his usual confident swagger, he was twisting like a scarecrow caught in the wind, each step lifting his boots to comical heights before lowering back to the earth in a position ever more awkward than the one before.

  “Careful, Cap’n,” came Barnaby’s low hiss. “Don’t want what happened to ’enry to happen to you.”

  Clara’s heart stopped. Traps. She couldn’t see the individual wires from this high above, but the cave had been rigged to keep thieves out.

  There was no sign of Henry—one of the young boys who swabbed the deck—and she hoped his absence didn’t indicate his untimely death. Or that Steele and the others were walking into the same.

  She was tempted to call out and beg Steele to be careful, but she did not wish to cause a fatal distraction. The men had made it this far, from God only knew where, and they had every appearance of being the first to have ever done so…and lived.

  No. Not the first. Not even the most recent.

  She swung her head back toward the treasure. The men couldn’t see the source of the light from their vantage point around a rocky corner, but Clara could. The single, thick torch casting its sinister glow from the far side of the chests had been lit by someone.

  They were not alone.

  The Corsair or his men were hiding in the shadows.

  She squinted in the direction of the orange light. The hollow cavern continued well beyond the site of the treasure, but the position of the torch merely cast the dark passage in moving shadows.

  As she watched, two swarthy men eased forward, barely visible in the darkness. One lifted a stump of an arm and pointed in the direction of Steele and his crew with the curve of a wickedly pointed hook.

  The other man nodded. He swung his peg leg forward and reached inside a thick leather pouch hanging on his thigh. Even the fickle light of the torch could not hide the glint of metal as the pirate retrieved a series of short, sharp throwing knives from the pouch. He glanced over his shoulder at some unknown quantity of compatriots deep in the blackness, then drew back his arm to take aim.

  Clara’s throat dried. Steele was leading his crew. If the pirates lying in wait caught him by surprise, he could be struck dead with a knife protruding from his skull in a matter of moments. If she called down to warn him, not only might that spur the pirates to attack even more swiftly—Steele might be startled into setting off one of the wired traps. She needed him to freeze in his tracks.

  She needed to take action.

  Hands shaking, she shoved her flint into the jaws of her heavy pistol.

  “Easy, men,” Steele was murmuring to his crew. “Don’t be hasty now that the booty is in sight.”

  She took a deep breath. It was time.

  “Stay put,” she screamed into the hollow cavern and squeezed the pistol’s trigger.

  Everything happened all at once.

  Acrid smoke hit her nose seconds before the entire cavern filled with dust. The bullet had hit its target above the pirates’ heads, intended to distract them before a single blade could be thrown.

  ’Twas distracting, to be sure. The bullet had not only ricocheted off the irregular ceiling, it had splintered the loose rock, causing an avalanche of stone to rain down upon the Corsair’s men. Dust and splinters of crumbling rock sprayed up from all angles.

  Where was Steele? Clara set the pistol aside and scrambled to her knees, her hands clutching the edge of the cliff as her eyes desperately raked the dust storm below for signs of the captain.

  Movement caught her eye. A hand waving in front of a face to clear the air. Several hands waving in front of several faces. Steele and his crew. She’d done it!

  A gasping laugh scraped from her throat as elation zinged through her trembling body.

  Steele’s hooded eyes were pointed directly at her hidey-hole. Due to the echoes, her voice might have come from anywhere, so he must have seen the muzzle flash from up in the black recesses. His expression was one of perfect disbelief. He might not be able to make her out in the darkness, but he’d no doubt recognized her voice—and her words.

  She waved weakly, then smiled to herself. He could kill her later. At least he was still alive.

  With haste, Steele and his crew carefully surged forward, clearing the last of the devious wires in time to subdue the Corsair’s men. As they were tying up the last of the pirates, a flap of wings sounded from beneath the rubble and a large parrot burst free.

  “Avast,” the parrot squawked as it flew over Steele’s head and out of the cavern.

  He slanted a look up toward Clara. “Friend of yours?”

  “Straight from the adventure rags,” she called back cheerfully. “I’ve been warned those tales are greatly exaggerated.”

  The crew moved toward the chests and the pile of treasure.

  “You know what to do,” Steele said to his men, then made his way to the cave wall leading up to her nook.

  She slid back from the edge just as he hauled himself up and onto the ledge.

  “I could kill you.” He hauled her to him instead.

  She nudged her cutlass out of sight with a toe. “I know.”

  “Or I could kiss you,” he said conversationally.

  “Less talk,” she suggested, bringing her face closer. “Do it.”

  He covered her mouth with his. Demanding. Taking. Holding her close. “If you ever risk your life again…”

  “I believe I’ve had enough pirating for a spell.” She lay her cheek against his and wrapped her arms about him tight. “What did you do to the Crimson Corsair?”

  “He isn’t here.” Steele’s words were laced with disappointment and frustration.

  She tilted her head up. “But you have his treasure.”

  He nodded. “And his men.”

  “How will we get them back to England? Will you rope them to the masts?”

  “They’re not going back. They’ll stay right here, tied with a pretty bow in the lair they were meant to be guarding.”

  “But they’ll die!” She pulled back from his arms, certain he couldn’t mean it. “There will be no one here to free them.”

  “Not for long.” Steele gestured toward the cavern below. “The Corsair will come for his treasure.”

  “He’ll be furious.” A chill seeped into Clara’s bones. “I’ve read all the reports in the papers. He’s a madman with no conscience. What if he kills them in a rage?”

  “I hope he does not. But they’re his men. They tried to kill us. I have to take care of what’s mine.” Steele’s ice blue eyes pierced her. “You come first.”

  Clara swallowed. He was right. She hated to leave anyone to an uncertain fate…but what choice did they have? The Dark Crystal had a finite amount of space and provisions. Not to mention the danger in inviting the Corsair’s men aboard.

  Those coldblooded cretins had intended to slaughter Steele and his entire crew. They were vicious murderers. Her heart shuddered just thinking about what might have happened. Steele could have died. They all might have.

  She nodded, grateful they were leaving. They were lucky to still have each other. They were still alive because of each other.

  She wrapped both fists around Steele’s linen shirt and pressed her lips to his. Kissing him was more than relief and emotion. It was a revelation.

  Steele had never been playacting. He was no gentleman. He fought with the same savage honesty with which he kissed. He was
Blackheart the pirate. Her pirate. And today they’d fought the enemy side-by-side.

  As a team.

  Chapter 17

  Long before the last of his crew had finished securing the jolly boat and cutters back onto the Dark Crystal, all Steele wanted to do was drag Clara into his cabin, close the door, and not come out until morning. If ever.

  Unfortunately, there was business to be taken care of first.

  He smiled at the two swabs that had left their posts instead of staying behind to watch over the ship…and Clara. “You’re sacked.”

  Instead of making futile excuses, both boys hung their heads in shame. Good. They were an embarrassment to the crew. If they couldn’t be trusted to follow orders, they had no business aboard his ship.

  Clara’s mouth fell open, and she whipped toward Steele, likely to spout some sympathetic nonsense.

  He captured her in his arms and stalked through the rows of men and toward his cabin without another word. She had long since proven her willingness to forswear her own life for all sorts of noble, foolish reasons.

  Steele had no such inclination.

  He hauled her down the hatchway, flung open the door, and swung her inside. With a satisfying click, he locked the door behind them. Then he turned to corner Clara between his body and his bunk.

  “Y-you can’t just sack them.” She stared at him in consternation. “They helped bring up the treasure.”

  He prowled closer. “They left you. You’re more important than treasure.”

  She shook her head. “Never mind a stowaway. Those boys wanted to come to their captain’s aid. To serve the commander of this ship. They went after you.”

  He pushed her onto the bunk and covered her body with his. “You’re more important than me.”

  “You’re wrong.” She gripped his hair and pulled his mouth to hers. “Nothing is.”

  He kissed her. Nipped her. Claimed her with the ferocity of his kisses. As much as this impossible woman could be claimed.

  His heart clenched. The only thing she’d ever done with consistency was surprise him. He’d recognized her voice in the cavern, but the shadowy darkness had prevented him from knowing which side of the resulting muzzle flash she’d been on. He had felt fear, damn her. For a heart-stopping moment, he had thought he’d lost her forever. He cupped the back of her head and drank in her kisses.