by Connie Mason
“But I can’t bloody swim!” Sally wailed again.
“Shut it.” Eve delivered a quick slap across Sally’s open mouth. The stinging blow settled the girl and she subsided into moist hiccups. “You should have thought about that before you jumped in.”
“But the fire,” Sally sputtered between sniffles. “I’m mortally afeared of fire.”
“Which hasn’t spread a lick, thanks to this cursed rain.” Eve hated being harsh, but panic would help no one.
“Here, let me untie your panniers,” she offered. The horsehair and wire contraption was probably weighing Sally down. Eve reached under the sodden mass of Sally’s broad skirts and jerked the knot at her waist free. Eve had kicked off her shoes and shed her panniers as soon as she hit the water.
“Penny, do you need help with yours?”
The question jolted Penelope out of her rigor. “No,” she said, hooking an arm across the hatch. “I’ll make do.”
Grim-faced, Penny worked at her lacings until the system of hoops loosened and she wiggled free of them.
“Did anyone see Lieutenant Rathbun?” Sally asked.
“No, and I don’t think we need concern ourselves with anyone else’s welfare at present.” Eve swiped her eyes, trying to clear the stinging brine. “Our plate of troubles seems quite full enough, thank you.”
A wave surged by, high enough to obscure the wreck of the Molly Harper behind a wall of water. When the ship reappeared on the dark horizon, Eve saw that the current had dragged them surprisingly far from their vessel. Her belly roiled.
The women had been forced onto the open deck when the Molly Harper ran aground on the hidden reef and water began pouring into the tiny cabin they shared. Sally panicked at the sight of flames on the poop deck and had run heedless through a broken spot on the gunwale, dropping into the black waves below.
Penelope jumped in after her, knowing her friend couldn’t swim. Eve watched from above for a helpless few heartbeats while Sally, stupid with terror, thrashed the water and tried to scale her would-be rescuer. Another minute and she’d have drowned them both.
The deck was alive with sailors running, hauling at the ropes and swearing the air blue. Every hand was busy trying to keep the Molly Harper from total ruin, with no thought to spare for three women, who everyone claimed were unlucky on a ship in any case. So Eve had grabbed up the loose hatch cover and followed the other two into the waves.
In retrospect, it was probably not the cleverest thing she’d ever done. If her time in Newgate Prison had taught her anything, it was that the wise woman looks to herself. But the confinement of a small shared cabin had wrought a sense of kinship among the three of them. Eve couldn’t let flighty, impulsive Sally or the steady, quiet Penelope come to grief if she could help it.
So now despite her best efforts, they were all in a pickle.
Sally squealed again. “Look! Another ship!” She waved a pale arm at the hull surging toward the wreck. “Why don’t they stop?”
Another wave washed over them and Sally came up sputtering.
“They probably can’t see us,” Eve said. “On the count of three, we must all scream as loud as ever we can.”
“You won’t slap me?” Sally asked reproachfully.
“Not this time, ninny,” Eve promised with a wry smile. “Ready? One, two, three.”
Even Penelope shrieked for all she was worth.
For a heart-stopping moment, it seemed nothing was happening, that no one had heard them. Then suddenly sailors on the approaching vessel scrambled to spill wind from the sails to slow the ship and a boat was lowered over the side. A big fellow with what looked like a permanent scowl engraved on his face stood at the tiller as his men plied the oars.
“We’re saved!” Sally shouted and waved her free arm.
Eve started to believe it herself, but a sudden movement caught the corner of her eye, something different from the rhythmic roll of the waves. When she turned her head, a long gray body stippled with dark patches passed by them no more than ten feet away. A sharp dorsal fin rose and then disappeared beneath the waves.
She swallowed hard.
Sharks had dogged the Molly Harper across the Atlantic, hoping for more scraps after that piglet fell in just off the Azores. Once, one of the sailors speared a big gray fellow, but before the men could haul the shark from the water, the other fish turned on the wounded one in a bloody frenzy. They boiled the water red devouring one of their own.
“Sally, dear, you must be quiet,” Eve said, forcing an even tone. She prayed the other girl wouldn’t catch a glimpse of the predator before the jolly boat arrived. “A lady is always calm and collected.”
“Even now?”
“Especially now. Imagine how impressed the gentlemen who are coming to our rescue will be when they see how graciously you face difficult circumstances,” Eve said. Lieutenant Rathbun had schooled them in decorum all the way across the long stretch of the Atlantic. Perhaps the lessons would come in useful now. “And keep your feet and legs as still as possible.”
“They can’t see my legs,” Sally protested.
“No, but if your head is bobbing around they’ll know you’re kicking up your feet like a light-heeled trollop. And it will be quite as bad as if they could see them. Look at Penny.” Eve nodded at their quiet friend. “She’s being perfectly still.”
The boat was drawing closer. The master growled an order, but the wind carried away his words.
The dorsal fin reappeared behind Sally and Penny’s eyes flared with alarm.
“Quiet, Pen,” Eve urged as the shark circled.
Penelope sucked in her bottom lip and worried it in silence.
The moon ripped through the clouds, silvering the black water. The shark glided by again. Its lidless eye flashed feral over rows of jagged teeth. It was closer on this pass. It seemed to be studying them, trying to decide what to do. Eve could almost hear its fishy thoughts.
Is they nice? Is they tasty? Shall we give ’em a nip then, ducks, just to see for ourselves?
The shark’s imagined voice sounded like that disgusting bloke from Cheapside, the one whose unwanted attention she’d fended off during her nightmarish weeks in Newgate. She shook away the evil fancy.
Someone from the small boat shouted to them, but Eve couldn’t yank her gaze from the monster. The sleek body was twice as long as she was tall.
Merciful God, it’s big enough to swallow us whole.
White-knuckled, Eve gripped the hatch cover till her nails bit into the wood. Why hadn’t she grabbed up something useful before she leaped into the sea? Like maybe a pike?
Sally caught sight of the shark and began to shriek like a lost soul.
“Suffering Christ,” Nick muttered, then shouted. “Put your backs into it, men.”
He hadn’t given up a prize vessel just to see these stupid women butchered before his eyes, but the shark wouldn’t wait much longer.
“Must be the same big bastard we seen off Spanish Point, Cap’n,” Tatem said. “There ain’t another un’ like that in these waters, or I’ll hope to shout.”
Nick drew his pistol and tried to track the course of the fin around the women. The beast was so close, he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t hit one of them. The hysterical blonde invited attack with her flailing and screaming. One of the others grabbed her and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“At least one of them has the brains God gave a goose,” Nick conceded.
He aimed his weapon at the circling shark, gauged the distance and allowed for lead time. He squeezed the trigger, but instead of a sharp report, his pistol gave a disappointing click. The rain had wet his powder thoroughly.
“Damn.”
There was no help for it and no way he’d order one of his men to join him in what he was planning. Lunacy was a dish best eaten alone. Nicholas yanked off his boots.
“Take the tiller, Mr. Williams,” he ordered. “Tie off the line and make ready to haul away on my signal. Tatem, stick a
harpoon in him if you get half a chance.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
Nicholas looped one end of a rope around his waist, thrust a dagger between his teeth and dove into the surging sea. Once his sleek head broke the surface, he closed the distance between the pitching jolly boat and the women in a handful of powerful strokes.
When he surfaced beside them, he pulled the knife from his teeth and unfastened the rope, kicking to stay afloat. The shark passed slowly, eyeing him with a pitiless stare. He didn’t dare look away until it disappeared, dissolving in the black water. Nick knew better than to feel relief. It would be back. Probably when least expected.
“Anyone hurt?” he shouted.
The screamer whimpered.
“Not yet,” the one trying to pacify her said. “Get us out of here.”
As if he wasn’t trying.
“My men can pull two of you to safety at a time.” The weight of the three of them would likely drag the women under. “Grab this rope and hold on!” he ordered the most sensible one of the bunch. In addition to a level head, she had fine features and high cheekbones—a bone-deep beauty that would only ripen with age.
“Not bloody likely,” she said. “You’ll take Sally and Penny first.” Her lovely eyes were wide, but her voice didn’t waver. She looped the cable around the other two. “Pen, grab hold of the rope.” She forced the screamer’s hands around the line. “Sally, shut up and hold fast.”
Nick wasn’t used to being countermanded, but there was no time to argue.
“Whatever happens, don’t let go,” he said to the quaking pair.
He waved both hands over his head and the rope drew taut. The women shot across the surface like a corsair under full sail. Nicholas spotted a fin trailing them. The big tiger shark was back.
“Make some noise,” he said to the woman clinging to the hatch beside him.
“What?”
“Scream, wench, or your friends are nothing but shark bait.”
That got her attention. She yowled like a cat with its tail caught under a rocker. She flailed her arms and legs, splashing and whooping.
“Good. Keep it up,” Nick bellowed.
As he expected, the fin slowed and turned. Given a choice, a shark would always pick an injured target over one moving smoothly through the water, and the beauty beside him seemed like she was mortally wounded all right.
The shark headed straight for them.
The woman stopped screaming and loosed an impressive string of expletives.
“What part of this is a good idea?” she demanded.
“This.” Nick pulled her close and planted a hard, wet kiss on her mouth. His only regret was that he must be brief. Nothing like a spot of danger with a beautiful woman who knows her way around profanity to make a man feel achingly alive.
He flashed her a quick grin, then looked back toward the oncoming shark. She had enough grit in her gullet for two of his men, but her lips were butter soft. With any luck at all, he’d have time to explore that sweet mouth with greater leisure later. Who knew what outlandishly wicked things a grateful woman might do for a man who faced a shark for her?
Unless this night’s work claimed him.
The fin sped up and sank.
He was out of time now.
“Tuck your knees to your chin and be still. Wait for my men to haul you to safety.”
Nick took a couple quick breaths, then dove down to meet the shark.
“Wait!” Eve gasped as the man’s feet disappeared with a final kick. A wave smacked her in the face and once it passed, she’d lost track of where he’d gone down. The shouts of the men in the jolly boat were louder now. She glanced up in time to see her friends being reeled in to safety.
She tucked up her knees, as the man had ordered. He might be a fool to attack a shark with nothing but a knife, but his advice made sense. Her broad skirts swirled in the water beneath her like jellyfish tendrils.
Something passed below her, catching and tugging at the trailing muslin. It sucked her down for a heartbeat. Water shot up her nose and brine burned the back of her throat. Panic grasped her belly. Then she was suddenly free and bobbed back up, clawing at the surface. The hatch cover was nowhere to be seen.
The inky sea thrashed around her, the water mounding up. Then as a bolt of lightning jagged across the sky, the shark breached beside her, its body glistening silver in the moonlight, its mouth a gaping maw.
The man clung to one fin, his legs wrapped around the cylindrical body. His other hand sliced the knife along the shark’s belly. Blood streamed black against its smooth skin. They slapped the surface and sank with a mighty flip of the shark’s tail, disappearing so quickly Eve almost couldn’t believe what she’d seen.
She searched the moon-speckled water for any sign of the pair. She was so intent she didn’t even hear the approaching jolly boat over the roar of the wind and sea until a sailor reached under her armpits and hauled her aboard. She was dumped on her bottom without ceremony on the unforgiving planks of the hull while the crewmen turned their attention back to locating the missing man.
“Sing out if you see anything,” the fellow at the tiller called.
Eve grasped the gunwale and looked out over the shimmering blackness. The moon scattered silver coins in a long broad path across the heaving waves. The small boat pitched and yawed in the rolling sea, but it beat a hatch cover by a long stretch.
She drew a deep shuddering breath.
A dozen questions speared her brain. How long could a man hold his breath? What was one knife compared to a mouthful of razors? What kind of lunatic took on a shark against such odds?
She only had an answer for the last one.
She fingered her bottom lip, still tasting the hard salty kiss that had smacked of farewell. “A brave lunatic,” she muttered. “A bloody brave lunatic.”
Chapter Three
His chest ached. His lungs burned for air. The last of his carefully hoarded breath had slipped away in tiny bubbles tickling across his cheek long ago. His ears threatened to explode. He fought the urge to inhale as he clawed toward the distant light.
The shark was dead.
Damned if he’d drown now.
His heart pounded like a smith’s hammer.
How much farther?
His arms and legs were slowing down. He couldn’t make them…he couldn’t…
He’d lost the knife. He couldn’t remember where.
His vision tunneled.
Then his head broke the surface and he dragged in a lungful of rain-sweet air. He sucked it in clear to his toes. Relief flooded his body. He lay back in the ocean’s arms, satisfied just to let his chest rise and fall. Stars wheeled overhead, brittle pinpoints of light poking through the sky’s black curtain.
Water muffled the sound of the dissipating storm. Nicholas drifted, closing his eyes in bone-deep weariness. How pleasant just to let the sea buoy him up, to let her rock him on her warm, wet breasts. How—
He jerked himself to full awareness.
The hull of the wreck loomed before him.
“As I live and breathe, what do we have here?” a sickeningly familiar voice drawled from above him. “I declare, I do believe it’s Captain Scott gone adrift.”
Adam Bostock was leaning over the gunwale of the wrecked Molly Harper, leering down at him. Bostock’s angular face was lit with self-congratulation as he slapped the rail with his thick palm.
“This vessel and her crew are secure now, and let me tell you, she’s a fine catch, but I still stand ready to aid another stranded mariner this night. Tell me, Nicholas, do you need my assistance?”
He wished for his lost knife with all his heart. Nothing would have kept him from hurling it at his gloating nemesis.
“Cap’n!” Tatem’s graveled voice echoed against the wrecked ship’s hull.
Nick pivoted in the water to see the jolly boat bearing down on him, the faces of his crew strained with worry. He glared at Bostock, then turned without a word
. He wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction. He windmilled his arms through the water, streaking a beeline toward the boat, determined not to let Bostock see his crew haul him aboard like a lost bit of baggage.
Nick was shaking with rage by the time he heaved himself over the side of the jolly boat.
“That’s right. Best you hurry back to your ship, Nick!” Bostock cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted across the water. “I’d hate to see Higgs run the Susan Bell aground for you. But rest assured, if he does, the Sea Wolf will help you out.”
And claim her as salvage. Not bloody likely.
Nicholas balled his fingers into tight fists. He’d see the Susan B on the ocean floor before he let Bostock set so much as the sole of his cursed foot on her.
“Your orders, Cap’n?” Tatem said.
His crew knew there was no love lost between Nick and Bostock. They just didn’t know why. And Nick was determined to keep it that way.
“Home,” he said simply before sinking onto the nearest empty slat seat. He dragged a hand over his face. His head pounded as if he’d been on a three-day drunk.
“Captain Scott.” A feminine voice interrupted the anvil strikes in his head. “We’d like to thank you for your help. Words fail in expressing our gratitude.”
But words proceeded to fall out of her mouth nevertheless.
He looked up into the lovely face of the woman who’d been the last one out of the water. Here was a welcome distraction. Between the shark and Adam Bostock, he’d almost forgotten about her, but now he was vaguely glad his crew had managed to fish her out. She was sitting between the other two, who huddled around her, shivering and sobbing softly.
Her mouth continued to move, but he’d stopped listening to her words, lost in the tantalizing play of her lips, teeth and tongue. Pity that kiss had been so damned short, but there’d been no help for it at the time.
It was hard to imagine that same soft, lovely mouth could wrap itself around such an inventive string of profanity. Her language would’ve made a bosun blush. It made no sense, but he’d heard her with his own ears. Here was a puzzlement worth untangling and a mouth definitely worth further investigation. His mood improved out of all reason as his gaze drifted down her neck to her low bodice.
