Savage of the Sea

by Eliza Knight

“If that was the case, ye wouldna have done it right in front of me.” The lady was bristling for a fight, her hands fisted at her sides. He’d never seen her so enraged. If she were in her right mind, she wouldn’t have picked her fight with a pirate standing before his entire brethren.

  Shaw took measured steps toward her, Constantine and every other man in his way stepping back as they took in the fiery look in his eyes. Jane, however, did not back down. She raised her chin, staring hard at him.

  When he was barely a foot from her, Shaw stopped, crowding her space and gazed down at her. The desire to haul her up against him and kiss away that anger was strong. Instead, he took her by the elbow and half dragged her away from her uncle and the prying ears of those who watched them intently. Though out of earshot, they were not completely out of view, and that suited him just fine as it would keep him from kissing her.

  “I’m a pirate, wife. Ye knew that when ye met me. When ye wrote to me. When ye begged for my help.” Then lower, he said, “Ye knew it when ye gave yourself to me. Dinna insult us both by pretending otherwise.”

  The tip of her pink tongue darted out to lick her lower lip. She looked ready to say something more, but he stopped her in a hushed tone. “Dinna say another word, lass, or I’ll be forced to punish ye. I know ye’re angry with me. I know ye want to gouge my eyes out, but look around ye. Remember where ye are. Who they are, who I am. I’m their prince, their leader, and if they see ye disrespecting me, they’ll want to see ye get the lash.” He didn’t dare mention that le Brecque wanted her in his bed—not after what she’d said on the ship.

  Redness came to her cheeks, and she bristled. “Ye wouldna.”

  “If ye forced my hand, I’d take ye over my knee right here and now and give your arse a good spanking.”

  Her mouth fell open in outrage, fisted hands rising as though she’d pummel him.

  Shaw grabbed hold of her fists, bent to kiss them, not allowing her to pull away even as she tugged. “When we’re back at Scarba, ye can rail at me all ye like in the privacy of our own chamber, but out here, out in the wilds with pirates drooling for a fight, ye’ll keep quiet, else ye see us both killed.”

  She glanced at the men over his shoulder, perhaps realizing for the first time exactly what kind of position they were in.

  “Now curtsy.”

  “Nay.”

  “Do it, love, else they think ye continue to disrespect me.”

  With gritted teeth, she ducked into an indelicate curtsy, and he knew it, but he didn’t mind. All he cared about was that she listened, and that it would calm his brethren. When she stood, he bent forward, brushing his lips over hers before she could back away. “’Tis for our safety, lass. Dinna fash yourself, I’ll not be coming back to your bed.” Yet.

  Anger radiated from her trembling limbs, but she remained quiet.

  “Go and sit by the hearth. We will leave this place soon, but sit where I can see ye and keep ye safe.”

  She nodded dutifully and did as he asked. And he hated it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The man is clearly in love with ye.

  Uncle Edward’s words kept repeating in Jane’s mind as she sat on a chair before the hearth in the great hall of Perran Castle. The velvet cushioned perch would have been comfortable if she could actually sit still. In fact, she might have been able to appreciate the castle itself more, if she could focus.

  Until Shaw had explained the danger of her situation, and she looked around the great hall at the men filling the space, she hadn’t realized how much danger she was in. Glory to him for having made her feel safe. But worse, she felt foolish for not having noticed.

  The hall was filled with dozens and dozens of pirate warriors. Maybe even one hundred of them, and only half were Shaw’s men. The rest belonged to the man who looked to have been borne of Odin himself.

  Every man in the place had more than one weapon strapped to his body. Axes, swords, long hooking or jagged daggers. One man even had a sword that looked like the mouth of a shark with hundreds of rows of jagged teeth. The men were covered in scars, and their eyes glittered with ruthlessness.

  A few wenches walked about the great hall, their breasts spilling from their gowns, and a few with a side of their skirts cinched up around their waist to show off not just a part of a leg, but the entire thigh. It was scandalous, as though she’d walked into a den of depravity, and the only moral man among them was her husband—who had just loudly and publicly rebuked her, after having loudly and publicly denied her.

  Och, what she wouldn’t do for a glass of wine, or perhaps even a sip of that hellfire the men were always drinking. Something, anything to calm her nerves. When a wench passed her, Jane caught her attention and begged a cup of wine. But the wench didn’t return, and Jane’s nerves had yet to abate.

  The man is clearly in love with ye.

  If Shaw were any other man, she would have laughed in her uncle’s face. But he wasn’t any other man. He was Savage, prince of the Devils of the Deep. Raised by a pirate king, ruler of his four ships and heir to the brethren, revered by men, feared by many. And loved by her.

  If her uncle were to be believed, and why should he even say such unless he believed it, then she needed to truly explore the notion.

  The way Shaw loved her was different than what she’d witnessed at court as a young countess—and certainly absent from her own previous marriage, if a child marriage could be called such. And if she thought back far enough, the fact that Shaw had placated her with writing her back over the years meant something. The fact that instead of turning her over his knee to prove a point to his men, he bid her to please be quiet meant something, too.

  The man is clearly in love with ye.

  Aye, there was an inkling of hope that he might just be. She’d thought so before, too. And though his words had crushed her, maybe they’d been necessary. Because if he’d not denied her, would not that vile devil who’d attacked them tried to do her more harm?

  She’d never know. And while her mind screamed to never trust a pirate, her heart adamantly denied that statement. In fact, Shaw was likely the only man she could trust.

  Around the great table, the men discussed battle strategies. The serving wench finally handed her a mug of ale instead of wine.

  “Drink up, love,” she said. “You look like you’re wasting away.”

  “Thank ye.” Jane took the offered cup from the buxom woman, realizing how waifish she looked beside her. Not caring that it wasn’t the wine she asked for, she downed the contents.

  Was a buxom woman what Shaw preferred? She recalled that at Scarba the women were rather endowed as well. Her breasts, which she’d never found fault with before, looked rather like unripe apples compared to the overripe gourds on the serving wench’s body.

  But when she glanced back toward the table, Shaw’s gaze was on her, not on the wench, and the way he was looking at her was the way he’d gazed at her in the cabin and on the beach. It was a darkened look full of desire and need and want and possession.

  She blushed, realizing that no matter the size of her breasts, he was still looking at her as though she were the most desirous creature in the room.

  Perhaps it was time to start seeing him for the man she knew him to be, and to understand the façade he had to keep up as the heir to a pirate kingdom. The only other choice was to make good on her word and leave him once this business was done, and the thought of no longer having him in her life left her feeling bereft.

  The sun had already set when they’d loaded their ships with supplies and enough cannons to blow an entire country to bits. Eight ships sailed with the wind at their backs, pushing them through the blackened waters as though the sea gods were on their side. When a roll of thunder sounded overhead, Shaw cursed their fate that a storm would intervene with their mission, but the skies never opened up, only threatened to for an hour.

  “Sky storm,” he murmured. Often when they were out at sea, the gods in the skies liked to taunt
them with such, to keep them alert and at the ready.

  “At this speed, we’ll reach Trésor Cove by dawn.” Jack took hold of the helm so Shaw could look through his extended spyglass.

  They’d kept well away from the English coast, so as not to be spotted by the Royal Navy. Eight pirate ships sailing at high speeds would alert them to an attack, and the last thing he needed to deal with was the damned English and their Royal Navy.

  Nay, what he was searching for was Livingstone. They’d yet to run into the man again, but he knew the day was coming. Livingstone would not have given up so easily. But the sea surrounding them was clear, not a single light by which to spot a running ship.

  He found his gaze wandering back to the closed cabin door, beyond which, his wife slept. He wanted to go up there and knock, or just peek inside to watch her sleep, but he kept himself below, manning the helm, keeping them on target. Though he had caught a few hours sleep while Jack took the helm. He didn’t want to be completely exhausted when they finally caught up with Van Rompay and the rest of his demon crew.

  By dawn, the coast of Calais was in view, and Shaw turned the helm north toward the caves that made up the pirate town of Trésor Cove. He ordered all lights dimmed, and all eight ships were soon blanketed in darkness. They trimmed back their sails, cutting through the water at a slower pace so that they would wake the French pirates with their cannons and not the sounds or sight of their approach.

  And then, there it was. Trésor Cove. The French pirate port that the authorities ignored except when they had enough firepower to completely overtake them—which was rare. The Water Bearers were a ruthless lot and had worked out some sort of arrangement with their government to leave them in peace. In exchange, the Water Bearers would only attack ships not of French nationality. Though that was the arrangement that was made, Shaw believed it might be that Van Rompay’s crew were too brutal, too many, to fight against. They didn’t fight fair, not by half.

  The lights burned from the mouths of the cave, and he imagined the sounds of music and laughter, though they couldn’t actually hear it from this distance. Besides, most of the violent, yet oddly cozy-looking town would be asleep at this late hour. Most. He waited, listening for the horn of those men on watch who would spot the moving shadows on the sea, but none came.

  “Ready the cannons,” Shaw ordered, praying Jane stayed locked up tight in their cabin. “We wake them with a bang. Aim for their ships first.” Knowing that Lorne and Alexander would not be aboard the galleys but tucked deep in Van Rompay’s dungeon, they would take out their mode of escape first.

  They navigated the Savage of the Sea, the other ships following through the water, cutting her at the last moment to point her cannons toward the French ships that lined the cove. Shaw glanced toward Constantine and The Gaia to see that he too had pointed his guns toward the shore, and then they gave each other the signal.

  “Fire!” Both ships’ guns exploded with a bright orange light, the boom a welcome music to Shaw’s ears.

  The ships in the coves exploded in a violent spray of wood, men screamed in the distance, and warning bells clanged. Kelly, Thor and Lachlan ordered their men to drop into their skiffs and row ashore. Constantine ordered his other captains to do the same, leaving their ships to be manned by their quartermasters. And then they fired again, obliterating all the ships in the cove to smoldering piles of floating wood.

  Their men rowed with the force of demons, their white smiles gleaming in the pre-dawn light. Their oars barely made a splash as they propelled themselves with inhuman speed toward shore, battle-lust raging in their blood.

  Shaw grinned. “Fire!”

  Again, they shot toward the now blazing piles of once great galleys that lit up the cove. There would be nothing left. Shaw wanted to take the French down where it hurt—their ships, their means of enterprise. What was a pirate without a ship? Merely a worthless thug.

  Once on shore, if Shaw came across the man who’d dared to touch his wife, he would take great pleasure in gutting the man.

  “Ready, Cap’n?” Jack urged him toward the rail where his skiff waited below in the dark water to take him to shore.

  “Edward?” Shaw turned around to see that Jane’s uncle was ready, a smile on his face and weapons in his hands.

  “Aye. Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “A moment.” Shaw broke away from the men, striding toward the stairs and taking them two at a time. He was about to wrench open the door, if only to see Jane’s sweet face one last time before he leapt into the battle, but it swung open when he raised his hand to knock, and she threw herself into his arms.

  “Dinna die, Savage,” she murmured. “We have a wide ocean to conquer together.”

  Her words filled him with a swell of turbulent emotions, as deep and dangerous as the ocean below them.

  “I’ll return,” he said.

  “Swear to me.”

  He shouldn’t, for to do so was to invite Fate to give him the opposite. So he didn’t. Instead, he brushed his lips over hers. And then, because he couldn’t help but kiss her more deeply, something he’d not been able to do since the night they’d made love, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her with all the emotion he felt coiling inside him.

  Jane didn’t push him away as he feared she might. She pressed herself hard to him and wouldn’t let go. In the end, it was him that had to pull free, else he’d pick her up and carry her to bed and forget the battle that sieged outside.

  “I love ye.” He hadn’t meant to say it. The words slipped out without him thinking. A visceral reaction to gazing into her eyes, just as natural to express as it was to breathe or blink.

  “I love ye, too, my pirate prince.”

  They shared one more swift kiss, and then he was sailing down the stairs, leaping over the side of the ship and landing in the skiff below. The battle was in full force by the time he reached the shore.

  Shaw yanked his swords from his scabbards, coming at his enemies with a blade in both hand. No mercy. He hacked away at the French on the shore, gaining ground as the minutes ticked by. His men were doing the same.

  “No quarter!” Shaw roared.

  Constantine echoed his bellows as they made their way closer to the coves and the castle that Van Rompay had built into the side of the mountain.

  Shaw knew where the dungeon was. He’d been held there before when he was a lad—taken from MacAlpin’s ship during battle. Kept in the deep dark with rats and other vicious things biting at his toes in the night. MacAlpin had found him, saved him, and Shaw had hated the French ever since.

  Aye, he’d wanted to lay waste to their coves since he was a lad, and bargaining with Constantine to do just that had been more than a blessing in disguise.

  The ships had stopped firing their cannons, but he heard the unmistakable sound of cannon wheels rolling on stone. Inside the castle, Van Rompay must be wheeling cannons to the windows to take aim at the ships beyond. There was no way Van Rompay could fire that far, though he might get close. Shaw bellowed for Jack and the other boatswains left on board to prepare, praying the heard his warning.

  Shaw ran toward the cove castle. He had to take out whoever was about to fire the cannons, but Thor stopped him. “I’ve got the guns, Savage. Go and get the prisoners.”

  Grunting his thanks, he hacked his way toward the castle and then took a sharp left into the cove, dipping behind a false wall that was wet from where the tide had fallen. The water lapped at his feet, dark and foreboding. He dove inside, spying two guards who gaped at him with surprise in the dim torchlight.

  He bared his teeth and swung, taking out the guards, and then he stared at the water where their bodies had just disappeared into the depths. If he didn’t remember exactly where the dungeon was, he risked getting lost and drowning, for the dungeon was located in the water, underneath a great stone barrier and then up into a small waterless cavern.

  With a prayer to the devil, he slipped into the chilly water and dove d
eep.

  By the time he found the cavern, his lungs were afire. It was not lit in the opening, and he could hear nothing beyond his own gasping breaths.

  “Lorne? Alexander?” Shaw called out.

  “MacDougall, is that ye?” The Black Knight’s voice rang out strong, echoing off the stone.

  “Aye. Come toward the sound of my voice. We’ve not much time.”

  “The lad is weak.”

  “If he wants to live, he’ll find the will,” Shaw said. “Come here, lad. Take my hand.”

  A hand that was oddly the size of a man’s but had the softness of a lad, slipped into his.

  “I’m…” The lad’s teeth chattered. “’Haps it is best to leave me here.”

  “Not if I dinna want my wife to kill me,” Shaw growled. “Buck up, lad. Ye’re borne of kings.”

  Alexander sucked in a breath, and Shaw dragged him into the water. By the time they got out on the other side, the wee king was coughing up half the sea, as though he’d not even bothered to hold his breath.

  Shaw lifted Alexander, flung him over his shoulder and started to run, sword in his free hand and Lorne fighting off French pirates behind him.

  They made it over the beach to the skiffs, Scottish pirates blocking the path of the French as Shaw tossed Alexander into the small boat. “Take him back to the ship,” Savage said to Lorne.

  Edward killed off the man he was fighting and joined them in the lapping waves. Blood soaked the front of his shirt, and for a moment, Shaw thought Jane’s uncle might be injured, but he looked hale.

  “Ye must come with us,” Edward said.

  Shaw glanced at the ships in the night, cannon fire from the castle had never sounded. “I’ve got a score to settle.”

  With that, Shaw left them at the skiff, certain that his men would see the three of them to the ship and that his wife would disobey him and exit her cabin to tend to the lad.

  Searching the beach, he made out the retreating figure of Van Rompay slipping up the stone stairs carved into the side of the cliffs.