Pirate Wolf Trilogy

by Canham, Marsha

  Juliet lowered the spyglass. She had recognized Captain Brockman standing tall on the quarterdeck, his shock of gray hair making him easy to identify. She had not seen any other familiar figures invited to join him on deck to mark the departure. No one with broad shoulders, dark hair, or a dashing plumed hat on his head.

  It was just as well.

  So far throughout this endless, insufferable day she had managed to keep her captain’s face intact. She had done that by keeping busy, by not thinking about him, by not once going below to her cabin where everything she looked at would undoubtedly remind her of him. The bed, the desk, the gallery, even the chair for pity’s sake, had all been used for other than what they had been intended and she was not sure she could look at them just yet without feeling the taint of his presence.

  How she could have allowed herself to become so besotted, she had no idea. Not the how of it or the why or the when. She just knew that when she had seen him standing at the gangway this morning, prepared to disembark with her father, she had felt her heart crack open and the pieces slide down into her toes. She had wanted to shout that it was a mistake, that she really didn’t want him to go, that what had seemed so logical and necessary a week ago left her feeling helpless and confused now.

  From the outset, she had never been dishonest with herself or him as to what she had wanted. She had taken him to her bed because she had wanted his body, had craved the numbing release of a few well-wrought orgasms to help ease the restlessness and the tension that had been clouding her thinking. With that foolishness burned out of her system she had fully expected to be herself again, tough, strong, resilient.

  But instead, she found herself distracted, unable to concentrate on the simplest of tasks. Something as second nature as calculating distances, speeds, and plotting the course they would take in the morning had turned into monumentally impossible equations that had Nathan Crisp frowning and chiding her for making basic errors. She had cut herself on the binnacle. She had nearly stumbled head first down a ladderway. She had stared blankly when Nathan had asked her questions for the second and third time.

  It had also occurred to her more than once, that this was the way her mother behaved when her father was overdue returning to Pigeon Cay, but if this was what love felt like, then perhaps it was for the best that Varian St. Clare was leaving.

  If it was love, it was a foolish, witless thing, for she was under no illusions as to how ludicrous a thought it was that there could be any future between them. Their worlds were so different, there was no end to the reasons why neither could adapt to fit in the other. She lived by instinct and passion, he lived by rules and social dictums.

  In a month, he would back in England taking strolls along the Thames, recounting his adventures with a dangerous band of pirates to a rapt crowd of tittering females. He would be back in his own world, surrounded by beautiful women in gauzy dresses who displayed soft white flesh and perfumed cleavage. He would be reminded of his responsibilities as the Duke of Harrow and grudgingly or not, he would do his duty. He would take the bride his mother had selected for him, he would gaze into her eyes and pledge his troth, then afterward, he would take her into his bed, into his arms...

  She made a strangled sound in her throat and turned away from the rail. Nathan Crisp was directly behind her and raised an eyebrow in askance.

  “If ye give the order, there is still time to hail Cap’n Brockman an’ have him heave to.”

  “Why the devil would I want him to heave to?”

  Nathan grimaced. “To save us all a deal of grief. Ye’ve been like a she-cat with turpentine up her arse all day, and I don’t see your mood improving any the further away he goes. Give me the word and I’ll run up a signal. We’ll fetch him back on board so’s we can get on about the business ahead without needing to worry that you’ll have us firing on our own ships.”

  “Sometimes,” she said slowly, “you overstep yourself, Mr. Crisp.”

  “An’ sometimes,” he paused, moving so close she could smell the sincerity on his breath, “ye try so hard to prove ye don’t care about something, ye only end up twistin’ yerself in tighter knots. If ye want him back, we’ll fetch him. Simple as that an’ no one would fault ye for it. Not after what he did last night.”

  “Last night?” she whispered.

  His grimace deepened at the look of shock on her face. “Ye didn’t think it would stay a secret, did ye? Not with yer brother lickin’ the tar out of every man on board the Dove. Whole crew knows. Whole fleet, probably, and there isn’t a man on board wouldn’t shake the duke’s hand for savin’ them the trouble of blastin’ the Dutchman to hell where he belongs.” He stopped and glanced at the mouth of the harbor, where the Gale was putting on more sail, picking up more speed as she neared open water. “Ye don’t have but a minute to decide, lass.”

  Juliet turned her head to follow the privateer’s progress. Most of her lights were doused now and as she sailed toward the darkness of the eastern sky, her huge main sails were unfurled, shaking out full and pale against the fading light.

  She watched until the ship rounded the island and sped out of sight.

  “We will be weighing anchor at first light,” she said quietly. “Have all made ready by then.”

  Nathan stepped back. “Aye, Cap’n.”

  She tipped her head and looked up. “Skies are clear, we should have fair weather ahead. If the wind holds we should be able to make the Devil’s Teeth in two days. By then, Mr. Crisp,” she met his eyes, “we will be far too busy to remember that we even had this conversation.”

  “Aye, Captain,” he agreed after a moment. “No doubt we will.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The serpentine chain of islands known as the Devil’s Teeth were perfectly configured for an ambush. Dozens of small, uninhabited atolls and islets were strung out in an elongated crescent some fifty miles long flanking the eastern boundary of the Florida Straits. Simon Dante had provided the other captains with detailed maps and charts of the cays, letting each decide where to position his ship where it might be put to best effect. Some preferred the hit and run method, lying in wait, concealed behind one of the islands until the galleons straggled into view. Then, like dogs culling sheep out of a herd, they would pounce on the slowest ship and engage it in battle.

  The Spanish captains were notoriously without mercy, even to their own. If a ship floundered or managed to get separated from the pack, and if the captain-general did not think it worth his while to jeopardize the safety of the other ships in the flota, the galleons would be sacrificed to the scavengers, tossed like a scrap of raw meat to a hungry pack of wolves.

  They would not know exactly how hungry those wolves would be this time out, or that it would take more than a few paltry ships to appease their appetites. The privateers would be spread out the entire fifty mile length of the cays, luring ships singly or by twos and threes into traps from which there would be little chance of escape.

  The Iron Rose was bound for a pair of atolls midway down the chain marked on the Dante charts as Spaniard’s Cay and Frenchman’s Cay, names that denoted ships of those particular nationalities that had been waylaid on previous hunts. Looking innocent enough from the deeper water of the Florida Straits, the islands sat where the sea bottom rose sharply in ridges and terraces, and where the currents that fed off the gulf stream drove many an unwary ship onto shallower banks that were often no more than two fathoms below the surface. Once there, a canny vessel waiting on the other side of the bank could pound away at the trapped ship until the white flag of surrender was run up the mast.

  With that goal in mind, it was Simon’s intention to use the Dove as bait—a more practical solution than blowing it out of the water as Juliet had originally craved to do. He proposed setting the Dutchman and the Avenger in plain view when the flota came in sight, both seeming to appear damaged and floundering in the water. There were few Spanish captains who did not know the Avenger’s silhouette on sight, fewer still wh
ose arrogance would not provoke them to throw caution to the wind if there was a chance they could be the one to bring the infamous Pirata Lobo to ground.

  Meanwhile the Santo Domingo would be stripped of her guns and mortars. They would be deployed along the beaches of the two small islands that flanked the narrow passage through the atolls. It was only wide enough for one ship at a time and once the galleons were committed to chasing the Avenger through, they would be caught in a deadly crossfire from the two batteries on shore. The Iron Rose and the Christiana would both be waiting out of sight behind the islands, while the Santo Domingo could be used to block the retreat. They would also be taking an additional hundred men on board, the volunteers coming in lots of five from any ship who could spare them. The extras would be needed to man the batteries on shore once the guns were in place.

  The Avenger had led the fleet of privateers out of New Providence, setting a brisk pace north, skirting any islands that might have Spanish ships patrolling their waters. Following close on his stern, flanked by the Iron Rose and the Christiana, was the newly appropriated Dove, whose crew had been given the choice of either submitting to their new captain—Isabeau Spence—or being sold to the Portuguese to work the cane fields. It made for an impressive sight to see nearly forty ships sailing out of port, all flying the Union Jack on their mastheads. Only once before had Simon Dante seen such a sight, and that had been on the eve he had sailed out of Portsmouth with Francis Drake to defend England against the threat of another Spanish fleet.

  ~~~

  True to her prediction, Juliet was kept so busy during the daylight hours that she rarely gave a thought to Varian St. Clare. It was more difficult after dark, when she ran out of excuses to retire to her cabin, but there too, after the third night, she could almost fall asleep without having to fight the urge to run her own hand down between her thighs.

  Before they reached Frenchman’s Cay, two of the captains broke away to set up their own ambush near the tip of the chain of islands. Captains David Smith had his own score to settle with the Spaniards and together with Captain Peter Wilbury, had bid to take up the first position. The combined guns from the five ships in their group would announce the arrival of the plate fleet as it entered the Straits. Dante’s guns would in turn give warning to the next ambuscade and so on all the way up the fifty mile span of the Devil’s Teeth.

  Juliet dropped anchor mid-afternoon in the shallow water less than half mile off the tiny island. The Santo Domingo lay alongside the Rose while the Avenger, the Christiana, and the Dove took up a position behind Spaniard’s Cay. Simon Dante, Pitt, and Juliet rowed ashore with their quartermasters and chief gunners to walk the length of the beach. They surveyed the slope of the dunes with an eye to digging the gun emplacements, checking to see if the channel between the two cays was as they remembered. They were pleased to see a thick line of trees less than fifty feet from both beaches.

  Out of the fifty-two cannon the galleon had originally mounted, four had already been removed to replace guns on board the Iron Rose. Thirty culverins, twelve demi-culverins, and six eighty-pound mortars would be broken down and transferred ashore, divided equally between the two islands. There was a good deal of back-breaking work ahead, but there too they had the crew of the Dove to supplement the labor force as well as the extra hundred men who would eventually man the batteries.

  “It should take two weeks,” her father said grimly “with all of us skinning our knuckles and blistering our backs. At first light, we’ll send some hunting parties out to scout for rocks, cut down trees, fill sacks with sand for constructing defences. I also want search parties to walk the entire perimeter of both islands to make sure there have been no unpleasant changes since our last visit.”

  Pitt concurred. “It wouldn’t hurt to put a couple of pinnaces in the water too, maybe check the outlying islands on either side.”

  “If memory serves, only one of these two islands has a source of fresh water, the other—” Juliet pointed to the beach on the opposite side of the passage— “is barely three miles long.”

  “We’ll need lookouts,” Simon said, noting the arrival of the next boatloads of men on the beach. Isabeau had come across on one and when he saw her, a sly smile stole across his face. “I will volunteer Beau and I to check out Spaniard’s Cay, while you, Juliet—” he waved at one of the men coming up the beach— “take one of the lads with you and find a good vantage point above these trees.”

  “Aye, Father.” She turned, expecting to see Lucifer loping up behind them, or at the very least, one of her own crewmen armed to the teeth with pistols and powder horns.

  Instead, she saw Varian St. Clare striding up the beach, his dark hair blown about his face, his long legs forcing Isabeau Dante to almost run to keep apace. He wore a plain white shirt and dark breeches. His sword was strapped to his hip and he wore crossbelts that held a brace of pistols snug across his chest.

  His steps slowed as he approached the small group at the water’s edge. After nodding to Simon and touching a finger to his brow to acknowledge the smile on Geoffrey Pitt’s face, he walked right up to Juliet, took her hand and started walking toward the trees without so much as a by your leave.

  She was so startled, she actually followed him half a dozen steps before she dug her heels into the sand and stopped.

  “Where the devil have you come from? You’re supposed to be on a ship bound for England!”

  “Unlike his daughter, who is too mulish and pig-headed to listen to reason, I was able to convince your father I would be of better use here. In fact, we got along rather famously after we started sharing some of our anecdotes about the stubborn, willful women in our lives. After hearing about the very first meeting between your mother and father, I can see you came by your threat to geld me honestly. And is it true you were such a nuisance when you were small, that your brothers trussed you up like a chicken and hung you by your ankles off the end of a bowsprit?”

  Juliet, open-mouthed, glanced back at her parents, neither of whom looked the least abashed.

  “We saw the Gale leave,” she said, turning back.

  “So you did. Lieutenant Beck was not entirely pleased to take my place, but he could see the need and recognized his duty. Beacom was only too thrilled to accompany him and offer his services on the voyage home. Not only that, but he has taken some private letters back to England explaining my decision to remain here. Now then, shall we go along? We have a fair climb ahead of us and only a couple of hours of daylight left.”

  He gave her a brief smile then started walking, the sand sounding like crushed egg shells as he strode toward the trees.

  Juliet stared. After another full minute, she glanced back at her parents a second time, but they had already headed off, hand in hand, toward one of the boats. Geoffrey and Nathan were talking together, the latter grinning and scratching his chin as if he should have known something had been in the wind.

  By the time she looked back at the trees, Varian had put several hundred feet distance between them and she had to walk smartly to keep him in sight. She made no overt effort to catch up to him. Her thoughts were spinning too fast to even believe he was there, let alone that her father had spent more than an hour discussing gun deployments and defences without giving her so much as a hint there was anything afoot.

  Anger put a new snap in her stride as she began closing the gap. The island boasted one tall peak and several smaller ones that stretched out several miles in length, descending like the knuckles on the spine of some ancient creature. The path, if it could be called such, was jagged and steep in places, with terraces of long grasses and tangles of bush in between that had not seen a human foot for centuries. The vantage, as they climbed nearer the top, was as dominant as the one from Pigeon Cay, giving a sweeping view of the surrounding area. The water shone like a rippled sheet of pewter beneath the sun, stretching out across the Straits for twenty leagues before it met the coast of Florida. To the north, the next island in the chain wa
s visible as a vaporous blue haze linked underwater by a high shelf of reef. To the south, Spaniard’s Cay rose like the hump of a dolphin’s back, the summit mostly rock surrounded by a ring of trees and pale pink sand.

  Juliet had lost sight of Varian, but knew he could not be too much farther ahead. She passed through a narrow belt of long, lush grass and was about to climb the last ten feet or so to the uppermost ledge of rock when she saw him. He was leaning against a boulder off to one side, his long legs crossed at the angles, his arms folded over his chest.

  “Why have you stopped? We haven’t reached the top yet.”

  “I think this is high enough, don’t you?”

  “High enough for what?”

  “To clear up any misunderstandings that might be between us.”

  She glanced around, not so much to assure herself they were alone but to save her eyes from being trapped by his. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you? When I came up the beach back there, do you have any idea how close you came to being thrown down in the sand and ravished there and then, before your mother, your father... before God Himself?”

  “They would have killed you if you’d tried.”

  He smiled. “I doubt that. In fact, it was your mother who suggested I just drag you off into the bushes and keep you there until you came to your senses. She said that was the only way your father managed to convince her she could be stronger with him than without him.”

  Juliet narrowed her eyes warily. He had removed his crossbelts and pistols, she noticed. They were on the rocks beside him alongside his sword and baldric. “She said that, did she?”