“Since when is a spot of good luck a bad thing?” the other sailor answered, but both men looked frightened.
The tall, sturdy captain waiting at the front of the ship beneath the unfurled flat of the Royal Navy heard the grumbling, and he knew that, despite the superstition, the men were right. Oncoming sails at such a speed gave him a misgiving, and so close to the Barbary coast … it could only mean one thing.
He called back for his lieutenant, who appeared at his side in an instant, tall and slim and young, with the bright eyes of a man eager to prove himself.
“Lieutenant Fitzroy, put the men into place at once and draw up at a diagonal to their approach. If they’re pirates, as I suspect, we’ll give them a mouthful of our broadsides before they get close enough to do any damage.”
“Aye, aye, Captain Egerton.”
The lieutenant spun around and began barking orders across the deck. The men jumped to, running here and there about their tasks. Lines were drawn in, sails adjusted, and below decks the soldiers could be heard rolling the creaking canons into place. Captain Egerton opened his spyglass and peered through it at the enemy. They were near enough now that he could see the shapes of men running about in a fevered action that matched that of his own sailors aboard the ship.
At the prow of the approaching vessel, a man stood facing the captain, too little sea separating their intense stares. He was dressed in ballooning trousers with a wide band of leather around the waist and a bare chest tattooed with some indiscernible design. His face was quite dark, his skin brown and heavy, and his eyes hidden beneath the shadow of the turban about his head.
The captain put his spyglass away and called out to the deck.
“Do you think the smoking lamp has been lit that you dawdle so?” he bellowed, wishing he could put the sense of urgency he now felt into the hearts of his men. “They’re pirates, clear as day, and they’re headed here to slice us limb from limb and take the orders we were to deliver to the bottom of the ocean. Men, to arms! Hold your fire until my command.”
He could see it in the faces of his soldiers; real fear. The Barbary pirates were legendary in these parts and had even gone so far as to open all-out war with the American colonies and then too with the French and the Spanish. They were ruthless; relentless, and often their prisoners spent a lifetime lost in the slaving fields of North Africa. It was enough to make men fight tooth and nail for their survival, and that is what Captain Egerton needed.
Far more quickly than he would have wished, Egerton saw the pirate ship drawing up alongside and heard the clamour of bloodthirsty men eager for the kill. Lieutenant Fitzroy was at his side as the ships drew beside one another, and he had the faintest of smiles on his face.
“What is it, man?” Captain Egerton asked. “Do you laugh in the face of certain death?”
“Death is certain for everyone, not just us hapless sailors,” the lieutenant answered, “but not, I think, so certain for us today.”
Captain Egerton didn’t have time to enquire further after this rather cryptic statement, for the pirate captain’s voice came bellowing over the waves in heavily accented English.
“You will pull over to be boarded at once.”
“We fly the flag of the Royal Navy,” Captain Egerton called back at the top of his voice. “You have no right to demand to board us either now or in the future. In truth, we have jurisdiction over this trading path, and I demand to know your purpose.”
There was a long silence, and then there arose on the pirate ship a loud, screaming call, much like the cackling of wild animals. There was a flashing in the fading evening light of swords and other sharp implements, and suddenly through the air came the distinctive whistling of grappling hooks launching towards the Earl’s Promise.
“Watch ahead!” the captain called to his men.
The first few hooks fell harmlessly into the sea, but the next were close enough to catch and hold. All sailors knew how hopeless it was to try to remove such a hook when the full weight of a ship and crew were against it, but the lieutenant set men at once to sawing at the great cables to break their own ship free. These poor sailors, however, were targeted most cruelly by the archers and sharpshooters on the other deck, and three fell in the space of a minute.
“To arms!” Captain Egerton called.
There was the slapping of ladders bridging from the pirate ship to the frigate, and then small brown men began scampering across and onto their prey scimitars drawn. It looked to be a bloody battle indeed, for Captain Egerton knew that aside from bayoneting skills, his men were woefully untrained in sword-fighting, something that the Barbary pirates excelled in.
It was just then that he turned and saw Lieutenant Fitzroy had gone from his side. He looked all around but could see the man nowhere amid the battle that had started below. His deck was awash with the enemy, and destruction was imminent—why then would such a decorated, brave young officer choose this moment to flee the scene? It was a credit to Fitzroy that Egerton didn’t even consider desertion for a moment: he knew that his officer would never indulge in such cowardice, but still the man’s disappearance troubled him.
Still, he couldn’t dwell long on the other man’s absence; the very real and present danger was too pressing. He drew his sword and took on a pirate that had run at him with a long, curved sword, parrying off the other man’s blows until, at last, his own sword found a sheath in the man’s innards.
No sooner had one enemy been vanquished but there were more at hand, a few of Captain Egerton’s more forward-thinking sailors had tipped the ladders into the sea, at no small cost to their own lives, and for the moment there were fewer pirates on the Earl’s Promise than sailors, but when the ladders were once again deployed, the odds would change distinctly in the enemy’s favour.
It was at this precise moment of crisis that Captain Egerton at last spotted his missing lieutenant, scurrying, of all places, along the deck of the enemy ship. He had loosed himself of his official uniform and was wearing only his trousers and flowing undershirt—not a complete disguise, but enough to keep him from being directly targeted until the carnage had died down enough for the pirates to inspect their troops. He had a line tied mysteriously around his waist, and he was coming up from below deck: running.
He reached the prow of the enemy ship and quite suddenly unsheathed his sword, holding it out to the pirate captain who, surprised by a solitary enemy soldier on his decks, called for back-up at once.
“Fitzroy!” Captain Egerton called across the small expanse of water between the two ships. “What are you doing, man?” He could only imagine that the brave young lieutenant had somehow thought that by killing the captain he would sacrifice his own life to save his ship, but Captain Egerton knew enough of these pirates to know that they would continue on for blood until the last of the Englishmen had died on their curved swords or been carried away.
At first, he thought that Lieutenant Fitzroy meant to engage the pirate captain in battle, but in the next moment the tall, slim man leapt up upon the rocking edge of the ship’s rail, helping his balance by holding onto a line on the pirate ship, but still pitching and tossing terribly with the force of the fighting all around.
Only then did Captain Egerton see that the line around Fitzgroy’s waist was tied to his own ship, not the pirate ship. Just as he began to grasp some manner of a plan, Fitzroy bent at the waist, said something indiscernible but seemingly dignified to the astonished pirate king, and then leapt towards his own ship. The line was a bit too long, and so as he sailed through the air, the returning British lieutenant was forced to lift his legs precariously to clear the rail of his own ship; when he’d done so he sawed himself free of the rope and dropped to the deck with his knife out, ready to fight whatever pirates were left behind.
All this would have been explained later, but at the time, Captain Egerton saw none of it—his eyes were fixed instead where the eyes of everyone, even the pirates, on his ship were fixed; on the explosion radiat
ing from the ship near at hand. It was a furious thing to behold. Only moments after Fitzroy’s feet had leapt from the edge of the pirate ship, the whole craft shuddered as if a great creature in the sea below had leapt up to seize it in its jaws. Then bright flames of fire began to lick out all around, and splintered wood came out of the base of the ship.
“Quick!” Lieutenant Fitzroy, who’d had the benefit of knowing something of his own plan beforehand, called to his men. “Release the grapple lines, or we’ll go down with her!”
The sailors fought to free themselves, this time unhindered by the former sharpshooters, who were now running about the pirate deck in a state of disarray, and in a matter of minutes, the lines had dropped uselessly into the sea and the Earl’s Promise was taking off unhindered from the sinking, shuddering, splintering form of the pirate ship behind them. She sailed a safe distance off and then waited, watching the destruction, as the few pirates who’d been left standing on the royal navy frigate were, one by one, taken into custody.
It was here, as the dust cleared and Captain Egerton’s orders of resolution were at last being carried out; when stock had been taken of the wounded and the damage to the ship, that Lieutenant Fitzroy was at last found leaning against a mast nursing a shattered lower leg.
“Right so,” he said as Captain Egerton approached. “I couldn’t quite manage the landing as I imagined. Things like this always go better in your head, don’t they?”
“Things like this always go better when you run them past your superior officer first,” Captain Egerton said soberly. He frowned at the leg. “Broken?”
“I’d warrant.” Lieutenant Fitzroy smiled wanly. “Come now, Captain Egerton, you know you would have forbidden me from doing it if I’d told you the full plan.”
“And why would I have had reason to doubt a foolhardy bit of nonsense that saw my most important officer flying into the face of the enemy with a barrel of explosives and a match?” Captain Egerton raised his eyebrow. “And let us not forget your intelligent plan of flying like a cursed elf through the air to escape the blast.”
The lieutenant laughed, but his face greyed a bit. “Aye, and my leg will be scolding me more than you for days to come.”
Captain Egerton found himself moved, and he knelt down by the man’s side. “Whatever men say about this day,” he said quietly, “I will know that you risked everything to save us, and I will not forget it.”
“What, are you going to promise me wealth and happiness in the return to England?” The lieutenant laughed. “I’m afraid I already have that: a pretty wife and a handsome lad growing up in the fields of England. You have only to get this cripple back to see them, and I will be restored to bliss.”
“I have a lass waiting at home too.” Captain Egerton smiled. “And a daughter; bless her. I would be honoured to have her one day married to a man with mettle like yours.” With a surge of pride, he thought of his little girl, so pretty and winsome. “In fact, after the service you have paid me and your country today, I can as good as promise you that, if your boy desires it, he can have my little Elsie for his own when he comes of age.”
The lieutenant winced. “Be careful not to promise what you might regret, honourable Captain.”
“My only regret,” Captain Egerton answered, “is that I have nothing more to give.”
Chapter 1
“Quite the correspondence today, Mrs Fitzroy,” Laura said with a little curtsy and bob, holding out the customary silver tray to Eleanor. She was dressed in the uniform of the house; crisp, starched blue muslin with an apron tied stiffly over the top. “The mail-boy said the bag weighed his cart down dreadfully.”
Eleanor still wasn’t used to being called “Mrs Fitzroy,” even after two years of marriage. The name made her feel like somebody else; a stranger whom she didn’t particularly want to know, and rattling around in her husband’s great estate, alone most days and surrounded by people she didn’t know when society did remember her presence, did nothing to make her feel herself.
She looked outside and saw that the spring rain had begun falling more ferociously against the windows, and it wrapped around her like a blanket, cutting her off.
“I’m surprised the lad was able to take the post in this weather,” she said. It wasn’t a comment that required a response, and so Laura, of course, remained silent. That was the strange thing about having one’s own servants; even though you were always surrounded by people, you were still quite alone.
The rules of society and morals surrounding proper behaviour kept the staff at arm’s length from the mistress of the house, not that Eleanor would have it any other way because she prized rules, appreciated that they, unlike people, were reliable not to change and never to leave.
She had been sitting at her dressing table when the maid came in, and she stood now to retrieve the letters. There were six, and she recognized the handwriting on at least two of them; her mother and, yes, there was Kitty’s haphazard handwriting. Well, at least they haven’t forgotten me.
“Thank you, Laura. Please lay tea for me in the parlour at the top of the hour. I’ll take it there after I finish my correspondence.” It still felt strange, ordering about a household all on her own, as though she was still nine years old, playing house beneath the willow at her parents’ estate.
The maid left, and for a moment, Eleanor let her mind drift away from the envelopes in her hands, the things she had to do, the duties she must fulfil yet again in never-ending tedium, and she let her mind go back to that day, all those years ago, when she’d first heard what her future was to become.
“Elsie, my love,” her father’s voice was soft and gentle, like the sea. Eleanor had heard that her father was revered as a great captain in the Royal Navy, but to her, he was never the tempest; he was always the calm, the sunrise over smooth water, the excitement of foreign lands. He was home, a rare occurrence indeed, and he came to sit beside her in the gardens where the overhanging branches of an oak housed a fine little swing and stout branches for climbing.
Eleanor hadn’t climbed those branches in years, just as she hadn’t gone by Elsie in years, not since her mother had told her that both things were girlish and not the hallmarks of a true lady. Eleanor wanted to be a true lady more than anything; to fit smoothly into the perfect life she saw reflected all around her. Marry, have children, host parties—it was all part of a magnificent dance that she had been on the outskirts of too long. Now, seventeen years old, with red hair that had finally deepened into an attractive auburn and grey eyes that the looking glass told her were subtle but inviting, she knew her moment had come. It was on this topic that her father had come to speak, but not in the way that she had expected.
“Yes, Papa.” She pushed her feet against the soft turf, propelling herself backwards in the swing slightly and then releasing herself in a delicate forward pendulum of movement: refined, not overeager; appropriate.
“I would like to talk to you about your future; about marriage.”
Her feet dropped to the ground to halt the passage of the swing, and she turned eager, nervous eyes in her father’s direction. “Yes?” Had someone come to speak to her father?
“You know of my history with Lieutenant Laurence Fitzroy, of course.”
This again. “Yes, Father.” The story of that fateful day off the Barbary coast; the pirates, the act of valour, and the explanation for Laurence Fitzroy’s debilitating limp had often graced their dinner conversation, as had the little joke the men had long shared about marrying their children off to each other as a way to commemorate the connection between the two men and link their families in friendship.
If her father meant to tease her about such things again, Eleanor meant to take it as gracefully as possible and turn her face towards more happy climes, for in truth, she had hardly spoken to the young man in question, who lived a good two days’ ride away from her father’s estate, and on the short occasions when they had met she had been unimpressed. He was not so very tall, rath
er unpredictable, and hardly willing to sit two whole minutes in proper conversation.
“I’d like you to consider young Miles Fitzroy as a romantic prospect, my dear. I know you’ve hardly met, but I think you would be well-suited, and you know how fond I am of his father.”
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