by Angel Payne
Perturbed gave itself up to pissed when he curled his finger in a gesture of bidding.
My name isn’t Caesar, Captain Stafford. Or Dinky. Or Monkey.
She tossed her chin up at him in a blatant go-to-hell.
His expression didn’t change. With difficulty, she concealed her further surprise at that.
He beckoned her again.
A break of wind teased along the deck, lifting the dark waves from his face and neck, accenting his powerful features. Damn and blast. The man likely had a cup with God this morning and special-ordered the breeze. It made refusing him ten times more difficult.
He wasn’t going to entrap her so easily again! Not this time. She couldn’t endure it all this time. Not the want, the heat, the pain.
But when she turned her back on the arrogant bastard, a fresh tureen of soup and a mug of bumboo were shoved at her. She scowled with the recognition of Maya’s hands at the two handles. But she didn’t dare raise her eyes any higher. She knew what would be waiting: a returning glare of near-black Arawak disapproval.
“The captain hasn’t had his food yet, Golden.”
“Fine. Take it to him.”
Her sister cursed in Caribbee.
“If Guypa heard that on your lips, Maya—”
“I would tell him who taught it me, sister.”
Boar’s fart. If anyone knew how to shut her up, it was Maya. Her sister also picked that moment to show off her indignant stomping talent.
“Peabrooke is right,” Maya muttered. “You scared.”
She lifted her glare directly at the native now. “Since when do you listen to Dinky?”
This time, Maya looked away first. A girlish smile inched across her full lips.
“Maya?”
Her sister’s answer came in the form of a wider grin.
“Oh, Golden.” She pressed the tureens again. “Go to him, please? If only for me, go.”
Golden deliberated her sister’s request. She looked across the deck again. Frustration erupted from her in a huff. If only the black-haired jackass wasn’t strutting his imperious best around her. Sitting there, elbow cocked on the side of the longboat, all Mast was missing was his crown. So blasted controlled. The cat waiting for the canary, she thought furiously.
If only some bird would come along and scratch his unfeeling eyes out.
That little vision flared her fortitude to take the tureen and mug then and begin the trek across that foreboding deck. Halfway there, Golden twisted her head back with a last glare of rebellion. Maya returned the look with loving sincerity, her hand now entwined with Dinky’s. The pair looked the simpering town lovebirds they used to scoff at as little girls. She turned her glare into a grimace.
“The sight doesn’t sit well on my stomach, either.”
Though Mast growled the complaint loud enough for her ears only, it was clear that tact was his sole intent, not conspiratorial fun.
Did you expect anything else from a hunk of solid rock, Golden? Solid rock isn’t capable of having fun. Solid rock isn’t capable of anything. Except inflicting pain.
“I’m not here to parry words,” she countered coolly. “Do you want anything besides this?” She thrust the bowl and mug at him.
He didn’t move for a long moment. Berating herself as she did, Golden gave in to the temptation to glance at him. As she expected, his face was a cool lake of composure.
Until she took in his eyes.
Dear Puntan. His eyes were a furious sea. She had just enough time to gasp before that storm charged up his arms too, enabling him to whip the containers from her hands.
In the same sweep of motion, he tossed the soup and bumboo over the side of the ship.
With an equal surge of power and grace, he rose, cleared the edge of the longboat, and grabbed her arm.
“S-Stafford! Wh-What do you think you’re doing?”
As if her demand would stop him. Golden struggled to keep up as he dragged her along the side deck. He stopped only when they reached a secluded section of deck.
“Damn it, Golden,” he snarled from locked teeth. “You’re more maddening than a headache.”
“I’m more maddening than—”
But that was as far as she got. The helpless undertone of his voice finally sank into her comprehension. Stars, he looked like he truly did have a headache—and she fought an inundating urge to stroke it from his brow.
She sighed heavily.
He’d been a hell-breathing dragon a minute ago, aye? When had he switched into this tired little boy? If he pulled more magic tricks like this, she’d be inclined to start thinking him a sea beast again.
“Excuse that,” he tried to begin again. “My swearing,” he explained, “and using your personal name. They are liberties I should have never commenced with you, let alone continued like this.”
Her heart lurched in her chest. Harsh understanding took the place of her sympathetic urges. “That was why you called me over here? To ‘excuse yourself’ with me?”
For—for what? For some of it? For all of it? For the way you made me feel last night? For the way I made you feel?
“Well, yes.” He cleared his throat. “Well…no. Golden—my lady—I also owe you an apology. My behavior last evening…was reprehensible. I promise you that it will not happen again.”
“I—I see.”
“We should arrive at Abaco within the next fortnight,” he stated. “Until that time, I assure you I will be comfortable in the fo’sicle with the rest of my men. I hope this action will make up for my lack of discretion.”
“I see.”
She couldn’t force anything else out. He’d eased back into his coldness like a favorite old rain cloak. Indeed, his face could have been an unfeeling gray cloud for all the emotion it showed—as he’d apologized for kissing her. With one horrid sentence, he’d wiped the beauty and magic of their embraces into the realm of nothing where he was concerned.
Sharp pain twisted between her breasts—but the physical torment was a twitch compared to the inner agony of looking to him again.
“Be my guest to apologize until you’re as gray as Nirvana, Captain. But they’ll only be words, because I will never be sorry for what we shared last night.”
“Captain!”
The shrill cry came from above. Inside those two seconds, she watched Mast’s entire stance change. Her breath left her on a stunned gasp as he heaved her tight against him. His head snapped toward the crow’s nest. The sudden silence on deck told her the rest of his crew had followed suit.
“Ramses?” he shouted to the young man in the perch on the mainmast. “What ho?”
“C-Captain! Starboard bow, two o’clock!” The lad paused to catch his gasping breath. “P-Pirate jack!”
“Great stars,” Golden choked.
“All hands to battle stations!” Mast’s bellow thundered through her body as well. “Except you, hellion. Dink! Get Maya to the food hold at once! Tell her Lady Golden will be along presently.”
“The hell I will!”
It was a day made for insane switch-ups. She’d reveled in his corded arm around her waist a moment ago. She fought the captivity of it now, twisting frantically against his hold. Though dread seized her senses, she glared defiantly at him. The thought of him up here, exposed to a band of filthy dogs and pissheads, threw blinders on her mind against everything except being by his side.
“You can’t face them alone.” She pulled on his shirt, forcing him to look at her. She sucked in a breath and hated how it shook. “I won’t let you!”
Her next breath wasn’t any better in the realm of stability—but this time, for entirely different reasons. Mast used his free arm to slide a finger along her face. His gaze followed that path, coating her skin in the deepest midnight magic. Though they stood in blazing daylight, Golden swore she could have turned eyes to heaven and seen stars.
“Hellion.” His voice was husky and low, again for her ears only. “I won’t be alone.”
Robert lumbered up with a long glass in hand. “You’d better take a look at this,” he said to his captain.
Mast dropped his hand from her face and accepted the narrow cylinder. After inspecting the growing shadow on the horizon, he growled, “Bloody fuck.”
“What?” Golden insisted. “What is it? Mast!”
Neither of the men looked at her. The way they both aged a year in a minute brought back the knives between her breasts.
“Is it him?” Robert asked quietly.
Mast whacked the long glass against his palm. His eyes were harsh slits into the sunshine. The taut lines fanning from their corners merged with the grim cords running up from his jaw. “It’s him.”
“Two gold dragons?”
“On a black field,” Mast said.
“Skulls in their claws?”
“Skulls in their claws.”
“Bloody fuck.” Rico echoed his captain’s terse oath.
Golden’s pulse raced with terror.
She’d heard that description countless times before. On summer evenings, she’d eavesdrop over the veranda where Papa and his guests would stroll for after-supper cigars. The talk would inevitably drift to the latest doings of the Caribbean Sea scoundrels. Her main goal was always news of the Moonstormer, but the notorious pirate El Culebra was just as often the subject of those evening rants. El Culebra, with his sinister black jack, gleaming with the dual dragons in a direct affront to England’s great “sea knights.”
And all too often, a deadly affront, as well.
Golden grabbed him, fully intending to take over the restraining duties now. And whatever else she had to resort to.
“Mast,” she begged, “cry off. Please. I know of this pirate. He’s very—”
“I know who he is, too, hellion.”
It was an acknowledgment, nothing more. Yet when he locked gazes with her again, his eyes glinted with something…whimsical. It was the same something Golden remembered in the gazes of Guypa and his hunters before they went out on a big kill.
“Then I can help you,” she exclaimed. “I know this brute. Papa strategized about him often. He’ll force you to cut hard port after the first round, then—”
“Then nothing. I ordered you below, sweet, and that’s where you’re going.” Swiftly and efficiently, he swept her into his arms and started through the rising turmoil on the deck with her.
“But you don’t understand! I can’t. Mast, I can’t!”
She tried to make him hear. Tried to make him realize that banishing her to the hold was worse than ordering her to walk the plank. She fought him like a furious lion.
Nay. She was more than furious.
She was terrified.
The hatch to the holding decks came into view as cannon fire began to throb the air. Mast kicked open the portal with one foot.
“No!” she screamed, staring in horror at the ladder that disappeared below. “I won’t go down there. I—I can’t go down there!”
Mast grunted as she tried punching him. “Golden, this is not a request.”
“I’m not hiding in your blasted salt pork!” For all the grit she attempted in the words, it still came out as a sob.
“Sweet, this is for the best.”
“God take your bloody best!” She dug her fingers into his arms. He looked as tormented as King Henry sending Anne of Cleves off to the Tower. Good. That was really good. Hope flared higher as he reached and pulled a strand of hair off her cheek. “Let me stay with you,” she implored. “Damn it, Mast. Please!”
One side of his mouth tugged up—but it wasn’t a smile. If that was what she had, that was what she’d take. Golden licked her lips and held her breath.
“She’s coming down, Maya.”
She pushed out the breath on a shriek.
There was a flash of blue—the sky; her last look at it ever?—and the feel of Mast’s steel grip, now slipping away, before she was plunged into the swallowing, suffocating blackness. Just like the ocean, swallowing her whole that night after it had consumed Mum and Dad…
She heard herself scream again, as if she’d dropped her voice and it was still on the deck waiting to be trampled in the oncoming battle. The sound was decimated the next second. An ominous blast shattered the air above, just before the hatch slammed down with a sickening boom.
“Mast! Damn you!”
Splinters from the ladder dug into her fingers as she tried to claw back up. But it was so dark now. The only light source they had was an oily glow from the small lantern in Maya’s grip. The ship’s belly digested them, the shadows huge and frightening and black. The weight over their heads was a pressing, pounding, living thing, growing heavier and scarier and noisier. Golden couldn’t catch her breath. She gasped, struggling for air.
“Sister,” she heard Maya implore. Gentle fingers prodded her loose from the ladder. “Sister, you be all right down here. Ssshh, now.”
“No! Nooo; it’s so dark!” The cry began in the pit of her stomach and shot to the core of her pounding heart.
“You safe, Golden. You hear me? Come sit down here.”
Golden forced herself down next to Maya between a couple of barrels. She didn’t know if it was Maya’s voice or the weight of fear that buckled her knees. She tried to breathe, though there was an assault of smells down here. Sharp spices mingled with potent dried fruits. Sweet rum did a jig with pungent salted pork. Some of the smells reminded her of home. She closed her eyes and worked to hone in on those, rocking back and forth as she began a calming litany. “We’re safe. We’re safe. We’re safe.”
But with each passing minute, the refrain grew harder to believe. The enticing aroma of the hold was soon vanquished by the stench of sulfur. Smoke started holding her throat a desperate hostage. The timbers around them voiced the moan she felt, protesting the torment of erupting gunpowder and trompling feet. Cannons boomed and pistols cracked; enraged shouts collided with screeched profanities.
Just as suddenly, it all stopped.
Well into the silence, Golden kept Maya’s hand clutched in hers. They looked at each other in wordless understanding. The stillness was more frightening than the commotion. Not a rope groaned or a spar creaked. Worse, not a footstep sounded.
Every nerve wanted to break out of her skin at once. What was happening? Had the pirates surrendered? Had Mast? Was anybody killed?
Was Mast?
A new wave of icy fear crashed over her. Mighty Puntan, was Mast lying somewhere above, choking on his own blood, slowly and painfully gasping—
“Saints!” She slammed both hands over her mouth.
“Golden?” Maya reached for her, but the Carib fell short when the ship pitched into motion again.
“A hard port,” Golden gasped. “We took a hard port. Oh God, Maya, it’s his trap. El Culebra. We’re falling into his trap. Mast is in trouble!”
“Sister, you stay right here. Capt’n knows what he doing. Peabrooke and the men helping him, too.”
But the ship rocked and reeled again, before the storm of gunfire intensified. Golden snapped her head toward the thin lines of light that were the hatch perimeters. “Please, great spirits,” she murmured. “Please…”
If only Mast would come bounding down here to prove Maya’s words true. The frowning ape could even call her my lady and she wouldn’t snort once. She promised; oh, she promised…
The hatch didn’t open. Mast was dead by now, for all she knew. The increasing lurches of the deck only added to the turmoil of that panic, the agony of that fear.
She couldn’t sit in this black torture chamber a moment longer.
With a determined cry, she sprinted to the foot of the ladder.
“By the stars, Golden! No!”
“I have to help,” she told her sister. “I’ll never forgive myself if they all die while I sniffed oranges and did nothing.”
“But Golden—please—”
Maya likely continued that protest. She didn’t linger to find out. With one determ
ined boost, she was out on the deck again.
It was like entering an inferno alive.
Heat instantly snatched half her breath. Fetid smoke sucked out the other half. Golden forced her head up through the grimy fog, coughing and blinking against the thick stench.
Items gradually began to take shape. Ropes slithered everywhere on the deck. The edge of a sail flapped aimlessly with no tack. A crate of belaying pins was dumped over. Mast would be glowering about this disarray. He should be stomping through here, a dozen profanities with matching growls on his lips.
Where was he?
With relief, Golden began to make out human beings through the gloom. The loyal and stalwart old Ben. Big, burly Rico. Tall and steadfast Robert. They all hastened to their duties, not seeing her at all.
But there were no stiffly-held shoulders amidst the crewmen. No figure paced like the weight of the world was on those shoulders. No hard profile stood out against the roiling chaos of a sky.
No Mast.
Chapter Twelve
Ironically, it was El Culebra himself who showed her the answer. Golden had scrambled no more than ten steps along the deck than an outburst like the gods’ own wrath blasted at them. The air came to life in orange and yellow fury, transforming the hideous black smoke into a bizarrely beautiful sight for a moment. The light also highlighted the Athena’s figurehead, also a strange profile of loveliness in the bright colors that flashed against it.
But it was the face just above the goddess’s that knocked all the air from her lungs.
“Mast!”
Her heart danced in gratitude. The uneasy feelings of this morning, even the realizations she’d experienced minutes ago in the hold, were but a taste of the emotion flooding her with the sight of him.
He was dirty and clearly exhausted, but he was alive, and vigorously so. She couldn’t make out his face, but barely-leashed tension was evident in every movement as he shouted orders, continuing to keep his fix on the opposite ship. He gripped his long glass in one hand, his pistol in the other.