by Merry Farmer
“Excuse me?”
Her throat went dry, but she forced herself to continue.
“Killing a man like that in cold blood. Forcing him to suffer so, when he was going to die in moments anyway.”
He leaned toward her, his long, silken hair falling around his face as he did so.
“If you do not like the ways of pirates, wench, then I would suggest you should not stow away on a pirate ship.”
“Do you not think I have realized my mistake?” she cried out, catching his dark look. “Well, I think you are despicable.”
“So I have been told. Now speak, or I will loosen your tongue for you.”
Penny swallowed hard as she twisted her hands in the folds of her simple crimson and cream dress, which already needed a good launder.
“I am looking for my uncle.”
“And you thought to do so from my ship?”
“Would you like me to speak or not?”
He said nothing but stared at her with a look she expected intimidated many. She, however, was becoming rather annoyed.
“Right, then,” she said. “Please stop interrupting me.”
He began to rise from the chair, but she continued to speak, which seemed to appease him momentarily.
“My uncle is a merchant. I spent two years on his ship when I was a girl of twelve and thirteen, following my mother’s death. It was the best time of my life.”
Penny did all she could to tell the story dispassionately, but saying it aloud brought tears to her eyes.
“Then my father found me. I hadn’t seen him in years, but he seemed to think it was his duty to bring me to live with him. He is a baronet, and my mother had escaped him years ago. He didn’t care until he found out she had passed. My uncle agreed that perhaps life at sea was not the best situation for raising a young girl.”
“I imagine this was some time ago?” Ramsay asked with a raised eyebrow, his scar moving with it. Penny wondered how he came by such a scar. Was it during battle? Was it caused by a cutlass, perhaps, or a pistol? Or maybe it was from shards of a cannon. She had heard of such things before. Although—
“Continue,” he growled.
“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. What was it you asked?”
He placed his hands over his face for a moment, muttering to himself.
“Is there something the matter, Captain Ramsay?”
“By God, wench, you are the most exasperating creature I have ever met.”
Penny sat back, stunned by the force of his words, but he didn’t seem to care.
“I asked,” he bit out, his eyes dark as they bore into her, “how long ago this was.”
“Oh! Nearly nine years ago. I am two-and-twenty now.”
“Two-and-twenty,” he repeated, tilting his head as though by studying her he could determine if she was being truthful. “You still have not answered the question of how you are going to search out your uncle from my ship.”
“I was escaping. I have no money. I thought to stow away on a merchant ship, attempting to make my way to Boston, where he makes his home when he is not at sea. I wish to join him there.”
“I see,” Ramsay said, standing now, swirling the chair back around and placing it where it belonged. “Well, you will be sorely disappointed, for we have another, much more urgent stop.”
“And where is that?”
“Puerto Rico.”
Chapter 4
Damn, but this she-devil tempted him. Ramsay had originally thought her rather plain, but it was difficult to continue to picture her as such when she repeatedly defied him so. It had been some time since anyone had refused to obey his every command.
Like most pirate crews, they voted on major decisions, but his crew knew well enough that if they wanted to continue to sail with Captain Ramsay, they would vote with him instead of against.
“Come,” he said, crooking a finger at her, and when she opened her mouth, he knew what she was going to say, and so he halted her words before they could come forth. “Do not argue. I will not do anything to you. I am going to show you something.”
She nodded jerkily, and then rose, nibbling her pink lips as she did so, her pert nose held high in the air.
“Not to worry,” he said, with a wicked grin, “I promise not to touch you.”
And he wouldn’t. He was a man of his word. He would, however, perhaps convince her to want to touch him. He had been some time without a woman and wouldn’t mind having a saucy little thing like this one in his bed.
“Stand here,” he said, gesturing to the table, and she did as he commanded for what seemed to be the first time. He came around behind her, tilting his head to peer down at the map before them. He was tall enough that he could see it over her head, but he leaned in, his chin just above her shoulder, his hands holding open the map before them. His arms spread wide around her body, which was now trapped between him and the table. He leaned in so that when he spoke, his lips would be just next to her ear.
“Do you see where we are right now?”
She nodded, wisps of her hair tickling his nose and cheek when she did so. An intoxicating citrus scent rose from her, and he leaned in closer so that he could inhale more of it.
“If your friend there wasn’t lying, then we now know where Ortego has been hoarding his treasure. If we can capture it as well as the man himself,” he chuckled lowly, “it would be the haul of my life.”
She turned her head ever so slightly back toward him.
“Is it because you want his treasure, or because you want to best him?”
“Both,” he said, not ashamed to admit it.
“We have just left England and are sailing down the coast,” he continued. “We will stop in Lisbon for supplies before crossing the Atlantic to Puerto Rico, where his hideaway is said to be.”
“Perhaps in Lisbon I could find another ship.”
“None that would be going to Boston. And then there is the matter that you know who we are and where we are going. One doesn’t know who you could tell about us and our destination.”
He leaned in closer so that he was as near as could be to touching her without actually doing so. The temptation to pull her toward him and press her soft curves against him, however, was far too great, and he had to push himself away to rein in his urges.
He rounded the table, leaning over it so they were eye to eye.
“I have quite the conundrum, Penelope,” he drawled out her name, liking the way the syllables rolled off his tongue. “I do not want you on my ship, nor can I set you free for a time. And it would be a waste to kill you, for you are far too pretty.”
He saw her suck in a breath, and he had to admit that he admired her courage. She hid her fear well, though he sensed it all the same.
“I won’t tell anyone—”
“That’s what they all say.” He leaned back now and studied her. Her blue eyes flitted from one side to the other before she finally met his gaze. “I would say, Penelope, that you will be one of us for quite some time.”
Did he mean to keep her for the entire crossing? Penny’s throat went dry at his words. There must be a hundred men on this ship, and she was to believe that none of them would touch her in what would be weeks, if not months? It was ludicrous. But she had something now. Information. When they stopped in Lisbon, she would be ready. Surely from there she could find another ship that would prove a much better choice on which to stow away.
She would simply need to make an escape plan.
But at the moment, Captain Ramsay was expecting her to comment.
“And then in Puerto Rico you will allow me off the ship?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” she squeaked.
“Maybe I will like having you around,” he said, rounding the table and lifting strands of her hair, this time rubbing it between his fingers rather than pulling it roughly as he had before. Somehow watching him do so stirred something deep within her, something she didn’t want to name.
“Stop t
hat.”
“Excuse me, wench?”
“Do not call me wench,” she said, exasperated. “My name is Penelope. Or Penny.”
“Of the two, I prefer Penelope. But I still favor wench.”
“Penelope. Better than wench.”
“Are you not a woman?”
He dropped her hair when she eyed him with a look of derision.
“Clearly.”
His grin now could be called nothing but wicked.
“I must go speak with Bastian and my crew.”
“Do you not make the decisions?”
“Most of them, yes. My crew follows my lead. But on a pirate ship, Penelope, I do not simply make orders. Bastian also makes some of the decisions, and at other times, the crew decides among themselves.”
He brusquely turned from her and she made to follow, but he whirled around with a hand up.
“You will stay here.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. I must have a word with my crew about you first. They will not like having you aboard.”
“Why?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Because you are a woman. And one that they cannot touch. Women are bad luck.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think. This is the way of it. Do keep yourself from any trouble until I return.”
And with his scarred eyebrow drawn inward in a silent warning that he would brook no argument, he was gone.
“What do you think, Bastian?”
Ramsay first consulted his quartermaster. The two of them split many of the duties on the ship — Bastian organized the crew, while Ramsay determined their missions and which ships they would overtake.
But they had no precedent for this.
Bastian rubbed a hand over his shaved head.
“We could maroon her on an island.”
“We could. But that would take valuable time away from us. We don’t know how long Ortego will stay in this hideout on the coast of Puerto Rico. If we take too long, we could miss him entirely.”
“True.” Bastian was silent for a moment as he gazed out over the rail at the rolling seas in front of them. “I don’t like it, Captain. A woman on the ship, and for the entire crossing? That’s some bad luck. And then there are the men.”
“I know.”
“She’ll have to stay locked in your cabin.”
Ramsay cursed. When Bastian mentioned that she might be the object of lust for the men on the ship, what he hadn’t considered was that Ramsay would be one of them.
To be locked in the cabin alone with her night after night…
It would be torture at its highest, but Ramsay lived by his own rules. Rules that ensured order, and that, in the end, worked to his advantage. It was how he had survived fifteen years on a pirate ship thus far, many of them as captain. This woman wouldn’t change any of that. He would make sure of it.
And so it was four hours later that he reluctantly made his way to his bed. He had considered sleeping on a hammock with the crew, but that would leave the woman — Penelope, he reminded himself — vulnerable to any man who decided she was worth breaking their rules. Most of his men were loyal, but there were enough newcomers that he couldn’t entirely trust them all. One never could, with a pirate crew.
No woman aboard was one of the ship’s articles. Unless, the article read, there was a circumstance that required an exception.
The crew had voted, agreeing that, for now, she could stay.
But then there was the addendum on the article. If a woman should find herself aboard, no man could touch her.
Including the captain.
He opened the door just in time to see her gasp from her position on the third shelf of one of his bookshelves, begin to teeter, and then topple to the floor. He raised an eyebrow as he walked over toward her, pleased to see that, at the very least, she hadn’t dropped the pearls she had been rolling over her hand. He plucked the necklace from her fingers and returned it on the shelf.
“Just what do you think you are doing?” he asked, and she turned crimson.
“I was bored.”
“Bored?”
“Well, yes,” she said, indignant now as she rose to her feet. “You left me here all day — alone! Unless you count the man who gave me dinner, if you can call it dinner. And he would barely speak to me.”
“He was under strict orders not to.”
“So, what, you are going to leave me to die of ennui?”
“I can think of worse ways to perish.”
“You are insufferable.”
“You chose this ship.”
She stood there staring at him, hands on her hips as her bosom rose and fell, drawing his gaze with the way it stretched the fabric of her gown. It was impossible for him to look away.
He knew the moment she realized it as her hue deepened, and she dropped her hands, crossing them over her chest. That only served to push her breasts up further, much to Ramsay’s satisfaction as well as his chagrin.
“Where am I to sleep?”
“The bed,” he said, walking past her to take a seat in one of the chairs before removing his boots.
“Wh-where are you going to sleep?” she asked, unable to mask her alarm. When Ramsay looked up at her, she was feigning nonchalance, but from the way she was staring at her interlocked fingers, twirling her thumbs around one another, she was obviously quite concerned.
He slowly strode toward her, and her chin rose ever so slightly with each step he took.
“Does it matter?” he asked once he had finally stopped in front of her.
“I’ve been told that I’m a terrible sleeper. I move around something awful. In fact,” she looked up at him now, clearly pleased with an idea, “I even snore.”
Ramsay tamped down the wild jealousy in his stomach at the thought of just how someone else might have gathered this information. He didn’t care, he told himself. He certainly shouldn’t care.
“I will be sure to inform you in the morning if that is all true,” he said, and her eyes widened as large as dinner plates. “For I will be sleeping just across the room.”
At that, there was a knock at the door, and Ramsay crossed the cabin to open it to a pair of the crew who held a hammock between them. They strung it up in one corner of the room before they were on their way once more.
When Ramsay returned his attention to Penelope, relief was evident on her face.
“Where did you think I was going to sleep?” he asked, advancing toward her, but she began to take a step backward for each one of his until she was flush against the wall. He leaned over her, bracing his arm beside her head.
Her eyes gleamed, though with what he wasn’t entirely sure. Fear? Uncertainty? Or even…disappointment?
“Th-thank you for your bed,” she said, stepping out from under his arm and making her way toward it. It was high, and he enjoyed watching her struggle to climb up the mattress, her bottom waving in the air until she finally deposited herself with an “oof.”
She tried to tug the curtains closed around her, but he wagged a finger at her.
“They stay open.”
“But— what about my privacy?”
“I told you I wouldn’t touch you,” he said sincerely, though the words pained him as much as they likely did her, albeit for different reasons. “At least, not until you are begging me to do so.”
“I would never beg you—”
“But I didn’t say I wouldn’t look.”
Chapter 5
The nerve of the man! Penelope had decided to sleep in her gown after his wicked laughter had chased her under the quilt. Only now she was wrapped in his scent, and it was driving her mad with distraction, especially knowing that he lay just across the room.
Now the material of her dress was wrapped around her legs most maddeningly and she had no choice but to attempt to undress beneath the blanket, for she certainly wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her do so overtop.
She said nothing, for she had no desire to argue with him any longer. He was exasperating. He was the most despicable man she had ever laid eyes on, which was saying something, for she had known some terrible men.
And yet she couldn’t help that he made her practically tingle with desire. Never before had she met anyone like him. The sailors on her uncle’s ship had acted nothing like this — likely because of who she was, but she had never encountered any trouble from them.
Of course, there were the men who were the very reason she was here on this ship, but that was beside the point.
This man, this pirate known all over the world, was positively virile. She was drawn to him like a barnacle to a ship’s belly, and nothing could currently be worse.
When she finally fell into a fitful sleep, it was upon a prayer for favorable winds to Lisbon, so that she could be off this ship and away from this man as soon as humanly possible.
It was six days to Lisbon.
Six days of agony.
Penny thought she might lose her mind, and this would only be the beginning of the journey if she didn’t manage to escape. She had inspected every curiosity on the shelves within the cabin. She had read a book a day, despite how boring she had found them, for they were mostly histories of various nations or biographies of men she had no interest in. And she slept.
The only time she had been allowed out of the cabin was to use the latrine — fortunately, there was a private one near the captain’s cabin at the stern of the ship in the quarter galley — as her food was brought to her.
On those odd excursions out of the cabin, she observed all she could. There was a guard posted to her door at all times, and to reach the deck, she would have to find her way to the stairs.
She never saw Captain Ramsay during the day and she had hardly seen the man sleep. When the sun set each night, she had no choice but to close her eyes for there was little light. At those times he was usually bent over the table in his cabin, using a sole candle to pour over maps or books or drawing what she assumed was a battle strategy.