by Merry Farmer
At the very least, that rendered him silent. I settled in to fight him in earnest, raining blows at him from all sides and hoping to keep him off balance. He returned them in equal measure, but his blade was heavy and easily turned. He wasn’t aiming to kill me.
I didn’t know if I held the same qualms.
I would never surrender, not to a man like him. Come hell or high water, he was destined to fail to entrap me again.
I baited him, hoping he would make a mistake. “You won’t win my ship with those kitten swipes.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his mouth, drawing my attention. “Perhaps I’m aiming for the woman this time.”
The ship rocked as a large wave crested, turning us near sideways. My crew shouted as they scrabbled for holds to remain on the ship. Milton’s men weren’t as lucky. Those standing by the rails made mad grabs for the ropes or the edge of the deck, but most fell into the sea with sickening plunges.
I stumbled, managing to keep my feet on the slick deck, but at great cost. A body slammed into me, pushing me up against the wall of the aft deck railing. My dagger dropped to the ground, useless. Milton pinned my sword arm to the wall with his free hand. He pressed his body against mine, the blade of his sword kissing my throat. The edge didn’t break my skin. It wasn’t first blood.
The press of our bodies distracted me. His hips fitted against me, holding me in place as if we fought a very different battle.
His gaze caught mine and held as thunder split the air. My chest rose and fell, brushing against the buttons of his navy jacket with every breath. With the tiniest of nicks, he would win. He would take everything from me.
Perhaps I’m aiming for the woman.
If I distracted him long enough to gain the upper hand…
The saucy smile came too easily to my lips. My pulse fluttered in my throat against his blade. Heat, awareness, and the adrenaline of danger flooded me. My body tightened in anticipation. In a throaty voice, I whispered, “Well, if it’s the woman you want…”
His expression heated, turning intense as his gaze traveled from my throat up to my mouth. I bunched to introduce my knee to his groin.
Lightning split the sky. Purple echoes plagued my vision as it struck with a devastating crash. The crash rumbled around me. Where had it hit?
Fire blazed from the sails of the broken mast of the British man-of-war off our bow. The storm opened overhead, drenching us and lashing the rain against my cheeks. Aludra’s voice rang with orders. Swells of waves carried us farther from the shore, the wind buffeting us and threatening to tip us into the sea. Chaos ensued as my crew scrambled for holds on the tilting ship. After it righted itself, half the women dashed to obey Aludra.
The other half looked to me for guidance.
Me, where I was pinned against the wall by the enemy. If I didn’t end this quickly and command them, the ship might sink…
I wrenched my attention to Milton’s face once more. “Release me. We can resume this later.”
“No.”
His word rumbled through me, making every muscle tighten. I didn’t have time for his stubbornness, for his fearlessness in the face of my command. Did he truly think that besting me was worth losing his life to the storm?
“This isn’t the time. The ship…”
He pressed against me closer, his body hard against my curves. “I’ll release you to lead your crew. If you concede defeat.”
Defeat. Marriage. Despite my earlier denial, I’d have to relinquish the ship. A wife’s possessions belonged to her husband, as much as did she.
Fight. I might be able to dislodge him, but we’d been so evenly matched and…
Another wave crested the ship, dousing me and Milton with ice-cold saltwater. Shouts rang in my ears. The crew, Aludra, Hannah. They needed me to make the decisions. They needed me to hold them together.
“I concede. Now leave me to tend to my crew.”
They might not be my crew much longer.
Milton held my gaze a moment more before he stepped back. I tightened my hold on my sword, tempted to run him through. But we’d made an agreement. I might be a pirate, but I was not without honor.
Shouting orders as I went, I ran to take position at the wheel.
Chapter 5
Put the Crew’s Well-Being First
As Grand-mère worked at the knots on the rope around my wrists and waist, I heaved the first deep breath I’d taken since the storm began. The air smelled damp and salty, hanging around us like a thick fog on the calm sea. Crew members trickled up from below deck, mops and buckets in their hands to wash the rest of the water off the sides. Aludra came with them, her black-clad form straight-backed as she directed the crew.
As my wrist was freed, I pulled away from the spoke of the wheel and flexed my aching fingers. When the storm had reached its pinnacle, after the crew had trimmed back the sails to keep the pernicious wind from dragging us into the ocean depths, I’d taken the helm and steered us away from the coast and the British ships that had cornered us. In this weather, they hadn’t been able to follow and rescue their stubborn captain from our deck. This had been one of the worst storms our ship had ever weathered. I still didn’t know if we had survived it in one piece. The ocean was calm now, but she could be deceptively calm at times. With will alone, I kept us from capsizing and pulled rank on every other member of the crew to hustle them into the safety of the lower decks where they couldn’t be washed overboard.
Grand-mère had not taken well to the order, and it showed in the churlish way she took her place at the wheel. I relinquished it to her without protest, rolling my shoulders to ease some of the stiffness as I stepped back and glanced at the woman who had accompanied her onto the poop deck.
“Where are we?” I asked my navigator.
Hannah wrinkled her nose as she turned her face up to the sky, thick with clouds as a mist blanketed the ocean around us. “I may be able to tell later this evening when the sun sets and the fog dissipates. Otherwise, it’s anyone’s guess. I wouldn’t recommend opening the sails fully until we get our bearings. I may not be able to tell how close we are to shore until the fog lifts.”
I bit my lip, mentally calculating how much food and water we still had in the hold. Depending on where we had been swept out to, we may not have enough left to survive a return trip to a friendly port.
The British hadn’t taken us, and I would be damned if I let a storm claim that honor. We would survive this. And once we did, we would retrieve our sisters, arrested or worse at the hands of the British Navy.
In a clipped tone, I told Hannah, “I’ll need to know as soon as possible, so we can regroup and talk about our next move.”
I glanced at Grand-mère, noticing her hands shaking as she held the ship steady. Her mouth was in a thick slash, a mulish look I knew well.
“Grand-mère, how are you feeling?”
She stubbornly didn’t answer.
“Perhaps we ought to see how Papillon has fared with all the tossing about. You know he doesn’t care for storms.”
The crannies of Grand-mère’s face softened, and she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t do that to me, Jeanne. Don’t turn me into an invalid.”
My grandmother was well into her sixth decade, and she still used a claw-footed cane, especially on the rolling deck. Some days, I was afraid she would slip and crack open her hip. Her bones were more fragile than mine, even if some days I was convinced she had built just as much muscle as me.
“It wasn’t personal. I’m the captain. I bear the burden of danger.”
“The devil you do,” she snapped, tears in her eyes. She blinked hard and turned them toward the ocean, her face stony. Louder, she said, “I’m a little shaky from the storm. It will pass as soon as I eat.”
Hannah’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she hovered over Grand-mère’s other elbow. “Perhaps you ought to eat now, Grand-mère.”
Although she was related to me by blood, she had been ado
pted by the entire crew. We all loved her and wanted to preserve her for as long as possible.
The crotchety old woman snapped, “Perhaps you should fetch food here. I shan’t leave the wheel.” Despite the tremor in her hands, her tone left no doubt.
Hannah hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I will.”
“And I ought to see to the rest of the crew. If you have the helm?”
Grand-mère nodded dismissively.
I followed Hannah down the stairs to the quarterdeck, the journey taking three times as long due to the encumbrance of the skirts Hannah insisted upon wearing. Almost everyone else in the crew preferred breeches for the mobility. When she departed for the galley, I walked toward the knot of women nearest to me, Aludra included. My first mate spoke with a tall, broad-shouldered woman with thick hands and a shy smile. As the woman turned away, I cupped my hand to my mouth and called, “Alexandra!”
Alexandra, or Lexi as she was called in private, turned. She looked sheepish, curling her shoulders inward as she always seemed to do when standing next to someone shorter than her. She was a competent woman, one of the first four who had joined me when I’d left my father’s house. Not to mention, the most capable of us all.
“I need an assessment of the ship done as soon as possible. We must start on repairs.”
Lexi ducked her head and, mumbling an assent under her breath, she turned away to perform her task. She’d been invaluable to us during our maiden voyage, when she was the only one who knew how to sail a ship since she’d helped her father build it. However, she preferred to work on her own and at her own pace.
As I watched Lexi go, her skirts swishing with her mincing stride, Aludra stepped into my path. Her expression was hard, a general’s expression. “What of your man?”
My mouth dropped open, and it took me a moment to process her words. “My…man?” Everyone aboard the ship was a woman.
Aludra nodded over my shoulder. Milton stood sopping wet beneath the mainsail, looking awkward and out of place as he dodged the glares of the women working around him. So preoccupied was he in not admiring their figures in their breeches and the shirts rolled up to their elbows that he didn’t appear to know where to look. It would have been comical if it hadn’t reminded me of the circumstance to which I had agreed.
Grimly, I asked, “Did we take on any others when we left the rest of the British Navy behind?”
Aludra shook her head. “Only him. The others fell overboard or retreated to their ships.”
A blessing, perhaps, though I couldn’t help but wonder if they weren’t helped overboard in the chaos. Mine was a ship of women, many of which had been mistreated and undermined by navy men. There was no love lost between them.
Trepidation stirred the longer I stared at Milton. His eyes trailed over the woman in the rigging who was inspecting knots in the ropes. All three masts were in one piece after the storm, thank Zeus. When his gaze found me, a warmth eased the tension in my body, like a sliver of sunlight breaking through the fog.
“I’ll manage Captain Sterling. Aludra, I leave the crew in your hands.”
My first mate nodded, but her gaze meandered to the aft deck to where Grand-mère stood sentinel over the Gambit’s helm. “How is she?” My first mate, usually so brusque and efficient, looked gently on my grandmother.
“She’s shaken by the severity of the storm and the attack, as are we all. Hannah is fetching her something to eat. She’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
Aludra looked dubious but nodded and turned her attention to the skeleton crew on deck cleaning up.
The prickle on the back of my neck told me that Milton had not looked away from me for a moment. I turned with trepidation, but I’d run out of reasons to avoid him. At this distance, his expression was unreadable. Was he already thinking of me as his wife? I squared my shoulders, shaking off that mad idea. I had only agreed under duress. Besides, if I capitulated to him, what would happen to my crew? I would give my life to prevent them from being hanged as criminals. Compared to that, reneging on my word seemed of little note.
Perhaps Milton will see reason.
I strode up to him as I would an enemy with loping, confident strides. At this moment, I was a figurehead and I represented every soul aboard this ship. When I stepped within earshot, I snapped, “Come this way.”
Rather than argue, he waved a hand gallantly to indicate that I should lead. I turned toward the quarterdeck where my cabin sat in the stern. Silent, he followed down a narrow corridor barely wider than my shoulders. The door to my cabin was small. He stooped to enter. I pressed myself against the wall to let him pass and shut the door behind us, hoping to keep this conversation private.
The moment I did, I regretted the intimacy. As the captain elect, mine was the biggest cabin of all the officers. However, with its wide bed, trunk, writing desk and chair bolted to the ground, the confines seemed far too intimate. With us both standing in the space in front of the bed, he with his back to the wall and me with mine to the door, we had no more than a foot of air between us, scarcely enough room to breathe. What with bracing ourselves against the roll and sway of the ship, I couldn’t help but lean closer at intervals. Either that or reacquaint myself with the floor. Suddenly, speaking in private seemed like a terrible idea.
More so when Milton cocked an eyebrow to devastating effect. “I take it the immediacy of the storm has passed?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Your powers of observation are nothing short of miraculous. What clued you in, the lack of rain?”
He didn’t rise to the bait. How did he manage to stay so calm? Nothing I said seemed to leave an imprint, not while we had fought, and not now.
“You are a competent and level-headed leader.”
I didn’t feel that way. I felt off balance, particularly with him offering compliments. And compliments on my prowess rather than my eyes or my smile or my figure, as other men had offered before him. I must look a wretch after weathering the storm, my shirt pressed tight against my body and sopping wet and my hair snarled and matted. I wanted nothing more than to change into a spare set of clothes, but he was between me and the trunk. Not to mention, stripping naked at this moment seemed more like an invitation than anything else.
My voice cracked as I said, “You sound surprised.”
“You…” He paused, considering. “You aren’t what I expected.”
I bristled like my cat. “You can take your expectations and—”
He laid one finger across my lips. His hand was warm and only the slightest bit damp. Where it touched me, it left ripples of heat and awareness and a dozen other things I didn’t want to consider. His eyes dark from the meager light shining through the porthole, he said, “Don’t be offended. I’m impressed.”
I rolled my eyes. “I live to impress you.” The sarcasm was muffled by his finger.
Chuckling, he removed his hand. My lips tingled in the wake of his touch. I licked them, trying to banish the sensation and failing. If anything, my mouth seemed even more sensitive.
“I admit, I miscalculated. I expected to find the same timid woman I met two years ago.” He paused, narrowing his eyes. His voice lowered an octave. “But you weren’t timid then either, were you?”
I decided to leave that unanswered. Whatever ties clung to us from the past, I would rather sever them and continue living my life as I had planned. In no part of my life did I have room for the awareness of his broad-shouldered body in the navy jacket that clung to him like a caress. I had no patience for the devilish way his gaze darted to my mouth. My first concern was, and always would be, my crew.
“I’m curious, how did you manage to get the ship out of the bay? It takes a crew to sail a ship of this size.”
I notched my chin higher. “I had a crew.”
He raised one eyebrow.
With a sigh, I ran my fingers along a curl that had popped free of my scarf and tucked it underneath once more. “I had help. We each took control of a mast a
nd managed to move out of the bay at high tide through stubbornness more than skill. We couldn’t sail the open ocean, so we limped slowly up the coast until we reached a harbor and put out a call for a crew.”
He still didn’t seem convinced.
“Believe me or don’t, it is what happened. If my father had sent the Navy after us, we would have been thwarted before we’d even began. Whatever my grandmother left in her goodbye letter, it bought us long enough to get our sea legs.”
“How did you pay a crew?”
“Pirates,” I said, biting off the word. It still rankled that we had been denied a privateer’s license from the onset. I uncrossed my arms and balled my fists at my sides instead. “We don’t steal from the British.”
He blinked, his thick eyelashes fluttering in front of his gaze. “I beg your pardon?”
I lifted my chin. “My crew. We steal from French supply ships and merchants. Occasionally, we’ll do battle with one of the smaller third rates, but we always steer clear of British ships. We even often offer British merchants our protection, on occasion.”
Milton snorted. “For a fee.”
I drew myself up, even though my chin barely reached his sternum. “Are you offended we’re taking away your bribe money? Navy vessels do the same, and for a far greater fee.”
Slowly, as if choosing his words carefully, Milton said, “I’m not here to arrest you.”
Unlikely, given the elaborate trap he had laid for me. “No, but it does appear that you’re here to take me into your custody.”
His expression changed, igniting. His gaze traveled down my body, over my chin and neck, skimming my breasts, the dip of my waist, and the flare of my hips that my tight breeches did little to conceal. By the time he raised his gaze to mine once more, I’d lost my breath.
“You yielded.”
“You didn’t draw first blood.”
“I could have.”
Yes, he could have. As could I have, if I’d stabbed first and taunted later. But my pride had gotten the best of me. I couldn’t look away from his unreadable gaze, couldn’t find my tongue to retort.