The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

“We don’t have a choice. We can either die in this room or take our chances in the bay. It’s the only way.”

  He didn’t like it but Marcus was right. Hopefully they would have time to swim around to one of the ladders hooked onto the dock and then get back above deck.

  Just as the two men began to shatter the thick glass, working at the muntin to displace the panes, the door Darius had tried to break down came crashing in, pieces of the busted lock clanging across the floor.

  Trelissick eyed them both and then grinned. “Redecorating? If you think you have the time…”

  Darius cursed and barged out into the corridor. The smoke was thicker there and he slowed as visibility reduced. “Damn it!” he roared. “Eliza!”

  He’d had her. He’d had her back, in the same room, and he’d stood there like a man who valued his life more than that of his wife. She may have only been his wife for a week but she had crawled her way around his walls to touch a piece of his heart. Her and those damned siblings of hers. This was why he didn’t get close to people. This was why he sailed his ship with his men and didn’t form attachments that lasted more than one night. If he lost them, he would… He would… God, he didn’t even want to think about it.

  If he didn’t have Sarah to consider as well, he would have charged his way through every room on the ship; he would walk through a wall of fire to find them. But he did have Sarah and she needed him to stop and think, to process and evaluate.

  He needed Eliza.

  He hadn’t understood it until she’d been ripped from his arms but the truth was there, stark and raw. The last week had been a series of ups and downs but he’d felt contentment, a sense of true family. As much as he’d run from that almost his entire life, he wanted it back and he wanted it back now.

  Benny appeared through the smoke, tearing him from his dark thoughts. “You have to follow me, Captain. The stern is aflame from one level down but she’s spreading and spreading fast. According to one of the crewmen we’ve taken prisoner, there’s only a small amount of shot on board but enough to take us all down to the bottom if it goes.”

  Darius grabbed Benny by the shoulders and physically turned the man, taking off after him, holding his breath for as long as he could. Within a few moments they emerged onto the decks, the air slightly clearer, the calls of men echoing against the glow of flame as a bucket line was formed to douse the fire. Even Darius could see the effort was futile and only slightly slowed the inevitable.

  He knew the ship well. He knew Eliza and her brothers and sisters would be held nearly in the lowest levels. Only one level above the bilge water and rat infestations. One level below the fire burning out of control.

  Darius looked to Benny. “Have you tried to get down there?”

  “Impossible. Whoever started that fire must have used oil or something like it.”

  There was more but Benny held back. His man’s eyes darted from Darius to James Trelissick and back to Darius again. “What is it?” Darius asked. “What aren’t you saying? Are they already dead?” His heart skipped a beat and his stomach dropped out. He was suddenly dizzy. He’d seen Eliza. The blood on her had been his father’s, he was sure of it. He was sure the four men who’d fled with her would be caught virtually outside the door. They had the ship surrounded.

  Darius fell to his knees, gasping for breath. He’d made so many mistakes since meeting the Penfolds. So many mistakes. If they were dead, had he sent them to it? By provoking his sire, had he sent them all to their graves? He couldn’t breathe. He held a hand to his chest as hopelessness spread.

  Benny squatted next to him. “They aren’t dead, least not yet, Captain, but the major’s wife, she broke through.”

  Trelissick came down to their level as well and bunched a handful of Benny’s shirt in his fist. “What did you say?”

  “Your wife, the red-haired one, she took us by surprise and went below.”

  “Into the fire?” Trelissick asked.

  “There was no fire then. First we saw the smoke was when those two came barrelling up the steps.” He indicated the men who were trussed up and gagged, tied to the main mast.

  Darius was slow to follow. They weren’t dead? But Daniella had gone down there? “Why the hell would she do that? You told her to stay put.”

  Trelissick barked a short, sharp laugh. “You know as well as I that she listens to no one.”

  In his mind, Darius flicked through his memories of the Persephone. He’d had the ship under his command for only one short year before he and his crew had moved to the Persecutor. He remembered the hold on the ship was split into sections. It was Deklin’s revolutionary way to try to minimise the risks of sinking if the ship took cannon fire in a battle. Each section had its own hatch and was tarred and sealed. The walls were actually quite thin considering the job they were built for but they were only there to hold the water at bay. If a cannon ball was coming, nothing much could stop it so they’d constructed with thinner, inferior timbers.

  Darius swivelled and met the eyes of Marcus. “I have an idea.”

  Marcus raised one scruffy brow. “Is it dangerous?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Do you think it will work?”

  Darius half shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  Marcus nodded. “Good enough for me.”

  “Right then. We need axes, hammers, anything the men can find. If we can go through the walls before the fire reaches them, we might stand a chance.” He attempted levity or even hope, but to his own mind, it was as though he were about to try to catch thin air in his hands.

  For the second time in Darius’s existence, he sent up a prayer to whoever watched over their piece of the world.

  *

  Eliza felt as though she and Daniella had stumbled about in the dark, smoke-filled corridors of the ship for an age. Every slam of her foot down on the floor to find the hatch Wickham had pulled her through jarred up her leg and caused the lump in her throat to harden and grow.

  With a sob of despair, she threw herself to her knees and began sliding her hands over the timbers. She winced when a splinter caught in her finger but she kept going. She knew it was there somewhere. It had to be.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Daniella asked from somewhere behind her.

  “I know it is. We only climbed one set of steps and turned only one corner.” Eliza breathed deep, kept searching. When her thumb hit the edge of cold cast iron in a long line with ridges, she almost cried out. Turning on the floor, she slowed and crept her fingers along the edges of a narrow seam. Before long, she found the handle and turned it.

  Frustration and anxiety hounded her from within when she couldn’t lift the hatch. It wasn’t locked; she just didn’t have the strength. Daniella was at her side in an instant and between the two women, they raised it only a few inches.

  “Nathanial!” Eliza yelled, hoping the smoke from the fire hadn’t yet reached her siblings. “Nathanial?”

  The heavy timbers became so light as the hatch was pushed from below that Eliza and Daniella fell backwards.

  Her brother emerged from the hole, wary and looking for danger but then he threw his arms around Eliza and hugged her hard. “God, we didn’t think we’d ever see you again. What happened? Where’s Wickham and his men?”

  The smoke grew thicker, the smell stronger and she coughed. “Go back below. We can’t talk here.”

  He nodded and waited for the two women to climb down the steep stair, the smoke swirling like fog into the small hold.

  Eliza hugged each of her siblings in turn, their eyes red and puffy, great sobs coming from both Ethan and Grace. “I’m all right,” she rushed to reassure them.

  Gabriella looked her over. “But your dress? What did he do to you?”

  Eliza had forgotten the moment when Wickham had meant to tear the clothes from her body and then rape her for sport. She shuddered. “Nothing happened to me, I promise.”

  “Where is Wickham?” Nathanial asked, but they we
re all distracted when the chained captain stood and stepped forward, his eyes flickering from Eliza to a silent Daniella and then back to Eliza.

  He drew a breath and then spoke quietly, his voice strained and croaking. “You have to go,” he urged. “If the ship burns you’ll be trapped down here. You’ll all die anyway.”

  Daniella stepped around the Penfolds and approached him. “Who are you?”

  Gabriella answered first. “He was captain of this ship before it was taken.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “That’s what he tells you, perhaps.” Never taking her eyes from the man, she asked, “What is your name and who did you sail for?”

  “John MacBride, Montrose Shipping.”

  Thoughtful for a moment, Daniella looked to Eliza. “Doesn’t Darius sail for Montrose?”

  Eliza nodded. Her brothers and sisters, even she, hadn’t questioned the captain further. They had believed him immediately. “He is a prisoner, Daniella. The same as we were.”

  The captain snorted and a wry smile stretched his lips although the action appeared to make him very uncomfortable and then it was gone, but his eyes were brighter as he asked, “How do you know Darius?”

  This time it was Daniella who smiled. “She married him,” she said, indicating Eliza with a tilt of her red-haired head.

  “Is he close?” Captain MacBride asked, his tone flat as though he already assumed the answer would be no. “Will he come to look for you?”

  Before Eliza could answer, before she could tell him the fire had trapped them preventing rescue or escape, the ship shook around them and the sound of thunder deafened.

  “The shot,” Daniella said with a groan. “The fire must have reached the munitions.”

  Gabriella took Eliza’s hand in her own. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “This is all my fault.”

  Eliza squeezed her fingers and backed everyone against the far wall of the ship next to the captain in his chains. “We’ve all made mistakes, Gabriella, but I don’t blame you. You did what you thought needed to be done.”

  “But if I hadn’t—”

  “We might very well be in a different kind of hell if you hadn’t,” Nathanial told her, his hand on his sister’s shoulder in a show of support that was maybe too late coming.

  Another booming noise rocked the ship, even louder this time if it were possible. Eliza hugged them all to her, the little ones in the middle as a tear rolled down her cheek. “At least we are together.”

  There was a part of her that wasn’t afraid to die. She hoped it was a quick death followed by eternal peace. Although now that she’d killed a man, she and Gabriella would probably both be going to hell, escorted there by fiery explosions. The other part of her, the part that had wondered at what it would be like to have a carefree life alongside Darius in America, howled at the injustice of it all. She’d glimpsed a happiness for herself she had neither asked for nor expected. That part of her wished she’d never met the man. But how could she regret any of it? She now knew what it felt to be thoroughly well loved and to return that love with little reserve.

  Eliza Penfold knew very little about the true love between a man and a woman but her heart knew it. Her heart had known it well before her mind had. She’d fallen in love with her husband, the man who’d tried his hardest to help them only for her to stumble in her belief of him at the final hour. The man who had been willing to give it all up to carry them away with the wind and show them a better life and she had all but told him he couldn’t.

  The cruellest injustice was that she would never be able to tell him what she really wanted to, that he mattered to her. That he had become a part of their family. That she believed in him and needed him to save her even if it was from her own stubbornness.

  For all the times she had let him deny it, he really was her knight in shining armour but she had walked away with her dragons instead of letting him slay them all for her.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sweat poured from Darius’s forehead and trickled down cheeks covered in God knows what from God knew where. He coughed from a mixture of sulphur and smoke as another wall was blown to smithereens. It would take too long to break their way through and the fire had well and truly taken hold of the upper deck. The captain’s cabin was gone, as was the first mate’s quarters and half the upper stern. Benny played runner and reported the inferno’s progress as they made little of their own just above the waterline.

  “Two masts alight now, Captain, and we’ve gained the attention of the harbourmaster. They’ve ordered the ship’s evacuation.”

  Darius gritted his teeth. “Go then. I’m not leaving.”

  Marcus laid a hand on Darius’s shoulder but he shrugged him off and made for another cask of powder. This should be the final wall. Four solid obstacles. Thicker than he had anticipated but not stronger than the gunpowder blasting the timbers apart. Two had fallen already and they had been lucky in the direction of the blasts so far. They were still a level above where the bilge sloshed so they had a measure of carelessness available. He should have called the order for everyone to leave but he needed help. Even the rats would have sense enough to have abandoned ship but God help him, he needed his men at his side when he reached the final wall. He needed the men above with their buckets of water. They were never going to put the fire out but Darius would need a clear line of escape once he broke through and found them.

  “What if they are already gone? The fire may have sucked the very air from the room by now.”

  Darius searched the reddened gazes of the five men present until he landed upon Trelissick’s soot-stained face. Trelissick shook his head. Darius bent his in acknowledgement. “We’re staying.”

  Benny didn’t hesitate. He took off back through the explosion holes yelling, “Every man hold his position.” And “Steady, lads, not long now.”

  The ship shuddered and leaned towards the portside with an almighty crack and another shudder as she righted herself.

  The mast must have fallen.

  He was joined by Trelissick and Marcus as they heaved barrels out of the way and pushed aside the very little that was left. Darius thanked ‘Mr’ Smith in a way. She had cleared out whatever booty had remained from their last raid, if there ever was one. The lower holds were practically empty. Except for the next one. He prayed they were there. He prayed he wasn’t too late.

  *

  Exhaustion played with Eliza’s senses as she crooned and whispered and smoothed the children’s hair. Ethan and Grace had fallen asleep. Daniella had paced until the smoke had become too thick to stand without coughing like an elderly dog. Eliza had watched the other woman try to free Captain MacBride from his bonds with the handle of her pistol. It hadn’t worked. Nothing worked. In the quiet between explosions, Eliza murmured sweet nothings to her siblings. Silly words designed to calm.

  Never in her darkest nightmares could she have imagined what one might say in the final hours of their life.

  “James is going to kill me,” Daniella said with a soft laugh. “I never was one to listen to orders.”

  Eliza smiled over at her. “It must be a pirate thing.”

  “Perhaps it is.” Daniella laughed again but then she sobered, her hands going to her stomach as she looked down. “Perhaps I should have listened this once.”

  “There’s still a chance they’ll come for us,” Eliza heard herself say. She hadn’t noticed the other woman’s state until that moment, her belly barely rounded but still showing signs of a pregnancy. Another casualty of all of their stupid decisions.

  The crackle of the fire could now be heard in the silence that followed her words but nothing else. No explosions. No calls of men or groans from the ship as she burned.

  They had given up.

  *

  “Do we use the powder?” Marcus asked as all three men crouched before tar and timbers.

  Darius shook his head. “It’s too risky. We might injure whoever still lives on the other side.”


  Trelissick stood and roared, “Bring the axes.”

  Marcus groaned. “It will take too long. We should set the powder and hope for the best.”

  Darius held his hand out, clicking his fingers when it took too long. Eventually he was handed a heavy axe, its blade chipped but wicked and sharp. Just like his wife’s saw the day he’d met her in the snow. Just like the lady herself. Sharp as a tack, wicked behind closed doors, and with the heavy weight of responsibility set on her slim shoulders.

  Heedless of the confined space and the choking smoke, Darius swung the axe as hard as he could at the wall before him. A sliver of tar caught the lantern light before falling to the floor. Swinging back again, Trelissick’s axe came forth and made a further dent.

  It seemed like a full day passed with little to show for their efforts. Until. Until a long piece of board tore free and bent inwards with a snap. Denser smoke poured from the small hole back onto their side of the wall. With renewed purpose, Darius and James swung the axes again and again until the hole was big enough for a man to fit his shoulders through.

  With hurried movements, with arms burning from exertion, Darius pushed the shards of timber through, knocking free anything that could cut through his clothes but then he was halted. Cold, clammy fingers gripped his hand. For a moment he thought James was trying to hold him back but then he realised the loose grip came from the other side of the broken wall.

  He tugged gently, crouching down to try to peer through the smoke. A cough. A sniffle. A sob.

  He dropped to his knees, reached another hand into the space and pulled harder, his heart in his throat, the breath stalled in his lungs.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Darius thought of the moment the world had truly darkened for him.

  He’d always thought it would never get worse than the day his father and Harold had beaten him half to death. Certainly nothing could be worse than waking up in a stinking hold, surrounded by rats and filth, in the middle of an ocean on a strange ship, your eyes so swollen you almost couldn’t see and then wishing you had been blinded. Or better yet, killed.