by Pam Godwin
“I’m not a warrior. Confound it, you saw me on that barrel…” I shook my head vigorously. “I just did what I had to do, and most of the time, it was nothing. There was nothing I could do but breathe.”
“I wager that breathing hurt the most.”
Heat swelled behind my eyes, surging tears.
“Christ, your courage and resilience are awe-inspiring.” His thumb stroked my cheek. “You’ve never looked more beautiful than you do now.”
“Thank you.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m letting anyone else see you uncovered.” He pulled the shirt over my head, tenderly guiding my arms through the sleeves.
Was this really happening? Was he truly here? Or was it just a figment? My brain felt foggy and full of shadows.
I cleared my throat. “What happened with Priest?”
“He hasn’t visited the brothel in years.” He gave me another concerned inspection. “Can you stand?”
“Yes.” With the help of his hands on my waist, I climbed to my feet. “He lives, then? Priest?”
“I didn’t kill him or capture him.”
Relief soared in my chest.
“But that was never my aim.” He strode toward the ladder.
“What do you mean?”
He retrieved a bowl of salt fish that one of the officers had brought down. That was when I saw them. The two men who had hauled me in and out of the hole.
They lay in a pile of lifeless limbs, throats cut open and eyes unseeing. That would explain some of the gruesome noises when Ashley had entered. The other ominous sounds I’d heard became apparent as my gaze landed on the third man. The one who’d raped me.
A concave hole hollowed out his head. All that remained of his face was a bowl of splintered bone and red mush. The skull, the eyes, all of it was crushed, completely pulverized beneath whatever had caused the repetitive thump, thump, thump…
I looked around for the weapon and paused on Ashley’s broken, bloody knuckles. “Did you…?”
“If I could kill him again, I would. But I would slow it down. Draw it out. Make him suffer for weeks.” His teeth ground together as he set the bowl of salt fish in my hands. “Eat. I know it’s the last thing you want right now, but you need your strength.” His eyes narrowed coldly. “Who else hurt you?”
“Just him.” My stomach tightened.
The mutilation extended beyond the face. Multiple stab wounds covered the abdomen so as to permit the bowels to fall out. A knife protruded from where the genitals used to be, the hilt jutting upward like a crude erection. A few feet away lay the severed flesh that had hurt me so brutally.
Sick satisfaction hummed through my soul. Ashley had disemboweled, castrated, and defaced this man in a matter of minutes. The only person I’d ever seen do something so swiftly and grotesquely was Priest.
“Who else knows what was happening in here?” He collected the knives from the bodies of the officers. “Be very certain, Bennett, because I will slaughter every man on board this tarnal ship.”
“Only these three as far as I know.” I swallowed down a sour bite of fish and fought back nausea. “Did you recognize the man who raped me? He always smelled like—”
“Onions. He ate them raw.” He cast the body an intense, fevered glare. “Sir John Dycker.”
“The admiral? You killed your superior?” I clutched my forehead, whirling beneath the implication. “They’ll execute you, Ashley! They’ll hang you right alongside me!”
His gaze narrowed on the hatchway as if daring it to open. “Neither of us is hanging.”
A flutter tingled in my belly. That was the first time I’d ever heard a promise of my survival from his mouth.
“I have a great deal to tell you.” He paced around the bodies, his expression pensive. “First, we need to get off this ship. Finish eating.”
I choked down the remainder of the fish in seconds. “How do we get out of here?”
“I’m working on that.” He handed the knives to me and scanned the space. “When I opened that hatch and saw him with you…” His eyes burned with renewed fury, his lips twisting back from clenched teeth. “I had no plans beyond beating his face into the back of his head.”
“You achieved that quite successfully.”
He lifted the admiral’s shoulders and began to drag him toward the black hole. “I left you here, thinking you were safe, so that I could find Priest Farrell and ask for his help.” He paused, growling angrily. “I never found the bastard.”
“Wait. You wanted Priest’s help?” My pulse quickened. “For what?”
“To free you.” He resumed moving the corpse, presumably to hide it. “I was going to make him an offer.”
“What offer? Ashley, forget the body. You need to clean the blood off your face and—”
“Any second, a soldier is going to come through that hatchway looking for his officers, his admiral, or perhaps even me, because I’ve been down here longer than acceptable. I spent the day arguing my way through a dozen different lieutenants before I reached the lower deck. It’s not normal for a commodore to visit his prisoner.” He glanced over his shoulder at the black hole and scowled. “What is that smell?”
My heart sank. “That’s where they kept me.”
A vein bulged in his scarlet-smeared forehead. He dropped the admiral’s body and spun toward the hole.
“Ashley, wait!” I planted my feet, refusing to go anywhere near there. That stench would forever haunt me, and I wasn’t brave enough to breathe it again.
He crossed the threshold and staggered to a stop. His head swung toward his shoulder, and he buried his nose there, gagging and coughing.
“How long have I been down here?” I asked softly.
“Two weeks.” He gripped the door, his fingers digging into the wood, his accent slurring with rage. “You were in there for two weeks with what I can only imagine is a dead body. Two weeks I spent hunting a pirate who might as well be a ghost. No one has spotted Priest Farrell in months. I should have turned back the first day when I learned he wasn’t at the brothel. Had I done that, you wouldn’t have suffered for so goddamned—”
“Ashley, stop this. And get away from that compartment.”
“Who’s in there, Bennett?”
“Three African women.” With a boulder of grief in my chest, I rushed through an explanation of what I’d experienced in that hole the first day. “They were abused the same as me. One of them was pregnant.”
“I didn’t know.” His hands clenched, and he tilted his head to one side, staring intensely at me over his shoulder. “You have to believe me, Bennett. I would’ve never allowed you on this ship had I known.”
“I believe you.” I stood taller, tightening my fingers around the hilts of the daggers. “I forgive you. For all of it. Everything. That forgiveness came before you showed up. Now tell me what your purpose was with Priest Farrell?”
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but we’ll discuss that later. And Priest… God’s teeth, if I only knew where he was hiding…” He swiped a hand down his face, making the blood smear. “I was going to offer him my protection in exchange for kidnapping you.”
My jaw dropped.
“I couldn’t free you.” He turned toward the admiral’s body, staring down at it with unbridled wrath. “Not without losing my career, shaming my family, and getting us both sent to the gallows. The day Dycker showed up, I decided to carry out my plan to find Priest Farrell. Only instead of capturing him, I was going to convince him to rescue you and make it look like a raid.”
My mind spun at the irony, and my mouth opened to tell him everything. But no words came forth. Where would I start? The compass? My marriage? Priest’s betrayal? My rescue plan? There was too much to explain and too little time.
“You trusted him with your body once.” Ashley watched me carefully, misunderstanding my reaction. “He would’ve remembered you. No man could forget.”
Oh, dear God, I needed to tell him.
“If I thought he’d hurt you instead of help you…” Possessiveness growled through his voice, but there was something else. Something desperate and strange darkening his eyes. “I would’ve killed him. I swear it.”
My gaze drifted toward the hatch. Did I just hear a creak? Footsteps on the deck above?
“Tell me you have a plan.” My nerves rioted.
“I have a plan.” He yanked the knife from the admiral’s groin.
“Be more specific.”
A transformation swept over him, his expression emptying before my very eyes. No emotion, not a trace of humanity as he stabbed a finger at the barrel beside me, silently ordering me to hide.
Then the door to the hatchway opened.
My pulse detonated as a pair of boots sounded on the ladder.
I crouched behind the barrel, completely concealed, and tightened my grip on the daggers. Any second, our visitor would turn and see three dead bodies and one very bloody commodore holding a knife.
Trembling, I gathered the hem of Ashley’s shirt high on my legs so that it wouldn’t hinder my movements if I needed to fight. Then I waited.
The door to the hatch closed, and footsteps descended into the hold. One man.
“My lord? What are you—?” His unfamiliar voice gasped and stuttered with the stumble of his boots. “Is that—? Pray, sir, put your hands where I can see them!”
I peered around the barrel, and my heart turned keel-up.
A head taller, the soldier towered over Ashley, holding a cocked pistol to Ashley’s head. The man was bigger, probably stronger than Ashley. But he trembled so miserably his finger bounced against the trigger.
Ashley’s face was one sneeze away from looking like the admiral’s.
He didn’t move. Didn’t appear to be breathing. His aristocratic mien smoothed his features, his unfeeling voice showing no traces of fear or guilt. “Lower your gun, Sergeant, and I’ll enlighten you on the situation.”
There was no explaining this. The blood of three officers coated his face. He murdered an admiral of the Royal Navy, for Christ’s sake.
“Do not presume to give me orders.” The sergeant stiffened his stance. “Your privileges are presently revoked, by God! Where is the prisoner?”
A chill hit my core.
“In the compartment behind me.” Ashley cocked his head. “Did you know the admiral was raping her?”
Oh, no, Ashley. Let it go.
“She’s a pirate. And you, sir, are a murderer.” The sergeant craned his neck, trying to see into the darkness. “Miss Sharp? Come out, if you please.”
“She’s gagged and shackled. See for yourself.”
“You first.” The soldier thrust his chin. “Go on.”
Perhaps Ashley had this under control. But perhaps wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t leave his survival to chance.
Rising slowly, silently, I curled my fingers around the daggers and sneaked up behind the sergeant. Ashley didn’t glance at me as he stepped backward, following the soldier’s orders.
Together, they shuffled into the tenebrous hole. When the soldier coughed, distracted by the stench, I charged.
Blades out, I swung them with all my strength. The steel slid easily into either side of the man’s neck, the tender flesh giving little resistance. A gurgling sound bubbled from his mouth. Warm blood spurted over my fingers, and Ashley caught the waving pistol, wrenching it away.
The man dropped. I pulled the daggers free and heaved a shivering exhale.
Another soldier dead. Another body to hide.
“Thank you.” Ashley’s gaze latched onto mine.
I nodded, breathing heavily. “You were saying…”
“My plan was to acquire clean frocks and breeches.” He stepped to a bucket of water and washed his face. “If we lure two soldiers down here and subdue them without bleeding them”—he cast me a narrowed look—“we can walk out wearing disguises.”
“Oh.” I grimaced at the gore saturating the sergeant’s frock. Blast it.
“We’re going to take care of each other, Bennett. You and me, from now on. No matter what happens. We’ll get out of here. I promise.”
His vow flowed through my veins, warmed my blood, and penetrated my heart. But I knew, even dressed as the admiral’s soldiers, we wouldn’t make it off the flagship without inquiries and detention.
“We’re even.” I squatted before him and cleaned my hands in the bucket. “You saved me from the admiral. I saved you from the soldier.” I closed my eyes against the resolution hardening his face. “I need you to go. Leave. Now.”
“No.”
I made a sound of frustration. “Think, Ashley. I’m a savage. A murderer. My fate is decided. This ends with me hanging, and you know it.” I met his searing gaze. “You are going to walk out of here. Right now. Tell them I murdered these men, and you managed to escape. Do it. For me. It’s the only way.”
“Never.” He rose in a blur. In the next breath, he pinned me against the wall beneath the furnace of his hard, shirtless chest. “If you ever suggest a preposterous idea like that again, I will punish your lovely arse until you can’t sit for a week.”
I sighed. That was the commodore I knew and loved.
Confident, stalwart nobleman.
Irritating pain in the arse.
Tipping my head back, I gazed into his beautiful, passionate blue eyes, and whoa. I was dizzy. Head-spinning, heart-racing dizzy. Probably stress and nerves. Or hunger. Or perhaps it was the floating, mystical magic I always felt in his presence.
Honest to God, if we weren’t surrounded by the stench of death, I would’ve planted an adoring kiss on his lips.
“We’re not equals.” He cupped the side of my face and brought my cheek against his warm chest. “And we’re not even close to being even, madam.” His mouth lowered to the top of my head, his breath rustling my hair. “I’m beneath you, less than you, in every way that transcends this world. Perhaps someday, I’ll do something great and good and earn your forgiveness.”
“You are great and good.” I circled my arms around him and squeezed tight. “So good, in fact, it’s positively annoying and not at all attractive.” Pressing my face into the chiseled heat of his torso, I found heaven. “Damn, I missed you.”
“I missed you, too, but we need to—”
A deafening boom exploded above us. The detonation hit so hard it blew me out of Ashley’s arms and across the hold.
The wind knocked from the lungs. The keel of the ship canted with a mighty groan, and the world slanted to the starboard, rolling every barrel, cable, and body in the hold to one side.
I must have hit my head, given the colossal pang hammering in the back of my skull. I couldn’t find my bearings, couldn’t see anything through the cloud of smoke that engulfed the space.
“Ashley!” The stench of sulfur burned my nose, my eyes stinging as I searched the gray haze. “Ashley! Where are you?”
“Here.” His voice came from behind me, right at my ear, and his arms hooked around my waist.
“What happened?”
“The flagship’s under attack. Don’t let go of me.” He lifted me up in the air and tossed me over his shoulder.
Then he took off. I clenched my whole body around his shoulders and back and held on as he scaled the ladder and shoved open the hatchway.
Another eruption shook the ship, the magnitude of it so loud it felt like a sledge in my chest. Shock waves rippled outward, and his boots lost purchase on the rungs. We started to fall, my stomach plunging. But his hands caught the deck above, and he pulled us up.
“Let me walk!” I shouted over the din of shrieking men and distant gunfire.
“Quiet!” He heaved me through the hatchway.
I had no choice but to hang on as he ran through the lower decks. All around us, sailors scurried left to right, paying no attention to the shirtless commodore and his female prisoner.
Gunfire grew louder, erupting overhead. Screams and curses chilled my skin
. The stench of sweat, smoke, and fear congested the air. Mayhem ensued, and we were headed into the thick of it.
“I hope you have a plan.” I hung upside down with my face against his back, wishing I’d had the foresight to grab a knife from the hold. “Where’s your ship?”
“With any luck, she still sits a hundred feet off the flagship’s larboard. My plan is to get us to her.”
That didn’t fill me with hope. If the flagship was under attack, Ashley’s ship would be, as well. The admiral was dead. The commodore of HMS Blitz was with me. Who was commanding these ships? Who was attacking?
In the back of my mind, I wondered if Priest was responsible for this battle. It would be just like him to make an appearance now with guns blazing.
Ashley burst out of the final companionway and onto the upper deck, holding fast to my lower body. The bulkhead beside us exploded in a shower of wood, but he didn’t flinch or slow his sprint.
Black obscured the sky and sea. Not just from the smoke. The hours of darkness were upon us.
I clung to his broad frame, blinking in the haze of sulfur, unable to believe my eyes. Bodies lay everywhere, some dismembered by chain-shot, others still alive and crushed beneath overturned cannons. Many were so mutilated there were only pieces left.
The gangways and foremast were gone, smashed by massive, hard-punching cannons. Thirty-two-pounders if I had to guess. But that wasn’t possible unless HMS Blitz was shooting at this ship.
Gunfire ricocheted, and fires burned, the smoldering haze so black it made visibility impossible. I scanned every direction, searching for the attacking ship. Men continued to drop to their deaths, the shots coming from somewhere off our larboard.
Ashley seemed to share my thoughts, for he raced in that direction. On his way, he ripped a spyglass from the hands of a lieutenant, not waiting for the protests.
He reached the larboard bow and set me under it, out of the line of fire.
“Don’t move!” Standing over me, he raised the glass to his eye. “God’s wounds, I can’t see!”
Cannon thunder vibrated across the sea, up through the deck, and into my rattling bones.
“My lord?” A sailor appeared at Ashley’s side, bleeding from a wound on his face. “Why are you here?”