“Nine days,” Alsandair replied. He stared at the clothes Renaud extended toward
him. “I stink.”
“Aye, you do,” Renaud agreed. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the facility
in the corner. “You can wipe off in there. I’ll give you a razor too. You can use it later.”
Alsandair took the clothes and walked behind the screen. He made use of the basin
of water and soap he found on the dry sink. Glancing in the mirror, he winced at his
scruffy appearance, his unshaven face looking haggard with dark circles punctuating
his eyes. When he was dressed again, he came out from behind the screen holding his
wet clothes.
“Just drop them outside my door. Gracey will pick them up in the morning.”
When he closed the door, Alsandair turned around to find Renaud offering him a
seat. He sat down and ran a hand through his wet hair.
“How long have you and your lady been Joined?” Renaud asked.
“Not quite two weeks,” Alsandair replied.
Renaud shook his head. “This just keeps getting better and better,” he muttered.
“Does that make a difference?”
“The longer the marriage, the better it would have been but we’ll have to work with
what we have,” the pirate captain answered.
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Alsandair narrowed his eyes. “Why are you helping me?” he asked. “What are you
getting out of this?”
Renaud had been preparing for bed when Devin had come to report. His shirt was
unbuttoned and he was barefoot. He brought one foot up on the chair seat and rested
his wrist on it. “Louis Corsair is a friend of mine,” he stated. “I’ve known him for ten
years now. Not once in those ten years has he ever put me into a position like this one. I
doubt he knows your Joining was performed at sea.”
“Is that important?”
“Aye,” Renaud said. “Very important. To the Brotherhood, that means your Joining
was sanctioned by the gods of the deep. That’s just one more point in your favor when
you go before them to ask for her to be returned to you.”
“One more point? What other point is there?”
Renaud smiled. “You will have my support.” He held up his hand when Alsandair
would have asked why. “I’m not happy with Louis right now and anything I can do to
thwart what he had in mind for you will suit me just fine.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Louis didn’t tell me the whole story when he asked me to come fetch you. He just
said there was a man on Clare Island who had insulted his family and needed to be
punished for doing so. I had no reason to question him and wouldn’t have if my first
mate hadn’t imparted to me what had happened a few days before.”
“You mean Andre firing on Louis?”
Renaud nodded. “Louis was coming to kill you,” he said.
“I figured as much.”
“I spend my time on the north side of Wicklaw Cay,” Renaud told him. “I’ve no
desire to be anywhere near the riffraff who live on the main part of the Cay. I rely on
my men to tell what they think might be of interest to me and when Boucharde
informed me of what was going on between the Corsairs, I wasn’t a happy man. Had I
known about it before we were halfway to Clare Island, I would have turned around
and gone home. I didn’t however know there was a woman involved until you and I
spoke.”
“You said Corsair had something in mind for me.”
“I was to take you directly to him without Andre knowing about it. That in itself
should have been a warning but I didn’t pay any heed to it. I imagine that once I
delivered you into Louis’ hands, he would have cut your throat, dropped your body in
a lime pit and that would have been the end of it.” He grinned nastily. “He won’t be
expecting me to bring the rest of the men from the Mary Constance to the Cay either.”
“You don’t fear him?”
“Louis?” Renaud asked with a laugh. “No, but Andre is a different matter.”
“In what way?”
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Renaud sobered. “Farrell, when we reach the Cay, Andi Corsair will do one of three
things.” He held up the thumb of the hand resting on his knee, fingers curled into a fist.
“He’ll either ignore you or—” he extended his index finger “—he’ll challenge you to a
duel or—” his middle finger shot out “—he will have his men truss you up like a feast
goose and take you as far from the Cay as they can get you. Most likely all the way back
to Anlusia.” He spread his fingers. “My guess is the latter because he doesn’t want his
lady—”
“My lady,” Alsandair snarled.
“He doesn’t want her to hate him because something happened to you.”
“I can handle a sword, Renaud,” Alsandair said.
“Not as well as Andre Corsair, you can’t,” Renaud said. “I’ve never seen any man
as good as him, Farrell. There isn’t a pirate alive who would go up against him.”
“Not even you?”
“Not even me.”
Alsandair locked gazes with the pirate. “I know who you really are.”
Renaud’s green eyes narrowed. “Is that so?”
“I recognized you as soon as I saw you.”
The two men stared at one another for a long time, neither blinking. When Renaud
broke the silence between them, he did it with steely resolve in his deep voice.
“Utter one word about what you think you know, Farrell, and you won’t have to
worry about Andre or Louis Corsair. I’ll fillet you and feed you to the sharks.”
“Your secret is safe with me, Your Grace,” Alsandair said.
“It had best be.”
Alsandair watched his companion get up and go to a table where crystal decanters
sat. Renaud poured two snifters of brandy. He gave one to Alsandair then sat down
again.
“You will need to join the Brotherhood,” the pirate said. “There’s no getting around
that. Once you do, you’ll be an outlaw and you’ll never be able to go home to Anlusia.”
“I understand that,” Alsandair said, taking a sip of the potent liquor.
“The Brotherhood isn’t about to take the lady in question away from Andre. He is a
much respected, greatly feared leader but—”
“I want my woman back!” Alsandair snarled.
“Will you let me finish?” Renaud snapped at him. “I am about to tell you how you
can do that.” He frowned. “At least in a way.”
“What do you mean in a way?”
“Despite the fact the world believes us criminals, there are laws the Brotherhood
lives by. Some of those laws govern conduct, the holding of property, the distribution of
assets, that sort of thing. One of the laws that is as old as the Brotherhood itself but one
that has rarely been used but it’s still in the Book of Rules and Regulations. It is called
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Se Tenir Conjointement. Once you have joined the Brotherhood and after your maiden
voyage as one of us, you can invoke that law. Until then, you must not mention it to
anyone. If Louis finds out, he’ll do everything in his power to keep the law from being
invoked.”
“What does that law entail?” Alsandair asked.
Renaud w
inced as though he didn’t relish answering. “Se Tenir Conjointement
means to be held jointly,” he finally replied. “It means you and Andre will share the
lady equally.”
“Share her equally,” Alsandair repeated, his brows drawn together. “You don’t
mean—”
“Six months out of the year she will live with you. The other six months she will
live with him.”
Alsandair exploded out of his chair, the brandy sloshing over his fist. “The hell she
will!”
“Sit down, Farrell,” Renaud said calmly.
“She is my wife!” Alsandair said. He was quivering with outrage. “I’ll not share her
with any man!”
“Even if that’s the only way you will be allowed to have her?” Renaud inquired.
There was deep hurt on the younger man’s face and his eyes were too bright as he
stood there staring down at Renaud.
“You are already sharing her, Alsandair,” Renaud said. He was speaking in a soft,
reasonable voice. “There really is no other way for you to be with her.”
“I won’t… I can’t…”
“What if she is carrying Andre’s child?” Renaud asked.
Alsandair had obviously not thought of that for the color drained from his face and
he sat back down in the chair, his eyes wide, mouth open.
“Take a sip of your brandy,” Renaud advised.
The Anlusian warrior didn’t hesitate. He lifted the snifter and drained the fiery
liquid. He sat there holding the empty snifter in his hand, staring bleakly down into it
as though the answers he sought could be found in its crystal bowl.
“Obviously Andre cares deeply for the lady else he would not have Joined with her
before the Brotherhood. Such a step is irrevocable and not taken lightly. Few pirates
ever legally marry their women,” Renaud said.
“Why buy the cow when you can milk her for free?” Alsandair mumbled. He
looked up at Renaud. “What kind of man is he?”
“He’s a good man, actually. I can promise you he will be treating her with the care
and respect she deserves as his wife. Believe me, Andi would never have fired on Louis
if he didn’t have very strong feelings for the lady and wanted nothing to upset her,
which your dying would have.”
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“She’s an easy woman to love,” Alsandair said softly. “She agreed to go with him if
he wouldn’t harm us.”
“That in itself is rare for a Corsair,” Renaud said. “Did Striker tell Andre he was
Khalid al-Rashid’s brother?”
“Aye, he did. I think he said we were under Khalid’s protection.”
“Then that’s another kettle of fish altogether. Andre wouldn’t have put the crew to
the sword knowing that.”
“You mean my lady sacrificed herself for nothing?” Alsandair asked.
“I wouldn’t say that. My guess is Andi would have taken her anyway.”
“This is a living hell,” the younger man whispered.
“But one you can overcome if you’re willing to do what it takes,” Renaud
suggested. “You have to decide what is more important to you—your woman or your
pride.”
Alsandair sat there for a long, long time, his eyes moving back and forth as he
thought and rethought his options. Outside the storm raged, rain beating against the
portholes, the weather as turbulent as the thoughts crowding his mind. He was grateful
Renaud did not speak, did not try to coerce him further. The pirate was allowing him to
make his own decision and though it galled him, he realized there was really only one
that would allow him to be with Rylee. When at last he looked up—his face pinched
and drawn—he had made his decision.
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Chapter Seventeen
Rouyce, the Mock brothers and Prescott were biding their time, surreptitiously
watching L’endroit Sûr and the woman who lived there for their chance to abduct her.
What little coin they could scrounge was through gambling and the lifting of an
occasional purse from one of the passengers or crew of the neutral ships—those
merchant ships that came often to Wicklaw Cay to buy stolen merchandise from the
pirates to sell at an ungodly markup in foreign ports. Now and again the three men
would take the dilapidated sloop they’d inherited by nefarious means from a fellow
pirate out past the reef to drop a net but what little catch they brought in was for their
own use. They lived from hand to mouth.
“I’ll be damned. Is that the Perdu?” Mock asked, nudging a tobacco-stained chin
toward the water.
The masthead of Noel Renaud’s ship was known throughout the pirate kingdom
and to see the sleek brigantine that was the flagship of Renaud’s fleet coming into the
bay on that side of the Cay was highly unusual.
“Since when does His Lord High and Mighty bring one of his ships into our
harbor?” Prescott sneered.
Sailors and islanders were stopping what they were doing to watch the Perdu as she
made her way towards the docks.
“Corsair,” Rouyce mumbled, and his two companions turned to see the elder of the
Corsair brothers striding past. He waited until Louis was out of earshot and cursed him,
hawking a wad of phlegm in the captain’s wake. “Bastard.”
“What you reckon Renaud is doing here?” Mock inquired.
“Bringing in a shipment of somethin’,” Prescott commented. “It’s happened a’fore.”
“Let’s mosey on down and find out for ourselves,” Rouyce suggested. He hitched
up his ragged breeches.
“Not that often,” Mock said. “Come on, Nealon.”
The mute nodded eagerly.
By the time the Perdu was tied fast to her moorings, a large crowd had gathered.
Questions were yelled out at Renaud’s crew but his men only shrugged. They were well
trained and loyal and even if they knew what was happening, wouldn’t comment about
it.
It was Louis Corsair stomping across the Perdu’s gangplank and going below to the
captain’s cabin that had those assembled buzzing like a disturbed beehive. People were
craning their necks, pointing at Renaud’s ship, making speculations. The longer Louis
remained onboard, the longer it took for Captain Renaud to appear, the wilder those
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speculations became so that when Devin Boucharde, the Perdu’s first mate, came
strolling off the ship, he was bombarded with a cacophony of questions—all of which
he ignored as he continued up the pier and to the stable.
“Whatcha wanna bet he’s going to L’endroit Sûr?” Prescott asked.
“To fetch the younger Corsair?” Rouyce asked.
When Boucharde came out of the stable leading a roan gelding, mounted and took
the pathway up to L’endroit Sûr, the noise from the crowd increased to a low roar.
“Aye, that’s exactly what Dev’s doing,” Prescott said. “He’s goin’ after Andre
Corsair sure as shit.”
“And the good captain will be leaving that pretty little wife of his’n all alone out
there,” Mock put in. He cocked his head toward the two women from L’endroit Sûr who
had come into town for market day.
“Don’t reckon anybody but old Gaston will be left out
there to mind the little chit,”
Prescott added.
The four men looked at one another and grinned nastily. Nealon Mock licked his
rubbery lips for the one thing he was truly good at was killing things. He’d spent a
lifetime trapping, torturing and mutilating helpless creatures.
While the crowd mumbled in excitement about what was transpiring onboard the
Perdu, the four ragtag rogues vanished behind a warehouse and melded into the jungle
beyond.
* * * * *
Alsandair had been warned by Renaud not to speak when Louis Corsair arrived.
He’d bathed, shaved, had Renaud’s steward trim his hair and had been declared
presentable. He’d been cautioned repeatedly that the man coming to visit was
dangerous and would look for any slight he could use against Alsandair to call him out.
“Keep your mouth shut and your eyes down,” Renaud had advised. “Let me
handle this.”
As the heavy footfalls thumped down the companionway, Alsandair tensed,
digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands. He was standing to Renaud’s
right—behind the captain’s desk—and listening to his heart pounding in his ears.
“He is a dangerous man,” Renaud said softly. “Don’t forget that for one minute,
Sandair.”
That the pirate had used his nickname did not escape Alsandair. He was surprised
to find he was beginning to like and respect Noel Renaud and unless the man proved to
be false, he thought they could easily become friends. Kyle—on the other hand—had no
use for the pirate and had made it clear there would never be anything but animosity
between them.
“I don’t trust him,” Kyle had stated emphatically. “There’s something about him
that just doesn’t ring true.”
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Alsandair glanced at the gambler. Kyle was standing on the other side of Renaud’s
desk and Captain Andelton was seated in one of the two chairs flanking that desk. Ataa
and the crew of the Mary Constance were somewhere below deck, being carefully
watched by Renaud’s quartermaster.
There was a short rap on the door of the captain’s cabin then the portal opened to
reveal a tall, bulky man with a face like an angry bull.
“You brought back the entire fucking crew of the Mary Constance?” Louis Corsair
demanded, his lips skinned back from stained teeth.
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