The Rebellious Red
The Ravishing Rees Book #4
A Pirates of Britannia World Novel
Rosamund Winchester
Copyright © 2019 Rosamund Winchester
Kindle Edition
This work was made possible by a special license through the Pirates of Britannia Connected
World publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by DragonMedia Publishing, Inc. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Pirates of Britannia connected series by Kathryn Le Veque and Eliza Knight remain exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Kathryn Le Veque and/or Eliza Knight, or their affiliates or licensors. All characters created by the author of this novel remain the copyrighted property of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
Published by DragonMedia, Inc.
The Pirates of Britannia World
Seduced by the Pirate
by Maggi Andersen
God of the Seas
by Alex Aston
Lord Corsair
by Sydney Jane Baily
Stolen by Starlight
by Avril Borthiry
The Righteous Side of Wicked
by Jennifer Bray-Weber
The de Wolfe of Wharf Street
by Elizabeth Ellen Carter
The Pirate’s Jewel
by Ruth A. Casie
The Blood Reaver
by Barbara Devlin
The Pirate’s Temptation
by Tara Kingston
Savage of the Sea
The Sea Devil
by Eliza Knight
Leader of Titans
Sea Wolfe
by Kathryn Le Veque
The Marauder
by Anna Markland
The Sea Lyon
The Sea Lord: Devils of the Deep
by Hildie McQueen
Pearls of Fire
by Meara Platt
Plunder by Knight
by Mia Pride
The Seafaring Rogue
The Sea Hellion
by Sky Purington
Laird of the Deep
by B.J. Scott
Raider of the Deep
by Jennae Vale
The Ravishing Rees
The Savage Sabre
The Beast of Blades
The Rebellious Red
by Rosamund Winchester
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
The Pirates of Britannia World
Dedication
The Legend of the Pirates of Britannia
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
About the Author
Dedication
For Alex Trebek. Where would I be without your wit and facial hair?
The Legend of the Pirates of Britannia
In the year of our Lord 854, a wee lad by the name of Arthur MacAlpin set out on an adventure that would turn the tides of his fortune, for what could be more exciting than being feared and showered with gold?
Arthur wanted to be king. A sovereign as great as King Arthur, who came hundreds of years before him. The legendary knight who was able to pull a magical sword from stone, met ladies in lakes, and vanquished evil with a vast following who worshipped him. But while that King Arthur brought to mind dreamlike images of a round table surrounded by chivalrous knights and the ladies they romanced, MacAlpin wanted to summon night terrors from every babe, woman, and man.
Aye, MacAlpin, king of the pirates of Britannia would be a name most feared. A name that crossed children’s lips when the candles were blown out at night. When a shadow passed over a wall, was it the pirate king? When a ship sailed into port in the dark hours of night, was it him?
As the fourth son of the conquering Pictish King Cináed, Arthur wanted to prove himself to his father. He wanted to make his father proud, and show him that he, too, could be a conqueror. King Cináed was praised widely for having run off the Vikings, for saving his people, for amassing a vast and strong army. No one would dare encroach on his conquered lands when they would have to face the end of his blade.
Arthur wanted that, too. He wanted to be feared. Awed. To hold his sword up and have devils come flying from the tip.
So, it was on a fateful summer night in 854 that, at the age of ten and nine, Arthur amassed a crew of young and roguish Picts and stealthily commandeered one of his father’s ships. They blackened the sails to hide them from those on watch and began an adventure that would last a lifetime and beyond.
The lads trolled the seas, boarding ships and sacking small coastal villages. In fact, they even sailed so far north as to raid a Viking village in the name of his father. By the time they returned to Oban, and the seat of King Cináed, all of Scotland was raging about Arthur’s atrocities. Confused, he tried to explain, but his father would not listen and would not allow him back into the castle.
King Cináed banished his youngest son from the land, condemned his acts as evil and told him he never wanted to see him again.
Enraged and experiencing an underlying layer of mortification, Arthur took to the seas, gathering men as he went, and building a family he could trust that would not shun him. They ravaged the sea as well as the land—using his clan’s name as a lasting insult to his father for turning him out.
The legendary Pirate King was rumored to be merciless, the type of vengeful pirate who would drown a babe in his mother’s own milk if she didn’t give him the pearls at her neck. But like most rumors, they were mostly steeped in falsehoods meant to intimidate. In fact, there may have been a wee boy or two he saved from an untimely fate. Whenever they came across a lad or lass in need, as Arthur himself had once been, they took them into the fold.
One ship became two. And then three, four, five, until a score of ships with blackened sails roamed the seas.
These were his warriors. A legion of men who adored him, respected him, followed him, and, together, they wreaked havoc on the blood ties that had sent him away. And generations upon generations, country upon country, they would spread far and wide until people feared them from horizon to horizon. Every pirate king to follow would be named MacAlpin, so his father’s banishment would never be forgotten.
Forever lords of the sea. A daring brotherhood, where honor among thieves reigns supreme, and crushing their enemies is a thrilling pastime.
These are the pirates of Britannia, and here are their stories….
Prologue
The Heather Bell
Off the coast of Wales
1424 A.D.
It was the silence she noticed first…and then the stillness. It seemed that, though the sun had risen from its slumber, neither the wind nor the sea herself had been roused from their beds.
But neither the silence nor the stillness lasted all that long.
“Rose, love, get back down below decks! ’Tis too dangerous up here
!” her father yelled, his usually booming voice barely audible through the angry screaming of the storm. The waves battered the ship, lifting it and throwing it as if it were a mere toy, and they were growing tired of playing with it.
The ship pitched violently, and she gasped, her mind echoing with the sounds of her pounding heart.
What am I doin’? What did I come up here for?
Just after dawn, she’d clamored on deck, seeking her papa out. She’d had a restless night, the swelling and abating of the sea a jarring lullaby. Her mama hadn’t slept well, either, but she’d remained below decks in their small shared cabin, the one they’d purchased for the long voyage from Scotland to Wales.
Once on deck, the violent orange and purple painting the horizon stole her attention, the colors a vivid contrast to the dark, ominous gray billowing along to collide with it.
A storm.
Arriving as quickly as it had appeared, she watched the storm stalk them. She stood, frozen in place, her bare toes curling, almost as if she could find purchase on the wooden planks beneath her feet.
A yell split the air, shocking her from her thoughts, and her focus was immediately recaptured by the sight of her father, her darling papa, struggling to make his way to where she was pressed against the mast, her thin arms wrapped around it as if to embrace it. Her papa’s large frame was hunched against the wind, his usually bright red hair black from the inundation of water pouring over the side of the ship.
“Rose! Get below! Now!” her papa’s voice was all but snatched away by a gust of wind. But she’d heard him. She knew what he wanted her to do, and she knew she had to do it, but her feet remained affixed to the deck, her heart thundering, her chest tight.
That soon changed, though, when another wave crashed against the starboard side. Her small body flew sideways, slamming into the deck and sliding until she hit the railing on the leeward side.
“Rose!” her papa screamed. Stunned by the impact, she failed to raise her head. She blinked, the water in her face plastering the lengths of her hair to her cheeks and eyelashes.
“Papa,” she squeaked, attempting to rise.
He was there in an instant, his strong arms easily lifting her, though her legs fought to hold her upright.
“Darlin’, ye need tae go tae yer mother,” her papa rasped against her ear. “I dinnae want ye up here. ’Tisn’t safe fer ye—”
His words were cut off by a loud crack as the ship heaved to the side, nearly sending all on the deck into the water. Around her, men were scrambling to secure the rigging and themselves. Shouts mingled with the claps of thunder and the crashing of the waves, a cacophony of the sea god’s music.
Trembling, her body chilled to the bone, Rose curled into her papa’s chest, the fleeting warmth of his embrace a miniscule comfort, for all the world around her was tumbling.
Another crack shook the ship. The rope holding the barrels of lamp oil secure snapped, and the barrel in front rolled free just as the ship heaved, sending the barrel into the air. When the barrel smashed into the deck, everything went terribly wrong.
The oil spread quickly, making the already perilous deck that much more dangerous. The wooden planks beneath her bare feet were slick.
She lost her footing. Her father lost his hold.
He screamed, the sound of terror snatched up by the gale.
She tumbled backward over the railing, her thin arms flailing uselessly. The water caught her, then immediately devoured her.
The world went quiet. It grew dark behind her eyes.
Chapter One
The Bearded Lady
Port Eynon Bay, Wales
1446 A.D.
“Goddamn, woman! How the hell did ye do that?” the scowling man bellowed, his purplish-red face pock-marked, his wide eyes unfocused as he stared down at his mate, unconscious on the floor beneath the table.
She shrugged. “When they tell tales of me, they do not exaggerate—you should have known that, Wickey,” she drawled, her words perfectly pronounced even though she’d just thrown back her tenth shot of whiskey.
She’d woken with a taste for whiskey, had stumbled down the stairs from her room and into the pub, and had gratified her thirst. Too bad she couldn’t do it in peace, not with two of the three ship crews puttering around town, looking for pleasure and trouble, and sometimes those things were the same.
Wickey, the old goat, sneered, his front teeth missing.
“So yer a mermaid, then, with swords fer tits, and a quim made of solid gold.” He stuck out his chest, crossing his arms and raising his chin, taunting her. The old bastard.
She gasped, pressing a hand to her neck in feigned shock. “Who told you that?” she asked sharply.
Chuckling to himself—a sound very much like a ship’s hull scraping against a sandbar—Wickey glanced at the crowd that had gathered for the drinking contest, his grin big.
“Ye mean ’tisn’t true, then?” he asked, his lips curling into another sneer. He thought he had her, the fool.
Rose almost rolled her eyes. Instead, she shrugged, casting Wickey a bored expression, one she’d perfected over the years. “Nay, I only asked so that I could thank the man properly. God doesn’t give a woman a golden quim without expecting her to use it.”
The crowd erupted into guffaws and Rose leaned back in her chair, winking at Wickey whose face was doing an atrocious imitation of a roasted fish. Red, bloated, and with protruding eyes.
Blubbering, Wickey picked up a tankard and tossed it across the room, narrowly missing Burgess, the bar keep.
“Oi, ye git!” Burgess bellowed, making everyone in the bar flinch, except Rose, of course. She knew Burgess was all bark and some growling, but he didn’t bite. Often.
“Come now, Burgess,” Rose called, “he’s only mad that my swords are bigger than his.”
Again, the crowd erupted, the laughter making the few other bar occupants turn to stare from their corner table. There were two of them, rough looking men, their beards as thick as their necks.
Rose had noticed them when she’d come downstairs. She noticed everything. It was part of what made her such a damn good “whisperer”; the one Rees tasked with listening at keyholes, hiding in shadows, and sharing all the juicy bits she uncovered with her cousin, Saban, the Brenin—King—of their family business.
Smuggling. And occasionally piracy. And sometimes murder. But never of the innocent.
The men in the corner continued their murmured conversation, but their gazes remained on her, their expressions unreadable. She mentally shrugged; she didn’t care what they were talking about or why they were looking at her. If they were in Port Eynon Bay, in the Bearded Lady, they knew her family, they knew her, and they knew better than to piss in her drink.
Picking up the nearly empty tumbler in front of her, she threw back the last of the whiskey, the burn like a tickle in her throat.
His face redder than the kerchief around his bloated neck, Wickey turned tail and lumbered from the room, leaving his mate on the floor, under the table. The soused man was groaning in his stupor, and Rose wanted to laugh about it. But the laughter wouldn’t come, not real laughter, only the forced laughter. True merriment had fled her soul long ago.
Sighing, she waved off the remaining crowd with a single movement of her arm, clearing the area around her table. Leaving her in peace.
Peace? She snorted.
Leaning back in her chair, she caught sight of one of the unknown men tipping his chin in her direction, a glint of curiosity in his dark eyes.
For the first time that day, she allowed her own curiosity to lead her, pushing her chair back and standing. Without hesitation, she strode to the corner, stopping just before their table. She stared down at them, they stared up at her, and the man on the right’s gaze flicked down to her breasts.
Hell, he wasn’t the first one to do that, but something about what he was doing felt…strange.
Unthinkingly, she slid her fingers up over the golden lock
et which was cradled in the crease of her bosom, the golden chain from which it dangled snagged in the wisps of red hair that had come loose from her braid.
Drawing herself up to her full height—which was not much taller than the underbelly of a sixteen-hand horse, she let the man look his fill. The man on the other side of the table pursed his lips, his gaze flicking between his friend and Rose.
“Is there something you want from me, stranger?” she finally asked, her voice clearer than you’d think it would be after a full bottle of Scotch whiskey.
The man’s lips quirked.
“Aye, I might,” he answered, his Scottish brogue easy to recognize.
Disbelief made her lips curl, and she crossed her arms, making her breasts all the more prominent. When she dragged herself from her bed, she hadn’t cared that her shirt was the same one she’d worn over the last week, or that the buttons meant to secure the thing all the way up to her neck were unfastened to just between where her breasts met her abdomen. For some reason, the urge to pull the shirt closed prodded her, but she stabbed it, unwilling to change anything about anything right in that moment.
It took too much energy…and she had to care enough. Which she didn’t.
“What do you think I can give you? Unlike my cousins, I don’t like giving away what I can sell. For outrageous amounts.” A smile tilted her lips.
The men both chuckled, but the one of the right stopped quickly, his gaze, once again, falling on her breasts. No. Not her breasts, the locket. The one thing from her hazy past that her grandfather told her to keep. It had been a part of her memory for as long as she could remember, and that first thing she could remember was waking up on the beach, a dark-haired man staring down at her, his large hand cupping her face with a gentleness that didn’t match the cold glinting in his sea green eyes.
Grasping the locket between her fingers, she glowered at the man.
“You won’t be having this, if that is what you’re after,” she practically growled.
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