But no. Dick had to bloody go and attack a harmless merchant vessel that had the bad luck of getting in The Growler’s way.
Martin stepped aside, gesturing for the doe-eyed woman he’d cornered in the cabin to go up the ladder ahead of him. She sent him a furtive glance, clutching something that looked like a destroyed book to her chest, and scrambled out into the early morning light. As she passed him, the scent of faded flowers filled his nose, causing his breeches to pull tight. Damn him, but he had to pull himself together. Immediately. Though climbing the ladder directly behind her when all she wore was a shift did nothing to help that effort. The angle of his ascent did nothing to hide her deliciously long legs and the…. He blinked. The bruised flesh of her thighs?
A flash of fury hit him like a lightning bolt as he reached the deck, but he barely had time to breathe, let alone ponder how such a lovely creature had ended up with such clear signs of abuse.
“Captain, Captain!” Jolly, the gangly ten-year-old who had stowed away on The Growler five years earlier and who had refused to leave the ship since then, shouted, skittering across the deck toward him. “Captain, Mr. Killian wants to talk to you at once.”
Martin stopped short, shaking his head. “Mister who?”
“One of the prisoners, Captain. A posh one at that.” Jolly practically jumped up and down, his eyes alight with excitement.
“It’s Lord Killian, actually,” the woman said in a voice that was as soothing as a siren.
Martin felt himself flush with long-ignored lust and turned his attention to the woman. She hadn’t run over to join the rest of the women—who were whimpering and weeping in each other’s arms near the fo’c’sle. She stood just a few feet to the side, her shift blowing around her shapely calves, watching with a slight frown.
For a moment, Martin forgot what Jolly was saying to him. “Is this Lord Killian a friend of yours?” he asked, unaccountably jealous.
She shook her head. “A fellow passenger.”
The way she lowered her head sadly made Martin want to question her further. He wanted to ask her name and her purpose for being on the ship, whether she was attached, whether she wanted to settle down on a remote island in the middle of nowhere and bear him nine strong sons. He wanted to kick himself in his own arse too. He’d definitely been on the high seas without a woman in sight for far too long.
Instead, he nodded to the woman, then marched off, following Jolly’s increasingly urgent beckoning.
Five steps later, he realized the woman was following them.
“Go join the rest of the women,” Martin ordered her over his shoulder with a scowl. The scowl was more for the fact that his heart had begun to dance a joyful jig at the idea she wanted to stay close to him, even after he’d behaved like a…well, like a pirate, and kissed her. Or perhaps that wasn’t his heart.
“You may need help speaking with Lord Killian,” she said in a quiet voice.
The men from the merchant ship had been moved to the quarterdeck. Martin stopped at the base of the ladder and turned to the woman. “I’ve never needed help speaking to another man before,” he said.
She didn’t talk back. She didn’t have to. The look she gave him—shy and humble, but as firm as iron and clearly communicating that he didn’t know what he was talking about—said it all.
He blew out a breath. “What is your name?”
“Lettuce,” she answered.
Martin blinked and shook his head. “That is a vegetable, not a name.”
“Lady Lettuce Marlowe,” she said.
“How dare you, you little whore?” a man snarled from the railing at the edge of the quarterdeck. “Your name is Mrs. Lettuce Pigge, and you will not forget it.”
The woman, Lettuce, shrank into herself, shoulders hunched, like a dog who had been kicked too many times. Martin raised his scowl to the man named Pigge, fury hotter than Hades burning in his gut. Now he knew where the bruises came from. He grabbed hold of the rail and pulled himself up the ladder to the quarterdeck. A few more steps brought him face to face with Pigge. Or rather, face to collar. Pigge was nearly a foot shorter than him. As soon as the wretch realized Martin had observed everything he’d said to Lettuce, he let out a sound like the animal that had given him his name and staggered backward.
That was all Martin had time for. A man in what appeared to be a silk dressing gown with gray hair and a haughty frown broke away from the cluster of male passengers grouped on one side of the deck.
“This is an outrage,” the man bellowed, puffed up as though he thought he were the Prince of Wales himself. “I demand that you and your scurrilous band of miscreants release us at once.”
“Father.” A younger but equally hoity-toity man stepped forward. He held back when one of Martin’s men drew a sword and blocked his path. “Now is not the time,” he hissed to his father all the same.
“This is precisely the time,” Lord Killian—or so Martin assumed the gray-haired man was—blustered on. “I refuse to be waylaid by someone as low and pathetic as a pirate.”
“He must be a gentleman of some sort,” Lettuce said, clutching her book as though it were a shield. “He’s well-spoken.”
Martin lifted his eyebrows as he stared at her. Was that why she had allowed him to kiss her instead of screaming in terror? If so, he figured he’d better start talking to see if his refined accent eased the situation at all.
“Who are you, sir, and why are you irritating me and my crew with your complaints?”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“How dare you, you brigand, you scurvy coward, you—”
“Silence!”
The shout came from Dick, who charged across the deck from where he’d been overseeing the disarming and restraint of the merchant ship’s crew. Dick held a cocked pistol in front of him and pointed it straight at Lord Killian. He didn’t stop his progress across the deck until he’d grabbed the annoying lord by the arm and held the barrel of his pistol to his head.
Lord Killian turned white as a sheet, his mouth flapping like the sails above them. “I…how dare you…you cannot do this to me,” he managed to say in spite of his obvious fright. “I am an earl.”
Martin opened his mouth to censure both men, but before he could, Dick fired. Blood and brains splattered over the deck. Lord Killian’s lifeless body dropped to the floor.
“Now you’re a corpse,” Dick sneered.
All hell broke loose. The crew of the merchant ship erupted into furious protest. The male passengers either joined them in shocked protest or bent double, hurling up their stomachs. One man fainted dead away. The younger Lord Killian merely gaped at his father’s body, going as pale as the old man had been. Behind Martin, screams echoed up from the female prisoners that were followed by more screams and wailing.
Lettuce had frozen completely, her eyes wide with horror, her knuckles white where she gripped her book.
“Dick,” Martin bellowed, glaring daggers at his first mate. “What the devil was that for?”
“The man was a threat,” Dick shouted right back.
“He was an old man in a dressing gown,” Martin roared.
“He had a knife in his hand,” Dick shouted louder, pointing the smoking pistol at the corpse.
Sure enough, the dead lord had a long, wicked-looking blade, half concealed in his hand. Still, Martin didn’t think he could have done any real damage. It would have taken two seconds to disarm the old fool.
“You didn’t have to kill him,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “He wasn’t—”
A cry rose up from the merchant ship’s crewmen. They hadn't been as well-secured as Martin thought they were. They leapt away from the corner where a few of his men had been guarding them and lunged at whoever they could. There was a short, devastating flash of activity. Shots were fired, both by the crewmen and by Martin’s own men. The majority of the crewmen and two of Martin’s men fell in bloody piles on the deck. More screams from the women split the air. Th
e majority of the male passengers ducked or scrambled to get out of the way.
Pigge leapt toward Lettuce. “Now, woman,” he shouted, grabbing her arm.
Martin didn’t know if Pigge meant to use Lettuce as a shield or whether he thought the two of them could make some sort of escape, or even whether he thought Lettuce would fight the pirates to save him. There wasn’t time to know any of it. Before Pigge do more than clamp Lettuce’s arm, Martin drew his pistol and fired, hitting the blackguard square between the eyes. Pigge fell to the deck, instantly dead.
“Dammit,” Martin hissed, lowering his weapon. “I’m sorry,” he blurted, leaning toward Lettuce. “God, I’m so, so sorry. It was reflex. The fight. I didn’t mean to—”
“Thank God,” she wailed. “Thank God Almighty.” She dropped to her knees, then curled in on herself and her book, weeping like Martin had never seen a woman weep before. And it wasn’t the kind of terrified weeping that the rest of the female passengers were currently engaged in either. Lettuce’s tears were so obviously tears of joy that Martin felt both proud and miserable at the same time.
Whatever the drama was that he’d just ended for Lettuce, he had a far more serious problem on his hands.
“Cease this nonsense at once,” he boomed, holding his arms out to his men. “Every one of you, stand down!”
His command was, arguably, useless. The fight had ended as soon as it began. The result was that the majority of the merchant ship’s crew lay dead on the quarterdeck, along with Lord Killian and Pigge. Two of his men writhed in pain, one cradling his arm and one his leg where they had been shot. Already, they were being helped by their fellows.
“Dick,” Martin snapped, turning to face the clear instigator of the whole mess. “This was supposed to be a quiet journey home, but now I’ve got eight dead men to dispose of, a passel of terrified prisoners to deal with, and two of our best men injured.”
“And a merchant ship containing who knows what booty that is all ours now,” Dick argued. He took a step forward, coming to stand in direct opposition to Martin. “We’ll be rich beyond our wildest dreams now.”
“We were already rich after the capture of The Mercury,” Martin argued. “And we don’t know what’s in the merchant ship’s hold.”
“Silk,” Lettuce said, rising from her crouch, still clutching her book. Her face was red and puffy and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Silk,” she repeated. “And linen. And good English wool. Brocade. And French wine as well.” She was almost laughing as she rattled off the list. So much so that Martin feared for her sanity. “Pigge was determined to make a fortune in Charleston, but now it’s yours. Now it’s yours.” She heaved a sigh of relief and squeezed her eyes shut, as if saying a prayer of thanks.
Martin was too stunned by her incomprehensible reaction to reply.
Dick was not. “Did you hear that?” he asked, his eyes glowing with avarice, like a true pirate. “I told you it was a good idea to capture this ship. A fortune. We’ve captured a fortune.”
“We’ve captured a colossal problem,” Martin sighed. He held his pistol to the side, knowing that Jolly would rush up to take it, which he did. Then he rubbed his face with both hands. The sun was barely up, and already his head was throbbing. He pivoted to stare out over the center of his ship, to the dozen or so women huddled together. He glanced back to the horrified and outraged male passengers and the handful of remaining crewmen.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered. It was time to take the situation in hand. “Which one of you is, or was, the captain?” he asked the crewmen.
“That’s Captain Moone,” one of them said, pointing at one of the corpses that held a long knife.
“Excellent,” Dick said with a vicious smile. “Then the ship is ours.”
He was right, of course, but Martin was in no mood to encourage the man. All he did was nod.
“Clean this up,” he ordered his crew, gesturing to the carnage on the deck. “Secure the prisoners,” he continued to issue orders. “Move the women to The Growler. Dick, choose a dozen men to take the merchant ship. I want an inventory of the cargo by nightfall.”
As his men launched into motion around him, Martin began to move as well, he turned away from the dead men and strode to the railing at the edge of the deck. As he suspected, some of his less disciplined men were already pestering the female passengers.
“Keep your hands off of the women,” he shouted loud enough for everyone on the ship to hear. “No one touches them until we sort things out unless it’s to help them across from one ship to the other.”
A few moans of disappointment rang from the deck, just audible over the weeping of the women. He trusted his crew enough to hold off on the raping part of raping and pillaging, but only for so long. He turned back to Dick.
“Keep the male passengers secure here. The women will be held on The Growler. That should discourage anyone from attempting another revolt.” He spoke loud enough for the men of the merchant ship to hear him.
“What about me, Captain? What can I do?” Jolly asked, all wide eyes and eagerness.
Martin didn’t have the heart to order the boy to help dispose of the bodies. “I want you to help guard the women,” he said, starting toward the ladder and making his way down to the main deck, to where the women were already being helped across the tenuous bridge that had been made between the two ships when the merchant vessel was boarded. Jolly followed him, and to his surprise, Lettuce did as well. Though that very well could have been because she wanted to join the rest of the women at last.
The three of them crossed over to The Growler. It took a bit more work to coax, drag, or carry the rest of the women over. Once the task was done, the women clustered together near the mainmast, a tearful, terrified bundle of skirts and nightgowns. Lettuce calmly stepped into the group. Her head was lowered and her face hidden, but Martin could have sworn she wore a smile.
“You’re our prisoners now,” he told them all in a firm voice. “I would like to tell you that you’re safe, that no harm will come to you, and that you will be dropped at the nearest port.”
A grumble rose up from those of his men who were close enough to hear his pronouncement as they worked.
“I’d like to tell you that,” Martin went on, “but we’ve been at sea for months now without women and only one short stop in port. So if any of you have ever secretly fantasized about being ravished by a pirate, well, now is the time to have that fantasy fulfilled.”
The women’s wailing took on an entirely different tone. One or two of the poor things had gone pale and looked as though they’d been sentenced to the gallows. One or two had suddenly gone suspiciously quiet and were casting guilty looks at their fellow captives and curious ones at the pirates. Martin stole a peek at Lettuce, praying that she was one of those. Because he intended to have his way with her by nightfall, and he hoped to God she would be up for it. Most of the women were too stunned by his statement to react at all. And one….
“Good Lord, you’re not a woman.” Martin scowled, nudging the ladies at the front of the group aside, making his way to a stooped figure near the back. He gripped the person’s arm, knowing instantly the muscle was far too thick to be that of a woman. With a yank, he pulled whoever it was to the deck in front of the women.
Whoever it was turned out to be a man of decent height and slender build who just happened to be wearing a flowery gown and a frilly cap. He broke into a fool’s grin as soon as Martin dragged him out of hiding.
“It seems you’ve figured out my disguise,” the man said with a self-effacing grin. He held his arms to the sides and glanced down at his gown. “I was so certain I could get away with it. It seemed like the perfect way to go unnoticed, what with all the men being rounded up by you ravening pirates and all. I knew I shouldn’t have traveled away from home. I rarely travel these days, not even to London. But fortune favors the bold and all that, and my bride insisted. I never thought I could fit into a dress, but I suppose there’s a f
irst time for everything. It’s not all the way done up in the back, as you can see.” He turned to show Martin that, in fact, the dress’s ties barely reached behind the fool’s back. “It’s one of my bride’s gowns, you know. That’s her.” He turned to point to one of the wide-eyed women in the group of prisoners. “That’s Malvis. Strange name, I know, but she’s a terribly wonderful woman. We were just married days before setting sail on this journey, and what a journey it’s turned into. It reminds me of the trip I made when I was just a boy when my father took me to—”
“For the love of God, man. Quiet,” Martin shouted. The man in the dress snapped his mouth shut. Martin gawked at him. “Who the hell are you?”
“Ainsley,” the man said, extending his hand as though they were in a ballroom. “Lord Hugh Ainsley, Marquess of Biddlesford. I hardly ever bother with the title, though. It’s never done me any good anyhow. Never helped me to make friends and all that, though they say everyone falls all over themselves to make friends with marquesses and dukes and the like. People tend to keep their distance from me, though I’ve no idea why. That is why I am so in love with my darling Malvis. She’s quite the—”
“Enough.” Martin silenced him again, raising both hands as if warding off an attack. “Very well, Lord Ainsley. If you wish to disguise yourself as a woman, then you shall be treated like a woman.” He raised his voice loud enough for any of his men who worked nearby to hear. They would likely devise better ways to deal with the man than he ever could. “Get back with the others,” he ordered the fool.
“Yes, Captain. Whatever you say, Captain,” Ainsley answered with a broad smile and a cheery nod, bowing and curtsying his way back into the cluster of women—who were now all stunned to a stupefied silence.
Martin sighed and turned back to the merchant ship. Clean-up was well underway on the quarterdeck. He regretted every life that had been lost. His surgeon had come up from below to treat the two men with gunshot wounds who had been moved back to The Growler. The Growler was still lashed to the merchant ship as it had been for the attack, which meant they wouldn’t be sailing any farther that day. His men were already up in the rigging, securing the sails to stop any disasters from befalling. All that he had left to do was supervise the proceedings and marvel over how badly his morning had started.
The Captive Vixen Page 2