“My goodness,” Sully said. “It looks like your crew-of-one-hour is already sick of you, Edward.”
“Shut up, ye bastard! It’s ye we’re sick of, and that’s all of us to a man. Now tell us plain afore I cut yer heart out—why did ye go to the island?”
“To find the girl you let escape.”
“Don’t give me that bilge! Ye went to fetch the treasure. Give over, ye bastard, or I’ll chain ye to the keel.”
Sully moved to put the railing at his back and Ella wondered if he was thinking of jumping. “As I am presently pointing a gun at your head, Edward, you’ll excuse me if your threats don’t scare me.”
“Tell us where the treasure is, ye bilge-sucking pox, or we’ll swab the deck with your wench’s blood.”
“Why think you that I care about the wench?” he asked, but his voice was unsteady. “Besides, you’ll have to go through the giant first to get her and ‘your’ crew has made it clear that won’t happen.”
Clearly deciding a wheedling tone was the better approach, Toad lowered his gun as if to appear reasonable. “Have done, Sully,” he said calmly, “you know ye’ll never leave this ship alive. It’s thirty-five to one.”
“Who’ll be the first to rush me? You? I guarantee whoever it is will get a first-class ticket to Davy Jones’ Locker.”
“Stalemate,” Ella whispered, leaning back into Rowan and feeling the strength of his fingers as he gripped her waist.
Sully pulled out the diamond from his bag to gasps from the crew. He held it high to let the light catch it for all to see and then placed it on the ship railing. He touched it with the tip of his pistol. Ella saw the morning light dazzle through the gem, even in its uncut state.
“It’s Jan’s treasure,” Rowan said in wonder. “So he really had it after all.”
“And checkmate,” Ella said under her breath. She couldn’t resist grinning. What a cool piece of work this guy is! Nerves of effin’ granite.
“Let the girl go,” Sully said, nudging the diamond on the railing with his gun, “or your treasure goes overboard into the dark, inky depths never to be spent by anyone ever.”
“Ye would never!”
“Oh, Edward, how little you know me. Let her go—with the giant—or the largest uncut diamond in the world disappears to the bottom of the ocean.”
Some of the crew called out, “Go on, make haste, mkubwa, and take ‘er,” and began to move away as if to clear a path to the rope ladder and the dinghy waiting below.
Toad aimed his gun at the pair and shouted. “Avast, all of ye! No one leaves my ship.”
He turned back to Sully and pointed to the diamond sitting on the railing. “It ain’t in ye to throw away a prize like that,” he sneered. “Not for a wench. Besides, I have a matter to settle with her.”
Sully turned to the gathered men. “Did you all vote to sink your prize so your new captain could get his revenge on a wench?”
“Nay!” Ansel yelled, “we never!” A chorus of dissension erupted from the rest of the crew, who moved back in place to block Ella and Rowan from Toad’s sightline. “Touch ‘er, Mister Toad,” Ansel said, pulling his cutlass free of his belt, “and we’ll be voting fer a new cap’n—one that’s alive!”
In manic frustration, Toad turned back to Sully, raised his pistol and fired.
Ella screamed as she saw Sully stagger backward in a puff of sulfurous smoke and then fall to the deck. As if in slow motion, she saw the long barrel of his pistol nudge the duck egg-sized diamond sending it skittering over the railing into the ocean below.
An explosion of rage bellowed through the air as the crew realized what happened.
Ella jerked forward to see where Sully had fallen but was held fast by Rowan’s grip. Before she could pry herself free, the sound of a cannon blast deafened her and the topmast seemed to explode before them and fall hurtling to the deck, scattering the stunned men and hitting three.
She turned to look off the starboard bow to see one of Commodore Porter’s twenty-oared gun barges squatting on the shoal.
Toad stared, stunned, at the destruction of wood and broken lumber on the deck at their feet, the sounds of men howling and racing to grab up their weapons. “Ye said they wouldn’t dare attack us with the girl on board,” he said in a daze.
Ella watched in horror as ten gun ports in the barge’s side opened up and erupted fire. A full broadside of grapeshot and round shot ripped a hole in the Die Hard’s hull, pummeling it with such force that she instantly began to heel over. Thirty men lining the barge’s bulwarks and gunwales opened fire on the pirates with muskets and flintlocks.
Ella looked around desperately for a place to hide as musket balls thudded into the deck around her. Rowan grabbed her hand and yanked her at a run to the far side of the ship, which was listing severely now. They climbed to the railing, Rowan’s cutlass tucked under his arm and one hand around Ella, the other reaching for the bannister to pull them free of the melee.
The pirates, scrambling for their weapons, quickly returned fire with blunderbusses, blasting a wild spray of lead shot, nails and glass fragments. Even Ella could see the result was ineffective. The crew was panicked, taken totally off guard. There was no leader to urge them to man the four-pounders—their only hope—and no one to direct their man-to-man defense. Rudderless, the men reacted in fear and confused desperation.
When the first volley of the pirates’ sawed-off shotguns failed, Porter’s men responded with a salvo of musket fire. Ella screamed when she saw the fusillade sever the main mast and rip through the rigging and the ratlines, the cut ropes flashing and twisting through the air like spasmodic snakes. The topmast cracked and fell with a heavy explosion onto the main deck, scattering the pirates, many of whom leapt overboard.
Ella saw the cabin boy, Kip, stunned and rooted to the deck, staring at the onslaught with horror-filled eyes.
“Rowan!” Ella called. “The boy! He—”
But before Rowan could turn to look she saw the bullet that cut the child down. She watched him crumple to his knees and sag to the deck in a growing pool of his own blood.
“Ella, now!” Rowan roared, pulling her ahead of him and pushing her to the far side of the quarterdeck. “They’ll concentrate on the ship’s center. We need to get to the captain’s quarters.”
Ella watched more pirates jump from the ship and saw that some of Porter’s men were directing their aim into the water. She stumbled past Rowan toward the cabin.
“Going somewhere, mkubwa?” a voice snarled from the opposite side of the helm.
Ella recognized the voice and stopped, preferring to take her chances with a stray grapeshot on deck than the owner of that voice. She felt Rowan’s arm come in front of her and sweep her behind him in one fluid motion. The other hand held his cutlass pointed at the man rising up from a crouch by the helm.
“It’s over, Toad,” Rowan rasped. “They’ve got you now.”
“Aye, but mayhap I’ve got ye and the wench afore I die.”
Ella watched in horror as the man lunged at Rowan, a dagger in each hand. His face was contorted with madness and hate. She staggered backward at the assault and fell over a coil of rope on the deck.
Rowan stepped forward into the attack, deflecting one of the dagger’s downward arcs with his cutlass and twisting aside as the second one grazed his hip. Without flinching, Rowan drove the tip of his cutlass into the back of Toad’s neck as he fell with the forward trajectory of the blade. She was shocked to see Rowan’s killing blow, delivered without hesitation or thought. She heard Toad’s grunt as he collapsed to his knees, his shirt drenched in gore. Rowan kicked both daggers away and stepped over Toad as he crumpled to the deck.
“Ella, let’s go,” he called, his hand out to her.
Ella scrambled to her feet, her eyes still on Toad. She could see he was alive, but just. His eyes blinked and then closed. She grabbed Rowan’s hand and felt him pull her nearly off her feet and toward the cabin door. He jerked the door open
and, after a quick glance, pushed her inside.
Before he could leave, she grabbed his sleeve. “Rowan, no! Both of us, please!”
She saw the indecision flicker in his eyes. She had never seen him like this. He wants to go back to the fight.
She turned to the nightstand to look for the lighter. It was gone. She ran back to him. “You found it, didn’t you? The lighter?” she said. She saw in his eyes that he had. “We can leave now. We just need to stay alive long enough.”
“Wait for me, El,” he said, his eyes flicking from her face to the battle that raged on the main deck. The men on the barge weren’t bothering to board the Die Hard. It was pretty clear their intent was to sink her and kill everyone on the ship and in the water.
“Rowan, you can’t stop them and they don’t know you’re not one of them! Look how you’re dressed! Stay with me!”
He shrugged off her grip and turned to go. “I’ll be back,” he said over his shoulder.
Ella bolted from the cabin in time to see Rowan lean down and rip the sword from the scabbard on Toad’s body. He dropped his cutlass to the deck with a heavy thud and wheeled around to face an unknown assailant from behind the capstan. Ella couldn’t see whom he was fighting. With Toad dead and the Americans not bothering to leave their barge, he could only be fighting another of the pirates.
She grabbed at the splintering remains of the topmast for support; the stump felt hot where a cannonball had hit it. She ran to Rowan. She knew she would distract him if he saw her even out of the corner of his eye, so she edged carefully around to the other side of the helm, not sure what she was doing or why, just knowing she couldn’t stay in that cabin waiting for the worst.
Rowan was slashing wildly, viciously with his sword, any interest in style or swordsmanship—if he’d ever had any—was no longer evident. His combatant stood facing him in the shadows by the yardarm without moving, only his sword arm engaged. Even over the sounds of the screams and splashes and diminishing reports of musket fire, Ella heard the evil swish of the pirate’s sword as it sliced through the air intent on taking Rowan’s head off at the neck. She watched Rowan dance away from the reach of the wicked blade, missing contact with it by millimeters.
When Rowan turned to look at her, she realized she had been screaming.
“Ella, stay back!” he yelled hoarsely as he lunged at the pirate. That was when she saw the man twist from Rowan’s parry—and check his next charge.
He was hesitating.
When she turned to look at him fully, she knew before they locked eyes it was him.
Sully stood alone, immobile. His sword held in front of him like a color guard at a parade, his left arm a mass of blood where Toad’s bullet had caught him. His coat swirled wide around his shoulders like a magician’s cape, and when he looked at her, his eyes sad but honest, he smiled.
Without thinking, she ran to Rowan and slipped in front of him as he was bringing his sword back for another lunge. “Rowan, no!” She put her hands on his chest, praying he knew her, praying the killing lust would recognize her in time to stop his attack. “Rowan, you can’t.”
She didn’t know the man she married in that face, didn’t understand who this stranger was standing before her so ferocious, so intent, so determined to kill. She watched him struggle, his sword held high and ready but he was looking at her, not Sully.
“Rowan, you can’t,” she repeated. “He’s my grandfather. Sully is my grandfather. If you kill him, then I…and Tater…we…”
Slowly, Rowan’s arms sagged to his side. He stared dully at Sully, his mouth agape in shock and incomprehension and Ella slipped under his arm and held him close to her.
“I’m sorry, Ro,” she whispered. “You need to let him go.”
She turned to see Sully standing and watching them, his head cocked as if puzzled, his sword hanging at his side.
The battle on the main deck below was nearly over, with only the sound of single musket shots in the air as the members of the Mosquito Fleet picked off those few pirates still trying to swim to shore or to the single launch bobbing in the water by the quickly sinking Die Hard. Smoke curled up from below deck. Ella could smell burning cloth and flesh.
Rowan dropped his sword to the deck with a clang and put both arms around Ella. They stood together without moving facing Sully, who released his own sword and turned toward the slanting ship’s railing. The sun was nearly fully up now in the sky.
Sully glanced over the side rail to the water below, then, putting his hand on his wounded arm, he turned toward her one last time, blew her a kiss and jumped.
28
Every man jack of them either killed or captured. That’s what Commodore Porter assured them when he met with her and Rowan in Judge Morton’s offices three days after the attack on the Die Hard. She had been surprised the Commodore was as young as he was. His mission of ridding the Florida Straits of all pirates was now very nearly complete.
Rowan had been positively broody since the day Die Hard sank. When Ella ran up on deck to wave her petticoat at Porter’s men, she and Rowan were promptly escorted back to Thompson’s Island, where they were met by Judge Morton.
The judge apologized profusely for Ella’s terrible experience, and although mildly confused about the fact that she now appeared to be married, was very cordial to Rowan, too.
“It actually makes my other news a tad easier,” he said, straightening out the vest of his suit. “I’ll be announcing shortly Adele’s betrothal to Lord Bingham.”
“I’m happy for them both,” Ella said. I have a strong feeling they deserve each other. “Please tell her I will visit very soon to tell her so myself.”
“I’m sure she would like that.”
All pirates either killed or captured.
She told the Judge that she and Rowan had taken a room at the Casa Antigua and would be staying on Thompson’s Island for just a few weeks before traveling back to Boston and their family. It occurred to her to mention Daisy’s part in her kidnapping, but something kept her from revealing the woman’s role. The poor maid’s life was hard enough. God knows what drove her to do it. But as far as Ella was concerned, it was over and done.
She thanked the judge for his hospitality while she was indisposed, and for his quick action in contacting the authorities when he became aware of her abduction.
Every man jack of them…
Except one.
***
Rowan stretched out his legs from where he sat on the pine bench facing the harbor. Now that he was bathed and wearing a suit with proper leather shoes, he looked almost normal to Ella. She slipped a hand inside his shirt and he looked at her with surprise.
“You’re insatiable, woman.”
“I like you clean.”
He grunted.
“I like you rough and messy, too, but I prefer you clean.”
Rowan held the lighter in his hand and flicked the lid open and shut.
“Be careful with that,” Ella said, leaning back into the bench to see what he could be looking at. “We don’t want to lose it after all we’ve been through to get it.”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Rowan said, frowning. “If the diamond was Sully’s way of travel, and that’s at the bottom of the ocean, how did he leave during the battle?”
Ella sighed. There was no other explanation for the fact that Sully’s body had not been found other than that he skipped timelines again.
“It’s possible I may have given him something he could use.”
Rowan looked at her. “You? Like what?”
“My mother’s necklace.”
“Ella, no!” Rowan sat up straight, his eyes wide with shock. “How will you get home without it?”
She held up her left hand with her wedding band on it. “I still have this, which it turns out, I value even more highly.”
She watched a grin tug at his lips and he put an arm around her shoulders pulling her to him and kissing her on the mouth.
�
�Careful,” she whispered. “We don’t want any public floggings to mar our remaining time in Olde Key West.”
They sat quietly for a moment.
“Are you thinking about Ansel?” she asked.
Ansel was one of the pirates taken prisoner. Rowan had already gone to both Porter and Morton to plead on the man’s behalf, but people were not feeling forgiving about pirates these days. Rowan didn’t expect leniency for his friend.
“He has a common-law wife in Bermuda,” he said. “And a kid. I can see to it that they have some money. It just sucks. Ansel had my back, always. He was a great guy.”
Ella let the moment sit. There was nothing to be done. Finally, she stood and reached out for his hand. “Let’s walk back to the inn. I’m getting hungry.”
Rowan groaned as he got to his feet. It always amazed Ella how the man could move with the swiftness and lightness of a cat in the most stressful of situations, but just dislodging from the couch after dinner seemed to require herculean effort.
He took her arm and they strolled away from the harbor, the sounds of the seabirds cawing overhead.
“Do you know what day it was that Die Hard sank?” she asked.
“What day?” Rowan repeated, frowning. “Was it your birthday? Because I think I have a pretty good excuse for forgetting it.”
She slapped his arm. “No. It wasn’t my birthday.” She paused for dramatic effect. “It was November first.”
“Yeah, I already thought of that.”
“Well, why did you not die? Or did we change things around without knowing it?”
Rowan walked up the front steps of the inn—one of the only hotels in existence in 1825 Key West—and opened the front door for her. “I think…when you stepped between me and Sully you assumed I was going to kill him, but it was probably more likely, considering his skill with a blade, that he would have killed me. When you stepped in to save him…I think you ended up saving me.”
***
The meals in the Casa Antigua restaurant were usually good, but always either turtle or fish. Ella was sure she was off seafood for the foreseeable future when she got back to Cairo. As she and Rowan were finishing their meal and preparing to return to their room upstairs, she noticed a foursome at the next table was giving her a disproving look.
Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) Page 26