He listened and waited and vowed his revenge on Lady Anne.
Chapter Eight
Although they’d been planning on it, preparing for it as best they were able, when the gales hit, they hit hard.
The wind whipped Emmaline’s long braid into her face. The spray of the sea stung her eyes.
There was something strangely elemental about standing on the deck of a ship while Mother Nature threw her worst at you, and you stood tall and straight, daring her to duel.
Crewmen struggled up the mizzenmast, the winds buffeting them. Before the full impact of the storm hit, Emmaline gave orders to reef the sails, hoping to outrun the worst of it. Now that the winds were upon them, and blowing far harder than she had anticipated, the storm sails were more a hindrance than a help and she’d ordered the crew to go bare poles.
Climbing the rigging in these conditions was quite possibly the most dangerous thing a sailor could do. Emmaline watched, breath held as a few men clambered up the ropes. This was the part she hated the most about being a captain—giving orders that might lead to a crewman’s death.
One of the men was barely a man, more a boy, but eager to prove himself. Too eager. He laughed at his counterparts as only an uncaring youth, unaware of his mortality, could. He reached for the next rope. His bare foot slipped and Emmaline pulled in a gasp, narrowing her eyes against the driving rain. The mizzen topgallant sail whipped around him, the ropes flogging him like the dreaded cat-o’-nine-tails. His leg flailed, trying to find purchase on the next rope, and his confident laughter turned to shrieks of terror.
The other men paused before moving on. Emmaline didn’t fault them. They understood that the important thing right now was to get the sail secured, to keep the ship and the rest of the crew safe.
She raced to the mast and began to climb, her bare toes digging into the ropes, the wind at her back pinning her to the rigging. The lad held on, his face white with fear, his muscles straining. She didn’t look down, because she knew what the view would be. Churning black sea tipped with white foam, waiting to swallow a person whole.
Her heart thundered above the rumbling of the storm clouds. Her chest ached with each exhalation and her head still throbbed from her fight with Shamus.
She’d lost crewmen before—in battle, in illness and in much the same circumstances as these. No matter how they died, a little part of her died with them.
The command to attack the merchant vessel had been a sound one, yet the knowledge didn’t stop her guilt. They might have been able to outrun the storm, but doing so would have left them without provisions.
Her shoulders screamed in agony every time she lifted herself to the next rope. The wind howled, reminding her more of a person doomed to the watery depths of Davy Jones’s locker than mere nature rolling along its course.
She pulled her battered body up one more rope. Rain pelted her face and ran down her neck. The lad above her hung on for his life.
Nicholas clung to his bunk but his strength wasn’t enough. The horrendous noise was like a living thing, wrapping itself around the ship, imprisoning everyone in its awful clutches. The terrible shrieking worked its way inside his head until it became a part of him. All thought of his captivity was replaced with nothing more than the will and strength to stay alive.
Over the sound of the wind, the sloop groaned in protest. The boards creaked against the force of the gale. Only mere wood, pitch and tar stood between him and drowning.
The ship tilted starboard. Nicholas rolled, hitting his head on the side of his bunk. His vision wavered.
Slowly, he pulled his legs beneath him and attempted to stand. His thigh screamed in pain, almost buckling his knees. He flung out a hand and braced himself against the wall.
Water began rolling in under the door, swirling around his feet. With a growl of rage he put his shoulder down and charged the still-locked door. He was damned if he was going to die in this cabin, locked in as a prisoner. The door shuddered under the impact. The ship tilted, forcing him back. Putting all of his weight on his bad leg, he gritted his teeth and kicked with his good leg. The wood cracked. He kicked again. And again and again until the wooden door finally gave way.
He raced out of the cabin that had been quickly becoming his coffin.
Where was everyone? Were they battened down? Or had they been swept overboard?
He struggled down the corridor, tossed from side to side. Another door stood open and a man lay half-in, half-out of the cabin. He was shirtless, with a bloodstained bandage around his torso. Nicholas hurried to him, bouncing from one wall to the other. The injured man opened eyes glazed with pain. ’Twas the giant from Alphonse’s ship. How the devil did he get here?
Nicholas grasped the man under his arms and tried to move him into the cabin and onto the bunk. Not that it would do much good. He’d probably be tossed right back off, but Nicholas couldn’t leave him lying on the floor.
Thankfully the man was conscious enough to help, and together they staggered to the bunk.
Fresh blood soaked the bandage, but there wasn’t much Nicholas could do without supplies. Besides, attempting to change the man’s bandage would be fruitless in this storm.
Sweat beaded his gray face. “Thank you,” he mumbled.
“Should I fetch the surgeon?”
He shook his head. His eyes drifted closed.
“What the hell happened to you, mate?” Nicholas spoke more to himself, not expecting an answer, but the giant responded.
“Lady Anne …”
Nicholas’s eyes widened. “Lady Anne did this to you?”
He nodded and licked his lips.
Lady Anne? Emmaline? She did this? By the looks of the bandage and the fresh blood, he’d probably been stabbed. What would possess her to stab him?
“Is there anything I can get for you?”
But the man had passed out. Nicholas left the cabin, hoping the giant survived.
He splashed through water as he made his way to the stairs leading to the upper decks. Each time the ship pitched, the water sloshed in his direction, soaking his pant legs. Before long it would be up to his knees. The injured man would probably succumb to the sea, rather than his wound. There wasn’t anything Nicholas was able to do about it now.
Outside, the wind howled. He didn’t know which was worse, remaining below and drowning if the ship took on more water, or going up top and being swept overboard.
He’d take his chances up top.
Once there, the wind forced him back a few paces until he was able to plant his feet and lean into it. Instantly, he was soaked, the stinging rain pelting him.
A few men worked to lash down whatever was loose, slipping and sliding across the deck as the ship rolled one way and then the other.
He spotted Phin by the mizzenmast, hands on hips, head tilted back. Nicholas followed his gaze.
Emmaline, barefoot and dressed in men’s trousers and an oversized overcoat covering a white shirt, was at the very top of the mizzenmast, a leg thrown over the yardarm as she struggled to pull a sailor up beside her.
A loose rope whipped in the wind. Several times, she had to duck to avoid it. The boy flailed his legs, his fingers trying to find purchase on the slippery, hard wood.
Nicholas stepped up beside Phin before he even realized he’d moved. Phin shot him a distracted look. “Forgot all about you down there.”
Nicholas ignored the verbal stab and stared up at Emmaline.
“Don’t worry, mate, she hasn’t fallen yet,” Phin said.
Hasn’t fallen yet? Yet? How often did the foolish woman climb the masts? Didn’t she realize how dangerous it was even in calm seas? Why, one gust of wind, a foot planted wrong, and a man could fall to his death. Hell, Nicholas had witnessed seasoned sailors make a false move and plummet to the sea below. Sucked under the ship’s hull, they were never seen again.
Was she mad? She was so small, so light, the wind was going to knock her off the damn yardarm.
Nicholas moved towa
rd the mast. Phin’s hand clamped down on his arm. “Where are you going?”
“She needs help.” He yanked his arm away and reached for the rigging.
Phin pulled him down. Nicholas struggled in his grip, swung his free arm and planted his fist in Phin’s jaw. The large man didn’t even step back.
“She’ll get him down,” he yelled above the wind and the rain.
“She’ll die trying,” Nicholas shouted back. The ship pitched, tearing them apart. Phin stumbled away and Nicholas’s gaze jumped to Emmaline, his heart in his throat. “You can’t let her do this alone.”
Phin struggled against the wind to get back to Nicholas. “You think I should go up there and help? She’d have my head when we came down. Think, man. You’re a captain. There’s no room for all of us up there.”
“She can’t possibly lift him onto the yardarm.”
“You don’t know much about our Anne, then, mate.”
Our Anne.
No, he didn’t know much about their Anne. He only knew Emmaline, and hadn’t he already determined everything she told him was a lie? He looked up at the life-and-death struggle taking place dozens of meters above the deck. This wasn’t the Gypsy in the white gown he met at Dorothy’s ball, nor the vision in green who boarded the Pride.
This was the real woman. Anne. Our Anne. Not his Emmaline.
She lowered herself over the yardarm until the entire upper half of her body rested against it. The boy began to swing from side to side. Emmaline reached down with her other hand to clutch his arm below his elbow. If he didn’t make it, he’d take her down with him into the angry, wind-tossed waves.
Nicholas’s hands clenched. His heart pounded unevenly. He strained to climb the rigging. To go to her. To help. Every bit of him raged at Phin’s hand holding him back and he found, to his surprise, a prayer running through his head. Please, God, keep her safe. Don’t let anything happen to her.
A gust of wind buffeted them. Emmaline’s legs tightened on the yardarm.
The ship’s bow rose, riding a violent wave up, up and up before crashing down. Nicholas and Phin stumbled. A crewman slid by them on his back, yet Nicholas couldn’t take his eyes off the horrible scene above him.
The boy swung one last time, his leg catching the yardarm to straddle it. Emmaline dragged him up with her. He slumped forward. She rubbed his back while the lad gulped in mouthfuls of air.
Phin clapped Nicholas on the shoulder. “See? She did fine.”
Nicholas stood riveted at the base of the mast, looking far up to the yardarm where Emmaline and the boy were securing the sail. Her movements were economical and sure, as if she’d done this a thousand times before. Which, of course, she had.
She was, after all, Lady Anne.
The next day, Nicholas sat with his back to the railing, his anger allowing his fingers to fly over the canvas. He’d spent many an hour mending sails in the service of His Majesty’s Navy. Many an officer refused to do such menial labor, but Nicholas never minded. No one really addressed the issue of his release from his cabin, and he wasn’t about to point it out to anyone. His guess was that his sailing knowledge was needed, even if only to mend the sails. There were bigger things to worry about than a lowly prisoner who didn’t have anywhere to escape to, anyway. The ships were badly damaged, but not enough to leave them foundering. They would make it to port, but they would limp along the way. Easy prey for pirates, but then, he was with pirates, so what did it matter?
The storm passed as quickly as it came, leaving in its path clear skies and a warm breeze promising tropical islands. Nicholas didn’t want tropical islands. He wanted a cold, drizzly London or a brisk Boston. He wanted to be back on the Pride, with his report ready for Kenmar. Not on a pirate ship with a woman pirate who had shattered all his illusions. Who risked her life to save a boy from falling to his death.
Who also stabbed a man and left him to die.
He caught a glimpse of Emmaline out of the corner of his eye and frowned, angry his gaze sought her out, that his mind always knew where she was and what she was doing. She stopped to speak to Phin, their heads bent together. Nicholas’s gut clenched when she smiled up at the man in such an intimate way. His fingers tightened on the needle when she reached out and touched Phin’s arm, leaving her fingers there far longer than propriety allowed.
Bloody hell! He didn’t know if it was anger at Emmaline or jealousy of Phin that had him seeing red. While incarcerated in his cabin, he’d thought he might have been seeing things that weren’t there. That he’d imagined the closeness between the two. Now he realized that was hope talking. He tossed the sail to the side and closed his eyes against the quaint scene. His head pounded and his body ached. He’d never been as exhausted or miserable in his life. He hated her with all his being, yet he also wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman before. Memories of their time in his cabin pushed his anger away, relegating it to a dark corner of his mind. He despised himself for being so weak as to want someone like her. A pirate. A liar and a thief.
A shadow fell over him and he knew without looking it was her. He refused to open his eyes because he didn’t want to see her blue-green gaze on him, or her white smile and deceptive dimples.
Her hand touched his shoulder, cool and feathery light. His hand twitched, fighting the impulse to reach up to cover hers, to stop her from pulling away.
“Nicholas.”
Slowly, he opened his eyes. She leaned back on her heels and he had to force himself to look away from the trousers hugging her thighs. The jolt of sexual awareness took him off guard, and he gritted his teeth against it.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
Against his will, he swung his gaze to her. She wasn’t dressed as a lady, yet her very being screamed woman. The loose white shirt billowed in the slight breeze, outlining perfect breasts and sleek muscled arms darkened by the sun. She reminded him of a Gypsy even more now than at Dorothy’s ball.
“We needed the help.” She indicated the battered ship with a wave of a hand. Delicate fingers, small bones, shimmering pearl nails. So very much a woman. And a liar.
Phin approached and touched Emmaline on the shoulder. “Anne—”
“Cap’n? We need yer ’elp over ’ere,” another sailor called out.
She stood, looked down at Nicholas with sad eyes and walked away.
Nicholas’s hungry gaze followed her. Good Christ, she was Lady Anne, the notorious pirate. He shouldn’t want her, but he did. He shouldn’t have prayed for her safety during the storm, but he had. He wanted to hate her.
But he couldn’t.
“Chow time.” The call passed from sailor to sailor. Nicholas stood, his leg not as stiff as it usually was, now that they were in a warmer climate. He followed the line of men to the one-legged sailor who was also the ship’s cook. Pea soup. Nicholas’s stomach grumbled. It wasn’t the fine meals he’d become accustomed to on the Pride, but pea soup was a luxury for these men, and he wasn’t about to turn it down.
He grabbed his bowl of soup and headed belowdecks. Shamus lay on his bunk, shivering in the stuffy cabin. The smell of decaying flesh hit Nicholas like a blunderbuss’s ball to the gut.
He’d returned to Shamus’s cabin several times to check on the sailor. At first Shamus was coherent enough to tell Nicholas his name, but not how he acquired his injury, other than the fact Emmaline caused it. Now the man was feverish and restless, and unconscious more than awake. Nicholas took rainwater from the rain barrels and bathed the man’s head, but there was little he was able to do. The crewmen confirmed there was no surgeon on the ship other than the carpenter, Taggert, who would act as surgeon if limbs needed to be cut off.
As far as Nicholas knew, no one else from the ship visited Shamus, which told him more than anything that they thought Shamus deserved his injury, and was probably being held captive.
Nicholas settled into the straight-back chair he’d taken from another cabin and gently shook Shamus’s shoulder. Shamus moane
d and his eyes fluttered open.
Nicholas held up the bowl of pea soup. “Chow, sailor.”
Shamus turned his head away, but Nicholas was having none of that. The man needed his strength if he was to fight the fever. Nicholas wouldn’t allow him to die on his watch. Why it mattered, he didn’t know, but it did, and Nicholas threw all his extra energy into it.
He spooned the soup into Shamus’s mouth. It dribbled out and Nicholas patiently scooped it back up and tried again.
His thoughts turned inward, and as they were wont to do, turned to thoughts of escape. Constantly he searched for ways off this wretched ship and away from the despicable pirates, but so far there were none, other than stealing a tender and rowing away. He was wise enough to discard that avenue. Maybe when they were closer to land, but even that was a far-fetched plan. He never once forgot the two other pirate sloops following them. Those ships would pluck him out of the water faster than he could say Davy Jones’s locker.
Emmaline took him for a reason and she wasn’t going to be keen on giving him up. She wanted something. Something only he was able to give, else she would have left him with Alphonse or set him in the tenders with his crew.
So what did she want? He could only assume it was the information on the shipment of gold she’d lost, thanks to her decision to save him. But why did she want them?
That was a question he had yet to find an answer for.
Why did Lady Anne, an infamous pirate, want to bring down Blackwell Shipping, the colonies’ richest shipping company? This was more than a pirate attacking ships for booty. These were well-planned attacks, perfectly executed and aimed at one man, which meant revenge. What had Blackwell ever done to Lady Anne?
As much as he didn’t want it to, the question intrigued him, and reminded him once again of the mission Kenmar sent him on. Wouldn’t Kenmar be shocked to discover the lady pirate he flippantly wrote off as nonexistent actually lived and breathed?
Which led his thoughts in another, totally unwanted direction. Lady Anne. Emmaline. Their kiss. Damn it! The spoon shook and he slopped pea soup over the side of the bowl.
The Notorious Lady Anne: A Loveswept Historical Romance Page 9