The Least Likely Bride b-3

by Jane Feather

  At the pirate’s cool tones calling to her from the opposite deck, Olivia looked up. There was both challenge and invitation in his steady gaze. She nodded, biting her lip with concentration, released the rail, and sprang forward. The netting bridge bounced beneath her and she gave a cry, half alarm, half exhilaration, and then she’d reached the galleon in safety, the wind whipping her hair from beneath the blue scarf. She tumbled over the rail to the deck and climbed up to the poop deck.

  “Gentlemen, may I present the lady Olivia.” Anthony introduced her with another bow and a flourish of his sword. “She will take your swords, if you’d be good enough to disarm yourselves.” He smiled politely. “A simple precaution, but one I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  “This is piracy!” spat the captain in thick accents.

  “Precisely,” Anthony agreed. “Piracy on the high seas. Your swords, gentlemen, if you please.”

  “I will not dishonor myself to a common pirate!” one of the other three spluttered. “I will die on my sword rather than surrender it to a thief.”

  “Then pray do so, sir. It is one of your three options.” The smile that flickered over his lips was one of polite indifference. “You may surrender your swords to Lady Olivia; you may die upon them if you so wish; or I will remove your swordbelts myself. And your britches with them.” His sword flashed suddenly, its point coming to rest against the captain’s considerable paunch.

  The man jumped back with a squawk. The sword followed. Three quick cuts and the captain’s swordbelt clattered to the deck.

  “If you would be so kind, Lady Olivia,” Anthony murmured. His sword point danced as deftly as a needle, and the buttons on the man’s britches flew to the four winds. He grabbed at his britches as they began to slide, and stood helplessly, glowering, swearing.

  The other three stared in loathing and fear at their smiling tormentor.

  Olivia picked up the captain’s heavy sword and placed it carefully on the deck some distance from its owner.

  Anthony raised an eyebrow at his remaining victims, and his sword point leaped forward jauntily. A second sword fell to the deck; a second man stood helplessly clutching his britches lest they fall to his ankles.

  Olivia picked up the fallen sword and put it with the other. Laughter bubbled within her but she tried to emulate Anthony’s cool composure. He stood now leaning against the rail, his sword point resting between his feet as he regarded the two remaining Spaniards.

  With an oath, one of them unbuckled his swordbelt, and his companion slowly did the same. Anthony leaned forward and took them. “My thanks, gentlemen. Now, if you would all be so good as to accompany my man to your cabins while we complete our business, we shall leave you in peace all the sooner.” He gestured to the stairs down to the companionway, and Olivia saw a grinning sailor waiting with sword and cutlass.

  The man gave the Spaniards an elaborate mock bow. “Thisaway, gennelmen, if’n ye please.”

  Olivia, her lip curled, watched them stumble away. Now the amusement was over, she was once more violently aware of the stench coming from the bowels of the galleon. It made her want to retch.

  “What preposterous creatures,” she declared. “So pompous in their braid and finery, with their great fat bellies full of food, living off the slave labor of those poor starved, tortured wretches down there.”

  Anthony sheathed his sword and came over to her. He had blood on his cheek, and he took from her his handkerchief that she still held, and dabbed at the cut.

  “On that subject, should we hand the ship and her masters over to the slaves and let them do what they will with them? Or should we put the masters aboard one of their longboats to fend for themselves? Their fate is in your hands.”

  Olivia considered. “Perhaps the slaves would murder them if they had the chance?” she muttered. “Do you think that’s likely?”

  “Highly likely.”

  “That seems like divine retribution,” she said savagely.

  “You don’t think maybe that losing their cargo, their slaves, and their galleon would be punishment enough?” he suggested. “The freed slaves would have the galleon and we could leave them some doubloons so that they could go where they wished.” He raised an interrogative eyebrow.

  “I don’t think you’re nearly bloodthirsty enough for a pirate,” Olivia observed. “But perhaps we should let them go their separate ways.”

  “So be it.” He turned and leaned over the rail, calling down an order, and in minutes came the ring of steel on steel, a steady rhythmic hammering, as men set to work breaking the slaves’ manacles.

  Olivia hung over the rail, watching the activity. Anthony’s men were bringing things up from the depths of the galleon, boxes and crates and bundles. They moved them across to Wind Dancer in a smooth operation that looked as if it had been performed many times. The galleon’s crew were assembled in the waist of the ship, and a few of the pirate’s crew were disarming them, moving cheerfully among them, chatting and whistling as if they were at a tea party.

  “What about the holes in the ship’s side? Will it not sink?”

  “Not if its new owners know anything about patching,” Anthony said carelessly. “They’re less than a day’s sail from Brest.”

  “Brest?” Olivia tried to picture the French coast. How far from the Isle of Wight was Brest? She thought it was beyond the Gulf of Saint-Malo. How long would it take to sail back home?

  Home. It was a concept so distant and so unreal, it seemed that it existed in another life. Suddenly she felt very tired as the surge of excitement ebbed. She glanced at the netting bridge with a tremor of apprehension. It looked very unstable now and very, very high above the churning blue-green water.

  “Too tired to make it alone this time?” Anthony spoke at her side, and she looked up quickly to catch that little flicker of a smile in his eye.

  “How do you know?”

  “I make it my business to know what might be troubling the members of my crew,” he said. “Particularly my newest and most inexperienced member.”

  “I thought I was very good at disarming villains,” Olivia protested, forgetting her fatigue for a minute.

  “Oh, you were. A natural,” he assured her. “A pirate to the manner born. Only pirates, you see, think of their victims as the villains.”

  “And I just fell into that way of thinking,” Olivia said in tones of wonderment. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  “Oh, I knew it all along,” he replied airily. “Come, let me take you back. I can see that you’re thinking longingly of your bed.”

  It was perfectly true, although Olivia still didn’t know how he could so accurately pinpoint her uppermost thought. He took her elbow and walked her down to the rail in the main body of the ship.

  Olivia regarded the netting doubtfully, her heart beating uncomfortably fast. The distance seemed to expand and contract before her eyes, and it astonished her now that she had leaped across it as nimbly as a monkey a mere half hour earlier.

  And then as she hesitated, despising herself for her apprehension, Anthony swung her into his arms, holding her securely against him. “This won’t take a second,” he said, and with that cheerful whistle between his teeth he leaped across the gap, his feet just once touching the netting bridge.

  “There, now you may seek your bed, and when you awake, we will be on our way and we shall dine on… on… oh, whatever Adam has planned for us.” He held her against him for a moment, and she could feel the steady beat of his heart against her breast.

  Then he set her on her feet and swiftly pulled away the blue scarf that had come loose around her hair and was threatening to blow off into the wind. He tied it around her neck. “I’d hate to lose it, it’s one of my favorites.” He put his hands at her waist and stepped back, surveying her crimson sash. “That one is growing on me.” He left her then and Olivia knew he would be smiling.

  Thoughts of bed were now irresistible. She was too exhausted for hunger, too exhausted even
to consider the unreality of her present circumstances. She left the quarterdeck and climbed down the companionway, her legs so heavy it was hard to lift them. The cabin was sun-splashed and peaceful, and without a second’s hesitation, Olivia fell onto the bed, dragging the quilted coverlet over her.

  * * *

  “‘Tis mad y’are. Mad as a March hare.” Adam glowered at his master. He had served this man since the man was a mere babe new delivered from his mother’s womb, and he knew when Wind Dancer’s master had mischief afoot. He could read it in the angle of his head, in the devilment in his eye.

  Adam knew exactly where the devilment came from, and he didn’t hold with women on board ship. They were unlucky. He stood at his master’s side as the enriched Wind Dancer skipped true to her name on a freshening breeze.

  “What’s troubling you, Adam?” Anthony didn’t take his eyes off the horizon, but he sounded amused, as always reading his friend and servant’s mind with uncanny accuracy. “She’ll not betray us,” he said.

  “I don’t know as ‘ow you can know that,” Adam grumbled. “Look at who ’er father is.”

  “The marquis of Granville. Parliament’s man.” Anthony shrugged. “But let us not visit the sins of the father onto the daughter, Adam. Not without cause.”

  “Oh, y’are impossible. There’s no talkin‘ to you.” Adam glowered up at him. “An’ there she was, bold as brass, watchin‘ you take the Dona Elena-”

  “She did her part, if you recall.” Anthony interrupted him before Adam could lose himself in his argument.

  “ ‘Twas a disgrace,” Adam declared. “ ’Er bein‘ who she is.”

  “This is no ordinary woman,” Anthony said with conviction. He looked down at Adam and the gray eyes now were serious, intent, his mouth set. “Trust me, Adam. Olivia Granville is no ordinary woman.”

  “I suppose that’s another o‘ your instincts,” Adam muttered.

  “And are they not always right?” Anthony raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “Aye, but there’s always a first time,” Adam muttered without too much assurance. Anthony’s mother had had the same uncanny ability to understand people on a level they didn’t understand themselves.

  Anthony shook his head. “Not this time.”

  “Well, if y’are thinkin‘ of beddin’ her, I hope you’ll remember she’s no village doxy. An ‘ighborn lady, she is. And you’d do well to remember that!”

  “I will, Adam. I will.” Anthony laughed. “There’ll be no irate papa beating down my door.” He looked down at his man’s creased expression, teasing, “There never has been as yet.”

  “Aye, well only the Lord knows why not. An out-an-out rake is what y’are,” Adam declared roundly.

  “Nonsense,” Anthony scoffed. “I take my pleasure when it’s offered like any other red-blooded male.”

  Adam sniffed at this and Anthony kept his counsel. It wasn’t so much that he intended to bed Olivia Granville as that it was inevitable. And he knew that on some level she knew it too.

  What he didn’t know was what it would mean in the greater scheme of things. The riches liberated from the Spanish galleon would go a long way to swelling the coffers of the Royalist insurgents and their Scots backers as they broke the uneasy truce that had been in place since the king’s imprisonment, and brought war once more to the English countryside in one last attempt to secure the king’s sovereignty.

  In this enterprise, Cato Granville was the enemy. At the moment, he was not at Carisbrooke Castle, but he would be back. The renewed fighting by the king’s supporters and the news of his undercover negotiations with the Scots would harden His Majesty’s jailers. They would try to move him off the island and back to London. Before that happened, Anthony intended that King Charles would take safe passage to France on Wind Dancer.

  Just where Olivia Granville would fit into his planning remained to be seen.

  “You got any idea what was on that ship the wreckers brought down the other night?” Adam inquired. “Mighty rich pickin’s, I’d guess. You think you got the word out all right?”

  Anthony’s face was wiped clean of humor. “Oh, yes, the word’s out, Adam. However rich the pickings, the goods have no value if they can’t sell ‘em. If whoever controls them knows there’s a discreet buyer, he’ll make contact. I don’t know what we’ll get, but I’ll lay odds it’s good. The ship was a merchantman.”

  He gave a harsh laugh and Olivia would not have recognized this man. His eyes were gray iron, his mouth twisted. There was no vestige of the softness or amusement she had come to expect. “Why not let someone else do the work for a change?” he said.

  The setting sun was throwing a great palette of colors across the western sky, and the lively water beneath Wind Dancer‘s bow was pink and gold. The good rich smells of cooking came now from the rekindled fires in the galley. The hardness left Anthony’s countenance as quickly as it had come. He was remembering his promise to the newest member of his pirate crew.

  “What d’you have for our dinner, Adam?”

  “A leg o‘ mutton on the spit,” the older man said begrudgingly. “An’ what ye took from the Spaniards’ table. A fine show o‘ pastries and some of that there manchega cheese.”

  “Then we’ll dine in an hour. My Sleeping Beauty should be awake by now.” He nodded at Adam and left the quarterdeck.

  Adam shook his head. His master was so many different men, and it astonished Adam how he was able to keep them all separate, each in its own compartment. It had much to do with his growing, Adam knew, but it still chilled him even through the deep love he felt for the man he’d nurtured and served since Anthony had entered the world on that demon-ridden night twenty-eight years earlier.

  Chapter Three

  Olivia awoke refreshed from a dreamless nap and was for a moment disoriented, then she heard the cry of a seagull and smelled the fresh salt tang on the air and remembered. She smiled slowly at the renewed prickle of excitement that crept over her skin. Fatigue had caused her to question the magic that now embraced her. But she was no longer tired and this strange new world was filled with wonder. Lord Granville’s daughter was the aider and abettor of pirates. Of course, one could say that she’d been kidnapped by a pirate and was held captive on his ship on the high seas. One could say that. And it would be the perfect truth. Except that she had no desire to be anywhere else, and it seemed she had acquired a shockingly keen desire for further adventuring. Her appetite for piracy had merely been whetted by the encounter with the Spanish galleon.

  She had more in common with Portia than she’d realized, Olivia thought with a soft chuckle. Her father’s illegitimate niece had a penchant for soldiering and had been married on a battlefield in britches with a sword at her hip. Olivia was beginning to see the appeal in such wildly unconventional behavior. Hitherto she’d simply assumed that Portia was unique, a law unto herself. What Portia did had no relevance to what ordinary people did. But maybe not. Or maybe her uniqueness was rubbing off on her friends. Or maybe Olivia herself was not ordinary either, she just hadn’t known it until now.

  Grinning to herself, Olivia pushed aside the coverlet and sat up, sniffing hungrily. The most wonderful scents of roasting meat were coming from somewhere, setting her juices running. She glanced curiously around the cabin, wondering what it could tell her of Wind Dancer’s master.

  Not for a moment did it occur to her that she might be invading his privacy as she began to explore. There were charts on the table, with a sextant and compasses. She peered at the calculations written in the same bold hand that had drawn the lines of her back. The calculations fascinated her mathematician’s mind, although to understand them would take some study.

  She examined the books on the shelves set into the bulwarks. An interesting assortment. Poetry, philosophy, some of her own favorite classical texts. The ship’s master had an intellectual mind, it seemed. She looked at the chessboard set out on a small table under the window. It looked as if he was in the middle of a ga
me, unless it was a chess problem he was working on.

  Olivia bent over the pieces, frowning. She moved the white bishop to king four, and stood frowning at the board. Then she gave a little nod of satisfaction. She’d been right. It was inevitable that white would now mate in two moves. Not a particularly difficult problem, she thought.

  Humming to herself, Olivia turned back to the chart table. Idly she opened a drawer beneath the tabletop. There were papers, a thick pile of them, facedown in the drawer. She took them out and laid them on the table. They were drawings, pencil sketches. It seemed the master of Wind Dancer was a draftsman who found objects for his talent wherever he looked. These seemed to be entirely of his crew.

  She gazed fascinated at the series of sketches. Some of the faces she recognized from the time she’d spent above decks. Jethro, the helmsman, appeared several times. In some of the drawings, men were working on the ship, sewing sails, splicing rope, climbing rigging. In some they were playing, dancing, laughing, listening to one of their fellows strumming a lute, his back against the mast. And then there were three or four where naked men stood beneath a pump on the deck, the water glistening on their skins, laughter in their eyes.

  Olivia had spent far too much time among the texts and illustrations of ancient Greece and Rome to be embarrassed by depictions of male nudity. But it seemed to her that this artist had no small talent for anatomy. The human form obviously intrigued him, judging by the number of small sketches of a hand, a foot, an ankle, the turn of a thigh. But the faces too were full of life, depicted in just a few lines, and yet an entire moment was captured in the tilt of a head, the slant of an eye.

  “In general, when my work is not in plain sight, it’s not for anyone’s eyes but mine.”

  Olivia hadn’t heard the door open. She looked up with a gasp, the drawings fluttering to the table, one or two sliding to the floor.

  The master of Wind Dancer stood in the cabin doorway, and his expression had lost its habitual amusement. A deep frown corrugated his brow and his eyes were annoyed.