Of all the things that she could have imagined on this journey, Roselyn never imagined that she would dread seeing the harbor of New Providence Island as she did now. How could she have ever conceived that she would fall in love with a pirate? She knew she loved Handsome Jack, the Captain of the pirate ship Neptune’s Revenge, with a certainty that brooked no doubt.
She also knew that she would have to let him go because he was a pirate, a man of the sea and adventure, and because she was simply a poor minister’s daughter. As much as she wanted to believe his flowery words and compliments, it was difficult. After all, she knew he’d had a great amount of experience flirting with women and he was a lovable rogue till the end. She would keep her adventure on her pirate ship close to her heart and endeavor to live a quiet life with Rupert.
The prospect made her heart ache.
After the great ship had dropped anchor and the rigging lowered, Jack and Roselyn disembarked, leaving the crew on board ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Jack and Mr. Blake had decided some scouting was in order before the crew left on leave.
Roselyn gasped at the grizzly sight of three men hanging from gallows just off the pier.
When she looked to Jack for an answer, his reply was cryptic. “It’s a warning.”
They were able to obtain the address for her fiancé from the first church they came upon in the town. While Roselyn spoke with the vicar, Jack waited outside.
“I’ll wait for you here. You don’t want lightning bolts striking the church, do you?” he teased.
While he paced, Jack wondered what was going on in the unnaturally quiet pirate capital. He had noticed the unusual activity in and around the port area and it concerned him. Two man-o-war ships flying the British flag were anchored outside the harbor. Using the spy glass, he’d also seen a British flag flying from the Fort, and a French ship burned in the bay.
The quartermaster, Mr. Blake, had also registered the disturbance but, other than an exchange of looks, neither of the men had spoken of it aloud. The Neptune’s Revenge’s flag, a red banner with a black skull wearing a crown, had been quietly lowered and not replaced with another flag. Jack thought it best not to announce their arrival too loudly for once. Everything inside him said stealth and subtlety were the way to go.
He hadn’t seen a single one of his compatriots since entering the city. Usually Nassau teemed with sailors and pirates and other unsavory characters. Used to every street corner being manned by prostitutes and drunks, the city’s subdued quiet was unsettling, and a sense of dread spread through him.
“Jack.”
He spun around at the sound of his name and saw his friend, Captain Ben Hornigold approaching. “Ben,” Jack called out. “What the bloody hell is going on? Where is everyone?”
“There’s a new Governor. Some British bloke named Woodes Rogers. He’s here to rout us out. He’s doing a good job of it too.”
“Where did everyone go?” There were so many questions. Jack didn’t even know where to begin. “Why are you still here?”
“Charlie Vane set that Frenchie ship ablaze and then blew out of here, firin’ his guns and thumbing them off. That was yestereve.”
“But what of England or Teach? I can’t believe that they turned tail and ran.” Those pirates were practically Nassau royalty. Jack couldn’t believe they would give up all they owned here.
“That bastard Blackbeard ran north. England’s not been here, but he’ll run too.” Hornigold sounded very confident and clearly loved spreading the gossip.
“If this Rogers fellow is so dangerous, what are you still doing here?”
“He’s got pardons for the cap’ns who surrender to ‘em. I got nothing left, Jack. My armada is gone, the traitorous, mutinying bastards.” Hornigold spit into the street in disgust. “All signed with Blackbeard. What do I have to lose?”
Jack was aghast. “You surrendered?”
“Rogers let me keep my ship and give me a crew if I go hunt down Vane.” Hornigold shrugged. “Better’n stretching my neck like those sots at the pier.”
“I saw ‘em.” Jack shook his head in disgust.
“You go surrender, Jack.” Hornigold clapped his friend on the shoulder in parting and continued on his way down the street.
“I can’t do that….” Jack did have something to lose, if it wasn’t already lost. “I’ll have to come up with something else.”
“Keep your handsome head on yer neck. You’ll get the same deal as me, I bet.” The turncoat pirate called over his shoulder when he rounded the corner.
“What deal?” Roselyn asked as she strode down the church steps. She peered down the street but Hornigold was gone. “I don’t know why you were so worried about me in this town. There’s no one here.”
“There are very dangerous changes afoot,” was all he offered by way of an explanation. He grabbed the first urchin on the street and gave him urgent whispered instructions. He sent the boy away with several coins and a purposeful expression.
Jack offered the lady his arm, and they headed down the walk. He concentrated on conrolling the urge to throw her over his shoulder and race back for the ship. But he knew, as much as he loved and wanted her, he needed to do the best thing for Rose. He would escort her to the fiancé’s house and prove to himself that this Rupert was the right man for his Rose.
They found Rupert’s little, white house only several blocks away. As they entered the tiny yard, the front door swung open and two doxies stumbled out of the house, laughing brightly. Roselyn stopped and stared with slatted eyes at the two painted women, one with bright-red, hennaed hair and the other a blond. Their breasts were practically falling out of their bodices and their faces were done up with powder and rouge. Her first thought was that Rupert must be ministering to their souls, but that thought quickly extinguished.
“Handsome Jack!” the blond squealed in delight. “We used up the preacher, but we’ve got plenty left for you!”
“Come back to Wilhelmina’s with us, Jack,” the red-head cooed, running her hands up Jack’s chest in a manner entirely too familiar as far as Roselyn was concerned. “Everybody else’s gone and me and the rest of the girls is lonely.”
“Cora. Prissy.” He nodded to the two women, and Roselyn was pleased to see he deftly removed Cora’s hands from his person before the harlot felt the need to grab anything lower than his belt. With his subtle rejection, the two prostitutes noticed Roselyn for the first time.
Cocking her hand on her hip, Prissy asked, “Who’s the fancy lady?”
“I am Miss Roselyn Weldon,” her tone was dry and hard. “I am Reverend Merickel’s fiancée.”
The floozies howled with laughter. “Good luck with that dry old fart,” Cora crowed.
“Yeah,” Prissy chimed in, “I hate to think of the poor woman who has to do him for free.”
With that horrible recommendation hanging in the air, the women flounced off, blowing kisses to Jack as they strode from the gate, laughing with contemptuous glee.
With newly minted confidence, Roselyn marched towards the open front door only to find her fiancé standing in the middle of the parlor buttoning his pants, his shirt tails still hanging out. Roselyn gasped in disbelief. This was her fiancé?
“Miss Weldon!” Surprise evident in Rupert’s voice as well as his expression. “What are you doing here?”
“I sent a letter informing you I was coming. Father died and I had nowhere to go.” Rupert stood there blinking at her so she continued speaking to fill the silence, inane, stupid words she wished she could stop. “I wrote you I was coming. I sent a letter when he died.”
“I never got any post. We aren’t to be married for another year.” Rupert had clearly snapped out of his shock. “You need to return home posthaste.”
“Home? I just got here.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Roselyn,” he snapped at her. He seemed to be hitting his stride now. “And just what in tarnation are you wearing? You look like a whore.” By now hi
s clothes were put to rights, even the clerical collar was tucked neatly in place.
“I guess you’d know,” she hissed back at him.
Behind her, she heard Jack slowly approach the doorway. He snorted at her comment.
“How dare you talk to me in that manner. You know nothing of men’s needs.” Rupert was in fine minister mode now. All he needed was his pulpit.
“My horizons are being broadened,” she retorted, dryly.
“By this man?” Rupert demanded, gesturing to Jack who leaned on the doorjamb watching the scene unfold before him with great interest. “Do you have carnal knowledge of this man? Your father is spinning in his grave.”
“Never mind about my father. Aren’t you the hypocrite?” Roselyn planted both hands on her hips. She barely recognized the man before her. She had never loved him, but she thought she had at least respected him. She had believed the man to whom she’d been engaged to be a pious man of the cloth, a harsh critic of pleasure in any form. The judgmental, hypocrite before her was not the man she thought she knew. Even if he did still want her, she would refuse to marry him now.
“I will not take a ruined woman to wife,” he roared at her. “You have lain with this filthy pirate. No one will have you now.” He lifted his hand as if he made to strike her.
Rupert was still screaming at Roselyn, his face turning puce, before he noticed too late that the giant pirate was almost on top of him.
Before the weasely, little man could even get up a good head of steam, Jack pushed away from the door jamb and purposefully strode through the room, tossing furniture out of his way in order to make a straight path to the man. He picked up the pasty skinned bastard by the throat and slammed him up against the wall, the minister’s toes dangling a good inch from the floor.
“You will apologize to the lady,” Jack spoke with a quiet, terrifying voice. There was no need to yell. He could smell the acrid stench that proved the minister had already pissed himself.
Rupert gasped for air. “I can’t marry a fallen woman. I’m a man of the cloth.”
“You will refer to her as Miss Weldon,” Jack spoke clearly and slowly, “and you will apologize to her.” He squeezed his hands a little tighter around the minister’s neck. “I can’t hear you.”
Point in fact, Rupert did make a little squeaking sound when Jack gave him a shake and waved the minister’s soft body about.
Roselyn placed her hand on his arm. “You’re killing him, Jack.” She was thrilled that he had come to her defense, no one had ever intervened during her father’s rants and punishments, but she couldn’t allow Jack to kill the man in her name. “Let him go. He won’t hurt me now.”
Jack released the pathetic man from his grip and the minister fell to the floor in a heap, dragging in ragged breaths.
“I’m taking Miss Weldon with me,” Jack told the cowering vicar. “Consider your arrangement terminated.”
Her pirate took her by the hand and headed for the door, but she pulled her hand free. She smiled to reassure him, and then strode back to her ex-fiancé with a gleam in her eye.
Rupert watched her approach with a leery expression, and visibly flinched when she knelt down next to him on the floor. She pulled back her arm and slapped him with an open hand leaving a very satisfying palm print across his cheek. “That’s for all the women you’ve humiliated, Rupert.”
Behind her Jack roared with laughter, his approval of her revenge evident.
Chapter Ten
Jack grabbed her hand and pulled her from the tawdry little house and the spectacle of her fiancé splayed out on this rug. Roselyn couldn’t suppress a giggle that bubbled in the back of her throat. She couldn’t even tamp it down when she realized she had nowhere to go and no means to support herself now that she found herself stranded in the Caribbean. Jack grinned at her as they rounded the picket fence and burst through the little gate, his teeth white and gleaming under the sensual mustache. Roselyn stomach tightened recalling the tactile knowledge of exactly how that mustache felt against her skin.
“I cannot believe your father wished you to marry that useless prig.” Jack’s scalawag grin drew down into a scowl. “I can’t imagine a man less fitting for you, Rose.”
Roselyn didn’t wish to disrespect her father, even from the grave, but she couldn’t agree more. She was a changed woman, and not just because she’d lost her virginity to a famous pirate. For the first time, she had control over her life. She wasn’t marrying that “prig” as Jack called him, a more fitting description she didn’t know. She had no idea what she was going to do with her life, or what other outlandish twists were in store, but she was filled with excitement at the possibility like she’d never been before.
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him full on the lips. “Thank you.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her tight against him. “For what?”
“Standing up for me.” She kissed his lips again, this time lingering a little longer than before. “No one’s ever done that for me before. Ever.”
“I am forever at your service,” he grinned at her. He took her hand and continued with her along the narrow, dirt lane. “I have a few things to do before the tide this evening.”
Roselyn considered her own situation. Right then and there, she vowed her life from this moment forward would be an adventure. “I do, too,” she admitted.
Jack raised their clasped hands to his mouth and pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles, then pulled a leather pouch from a pocket and wrapped her fingers around it. “You’ll need some clothes. You won’t be able to run around in just that frock, as lovely as you are in it, forever.”
She looked at him with a hopeful glance. “I’d hoped to see what other dresses you had in the hold that might fit. You said there were trunks of them down there.”
“Anything you wish, Rose,” he grinned and pleasure coursed through her. “Still go to the shops and get everything else you need – under things and bonnets, ribbons and lace and whatever suits your fancy.” They came to a crossroads, the intersecting street was much wider and shops with all types of commerce lined the sandy walks. Jack pointed towards several likely buildings. “Right down that way you’ll find what you need. I’ll come find you in an hour or so and help you tackle anything else you lack.”
It occurred to Roselyn that fripperies such as ribbons and lace were a foolish extravagance when she didn’t have a house to put them in but, as she shifted in the too-large silk slippers Jack’s cabin boy had found for her in the hold, the idea seemed less of an indulgence. Since she no longer owned a single item of clothing that didn’t come from the bounty of stolen goods in the Neptune’s Revenge, some underclothes and a corset and a chemise or two would be prudent.
“An hour then?” Roselyn squeezed the pouch of coins in her fist.
“Or so,” Jack answered and kissed her on the nose before turning and heading the opposite way down the road, away from the shops and docks and further into the heart of the town. He moved quickly, his strides long and purposeful. He glanced back and blew her a kiss before he turned at the next block and disappeared from view.
Roselyn hesitated another minute before she proceeded along the lane and into a feminine domain of shop keepers and seamstresses to attempt to rebuild her wardrobe.
Jack was loathe to leave her alone in the town but, the way things were shaping up, there weren’t any pirates left in Nassau to harass her and the rest of the unsavory lot who hadn’t fled were laying low. He had to get to his little house to collect the few things he’d need if he intended to leave this profligate life and move back into respectability with Rose. Besides the gold and other treasures he’d stashed, there were papers he’d need when he returned to England.
England.
He puffed out a deep breath and quickened his pace.
England.
The thought of the place, specifically his ancestral home, threatened to give him hives. But his father wasn’t there to look down his
long, patrician nose at him any longer. The old man couldn’t judge him from the grave and his brother, the new earl, had never expressed the same tired sentiments – not when they were children and not in the few letters he’d received from him over the years. Though not lengthy or plentiful, the letters had hinted that his brother knew the truth about Jack and his career at sea and yet Edmund still urged him to return home.
He would much rather have made a comfortable life here in the Caribbean, but that was no longer a possibility. This beautiful island paradise was no longer capable of giving him his desired retirement from piracy. If he wanted Rose, and he wanted her, badly, then home he would go.
He crested a small hill and veered off the road onto a path through a scrubby, wind-blown meadow. Taking the short cut, he hoped to shave valuable minutes from his chore. From that vantage point, he was able to see the smoke from the burning ship and, though he couldn’t see the actual bodies of the dead pirates in detail, he could see the shape of them swinging from the gibbets at the harbor. He sped up his pace until he was jogging, the cutlass lashed to his side banged against his leg.
His house came into view, the solid stone of the walls broadcasted strength and comfort that he knew he could no longer find there, or anywhere else on Nassau. He used a hefty, iron key to unbolt the door and, when it swung open, he was relieved to find his house just as he’d left it six months prior. The home was cluttered and comfortable with maps and charts spread over thick, wooden tables, exotic trinkets from his travels spread about the rooms. He paid little attention to the front parlor as soon as he recognized that nothing had been disturbed. The location of his house was not a secret; everyone in Nassau knew where he could be found and that common knowledge had worried him. Perchance, once the new governor had begun the raiding and hangings which had cleared out the harbor, the scalawags in town had been too intent on saving their own necks or turning traitor to worry about raiding his coffers.
The Sea Rose Page 5