The Rebel Pirate

by Donna Thorland

  The thought made her pulse speed. She sidestepped him once more, but he tacked and followed her new direction, until she put her hands out. “I cannot . . . ,” she said with a sigh, the euphemism bathetic but apt, “give you my ration of grog. I have a suitor.”

  He checked his advance. “Ah. Your sense of honor again. Is it truly a greater betrayal of your suitor to lie with me than to save my life?”

  She had known this would not be easy, but she had not suspected how hard it would really be. “I have already betrayed this man with you a hundred times in the privacy of my own mind.”

  “And was it any good?” he asked, a mischievous glint in his eye.

  “It was very good,” she said baldly, though she had not imagined the things he might do with his hands. Or his mouth. And she was doomed to think of them now. “And that is why it would be a very bad idea to make fantasy into reality.”

  “Unless reality failed to live up to fantasy. I suppose I could promise to disappoint you.”

  “As a seduction technique, that leaves something to be desired.”

  “My apologies. Even I have limited experience wooing lady pirates. Why don’t you tell me what would please you?”

  Your hands, your mouth, your well-made body, covering mine. The snug little house, and sometimes, a place at your side on board ship, like Abigail and Abednego.

  Impossible, all of it.

  “Be ready tomorrow night a quarter of an hour before the watch changes, and follow Mr. Cheap’s sage advice for such situations. Run, and don’t look back.”

  Fifteen

  Sparhawk had awakened to find a marine guarding his door. That was new.

  And inconvenient.

  The day passed more quickly than any since his arrest. He was not invited to practice with the gun crews, but instead sat listening to the familiar rhythms, the bells and watches and work songs that had replaced hearth and home and been his whole world for fifteen years.

  He was not allowed to join Ansbach and his officers for dinner. Ansbach himself appeared a little after the meal hour, equal parts apologetic and angry.

  “It is an insult,” said Ansbach, “and Graves knows it. To send his marines aboard my ship. To suggest that we cannot guard one prisoner, who is in any case a gentleman, and only under the most nominal arrest. I must warn you not to stir from your cabin. They have been given orders to shoot you upon sight, as though you are a common criminal.”

  His arrest was not as nominal as all that, Sparhawk now knew. He hoped that the guard was only a precaution on Graves’ part, and not a response to Sarah’s visit. If anyone knew of their meeting, she and Ned would be in even greater danger.

  And Sparhawk was both more and less than the gentleman Ansbach imagined him. He accepted Ansbach’s apology, and felt ashamed.

  After Sarah’s visit the previous night, he had been invited to a particularly fine dinner with Ansbach and his officers. There had been fiddle music during the meal and a bottle of port later, but he had eaten with treachery in his heart. The men of the Hephaestion had included him in their good fellowship, and now he was planning to break his parole to participate in an escape that might bring disgrace to their ship.

  Confined all day to his cabin, Sparhawk could not stop thinking about Sarah Ward. She had risked a great deal to warn him, and she was risking more to help him escape. He should not presume upon it. She had a suitor, a man who could offer her marriage and repair the damage Micah Wild had done to her reputation and her amour propre.

  He ought to leave her alone.

  He could not pretend that he was rescuing her from Micah Wild, not if another man was offering her the far more permanent protection of marriage. But Sparhawk still wanted her. And his desire for her he recognized as entirely selfish. No matter that his feelings for her were more than simple lust, that they included tenderness and a regard for her family, a desire to be part of that roguish Ward clan. Pursuing her now would make him no better than his father.

  Something struck his door and slid down it, interrupting his thoughts.

  The latch rose. The door swung open. The man who entered was almost Sparhawk’s height. He had Sarah’s gilded hair and he might have had her delicate coloring, but his skin was deeply tanned and any freckles he had were obscured. He was dressed in somber dark colors from shoes to collar, but his coat had the subtle sheen of silk and his tailor had been gifted with genius.

  With a nod at the unconscious marine on the floor without, Benjamin Ward said, “Is he the only guard?”

  “No. And the watch is about to change.”

  Ward dragged the marine inside the cabin. “Come quickly, then.”

  Sparhawk turned to get his bag.

  “Leave it. The less you carry,” his rescuer said, “the faster we move.”

  “It is your father’s pistols, and his cutlass.” The copper velvet coat was packed as well. No one had asked for it back, but Sparhawk had kept it all the same.

  Ward stopped him on the threshold. “I know what you did for Ned and my sister while I was gone, and I am suitably grateful, but I am home now. Sarah has already suffered at the hands of one rake. I cannot kill Wild for her, because despite all that the man has done, he is married to the dear friend of her childhood and she forbids it, but if you toy with her affections, I will kill you.”

  “Mr. Cheap said much the same thing when we met.”

  Ward flashed him a crooked smile he must have learned at the knee of Lucas Cheap and said, “Well, you’re still alive, so that is a point in your favor.”

  They crossed the main deck and reached the ladders without attracting attention, though it was impossible to do so without being seen. But common sailors at their duties were not obliged to worry about the comings and goings of gentlemen. Sparhawk and Ward climbed on the deck to find night fallen, and a voice boomed, “You there!”

  Sparhawk turned. It was one of Graves’ marines.

  “This way,” said Ward.

  They ran. Sarah’s brother indicated a point on the rail where a line had been rigged.

  Sparhawk grabbed the rope and climbed over the side. Ward was right behind him. Then a cultured voice Sparhawk recognized cried out from the darkness in surprise and alarm. “Benji!”

  Ward turned. Sparhawk spied two of the admiral’s marines in the forecastle. Moonlight glimmered off their musket barrels. Sparhawk saw the flash, heard the shot ring out.

  Sarah’s brother staggered, pitched back, and fell over the rail.

  Sparhawk caught him—just. For a moment they hung like that, Sparhawk clasping the rope with one hand, and gripping Benjamin Ward’s silk collar with the other. Then Ward grasped the rope, and the strain across Sparhawk’s shoulders eased.

  “Go,” Sparhawk said. “I’ll follow you down.”

  James took one last look at the Hephaestion’s deck, where Charles Ansbach, his face a mask of horror, was ordering the admiral’s unwelcome marines to stand down. Then Sparhawk followed Ward down the rope to the waiting boat.

  “We must row smartly,” said Ward, tight-lipped. “I cut away their boats, but they can still fire upon us.” He could not contain a hiss of pain as he reached for the muffled oars.

  Sarah had been right. Her brother was indeed a capable man. Cutting away the Hephaestion’s boats was the first thing Sparhawk would have done. And Ward had disabled the guard with ruthless effectiveness. He had not, unfortunately, foreseen that Admiral Graves might send a detail of his own marines aboard the Hephaestion.

  “Put pressure on the wound,” said Sparhawk. “And let me row. Ansbach will hold off pursuit.”

  “A friend of yours, is he?”

  Loyalty, it seemed, was a Ward family trait, but the truth had been plain to see on Ansbach’s face. “I suppose, but that hardly signifies,” Sparhawk said. “He’s your lover.”

  Ward paled. Canny old
Abednego. He had sent his son to London in the hopes that he would “outgrow” it. Perhaps he was not so canny as all that after all.

  “You have insulted me, sir,” said Ward, jaw clenched. “And I will meet you to settle the matter as soon as I am able.”

  “I am not interested in your affairs, or Ansbach’s for that matter, except where they touch upon my own. In this case I must ask you, are you on such terms that he will further delay pursuit?”

  Ward looked right and left, as though there might be someone to overhear him in Boston Harbor. Sparhawk pitied him. He knew what it was to hide one’s true self; he had probably been doing it for as long as Ward. Caution was a necessary habit. Finally Ward said, “There will be no pursuit. Though there is likely to be a reckoning.”

  “Ansbach did not know of your plan?”

  “Of course not. He is the king’s nephew. Asking him to aid in your escape would have placed him in an impossible position. It’s bad enough that I have sided with the Rebel cause.”

  “You would take their part, even after what Wild did to your sister?”

  “I am a Ward. I will always put my family and the Sallys first, just as Sarah does. That is why I have taken the American side: I want Ned and Sarah to enjoy the rights of Englishmen, to live without the fear of search and seizure and arbitrary arrest, and the violence of press gangs. The cause is bigger than the failings of the men who lead it. Now we must row for the creek. The Sally is hidden behind Noddle’s Island. The navy does not patrol the channel because it is so shallow, but she will be stranded if we do not make the tide, and we must reach the meetinghouse in Chelsea before daybreak to collect the evidence the Rebels have assembled for you.”

  This last was said in a quiet, tight voice that worried Sparhawk. “Did the ball pass through, or is it lodged in the wound?”

  “It is lodged within.”

  Sparhawk looked out at the dark water and the freedom that beckoned. Ansbach might be able to hold back the marines on his own ship, but eventually he would have to report Sparhawk’s escape to the castle. In a few hours, Boston would be crawling with searchers. To enter Boston now would be to risk capture, and the outcome of his trial now that he had fled was certain to be execution. He could not have made it easier for Admiral Graves to condemn him.

  “I don’t suppose you have a surgeon on the Sally?” Sparhawk said.

  “Mr. Cheap is handy with a needle.”

  A needle would not serve. The ball must come out. And preferably on land. Extractions were tricky to perform at sea. A man did not want a surgeon poking about in his guts on a moving ship.

  And this man was Sarah’s brother. She had sent Benji into danger, for him.

  Sparhawk turned the boat toward the nearing docks. “We row to Boston.”

  “I promised my sister I would get you away.”

  “Loyalty is an admirable Ward family trait,” Sparhawk observed. “But I daresay she did not expect you to do so at the cost of your life. You are bleeding profusely. We need a surgeon.” He set a brisk pace at the oars.

  “If we are discovered in Boston, they will hang you as a deserter, trial be damned. And you will never find a doctor in the city willing to call upon a fugitive and a Rebel.”

  “More likely they will shoot me, but I think I would prefer the firing squad to facing your sister if you expired. And I believe I know a doctor who owes me a favor,” said Sparhawk.

  “The risk is too great. Row for the Sally,” insisted Ward.

  Sparhawk shipped his oars, and the boat drifted. “You do it,” he said.

  Ward gamely reached for an oar, cursed, and slumped over the bench.

  “I thought not,” Sparhawk said, taking up the oars once again.

  “If you had any prospects at all,” Benji gasped, “I should say you and my sister deserved each other.”

  “My prospects may not be all so grim if I can prove my case against the admiral,” Sparhawk said.

  “If you live that long,” said Ward. “Those marines were not firing warning shots.”

  Sparhawk had thought of that. There was a more expedient—though riskier—method for silencing him than a trial. Shot—trying to escape. Since Sarah’s visit, he had kept the pistol loaded and the cutlass handy. “You think Admiral Graves would prefer me safely dead to tried?” asked Sparhawk.

  “I think you are lucky to count my sister and Mr. Cheap your friends.”

  Sparhawk docked the boat in pitch-blackness at one of the little wharves in the North End. A single skiff more or less would not be noticed in such a jumble of small craft. Ward had been quiet and contained for some time, and he leaned heavily on Sparhawk as they made their way in silence up the quay.

  Sparhawk had never seen the little house he had purchased, but his man of business had sent him the keys and a goodly description. He need only find a three-story dwelling, green, with two dormers, on an alley, in the dark, while dodging the city watch and the Redcoats who vied with them for authority over the townspeople. This, when supporting an injured man roughly his own size and weight.

  His man of business had further informed him that the North End was a nest of wickedness and sedition, inhabited by Rebels and smugglers; but it was also a neighborhood of sailors and carpenters and caulkers, and Sparhawk had thought the Wards would feel at home there. Certainly tonight the choice was proving fortuitous. The North End was one of the oldest parts of the city, a warren of twisting streets, blind alleys, and overhanging second stories that cast deep shadows.

  The house, when they found it, was one of those peculiar, narrow gambrel-roofed structures built side to the street. Sparhawk opened the gate as quietly as possible, and discovered an empty garden plot, freshly tilled, with the rich, earthy smell of loam, and a neat classical façade. The brass key turned smoothly in the lock, and at last they were inside and, for the moment, safe.

  He had asked his man to engage a cook and a maid and see that all the little details that would please a young lady were attended to. In the moonlight that filtered through the transom, he could see that the floor in the hall was brightly painted and cheerful, and if the furnishings were somewhat out-of-date, with their turned legs and exuberant Tudor carving, the upholstery was good new Russia leather and the cushions were fine—if mismatched—damask silk.

  The pine floor in the parlor had been spread with sand and brushed into a zigzag pattern. He spoiled it now by half carrying, half dragging Ward to the daybed beneath the window.

  “Dare I ask who owns this place?”

  “I bought it for your sister,” said Sparhawk.

  “Then you’d do best to let me bleed out on the floor, for I shall never let her occupy it.”

  “For the children of a freebooter, you are both shockingly inflexible. I was going to take care of her generously.”

  “But without name, or honor.”

  “Hold that unflattering thought,” said Sparhawk, “while I send for a doctor. I fear if you go on, I will take you up on your offer of martyrdom.”

  On the other side of the staircase Sparhawk found another parlor, fitted up as a dining room with a plank table, high-backed chairs, and a menacing sideboard on bulbous legs. Beyond that was a narrow service ell. He discovered the cook, a neat but plain middle-aged woman, asleep in a chamber at the back of the house, and her ten-year-old son on a trundle beside her.

  The child seemed bright enough and the mother sensible, so he made the boy commit two messages to memory. The first was for Lady Gage at Province House; the second was for Sarah Ward, whose direction he received from her brother.

  Sparhawk was determined to find a doctor for Benji, but a belly wound was always serious, and if things turned for the worse, Sarah must be there. Sparhawk’s mother had died friendless on a dirt floor. Such a fate, he believed, was no better on a silk cushion.

  He sent the boy into the night, found a bott
le of rum and two glasses in the well-stocked kitchen, and returned to find Ward sitting up. James handed Sarah’s brother a glass. “You’d best drink,” he offered. “It’s never pleasant, letting the sawbones fish for lead in your belly.”

  Ward did not reach for the glass. “I want you to understand that I am not a moralist or a prude. I know my sister is partial to you. And you might make her happy for a while. But Micah Wild’s betrayal left a mark on her. I don’t mean the gossip. She doubts her own worth. Your esteem is not enough to restore her. Nothing less than a man’s name and fortune will make her whole.”

  “I did not offer your sister my protection because I think her unworthy of my name. Quite the opposite. If I were free to consider marriage, I would, but I am not.”

  And he told him. The whole story. The things he had not told Sarah Ward. About what Slough had done to him on the Scylla. How he had fought the first time and then, when Slough ordered him tied to the gratings and lashed, discovered that he preferred being defiled to being beaten. How someone at the jail on Nevis had been paid to pour lye down his mother’s throat so she could never tell her tale, and then sold her into indentured servitude on a plantation where she had died of overwork and starvation.

  Sparhawk told him everything, because he was privy to this man’s secret, and Ward had risked his life for him.

  “My father is a ruthless man. You must see that once I step forward with proof of my identity, any woman tied to me by marriage would be a threat to him. And he would deal with such a threat as he has in the past—ruthlessly.”

  “All the more reason,” said Benjamin Ward, “that if you truly care for my sister, you will leave her alone. You and I have only just met, and here I lie waiting for the sawbones with a ball in my belly.”

  He was right. Sparhawk’s encounters with the Ward family had not been to their benefit. He had destroyed their hopes of escaping poverty, driven Sarah to an act that could get her hanged as a pirate, and nearly seen Ned drowned.