The Devil's Luck (The Skull & Crossbone Romances Book 1)

by Eris Adderly

  “Brigit,” she said, greeting the woman with care, uncertain of the reception she’d find, considering she was in some way to blame that the woman was aboard this ship at all. “How do you fare?”

  “Oh, right enough, Mrs Collingwood,” Brigit said as though it was the first time she’d considered the question herself. Her hands made careful work with a knife, trimming a bit of mould off the remainder of a block of cheese.

  The normalcy of the scene didn’t quite fit within the boundaries of Hannah’s understanding. She didn’t want to be rude with Brigit, but she had to be satisfied she was hearing the truth. “You’ve not been treated harshly, then? What does he have you do all day, this cook?”

  “Mr Bone?” she said, lifting her eyes for a moment from her task. Brigit’s gaze was far less vacant and glum than the last time Hannah had seen her. “He hasn’t been the least bit of trouble, Ma’am. He’s mostly set me to help with the meals, and the cleaning.”

  “And the other men? The crew? Have they let you alone?” She’d hesitated to ask this question, but she knew from her own experiences now that it was very difficult for a woman to avoid the pursuit of men within the limited confines of a ship. It was one thing if the woman wanted the attention, but …

  Brigit burst out with an unladylike bark of laughter at her question as she went about wrapping the newly pruned cheese back in its paper. “The crew?” Her words bounced out through another chortle. “Oh, no, Ma’am. There’s them that’s been fool enough to try, all right, but Mr Bone’s been having none o’ that.” The knife glittered in some meaningful way at this, and Brigit grinned. “Neither have I, mind you.”

  And still, the woman’s expression spoke of yet another meaning behind her comment about Mr Bone.

  Hannah’s brows went from lowered in confusion to raising nearly off her forehead in sudden clarity. If the captain and Mr Till were protecting her from any advances or mistreatment by the crew …

  “Ye done with that cheese then, pretty girl?”

  John Bone came thumping down the stairs behind her then, trailing King George, the ship’s cat, and Hannah moved out of his way to let him into the galley. The cook would never approach anyone in stealth for as long as he lived, with his left leg missing at the knee and a wooden peg in its place that clunked along in a regular rhythm wherever he walked. His booming deep voice didn’t help him avoid notice either.

  “I’ve just put it up,” Brigit called up to him. “You have something more for me to do?”

  The man was bald like the quartermaster, but there the resemblance ended. He was half again as wide as Till through the middle, and a great red bushy beard bristled from his face and down his chest, long enough to be braided into twin plaits, and beginning to come in white at the edges.

  At the sight of the man, Brigit’s pockmarked cheeks dimpled to a depth Hannah had never seen and, as he passed her by, he landed a firm slap on her bottom. The woman giggled—giggled!—in response and turned her head to catch a playful kiss from him as he made his way ‘round.

  Bone slipped in behind Brigit and went to move his hands over her hips as though Hannah weren’t standing there right in front of them.

  “I’m sure I can find some work for those hands of yours, girl,” he said, tickling her ear with his beard.

  “Oh, leave off, you great beast!” Brigit swatted at him and put an elbow in his ribs, but her tone said she might not mind too much if he didn’t listen.

  It was not to be believed. Brigit and … and the cook? She didn’t begrudge the woman happiness, but her history of sullen stares and bitter complacency made this new side of her quite the challenge to accept. Hannah had never expected to see a smile, much less hear two pleasant words out of Brigit, and had certainly not thought to see her demeanour improved in any way whatsoever after weeks aboard The Devil’s Luck. Let alone endure a pairing such as the one revealed to her now in the ship’s galley. The man was old enough to be the woman’s father, for Heaven’s sake.

  “Cap’n let you out of his rooms for a spell then?” Bone turned to give Hannah a merry wink and waggled his ginger brows at her.

  She felt her cheeks heat up at the cook’s implication. As I suspected, everyone knows. She felt the cat make a furry pass at her shin, as if to indicate that he, too, was in on the gossip, and wanted to make sure Hannah knew it.

  The burly man seemed to expect no answer from her and moved off into the room to rummage with a great amount of clattering through a small pantry in the back.

  Brigit leaned over the cutting block toward Hannah, taking advantage of their temporary measure of privacy to whisper at her with a mischievous grin that seemed out of place on her pitted face.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs Collingwood,” she said, her voice conspiratorial, “I won’t be telling anyone.”

  Hannah was confused even further. “Telling them what, Brigit?”

  The woman’s salty smile all but split her face in two. “That a fine lady such as yourself likes to have a go just the same as any maid or farm wife. The captain and the quartermaster I hear? Didn’t think you had it in you, Ma’am,” Brigit said in appreciative tones. She seemed to reconsider something, because she added with an impish laugh, “But then again, I suppose you did!”

  Hannah could not possibly have coloured further. The sullen Brigit she knew from the inn was almost preferable to the fiery girl before her now who spoke with such a blunt familiarity.

  It would be difficult enough now for her to eat anything at all if she thought of what those two might be up to down here in the kitchen when no one else was around, but that was not the only reason Hannah excused herself and beat a retreat up the stairs. No, she needed also to be away from the impertinent comments of Brigit and the cook lest her already burning face catch flame at last and they assigned her a permanent new role as an oven.

  * * * *

  Pirates had never struck her before as being an especially pious lot, what with the murdering and thieving and ravishing of widows, and so it had surprised Hannah that someone aboard The Devil’s Luck would remember Easter Sunday and suggest something in the way of a feast.

  Counting back through the weeks she’d been on the ship, she realised that the time for the holy day had indeed rolled around, and was jarred to some extent at the rapid passage of time.

  Oddly enough, the ship’s cooper, a Mr Henry Adams, had brought up the notion to the cook, and Bone in turn to the captain. It wasn’t as though there was any sort of feast-like variety to the food stored in the galley, but Blackburn had approved the idea regardless. An uncharacteristic show of enthusiasm and charity from the man, Hannah noted. His demeanour did seem to be improving as the weeks went by.

  Adams had interrupted her one evening with a warm excitement in his eyes, to bring up the idea as she’d sat reading to some of the crew from a waterlogged copy of the Bible. Someone had the book tucked away among his things and Hannah felt sorry for it. The poor thing probably had no idea what its holy pages were doing laid open among such a floating den of thieves.

  It hadn’t taken long for the crew to more or less accept Hannah’s presence. After they came to see her as belonging to the captain, most of them were even friendly, and those who weren’t simply avoided her instead. Black Edmund tolerated no nonsense aboard his ship, and for once, Hannah was grateful.

  Because of the easing of tension between herself and the crew, Adams had found in conversation that she could read, and he’d hinted that some of them might like to hear a passage or two, of an evening. And that had led to a Bible being produced and subsequently inspired the cooper’s idea for an Easter meal.

  Such an idea found Hannah now crammed into the council room with the more senior members of the crew for the strangest Easter Sunday meal she’d ever had the opportunity to witness.

  She didn’t know what pirates would go without for Lent and still manage to be scoundrels. The looting of other ships? She hadn’t seen that happen yet. Still the cook had made Brigit carve cros
ses into the hard pieces of ship’s biscuit in lieu of cross buns for the occasion, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves on the feast day, despite the unlikely venue.

  The council room was one of only two places on the ship with a table large enough to accommodate a number of people at once. The bulk of the crew had to eat in the mess, which was really a series of tables lowered down on chains from the ceiling of one of the gun decks. Some that had a later watch were even asleep. The cabin outside the stateroom held the men who were mostly responsible for running Blackburn’s ship. The surgeon was conspicuously absent.

  Hannah sat next to Henry Adams, and was continually amazed at the pirate whose idea this whole thing had been. The man put away enough liquor in a day to intoxicate a horse, and yet aside from being an excellent cooper, he could recite astonishing streams of poetry from memory, and could sing with a surprisingly pleasant voice. His appearance made no sense either. He was fleshy and pale for a man of the sea, and his skin always looked clammy as if he’d just climbed out of the water after several hours afloat. But here aboard The Devil’s Luck, a sweeter man there never was. She wondered how he’d made his way into this life.

  The captain sat on her right, at the head of the table, and Till to his right, facing Hannah. The occasional tap of a boot at her ankle accompanied by a hidden smile from Edmund kept her fidgeting with her fork and knife, rearranging them this way and that in an attempt to avoid staring at him for too long at a time.

  What that man does to me …

  On the other side of the cooper was Ellis George, the man who’d supervised her bathing on that first occasion. The carpenter was yet another with whom Hannah had grown comfortable. She would often spend some of her free daylight hours conversing with him while he worked. He’d pile up curls of wood on the floor and speak to her about all manner of things. No matter what the subject, he always had some unusual perspective on it that would cause Hannah think about the matter in a completely new light.

  Further down was John Bone, and to Hannah’s surprise, the captain had allowed Brigit to join them, despite her lack of seniority. It appeared that cooking the same meal they ate had granted Bone some privileges. What was more, Brigit completely eschewed the additional chair meant for her and chose instead Bone’s lap for a seat. At an Easter dinner, of all times. The two of them were incorrigible. Bawdy comments flew back and forth, and there was every now and then a flurry of pinches and squealing.

  It is a pirate ship, after all, she reminded herself, trying to ignore their display.

  Seated next to Mr Till were Hezekiah, Simon Grey, and Mr Osbourne. Here were three men she did not interact with so often, but they all managed to be cordial with her when she did.

  The quartermaster did have to give Grey the elbow to keep the lewd comments he directed at Hannah to a minimum, but Osbourne mostly pointed his conversation elsewhere. She thought he might be embarrassed for her, after the act the captain had invited him to stay and watch those many weeks ago. Hannah didn’t know whether she’d reconciled herself to that whole situation or not.

  The presence of Hezekiah intrigued her. The Bosun had been a slave in another life, and she’d heard snippets of conversation that seemed to indicate he’d worked on a cane plantation in Kingston, where Edmund was raised. She wasn’t brave enough to ask him how he’d come to be in charge of line and sail aboard a vessel such as this, but the cruel scars over the dark skin of his back and chest spoke of a transition that would’ve thwarted other men less bold. The one thing she did know was that a person could hear his booming laugh from nearly any place on the ship, and he was rarely seen without a contagious wide smile that Hannah found endearing.

  Hannah thought about crew members like Hezekiah and Ellis George while she stole a glance at Edmund as he cut into the salted meat on his plate. It seemed the only thing that mattered aboard The Devil’s Luck was whether a sailor could do his job, and Hannah admired this about the captain. A sea of change had certainly passed her by, she thought, for her to be able to admire anything about the pirate known as Black Edmund.

  Yes, a number of curious changes had been brewing, she mused as she swept her eyes from Edmund to Benjamin. What these yet meant, she was not sure.

  Cutlery clanked against dishes and cups were filled time and again as the ten of them made their way through their odd version of the holy day feast. Tongues wagged as drink loosened them from their moorings, and there was one comment that caused Hannah to look up from her plate.

  “I’ve had enough of the whores in Nassau already,” Mr Grey slurred, clearly ready to have his mug taken from him, “but ‘m sure there’s plenty of likely flesh in Boston! Why I bet the skirts will climb right up when I—”

  Grey bit off his words with a start and a slosh of wine, and Hannah thought someone might have kicked him under the table. He went back to eating with a purposeful silence.

  Boston, though. That word struck her. Her uncle was there. The captain had letters by his hand. Something was odd here. Was she imagining connections where there were none?

  You’ve probably had too much wine yourself, fool of a girl. What could Edmund possibly have to do with your uncle, or anything concerning him? Stop inventing nonsense.

  The rare sound of the captain’s laughter broke into her darkening thoughts and the clouds of suspicion parted away, instantly forgotten. Hannah watched him jest with Mr Till and melted in the sight of his smile. She wanted to taste the wine on his tongue, and was soon thinking of far different things than letters and uncles. This dinner was carrying on for far too long. They could be in his stateroom right now …

  * * * *

  Four days after Easter Sunday, Hannah was obliged to return to the ship’s galley, at the captain’s request she fetch their evening meal back to his cabin.

  She’d needed to steel herself to walk down those stairs again after her last visit. The provocative commentary she’d endured from Brigit and the cook had been far more direct than was tolerable, and she was not eager to repeat the experience, should the two be in an equally mischievous mood today. It was one thing to speak such blunt words behind closed doors with Edmund or Benjamin, but to hear such things from people she was not sharing a bed with was still exceptionally flustering.

  Sharing a bed, you say. Look at you, Hannah. Look what you’ve become. Shall we put a name to it?

  Her inner voice mocked her, but no, she would still not put a name to what she knew she must be. She would fetch the plates as he’d asked her and that was it.

  Bone was there as she stepped down into the galley, brushing crumbs away from the cutting block with a rag so filthy it defied any claim the activity had to providing cleanliness. He glanced up as her shadow darkened the entrance for a moment, and nodded to her in greeting.

  “Evening, Mrs Collingwood. Didn’t expect to see ye back here again so soon.” As he spoke, he flailed the rag at King George, who was trying to jump up on the block. The cat stalked away in a huff and settled on the bottom stair step to lick its tail.

  “The captain sent me to bring back something for our evening meal,” she said, trying to keep their interaction aimed at the business at hand.

  “Well then,” he said, turning back to inspect a steaming pot, “you’ll need to wait just a few more minutes. Not quite done yet with the pease.”

  “Where is Brigit?” she asked, not sure if she wanted to see the other woman at that moment or not. Her teasing those few days ago still made Hannah feel … awkward.

  “She’s gone off to rest, I imagine.”

  Hannah didn’t want to think about what might have made her former maid so tired at this time of day.

  Satisfied with the progress in the pot, he bent for a moment and then brought out two plates from a stack beneath the block. Hannah shook her head at him in correction.

  “Three please, Mr Bone. I believe Mr Till will be joining us.”

  “Ah.” He added another plate to the stack.

  The cook rested the weig
ht of his bulk on his hands atop the block and eyed her as if there was something he was deciding whether to say. Hannah fussed with the edge of her sleeve, not entirely comfortable under the gaze of the red-bearded man.

  “Has the captain spoken to ye much,” he ventured at last to ask, “about any of his time before taking command of The Devil’s Luck?”

  She shook her head. Blackburn avoided bringing up his past, and when the subject came up he was quick to move the conversation elsewhere.

  “Or of how he came to choosing out his quartermaster?” The man added a second question, to which she also answered in the negative.

  “The captain doesn’t seem to talk of such things, Mr Bone.”

  “No, that wouldn’t be like our Captain, now would it? Why don’t ye bring over that stool for yerself, Mrs Collingwood.” He gestured to a tall wooden stool standing in a corner behind her. She pulled it in front of the block and sat at his suggestion, curious now. It was clear the cook had something more to say and she watched him struggle, possibly with how to word it. Hannah waited, trying for patience.

  “I don’t know what to say and what not to say, ye understand.” His words confirmed her suspicions at his hesitation. “It’s only that … well, the captain’s been side by side with Mr Till since the two of them were boys. Like brothers, they are. Never seen a more loyal pair of friends.”

  She dipped her head in a quick nod, encouraging him to go on.

  “The pair of them cut nearly every purse in Kingston, and that before they were grown men.” Hannah squirmed in her seat a bit at the thought that Edmund had taken to crime at such a young age. Bone continued. “They made their coin as war-caperers—privateers, Ma’am—for many a year after that, you see, but always on the same ship, one always watching the other’s back.”

  He held her eyes then, possibly to see whether she was following him or winnowing out some implication from his words. She wasn’t, and said as much.