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

by Eris Adderly

  * * * *

  The ships were side by side, The Devil’s Luck looming over the schooner, and the crew were casting lines to tether the two for their boarding of the smaller vessel. His men swarmed the upper decks in an organised chaos and Edmund stood beside the gunwale on the main deck, ready to lead them aboard the cargo ship and lighten its burden as best they could.

  As Edmund had foreseen, Mr Grey had been none too thrilled about the single cannonball he’d been allowed to unload into the other ship, but the tactic had worked as well as it had the last time, and had saved them powder to boot.

  He hadn’t wanted to tear up the other ship, and possibly any of its cargo too badly, before they got a chance to see what was what, and the boom and splinter of a lone ball through the upper part of their hull had been enough to set a white flag flapping in the breeze in short order. They ought to be able to board without too much trouble at this point, the smaller ship having seen how vastly outgunned they were, and its captain uninterested in losing lives.

  The gossiping types at major ports who didn’t know any better liked to believe that pirating involved a great deal more cannon fire and noisy destruction of ships than it actually did, but Edmund knew from experience that this was often not the case. All sides wished to conserve resources, especially when, out at sea for weeks or months at a time, they could not be easily replenished. Ships like his would usually seek out prizes they could overpower without too much trouble, those that would give up their goods before their lives, and so the take might be had without so much damage to his own vessel or crew. Surgeon, carpenter, and gunner always remained behind and out of any fighting, though, just in case.

  This ship would be no different, it seemed, and as the hulls pulled together, a line of his crew formed at the gunwale, two and sometimes three men deep in places, weapons drawn, waiting to board.

  It was time.

  “With me!” His words rang out over rigging and plank as, cutlass in the air, he made for the deck of their prize. Cries of challenge and triumph rose as one like a roar behind him. It was a significant drop from the galleon onto the schooner, but his crew followed him over the edge in a waterfall of pent up enthusiasm for the take.

  Pairs of boots were still thundering onto the smaller ship’s deck when Edmund laid eyes on a man with a greying beard who he placed somewhere between his own age and his father’s. Judging by his crossed arms and scowl, he wagered he’d found the captain.

  “Are you in command this vessel?” he sauntered over to the other man, cutlass dangling, but ready if the schooner’s captain were to change his mind about the white flag.

  “As much as can be expected, pirate.” The older man hawked a spiteful gob of spit onto the deck and eyed Edmund with something far beyond distaste.

  “You’ll be left that way if you and your crew stand aside,” Edmund pointed out, in what he felt was a most gracious offer, considering. “What are you carrying? Sugar? Rum? Where are you bound?”

  “Go find out for yourself, thief. I’ll not aid you with information.” The schooner’s captain curled his lip up in a derisive sneer as he shifted his weight from one leg to another. Edmund had a hearty laugh for the man’s spirit, glad at last to be in a situation with which he was familiar.

  “You may spill your mind to me yet, old man, if I find a need to know its contents. Hezekiah!” he bellowed to the man whose deep voice he’d just heard behind him. “Have this man disarmed, along with everyone else. Keep them out of the way, and have Mr Reeve take some men below decks to take stock of their hold. I’m going to see if our captain here has anything of interest in his quarters.”

  “Aye, Sir.” Hezekiah acknowledged his orders, moving from behind to carry them out.

  Edmund moved off into the ship to see what they might claim for The Devil’s Luck and her crew.

  * * * *

  Hannah had buried herself nose-deep in an illustrated text concerning known species of water fowl native to the Americas. She’d snatched it from the captain’s shelf as an available distraction from the noise rumbling now outside the cabin. It appeared the crew of The Devil’s Luck were up to the very thing they did best.

  No one had come into the stateroom to tell her so, but Hannah could infer the nature of what was afoot from the increase in muffled sailor’s calls answering one another across the deck. The lone boom of cannon fire she’d heard had nearly startled her into incontinence, and at the very least made her fumble the book out of her hands, almost knocking over the tiny oil lamp she’d been using to read in the dim light. A series of jarring thumps to the hull told her not only must they be directly alongside another vessel, but that the pirate crew was boarding the other ship, as well. She had never really thought about it before today, but now that what went on above decks became apparent to her, Hannah was surprised to note that this was the first activity of the kind to happen during her time on the cursed ship.

  Now she grit her teeth and tried to focus on birds. The colouration and mating habits of various gulls and herons overlapped with jagged edges as she tried to read, but the sounds of whatever was going on above were proving a formidable deterrent. She fussed and couldn’t focus. With a long-suffering sigh, Hannah glanced up at the pitcher of water the captain had left her on the side board, trying to decide if her thirst was worth it to fetch another cup.

  No. Because then you’ll have to use that wretched bucket again.

  She made some low noise of irritation in her throat and went back to the book.

  The curious part of her would normally be tempted to poke her head out of the council chamber and see just what was happening first hand, but both her irritation with the captain and, on a more practical level, the length of chain securing her to the cabin’s table, prevented her from doing so.

  Oddly enough, she didn’t feel herself to be in any imminent danger, despite the looting and inevitable violence taking place not very far from her current prison inside the stateroom. As much as she might want to slap the colour from his face, Hannah admitted in her thoughts that she judged Blackburn a competent enough leader as to not put his own ship into undue risk. She would no doubt be safe enough, if annoyed, in the cabin alone until the fray was at an end.

  Now where was I? Right. “The common heron, or Ardea cinera—”

  A more familiar sound, much closer to her ears, brought her eyes up out of the text.

  Hannah’s unbound ankle swept back by instinct, preparing her body for flight as she turned from her seat at the table to face the clicking latch of the door.

  “Hello again, Little Dove.”

  Graves.

  The surgeon was on her in a sinuous flash before the toppled chair even finished clattering to the ground.

  She tried to lunge away with a cry of denial, but he had the bony fingers of one hand fisted into her hair with a speed that seemed unnatural. His other hand swept nearly everything off the table in a single, forceful arc of his forearm, sending papers and quills and inkwell clattering to the deck.

  With a strength she wouldn’t have assigned such a wiry man, Graves was hauling her backward over the cleared table top, one swift hand hoisting her by the knee so she was forced to either fall back or sit upright on the edge of the table, with the foul man wedged between her thighs. She tried kicking at him, but her left ankle kept binding up in its chain, and worse, made her legs fly further apart.

  Much like a wounded animal making too much noise thrashing around in the forest, all of her flailing had sent the chain into a metallic spray of links over the deck and table leg, catching the surgeon’s attention in a most unhelpful manner.

  “So this is how he keeps you in here.” The man tsked and the sound made a sickening knot in her belly as he leaned down to take the length of chain in hand.

  He tugged at her tether, thoughtful, his other hand still twined in her hair, close to the scalp. Hannah was very still now, eyes wide and trying to keep her breathing slow and deliberate through her nose, falling furt
her into the role of stunned prey animal every second.

  “I would require no chains to keep you at my side, Little Dove,” Graves said, in a mix of reverence and chilling conviction. And more disturbing still, none of the boorish façade he’d put on for the captain that day at the mast. This man came from breeding, wealth. “It would only cost you the briefest of educations to learn the way.”

  From nowhere, a scalpel was in his fingers, glittering before her face in a sinister flurry before it disappeared again, the threat made plain. He laughed at her gasp, something much lower and more intimate than a chuckle, but the surgeon was quick to keep her disoriented.

  Hannah let out a startled cry when the fingers in her hair became a knotted fist and yanked her head backward so that her eyes were now on the wood planks overhead. She heard Graves drop the chain back to the floor and felt his free arm come to support his weight on the table, the tip of a thumb wedging in just under the side curve of her bottom. Blinking rapidly, and retaining no control of her breath with her head bent back this far, Hannah felt the panic start to flap around in her chest with furious wings. Whatever this demon who pursued her had planned, she most assuredly wanted no part of it.

  Her eyes flew wide when she felt his damp breath just below her ear.

  “Do you know what has brought us together, Dove? Here, on this ship?” Filthy fingers caressed her throat, making her involuntarily try to swallow. The action was quite painful with her neck tilted back from the pull of his grip in her hair and it threw her into a fit of coughing. Graves laughed like a gleeful child who’d discovered his new pet could perform a trick on command. He took time from his rhetoric to draw further back on her hair, and Hannah choked and sputtered, trying to catch her breath.

  “That’s right,” he continued, when he’d had his fill for a moment of her distressed attempts to take in air, “you’ll learn to breathe at my pleasure. To sigh at my pleasure. To laugh. To scream.”

  She felt the bracing hand leave the table and begin tugging at her skirts, dragging them up over her knees.

  “What has brought us here, Dove, is that you are the One.” Hannah had less than no idea what this madman was talking about, but his rhetoric sent ice trickling down her spine all the same. He meant her harm, that much was clear.

  And he was insane.

  “I’ve searched half of Europe for over twenty years,” he went on, “but none of them have been the One. But you … well, you’re different, now, aren’t you?”

  … those whores you played your sick little games with.

  The captain’s words to the surgeon at the mast came back, making her stomach clench in fear. Here was a monster disguised as a man, and bent on ‘educating’ her, possibly with the aid of a scalpel.

  She felt air on her bare legs just before Graves managed to ruck the fabric of her skirts up against the bend of her hips. The coarse weave of his breeches itched between her splayed thighs and, with the surgeon pressing in far too close for her sanity, she could feel that the man was already erect. She nearly retched, but for the awkward angle of her throat.

  A set of rough fingernails scraped up the inside of her thigh, and the relentless serpent invading her space kept talking as he went.

  “I’m sure, my sweetest, you imagine yourself in possession of your own will, your own ideas,” the surgeon crooned on in a sickening, musical tone, “but you will come to understand—for I will teach you—that what you truly are is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled. Waiting for me to show you the way.”

  He drew his bony hips and upper body away from her for a moment, and by the hissing sound he made, as though he’d just been burned, Hannah knew where his eyes had focused.

  “Perfection. Of course. For this, he keeps you to himself, as if you didn’t already belong to me,” he muttered, distracted, bringing his hand to the one place she least wanted it to go.

  “Well, almost to himself.” His voice thrummed with dark humour, fingers combing through the curls that defended her sex. “We can’t forget the quartermaster, now can we? They both attempt to own what isn’t theirs. Tell me, Dove,” he went on, villainous touch sliding down until the tips of a thumb and finger rested against each of her entrances, “have they had you backward and forward yet? Perhaps both at once?”

  The surgeon made a taunting press at her secrets as a crude parallel to his last question and wove a thin growl of lust at his own suggestion into the fabric of her growing fear.

  “Mark me now, once I have you away from this cabin, off this bloody ship”—his next words came in a humid whisper against her ear—“And I will, eventually—there isn’t a single part of you we won’t explore and dissect, Little Dove. Find out what sort of lovely noises you can make, when properly tutored.”

  He used the press of his hips to grind his fingers further into her vulnerable flesh, and Hannah tried to squirm backward away from his touch, but the back half of her skirt was still pinned between Graves’s thighs and the edge of the table. She tried her best not to provide him with the satisfaction of helpless noises and bit the inside of her cheek.

  “Yes, just aching to be learn, aren’t you?” He returned to his previous thought aloud, and worse, the original probing quest of his hand. “Waiting for a man to come along and show you the way.”

  His fingers abandoned their taunts for a real effort to work their way inside her now, and an animal noise of rage and protest tore from her strained throat. She felt him lean back in and was rolled under a wave of revulsion when he set about dragging his tongue in a long, excruciating lap from her collar bone to her jaw. A low groan of depraved satisfaction hummed out of the surgeon as he sampled her flesh.

  “You’ve been waiting for direction, have you not, Mrs Collingwood? Waiting for a father to tell you who to marry.” His words were suddenly very personal as his fingers painfully twisted their way further into her unwelcoming gateway. “Waiting for some ship’s captain to offer an excuse to lift your skirts.”

  Hannah heard the sinister smile in his voice at that last taunt and she choked out a curse that may or may not have been intelligible with her head at such an angle. The surgeon only laughed in response. He was receiving the reactions he wanted.

  But now another cold fingertip was searching lower between her cheeks and, to her escalating terror, seemed to be wriggling toward an entrance of its own.

  “NO!” Hannah managed to form at least that hoarse word clearly enough, as her hips bucked at him, despite the implication of pleasure-seeking the instinctive defence might imply. She was desperate to break away from Graves’s horrid touch before she could be violated further.

  A sudden sharp yank on her hair set her coughing again and the surgeon speared at her with a rough thrust of his fingers.

  “Be still!” he snapped. “Be still, my fine lady, or I or we can being your real education right here and now.”

  She tried to still herself, tried to breathe, for all the good it might do. This man was mad. Sick. She must try to calm down. Perhaps a way out of this would present itself, but it wouldn’t do so if she was so panicked she couldn’t see it.

  Breathe, Hannah. Breathe.

  “Oh yes,” he said, mostly to himself now, his attention returning to the rough digit he was trying to worm past her defences. “All the same. All pink and spread out, whores and duchesses alike. And they all begged just the same as well, though none of them was the One. You will beg me one day, Dove. And I will show you what it means to be the One.”

  The surgeon’s ominous words seemed to trigger a very rapid series of events within the confines of the stateroom just then.

  He’d breached the second entrance between her legs with the tip of a finger. The trespass had become simply too much, and she drew in a great, ragged breath, ready to scream out and make at least a final valiant effort to throw her tormentor off.

  When she took in that breath, though, a different alarm swept all others from her mind.

  Smoke.

  The oil
lamp.

  She was hardly able to twist her neck to the side, but at the very lower periphery of her vision, she saw it. Flame, and licking at the leg of the table. When he’d flung everything from the table, he must have knocked over the lamp, as well. How had Graves not noticed?

  “Fire!” She tried to yell out, but the word came out a meaningless bark.

  Shoving at Graves with her palms—did you forget you had hands this entire time, you madwoman?—Hannah repeated her cry until the surgeon seemed to break from his trance of violation.

  “I told you to be still, you—”

  He stopped. All motion and all threats. He’d seen.

  And in the same silent moment of tense surprise, they heard from somewhere near the outside door to the council chamber, in a muffled bellow, “Where’s that bloody surgeon?”

  “You … lucky little cunt.” He seethed, jabbing at her with a final harsh thrust of his fingers. The offending hand abruptly withdrew and she yelped in pain as he levered himself out from between her legs with a growl of frustration.

  “Best of luck with the fire, my Little Dove.” He moved in a quick retreat toward the door, poison in his words. “If that doesn’t manage to kill you, I promise to bring along any number of interesting toys for us to play with the next time we’re alone.”

  As soon as the door shut behind him, Hannah vaulted off the table, jerking her skirts into place as she went, and stretching her neck back in the proper direction to stem some of the ache from having it bent backward for so long.

  She got as far away from the flames as her tether would allow, swallowing to rewet her throat as she went. The panic threatened to rise again as she turned back to assess the danger.

  Think, Hannah!

  The fire wasn’t out of control yet, but it was climbing one of the table legs at a steady rate, and being fuelled by the spilled lamp oil. Not so easy to put out, and it would spread quickly with the rocking of the ship rolling the puddle of oil back and forth in an increasing pool on the floor.