Brendan Merrick. He emigrated to New England some thirty years ago, and made quite a name for himself in the American War—on their side, I’m sorry to say—with a little schooner named Kestrel.”
Both of the admiral’s brows were raised now. “Kestrel . . . wasn’t that the name of the Pirate Queen’s vessel?”
“Yes, sir, it is. And Merrick is the surname of the Pirate Queen.”
“Aha!”
“At first, I didn’t put two and two together when she came to us last night,” Colin went on.
“It wasn’t until she mentioned the name of her schooner, sir, that I realized just who she is. By God—this is most embarrassing, sir. . .”
“No, no, do go on!” Nelson’s eyes were gleaming; obviously, he was getting far more
enjoyment out of this extraordinary tale than Colin was in telling it.
“Well, my mother and her cousin in America, Brendan, write to each other quite frequently, sir, and while I have never been to New England, and never met her relations over there, I do remember her saying something about how one of Brendan’s children, a girl, had some uncanny ability to predict the future and see visions of what was to come. My mother—she’s Irish, you know—called it the Sight.
“They had a lot of trouble with the girl,” Colin continued. “Apparently she was quite willful and uncontrollable, a real handful. Seven years ago, now, she fell in love with a French sailor her parents disapproved of, stole her father’s schooner, and off the two of them went. Her father chased her all the way to Florida, where he was told of a ship that wrecked in the Keys during a hurricane, a vessel that, according to those who’d seen it go down, answered Kestrel’s description. The girl hasn’t been seen or heard from since, and her family has long since given her up for dead.”
“By God! That is quite a tale, Captain Lord!”
“Yes. I’d forgotten the incident—at the time it happened, I was a young commander and,
being at sea, was not around my own family enough to have it more firmly ingrained on my
mind; indeed, I learned of the girl’s disappearance and death via letters from my parents. Thus, it did not immediately occur to me that the girl who ran away from home, and the woman who
crashed into this cabin last night, are one and the same.”
“So, the Pirate Queen is your cousin.”
The young captain looked at the freshly repaired window, and nodded with embarrassment.
“Yes sir,” he said slowly. “I’m afraid so.”
###
Gray had reached the Pirate Queen’s house. On the veranda, he found wicker chairs strewn
amidst pots of flowering hibiscus. He stood there for a moment, his hair hanging down his back and dripping water down his spine, his backside, his legs, while he watched the sun dance across the cool stone steps in lazy patterns of shadow and light. A bird sang in a nearby tree, and butterflies flitted over a little garden just beyond the lawn. Gray yawned, stretched, and smiled.
Beauty certainly existed in the most savage of places.
A thought that could certainly be applied to Her Royal Highness herself.
He grinned, wiped the sand from his feet, and stepped inside. The house was quiet, still—
and apparently, empty. Sea breezes wafted through open, louvered windows, playing with gauzy curtains and sweeping the rooms with the fresh scent of flowers, vegetation, and the ocean. Giltframed portraits hung upon the walls, and pots of bright red bougainvillea were set in the corners. The ceilings were high, the floors of polished hardwood, the furnishings rich and elegant and gleaming. Obviously, whoever had once lived here had been more than affluent, and he wondered what had happened to drive the former owner away; but then, ruined finances, fever, and a host of other misfortunes could well break a man.
Ah, well, it was not worth his speculation. Dismissing the thought, he continued on, and his growling stomach led him to the dining room. It was dominated by a mahogany table set with silver candelabra, a vase of flowers, and a bowl of fruit. His mouth watering, Gray sat down and proceeded to help himself.
Outside, the sun rose higher and the heat came with it.
He ate until he was full, happy, lazy, and content. Fruit juice was sticky between his fingers, and he licked each one in turn as he rose and, taking one last orange padded through the house, poking into a corner here, peeking into a room there, nonchalantly tossing the orange up and down as he explored. A grand, Turkish-carpeted stairway led to a second floor, and this he climbed with all the spirit of Captain Cook on an exploration into the unknown.
The unknown turned out to be a long, airy hall and a host of bedrooms.
Gray grinned, wolfishly, and began to push open each door. There was one room decorated
like a ship’s cabin, complete with swinging hammock . . . another, with the lace and frills and ribbon trimmings a young girl might favor ... another, in deep shades of gold and crimson, another with clothing thrown over chairs and chests, on and on until he came to the last, set far down the hall and apart from the others.
There was a toothless shark’s skull mounted on the door, and he knew without question that this room belonged to the Pirate Queen.
Still holding the orange in one hand, Gray pushed open the door and stepped inside.
It was an immense, airy room, dominated by a huge bed with four mahogany posts, over
which was draped a netting of gently swaying gauze. Thick pillows of dark purple satin were piled at the headboard, and a tasseled, cream-colored spread made a delicious expanse of
softness over the high mattress.
He pictured the Pirate Queen’s lithe body spread invitingly on that spread and felt a quick stab of heat in his loins.
He stepped forward, put the orange on a bedside table, and trailed his hand over a sea chest of lignum vitae. It was carved with figures of sharks, and upon closer examination, he realized that the shark theme was carried throughout the room; there were china sharks on the dresser, wooden sharks guarding the door, paintings of sharks on the wall; and yes, upon closer inspection, even the finials of that huge bed were carved with open-jawed sharks.
Gray stood for a moment, thinking. He reached out and moved his hand over a pillow,
feeling the silky satin catching in the calluses of his palm. He smiled, a slow, conniving smile.
His belly was full. The play of sunlight and sea breeze against his bare skin was making him drowsy. He heard a bird chirping just outside the open window, the soft hiss of the trades through the palms, the distant, soothing music of the sea.
What the hell.
Yawning, he tossed his clothes over a chair, peeled back those luxurious spreads, and, naked as the day he was born, promptly fell asleep in the Pirate Queen’s bed.
###
“Majesty!” Aisling and Sorcha came running from the abandoned storehouse, their hair
flying behind them. “Majesty, come quick! The prisoner’s escaped!”
Maeve had left her crew to see to Kestrel and was halfway up the beach when the two girls, who had run ahead, nearly collided with her. “What?”
“He’s gone! We just checked the storehouse and he’s gone!”
“Bloody hell.” Drawing her pistol, Maeve raced up the beach after them. Sure enough, their makeshift gaol was empty, the pirate gone. Only loose shackles and the pallet rested on the floor.
Fuming, she kicked at the old bedding, then leaned against the cold stone and passed the back of her hand over her brow.
“Now what, Majesty?” Aisling cried, tugging at her arm.
Maeve kneaded her aching brow. “He cannot have gone far,” she muttered, wishing for
nothing more than a dark room and an hour’s rest. Of all the times to have to face a problem like this. “There’s no way off this island, and if he’s fool enough to wander into the forest, then I should think him smart enough to come out.”
“What if he’s armed?”
“And dangerous?”
>
“And waiting to ambush us?”
Maeve gave a hoot of laughter and slammed out of the gaol. “For his sake, he’d better be armed. Now come on, we have work to do. When Nelson finds he’s been duped by this General What’s-his-name, he’s going to come hightailing it back here in a fine rage, looking for me, because I was right. And as for our traitor . . . he’ll show, have no fear of that. He no doubt fled because he knows I’m going to turn him in, but when his stomach gets hungry he’ll come slinking out of wherever he’s hiding, the blasted coward.“ She spat the word with all the vileness she could command. “And then—”
“And then, Lord Nelson will annihilate him! “ Sorcha cried.
“Aye, he’ll string him up from the Victory’s foreyard!”
“Can we stay and watch, Majesty? Can we?”
Young Aisling, echoing her sister, began jumping up and down in the hot sand. “Can we?
Can we? Can we?”
They didn’t notice the shadow that passed over Maeve’s face. “By God, you two make
Grace O’Malley look tame,” she muttered, referring to the notorious sixteenth-century Irish pirate queen from whom she was supposedly descended. “Go help the others secure the boat, and when you’re through we’ll wash down Kestrel's decks.”
“Majesty, you look pale. Are you all right?”
“My head is killing me,” she admitted, as indeed it had been since Lord Nelson’s lips had touched her hand and the Vision—God, she didn’t want to think of what it had revealed—had hit her with the force of a warship's broadside.
That coat will be the death of you.
She should never have spoken the thought aloud, for she’d had the most uncanny feeling
he’d been able to look inside her mind and see what she had seen; battle with the French at last.
Victory! And the little admiral, falling to his quarterdeck with a bullet in his spine, there to lie drowning, dying, in his own blood—
“Well, you go rest then, Majesty,” Aisling said, steering her toward the house. “We’ll see to Kestrel. Maybe tonight we can have a bonfire and a pig roast, and tap into the wine we stole from that Spaniard off Guadeloupe!”
“That should draw our pirate out,” Sorcha sniffed.
Maeve, pressing her fingers to her throbbing temples, was in no mood to argue. “Very well, then. Maybe I will go lie down for a few minutes. . . The devil take this blasted sun, this heat—”
“What about the prisoner?” Sorcha called, as Maeve trudged up the beach.
“I’ll find him, damn his scurvy hide, and when I do. . .”
Leaving the rest unsaid, she walked toward the house, drooping like a flower in the heat and wanting nothing but the blessed sleep of oblivion.
Chapter 8
Maeve pushed open the door to her room, tossed her scabbard into a chair, and saw the
pirate sprawled on her bed, fast asleep and naked as a newborn babe.
She froze.
Then, holding her breath, she slunk backward, flattened herself against the wall outside, and, shutting her eyes, leaned her head back against the wall, the image of that virile man stamped indelibly on her brain.
Fury at his insolence . . . shock at discovering him in her bed —her bed! . . . joy that he hadn’t fled like the coward she’d thought him to be . . . excitement at the sight of that handsome body. . .
And terror of the broken heart she knew he would give her.
Maeve’s first instinct was to kill him. Her second was to slip into bed with him and have her way with that splendid male body. She decided instead to creep back into the room and stare at him until she decided between the first and the second.
She found him awake and sitting up, reposing against the pillows heaped at the headboard
with his hands linked behind his head and his black hair in disarray across his brow, his arms, her pillows. His shoulders were dark against the lavender satin, his chest a formidable expanse of darkly tanned muscle. His manhood was bared to the world, his amused gaze challenged hers, and there wasn’t the least shred of modesty in those wicked indigo depths—only ripe humor and bold, blatant invitation.
“Care to drop anchor beside me, lass?” He grinned, wolfishly. “Morning is the fairest time for a tryst, you know.”
For the first time in her life Maeve Merrick was at a loss over what to say, do, think. She stared at him, unable to tear her eyes from that magnificent male body that lay so dark against the creamy sheets and violet pillows, her creamy sheets and her violet pillows— She grabbed up her cutlass and pointed it at him, accusingly. “You—” Her hand was
trembling, and she saw humor dancing in his eyes as he looked at the jiggling sword tip. “You escaped. . .”
“Aye.” He gave a lewd, suggestive wink. “Proud of me?”
“Proud?”
“Aye. Your pirate here is smarter than you give him credit for.” He tapped his temple and grinned. “I merely plucked the key from you when you lay senseless in my arms. You really didn’t expect me to berth on that filthy pallet, now, did you?”
Her mouth fell open and she could only stare. The rogue! Her skin flushed hot and feverish, flushed hotter still as she noticed that he was beginning to swell and rise and stiffen. Her palms grew sweaty, and she tightened her grip on the sword hilt and forced herself to meet his eyes, admiring his courage and yes, even his insolence. No coward, this man!
“So,” he drawled, taking advantage of her stunned silence. “Did you have a nice meeting
with the admiral?”
His words jolted Maeve out of her shock. “My meeting with Lord Nelson is none of your blasted business! And if you think to change my mind about handing you over to him”—she
stormed to the window to escape the temptation his virile body offered— “you’re wasting your breath.”
“Ah . . . so you did meet him,” he murmured from behind her. “Quite a remarkable little fellow, isn’t he?”
“In spirit,” she allowed, “but not stature. I make two of him.”
She was staring out at the turquoise sea, gripping the cutlass so fiercely the wire-bound hilt drove itself into her palm. Then she swung back, not liking the feel of that amused gaze nailing her between the shoulder blades, of having her back to an enemy, of knowing his eyes were sliding heatedly over every inch of her spine, her rump, her legs, her bare calves. . .
“So, you failed to convince him of your mystical powers, eh? Is his lordship’s course a
southerly one, after all? Hmmm?”
“I will not answer that. You’re a spy and therefore I shall disclose no information about the British Navy to you.”
“Why this apparent loyalty to the British Navy, eh? By your speech, I’d have thought you an American.”
“I am an American. But I detest the bloody French as much as the British do. And as for Nelson, he’s not only a hero, but the finest sea officer in the world and I happen to admire him, all right? Now shut your damned mouth before I lose my temper and flay that tongue of yours into ribbons!”
His lips twitched, and she bristled at the thought that he was inwardly laughing at her.
“Well, you can’t blame a body for trying,” he said mildly, his gaze sliding down the front of her shirt with enough heat to burn the fabric right off her skin. Maeve slapped the flat of the cutlass across her chest, but the action only called further attention to that part of her anatomy. “And Villeneuve? Surely you can tell me about him. . .”
“Villeneuve is north, and that’s all you need to know.”
“Aah, but does Nelson know that?”
“Aye, I told him.”
He smirked. “And did his Lordship believe you?”
“No,” she admitted, her mouth tightening in an angry line. Unbidden, her gaze flickered to his masculinity before she glared up into his smug, amused face. “Damn you, do you have to lie there, all exposed?”
“It’s . . . hot.”
“There’s a fine breeze b
lowing!”
“I wasn’t referring to the weather.”
In one quick motion, Maeve drew her dagger and flung it at his head, satisfied to see him jerk away so that the vicious blade impaled the wall just above and behind him. “You are
disgusting, despicable, and totally without pride!”
“On the contrary, madam.” Without blinking an eye, he reached up, pulled the dagger from
the wall, and plucking an orange from the nightstand, began to use it to peel the fruit. “I am quite proud of it, thank you.” Still holding her gaze, he popped a section of the orange into his mouth, eating it with slow, suggestive motions that shortened the breath in Maeve’s lungs and made her realize that he was not the only one who was hot. Her temper and her temperature were rising as well. Had she had her pistol, she probably would’ve shot him. Probably. Maybe. Maybe . . . not.
Her gaze darted from him to the window. From the window to him. From him to the window . . .
and each time she looked at him, she saw that he was watching her, fully enjoying her
discomfort.
He grinned, and suggestively licked at the juices trailing from the sweet fruit, letting his tongue wrap around each section and making sure she saw him doing it. His eyes were dark, laughing, and half-veiled by heavy, thick lashes that did nothing to conceal the wicked expression that lit them.
The suckling noises increased.
“Stop it!” she hissed.
He dropped the orange section into his mouth, licked his lips with a slow, languorous,
circular motion, and slowly peeled off another.
The heat rose in Maeve’s blood.
“Would you like . . . a taste, madam?”
She raised her cutlass. “I’ll give you a taste—”
“No decisive battle was ever fought from afar,” he interrupted on a low murmur, still
grinning. “Nay, two vessels must lie alongside of each other in order to best bring their guns to bear.” He bit into the orange, making lewd, evocative noises as the juice trailed from the succulent flesh and dribbled down his chin. There was a dimple in that chin, and Maeve felt her heart skipping, staggering, faltering. “We have a signal for such an engagement in the navy. ’Tis called close action.”
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