She was wearing serviceable leather half-boots, but there was no need for them to get wet. Before she could step down into the surf, Kieran seized her beneath her arms, swung her up and out of the boat, and carried her to the beach. There, he set her down on the hot, dry sand.
“That was quite unnecessary,” she said, making a big pretense of straightening her skirts and brushing imaginary dirt from her arms. He noticed her cheeks were quite pink, and that she suddenly wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m quite capable of getting out of a boat by myself.”
“I’m sure you are, but I was thinking of your feet.”
“It’s not like the water is cold.”
“It’s not like it isn’t wet, either.”
“It was still unnecessary.”
“Manners in a gentleman are indeed necessary. And usually appreciated. Do you not appreciate them?”
She walked stiffly ahead toward the gathered shore party. “I thought we’d already established that if you were indeed a gentleman, you’d have returned my ship to me without laying claim to any part of it.”
“You established that, not me.”
“Because you’re a privateer first and a gentleman second, Captain Merrick?”
Kieran felt a familiar stab of pain begin to beat behind his temples. He handed the blunderbuss to Watts to hold while he yanked one of the pistols from his belt. “I can put you back in the boat if you like so you can be free to trudge through the surf to your heart’s content, Miss McCormack.”
“If that requires your touching me with such familiarity once again, Captain Merrick, I will decline your…gallant offer.”
He gritted his teeth. She was a distraction, this woman, and possibly a dangerous one, and he was deeply regretting his decision to let her accompany the shore party. And now the others were regarding her with a mixture of surprise and amusement that she would speak to him so. His mouth tight, he flipped open the lid of the cartridge box slung around his left shoulder and resting against his right hip, selected a paper-wrapped charge, ripped the top off with his teeth and poured the black powder into the barrel of the pistol.
“Are we ready?” he asked the group, with a lingering glance at Diego.
Murmurs of assent all around.
And still, she wouldn’t give up.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Captain Merrick. We are here to find answers, not to argue.”
“That’s the most sensible thing to come out of your mouth yet.”
“And that’s the most complementary thing to come out of yours.”
“Look, I don’t want to be in this godforsaken place any longer than need be, especially if there’s a chance that brigantine will be back anytime soon. Are you quite ready?”
She checked the flint on her own pistol. “Quite so.”
Diego had walked a little distance away. He cast a pointed, hungry look at Miss McCormack and smiled, his broken canine making him look both lecherous and evil and Kieran, seeing it, felt the hackles go up the length of his spine.
“You look at the lady like that again and I’ll make you regret it,” he snapped, priming and loading the other pistol.
The pirate’s calculating gaze swung to his. His smile spread like disease through a crowded city. “Been a while since I had me a woman,” he murmured, leering at Miss McCormack’s bosom. And then, pointedly, “but it won’t be much longer, if I have anything to say about it.”
Kieran prided himself on the fact that he did not have a temper. He prided himself on his cool head and discerning thoughtfulness. But in that moment both deserted him and grabbing Diego by the throat, he shoved him backward with such force that the breath exited the pirate’s lungs in a whoosh as he hit the sand. Before he could even lunge to his feet and attack, Kieran had his pistol drawn and leveled at his chest and Joel and Briggs had gone for their own weapons. It was a moment before Kieran trusted himself to speak.
“Get up,” he snarled. “And start moving.”
The pirate’s cold smirk further taxed his ability to stay deliberate and calm. Beside him, he could feel Miss McCormack staring at him. She had gone white at the pirate’s threat but now, for the first time since he’d met her, she seemed to be stricken silent.
Silent.
Thank God for silver linings, Kieran thought.
He glanced out over the pristine turquoise water to Sandpiper, familiar, a part of home in this strange and inhospitable place. She was a reassuring sight. Close enough to train her guns on any attack that came out of the forest. Close enough that they could beat a hasty retreat back to her should the need arise.
“What now, Captain?”
“I want to check out that cooking fire. Then Diego here can lead us to any other encampments which, hopefully, will also be deserted.” He turned a hard gaze on the brigand. “Any noise out of you louder than a whisper and it’s the last sound you ever make. Got that?”
Diego just smiled, his eyes gleaming.
“Move,” Kieran said.
They trudged through the sand to the remains of the cooking fire and there, Kieran stopped dead in his tracks. For a moment, his lungs were unable to draw air and a strange buzzing sensation moved up his spine and stole the moisture from his mouth.
At first glance it was just a stack of wood, most of it charred, a pile of ashes at its base, depressions in the sand, footprints, chicken bones, a discarded mug evidence that the site had recently been used. But it was the wood itself that had caught Kieran’s attention.
Miss McCormack was beside him. He’d all but forgotten her. “What is it, Captain?”
He moved closer to the remains of the cooking fire, and poked at the charred remains with his foot. “What do you see here, Miss McCormack?”
“Chunks of wood. Dead branches, probably gathered from the forest. Driftwood. And—” she took a step closer. “That curved piece looks like part of a ship. A bit of planking, perhaps?”
Planking. Weathered on one side, painted black on the other.
Like Kestrel’s had been.
Kieran turned and stared hard into the pirate’s eyes. “Explain this,” he said, fisting his hands to keep them from shaking. “Is it what I think it is?”
“What do you think it is?”
“It looks like hull planking.”
“Sure does.”
“Where did it come from?”
The pirate’s smile was cold and ruthless. “A shipwreck, I’d imagine.”
Kieran felt tremors starting in the very marrow of his bones. Emotion assailed him. Hope, no longer quite so fragile. Shock. The stunned realization that this, this, might be a part of the beloved ship with which he’d grown up, the beautiful schooner that had been carrying his mother and father and Liam home under Connor’s command when she’d encountered the pirates. He opened his mouth to say something when sudden shouts erupted from Sandpiper and one of her guns thundered a warning. As one, the shore party turned and in that moment a gasp of horror went through them all.
There was Sandpiper, men already racing her decks to take action.
And there, sliding around the headland, was the pirate brigantine.
Chapter 8
Everything happened at once.
Diego tackling a distracted Joel. The two of them going down in a tangle, the pirate ripping a knife from Joel’s scabbard. Captain Merrick’s lightning-quick move, his pistol barking out, the pirate falling to the sand as he’d been about to plunge the dagger into Joel’s throat. Desperate shouts from Sandpiper, Captain Merrick grabbing her hand and hauling her at a dead run down the beach toward the boat, the others close behind.
Never had safety seemed so far away.
And the brigantine was already moving to intercept their escape back to Sandpiper.
A sudden roar from its guns made the ground all but tremble beneath them and in horror, Rosalie saw holes appear in Sandpiper’s backed square topsail as Captain Merrick all but flung her into the boat then shoved it backward into the surf.
> “Get in!” he shouted to Joel and Briggs and a second later they were all aboard, Joel’s powerful arms already propelling them through the shallows.
Rosalie sat frozen; aboard Sandpiper, figures were scrambling.
“Damned bastards must have been here all along!”
“We circled this entire island, they were nowhere in sight. Ships don’t just appear out of nowhere!”
“Well, that one did!”
“What d’ye make of her, Captain?”
But Kieran, already reloading his pistol, was staring past Joel as the bosun propelled them at furious speed toward Sandpiper, oars dipping and flashing, dipping and flashing in the sunlight. The sloop was pinned like a butterfly beneath the pirate ship’s guns, but Kieran could see men in the bows with axes slashing at her anchor cable, Liam at the helm shouting orders, two men already backing the jib to get her nose around for steerageway.
Sandpiper lay dead ahead. Off to starboard the brigantine’s bow was growing large, the ship towering above them as she moved to cut them off. Kieran clenched his fists in despair. They would never reach the safety of the sloop. And even if they did? She was half the size of the pirate ship. She was built to fly, to taunt, to tease, to run—not to engage in a full-on war of iron with a vessel that was bigger, stronger, and heavier than she.
A vessel that had destroyed Kestrel.
Go, Liam. Get her out of here. Don’t try anything foolish in an attempt to save us, that ship will crush ’Piper like a twig beneath a boot and every one of you will die. I’ll see to us, here. You save yourselves.
“Captain?”
He returned his attention to the present crisis. “No, Briggs, ships don’t just appear out of nowhere. There must be a hidden harbor on the island. Probably has a narrow entrance screened with vegetation. I can’t think of any other way we could’ve missed it.”
“And now we’re trapped,” said Miss McCormack beside him.
Miss McCormack. He had, for the moment, forgotten her. She sat stiffly on the thwart, composed, quieter than he’d ever seen her, but she was white beneath her heavy spray of freckles, her eyes huge and luminous in her face. In her right hand was the pistol, currently aimed harmlessly down at the water sloshing in the hull. A fierce and unexpected wave of protectiveness toward her washed over him.
“Not if I can help it,” he muttered.
A hundred feet away, Sandpiper’s sleek black bow loomed. Already her nose was sweeping around, farther and farther yet on a course that would take her right across the brigantine’s bows, and suddenly Kieran knew what the man he’d left in charge of his sloop intended to do.
Damn you, Liam! Damn you!
“What is he doing?” Miss McCormack asked, turning to stare at him.
Kieran wished he could shut his eyes against what he saw coming. “’Piper’s no match for that brigantine and Liam knows it. He’s planning to ram and board her and fight it out in hand to hand combat.”
“Your men will be slaughtered! That brigantine is teeming with pirates!”
“Aye, they will be. But he’s doing the only thing he can to try and keep us from meeting that same fate.”
Joel’s brawny arms were speeding the little boat through the water. The brigantine loomed larger, now blotting out the sun. It was futile; the pirate ship was coming on hard and fast.
And Kieran saw it all. Sandpiper’s long, jaunty jib-boom coming around to train on the brigantine like an arrow from a bow. Her sleek black hull disappearing behind that of the much bigger pirate ship’s. The proud rectangle of her topsail rising high above the brigantine’s deck as she closed on her and the brigantine never slowing, and then the horrible, grinding crash as the two ships collided in a thunderous boom of wooden hulls.
The impact shoved the brigantine’s bow sharply around to larboard and she pitched wildly, Sandpiper’s jib-boom embedded in her rigging like a spear through a fish. Already, Kieran’s men were pouring over her gunwales, streaming up her jib-boom and down onto the pirate ship, and from across the rapidly decreasing span of water came the ring of steel, pistol shots, cries of rage, bloodlust and pain.
There was no time for regret or recriminations. No time to wonder how he’d missed the hiding place of that brigantine. There was no time left for anything but action—and fighting for not only their ship and their lives, but Miss McCormack’s too, for defeat would mean a fate worse than death for a beautiful young woman with no one left to protect her from horrors Kieran didn’t even dare to imagine.
Sweat was streaming down Joel’s arms; one last pull and they were there, the brigantine towering above them as Joel hooked onto its chains.
“Boarders away!”
Kieran was on his feet, already knowing what he had to do. He would likely die in the attempt, but he would do what he could to protect the young woman beside him. Briggs leaped for the chains and began to climb the dark, peeling hull, his knife in his teeth while Joel waited right behind him, steadying the boat. And Miss McCormack—
Kieran braced himself against the chains as Joel began to climb. He looked hard at the young woman. “As soon as I’m off this boat, I want you to row for all you’re worth back to that island and wait this thing out. Godspeed, Miss McCormack.”
Their eyes met; his resolute, hers quietly terrified.
“Good luck, Captain Merrick,” she managed, and then he was charging up the pirate ship’s tumblehome and onto the deck above.
* * *
They were outnumbered three to one.
Liam Doherty had abandoned the tiller at the moment of impact and run forward with his shipmates, the two dozen men streaming up the bowsprit, over the sides, and down onto the pirate brigantine’s decks. With six and a half decades behind him he was by far the oldest, but that had ceased to matter. This wasn’t just a fight to save their captain and those he’d taken ashore to try and find the lassie’s brother and crew and maybe even lay aside the ghosts that drove him; this was a fight to save their ship and their very lives.
In those moments as he’d sprinted out along the bowsprit, finding himself as nimble as he’d been thirty years before under this same captain’s father, finding the rheumatism that had been plaguing him dropping away with the years, Liam was overtaken by a savage fury. He remembered those last fateful hours aboard Kestrel. Connor making the ill-fated decision to pursue the big merchantman against Brendan’s wise advice; that same merchantman turning out to be a pirate ship, this pirate ship, her heavier armament punching a mortal hole beneath the schooner’s waterline that had fractured her very bones. His last image of Brendan standing alone on the deck, staying with his sinking ship and his dying wife and the grief at finding the sea empty the following morning. Had these filthy rogues gone back and picked over his friends’ grave? Damn them all to the hell to which they belonged! Finally, here was the target on which to take out his unrequited rage and heartache—
He saw the small boat bumping up against the hull and Kieran and the shore party already charging up over the side to join the fight.
—and a way to save the youngest son of his best friend.
Liam jumped to the brigantine’s foredeck, pistol already blazing in one hand, his great, meaty fist slamming into the jaw of a pirate who came at him from his left, and the fight was on.
* * *
Rosalie, all but paralyzed with fear, put her arms to the oars and began rowing.
Don’t think about what’s happening on that ship…don’t think about what the pirates will do to Captain Merrick and his crew should they lose the fight, and dear God above don’t think of what they’ll do to you.
They would not catch her.
Oh, Lord Jesus, please help us!
The prow of the boat slammed into the beach they’d only just left, jolting her with the force. She put down the oars and, her heart in her throat, watched the terrible battle ensuing on the brigantine’s decks two hundred feet away.
And suddenly sensed she was not alone.
Comin
g out of the trees was a band of pirates, filthy, armed, and dangerous. One of them pointed to Diego’s body, and his dark face turned savage.
Another looked up and saw her sitting frozen in the boat.
Rosalie grabbed for the oars but it was too late.
They were already running down the beach toward her.
Chapter 9
“Captain! To your right!”
Kieran whirled, discharging the blunderbuss into the howling mob of pirates that surged to meet them as they came over the rail and onto the brigantine’s deck. The recoil punched backward, coughing a tongue of flame. Several of the brigands went down. No time to reload. More figures charging at him through the smoke, knives glinting, screaming like Indians. He tore a pistol from his belt, fired it at one who came at him with a dagger, saw him fall to the deck, blood burbling from the exit wound at his back. Another off to his left, knife glinting; Kieran swung the empty blunderbuss, catching the scoundrel across the torso and dropping him with a crack of breaking ribs.
Guard your back. Parry the thrust from the right, defend Briggs to your left. He caught glimpses of Sandpiper’s jib-boom speared through the rigging like a javelin. Of Joel thrusting his dagger into a pirate’s throat, the man dying in a gurgle of agony. Flashes of musket-fire through the smoke, another pirate coming at him, another pistol spent. The glint of light off a blade and poor Briggs going down in front of him with his entrails spilling through his waistcoat and Liam’s great, meaty fist slicing up in a deadly right hook, his left already slamming into another attacker before the first one even hit the deck.
Was Miss McCormack all right? Had she reached the shore?
Screams all around, of men gripped in blood-frenzy. Shouts and gunshots and howls of agony, the smell of spent powder and spilled blood. He pounded forward, training his last pistol through the smoke, aiming it at a gaunt, yellow-haired rogue who was lunging for Liam. Kieran squeezed the trigger. Flash-in-the-pan, useless; he hurled the weapon away and tore his cutlass from its cracked leather scabbard. A well balanced and trusty weapon, the hilt already sweaty in his hand, but the weight sure, comfortable.
Heir To The Sea Page 7