Rosalie trembled with fury.
“Can’t wait, can you? Neither can I.” He shoved her away from him. “And I can’t wait to return that sloop of his to my growing fleet. She’s faster than a Jamaican whore. I’ll get her back and I’ll do it before the sun sets this evening, too. You mark my words.”
Rosalie finally trusted herself to speak. “She’s well-armed. And my husband is no fool.”
“We’re about to find that out, aren’t we? As for you, you’re coming topside. I want him to see you. I want him to know you’re mine.” He leered close, so close that she could see the cracks in his lips and the yellow pustules between them where his filed-down incisors had rent open sores. “Mine.”
His fingers bit into her arm and he shoved her toward the door. Rosalie tripped and went down hard, her chin scraping the decking, the breath slamming from her lungs. She stared at a rusty stain of what looked like blood a few inches before her eyes and then Escobar, laughing, grabbed her by the back of her gown and yanked her to her feet, the delicate muslin tearing in his hands. She felt air against her suddenly bared back and then she was stumbling forward and out onto the open deck, her torn gown sagging off one shoulder.
She stood blinking. Bright sunlight blinded her, bouncing off rolling swells in every direction. They were headed southeast on a starboard tack, and Escobar had the ship as close to the wind as she could bear. A purple ridge of land lay off to the distant west, and Rosalie frowned in confusion as she looked up at the sails; why Escobar had taken such a lumbering, ill-maintained vessel as this one to get her out of Newburyport when he could have found something faster was beyond her comprehension…until she realized the awful truth.
He didn’t want to put too much distance between himself and his pursuer.
He only wanted to lead Kieran to wherever his big brigantine was waiting, force him to confess the whereabouts of his little brother, and then end this once and for all.
Escobar didn’t give her time to look around, to glare unflinchingly at the sneering, smirking pirates who were all staring at her exposed shoulder and beginning to laugh; instead, he yanked her off her feet and dragged her aft and there, pointed over their foaming wake and back to where it led.
Rosalie’s heart went cold.
Sandpiper. She lay well astern, heeled hard over and smashing down on the white-capped crests with her long jib-boom speared on them like a harpoon aimed at a whale. Pennants flying, water creaming off her leeward bows in sheets, she was a good mile behind them but she was gaining and gaining fast, and that was exactly what Escobar wanted.
“And what are you going to do when he starts firing on you?” Rosalie challenged, for not one gun was mounted on the deck on which she stood and the ship appeared to be all but defenseless, though the pirates around her were armed to the teeth.
“You really think he will? With you aboard?”
Rosalie sobered. The pirate was right. Kieran might not dare to unleash Sandpiper’s guns upon this lumbering vessel for fear she’d be hurt. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but taunt, “I hope he does, because I’d rather die from being hit by shot or a falling spar than suffer your touch.”
“Oh, you’ll be suffering my touch all right, and you’re going to like it.”
She tried to turn away but he snared her by the torn remains of her sleeve.
“Did you hear me? Like it.”
Rosalie jerked away from him, her skin crawling. Terror clawed for a handhold, but the idea that this filthy, wretched criminal would dare lure her beloved Kieran to his death outweighed any fears for her own personal safety. Think, Rosalie. Think! She looked astern and to the ship in hot pursuit, growing larger by the moment. With any luck, Kieran would catch up to them before they made their rendezvous with the big brigantine waiting in the waters off Gloucester.
The big brigantine that had destroyed Kestrel and now lay waiting to do the same to Sandpiper.
And it was then that cries from above drifted down, piercing the sound of wind and wave and spray.
“Sail ho! It’s Suarez!”
She followed Escobar’s grinning gaze and saw, hull up on the horizon, the brigantine.
And aft, the valiant little Sandpiper, driving hard, close enough now that Rosalie could see figures moving on her decks and her bows parting the sea in great sheets of foam.
The blood drained from her face. She glanced at Escobar and noting her sudden horror, he began to laugh, a dark, evil sound that dug itself into the nerves at the base of her spine, chilled her limbs, and made her mouth go dry.
Kieran. Kieran, shear off…now, before it’s too late.
But astern, Sandpiper was looming ever larger. A puff of smoke burst from her bows and a second later the thunder of the gun echoed across the water, demanding that they heave to.
Escobar gauged the distance between himself and his brigantine, the distance between himself and his enemy, and looked up to check the direction of the wind.
“Let him get close,” he murmured to Rocco, at the helm. “It’s not like we’re actually trying to get away now, is it?”
“Think he found the ransom note we left in the house?”
“Who the hell knows. What matters is that he’s here and about to tell me where my brother is. Heave to.”
“Heave to!”
At the wheel, the helmsman glanced up at the sails and turned the old ship into the wind. In moments, Sandpiper’s long jib-boom and bowsprit were even with them…sliding past…overtaking them to windward, her decks crowded with seamen. Rosalie’s heart caught in her throat. Kieran’s friends and neighbors must have dropped everything to accompany him. No shortage of crew members from his own town and neighbors. Not here.
Sandpiper turned her nose into the wind and rode there on the swells like a gull, bobbing up and down with the surge of the ocean beneath her.
And there was Kieran standing at her leeward rail, armed with pistols and cutlass, Liam and Matthew on his left and his brother Connor—Connor!—on his right, oh so close across the short, surging stretch of blue, blue sea, oh so very far away as the beautiful, rakish sloop rode alongside the old vessel—
“Escobar!”
“We meet again, Merrick, and I see you’ve brought me my sloop back.”
“Send my wife over, unharmed. Now.”
“I don’t think so. Why don’t you come and get her, you thieving son of a bitch?”
Rosalie briefly shut her eyes, willing her husband not to fall into this trap, wishing she’d never left him to his grief, wishing that her hands were free and that she could reach the pistol, still tucked in her garter.
Kieran had seized a speaking trumpet and Rosalie saw his face go dark with controlled fury when he saw her—and her gown, torn and hanging off one shoulder, implying that Escobar had already had his way with her. Never had she seen such a look in her husband’s eyes and it frightened her. This was a side of Kieran she’d only glimpsed but never seen. A rigidly controlled, deadly side, the depths of which she couldn’t plumb.
Kieran. Please, please don’t come aboard. They mean to kill you.
She saw him turn to his brother and say something, saw Liam shaking his head and frowning. She saw him glance over his shoulder to gauge the progress of the brigantine, now taking clear shape from out of the haze, storming toward them with menace and strength. Liam was now nodding, and it was then that Rosalie noticed how many men were in Sandpiper’s rigging, in her crosstrees and clinging to her shrouds, all of them holding rifles and training them down on the decks on which they stood.
Rifles, so much more accurate than a musket could ever be. And men at the swivel guns mounted in Sandpiper’s bow, men who were not about to let their captain—their friend and neighbor—come to this pirate without offering him as much protection as they could.
“Tell your crew to stand down.” Escobar ordered, grabbing Rosalie once more and yanking her up against himself. He pressed a dagger to her throat and she shut her eyes, taking in shallow b
reaths as she felt the cold steel against her skin. “Stand down now, or she gets a permanent necklace.”
Rosalie opened her eyes, unable to move her head and staring up at the luffing tanbark foresail above. And then she felt Escobar relax, the knife no longer at her throat; she swallowed, took a deep breath and saw Kieran, alone and crossing the short stretch of water in Sandpiper’s boat.
No.
Oh, please, God…no.
Moments later her husband was coming over the side, his jaw bruised purple beneath a day’s growth of dark bristle. He moved with the lithe, predatory energy of a cat, calm, composed, only his eyes still gleaming with that terrible fury. He stood there, Sandpiper filling the sea and sky behind him, the brigantine, far off in the distance, now setting her topsails in an attempt to make more speed.
“I’m here,” he said coldly. “Release my wife.”
“Fine position you’re in to make demands, Merrick.”
“Fine, indeed. My men will unloose the entire larboard battery upon you should you harm the lady, and you’ll be halfway to the ocean floor before your friends out there manage to reach you.” His gaze met Rosalie’s, lit on her exposed shoulder and hardened all the more. “Untie her.”
“Throw down your pistols. And the cutlass.”
Above, the sails made a flapping noise of protest, eager to fill with wind once more.
“Untie her.”
“I could shoot you dead in your tracks.”
“I expect you could. But you won’t, because you want something from me and right now I have the advantage. Untie her and then we’ll talk.”
Escobar’s black, greasy eyebrow lifted in condescension. Rosalie’s gaze slid briefly to Sandpiper, still hove-to and riding the waves fifty, maybe sixty feet away…and then she realized that the man at her helm was Connor Merrick, and that Connor Merrick had subtly, ever so very subtly, pushed the tiller over such that the sloop had gained the faintest of headway and that the distance between the two vessels was slowly decreasing…and that the pirates, their attention on their captain and the drama playing out before them, their captain’s attention on his hostage and the man who would not leave these decks alive, didn’t notice the decreasing distance either.
Escobar’s black, snake-like eyes raked Kieran, standing before him unflinchingly. Neither man moved. Out of the corner of her eye, Rosalie saw the giant, Rocco, looking at her husband and grinding his fisted knuckles into his palm.
But Kieran had not come into this unprepared.
And the distance between Sandpiper and the ship on which they stood was steadily decreasing.
Escobar’s nostrils flared, and a twitch caught the corner of his mouth. Never taking his eyes off Kieran, he grabbed Rosalie by the shoulder, spun her around, and sliced at the salt-encrusted hemp that bound her. Her hands were suddenly free, her shoulders and upper arms aching with the sudden pain of release before the pirate’s hand snared her wrists, all but breaking the bones.
“Now send her over to me,” Kieran said.
“No, you come get her.”
Escobar glanced desperately at the brigantine, still far off, too far off to be of any help to him, and Rosalie sensed the sudden acceleration of his black heart. He had mistimed this. Misjudged his adversary and the speed of his faithful Sandpiper. Even the wind, now shifting slightly, was turning against him—and the progress of the distant brigantine. She felt his hand tightening around her wrist, sensed the sudden pounding of his pulse and knew the exact moment he realized that Sandpiper had drifted close enough down on them that he was in danger of being boarded.
Desperate men did desperate things. Escobar’s knife flashed up toward her throat—
And everything happened at once.
“She’s mine!” Escobar shouted, and Rosalie’s head snapped back with sudden force as Kieran threw himself at the pirate, taking all three of them down to the deck. Escobar’s knife skittered away. A shot rang out at close range, another, and the deck lurched wildly as Sandpiper collided with them. She had time for a single glimpse of the tanbark sails above before they were lost behind a horde of howling, enraged Newburyporters who charged onto the old ship’s deck in force.
She jumped to her feet, staggered away, grabbed for the pistol beneath her skirts only to be snared by Matthew Ashton and all but thrown into the arms of his son Toby, where she struggled to get free as carnage erupted all around her; Matthew charging back into the fray, cutlass swinging, as lithe and limber as a man half his age… Connor Merrick in vicious hand-to-hand sword combat with the massive Rocco, driving the bigger man up against the rail and with one decisive blow, sending him over the side to be crushed between the two bumping hulls. Nathan Ashton shooting dead a brigand who was taking aim at his cousin Kieran, Liam Doherty felling another with a fist to the jaw, and pirates down and dying all around beneath the Newburyport men until there was only Kieran rolling around on the deck in a life-or-death struggle with Escobar.
Yanking free of Toby, Rosalie quietly felt for—and found—the pistol in her garter as every eye turned to watch the fight.
“You tell me where my brother is!” Escobar screamed.
“You tell me if there was anything left of Kestrel or any survivors when you went back after the fight that sank her!”
“I’ll never tell, you whoreson! Never!”
Connor Merrick had moved back to join the circle of men watching the fight, and in that moment Rosalie saw something change in his handsome face, something that twisted it into a mask of rage and anguish as he realized just who his brother’s adversary was, as he realized that this pirate was the one who’d sent Kestrel to the bottom and brought about the deaths of their parents. With a howl of agony he snatched up a rifle, his hand stayed by Liam, and somewhere off in the distance the roar of heavy guns shook the very air around them as the brigantine opened fire and iron went screaming past.
But there was gunfire coming from the opposite direction as well, and in the sudden confusion every man looked off to the northwest, where a fleet of hastily assembled Newburyport ships had poured out of the Merrimack and were now storming toward them under full sail. The momentary lapse was all Escobar needed. Ripping free of his adversary, he grabbed up his knife and lunged to his feet.
The blade flashed and in that horrible moment before it would have connected with Kieran’s throat, a single shot rang out. The knife fell from Escobar’s hand, his fingers went to the rose now blooming on his chest, and his black, feral eyes swung in disbelief to the woman who stood nearby, the pistol smoking in her hand.
His mouth opened and he dropped lifelessly to the deck.
Connor Merrick reached down to his younger brother and pulled him to his feet.
Both turned to stare at Rosalie.
But it was their Uncle Matthew who broke the silence as he looked at her with an admiring smile. “Well done, young lady,” he said simply. “A true Merrick you are. Welcome to the family.”
Her eyes met Kieran’s, and in them she saw the love, the warmth, the gentle kindness that she loved so much. Gone was the grief that had shadowed them these many months, and in its place, a glow, a liveliness of spirit that had been so lacking. She dropped the pistol and flew into his arms while off in the distance the brigantine turned tail to run, no match for the aggressive fleet of Newburyport privateers who were all giving chase.
Her husband embraced her, his arms going around her as though never to let her go.
The nightmare was over.
Epilogue
It had been a week since the final confrontation with Escobar, and during that time Kieran’s bruises faded and his heart continued to heal, though he did not set foot in the house in which he’d grown up and neither did Connor.
The house stood there just across the street, silent and waiting.
One Sunday morning following church and the noontime meal, Rosalie found her husband standing at the window and watching a horse and carriage pass, a dog running along beside it. She walked qu
ietly up to him and slipped her arm around his lean, hard waist, her heart filled with love.
“A penny for your thoughts?” she asked, laying her cheek against his shoulder.
“I was just thinking.”
She smiled. “That’s what you do best.”
“Is it?”
“Well, you do a lot of things best. But the way you think is one of the many things I love about you.”
He smiled and drew her close for a kiss. “Well, be that as it may, dearest, there are things I don’t do very well. Forgiveness is one of them.”
“You?” She made a little noise of disbelief. “That’s not something I would have thought you needed to practice. You’ve forgiven Connor.”
“It’s not that.”
He gazed back across the street, his gaze distant.
“Connor,” he continued, “is the only brother I have, the only brother I’ve ever had, and in this past week I’ve come to realize that I love him for who he is, no matter what he’s done, no matter what mistakes he’s made. I always have. We all make mistakes, myself included. No, Rosalie. My need for forgiveness is not toward my brother, but myself.”
She raised a brow and looked up at him.
“You see, dearest, it’s not Connor I’ve needed to forgive. It’s myself for the resentment I had for him, the anger I allowed to build for so long.” He took a deep sigh and let it out. “And I’m finding that very hard to do. I am ashamed.”
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