The Secrets of a Scoundrel

by Gaelen Foley

  Virginia would still have the other half of the crew to contend with, but once she got her attack under way, at least these men would not be able to return to the Black Jest to assist their mates.

  Dusting off his hands, Nick sneaked off the beach and hurried back to get his wagon. It was a little early yet, but staying around here would not be wise.

  Besides, he was eager to get back up the hill to make sure Phillip was still relatively safe.

  At that same moment aboard the Black Jest, Gin glanced around at the silent, waiting girls in the cargo hold.

  She lifted her finger to her lips, signaling them to remain quiet, while she crept to the door with the knife in her hand.

  Though they could not see the outside world from their dungeon, they had known when their repulsive supper was brought down to them that that meant it was evening.

  Then they had heard the boats being lowered as a goodly number of the crew went on shore leave.

  This was part of Nick’s plan, luring as many men as possible away, and indeed, when Susannah had returned earlier, she reported seeing the red flag flying.

  Gin was startled that it was all happening so fast, but it was just as well, for now there was no time to lose her nerve. Her heart was pounding, but she’d get no second chance.

  The time to start her mutiny had come.

  Listening at the door for a moment, she couldn’t hear anyone in the passage. So she slid the tip of the blade into the lock and wriggled it until it turned.

  As soon as it sprang free, she opened the door without a sound. Beckoning to the others to follow, she slipped out of the cargo hold, Nick’s knife clasped firmly in her hand.

  She gestured to Susannah Perkins to come up alongside her. Gin didn’t know and didn’t want to know what Miss Perkins had had to do to learn the location of the arms locker. All that mattered was that the guns and ammunition Nick had given to Rotgut awaited them there: the means to their freedom.

  Silently, the girls followed her down the passage, then climbed one by one up the ladder. As Gin shepherded them along through the darkness, she couldn’t help but think of her father.

  This sort of dangerous adventure had been his ordinary life. She hoped her courage held, to prove her worthy of the old spymaster.

  What helped most to steel her heart against whatever this night held was thinking of all she had to fight for. All she had to do was get through this night, then a life with Nick and Phillip awaited. They could be a family.

  She couldn’t wait to see her son again . . .

  Phillip could barely believe he was on a real mission with a bona fide Order agent.

  Though waiting in a box smashed under a rack of guns was relatively boring, this was still the most exciting night of his fifteen years by far.

  Danger was close, but safe inside the box, it was easy to remain optimistic about his chances of success.

  This was actually fun!—­considering he was fully confident that Nick was right outside to protect him and handle any unpleasantness if something should go wrong.

  Moreover, he was further inspired by the chance to be a hero, now that he’d had a hand in chastely helping rescue a damsel in distress.

  Poor little Rose. She was waiting safely for them back on the Santa Lucia. He knew old Captain Antonio was watching over the wee pip as if she were his own granddaughter. The Fabrianos would keep her safe.

  Well, then, he thought, squinting at his fob watch in the darkness for the hundredth time. The tiny brass hands caught what little light there was and told him all he needed to know. It’s time. Two hours exactly. Off we go!

  He tilted the rack of rifles off him with a grimace and reached up to plant his hand against the lid of the crate. It didn’t lift easily; the guard who’d glanced into the box had shut it well.

  He had to kick the lid a bit to get it loose again, and doing that quietly wasn’t easy.

  But, at last, he lifted it aside and popped up out of the crate. The tarp confused him momentarily, but then he tented it over his head and carefully climbed out.

  His heart pounded with wild excitement as he stepped down from the crate and ducked out from underneath the tarp. At once, he glanced around.

  Good. The place was deserted. As soon as he got his bearings, he started searching for his grandfather’s book. He strode up and down the darkened aisles between the goods that all the miscreants had brought to sell at the Bacchus Bazaar. Not there, not there . . .

  He looked high, he looked low—­then all of a sudden, he froze, hearing low male voices coming from outside.

  Who’s that?

  It was hard to be certain, but it sounded like they were speaking French.

  Suddenly, there was a bang from the front of the barn; one of the doors jumped on its hinges.

  Egads, they’re trying to break in. With a gulp, Phillip shrugged off a wave of dread. Whoever they were, Nick could take them, he assured himself. Now, hurry.

  He redoubled his efforts to find Grandpa Virgil’s secret book.

  Nick was slightly delayed because he had had to abandon his wagon at the nearest village to avoid detection. He had gone the rest of the way to the warehouse on foot, striding through the moonlit countryside.

  Watching his footing over the rocky ground, he passed through an olive grove, moving with added stealth as he approached the building.

  As he got into position to check the location of the guards before moving in, he heard voices on the wind.

  They were coming from around the corner of the warehouse. Without warning, a commotion broke out.

  Yells, curses. The sounds of a fight.

  Shots fired.

  For half a second, his heart gave a jolt of sheer horror, fearing Phillip had been discovered.

  But, no. As a ­couple of men came barreling around the corner, one chasing the other, he realized in astonishment what was going on.

  It seemed he wasn’t the only one who had had the idea to raid the place.

  The jackals were back.

  Bloody Simon Limarque and his men.

  Well, it was certainly convenient that the Frenchmen were obligingly dispatching the guards for him.

  But that left Nick to finish off Limarque.

  Gladly. With a whisper of metal in the darkness, he took out his knife, an icy gleam in his eyes.

  Time to even a score. Then he slipped out of his hiding place and stalked toward his prey.

  “Yes!” Phillip breathed, seizing his grandfather’s journal off the shelf where he had just found it.

  He quickly leafed through it to see if any of the pages had been separated and were lying loose to be auctioned separately, but it seemed to be intact.

  He tucked it into his waistcoat and glanced around for his exit. Hearing gunshots outside, he was in no hurry to go out there.

  He told himself that Nick surely had the situation under control, then he focused on his own task of finding a way out.

  Heart pounding, he jogged around the inside perimeter of the barn, warding off panic to find every exit boarded up, except for the main doors, where he could hear the fight raging.

  That was the way the Frenchmen had been trying to break in, and he had no desire to come face-­to-­face with them.

  His only other option was to climb up the ladder to the loft. Here, he was relieved to find the open hay door, but, of course, it was a long way down.

  Got to be some rope lying around here somewhere. He hurried about until he found some. He grasped it with a mental cheer, then ran back to the loft and tied a series of strong knots around the nearest post.

  Hope it’s long enough to reach the ground! When he glanced down from the hay door, however, he stopped, riveted by what he saw below.

  Nick came striding out of the darkness unloading a brace of pistols on his enemies, guns flaring a
s the powder flashed two, three, four times in a row. Men shouted and fell, staggering back with foreign curses.

  When one fired back, Nick used his nearest victim for a shield, then dropped him. Out of bullets with no time to reload, he felled the next one with a knife hurled from an expert distance. Phillip gulped as the unfortunate Frenchman screamed and crashed backwards with the hilt sticking out of his chest.

  Nick pivoted and warded off his next attacker with a bone-­jarring kick in the chest. Another man closed in from his right, but he traded blows with both of them with smooth, swift savagery.

  Good God, thought Phillip, staring in amazement at the spy-­warrior in action.

  Nick slammed the other fellow’s skull ruthlessly onto his knee and dropped him in the dirt, out cold. The next screamed as Nick twisted him about-­face and dislocated his shoulder. He gave it an additional wrench, and the man passed out from pain.

  “Behind you!” Phillip suddenly yelled out.

  Nick whirled around, ready to attack, just as a tall, lean, sinewy man threw a knife at him. He whipped out of the way just in time, but picked the blade up where it had fallen and hurled it back at the man.

  It plunged into his side as he tried to twist away. The man screamed and fell to his knees.

  With a look of cool determination, Nick strode toward him, reloading his pistol as he went. “I told you I’d kill you, Limarque.”

  “Please!” he choked out, holding up one hand in a token surrender.

  “You should never have touched her.”

  Bang!

  With a single shot at point-­blank range, Nick took the Frenchman’s life. Phillip stared in disbelief, well aware of who the “she” was Nick had been referring to.

  The body twitched a little, then went still.

  One last enemy had run toward the sound of the gunshot, but as he came tearing around the corner, the man took one look at Nick, then spun around and fled.

  The area below Phillip’s perch on the hayloft was strewn with unmoving bodies, some dead, others unconscious.

  “See any more from up there?” Nick called to him, as they both scanned the landscape.

  “No!” Phillip answered after a moment. He felt a little queasy at the ferocious display of prowess—­and the utter lack of mercy—­he had just witnessed.

  Good Lord, did he really want to be a spy when he grew up if that was what it was like?

  “Come on down,” Nick ordered.

  Phillip thrust his fears aside but was still a bit nervous about the descent. Of course, he did not even think about disobeying after what he had just seen. He wasn’t stupid.

  While he climbed awkwardly down the rope, his hands burning with his task, Nick took a moment to catch his breath. When Phillip reached the ground, dropping to his feet, he headed over to Nick at once to give him the book. As he approached, he found himself suddenly more than a little intimidated by his fierce Order friend.

  “Did you get it?”

  He nodded. “Here.”

  “Good lad,” he said, but he must have noticed the wary look in Phillip’s eyes, for he paused. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” he blurted out, trying to sound natural.

  The predatory glint in Nick’s dark eyes dimmed as he realized Phillip had seen everything. “Oh, shit. Are you all right? Of course you’re not all right,” he muttered at himself before Phillip could reply. “Look, lad, it was us or them.”

  “Are they the ones that took my mother?”

  “Aye.”

  Phillip swallowed hard. “Then they got what they deserved.”

  Nick’s stare searched his eyes. “Are you ready to go?”

  Phillip nodded.

  “All right, then. Let’s ride.” He ordered Phillip to follow him with a curt nod, then they stole the dead men’s horses.

  All in a night’s work.

  Having broken into the ship’s arms locker, Gin was loading rifles, one after another, and handing them off to her followers.

  In the quiet of the night, fear and desperation haunted the girls’ eyes as each accepted her weapon; but after their long kidnapping ordeal, Gin’s firm air of command seemed to shore up their resolve. For herself, it was time to prove herself her father’s daughter.

  Having armed each girl with a weapon, she instructed them in soft whispers on the simple firing technique.

  “Everyone got that?”

  As farm girls, most of them had at least fired a fowling piece before. A few of them even knew how to load their guns themselves, thanks to the tutelage of farmer fathers or soldier brothers.

  Only a few of the girls were complete novices without skills of any kind. “You’re with me,” she ordered these.

  Just then, Susannah Perkins returned from her one-­woman mission of locking the sleeping crewmen into the mess hall, which served as their communal bedchamber at night. As on most ships of this size, the sailors slept in rows of hammocks hung from the bulkhead, above the long, crude dining tables. “It’s done,” she whispered.

  Gin nodded in approval. “Excellent work. That only leaves us the dozen men or so who are on duty now. It’s almost dawn; their watch is nearly ending. They should be half-­asleep on their feet at this hour. Now, listen,” she instructed her wide-­eyed troops.

  “When we go up on deck, each of you pick one man to focus on. Don’t try to cover all of them, just worry about your one target. With half the crew gone ashore and most of the others locked in their quarters, there’ll be more of us up there than there are of them.

  “Hold the men at gunpoint, but try not to fire, even by accident, unless you have no choice. The first shot will only wake the rest of the crew, so we must do this as quietly as possible.

  “Besides, if we fire first, it’ll make them fight back that much harder against us, do you understand? They’re not going to want to hurt us if they can avoid it—­we’re the merchandise.”

  Gin did not say it aloud, but she considered herself the one exception to that last point.

  When Rotgut realized she was the ringleader here, she did not doubt he would gladly kill her if he got the chance, especially after she had embarrassed him in front of his fellow criminal, Jonathan Black.

  “Leave the captain to me,” she added. “I’ll see to that monster personally.”

  Then she divided the twenty girls into four groups of five. She designated three to be the other groups’ leaders and gave them their instructions.

  Two groups would head forward on the ship, two toward the stern. These, in turn, would split up, one going to the starboard, the other group to the port side of the ship.

  From all four quarters at once, then, they would launch their attack, taking over the ship as quietly as possible. “Hide behind the hatches until you see me on deck. Then follow, and do as I’ve told you. Emotions will be running high, so decide now to keep your cool, and no matter how they laugh at us or try to goad us, don’t fire unless you feel your life to be in danger.

  “We don’t need to kill these men—­as much as we might want to. We just need to put them in the brig until Lord Forrester arrives. He’ll be in contact with the Royal Navy at Corfu Town to come and arrest them, and then we’re going to get off this cursed ship at last.

  “Now, go, girls. And if your courage falters, think of Joan of Arc, or Good Queen Bess in her armor facing down the Spanish! We are women, but we can fight,” she whispered fiercely. “Stand firm, and we’ll be free within the hour.”

  Her words visibly rallied them. Steeling themselves, her fair mutineers padded off to get into position for their battle.

  Gin couldn’t help but feel that even her father would have been impressed.

  Nick and Phillip raced back down the hill and through the sleeping town of Sidári. They returned to the beach at a safe distance from the Seahorse Inn, where h
alf of Rotgut’s sailors were three sheets to the wind, thanks to gallons of free ouzo Nick (technically, Phillip) had paid for in advance.

  Perhaps the sailors thought it strange that the host of the party at the taverna had not yet appeared, but by now, they were probably too drunk to care. Yes, Nick mused, as they dismounted and strode across the sand, this half of the crew would not be a problem.

  It was the other half that worried him.

  He had to get out there onto the water to be ready to assist Virginia in her mutiny. Any minute now, he expected to start hearing shots coming from the direction of the slavers’ frigate.

  He and Phillip abandoned Limarque’s horses in favor of the dory, running it out into the shallows, and splashing into their seats before picking up the oars.

  Nick rowed as fast as he could back out to the Santa Lucia, where the Italians waited. When he called to them from the waves to get ready to make sail, they rushed into motion.

  He tied the dory to the ladder to be dragged through the water. There wasn’t time to lift it back up onto the ship with the davits.

  Phillip climbed up the ladder ahead of him and was surprised to find Rose waiting for their safe return. She was supposed to be in bed.

  As soon as Nick was also aboard, he took the captain aside. “Do you remember when I hired you, I said there might come a time when bad business afoot might require some action? Well, that time has come. Get me as close to that frigate as you safely can.”

  The tough, weathered Italian followed Nick’s pointing finger with his gaze. He eyed the frigate darkly, then nodded. “That’s the one that took the little girl?”

  Nick nodded. “And he’s got more girls on board. Tonight, the bastard gets what he’s had coming.”

  The captain gave him a hard-­eyed nod, then turned and clipped out a series of sharp orders to his sons. All their usual merriment vanished.

  Satisfied that they’d be in range shortly, Nick called Phillip and Rose down through the hatch to the ship’s galley. He beckoned them over to the stove, pulling Virgil’s book out of his waistcoat. “I have a job for you two.”

  They looked at him eagerly.

  He handed the journal to Phillip. “Start a fire in the stove and burn this thing. Every page. I want nothing left but ashes.”