‘I hope that pistol is loaded,’ she said.
He smiled as if he knew it for the question it was. ‘Always. But it will not make any difference to Coyote’s fate. Bigger guns are already aimed and waiting.’
She swallowed, her mouth dry as ash, her heart thudding hard as a horse at full gallop. Coyote would see the guns, but she would not realise their size, or the special powder, or their range. She would not know what she was sailing into before it was too late.
Raven was barely moving now, making the distance between the two ships diminish fast. Too fast. Even with the naked eye, no one aboard Raven could doubt that the identity of the closing ship was anything but Coyote. Every second brought her closer.
Kate’s fingers found her wedding band again. Oh, God, please stop them. But Coyote kept on coming.
‘Eight hundred yards!’ came a shout from the rigging.
She bit her lip, trying to stop herself from crying out. Stood there still and silent as a statue while her mind sought and tunnelled and tried to find a way out for them all.
‘Seven hundred yards!’
She thought of Sunny Jim. She thought of young John Rishley. And the rest. All of them men from Tallaholm. Men with wives and children, with mothers and fathers, and brothers and sisters. Men who would lose their lives trying to rescue her.
‘You can’t just kill them!’ The words burst from her mouth.
‘Why not?’ He turned to look at her, his calmness in such contrast to the rushing fury and fear in her heart.
‘For the sake of humanity and Christian charity.’
‘You care for the lives of the men who abducted you?’
‘Some of them are barely more than boys, for pity’s sake. Have mercy.’
‘Your compassion is remarkable, Mrs Medhurst.’
‘Reverend Dr Gunner is a priest. He will tell you the same as me, I am sure. Where is he?’ Her eyes scanned for Gunner.
‘He is on the gun deck,’ said North, ‘making ready to fire.’
She could see the fifteen horizontal red-and-white stripes and the fifteen white stars against the blue canton of the American flag and the skull and smiling cutlass of her own flag.
‘Six hundred yards!’ the voice called, followed by another from over by the deck hatch, ‘Ready below, Captain! We fire on your command.’
‘Do not!’ Her hand clutched at North’s wrist. ‘If you sink them, they will all die. And no matter what they have done, they are just men seeking to make a living in difficult times.’
He looked at where she held him so inappropriately. Her fingers tingled and burned with awareness. She loosened her grip, let it fall away completely. ‘Please,’ she said quietly.
Their eyes locked, their bodies so close that she could feel the heat of his thighs against hers.
‘I do not intend to kill them,’ he said with equal softness to hers. ‘Only to disable them.’
‘Five hundred and fifty yards and in range!’ the call interrupted.
North turned away and gave the command, ‘Fire!’
Her heart contracted to a small tight knot of dread. She heard the echoing boom of a single long gun and watched with horror as the iron shot flew through the air towards its unsuspecting victim.
But the round shot had not been aimed at Coyote’s hull. Instead, her foremast was cleaved in two, the top half severed clean to fall into the ocean. Canvas and rigging crumpled all around. The men on deck rushed around in mayhem.
Her hands were balled so tight that her nails cut into her skinned palms. She did not notice that they bled as she braced herself for the echoing cacophony of shots that would follow, standing there knowing that she owed it to Coyote and her men not to look away, but to bear witness to their valour. She waited.
But there was only silence.
Kate glanced round at North in confusion.
‘She is, no doubt, too small to carry spare spars and canvas, but these waters are busy enough that they should not have too long to wait for help. Either way Coyote shall not be following us into port, or anywhere else for that matter.’ He paused, holding her gaze. ‘If you care to check, you will be relieved to see not a pirate life was lost.’ He passed her his spyglass and stood watching her.
She looked at the spyglass, knowing she should not accept it. But she could no more refuse than she could stop breathing. The responsibility of a captain to her ship and men ran deep. So Kate took the spyglass and checked for herself the damage to the men and the ship.
North was right. There were no casualties.
‘Let her run with the wind,’ he commanded his men.
‘Aye-aye, Captain,’ came the reply as they ran to increase the sails.
Kate returned the spyglass without either a word or meeting North’s eyes. She was aware of how much she had betrayed, but all she felt right now was wrung out and limp with relief for her men. She offered not a single excuse or explanation.
‘If you will excuse me, sir.’
He did not stop her, but let her walk away without a word.
Because they both knew that she was not going anywhere other than her cabin. They were on his ship. At sea. He could come and question her anytime he chose. And that there were questions he would ask, she did not doubt.
Chapter Four
Within his cabin Kit sat at his desk, the paperwork and ledgers and maps upon it forgotten for now. Gunner sat opposite him, leaning his chair back on to its hind two legs and rocking it. The afternoon sunlight was bright. Through the great stern window the ocean was clear and empty, the disabled Coyote long since left behind.
There was a silence while Gunner mulled over what Kit had just told him of Kate Medhurst’s reaction up on deck earlier that day.
‘Women are the gentler sex. Their sensibilities are more finely honed than those of most men,’ said Gunner, ‘but...’ He screwed up his face.
‘One might have expected a degree of either fear or animosity towards the boatload of ruffians that took her by force and held her against her will,’ Kit finished for him.
Gunner nodded. ‘It is possible she has an unusually meek nature.’
I hope that pistol is loaded? Kate Medhurst had looked at the weapon like a woman seriously contemplating snatching it from its holster and holding it to his head.
He thought of the essence of forbidden desire that whispered between the two of them, the barely veiled hostility in those eyes of hers and the way her body had responded so readily to his.
He thought of her plunging from Raven’s head and swimming so purposefully towards those rocks. And of their interaction in his cabin, with her skilful deflection of his questions to reveal nothing of herself.
‘I would not describe Kate Medhurst as meek.’ Intelligent, determined, formidable, capable, mysterious, courageous and passionate, most definitely passionate. But not meek. ‘Would you?’
‘No,’ Gunner admitted.
‘Mrs Medhurst was not so unwilling a guest upon Coyote.’
Gunner’s gaze met his. ‘You think she is lying about being abducted?’
‘She never told us she was abducted. We made that assumption. Mrs Medhurst did not correct it.’
‘But you saw how the pirates treated her.’
‘La Voile would have given her to us easily enough. The rest did not wish to yield her.’
‘She was afraid of them.’
‘She was afraid, but not of them...for them.’ He thought of the desperation that had driven her to grab his wrist, to plead for the lives of those men. ‘There is someone on Coyote that she cares for, very much.’
‘A lover.’
Kit thought of the way Kate Medhurst touched so often to the gold wedding band upon her finger. ‘Or a husband.’
Gunner looked at him in silence f
or a moment. ‘You think it was not La Voile’s body his crew were intent on retrieving. You think it was the woman.’
‘It would explain much.’
‘But not what we saw between her and La Voile on Coyote’s deck that morning.’
‘Does it not? If we remove our assumptions, what did we see, Gabriel?’ Kit asked.
‘An argument between two men over a woman,’ Gunner said slowly. ‘The other pirate...’
‘It is a possibility.’
‘The only fly in the ointment is her mourning weeds.’
‘Are they mourning weeds? A ship that flies a black sail is not in mourning.’
Gunner looked at him and said slowly, ‘A pirate’s woman might dress as a pirate.’
Kit said nothing.
‘And if she is a pirate’s woman?’ Gunner asked.
‘It makes no difference. As long as we have La Voile’s body she is not our concern. We offload her in Antigua in the morning. Let them ship her back to Louisiana. We have bigger things to think of.’ Like getting La Voile’s body back to London. Like returning to face what he had left behind. ‘Post a guard on La Voile’s body in the meantime.’
‘You think she is capable of sabotage?’
‘I think we should not underestimate Kate Medhurst. I will breathe easier when she is gone.’ And he would. Because every time he thought of her, he felt desire stir through his body. She was temptation, to a life he had long left behind, to a man he no longer was. And that was a road Kit had no intention of revisiting.
* * *
The purple-grey-green silhouette of Antigua loomed large before them. The haze of the early morning would burn off as the day progressed, but for now the sun sat behind a shroud that did not mask the brightness from the daylight. Within the rowing boat there was no sound other than the rhythmic creak and dip of the oars and their pull of the water. No one in Raven’s small party spoke.
The wind that was usually so mercifully cooling seemed unwelcome at this hour with the lack of sun, making Kate’s skin goosepimple beneath the thin black muslin. Or maybe it was just the sight of North in his place at the other end of the boat.
His eyes were sharp as the raven’s perched upon his shoulder and strayed her way too often, making her remember the lean strength in his body, and the scent of him, and the feel of his skin against hers...and the way he had stroked the hair from her cheek. Making her feel things she had never thought to feel again; things that appalled her to feel for him of all men. And she was gladder than ever that this was the end of her journey with him.
But there was a small traitorous part of her that, now she was safe, wondered what might have happened between them were it not the end. Just the thought turned her cold with shame and guilt. She pushed it away, denying its existence, as much as she denied the tension between them was not all adversarial. And turned her mind to wondering as to her crew and Coyote’s fate.
North was right, these waters were rife with Baratarian pirates and privateers; one of Jean Lafitte’s boys had probably already found and helped the stricken ship. Sunny Jim knew what he was doing and would get them all back safe to Tallaholm, and she felt better at that thought.
* * *
‘Something is not right,’ Kit said softly to Gunner as they stood before Fort Berkeley on the island not so much later. Jones the Purser and five ordinary seamen who had rowed across with them had stayed in the main town, St John’s, to procure water and the list of required victuals. Kate Medhurst stood just in front of him, surveying the yellow-washed walls of the fort that guarded the entrance to English Harbour. She was more relaxed than he had seen her, now that they were about to part company, her secrets intact. He wondered what they were. He wondered too much about her, he thought, as his eyes lingered on the way the wind whipped and fluttered the thin black muslin of her skirt against the long length of her legs. He turned his focus back to the fort and what it was that he did not like about it.
Gunner gave a nod. ‘I get that same feeling.’
‘No guard outside the gate.’ His eyes scanned, taking in every detail.
‘And apart from the lookout in the watchtower, not another soul to be seen,’ murmured Gunner.
‘Silent as a graveyard, and a gate that should be opening, demanding to know our business by now.’
Kate Medhurst glanced round at him, as if she was thinking the same.
‘Wait here with the woman, Gunner. If I am not back in fifteen minutes—’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Kate Medhurst interrupted, as if she did not trust him.
‘Maybe Mrs Medhurst has a point,’ said Gunner. ‘You should have someone at your back.’ He touched a hand lightly to his cutlass.
Eventually they were admitted through the fort’s gate by a lone marine in a coat faded pink by the sun and taken to see the admiral. The distant dry docks were empty, not a man could be seen working in the repair yards, not a man on the tumbleweed parade ground. Within the yellow-painted building every room was deserted. Not one other person did they pass along those corridors and staircases lined with paintings of maritime battles. And for all of that way there was a faint smell of rancid meat in the air.
‘It’s like a ghost town,’ Kate Medhurst whispered by his side and she was right. ‘Is this normal for a British fort?’
‘Anything but,’ replied Kit softly.
‘Something is definitely off.’ Gunner’s quiet voice held the same suspicion that Kit felt.
He shifted his coat so that his hand would have easier access to both the pistol holstered on his hip and his cutlass and saw Gunner do the same.
The marine eventually led them through a door mounted with a plaque that read Admiral Sir Ralston.
The office was large and more grandly decorated than many a ton drawing room. Ornate, gilded, carved furniture filled it, along with a massive sideboard that looked as though it might have been brought from Admiralty House. There was a large black-marble fireplace, although the hearth was empty save for a pile of scrunched balls of paper which were clearly discarded letters. The windows had roman blinds of indiscriminate colour, pulled halfway up the glass, and were framed by fringed curtains that might once have been dark blue, but were now somewhere between pale blue and grey. From the ceiling in the centre of the room hung a crystal chandelier. But despite all of this faded opulence there was an unkempt feel about the place.
The great desk was littered with a mess of paperwork and documents. A thick layer of dust covered the window sill and every visible wooden surface. It sat on the back of the winged armchair by the fireplace and turned the ringed, empty crystal decanter and silver tray that sat on the nearby drum table opaque. It hung with cobwebs from the chandelier. But the two things that concerned Kit more than any of this were the stench of rum in the room and that the man that sat on the other side of the desk was not Admiral Sir Ralston.
‘Acting Admiral John Jenkins, at your service, sir. I am afraid Admiral Sir Ralston died a sennight since.’ Jenkins was younger than Kit, no more than five and twenty at the most, with fine fair hair that stuck to a sweaty brow, red-rimmed eyes and thick determined lips.
‘I am sorry to hear that, sir. My condolences to you and your men.’
Jenkins gave a nod and gestured to the chairs on the other side of the desk. ‘Take a seat. May I offer you a drink?’ He produced a bottle of rum from the drawer of his desk.
‘There is a lady present, sir,’ said Gunner.
‘Beg pardon,’ Jenkins said and sat the half-empty bottle on top of a book on the desk. ‘How are matters in London?’
‘I have no idea.’ Kit had no intention in wasting time in small talk. ‘What has happened here?’
‘We are awaiting reinforcements. They are due any day now.’
‘You have not answered my question. Why do you need reinfor
cements?’
‘We have lost almost all the men.’
‘How?’
There was a silence while Jenkins stared longingly at the rum.
‘What happened to the men, Jenkins?’
‘Dead,’ he said, and did not take his eyes off the bottle. He reached a hand to it and began to absently pick at the wax near the rim. ‘It will have us all in the end. Every last one of us, you know.’ He smiled softly to himself.
Cold realisation stroked down Kit’s spine. He understood now, not the detail, but the gist. Too late. He was here now, and more importantly so were Gunner and Kate Medhurst.
‘Get up,’ he snapped the order to them by his side, already on his feet. ‘We are leaving.’
‘What?’ She looked aghast. ‘But—’
‘I said we are leaving. Now.’
‘So soon?’ interrupted Jenkins. ‘You are welcome to stay and dine with Hammond and me.’ He smiled at Kate and walked round to their side of the desk. ‘It would be a delight to have the company of a lady at our table.’ He offered his hand to Kate.
Kate moved to accept, but Kit grabbed her hand in his and pulled her away from Jenkins, placing himself as a barrier between them.
‘Captain North!’ she protested and tried to break free.
‘They have a pestilence here,’ he said harshly to her. ‘A pestilence that infects both men and women.’
She ceased her struggle, shock and fear flickering in her eyes.
‘Which disease, sir?’ Gunner asked Jenkins, the scientist and physician in him coming to the fore.
‘Yellow Jack.’
‘May God have mercy upon your souls, brother,’ whispered Gunner.
[GOD08] The Lost Gentleman Page 6