Lord of Devil Isle

by Connie Mason

  “Not until you hear me out,” he said. “The islanders will see him punished because people love a spectacle. Hanging, drawing and quartering a whole crew is something they can talk about for years. They’ll deplore it loudly, of course, but they won’t be able to look away. They’ll hang on every scream. They’ll gawk in horrified fascination as the guts spool out. People love the misery of others. You, of all people, should know that.”

  She swallowed back the rising gorge. “We are on a public street. Remove your hand from me or I will scream.”

  “If you scream, you sign his death warrant,” he promised. “But, if you come with me to the Carolinas now, both of you, and without a fuss, I will not bring forth my witnesses.”

  “No, we aren’t going with you.” Eve had to find Reggie and the carriage. They had to hurry back to Whispering Hill. Nick would know how to deal with this.

  “Suit yourself, though I doubt you’ll look good in black,” he called after them. “Oh, wait! You’re not his wife, so you won’t even be able to publicly mourn him. Not that mourning a traitor is a healthy idea.”

  Eve kept walking. Rathbun dogged them.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You plan to run back to warn him now.” His voice seemed eerily disembodied, coming from behind them. “Be assured that the magistrate will send troops to arrest him long before he can see his crew assembled and his ship under sail. He has no way to run. No place to hide. And neither does his crew.”

  “His crew.” Penny stopped in her tracks. “We have to go with him, Eve.”

  “But—”

  “There is no other answer for it,” Pen said. “I love Peregrine. I can’t let him be…” Her face crumpled and she sobbed into her kerchief.

  Shaking with fury, Eve turned on Rathbun. “You’re bluffing.”

  “Perhaps,” he admitted with a cruel smile. “And perhaps I just spent the morning with Digory Bock, a man your captain thoughtlessly cut from his crew. He and his friends will testify.”

  Digory Bock. The name sounded familiar to Eve. Yes, that’s the one Nick had struck from the ship’s roll for drunkenness.

  “The stars are aligned against your captain. Someone will be blamed for the theft of that powder. Someone will be made to pay. The common folk may love your ‘Lord Nick,’ but let me assure you, those who hold an official post don’t think much of someone styling themselves with a title they don’t really deserve.”

  “I don’t think he has any witnesses, Penny,” Eve said, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

  “Are you willing to wager his life on it?” he asked. “I assure you I can point the magistrate in Scott’s direction and he makes an admirable target. Mr. Bock was quite willing to talk to me.” Rathbun narrowed his eyes at her. “The stakes are rather high, aren’t they?”

  Too high.

  “We’ll come with you.” Eve spat out the words. “But know this. If I get half a chance on the way to Charleston, I’ll feed you to the sharks. So sleep lightly, Lieutenant.”

  “Thank you, Miss Upshall.” He dipped in a low, mocking bow. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Reggie twisted his cap in his hands. Oh, Lord, oh Lord. Now I’m in for it.

  “What do you mean they’re gone?” Nicholas Scott bellowed. He was like to wear a trough in the floor with all that stomping about.

  “They waren’t there. I does just like Miss Eve says, I nipped round to the general store and had a couple o’ cinnamon sticks. Then I brings the carriage back to Water Street at the time she tells me, but they plumb aren’t there.” Reggie shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I checks every store, but no one seen ’em, not even the hatter and if ladies is going to buy anything, they always buys hats.”

  The captain snatched him up by the collar and brought him nose to nose. “Stick to the point, Reggie.”

  “Aye, the point.” He breathed a sigh of relief when Lord Nick set him down and resumed pacing. Reggie had never seen the cap’n so fit to burst, straining at his moorings like a ship battened down for a gale, he was. “Then I drives down to the wharf to see had me mates seen the ladies. They tells me ‘aye,’ they seen ’em.”

  The captain stopped pacing and glared at him. “Go on.”

  “Me mates says the ladies boarded the ferry with this feller what looks like a dandy, but seems a bit down on his luck. Frayed about the edges, he were.”

  “Which ferry?”

  “The one bound up the country to Ireland Island and Somerset village.”

  “Bostock makes berth there.”

  “Aye, that’s the name me mates said they heard. The dandy, he pays the ferryman extra to sail ’mediately. He were plannin’ to take passage to the Colonies on the Sea Wolf, he says, if they could catch it, that is. Cap’n Bostock were sailing today.”

  Nicholas snatched his spyglass from the desk and strode to the nearest westerly window. “I see the tip of a mast sailing into the sun.”

  “Be it the Sea Wolf?” No one could work for Nicholas Scott long without hearing whispers of his enmity with the master of that unnaturally named vessel. Every proper seaman knows a ship’s a lady, not a fierce growling beast, and she ought to have the name o’ one.

  “Find Mr. Higgs,” Captain Scott ordered. “Tell him to assemble the crew. We sail with all speed.”

  “But sir—” Reggie felt strange making a suggestion to the likes of Captain Scott, but the words popped out of their own accord. “The Susan Bell likely isn’t rigged for a voyage. She’ll need water and victuals and—”

  “No, she won’t. We aren’t going far.” The captain raised his spyglass again and trained it on the horizon. “Only far enough to catch that black-sailed bastard.”

  The ship’s bell clanged incessantly for the better part of half an hour and the crew responded to the summons at a run. Even Digory Bock came to stand on the wharf, hoping the captain might relent and let him back on the ship’s roll.

  “How many pints have you drunk this day, Bock?” Nick bellowed down between issuing orders for the Susan Bell’s sails to be unfurled.

  “Only four,” Digory shouted up to the deck. “Or maybe it were eleven.” It was hard to be certain.

  “Decide which and come back when you’re sober,” Scott said as the gangplank was shipped. “I can’t use a man who’s always three sheets to the wind. You’re a decent enough seaman, Bock. See if you can become a decent enough man and we’ll talk. Mr. Higgs, slip those cables now!”

  “Godspeed, Cap’n,” Digory said under his breath as the Susan B glided between the inner harbor islets. The captain had as good as given him a berth again. It was only a matter of time before he was sailing with his old mates. Digory was glad he hadn’t gone to the magistrate now. He swiped his greasy sleeve across his mouth. “Good news like this calls for a drink!”

  Night fell and the Sea Wolf was still beyond Nick’s reach. But just before the sky darkened to indigo, he managed to take a final bearing on the distant black sail. If Bostock ran true to form, he’d drop some of his canvas for the night watch. Nick had more sail laid on.

  “Shall I give the order for the running lamps to be lit?” Higgs asked.

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t want Bostock to know we’re coming. Starlight will do for the old girl.” Wind strained the ship’s sails, but she glided almost silently through the night. The only sound was the shushing of waves against her hull. “Get some sleep, Pere. I’ll stand the first watch.”

  “I don’t know as I can, sir,” Peregrine said. “Penny’s on that ship.”

  “And you’ll not be worth anything to her unless you’re rested. Relieve me at two bells, Mr. Higgs.” His tone made it an order.

  Nick stood at the helm, letting the ship speak to him through the wheel while his crew slept. As usual, the Susan Bell calmed him. The world was mad, but all was quiet here. There was only the wind and the waves and the mathematical dance of the stars across the black sky.

&nbs
p; And then suddenly, he was aware of another presence. The scent of lavender wafted past and he knew immediately who it was.

  “I’m sorry, Hannah,” he whispered. “I love her. I must have Eve. If he stands in my way tomorrow, oath or no, I’ll be sending him to join you.”

  Or perhaps Nick would be seeing his dead wife again. He and Bostock were evenly matched. It might go either way. A cold finger ran down his spine.

  The lavender scent faded so completely, he wondered if between fear for Eve and exhaustion, he’d only imagined it. The soughing in the topsails was probably just the wind, he told himself.

  Eve and Penny were taking a turn along the port rail in the pearly dawn. Neither had slept. And neither wanted to remain cooped up in their airless cabin a moment longer.

  Penny had cried half the night, but Eve remained dry-eyed. It was as if a shroud had already covered her heart. Nicholas Scott was as good as dead to her.

  She couldn’t feel a thing.

  “A sail! A sail!” one of the crewmen called out from the Sea Wolf’s crow’s nest.

  “Whither away?” Adam Bostock cupped his mouth and shouted up to the seaman.

  “A point off the starboard bow and closing fast. It’s the Susan Bell, sir, flying every stitch of canvas she can bear.”

  Eve gathered her skirts and ran to the starboard side. She leaned on the gunwale to see the ship bearing down on them for herself. The wind blew her mobcap off, but she didn’t care.

  Oh, God! He’s come.

  Her dead heart woke to aching life and the tears she hadn’t shed the night before stung her eyes now.

  “Captain Bostock, what do you intend to do about this?” Lieutenant Rathbun stormed across the deck. “You can outrun them, can’t you?”

  Bostock peered through his glass at the advancing vessel. “I could lay on every sail, but the Susan B would still catch us. We’re fully loaded and she’s riding high in the water. Best for us to heave to and see what our old friend Nicholas wants.”

  “You are obligated to protect your passengers.”

  “My willing passengers,” Bostock agreed with a meaningful glance at Eve and Penny. “Are you willing, ladies?”

  Rathbun shot a murderous glare at them. He still held Nick’s fate in his verminous hand.

  Eve’s heart went cold again. “Aye, we’re willing.” She spat the words out. “Aren’t we, Penny?”

  Penny nodded miserably.

  “There, you see,” Rathbun said.

  “More than you wish I did,” Captain Bostock said stonily. “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing that need concern you. Just get us to Charleston and you’ll be paid your fare.” Rathbun screwed his face into a scowl and reluctantly added, “With a bit more thrown in for this slight aggravation.”

  Adam Bostock laughed. “You don’t know Nicholas Scott a bit if you think he’s only a slight aggravation.”

  Just then a loud boom reverberated over the water and a nine-pound ball whistled past the Sea Wolf to splash into the ocean a hundred feet off the prow.

  “That madman is firing at your ship!”

  “No, he’s signaling for us to stop and parley.” Bostock glared across the water at the Susan Bell. “If Nick was aiming at my ship, he’d have hit it. No, he won’t fire. He made a promise to—” The Sea Wolf’s captain stopped himself in midsentence and eyed Eve thoughtfully. “He doesn’t want to endanger…someone he means to take back to Devil Isle with him.”

  “This is your chance,” Rathbun said softly. “You hate the man. I’ve seen it. Fire on him. Blow the bastard back to Bermuda.”

  Another cannon ball whistled overhead, dropping harmlessly into the swells in front of the Sea Wolf. But the shot was closer this time.

  “Blast the man!” Bostock said. “Much as I’m tempted by your suggestion, Rathbun, I made a promise to someone, too.”

  Adam Bostock bellowed orders to his crew and several seamen began climbing the rigging and reefing the sails. Rathbun stomped and swore, but nothing he could say would dissuade Bostock from slowing his vessel. Eve returned to the rail to gaze across the expanse at Nick’s ship.

  She could see him, standing at the prow. She couldn’t see his face clearly yet. She didn’t want to see it when she had to tell him she could not return with him. The heady joy she felt when she first saw he’d come for her disappeared when she realized it changed nothing. Rathbun could still see Nick branded a traitor and Eve couldn’t allow that to happen.

  The Susan Bell pulled to within a boat’s length of the Sea Wolf.

  “Nicholas Scott!” Bostock bellowed. “Why are you firing on my ship?”

  “Permission to come aboard and we’ll discuss the matter,” came the shouted reply.

  Permission was granted and the Sea Wolf’s crew sprang into action, running a cable through a system of pulleys attached to the main mast. The cable was attached to a line which was affixed to a crossbow bolt. Bostock took aim and shot the bolt squarely into the Susan Bell’s main mast.

  Nicholas loped back from his position on the prow to yank the bolt from the mast. He pulled the cable taut and climbed onto the gunwale.

  Eve’s heart constricted. Balanced on the narrow rail, the corded muscles in his forearms rippling, he was magnificent. When he launched himself into the air with a shouted “Now!” her belly turned backflips. But instead of falling into the waves, he rose into the air. Bostock’s crew hauled away on the cable and Nick came flying across the distance between the two ships.

  Once he was over the Sea Wolf, he let go of the cable and landed with a roll on the deck. Eve ran to him and he caught her up in his arms.

  He cupped her face and kissed her hard. Then he pulled back and said one word, but it was enough to break her heart.

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Rathbun said. “Because she wants to be the wife of an honest man who’s loyal to the Crown, that’s why. Isn’t that right, Miss Upshall?”

  A threat simmered beneath his words.

  Nick surely heard it, too.

  Maybe he wouldn’t make her say she didn’t want him. Maybe he’d understand she was doing this for him and let it go. Her chest ached so, she could scarcely draw breath. Her mouth wouldn’t form the words to tell him good-bye forever.

  Surprisingly, Nick smiled at her. “’Twill be all right, sweetheart. Trust me.” Then his face turned to stone when he looked at Rathbun. “Am I to understand you accuse me of being less than loyal?”

  “Treasonous is more like it.”

  Nick drew his blade from its scabbard. “Much as I hate to get blood all over your deck, Adam, I can’t let an insult like that pass.”

  “I’d be disappointed if you did.” Bostock folded his arms across his chest.

  “So be it. May God have mercy on your traitorous soul,” Rathbun said as his sword cleared its sheath with a metallic rasp. “For I shall have none.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  “I warned you once, Scott. I am a master of the blade.” Rathbun took his stance, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet.

  Nick had dismissed the man’s claim at the time because of Rathbun’s foppishness. Now he realized Rathbun was like a scorpion fish, hiding his predatory nature behind a clever disguise.

  “No doubt you cut a wide swath through your effeminate cronies in the London coffeehouses,” Nick said, trying to unsettle the man’s confident glare. “There’s no umpire. No rules here.”

  “Just as I would have it.”

  Nick saw the strike in the man’s eyes before his arm moved, but it still came faster than he expected. He met Rathbun’s blade with the edge of his own, but it was a near thing.

  Rathbun smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “No duel, then. No seconds needed.”

  He flashed his blade to Nick’s left side, testing his defenses.

  “A bit slow there,” the dandy said. “How about this?”

  He feinted high and then made a low swipe. Nick leaped back,
but the tip of Rathbun’s blade caught him across the chest, slicing through his white shirt. A faint red stain oozed through the fabric.

  Eve gasped.

  “Your wench is concerned for you already, Scott.”

  Don’t look down. Don’t look away. You can’t even think about her, he ordered himself. He felt the sticky trickle on his skin, but there was no pain. That would come later. “It’s naught but a scratch.”

  “I can’t wait to show you the color of your liver, Captain,” Rathbun said with a sneer.

  “You’re more like to see the color of hell,” Nicholas returned and launched a blistering assault.

  The world spiraled down to disjointed elements. The clash of blades. A shoulder-jarring blow deflected. The swirl of Rathbun’s frockcoat. Nick heard the roar of seamen shouting around them, but it was muffled and indistinct beneath the steady pounding of his own blood in his ears.

  “Four to one on the fop!” shouted some enterprising bloke up on the forecastle.

  The fight boiled around the main mast. The crowd scuffled to both stay out of the glittering arc of their blades and to secure the best vantage points. Nick crowded his opponent up to the poop deck and was forced to retreat back down.

  Nick’s sword arm was tiring and he was nicked in a dozen places. Rathbun looked blown, but Nick hadn’t even pinked him once.

  “Almost finished,” Rathbun said with a slight gasp. “It’ll be a relief to have it done with, won’t it? And you can’t deny I’m a better end for you than a traitor deserves.”

  Nick didn’t waste breath with an answer, but the man was right. What he’d done at the magazine was an act of treason. And a clean death was better than hanging, drawing and quartering.

  “Nick, don’t listen to him!” Eve’s voice pierced his ear.

  Fresh wind filled Nick’s sails. He wasn’t ready for death yet, not of any sort.

  “No,” he growled and married the word to a bone-crunching blow Rathbun was barely able to stop. “No, no, no!”

  There was no finesse. No strategy. It was only rage and brute force and the determination to kill, not be killed, that propelled him forward. Nick drove the superior swordsman across the deck toward the gunwale. Then with a lucky glancing thrust, he knocked Rathbun’s sword from his hand. It pitched over the rail and turned end over end before slipping into the waves with hardly a splash. Nick planted the tip of his sword in the center of Rathbun’s chest. A tiny rosebud of red bloomed around the point of his blade.