“Got a plan, Kieran?” Liam’s voice, little more than a whisper in the darkness.
“No, but God gave me feet, didn’t he?”
“God gave ye feet, lad, on which to run.”
“No, Liam, God gave me feet on which to think.” Rosalie heard the sound of him adjusting his position on the sand. “Miss McCormack. Go sit with Liam and Joel. ’Twill make you a little less vulnerable, at least.”
It was impossible to see anything in the darkness. On hands and knees, she crawled across the sand in their direction. Her hands bumped shockingly into Captain Merrick’s outstretched legs and she caught her breath, mortified.
“Sorry.”
Outside, the light was getting stronger. The voices, louder.
“Mr. Doherty? Where are you?”
“Here, lass. This way.”
She stretched out her fingers in the darkness and then Liam’s big, broad hand closed over her own and pulled her up into the shelter of his arm.
And now, she could see the torch itself just outside. Drunken boasts and ribald laughter. The whoop of high spirits, someone belching and more laughter. Rosalie tensed and quietly pulled the pistol free from under her skirts.
Flickering orange light and leaping shadows as the gate was unlocked and pulled open. Flickering light that revealed Captain Merrick lying on his side in the sand as though still unconscious, his body between the iron gate and the back wall of the cavern where the others sat pressed against the cold, damp limestone. Three pirates, one carrying the torch whose light cast a rich glow upon the sand, came in. All were armed, one of them with a blunderbuss hung from a leather sling across his shoulder, the other two with pistols tucked into their belts. Rosalie noted with relief that the dreaded Escobar was not amongst them.
“Where’s the pretty little señorita?
“Must be hiding in here somewhere.”
“I get her first.”
“You get what’s left after I’m done with her.”
“We could share.”
“Share? The oceans’ll dry up before I share such a tasty little morsel with the likes of you, Tito.”
The one with the blunderbuss unslung the weapon from his shoulder. “Shut up, both of you. Escobar wants her for himself. He finds out we’re even in here, he’ll gut us all like mackerels.”
Nevertheless, they shuffled cautiously forward through the sand, pausing as they came to the prone form of Captain Merrick.
“Yankee captain wake up yet?” asked the one with the blunderbuss, poking him with a toe.
“No, and no thanks to you lot,” Liam snarled.
“He dead?”
“Might be. Can’t really tell now in the darkness, can we?”
“Never mind him,” said the one with the torch. “We came here for the girl. Ah, there you are, Cariño.” The pirate, with oily black hair and a face pummeled by smallpox, drove the torch into the sand and rubbing his hands, stalked toward Rosalie, now shrinking against Liam. “Come on out, mi amor. It’s playtime.”
She looked directly at him, her eyes reflecting the torchlight, her pistol now cocked and pointed straight at him. “You can go to devil.”
“Ooooh, she’s got spirit, that one!”
The other two pirates erupted in laughter. One began rubbing his groin. The one with the blunderbuss raised the gun—and pointed it at Liam.
“Out of the way, old man.”
Rosalie, still aiming her pistol, felt Liam go tense beside her.
“I said, out—”
“No!” She got to her feet, the breath catching in her lungs. The pirate moved forward, licking his lips. But there was only one way to reach her and that was over Captain Merrick’s prone form.
He stepped over the body on the sand—
And in that moment the captain came alive, punching violently upward with both fist and knife and catching the pirate squarely in the testicles. The man howled and before he could even fall to the sand, writhing in agony, Captain Merrick had lunged to his feet, ripped the blunderbuss from him and swung it hard, catching a second pirate across the face with a terrible crack and dropping him like a stone in a pond. A well-placed kick silenced the first brigand, and Liam and Joel quickly subdued the third before he could run back out and spread the alarm.
“Let me go, you bastards!”
“Shut up, or ye’ll end up in the same state as yer two friends,” Liam snarled, jerking the man backward.
But Rosalie, the unfired pistol still in her hand, was staring at Captain Merrick. Captain Merrick who had seemed quiet and thoughtful, not a vendor of violence. Captain Merrick who had moved so quickly and so decisively that he’d turned the tables on their captors in an instant and was now bending to relieve them of pistols, cutlass and knives. Wordlessly, he handed out the weapons to Liam, Joel—and herself.
Herself.
He offered her a second pistol and as their eyes met, something passed unspoken between them. Her throat went dry. She quietly accepted the weapon.
And you dismissed me as a useless female.
A mistake I won’t make again.
He bent over, yanking a cartridge box on a sling from the body of the first pirate. As he straightened up, shouldering it so that he was now formidably armed with blunderbuss, pistols and a cutlass, his gaze caught hers yet again—and this time he grinned.
“Are you quite all right, Miss McCormack?”
“Um…what makes you think I’m not?”
His grin spread. “Your sudden inability to find words. I hope we’ve not shocked you into speechlessness.”
“I think, rather, that you have.”
She looked at him, standing tall and triumphant as though he owned not only the world, but his own future. All of their futures. After what she’d just seen, she was inclined to think he did—and in that instant, Rosalie realized that Captain Kieran Merrick, despite the gravity of the situation, was exactly where he wanted to be.
In his element.
Who would have known that this man who looked like a romantic poet was every inch a tough and dangerous warrior beneath that deceptive exterior. And that warrior was all business once more.
“Here.” He held out her knife, offering it hilt-first. “You can have this back. I won’t be needing it anymore.”
She took it, her fingers touching his, and again felt that flash of awareness of him as a person, of him as a worthy opponent, of him as a man—and a very virile, confident, and unexpectedly capable one at that.
He had been cunning and lightning-quick in his attack, and this despite being knocked unconscious earlier and still feeling the effects of it. She looked at him again, watching him check the flint on one of the pistols and tuck it into his belt, that thick, glossy, bountiful hair flopping over his forehead and making her wonder what it would be like to push her hands through it. Sinful, for a man to have hair like that. Yes, there was much more to Captain Merrick than she had initially guessed based on his quiet, unassuming exterior.
Much more.
He went and stood looking down at the scoundrel he’d dispatched so neatly, now stirring on the sand and moaning in agony.
“Ye bastard,” the brigand groaned, cupping his bleeding groin. He glared up at the man who had bested him. “Ye sneaky fuck of a bastard.”
“There is a lady present,” Captain Merrick said. “Unless you want me to make this more painful for you than it’s already become, I suggest you mind your language. Now, where is my ship?”
The man said nothing.
Joel moved in, pressing a dagger to the man’s neck in unspoken warning. “Answer my captain, you wretched whoremonger.”
“Still in the cove.”
“How many men are on her?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything, you—argh!” he grunted, as Joel’s knife found blood.
Rosalie looked at Captain Merrick, who stood checking the flint on a second pistol. “I suggest that you do,” he said mildly. “And also, what you’ve done with Captain
McCormack and his men.”
“Who?”
Liam, in the process of tying up the other two brigands, raised his head. “Ye heard our captain. Don’t make him repeat himself, ye scurvy maggot.”
The pirate glared at them all for a long moment. “Escobar put them aboard the sloop. Figured they could be pressed into sailing her.”
Rosalie stifled a little cry. Stephen was alive!
Again, Captain Merrick met her gaze—and smiled. It was only a slight lift of the corner of his mouth accompanied by the faintest upward motion of one dark brow, but the effect on her was akin to warm syrup being poured into her heart and pumped throughout every cell in her body.
“What do you say to that Liam?”
“I’d say the luck of the Irish be with us, Kieran.”
“Pity that my Irishness only encompasses one quarter of me. We could use all the luck we can get, considering the task ahead.”
Rosalie tucked her knife back into her boot. “I’m of the firm conviction that luck is made, not given.”
“And you may well be right, Miss McCormack.” The captain looked at her and grinned, a sparkle coming into his warm russet eyes for the first time since she’d known him, and again Rosalie felt that flash of something passing between them, a visceral attraction, a lightning-bolt of hot, sexual awareness. He was blindingly handsome when he smiled, the sun breaking out over a bleak and barren landscape starved for light, and everything that made her a woman responded to him in a way that left her clawing for breath. “So let’s set about making it.”
Chapter 14
Kieran was aware of the woman just behind him as they carefully made their way back through the forest trail toward the beach.
Far too aware.
The part of his brain that wasn’t throbbing with pain thanks to its unexpected meeting with the brigantine’s mainmast, quietly noted the direction of the wind, the lay of the stars as they appeared through the tangled canopy overhead, the fact that between them they had two injured men, one getting-on-in-years Irishman of superior size and brawn, and a young woman. If his head ached, his back and kidneys hurt even more. It would be no easy feat to retake the sloop and sail her out of here without being slaughtered.
But they also had several pistols, the blunderbuss, ammunition, two cutlasses, several knives, and the element of surprise. And that young woman was proving to be more of a help than a hindrance…and a very different kind of distraction than she’d been thus far.
They had left the three pirates bound and gagged back in the cave, thrown the torch into the pool, and made their escape into the jungle. Mosquitoes were thick. Strange animal and insect-sounds came from the darkness around them. Ahead, the forest ended abruptly and a strip of sand, silvery in the starlight, glowed just beyond. They had reached the beach.
Breakers curled softly against the shore. Studying the bay through the trees, Kieran was grateful that the moon, full and bloated on the eastern horizon, had not yet risen. He could just see the two ships riding at anchor, Sandpiper dwarfed by the big brigantine. Laughter and revelry caught his attention and there on the beach not two hundred feet away were Escobar and his men, grouped around a fire. The smell of roast pig reached his nose.
His stomach clenched with hunger, and his mouth watered.
There was time for that later. First, he had to get them all out of here.
“Right,” he whispered, watching the revelry down on the beach. “We need to reach ’Piper, dispatch any guard left aboard her, and get her underway before those wretches down there even realize she’s slipped her anchor. But that’s going to require getting out to her.”
“Can’t quite take a boat out there now, Kieran.”
“No, we’ll have to swim for it.” He looked down at the woman at his side. “Miss McCormack?”
“I can swim.”
“Good. And you, Joel. You’re going to have a hard time of it with that shoulder.”
“I’ll manage, Captain.”
Kieran nodded. The wind was blowing onshore. Once aboard, they’d have to beat against it or run the length of the beach before tacking out into the night but Sandpiper, with her handy fore and aft rig, was designed to get close to the wind. Closer than that brigantine could. If he could manage to get her underway without the pirate vessel blowing them to bits, Escobar and his men would have a hard time catching her.
He hoped.
He felt Miss McCormack just behind him and unbidden, the memory of the kiss flooded his mind.
The kiss.
He had tried not to think about it. The sensation of swimming up from the darkness, the sudden awareness of pressure against his mouth, of warm breath against his cheek, of someone’s thumb rubbing the underside of his jaw, holding his head steady as consciousness had flooded in—and with it, her soft, feminine scent. It, more than anything else—with the exception of the kiss itself—had been what had dragged him up from oblivion and filled him with awareness, and that awareness had been of her.
He was glad of the darkness and glad that she was behind him, because he was growing hard. It was an inconvenient time for his body to be aroused.
But then, everything about Miss McCormack was inconvenient, wasn’t it?
Yes, Miss McCormack had awakened him….
And in more than just one way.
He tamped down the sudden direction of his thoughts. It was both fruitless and stupid to get his hopes up like some dumb, love-struck calf, because that kiss obviously hadn’t meant to her what it had meant to him. To her, it was nothing but a means to an end—the end being that he was awake and useful once more. And why should it mean anything more to her than that? He was certainly no prize. He wasn’t as bold and outgoing with the fairer sex as Connor was. Women liked brash confidence, not shy, quiet types that tended to be invisible.
And yet, he could feel the warmth of her sweet, curvy body standing close beside his own.
And she had looked at him for a moment back there as though he were a god come down from the heavens to save them all.
And she—
Put her from your mind.
“What next, Kieran?”
Liam’s urgent whisper forced him back to the situation at hand. “We can’t just walk out across the beach and into the water without being seen, Liam. We’ll have to head off to the east, back through the forest. See if there’s a way to come out around that headland and swim out to ’Piper from there.”
“I remember seeing a trail going in that direction when we were being marched to the cave. We passed it a ways back. If I remember right, it—God almighty!”
Sudden shouts of alarm came from somewhere back in the direction from which they’d come and beside him, the girl checked her pistol. Liam yanked out his own. Joel’s dagger glinted in the starlight. Kieran unslung the blunderbuss from around his neck, taking assurance from the weight of it in his hands, and the four of them backed quietly into the undergrowth as figures charged past and onto the beach.
“What do you mean they escaped?” someone roared, and Kieran recognized that furious voice as Escobar’s.
“I think that’s our cue to move,” he said. “Quickly.”
He turned, but not before he saw the sudden confusion around the fire. Figures ran through the darkness. Some raced back into the forest, presumably toward the cave. Others spread out onto the beach. All were shouting. Someone fired a pistol to alert others, and commotion filled the night. Grim-faced, Kieran grasped Miss McCormack beneath the elbow, quietly steered her back onto the trail, and with a signal to the two men, struck off rapidly for the east.
They broke into a run. There was no time to lose.
* * *
Young Stephen McCormack sat huddled in the sloop’s hold, packed into this small space with his five surviving crewmen. The pirates had not afforded them any light. They hadn’t even given them any food since forcing them onto this new ship and belowdecks. They were sitting in misery when suddenly Jonas Robertson froze.
> “What was that?”
“Sounded like gunshots to me,” said Cam Eagan. “Rogues must be in their cups and shooting crabs on the beach.”
“Or getting ready for the next target practice.”
“God help us.”
“What do you think, Captain?”
Stephen raised his head. After all this, the men were still expecting him to lead them. To offer encouragement, advice, and solace. But he had failed them. Even now, the memory of the pirates’ savagery played itself over and over in his mind. Memories of how ruthlessly they had taken Penelope. Memories of how they had brutally killed his sailing master for no reason but to incite fear and obedience in the rest of the crew. Memories of their daily sport—setting them all loose on the beach, giving them a head start, and then allowing two “contestants” to fire on them. The winner was he who brought down one of Penelope’s crew first. The loser was Penelope’s crewmember himself.
Stephen bent his forehead to his rough, calloused hand. His fair skin was burned and blistered from being exposed to the harsh tropical sun without benefit of a hat, raw to the touch and sore. Even the beard growing through the sunburn hurt. But his and his crew’s complaints and impending fate were nothing compared to what his tormented imagination had envisioned when it came to his sister Rosalie, whom he’d locked in the main cabin for her own safety during the short, intense fight in which the pirates had taken his ship.
Rosalie was brave and smart, the equal of any of his men. But had she been able to defend herself against the prize crew the pirates had put aboard Penelope?
More distant gunshots, barely discernible down here in the hold of this new ship to which they’d been transferred. Another prize, or so it was said. And what had become of her crew?
“You thinking what I’m thinking, Captain?”
“What are you thinking, Jonas?”
“I’m thinking that if they’re in their cups and come back to this ship, maybe we can rise up, take her, and sail out of here.”
“That would be an excellent plan if we weren’t shackled.”
A sound, above.
“What was that?”
Every man tensed in the tight, cloying darkness. “Sounds like footsteps on the deck above.”
Heir To The Sea (Heroes Of The Sea Book 7) Page 12