A/N
Welcome to my second chapter! Sorry for the wait! While you read please if you see any mistakes, errors, or something confusing, let me know so I can fix it, so you can have more enjoyable reading experience! With more to come please enjoy
JACK SQUINTED AT THE SHIP'S GRIM QUARTERMASTER who kept looking back toward the wharf as if expecting trouble and wondered if he'd made yet another terrible mistake.
The fact that the second under the ship's captain was a woman had made him falter, but in his unpopular opinion, female smugglers were more than capable of being just as merciless as their male counterparts. Perhaps even more so.
This one had a cutlass and two pistols strapped to her hips, and eyes that were sharp and hard. It had made him worry just a bit. He'd have better odds with a man who could be more easily fooled. Women tended to be more discerning.
Fortuitously or not, she'd hired him-thank you,
charm and false confidence-but only after making him sweat with pointed questions about his experience reading charts and navigational skills.
He was proficient in seafaring but had his own sailing masters on his ships, which meant he was out of practice. Since the only way off this godforsaken island was to board a vessel exiting the harbor in short order, which meant this ship, he'd had no choice but to obfuscate. Jack hadn't even looked at the name of the ship. Then again, that didn't matter.
The only thing that mattered was the fact that it
was leaving. It helped that he was familiar with this particular in let as well as the surrounding seas, at least enough to be hired as a passably competent sailing artist, as the pirates of old
called it. In truth, he did not like navigating in the dead of night there were too many things that could go wrong in the darkness-but a storm was brewing in the winds. He could smell it. Besides, he'd rather be out on the open seas with a chance to outrun a squall than stuck here on a very small island with his uncle who wanted him dead. Pitch was the only one who knew about Jack as ties to Tobago and that from time to time, he dropped off money and supplies to his relatives who lived on the island.
Unfortunately, he hadn't counted on a mutiny...or being thrown into irons the second they'd put into port. He let out a growl. When he got his hands on his treacherous uncle, Jack was going to throttle the man and feed his body to the sharks! He could have boarded either of the two ships at the far end of the harbor-both of which were part of his merchant fleet and belonged to him-but sailing required a capable, and clearly loyal, crew. And the truth was he did not have the time to gather up enough new sailors he could trust to get them safely to sea...at least not here. They were probably all Clayton's men, and by default, his uncle's. Raphael would rather not be tricked and incarcerated again, thank you very much. Live to see another day and all that.
"Merida!"
He frowned as the faint cry reached his ears. Was that a bellow from the dock or the rising wind? A storm was definitely brewing, which made him want to make haste even faster, despite the late hour. He did not want to be stranded because the ship could not leave the inlet due to a reef made
more dangerous by the incoming tide and rougher seas.
"Damn it, Merida, you soulless witch, ease up!"
He frowned. Dieu, that was a voice, not in fact the sound of the billowing wind, and it sounded much closer now. Wasn't the quartermaster called Merida? He strode to the stern where the gangway had been pulled aside and peered into the darkness toward the docks. Though he could barely differentiate between the shadows, one of them seemed to be thicker than the others. Thicker and getting bigger. And person-sized.
What the devil?
Jack barely had time to think before what
looked like a small boy launched himself from the end of the wharf in his direction over six feet of open space. His lips twitched in admiration at the lad's sheer ballocks. Jumping that distance in the dark was no mean feat of courage. Well, it was either courage or madness.
Either way, even if the boy succeeded, Jack was
certain that the surly, hard-as-granite quartermaster didn't have time for stowaways or extra mouths to feed. She had made it abundantly and sternly clear that he was a last resort and that he'd have half rations because of his size. No doubt this new arrival would be disappointed to learn that he'd have to swim back to the dock since Jack wasn't giving up his spot!
He had barely locked his stance when the small, airborne mass hurtled onto the deck, rolled, and crashed into him where he stood. A tight cap flew off in the collision, and coils of pale hair tumbled into a chaotic cloud as the unexpected scent of orange blossoms and honey flew into his nostrils.
He blinked in shock while his hands
automatically reached out for purchase and he found his fingers full of a pleasantly rounded bosom. An infuriated, savage curse had his eyes widening.
"Get your filthy hands off me, you bloody cretin!" He did and stepped back, even as several crew members cheered and whooped at the newcomer's entrance.
"Who the hell are you?"
"The bloody captain," the virago who was most definitely not a boy snarled.
"Who the hell are you?"
Jack blinked in delayed shock. This was the ship's captain? His eyes took in her petite stature, at least compared to him, and the bold jut of her chin. She looked like a wrathful Viking warrior.
"I'm your new sailing master," he replied, though to his horror it sounded more like a question than a statement.
Lip curling into a sneer, she glared at him. "The fuck you are."
He smirked at the foul oath dropping from that pair of perfectly plump lips, with a Cupid's bow on the upper, the only feature he could see beneath the tangled mass of platinum blonde colored tresses.
"Sorry to say but I am," he said
genially. "I was hired this very evening by a cheerful quartermaster who assured me that I'd be in excellent company on this here ship for the fair exchange of my services."
"Cheerful, is she?" she muttered and then rolled her eyes.
"Merida, turn this goddamned ship around," she bellowed, but the statuesque redhead with the uncompromising mien who had interrogated him was nowhere to be found. She was no longer on the quarterdeck where Jack had seen her last.
Still panting for breath from her death-defying leap, the woman claiming to be captain shoved the damp locks out of her brow, and Jack's eyes went even wider. Streaked, icy-blond, half-braided hair surrounded a heart-shaped
face with a pert chin, a down-turned but full mouth, and a pair of sharp light eyes that shone with equal parts grit, loathing, and irritation.
His heart gave a sudden thump.
Not what he was expecting at all. This part of Tobago, a port known for its smugglers, thieves, and generally an unsavory sort, attracted rough people of all sexes, but certainly not anyone who looked like her. He would have remembered. Fiery Valkyries with murder in their eyes would command notice.
His heart thumped again.
Despite that and the utterly unwanted tug of attraction in his gut, he shrugged it away. His reaction-a very normal biological reaction-could have been because he'd had his hands full with her very feminine charms a moment ago. Considering he'd been locked in jail for
weeks with no one but Hans's for company, it was no wonder certain parts of him had perked up.
That furious stare of hers churned with savagery and displeasure, but he held his ground and kept his nascent desires in check. His instincts warned that, unlike the quartermaster, this lady might not be so easily charmed or hoodwinked. She was mesmerizing in the way a wild hawk was...like something that soared and hunted, and could never be caged.
Or tamed.
"So you're truly the captain," he repeated. "Of this vessel."
She tilted her head backward to meet his stare with hers. In the guttering lamplight, a pair of changeling, siren's eyes leaned toward the darkest green of the ocean.
"Did I bloody stutter?"
He opened his mouth to say no and shake his head meekly because why would he risk his means of escape-but blurted out instead, "What were you running from just now?"
"None of your business. Merida, come out, you lily livered coward, and explain the meaning of this before have your wretched carcass lashed!"
"Promises, promises," a voice called back, and Jack blinked. That didn't sound like distress at all. In fact, it sounded...flirtatious.
The captain scowled as she peered around, her top teeth sinking into her plush bottom lip, and he felt that sensual jolt again. He ignored both it and the urge to lean forward to sample that full red lip himself. She'd probably lash him into strips if he tried, and he was quite fond of
being in one piece. Best not to tangle with an infuriated woman who had the power to kick him off her ship and right back into irons.
The tall, stoic quartermaster strolled out from the port deck.
"Cap'n."
"Don't 'Cap'n' me. What the deuce is this, Merida?"
Merida grunted, her face giving away nothing. "We needed a sailing master. There was no one else, and you demanded to leave in short order, if you recall. I didn't have time to find anyone more suitable. In fact, I'd lost hope we'd have anyone at all until he showed up."
"Showed up?" she bit out. "That's coincidental."
"Kismet," Merida countered, and the captain hissed a curse he didn't quite catch. "He claims to know the routes and the sea, and has enough navigational knowledge to steer us out of here in one piece."
Damn right he knew the sea! Jack puffed his chest, not missing the captain's narrowed gaze on that part of his anatomy, considering she was standing an arm's length away. It was a rather nice chest, if he did say so himself. He couldn't help it-he gave a subtle stretch. Her mouth flattened even more when he noticed her sidelong observation. Maybe his first impression had been off, and he could turn on the charm to flick that frown upside down. Or not, as a long fierce hiss eased from compressed lips.
"He doesn't belong here," the sullen captain growled, stalking across the deck to get in her quartermaster's face.
"We're a vessel full of women and we have no idea who he is. He's a lowlife and a bottom-feeding pirate! Look at him. He's a distraction, he smells like a distillery, and he'll eat everything onboard."
Rude! Jack blinked. He'd only eat his share, and surely he didn't smell that bad. He'd bathed! With soap!
Then again, a bucket of water thrown at him once a week for two months didn't actually constitute bathing. But what was that about a ship full of women? Now that he looked around at the faces and bodies crowding the deck, he saw that it was indeed true. More than half of the hard-faced sailors were female. Why did that seem unnervingly familiar...like something he should know? A strange feeling of foreboding slunk through his bones.
"Women who can fight as well as any men," the quartermaster replied, undeterred by the mortal threat in her captain's voice. "We need a sailing master, Elsa. Unless you want to take our chances and guess our way out of here with that reef in the middle of the night. He knows the inlet."
That deep-water glower just about incinerated him. He could see the captain thinking and considering the alternative of taking her chances without him, and then fuming when she realized she couldn't. She glared at him.
"You better not be lying about what you know, Pirate."
"I'm not, Snowflake."
And then he sucked in a breath as her eyes flared with renewed fury at the moniker, the foreboding he'd felt earlier spearing its claws into his gut as gong.
"Wait, Winters?"
The name Merida had called her echoed through him like a Dieu, was this ship the goddamned Syren? Of all the vessels he could have stumbled upon, he'd chosen this one! They'd gut him inside a week!
The captain's grin was near feral, the corner of her mouth kicking up in a way that made his ballocks shrivel with apprehension.
"Aye, Elsa Winters. Perhaps you've heard of me?"
Jack felt his jaw drop. Everyone with a pulse knew the name of the dreaded female captain taking the seafaring world by storm who made other captains look like bumbling, inept infants. Her ship was fast, she was deviously smart, and her crew-a disproportionately female crew that was uncommon in their walk of life-was unerringly steadfast. And, by all accounts, vicious. Rumor had it she had an inflexible code of conduct on her ship. Assault of female crew or prisoners was punishable by beheading, and defectors had their ears removed.
The island locals had even made up a sea shanty about Elsa Winters. If he recalled correctly, there was a part about her skill with bullets and blades, and a razor-sharp that enjoyed inflicting pain instead of pleasure tongue not that he was interested in validating any part of that.
He'd rather take his chances with the eels in the bay.
"Well, this has been-" The reply was ripped from his mouth by an explosion that lit up the darkness and made part of the dock crash into the ocean and a wave of debris flood toward them. He planted his feet to keep his balance even as shouts from the wharf in the distance followed when red and orange flames barreled upward into the night sky. "What the hell was that?" he shouted.
"Looks like a ship or half of the harbor!" one of the deckhands yelled as everyone scattered back to their posts.
Jack stared toward the south end of the wharves. Merde. Were those his ships?
The quartermaster sprinted to the top deck and
squinted through a narrow looking glass, but it was too far to tell and they were already nearly out of the cove.
"I heard rumors of the revenue cutters sniffing around, Cap'n," one of the boatswains hollered. "The customs house has been clamping down on smugglers, following ships and seizing their cargo. Could be them."
Jack clenched his jaw. No, not the cutters. His fucking uncle. Rage filled him, slow and savage. That sniveling, cowardly bastard would pay.
The dragon of a captain didn't reply, her lips tight as she peered toward the fire. Something like satisfaction. burned in her eyes, fists clenching at her sides, but she didn't react to the billow of flames in the distance.
"Get those boilers lit," she ordered, and the remaining crew scurried to do her bidding. "Sails up. Loosen the braces. If there's trouble, the faster we're out of here, the better." She turned to him, a wide grin on her face that was completely at odds with the violence in her stare. That broad, guileless smile should have been his first warning that he was in deep shit.
"Time to show me what you can do."
Jack had a decision to make. One that did not lead him to jumping ship, not if that would put him back in irons. But it was obvious this captain did not want him here and he would be fish food if he didn't play his cards right. He glanced down at her, frowning at her ferocious gaze. He could always predict a storm on the horizon, and this woman made a roaring hurricane look like light rain.
He raked a hand through his loose hair and cursed an expression under his breath. He could do this. Honestly, how bad could it be?
Now Elizabeth wanted to shove the annoyance of a brute off the side, but she had no choice now. She needed him to navigate the waters and this particular reef, especially at night, and as fast as possible. This southwestern coast of Tobago and this specific part of the inlet were treacherous. She'd seen more than one ship torn up on the lethal five reef flats that lay beneath the seemingly placid waters of the cove. She could take her chances, Elizabeth supposed, but she
wouldn't risk the lives of her crew because
her instincts about the man were firing.
She could already tell that he had an ego on him, just by the smirk on his face, the slight growl of command in his voice, and that overconfident stance. This was a man used to being obeyed, not one who took orders. He was amiable and deferential because he wanted to be, not because that was his nature. He was going to be trouble; she could feel it in her bones. And he reeked like a dockside tavern, which brought its own problems.
"Lift the sail, hard-a-starboard into the wind for a
spell," the smelly pirate commanded Merida, and Elizabeth watched as her quartermaster didn't hesitate to obey the directive from her position at the helm.
Merida wasn't one to trust easily, but for the moment it seemed like their new crewmate knew what he was doing. Time would tell.
Something that they were in short supply of.
Faint shouts from the shore reached her ears. The fires had died down after the initial explosions. It would be a while before either of those ships were seaworthy, if they didn't sink outright. She didn't have any regrets. Well, other than not meeting the elusive Captain Prince, but that was a goal for another day. Elizabeth climbed to the quarterdeck of the stern and didn't relax until they'd successfully cleared the reefs and were out to sea.
"Did I convince you of my skills, Captain?"
a deep voice said from behind her.
"Well enough, I suppose," she conceded. "We're not aground on a reef or at the bottom of the bay."
"So hard to please," he replied, that maddening lopsided smile still in place. "I see I have my work cut out for me."
Elizabeth whirled. "I beg your pardon?"
That smile faltered, curiosity glinting in his eyes at her choice of words, and she wanted to kick herself for sounding so missish and proper. A lowbrow sea captain would never speak thus, but something about him had her rattled. He was no one! A dock rat that Merida had taken
pity on, who'd been scheming for a ride out of Tobago.
"You beg my pardon? Somehow, I can't fathom you begging for anything," he remarked. "Rather the reverse voicing your orders and expecting them to be obeyed."
God damn her eyes, why did everything he said sound like it held a double meaning? Elizabeth shoved the instant vision of him on his knees in wanton supplication from her mind. Bloody hell, she was nonsensical. It was his mouth, she decided. Even closed and silent, its wicked
curve and perpetually quirked corner edges conveyed indecent promises of pleasure.
Her brow arched.
"It's an expression, nothing more. Or perhaps you intend to be the grammar master instead of the sailing master?"
A pair of thick eyelashes dipped, though that aggravating smirk seemed to deepen. "I can be anything you wish, Captain."
Staring out to sea, Elizabeth scowled and ignored the way that rumbling baritone crept over her senses like a balmy ocean wind. It had been a long time since she felt attraction to a man. Not even her old retired spymaster partner and former husband of convenience, the Duke of Thornbury, had held her interest for long. Their past, very brief interactions had been of mutual accord as opposed to any true, grand passion, and he was happily remarried now.
The new Duchess of Thornbury was a spectacular
woman. In fact, Elizabeth had joked to Thornbury that she could have easily been smitten with her, given half a chance. Alas, the duchess was as madly in love with her husband as he was with her, and Elizabeth could only hope to find such happiness for herself one day with a partner she could tolerate long enough. She exhaled a huff of amusement. One day when Pitch Black was behind bars, at least, which at this rate might be never.
Two years ago, she'd met Merida in a fancy dress shop in New York. She'd never tell the woman, who'd gone from dressmaker to shipmate to lover to trusted friend, but Elizabeth had pursued her on purpose. Per her information from the Treasury Department, Merida had sailed to Europe on several ships, both as a sailor and dressmaker, and had a wealth of empirical knowledge. And she was a suspected smuggler of ladies' fabrics. Given Elizabeth's latest assignment to capture the Prince of Smugglers, she'd needed a crew, a person with knowledge of the customs houses, and a dependable quartermaster.
Merida had instantly agreed. They had warmed each other's beds for the better part of a year, and then that, too, had lost its luster. Elizabeth had found over the years that her lovers had to catch her interest, and not just at a surface level. While she appreciated looks as much as anyone, compassion, intelligence, humor, and insight held more of a draw for her. Most of her romantic relationships seemed to have no legs to go the distance-not that she needed that sort of distraction in her profession. Lovers took effort.
And the truth was, her job left little space for affairs of the heart.
Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder at the sailing master, who stood there like a silent, obedient, pretty statue. His stark cheekbones stood out, with the gauntness of a half-Istarved creature. Her eyes narrowed. What kind of feral cur had Merida welcomed aboard?
He was tall, at least a half-a-foot taller than her, and rangy in build. Long inky hair fell in a thick windswept skein from his crown to his shoulders, framing that angular, sculpted face, the bottom half of a square jaw covered in a thick layer of dark scruff. Two gold hoops hung from his right ear, one at the top through his cartilage and one in his lobe. He certainly had the look of a long-ago pirate.
Dashing. Roguish. Definitely dodgy.
His eyes were an unusual gray blue color with a cold ice at the center, made even more striking by his rich brown skin, and his longish nose had a bump in it as though it'd been broken by a fist. Or a shovel. A girl could dream. But it was that mouth-curved into a crooked, ingratiating smile-that made her hackles rise. Everything seemed to be of perpetual amusement to him, those irises alight with something puckish that provoked and irritated. A staunch scoundrel through and through.
Elizabeth had to hand some credit to him, however. He'd passed muster to get them out of port safely, even if he did smell like he'd bathed in a vat of rum. Her crew drank like any other sailors on the sea, but liquor had its place, just like everything else. Drunk mariners made mistakes. Took liberties. Were too loose with their pride and their tongues. Were dangerous.
She fastened her gaze to him. "Who are you? Who are your people?"
As if waiting for the inquiry, he stepped up beside her at the railing. The pungent smell of rum curled around her, but it was underscored by the salt of the sea and something that hinted of cedar and spice.
"What do you wish to know, Captain?"
"All of it. Are you Caribbean? English? European?
What brought you here?"
His lips quirked. "Once upon a time, there was a boy, now a man. A strapping, charming man, beloved by all. Especially bloodthirsty Vikings." She let out a low growl, brows slamming together, and the rotter threw up his hands in surrender with a chuckle that shouldn't have made her want to smile despite herself.
"Very well, the boring version, then. I'm French by birth. My grandfather was one of the initial French settlers in Tobago and my grandmother was a free French Creole woman from Martinique. They had one child-my father-who in
turn met and married a free islander from the neighboring island of Trinidad, one descended from East Indian and Amerindian parents. So the first and the last, I suppose."
That explained his singular looks, Elizabeth thought, and the sun-kissed brown hue of his complexion. She filed away the information he'd offered and let out a tiny mocking huff of laughter.
"A sailing master without a ship is like a hermit crab without a shell. Whose ship were you on before? What brought you to Tobago, and why did you need to leave so suddenly?"
A muscle leaped to life in his jaw. The fact that he had pause, but Elizabeth had to think about his answer, he made her wait. Everyone had secrets... She just had to make sure that his were no threat to her or her crew. The last thing she needed to have on her plate was a man with a complicated past bringing his tribulations to her ship. She was in enough of the stew because of Davy.
"A bit of business that went bad, I'm afraid," he
replied. "Trusted the wrong sort and ended up stranded and shipless."
That sounded reasonable and plausible, but Lisbeth trusted no one she hadn't thoroughly investigated herself.
"Where are you trying to get to?"
"Bermuda or Nassau, the second preferably."
She frowned, her brain sparking. What were the odds that a sailing master of his skill would choose either of those islands? Both places were strongholds of smuggling activity, ports she'd planned to infiltrate herself. Just like the upper-crust echelons of the British ton, the smuggling world had rules and hierarchy. Lisbeth would have worked her way in there earlier, but the inner circles were tight and one had to be someone of enough repute to be granted entry.
Could this marauder be her way back in? The hope was a stretch at best, or perhaps she was grasping at straws. Then again, Elizabeth was nearly out of options. It was either that or head back to New York empty-handed with her tail between her legs...and she did not like to fail.
No, when a door closed, a window could be pried open.
And this was a window. A very, very, very small window, but one nonetheless. What was the harm in seeing him to his destination? And if she discovered that he could be useful, well then that would be a boon.
"Nassau it is," she said. "And Pirate?"
Those mercurial gray eyes flashed.
"Yes, Captain?"
"Keep your head down or you'll find yourself tossed out with the rest of the slop."
The corner of his mouth kicked up as he moistened the lower of the two sensuous curves, the drag of the tip of his tongue unmistakable. The bloody knave had the audacity to wink.
"Aye, aye. I've been told I do my best work with my head down. You won't regret it."
Elizabeth cheeks heated-in instant irritation, of
course but he was gone before she could reply and cut him down to size, the lewd images she'd shoved away earlier returning in full salacious force. She let out a growl of a laugh. Blast her floundering luck, she was bloody regretting it already.
————————————-
Vote
Like
Comment
Add to your list
Or whatever🩵