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It’s 1780.

The Americans are losing their desperate fight for independence from the most powerful nation on Earth. Britain’s navy is crushing outposts up and down the eastern seaboard and the Americans’ pitiful navy consists mostly of small-vessel privateers on missions of profit.

“Captain Jack” Celia Bancroft is one of those privateers, whose list of debts of honor is a nautical mile long. Sailing for the Americans is the current project on her to-do list, and once she has finished all her tasks, she will then be free to sail on a tide of whimsy.

Commander Elliott Raxham, cashiered from His Majesty’s Royal Navy, is a newly made British earl who schemes for his own independence — from the title he never expected to inherit and the country that has betrayed him time and again.

They meet in a Caribbean tavern where he steals a kiss that starts a brawl she finishes. In retaliation, he steals her ship’s figurehead and, if that isn’t a grave enough insult, proceeds to chase her across the Atlantic to collect on the promise in her kiss.

With that, the romance is on, but the adventure is only beginning as Elliott and Celia face obstacle after obstacle in their own fight for independence — a new life together on the American frontier.

← Magdalene, Book 3

Paso Doble, Book 5 →

 

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JULY 4, 1776
BARBARY COAST

BARE AND BLOODY from forehead to waist, she held the tip of her sword tight to the neck of the man who lay on the quarterdeck between her feet, his sword-hand fingers ground under her heavy boot heel. Her long, blood-soaked braid whipped and snapped in the wind.

“This ship is mine now, Skirrow,” she snarled. “You have three choices. Adrift, keeled, or death by my hand.”

He would have swallowed, but her sword prevented that. “Adrift,” he whispered as best he could.

“Wrong choice.”

The blade of a carefully sharpened battle axe glinted and whistled as she arced it overhead and brought it down through his neck, cleanly separating his head from his shoulders.

Heedless of the blood spurting from their vessels, she dropped the axe and snatched her former captain’s head off the deck.

She whirled to see the crew—her crew now—watching with varying degrees of calculation and terror.

“I AM CAPTAIN FURY!” she roared, thrusting Skirrow’s bloody head, still with its terrified expression, skyward. “I am your captain now, by right of my victory. Any who challenge me will also be sent straight to hell.”

She dropped Skirrow’s head upon his body, then rammed her sword into the deck so hard that it sank two inches into the wood and quivered. Most of the crew gasped and stepped back.

“Dooley Smith, step forward!” she shouted.

A man of indeterminate age with a shock of carrot-colored hair stepped forward proudly and saluted. “Sir!”

She plucked a jangle of keys from the body’s belt and fired them at him. Without a blink, he caught them. “Dooley Smith. Leftenant. Second in command. Take who you trust and go free the prisoners. Bring them to me.”

A quarter hour passed in which she stood on the quarterdeck, hands on hips, unashamed of her bare breasts, surveying her holdings and crew. Many would die today, but most of those not by her hand.

Only fifteen men knew what this day would bring, and fourteen of them stood spread out, heavily armed, their backs to her, holding weapons to discourage any who might forcibly object.

A gaggle of Moors, Africans, Arabs, Jews, and Caucasians in equal numbers straggled up on deck, gaunt, nearly lifeless and, for the first time on this voyage, not bound by chains. Two men stood out: An Arab and a runaway Negro slave. Both stood proud, their backs strong for all their emaciation, and their bearing dignified.

“Solomon Ibrahim and Cambridge Bull, step forward!”

The two who knew they had the most to gain by this mutiny stepped forward with purpose. She pulled two leather-sheathed daggers out of her waistband and sent them zinging toward the men, who caught them handily.

“Seek out your enemies and do what you will,” she murmured, and studied the faces of the crew, a full quarter of which turned to shock and fear.

The Arab gave no expression to betray his feelings, but he turned on the balls of his feet and, with one graceful arc, slit the throat of the man behind him—then plowed through the assembled crew.

The Negro’s expression had turned murderous and he too pursued those who had made his life worse than a living hell down in the deep, dark holds below the cargo.

She watched as men dove overboard to escape the wrath of the two who suddenly possessed the strength of madmen. Throats were slashed and bodies dumped, the sea below them blossoming vermilion as she stood silent, watching, waiting.

The rest of the prisoners stared agog, their vengeance wrought by proxy, their expressions slowly betraying hope.

The two men ran for hatches and disappeared into the bowels of the ship from whence screams erupted only to be abruptly silenced. Bodies flopped in their mates’ arms as they were dragged from belowdecks into the sunshine and tossed overboard.

The sun marked three quarters of an hour before the reapers reappeared before her, as bloody as she, sheathing the daggers in their waistbands.

“Solomon al Ibrahim,” she intoned. “I have no sailor’s rank for you, but you will be my equal on this ship, should you choose to sail with me. Anon, we shall together address your grievance with the sultan.”

His expression still blank, he bowed his head in respect, then raised it to look her in the eye. She nodded once.

“Cambridge Bull. Second leftenant. Third in command.” He, too, bowed his respect.

“Paulo Papadakos, step forward!” The Greek had taken to the sea at ten, when his family had been run out of their ghetto and he had become simply an extra mouth to feed. “Third leftenant.”

“Bataar Khan, step forward!” A smallish Mongol looked up at her from under lowered brows. “Bo’sun. And do away with that farce of hair affixed to your chin. You are no more male than I.” The woman grinned and spun a Turkish sword over the top of her hand before touching the dull edge of the blade to her forehead.

“Enrico Espejo, step forward!” Barely out of the schoolroom, this Spaniard had proven his worth many times, and no less so today. “Master gunner.”

“Adrian Croftwood, step forward!” An English nobleman’s fifth son, who had no hope of anything in his homeland and had gone to sea seeking a fortune that had never materialized. “Carpenter.”

“Orlando Telesca, step forward!” Another nobleman’s son, Venetian, heir to nothing owing to a profligate father. “Surgeon.”

The afternoon bore on thusly as she named her crew and positions, the last a small boy who had been used as a toy for the man she had just slain. No one knew his name or his age, not even he. He had always been called Boy.

“Boy!” Her voice rang out, still true, though she could feel her throat sting. “Step forward!” He did, trembling. She placed him at no more than nine or ten years old. “Can you speak, child?”

“Yes, Sir,” he replied, immediate but timid.

“You shall henceforth be known as Christopher. Take the first watch under my command.”

With the energy of the very young, he ran to the mainmast ropes and climbed, swift as a monkey, to the highest platform, where awaited a glass and cone. She looked up at him and he looked down at her, then he saluted. She nodded once, then stood silent whilst she picked out her own victims.

She saw where they stood, still alive. Neither Solomon nor Bridge would have had reason to kill them.

But she did.

And they knew it.

Lieutenant Smith caught her look and barked an order for five men to be tied to the masts of the ship. They ran, but her new crew was quick to capture them and follow those orders.

She clipped down the stairs to the main deck. She approached the first. “Look at me. Open your eyes.”

He refused, mute, miserable, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Confess your sin.”

But he wouldn’t. He knew what he had done, and what she would do to him. Her crewman pried his eyelids open. With the point of her dagger, she pried his eyes out one by laborious one while he screamed in pain and blood poured out of the sockets. If he did not die, she would put him ashore.

She went to the next mast to which were bound two men. “Turn this one facing wood and get me a harpoon.” Her order was carried out and someone had slapped the long spike in her hand. “Spread him open.” With one upward thrust, she drove the spear into his back passage. His screams were deafening. They would cease in a moment or two.

The man next to him was already blubbering and begging for mercy, as he knew what was in store for him. She cut his breeches open with her dagger. With one hand, she grasped his cock and balls, yanked them toward her, stretching them as far as they would go, and sliced them both clean from his body. He passed out. Blood drained from his groin all over her hands and she wiped her palm dry on her arse. He would be dead by sunset.

To the third mast were strapped the last two men upon whom she would visit her vengeance. Smitty had ordered the instrument prepared as soon as she’d begun her rampage, and brought the red-hot iron tongs to her immediately. “Open his mouth.”

Two of her newly minted officers muscled his jaw open—twisting it so that it cracked at the hinges. Smitty clamped the tongs to his tongue and dragged it out of his mouth. She cut it out with short, ragged strokes. He, too, passed out. He could beg on a street corner somewhere with the blind man.

The last man was the ship’s former surgeon. She stared at him, and he stared back, his head high. He had participated in the event that had led her to take this ship, but not in the same manner as the others.

“You killed him, the grog you gave him.”

“I did,” he said without hesitation. “Swift and painless.”

She took a breath. “Thank you.”

He inclined his head.

“Leftenant Bull! Take him. Lock him in my cabin. I should decide what to do with him later.”

Bridge stepped forward and saluted. “Which cabin, Sir?”

“Oh, aye. I have a new cabin now. My old one, then. Have a boy move my things first.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

That done, she turned and bound back up to the quarterdeck. “Solomon. Mount Skirrow’s head on the bowsprit as a warning to anyone else who thinks to take me or mine.”

The Arab’s mouth turned up in a diabolical smile. She and the rest of the crew watched silently as he impaled the head on a claymore, then grabbed a measure of rope before heading to the bowsprit to lash it tight.

Turning to address her men, she said, “We put into port in Casa Blanca soon for drydock. That will take some weeks. Those of you who do not wish to sail under a woman’s command will find your own way back to your homelands. After that, I go to Philadelphia to apply for a letter of marque. War has begun, and where there is war, there is money to be made.

“Those of you who’ve been bound who would be my crew are welcome to stay as long as you work. Otherwise, you’ll tell the leftenant where you wish to debark and I shall take you there. Any who have wives or sweethearts who would be willing to work for me are welcome to bring them aboard as we pass your home ports.

“The rest of you who wish to stay as my crew, freely and of your own will sailing under the command of a woman, will be well rewarded. This ship will henceforth go by the name Thunderstorm. We weigh anchor at dawn. Monsieur Senzeille, two extra rations of rum for each man and other than a skeleton watch of two hours each, you may have the rest of the evening to yourselves.”

The crew erupted in cheers.

It was a good day’s work, but she could find no joy in it.

She looked to the sun, low on the horizon, and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Adieu, mon cœur,” she whispered and went below to find a dark place to sob out her grief and heartache before her new crew saw her tears.

It was not meet for a commander to weep.

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JULY 4, 1776
NEWGATE PRISON, LONDON

cold
          wet
                              dark
                    hunger
                                                  filth
stench
     humiliation
             pain
                                 madness
     death

England’s traitor awaited the court’s verdict sitting in a puddle of his own filth on freezing stone, even in summer, barely able to move for cold and pain:

his back against the equally freezing stone wall,

his knees up and his arms propped across them,

his head hung low,

his ankles with bracelets of iron, a short length of chain betwixt them to hobble him; a matching set gracing his wrists—the two chains connected by a third to keep him secure from escape,

his waist-length hair matted, filthy, crawling with lice and maggots,

his beard, thick and coarse, itching and crawling with the same vermin as his hair,

his body emaciated and weak, his stomach aching from hunger.

Two years.

He had been sitting thusly for two years here whilst his trial lumbered toward the inevitable conclusion of his execution.

To keep his mind sharp, he created word puzzles and riddles. He made lists of the books in the library at home and which ones he had read. He named the names of every tenant, villager, and boarder on his estate.

To make himself laugh, he recited by memory long passages from Pope’s Dunciad; following that, the works that had inspired such brilliant insults. He stood in the middle of his cell and delivered monologues from Shakespeare and Marlowe, twisting them beyond recognition into bad puns that made him cackle at his own jokes.

To keep his sanity, he recalled his boyhood, spent running hither and yon with his older siblings, racing their horses through the woods, hunting small animals with primitive snares and weapons, playing games with the village children, sneaking into the sea caves to hunt pirate treasure.

To keep hope alive, he flew far away from this place, to the Ohio river valley he had found and made his home for a fortnight, land he had coveted so much he had paced it off as if to verify a purchase. Upon reflection, he should have known it could never have been his, but in this time and place, as it had for the last two years, it was.

He split logs for the fences that corralled his bleating, stinking sheep. He walked behind yoked oxen guiding a plow, his feet bare in the cool, damp, rich black dirt that had never before met steel. He dug precise holes into which he carefully set saplings for apples and pears, then carried water and mulch with which to nurture them. He mucked his horses’ stalls and milked his cows, and when he emerged from his stables, he looked over acres and acres of grain, pastureland, and meadows to the horizon—all his, as far as he could see.

He turned and saw his home, his beautiful home, the one he had built with his own hands, along with equally beautiful furnishings inside. Here, a rocking chair he had labored over. There, a well-designed roof hip he was particularly proud of.

A simply dressed woman waved to him from the porch, called his name, and returned the smile that grew upon his face. He could not see her very well, though, for he was rather far away. He could, however, hear his children squawking at one another over this favored toy or that—one he had made.

Come to supper, my love! The sun will set again yet tomorrow.

“A moment, my love,” he whispered, and gazed again over his land—his!—marveling at its vastness.

The day guards thought him mad, for all that he spoke to himself, asking and answering his own questions, reciting the same lists and soliloquies over and over again, conversing with his nonexistent wife and children, scratching out crop plans on the stone with the jagged edges of the links that tethered him.

The night guards had nothing better to do than listen to his plans and scoff.

“TRAITOR!”

Jerked out of his reverie, he smirked at the screech that came through the narrow bars far above his head. He wiped his mouth with his filthy hand, chuckling. How many times had he heard that?

Traitor. He heard it shouted outside the prison walls for hours at a time, the populace clamoring for him to dance from a gibbet.

Traitor. He heard it shouted outside the courtroom where his trial took place, where he stood stooped because of his shackles. His appearance condemned him even to those who could not quite be convinced by any other means that he was guilty of high treason.

Traitor. The word was splashed all over the gazettes, or so he was told. Almost no one would speak of it to him, even when he begged for the truth. Only his mother understood his need for the truth—and gave it to him.

Truth: There was a word whose concept he had long forgotten, if it had ever existed in the first place.

Honor: He had been betrayed by the Crown itself, its political interests in his death paramount to any claim of honor.

Nobility: His home, the place he had left fifteen years ago, the one to which he had wanted to return for so many years— He would never see it again.

Reputation: Shredded beyond repair, his family name forever black, his siblings left to bear society’s disdain and contempt. His unmarried sisters, still in the schoolroom, would find it difficult to make a decent match. His brothers would find the task equally burdensome, which, if remained unaccomplished, would be the death knell of their family.

It would not be long now until he was shuffled off this mortal coil, if the rising clamor outside was any barometer.

I did not bear weak men, Son. Keep faith. Your brother will get you out of this Godforsaken place, and if he doesn’t, I will.

Ah, but his mother had always sailed into the wind, making little headway, but determined to defeat Fate, refusing to lose or to fail no matter how difficult the task. He himself had inherited a good measure of that foolishness, he knew, and perhaps his father truly had the right of it: allow Fate to deal the cards, then play the hand given without complaint. It certainly must be easier.

That bloody Hanoverian jackanape has taken too much of us, of you, and I will cheat him of his goal if ’tis the last thing I do.

Mother, you would make me a fugitive? I will never see you again.

I would rather never see you again, knowing you are alive and well, than watch my wonderful, courageous boy sacrificed on the altar of politics. You will not die before I do. I’ll not allow it!

“‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more,’” he whispered, then shook his head furiously. “Lord, Mother would have my arse, thinking thataway.”

He might allow as how his father’s philosophy was easier on the soul, but he was indeed his mother’s son. Visions of a life on the American frontier persisted, which meant he would go to his death mired in hope.

Yet for all his misery, he had endured far, far worse. Two years alone in these unaccommodating accommodations was far more preferable to the fortnight of hell he had endured in the hold of a Royal Navy frigate that marked the beginning of his career—the one he had never wanted.

Here, he was left alone but for a guard’s occasional half-hearted taunt.

Here, he was given at least a bit of gruel and water.

Here, he was not stripped, not bound in stocks, not flogged, not—

Here, he could sleep as deeply as he wished without fear.

The nightmares were rare and negligible. They did not shake him out of slumber, nor disturb him when awake. He knew where he was: Newgate. He knew his cellmates: No one. He knew that the bars that kept him in kept everyone else out.

Here he could escape across an ocean and hundreds of miles inland to a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, far away from this meaningless existence.

And here, he had regular visits from people who loved him, who gave him what little comfort they could afford, who had dedicated themselves to winning his acquittal—whether he was innocent or not.

The noise outside was swelling. Pebbles and larger stones were tossed into his cell, their plinking against the walls faster and faster. A collective bellow gathered and rose to a roar.

traitor!

traitor!

traitor!

It was a chant growing in volume and vitriol.

He would be drawn and quartered by sundown on the morrow. Unless his mother had one of her seemingly endless supply of wily feints at the ready, he would never have to worry about anything ever again.

He found that a … relief. Father was definitely more correct in this, he finally decided and hang what Mother would think. At some point, it was easier to accept it than to continue fighting against the inevitable. After all, even the best captains and generals had to retreat now and again. There was no dishonor in losing a battle to win a war, and no war could have two victors.

Thus, he proceeded to unfurl his mind’s sails and head for Ohio as he had done so often, to sink into the soft dirt and sweet grasses on the bank of the Cuyahoga River to await the executioner’s summoning. Then it occurred to him that though he could not have that in life, he could have it in death: He would ask his family to bury him there. His mother would push back the cliffs of the estate to see this request honored. Aye, that was precisely what he would do.

He smiled and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the stone wall.

Clanging at the iron doors of the gaol two floors up only surprised him in that it was so soon after the verdict was rendered. The voices of his advocates barely pricked his resignation to Fate.

The haste with which his cell door opened and men rushed in did spur him to lift his head. The sudden light from the guard’s torch blinded him and he raised an arm to shield his eyes.

“My son!” He grunted in pain when his father cast himself to his knees and fell upon him, weeping. “My son, forgive me, I pray!”

There was nothing he could say except, “’Tis of no matter, Father.” Except it was, insofar as he was an obedient and dutiful son, and his tribulations were the direct result of that obedience. “But, please, I must ask you to bury me—”

“Leftenant!” snapped his commander as he sank to his haunches beside him and began to fuss with his manacles.

Lieutenant? He had not been any man’s lieutenant for nigh ten years, but the sharp address certainly made him pay attention. What had he done—high treason notwithstanding—to be reprimanded so by an ally?

“Sir?”

“No one will be burying you in the immediate future. You’ve been acquitted.”

“Acquitted?” he croaked. Surely he had misheard … ?

He sat confused, but that was certainly of no matter, either, since he would die on the morrow and now felt an urgent need to get his request made before that happened. He flinched when the frigid air touched his wrist where the manacle had worn scars into his flesh.

“Father, come.” His older brother’s voice. “Get up. You may weep over him in the coach. Nephew, help me.”

“Grandfather.” Ah, and there was his nephew, his solicitor. Shadows moved as the younger man bent over the older one and urged him away from his supplication.

His commander grasped his left wrist, and he watched in wonder as the key went into the hole, turned, and released the mechanism that bound his other wrist. The manacle fell off, clattering upon the stone floor. He flinched from the sharp sound.

A fourth man stooped over him. “Mother will take you home as soon as you can walk farther than ten feet. You will be at home in time for Christmas!”

“What?” he whispered as he looked at his younger brother, the barrister who had argued his case.

“Do you not understand?” He pulled away when his brother’s nose nearly touched his while he stared directly into his eyes and spoke. “You—have—been—acquitted.”

He blinked. And again.

“Acquitted?” Did he dare hope this was not an hallucination? “I can go home?”

“Aye,” grunted his commander, who was currently struggling with the lock on a rusty ankle cuff. “Your brother did a fine job and your father’s influence is not to be discounted, either. Your mother—well, I should not want to cross her in a dark alley, to be sure. You’re a free man.”

Free.

Nay. Not so long as he could remember the king’s betrayals of him, nor whilst he seethed with the rage that had been building for the last two years.

The first betrayal he had been able to put behind him to fulfill his duties with extraordinary valor.

The second he shared with fifteen other men, all of them cast under the wheels of political expediency.

This, the third …

He was finished bearing Britain’s sins against him without seeking redress.

Redress.

That which the Americans sought also.

But they were little more than beasts, the colonials, with their primitive weapons, little training, sparse leadership, and no navy.

He was not.

When these men, his family, the people who loved him, attempted to pull him off the ground, his legs buckled. Even his arms, so long in one position, refused to hook around their shoulders with enough strength to hold himself.

“Bloody hell,” his father hissed before sweeping him up in his arms and cradling him as he had done when he was but a wee lad.

Redress.

Revenge.

Suddenly, it was a more intoxicating idea than Ohio.

Aye, he would seek justice for the crimes committed against him and his family, and he would do it in the manner the Crown had trained him. Could there be anything sweeter?

His father carried him out of his cell, out of Newgate, whilst the crowds who screamed for his execution were held at bay by Bailey guards. Soon enough, he found himself ensconced in a comfortable coach, his father tucking warm blankets around him.

“My son,” he whispered as he worked, his eyes glittering, a smile—that smile, the one he loved so much to see—growing. “You are a free man.”

The newly acquitted barked a rough, bitter laugh and said, “Your optimism is always the gentlest of salves, Father, if only for a small amount of time, but look.” He gestured weakly out the window toward the bloodthirsty crowd. “Does that look like freedom? Nay. I shall never be free,” he muttered. “I am a traitor. I will always be a traitor.”

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I

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1

January, 1780
Oranjestad, Sint Eustatius
Caribbean

“YE’RE GOIN’ ASHORE, JACK?” Lieutenant Smith asked, shocked when Celia swung from the deck of her ship and dropped into the dinghy already being rowed toward the docks.

“Shush. Solomon can’t know. He believes I am abed as he bade me.” She cast a glance between her first mate and her bo’sun. They were the only two occupants of the boat. “I’ll assume you two wanted away from a nosy crew.”

Bataar glared at her, and if Celia’s head were not throbbing like the very devil, she would have laughed. “If Solomon bade you rest,” she sneered, “then why are you here disturbing our liaison?”

“Aye,” Smitty agreed. Celia now could see he was equally annoyed with her. “I’d think a body’d rest after sailing through that last stretch of storms.”

It had been an incredibly long and difficult voyage from Portugal, after an incredibly long and difficult voyage from Virginia to London and on to Portugal—but for different reasons. Truthfully, she would like nothing better than to sleep, having already postponed her meeting with her partner until the morrow, but—

“Not this body,” she returned wearily.

“Then why … ?”

She gestured vaguely out to sea. “Dunham sailed into the bay two hours ago. I must make haste to go to Mohammed before Mohammed comes to me.”

Bataar sighed in sudden understanding. “Your mother. Does she know he has graced us with his presence?”

Celia grimaced. “Not yet. She’d have my head if I allowed him on board, yet I can hardly deny him. I sent a message for him to meet me at the Bloody Hound.”

“It’s been near five years. He must miss ye much.”

She slid Smitty a look. “He is not so sentimental as to cross the Atlantic for a visit with me, and he cannot possibly know Mama is aboard, so I’ll admit to some curiosity as to his reasons for being here.”

“More than one?”

“He does not do anything without he has six reasons at once, and certainly would not do such a thing as leave the Mediterranean without those reasons being very large ones.”

“An’ what’ll ye do when he requests a tour of the Thunderstorm? He hasna seen it.”

“I have not thought that far ahead, and I have a singular inability to lie to him. I shall have to arrange for Mama to go ashore somehow.” Celia’s head began to throb in earnest, and she rubbed at her temples. Certainly, she was happy to see the man, but why here? Why now? “Oh, God,” she groaned, closing her eyes and lying back in the dinghy. “Does it never end?”

“Perhaps,” Bataar said haughtily, “you should allow Fate to do what she will. It is not your concern.”

Celia could only groan again. “Do not make me think, Bataar. Your family concerns are a matter for all scholars of history to sort out, whilst I am alone between two—nay, three—warring factions.”

“They are adults. Stand aside and allow them to war.”

It was not long until the dinghy scraped the shoals. Smitty hopped overboard, up to his knees in the water to haul it close and tie it off. Celia climbed out even as he held his hand out to Bataar.

“I’m off,” Celia muttered. “My thanks for the conveyance.”

“We’re bound for the Bloody Hound as well,” Smitty admitted reluctantly as he laced his fingers in Bataar’s. “There is a quiet inn behind the courtyard, but we’ve yet to eat.”

“Mmm, I may avail myself of that. I could use—”

“CALICO JACK!”

“God’s blood,” she moaned again, but Smitty and Bataar both turned at Solomon’s bellow from behind them. Half the street’s denizens stopped and looked around. Soon enough her gunpowder supplier spotted and hailed her. “Four days hence!” she called to him. He nodded enthusiastically.

She was obliged to greet half a dozen people and arrange meetings whilst Solomon and another four of her officers fought through the crowd of drunken sailors and women to reach her and her companions.

“Cap’n Jack! Heads up!”

Celia’s head snapped to her right just in time to see a bottle flying toward her. “Praise be,” she said fervently, snatching it out of the air, pulling the cork, and tipping her head back to drink deeply. It was good, strong rum, and once she had poured a good quarter of it down her gullet, she saluted the man who’d tossed it to her. “Excellent, Distiller! One hundred barrels to the Thunderstorm. Come see me this week, as I have a Greek spirit for you to sample.”

“Many thanks, Cap’n!”

“We might as well have stayed on board,” Smitty muttered to Bataar.

“Speaking of that,” Celia said, feeling her headache fade with the alcohol and her mood lift as she graciously collected salutations and good wishes with every step she took. “Why do you not share a cabin as well as a bunk? I can find a use for a cabin that stands empty most of every day.”

“Well, Cap’n,” Smitty drawled snidely, “now that ye’ve made a spectacle of us, I ’spose there’s no need to keep us to ourselves.”

“Happy to help!” Celia chirped, suddenly amused, and waved at yet another acquaintance.

“Jack,” came Solomon’s ominous voice from just behind her.

“Oh, do not berate me. Dunham’s here.”

“I know and I had a plan to defuse the situation, but you did not stay long enough for me to inform you of it.”

She huffed at the dark Arab, who was clad in his preferred white silk tunic and pajamas, his bald head wrapped in more white silk that emphasized his black close-shaven beard. Her mouth twisted in thought. “Aye, well, now I’m here and he awaits and I find myself in dire need of food and more of this fine rum.” She took another swig. “That,” she pronounced with a satisfied smack of the lips, “is lovely.”

He grunted.

“Solomon,” she said, annoyed with his clucking. “I do not need my physician tagging after me.”

“I told you not to come ashore. If I cannot force you to your bed, I will cling to your heels like dog shit and follow you like its stench.”

“Solomon!”

His eyebrow rose. “Am I now under your command … Captain?”

Her jaw ground. “That was a mistake I’ll not repeat.”

He smirked.

“Oh, here we are,” Celia said, surprised they had arrived so soon. She looked over her shoulder to see that many of her crew had assembled behind her. “Do not get yourselves killed—and that’s an order. If I have to knock on hell’s door to drag you back to your posts, I will, and then I’ll flog you for putting me to the trouble.”

The lot of them laughed and wandered off.

“So, Jack,” Smitty drawled as they filed through the doorway, “now that ye’re the only body occupying your bunk, should I keep an eye out?”

Bataar laughed and Celia flashed the old salt a grin. “I’m not sure, Smitty. I married the last man you brought to me.”

“Oh ho! I should take up matchmaking, ye say?”

“You’ll not get my business, then. I have need of a procurer.”

“Jack,” Solomon growled, “there will be no procuring done on your behalf for the foreseeable future. If you test me, I will inform your mother.”

“We shall see about that,” Celia said archly. “I’ve not had a good tumble since before we made London. I am positively famished.”

The tavern fair crawled with pirates and privateers, most of whom she recognized. She cast around for Dunham, who sat in a back corner of the tavern holding court with Maarten Gjaltema, her sailing partner.

The last five years had aged Dunham aplenty, his long once-orange hair now almost completely white. His close-shaven beard was the color of new-fallen snow with not a patch of orange in sight.

She had been too busy to think about him much since he’d officiated her wedding, but she had missed the old man and was more than glad to see him. It shocked her how much she wished he had come here because he had missed her.

“HO, DUNHAM! HOLLANDER!” she bellowed, her hands cupped around her mouth.

“HO, JACK!” Dunham returned in the heavy brogue he affected in public. “Come aboard, Lass! Make room, lads. ’Ere comes me finest work.”

She made only a little stir as she worked her way through the writhing mass of male and female bodies. Whether she knew any particular individual or not, most everyone here knew her by sight or deed, and dare not offend her.

Except one.

It was not until she had made half her destination when she found herself pulled down into a hard, muscled lap and her mouth thoroughly kissed.

The man tasted of rum and cocoa.

Surprised, shocked, and so unexpectedly warmed as she looked into amused ice blue eyes, she ceased to think. She opened her mouth to let his tongue stroke hers, raised her hand to caress his rough, stubbled cheek. His body was big and strong, so she relaxed against him with a sigh, closed her eyes, tilted her head to get closer, and kissed him for a long moment.

She whimpered when he palmed one of her arse cheeks, caressing and squeezing—

—but no matter how beautiful his eyes, no matter how well he kissed, no matter how sweet he tasted, no matter how famished she was, allowing just any sailor to accost her so … publicly … would set an inconvenient precedent.

The point of her dagger just under his jaw convinced him to let her go.

He drew away from her carefully and Celia caught her breath. Never had she seen such a beautiful man in her life. Long silver-streaked blue-black hair, chiseled features, dark tan, good, white teeth—and those eyes!

“There are many ways you could have acquired my undivided attention for a night or six,” she remarked mildly after admiring his face and making no secret of it. “Mistaking me for a whore is not one of them.”

She slipped off his lap and sheathed her dagger as she walked away without a backward glance. She felt her wrist grasped and prepared herself. By the time he had swung her around to face him, she had drawn her cutlass with the unmistakable ring of battle, silencing the mob of people in the great room of the tavern. Her crew gathered behind her, as did the Hollander and the crew of the Mad Hangman, Dunham and her former shipmates from the Iron Maiden.

Other men gathered behind this beautiful stranger who had kissed her so well.

“Take—your—hand—off—me,” she growled, then whirled into his arms to drive the tip of her elbow into his breastbone and her thick boot heel down onto his instep.

The battle erupted with a roar, and she found herself in an unexpected sword fight with the man. Solomon and her crew, as did the two other crews, fought alongside her, outnumbering her opponent’s men two to one. Sword in one hand, dagger in the other, she was forced to fight better than she had ever fought before—even against her own master.

“Dunham!” she bellowed above the mêlée, “who is this bastard?”

“Judas,” the man himself snarled just before half the tavern shouted likewise. “My name is Judas and you’ll have reason to remember me, lady, never fear.”

“Oh, aye. I’ve heard of you,” she announced as she parried and thrust. “Little boys playing pirate.”

That seemed to infuriate him and he pressed her backward, raining strikes upon her faster and harder, forcing her to drop her cutlass and snatch her other dagger.

The pirate was brought up short by the Hollander’s sword point near his throat. “Well, now that you have met,” he said conversationally, his Dutch accent thick with amusement, “allow me the honor of the formal introductions. Anon, we can gather in Philadelphia for a ball my wife will be delighted to plan, and you may continue this dance there. Sans weapons. Fury, this is Judas, captain of the Silver Shilling. Judas, this is Fury, captain of the American privateer Thunderstorm, formerly the Moroccan corsair Carnivale. Most know her as Jack.”

That brought a glimmer of recognition to his face, but for her name or the Carnivale’s, she could not tell.

“Jack here,” Dunham murmured from Celia’s other side, “is me best student and I see you’ve near bested her, which is a feat. Jack,” he drawled, chastisement so heavy in his voice she grimaced. “Ye’re out of practice. Been lazin’ on yer laurels?”

“Aye, Cap’n,” she breathed, her chest heaving. “’Twill not happen again.”

“Judas, yer crew’s outnumbered. Ye might have bested Jack here—” Dunham shot her a disgusted glance. “—an’ he shouldna be able to do it again or I’ll know the reason why, Missy—but your crew be not so lucky. Turn an’ look.”

Indeed, the clash of swords had nearly ceased. Celia looked over her opponent’s shoulder and saw that between the crews of the Thunderstorm, the Iron Maiden, and the Mad Hangman, Judas’s crew had no chance.

“I should think you’ll not assault a woman again without knowing who she is and the extent of her firepower,” Celia murmured. She felt Dunham start. “Aye. He grabbed me and kissed me like some common whore.”

“No, wench,” Judas growled. “No common whore, I see now.”

Celia sucked up a breath, then glared at the Hollander when he laughed.

“Sheathe your weapons, Judas,” Dunham commanded, “an’ you an’ yer crew be on yer way. You got yer kiss an’ she got ’er fight, so ’tis a draw. You can hash this out at sea. I wanna enjoy me time ashore with me protégée.”

“I’m sure,” Judas drawled as he put his weapons away and sneered at her. “Your protégée.” He turned and stalked out of the tavern, his crew following reluctantly.

“Well, me girl,” Dunham chuckled as they watched him leave. “I doonna know where ye’ve been in the last year that ye’ve’na crossed paths with Judas—bloody hell, even I’ve heard of him all the way’t the Holy Land, wagin’ his own war on King George. No’ payin’ attention, are ye?”

Celia’s mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed on her former captain.

“Aye, and make no mistake, either. Now he’s gotcha in his sights. Whether to bed ye or kill ye, I canna say, but it dinna look like ye’d object to bein’ bedded.” He paused, then slid her a significant glance. “I’d not object should ye bed him.”

To that she replied with great precision, “Rafael Covarrubias.”

Dunham’s humor vanished, his facing flushing bright red. “Ye gods, woman!” he roared. “You dare speak that man’s name to me?!”

“You are as predictable as the sun, Cap’n,” she said with a sweet smile. “Makes one wonder how you’ve escaped the hangman’s noose this long.”

He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “Rum’s on Jack tonight, lads! Tell the port!” She heaved an annoyed sigh, and he grinned at her. “What’s ’at, Whelp?”

She should have known better than to engage in a battle of wits with the man who’d made a commander out of her.

---

2

January, 1780
Oranjestad, Sint Eustatius
Caribbean

ELLIOTT BROODED as he rowed back to his ship.

He had never lost such a battle before. Granted, it was not one he’d meant to start, and had taken him and his crew completely unawares. Granted, too, that while he’d outmatched a highly skilled swordswoman, his men had had to fight three crews at the same time over her—

—and there was no honor in besting a woman at swords, no matter how accomplished she might be.

Still …

Captain Fury.

Dunham had called her Jack, but it did not sit well on her shoulders, and definitely not as well as her nom de guerre.

It and tales of her adventures traveled from the Colonies to the Caribbean, from England to Egypt, from Africa to Argentina. He’d thought her a myth, such as sirens and mermaids and selkies. He’d heard she was striking, though not beautiful, and even that only as an aside. He’d also heard she occasionally went bare-breasted about her ship and always, without fail, in battle.

’Twas said she had taken the Carnivale on her own, with no forewarning, no conspiracy, but he refused to believe that. Captain Skirrow was known far and wide as a tyrant so cruel even the Ottomans feared him. Considering the women in Elliott’s family, he could easily believe in the existence of a female privateer captain, but not that a woman could lead a mutiny to acquire it.

If she had indeed taken it—no one seemed to know why—she would have had to have its crew behind her.

mutiny

by a woman

accepted as an equal by two well-respected commanders

Elliott searched his mind for more tidbits he’d long forgotten because her existence—if, indeed, she did exist—made no difference to him. A woman pirate. Not since Anne Bonney and Mary Read. Even they had worked as men, and under Jack Rackham’s protection.

Myth.

Most men weren’t capable of the exploits laid at Fury’s feet.

Striking? Aye, he supposed. Not beautiful. She had generous hips, magnificent breasts, fair skin that had the faint look of perpetual sunburn, and eyes the color of burnt sugar. Her hair had initially caught his eye: pink. A red so light and so streaked blonde by the sun it looked like a strawberry, peach, and creme purée.

But it was the smile she had cast at the old man with whom she’d entered the tavern that transformed her into something ethereal.

Fierce? Aye. She had challenged him so that he had been stretched to defeat her, and even then her mentor had reprimanded her for being out of practice. He could see why she might be; she likely relied upon her reputation to stay out of as many battles as possible. ’Twas logical: the most reward for the least risk.

Captain Fury.

She kissed like a woman who knew how to spike a man on his own lust, and her arse had filled his hand perfectly.

There are many ways you could have acquired my undivided attention for a night or six.

His eyes narrowed as he rowed harder and his jaw clenched.

He definitely wanted her undivided attention. Wanted to run his fingers through that incredible pink hair. Wanted to grind his mouth against hers. Wanted to wrap her thighs around his hips. Wanted to bury himself so hard, so deep within her she would never, ever forget who he was or what he could do to her.

What pleasure he could give her.

His men had left the tavern to seek their fun elsewhere, but Elliott had lost his taste for whoring tonight. With each pull of the oars toward the Silver Shilling, he cast about the bay for the Thunderstorm. Ah, there, not so far from his ship, though he could be easily forgiven for missing it, as it was painted entirely black so as to disappear in the night.

The stern was sparsely embellished, but its design was definitely British. He rowed slowly toward it. It was a sixth-rate sloop-of-war, three masts, ship-rigged. He counted no fewer than sixteen carronade and at least twelve swivels. It was a rare vessel, Swan class, the same size as the HMS Rose, which Elliott had once numbered in a fleet he had commanded. It was the perfect privateer: enough room in the holds to put a decent amount of cargo, enough armament to fend off most predators as well as take merchant vessels much larger, and enough speed to outrun any warship she came up against.

He found himself nodding in approval as he rowed slowly past it, admiring its sleek lines. He was just past the ship’s hull when he looked up at the prow and his mouth dropped open.

That figurehead!

“Almighty God,” he whispered, thoroughly awed.

Fury herself. Carved thrice scale in mahogany, with her hair streaming behind her, her body bare to the apex of her thighs, which then parted and straddled the prow as if she rode a lover, her bare arse firm, her wooden feet curled up over the rail. Her breasts were high and well-formed, the erect nipples large and prominent. Her right fist gripped the hilt of a massive steel sword, its point thrust deep into the wood beneath her thigh, its blade dripping wooden blood down the hull. Her left hand was outstretched to the world, her first finger pointing the way.

Her face had been caught in an expression of savage ecstasy; one could not tell if she was receiving ungodly pleasure from her prow or from battle. If Elliott had not already been half aroused thinking about how that arse fit in his hand, he was fully engorged now, watching her fuck her ship.

Then he grinned. No, he had not intended to do anything other than kiss a pretty wench with an entrancing smile, much less start a war, but there was only one thing to do after one had lost a battle to an enemy: Win the next and with it, finish the war.

By dawn, Elliott and his ship, its crew lively from a good night’s work and now not at all resentful of a lost tavern brawl, weighed anchor and put out to the other side of Sint Eustatius.

Elliott could barely think to command, his attention riveted by the sword-wielding mahogany privateer captain who now fucked the prow of the Silver Shilling instead of the Thunderstorm.

---

3

February, 1780
Chesapeake, Virginia

NOT A FORTNIGHT after he had left the Caribbean, Elliott dropped the spyglass, wondering how the hell he was going to get the Silver Shilling through the barricade of British ships o’ the line strung out along the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. If he had a smaller ship …

Then again, if he had a smaller ship, it, along with its captain and crew, would be at the bottom of the ocean. Instead, the last two British frigates whose captains were foolish enough to turn and fight him were the ones now breaking bread with Davy Jones.

“Dr. Covarrubias is near three miles north of us, Cap’n.”

“Wonder why,” Elliott muttered to himself more than his lieutenant. It was dark, but the moon was just bright enough to catch a glimmer of another vessel.

“Do you think he’ll give us trouble?”

Elliott shook his head. “I see no reason that he would. He is neither one of King Charles’s minions nor any variation of pirate, and our quarrel is with the British. To my knowledge, he’s never opened his gunports without being pushed to it.” He churned through the possibilities and put the glass to his eye again. “He probably has cargo and awaits what we do.”

The British line was rumored to be changing soon, and any captain worth his salt would take advantage of it.

“The man is the best astronomer since Galileo. One would expect him to be a decent captain.”

“He’s too impetuous for command,” Elliott grunted. “Reckless. But his navigation is impeccable, clearly, and he has a gift for squeezing the last pence and more from his cargos.”

Yeardley snorted. “If he can get his cargos to port.”

“Aye, precisely. He should simply hire a captain and keep to navigation.”

“And Fury? She’ll want her figurehead back.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the two men closest to him glance at her magnificent wooden effigy. His. He’d claimed it, and by doing so had dealt her and her crew a grave insult. Figureheads were sacrosanct and men had gone to war for far milder offenses. If she or her crew were the least bit superstitious …

Yet she’d not pursued him for it. He wondered, not for the first time, if she had any intention of pursuit.

Elliott had taken care to learn her intentions and had then followed her out of the Caribbean, losing distance every hour the wind blew. Had she a mind, she could have sailed around him and approached him from behind. But a ship built for speed and cargo was not built to declare war on an unusually large pirate ship and crew. The Thunderstorm was no match for the Silver Shilling and a captain of her rumored accomplishments would not consider such action for more than a moment.

There are many ways you could have acquired my undivided attention for a night or six.

Or … did she understand Elliott was determined to keep her attention now that he had it, and stealing her figurehead simply the first notice of his intentions?

His cockstand, it seemed, was interminable. Truly, taking that figurehead had been a mistake, if only for strategic purposes because he couldn’t seem to think beyond that fine wooden arse that permanently graced his line of sight, parting at the thighs to reveal … nothing.

Aye, she had had reason to be angry with him, but before it had occurred to her to be angry … Oh, that kiss. What would have happened if he’d stayed in Oranjestad, swallowed his pride, and groveled adequately?

He didn’t grovel well.

“Cap’n?”

Elliott started.

“Fury?”

Elliott looked toward the Virginia coast. Rumor had it that Fury and the Hollander (Elliott had no idea how to pronounce the Dutch captain’s name, nor, he gathered, did anyone else), were, at this moment, somewhere in the Bay with God only knew how many more American privateers, awaiting the change of line.

“If she is in the harbor and if she gets through the blockade and if she sees us, she will sail on past and blow us a kiss whilst she outruns the Navy fleet that will be pursuing her.”

“And after that? She’ll have the Hollander with her.”

The Mad Hangman was a fourth-rate frigate with at least forty guns—three-quarters the size of the Silver Shilling—and the Hollander was rumored to be at least as merciless as Elliott. If Elliott were caught fore and aft ’twixt a ship of the line and a fully armed sloop-of-war whose captain had reason to sink him, he would have a fight on his hands—a fight he did not need or want, and might not be able to win.

But that kiss …

“Point taken. We cannot underestimate anyone capable of mutinying Skirrow, alone or otherwise, so you need not worry I’ve lost my head over her enough to allow her to engage us at any point without reprisal.”

Sage nods all ’round.

“Cap’n,” said another of his crew, lightly landing on his feet beside Elliott. “The line is shifting watch, right on schedule.”

Elliott grinned. “Excellent.” If they were trapped in the Bay, the privateers would take the opportunity of the change to break through the line and head out to sea. “The patrol vessels?”

“There are six. The three to the north have not seen Covarrubias, so far as I can tell. The other three have not come close enough to us to see us.”

Nor would they.

“Sir, I took it upon myself to watch for the Iron Maiden behind us. Should I continue?”

Elliott was still chafing at what had happened in that tavern, though his men thought him daring for having claimed a kiss from Captain Fury and felt the figurehead more than compensated them for the loss of a brawl in which they were so badly outnumbered.

“Nay,” Elliott rumbled. “I gather Dunham went back to Morocco. But good thinking, seaman. Thank you. Dismissed. Leftenant, you stay.”

Yeardley lowered his voice once the rest of his men had scattered to tend their battle preparations. “Do you mean to chase the woman hither and yon?”

Only Elliott’s most trusted officers could get away with asking that question. “Wouldn’t you?”

Yeardley opened his mouth to protest, and then muttered, “Aye, I suppose I would.”

“I want her, Ian. Mayhap as much as I want that pay ship.”

“I don’t have to ask why, but I have never seen you like this over a woman. ’Tis a bit disconcerting.”

Elliott shrugged. “How long have we ever been in one place long enough for me—either of us—to form some attachment?”

“You formed an attachment the minute you saw her in the door.”

He ignored that. “We are here for several reasons, only one of which includes Fury. However, should she have any trouble, we shall assist.” He tilted his head to his right. “I would not be surprised if Covarrubias thinks to charge the line by himself. If possible, we shall assist him also.”

Yeardley accepted that with a nod. Elliott and his crew, the American privateers, and the Spaniard had a common enemy, and engaging the British was the first priority. He had no quarrel with Covarrubias or the privateer fleet, and his bone of contention with Fury could be settled at a later date.

There was only one way Elliott wanted to settle his bone with Fury.

---

4

February, 1780
Chesapeake, Virginia

“CELIA, MY LOVE, what troubles you so? You have been out of sorts since we left Sint Eustatius.”

Celia did not want to think about Sint Eustatius and all the things that had happened in the fortnight they had spent there, so she settled on the least concerning thing.

“Having my figurehead stolen by a pirate might be a good enough reason, don’t you think?”

Mary chuckled as she braided Celia’s hair. “What I am thinking is that you are restless over what that pirate didn’t steal.”

Oh, aye, and Celia was still famished, but now she had her mouth set for him. She harrumphed.

“I think it’s a good sign. Especially after the last row between you and that … person.”

“Mama, please. You have made your opinion of Rafael perfectly clear. So has everyone else.”

Mary made no answer.

“’Tis the war,” she burst out. “Rather, my competing tasks, all of which are urgent and none of which I can complete with efficiency. I cannot be in three places at once and time spent on any one of them comes at the cost of the other two. And then Dunham sought to add to my list.”

There was a moment of silence, though her mother never slowed in her task, her hands deft in the weaving of Celia’s hair. It was a ritual they indulged in often, Celia seated on the floor between her mother’s knees, being cherished by the only parent she had never disappointed.

Mary had taken a fancy to use seven strands this time and Celia could only imagine the braid’s intricacy. ’Twas a shame to waste it on a crew intent only on getting to London without dying.

“What did he want?” Mary asked low.

Celia had hoped Dunham had simply missed her, but no. His true purpose for crossing the Atlantic had little enough to do with her and everything to do with him. She swallowed hard and pressed a closed fist to her breast. “’Tis of no matter, as I refused him. In truth, I am weary. Bored. I have more money than I can spend in three lifetimes. I’ve accomplished things I never set out to accomplish. I do not now, nor have I ever had a goal.” She shuddered. “I wish to—”

“Wish to what, love?”

“Sleep!” But then Celia sighed. “Truly, I do not know. Something …  any­thing else. Preferably something I have not yet done. I am … empty.”

“Babes. That is what you lack.”

“I have no wish for babes, Mother,” Celia said wryly. Rather, they had no wish for her.

“Not now,” her mother countered with a jerk of her scalp. “But when ’tis too late, you will, mark my words. And I want grandchildren. You will have them because you do not deny me anything.”

“There are one or two things I would refuse you, Mother.”

The door to Celia’s cabin flew open and banged on the wall. Christopher was out of breath and panting. “Line’s changing, Cap’n.”

Celia had no need to move. It was the very thing they had been awaiting.

“The Mad Hangman?”

“Sent the signal.”

“Aye. The black sails?”

“Ready, Sir.”

“Braziers?”

“Being prepared.”

“Good, Kit. Dismissed.”

The door slammed closed behind him and his feet pounded toward the hatch, and then above. Indeed, the ship was vibrating from the men and women running hither and thither to prepare for their night’s work.

“Allow me topside, Captain,” Mary said, mocking the whine Celia had used to get her way when she was small. “Please?”

“Learn to wield a sword properly and I may consider it. I cannot keep watch over you and ’twould only take one small mistake to send us all to the judgment seat.”

“I would rather meet God by way of a fire fight on a ship captained by my daughter than waste away alone.”

“You are alone by your choice.”

“Celia,” she warned.

“Do not speak to me of your loneliness,” Celia snapped. “I’ll not tolerate it. After what happened in Sint Eustatius, you cannot now cry ‘Lonely!’ at me nor instruct me on how to conduct my affaires.”

Mary sighed and did not press. In silence, she finished the braid and tied it off. “I am so proud of you, my love,” she murmured finally, her hands resting on Celia’s shoulders. “I cannot imagine that such a brave girl came from my body.”

Celia stood and twisted to look down at the woman before her. She was smiling, enhancing her beauty to that of the angels’. Celia had gotten none of that beauty. “Perhaps I was a changeling,” she muttered.

A dimple appeared in her cheek as her smile deepened. “Then the fae granted me a great boon.”

“A devil changeling, I meant.”

“CAPTAIN!”

“Go,” Mary said. “Would that I could watch my daughter command during battle.”

Celia’s mouth twisted into a reluctant smile. She would grant most all her mother’s wishes if she could, but that was not one of them. She bent and brushed her mouth with a kiss. “I shall see you tomorrow, Mama.”

No strategic planning for the evening’s adventure was necessary other than a slight recount of the drill and which ships were positioned where in the blockade, which were new, and who captained what.

“Bancroft and Rathbone,” Bridge reported to her. “Commanding His Majesty’s Ships Grace and Purity, respectively.”

That did not bode well.

“Which Bancroft?”

“Lucien.”

“Bugger. Mind you do not let his name slip to my mother.”

“Oh, never fear,” he said fervently. “We know. Speaking of captains awaiting your pleasure—”

“Do not, or I shall have Solomon transform you from a bass to a contralto.”

“Not a soprano?”

“Nay. I’ll not have my second mate singing fairer than I.”

His grin flashed in the meager celestial light of night. “The Silver Shilling’s rumored to be a few miles out, to the south.”

“Ah, so I was right. He did follow us here.”

“’Tis a rumor.”

“As good as fact in this harbor.”

“Perhaps the figurehead is too much for him and wants a smaller portion.”

“More likely because it has no convenient holes in which to stuff his yard.” Bridge barked a laugh and Celia sniffed. “God knows he cannot catch us with that poor excuse of a boat, so he is deprived of both the figurehead and my person.”

“And a Spanish vessel called the Indigo IV is a few miles to the north.”

She started. “Another one?”

Bridge simply shrugged. “’Twould seem he might learn from his misadven­tures as any rational man would.”

“He did not tell me about this.”

“As I recall, you two were not speaking when we set him down in Portugal.”

“That was only four months ago and he is here with a full hold?”

“He had to have left soon after we did.”

Celia sneered at no one in particular—or at least, no one who was present. “His family must need more funds. They would drive him to the ocean floor for their greed, then spit upon his memory for being so careless as to leave them without income.”

“You also have difficulty denying your parents anything,” Bridge pointed out.

“I forget: Are you under my command or not?”

He laughed and disappeared into the darkness to direct the rest of their preparations while Celia headed up to the quarterdeck to take the wheel.

Solomon was ghostly in his black tunic and trousers as he bent and checked his work. She saw the faint glow of lit coals in twelve copper braziers tucked solidly in weighted lead boxes along the wale of the main deck, six to a side and spaced evenly along the deck’s length.

An unfamiliar flash between two hatches caught her eye and she squinted through the darkness, as if she could see better doing so.

“Jack,” Bataar said from her right. “We’re ready.”

Celia ignored that and gestured toward the crewman she did not know and said, “Who is that?”

“He came on board two days ago wanting to roust the British. He said he was sent by the General. Marcus Zimmerman.”

Celia looked at her officer, her eyebrow raised.

She shrugged.

Well, if General Washington sent him … Celia’s lips tightened. “I do not like not knowing my entire crew. There are few enough of us.”

“I had need of a large man willing to work.”

She watched the stranger a bit longer and saw that he was indeed an ox of a man working with an enthusiasm that was not misplaced. “Aye, then. How far is the blockade?”

“Within the hour.”

“Good. ’Tis time.” She took a deep breath. “Fore course!”

A lone black canvas rose low against the night, and blocked nothing but a few stars, then filled. It would be enough to get them to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and give them some momentum, but not enough to outrun the patrol vessels.

“Weigh anchor!”

Soon the Thunderstorm was under way, and Celia put everything out of her mind to maneuver the sloop through the shoals. From where she stood, she could barely see her crew, outfitted all in black, any exposed white skin covered with kohl.

Her own snug black breeches, black stockings, and tar-soled deerskin moccasins were invisible in the darkness, as was her black shirt. Her head was covered with a long black silk scarf that hung down her back and camouflaged her mother’s braid work.

Her face, she knew, shone like a beacon in the night. Solomon would arrive—

“Your face can be seen from England,” he murmured before she felt his fingers rubbing kohl over her cheeks and nose.

“’Tis my misfortune to glow,” Celia replied. The only sounds were the wind in sails drawn tight and the slosh of a ship carving its way through a calm harbor.

Celia spent the next forty-five minutes alone at the wheel in utter concen­tration, refusing to think about what they had planned. The sea was calm, the wind favorable and loud, and the constellations twinkled helpfully. If all went aright, they would slip through the British blockade without being noticed.

If all went awry …

She supposed she would have no more reason to worry about boredom or babes.

After another quarter hour had passed, Celia took out her spyglass and peered through the darkness until she could barely make out the silhouette of the warships blocking the harbor. A smile slowly stretched her face. It wouldn’t be too much a challenge, after all. The ships lay at anchor far enough apart to allow the sloop’s passage.

Rear-Admiral Lord Rathbone on the starboard side.

Captain Lucien Bancroft on the larboard.

Her mouth went dry at what they were about to attempt.

It had been Rafael’s idea, sparked after a long night of heavy drinking and fucking. Yet even soused, Rafael’s calculations were precise and his judgment on probabilities above reproach.

The plan was as dangerous to the Thunderstorm as it would be to the ships they targeted, and Celia would never have done such a thing under normal circumstances. Not even Dunham, who despised Dr. Rafael Covarrubias, could come up with an alternative plan should they be caught in Chesapeake Bay, and agreed that eventually they would be caught.

Maarten had been enthusiastic about the plan, but then, the Hollander was inordinately cruel to those he considered to have wronged him, and what King George had done to him embodied in the person of Lord Rathbone …

Even though she and Maarten had known they would have to blow the blockade, they had not anticipated they would need to do it so soon.

As the vessel slowly approached the line of battleships, all noise on the already quiet ship ceased completely. The wind was up, making the lone sail snap, so it was tightened further. Among the noise of the wind, the ocean, and the creaking of the two British vessels, the Thunderstorm would—hopefully—pass silently, invisibly.

Every man in her crew crouched in the shadows, waiting. Celia steered the ship by degrees toward the sea and death.

Another ten minutes passed, a tense ten minutes, before the Thunderstorm slid through the calm night within shouting distance of the British frigates. Still no alarm was raised on the dark vessels—most likely the result of bitter sailors impressed into service and unwilling to aid their captains in any way.

According to the plan, the Hollander was to slip through a gap two ships up the line. Were Maarten and Celia sailing alone, their only goal would be to slip the line, but with six more privateer vessels following them, all with less experienced captains, a path would have to be cleared. The Thunderstorm and the Mad Hangman would slip the line and then attempt to sink four British frigates of war and outrun five patrol ships with one suicidal maneuver.

Dear Lord. Eight crews and vessels hung in the balance of her and Maarten’s lunacy—and she could not but help the smile that stretched her face.

Closer and closer she steered the ship until they were sliding through the corridor. Sweat rolled down her back and dotted her brow. There was only enough room on either side of her ship for her yards and rigging not to catch with those of the warships.

“Ahoy, lads! Mind the grappling hooks! Ship off the stern and she’s tryin’ to run the blockade. Step lively!”

Celia and her crew whipped into action. Once they had sunk these two ships, they would have to outrun the patrol ships that would give chase. Timing was crucial.

“Hoist the mains’l!” Celia bellowed over the sudden din. “Ready the topsails and jibs. Kit! Run up Congress’s colors!”

“Avast, Thunderstorm! In the name of His Royal Highness, King George, we order you to stand down or we will fire upon you!”

“Lord Rathbone!” she called, and stepped away from the wheel long enough to drop a quick but elegant curtsey. “You would waste shot on me? You flatter me.”

“You’re outgunned, Fury! Stand down!”

“You know me better than that.”

She might have laughed when she heard his order to ready the cannon being given, but they were far more efficient than she hoped they would be. “Bugger,” she hissed, her plan set awry by enough moments to put them in even more danger than they had been before.

With a wave of her hand, twelve small—but deadly—flames burst on the tips of arrows held by archers and aimed at the frigates on each side of them.

“By God, woman, are you mad?!” Rathbone bellowed. “You’ll die with us!”

“You stand down, Marquess!” she roared back. “You too, Bancroft! You both have more to lose than I do!” Both captains gave the orders, but it was a faithless gesture. This was war and she was tired of it. She was in no mood to honor an expedient.

“FIRE!”

The arrows were loosed into the rigging and slack sails of the British ships. The next volley went directly into the open ports of the gun deck.

Fire on the ships erupted immediately, and Celia simply knew their magazines would blow before the Thunderstorm was clear.

“Smitty! Bridge! Bataar! For the love of God! Get—us—out of here!”

At that, every sail on the Thunderstorm immediately unfurled and filled to capacity. The night, formerly impenetrable black, was lit bright as day as the two ships blazed on either side of the Thunderstorm. The wind was up, feeding the fire, and blew the sloop quite clear of burning frigates.

The crew raced to douse the coals in the braziers, and Celia nearly allowed her heartbeat to slow when—

“FIRE AFT!” Smitty roared.

“Mother of God,” Celia gritted, as a score of crewmen raced passed her and up to the poopdeck with buckets of water and sand, then formed a line. The Thunderstorm rocked with a gust of wind, and all of Celia’s concentration and strength were again taken with the steering of the ship.

If that fire were not extinguished …

Death screams from the British frigates followed them, cutting through the sound of flames, wind, and water. She could hear men diving overboard to the relative safety of the water, for a watery death was imminently preferable to a fiery one, and most of the men who could swim would survive.

“Please God, let Bancroft survive,” she whispered fervently.

“Fourth-rates off the stern, larboard and starboard, three points each, Cap’n!”

She did not need to turn around to see the two ships burning; they lit the night and the water reflected the carnage. What she did not know was how much of that fire was coming from the Thunderstorm’s stern.

She did not dare attempt to assess the situation.

Behind her, the two blazing ships finally exploded, sending debris raining down on her and her men. She looked up, terrified a spark would touch her tarred rigging and masts, and send them down with the Grace and Purity.

But no. The cadre of young sailors who regularly plied the rigging raced in the ropes to douse each stray ember they could find.

“Fire is OUT!” came Smitty’s voice, and Celia allowed her head to drop back as she partook in a brief moment of relief.

That was all the time she could afford.

Another two explosions, but those far enough from them so as to make no difference. The Hollander had done his job well, from the sound of it.

“Step lively, lads!” Celia shouted as she turned her mind fully to evading capture. “Hangman’s on our tail!”

“Aye, she is, Cap’n!” Kit called from on high. “One … Two … Three privateers clear.” Celia held her breath. “Four … ” Another, smaller, explosion. “That was number four, Cap’n.”

“Damn.”

“The Mad Hangman’s turning! Engaging a patrol.” Pause. “Five, six. They’re all through but the one. I don’t know which.” Another explosion. “Mad Hangman set upon another frigate, Cap’n.”

“Lord, Maarten,” she gritted. “Enough is as good as a feast.”

“Three fourth-rates after us now, Cap’n.”

“BY GOD!” Bridge thundered. “Off the starboard stern! Kit! Report!”

“The Silver Shilling, Sir!”

Celia’s heart stopped.

The roar of cannon fire.

“She’s opened fire on the patrol vessels! The third one is turning back … Now the second. The first is sinking.”

“Where’s Rafael?”

“Sails up, and gaining speed. Tacking into the breach of the Mad Hangman’s last frigate.”

Maarten wouldn’t be happy about having aided the Indigo in any way. Celia snorted. The Indigo FOUR.

“Our fleet’s pulling up closer, Cap’n. Silver Shilling’s sailing in to the rest of the line and giving cover to the Mad Hangman.”

“How many guns does that man have, anyway?”

“At least sixty, Sir. Maybe more. The Silver Shilling looks like a third-rate.”

“A third-rate pirate ship?” she demanded in utter disbelief.

“Aye, Cap’n. She’s a biggun. Brit-built.”

“But he still cannot take on the rest of the line himself.”

No answer while Celia steered and barked orders to gain as much speed as possible.

“He is!” Kit cried. “He’s breaking through the line. Heading into the Bay.”

Celia’s head whipped around and saw a third-rate frigate with guns blazing. “What in blazes for?”

“She’s heavy in the water, Cap’n.”

Ah. The Silver Shilling would not have been able to breach the blockade alone, but with four burning frigates, six patrol sloops occupied with eight privateer vessels, at least two of which could and would engage in battle, the Silver Shilling could assist them and take advantage of the opportunity to unload her cargo.

“The Mad Hangman’s headed out to sea, and the Indigo’s through the line.”

“Good,” Celia whispered with much relief.

“We’re clear, Cap’n!” Kit called after a tense fifteen minutes of reports on the activity behind them. “No sign of pursuit.”

Another explosion. God help her, if that was the Silver Shilling …

“Hollander’s last frigate, sir. Five ships o’ the line down.”

“And Judas?”

“Clear, also, with three fourth-rates to his credit.”

“Now will you forgive him?” Celia bellowed.

A collective roar arose from the Thunderstorm’s decks: “AYE!”

“It’ll take a mite for the Royal Navy to replace a fleet that big, what with the occupations north and south,” Smitty observed from somewhere overhead. “The harbor should be free for some time to come.”

Celia breathed a long sigh of relief. “That was a satisfactory way to get my undivided attention. I shall fuck him as soon as ’tis convenient for me to do so.”

---

5

February, 1780
Chesapeake, Virginia

“I SHALL WRING that woman’s neck when I catch up to her,” Elliott snarled to himself as he wheeled the Silver Shilling hard to starboard. “What was she thinking?”

The Mad Hangman, too, but the Hollander was known for his … well, madness.

“Hellfire,” he muttered as another volley of cannon fire rocked the Silver Shilling, the master gunner giving the orders to fire at the last patrol ship that chased the Indigo—his crew so well-trained they could deliver a sixteen-gun broadside every minute.

“The last patrol is down, Sir. The remaining two are chasing the Mad Hangman.”

Elliott merely nodded as he kept course, heading straight into a cove he knew as well as he knew his ship. They were free of the line, having left behind five first- and second-rate frigates burning, four patrol ships and (unfortunately) one privateer sunk, and assisted seven more privateers on their way out to sea. They’d even helped an American ally evade capture. The Hollander would sink the last two patrols when it suited him to do so.

Likewise, without them, Elliott would never have been able to breach that line by himself. All in all, a good night’s work for the lot of them.

“That was the most lackwit thing I have ever witnessed,” said Yeardley from beside him.

“Aye,” Elliott agreed heartily, still seeing the Thunderstorm’s stern catch fire and still angry about it.

“I would expect that from the Hollander, but Fury is not known for recklessness.”

“She is a female sailing as a female. That is reckless.”

Yeardley didn’t answer for a moment, but clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “There are rumors. One hardly knows what to believe, they are so incredible.”

Elliott waited.

Yeardley reeled off the most common rumors, ones Elliott already knew:

She was the protégée of James Dunham, captain of the corsair vessel Iron Maiden that plied the Barbary Coast, one of the Crown’s useful brigands whose occasional misdeeds against the East India Company went unremarked and unpunished. He was also the last male bearing the name of a noble Scottish clan disenfranchised over the last duke’s regrettable inclination to form bad alliances.

“I know the history,” Elliott said tersely when Yeardley would have expounded. “Dunham lands march mine and Laird Dunham was a good friend to my grandfather. So Dunham’s bitter. As am I. ’Tis the usual story. What more of her?”

She had been trained as a navigator in Portugal by master navigator and astronomer Dr. Rafael Covarrubias, the captain of the Spanish vessel they had just assisted.

She had sailed with Dunham as an officer for a time after she’d left university until, it was rumored, she had openly defied him and been flogged for her insolence. Yet Elliott and his crew could testify of their loyalty to each other.

“All cannot be sweetness between them,” Elliott muttered. “Was there not some trouble ’twixt the two in Sint Eustatius? What of that?”

“Dunham attempted to abduct one of Fury’s women.”

Elliott huffed. “Women aboard cause nothing but trouble.”

“I’d not be averse to testing that superstition,” Yeardley grumbled.

That surprised a grin out of Elliott. “Oh ho! So I am not the only one on this ship with a prick invested in the Thunderstorm.”

“You are far from the only one. The old tars want nothing to do with women aboard, but after having seen that a ship captained by a woman will not sink—one with a couple dozen women aboard, to boot—well, it has the young ones’ imaginations aflutter.”

“Aye, well, ’tis too late to take on women now that we’ve nearly reached the end of our last cruise. More, Yeardley,” Elliott commanded. “About her.”

After Fury had left the Iron Maiden, she had sailed on the Carnivale as Skirrow’s lieutenant and navigator, beheading him after little more than a year under his command. It did not quite make sense to Elliott that she’d hired aboard a slaver, but it was possible she’d simply found the only captain who’d hire a woman. Skirrow would have had to be desperate to hire a woman in Ottoman-infested waters, especially for such a powerful position.

After her mutiny, she had sailed directly for Philadelphia and applied for a letter of marque, legitimizing a lifetime aboard pirate vessels.

“Aye, I know all that,” Elliott said, frustrated when Yeardley finished. “Why did she mutiny Skirrow? He would have been the only thing between her and the Muslims.” Which was, come to think of it, a good reason for her to have quit the Mediterranean altogether.

“No one knows. Her officers keep their mouths shut, and the rest of the crew swear they don’t know. Skirrow was only slightly less cruel than Kitteridge.”

Elliott and his officers knew enough of Skirrow from their Navy days for Elliott to know he’d have mutinied the man far sooner, but since the Siege of Casco Bay, he was not averse to using swift and ruthless preemptive measures against those who might become a problem.

“Anything else? Family? Name? Circumstance?”

“No one knows her family name. When one is required, she signs Calico Jack.”

“Odd, that. Of all the buccaneers in history, why take his name?”

Yeardley shrugged. “Who knows? ’Tis said she’s quite wealthy.”

“I should think so. If she is not after all this time, I’d take her for a fool.” He paused. “Husband? Lover?”

“Possibly Covarrubias.”

Elliott’s mouth tightened. “Do tell.”

“Since she studied, ah, under him at university … ” Elliott curled his lip and Yeardley chuckled. “In fact, she was suffered to undergo a full course and it’s said she is degreed in her own right.”

“In what?”

“Mathematics and music.”

That shocked him.

“Aye, so,” Yeardley said slyly, “’twould seem reasonable to suppose Covarrubias facilitated her education. Perhaps astronomy and mathematics were not all he taught her.”

“Just a supposition?”

“Everything concerning Fury is supposition and speculation. The Hollander probably knows, but they are—”

“Lovers?”

“Possibly. One cannot give credence to any such rumors when ’tis also rumored that you are one of her lovers.”

Elliott barked a laugh. “I am, am I?”

“Aye. After having handled her so familiarly in Oranjestad—”

“She took exception to that.”

“Only because you did not respect her as she is accustomed. We were the only ones in the entire port who did not know who she was.”

“I have no reason to think a woman in a tavern is anything but a whore, much less the captain of a ship.”

“Does it matter? What I witnessed was a lovers’ kiss, not two strangers’. ’Twould seem the rest of the island shared my impression.”

And there was the rub: It had been a lovers’ kiss—right up to the second she’d stuck her dagger in his throat.

Elliott smirked. “I intend to make that more fact than rumor.”

ELLIOTT ARRIVED at the private club where he was expected, handing his tricorn and long skirted coat to the butler, pausing only slightly when he saw who sat at his usual table.

“What is your pleasure, Captain?” came the voice of a comely and very expensively dressed woman.

“Brandy, if you have it, Miss.”

That was not the answer she wanted, and her pout was real when she turned to do his bidding. She had light red hair reminiscent of Fury’s, but green eyes, and she was shorter, thinner. In point of fact, she was far more beautiful.

She was not the woman he craved, but he had to tup something other than his hand.

Especially after what he’d seen the night before, watching Fury through his glass as she commanded her men and sailed her ship with expert grace and confidence into that foolhardy blast through the blockade.

Elliott discreetly adjusted his trousers as he pulled out a chair and sat with no greetings exchanged. All but two of the five men already present were waiting for Elliott, and their covert expressions let him know not to speak.

Rafael Covarrubias’s presence at the table would make short work of what had promised to be an enjoyable evening with the harbormaster and the merchants to whom he sold his cargos. Hellfire. Covarrubias already had a stack of gold, silver, and papers in front of him.

Elliott looked around at the fifth player, who likely did not know that the man he played was a mathematician and possibly unbeatable. Elliott didn’t care about winning or losing; he had bigger business to conduct at this table, which he could not do in the presence of Covarrubias and a Prussian mercenary. Meeting here, playing a few hands—that was the cover under which he did business. However, he was not averse to losing a bit of money and time if it meant observing a man who was probably a rival for Fury’s affections.

Two women were draped over Covarrubias’s shoulders, ignored except when he absently raised a hand to caress a breast or pinch a nipple. At that moment, the wench who had hoped Elliott would request more of her than whisky set the glass on the table and leaned against him.

“Felicitations, Captain Judas,” the Spaniard said after a moment, his accent moderately heavy.

“For … ?”

“Slipping past the blockade, of course.”

“No credit to me, alas. I had too much assistance.” Elliott cocked his eyebrow and waited.

“Gracias,” Covarrubias drawled wryly, then said with far too much disinterest, “You seem to have acquired a lovely new figurehead.”

Everyone remarked upon it, hoping for an on dit that Elliott never granted. Nor would he now. “Aye.”

“You are aware that it belongs to me, are you not?”

Goddammit.

“Possession is nine points of the law, Doctor.”

No answer. Covarrubias made his play, then slid a glance at the man to his right. “Señor, I do believe you have misplayed your hand.”

Elliott wondered if Covarrubias could defend a charge of cheating against a man almost as big as Elliott. Covarrubias was large for a Spaniard and as Teutonic in appearance as the soldier he’d challenged, but not nearly so tall or burly.

“Why,” asked the Prussian carefully, threateningly, “would you say that?”

“I say that because four sevens have been played, all in their appropriate suits, and you just played a fifth seven.”

The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “Are you implying that I have cheated?”

“No. I declare that you are cheating. And with no cunning whatsoever.”

It happened too fast for Elliott to have described later. The soldier had apparently drawn his weapon, but not before Covarrubias had the point of a short sword at his throat. It was an oddly shaped blade with the barest of curves, not tapered, and a long, flat, two-handed hilt wrapped in what looked like black silk thread. It was like nothing Elliott had ever seen, much less used.

The Prussian watched Covarrubias, who spoke with an impressive insouciance, “I’m sure it was a simple mistake, Señor, no?”

It took the soldier a moment to decide to take Covarrubias’s mercy. “Ja.”

“You may forfeit your winnings to me and be gone. I have no taste for duels, but should you challenge me, you will lose. Should your compatriots set upon me, you will all lose.”

The Prussian was studying that odd sword and seemed to understand he could not win. A quick look around convinced Elliott that everyone else did, too. Covarrubias might be a barely competent ship’s captain, but he seemed to be able to acquit himself exceptionally well on land. Arising stiffly, the soldier walked out of the club with what one could mistake for wounded dignity.

“That’s an interesting piece,” the harbormaster said, much to Elliott’s delight.

“It is from Japan,” Covarrubias answered matter-of-factly as he sheathed it. “I spent much time in the Orient in my youth and have a particular fondness for its varieties of cultures. And women.”

The gentlemen chuckled. “Ah. A misspent youth.”

Covarrubias’s attention flicked up to the merchant who’d spoken. “Not at all. It was thoroughly educational.”

“Captain?”

Elliott looked up at the wench he’d forgotten about. “Tell me your name, my lovely,” he said with the graciousness of a properly begotten and reared lord of the realm. “I’ll be along shortly.” Once she’d disappeared, he settled in for a silent evening of gaming. Covarrubias glanced at the door through which the whore had disappeared, then at Elliott and smirked.

“I’d prefer her hair to be lighter,” Elliott mused, tossing two coins into the pot, then raised his gaze and met Covarrubias’s. “Somewhat more … pink. Her eyes aren’t the right color, either, but she’ll do for now. All eyes are whisky in the dark, eh?”

Covarrubias’s smirk faded and he fingered the hilt of his odd sword. “I have no reason to believe such a … pink … -haired woman could be swayed overlong from her long-lived loyalties. Such a woman might dally, but never commit. I would feel it my duty as a gentleman to warn any man enamored of such a woman to carefully guard his heart.”

Elliott’s colleagues shuffled and coughed. Elliott pointedly studied Covarrubias’s female companions. “I question that any such woman would long tolerate the dalliances of a man who does not return the loyalty he demands of her—did she but know.”

No reaction.

“Gentlemen,” said the harbormaster. “Please.”

Without a word, Covarrubias stood and swept the table clean of his winnings. “Señores,” he said absently, and signaled to his women to follow him up the stairs.

The remaining men at the table breathed a collective sigh of relief once the Spaniard had disappeared with his coin and his women.

“I should know not to play Covarrubias,” grumbled the harbormaster as he counted out three coppers and threw them into the middle of the table. “But one does not simply get up and walk away when he sits down.”

“So, Judas,” murmured another. He was a merchant who made a practice of buying British goods American privateers had seized, then selling them back to the Tories at criminally inflated prices. Elliott had liked him immediately. “There is a woman between you, I take it? Mayhap … Fury?”

Elliott grinned. “Do you know of any other women with pink hair?”

“This should prove entertaining.”

“Already has,” grumbled the harbormaster.

The merchant lowered his voice. “When do you plan to sail?”

“Two days hence,” Elliott murmured equally low.

“Ah.” It would surprise no one that Elliott would want to get out of the Bay while the entirety of the British line was flotsam, and the fleets in New York and South Carolina were thoroughly occupied. But every one of these men knew Elliott wanted to run Fury down and bed her, especially after Covarrubias had all but dared him to try.

The tale of this encounter would be all over the harbor and every village along it by dawn. “So I shall see you at ten of the clock?”

“Aye.”

Elliott played his last hand and arose, extending his hand to each of his opponents, and collecting his meager winnings before heading upstairs to the strawberry-blonde who awaited him.

---

6

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

THE MORNING SUN SHONE bright on Celia’s face. Below her, on the main deck, activity was lazy and, for the most part, curtailed, the crew engaged in menial tasks that nevertheless must be done. Two of the women aboard were mending sails and rope. Two more were in the galley baking the day’s bread. Another was with the men who sat along the rails fishing. Yet another was aloft with Kit, keeping watch. Mary and Solomon were behind her at the communal secretary, Mary dictating correspondence to Celia’s moneylender concerning Celia’s accounts and holdings.

She turned the wheel a bit, allowing the wind to strike her face sharply. In great need of some respite from her restlessness, she took a deep breath as the Thunderstorm sliced cleanly through the waters and listened to the music in her head.

“For, unto us a child is born … ”

Work halted around her when she began to sing to them, her men and women, even the ones who did not know her voice had kept her as safe as her scars and her sword.

“Oh, child,” Mary sighed happily.

“Unto us … A son is given … Unto us … A son is given … ”

Johann’s tenor answered her soprano immediately: “For, unto us a child is born.”

’Twas only a half measure before the men and women who could, in fact, sing, joined her lustily.

Wonderful

Counselor

The mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace …

It had taken time for her and surgeon’s mate Gasparo, a highly trained Italian evirato, to teach the crew to sing thusly, but now they did so with vigor and skill and the length of a watch could be easily passed in near-complete abandon.

Bridge’s deep bass rose as her soprano faded away, then Johann’s tenor slipped in and out. Gasparo’s countertenor joined their voices.

Then she heard a violin expertly playing the recitative before the soprano’s next aria. Someone else had found his recorder flute, and a third had fetched his squeezebox.

She was certain Maestro Handel had not intended his piece to be performed on the deck of an American privateer by a crew of ne’er-do-wells for no one but themselves, yet here they were.

And suddenly, there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying—

“SAIL HO!” Kit bellowed from the platform.

“God’s teeth,” Celia gritted, instantly on the alert. She was at once disgruntled at the loss of her respite and glad of the termination of her boredom—if only for a while.

If it were British, they would either take it or blow it up.

The instruments were put away and the menial chores abandoned for preparations of battle. Everyone who could not fight went below immediately, taking their work with them if they could. Mary and Solomon hurriedly gathered up the parchments and pens, books and ledgers, and disappeared.

Celia waited for more information before giving her orders.

“British, but not navy. Looks like a merchantman. Off the larboard bow. Alone.”

“Are you certain?” she demanded, wary of a trap, and waited patiently another ten minutes before the answer came:

“Brit-built. Square-rigged. Two masts. Ten guns, if that. Aye, Cap’n, I’m sure.”

Well, that settled it.

Celia spun the wheel to come hard about. Sea spray and sun splashed her face, her heart beat faster with excitement. ’Twas hard to remember why she was bored with this life at times like these.

“Run up the Union Jack.” She grinned now, the urge undeniable. “Look sharp! If we cannot sing praises to God, then we shall plunder in his name!”

Celia could now see the white sails of the British merchantman, which were approaching fast. It would not take but a few moments to reach them.

“Has she spotted us, Kit?”

“Aye, and she’s spilling wind.”

“Glad of a Navy escort, is she?” Celia laughed, but the sound was whipped away by the stinging wind.

“Cap’n, there’s a woman aboard. In a dress.”

Celia’s eyebrows rose in surprise. It made no difference in her battle plans, but women in dresses aboard British merchantmen bound for England meant gentry and that did not bode well for her.

The master gunner barked orders for the guns to be readied in the surreptitious manner he had drilled into his gunners.

“I hope to settle this with not a shot wasted.”

A quarter hour passed before the Thunderstorm was close enough to the Lamplight to hail it.

“Ho, Lamplight!” Bridge called from the prow, his voice strong enough to carry back to Celia. His bare chest glistened ebony in the sunlight.

“Long live the king!” came the return.

“Run up Congress’s colors!” Celia bellowed. The Union Jack was struck. The gunports slammed open.

The crew aboard the Lamplight scrambled in panic.

Bridge cupped his hands around his mouth. “Stand down and prepare to be boarded!”

She struck her colors the moment Bridge ended his command, and Celia’s crew ran to grab the grappling hooks. Down the rails, the hooks struck the wood one after another in rapid sequence—

thunk

       thunk

              thunk

                     thunk

                            thunk

—then Celia’s crew heaved as one until the two ships crashed together. Immediately, thirty of her men and women swarmed the deck of the Lamplight, swords bared. They met no resistance, much less a fighting force.

Celia handed command off to Smitty, clipped down the stairs to the main deck and vaulted over the rails, Solomon and Bridge following. Ten of her crew followed the pair of them, her other officers left behind to sail the Thunderstorm should anything untoward happen to their captain.

Celia surveyed the scene before her before she spoke. A normal-looking crew, scattered across the decks, betraying a great deal of fear. The captain slowly came forward because his position demanded it, but the man would have turned and fled at a moment’s notice. Across the deck, Celia caught the flash of pale blue going down a hatch, and with a slight signal that only her crew could discern, one of her men sprinted across the expanse and dove down after it. With another signal, the rest of her crew disappeared into the holds to inventory what she held, leaving Celia, Bridge, and Solomon alone on deck.

The captain of the Lamplight stood before Celia, trembling and wringing his hands, looking amongst the three of them, unable to decide which would be the captain: the Arab, the woman, or the Negro.

Her lip curled. “Speak, man.”

“Captain Tunney at your service, ma—er, uh—”

“I am Captain Fury,” Celia intoned, her eyebrow raised and her lips pursed. If this man swooned, she would lose a ten-pound wager with Smitty. “You may address me as Captain or Sir. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma—er, Sir.”

She gestured to her right. “This is Captain Bull, who will be commanding this vessel once I have completed my inspection.” He watched warily as Bridge strode off to oversee preparations for his command. “What do you carry?”

“Cotton, m’lady—er, Sir—er, Captain. Spices. Tobacco. Coffee. Naught else.”

Not a word about passengers. She and Solomon exchanged glances, which only made the man fidget more.

“There is a woman aboard this ship, aye?” His face colored, but before he could stammer a reply, Celia said, “Loyalists bound for England, mayhap?”

But the captain was beyond speech. His eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped, a dead weight, onto the deck. Guffaws rang out from the quarterdeck of the Thunderstorm.

Celia sighed and looked at Solomon. “Another ten pounds sterling lost to the leftenant. I believe I shall have to cease wagering with the man.”

No sound or change in expression came from Solomon but a speaking glance told her he had found amusement in both the circumstance and her comment.

She turned to the crew, and said, “Who here would like to work for me?”

To a man, not one raised his hand. Well, that was no surprise. Celia was not especially good at impressing men, because she wanted willing sailors, but no matter. Bridge would need this crew and she did not.

“Cap’n! Hold’s full of cotton and tobacco.”

She nodded at the crewman who yelled this bit of news. “Offload the spices and deliver them to Solomon’s cabin.” With a salute of acknowledgment of the order, the crew went back to their preparations.

Her crewman appeared shortly thereafter with a woman, a girl, and a man in tow.

The man was obviously well-heeled merchant gentry, and even in this dire situation, the wife would not allow her hem to touch the sailor who held her. She was not well pleased a Moor held her arm in his iron grip.

“What is the meaning of this outrage? Get your hands off me, you animal!”

Celia looked at the woman as she was dragged, struggling, across the deck to stand before her.

With one look at Celia, she ceased struggling and threw herself at her, hugging her and wailing. “Oh, m’lady, what shall we do? They’re monsters, the lot of them!”

Grimacing in distaste, Celia tried to extricate herself from the arms that held her. The woman seemed not to have noticed that Celia was dressed quite differently from current fashion, in a white cotton shirt and breeches. The tarred moccasins, white head scarf, broad slashes of kohl across her cheekbones, and huge gold hoop earrings were also quite beyond the pale for this season’s rage. The flintlock in Celia’s waistband, the dagger strapped around her thigh, and the scabbard swinging from her hip did not seem to register.

“Madam,” Celia muttered as she sought to disengage herself. “I say, Madam!”

With that, the seaman pulled the woman back with some force, and she stood, panting, staring at Celia as if she had somehow grown another head.

Celia calmly dusted herself off before looking back at the woman. For some reason, however, the girl caught her attention. So, she was the daughter of this gentrified pair.

She tilted her head in curiosity. “What is your name, girl?”

“Georgina, Sir.” Ah, the girl had courage. She did not flinch. She held her head proudly and looked Celia in the face.

“How many years have you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Where are you bound?”

“England, Sir. To wed.”

Celia thought a bit. Had she grown up as other girls, a match would have been made for her, but now, a score of years past and a truly scandalous marriage behind her, she could not imagine being given no choice in the matter. “Have you met this man?”

“No, Sir. He is of the nobility. Wealthy, but more than twenty years older than I. I—” The girl stopped abruptly and snapped her mouth tight.

“Say what you will, girl.”

“I do not want to wed. ’Tis as if I have been sold.”

The girl’s mother, so outraged she forgot everyone’s presence but her daughter’s, raised her hand to slap her, but Solomon caught her wrist in a vise grip until she whimpered, then harder until he’d forced to her knees.

“Your parents have whored you out, eh?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Oh, the girl was completely bitter, then. Celia ran her tongue over her teeth. “Tell me something. Would you return to your life with them now, if you could? Until it was appropriate for you to marry? Even someone of your choosing?”

Everyone but her own crew started at that question, though the girl herself started the least. “No.”

Her mother continued to weep in pain and her father looked away. Celia looked at the girl for a long time and the girl stared back.

“Marriage or piracy. Choose.”

She gulped, but did not look away. “Piracy,” she croaked.

The father blanched. “No!” screamed the mother. “You can’t! Georgina! Don’t do this to us, please!”

The girl looked down at her mother, her mouth tight. “I told you I would rather die than marry that man,” she murmured. “This is the best choice I have.”

“Orlando!” Celia bellowed finally, looking over her shoulder to the Thunderstorm. When he appeared at her side, she waved a hand at Georgina. “Take the girl to Officer Mary.” Her crew did not hesitate and the girl looked at her with wide eyes.

“You’ll thank me for this someday.”

She sucked in a breath. “I already do, Sir. I already do.” She said nothing more, but went willingly with Dr. Telesca, who, ever the gentleman, would have assisted her over the rails even if she hadn’t been wearing a rather cumbersome dress.

“Now,” Celia began again. “I will reiterate in case the situation is not perfectly clear: I am Captain Fury, of the American privateer Thunderstorm. This vessel now belongs to me, claimed in the name of the United States of America. Cambridge Bull will be the commander of this vessel and has every right and protection afforded me as part of the privateer fleet.”

Celia sat on her haunches before the weeping mother and said, “Where do you wish to go?”

“We have nowhere to go,” she wept. “We sold everything, and cannot set foot in England without Georgina. We are ruined.”

“I see. In that case, England is exactly where you’ll be going. I’ll be sure to deliver the pair of you up promptly to Georgina’s former betrothed.”

Solomon chuckled as he loosed the girl’s mother, who fell into another bout of weeping at Celia’s feet, begging for mercy, but the sailor who’d fetched her earlier picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. Her screams of outrage made Celia laugh a bit herself and the father cast her wary glances.

“Ah, I amuse myself mightily,” she murmured, and the crew that heard her laughed. She turned back to the woman. “And thus we see the Ottomans are not the only ones who buy and sell Christian women. What name did you sell your girl to?”

The woman could not speak for her weeping and gasping and the shoulder buried in her belly, so Celia looked to the father for the answer. His mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air before he found his voice. “Co— Co— Commander Elliott Raxham, second so— so— son of the Earl of Tavendish. A good fr— fr— friend to my cousin, who, who arranged the match.”

Celia slapped a hand on the hilt of her cutlass, put a finger to her lips, and studied the deck. “Who is that?” she muttered to herself. “I’ve heard that name.”

“Tried for high treason and acquitted,” one of her officers called from the Thunderstorm. “Siege at Casco Bay. Captained the HMS Iphigenia and commanded the fleet. In the midst of firing on the village, he turned on one of his own ships and sank it.”

“Aye, that would get one tried for treason. And you sold your daughter to a man who’d turn on one of his own fleet?”

“Cap’n, wait,” Croftwood continued. “His barrister argued Raxham was the target of an assassination attempt by the captain of the ship he sank and thus was acting to save his and his crew’s life.”

Celia turned to stare at her master carpenter, but he nodded solemnly. “Well! I simply have not heard a yarn that preposterous in years!”

“Bloody hell, Jack,” Smitty called, “you have no room to call that preposterous.”

Celia’s face split wide in a grin and the crew of the Thunderstorm roared. “Ah, just so,” she finally said. “’Twouldn’t matter. His name is forever black. He’ll not be able to find a bride with sufficient settlement or title, I’ll wager. No noble in England would desire a traitor’s name attached to his own by marriage, wealth or not—and a second son with no title to sweeten the pot.”

“Wot’s ’at?” her pesky lieutenant called again. “Another wager?”

She looked over her shoulder and yelled back, “Aye, another, you whoreson! An hundred pounds this time!”

It took another hour to prepare. The family’s trunks were stowed aboard the Thunderstorm, though Celia would have to think about where she wanted to put them and what they would do to earn their keep.

“Captain Bull,” Celia called and jerked her head for him to follow her back aboard the Thunderstorm. She led the way to her cabin and counted out some gold for use as shares and bribes. “I’ll send Li Chen with you to navigate. He has not as much training as I’d like, but can find his way to Holland. Dock in Rotterdam and seek out my agent there. You have met him?”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Sell everything, dole out shares as you see fit, then oversee any repairs she may need. Your new crew promises to be unwilling. How many of our crew will you need to keep them in line?”

“A good two score.”

“Done. Take whom you will. What do you plan to do with the captain?”

“Throw him in the brig. I’m not in the habit of killing mice.”

Celia chuckled. “I don’t expect to be far behind you. Once we arrive, you will deposit George’s parents wherever her formerly betrothed lives. Mama and I will likely be gone to London by the time you return.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Godspeed. George!” she bellowed once Bridge had disappeared up through a hatch and she heard his deep, commanding voice. The girl poked her head out of Mary’s door and looked at Celia with some trepidation. “Come up on deck with me. Your education started three hours ago.”

Once up on deck, Celia went directly to the pair whose name she did not know, nor did she care. Woman and Man would do nicely, she supposed, and she went to stand in front of them, who huddled, terrified. Activity went on all around them, crewmen jumping over the rail to the Lamplight, grappling hooks being retrieved, Bridge bellowing orders as he stood on the quarterdeck and threw the wheel hard to larboard.

Celia waited until the pair actually looked at her.

“Man. Take George’s trunks to the mess. A crewman will show you where. Take your own to the hold. You will sleep in the berth with the rest of the crew. The purser’s mate will give you a hammock and change of clothes. You will work and work hard. Mayhap my crew can shove a ramrod down your spine with regard to your wife and with any luck, you won’t die from it. Get going.”

Man began the process of laboriously dragging their trunks belowdecks, a crewman waiting impatiently for him to direct him.

She turned her attention to Woman, who cowered. “Have you tailoring skills?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good. You will also earn your keep on this ship, since you did not pay me passage. You will sew George and yourself clothes like mine. As regards George, she is now under my command by her choice; thus, you no longer have any claim on her, her belongings, or her behavior. You will treat her with the same respect you will be expected to treat the rest of my crew and obey any orders she gives you, understood?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

Celia then curled her hand into the low neckline of the girl’s dress and pulled, ripping the dress all the way down to the deck. It was George’s first look of terror as she attempted to cover herself as if her shift were not enough.

“Take off the dress. Give it to Woman.” The girl did as she was told without a word of protest, though she was terrified and the crew watched and snickered.

“God’s blood! The girl’s bound up in stays and she’s not yet grown tits. Have you your courses?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Yes,” she squeaked.

“Condolences. Well, what are you waiting for? Get that thing off.”

But the girl looked at her helplessly. Heaving a longsuffering sigh, Celia bid the girl turn around. She drew her dagger and sliced the laces with no further ado. George turned back around and Celia, catching the garment as it fell, unceremoniously tossed it overboard.

Celia then pulled her own shirt off over her head, and both George and Woman gasped to see not her bare breasts, but the matting of horizontally striped scars that encircled her torso from hips to collarbone. “Here,” she said, handing the shirt to George, whose breasts were, in fact, rather respectable. “Well, so you’re not titless after all. Good. Put that on over your shift. KIT!”

Only a moment it took for the boy to land on his feet beside her. “Cap’n?”

“This is George. Loan her a pair of your breeches and then teach her to climb the rigging.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

As she walked away in a daze, Celia heard Kit demand, “Gimme your slippers,” followed by a faint plink in the ocean. Celia chuckled.

“Woman. George is to have one pair of breeches and a shirt like mine before sunrise. After that, you will make her enough to last a week before laundering. When you’ve finished her new wardrobe, start on your own. I do not allow skirts on my ship.”

“I have no cloth,” she whispered. “What shall I use?”

“Your wardrobes, of course. She’ll not need a dress again for months, if not years. After that, you will be emptying the slop jars, doing laundry, and keeping all the women aboard this ship supplied with clean menses rags.”

With that, she dispatched Woman to the galley to use one of the broad mess tables for cutting and sewing. Yet before—

Celia gripped Woman’s neck and hauled her back to speak in her ear. “I am your entire existence now, Woman. You do what I say when I say how I say. Do you understand me?” She nodded frantically.

Celia let her go with a shove, then turned to watch the little merchantman sail east, ahead of her. She smiled at a job well done and stretched, running her hands up her ribs, over her breasts, under her braid until it fell from her outstretched arms.

“Captain! I must protest!”

Celia whirled at this voice she did not know and who questioned her authority. The entirety of the crew within earshot stilled to watch this scenario play out.

A man approached her with some urgency, a great weaselly fellow. Tall and bulky, he had thinning hair of an indeterminate mousy brown. One colorless eye did not focus in the same direction as his other colorless eye and he tended to squint. His hands were large as hams and, Celia imagined, just as clumsy.

“Who are you?” Celia asked calmly.

“My name is Marcus Zimmerman, Ma’am.”

“Captain or sir, Mr. Zimmerman. You’ve been on this vessel a fortnight now; you know the proper address.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What is your protest?”

“The treatment of the women, sir. They’ve brought you no harm.”

Celia was a tall woman, and she was still obliged to look up at him. “Mr. Zimmerman, tell me: When you came aboard this ship seeking employment, did you not know ’twas a privateer and its captain a woman?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And now you question my behavior?”

“’Tis not right to treat gently bred women thusly.”

The male crewmembers held their breath, Bataar wrapped her hand around the hilt of her sword, and the rest of the women abovedecks began to murmur angrily.

“Isn’t it now? Richins!” she bellowed without taking her eyes from the man before her. “Fetch Woman back here.” She waited, never taking her eyes off of this upstart, who began to squirm under her cool regard. Once Woman was shoved to Celia’s left, she dropped to her knees, sobbing.

“Mr. Zimmerman,” she began. “You say it is not right to treat gently bred women as I have treated Woman here. Do I understand you to say that it is right to treat common women thusly?”

The female crew growled and Zimmerman’s mouth dropped open. “No—no, not at all.”

“Pray tell me why you protest for this woman—a woman who sold her girl’s womb to an aristocrat? What has she done to earn your chivalry that the other women aboard this vessel do not deserve?”

“Ah … the others are here to—of their own free will. This one is an innocent being taken hostage. Sir.”

Celia laughed. “I am a pirate, Zimmerman!” Guffaws rang out. “’Tis what I do!” She leaned forward. “What I do not do,” she murmured, “is tolerate insubordination. So. I will test your chivalry. You get back to work and mind your own business or Woman here gets the lash.”

His eyes widened. “But I—” Celia’s eyebrow rose and his stuttering became nearly painful before he said, “Please don’t lash her, Captain.”

With a glance slid to Richins, he took weeping Woman belowdecks once again. “I do not know you, Zimmerman,” she said, “and I hear you came aboard bearing Washington’s name.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You’re lying to me.” He started and Celia knew she was right. “I cannot prove it, but I don’t have to, as I am the only law here. One more misstep, Zimmerman, and I’ll shackle you in the hold for the duration. I don’t like liars and I will not have my authority questioned.” She turned and walked away from him then, toward the quarterdeck. Over her shoulder, she called, “I’d watch my back if I were you, Zimmerman. Methinks you’ll not want to cross swords with me.”

Once she’d taken the wheel over from a glowering Smitty, she saw the man still standing there, his mouth agape. “Get to work, Mr. Zimmerman,” she murmured just loudly enough for him to hear. When he didn’t move, out of fear or rebellion Celia did not know, she pulled the dagger out of its sheath on her leg and hurled it at him.

It pinned his foot to the deck.

He howled in pain and bent to grapple at it, sobbing.

“Mayhap now you’ve an excuse not to move when given a direct order.”

She watched as he dislodged it from the wood beneath his foot, then pulled it out of his foot. He hobbled away, blood streaming behind him. “Get Senzeille to tend his wound,” she mumbled to Smitty. “I want him alive for his flogging on the morrow and do not wish an infection to rob me of that.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Made me waste a bloody nice day. I’ll not forget that soon.”

She began to yell instructions and sails were unfurled. She spun the wheel to starboard and fought to catch a breeze.

There was some commotion above her and she was obliged to smile at Kit’s attempts to teach George to climb. ’Twas a difficult task made more difficult by the softness of the girl’s feet, the dizzying height, the strength of the wind, and the pitch of the ship as she turned. It took tremendous strength and a strong stomach. If George could master the rigging, she would be able to master anything.

At the moment, though, Kit hopped from the platform to the ratlines and ran down the net, upsetting George’s timorous hold on the ropes so that she lost her grip and fell. Celia watched as the girl caught herself halfway down, but she clung to it, breathing heavily; Celia smiled with the memory of herself having done the very same thing. ’Twould teach her to hold on better.

Oblivious to his charge’s circumstance, Kit launched himself off the rigging by a rope and swung out over Celia, dropping neatly beside her. “The Silver Shilling’s twelve miles behind us, two points off larboard.”

She speared Kit with a look, and realized she had to look up at him, too! When had he grown so without her notice?

“Are you sure?”

“The figurehead, Cap’n.”

“Oh, aye, that would do it. Does she see us?”

“Aye. She’s heavy in the water but seems to me she is trying to overtake us.”

“Excellent. Get me a shirt.”

---

7

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

FROM THE PERIPHERY of her dreams, Celia felt the bed depress beneath her, and though it could not possibly have been Dindi, Celia cast the irregularity of it to the back of her sleep-induced haze and remained settled in the darkness of slumber.

She should not have, she discovered, when a stranger’s lips pressed harshly against hers. Her eyes popped open, her heart lodged in her throat, and her stomach lurched—

Light eyes twinkled in the moonlight piercing through the darkness.

Then she tasted rum and cocoa.

She opened her mouth and wrapped her arms around the man’s broad shoulders, under and through his long silky hair, his skin cold and a bit damp from his midnight row.

“Ah, now that’s a greeting I didn’t expect,” he whispered into her mouth.

“Not even after I ordered my sails trimmed? I expected you days ago.”

He stilled, and she felt him smile against her lips. “And now we are becalmed.”

“Aye. I want my figurehead back.”

“Is that why you are so willing? You’ll fuck me to retrieve it?”

“If I must.”

He chuckled and hoisted himself off the bed to pull the linens back. “Share your bedclothes.”

“Why?” she asked as she moved to accommodate his big body and held the linens for him to slip in.

“Because I’m cold,” he said wryly, and proceeded to prove the point by rolling up against her so that they were cold skin to warm.

Celia squeaked. “God’s teeth, Judas. First you mistake me for a whore, and then you mistake me for a warming brick.”

“And yet you have not chased me out of your cabin for my audacious invasion of your ship and your person. You haven’t even fled to the other side of the bed.”

“You sound particularly pleased with yourself. I told you there were many ways to gain my undivided attention for a night or six.”

“And this is one of them.”

“It is now, although if you had a faster ship, you could have ordered me to heave to and boarded me.”

“I intend to board you, Madam, never fear. And I am keeping your figurehead.”

“Aye, I thought you might say that. I will simply sink your ship, then. If I cannot have it, neither can you.”

He ignored that. “I would like to discuss your questionable judgment in methods for running British blockades.”

Celia laughed. “And all this time I thought talking was the last thing you would wish to do.”

“In time, my love. In time. I’m intrigued. I want to know your mind as much as your body.”

“My mind is not engaged at the moment, Sir,” she murmured and rubbed her palm carefully down his body, thumbing his pap along the way, feeling the hard muscles of his torso—its scars—the peak of his hip, to the nest of curls around his cock. It was flaccid at the moment, but she would expect no less considering the cold. “And it won’t be long until yours is no longer engaged. Kiss me.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” he muttered as if he had no choice, pressing his mouth against hers again, opening her lips expertly with his.

It wasn’t the first time Celia had been tempted into bed by a virtual stranger, but it was the first time a man had made such a concerted and sustained effort to get her there.

It was also the first time she had bedded a man who was her equal at sea.

Aye, he was a special one, one she wanted to know better, and she did not ken why she was so hungry for a man she did not know that she would tolerate his violations of her property and her person. “Why?” she whispered against his mouth, her fingers running through his long, damp, salt-laden hair.

“Why not?”

---

8

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

WHY NOT.

Elliott dragged his hand down Fury’s side, shocked by the heavy scarring, far more so than his own. She had been flogged—and severely. He allowed his fingertips to study her scars, tracing each bump and ridge, feeling himself harden in her hand. He cupped her breast in his palm and realized that it, too, was riven with scars. He flicked his thumb over the peak, but the nipple didn’t respond.

“I have no feeling there,” she whispered absently, lost in their kiss. She did not seem to find that anything out of the ordinary.

“A flogging like this would have killed a lesser man.”

“Aye, but I am not lesser nor a man.”

He grinned against her lips while slipping his hand between her legs to caress her velvety inner thigh. She gasped. “You have feeling there.”

“Aye, I do. Stand down and prepare for my boarding, Cap’n.”

She arose to her knees as he turned to lie on his back. She lifted one strong thigh and straddled him so his growing prick nestled in the crack of her arse and slid along her back. The tail of her braid brushed across his thighs.

Elliott thought he must have died and gone to paradise, as this was truly not the reception he’d anticipated, nor had he anticipated how … at ease … he would be with her and how rapidly.

She wiggled, grinding her cunt into his belly.

“Madam, you are an accomplished tease.”

“That,” she said pertly, “is what Marquess Rathbone thinks, also.”

Elliott thought to toss her off. “What ho, then?”

“Nay, not so much as that,” she said with a wry tone. “He is one of the last men on Earth I’d tumble, and not for any reason I would tell you.”

“Ah, you were speaking figuratively.”

“You are the one who wanted to discuss the blockade. I have decided to indulge you.” He groaned, and she reached behind her to wrap her hand around his cockstand. She pressed the pad of her thumb into the tip to collect the liquid there, then manipulated the rest of the head with that same very talented digit while she squeezed with just the right pressure. “I have heard no expressions of gratitude from you, Judas. Methinks you’d be more appreciative of the gaping hole Maarten and I left you to sail through.”

“My thanks, Captain,” he croaked. Surely the woman had been born for the sole purpose of driving him mad. “Your turn.”

“My thanks for your assistance, Captain,” she purred. “Enlighten me,” she continued with amusement. He could smell her arousal and wondered at her control. Then she put her hand between her legs and spread her flesh open against his skin and bore down.

“Fury, is this some new form of torture?” he gritted.

“Nay,” she said with a little gasp. One more tiny sound of pleasure slipped from between her lips, and the hand wrapped around his prick tightened. “Not for me, anyroad.”

“If I enlighten you, will you cease torturing me?”

“Aye, perhaps. If I like the answer.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I am perfectly capable of pleasuring myself, Judas.”

“But you would rather have me.” He quickly, unerringly slid two fingers up into her cunt, making her gasp in surprise. “Wouldn’t you?”

He could feel her shrug. “This will do.”

“Liar. Ask your question.”

“Would you say that your ship is fucking my figurehead or my figurehead is fucking your ship?”

Oh, Elliott knew which answer would get him buried inside this evil woman, but he could not bear to give her that. Yet. He lunged upward and rolled her over so that he was on his knees between her thighs, his body pinning hers to the bed. He grasped his prick and guided it to her cunt, sliding the head between her wet folds, up and down—

“Now who is the tease,” she gasped, lifting her hips, seeking his prick.

He grinned. He had barely entered her when she drove herself upward until he was sunk into her to his bollocks.

“Oh, yes,” she sighed.

He leaned down to press her into the bed and whisper: “Your figurehead might be fucking my prow, Madam, but I am fucking you.”

“Oh, yes,” she sighed again. “Do continue.”

She was deliciously tight, perfectly wet, as he gave her long, leisurely strokes she sought to quicken by tightening her legs around his hips until he could not move at all.

“Do you wish me to continue, you should not hold me so tightly.”

In answer, she reached above her head to the iron rings in the bulkhead, then tightened her legs even further, making him lose his balance so that he fell upon her. It was delightful to have her restrained so closely underneath him, but not so much that he would trade it for control. He pushed up, his body braced by his palms on either side of her head.

Her chest was heaving. Her legs tightened. Her mouth found his. Her hips and legs worked in some odd rhythm for the purpose of—

She growled just as her pussy clenched around his him.

—grinding her pearl against him. She released the rings and his hips, letting her knees fall open wide.

“Judas,” she whimpered.

He could do naught but fulfill her plea.

He thrust hard and fast, and she met him on every stroke.

She arched her back and let forth a guttural cry from deep in her chest when she reached her crisis. Not long after, his groan of satisfaction came from somewhere deep in his soul, and he stilled.

They stayed that way, spent but connected. They were both panting as they looked at each other for a few minutes until Elliott could no longer claim any firmness.

“That needs must happen more frequently, methinks,” she murmured, cupping his face in her hands.

“Aye,” he said brusquely. “You said a night or six, as I recall.”

He turned his head to press a kiss into her palm, then pulled away, twisting to land on his back beside her. She looked at him.

“As long as we are becalmed, I see no reason not to indulge. But my hold is empty, so I have prizes to hunt and, hopefully, a shipment to deliver. As soon as the winds pick up, I must be upon my way.”

“Where are you bound?”

“Eventually, London. You?”

“Ah … London. Eventually.”

She lifted herself and moved closer to him, until she was tucked in the curve of his arm and her head upon his shoulder. She caressed his belly, tracing the lash lines with a fingertip, and whispered, “You are acquainted with the cat, too, I see.”

“Who among us does not bear the scars of a life at sea?” He tightened his arm around the back of her head and she adjusted her position so as to grant him the kiss he sought.

They kissed, teased, nipped, sucked. He felt her hand in his hair, pulling him closer as if they could lose themselves in each other. He suspected that might be possible. It had been nigh twenty years since a woman had so strongly caught his fancy, and somewhere at the back of his mind, he wished she hadn’t.

She was dangerous.

Nay, his compulsion to have her was dangerous.

“Will you be in London long?” he whispered against her mouth.

“I am not quite certain,” she returned.

“Will you meet me?”

“Mayhap. Washington is expecting our return in October or November.”

“’Tis nearly March. You could make two or three voyages in that time.”

She paused and pulled away from him, leaving a sudden chill where her body had warmed his. She rose up and knelt beside him, her knees touching his ribs.

“I … There are … complications with my presence in London,” she said slowly, continuing to trace his scars with a finger. He shivered, and not from any chill: He could see no fewer than three glowing braziers dotting the cabin. “’Tis not simply a matter of slipping in and out, meeting suppliers and selling cargo. I have other obligations to attend.”

“As do I, so I ken.”

“You are British,” she said softly. “What is your quarrel with your own countrymen?”

“That is not up for discussion, Madam.”

“I can tell by the way you choose your battles that you feel you have cause,” she continued as if she hadn’t noticed Elliott’s tension, but of course she had, “yet you have taken the name of the betrayer and raised him up to destroy the Messiah that is England. ’Tis the stuff of bathos.”

He snorted. “And yours is not equally ridiculous? Fury.”

“Oh, that was a gallows jest I made after I killed Skirrow.”

“And no one laughed.”

“Nay, but I did not find much humorous about it, myself.”

“Dunham called you ‘Jack.’”

“‘Jacqueline’ wearies the tongue.”

“Ah. Jacqueline what?”

“You are so set upon having my name, are you? Methinks you should give me something other than Judas.”

Would that he could hear his name on her tongue, but there were few enough Englishmen with his given name that she could deduce his surname, too, given a few weeks in London.

“I’ll not give you that, Madam,” he said gruffly.

“Then fie upon you, Judas, expecting my name when you will not give me yours. Anyroad, I hate ‘Jacqueline,’ and ‘Jack’ only slightly less. I always have, so do not think to address me thusly.”

“And Calico Jack? To my mind, that would be a dueling insult, as you are more man than he ever was.”

“Another jest, though foisted upon me because of my fondness for calico cats.” Elliott grinned. “I was very young and did not know the history, so I did not object. By the time I knew the history, ’twas mine forevermore. I do not care for that appellation, either, but ’tis useful for legal purposes, contracts and such, with my flourish and seal. For many reasons, I simply do not have the luxury Dunham and Maarten have to go about wearing their names on their chests, or I would.”

“And what would you have me call you?”

“I prefer the name by which I am known in my … communities … on land, but since you will not give me your name, I will not tell you mine.” And he regretted that. “So until you give me yours, you will call me Fury or Captain. None of this Jack business, Calico or otherwise.”

Elliott said nothing more as she climbed over his body to disappear into the shadows behind a screen. He started when something soft brushed against his foot.

Mrow.

So. There were two cats in this cabin. He chuckled when it climbed up on his belly and walked up his chest to stick its cold, wet nose up his. He stroked its silky fur, then its back arched and its claws dug into his chest, begging scratches at the base of its tail.

“I was not expecting to be taken hostage and ravished this eve or I would have prepared,” she called softly.

He snorted. “Did you think I would wait until the wind blew so I would not have to row?”

Fury’s soft laugh drifted to him.

Once she had finished her ablutions, she emerged from behind the screen, her shadow moving vaguely about the cabin until a lantern flared. She cast a glance at him where he lay with one arm behind his head and a calico cat on his chest.

“I see you’ve met Dindi.”

“I am now the one being ravished,” Elliott murmured, allowing the cat to scratch its face upon his rough jaw. He had never been in the habit of keeping pets, but he found himself scratching the cat’s other cheek such that its purr increased until his chest was thrumming.

“She’s spoilt. None of the other ship’s cats require such excessive praise for their valor in keeping us free of vermin.”

He studied Fury’s rather large body as she went about her cabin completely nude, lighting lamps until the cabin was quite bright. He had not noticed her size until now, accustomed as he was to looking at her many-times-larger figurehead. Tall and muscular, she was yet voluptuous, with a nipped waist, soft belly, and hips and breasts reminiscent of graven images depicting ancient fertility goddesses—

—all overwhelmed by the most grotesque scarring he had ever seen.

From chest to waist, they encircled her torso, a thick mat of pale pink ridges. Her breasts were pert, but her nipples lay flat despite the chill in the air. The left nipple had been cut in two vertically. On the other hand, her arms were smooth but for the welts circling her wrists: She had been hung from a yard instead of strapped to a mast. He found the contrast between her feminine-smooth limbs and arse and ravaged torso to be profane.

Aye, her midsection was hideous, and even though he, too, had been flogged, he could not imagine how she’d lived through it— And that her mentor had wielded the lash …

By any definition, Elliott was an uncommonly big man and, with his strength, had unwittingly killed a man with fewer than twenty strokes of a common cat. Dunham was larger than Elliott and had he not personally witnessed Dunham’s affection for Fury, he would swear that the man had tried to kill her.

“Not so eager for me now, eh?”

Her bitter question shook him out of his reverie and realized that she had caught him staring, most likely with some measure of horror on his face. He scowled at her and snapped, “Do not assume what I do and do not find arousing, Madam.”

She blinked and her delectable mouth dropped open a little in confused surprise. “Oh,” she finally said, but then her mouth tightened. “Oh, aye, I apprehend,” she said acidly. “You have been looking at my figurehead these weeks past and can simply close your eyes and think about how I once looked.”

Incensed, he leveled a glare at her that had quelled more unruly sailors than he could count. “That is enough of that,” he growled. “I am no callow youth, easily impressed by appearance to the good or bad. Your scars are ugly, but they are part of what makes the woman I have pursued since we met. ’Twould take more than the sight of those to thwart my interest in you.”

Her expression was filled with uncertainty, but she made no more protest, for which he was grateful. It was not well done of him to confess how much he wanted her, as she did not seem to reciprocate as deeply.

With one final, suspicious glance, she turned to dig a small box out of her sea chest and sit at her desk with her back to him. Her scars might be hideous, but the rest of her was precisely to his taste: Her arms and shoulders were shapely but muscular. Her legs were likewise. Her hips were more than generous, her arse firm and smooth. Her pink braid brushed her skin.

That pink hair! Elliott thought his wonder at the sight of her hair may never cease.

“Why did you not stay in Oranjestad if you wanted me so badly?” she mumbled as she unpacked the small box, sorted its contents, and began a process he understood. “I would not have rebuffed an apology.”

“Pride,” he rumbled. “I do not grovel well. Rather, not at all.”

“Thus you knew you were in the wrong.”

“No question of that.”

The pestle clinked softly against the mortar as she ground spices. “Why did you think I would be more receptive to your overtures after you stole my property?”

“I was angry, so I thought nothing of it at all. I saw it. I wanted it. I took it.”

That made her chuckle, and she paused in her grinding to cast a sly smile at him over her shoulder. “Like Caesar. You took a great risk, coming here, sneaking aboard. We’ve had you in sight for days, and certes, my watch saw your approach.”

Elliott scoffed. “’Twas no risk at all, considering you all but dropped anchor the moment you sighted us.” The smile spread across her striking face, and Elliott’s breath caught with her beauty. “I am curious as to how you appeased your crew, however.”

“I didn’t. You did.” She bent back to her task and spoke matter-of-factly. “You saved us from the three patrol frigates. Whatever your quarrel with Britain, had you any real quarrel with me, you would have left all of us to her mercy. Then, once we were sunk, you would have finished the job we began.”

“Aye, that would have been efficient,” he said dryly.

She shrugged. “At that point in the battle, you had the advantage of time. You could have done anything you wanted without Britain to belay you.”

Elliott said nothing. It had never occurred to him to leave Fury and her fleet to the Royal Navy’s mercy, and that she had any idea he might have done so unsettled him a bit. But then, that was a hazard of pursuing a woman with whom his only conversation had involved swords, daggers, curses, and the theft of her effigy.

“And,” she continued, “my crew knows what I want from you. Hand me that rum over there. ’Twill kill the taste of these herbs.”

He displaced the cat to sit on the edge of the bed, grasp the bottle she’d indicated, and hand it to her. She poured some in a glass and mixed it up with the herbs, then tossed it back with a grimace. “God, that’s vile,” she muttered.

“I told you I have no intention of returning that figurehead.”

“Not that.”

“Then what?”

“Your cock,” she said absently, her hands carefully re-packing her box.

Elliott’s mouth dropped open. “My cock? And now you’ve had it, you’ll toss me overboard?”

She huffed and looked up at the overhead. “Bedsport with a man I both respect and desire. Is that better? Forgive my lack of sentiment, Captain, as I am a mathematician and astronomer, not a poet.”

With that, Fury looked down to finish packing up her herbs. That she had such a collection and in such an exquisitely carved Moorish box told Elliott more about her tendencies than he cared to know. He was the latest among many, and would not be the last, just as Covarrubias had warned him.

For the first time in his life, that irritated him.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asked abruptly.

“Love?” she hooted. “I fall in love with every flap of a sail!” That shocked the bloody hell out of him, and when he made no response, she looked over her shoulder and said, “You were hoping I’d say ‘never’? That perhaps you might be the first?”

He shrugged, loath to admit it.

“I may have exaggerated a mite,” she said with an impish grin. Oh, God, that smile!

“How large a mite?”

“Oh, mayhap no more than two flaps of a sail.”

Elliott could do nothing more than laugh, his relief far greater than the situation warranted. “Number one?”

She raised an eyebrow. “This is not the moment for such discussions, Judas.”

He almost called her bluff by confronting her with Covarrubias, but decided she was probably correct.

“You know who I am,” she said when he did not respond. “Did you think that because I am a woman, though neither whore nor lady, I would remain a maiden, lying in wait for a handsome pirate captain to climb in my window and skillfully ravish me, thereby allowing me to abdicate any responsibility I have in my enjoyment of fucking a man I don’t know but want desperately?” He said nothing, but she began to laugh. “You did!” she squealed, then clapped and laughed with utter glee. He scowled at her, irritated with her mockery. “My womanly awakening did not begin with your stolen kiss, Captain.”

Still chuckling, she arose and disappeared behind her screen. Soon the faint scent of lemon touched Elliott’s nose.

“Tell me at least if you are married,” he called.

“I am not,” she returned immediately.

Thank God. “Now tell me about the blockade.”

“Desperation. The Navy had cut off all our avenues of escape. Did the trap draw tighter, we would all have lost our ships and our lives, not to mention what the loss of eight or more privateers would have done to Washington’s supply lines. I would not have done such a thing otherwise or on my own, and I hope never to have to do it again. I do not relish captaining a fire ship.” Elliott closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. “By the bye, did Rathbone or Bancroft survive?”

“Aye, both. They are too wily to die.”

“They are intact?”

“So I hear. I imagine their pride is in tatters, however. You may find your head with a price attached.”

“Nay. You would have a price on your head regardless. No matter what I do, I would be merely a prisoner of war.”

Elliott snorted bitterly. “Being a prisoner can make a person wish he’d been executed,” he said before he thought.

Once again she appeared from the head and went about putting out all but one of the lamps she had lit. “And how do you come to think I have no experience of imprisonment or torture?”

“Touché.”

“One missive to Ambassador Franklin would cut short my imprisonment and put a period to any plans for my execution. Besides the fact that the ambassador adores me, there are many leaders in the army who would not hesitate to kill Britain’s finest officers—sons of nobility, as you well know—should their suppliers be harmed.”

’Twas true enough. She and her cohorts may be considered pirates, their letters of marque not regarded as legal in British courts, but as a practical matter, they were treated as enemy combatants.

“Now, Captain,” she said silkily as she approached the bed. She put a knee alongside Elliott’s hip, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him deeply. She tasted of lemon, cinnamon, and rum. He pulled her to him tightly as he lay back on the bed. “’Tis my turn to ravish you.”

---

9

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

THE RISING SUN CREPT under Celia’s eyelids and she stirred against the big, warm male beside her. She opened her eyes and turned her head to see Judas there, lying on his stomach angled away from her, one arm under his cheek and the other dropped over the side of the bunk. His hair, black and silver, mixed with her sun-bleached strands and fanned out across the pillows.

He was snoring.

That he trusted Celia enough to sleep that soundly, alone on what might have been an enemy ship for all he knew, pleased her more than it should have.

… that’s a greeting I didn’t expect.

Not for a heartbeat did she believe his claim that he knew her men would not kill him before he got to her, yet he had taken the risk. From stealing a kiss to stealing her figurehead to stealing into her bed, he had more than demonstrated that he wanted her and would do whatever he had to do to have her.

Rafael had taken advantage of her youth and impressionability, then proceeded to take her love and loyalty for granted. Celia’s husband had nursed an infatuation from afar and feared her rejection of him so much he had had to be coaxed to meet her.

But this man …

She smiled sleepily and turned until she lay half atop him, inserting her knee between his legs and raising it so it just brushed his soft sac. She caressed one dark, brawny shoulder and kissed the other.

An almost-purr began to vibrate from deep inside Judas’s chest when she stroked his scarred ribs, but otherwise he did not move, leaving her to marvel at what a powerful man he was, both physically and as a commander.

The Silver Shilling was a British ship of the line, with a roster at least four hundred men strong, of whom a third would be marines. There were no pirate vessels of that size. Ships such as his were built for war, not speed or stealth; the number of men needed to sail and defend one was not conducive to cohesion or loyalty; and the number of prizes they could expect to take would not be enough to feed and pay that many people.

I doonna know where ye’ve been in the last year that ye’ve’na crossed paths with Judas …

His actions during the blockade spoke to his long experience as a commander, because he could not have gained it in one year of pirating on a ketch, much less a ship of the line.

Judas was, in fact, not a pirate and everything about him betrayed it. He was a well-educated and well-seasoned British officer bent on the destruction of the very navy that had trained him. Moreover, she thought he might be from somewhere near Yorkshire, though his accent was far more refined than any she’d heard, and was overlaid with a heavy Oxford polish.

Celia could not fathom commanding four hundred men under any circumstances, nor could she imagine any pirate or privateer commanding such a large contingent, much less leading them into a one-man war against the most powerful nation on Earth. That there were four hundred men who would follow him into that war spoke volumes of his leadership.

She would wager her last farthing he was from landed gentry or a wealthy merchant family. The possibility that he was of noble lineage was too slight, given that the repercussions for such would destroy not only him, but his entire family and the title.

Mrow.

Dindi arose from her place at the head of the bunk and sought to nuzzle her way between them, butting and pushing at Celia’s face and shoulder. Celia shooed the cat away (though not without many protesting meows), but the animal would only obey so far as to hop up on Celia, walk down her body, and perch at the foot of the bunk in a huff.

Judas was still offering up his version of a purr when she opened her mouth against his shoulder … and bit.

“Hell’s bells, woman!” he croaked and shifted until he could look at her over his shoulder. “What was that for?”

She made to answer, but had no good reason to give. “I—” she began, but stopped, suddenly and thoroughly bemused by her act. “I thought you looked rather … delicious. I have never done that before.”

His eyelids lowered. “Do it again,” he growled.

Celia blinked at the request, but fulfilled it, sinking her teeth into that big muscle, licking his skin, still salty, and tasting something that was just him.

“Harder,” he whispered.

In sudden understanding, Celia smiled against his flesh even as she swept her hand down his back to cup his tight arse cheek.

His back arched away from her when she dug her teeth and nails into him at once. “God almighty,” he rasped.

“Mmm,” Celia hummed when she released him to lick at the small wound she had made, tasting the bitter copper. Her fingernails were sticky with his blood, which she smeared over his arse, then slapped him.

Hard.

He groaned.

“I’ve heard about men like you. More?”

In answer, he moved so that she fell back on the bunk. He flopped to his back, grasped his turgid cock, and scowled at her. “This, you do not bite.”

She grinned and arose over him, slid down his body, situated herself between his bent knees, and took him in her mouth. Clean from her ministrations a scant two hours before, she tasted him, Judas, with a hint of soap. She ran her tongue ’round the head, down the underside length, pressed her nose and mouth into the crease between his cock and bollocks.

“Fury,” he croaked, his hand in her hair.

Her quim was wet and empty, the cool air kissing her, tormenting her. She wanted so much for him to fill her again—

Celia screeched when she was jerked upright, one great arm around her waist, lifting her, spinning her round until he slammed her face-first against the bulkhead. She gasped when he spread her legs and speared her.

If any other man had had the audacity to accost her thusly, Celia would have fought her way free, and then she would have slaughtered him.

He grasped her wrists and raised them, pinning them together with one big hand against the wood above their heads.

“Judas,” she panted, feeling him in her, still, stretching her.

“Now I have you where I want you,” he gritted in her ear.

She should have expected this.

She had no desire to stop it.

“Well, get on with it,” she said as calmly as she could. “In, out. There’s a good pirate.”

He barked a surprised laugh and withdrew until his cock was barely brushing her.

“Back in, now, Judas. You know what to do.”

The force of his thrust made her grunt with some pain that melted into pleasure with every hard shift of the warm, velvety skin of his lower belly against her unscarred and oversensitive buttocks.

“Do you— imagine— someone else—” Celia grunted between his violent strokes, “—now that— you’re fucking me— from behind?”

“Nay,” he growled in her ear. “I imagine you. Completely at my mercy. The way I should’ve taken you in Oranjestad, bent over a table in front of the entire tavern.”

“God, yes,” Celia whispered in appalled ecstasy, her face against the wall as he pounded into her, his cock sliding in and out, his bollocks slapping against her button. “Harder.”

Hinges squeaked and the door flew open. “Oh, Captain Fury, please forgive—” A shocked gasp and choke. George, late for her newly assigned duties as Celia’s cabin girl.

“Get—out!” Judas snarled without once breaking his rhythm.

The door slammed and they were alone once again, Judas’s chest to her back, her fingers clutching wood and his fingers clutching hers. Celia couldn’t be bothered to care about the poor girl’s shocked sensibilities.

He buried his face in the crook of her neck, kissing and licking with the rhythm of his hips. Nibbling.

“If you bite me,” she panted, “I’ll kill you.”

Neither his lips nor his tongue left her skin, but she no longer felt his teeth.

He thrust deep inside her and stilled suddenly, sliding his hand down her leg. He was not taking his release, so …

She knew what he was about when he grasped her knee and pulled it back to wrap her foot around his hip. Her thigh burned with the stretch and her quim felt a new kiss of air. Still, she assisted him when he repeated it with her other leg, being very precise about where he placed her feet.

His hips moved, resumed the punishing pace and force.

“Judasjudasjudas,” she panted with every step to ecstasy she took. He kissed, sucked, licked her neck as he went harder and faster.

He was fucking her now the way his ship was fucking her figurehead, her feet curled around him the way her figurehead’s feet wrapped the rails of his ship. She was impaled upon Judas’s cock, his upper body keeping her utterly immobile.

The way his prow impaled her figurehead.

Her climax welled up in her cunt and her belly and her chest and finally she broke with the wail of an animal.

He opened his mouth against the nape of her neck, his teeth barely scraping her skin before he seemed to think better of it. He pressed her harder against the wall, kept her that way, growling and grunting into her skin, until his hips jerked upward once, twice, three times with such force it hurt her.

He stilled on the last and most painful thrust.

His cock twitched within her, forcing a nervous giggle out of her.

“That, Madam,” he growled against her neck, “is how my ship fucks your figurehead. All the goddamn day and night.”

“Not so,” she whispered. “She is on top.”

He continued to lick at her, the flat of his tongue rough and soothing her bruised skin where he had sucked at her.

“I’ve never … That was unlike anything I have ever known.”

“I don’t believe that,” he muttered. “You’re not an innocent.” He was still licking her. Still inside her. Still pressing her hard into the bulkhead, his hand now cupping her mound.

After the moment they spent catching their breath, she felt him shrink and slide out of her with a sweet pop. With it, all his juices ran down between her thighs. She sighed, vaguely aroused at the feel of him, the feel of his possession of her, his taking of her.

She had not been taken like that since she was an adolescent, when Rafael had begun to add variety to her education—and she had never allowed him to do it again.

She did not like being taken any more than she liked being bitten.

Until now.

By the biggest—strongest—man she had ever tumbled.

Finally, she admitted, “I have never tolerated such violence from my bed partners.”

“That surprises me.”

“I prefer to be on top, the one in control.”

Judas’s chest suddenly rumbled with a chuckle. “Ah, not so surprising, then. But you tolerated it from me.”

She had no response, no way to explain that to herself, much less him, so she pried them both away from the bulkhead. “I must tend myself, Judas,” she murmured.

He complied slowly, his large hands wrapping around her arms with some tenderness and pulled her back against his chest. He eased her feet from around his hips and helped her straighten them.

She moaned in pain, but instead of garnering his sympathy or contrition, she merited only chuckles. Once she had waddled to her private head, she heard him wandering about her cabin. Every creak of every plank was unique and let her know exactly where he was and, most likely, what had attracted his attention.

What had she done, allowing this man such liberties?

What had she done, admitting she wanted him to take them?

’Twas thoroughly shocking. Nay, ’twas horrifying. It made her question everything she knew about herself.

Yet he hadn’t bitten her.

Nothing would have compelled his obedience had he a mind to disregard her wishes, thus he had complied out of respect for her. In the midst of his show of dominance, he had yet bent to her will.

She pressed her fist to her breast and bowed her head, breathing deeply in an attempt to gather herself.

When she emerged from the head enrobed in red silk, he gave her a cocky grin and took his turn. She noted a pair of damp breeches half hanging out of her stern window, then sat at her table. She was nearly finished grinding the herbs for her elixir when he emerged. She glanced up to see his nude body glistening with water droplets, his cock peaceful against his sac.

He gestured to her mortar and pestle. “Might as well prepare a large batch, Madam, as I intend to avail myself of your charms as often as possible.”

She could not help the pleased smile she directed at the table. “That was my intent. Find me an empty rum bottle. We finished the one last night, did we not?”

“Aye,” he grunted and swept it up off the floor, thumping it on her table with a flourish before heading to her liquor cabinet and sitting on his haunches in front of it. “You, Madam,” he mumbled as he ran his fingers over the bottles, surveying its contents, “are a connoisseur.” He picked out a bottle of a fine Italian wine. “This will do.”

Celia cleared her throat. “Do you care to cover yourself, I shall call my girl back to bring breakfast. Hopefully you have not driven her to cast herself overboard.”

He laughed and dropped himself back on the mattress, uncorked the bottle, and took a long draught.

“What is that you are wearing? I have never seen such.”

“’Tis called a kimono,” she murmured. “From Japan.”

“Japan?” he asked sharply.

She slid him a glance, wondering at his tone. “Aye,” she drawled. “Do you not care for it?”

He paused. “I was simply curious,” he murmured slowly. “From the rumors, I gather you are far more well travelled than I.”

“This was given me on my seventeenth birthday. I have not been that far east nor have I met any Japanese.” She watched him examine the worn gold embroidery and spots where the silk had thinned, an enigmatic smile curling his mouth. He looked up to find her staring at him, which he held for a long while until his smile faded.

“What are you thinking?”

She bit her lip and tried to find words. “That—” She gestured toward the bulkhead. “What you did to me. It was … wonderful.”

“Says she who decries violence in bed but awoke me with a bite and drew first blood.”

“It was a … whimsy. I cannot think of another explanation. But then you asked for more. Why?”

He shrugged. “I like it. Why should I not ask my lover for what I want if I have reason to believe she will grant me the favor?”

She was his lover now?

No passing bedsport was he, to be paid (or not) and left behind without a second thought when it was time for her to return to her work. This man demanded a place in her thoughts. She suspected he would continue to long after their association ended.

When she didn’t answer him, his expression hardened and she caught her breath.

“Madam, I will have you know that you are magnificent.”

Celia’s heart swelled so large she thought her body would burst. “And you,” she whispered. It was true: His arms were enormous, his legs long and his thighs strong, his arse tight. His shoulders wide, his belly flat with vague lines around his muscles, his cock of average length but thick and heavy.

She looked up, into his face. It, too, was strong. His nose was straight and aristocratic. His cheekbones were high. His skin was darkly tanned and lined from sun and laughter. His eyes … Oh, God, his eyes.

The silver streaks in his black hair made him look—

“How many years have you?” she asked abruptly.

“Eight and thirty.”

—older than that. He had had a hard life, though the laugh lines belied it.

“You are twenty-five or thereabouts?”

She barked a laugh. “Thereabouts! Next month, I am one year shy of thirty.”

“’Tis not usual for a sailor to look younger than his age.”

“My age is writ large across my breasts and back, Judas.”

“Ah.”

“Are you married?”

“Nay.” He paused, then continued on slowly as if suddenly remembering some troubling thing. “If I were, would that curtail any willingness you might have to engage in an affaire?”

“Aye,” she said matter-of-factly. “I will be no man’s second.”

“Even if he didn’t love his wife?”

Celia stilled and looked at him, but his expression was carefully blank. Too careful. She tilted her head. “Why would anyone not wed for love?”

He shrugged. “’Tis done all the time.”

Celia’s eyebrow rose. “Commoners have the luxury of marrying for love.” She rushed on before she could think too deeply on it. “Is there some reason you might feel compelled to wed a woman you did not love?” Ah, there. The slightest tightening of his mouth. She went on before he could answer. “Politics? Land, wealth, family expectations? All those reasons bespeak power and the building or continuation of dynasties.”

“That is enough, Madam.”

Celia was torn between glee that she had found some clue to his identity and sadness that if he were in such a position, she would not be an acceptable candidate for a wife—and not because of her social status.

Candidate.

Rafael had wanted her, so he had seduced her immediately. Talaat had been overjoyed that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

Candidate.

It was enraging, that her femininity—her self—could be reduced to candidacy.

“Do you know what is rare amongst commoners?” she went on without allowing her growing bitterness to leach into her voice. “Commands. I am not wholly familiar with the intricacies of the British Navy, Sir, but is it not true that one can purchase a commission if one is wealthy or high-placed enough? That would thereby grant him a far greater opportunity to rise to captain. And is it not also true that aristocrats are deemed better leaders because they are of the ruling class and therefore inherently superior in knowledge and wisdom? From what I have seen, you have been a commander a very long time.”

His warning scowl was unmistakable. “Cease that line of reasoning, Madam.”

“Pirating only a year, eh? On a ship of the line? A full complement of sailors and marines? Do you know: A quarter of my crew is comprised of second and third sons of wealthy merchants, landed gentry, and nobility—every one of them running from their fathers.”

His jaw ground, but Celia had ever dared where she should not. “I am reasonably certain of the conclusions I am drawing, I’ll have you know.”

“Madam, shall I stuff your mouth with my prick to get you to cease?”

Her vanity still wounded, she feigned amusement. “Do you not remember I bite, my lord?”

His jaw ground, but Celia stood and went to her bunk where he half-lay, propped against the hull, one arm behind his head and a blanket tossed carelessly over his midsection.

In this time and place, however, she was not a candidate for anything: Judas had also wanted her enough to take her. The question was: Would he cast off his obligations to keep her should she wish to be kept?

She sat, her hip against his, and reached a hand out to trace some of the lines around his mouth. “You like to laugh.”

His mouth turned up in a reluctant smile and the lines around his ice blue eyes—good Lord, those eyes!—deepened. “Aye,” he murmured. “I’m not one to brood. I should be furious with you.”

She leaned in to kiss him softly, closing her eyes and opening her mouth. Judas threaded his fingers through her hair and closed them into a fist to hold her close whilst they kissed.

“I shall make a point to lie back and love you gently,” he murmured finally when she pulled away, “if that is what you prefer.”

His respect for her and her preferences warmed her to her soul, but it was a simple enough task. His preferences, however … “Alas, I cannot reciprocate, for I know nothing about administering pain for pleasure.”

He smiled slowly, sensuously. “I will be more than happy to teach you.”

---

10

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

ELLIOTT’S SMILE DEEPENED when Fury blushed, arose abruptly, strode across the cabin, and threw the door open.

“GEORGE!” she bellowed. “FOOD!”

He watched as she went about the cabin tidying things that were already tidy until they had achieved some perfection only she could discern. Her hair swirled about her hips with every move she made. Instead of the pink braid that had originally caught his eye, when loose and in the harsh spring dawn, her hair was a lovely Venetian blonde.

Aye, he should be incensed that she had ferreted him out so quickly, but he should have expected that. She was no fool. Any experienced sailor and sharp observer could draw the conclusions she had were they afforded the opportunity to observe, which was precisely why he had never let anyone else that close.

Yet now he knew that the minute he told her of his betrothal to a twenty-three-year-old American girl he had never met, whose name he could not remember, his time with Fury would be over—irrevocably.

He wasn’t surprised, but he was rather seasick at the lost opportunity. The only thing he could do was enjoy this time with her in order to have one good memory to take with him into his interminable future, the one in which he was forever trapped, bound by duty.

She returned to him, scooping her cat up in her arms along the way, and once again sat on the edge of the bunk, her arse against his hip. He drew a finger down her arm, and then up again, caressing her until she shivered and sighed with obvious delight.

“What did you study at Oxford?”

“Law,” he answered before he realized what she had said. “Hell’s bells,” he muttered when she began to laugh. “How did you know that?”

“I can hear it in your voice.” He stared at her and her smile deepened. “’Tis not obvious, so do not fret that someone else will find you out. I have an ear for accents and languages.”

Languages. That was a safe topic. “Oh? Your accent is barely American.”

“’Twould be no wonder,” she said matter-of-factly. “I speak six languages more or less fluently and have spent most of my life on the deck of a ship with men who spoke ten more and every variety of English I know of.”

“I confess I am fluent only in English and French. Whatever Latin I learned has long since vanished.”

“I know no Latin, so you have my advantage there.”

“And the other four?”

“Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch. French is my second language, as ’tis the lingua franca of the Barbary Coast. Portuguese was my most difficult language to acquire.”

“Ah, yes,” he drawled. “You attended University of Coimbra, so your Portuguese is academic, no? And you studied astronomy and mathematics with Doctor Covarrubias.”

She reached out and tweaked his nose. “That is no great secret, Sir.”

“Nor that he was lover number one.”

Her palm landed softly on his chest and she leaned forward, her smile mischievous. “He still is,” she whispered. Elliott wished he’d killed the bastard in Virginia, but she shrugged when his eyes narrowed. “Do you care to tell me your name, or for me to examine your inability to wed for love, we may then discuss Rafael. Men who marry for duty must choose an appropriate woman and by anyone’s defining, I am as far from appropriate as the sun.”

She had him there—and he despised the fact of it. He struggled to find another topic. “I heard a rumor you are a musician.”

“I sing,” she answered airily. “Soprano. Also not a secret.”

“Well! That is certainly something remarkable.”

Her jaw tightened suddenly and Elliott realized he had stumbled into a sore point.

“I am degreed, aye,” she muttered, “but I could never become a soloist as I cannot maintain a satisfactory vibrato. I never rose above the chorus.”

“Neither could I,” he said wryly.

Fury’s brows drew close. “You sing?”

He chuckled. “Not a note. Aye, I studied law, but I am not suited to it. The other men in my family are extraordinarily talented at it, but I … ” His pride in Niall and Sandy tempted him to prattle on about how talented they were, but he resisted. Indeed, I owe them my life would invite yet more speculation by this woman who, in twenty-four hours, had deduced far too much of the truth of him. “I’m not terribly suited to academics in any case. But in reality, it did not matter, as I was bound for the sea. Thus, I am degreed—barely—but I was never called to the bar. I dare say I could not maintain a vibrato or rise above the chorus, either.”

She laughed and leaned down to kiss him. “And so here we are, doing what we were born to do.”

“No,” Elliott said thoughtfully. At her confused expression, he said, “I despise sailing.” For some reason, he felt particularly satisfied at her shocked expression, and grinned wryly. “’Tis a trap to be talented at a thing one hates.” Fury’s mouth opened and closed in her shock, seeming to be searching for words. “How do you come to your assumptions of me?” he asked to forestall any more questions.

She blinked, then seemed to recover herself enough to slide a saucy glance at him. “Every word you say. Every choice you make. Every detail of your ship and crew. You are no pirate, Sir.”

“The Royal Navy would dispute that.”

“Is there anyone left of your battles with them to dispute it?”

“There were none until, of necessity, I was forced to leave a quarter of a British fleet floating in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, very much alive. I was an unprovable myth, but now both Rathbone and Bancroft have seen that I am not.”

She laughed and scratched her happy cat’s chin. “Otherwise cheerful men who expend their rage upon those who built it have no need to brood elsewhere, do they?”

Elliott opened his mouth to give her a flippant response, but found himself saying, “I am not angry anymore.”

“Oh? Then why … ?”

“Now ’tis only a matter of opportunity.” Her brow wrinkled in question. “Fury, I’m on my way home. To stay. I accomplished what I set out to accomplish. I will take any opportunities that present themselves on my way, but once I put into port, I am finished with this life.”

“What will you do then? Since you have no taste for the law, either?”

He paused, reached out to scratch Dindi’s cheek, then murmured, “My duty.”

“What would you rather do?” she asked slowly. “Or have you never thought of it?”

Elliott frowned. “At times,” he said slowly, “’tis the only thing I can think of, but I durst not speak of it. As I have my duty, what I want can never happen. Do I speak of it, I grow angry at what cannot be and truly, I do not like being angry. Nor do I relish wallowing in my circumstance. And that is enough of that. I will indulge your curiosity no more.”

She cast him a moue of amused dismay.

“Can you spare me some of your cats?” Elliott asked abruptly.

She blinked with surprise. “Certainly. You have none?”

“Cats. Water. It did not occur to me.”

“I forget ’tis not common practice.” Just then there was a timid knock at the door. “Come.”

It opened slowly, and a small face peered around it. “Captain?”

“It is safe to enter now, George,” Fury said wryly.

She did, carrying an enormous tray filled with so much food she should not have been able to carry it. But she set it down on the captain’s table with the strength and gracefulness of a girl accustomed to hard labor.

“Well, look who’s back,” Elliott drawled.

The girl flushed to the roots of her hair and looked resolutely down at the food she was arranging. She was average in size, possibly fifteen or sixteen years old, with a tight brunette braid. Her face was soft and plump and her hands red and chapped. She still wobbled a bit, though the deck was not moving.

“Good morning, girl. George, is it?”

“Goo— Goo— Good morning … ?”

“Cap’n Judas.”

“Oh. Um. Ca— Captain Ju— Judas.” She gulped. “Sir.”

“Did no one on watch last night tell you your captain acquired a bed partner?”

“N— N— No.”

“Shame on them.”

She peeked at Fury, clearly confused by the fact that her captain was sitting calmly on the bed, one leg crossed over the other, leaning forward with her elbows crossed over her knees and Dindi tucked against her body.

“Ca— Captain Jack? Are you— Are you well?”

Fury laughed and Elliott was pleasantly surprised at the girl’s pluck in daring to ask. “Good God, yes. In fact, I’m positively boneless.”

“Boneless, you say, Fury?” Elliott queried innocently. “Allow me to remedy that.”

The girl whimpered and looked away from him, wringing her hands.

“Never mind him, George. He plays the ogre well enough, but in truth, he is harmless.”

“Harmless?” Elliott protested, affronted.

Fury continued as if she hadn’t heard. “You and Kit are relieved of your regular duties for the day.”

That confused the girl further. “Captain?”

“We are on anchor watch, which means almost none. We’re becalmed. We aren’t going anywhere until the wind picks up and thus, no one else is, either. We are relatively safe at the moment, and I have a wish to spend time with my new friend.”

Elliott chuckled when she flushed again.

“I don’t … I don’t understand, Captain.”

“It means we—all of us, both ships—will be making merry until Mother Nature sees fit to blow us upon our journey.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Oh,” she said wonderingly.

“Since we do not know when that will happen, enjoy yourself, because then it will be work time once again. Oh, aye, wait. I do have a task for you. Go to the hold and gather some dozen or so young cats, then take them to the Silver Shilling and hand them over to its leftenant.”

“Uh … how will I get there, Captain? It’s leagues away.”

Elliott snorted “A bare hundred yards. Fewer than that if it’s being towed at this very moment.”

“I’m sure you can find a solution to the problem,” Fury purred.

“Ask my leftenant for a set of clothing for your return trip,” Elliott added.

“Aye, Sir,” she whispered, unable to look anywhere but at the floor.

“Dismissed.”

The girl was all too eager to leave the cabin, but took care to close the door softly behind her.

“She is new?”

“Aye. She is a good girl and a hard worker, but needs a firm hand by someone who respects her will and trusts her intelligence.”

“She’s strong as any able seaman, but has not been aboard long enough to lose her timidity or catch her legs, much less get that strong.”

Fury raised a finger and said, “Ah, but she has been aboard long enough to lose her virginity.”

“Oh, aye? She acts as if she had never seen a man in the altogether.”

“Five days. I believe it took Kit two of them to lure her to his bunk. What she saw you doing would frighten grown women, and she is but a girl—albeit a complete rapscallion, or I miss my guess—on the edge of womanhood who has been suddenly taken by pirates. She is under the command of a woman more powerful than any man she has ever met, but whom she does not yet trust. Then she sees this woman—who is her only protection at the moment—being violently plowed by an enormous savage with blood on his arse, who barks at her without breaking stride. How should she comport herself in his presence after the fact, especially if she has no way to know she is not next on his menu?”

Elliott had to concede the point once he thought about how it must have looked to a young girl.

“Come, eat. You have stirred in me a prodigious appetite, Sir, and I enjoy dining with pleasurable company.”

Elliott refrained from the ribald comment he could have made and stood to join her at table after pulling on his almost-dry breeches. He looked down as she spread out their repast: two great covered bowls, two pitchers of something else, a large pot of coffee, six oranges, a loaf of bread, and a plate of butter.

He was very impressed.

“Bread?” he asked, even as she lifted one of the lids and sniffed at what appeared to be a thick stew, closing her eyes in ecstasy. “How do you come by bread in the middle of the Atlantic, Madam, when even I am reduced to hardtack?”

He reached across the table to set out the plates, utensils, and tankards whilst she stirred the stew.

“I feed and pay my men well,” she said and took her seat, then poured what looked like lemonade from the pitcher into her tankard, then offered him some.

“No tea?”

She grinned. “Well, are you not the proper Englishman! No. Coffee, lemonade, grog, beer, or rum.”

He grunted and reached for the coffee pot and cup to pour for himself.

“This is part of why I can keep a crew happy and loyal. Look at this. Would you leave my employ if you knew this was on the regular Thursday breakfast menu and that you were also earning a regular wage?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Just so. I have been diligent in hiring men and women who can cook and train others to cook just as well. I cannot abide the usual ship’s fare and I cannot fathom how any man can work well without collapsing of hunger subsisting upon it. I know I would. In fact, I have.”

Elliott said nothing, but bent his head to taste the stew while he thought about how much space it would take to keep provisions enough to feed five hundred men such a delicious concoction as this once a week for eight weeks—never mind the rest of the week.

“I’ve been at sea my entire adulthood,” he said gruffly. “I have not thought of having better food at sea as a constant.”

“His Royal Highness is not known for the tender care of his men,” she said dryly. He snorted. “Yet you’re the captain. Surely you’ve eaten far better all these years?”

He slid a wry grin at her. “As you noted, I’m rather much larger than any two of my men put together and so I eat more, aye, but better? A bit, I suppose.” He took a long draught of the surprisingly delicious coffee. “Dining modestly goes far toward cultivating goodwill.”

“Modest? What is that?”

Elliott spewed coffee.

A knock sounded whilst Elliott was still laughing and coughing at once. Fury smirked and called permission to enter. An older woman, dressed in breeches and loose shirt, her pure white hair braided and pinned in a crown atop her head, opened the door and sauntered in with an enormous ledger tucked under her arm.

He would have to accustom himself to seeing women aboard, for a certainty.

“Good morning, Mama.”

Elliott choked again. “Mama?!”

“Good morning, see … Jack,” the woman returned, bending to kiss the cheek Fury offered her before setting the ledger aside, taking a seat at the table, and helping herself to breakfast.

Elliott gaped at her.

“Good morning, Captain Judas,” she said, a hint of a smile curling her lip. “I trust you slept well.”

“Good God, this is unpleasant,” he whispered.

Fury laughed in sheer delight, exchanging amused glances with her mother, who bore so little resemblance to her daughter, he was tempted to ask if Fury was from the woman’s body.

“Would it soothe your sense of propriety if I introduced her as Officer Mary?” Fury asked sweetly. “Chief Purser. She breaks her fast with me most mornings.”

Elliott did not think how he could continue to be taken broadside by this woman, but she seemed to be able to blow cannonballs through his mind at a rapid pace.

“Whilst Captain Judas is recovering his wits,” Officer Mary said, “I want to discuss the Lamplight.”

“The Lamplight is the merchant I took last week, from whence George came.”

Elliott simply nodded. It was all he could manage.

“Did you inform Captain Bull of your plans for it?” Officer Mary asked. Her accent, though basically American, was nearly as garbled as Fury’s.

“Nay. ’Twas a discussion I had no time for at the moment.”

“Oh, good.” Fury’s mother shifted and opened the ledger to a page Elliott now saw she had marked. “I suggest you ask him if he would like to lease it from you.”

“Mama, no. He has served me well and I would reward him. He is a gifted leader and a good friend and I have no need of the ship or the funds. Why should I not give it to him?”

“Because it is your ship.”

“It is my ship to do with what I please,” Fury corrected somewhat impa­tiently, “and it pleases me to give it to Bridge.”

“You would give away everything you own if I allowed it.”

She shrugged. “My needs are not that great.”

“Your modistes in London, Rotterdam, and Paris would disagree with that. I see the invoices.”

That jerked Elliott right out of his shock. “Three modistes?” he asked with a grin.

Fury sniffed, but her mother slid her a disgusted glance. “If that man hadn’t spoilt her rotten and made her so bloody vain, she might be content with one.”

“Mother!”

That Man could be a lover or a father, but now was not the time to pursue it. “She has reason to be vain,” Elliott murmured, raking Fury with a lascivious glance.

Fury flushed and looked away. “You need not flatter me unduly to pry my thighs open, Judas,” she muttered. “I am quite aware of my deficiencies, even without my scars.”

“Unduly?” Elliott asked, staring at her, suddenly incredulous. “Madam, we discussed this last night. Know this: Had I not thought you beautiful, I would never have kissed you in the first place.”

Her head snapped to him, her mouth open. “Look at her!” she said, pointing to her mother. “Do I look like her? No. I look like my sire, who is not precisely easy on the eyes.”

Her mother drew herself up with great umbrage. “Oh! That is not true!”

Fury glared at her. “Mama, do not begin to sing his praises to me now.”

Elliott smothered his grin and continued with his meal while they continued to bicker. Until Fury had pointed it out, he had not noticed anything particu­larly special about her mother, but now that she had, Elliott had to admit she was, indeed, a beautiful woman.

The argument mounted. It reminded him of his sisters and his mother, who regularly clashed and, while he could respect Fury as a wise leader and accomplished navigator, he relished the fact that she was also so … womanly.

A beloved pet.

Three modistes.

Bruised female vanity.

A friendship with a mother that allowed for such this type of bickering.

He could have been at the breakfast table at home for all the differences between his family and this pair, and he was enjoying every second of it.

Thus he learned that Fury was of Mary’s body and that Fury’s parents were not on speaking terms. In fact, Mary was quite displeased with her husband. It was obvious to Elliott that Fury wanted them to reconcile, but Mary felt there were too many years between them to do so.

“How many years?” Elliott asked abruptly around his bite. They both started and turned to stare at him as if he had just appeared. “Forgot I was here, did you? How many years?”

“Ah … ” Mary blinked. “Twenty.”

“What did he do?”

“He failed to divine her circumstance,” Fury drawled with a sidelong glance at her mother. But then she turned to Elliott. “The inciting, ah, incident was horrid.” Fury shuddered. “Mama had made a grave mistake, it is true, but the other persons involved compounded that by orders of magnitude. Because of their unwillingness to put their pride aside, the last twenty years have not been kind to her. In my father’s defense,” she said pointedly (clearly, this was a well-trod subject between them), “he made a reasonable assumption that by staying away, he was protecting both me and her. But since he did not return in all these years to find out if this assumption was true or to reunite her with me, she is angry and unwilling to listen to him.”

Elliott took another bite and thought. There were not enough details for him to assume anything, but he was quite curious about the relationship as it stood now. He studied Mary from under his brow, noting that her eyes were the same color as Fury’s.

“How did the two of you come to be reunited, then?”

“I went to her after I took this ship and asked her if she wished to put out to sea with me. But if I had known she would harry me thus, I wouldn’t have.”

Mary harrumphed.

Elliott swallowed his bite, took a drink, and pointed his spoon at Fury’s mother, as he would his own. “You would not be this angry still if you had no feeling for him.”

Mary stared at Elliott as if he were a serpent bent on hypnotizing her.

“She loves him,” Fury muttered. “He loves her. But because of all of the other parties involved, a reconciliation is far more complicated than it would be for anyone else.”

“And where is he right now?”

“Oh, likely closing in on Morocco, where she would be, too, if she hadn’t fought him tooth and nail in Oranjestad.”

Elliott gaped at Fury. “Dunham is your father?”

“Could you not tell?” She cast him a befuddled look. “Everyone can tell.”

“I had no chance to look at the man, Madam, as you were trying to kill me.”

She grinned.

“I do not comprehend. If you want them together, why did you not allow him to take her?”

Fury looked down at her stew. “After our brawl, I fell ill,” she muttered, “and thus was unable to give the order or even negotiate a truce. She did not want to go, so in my absence, my crew backed her. Given that my leftenant does not care for Papa anyroad, ’twas not a difficult decision for him to make. Given that we are well known and liked in Oranjestad and Papa but a stranger, it was also not difficult to convince him he would be starting a battle he would regret did he attempt to take my ship.”

Elliott nodded. It was the correct protocol, but he now had a thousand more questions. He asked the most important one.

“Was your affliction a consequence of our misunderstanding?”

“Nay. ’Twas a … womanly malady … I must occasionally endure.”

Ah, yes. He had observed that his mother and older sister had taken to their beds three or four days of every month in agonizing pain. He had no wish to probe further.

“In point of fact,” Mary snapped, clearly having recovered herself, “one reason I declined to go with him was because of what he did to Jack. I expect you’ve seen her scars.”

“Oh, Mama, no,” Fury groaned. “Not that again.”

Elliott looked at Fury. “Your flogging?”

“Aye. I have explained this to her countless times. She will not take my word as a commander that he was merciful.”

“Captain,” Mary said briskly. “You are qualified to say if ’twas a merciful punishment or not.”

“What did you do, Madam?”

Fury looked away. “I was twenty,” she said low. “I was at university for over five years. Rafael doted on me.” Jealousy surged through Elliott. “He gave me everything I wanted and more. In short, he turned me into a spoilt bitch.”

Ah. He of the Japanese swords and wraps was That Man. Elliott caught Mary’s snarl out of the corner of his eye. And Fury’s mother despised him. Excellent. Even better would be if Dunham shared his wife’s opinion.

Yet there was nothing Elliott could do but enjoy this time with Fury, as her parents’ opinions of Covarrubias made no difference to his circumstance.

“When I returned to the Iron Maiden after I graduated, Papa made me his third leftenant and navigator,” Fury was saying. “After about a year, he gave me an order I refused to carry out.”

“There is more to it than that,” Elliott rumbled, reaching out to slide his hand down her silk-covered ribs. “This does not happen for merely refusing a direct order.”

“I told him he would have to kill me first and see to the task himself if he wanted it done,” she said lightly. “Then I spit in his face. In front of the entire crew.”

Elliott gaped at her, horrified. “Good God, Madam!”

“Yes!” Mary was triumphant. “I knew you would see it my way, Captain!”

At that, Elliott leveled Mary a hard look. “There is an order to things aboard a ship, Ma’am. She challenged him to kill her, but instead of doing so, he left her with a body covered in scars and no other damage. Aye, he was more merciful than I would have been.”

“She is our daughter,” Mary hissed, banging her fist on the table. “His daughter. Would you do that to your daughter?”

“I wouldn’t raise my daughter on a pirate ship amongst men,” Elliott shot back. Mary blanched. “She knew the rules, the consequences for infractions, and likely having—” He looked at Fury. “Third leftenant? You administered the floggings, then?”

“Aye,” she replied tightly. “I knew what would happen. I … expected to die for it.”

“Why, Madam?” Elliott demanded. “What order could have been that repugnant to you?”

She glared at him, then at her mother. “I had my reasons and those are my own. ’Tis trivial enough on the surface until one speaks to principle, but ’tis naught I would expect either of you to understand. He certainly never has.”

“I assume you carried it out eventually.”

Fury’s mouth twisted in an ugly sneer. “Absolutely not. I’d defy him again. And for the same reason.”

If Mary had not been in the room, Elliott would have swept Fury out of that chair and right back into bed. God’s blood, but she lit his mind and body like a match put to the bung of a powder keg.

“Ah, see … Jack,” Officer Mary said carefully. “You understand ’tis a mother’s love for her child that spurs me to this ire, do you not?”

“Aye, I understand it. But now you have another opinion on the subject that aligns with mine. And Papa’s. If I can accept it, mayhap you should also?”

Mary’s mouth tightened and she looked to the larboard bulkhead, where Fury kept her log books. Elliott saw the telltale glint of tears in her eyes.

“She does not understand their value to me,” Fury muttered, refusing to look at him. A flush stained her cheekbones. She was embarrassed by this confrontation, though clearly not by what she had done.

“When you go bare-breasted in battle?”

Officer Mary tipped her ear toward the conversation.

“Aye. If you knew nothing else of me, met me in battle and saw my scars, would you see a woman? Would you see my breasts?”

“Nay. I would see a commander not easily vanquished or killed.”

Fury’s eyelids fluttered up until she was staring into his eyes. A corner of her mouth began to tuck up in a pleased smile. “Just so,” she whispered.

The door opening without a knock halted the conversation, to Elliott’s chagrin, and Fury’s first mate spoke with a heavy Irish brogue. “The Silver Shillin’s been towed close enough in now to consider grappling.” He looked at Elliott. “Yer leftenant’s askin’ do ye permit it. Seein’ as how our new girl’s been charged with fetchin’ an’ carryin’ ’twixt us, we thought it likely we’d be goin’ back an’ forth anyroad.”

“For my part, ’tis a fine idea,” Elliott said, looking at his lover. “Fury?”

Her eyes narrowed at him and she sat up, poking a finger in his face. “How do I know you will not steal something else I value, my handsome pirate captain?”

“You’ve caught me out,” he said, gently grasping that finger to press a kiss to it. “I have designs on your purser and your cooks.”

Fury gestured toward her mother. “You may have my purser with my blessing, but not my cooks. I would kill you for that.”

Mary laughed in spite of her upset.

Fury turned back to her lieutenant. “Make it so. And Smitty—” she added when he was retreating, “open the casks and bid everyone make merry.” She cast a come-hither glance at Elliott and murmured, “Because I certainly intend to.”

---

11

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

ELLIOTT JERKED AWAKE, sweating, casting about wildly in the dark to ascertain from whence the screech had come. He knew exactly where he was, but this noise was not normal for any ship. Another screech, just through the bulkhead. A thump. A spate of giggles. A scandalously delighted squeal: “Kit, no! ’Tis wicked.”

Elliott couldn’t make out what the boy said in return, but it was of no consequence. He released a great breath and relaxed into the mattress. He scrubbed at his face with both hands and listened to the sounds of this most unusual night, simply grateful he was not again three and twenty and not chained in the hold of the HMS Ocean.

Faint music drifted to him from the Silver Shilling’s fo’c’sle, some one hundred yards away. Then he heard the foot stomps of dancers, musicians, and people simply keeping time. Both ships’ beams and masts creaked, and their hulls scraped where they were bound together. The Thunderstorm’s bell rang four times. Two of the clock. There was intermittent shouting coming from the officer’s quarters on the Silver Shilling, and Elliott considered joining them at their dice.

Water barely lapped at the hull just below Fury’s stern windows, which were slightly open despite the cold. She liked to sleep in the cold, she’d told him, whilst buried deep in a pile of blankets. It made for a rude awakening, but it was a price she was willing to pay.

The faintest sound of sea chanteys and rowing reached him and he supposed the Mad Hangman would be grappled to the starboard side of the Thunderstorm by morning. It would take the Hollander’s crew the rest of the night to tow her the remainder of the six miles that had lain between them.

Dindi lay curled up next to his ear, the tip of her tail against his cheek, after having encroached upon his pillow space until he had but a sliver. She was snoring, but the minute he put his hand to her head to scratch it, she began to purr.

George was shrieking again, laughing breathlessly. Another cabin door opened, then a fist pounded on Kit’s cabin door. “Settle down, you two,” barked Fury’s lieutenant, “or find another berth. Some of us’re tryna sleep.”

“Aye, Sir,” Kit called, but then George giggled again.

Lieutenant Smith grumbled and slammed his own door. Elliott finally grinned. He knew for a fact that “Smitty” and Fury’s bo’sun had, but an hour ago, been engaged thusly. And upon remembering, Elliott had to admit a great deal of admiration for a tar of his years to have caught the eye of a young woman that beautiful without benefit of an arrangement.

He reached out a hand under the blankets to feel for the woman next to him. Her ridged skin was warm and her breathing slow, shallow, and even. He declined to awaken her, as they had spent the day together touring each other’s ships, meeting each other’s officers and crewmen, tending to tasks upon their respective ships that only they could do, establishing rules for the merrymaking, rearranging duties, and assigning watches.

Elliott, Fury, and both ships’ officers had gathered in the Silver Shilling’s dining salon to partake in a normal Thursday evening supper for the Thunderstorm, prepared by its cooks, but a treat for his officers, who ate no better than Elliott did.

The Arab, Solomon, whose unofficial position aboard the ship was as the women’s physician, was taciturn, but not unfriendly. He had seemed to be assessing Elliott for his fitness as Fury’s lover, but Elliott had no idea if he had met with the man’s approval or not. Elliott didn’t suppose it mattered, as Solomon had decamped to his own cabin as soon as he had finished his meal.

Even though it had been, to Elliott, one of the most wonderful days he had had in years, it had been a long one and they were both fatigued. Yet they had managed to love once after attaining her bunk. He could not get enough of her and, happily, it seemed she felt the same for him. Now, lying beside her, touching her, feeling her kindred spirit, he dreaded more than ever the mantle he must take up once he arrived home.

Never before had he felt so at home anywhere other than in his own manor in the midst of his large, boisterous family. Nor did he expect to feel at home with a wife he did not want, presiding over an estate in danger of being taken by the Crown, and the woman he did want plundering the Barbary Coast never to return to him.

Certainly he had never felt at home at sea and even less in the year since he had gone on account. In fact, he had never felt so alone in his life as he had this past year.

Pirate law was entirely foreign to him and his officers, trained as they were to expect unquestioning obedience no matter how outrageous the order. Thus, having a ship full of fugitives, mercenaries, and major and minor criminals to command with no government authority behind him had put Elliott in a constant state of tension.

Here, in Fury’s bed, he could not only indulge his mind and body with an intelligent and enchanting woman, he could also sleep.

More thumps. “That tickles!” More abruptly smothered giggles.

Watching Fury this long day had taught him a great deal about how she kept a democracy of ne’er-do-wells from dissolving at the first hint of weakness. Contrary to everything he had been taught, this captain allowed her men to call her “Jack,” shared jokes, traded insults, drank and caroused and gambled with them. However instructive, it was still not a manner of leadership with which Elliott could ever grow accustomed.

No matter how much he resented that she had deduced the truth of his career, it was because she knew that she could discern his tension and deduce possible reasons for it.

Except … as of ten days ago, Elliott had a hold full of glittering reasons for a mutiny that had nothing to do with his leadership. He hoped that this sojourn would lull even the most avaricious of his crew into complacency. Keeping them drunk on good food and drink, gambling and entertainment, their pricks sated, might prove to be an effective distraction.

His crew was not stupid. Losing that tavern brawl and stealing a near-spiritual icon from a powerful and well-respected ship had unified them as nothing else had: It proved that Elliott was not above a bit of grand mischief. His pursuit of that same ship’s captain to make her his lover had garnered a higher respect he needed.

It also gave any potential mutineers pause: She, along with her partner, were fully capable of sinking the Silver Shilling and, by virtue of his union with her, might be willing to do so at the first sign of mutiny.

“Kit! Oh, God, yes! YES!”

Yet he was loath to ask Fury for the help he really needed. Firstly, he had no desire to involve her in his command, as it would weaken him in his crew’s eyes. Secondly, it would make him appear weak in hers and he had no desire to lose her respect. It was too much to be borne that he would lose her at the end of this voyage, never mind leaving her with an impression of him as a weak commander.

But finally, his mind grew as tired as his body and he was relieved he could allow himself to go back to sleep.

“Where is she?!”

Elliott started at the sound of a scream that was not George in the throes of release. He started again when Fury lunged out from under the linens, hopped up and over Elliott to land on the deck, light as a cat. She dashed across the cabin in the altogether, swept her kimono around her shoulders, grabbed her dagger and whip, and threw the door open with a crash.

“WOMAN!” she bellowed. Elliott flung off his own bedclothes, stepped into his breeches, and went to the door to lean against the threshold and watch. “Get back to your berth and stay there until I give you leave to come abovedecks.”

“Where is my daughter, you whore of Satan!” she screamed again. “Turning her into a harlot, spreading her legs for a wretched pirate!”

Kit’s cabin door banged open and the boy—almost as tall as Elliott, but lean and wiry—stepped out. He was naked. “She is no longer any of your concern, Woman,” he snarled down the passageway. “You shut your filthy mouth before I shut it for you.”

The woman burst into enraged gibberish spiked with entirely articulate curses aimed at both Fury and Kit.

Because they were becalmed and at play, with everyone coming and going at will, the passageway lanterns were lit and shining brightly despite the hour. Yet she was so far down the passageway, Elliott could only see her thin form swathed in a white nightrail.

“Do you take care of this or do I?” Fury asked the boy calmly.

“I will,” Kit answered and stormed down the passageway, brushing past Fury until he disappeared.

“I don’t think me old heart can take so much excitement of a night,” Smitty observed from Elliott’s right. Officer Khan, wearing what Fury had called a kaftan, stood behind him looking well-tumbled, drowsy, and irritated.

“Sounded to me as if your heart is right and tight,” Elliott drawled.

The man chuckled, and he and his lover disappeared back into his cabin. Woman screamed again for Kit to put her down. Fury sighed with great exasperation, then followed Kit and his prey anyway. It was then Elliott noticed George standing in her own doorway, wrapped in a blanket, distraught, trembling, and weeping quietly.

The sharp point of homesickness stabbed him; she reminded him of his little sisters and his nieces. “Your mother, I take it,” Elliott said gently.

When the girl turned to look up at him, he saw that she was not distraught. She was furious. So furious, in fact, she forgot to be afraid of him.

“Not anymore,” she snapped, dashing tears away with her fingers. “Thank God!”

Elliott almost smiled. “And why is that?”

“She sold me,” George spat, “to some ugly old man who just wants a baby.”

“Aye, well, ’tis the way of the world, to be sold.”

“What?! You have never been sold!”

The corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Sure of that, are you?”

That brought her up short. “You are a man. And a captain,” she muttered with confusion. “How can that be?”

“I was not born fully adult with a ship at the ready. When I was your age, I already knew my father would send me to sea and it was the last thing I wanted to do. But he would brook no disobedience and so I simply made the best of it. ’Tis better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.”

She glared at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means—”

Another scream, but this one of pain. Ah, and there it was, the tell-tale whistle of the cat. George whimpered, her eyes wide.

“It means,” Elliott continued, snapping his fingers in her face until he had regained her attention, “that no matter how much I hated it, since I had no choice at all, I would not countenance being anything less than captain.”

Two.

“That does not compare to being sold to a man nigh on his deathbed to do—” She waved a hand backward into her cabin. “—that.”

Elliott would not argue the point. “You have more courage than I did,” he said simply, “to choose this in spite of your parents’ wishes.”

Three.

“’Twasn’t much of a choice,” she said with a bitter glance down the passageway from whence her mother screamed for mercy.

Four. George blanched. Five.

Then, blessed silence.

“Is that so. Tell me then, girl, in the five days you have been here, how your life is worse than being leg-shackled to an ugly old man who needs an adolescent womb to secure his line. Do you not know that once your voyage here is finished, you may collect your earnings and leave?”

She stared at him, aghast. “Leave?” she squeaked.

Elliott could not contain his grin. “I see you don’t care for the prospect.”

“Is she dead?” George whispered when the silence continued.

“Passed out. The surgeon will tend her, but she’ll now think twice about crossing your captain.”

She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “If I left here,” she said after clearing her throat, “where would I go? What would I do?”

He shrugged. “Anything you want. If Fury and the other women aboard this ship can flout Fate and determine the course of their lives, what makes you think you cannot? You have already, in fact. There is no reason not to continue to do so.”

She looked down at the floor. “I thought I was here forever,” she whispered.

“And yet, you have made no protestations of being here. You wasted no time taking up with the first handsome boy to do more than beg a dance. You make an effort to learn your duties and to execute them well. You work hard and are eager to please. I see no sign that you resent being here.”

Her mouth tightened. “This is a pirate ship. If I do not work willingly, I shall be forced to do more abhorrent things.”

“Ah, and smart, too. You are a strong girl, for all you have not been here long enough to be able to fulfill the tasks you’ve been assigned. Fury thinks you a bit of a hoyden, which would, in turn, make me think your parents are glad to be rid of you.”

She flushed. “They made no secret of it,” she grumbled.

Elliott leaned down to her. “And this life excites you, does it not?” he murmured. She gulped. “’Tis the adventure you dreamed of? I dare say ’tis preferable to sitting in a parlor working sampler after sampler, painting insipid watercolors, practicing an out-of-tune fortepiano, no? You’re a pirate now, girl. You have a handsome lover, money you will have earned without bearing an old man’s child, becoming a governess to a lecherous lord’s brats, a shop assistant to a harridan of a milliner. Or a whore.”

Her mouth hardened. He had seen that look on his older sister’s face too many times to mistake it. Nay, his instincts hadn’t yet failed him.

“You envy Fury, do you not? The freedom she has, the power she wields? You don’t want to disappoint her, do you? You seek to earn her respect.” She blinked owlishly. Likely she had not thought that far. Then Elliott went in for the kill. “What would your male playmates at home think to see you here, living the life they never dared hope to have?”

She gasped, and a wicked smile began to grow. “They would despise me,” she whispered with conspiratorial glee.

Elliott chuckled. “Green is a lovely shade when someone else is wearing it in your honor, eh?” With that, he turned. “Good eve, George.”

“Captain? Sir?”

He looked over his shoulder to find her grinning at him the way his nieces did when he had granted them his approbation for a job well done. “You are harmless.”

He scowled at her, but she giggled and ducked back into her cabin, leaving him alone in the passageway and staring at the closed door. He returned to Fury’s cabin, utterly bemused by this chit even though he had a gaggle of his own females at home he knew perfectly well how to manage.

He dropped into bed and muttered, “Girls.”

---

12

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

FURY STORMED INTO THE CABIN some time after Elliott had bid George adieu and settled into bed with a barely touched copy of Fanny Hill he had found on her bookshelf, sparse of anything not related to mathematics or astronomy. He opened the book to page twenty-seven, where it was marked by a red ribbon. The pages were stiff, the book nearly pristine, and red dye had leached from the bookmark, betraying the fact that the marker had been in that spot for some great while.

“I despise that woman,” she mumbled at Elliott, then stopped short at the sight of him. “What are you doing on my side of the bed?”

He was too shocked at both question and tone to laugh. “Ah … ’twould be easier for the captain to not have to climb over her lover in urgent situations, no?”

“I am well practiced at climbing over a lover in haste. That is my side of the bed. Move.” Then Elliott cocked an eyebrow at her until she impatiently shooed her hands at him. He stirred himself only enough to shift to “his” side of the bed.

But she had turned, saying, “Rum? Wine? Brandy? Whisky?”

“I’ve developed a taste for that Italian wine. You have more?”

“Aye. The harbormaster in Rotterdam is particularly fond of it.”

“That is your home port?”

“Aye. Come drink with me whilst I tend my log.”

“I would rather you come kiss me.”

She cast a pleased smile over her shoulder from where she stood in a corner of her cabin, fetching that bottle of wine. “Why, Judas, for shame. I cannot neglect my log.”

“But you would neglect mine.”

She laughed and thumped the bottle on the table. “You, Sir, are vile.”

He grinned. “Quite. Come tend my log.”

“Do you know,” she said matter-of-factly, “your smile is a very dangerous weapon.”

As if hers were not. “I shall wield it more often, then.”

“Come,” she said again, pulling a chair out from under the larboard end of her table where her charts, ledgers, and logs were arranged neatly. He arose and took the seat he had occupied for breakfast and noon meals, even as she poured herself a tankard of lemonade from yet another pitcher of the stuff.

“More?”

“Aye,” she murmured, then tipped back the tankard to drink. Her mouth puckered once she had drunk at least half the cup and she shook her head like an otter, then shuddered. “I love it,” she said finally after that little display. “Surely you know the value of citrus aboard a ship.”

He scoffed. “Of course. Oranges. Limes. But I would not dare serve any crew an insipid punch one would find at a girl’s coming-out, with not a drop of spirits. In such volume. And apparently without sugar, too.”

She grinned. “But I have women aboard, and we require lemons for our—”

“Avast, Madam,” Elliott commanded with his hand held up. He knew only enough about a woman’s body to bring her to screaming pleasure. “I ken all I need to ken and have no wish to know more.” He took a measured mouthful of wine and savored it whilst she chuckled.

He relaxed back in the chair to watch her go about a task he had performed every day for most of his career. With a look of pure concentration, she poked a finger in her box of quills, found one that met her pleasure, picked up her penknife and whittled off a shaving or two. She opened another Moorish filigreed box that held her inks and sand, opened a well and her log, dipped the pen, and began to write.

As Elliott observed this, he marveled at her very existence. She was no myth. No selkie, mermaid, siren. She was a woman doing a man’s job, but not any man’s job. Of all the men who made their living at sea, very few of them had the strength to command a ship.

Don’t be fooled by ’er jests an’ whimsies, Cap’n, her lieutenant had told him aside. She ain’t cap’n for nothin’ an’ she’s every inch Dunham’s get. Half of us saw ’er take Skirrow’s ’ead off, an’ we’ve all been in battle widder.

A lock of her peach hair slid across the still-wet page. Without a pause or a care for the spot of black now staining the strand, she smoothed it back behind her ear. After another moment of scratching out words, she stopped and turned away from him to open yet another exquisitely carved box. She took out what looked like an overlarge pocket watch, looked at it carefully, then continued to write.

Feeling a bit disappointed, he could not stay silent. “A watch?”

She did not look up, but a smirk suddenly graced her full mouth—one he wanted to kiss just because it was so lovely. “And what sort of brilliant navigator would attempt to navigate with a watch, you’re thinking.”

“Well, aye,” he grumbled, knowing he had somehow misjudged the situation, but how, he could not begin to deduce.

She offered it to him with one hand whilst she continued to write with the other. “’Tis Harrison’s masterpiece. Well, rather, Kendall’s duplication.”

The world rocked ’neath Elliott’s feet at he stared at chronometer in his hands. Not even he, with his family connections, had been able to obtain one—and his father had exerted no limit of pressure on the Admiralty to get him one.

“The K1,” she added smugly, as if he would not already know.

“How— There is only one in existence and Captain Cook has it.”

“Who can say how many were privately commissioned? I doubt Captain Cook and I have the only two in existence.”

“I see your point.” He turned it over with great reverence, inspecting it. “Fury, would you— That is to say— Did you tell my navigator about this at supper?”

“No. ’Tis the most valuable thing aboard this ship, second only to the ship itself. Very few people know I have it.”

And now Elliott. He cleared his throat. “Ah, well, in that case … ” But there was nothing to do excepting to lay it out to her anyway. “Benjamin is getting on in years, as you noticed—” But that had not stopped the old salt from succumbing to Fury’s charm and monopolizing her attention for the better part of an hour at supper—which fascination had been, thankfully, mutual. “He has asked to be pensioned off once we reach England and I have granted him this request. He has been faithful and loyal to me for many, many years, and it would mean a great deal to him to see this, to hold it, just once before he leaves the sea.”

“You are a good captain to think of him so,” Fury murmured. He looked up into her burnt-sugar eyes, her smile tender, her face plump and soft. “I would not deny him. He deserves great respect. I hope you plan well for him.”

Elliott nodded slowly and gave the chronometer back to Fury. He was about to ask its price when yet another thump on the wall between the captain’s cabin and Kit’s rattled it.

Slightly annoyed at the prospect he might have to listen to that all night, he rumbled, “Madam, why do you allow them to carry on so?”

She scoffed. “I am not their mother, to dictate how they should comport themselves. I only demand they work for their pay and not disrupt the ship’s business.”

“How old are they?”

“I know not how old Kit is—no one does—but his voice only dropped six months ago and he grew overnight, it seems. He is perhaps … fourteen? Fif­teen? Perhaps younger. Who knows? She is barely fifteen.”

And bound to spend her life making babies for some panicked heirless noble facing his own mortality. Elliott snorted. He certainly had no room to pass judgment on that panicked heirless noble—and he had, more often than most, glimpsed the end of his mortality.

But she was still speaking. “ … unfortunate that at his age, Kit knows exactly how to please women—and men—but he seduced her, so for his part, I am simply glad he has found some joy in the act. Most likely this is the first time his participation is voluntary, and because ’tis with a girl his own age whom he likes, I hesitate to set that asunder.”

“And she?”

“Judas,” she drawled, sliding him a wicked glance, “would you deny that having a good lover as one’s first is better than having a bad one?”

He grinned and laughed low in his throat. “Nay,” he purred. “I have very fond recollections of a talented young widow in the neighboring village. She taught me many delightful things.”

An answering grin bloomed upon her face, and in that instant, she looked exactly like her mother. “What did she call you?’

Elliott rolled his eyes. “You’ll not trick any more information out of me, Madam, particularly not my name.”

She huffed. “Well then! Did she bind you and crack a cat ’cross your arse, too?”

“Riding crop.”

Fury burst out laughing. “God’s blood, Judas. What else did she teach you?”

“I’ll demonstrate anon,” he purred. “I doubt very much Kit is as brilliant an instructor as she was.”

She slid him an amused glance. “He is a very kind boy despite his past,” she finally said, “and I know not the worst of it. Truthfully, I am not certain he remembers, so I do not ask.”

Elliott’s amusement seeped away. “But now he is visiting his past upon a young girl.”

She cleared her throat. “Kit knows what he would face at my hand did he ever treat an innocent the way he was treated, but he has never demonstrated interest in anyone until now. In fact, he has never gone ashore since I took him away from Skirrow six years ago. I have been growing quite worried about him.

“As to her, I would have let no one—including Kit—near her did I think she would be harmed. I have no doubt that, once she went ashore, she would find herself at the mercy of some knave with no help in sight. The girl is beautiful, in case it has escaped your notice.”

It had, in fact, escaped his notice.

“’Twould not be long until a man got it into his head to take her, willing or not, and I might not be there to disabuse him of the notion. No one was present to dissuade Rafael from his intentions and I was younger than George. ’Twas only luck I landed in the bed of a kind and generous man.”

Elliott’s eyebrow rose, but with another smirk, she bent back to her log. All he said was, “Thus, here you can watch over both of them.”

“Aye. And control certain aspects,” she muttered absently.

“Such as?”

“Shall I say, there shall be no babes from that girl’s womb whilst she is under my care.”

“I see.”

Fury shrugged as she wrote. “As long as they are happy with each other and not inclined to stray, as long as she minds her sponges and elixirs and caps as I have taught her, there will be less trouble for both of them, either aboard ship or ashore. I shall put a stop to it as soon as I feel it more detrimental than beneficial.”

“Are you almost finished with that, Madam? I have not rutted you since midnight.”

She slid him a glance. “’Tis an à propos description for that beastly bit of business this morn.”

Elliott snorted.

“I beg you one moment more, and then I will rut you.”

Elliott paused whilst she sprinkled sand on the page she had just written. “What of George’s mother?”

“Barely touched her,” Fury mumbled, blowing gently on the ink and sand. “If she has a welt to her name in the morn, I’ll be shocked.”

It was not soon enough that the ink dried sufficient for her to close her log and put away her tools in a careful ritual he found fascinating. She stood, but before he could, she dropped her kimono and straddled him in the chair.

He looked into her whisky eyes that sparkled in the lantern light. He raised a finger and traced the mischievous, lusty smile that had laid him low the moment she appeared in the door of the Bloody Hound. She was the most beguiling woman he had ever met, and he ached for her.

“Now,” she purred, “we may rut.”

---

13

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

CELIA ATE HER FRIDAY nuncheon of shark steak without participating in the rousing discussion her mother and Judas were having concerning the Americans’ grievances with England. Celia had nothing to add, for she knew little of politics. She had a long history with and trusted the men she worked for, and, unlike the other privateers, her real reasons for participating in this little war had nothing to do with profit.

However, her mother was eminently studied in the intricacies of the American concerns, and Judas was equally studied concerning the British ones.

“What do you think, Ce—Jack?”

That was the third time Mary had nearly called her by her name. Fortunately, “see” and “Ce—” sounded exactly alike, and might not be taken as a slip of the tongue.

“Mama, you know I have no thought for it at all,” she said calmly, sitting back and sipping at her coffee.

“Come now, Fury,” Judas rumbled with a teasing smile. “Surely you have some thought else you’d not be spending your energies in this manner.”

She took a deep breath and looked at Judas. “Tell me, Sir. Do you know of any other woman who has the freedom I do?”

“Well, certainly, though it manifests differently.”

“Name one.”

She watched as he thought, his long finger tapping at his lips, lips that had awakened her in the most pleasurable of ways this morn. “A modiste,” he finally said. “A … certain countess I know but will not name.” He raised his eyebrows. “An actress. A courtesan.”

Mary choked on her coffee.

“A modiste,” Celia began, “is subject to the whimsies of her clientele, which is female, whose husbands control their pursestrings. One offense to one client or her husband, and she is suddenly without business. That assumes she also has no other investors in her business, no husband, no children, and all her suppliers are willing to sell her goods directly regardless of the fact that she is a woman.”

“You have the same problems.”

She smiled. “No. I do not. I do not have to sail. I choose to.”

“Ah, but wealth is a different matter. Wealthy women have more choices.”

Celia raised an eyebrow. “Oh? So a young heiress could marry for love? Any woman of wealth could travel the world alone?”

Judas’s smile dipped a bit. “I take your point, but then we come upon the courtesan.”

“Why do I doubt you know anything about the finances and independence of a courtesan, Captain?” Mary asked sweetly.

“Ma’am!” he protested with faux affront, his fingers splayed across his chest. “I am a man of the world!”

“Which is why you were in the Bloody Hound and not the Friars’ Club three blocks inland,” Celia said dryly, hiding her smile behind her coffee cup.

He flashed her a grin. “I take it the Friars’ Club is a bit more exclusive.”

“Aye.”

“And how would you know of it, Madam?”

Her eyebrow rose. “Why, I am a woman of the world, Captain. That is where I go for my amusements.” His mouth dropped open and she grinned. “And when I am finished with my … amusements … I return to a ship I command. And I do not have to masquerade as a man to do so, unlike most women in history, including my bo’sun.”

“You—” He blinked. “Madam, if you have a taste for women, I pray you allow me to watch the next time you go for your amusements.”

She burst out laughing. “It happens that the Friars’ Club—as do several establishments of pleasure—are able to cater to my tastes, which do not include women.”

“And those are … ?”

Celia’s mother cleared her throat and, truly, Celia had no wish to parade her habits in front of her, as it would distress her. Celia arose abruptly and went to her door. “CROFTWOOD!” she bellowed. “PRESENT YOURSELF TO MY CABIN!”

“Aye, Cap’n!”

“My master carpenter,” Celia said as she seated herself, “is the fifth son of an English duke. A duke! Yet he is here, on my ship, and has been under my command since Skirrow hired me. Why is that? Because he has any independence of his own? Nay. He is four times removed from the heirdom.”

“How does that relate to a woman’s independence?”

“You called, Cap’n?”

Celia kicked at the chair next to her. “Aye. Sit. Eat. We are discussing the nature of independence and I would have your opinion.”

“Oh, aye. Thank you, Cap’n.” He sat next to her and helped himself to a plate and food.

“Don’t drink all my lemonade, Croftwood.”

He chuckled and poured himself a tankard of rum.

“Now,” Celia said, “tell Captain Judas about how much independence you, the son of English nobility, have, measured against that which the Americans seek from England.”

He curled his lip behind his tankard and grunted. “None to speak of,” he muttered. “I ran away to the sea to take what I could.”

“You studied at Cambridge?” Judas rumbled.

Croftwood nodded. “My accent gives me away, I suppose. I completed my course. Animal husbandry, of all things. My father wanted me to be his land steward. Good God, but I cannot think of a worse fate, except perhaps marrying that horse-faced heiress out in her third Season.”

“As I recall, you were about to do just that,” Celia said wryly.

“Aye, which is when I decamped from my grand tour in Italy onto the Carnivale. I’m not sure which was worse,” he mused, “but the Carnivale was bound to be less permanent than being leg-shackled to that.”

“So you have as little independence as a woman,” Judas said, flashing Celia a triumphant look.

“Oh, no, Sir,” Croftwood objected. “Women do not go on grand tours. Women do not go to university. Women do not sail, much less become navigators and captains.” He nodded at Celia. “I would sail under no one but her now, but if you had told me, when I was at school or with my chums bedding every woman in Naples, that I would, within two years’ time, choose to sail under the command of a woman, I would have called you out for the insult. ’Twas when I saw what she would do as compared to what other women are allowed to do that I realized perhaps women were no less capable than men. Perhaps some are not as strong, but some men are delicate, also. Even Officer Khan masqueraded as a male, and she is no coward. She just wanted for opportunity.”

“Aye, well, Muslim and Jewish women have even fewer choices than Christian ones,” Celia muttered, “so you were seeing the worst of it anyroad.”

“There is that. But American women! Lord, they’re feisty, but they still do not have the freedom Cap’n Jack and the other women here have. I dare say my horse-faced heiress would rather like this life and I might not mind her so much were she here.”

Celia cast Judas’s triumphant look right back at him, but he simply chuckled.

“Thus, to answer your original question,” Celia finally said, “one of my goals in this endeavor is to see that the Americans have an opportunity for independence, especially their women, who have a great deal more than English ones. I see them—collectively—as no different from an heiress bound to a husband, being his property as much as anything else she brings to the marriage. Or like Adrian here, bound to a name and a future by accident of birth. I want them to have the opportunity to be me. After that, they can sort out their difficulties themselves, the way anyone with newfound independence must do.”

She watched as Judas thought about that for a moment, then nodded his head slowly. “I’ve freed slaves who’ve returned directly to their masters,” he said slowly, “and so have become far more selective in which slaves I free.”

“I have taken a similar tack. Some men—some humans—are so broken they cannot bear freedom, although I do think some could be rebuilt and taught, if one were inclined to spend the time and care.” For some reason, that sparked a memory. “Croftwood, I have not had a chance to ask. Expound on that preposterous story you told me last week in the midst of taking the Lamplight.”

“Oh! Commander Elliott Raxham, righto.”

“Who?” Judas asked.

“Elliott Raxham, the second son of Earl Tavendish. Tried for high treason and acquitted.”

“Acquitted?” Judas drawled. “What brought the charge?”

Celia answered. “Croftwood tells me some nonsense about this British captain who fired on his own fleet.”

“Why would he do that?” Judas asked.

“Because the ship he fired on was preparing to fire on him first,” Croftwood answered. “Commander Raxham prevailed, but was tried for high treason over it, then acquitted.”

“You’re bamming me,” Judas drawled. “A British fleet turning on itself? To what end?”

Croftwood shrugged. “The event was all over the papers, and my father was absolutely livid.”

“At Raxham’s arrest or the fact that he wasn’t executed on the spot?”

Croftwood glanced up at Judas’s gruff question. “At Rear-Admiral Lord Kitteridge, whom everyone believed ordered Raxham to be fired upon.”

Celia was utterly confused. “Believed? They don’t know? Why would an admiral order a captain fire on his fleet commander?”

Adrian sighed and sat back in his chair for a moment, staring vacantly at the larboard bulkhead whilst he thought. “Lord Kitteridge,” he finally began, “is a cruel man, but he is close to the King and so through the years has done many grievous things in his service to the Crown.”

“Worse than Skirrow?

“I gather that,” Croftwood replied, once again attending his meal, “amongst the nobles, he is referred to as Vlad the Impaler.”

“God’s blood.” Even Dunham, not quite as superstitious as most seafarers, was known to cross himself at the mention of Tepes’s name.

He shrugged. “Every so often, Father would return home in a lather over whatever Kitteridge had done that time. But then there was the big one, some scandal that happened when I was still in short pants that involved one of my older brothers. Father thought for a certes that would be the scandal that sank him, but no. It did set several of the Navy’s officers against Kitteridge, who in turn nursed his own grudge against Raxham. Whatever it was, it was kept contained within the walls of Parliament and Kitteridge emerged not only unscathed, but promoted. My father knows what happened, as do the others in Parliament, but he has never spoken of it outside of the House of Lords. That was why he was so furious at Raxham’s arrest. He thought Kitteridge should have been drawn and quartered fifteen years ago.”

Judas snorted. Celia slid him a glance, but said nothing. She turned back to Croftwood. “If Parliament is unhappy with him, then why is he allowed to flourish?”

“Follow the money, Fury,” Judas intoned.

Croftwood was nodding and pointed at Judas. “Aye, just so. The amount of money he has contributed to the Treasury is substantial enough his disgraces are either covered, ignored, or dismissed. There are not enough ranking nobles in the House willing to censure him against his profitability.”

“This Kitteridge— What rank does he hold?”

“He’s a duke and some relation to the King.”

“Was it proven that Kitteridge ordered his own officer’s death?”

“I was just about to leave for the Continent when Commander Raxham was arrested, so I have little knowledge of what happened at trial. Father merely wrote that Raxham had been acquitted, but that it took two years and the best barristers and solicitors the earldom could purchase, which nearly bankrupted the estate. I do know that the commander was cashiered, along with his entire corps of officers. I have to assume there were equal measures of politics afoot on both sides to keep it going so long and for the Raxhams to ultimately prevail.”

Celia pursed her lips, suddenly grateful for the utter simplicity of pirate life. All she had to worry about was life and death, with no governmental machinations getting in her way.

“Were his officers tried for treason, too?”

“Nay. Father told me they were cashiered for testifying on Raxham’s behalf under suspicion of perjury.”

Celia groaned. “And Papa wonders why I sail for the Americans.”

“What happened to Kitteridge?” Judas muttered around his food.

“Father wrote that he was promoted. Again. And should I ever find myself in need of passage home, to take any ship but one commanded by him.”

Celia barked a laugh. “And so you took Skirrow’s.”

Croftwood grinned.

“What is Commander Raxham— His name again—?”

“Elliott,” Judas supplied.

“Elliott—I like that. What is he doing now?”

“I don’t know, but I would assume he went back to Northumberland properly chastened and is permanently rusticating. It was rumored, though, that the two years he spent in Newgate drove him mad.”

“Of course he’s mad. God’s teeth, I was set to chew my way out of the hold after two weeks. If he is not mad, I would deem him the strongest of souls.” Celia snorted. “Well, at least he’s the second son. English aristocracy. Entails. Primogeniture. Forfeiture. Class privilege. Saying nothing of merit or disposition. ’Tis an abomination.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she noted Judas nodding fervent agreement.

“Or sanity,” Celia mumbled as she took another bite. “Because God help a house with a prison-mad earl at the head of it.”

---

14

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

GOD HELP A HOUSE indeed, since Elliott was, in fact, the head of his: fourteenth Earl Tavendish by virtue of the fact that his father and older brother had died in a coaching accident.

Rather, God help him, since he was most definitely not mad.

Enraged, desperate, and betrayed, aye, but not mad.

Elliott sat in his cabin alone, at his table, having pleaded captain’s duties soon after nuncheon had concluded and Croftwood resumed his leisure. Elliott had buried his head in his palms, his hair soaked with the sweat he had been hard-pressed not to wipe away during Croftwood’s recitation.

It would not take long for Fury to make the connection between what she suspected of Elliott’s circumstance and that tale. She seemed inclined toward sympathy, particularly once Kitteridge’s sobriquet was trotted out and her face had lost all its already meager color. Elliott could only hope Croftwood’s account, no matter how accurate, was perfunctory enough for Elliott to avoid unwittingly betraying himself by supplying further details. As long as Croftwood thought Lord Henry still thirteenth Earl Tavendish, Lord Phillip Raxham still the heir, Commander Elliott Raxham still the second son, and Lord Kitteridge still alive, there was less chance the boy could connect Elliott to Judas.

Because if he did … all could be lost. The Crown would strip the title and every asset from them all and cast his family to the wolves. His younger brother and nephew would lose their places at the bar. Elliott’s villagers, tenants, and boarders, his staff in London—everyone associated with the earldom—would suffer greatly for Elliott’s piracy.

His family and select villagers and tenants, who covered his absence so well that no one would connect him to Captain Judas, could be counted upon to keep their counsel. They had far more to lose than he did, as he would suffer the least: If caught, he would simply be executed on the spot.

He had taken such care this past year to leave no one behind who could identify him, until the blockade when he could not turn back to kill every last British sailor still floating in the wreckage and the ones swimming to shore. They were too many and too scattered.

Both Rathbone and Bancroft had been bobbing in the water, casting up for a glimpse—anything—that would give them a clue as to Captain Judas’s identity. He had no way of knowing what they had seen, and thank God he’d had his hair braided and head wrapped.

And now he was becalmed with a woman who could not only identify him by sight, but, given just a few more pieces of information, could put it all together in the blink of an eye.

A series of low thuds reached his ears, then the clang of metal. The Silver Shilling rocked a bit and Elliott arose to lean out his stern windows. Exactly what he had expected: the Mad Hangman, now being grappled to the starboard side of the Thunderstorm. There were shouted commands, greetings, and questions.

He heard Fury’s voice coming from her quarterdeck, though he could not see her. She was speaking quickly, orders mixed with bawdy jests. There ensued a shouted conversation ’twixt Fury and the Hollander, which Elliott could not understand because they were speaking in Dutch. She bellowed something which caused great guffaws to ring out from beyond the Thunderstorm. Once the Mad Hangman was attached to the Thunderstorm, all three ships settled back into the still water, and their crews went about the business of pursuing their pleasures, he ducked back into his cabin.

He looked around as if searching for something to do, or as if he had many things to do of equal importance and he could not decide which to do first.

Yet he allowed his mind to drift.

… went back to Northumberland properly chastened and is permanently rusticating. Elliott did have to chuckle at that. Only one person had ever managed to properly chasten him, which was how he had ended up at sea, where he least wanted to be. In fact, he preferred rustication.

It was rumored, though, that the two years he spent in Newgate drove him mad.

Being confronted with his personal history by American privateers whilst stuck in the middle of the Atlantic had been an utter shock. He had near cast up his accounts at the first mention of Commander Elliott Raxham, but managed to remain aloof and appropriately interested. How, he did not know.

If he is not mad, I would deem him the strongest of souls.

But what shocked him most was his pressing desire to confide in Fury. She would understand and keep his secrets.

Elliott—I like that name …

Or at least, that was what he wanted to believe.

If it were not for his family, he would tell her. But everything he had done from the time he had turned fifteen and been given his instruction as to his duty had been for his family and he would not betray that now by giving in to a romantic impulse. Other than obliging him to a career he did not want, his family had always loved him, always supported him.

Nearly everything Croftwood knew of the matter was true:

His father had bankrupted the earldom to see to his acquittal, had joined with the Duke of Croftwood to foment the anger against Kitteridge in the House of Lords, had kept the politics in play long enough to wear down King’s Counsel. And while his father’s efforts were just recompense for forcing him to a profession he loathed, Elliott still bore the burden of the debt and the rage of injustice. He had known exactly what to do to refill the earldom’s coffers and had no compunction about doing it—with or without his father’s approval.

It was his mother and sister who had become his partners in crime, for they, too, felt his burden and anger; they, too, were as heartbroken and disillusioned as he. Indeed, they had drawn his magistrate brother-in-law, barrister brother, solicitor nephew, and a few key villagers into this conspiracy. They had all gone willingly, their need to survive greater than their fear of discovery.

He was so close—a mere three weeks away from home—to putting this behind him. He could not risk it now. He had learned, in battle, that it was always the worst before the victory, and Elliott could smell his victory on the wind. He would persevere and fight to the end.

Yet … what victory was it if the estate was still in jeopardy of being taken, of the possibility that one day—one day—the army and navy could descend upon Tavendish Grange with orders for the execution of its pirate earl?

In truth, the job would never be finished, not so long as he looked over his shoulder.

Certainly, Elliott had a contingency plan in case of discovery—which would be to take every soul for which the earldom was responsible and flee England. Whether they fled ultimately to America or Argentina depended entirely upon the outcome of the war.

He remembered in vivid, glorious detail how Fury and the Hollander had blown the blockade, the risk they took using fire at such close range, their lives gambled on the tips of uncontrollable arrows in an unpredictable wind. They had been willing to die to clear the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay for those behind them, to die for this cause Fury had only a philosophical interest in.

His eyes narrowed and he wondered if her philosophical interest, so strong in her she was willing to pay for it with her life, was related to whatever order Dunham had given her that so offended her she was willing to die for that, too.

Independence, she said. The opportunity for the Americans to be her and Bataar and the rest of the women aboard her ship, their worth determined by merit alone.

He arose from the table and sought his bunk, his head now pounding from too little sleep, too much rum, and too much thinking.

There were ways to gain his independence from the Crown and the title. He had thought them over innumerably in the last year the same way he had walked the land in Ohio whilst he was in Newgate. He knew what sacrifices he would have to make and he was willing to do so.

The problem was a matter of what sacrifices his family would have to make, how far they were willing to go to do it, and if he were so ungrateful to them he would push them to it to gain his own freedom.

THE SOFT KNOCK on his cabin door awoke him from his doze. “Come,” he rasped.

It opened slowly and a slightly sunburnt face with a black stripe painted across the nose and under whisky eyes peeked around its edge. “Judas?” she murmured.

“Ah, Fury, I was just dreaming of you. Come join me.”

Clothed in buff breeches and a ruffled white shirt open to her navel, she entered and closed the door behind her. Her peachy-pink hair was free and swinging about her hips. Her feet were bare, as he would expect. He had learned to enjoy going barefoot about his ship instead of being confined in boots. Instead of layers of proper Navy uniforms and stiff overcoats heavy with embellishment, he now only wore breeches. Even in the winter, when the sun shone he could doff his coat. He had never had that. The newfound freedom of piracy was thoroughly unfamiliar to him.

“Have I driven you to boredom already?” she asked lightly, but he had sisters and nieces aplenty and was wise in the ways of women. She feared that very thing.

“Nay. I am old. And weary. You, Madam Youth, suck what little life I have left right out of me. And very well, I might add.” He palmed his cotton-covered crotch and began to unbutton the flap. “I beg you suck some more.”

She grinned and plopped down beside him on his bunk. “You are vile.”

“So you insist. What have you there?”

“Games. And rum. Have you finished tending your log?”

“My hand wearied long ago, so for the nonce, you have sole charge of my log. Speaking of vile, what are your tastes that you must visit an exclusive house of ill repute to get your satisfaction?”

“Two men,” she said promptly. “I could not understand why, if a man can bed two women, a woman could not bed two men.” She gave him a significant glance. “At once.”

Elliott stared at her, aghast. He didn’t know whether to laugh or rage. “Ah, Madam, I hope that is not a taste you expect me to indulge you in.”

She waved a hand. “Oh, no. That is not for my lovers. Besides,” she said airily, “there are ways to mimic that, if you are willing.”

His eyebrow rose. “Oh? You expect me to bugger you, then?”

“At some point.”

Elliott released an incredulous laugh.

“Judas, honestly. A man whose cockstand responds so well to pain and practically asks to be tied up and whipped cannot judge a woman for her own peccadilloes.”

“That is not a peccadillo, Madam. That is a perversion.”

“Yours or mine?”

Elliott cast her a broad grin.

She sniffed. “Says he who also requested viewing privileges should I tup a woman.”

“That is right and proper, two women. And then I would join.”

“Where is your birch? I am beginning to feel a need to punish you for your mockery.”

“Whilst you suck me.”

Fury’s grin was everything that was wicked. “Thus we can be vile and perverted together.”

“That was my thought. In fact, there is a game I want to play with you, one I’ll wager you’ve never played before.”

She granted him a mocking scowl. “I have either played all the games or declined to. I doubt you have one I’ve yet to encounter.”

His eyebrows rose even as his grin widened. “It involves your stays.”

Her fake scowl turned into genuine confusion. “My stays?”

His wicked laugh came from deep in his chest. “Ah, so you haven’t. No matter. I shall teach you.”

“Or perhaps we could simply play chess for now.”

Elliott studied her, marveling that he had the interest of a woman such as this, cursing Fate’s whimsy. “One hand giveth and the other taketh away.”

Her brow wrinkled. “What?”

“Nothing. Why have you put tar across your face?”

“’Tis not tar. It is kohl. A cosmetic from Egypt.”

“Ah. And its purpose?”

“It reduces the glare of the sun and water, which a hat alone cannot do. Is this also something you never learned? Like the cats, who do the work of a half dozen men and feed themselves, making it possible to sail with that many fewer men to feed and house? You remarked upon the fact that I look young for a sailor. This one reason why. And Papa has always had some sort of ointment he puts on his face. We both burn badly, you see. He does not care for unnecessary pain, and I am vain enough to want to preserve what little beauty I possess.”

“I find you beautiful and I refuse to revisit that no matter how you beg further compliments.” She smiled, delighted. He would compliment her end­lessly to see that smile. “As to the kohl, the Navy would never allow something so vulgar to tarnish an officer’s uniform.”

She sighed. “’Twould seem to me you Englishmen continually sacrifice practicality for some arbitrary and ineffective propriety. Your army fights in rigid lines, marches through forests clothed in bright red along the most obvious paths, and has not paid its men in months. Your navy gangs press hundreds of unwilling men, leaving their wives and children to starve, which foments rebellion and mutiny, then denies you adequate sustenance and pay. Why do you think we could run the blockade so easily? The watch did not sound the call because it did not care. And we knew that.”

Elliott shrugged. There were many things he would have done as commander had he had the freedom to do so. “If you are expecting a denial, you’ll not hear one from me. That said, you Americans are naught but primitive barbarians.”

She laughed and nudged his body with hers. Even that little bit spoke of comfort he had yet to experience outside his family. “Because aristocratic sophistication wins wars with barbarians, no? Genghis Khan conquered every land he stepped foot upon. Why should we not follow suit if it works?”

“By the bye, is your bo’sun … ?”

“Aye. A distant granddaughter. She is as fierce as any man I have ever fought alongside. I believe Genghis would be proud of her. Now tell me of this young widow who corrupted you at some tender age.”

“Barely sixteen,” he drawled. “’Twas the most wonderful interlude of my existence until now.”

“Were you in love with her?”

Her question brought him up short. Was she jealous? “I am not certain,” he finally said. “How does one measure such a thing at such an age? And now, from such a distance, one thinks, ‘Oh, it could not have possibly been love.’”

She shrugged. “Longevity?”

“When does longevity become simple habit?” he countered. “I would have wed her, had I the opportunity, but then what? What does a landless sixteen-year-old boy have to offer a twenty-two-year-old woman and her child? I am so far from that boy now he may as well be dead and gone.” He paused. “He is, actually, to be frank.”

Fury was quiet for some time and, unlikely though it was, he relished their silence together. It was comforting.

“Habit,” she mused. “Does longevity always disintegrate into habit?”

“I might think so, but how would I know for a certainty? My affaire with the widow lasted the whole of one spring before I was sent to university. I thought I was in love with her and mourned when she wed a man far older than I who had some wealth. Then I met a merchant’s daughter of whom I became quite fond. I looked forward to the marriage bed and teaching her what I had learned.”

She sat up, interested. “Oh? Did she return your affection?”

“Aye, she did indeed. Her father approved, too.”

“What happened then?”

“I was sent to sea.”

Then she slumped a bit. “Oh.”

“You are sad for me?”

She smiled somewhat wryly. “For her, rather.”

That was telling, but Elliott would rather not dwell on that, as he was about to lose a third woman to circumstance just when he had found her.

“And Covarrubias? You said you were younger than George.”

“Fourteen.” She waved a hand. “Every girl falls in love with the first man to seduce her. ’Tis a womanly rite.”

“Have you fallen out of love with him?”

She said nothing for a second or two. “Fall out of love?” she said thoughtfully. “I would not have thought such a thing possible. We are … ” Her lips pursed, then said absently, “I … know not what we are, to be truthful. Mayhap … a habit, now.”

“If he is just a habit, why do you continue with him?”

She slid him a glance. “I told you. He was my first.”

“Women who go on to have seconds, thirds, and fourths do not remain loyal to their firsts.”

“He made me who I am every bit as much as Dunham did,” she said with a sad chuckle, then tipped the bottle of rum. Elliott watched her throat bob and wondered if that was how she looked when she swallowed him. He took the bottle when she offered it, then she leaned toward him and spoke earnestly as if to impart great wisdom. “Mayhap more.”

“You are not fourteen anymore, Madam,” he said softly, looking into those burnt-sugar eyes, raising his hand and stroking her cheek. “Perhaps ’tis time to put away your girlish infatuations bound up in gratitude.”

An odd expression swept across her face in a blink and she sat up straight. “You have no knowledge of the situation, so pray keep your thoughts on that to yourself.”

Elliott did not argue the point. “And number two?”

She bit her bottom lip and, to his shock, her eyes began to glisten. “Ah, he … perished,” she murmured.

“Tell me about him.”

She studied him warily, and he wondered why he’d asked. It was enough to know the man was dead and no threat to Elliott’s pursuit.

“His name was Talaat Khersis,” she said low, then rubbed the corner of her eye with a knuckle. Elliott waited. Not only did he not know the name, he had no idea what nationality it was. “I met him in Morocco,” she continued, either unaware or uncaring of his ignorance. “I married him there, too.”

Elliott’s jaw dropped, and he said the only thing he could think of. “You’re a widow?”

Fury barked a laugh and turned that smile upon him. “’Tis usually what a woman is called once her husband has died, Judas.”

“How old were you then?”

“Five and twenty. He was two score and one.”

Elliott cracked a self-deprecating smile. “You don’t care for young men, do you?”

She snorted. “Not for bedsport lasting beyond a night, no.” One peachy-pink eyebrow rose. “I like well-seasoned men who know how to please a woman and can then carry on a decent conversation afterward.”

“He was Arab?”

“No.”

Her tone indicated that she would not welcome questions in that direction. Now that he thought on it, perhaps he should simply assume that she was not particular about the nationality of the men she bedded. She had grown up in a land where Arab men took women of many lands and might not find such intermingling amiss. To his shock, he did not find that particularly bothersome.

“This was how long ago?”

“Four years now.”

“Isn’t that when you beheaded Skirrow?”

“Aye,” she purred.

Elliott could see how a woman might want to behead the man who’d killed her husband. “Condolences.” She inclined her head in acknowledgment of his offering. “How long were you married?”

“Five months.”

Elliott had to ask, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Do you have any children?”

“Nay.”

Such a woman might dally, but never commit.

“Does Covarrubias know of your husband?” he asked slowly.

“Nay.”

Thank God. “Do you still love him, too?”

Fury’s whisky-colored eyes went cold and her expression was stony. Elliott knew he had gone too far.

“Tell me something,” she said smoothly. “If I loved you enough to leave the sea to wed you, spend the rest of my days with you, would you want to die knowing that my love for you expired when you did? Or that my love was a glamour of gratitude? Or that I was suffering from some … girlish infatuation … that would fade the minute I met the next fascinating man?”

Elliott looked away.

“Nay, I thought not. Clearly you did not love the widow or the merchant’s daughter, else you would not ask such questions.”

“Guilty,” he muttered.

“I have bedded a fair number of men in my time, Judas,” she said matter-of-factly, “both before my marriage and since. I have loved two of those men, and I wed the second a mere fortnight after we met. I will always love my husband. I still love Rafael. But I am not incapable of loving a third man, should I find him worthy of it. Furthermore, I know within hours of meeting and bedding a man that I will or will not fall in love with him. Think on that and then reflect upon why I did not toss you out my window two nights past.”

Elliott had no need to. He knew what she had said, but being the third did not appease him, especially when she was still fucking Covarrubias and grieving her husband.

But who was he to claim her? He was betrothed and had a duty to his family and title. There was no place for Fury in his life.

“To follow that reasoning, then,” he said slowly, “you must choose to fall in love and choose not to fall out of it.”

She was silent for a moment. “’Tis an odd way of looking at it, but aye, I think that is a fair conclusion.”

“And now?”

She granted him that slow smile he would have given his left arm to purchase.

“And now,” she murmured, her voice utter velvet, “I am allowing myself to fall in love with a man who is duty-bound to put me aside. I would rather spend what time I have with him in happier conversation.”

Falling in love with him. Would that he could put aside his duty. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, his chest aching. “More than you can know.”

“I must tell you,” she said matter-of-factly, sliding off the bunk and around his leg until she knelt on the floor between his legs. She took her time with a button on his falls. “You are quite possibly the most handsome man I have ever met. Big. Powerful. Intelligent. Well educated. My taste in men runs true.”

He laughed harshly, then groaned when her knuckles grazed his stiffening rod and tightening bollocks with every button she released. He could barely gather his thoughts. “You have so soon determined not to carry on with me after I wed, then?”

Her laugh was shockingly bitter. “I have no intention of it.”

“It could be done—”

“Judas!” She stopped fussing with his breeches and looked up at him with amazement. “What good does it do me?” His gaze dropped to the creamy skin of her chin and throat, down her chest until the scars began, but it was unfocused. “Could you, confined to whatever protocols you are, wed me, at near nine and twenty, with fifteen years between me and my virginity, no children despite my licentiousness, and still fulfill your duty?”

He opened his mouth to say no, but instead, “I … know of a way—two or three, in fact—but it would require the consent of many people.”

People who were not likely to consent.

“Then the answer is no.” She tsked. His prick had lost all stiffness and her hands lightly gripped the tops of his thighs. “I may be many kinds of wicked,” she said softly, her lovely face turned up to him, “but carrying on an affaire with a man who weds out of duty is not a wickedness that attracts me, for either my own sake or hers.”

He grasped her arms, breaking her contact with his breeches, and leaned forward. “Fury—’tis how it is done all over the realm.”

She rolled her eyes and pried herself out of his hands. “Do not talk to me about how things are done, Judas,” she said with some humor. She stood, then took two steps to snatch one of his shirts off the floor. “I have spent my life doing things that are simply not done, and refusing to do things I’ve been ordered to do.”

“You’re a pirate,” he said, his elbows dropping to his knees. He was desperate for her acquiescence while she was calmly folding his shirt, then laying it on top of his chest. “And you just said you were in love with me.”

“Aye, I’m a pirate and thus, I am only interested in me,” she said flatly, finding another garment he had carelessly cast aside. “’Tis the very hallmark of a pirate.” She eyed him skeptically. “We are thieves and liars. Yet another way you betray yourself, thinking of duty rather than booty.”

He couldn’t muster a laugh for her quip. This moment, every sight, sound, and smell, etched itself upon his mind, branding him with pain. It was as great as he had known when his father had stared him down, daring Elliott to defy him and the path that had been set for him.

Then, Elliott had been a fourteen-year-old boy looking up into the face of a man he adored, fearing his disapproval. Now, he was a thirty-eight-year-old man looking at the woman he was quite sure he wanted for the rest of his days who could not be persuaded to follow her heart.

He was as helpless now as he had been then.

“Your interest in you and my interest in me are at odds.”

“Covarrubias is not true to you,” Elliott rasped.

She waved that off and began to tidy his bookshelves. “Aye, and so what. It is me he returns to, year after year. This,” she continued, looking around, gesturing leisurely with the sensuality of the most expensive courtesan, “with you. ’Tis but a whimsy. An idyll. ’Tis all it can be whilst you are not wed.”

“And after, all my time and attention would be yours.”

“Once you have gotten two sons on her.”

He had no answer for that.

“I have no reason to deny that I am falling in love with you—deliberately, by your logic—and no reason to keep it a secret. But I also have no reason to compete with a woman who has the clear advantage. She will have a contract, and I am unacceptable as a wife, for all I can have naught but your heart.”

“And my heart is not enough,” he growled.

Her eyes narrowed. “I rather hope you would not expect me to abandon my place in Rafael’s bed nor refrain from any perversions wherever I find myself.”

He sucked in an outraged breath, but what could he say in protest? He wanted who she was, and were she not that woman, she would not be with him.

“Aye, I have Rafael’s heart,” she said as she set about alphabetizing his books, “though every beautiful woman in the world has his yard when I am not about.”

“And you tolerate this.”

“How can I not, when he encourages my dalliances?” She swooped to pluck another two books off the floor and examined their spines. “You may ascribe it to girlish infatuation if you wish. But I have also been the wife of a man who showed me what ’tis like to love and have the love of a faithful man. I’ll not be any man’s mistress.” Her head slowly turned until her gaze bored into his. “Not—even—yours.”

“Thus you would deny yourself something you want.”

“Examine your premise, Judas. I will be amputating a limb to keep the gangrene from spreading.”

“My God, Madam!”

“I know what ’tis like to lose a beloved,” she murmured. “If you think the description horrible, ’tis only more proof you have no idea of love. And yet … I am willing to be your lover in spite of our inevitable separation when I know how much it will distress me.”

Elliott stared at her, still appalled by the comparison.

She pointed to the door. “Shall I leave, Captain? If you cannot enjoy the rest of our time together whilst you are not wed, I’d rather not be here at all. We can be uncoupled within the hour.”

It was a challenge. The commander in him would order her out, then order the grappling hooks retrieved. But the duty-bound aristocrat could see the years ahead. If she stayed, he would live with his heartache. If she left, he would live with his heartache and regret the time wasted.

“We have been together little more than a day,” he said low, rubbing his chin, scratching his jaw. He had not shaved yet. “I would we had not had this discussion now.”

Her eyebrow rose. “I would rather have it now and seize what time we have together than be slapped with it when we make port. Tell me now, Judas.”

He dropped his head in his hands. “I can’t,” he muttered. “If you will not agree to— I must have something to take with me into the future. One moment in time that I was truly happy.”

Her brow wrinkled. “You have had so little of it, then?”

“I cannot recall one moment since I went to sea at nineteen.”

“Mm … that is quite sad,” she murmured. He heard her move toward him, then felt her fingers in his hair, running through it gently, tucking it behind his ear, fondling his ear. He shivered. “None?”

“None. I have also never met a woman who— Nay, I should say that I have never had the opportunity to find a woman with whom I could speak so plainly, with so much common knowledge, and so much in sympathy. After the merchant’s daughter, my only female companionship was bought, briefly and cheaply at that. I am happy with my family, I think, but my time with them may count as three years in the last twenty, if I were generous. I believe that if I could never fuck you again, I would still be happy if you are near.”

Her hand stilled in his hair. “I make you happy?”

“Aye.”

“Oh,” she whispered again with what seemed like wonder.

He gazed at her rounded belly riven with scars, up her body to the curve of those pert, lovely, scarred breasts with the nipples that could not pucker and had no feeling, and determined that she would remember him as the man who had made them feel again. Somehow.

Fury’s fingers left his hair and skimmed down his cheek to his jaw. She cupped his chin gently and tilted his head up to look at her, her caramel eyes filled with tears. “Let us set up the chess board, Judas, and I will allow you to describe your peccadilloes whilst I pummel you into the deck.”

She leaned down. He met her mouth, opening it, meeting her tongue, tasting her flavors: lemon and cinnamon and rum. Feeling against his lips the hum in her throat.

“Do not be sure of your advantage, Madam,” he growled as he stood, palming her arse and pressing her body against his as they kissed.

“What shall we wager?” she breathed.

“Anything but our names.”

---

15

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

IT WAS NOT THE FIRST TIME Celia had awakened with a man’s tongue in her quim, but it was so rare it never failed to delight her when it happened.

Judas must have put a pillow under her arse whilst she slept, which had her at a bit of a disadvantage for controlling her sensation. With him, however, her urge to take control was tempered, as she had amply demonstrated their first morning together.

It had been like that with Talaat, too, a feeling of inherent trust she had learned to recognize by its startling absence once she had left Rafael’s bed. Mayhap that trust was how she determined a man’s worth.

Though he had not bound her, he had blindfolded her—and it was a testament to that trust that she didn’t immediately rip the thing off.

She breathed a sigh of luxurious contentment and reached down to dig her fingers in Judas’s silky hair to pull him closer. The faint vibration against her skin betrayed his chuckle. His big hands were wrapped around her thighs and gently pushing, spreading her open, tipping her hips up.

She gasped and arched her back when he sucked her pearl between his lips, then licked. She attempted to close her legs, but his strong hands prohibited it and, in fact, pushed her open wider. Sadly, he withdrew that magical mouth.

“God, yes,” she moaned when a well-oiled glass dildo gently pressed its way into her back passage.

Though he was clearly unpracticed at this, his hesitance to ply the dildo charmed her even while it frustrated her. His hand covered her lower belly and his warm, calloused fingers slipped into her cunt, teasing her, pressing against the front of her sheath, against the hand on her belly, and one thumb caressing her pearl.

“Judas, my God … ”

His chuckle was broader now, a little louder, and far more wicked. She was reaching for her two crises simultaneously, arching her back, whimpering and panting for them to continue to build, to come to her and sweep her away. “Judas! Please!”

His fingers withdrew from her, but before she could protest, another of her toys—a leather one—slipped into her cunt, then out and in, filling her more for the one in her arse—and the fingers of his other hand were pressing more firmly into her mound.

“Harder,” she panted. “Harder, Judas!”

He couldn’t quite overcome his unwillingness to hurt her, but it was enough so that she cried out at her release—both of them, coming in waves, buffeting her unceasingly until the storm scuttled past and she relaxed into the pillows.

Even though she was blindfolded, she opened her eyes and felt for him. There on the bed, what seemed the entirety of her harem toy collection scattered about. Her fingers touched the vial of coconut oil, the set of three solid silver balls, the gold ring that—

“What is that you’re touching?” he asked softly.

She smiled slowly. “Do you have a full cockstand?”

“Aye,” he said gruffly.

“Then this is of no use to you at the moment. I will show you later. I’m rather shocked you don’t know.”

“These things are foreign to me, Madam,” he said with a haughty sniff, “though I can deduce most of their uses. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me a woman who attained adulthood in the land of the harem would have such things.”

Her smile faltered, thinking of the reason why she had them.

“Fury, did I say something wrong?”

“Nay,” she replied softly, reaching for and caressing the hand that still wrapped her thigh. She was still blindfolded, still filled to bursting, and still not feeling burdened to change the situation. “My husband gave most of them to me. I would have never known anything beyond the one dildo I used in a rather perfunctory way had he not been so extraordinarily talented with them. You,” she hastened on, “show great promise, particularly for someone who has never used them.”

She felt the heat of his body as he leaned up over her. The clang of ship’s bells informed her it was nine of the clock in the morning. Other than faint sounds of the most pressing of chores being accomplished, it was quiet.

Her blindfold was removed, with the gentle brush of his knuckles against her face.

The cabin was awash in morning sunlight, and she looked up at him, his powerful, dark body held close over her pale one, and smiled. “And what shall we do about you?”

“Later,” he murmured silkily, “I shall teach you about pain. Mine,” he drawled when her eyes narrowed.

She sniffed. “And you intend to ignore your cockstand until this blessed event?”

“I do. ’Twill heighten the experience.”

She said nothing whilst he heaved himself upward to kneel between her raised knees and carefully withdraw one phallus, then the other, and place them in a pail on the floor. Then he pulled a cloth from another water-filled pail and wrung it out.

He glanced up at her as he began to minister to her. That, too, was some­thing only Rafael and Talaat had done. “How do you stay in control when you take two men?”

She shrugged. “The money. I dare say I pay significantly more for two whores at once than you do.”

“Likely so,” he said absently, his concentration almost fully upon her quim, cleaning her, kneading her.

Caressing her.

She shivered with sensation.

She bit her lip. “But in truth,” she murmured, “the dreadful possibilities are … ”

His glance—oh, those eyes—flickered up to hers and he smirked. “Enticing?” he purred. Damn her tendency to blush. He laughed. “Then dare I draw certain conclusions about your state of arousal at Chesapeake Bay these weeks past?”

That made her laugh against her will. “You may. I was sorely disappointed to find you absent from my cabin when I finally attained my rest.”

He barked an almost humorless laugh. “Ah, I may have indulged you, but then I would have killed you.” He must have caught her bewildered and vague hurt. “Your ship was aflame, Madam,” he explained softly and began to clean her toys with agitated movements. “You couldn’t see it, but I could, and I feared you would die before I had a chance to speak with you.”

“Bed me, rather,” she said wryly, so very touched by his sincerity.

But he shook his head. “Bedding was not then nor is it now my sole desire of you.” He grunted when he reached for the chest in which she kept her dildos, and he carefully put each item in its proper place. She said nothing, watching him pause over one, study the box, move a different item out of the way, and continue packing them as if doing so meant something to him.

It couldn’t mean anything to him. His cabin was inexcusably cluttered, with books and boxes stacked willy-nilly, clothing strewn about. The day before, he had taken off his shirt and thrown it on his bed. It was nothing she wouldn’t have done in a hurry, but it had stayed there for the many hours they played chess. It had been there when they had put the game away, eaten, and gone to bed. It had been there when they’d awakened from their slumber. It had still been there when he had begun to seduce her again, at which time, Celia couldn’t stand it any longer. He had looked on with great amusement as she interrupted his seduction to pluck it out from under him, fold it neatly, and set it atop his clothing chest with the others she had put there.

She watched him arise from the bed and put the chest in its place at the foot of her wardrobe. He returned it to its proper position, with the clasp and hinges positioned just so.

It was when he positioned it the tiniest bit to the left so that it was in its exact spot that she took those last few steps over the cliff and fell in love with him.

---

16

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

ELLIOTT FOUND FURY’S rituals charming—when she was the one performing them. But making sure to respect her as a captain on her ship in this manner would grow tedious very quickly.

“Kit’s the only cabin boy I’ve ever had who could put my things where they belong,” she said softly. “He’s teaching George, but in this respect, she is yet slow. She doesn’t understand its importance to me.”

He dropped on her bed and lay between her thighs, his head on her belly. She stroked his forehead and ran her fingers through his hair, which was one of the most heavenly things he had ever experienced. He yawned. “You do seem rather obsessed of it. How does Kit come to know this?”

“Kit shared my bed from the moment I stepped aboard the Carnivale until I took command. It was the only way I could protect him from Skirrow and his men, who passed him around. He learned my habits very quickly in an effort to please me.”

Elliott’s eyebrows rose. “Your bed?”

“Not in that manner. He, like you, could finally sleep in peace. Do you know: I never heard him speak until I killed Skirrow.”

“Any other captain would have simply taken on more boys,” Elliott pointed out.

She laughed. “Aye, who sought refuge in my cabin eventually. I ordered the bo’sun to vacate his bigger cabin so I could accommodate them all.” She paused. “This ship has more hammock-sharing aboard it than most, I imagine, since I hire women and take on girls as well as boys, but it must be discreet, it must not interfere with ship’s business, and it must not be with the children. When they are old enough, they will experiment for themselves amongst themselves.”

It would be little time now before he was asleep, being coddled as he was by this magnificent woman who commanded a ship in such a foreign way. Then again, her anomaly began with the fact that a female commanded it without benefit of a masquerade.

“Have you ever gone as male?”

She snorted. “Aye, I have, but only when I must, which is not seldom enough. The first time, it was against my will and better judgment. It was not a successful endeavor, if by successful one means that I was mistaken for a boy.”

“What happened?”

“Rafael took me for a girl and promptly took me to bed,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Because he is perverse and reckless, he thought it would be a grand bit of mischief to train a woman to stand in a man’s world and spit in its face. And I will forever be grateful for that.”

Now Elliott could apprehend the reason for her attachment, which did not seem quite so girlish. Perhaps he should show Covarrubias a bit of gratitude himself.

“Surely you can understand the difficulties inherent in continuing such a ruse, and for so many years,” she murmured, still stroking his forehead, running her fingers through his hair. “’Twas far easier to prove my sailing worth as a woman than prove it as a man while also secretly tending to my womanly needs, binding these breasts, and fearing discovery every moment of every day.”

She fell silent whilst she fondled his head and shoulders, caressing, kneading, exploring him with her fingers. Lying in this woman’s arms made him ache with emptiness over one fact: He could not have her. His future was bound up with a woman who, as pertained to his duty, could not legally be Fury. The fact that she refused to be his mistress only put another stake into his gut.

Yet another decision made by someone else, another decree in which he had no choice but to comply.

Elliott prided himself on his ability to foresee and plan for contingencies and enact those plans at a second’s notice. Fury and all the implications of her presence in his life was not a contingency he had planned for.

You’re a pirate.

I am only interested in me … We are thieves and liars.

Kidnapping her was out of the question. That was an assault she would never forgive.

But lying …

An entire scheme bloomed in his mind as he lay in comfortable silence, feeling her skin against his.

Truly, he could see no reason why she should ever know of his marriage. She didn’t know his name and the likelihood of her finding out—even after Croftwood’s tale—was slim. He did have an heir presumptive, after all, and he could simply inform her he had decided to allow that to suffice.

He would tuck his wife away in Northumberland with his sons. Fury would be at sea, in London, or some other port of call he could attain easily.

Aye, that was the way of it: keep them apart and ignorant of each other.

Finally. A choice. One he had created for himself.

“What are you thinking, Judas? You appear so smug I should rather become suspicious.”

He opened his eyes and stirred himself to look up into her face. “I am thinking, Madam, that you are delightful.”

She gave him another one of those pleased, yet shy, smiles. “You’re at half-mast,” she observed most unnecessarily.

“Aye, but there is method in my madness. I told you that.”

She laughed and pushed him aside, then arose to open the box he had so painstakingly put away. She produced the gold ring he had asked about earlier and said, “You may find this helpful.” It took her only a second or two to put her chest to rights again.

He groaned when she touched his yard and closed his eyes again in pure bliss when she slipped it through the ring, then carefully maneuvered one bollock, then the next, also through the ring so that they were comfortably tight against his prick.

This sensation, too, was like nothing he had ever known, and he sighed when she continued to stroke and fondle him.

“I have heard of men who wear these as a matter of course,” she murmured as she worked her magic with her wonderfully calloused but gentle hands. “This is gold, so it is somewhat malleable once it is warmed. I’m told there is a certain ongoing mild pleasure. Once you are fully erect, you will stay that way as long as you please.”

“That is exactly what I wanted, Madam. Why do I not know of this?”

“Why do I not know what you intend to do with my stays?”

“Touché. Is this also something your husband introduced you to?”

Her body stiffened. Slightly. The way it had before when he had referenced her toys. Had he not been in such close observation of her, he might have missed it, then, too.

“Ah … no,” she murmured with slight melancholy.

Then he realized her reaction was not one of having taken offense; it was one of having remembered something that saddened her.

“You miss him,” he said softly.

She nodded. “Very much, aye.” She turned abruptly and crossed her cabin again to pluck her copy of Fanny Hill off the bookshelf. She handed it to him as she plopped herself back into bed. “I saw you reading this yesterday. You may have it, if you wish. I’ve no interest in it.”

“I have one, but thank you. I would have thought this would suit you.”

She snorted. “’Tis the most ridiculous thing I have ever read and possibly the most boring.”

He laughed. “Boring?”

At that, she snatched it away from him again to fan the pages. “I am not a scholar of words, but when I am reading what claims to be an erotic work and my response is to laugh, it must have failed in its purpose.”

“Ah, my love,” he purred, stretching out beside her and propping his head on his hand. “’Tis not meant for women like you who already know and revel in the delights of the flesh. ’Tis for people to experience vicariously and for men to stretch their yards by.”

“Oh ho! Are their yahoo imaginations so lacking they need someone else to narrate their onanism?”

“Read to me,” Elliott growled, “and I will demonstrate its allure.”

Fury sat up, crossed her legs, and opened the book. “‘The brute had, it seems,’” she read haughtily, but unable to hide her amusement, “‘as I afterwards understood, brought on, by his eagerness and struggle, the ultimate period of his hot fit of lust, which his power was too short-lived to carry him through the full execution of; of which my thighs and linen received the effusion.’”

“Aye? What is your point?”

“’Tis an awful lot of words to say he came too quickly and spilt his seed on her legs. ‘Hot fit of lust,’ indeed.”

Elliott could barely contain his grin. “Aye, but his villainy is established by the fact that he could not bring her to climax before himself. Hence, he is inferior. A virile and attractive man would not have done that.”

She looked at him flatly. “The word ‘brute’ serves the purpose.”

“The rest is figurative.”

“Judas, if you deny you have done this very thing, I shall whack you in the head. You all do it, and you all cannot be villains.”

He began to laugh and flopped onto his back. He waved a hand. “Continue.”

The slight breeze from the flipping of pages was cool and tinged with the scent of lavender from the oil he had used to soothe her arse.

“‘But every thing must have an end,’” she read. “Does this inane prose end? ‘A motion made by this angelic youth, in the listlessness of going off sleep, replaced his shirt and the bed clothes in a posture that shut up that treasury from longer view. I lay down then, and carrying my hands to that part of me in which the objects just seen had begun to raise a mutiny, that prevailed over the smart of them, my fingers now opened themselves an easy passage; but long I had not time to consider the wide difference there, between the maid and the now finished woman—’ God’s teeth! Does this woman not take a breath? She frigged herself. Why can she not just say that?”

Elliott was near to lost in laughter. “Oh, Fury. ‘She frigged herself’ does not excite anyone.”

“It does not excite me the way ’tis written! That is my entire point!”

“And yet, here we are, discussing it.”

“Look here, this phrase, ‘ … which the objects just seen had begun to raise a mutiny … ’ I dare say he does not know the meaning of the word ‘mutiny.’”

“Do not pretend to thickheadedness, Madam. You know exactly what he means. You just find it overwrought.”

“I do! ’Tis what makes me laugh.” She read to herself for a while, then giggled. “Oh, this: ‘ … where the narrowness no longer put me to intolerable pain, and afforded my lover no more difficulty than what heightened his pleasure, in the strict embrace of that tender, warm sheath—’ ’Tis a cunt, you nincompoop.” Elliott burst out laughing, but she continued to read. “‘—round the instrument it was so delicately adjusted to—’ Cock. ‘—and which now cased home, so gorged me with pleasure, that it perfectly suffocated me and took away my breath; then the killing thrusts!’” Fury squealed with laughter. “Killing thrusts! Lord above. ‘—the unnumbered kisses! every one of which was a joy inexpressible—’”

“That may be how George thinks of it,” Elliott said dryly.

Fury squealed again and fell over on the bed, laughing. “I’m sure. But does she think of it in those words?”

“Who knows what latent poetry lurks inside our breasts?”

She did indeed whack him then, on the arm, and not hard. “You are mocking my mockery. Cease that.” She sat up again. “‘—and that joy lost in a crowd of yet greater blisses! But this was a disorder too violent in nature to last long: the vessels, so stirred and intensely heated, soon boiled over, and for that time put out the fire—’ Disorders! Vessels! Boilings over!”

Elliott, in fact, ceased listening to her at all so that he could watch her amusement bubble. He loved the way she read in such an exaggerated manner to emphasize her point. He loved her laugh, rich but delicate. And she was squealing like a girl.

A woman who had beheaded her captain with a battle axe in one stroke—giggling.

“Judas! Attend! Only a man would write something this preposterous.”

He chuckled. “It was an experiment, of sorts. Cleland wanted to write an erotic work without using vulgarities, which he accomplished, though not to the courts’ satisfaction.”

She stared at him. “Oh, aye? But ‘ … the engine of love assaults … ’? Inex­cusable.”

“It has an unintentional poetry about it.”

“Unintentional, you say?”

“Aye. I would even go so far as to say ’tis rather an accident.”

“‘Engine of love assaults!’ There cannot possibly be a more absurd phrase in all of this book than ‘engine of love assaults.’”

There she went again, off into squeals of laughter. “And—oh, look—” she said between breaths. ‘Violent agitations … wondrous treasure bag of nature’s sweets—’ Bollocks, for God’s sake and I’ve not had a sweet one in my mouth yet. ‘ … ran directly upon the flaming point of this weapon of pleasure, which she staked herself upon, up pierced, and infixed to the extremest hair breadth of it.’” That sent her into paroxysms so much that she could not catch a breath for several minutes, her face red, a dimple carving deep into her cheek, tears streaming down her face. He could do naught but wait for her to compose herself. “By all that’s holy,” she gasped, “this man is an idiot.”

“He is not necessarily an idiot. He is bitter, which is actually quite evident in the work.”

“How come you by this opinion? Do you know the man?”

“I do not, but I did hear his drunken rantings in a tavern once. Do you know of better material that serves the purpose?”

“Its purpose is to make me laugh, I am convinced of it. Do you not find this book humorous?”

He grinned. “In parts.”

“Is your yahoo imagination so lacking you need to be led to your climax by ridiculous prose?”

Elliott dropped his hand to Fury’s knee and stroked upward to her quim, caressing lightly, opening her folds leisurely whilst looking. The hair of her mound was a flame of orange and soft like a cat’s fur. He smirked at the comparison.

“What is so funny about my tender, warm sheath, Sir? My vessel, if you will.” She held the book up so she could watch him fondle her.

“Petting your cat, my love,” he said huskily, feeling his yard begin to stiffen and reminding him there was a ring around it. He slipped two fingers inside her, and chuckled when she moaned. Giggled. Sighed. “I need no words when there is a quim in front of me in which I can bury my engine of love assaults.”

She screeched with laughter once again, and it occurred to Elliott that she was far too easily distracted. First his clutter and now this book.

Yet he couldn’t help grinning. Her face lit up when she laughed. Joy surrounded her when she smiled. The sly glances spoke of jests shared solely between the two of them and mischief yet to be wrought.

“Have you finished with your screeching, Madam, so that I may assault you with my engine of love and deliver unto you killing thrusts and violent agitations?”

“No— No— Oh— Can’t … stop … laughing … ”

He reached up to grasp the back of her neck and pull her down to him for a kiss. Though she grinned against his lips and giggled into his mouth, soon enough he had effectively quelled her amusement into desire.

Elliott took the book from her and, with the flick of a wrist, tossed the book over his shoulder. He tugged at her leg and lay flat on his back, urging her to cover him.

She started when he positioned her hips over his and brought her down on his prick. “I thought you said—”

“I now want to see how well this vaunted ring works to enhance my engine of love assaults.”

Her eyes narrowed as she lifted herself off him. “Oh, no,” she purred, standing to the side of the bunk in all her naked glory, her feet spread, her hands on her hips as if she were on her quarterdeck bellowing commands. “You’ll wear it all afternoon and evening.”

He smirked. “Aye, I’ll take that challenge.”

“And we are invited to the Mad Hangman for supper with Maarten and Catherine. Just the four of us.”

“Madam! Do you mean to say I must suffer through social niceties with this thing ’round my cod?”

“Aye, and in formal custom, no less.”

She was going to be the death of him, but he decided to take her dare. “Aye, but a formal toilette for you requires stays, does it not?”

“And there it is again. What is this game with my stays that has you so fascinated?”

He grinned. “You’ll see.”

---

17

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

THE SILVER SHILLING’s bo’sun’s mate (a valet by profession before being impressed aboard the HMS Iphigenia) (though not by Elliott) (who was also extraordinarily talented at firing a swivel) fussed over Elliott’s cravat as if the success of his wedding depended upon it. He had no looking glass and thus must trust Piefke and his assessment.

“You look quite fine, Sir,” Piefke finally announced with some gravity. “You will be sure to impress the lady.”

Lady.

He had not thought of Fury as a lady. “Lady Jacqueline Tavendish,” Elliott whispered, though not softly enough, because he caught Piefke’s quickly hidden amusement. No, he must leave off thinking such things. It was not possible, and Elliott had the best plan he could muster under the circumstances. He must become satisfied with it.

“These togs are quite spare, Piefke. Are you certain of them?”

He sniffed, affronted. “I believe you are better served without excessive ornamentation, Sir.” Then he leveled a significant and bitter glance at him. “You left off ornamentation six years ago. We all did.”

Ah, yes. At his arrest, during which every medal, stripe, and epaulette he and his officers had ever earned and worn were stripped from them all.

“I am not the only one who prefers the pirate’s uniform, then,” Elliott murmured, looking down his body, unable to take a true measure of his appearance. He had forgotten how it felt to be accountable for his sartorial choices.

“The Lady Captain Fury cannot help but approve, Sir,” Piefke murmured.

“We can hope.”

Elliott had been hard-pressed to hide his unusual jewelry from Piefke, but managed. Barely. He had been perpetually at quarter-mast ever since Fury had tossed him out of her cabin to dress. His waistcoat was long enough to hide the fact that he was still a bit stiff—and he did not mind the ongoing sensation at all.

Still, he was nervous. It had been more than twenty years since he had been in Society, and the last time he had worn any type of formal dress was in the House of Lords the year before, which no one saw but his fellow nobles. The fact that he possessed this suit of clothing spoke more to Piefke’s pride in his rightful occupation than any desire on Elliott’s part to attend ton soirées.

“Shall I put your cabin to rights while you are gone, Cap’n?”

Elliott looked around, but saw nothing wrong with it. The floor was relatively clear. Everything was secure. His bunk was a tangle, though.

“Is it that bad?” he asked, bemused. “Fury does not find it to her liking, but I cannot see—”

“I wouldn’t bring a lady here, Sir.”

He sighed. “If it will make her happy, do what you will.”

He left his cabin and swung down to her deck. He popped down the hatch just six feet in front of her cabin door. Like a smitten boy, he hesitated before he knocked.

But his nervousness disappeared as soon as Fury opened her door.

“Almighty God,” he whispered, thoroughly awestruck.

She was a vision in mint silk, heavily embroidered with peach flowers and dark green leaves, her stomacher a work of needle art. Her décolletage was low, the nipples of her already magnificent breasts near to bursting out of the peach-piped edging. It was then he noticed that her stomacher was embroidered in the pattern and color of her scars, to make her ridged flesh part of her gown.

Her hair was elaborately dressed, not powdered nor starched, but with green ribbons and strings of pearls woven throughout the high-piled curls. She wore an exquisitely cut emerald at her throat and equally lovely ones bobbed from her ears.

She raised her closed fan to her breast and clasped it with the opposite hand, revealing another emerald on her middle finger.

“Judas?” she asked in a small voice.

His gaze met hers. “You look … ” he whispered. Though he dabbled, he was an execrable poet and there stood the loveliest woman he had ever met. He could barely manage to speak at all. “My God, Madam! I never would have imagined … ”

He could speak no more, for he had forgotten how.

“Aye, now you know what Dunham looks like gowned,” she said bitingly after he had stared, apparently, for quite a while.

Elliott was shocked into a laugh and offered his arm. “Your hoops are absent, I see,” he drawled as he took the three steps to the hatch ladder.

She sniffed and began to climb. “I made do with hip and bum rolls. Six-foot panniers do not fit through a hatch so well.”

“I told you I would not lavish more praises upon your beauty, no matter how you begged.”

“I did not realize I had done so,” she said haughtily when he heaved himself up through the hole. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she was glaring at him, but everyone else was gaping at her.

The ships had quieted and his mouth twitched when he again offered her his arm for the seven steps it would take them to reach the Mad Hangman’s ladder, but she looked over her shoulder and called, “Oh, quit your gawping. You act like you’ve never seen a lady before.”

“Not that one!” bellowed someone from the Silver Shilling.

She turned back to Elliott with a pleased grin.

Soon they were directed to the Mad Hangman’s captain’s cabin, which was bigger than Fury’s, almost as big as Elliott’s, nicely appointed, the bed finely crafted, and all arranged for the cozy comfort of two.

He shook the Hollander’s hand, then made a leg to the missus, who was as exquisitely turned out as Fury. “Catherine,” she said warmly.

“Pleased.”

As they were seated, Elliott slid a glance at the confection of a captain by his side and wondered what it might be like to sail on the same ship with her, sharing the captain’s cabin, being in sympathy.

But no. Elliott could not think of that if he wished to accustom himself to his fate.

The cuisine and wine were Dutch, as was most of everything—and everyone—aboard the Mad Hangman. The Hollander had worked his way up from an eight-year-old ship’s boy to captain of a Dutch East India Company ship, until now he was a large stakeholder. He liked to sail, he answered in response to Elliott’s questioning, but his foray into privateering for the Americans was at once a respectful nod to his wife’s long American heritage and loyalties, and a way to redress his grievances with the British government.

“Which are … ?” Elliott asked.

His bushy blond eyebrow rose. “Are you prepared to tell us yours, Judas?”

Elliott smirked his answer. The Hollander didn’t trust him, and that was all to the better.

He was in the middle of his sixth decade, a fellow whose bluster was of the warm and inviting sort. His hair was still a youthful blond, though the lines on his face and the gray in his beard betrayed him. His wife looked far younger than she was but, Elliott learned, had given the man four children over their thirty years together, one of whom—their eldest son—had perished.

The glint in the Hollander’s eye when he mentioned it answered Elliott’s question. He had never been able to think of a better reason than his own for revenge, but there it was.

The old captain and Fury were at utter ease with each other, owing in no small part, Elliott thought, to the fact that he did not treat her as anything but an equal, no matter the difference in their age or sex.

“You and Dunham are friends then?” he asked.

Hollander shook his head. “Not friends. Acquaintances. I would tire of him soon enough did I spend more than a night drinking with him.”

“They try to outwit each other with their tall tales,” Fury said dryly. “They frustrate each other with their inability to top the other and would perish from lack of sleep in the attempt.”

The Hollander laughed. Catherine smiled. Fury smirked.

And Elliott felt right at home.

The conversation was light, calm, and erudite. Once a dessert of a fruit tart—a vlaai, Fury informed him (then was obliged to spell it for him)—was served, the discussion turned to business.

The Hollander had grown comfortable with Elliott, which was not attributable to the wine. The two of them spoke for quite a while before Elliott noticed the ladies were silent. He looked to Fury, but she waved a hand.

“I have no head for this,” she said airily with an equally airy wave of a hand.

“Nor I,” Catherine admitted with a grimace. “Mary shames me.”

Elliott looked around questioningly.

“Mary served as my clerk for several years,” the man said gruffly, then glared at Fury. “Until some upstart privateer stole her from me.”

Fury snickered. “You got a navigator in return.” She looked at Elliott. “When we sail together, he doesn’t bother. He simply follows me and takes the time and weather signals my crew sends him.”

The Hollander grunted. “She’s the one with the timepiece. There is nothing better than that.”

Indeed there was not.

Elliott almost started when he felt the slightest caress on his inner thigh, then realized how close he and Fury were sitting. He glanced at her, but she appeared to be paying no attention to anything. In fact, she looked far away, as if she were in some stupor.

“Fury?”

She graced him with those whisky eyes brimming with lust and stroked his leg again. Unerringly, she found his prick and pressed against the ring.

The Hollander cleared his throat and stood. Elliott followed suit with as much aplomb as he could manage, thanked them with every major and minor courtesy ingrained into him as both the son of an earl and an officer in His Majesty’s Navy, and escorted Fury out.

“And now,” he whispered in her ear as they made their way back to her cabin. Her only response was to shiver. “I shall teach you my little game.”

---

18

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

IF CELIA THOUGHT JUDAS was handsome in breeches or, better yet, the altogether, he was breathtaking in a formal suit of clothing. He wore a silver-embroidered black brocade waistcoat under a black velvet coat. Black velvet breeches clung to his strong thighs. He had a modest fall of white silver-shot lace at his throat and wrists, white stockings, and on his feet were black leather pumps with silver heels as high as hers. His silver-streaked black hair was pulled back, tied neatly with a silver ribbon.

It was all she could do to keep her hands away from him, knowing what he was wearing around his cock, but most especially after he had looked at her so … worshipfully.

She had never struck a man dumb before.

Despite the temptation, however, she refrained from touching him again until they had returned to her cabin and the door was closed—

—at which point, Celia shoved him back against the door and crushed his mouth with hers.

He needed no encouragement to press his thumbs into her stomacher and pull down just enough for her nipples to pop out of her bodice and rest upon the piping.

He dove for the left one, the most damaged. Celia panted and dropped her head back, pressing him to her. She couldn’t feel his mouth or teeth, but his hair bunched in her fist and the knowledge that he wanted to pay homage to her scars aroused her further.

“Take off your gown,” he growled against her breast. “Leave your stays on.”

“But I—” she whispered helplessly, then stumbled backward when he straightened. He crossed the cabin to snatch her dagger off the bulkhead above her pillow, and in two steps he was in front of her.

“—can’t … ”

With two skillful slashes, her overdress was cut from her stomacher and fell off her arms, the weight of the dress at the back of the neck unable to be supported.

“Take it off,” he snarled, throwing the dagger on the table.

She stared between him and the dagger, not sure she should trust him in this … state … whatever it was. Granted, he had taken her before and she had admitted that she liked it, but certainly she did not care to make a habit of it.

Before she could decide the matter, he stepped behind her and pulled her overdress off, nearly taking her arms with it. Pounds of silk whooshed through the air and landed with a plop on her bunk, leaving her in her stays, shift, rolls, and heavy silk underskirt.

She jumped when he pressed his mouth to the back of her neck, licking, sucking … nibbling. She felt his knuckles brushing against her back.

Testing her.

His lips found their way to her ear and his rigid cock pressed against her arse. “Suck in.”

She did and gasped when her laces tightened. “Judas! I can’t breathe.”

“If you can talk, you can breathe. Suck in.”

She did. “Oh!” she choked. “Don’t … like … game.”

“You will,” he said, his voice filled with wicked delight as he nudged her toward the table. “Now,” he purred in her ear, “shall we see if that cat is as ready as it was when you decided to fondle me under the Hollander’s table?”

Celia could barely breathe, much less think when he shoved her over the table and threw her skirt and shift up. Her hips and arse swayed this way and that whilst he sliced her rolls away.

Then he touched her …

She moaned and collapsed into the table, helpless, weak, nearly unable to breathe, his clever fingers sliding easily, oh, so easily, into her.

With her upper body spread out across the table and her cheek against the smooth wood, she vaguely wondered why she was allowing this and if she could stop him from killing her and why she wanted him inside her right now.

He spread her legs apart, pressing against her, the velvet of his breeches caressing her.

Black spots began to float in her eyes—

She closed them. “Fuck me,” she whispered.

“Tsk tsk tsk. You can still talk.”

The feel of his fingers over her quim was more exquisite than she had ever known, the way his rough thumb flicked her pearl, the way palmed one of her arse cheeks, the way he—

—drove into her.

“Mrrrmph.” In her head, she screamed it.

He leaned over her, pressing her into the table, taking the last of her breath. She began to float a little.

But her quim was grasping for every violent stroke even as she lay suffocating under his body, trussed up in her stays like a Christmas goose, bent over her chart table being fucked to a fare-thee-well.

Breath or climax.

Climax or breath.

She ceased to think.

Her stays popped open.

She screamed when she climaxed, dizzy, the sudden rush of air into her lungs and Judas’s hand against her button together doing—something!— What?! Lord God above, what?!

Dizzy, so dizzy.

She couldn’t get enough of him, pounding into her whilst his thumbs caressed the insides of her thighs and the folds of her quim that would have otherwise been neglected. But she didn’t have the strength to meet him.

“Augh,” he gritted, fisting his hand in her carefully coifed hair to both pull her head back and pull himself forward. They were connected tightly, as if they had been made for each other, but Celia may have been able to say that for any well-endowed male she’d tupped.

At the moment, she couldn’t remember.

“Judas,” she panted, reaching to supply herself with the air of which she had been deprived.

He pulled her head back and thrust once more. Twice. With the third, she climaxed again.

Unexpected, she simply cried out, caught as she was between Judas’s big body and her table, between his cock impaling her and his mouth doing those wicked things to her shoulder and neck.

He released her hair and she collapsed on the table, panting.

“Did you like that game, my love?” he whispered in her ear. Nibbled on it.

“No,” she gasped. “Yes. I … ”

“You did.”

“Not—enough to—do it—again.”

“A little too much risk for you?”

She nodded slowly. “What—was—that?”

“It has no name that I know,” he replied, and she was gratified now to hear him panting, too. He was still inside her, still hard. He rose slowly away from her body, his hands braced on either side of her. His lovely black-and-silver hair fell around her like soft willow branches. His chest heaved and he lowered his head until his forehead was against her ear. “’Tis usually done by strangling.”

She panted. “’Twould seem to me,” she whispered, now regaining her breath without the stays, without his body pressing her into the wood, “too easy to make a fatal error. I’d rather not die in such a humiliating position, no matter the pleasure to be had.”

He chuckled a bit. Shakily. And withdrew from her.

She closed her eyes.

Her legs were trembling and she did not know if she had the strength to keep her feet.

The cool air upon her slick quim and thighs made her whimper again, for relief, for anything that would assuage the need she still had.

“’Tis an aphrodisiac,” came his disembodied voice from somewhere behind her. “I have heard of people—men, mostly—becoming attached to the play, as some do to drink.”

She could certainly see why. Those releases had been like nothing she had known. Now instead of being caught between breath and climax, she was caught between the need for sleep and the yearning for another climax.

“Have you?” She could barely manage the breath it took to ask the question, but was too curious not to try.

“Once. It was enough for me, and I drew the same conclusion you did. I’ve no wish for my family to be forced to lay me in an unconsecrated grave.” His voice was drawing nearer. “If you had two mirrors,” he said softly from above her, “I would show you how you look, spread out for me, wet all the way down to your knees. Your stockings and garters, your arse pink, your skirts askew.”

“Again,” she whispered. “Please.”

He chuckled. “Ah, and you know I can because I have this instrument of exquisite torture on my yard.”

“Aye,” she breathed.

“I like it,” he purred, stepping behind her and sliding into her once more.

Celia moaned, then sighed when he began to move slowly in and out, the fingers of his large hands digging into her hips and pulling her to him. She couldn’t help him, couldn’t participate in her own need. She was too weak.

Every slide of his cock, every brush of his velvet breeches, every tiny pain from his fingertips, every growl as he finally spent …

She cried out one more time, which turned into helpless weeping—

—which continued even as a soft, warm, wet cloth touched her quim and her thighs and the faint scent of her soap touched her nostrils. When something slithered over her skin only to be massaged in by strong, careful hands, releasing the odor of lavender. When strong arms carefully lifted her from the table, turned her around, and lifted her before setting her on her bunk. When she was gently undressed until naught remained but her stockings and ribbon garters.

He was on his knees between her legs and Celia fell upon him to sob, feeling the silver embroidery on her cheek, the silk of his hair between her fingers, the brush of his hands against her back.

“How did you like that game, my love?”

“It was—astonishing,” she hiccupped, then wiped her nose on her hand. “If you—do it—again—I’ll kill you.”

---

19

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

ON SUNDAY, GEORGE entered the cabin, again without knocking, but quietly this time and with breakfast.

From under shuttered eyelids, Elliott watched her set out the food, humming to herself and smiling as if she had just divined the meaning of life. Indeed, she probably thought she had, Elliott supposed. The girl was in love. In his opinion, nothing good could come of allowing George and Kit’s shipboard trysting to continue, but it was Fury’s business and he would not mind it.

From where Fury still lay against Elliott’s side, he felt her breathing and heartbeat quicken apace with awakening, but she did not stir or open her eyes.

George left as quietly as she had come and done her duty, but then Fury’s mother sauntered in and said, “Good morning, children.”

Fury groaned. “Go away, Mama. Isn’t there some young buck aboard the Silver Shilling who might interest you?”

“Too many to choose from.”

“An old one, mayhap?”

“If I wanted an old one, I’d have gone with your father.”

Elliott chuckled.

“Go find something else to do, then. Go! You are off duty. I forbid you to work. There. That is your order.”

But, as mothers will do, she ignored Fury and sat down to breakfast. “Will you sing for us today?”

“Will you go away?”

“Aye, sing,” Elliott croaked, his voice tight from hours of disuse.

“She sings like an angel,” Mary sighed. “If there is one thing That Man did right, it was discerning her voice and seeing it trained.”

“Mother, please … “

Mary cast Elliott a sly glance and purred, “I like to see her all aflutter over you.”

“Mother!”

That surprised a laugh out of Elliott, and his grin widened at the flush that now stained Fury’s face. “Aflutter?”

“She laughed when she found her figurehead gone.”

“Mother,” Fury gritted.

Elliott leaned down to catch Fury’s glance, but she pressed her face into his ribs. “You laughed?”

Fury slowly looked up at him, her eyes narrowed, and drawled, “I did, my lord.”

Though they were both raw from that delicious game they had played hours ago, his yard roused for her again, simply for this little threat, which delighted and excited him at once.

Officer Mary cleared her throat when neither he nor Fury would look away first. “I apologize. I did not mean to provoke a spat. Besides, Captain Judas,” she continued, and rapped her knuckles on the table to direct Elliott’s attention toward her, “I think I might like you.”

“Congratulations” Fury muttered. “You’ve the approval of both my parents.”

That shocked him. “After that brawl?”

“He mentioned that he did not object to you.”

“Does he object to That Man?” Mary asked, her words mordant. The undercurrent of stories untold running between Fury and her mother was thick.

“You know very good and well he does, Mother. Now will you go?”

Officer Mary balled up her linen and arose with a huff. The cabin door opened and closed with a bang.

Fury growled and sat up. “Oh! Sometimes she treads too close to … to things that should not be spoken of.”

“Why was that too close?” he asked gently, smoothing a finger along her col­larbone.

“It just was,” she said with a genuine pout, but then her righteous indig­nation must have fled because she slumped. “I am not used to having a mother,” she muttered. “She is not used to having a daughter. Having her here has been more difficult than either of us had imagined.”

“Do you regret it?” he asked quietly.

“Oh, no!” she denied with wide eyes. “Never. ’Tis true I would rather she be with Papa, but that is simply a child’s longing for her parents to be together. It is— Well, we have too many years to make up and both of us are people we wish the other had not become. There are some things she would rather not know about me, and the reverse.”

Elliott nodded. “Where is your home?”

“I have no home,” she snapped.

Her voice was thick with bitterness, and Elliott did not know what to say. He had a home. No matter how long he had been at sea, he had a wonderful place to return to with wonderful people who loved him.

“Where is your birthplace, then?” he asked carefully.

“Philadelphia.”

“You don’t consider the Thunderstorm your home?”

“Whisht! Why would I? It can sink. All this can be gone with one lightning strike. The Iron Maiden is the third one Papa has had. The first two sank in storms.”

“Surely you shared a home with your husband?”

“Two, actually. One in Marrakech and one in Casa Blanca. But … I cannot go back.”

Elliott looked up at her for a long time, intending to ask her why, but she would not meet his eyes and, indeed, arose and swept that swath of red silk around her, cinching it with a saffron sash. She plopped down at her breakfast and gestured impatiently at the chair next to her.

He swung his legs out of the bunk and stood slowly, then stretched, deliberately putting himself on display for her—then smirked when she relaxed back in her chair to watch with undisguised appreciation.

Elliott was shocked at how much he loved the way she looked at his body. Oh, aye, women aplenty had ogled him from the moment he had attained his height. He had exploited it with abandon as soon as he could, but he had never been particularly vain; his appearance was a means to attain the beds of the most beautiful women available.

But this woman’s obvious delight in looking at his body fed his previously unexplored vanity in ways he had never imagined. Her attention was as palpable and arousing as her touch.

“You’re a lusty wench, Fury,” he murmured as he came down out of his stretch.

“That I am,” she said lightly, now feigning attention on her plate, but huffed when he wrapped the sheet around his waist. It seemed almost no one on this ship knocked on Fury’s door, and whilst he did not mind posing for her, he was not in the habit of going about in the altogether where anyone could see him.

“Why can you not go back?” he asked once he’d seated and piled his dishes high with yet more delectable food.

“Every Ottoman sailor in the Mediterranean wants me dead.”

Elliott blinked. “Surely that’s an exaggeration, Madam.”

She shook her head slowly. “How much do you know about Robert Skirrow?”

“He was cruel. He was cashiered from the British Navy for insubordination. The Carnivale was a slaver. And he died in a very … unconventional … manner.”

That made her snicker. “Aye, well. He was despised and feared by the Muslim sailors—pirate, slaver, merchant—it didn’t matter. He hated them and would abandon better prey in favor of Ottomans. He slaughtered or enslaved every one he encountered.”

“Why would you sail with a man like that?” he asked quietly.

She snorted. “And do what? Become a whore?”

Elliott flinched.

“’Tis better to rule in hell than serve in heaven,” she muttered.

Elliott snorted, wondering if she had somehow overheard what he had said to Georgina not two days ago.

“I was an armed white infidel female alone in Ottoman territory with no home, no money, no veils, no male family members to escort me, and dressed like a man. Amongst those captains who might have taken pity on me, I had a bit of a reputation for insubordination, and would not hire me. Smitty had heard rumors I was in Cairo and came looking to hire me, since their last navigator had left for a better captain. Skirrow knew I was trouble, but he had need of me and was not so stupid that he would harm his last means of finding his way around the ocean.” She shrugged. “If he stayed ashore, he would be a dead man within the week. He had to sail, but he could not pick out a constellation to save his life. ’Twas why he was desperate enough to hire a woman.”

“Did he touch you?”

Fury had bent to sip at her soup, but her lashes fluttered up. “Rape me?”

He nodded.

Fury snorted in derision. “There are a thousand reasons that bilge rat deserved to die, but that is not one of them. And lose the only thing standing between him and his enemies? No. How do you think I could protect all the ship’s boys from him?”

“Then why did he kill your husband?”

Her jaw began to grind and she paid more attention to her meal. “He killed my husband,” she said low, “to take away my reason for leaving him without a competent navigator, and to frighten me into doing his bidding.”

“He must have been desperate to do such a thing. Did you not think it a possibility?”

“Talaat was a very powerful man,” Fury said calmly enough, but her grip on her spoon was deathly. “We—nay, I—did not believe anyone would be so bold as to attack him. Thus, it was … the easiest thing in the world to do.”

Elliott’s mouth pursed.

“I … Sometimes, I think perhaps I was the worst thing that ever happened to him.”

So her grief was wrapped up in guilt. He took a deep breath and released it on a long, slow whoosh. “It was not a simple murder, was it?”

She laughed caustically and wiped her eye with her linen. “Ah, no. It was Skirrow, who was incapable of a simple murder anyroad. He also forced me to watch to teach me a lesson. That is all I will say on that. I cannot speak of that day.”

“Aye,” he said hoarsely. “There are things of which none of us speak, I think.” He cleared his throat. “What will you do when the war has been decided?”

“Go to Algiers.”

Elliott choked on his coffee. “I thought you said—”

“An Algerian sultan is holding Solomon’s wife captive, and I promised him we would go back to Algiers to find her. I intend to keep that promise, but since Maarten has no intention of accompanying me, I do not expect to escape the Mediterranean alive.”

He put his elbow on the table and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t understand. If Skirrow was hated and feared, but you killed him, would that alone not keep you safe?”

She waved a hand. “Oh, that. That I cut off his head does not matter; the fact is, Skirrow preyed on Ottoman ships and I was no more shy in battle than he was. Secondly, I am a woman. Not only should I not be aboard a ship, much less as a commander, I should not be aboard one half naked and killing Muslim men. I am an affront to the whole of Islam.”

“Not enough to cross Gibraltar, clearly.”

“Ha! The only way I can cross Gibraltar is by disguising myself as a British patrol with Papa as escort. The Ottomans would never attempt to breach it, no matter how much they want me dead.”

“Cannot he protect you from them?”

She took a deep breath. “He can. One reason he sought me out in Oran­jestad was to see for himself my current occupation, and to see if I wanted to go back. If so, we would sail together the way Maarten and I do. He is getting on a bit and, worse, he is lonely and bored. He’s been going farther and farther afield for new challenges, but he is restless. Unsettled.”

“Which is one reason you want your mother to reconcile with him.”

“Aye.”

“And you must return to fulfill your vow to Solomon anyway.”

“Aye. I did not tell Papa of it, though, as he is not happy that I’m working for the Americans and he would argue that I return now. I did inform him that I refuse to fight for any British cause if it does not suit my purpose, which Papa will do on occasion when covert action is needed.”

“That would make you adversaries at those times.”

“Aye, precisely. But it is a moot point whilst my current obligation must be satisfied before returning to Africa.”

“What will you do after that?”

She scoffed. “I have no plans. Why would I plan anything if I expect to die?”

Elliott blinked at something odd in her voice, her eyes. He reached out a finger and traced it along her thigh. “You’re frightened, aren’t you?”

She swallowed and looked away.

“I would go with you.”

“And leave the wife at home?”

He shrugged. “’Tis done all the time.”

“You said you hated sailing, that you were on your way home to stay.”

“Ah, but I would do it for you.”

“Why? We barely know one another.”

“I know enough to make that commitment to you.”

Fury’s mouth tightened and more uncomfortable silence fell until her stomach growled and she laughed suddenly. “I cannot let melancholy interfere with my favorite pastime, Judas. Eat! Eat!”

Elliott had never had better meals at sea, not even once he was promoted to fleet commander. Sailors—especially impressed ones—were resentful enough, and Elliott had learned that eating modestly, though a bit above his men, was a small way he could mitigate the anger aboard a ship and still display his rank and privilege appropriately. Fury, it seemed, took the opposite tack. Those pleasures she would not give up, she shared with the rest of her crew. Then again, she had one-fifth the complement he did and could afford such luxuries.

“I did not think your galley could outshine itself,” he said in wonder once he paused to take in the savory foreign dishes.

“Thank you,” she returned, picked up her cup of lemonade and drank it down, then poured another.

“I could never afford this.”

She shrugged. “’Tis a point of contention with my mother, who thinks I am too extravagant, but I have the funds and see no point in austerity if there is no need.” She pointed her spoon at him. “Pare down to a real pirate ship and you could.”

He shrugged.

“How do you keep your secrets with four hundred men who could turn on you at any moment?”

“Five hundred. All my officers know who I am and why I have embarked upon this path. Indeed, they are as invested in doing so as I and for the same reasons. There are perhaps one hundred regular seamen who also know and have the same motives. I rely upon their goodwill and hatred of the Royal Navy to keep the rest in line.”

“Tell me: Barring soldiers, how few men would you need to sail and fight?”

“Two hundred fifty able seamen,” Elliott said, “provided they can also fight as well as my marines.”

“One hundred fifty, rather,” Fury drawled with a sidelong glance.

“You have that many here, and this vessel in no wise compares to mine for size.”

She smiled sweetly. “I like my extravagances, as you have seen, and I can afford them. I could sail this ship with forty persons did I have to. I like good food, good liquor, good entertainment of an evening, and good sleep. You, on the other hand, have a large secret to keep, which is an extravagance you cannot afford. You would have to give up sleeping, though, to pull one or more men’s share of the work aside from your own.”

Elliott would not dignify that with an answer, as he did not care being lectured to thusly as if he were a midshipman three days out and green around the gills. Oblivious, she continued:

“The fact of the matter is that you are not comfortable sailing any way other than how you were taught. Considering how soundly you sleep when in the bed of a pirate you don’t know, I would wager you don’t find much rest anyroad.”

She had noticed, then. “I cannot deny that,” Elliott murmured.

“You say you leave no survivors. Have you once taken a ship that required the use of a marine where an armed sailor would have sufficed?”

He pursed his lips and again declined to belay her assumptions.

“I thought not. The loss of your marines and the other two hundred men you don’t know and don’t trust would make this endeavor easier for you. Any seaman can be turned into a gunner.”

He laughed bitterly and sat back in his chair. “You must think me the stupidest commander who ever sailed.”

Her head snapped up from her bowl, her wrinkled in confusion. “Most certainly not. Why in God’s name would you think that?”

“According to you, I have done everything wrong.”

She scoffed. “If you had done everything wrong, you and your crew would be dead. You have met success after success, and your ship barely has a dent in it. ’Tis simply that you have done everything with more than you needed to be successful and thus laid yourself and your officers a heavier burden than necessary. But so what. ’Tis not stupid to take on more provisions than you need. Extra can be tossed overboard, but more cannot be found in the middle of the ocean. ’Tis a matter of degrees of efficiency, not fatal errors.”

She laughed without humor and took another bite. “I tell you … if Washington had men like you, Congress wouldn’t need to hand out letters of marque to any merchant who can pay the bond. He needs a navy he doesn’t have and cannot get. I dare say, whether you care or not, whether you intended it or not, whether you realized it or not, you make up a significant portion of our navy, and you, Sir, are no barbarian.”

Elliott couldn’t help but laugh.

“Such a large crew also necessitates you lead by fear, and I suspect this is not to your taste or your nature.”

“I very rarely flog anyone.”

Her eyebrow rose. “Oh? Then how do you keep order?”

“Ball ’twixt the eyes.”

She stared at him warily for a long moment. “Oh,” she said in a very small voice.

“Minor infractions I care naught for so long as the work gets done. But— A shot through the head for cheating at games. The kind of insubordination you showed Dunham. A threat my identity will be exposed. Theft. Rape. I’ve no time for formalities.”

She glared at him suddenly. “I hope you are as careful about enforcing that if the victim is a woman as you are if ’tis a man.”

“I make no distinction, nor do I make a distinction whether it happens aboard ship or ashore. Or even if ’tis against a whore.”

She nodded approvingly. “That is efficient,” she murmured. “What more?”

He shrugged. “I cannot think of anything else that has been done to warrant that. I had no reason or desire to do that whilst in the Navy, but I underestimated the influence of government sanction on men’s behavior.”

“What do you fear most that you lie awake at night?”

Elliott looked at her and wondered if he should tell her all his worries. It was not one or two things. Nor was it five or six. It was a dozen, and a dozen more on top that, worries major and minor. ’Twould seem all he had done in the last four years was worry.

Finally he sighed. “Too many things to list. One of them is the fact that the Navy now knows Captain Judas and the Silver Shilling actually exist. Another is that both Rathbone and Bancroft may have seen me. If they did, the question is whether they can identify me or not.”

Fury chewed on her tongue a bit. “They know you, don’t they? In your real life? They have sailed with you?”

“Aye. I served under Rathbone and trained Bancroft. Further, I did a favor for Rathbone when I was a very new captain that I soon came to regret deeply.”

She said nothing, though the question in her face was plain. He refused with a shake of his head. “I don’t speak of it. ’Tis one of very few things I am ashamed of in my career.”

“Rathbone is my adversary, if not my enemy, but his reputation is that of an honorable man. I cannot imagine him setting you upon such a dishonorable task.”

“He did not know what it entailed and he did not know what it cost to have it done. He still doesn’t.”

Elliott was not aware he was clutching his spoon so hard he was bending it until Fury laid her hand over his fist. “Judas,” she said softly with a comforting smile. “I ken. You are not alone anymore.”

Anymore.

“Would you care to sail with us?”

Elliott blinked. Was she was offering exactly what he needed but was loath to ask after she had all but charged him with stupidity? He could not find words.

“Judas?” she said carefully. “Have I offended you or made you suspicious of me?”

“Nay,” he lied. “I have not sailed in a fleet in years. ’Twould be a nice change.” He slid her a glance and smirked. “Why should I trust you?”

“I haven’t killed you.” Elliott’s smirk turned into a laugh, but realized she had not caught his jest. “I have killed men for lesser offenses than what you dealt me by stealing my figurehead.” Or mayhap she had. “Yet here we are after that, of four days’ acquaintance, having fucked to hell and gone—after you sneaked aboard my ship—sharing meals and secrets, touring each other’s ships, and leaving our crews to their pleasures.

“You are heavy in the water, Sir. You have something very valuable in that hold of yours, because cotton and tobacco do not weigh that much, and you do not have enough armament and ordnance to displace so much. Do you think Maarten and I could not take you to find out what? You are bigger, true, but we are seasoned pirates, having together taken ships bigger than yours. And my hold is utterly barren, as I sent my last prize ahead of me to Rotterdam.”

He drew in a deep breath.

“I might not know your name, Sir, but I know you are of the upper classes, a merchant or landowner’s son. I know that you were not born your father’s heir, and that you have been somehow charged with continuing your line or you would not be obligated to wed. I also suspect a few other things of you, which I will allow you to wonder over. With what I know, it would not take me but half a glass in London to learn your name. Questions of trust are moot at this point. You have no choice but to trust me, and, I will submit, you would not be here—and sleeping so well in my bed—if you did not already know you could.”

She had the right of it, and it disturbed him. “Why did you not pursue me for the figurehead?” he asked abruptly.

Fury’s eyelashes lowered. “I told you. I was ill. I was abed and senseless for the better part of a week.”

“Did you laugh? Truly?”

“I did. I knew it for the prank it was. You did not injure my men but for their pride. You cut the rails in a manner that would make it a simple repair and did not damage my ship otherwise. I left the Bloody Hound the morning after simply furious with you for not coming back to find me. I was cursing you for a coward.”

He was furious with himself for not going back. She had been ill whilst he was making merry elsewhere, congratulating himself and his crew for their fine bit of mischief, awaiting her pursuit or word of her departure so he could chase her.

“But then I saw what you had done, and I laughed. I did not pursue you for my figurehead because I wanted you to come to me.”

---

20

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

“CAPTAIN, I NEED TO SPEAK with you privately.”

Celia stood in her door looking at her second lieutenant soberly. It had to be dire for Papadakos to rap her door at midnight whilst she and Judas were clearly in the midst of bedsport and the crews were only at the beginnings of the night’s festivities. “Aye, Paulo. Come in.”

She opened the door wide and turned to cover her body with the kimono hanging neatly over the back of a chair. She cast a strained smile at Judas, whose face betrayed his tension. Of course he would know this was no trifle.

“If you would be so kind … ” she murmured, gesturing vaguely toward the door.

His dark eyebrow rose, but he said nothing whilst he pulled on his breeches and complied with her request, closing the door softly behind him.

Papadakos took a deep breath and drew close to speak very low. “Two of the boys were getting into trouble aboard the Silver Shilling and overheard plans for the mutiny of Captain Judas.”

Celia gasped. “Are they sure?”

He nodded.

“What in God’s name for? He told me he would rather kill than flog, but—”

“His hold is full of gold—and that’s the only thing in it.”

Celia’s breath left her in a whoosh and she sat on her bunk, a trembling hand over her open mouth. “God’s blood,” she whispered, horrified.

“Just before the Silver Shilling reached us, she’d taken a fleet of British warships bound for New York.”

“A pay ship!”

Paulo nodded. “A king’s ransom.”

“Bring the boys to me.”

Soon enough she was faced with two terrified ten-year-olds who stuttered and sputtered through their story, sobbing and hiccupping. She wasn’t sure if they were frightened of her punishment for being where they oughtn’t to have been or of the men they’d overheard whilst they explored the Silver Shilling’s orlop.

She suspected the latter.

She speared the German boy with a glance. “Your English is not savvy,” she growled. “Are you certain?”

The child gulped. “They were speaking Vlaams, Cap’n.”

Good Lord. ’Twas the mercenary marines, who were mostly some German variant. Damn the man for his inability to deviate from Royal Navy protocols.

Celia sat still, looking at the floor and searching her mind to put together some counter to this. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said absently. “Leftenant, give these two an extra ration of grog and bread, and bid Captain Judas to join me.”

It was only a few moments until Judas had seated himself beside her on her bed. Celia did not know how best to impart such news but bluntly:

“You are about to be mutinied.”

“I know.”

She gasped. Her head snapped up to see him calm, a bit of a smirk on his face.

“What I do not know,” he continued cautiously, his slight amusement gone, “is by whom.”

“My boys tell me they overheard Flemish.”

He nodded somberly. “Aye, then, now I know who it is.”

“This is what has you so taut?”

“Only since we took our last prize.” Celia said nothing. “I … have put down a few mutinies in my career, but never have I been mutinied nor have I known of one solely over cargo. I assume, then, you also know what I have in my holds.”

She nodded impatiently. “Surely, you must have known before you took the pay fleet—”

“Of course I did,” he scoffed. “You asked me why I carry a full complement. That is why. I needed every sailor and soldier I could get my hands on to take that fleet. One first-rate and two second-rates.”

Celia gaped at him, a feeling of utter awe leaching into her body. “You—” she squeaked. “Alone?”

His eyelids lowered and he gave her a smug grin. “Aye,” he drawled. “Three men o’ war down, twenty-three hundred men. Sinking the patrol frigates in Virginia was child’s play by comparison, as we were preparing for much bigger prey, but it was an excellent drill.”

“You knew that fleet was there!”

“I did, and I was actively hunting it.” He wrapped his hand around her head and brought her ear to his mouth. Celia closed her eyes in utter ecstasy. “But I thank you for your lessons in piracy all the same, Madam.”

She jerked away from him then, jumping up from her bunk to stalk across her cabin. “You played me for a fool,” she hissed.

“Oh, ho!” he chortled. “Says Fury Prometheus, bringing the fire of piratical wisdom to hapless, helpless, idiot British Navy commanders. Do not make the mistake of believing you and the Hollander could take me.”

Celia’s back stiffened as shame filled her, and she took a deep breath.

She looked over her shoulder, but not at him. “You are right. It was not well done of me and I apologize.”

“Och, Fury, c’mere and let me soothe your feathers.”

Celia looked at him then, suspicious, for with just a few words, he had sounded exactly like Dunham. She could not ascertain if that was his natural accent without the Oxford glamour or if he were playacting.

“Are you Scots?” she asked slowly. “A lowlander?”

His smile grew. “No. Of that, you can be sure. Would you be in more sympathy with me if I told you I had planned to ask you and the Hollander for assistance?”

She blinked. “Is that why you sought us out?”

Judas’s expression hardened. “I wanted you, Madam, but a good commander does not disregard any collateral benefits.”

He had refrained from reminding her of his rôle in the fact of her continued existence and she could not fault his logic otherwise, so she huffed and went back to her bed to plop herself upon it. He wrapped one of his enormous arms around her shoulders and pulled her in to his body until her head was lying upon his shoulder.

“I will inform Maarten he is to host nuncheon tomorrow for all our officers,” she muttered, ashamed of how she had spoken to him the day before. “I cannot think he will have an objection to the added duty of putting down a mutiny.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

She looked up at him soberly. “In truth, would you come to Algiers with me if I asked?”

“Aye,” he whispered. “I would do … almost anything for you.”

Except forsake your duty.

She didn’t say it. She didn’t have to. He glanced away.

With a bitter heart, she arose and went to the door, opened it, then bellowed for the boys and Papadakos.

“Go to the Mad Hangman and fetch a Dutch and Flemish boy,” she said when they arrived. “Take them to the Silver Shilling. Pretend to play, run, and explore. Find out everything you can. Report to Leftenant Papadakos every hour. Do not get caught.”

Their eyes shone bright with pride when they stood straight and saluted. “Aye, Cap’n,” they said gravely, then scampered off.

“Do you think that’s wise?”

Papadakos gaped and Celia whirled at Judas’s voice coming from behind them. “Are you questioning me?” she snapped.

Judas grimaced and put up his hands. “Apologies, Captain.”

Celia cast him one last glare before turning to her officer. “See that they are given sweets at breakfast mess, then put them to bed in Kit and George’s bunk and send another two pairs out. Change the pairs at each watch until we have come back ’round to these two.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

Once the door was closed, she charged across the cabin and stuck her finger in his forehead. “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she snarled.

“I was wrong,” he said stiffly. “I admitted it and apologized. What would you have me do, Fury?”

Celia looked down and to her right, seeing nothing. What would she have him do? Had it been one of her trusted officers or Maarten who’d questioned her, she would have simply said No, but I’m doing it anyroad.

Why was it different when Judas said it?

What if Dunham had said it? Oh, aye, she would have bitten his head off, too.

Suddenly, the thought of sailing past Gibraltar between her lover and her father did not seem quite so … tempting.

Her safety or her pride?

Her hands were clasped gently in much larger, warmer, more calloused ones and she looked at him, her lover—her beautiful lover who could not wed her even if he wanted to. He was pressing a long, soft kiss to her knuckles, looking up at her with those heartbreaking ice blue eyes, his lashes long and black.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “If I knew how to grovel, I would.”

She nodded haltingly and looked away. “We must rest. The morrow will be … demanding.”

---

21

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

THEY LAY IN FURY’S copper bathing tub together late Sunday night after having spent most of the day on the Mad Hangman making battle preparations, with boys and girls coming and going with more information. In the afternoon, Fury had somehow beguiled Old Ben to climb to the Silver Shilling’s main mast platform, where the two master navigators had kept their glasses pointed to the west, talking and laughing as if they were bosom companions.

If Elliott hadn’t had his head bent with Maarten’s and three ships’ officers, all discussing the mutiny’s possibilities, probabilities, and strategies, he’d have been far more charmed by their camaraderie, and possibly jealous.

But now the plans were set and they could do no more until the wind blew. For the nonce, his mind was as weary as his body, and he wished simply not to be called upon to think, speak, or move.

Three lanterns hung relatively close and swayed gently from the force of hundreds of feet dancing and pounding, keeping time to the lively music. The crews were just beginning their night’s festivities after having snored and gamed the morning and afternoon away.

Elliott was behind Fury, who relaxed upon him, her head lolling on his shoulder. He cupped her scar-ridged breasts, but, as usual, she made no sign of feeling his touch and her nipples did not pucker. He plucked at them anyway.

And as he did so, he mused absently upon the things she had brought with her from the Arab world that were, to her, ordinary but to him, extraordinary. This tub, for instance, full of hot water kept hot by three small braziers set in a compartment under the tub, was not a particularly brilliant idea … so why had his countrymen not thought of it?

She yawned.

Aye, with the hot water and warm woman and comfortable head rest, it would not take much for Elliott to fall asleep, either. They had been engaged in some type of unfamiliar, demanding perversion or another since he’d climbed into her window, and he had never tupped a woman so many times in so many ways for so many consecutive days.

He was beginning to feel it. His legs and arse were sore, as was his jaw.

But as for indulging his particular perversion— After last night, he had decided he didn’t want her anywhere near his arse with a cat o’ nine tails in case she was still angry enough to wield it more enthusiastically than he liked.

“Do you not have things you can wrap around your nipples to make them stand?” he asked suddenly.

He felt the vibrations from her low chuckle seep from her back into his chest. “Do you think me in possession of every manner of tool and toy?”

“I do now.”

Her cheek creased with a grin. “Aye, I do, but they slip off.” She shrugged.

He dragged his finger across the nipple that had been sliced in two. “Does this not bother you?”

“Of course it does. ’Tis as if my breasts have been cut off and I must yet contend with these things hanging off my chest. But more to the point, there are days I would give up my command to be able to feel a man’s hands on me there again.”

The trace of sorrow in her voice made her matter-of-factness more poignant to him. “Yet you and Dunham get on.”

She sighed. “I maintain a distance from him for a reason. He, being my father and former captain, is accustomed to being my father and captain. And I, being an adult in command of my own ship, am accustomed to doing exactly what I want. The two are incompatible.” She stopped for a moment. “I love him dearly, do not doubt. I think he may love me, too, though he has never said. Even if he did, even if I knew he did, it would not mitigate the fact that he is and mayhap always will be disappointed in me. I will never be able to make him happy.”

Elliott started. “Why?”

“Because I am female.”

Elliott had no words for that. His father had never held Elliott’s sisters any lower than his brothers. Considering Henry had had a taste for hoydens so much that he had married one, he must have expected to father one or two. Yet here was Dunham, having taken his daughter far beyond anything Elliott’s father could have thought any woman could go—indeed, beyond anything Henry could have thought his sons could have gone—and the man was disappointed in her?

Surely if Elliott ever wanted for a daughter, he would be proud to have one like Fury.

With Fury …

He put that thought away.

“I cannot imagine that, Madam,” he rumbled after a while. “His pride and affection for you were unmistakable. What little of it I saw, that is.”

She laughed without humor. “Mayhap at the moment he publicly chastised me for losing a sword fight to you? In front of the entirety of a port in which I am liked and well respected?”

Elliott sighed. He had forgotten.

“‘Jack, do it this way. Jack, do it that way. Jack, why canna ye do it the way I wantche tae do it? Jack, ye been lazin’ on yer laurels, girl?’”

Elliott did not dare laugh at the mimicry of her father’s brogue.

“He completely destroyed my credibility in Sint Eustatius.”

“Nay,” Elliott rumbled. “He and I were both strangers, and your crews beat mine.”

She drew in a long breath, as if she had needed to hear that from someone who would know.

“That’s why you hate being called ‘Jack,’ though, no? Because ’tis a man’s name.”

“Aye. I sat all night in the Bloody Hound with him, talking, drinking after not having seen him in almost five years. He did not once mention Skirrow. If beheading a captain feared ’cross the Ottoman realm is not enough to garner his approbation, nothing is.”

Even though her voice was light enough, he could hear her pain and could sympathize, if only slightly.

Elliott wrapped himself around her and pressed her to him.

“What order did you refuse that he felt obliged to nigh kill you?”

“I won’t tell you that. You wouldn’t understand. But … ” she said slowly, “that does remind me of something I must ask you.”

He waited.

“Do you fuck men?”

He took a deep breath. She was asking for something other than curiosity. A woman of her occupation and experience should not care.

“What does that have to do with Dunham or daring him to kill you?”

“It just does.”

“And if I did?”

Her heartbeat quickened, but he did not know if that was in excitement or anger. “Yea or nay?”

“Sailors fuck men quite a lot, Fury,” he said calmly, as if she didn’t know, “and very often, it has nothing to do with whether they prefer men or not. But you didn’t ask me if I prefer men.”

She sat up, pulling away from him and covering her breasts. She would not look at him though she turned her head to speak over her shoulder. “Yea or nay, Judas. ’Tis a simple question.” But then she scoffed. “I don’t know why I asked. You would tell me what I wanted to hear anyroad.”

“I don’t know what you want to hear or why. What would you do if I do fuck men?”

“I would … not be … happy.”

“You’re a woman of the sea. Did you not think about the likelihood of that before we began this together?”

Her mouth tightened. Her jaw clenched. She reached out to grasp the sides of the bathing tub to pull herself up. Elliott could see that the idyll was about to come to an end—far sooner than he had expected.

“No, I don’t fuck men.”

She paused and did look at him then. Her face was full of things he couldn’t identify, except one: hurt. But why, he couldn’t imagine.

He stared right back at her. “But I have.”

She stiffened.

“When I was younger.” Why was he telling her this as if he were ashamed? He wasn’t, but for some reason, he felt a need to explain. “I was lonely. Homesick. Angry with my father for forcing me to the sea. Angry with my mother for not protesting more loudly. Angry with myself for not defying him. Desperately missing both the young widow and the merchant’s daughter. I wanted a woman in whom to seek solace, but there hadn’t been opportunity for a woman for a year and there wouldn’t be for another. I was desperate enough to take what I could get.”

She blinked and looked away as if in thought, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that men rutted for other reasons than lust or simple release.

He laughed wryly and rubbed his mouth with his hand. “I haven’t thought about that in years. Command has its advantages, and one of them is being able to decide when to put into port.”

The tension in her body began to leach out of her.

“Fury,” he drawled, wrapping his hands around her shoulders to draw her back. “How can you sail and be so wary or disapproving of men who desire each other? I care not who fucks whom on my ship as long as it doesn’t interfere with my command, and I dare say I have more reason to disapprove than you do.”

She lunged up and out of the water, splashing everywhere, standing over him with that snarl that made him want to plow her immediately. “You have a prick,” she hissed. “I—don’t.”

Elliott studied her face though ever aware of the tension and anger in her body, and tried to sort out what she was really saying.

Because I am female.

And then he did. “You see men as competition,” he murmured.

Her brow wrinkled. “Well, of course I do!” She flung her hands and arms out as if to force the world away from her. “I’ve spent my life competing with men and losing.”

“By all accounts, Madam, Skirrow was the one who lost. His—head.”

“Aye, well, I’ll not be a lover to a man who desires something I don’t have and cannot give him—no matter how seldom.”

Elliott raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to have one?”

“NO!” she roared. She stomped her foot, narrowly missing the prick under discussion, and splashing yet more water out onto the deck. Elliott cupped his manparts to protect them from further demonstrations of her temper. “I like being a woman. I like fucking men. I am happy to compete with men on the high seas, but I’ll be bloody damned to hell if I compete with a man over a lover, too.”

Elliott tipped his head and watched her speculatively. She stared back at him, chest heaving, her expression wary. Fury stood there defiant, daring him to cast her aside, but only a fool of a man would cast this woman aside.

Covarrubias, then, must be a fool.

“Fury,” he murmured, reaching up to catch her fingertips in his, pulling her to him, however reluctantly. He kissed those fingertips, his gaze never leaving her eyes that were filling with tears. “I do not prefer men and I haven’t fucked one since I was twenty-three.” He debated whether to tell her why he hadn’t, then decided against it. Pity was the last thing he wanted from her, and it would give her yet another clue to put together with Croftwood’s tale. “Would you hold a youthful indulgence against me?”

“I don’t,” she muttered. “I simply don’t want my lover to have any longing for something I cannot provide.”

“Fury, with regard to me, your premise is flawed, as you well know. You must never have been enamored of a man enslaved by the need for a particular kind of woman.” His throat swelled with regret. “As unobtainable for you as a prick.”

Her mouth tightened immediately. “I am the granddaughter of a duke,” she growled. “Daughter of his heir.”

He rolled his eyes. “A Scots duke, stripped of his title before your father was out of short pants.”

“Politics!” she spat.

“Aye, and so what. Clan Dunham invariably chose the wrong allies for hundreds of years. And then, not content that the clan somehow managed to survive the Union, your grandfather decided to reassert his Jacobite leanings. What did he think would happen?”

She stared at him for quite a while, her face still and thoughtful. “You are Scots. You know too much of my family’s history not to be, and now I can hear the burr in your voice no matter how you discipline yourself.”

He shook his head. “You may continue to believe it, but it will continue to be false. I am as English as Marlowe.”

The corner of Fury’s mouth turned up reluctantly.

“Fury,” he said briskly. “I have never been terribly particular about bed partners, but now I am tired and getting old. I grew utterly bored of bedsport long ago, so much that my hand and my yard have become quite fond of each other.” She snorted. “I was utterly phlegmatic about fulfilling my obligations until I recently realized that my taste is quite specific, and I find my need for it is insatiable.”

Her eyebrow rose.

“Pirate queens.”

Her eyes glistened in the lamplight, and he pulled her down to him until she again lay sprawled upon his chest. She seemed smaller than she really was when she was against him thusly.

“I am no queen,” she muttered. “That honor belongs to Grace O’Malley.”

Elliott laughed. He should have expected that. “I’m not likely to dig her up to tup her, though, am I?”

He held her to him and caressed her arm, her shoulder, her arse. Her skin was especially sensitive there, he supposed, because the rest of her torso wasn’t. She melted like a dusting of snow in the desert sun when he brushed his fingertips over the smooth, taut curve.

So he did that, and was rewarded with her body relaxing against his and her long, weary sigh. However, the disadvantage of paying attention to her arse was that, instead of arousing her, it put her to sleep.

“The wind will be here soon,” she whispered.

“I know. I don’t care to spend these few hours we have together in argument.”

“Oh, good. Play with my hair.”

“Well, are you not a demanding wench.” He combed his fingers through her hair, making her sigh and her body relax even further. He caressed the soft skin of her cheek and swept back to her ear.

“I love that,” she whispered, though he was barely able to hear her above the rising volume of merriment abovedecks.

He started when Dindi jumped up on his chest and butted her way between Fury’s face and his shoulder. Simply scooping the cat up, he dropped her on the floor. He knew she would be back, but strangely, it did not bother him much. “Nice puss,” he said to her. “Stay there. Next time, I’ll throw you in the water.”

He examined Fury’s mouth, soft and pink, dewy and luscious, and felt privileged that such a captivating woman was his lover. “I fear we may not be able to sleep this night,” she muttered, gesturing vaguely toward the overhead as the noise grew and grew.

The dancing and thumping of those keeping time to rather lovely music was so exuberant it rocked all three ships. But for the fact that there was no wind, they might have well been asail.

“Alas,” he agreed.

A song ended. So did the dancing. It would only be a moment before the next began. Men and women laughed. Someone bellowed. There, a screech of a completion and—

Oh, God yes!

The decks roared with laughter and Fury chuckled.

Elliott tensed when the music did not start when he expected it to and men began to bellow things he could not hear. An enthusiastic roar shook the timbers, and Fury’s body tensed when suddenly men ran hither and thither.

“Lord, not now,” she whispered.

They had planned for the possibility of battle here whilst they were becalmed, but had not thought it a probability. Then …

… a horn.

A French horn, clear and sweet, its sole note cutting through the noise and the night. A signal?

“Fury—”

She laid her hand gently on his chest. “No, wait. Listen.”

Then he heard a cello—tuning itself to the French horn.

Violins joined.

A squeezebox, pipes and drums joined in.

One last bellow was met with an affirmative roar:

“Somebody fetch Cap’n Jack!”

---

2

March, 1780
Atlantic Ocean, Trade Route

FURY SIGHED.

Elliott heard the feet running toward Fury’s cabin, so the subsequent pounding on her door was not a surprise.

“Cap’n!”

“Aye! Aye!” she croaked. “I’m coming.”

The only answer was the receding sound of those same feet. “She’s fixin’ her voice, mates!”

Another roar of approval and what sounded like people rearranging themselves.

Elliott listened as she cleared her throat.

And again.

Thrice before she began to hum, low in her throat. Hoarsely at first.

Then she pushed away from him and stood whilst beginning to sing the scale. She stepped out of the tub, went to her door, and opened it.

“FRESH WATER!” she bellowed.

With the scales, her voice gradually cleared in the time it took for her to enrobe herself in her kimono and tie it closed with the gold sash. A pitcher of water was brought by a crewman with a half-wild grin.

She chuckled at him, then tipped the pitcher back, drinking as if she were dying of thirst, water spilling out of either side of her mouth. She finished half of it, then fetched her box of herbs. She withdrew a small flat pot, pulled off the top, dipped her tongue in it (which stirred Elliott’s desire for something other than her voice), and tilted her head back to work it down her throat.

“What was that?”

“Honey.”

She put it away with the same sort of ritual she did all her small tasks, then finished off the water and thumped it down on the table with a satisfied sigh. It was when she began to sing the scale, louder and louder that Elliott realized he was listening to a woman he would have paid to see perform.

As her voice grew louder, the men and women above began to cheer and the instruments began to play the scales with her, to tune to her voice. Whilst she sang, she checked her chronometer and sang the time: four of the morning.

Then she stopped singing and looked at him. “Come,” she murmured. “You wanted to know why Skirrow never molested me. I will show you.”

Elliott arose and exited the tub, accepting the towel she proffered him, then pulled on his breeches. “I thought ’twas your navigation.”

“Half,” she conceded, holding her hand out to him, leading him out the door, down the passageway, and to the hatch. “He thought I was a witch, that I could bring down the wrath of Satan upon him at any time just by opening my mouth.” She grunted as she attempted to pull her kimono out from under foot where she had caught herself. “On the other hand, my crew believes me to have the power to protect them from evil.”

“Do you?”

“Do I believe it or do I have it?”

“Aye.”

She chuckled. “I am an educated woman, Sir, so neither. But the supersti­tions themselves have always served me well, thus I do not discourage their notions.”

If Elliott had thought the clamor was great when he lay in Fury’s cabin, it was deafening now, akin to that of a battle, without the sound of cannon fire or stench of brimstone. And when she emerged from the hatch …

“God almighty,” he whispered, coming up through the hatch after her to see nigh seven hundred fifty men and forty women gathered across the three ships, all bathed in the cool light of a full moon and the warm light of hundreds of lanterns hanging from all the lower yards.

Fury’s crew was standing and applauding. The crew of the Mad Hangman followed suit. She dropped into a deep curtsey, the ends of her loose hair brushing the deck.

She arose and looked around, then up toward the poopdeck of the Silver Shilling looming high above the Thunderstorm. She turned to him. “There,” she murmured, pointing to it. “Would you be so kind as to assist me, Captain?”

At that moment, watching her dignified grandeur, Elliott would have given her the world. Yet he only grunted, “Aye,” because he was so besotted he could not speak.

A dinghy was lowered to the Thunderstorm, into which he assisted her as if they were in a grand ballroom. Once she had her balance, it was slowly raised until it was level with the wale of the Silver Shilling. He swept her into his arms and set her gently on her feet.

She smiled at him and he was lost to her. She might fall in love with every flap of a sail, but Elliott had only done so once. He could not point to the moment, but some time in the past four days, he had given her his heart.

The makeshift orchestra had taken it upon itself to play some sort of entry march as she climbed higher and higher until she stood at the rail of the Silver Shilling’s poopdeck. She looked down to her musicians and nodded. Everyone settled in and grew silent as they began to play and Fury stood with her fingers clasped, relaxed, in front of her and her head bowed.

He saw Fury’s mother sitting on the main deck of the Mad Hangman in a chair next to the Hollander’s wife, who snuggled against her husband. Several of her crew then stood where they had sat before: ten men, four women.

Elliott intended to join his men down on the main deck, but her head snapped up and she said, “No, please, Judas. Stay.”

He did, seating himself on the deck at her feet, his back against the rail.

As the makeshift orchestra (which was, by comparison to the very few performances Elliott had ever attended, not particularly bad) wound down and finished that piece, Fury raised one hand.

All was still. Not a breath of wind. Not a stir of sail. Not a whisper of a voice. Then Fury dropped her hand and when the musicians began again, Elliott watched her raise and lower it again, both now, his astonishment growing as he realized she was conducting.

A strong male voice rang out over the still ocean.

“Comfort ye … comfort ye, my people … ”

Elliott closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the rail as he listened. To have a few musicians aboard a ship was, in Elliott’s opinion, an absolute necessity. To have as many as Fury did meant she had deliberately sought them out.

… good entertainment of an evening …

A degreed musician, who had not been able to rise above the chorus. Yet she could also conduct. Why was he surprised? A ship’s captain who was a trained musician should be able to lead an orchestra as well as a crew into battle.

The next piece, another male part. Elliott was already half enthralled, never mind she had not sung yet.

“Ev’ry valley … ev’ry valley shall be exalted … ”

He didn’t know what this was, but it sounded vaguely familiar.

Fury took a breath. “And the glory, the glory of the Lord … ”

The other women were singing with her, then all the men joined in. Fury was not overpowering her chorus, but all Elliott truly heard was Fury’s voice, high and pure. As she conducted, her kimono sleeves created a small breeze only Elliott could feel.

The night went on, Fury and a handful of her crew performing for three ships’ crews in the moonlight cast large over the still Atlantic. They were alone in the world, these three ships, and nothing could touch them.

The music wound around him, cradled him in its majesty and safety.

And then … Then!

“There were shepherds abiding in the fields … keeping watch by night … ”

Her voice, powerful but delicate, high and pure but warm. It rang out into the night without accompaniment, and he could indeed believe that she was a sorceress, keeping her crew safe from evil.

He drew his knees up to his chest and pressed his face into them to simply absorb the sounds.

… could not rise above the chorus …

Dear God in heaven, why?

… cannot maintain a sufficient vibrato …

He had no idea what that meant. He only knew he was at the feet of an angel in the guise of a pirate captain, one he had had the privilege of bedding.

“And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone ’round about them, and they were sore afraid … ”

His mind cast back to the moment Fury and Old Ben had descended from the platform, after which she had sent her girls up in the ratlines of the Silver Shilling with glasses. She had then bid Kit go to the platform she and Ben had just vacated, and keep watch.

Sails?

Nay. Nothing to be concerned over.

That was a lie, but he did not want to consider the truth overmuch.

The music went on and on for an hour, as skilled and joyous as it had begun, but Elliott knew this was the end of their idyll.

“Hallelujah … Hallelujah … ”

Her voice was majestic, powerful, blending in with her crew’s but rising above it, and with her voice gaining more strength, her arms began to rise slowly—

—as slowly as the dawn was breaking. She stood toward the east with her arms outstretched, her face to the sky as she sang to the rising sun.

“And he shall reign forever and ever … ”

And as the sun rose to worship her, he saw tears running down her cheekbones, down the valley of her ear and jaw.

Her voice gained strength and soared over the world, to the sun. Elliott heard nothing but her.

“For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth … Hallelujah, hallelujah … King of kings … And Lord of lords … And he shall reign forever and ever … Hallelujah, hallelujah—

“—’allayyyyyyyloooooooyaaaaaaa!”

Silence.

Fury dropped her arms whilst gasping for breath through her sobs, her chest heaving. At the first sniffle behind him, Elliott looked over his shoulder through the balusters to see hundreds of men wiping their noses. Some had buried their faces in their bandanas, their shoulders quaking. Fury’s mother was curled up in her chair, also sobbing. Even the Hollander, who cradled his weeping wife in his lap, pressed a thumb to his cheekbone.

whuuuuufffff

Elliott’s head snapped up to the topgallant sails, which began to flap, and his mouth dropped open.

whuff-snap!

A bit of breeze stirred the ends of Fury’s hair, now a blazing orange halo between the red sunrise and red silk.

A strong wind filled the sails, pushing all three ships forward together at once with a bevy of protesting groans.

“Begorra,” he heard a man whisper. “She summoned the wind.”

To a man, Elliott’s crew looked up at her in frightened awe. Elliott watched her, as stunned as his crew, as the corner of her mouth turned up.

The angel was disappearing and the pirate taking her place.

She cupped her hands ’round her mouth and bellowed, “SORT YOUR­SELVES OUT AND MAKE READY! WE SAIL IN ONE HOUR!”

Three ships’ crews scrambled to do her bidding, and Elliott blinked up at her. “I think Skirrow was right to fear your voice.”

She grinned. “Whisht!” She leaned down to him and whispered, “He was too busy fearing my voice to hear me sharpen my ax.”

---

II

---

23

April, 1780
Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
Dutch East India Company
Rotterdam, Holland

CELIA SWAYED AGAINST JUDAS where they stood on the wharf, the Silver Shilling having been granted a mooring as close to his warehouses as he could get.

“Will you meet me in London?” Judas asked softly, brushing his mouth across her knuckles.

“No,” Celia murmured, looking at him whilst her heart broke. It was a familiar pain, but not a welcome one, a hazard of how easily she gave over her affections. “There is no future in it for me.”

“You who will return to Ottoman waters to fulfill a blood oath and expects only to die victorious have no right to speak of a future.”

She feigned a scoff. “I would never die defeated.”

“Which is one reason I do not want to let you go.”

“Judas,” she muttered, exasperated. “Please do not make this more difficult for me. Train your virgin bride to bite and swing a cat ’cross your arse, and you will forget me by the time she bears your heir.” He dropped her hand with an angry huff, his disgust undisguised. Her brow wrinkled. “You really do not comprehend, do you?” she asked wonderingly. “Of everything you know of me, of every conversation we have had, what in God’s name makes you think I would ever agree to be your second no matter how you hound me?”

“You are the one who does not understand,” he spat. “You would be first.”

Her eyebrow rose. “If you cannot wed me, I will never be first.”

His mouth tight, he swallowed, but did not answer.

She smiled wryly. “I would give up the sea for a faithful husband and a home. I begged for it at twenty, but was refused. I did it—gladly—at twenty-five, but lost it not even six months after the vows were spoken. I would do it now did you ask.”

“I … can’t.”

“Then that is that.”

“Fury—”

“You will not even give me your name!” she cried, now hurt beyond anything she should have felt, considering her short time with this man. “If I cannot have even such a small part of you as that, why would I think you would give me anything else?”

“JACK!” She turned at Maarten’s roar to see him dockside with a speaking trumpet. “I want to catch this tide to London, so we must depart now and we await only you. I need to get back to my offices and months of neglected paperwork.”

“What did he say?” Judas demanded, and only then did Celia realize Maarten had spoken in Dutch.

“Ja!” she called back likewise. “Weigh anchor! I’ll be along shortly.”

He gave a curt nod and disappeared into the crowd of busy sailors, vendors of pickled herring and overly sweet cookies, worn-out doxies of all ages.

“Well?”

“I must go,” she muttered, attempting to step around him, but he took the step to block her passage, as she had known he would. He wrapped his hands around her arms, but she looked down at the wood beneath her feet to keep him from seeing her tears. She was resolute, but he would take her weeping as some sort of silent request to pursue her.

“Help me find you,” he whispered desperately. “If not, I will still find you.”

“No, you won’t,” she croaked. “I could be right under your nose and you would never know ’tis me. Release me, Judas, before I stick a dagger in your throat as I did at the Bloody Hound.”

He opened his hands, but caressed her arms in the way he knew that she loved—lightly, the brush of fingertips, a breath. Any patch of sensitive skin on her body, he would find and lavish attention there, for he could not force her insensate breasts to feel again.

Lord only knew how he had tried.

She loved him for that.

And other things.

He lowered his head to press his mouth to the underside of her jaw. She closed her eyes and dropped her head back to allow him to seduce her. “Fury,” he whispered against her ear. “My love. Please. Tell me your direction in London.”

She could stand no more.

She broke away from him and strode up the dock to the cobbles, not daring to look back, ignoring him calling her name: Captain! Fury! Jack! Calico Jack! even. Then—

“JACQUELINE DUNHAM!”

She gasped and stopped short. She put her fist to her breast and pressed. Hard. “Oh, God,” she whimpered, then broke into a run, down the street to where Maarten’s yacht and skeleton crew awaited to take her to London.

Maarten’s look of somber pity once he had hauled her aboard only magnified the pain, and she went directly to her berth for a nap. It would not take long for the British-registered yacht, an ostensible British West India Company vessel, to reach port. If she wanted a nap before the next watch, she had really no time to waste.

Thus, she stripped down to her skin, then encased herself in the comfort of her kimono before rolling into her hammock. She would allow the sea to rock her to sleep whilst she cried.

Anger with Rafael’s refusal to wed her after five years together, to be faithful to her, would never abate and indeed, only grew worse with each liaison. Her grief now lay more in the fact that she could not bring herself to cut him off than the fact that he continued to take her for granted.

Talaat would never have chosen to leave her, but then again, there was a reason he had been alone for years. He deserved far better than Celia, but all things considered, she was the best he could hope for—and she had gotten him killed. Now, four years after his murder, she still grieved his loss so much that, occasionally, she locked herself in her cabin to weep.

But of all the heartache she had borne, she thought this might be the worst: A man who had wanted her badly enough to chase her down and demand her attention, to declare himself happy with her, had then deliberately chosen something else over her.

Celia did not know or understand such constraints. No contract was unbreakable. No obligation was, in fact, an obligation. Those promises she made, she chose to make and chose to keep. Should she choose not to honor them, well, that was part of being a pirate.

Yet Judas did not know how to be a pirate. Duty was part of his blood and his siren call. He would follow it to his death.

Jacqueline Dunham!

He would never know how much that wounded her and for how many different reasons, why the very act of calling her by the Christian name she de­spised and the family name she could not claim at all pained her beyond bearing.

A knock at the door broke into her thoughts.

“Come,” she said, forgetting this was not her ship, not in command, and she had no obligation to answer it.

“Celia— Oh.”

“I shall be up in a moment, Mama,” Celia called softly. “I am weary.”

“Georgina,” Mary murmured to the shadow behind her, “would you please go ask Captain Gjaltema how you can assist him?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Mary stepped into the tiny cabin the three women would share and shut the door. “Is this a temporary separation or a permanent one?”

“Mama, please don’t, I pray you.”

Something in her voice must have convinced Mary to leave it be. “Would you like a mother’s company, then?”

“I have never had it before,” Celia snapped. “I can do without it now.” Mary gasped. Celia knew it was cruel, but at the moment, she resented everything about her life. And she was not so forgiving that she could forget its origin was in her mother’s long affaire with Dunham.

Yet she did not leave. Curious, that. Did mothers routinely keep company with their contentious daughters?

“He called me Jacqueline Dunham,” she finally whispered when it appeared Mary had no intention of leaving. Her tears were soaking the pillow beneath her head. “He doesn’t know my name because I have none to give him. I haven’t the security of my sire’s name nor the one I was born with because it would get me killed. ‘Calico Jack’ is my only birthright. Calico bloody Jack, the most cowardly man who ever sailed the Spanish Main, yet I am named for a bloody cat.”

“I’m sorry,” Mary whispered in return. “So very sorry. I … forget. Jamie did such a fine job raising you that I forget you were not born to this life.” She paused, then continued briskly. “Celia, I want to tell you something.”

She stopped and waited for Celia’s permission to continue. “Aye?”

Mary did not hesitate. “When I first saw you four years ago in Philadelphia, swaggering down the street with your crew, armed, pounding on doors and bellowing for someone to tell you where I was … I was in awe of you. My daughter— I knew you were. I could not help but know who you were immediately, though I had not seen you in nigh twenty years. You are every inch your father’s daughter, yet rendered so beautifully. I simply wanted to speak with you, just once. Touch your sweet face. To know that you were alive and well— But you were not only alive and well, you were larger than life itself. It was the most incredible …

“I didn’t know what would happen when I bade Jamie take you. I agonized every day that he had perhaps abandoned you or sold you to a sultan, but I could never fully credit him with such a notion. But when I saw you, I knew that only he could have made a pirate out of a princess.”

“Aye, and he still sees me as a princess,” Celia said bitterly. “I am ever eight years old, all frothy white ruffles and lace, relentlessly seasick and crying for her mama. Until I grow a prick, I will never be able to fulfill his expectations. I have seen no sign of a prick growing ’twixt my legs lo these past twenty years, though I have a chest full of them. Glass, wood, clay.”

Celia heard a thump as Mary was tossed against the wall when the ship heeled on its way out of the harbor and into open waters. “Are you well?”

“Just a bump on the elbow,” she murmured.

“Do you know why Papa hates Rafael so much?” Celia said abruptly.

Fabric rustled as Mary sat on her bunk. “You say so, but in that circum­stance, I simply cannot comprehend why he sent you to him.”

“This is what I want to explain.” Celia swung around until she was sitting in her hammock cross-legged, swinging lightly, as comfortable there as she was in a bed. “He sent me to Rafael to finish the job of making a man out of me.

“But instead! Rafael taught me how to be a woman. To enjoy being a woman. He knew I was a girl the moment he saw me and refused to let me play the part of a boy, especially as I did it so badly. Ruffles and ribbons and lace … colorful gowns, wigs, cosmetics, beautiful shoes and lavish underthings— I never outgrew my love of them. And here they were, all around me, in the flocks of women about Coimbra. I was enthralled and envious in the way girls can be, because I had only a trunk full of breeches and shirts, two pairs of shoes, a sword and dagger, and my ditty bag full of navigation instruments and sailor’s tools. So, ’twas a choice between being thought a catamite—and treated that way—or being defiantly presented as a girl to be educated and trained like any male. He felt the first too cruel and the second too brazen a dare to resist.

“Rafael gave me anything and everything I wanted—and I wanted so much. Not only did he not continue the work Papa had begun, he set asunder all Papa had done. He made it impossible for Papa to forget he had whelped a girl who mayhap was superior to any son he could have whelped. And that is why he hates Rafael.”

“I shall never believe it,” Mary muttered, anger thrumming in her voice. “Rafael took you as his mistress when you were too young to know better and too fragile to resist his charms.”

“Aye, and you were Papa’s when you were an adult who knew better, strong enough to resist his charms, and had everything to lose by lying with him. Not even Papa dares deny that being Rafael’s mistress improved my fate by orders of magnitude.” Her mother flinched and Celia sighed. It seemed that she was bound to lash her mother with her own bitterness.

Still Mary was not deterred. “Rafael gads about, lying with anything that has two breasts, but never weds even though his station demands it. He was Pygmalion looking for a block of marble to carve into his perfect woman, then he found his Galatea in you. His questionable loyalty to you is the loyalty of a creator to his creation, not the love of a man for a compatible woman. I would have thought your time with your husband would have taught you the difference.”

“Mama!” Celia cried. “I know his faults but I love him anyway and I cannot abide being at odds with him! Are you not happy enough with the nature of our relationship that you remind me of his vices?”

“Of course not! But I despised how he treated you on that last voyage, how he spoke to you. And I wasn’t the only one.”

Celia knew that. Smitty had taken her aside and lectured her as if they were once again equal officers aboard the Carnivale, when he would override her decisions with a tie-breaking vote. Of course, Celia knew the value of having a lieutenant who would do that. Beyond that, Smitty was her best friend and didn’t hesitate to bring her up short when she needed it.

Either he goes or we’ll have a revolt on our hands. Ye ain’t inspirin’ confidence when ye let ’is insolence slide just cuz he’s yer professor an’ ye’re fuckin’ ’im. If I ’ave to put ’im down, ’twill not go well fer yer command. No crew’ll tolerate its captain bein’ led ’round by ’is yard for long, an’ Rafe’s leadin’ you around by yours.

It hadn’t taken long for Rafael’s insolence to resurface, at which point Celia had stripped him of his navigation duties and thrown him in the brig. She had then unceremoniously dumped him on the docks in Portugal with his trunks.

“We are simply at odds with one another,” Celia said absently, “which, I gather, happens ’twixt men and women who have been together as long as we have.”

“You are at odds with Rafael because you have outgrown him.”

Celia gasped, jerked fully back into the conversation. “Outgrown him? Like a slipper? He is eleven years older than I!”

“Celia, he wants his sculpture back so he can smooth out the rough edges it acquired in his absence, not a flesh-and-blood woman who can meet him on equal ground and does not need smoothing. Why he did not wed you to keep what he carved from being chipped away, I do not understand.” Neither did Celia, and she resented it. “Your experience with men is different from mine, and you’ve had precious little female influence in your life. I can see that you have never observed such interactions, so I will tell you: Rafael expects you to be the thing he trained you to be.

“Unfortunately, I have seen it all too often, the men who came to me who could not bear the possibility their wives were someone other than they wanted them to be. Their pretty women to show about to society, ever treating them like dolls to be admired but not soiled with base lust, never mind their women’s needs.”

It was rare enough Mary referred to her time as a minor courtesan, but it did make Celia think—

“Is that what happened ’twixt you and Papa? He did for you what Bancroft wouldn’t?”

And there it was, the name, laid out between them. They had not spoken of him since Celia had taken her to sea. “Not … precisely,” Mary muttered with a flush. “Nathan was never unfaithful to me and he loved me tenderly with all the care of a gentleman.”

Celia’s mouth pursed in a moue. “I take that to mean Papa was not so considerate.”

“Correct.”

“And you liked that. Mayhap … Bancroft could not love you to climax?”

Mary harrumphed. Celia smirked. “For your information, Little Miss,” Mary said with false airiness, “Nathan was quite skilled. I enjoyed … that …  with him. ’Tis that your father—”

“Mama, please. I’ve no wish to know Papa’s proclivities any more than you wish to know mine.”

“Celia!” she cried suddenly, desperately. “Do you not see? ’Tis not only that. You do not know what it is like to love two men at once, equally, precisely for their vast differences and not in spite of them. To be unable to choose. To then have the choice made for you, and that choice is to lose both men and—worse!—to immediately lose both children made with those men, never to see them again. My son, taken by his father. My daughter, taken by her father. Gone in an instant, in a whirlwind of rage and hurt, leaving me to my own devices. Then I am tossed out of my home like so much rubbish. God’s punishment for my wickedness.”

Forced to survive as a whore to the very men she had once hosted at lavish dinner parties as the wife of a British Navy commander and incidental politician during the Seven Years’ War. She had had no skills, no family, and no friends until a woman from Boston, wed to a wealthy Dutch East India Company man, had found Mary weeping on a park bench and taken her in.

As it pertained to Mary’s situation between her husband and her lover, no, Celia could not imagine it. She had options and power very few women had: She was a law unto herself and had been since she had spit in Dunham’s face. Death was the price she had been willing to pay to declare her independence, emerging with scars that declared it for her.

And Dunham still did not understand.

“There is no sin in wanting your desires met,” Celia offered weakly.

“Wanting my desires met,” she snapped, “cost me everything I held dear and more besides.”

Celia was out of answers. “I cannot take away what you have had to do to survive, Mama,” she murmured. “And I am sorry for it, but know this: Papa could not have foreseen that Bancroft would immediately abandon you or he would have returned to fetch you straightaway. He loves you and he has been so very lonely without you all these years. Why will you not believe me?”

“Has he been faithful to me?” she snapped.

Celia raised an eyebrow. “Have you been to him?”

Mary’s nostrils flared.

“Aye, he goes ashore, but what would you expect of him? Twenty years? For God’s sake, I’ve been in love with one man or another for fourteen years, and still cannot go six months without putting into port for a quick tumble.”

Mary looked away and muttered, “I could live for the rest of my life without having … relations.”

“Oh, I doubt that. The women in this family are a lusty lot, and if Papa—”

Mary flushed to the roots of her hair. “Yes, well, perhaps with your father.”

“And yet you refused him. This makes no sense to me.”

“Things changed.”

“Papa is not blameless, I ken,” Celia said matter-of-factly. “He was wrong to seduce another man’s wife.”

Mary looked away, and Celia watched her for a moment. “Mama,” she asked slowly, “is there something you have not told me?”

“Nothing important,” she muttered.

Celia doubted that also, but would not press. Everyone needed their secrets. Certainly, Celia had her share of those.

“And he was wrong to let so many years go by. I’ll not dispute that. But Bancroft was wrong to abandon you on the spot and immediately create a new family. Of the constellation of sins amongst you, his is the worst by far, and the most unforgivable.”

Mary pursed her lips. “I would not dispute that,” she murmured.

“’Tis only by Washington’s order that I do not kill him for it. Why he wants Bancroft alive, I do not know. ’Twould only help the cause for an admiral of the British Navy to meet an unfortunate and untimely end.”

“You would do that?” Mary whispered, her high color now drained.

“I ache to do it, but I am under orders. My husband,” Celia went on before Mary could protest, “used to say that we are born to misery, and ’tis a test of faith to bear what God has visited upon us. Like Job—and! further! to do so with grace and honor.”

Mary’s brow wrinkled. “He was a religious man, then?”

“Oh, aye, very. He was a … ” Celia searched for the proper word. “ … righteous man.”

“Do you believe that?”

“In God’s will?” At Mary’s nod, Celia pursed her lips in thought. “Sometimes I am tempted to. The first time I heard Maestro Handel’s masterpiece, I was convinced, and every time I sing it, I am without doubt. Likewise, with Talaat, it was easy to believe when he would point out all the ways in which he saw God’s hand in his life, to the good or ill.” She shrugged. “He thought the ill was still ultimately to the good, as it made him stronger and more wise.”

“And so?”

“And so? I have no time to give it any thought at all, much less believe it. But when I sing Messiah, aye, I believe it to the very depths of my soul.”

Mary was silent for a moment, then murmured, “You do not talk about your husband much.”

Celia hesitated. “There are many reasons for that,” she said low, then rushed on, “Nay, I cannot know what it is like to love two men equally, as you did—”

“Do.”

“—Papa and Bancroft. I do know what it is like to love two—” She laughed bitterly. “—three men at once, though not equally and in differing circum­stances, and I am unable to have any of them.”

“Judas— He is so dear to you then?”

They both started with the fist pounding on the door. “Jack!” Maarten called. “Go aloft. A storm’s brewing. I need specifics and more hands on the sheets.”

“Aye,” Celia returned immediately, hopping out of her hammock, stripping off her wrap, pulling on her breeches and shirt. She was headed out the door, then stopped and bent to give her mother a kiss. “I love you, Mama.”

THE GALE BLEW THEM into London five hours ahead of time, but Celia was worn out from hauling sheet against the storm and teaching George the fine art of same whilst making sure the girl didn’t get washed overboard. Once they had traversed their tortuous way up the Thames and found their mooring, she dropped into her hammock in the small hours like everyone else. Thus, she arrived at her land destination at the same time she would have anyroad.

Her mother balked as soon as she realized what it was. “A house of ill repute?” she whispered in horror, clutching at Celia’s sleeve.

“I inadvertently allowed the lease on my townhouse to expire and have nowhere else to light until I get another, which may be hard to come by as the Season is nigh upon us.”

“But Georgina!”

Celia slid a glance between her mother and her cabin girl, who blushed. “George knows well enough what goes on ’twixt a man and a woman. The only difference,” Celia grunted absently as she pulled out a key and tried it in the lock. It was ten of the clock, the sun was high, and every inhabitant of the house would be asleep. “Is that here, money changes hands.”

“You have a key?” she hissed.

The tumbler turned and Celia swept the door wide, then directed the wherrymen to bring their trunks inside. “Up three flights to the second door on the left, if you please.”

“Ah, there you are, Jack!”

Celia looked up the stairs at the abbess. “You’re up with the roosters, Nonny.”

“Wanted me pay. A week, at least.”

Celia dug a gold coin out of her pocket and flipped it up at her. She hefted it, then bit. “Ye’re a generous jack, Jack.”

“You seem to forget that about me from visit to visit. Nonny, this is my mother, Mary. This is my cabin girl, Georgina, who is the one needing to be trained as a lady’s maid. Mama, George, this is Nonny, the keeper of this fine dovecote. I trust you have made all the arrangements I requested?”

Nonny looked affronted. “O’ course. I swear, Jack, playing innkeeper and clerk to you is more tryin’ than gettin’ Lord Williams’s hoops and bodice laced together.”

Mary choked. George gasped. Celia’s brow wrinkled. “He’s still alive?”

“Unfortunately. Yer new townhouse ain’t available for ten days,” she said as she draped her cotton-covered arse over the banister and slid all the way down it to land lightly on her feet in front of Celia.

“Remind me to try that,” Celia said, looking at the banister speculatively. “What is its distance from Rathbone House?”

Nonny leaned close and murmured, “Directly across the back alley.”

Celia grinned, surprised and very, very pleased. “Nonny! You deserve a bonus!”

“A night in bed with you would suffice,” she simpered, running the finger of one hand over Celia’s collarbone and putting the other between her legs. “I like big-tittied women in britches.”

“You’ll have to take it in gold, m’dear. Oh, what a pout! Your feelings are not so bruised as all that. Now behave in front of my mama and girl.”

“Ye brought ’em to a bawdy house,” Nonny sniffed, retrieving her wandering hands. “Wha’d’ye expect?”

“Indeed. Well, then! Have I appointments with my solicitor and banker?”

“T’morrow. Ten an’ three.”

“The abigail who will be instructing George? Er, Birdie. ’Tis her new name.”

“Waitin’ in yer rooms. Are ye gonna be needin’ your usual … services? As it ’appens I scared up two willin’ blokes for ye. Brothers, no less, ’andsome an’ the youngest not a day over nineteen. Had a go at ’em meself. Might again when you’re finished widdem.”

Celia almost laughed when both Mary and George whimpered a little. “Nay, but your foresight is noted and appreciated. I’ve a man fresh from my bed and lingering in my head.”

“Oh, ye do, do ye? That’s int’restin’. Anybody I know?”

Celia leaned in close and murmured, “Judas. He has the most wicked game I have ever played. It involves stays.”

Nonny’s gasp nearly echoed, it was so loud. “Begorra! Ye don’t say!”

“Aye, I do, but you better not.”

“Me lips is sealed.” It would be up and down the Thames by sunset.

“What of an appointment with the wig maker?”

“In an hour.”

“My modiste?”

“Not your modiste. Your modiste refuses to do what ye want. I took the liberty of engagin’ a talented young lass who needs the business. Yer appoint­ment’s at six this evenin’. Ye’ll find breakfast in the kitchen, but don’t put me cook out about anythin’ special.”

“Understood.” Celia turned to her mother and George. “After we eat, we shop.”

If spending money could not dispatch Judas from her mind, nothing could.

---

24

April, 1780
Tavendish Grange
Northumberland, England

IT TOOK ELLIOTT five hours longer to get home than it should have, thanks to a sudden gale. He had set Old Ben ashore in Gravesend with a five share of gold and a letter of introduction to Niall and Sandy, who resided year-round in the family’s London townhome. Elliott was not as efficient at reading the weather or navigating as Old Ben (or Fury) and thus, made several rather inconsequential missteps that frustrated him more than he already was.

Accompanying Old Ben, Elliott had dropped a handful of other seamen ashore, officers beyond their prime, who were happier to settle down as Elliott’s well-compensated retainers than seek another fortune at sea under someone else’s command. Neither Niall nor Sandy would likely notice the increase in household staff, which was just as well.

Now, thirty-six hours later, he was approaching Berwick-upon-Tweed, and just beyond that, the bay where he could moor his cutter, Penance, unmolested by both smugglers (for he was the only smuggler for one hundred miles in any direction) and the Navy (which thought he kept the coast clear of smugglers as penance for his unpunished crimes against the Crown).

He breathed a sigh of relief when the anchor was dropped and the dinghies lowered.

It took them another hour to secure the ship within clear sight of the manor, row into the well-hidden caves, stow the dinghies, and find their way through the maze of water-hewn tunnels before the tide rolled in. He looked around to see the tops of the sunken barrels in which the gold was hidden.

In Rotterdam, after he had paid and dismissed that portion of his crew who did not know his identity, Fury, the Hollander, and their crews had helped him and what remained of his crew to offload the gold, repack it in barrels of tobacco (which would be rendered worthless in these caves), then load it onto the Penance, the Mad Hangman, and the Thunderstorm.

Captain Bull, commanding his own ship renamed Black Demon, set sail to deposit George’s parents somewhere along the coast of England, and would then make his way back to America to continue the trade Fury had taught him.

Lieutenant Yeardley, at the helm of the Mad Hangman, and Lieutenant Smith sailing the Thunderstorm, had helped Elliott transport the barrels from Holland to Northumberland whilst the Hollander took Fury, her mother, and George to London for reasons Fury would not disclose and Elliott could not fathom.

He could never repay them for their service to him, which they had done for no reason he could name, as they did not seem to be as avaricious as pirates should. Fury had refused her share, though her crew hadn’t. Nor had the Hollander or Bull. If the Thunderstorm and Mad Hangman hadn’t accompanied him and seen the gold through to its penultimate destination, it would have been far more difficult for him to put down the mutiny he had expected.

It had happened not quite one week after Fury had summoned the wind and they had set sail, Fury close to larboard and the Hollander close to starboard. Tensions had been mounting. Elliott could feel it in his bones and had signaled both ships and his officers to be ready. Even though he knew they were making battle preparations, he had not been able to discern it.

The dozen leaders, a mix of soldiers and sailors, had drawn their swords and charged the quarterdeck, dozens more men following—

Only to be killed by shots coming from the ships on either side of the Silver Shilling.

Gunports slammed open and cannon popped out. Gunners flocked to the swivels. Archers displayed tar-tipped arrows and the braziers prepared to light them.

“AVAST, MUTINEERS!” Fury bellowed from the platform of her main mast.

The dozens of men stopped cold and looked around. Elliott’s loyal crew had some of them at swordpoint, but there were more than Elliott had anticipated and the rest of his crew had not come abovedecks. That could only mean there were more below.

“One more step,” she roared, “and we will sink your little boat the way we did the British fleet.”

One of the mutineers ordered the Silver Shilling’s gunports opened, but … silence.

“They’re bolted shut, gentlemen,” Elliott said calmly. “You just sold your lives for a measly extra share, which I would have given you as a bonus anyway, had you not been so greedy.”

“And stupid,” the Hollander called, his Dutch accent heavy with disdain.

A soft whiff and thud pierced the relative silence. A soldier looked down at his chest where an arrow stuck out from his heart, then he toppled over. A flurry of steel-tipped arrows sent the rest of the mutineers scrambling and crying for mercy.

“Get the rest of them up here,” Elliott snarled.

Fury merely stood high above, arms crossed over her chest, and watched as man after man was brought forward and shackled to the previous one.

Elliott clipped down the stairs to the main deck and, furious, had picked up the chainshot at the first captive’s feet and held it out to him. “Hold that.”

The second he took it, Elliott picked the man up and heaved him over the rail.

The clang of chain and ball as it scraped against the rail as the screaming men went overboard one after another, faster and faster until the last mutineer went over the side with a great splash.

“Methinks you’ll not try that again, children,” Fury called gaily down upon the decks of the Silver Shilling. She and the Hollander and their crews roared with laughter as if ’twere a great jest, and Elliott found himself envious of their cohesion.

Elliott shook his head free of the memory.

Yet more people to whom he owed his life … one of them a woman whose heart he had broken.

He felt indebted to the world, and knew Fate would require him to repay his debt to her in the currency of duty.

It was this thought that dogged his heels through the labyrinth, up the ancient hewn stone steps, and out the trap door that opened upon the heather-strewn moor high above the sea just as dawn broke.

“UNCLE ELLIOTT! YOU’RE HOME!”

He had barely gained his feet when six children surrounded him, screaming, jumping, begging for his attention. Somehow his arms filled with one little girl and one little boy.

Their father, striding up behind them, rolled his eyes and shook his head, but soon enough he had broken through the clamor and clasped Elliott to him. “Welcome home, Brother.”

He held on tight to this man he loved, his eyes stinging so badly he closed them, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Almost a sob, really.

Finally he opened his eyes and over his brother-in-law’s shoulder, he saw all three of his sisters and his older nieces and nephews running helter-skelter with a dozen pug dogs at their heels. His tiny mother drove a tiny gig hitched to a tiny pony, a wide smile on her face, her cheeks glistening with moisture.

His soul was suddenly overcome with a tidal wave of love for these people, his family.

These were the people for whom he had sacrificed his own desires—and he would do it again.

“THE EARL HAS RETURNED! MY LORD! LORD TAVENDISH!”

Ah, no. Not all the people.

Soon enough hordes of villagers, tenants, and boarders were surrounding him as much as his nieces, nephews, sisters, brother-in-law, mother, and those damned dogs yipping and nipping at everyone’s heels in ignorant happiness.

“Oh, my son,” his mother whispered in his ear when he leaned down to embrace her. “My wonderful, courageous son. I have missed you every day you have been gone these past twenty years. Welcome home.”

“And I, you, Mother,” he whispered in return. “Thank you.”

For he was home. Home to stay. Finally.

It was the culmination of every one of his achievable goals, and he had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

He smiled, but the memory of tears filling burnt-sugar eyes made success lie bitter upon his soul.

★