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1851, Bias Bay, South China Sea
Philip Carruthers leaped onto the deck of the Chinese pirate ship, letting his men secure the small two-masted junk while he headed for the captain’s cabin in the stern. He had one prize to obtain though he had to fight through more pirates than he cared for.
Too many bloody pirates, he thought, as two men rushed him.
And you’re one of them, returned a voice in his head that sounded like his twin, except his brother was dead.
Still, with his pepperbox revolver in one hand and a sword in the other, he fancied his odds were good and quickly dispatched both pirates to Davy Jones’s locker.
Since the carriage accident that took Robert’s life, Philip continued to hear him in his head as the voice of reason.
Besides that, the only thing left of his brother was a—
“Arr,” he yelled as he broke the door down to the pirate captain’s cabin. The man himself was on deck, as Philip had seen, and was undoubtedly engaged in battle with his crew, if not already tied up or killed.
In the cabin, Philip hoped to find the treasure he had been seeking for two long years.
As he crashed through the doorway, he saw two things at once. Rising from the bed was a woman, her hair in disarray, wearing a decidedly ragged gown and an expression of terror. Secondly, also on the bed, was a small, red-lacquered box, leather straps around it for security. It was as if everything important had been gathered together in one spot by the pirate captain.
How tidy!
Philip stopped in his tracks. He’d been expecting the latter but certainly not the former — a white woman, in Bias Bay, on a Chinese pirate junk.
What the hell? The captain’s mistress?
Raising his weapon toward her, he asked, “Who are you?”
“Beryl Angsley,” she said evenly, her fear apparently having dissipated somewhat when he hadn’t instantly killed her. “Daughter of Lord Harold Angsley.”
A peer’s daughter. She said it as if introducing herself at a ball.
Christ!
He shook his head and sheathed his sword. This was not his day. First, he’d nearly missed this slinky ship he’d been pursuing for two weeks. In the waning light, the junk almost slipped past him and out to the open waters where they would have lost her for sure. Then some of the pirates, either cowardly or clever, had hidden behind barrels on the junk’s deck instead of engaging in honest battle the instant his men boarded.
Thus, Philip had seen one of his crew lose a hand before his eyes from the surprise attack.
Losing a hand over jewels! Dammit!
At least the man hadn’t forfeited his life. Philip prided himself on not losing a single member of his crew since setting out from the docks of London two years earlier, neither from desertion nor death. His goal, besides the contents of the glossy container, was to get the crew of the Robert home safely to their loved ones, not to go home and give terrible news to widows and orphans. He would consider it a personal failure to lose even one man.
Now, to be saddled with an Englishwoman, here on the other side of the bloody globe in the South China Sea, it had to be a stroke of the worst luck. For Philip couldn’t leave her behind.
“You are a prisoner?”
She nodded.
“From now on you are simply, Beryl Angsley, daughter of no one in particular.”
She opened her mouth — a pretty one, too — perhaps to protest, but he interrupted her.
“The higher your social status, the greater your ransom value, the more danger you are in. Even among my own crew.”
Philip was wasting valuable time. They were in pirate-infested waters and other junks, under the leadership of Chui-A-poo, were undoubtedly sailing toward them even then. And at that moment, his own ship, a swift and small clipper, had a skeleton crew until they secured this vessel and returned to her, meaning vulnerability of the worst sort.
Once back aboard her, however, the Robert could outrun practically anything.
He turned his attention to the other item, the treasure for which he’d risked life and limb, the small container still on the bed. It didn’t need to be very large to contain what he sought. It looked exactly as had been described to him one dark night in a tavern in Ningbo, just south of Shanghai, a month prior.
Still, he had to be certain. As he walked toward her, the woman darted sideways and around him. Even as he bent to pick up the box, he spied her out of the corner of his eye moving toward the splintered door.
“Don’t go out there,” he uttered without looking.
She halted.
“It’ll mean your death and not a clean one, I can assure you.”
Drawing the knife from his boot, in the blink of an eye, he sliced off the leather straps and opened the intricately worked metal clasp. Lifting the lid, he checked inside. From a bed of black satin, a necklace of rubies, diamonds, and gray pearls winked at him in the light of the cabin’s lamps. The man in Ningbo hadn’t lied.
It had been a long hunt to recover the jewelry belonging to the Duchess of Sutherland, stolen unbelievably from her quarters at Buckingham Palace. When next he returned to Britain, he would receive a generous, well-deserved bounty.
Placing the container in a bag slung over his shoulder, Philip turned to Miss Angsley. He had no choice, he reminded himself. She was an Englishwoman.
“Let’s go.”
She frowned, and it didn’t mar her lovely features one bit, he noted.
“But you said not to go out there,” she protested.
“Not without me. My men are in full fight mode and on high alert. Let me smooth the way, stay close, and you’ll be fine.”
“You’re the captain?” Was that doubt in her tone?
“Yes.”
“For the British Navy, I take it, by your accent.”
“Alas, no. I run a private ship on commission.”
“Private or pirate, did you say?”
“Same thing,” he muttered, grasping her hand and yanking her behind him as he made his way above deck.
He wished he could tell her to keep her eyes closed because there was more than one unpleasant scene unfolding, but he couldn’t. All he could do was get her swiftly back to his ship and safely into his cabin.
At her appearance on deck, he heard and felt the change. First, an outcry from the Chinese pirates, most likely at the loss of their prisoner, followed by a murmuring from his own crew as they saw her, and then a definite lessening of the violence. No one wanted to slice a neck open and have blood shooting everywhere in the presence of a woman if it could be helped.
Or so he thought. The pirate captain, a man who would face the wrath of the fleet leader, Chui-A-poo, struggled against his bindings, shrieking at his men to “save the jewels.” These words in Chinese, Philip understood.
So, it wasn’t the loss of the lady causing the agitation. It was the pirate captain’s guess, and perfectly correct, that Philip had taken the red-lacquered box. A few of the Chinese pirates were still fighting and redoubled their efforts at their captain’s cries.
“Move smartly!” Philip commanded his men. “More junks in this bay than rats on a barge.”
Chui-A-poo had fifty ships under his command — a desperate pirate leader with a price on his head for brutally killing two English officers. Now losing the priceless necklace belonging to Queen Victoria’s special friend, Chui would be a dangerous man indeed.
Moving swiftly, Philip crossed the deck, keeping an eye out for Leo, who nearly always accompanied him when he boarded another ship. Spying the fluffy orange tail of the stout cat racing toward him, he led Miss Angsley past the junk’s lowered rectangular sails, which he admired for their superior speed and control. The pirates would have them up again in a flash, but he was confident his clipper could outrun them.
Of course, he could order the deaths of enough of the pirate crew to cripple the vessel, but it wasn’t his style.
He was called Lord Corsair, not Blackbeard, for God’s sake.
***
SAFELY BACK ON THE Robert, Philip turned his unwanted guest over to his trusted first mate, Rufus, a fierce, red-headed Scot, and then stayed on deck until all his crew had returned and the ship had set sail.
“All hands, haul the wind,” he ordered his crew. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Boom about!” he heard Bantam, his sail master, call out, and then they were underway.
Leaving the Chinese junk behind in the waning light, Philip didn’t relax or stop scanning the waters until two hours and about forty nautical miles separated him from Bias Bay. They headed south toward Hong Kong harbor, with no other sails in sight, and, at their current pace, they would be there before midnight.
With the sack still on his back, Philip left the quarterdeck for his cabin in the stern. At his instructions, Rufus had taken Miss Angsley there, for nowhere else on board the ship was suitable for a lady. Besides, it seemed the safest place for her, hopefully, short stay.
A single lamp burning, she lay stretched out on his bed, fully clothed, eyes closed, apparently sleeping with her hands together on her chest like a church effigy.
Hesitating, he wondered what to do.
Closing the door quietly behind him, he supposed he should awaken her, ask her some questions, determine if she had family in China, and then decide the most expedient way to get her off his ship.
Instead, he let her sleep. God’s teeth but he was exhausted, too. While she slept, so could he. Quietly, he pushed aside the tin full of lead shot for his revolver and slowly lowered his sack to the table, resting it on the charts already there. Then he sat down in his comfortable chair, lifting his booted feet to the table as well.
Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes, knowing he could nod off in a minute, maybe less.
The lookout would alert him at the first sign of danger. Otherwise, the Robert would drop anchor in the British-owned and patrolled waters around Queen Victoria’s easily won prize of Hong Kong Island.
***
BERYL AWAKENED WITH an immediate sense of panic from a fitful sleep filled with nightmarish dreams. She knew at once she was on a ship by the distinct smell of a closed cabin, by the sound of water lapping against the hull, and by the gentle swaying motion, of course.
However, she was no longer aboard the junk, with everyone speaking so quickly in a language she hadn’t been able to make neither heads nor tails of since arriving in the Orient two months earlier.
Truly, being unable to communicate, even to ask to relieve herself had been the most terrifying part of her previous ordeal with the Chinese pirates.
Precisely where she was now, she couldn’t say, though she hoped still in the South China Sea. All she knew for certain was her father would be worried sick, as it must be going on three days since her kidnapping. She also knew she was in the cabin to which she’d been brought the night before, spacious but sparsely furnished.
Then she heard it, a soft buzzing sound. For a moment, she closed her eyes to pretend she was home in England, in the Bedfordshire countryside watching bees alight upon the flowers. It took her a second to realize someone was snoring close by. Opening her eyes again, she lifted her head and saw a man at the other end of the cabin where there was a table and chairs.
Good. Snoring meant sleeping, which meant the possibility of escape. For even though she’d been terrified and tired when rescued from the Chinese ship, she recalled her rescuer saying he was not in the queen’s navy. Thus, she was probably on another pirate ship.
Her hope now was for it to be docked. Otherwise, she would tear off the already ripped and ruined gown and swim for shore, if it was within sight.
What choice did she have?
Swinging her legs off the bed, Beryl put her feet to the floor and stood. Instantly, with a feeling of lightheaded unsteadiness, she sank back down. It wasn’t the rocking of the ship affecting her so much as the lack of food and the long hours on the junk with her heart pounding and terror being her constant companion.
The man who’d escorted her to the cabin the evening before, a soft-spoken, red-bearded sailor, had given her water when asked. Her mouth again dry and the dizziness remaining, she wanted more water, as well as to relieve herself and desperately hoped there was some option better than a chamber pot.
Drats! It was hard to think of how to escape when one wanted both to have a drink and to use the privy!
More slowly, Beryl stood again and, lifting her bedraggled skirts so she didn’t trip, began to creep across the cabin. Of course, the door had to be on the other side of the snoring man, whom she now recognized as the captain who’d taken her from the pirate junk.
The cabin was longer than it was wide, and holding her breath as if it would make her smaller and quieter, she had nearly gone by him when his arm shot out and grabbed her wrist.
Captured again!