Guided by the distant glow of lantern light through canvas walls, Rafe prowled between the double row of muttering, sighing, snoring men sleeping in hammocks suspended from the deck beams, and pushed open the door to the source of the light—a cabin beneath his own quarters. The chamber was made up of no more than canvas walls and a wooden post frame, too flimsy a shelter for two beings he wished to keep out of harm’s way as much as possible aboard a vessel that could and did go into action at a moment’s notice. But not on this run, not with noncombatants aboard, however much that annoyed the crew hungry for prize money. He didn’t like vulnerable people exposed to more danger than necessary. Even this canvas room would not do for long for its inhabitants. They needed to be back in their own cabin, now that he had had a good look at the Americans and deemed them harmless.
Not that he had intended to welcome two Americans aboard.
Grinding his teeth over the unwelcome passenger, he knocked on the door to the temporary cabin. In response, a high, clear voice called, “It’s unlocked.”
“Why?” Rafe turned the handle.
The instant the door latch clicked, one of the beings went into action. She sprang up from the lantern-lit hammock and charged toward him, tiny legs flying, mouth open in a joyous grin.
“Do not leap on me, you wee beastie.” He scooped the black-and-white terrier into his arms.
She proceeded to lap her miniscule tongue across his chin.
“She doesn’t like being stranded down here any more than I do.” The disembodied voice rose from the depths of the hammock.
“Why was the door unlocked?” Rafe emphasized his earlier query.
“As if a lock would stop anyone from breaking in. The walls are canvas. Rip.” A hand emerged from the hammock and sliced through the air. “They’re to hold me hostage. Which sounds rather intriguing.”
“You would not think so if you had it happen to you.”
“It must be better than being stuffed down here like cargo. ’Tis stifling and boring.”
“You have your books.”
One of the tomes thudded to the deck. “Stuffy and boring.” A head emerged from over the edge of the hammock. Dark red hair gleamed in the glow of the lamp.
Dark red hair that should have hung in a braid at least a foot past thin, childlike shoulders. Except it now swung in a tangled, ragged mass to just above those shoulders.
“What . . . did you do . . . to your hair?” With care, Rafe set the dog on the deck and closed the yard and a half distance between door and hammock. He curled his fingers around a hunk of the ruined hair and glared into the child’s green eyes. “Answer me, Mel.”
“I cut it.” A round chin jutted. Mel’s full lower lip protruded. “It was heavy and ugly, and I’d have cut off more if Jordy did not stop me. Now I look more like you.”
“I don’t want you to look like me. I’ve told you ’tis not safe.”
“Only if we lose a fight.” Mel rolled off the hammock and scooped up the dog. “Besides, I have Fiona here to protect me.”
Rafe set his hands on his hips and scowled. “She’s a wee dog. She cannot protect you against a horde of bloodthirsty Frenchmen or Americans. If they think we’re related—”
“They’ll treat me with courtesy and kindness.” Mel chuckled in a voice surprisingly rich for a child of barely twelve years. “What did that one broadsheet call you? The scourge of the English Channel?”
“You should not be reading such nonsense.”
“Why not? You’re a hero.”
“Nay, I’m no more than a legalized pirate making a profit off this war with France.”
“And now America.” Mel rubbed grimy hands through the dog’s black-and-white fur.
Fiona wriggled and made noises that sounded as though she were trying to purr like a kitten.
“See, she thinks so too.” Mel grinned.
Rafe sighed. “You’re both daft. There is naught heroic in war. I’d like to see it all end.”
“But how will you make money if the war ends?”
“I have more than enough.”
More than enough to provide a fine home. More than enough to return to most of the life he’d had before evil men ripped his world apart. More than enough to see Mel educated and clothed properly and himself made respectable.
But not enough to get him what he really wanted until he’d made landfall in Southampton in July and visited his usual haunts, sought out his usual informants. One sent him to the Nore, to a prison hulk rotting with its human cargo in the Thames, to one of those prisoners aboard, then across the sea to lands he’d avoided since Great Britain and America went to war the previous year.
He didn’t want to fight Americans. Their complaints against Britain held merit. They didn’t deserve to be destroyed.
Except for one of them.
Who would take one look at Mel and use the child as Rafe was using Mrs. Chapman—bait to draw his quarry from hiding, draw him into surrender.
“I’m retiring after this voyage,” he announced.
Mel stared at him, horror registering in big green eyes. “You cannot. We’ll have to live on land then. I’ll have to dress properly in front of people.”
“Aye, shoes and stockings and no cutlass in your waistband.” Rafe frowned at the unsheathed weapon.
Mel set Fiona on the hammock and removed the cutlass. “I thought perhaps I should be carrying it with strangers aboard.”
“They are two harmless women.” He thought of Watt’s black eye, of hands that appeared too delicate and smooth to have inflicted such damage, and added, “Mostly harmless.” If he thought little of her hands, her eyes, her fairy-tale-princess hair. “And one has the seasickness.”
Reduce her to nothing more than the crumpled, retching stranger, and she wouldn’t haunt him so.
“Ugh.” Mel grimaced. “I don’t have to do any cleaning up, do I?”
“Nay, but I’m thinking you can make me more ginger water for her.”
“More?” Mel gave Rafe a sidelong grin. “We’re running low on ginger. What happens if she drinks up all your ginger water?”
“We’ll stop in Bermuda and buy more ginger.” He turned toward the door. “And get a proper barber to undo as much damage to your hair as possible. Until then, wear a cap when on deck.”
“I can go on deck?” Mel grabbed Rafe’s arm. “I’m not one of the prisoners?”
“You were never a prisoner, you imp. You had the lock and were supposed to use it until I assured you all was well up top.”
“I did stay down here with Fi, and I am always obedient.”
Rafe snorted. “I wish I were that good at raising you. But now that you have mentioned obedience, obey me in this: keep out of the way of our guests.”
“I thought they were not dangerous.”
“Aye, weel . . .” Rafe drummed his fingers on his thigh and gazed up as though he could see through the deck. At that moment, he couldn’t hear through it either. The ladies either slept or remained nearly motionless. “I do not trust the one to not be up to some tricks. She is not happy about being here.” He reached for the door and caught sight of the book still lying on the floor. He stooped to retrieve it.
Mel dove in front of him, snatching it up first. “I—I still need to do my work in this.”
“You threw it on the floor.” The bantering tone left Rafe’s voice. His muscles tensed. “You threw your Bible on the deck.”
“I did not. I dropped it. I—” Mel’s chin jutted again. “I saw you throw one overboard once.”
“Aye, weel, one thing you should have learned aboard this brig is that I am not the best example for a child.”
“But you are.” Bible clutched in one hand, Mel laid the other hand on Rafe’s arm and gazed up at him with limpid eyes. “Do not be angry with yourself for me being here. You are the best teacher in the world. You make certain I can read well and write a fair hand and do my sums better than any of those schools you sent me to.”
“But they taught you Scripture.”
“And you don’t beat or starve me.”
Rafe’s muscles relaxed, and he tweaked the end of Mel’s nose. “Nay, I simply expose you to danger every day.”
“’Tis still better than being alone on land.”
“You would feel differently if you suffered from the seasickness.”
“Like you do?” Mel’s eyes twinkled.
Rafe responded with a narrow-eyed glare. “Insolence will get you naught but a caning.”
Laughing, Mel scooped Fiona off the hammock and darted past Rafe, out the makeshift door, and into the darkness of the lower deck. “Bring the ginger water to me when you’ve made it,” Rafe called softly to the retreating figure, “and then you can recite your lessons to me, if you cannot sleep.”
Mel would stay with Rafe and recite. Neither of them ever slept during a storm. Mel didn’t remember why, having been but three years old when a storm ripped through their lives, but Rafe did. So he ensured they knew how to spend the wakeful hours in the dark and wet, in the heaving seas and lashing winds. Mel recited lessons and Rafe concentrated on listening, correcting, teaching until the sun returned.
The sun should return with the dawn. Already rain fell only in spurts, though the waves loomed before the prow and white-rimmed mountains climbed and slid down the other side.
Rafe’s stomach rolled with them. He’d never gotten used to heavy seas, never lost the nausea that kept him surviving on ginger water and ship’s biscuit for days on end. Unlike he had done for the lady below, he never dosed himself with the merest hint of poppy juice. He needed his head completely clear. A drugged privateer captain meant death for himself and his crew at the hands of the enemy.
The enemies.
He sighed as he climbed to the main deck and strode aft to the quarterdeck ladder, his boat cloak flapping around his legs in the gale, his hair catching on his wet cheeks and eyelashes. He disliked the notion of Britain fighting more than one country at a time. War with America was a mistake. They were only a generation removed from being Englishmen, Scots, Welshmen, and half a dozen other nationalities. Yet if the Americans hadn’t declared war on England the previous year, he might never have found out how to run James Brock—merchant, politician, murderer—to earth with a scheme so unscrupulous, so craven, he couldn’t do enough to make up for his actions of the next two months, if he acknowledged a conscience.
He preferred to keep that suppressed. A conscience had brought him nothing but grief.
And his latest actions had brought him another enemy. No doubt James Brock had learned something by now, might even be considering an action against the captain of the Davina.
And in a moment of weakness, he’d allowed Mel to come aboard.
Loneliness, like a conscience, was no good for a man’s safety.
Rafe grasped the taffrail hard enough to nearly rip it from its bolts. “You will pay for that too.” He glared at the distant lights gleaming from the eastern shore of Virginia, a sign they were out of the Chesapeake. His breathing eased. In a few hours, the chances of them running into trouble with an American vessel would come close to disappearing. Mrs. Phoebe Carter Lee and her powerful friends on shore would be of no danger. He just needed to get through the night, through the storm, beyond where the woman would think he would dare set her—onto land anywhere this side of Bermuda.
He strode to the wheel, where Jordy held the Davina on a steady course east. “I can take the wheel for you if you want to seek your bunk.”
“I’d rather be here till we’re far from land.” Jordy spat to leeward. “I do not trust those Americans not to chase us down and pick a fight at dawn.”
“Let them try.” Rafe rested a hand on the binnacle. “We’re not fighting the Yankees on this voyage.”
Jordy snorted. “Aye, and how do you plan to let them know that? Or our own lads, for that matter. We’ve not taken a prize in three months, and they’re growing restless.”
“Greedy, are they not?” Rafe tried to laugh.
His mirth fell flat. Restless men on a privateer spelled potential danger. They didn’t know what their captain intended, and they wanted to fight, accumulate more wealth, perhaps buy vessels of their own. No one got wealthy sailing back and forth across the Atlantic, risking life and limb, enduring cold, damp, and bad food for no purpose. He would have to compensate them somehow, or be worrying about mutiny.
“No Americans,” Rafe said. “’Tis like fighting our cousins.”
“Aye, but—” Jordy stopped.
Feet pattered up the quarter ladder, and Mel appeared from the gloom, Fiona clicking behind. “I have the ginger water, Captain Rafe.”
Rafe flinched at the sobriquet his crew had adopted from Mel. He didn’t mind it from the crew; he disliked it from the child. He wasn’t Mel’s captain, for all he demanded obedience while on board.
“Are you feeling poorly, sir?” Jordy asked.
“’Tis not for me.” Rafe took the tankard from Mel and did consider drinking it himself for a moment. “Mrs. Lee has not taken to the sea so well as her sister-in-law.”
“Hasn’t she now. I had no notion of it aboard the cutter.” Jordy leaned over the wheel, staring at the binnacle compass. “We’re getting pulled to the north. Can we get a man or two up top to set some sail? The wind is dropping.”
Rafe shook his head. “As much as I’d like to be away from the coast in a trice, I’d prefer no more sail until light. We’ll not be that far off course that ’tis worth the risk. And with an ailing passenger . . .”
“Why would she not be sick aboard the cutter?” Mel asked. “It bounces around like a cork in boiling water.”
“And when have you been boiling corks in water?” Rafe tugged Mel’s shorn hair and frowned. “I told you to wear a cap on deck.”
“I cannot find one.”
“Ha. You’re going to regret doing this.”
“Aye,” Jordy agreed, “I said it deserves a thrashing.”
“Ha.” Mel tossed back the ragged locks. “Neither of you ever did such a thing to me.”
“Aye, and it shows. As for Mrs. Lee not being sick aboard the cutter, the weather was not so bad until right before she came aboard. And speaking of the lady, I should see how she fares.”
“Do you think you should go down there alone?” Jordy lifted one hand from the wheel and rubbed his belly.
“Ah, yes, she got you too?” Rafe pictured those small, high-arched feet curving into delicate ankles.
Abraded ankles.
“Mel, fetch the comfrey salve. Jordy here tied Mrs. Lee a wee bit too tightly and she has some scrapes that need tending.”
“Aye, sir.” Mel executed a perfect acrobatic flip despite the canting brig and landed on the main deck.
Jordy grimaced. “That bairn is going to break a limb one of these days.”
“Or give me an apoplexy before I’m five and thirty.” Holding the tankard of ginger water, Rafe paced across the quarterdeck, his body shifting to the roll of the brig, until he reached the skylight. It was closed to keep out sea and rain, and the glass was colored green for privacy, but light glowed through from his cabin, a reminder of Phoebe Lee’s eyes glittering with suppressed emotion despite her calm exterior.
He understood her illness, the roiling of rage and frustration suppressed to make the body sick. Absently, he sipped at the ginger water and listened, one hand on the taffrail for balance. No sound rose from the chamber below, nothing loud enough to penetrate deck planks and creaking timbers, or the roar of the sea and whistle of wind through rigging.
Quiet didn’t mean all was well. She might sleep, but he hadn’t dosed her earlier draught with enough opiate to guarantee sleep. She might very well be awake, plotting, scheming, trying to work out a way to escape.
There is none, my dear lass.
As if in reassurance to him, the last glimpse of light from shore winked out behind a wave. When the Davina lifted to the crest of the next swell, the horizon remained a line of black between sooty sky and phosphorescent sea. Gone. The threat of Phoebe Lee’s friends vanished beyond the waves.
But Rafe remained tense, ears straining for sound, nostrils flaring for a scent wrong amidst the effluvium aboard a vessel, eyes straining for the darker bulk of a ship or schooner swooping out of the night to challenge his presence so close to the coast of Virginia, or engage him in a fight.
At that moment, a fight sounded grand, gun smoke and powder flashes to wipe out the sight of her green eyes and tumbled golden hair, her silken skin and warm cream voice. For a moment, while she sobbed from the discomfort and humiliation of seasickness, he considered setting her ashore. But he couldn’t risk it, couldn’t take the chance of her reaching Cherrett too soon for Rafe.
Nothing must stop Rafe. No one must warn James Brock that his years of pillaging in the name of the privateers in which he had invested, like George Chapman, neared their end.
Scampering footfalls sounded on the deck. Rafe turned back to find Mel and Fi leaping up the quarter ladder.
“Can you carry all this, old man? Shouldn’t I go down to protect you?”
“I do not need the protection of a wee bairn. Now, either get yourself to your cabin or be prepared to recite your lessons.”
“But I want to see the ladies. Watt says the one is ever so bonnie, even if she is a virago.”
Rafe took the jar of salve from Mel. “’Tis no way to speak of a lady.”
“If she’s a virago, she’s not a lady.”
“Mel.”
“All right then. Is she pretty?”
“If you like them as substantial as spindrift.” Rafe headed for the companionway. “If you wish to do your lessons by the binnacle light, you may. The storm is abating.”
Mel said nothing.
Let the child sulk over being thwarted. Rafe needed the reassurance that the ladies below were settled for the night, not to concern himself with the wants of an adolescent.
Balancing the salve and tankard of ginger water in one hand, he turned the key to the cabin with the other. Beyond the panels, someone exclaimed and the other one responded, the words indistinct above the creak of timbers.
“Is it a’right if I come in?” he asked before lifting the latch.
“Of course, Captain.” Mrs. Lee’s sweet voice responded from close to the door.
Too close to the door. Before he stepped over the coaming, Rafe knew he should have taken Jordy’s advice. But two unarmed females were harmless against nothing more than his size and strength, not to mention the dirk he kept in his belt.
Except they weren’t unarmed.
He noted the missing fiddle board from the desk, slammed the jar and tankard onto the mahogany surface, and spun. His hand dropped to his knife—too late. A blade slipped through his hair and beneath the collar of his cloak to lie with its point against his jugular vein.