Chapter Eight

The weather turned stormy and rough. For five days, the rains fell and the sea rolled beneath the ship. Though she’d battled the storms of the northern Atlantic and more tropical cyclones than she could count, the captain ordered her to stay in the cabin. Not even her leather jerkin, he argued, could hide her sex if a wave soaked her upon the deck.

Now Adriana lay restless in her hammock and listened to the boom of waves. The storm was ebbing, but the yardarms still creaked and the sailors ran frantically across the decks. Above the moaning of the ship’s timbers, she heard the captain’s commands as he ordered repairs as the wind abated.

Chou-Chou leapt out of her hammock, long tired of the wild swinging. Even the charms of her Breton horn had worn thin. He raced into the captain’s cabin but was pulled short by his rope harness.

“Don’t give me that look,” she said, as the lemur pinned her with his wide gold gaze. “After what you did to the captain’s shirt yesterday, you’re barred from his cabin.”

The captain was bad-tempered enough without Chou-Chou exacerbating the situation. She’d blame the captain’s fury on the storm, but she sensed there was more to his mood than constant work and a lack of sleep. Her very presence irritated him. She was the same person she’d been days ago, but now he treated her like a plague of fleas.

The leash suddenly slackened in her hand. She sat up on her elbows to see the empty harness at the other end.

Damn!

She struggled out of the hammock and clutched the door frame as the ship bucked under a wave. She scanned the cabin and saw her pet batting the feather quills on the captain’s desk.

“Chou-Chou, ici!”

Startled, the lemur cried out and sprung off the desk, upsetting an inkpot in the process. She stumbled across the swaying floor to tip it back into the hole, but a small puddle of inky liquid stained the papers. She searched the desk surface for a rag, then, not finding one, she yanked open one of the drawers.

Papers, papers, papers. An inventory of the two British warships. Official-looking dispatches tied up in twine. A privateering lettre de marque, made out to Captain Wolfe and made regal with the raised yellow seal of King Louis XIV. She was about to shut the drawer and search elsewhere for a rag when a flash of red ribbon caught her eye.

She hesitated, glancing at the door. She could still hear the captain’s voice coming from above, shouting orders to the men.

She pulled out the letters tied with ribbon. The paper was old, yellowed, but made of fine stuff that crackled when she unfolded the first. The letter was addressed to Roarke Lee Cameron and written in French.

 

My darling son Roarke,

I am writing this note to you alone, because you brother would not appreciate the sentiments I wish to convey before you both set off on your adventure. Adam is a fine young man of great intellect who will do great things in this world, but with his gentle constitution and his insistence in speaking his own mind, I fear that he may not fare well at first under the rigid discipline of the royal navy.

And so I must ask you to watch over him during the trials, to guide him as I would in your place, to stifle his brilliant impudence even if it requires a gentle cuff or two, so that he may soon grow in wisdom as well as in strength. I hope you will bear this last request of mine with good humor, and forgive a mother for wanting to reach across the miles to protect her two most precious children.

I look forward to the day when I see you walking up the road in your fine red uniforms, for that will be the day we are reunited.

Your loving mother,

Marguerite Cameron

Her lips stumbled over the English surname. She repeated it under her breath. It was a fine name, a strong name. This Marguerite was the mother of Adam. She remembered that the captain said he had a brother by the name of Adam, when they spoke on the deck of the ship outside Roscoff.

Roarke Lee Cameron.

She rolled the name over her tongue, wondering why his privateering papers were registered instead under Captain Wolfe.

She startled as Chou-Chou sprang onto the captain’s bed to bounce about, and she suddenly remembered the spilled ink. She re-folded the letter, slipped it under the red ribbon, and returned it to the bottom of the drawer.

When the door to the main cabin burst open, she was soaking up the spilled ink with a corner of her shirt.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Cleaning up,” she said, as the name Roarke Lee Cameron rang in her head. “The inkwell overturned when the ship bucked.”

She tried not to shoot a dirty look at her pet, who’d settled by the alcove, where he cleaned his fur.

“Come pull off my boots.” He paced to the bed and sat on the edge. “They’re filled with water.”

She knew that the captain—Roarke—preferred being barefoot on deck during a storm, so since he was wearing boots he must have gone below decks to check the level of water in the hold.

“Is there much damage?”

“Some.”

She gripped the boot and pulled. “Anything serious?”

“Some tangled rigging, one torn sail, a bilge full of water.”

The boot came off with a sucking sound, splattering seawater all over the floor. “I could go below decks,” she said, as she tossed the boot aside, “and help pump out the water—”

“The water is deeper than you are tall.” He held out his other booted foot. “You’d be soaked and your charade would be undone.”

“It’s as dark as midnight in the hold.” He seemed to forget she’d been doing this for years. “No one will notice—”

“I will notice.”

“Because you already know.” His other boot came off in her hands and she fell on her behind.

“You argue like a serving wench.”

“I argued like this when you thought I was a boy, and never did you say anything stupid like that.”

His jaw shifted in that way she’d come to know too well. He was holding his tongue and didn’t much like it.

Someone knocked at the door. He barked an impatient come in. A sailor slipped a bowl of stew and a hunk of dark bread on the table near the portal, and then closed the door tight.

The captain—Roarke—reached over his shoulder to grasp a fistful of shirt to peel it off his back. “Why this sudden anxiety to get out of here?” he asked. “You’ve been in storms. You know what it’s like to stand on a slippery deck—”

“I’m bored to death.”

“Then fetch me a dry shirt.”

He wadded his sodden shirt and tossed it in a corner. At the thud, Chou-Chou rushed into the main cabin and burrowed his head in the wad of wet linen. She made no effort to remove the lemur from his new plaything, despite the annoyance on the captain’s face.

“He’s been locked up for days.” She lifted the lid of the sea chest, pulled out a shirt, and tossed it at him. “You are keeping us prisoners in here, Chou-Chou and me.”

“You aren’t a prisoner.” He ran the clean shirt over his wet, naked chest. “You can stay below decks.”

“And do what? The cook doesn’t want me around lest I set the ship afire."

“Then,” he said, gesturing to the room, “do your work here.”

“I’m not a housemaid.”

“You’ll make a horrible wife to some unfortunate sot.”

“Yes, I would, since I’m a sailor, not a wife.”

Although as she watched him stand up, shirtless, muscular, and gleaming, she found herself thinking of wifely sorts of things.

Even more so when he began to unlace his breeches.

“Look at you,” he said, tugging the ties free. “Blushing like a bride.”

Anger rose but she put a cork in it. Every day she saw men pull their members out to relieve themselves over the rail, and she’d never blinked twice. Yet in front of this half-dressed man she found herself acting and feeling like a flighty young girl. She didn’t trust these feelings she was having, cooped up so long in this room with a man who knew the truth.

“Come, come,” he said, in a deep-throated, teasing voice, “it’s not as if you haven’t seen me before. Would you like to check the wound?”

She turned on one heel, unnerved by the timbre in his voice. “I’ll wait in my room until you need me.”

“That may be sooner than you think.”

Once in the alcove, she sat on the little ledge of the window, gripping the sill as the sea still rolled, but not as fiercely as the rolling within her own body. She pretended to be absorbed in the view but her senses prickled. From the other room, she heard the clink of crystal against crystal and knew he’d opened one of the few remaining bottles of brandy. Chou-Chou was jumping around in the main cabin but she didn’t care. Let the captain toss him out—no, let Roarke Lee Cameron toss him out.

“Get out here, Joubert,” he said, after she’d heard the clink of crystal against crystal a few more times. “Hang up these wet clothes to dry.”

She entered the cabin with some caution. He leaned back in the chair. He had changed to a dry pair of thin-legged breeches and hiked his bare feet on the desk. He’d combed his hair back off his brow and it glowed with a blue-black sheen in the gray light of the room. As she gathered the clothes, she felt his gaze drifting up and down her body with disturbing intensity.

“There are times,” he said, “when your femininity overcomes this disguise, Joubert. I admit, I find it intriguing.”

She bundled his wet breeches close to her chest, wondering what to make of his soft voice, this strange mood.

“I don’t know what you are,” he continued. “I look at you every day and wonder how I could ever think that backside of yours had anything but a woman’s curves. It’s like stripping a ship and finding a dozen hidden compartments—”

“You’ve been drinking.”

He raised his glass. “Your perceptions are impeccable.”

“You’re not yourself.”

“Indeed, I’m not. I’m not the kind of man to bring a woman on a ship, or let one stay with me in my cabin.”

“You’re raving, so you must be famished.”

She turned to bring him the food the sailor had left on the table and saw, instead, Chou-Chou standing on the tray.

“Chou-Chou!”

The lemur shot up. His catlike face was smeared with the drippings of the stew. She heard the captain’s chair scrape against the floorboards just before he came around the desk and lunged for the lemur, just missing his ringed tail as he darted, screaming, into the alcove.

“Don’t!” She rushed to stand in the doorway of the alcove, between the two. “He was just hungry, you can’t blame him—”

“He’s the best-fed soul on this ship.”

She couldn’t deny it. The lemur had a bad habit of leaping on the officers’ dinner table and sampling the dishes before a furious lieutenant could bat him away. But still she didn’t move from her position even though the captain loomed over her, his breath smelling like brandy.

“Bring me another bowl,” he snapped, stepping away. “And make sure that pet of yours stays away from it—and me.”

In the alcove, she seized her pet and wrapped him in his harness more tightly than usual. “It’s all right, Chou-Chou. I won’t let the captain hurt you.” He thrust his muzzle in her neck and she buried her face in his amber fur. “But don’t go wriggling out of this again or else both our hides will be tanned.”

She snatched the dirty bowl and headed out of the room. In the brick-floored galley, the cook was tending several contained fires, cooking furiously now that the worst of the storm was over. She dunked the bowl in salt water and then held it out. “Captain’s plate. He wants seconds.”

“He does, does he?” The cook scowled. “He’ll be food for fish if he’s not careful.”

Adriana frowned. She knew the crew was dissatisfied, especially after Gwynn’s punishment, but this was dangerously bold, even for a pirate. She wondered what else had happened on deck while she was closed up in the captain’s quarters.

She climbed atop one of the unopened barrels of salted meat and searched for a less dangerous topic of conversation. “The storm is stopping, it seems.”

“Oh, it’s just beginning, boy. And it’s been brewing since we left Roscoff—”

“What’s this?” Lieutenant Drake approached through the dimness. “The captain’s mouse, out of hiding?”

Drake’s gaze was intense, baffled, and probing, as it had been since Roarke had tipped him off to her true identity.

“I’m not hiding,” she said, her throat tight.

“I haven’t seen you on the upper deck, lad, fighting the storm like the rest of us.”

“That’s no fault of mine.”

“You should be grateful to the good captain—one big wave and you’d be swept over.”

“I’ve battled worse storms.”

“And now,” Drake said, “you’ll live to battle more.”

The lieutenant took the bowl that the cook offered with an averted face. Rather than bring his food to the officers’ dining area, Drake settled on his haunches and rested his back against one of the tubs. He ate with methodic, polite rhythm. Gwynn had told her that Drake was the third son of an English viscount. He looked every bit the aristocrat, eating his rancid stew with a silver spoon he had fished out of his ruined satin culottes.

“It won’t be long now,” Drake said, “before we sight land. There’ll be fleets of merchant ships just off the coast of America.”

“America?” She frowned. “Have we been thrown off course that much? I thought we were headed to the Caribbean.”

“We were. But the captain always has the welfare of his crew in mind.” Drake pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket and patted his lips. “He wants to capture a few well-laden merchant ships before heading after the British fleet.”

There was no question—Drake had heard some kind of grumbling. He’d have no other reason to bring this up.

She met the cook’s wary eye as the cook held out the captain’s now-filled bowl. “Well,” she said, hopping off the barrel she’d been sitting on, “here’s to easy gold and quick glory.”

She took the bowl and headed to the stern of the ship to take the stairs to the quarterdeck. When she got to his quarters, the captain was sitting at his desk absorbed in his charts and calculations. His hair was no longer neatly slicked back. It looked like he’d spent the time she was away raking through with his fingers.

“Just leave it there,” he said, not even looking at her.

She left the bowl by his elbow and returned to the alcove. Chou-Chou lay motionless on her hammock, dead asleep. Absently she reached out and scratched his fur, and her pet made a strange, gurgling moan. Curious, she leaned closer. He was panting as if he was hot. He smelled bad. His white underfur was stained and he was as limp as if someone had beaten him. She noticed a dark spot on the floor beneath the hammock.

Anger flaring, she strode into the main cabin. “What did you do?”

The captain lifted his gaze from his papers. “Do?”

“If you hurt him—”

“Lower your voice.”

“—if you even touched him—”

“Joubert.”

Her name was a barked order. Instinct made her go quiet though anger tightened her hands into fists.

He said in a lower voice, “What’s wrong?”

“Chou-Chou.” Her throat tightened. “He’s hurt.”

“Not by my hand.” The captain straightened up, his brows drawing in concern. “He didn’t leave the alcove.”

She did not know why, but looking at Roarke’s face she just knew he spoke the truth.

The captain rounded the desk. “Let me see.”

“No.” She headed into the alcove ahead of him. “He doesn’t like to be touched by anyone but me.”

She entered the dim room, loosed the harness, and slipped her arms under Chou-Chou’s small body.

“Maybe he’s just sick.” She hefted her pet to her chest.

“He threw up my dinner.” Roarke was a tall warmth behind her. “Bring him into the light. Hold him while I look him over.”

Her heart began to pound. The captain stood close and searched the pet’s splattered fur, slipping his fingers over the froth at her pet’s mouth and lifting those fingers to his nose. Chou-Chou’s eyes had fluttered closed.

Something was wrong, terribly, terribly wrong.

“Maybe,” she said, “I should get the surgeon.” At least Chou-Chou’s whimpering had stopped. “Maybe he can give him something—”

“Adriana.”

Her name on the captain’s lips was husky and foreign and she almost didn’t hear it. She didn’t want to hear it, not now, not while Chou-Chou lay sick in her arms. But the captain had straightened up from his examination and now stood looking at her with an odd expression on his face.

“The surgeon,” he said softly, “can no longer help.”