A Lady's Wish (12 page)
Authors: Katharine Ashe
I
n pursuit of unexceptionably noble ends, the heroes of my
Rogues of the Sea
trilogy nevertheless occasionally find themselves working at cross-purposes to the Royal Navy. So it was great fun to turn over the coin and write Nik, a sailor who became a hero through serving his kingdom’s military. I dedicate this story to the brave men and women of our armed services whose ultimate hope is peace for all.
My profoundest thanks for assistance go to Margaret Brill, Georgann Brophy, Georgie Cashin, Laurent Dubois, Melinda Leigh, and Marquita Valentine.
The American Library Association’s
Booklist
named Katharine Ashe one of the “New Stars of Historical Romance” and
RT Book Reviews
awarded her debut historical romance,
Swept Away By a Kiss
, a “TOP PICK!” Katharine lives in the wonderfully warm Southeast with her husband, son, two dogs, and a garden she likes to call romantic rather than unkempt. A professor of European history, she has made her home in California, Italy, France, and the northern US. Please visit her at www.katharineashe.com.
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A Lady’s Wish
Captured By a Rogue Lord
Swept Away By a Kiss
Coming Soon
In the Arms of a Marquis
Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose minds he learned, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life.
—
H
OMER
, Odyssey
“G
orblimey, Cap’n Redstone. Cut off his head already.”
With his long, leather-clad legs braced upon the pitch-sealed deck, Alexander “Redstone” Savege stared down at the cowering form, his broad-brimmed hat casting a shadow over the figure. The whelp’s skinny arms encircled his head, his pallor grayish from a dredge in frigid coastal waters. He wasn’t more than fourteen if he were a day. Far too young to be living such a wretched life.
Alex rubbed his callused palm across his face, sucking in briny air laced with the scent of oncoming rain, his gray eyes shadowed. He gripped the hilt of his cutlass, a thick, inelegant weapon, long as his arm and meant for only one purpose—the same as the ten iron guns and pair of agile pivots jutting from the
Cavalier’
s sleek sides, all at rest now but easily primed for battle.
Violence, the hell’s ransom of a pirate. Once mother’s milk to Alex, now a curse.
He cast a glance at his helmsman, a hulking, chestnut-skinned beast sporting a missing earlobe and a leering smile. Big Mattie was always eager to see blood spilt. The faces of the five dozen sailors clustered around showed the same gleeful anticipation.
Alex withheld a sigh. He’d brought this on himself. The lot of them knew, after all, the swift ease with which their master’s blade could fly.
“Pop his cork right off, Cap’n,” cackled a sexagenarian with cheeks of uncured leather. “Or slice his nose and ears.”
“Stick ’im in the ribs, just like you did to that Frenchie wi’ the twenty-gun barque we sunk in ’thirteen,” an ebony sailor chimed in.
Alex repressed a grimace, his hand tightening around the sword handle. He fixed the grommet with a hard glare.
“Are you ready to die for your crime, Billy?” he grumbled in his deepest, scratchiest voice, the sort that never saw the inside of a St. James’s gentlemen’s club or a beautiful lady’s Mayfair bedchamber. The sort that his mother, sister, and most of his acquaintances would be shocked to know he could affect.
The Seventh Earl of Savege never cussed, rarely swore, and only in the direst circumstances raised his voice above an urbane murmur. Handy with his fives, expert with saber, épée, and pistol alike, he never employed any of them, to the eternal vexation of not a few cuckolded husbands. He preferred perfumed boudoirs to malodorous boxing cages, and the elegant peace and quiet of a fine gaming establishment to the dust and discomfort of a carriage race.
But each time Alex stepped aboard the
Cavalier
, he left the Earl of Savege behind.
“Blast and damn, Bill, are you trying to fob off a whisker?” He glowered. Several of his crew members echoed his discontent with mumbles.
“I didn’t cackle, Cap’n. I swears it,” the youth mewled. “You can’t kill me for not telling them nothing, can you?”
Alex took a long breath, steadying the blood pounding through his veins, fueled by a dangerous cocktail of anger, frustration, and pure cerebral fatigue.
“I can kill you for soiling my ears with that sound,” he grunted. “What’s that coming from your throat, a plea or a girl’s whimper?” He tapped his sword tip to the boy’s bony rear and nudged. “Stand up and let me hear if you can speak like a man instead.”
The lad climbed to his feet.
“On my mother’s grave, Cap’n, I didn’t tell any of them smugglers about our covey. I didn’t.”
“Your mother is still alive, Billy, and happy you’ve nothing to do with her any longer, I’ll merit.” Alex sheathed his sword.
The whelp’s eyes went wide. “Then you ain’t going to kill me after all?”
“Not today, but you’ll scrub the decks for a fortnight,” Alex growled. “And caulk that crack on the gun deck at the bowsprit. Caulk the whole damn deck, for that matter. The rest of you get back to work.”
Nothing stirred atop but the fluttering banner, gold rapier upon black undulating in the fresh breeze.
“Now!” Alex bellowed.
Billy jumped, and the crew scattered like grapeshot. Alex moved toward the stair to belowdecks. Big Mattie lingered.
“You ain’t gonna even strap him to the capstan for a day, Cap’n?” he prodded. “But he gave up our covey to those curs at the tavern in the village. Got to make an example of him. What do you want, for the rest of these lilies”—he gestured around the ship—“to go spouting their mouths off?”
“Stubble it, Mattie, or I’ll stubble it for you,” Alex warned without breaking stride, hand still upon the metal at his hip. He forbore grinding his straight, white teeth, the only bright spot on his polish-blackened face except the whites of his eyes.
“Big Mattie has a point, Captain,” his quartermaster said quietly, falling in beside him, matching him stride for stride. Jinan stood a mere inch shy of Alex’s considerable height, of similar build though somewhat leaner in the chest, like his Egyptian ancestors.
Alex met Jin’s steady blue gaze, the intelligence glinting in it reminding him as always why he left his ship in this man’s hands for most of the year.
“Big Mattie has an unhealthy thirst for blood, like his master,” he muttered, swinging down the steep steps to the gun deck, leaving the gray of the spring day behind. “We don’t need to worry about the smugglers. They’ll keep to their own if we keep to ours.” From habit his gaze scanned the cannons before he ducked beneath the beams.
They entered the day chamber, appointed in Aubusson carpets, with brocaded upholstery sheathed in walnut, cherrywood furniture, and a crystal carafe cradling French brandy on the sideboard. A silver and onyx writing set graced the desktop in the adjacent office, and ivory bookends supported leather-bound volumes of Greek verse. Along with the bedchamber opposite, and the finest linens, it looked like the private rooms of a lord of the realm. Unbeknownst to all aboard except Alex and his quartermaster, they were.
Jin closed the door and affixed the shutters of the windows letting onto the deck. He folded his arms.
“Thirst for blood, my arse. Mattie might gripe, but your mercy stands you in good stead with the men, as always. Even when they’re itching to be ashore.”
“Lilies, the lot of them, just like he said.” Alex waved a dismissive hand. “They ought to be ashamed to be weary of the sea after a mere seven weeks abroad.”
“They’re not weary, merely looking forward to a lick at the grog we took off that Barbadian trader.” Jin shook his head. “You’re right about the smugglers, of course. But, Alex, the hull won’t clean itself. We’ve got to careen the ship.”
“Which you should have done before the last cruise.”
“I couldn’t heave to for that. Not after the
Etoile
challenged us off Calais.”
“And left you twiddling the sweeps when the wind died and she failed to show for the fight. Jin, I did not give you permission to go after that blasted privateer. We are at peace with France now, or hadn’t you noticed? Even if we weren’t, that is not our purpose.”
“The men think it is, at least since you put French merchantmen off limits after the treaty last November.”
“You sound as though you agree with them.” Alex moved into his washroom, pulled off his sash strung with dagger and pistol along with his leather waistcoat, and hung them upon a hook. His sweat-stained linen shirt came next. “Have you finally become greedy for pirate’s gold after all these years, my friend?” He drew on a fresh garment.
Jin scowled, marring the aristocratic lines of a face that mingled the blood of English nobles and eastern princes.
“Don’t insult me. But after our run-in with that American frigate last week and the quick repairs, the crew deserves a break.” He paused. “And so do you.”
“Have a yen to take the summer cruise without me? Are you hoping to storm the Channel and win a fat French prize despite my prohibition?” Alex chose a dark, simply tailored coat from his compact wardrobe and took up a wrinkled cravat. Tubbs would have his head for donning such a rag. But he didn’t answer to his valet, or to anyone else.
“Of course not,” Jin replied. “If you say we mayn’t take merchantmen any longer, we will not. The men got accustomed to it after three successful years, though.”
“The war did not last long enough for some.”
“Long enough for you to take out a half-dozen French men-of-war,” Jin murmured.
Alex ignored his friend’s look of measured admiration and wound the linen about his neck. It smelled of salted fish, but that was a good sight better than plenty of the other aromas on the
Cavalier
at the end of the seven-week cruise. Jin was right. Both ship and crew needed a break before the next trip out. And, according to the note Billy brought back from his trip ashore last night, he had business at home.
He wrapped the cravat about his jaw, stretching it over his nose and tucking it fast at the base of his skull. With the black face paint and a concealing hat, the disguise had not failed him in eight years. It still astounded him, despite the
Cavalier
’s repeated visits to the north Devon coast of late, that no one among the
bon ton
had connected the notorious buccaneer Redstone with the seventh Earl of Savege. With a vast, prosperous estate stretching across miles of remote Devonshire coastline, the earl was far too busy in London whoring and gambling away his fortune to set foot at home often.
Alex took some pride in Redstone’s mysterious identity. His brother, Aaron, positively delighted in it. Blast him.
“Last autumn the men grew richer than bilge rats should,” Jin commented.
Alex dropped a nondescript hat atop his head and tugged it low over his brow.
“Then they should be content this season with an occasional English yacht. In the meantime, allow them ashore, north as usual. But for God’s sake tell them to behave and stay clear of those blasted smugglers. I don’t want them getting mixed up with that bunch of miscreants, or being mistaken for them.”
“The locals know the boys well enough by now.” Jin frowned. “But Billy didn’t like the looks of the
Osprey
’s crew, and he brought back news.” He shook his head, bracing his stance against a sudden sway of the ship. The far-reaching eddies of Bristol Channel were friendly enough in gentle weather, but rain beckoned. Alex could feel it in his blood like he felt sunset, moonrise, and the ebb of the tides.
“What have they done?”
“Seems they roughed up a girl.”
His gaze snapped up. “Roughed up?”
“Aye.” Jin nodded. “A group of them.”
“What girl?”
“A dairy maid. Did it right under her brothers’ noses. In a barn.”
“They took a girl from a barn and no one challenged them?”
“
In
a barn—”
“No.” He lifted his hand. “I understand. The farm sits upon the shore, doesn’t it?” Weeks ago he’d come upon the smuggling brig out of a fog and had a good look at it. Well armed and deep in the draft, the
Osprey
was an impressive vessel. Even if she sat too far off shore for the cannon shot to reach land, sailors’ muskets, cutlasses, and pikes could readily best a farmer’s pitchforks and axes. The girl’s brothers could not have saved her virtue, much like his own brother could not save their younger sister years earlier.
Alex headed toward the door. “Why did you wait until now to tell me this?”
“You always say you don’t wish to know the business of English smugglers. Let them go their own way. But this is a nasty one. Captain goes by the name of Dunkirk.”
“I don’t care about the
Osprey
or her captain. Only—”
“The pleasure boats of spoilt English nobles. I know.”
Alex set an even gaze upon his friend.
“If you object to the
Cavalier
’s purpose, you are free to find other employment. I have made that perfectly clear many times, and you must have enough gold stored in London banks by now to buy yourself a fleet. You owe me nothing.”
Jin returned his steady stare. “I will decide when my debt to you is repaid. And you need me, now more than ever.”
Alex refused to bite at that bait. He reached for the door handle.
“What about Poole, then?”
Alex paused, a hot finger of anger pressing at the base of his throat once more. But it did not spread to fill his chest as it had for so many years. Now it merely lapped at his senses, taunting him with what might have been. Revenge was sweetest served hot, and eight years had in truth cooled his thirst for blood. Now the sole reason he pursued his present course sat in solitude at Savege Park, awaiting his return.
“I will concern myself with Lord Poole when and if he ever finds us.” He could wait to confront the man who, barely knowing it, had twice turned his life inside out.
“By which you mean never,” Jin said casually as Alex opened the door. “He’s been making very friendly with the Admiralty, if rumors can be believed. Perhaps you should spend some time sitting in your seat in Lords. Then you can ask him to his face what he intends to do about Redstone.”
Alex lifted a single brow. “When you hold a peerage yourself one day, Jin, remind me not to give you foolish, unsolicited advice, will you?”
His quartermaster laughed. “See you in June?”
“I will send word. Until then, keep them out of trouble. I don’t want to hear any stories of the crew getting up to rigs in the villages. My ship deserves it, if not its master.”
“Aye aye, sir. I will take good care of her. And you take care of those other ladies you’re abandoning this one for.”
Alex grinned, his chest loosening. He left the cabin and climbed onto the main deck. Fore and aft the schooner stretched sleek and sparkling, in top order. A 135-ton, twelve-gun beauty, she was one of the fastest ships in the Atlantic. In the eight years since he’d purchased her gleaming new at St. Eustatius, then four years later sailed north into the English Channel, no one had come close to finding her. Only two ships—the American
Wasp
and the free-agent
Blackhawk—
had outrun her.
