Читать книгу The Lost Gentleman - Margaret McPhee - Страница 11
ОглавлениеThe water was colder that Kate had anticipated and the distance to the rocks looked further in the water than it had done from up on Raven. The cotton of her shift was thin, but it still caught around her legs and swirled in the water enough to slow her progress. But the dive had been seamless and quiet and she was a strong enough swimmer, taught by her father when she was still a girl. He had seen too many people drown and insisted that it might save her life one day. It might save several other lives, too, she thought wryly, if she made it to those rocks unnoticed and was able to flag down Coyote when she passed.
Each stroke of her arms, and each kick of her legs, was careful and as smooth as possible, trying to avoid any splashing or noise that would draw a stray glance from Raven as she cleared the shadow of the ship.
Quiet and smooth.
Breathe.
Keep going.
The three-line mantra whispered through her head. She did not look up and she did not look back. Instead, she kept her focus fixed firmly on the closest of the group of tiny rocky islands that lay in a direct line ahead. All she had to do was swim to it. North and his crew’s attention would all be to the larboard and stern. Kate was starboard and swimming clear. She would have to be real unlucky for them to see her.
Quiet and smooth.
Breathe.
Keep going.
And then she heard the shouts.
Her heart sank.
Keep going. They had what they thought was La Voile’s body; it was enough to secure their bounty. They did not need her. And North was an Englishman and a scoundrel to boot. He would not come back for her, but sail right on.
But the shouts grew louder, more frantic, so that she could no longer pretend she did not hear them. She glanced behind and saw what looked like every man on the ship crowded on to the upper deck. And there, at the stern, she could see North, his coat stripped off to expose his white shirt beneath, busy with a rope. The black-robed priest was by his side helping him and she knew in that moment, whatever else North was, he was not a man who sailed away and left a woman in the water.
She stopped swimming and trod water, knowing that to swim on would only make things look worse for her. One last glance at the tiny rocky islands and freedom. A movement flickered at the side of her eye. She shifted her gaze and saw across the beautiful clear green water the tall grey dorsal fin heading directly her way.
Time seemed to stop. For a tiny moment she froze, then turned and swam as fast as she could back towards Raven and North and all that she had fled. Her enemy had turned, in one split second, to her only hope. She could feel the beat of her heart and the cold sensation of terror as all of her life flashed before her eyes in a multitude of tiny fast frozen scenes. Ben and little Bea. Wendell. Her mother and father. Sunny Jim. Tobias with his dead unseeing eyes. And North. Why North, she did not know, but he was there with that sharp perceptive gaze of his.
She did not look back. She did not need to. It did not matter if North sent the jolly boat down. In maritime stories people always swam fast and made it to the safety of the boat just in the nick of time before the shark reached them. And she wanted so much to believe those yarns right now. But the truth about sharks was that one moment they were two hundred yards away and the next they were right there in your face. They could swim real fast; faster than any man, and faster than a boat could be rowed. If you were in the water and they wanted you, then your time on this earth was over. Those who survived only did so because the shark let them, so her grandfather said. And he should know since he was one of those that did not taste so good to sharks. They took his foot, but not the rest of him.
Fear was coursing through her body, fatigue burning her muscles like fire. Her breathing was so hard and fast that she could taste blood at the back of her throat. She knew the shark must be right there, but she would not yield, not when she had so much to fight for. Not when Ben and little Bea still needed her.
Something big and hard bumped against her, knocking her off course. She pushed it away, flailing beneath the water, holding her breath, eyes wide open to see the big dark shape. The lazy flick of its tail was so powerful that she felt the vibration of it through the water. Her head broke the surface, her mouth gasping in great lungfuls of air as she watched the enormous white-tipped dorsal fin head towards Raven’s stern.
Something landed in the water between her and the shark. Something that was swimming towards her. Something that was North. She stared in disbelief.
A few strong strokes of his arms and he was there before her.
‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.
‘Stealing a shark’s meal.’ He pulled her to him. There was no smile upon his face, but there was something in his eyes that did not match the deadpan voice.
They stared at one another for a tiny moment and she felt as if he could see everything she was, all that she kept hidden from him, from her men, from all the world. As if her very soul was naked and exposed before him. As if he were not North, and she Le Voile. As if he were not British and she American. As if he were just a man and she just a woman with raw honesty and attraction between them. Making her forget about Wendell, making her forget about everything she had sworn, everything she was. All of this revealed, stark and sudden and undeniable in the tiny moments left of their lives. It shocked her, the depth of it, the absurdity of it in this situation.
Someone shouted a warning from Raven’s deck.
Beyond North, where he could not see, the shark circled and came heading straight for them.
‘It is coming back,’ she murmured to him. The dorsal fin disappeared as the shark submerged for attack. Her eyes held to North’s for her last moment on this earth.
North’s arm gripped around her waist. ‘Hold on tight,’ he whispered into her ear, then turned his head to yell, ‘Now!’
She gasped as they were suddenly yanked hard out of the water and suspended in mid-air, swinging precariously. Below them the great jaws of the shark snapped shut as it sank beneath the waves once more.
Only then did she notice the rope around North’s waist that was hauling them slow and steady up to Raven’s deck.
She closed her eyes to the image of the shark and held tight to him, her body pressed to his, her legs wrapped around him in the most intimate way. Nothing mattered other than that they had made it to safety.
She was alive and she could feel the beat of her heart and his. She breathed the freshness of the air and the scent of him where her cheek was tucked beneath his chin. North’s arms were strong around her, securing her to him. His body was warm after the coldness of the ocean. He was strength. He was safety. And by holding to him she was holding on to life.
Her breath caressed his neck. Her lips were so close to its pulse point that she could feel the thrum of his blood beneath them, so close that she could taste him. She was alive, and so was he. And she clung all the tighter to him and to the wonder of that realisation.
But at that moment the voices of the men intruded and she felt her and North’s merged bodies being guided as one over Raven’s rail.
They were safe.
The ordeal was over.
Her face was so close to North’s that she could feel his breath warm and moist against her skin, their bodies so close as to be lovers. Breast to breast. Heart to heart. Thigh to thigh. In a way no other man had ever been save Wendell. She stared up into his eyes, frozen, unable to move, unable to think.
Wendell.
She tried to right herself, but North maintained his grip around her and she was glad because her legs when they touched the solidity of the English oak deck had nothing of strength in them and her head felt dizzy and distant. Somehow the rope was gone and North was sweeping his dry coat around her and lifting her up into his arms, as if she were as light as a child.
‘Let me take her from you, Captain. I will carry her.’ Reverend Dr Gunner’s voice sounded from close by, but North did not release her.
‘I will manage,’ he said in his usual cool way. ‘It is your other skills that are required.’
She did not understand what North meant, but the faces of the men were crowded all around, staring at her, and exhaustion was pulling at her, and it felt such an uphill struggle to think. Every time her eyes closed she forced them open. She knew she was over North’s shoulder as he descended the deck ladder. When she opened her eyes again she was lying on the cot in the cabin they had given her. North was standing over her and Reverend Dr Gunner was there, too, in the background.
North’s hair was slicked back, dark as ebony and sodden. Seawater had moulded the cotton of his shirt to the muscular contours of his arms and his broad shoulders, to the hard chest that she had been pressed so snug against. Only then did she see the scarlet stain on his shirt.
‘You are bleeding.’ Her eyes moved to meet his.
‘No,’ he said quietly, and gently smoothed the wet strands of hair from her face. ‘Rest and let Gunner treat you.’
Before she could say a word he was gone, the door closing behind him with a quiet click.
Gunner opened up a black-leather physician’s bag and stood there patiently. Only then did she understand that the blood was her own.
‘You are a physician as well as a priest?’
‘Priest, physician, pirate...’ He gave an apologetic smile and a little shrug of his shoulders. ‘I never could quite decide.’ He fell silent, waiting.
Kate gave a nod of permission and laid her head back against the pillow.
* * *
Up on the quarterdeck, having changed into dry clothes, Kit stood watching the distant ship creep closer. It was discernible as Coyote now without the need for the spyglass.
He thought of Kate Medhurst lying bleeding and half-naked upon the cot. And he thought of her in the water, her body so slender and pale against the large dark silhouette of the shark. And the way that, even as he dived from Raven’s stern, the scarlet plume had already clouded the clear turquoise water. And more than any of that he thought of that look in her eyes of raw, brutal honesty, exposing the woman beneath with all her strengths and vulnerabilities, and the sensations that had vibrated between them. Desire. Attraction. Connection. Sensations with a force he had not felt before. Sensations that he could not yield to even if what had just happened had not.
As he watched Coyote, his eyes narrowed in speculation. He was still thinking about it when he heard Gunner’s approach and glanced round.
‘It is an abrasion only.’ His heavy leather coat hung over his friend’s arm. Gunner chucked it on to the floor and spread it out to dry in the sun. ‘The shark’s skin has grazed one side of her waist—from beneath her breast to the top of her hip. And the palms of her hands, too, where she must have pushed against it.’
‘How deep?’
‘Mercifully superficial,’ Gunner replied. ‘She will be sore for a few days, but she will heal.’
Kit gave a nod.
‘What I do not understand is what on earth she was doing in the water.’ Gunner shook his head as if he could not understand it.
‘Swimming,’ answered Kit.
‘Surely not?’
‘You saw her.’
‘Maybe she fell.’
‘She did not fall. Her dress was removed and neatly folded.’
‘Not necessarily,’ countered Gunner.
‘She might have removed it for other purposes.’
‘Such as?’
‘Bathing.’
‘With no means to reboard the ship?’
‘A woman might not think.’
‘Kate Medhurst certainly doesn’t strike me as woman who might not think—quite the reverse. I would say, rather, that she has a shrewd intelligence lacking in many a man.’
‘I concede you may have point there. She was not bathing,’ said Kit. ‘She was swimming. With purpose. Away from Raven.’
Gunner nodded. ‘But there is nothing out there save those rocks. Even if she reached them, what would have been the point?’
‘The rocks are not quite the only thing out there.’ Kit’s gaze shifted pointedly to the horizon and the small dark shape of the pirate ship that followed.
‘You cannot seriously be suggesting that she was trying to escape us to wait for them.’
‘I am not suggesting anything.’
‘But you are thinking.’
‘I am always thinking, Gunner.’
‘And what are you thinking?’
‘I am thinking we need to discover a little more about Mrs Medhurst and her presence upon Coyote.’
* * *
When Kate woke the next morning she thought for a minute that she was aboard Coyote heading back to Tallaholm and Ben and Bea, and her heart lifted with the prospect of seeing those two little faces again and hugging her children to her. But before her eyes even opened to see the truth, the sound of English voices faint and up on deck brought her crashing back down to the reality of where she was and what had happened. She remembered it all with a sudden blinding panic: Coyote and Tobias and North; and the shark; and that North had saved her life by risking his own.
Yesterday seemed like a dream. She might not have believed it had truly happened at all were it not for the ache in her body and the prickle of pain in her side every time she breathed; a dream in which she could not get the image of him appearing in the ocean between her and the shark out of her mind. What kind of man jumped into the water beside a ten-foot shark to rescue a woman he did not know? Not any kind of man that Kate had ever met.
She thought of the way he had pulled her to safety with no concern for himself. She thought of how she had clung to him, in a way she had never been with any other man save Wendell during their lovemaking. But most of all she thought of the gentleness of his fingers stroking the sodden strand of hair away from her cheek. Such a small but significant gesture that made her squeeze her eyes closed in embarrassment and guilt. She thought of Wendell and the memory reminded her that she hated the English and she hated North. She had to remember. Always. She could not afford to let herself soften to him. Because of Wendell and because of who she was.
Yesterday had been an aberration caused by the shock of the shark...and the rescue. This morning she was back to her usual strong self. She was Le Voile. With images of Wendell, little Ben and baby Bea in her mind, she hardened her resolve.
On the hook of the cabin door hung her black dress, her newly dried shift with its faint bloodstain and her pocket. The sight suddenly reminded her of the rest of what she normally wore. Her heart missed a beat. Throwing back the bedcover, and unmindful of her nakedness or the way her newly scabbed side protested, she sprang from the bed and got down on her knees to check her hiding place under the cot, but the holstered weapons were still there just as she had left them. With a sigh of relief she sat down on the bed. And thought.
North was not stupid. He was going to ask questions. About what she was doing in the water. And the thought frightened her. But one of the best forms of defence was attack and so Kate had no intention of just sitting here waiting meekly for the interrogation.
On the washstand in the corner, someone had sat a fresh pitcher of water, brandy and some fresh dressings. Kate wasted no more time. The dressings Gunner had applied had stuck to the dried clotted blood. She eased the mired dressings from her side using the water and dabbed the fresh flow of blood with the brandy, ignoring the sting of it. The wound made wearing her holsters an impossibility. Much as she would have felt more comfortable with them in place she left them where they were. Then, she quickly dressed, tying her pocket in place beneath her skirt, and fixing her hair the best she could with her fingers and the few pins that remained. She stood there, looking into the small peering glass fixed to the wall, for a few moments longer. Calming herself, waxing her courage and determination, readying herself. One final deep breath and she went to face North.
* * *
‘Come in.’ Kit did not raise his eyes from the open ledger before him when the knock sounded at the door. He was expecting Jones the Purser with a list of the supplies needed. It was the silence that alerted him to the fact that it was not Jones that stood before him. He marginally shifted his gaze and caught sight of a pair of feminine bare feet peeping from beneath the hem of the black dress he had hung on the back of Kate Medhurst’s cabin door.
‘Mrs Medhurst.’ He set his pen down, rose to his feet and bowed, as if they were in a polite sitting room of one of London’s ton. ‘Take a seat, please.’ He waited until she lowered herself on to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk before resuming his own seat. ‘I did not think you would be recovered enough to be out of bed today.’
‘I am very well recovered, thank you, sir.’ Following yesterday’s lapse, her armour was back in place. Her head was held high with that slight underlying hostility that was always there for him. There was the same expression in her clear grey eyes, politeness flecked with strength and defiance, wariness and dislike.
Most women would have still been abed, waiting for Gunner to dress their wounds. Kate Medhurst had not waited for Gunner...or for him and his questions. The grazes on her hands were the only visible evidence of what she had endured the previous day.
‘How are your hands?’
‘Healing.’ She held out her hands before her, palms up for him to see, a gesture of revealing herself to him, a clever tactic given that he suspected that, aside from yesterday, Kate Medhurst had revealed nothing of the truth of herself.
‘And the rest?’ His eyes held hers.
‘The same.’ She did not look away.
He let the silence stretch, let that slight tension that buzzed between them build, until she glanced away with a small cynical smile.
‘I came to thank you,’ she said, taking control of the situation and looking at him once again.
‘For what?’ He leaned back in his chair, watching her.
She raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated quizzing. ‘For rescuing me.’
‘Is that what I did?’ he said softly. Rescuing her...or preventing the escape of a prisoner.
The ambiguity of the words threw her off kilter for the tiniest moment. He could see it in the frisson of doubt and fear that snaked in those cool, unruffled eyes of hers, before she masked it.
‘How else would you describe it, Captain?’ she asked.
‘A lunchtime swim,’ he said.
Despite herself she smiled at that and averted her gaze with a tiny disbelieving shake of her head.
He smiled, too. And then hit her with the question. ‘What were you doing in the water, Mrs Medhurst?’ His voice was soft, but the words were sharp.
Her eyes returned to his. The hint of a smile still played around her lips. ‘Swimming. At lunchtime.’
‘As I suspected,’ he said.
They looked at one another, the amusement masking so much more beneath.
‘Tell me about Kate Medhurst.’
‘What do you wish to know?’
‘How she came to be aboard Coyote.’
‘In what way do women normally found upon privateer or pirate vessels come to be there?’ she countered.
‘Were you abducted?’
‘Abduction is a delicate question for any woman.’
She was good. ‘As is the question of allegiance, I suppose.’
‘I do not know what you mean, sir.’
‘I am sure that you do.’
She said nothing. Just looked at him with that calm unruffled confidence that hid everything of what was true or untrue about her.
‘Where are you from, Mrs Medhurst?’
‘Louisiana, America.’ She said it with defensive pride, wielding it like a weapon. ‘And you?’
‘London, England.’
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly at his answer.
‘Why do I get the feeling that I am not your favourite person?’ he asked.
‘Delusions of persecution?’ she suggested, and arched one delicate eyebrow.
He laughed at that. And she smiled, but the tension was still there simmering beneath the surface between them.
‘I don’t expect you can take me home to Louisiana,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Too dangerous for you?’ she taunted.
‘Most definitely.’
‘So, Captain North,’ she said in a soft voice that belied the steel in her eyes, ‘what are you planning to do with me?’
‘We are for Antigua to replenish our water and stores before our journey to England. There is a British naval base there, they will arrange your transport home.’
‘Thank you.’ She gave a single nod of her head.
The conversation had been conducted on her terms. Now she terminated it at will. ‘If you will excuse me, sir...’ She rose to her feet.
And as manners dictated he did the same. He waited until she reached the door and her fingers had touched to the handle before he spoke again. ‘I had presumed you would be happy to travel with us to Antigua. Is that the case?’
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Why, indeed?’ he asked.
The quiet words hung in the air between them.
Her eyes held his a moment longer and the tension seemed to intensify and rustle between them. About unanswered questions, implications and the physicality of yesterday.
‘Good day, Captain North.’
‘Good day, Mrs Medhurst.’ Her bare feet were silent upon the floor. The door closed with a click behind her.
He stood where he was, his eyes fixed on the closed door. In his mind he was seeing the one moment when Kate Medhurst had let her mask fall, in the ocean faced with death. Then there had been nothing of poise or polish or clever tricks. Only a pair of dove-grey eyes that had ignited desires he thought long suppressed. Eyes that made him remember too well the press of her half-naked body against his and the soft feel of her, and the scent of her in his nose. Eyes that were almost enough to make a man forget the vow he had sworn...as if he ever could.
He sat back down at the desk and, picking up his pen, curbed the route his thoughts were taking. He wanted her, he acknowledged. But he could not have her, not even were she not hiding something from him. Not even if she were available and she wanted him, too. He thought of that vow, forged in blood and sweat and tears.
A knock sounded at the door, pulling him from the darkness of the memory. This time it was Jones, and Kit was glad of it.
Kate Medhurst was not being entirely truthful. But whatever it was she was hiding, she and it need have no bearing on his returning La Voile to London.
* * *
The afternoon was as beautiful as the morning. Every day was beautiful around this area, except when hurricane season came. Kate did not have to feign that she appreciated the view as she stood at the stern, watching the crystal-clear green waves and the intense warm blue of the sky so expansive and huge...and the distant speck of a ship against its horizon.
North was on the quarterdeck, issuing commands to his men. Her muscles were still tense, her blood still rushing, her skinned palms still clammy from their confrontation in his cabin that morning. Part of her wanted to stay hidden below decks in her cabin, not wanting to face him, but Kate knew she could not do that. Coyote was coming. So she stood on the deck, brazening it out, watching Sunny Jim struggle to catch them, and breathed a sigh of relief that Gunner seemed to be right about Raven having the superior speed.
As she watched she thought of North’s cabin, a cabin that she would have mistaken for that of an ordinary seaman had it not been for its larger space. Everything in it was functional. There were no crystal decanters of brandy on fancy-worked dining tables, no china plates or ornamentation, no crystal-dropped chandelier as she had expected. Everything was Spartan, functional, austere as the man himself. He did not seem given to indulgences or luxuries. Maybe that was why the men liked him. Or maybe they were just afraid of him. She slid a glance at where he stood with his men, seeing the respect on their listening faces, before returning her gaze to Coyote.
There was no tread of footsteps to warn her of his approach, nothing save the shiver that rippled down the length of her spine as North came to stand by her side, his body mirroring her own stance, his gaze sweeping out over the ocean.
‘Enjoying the view, Mrs Medhurst?’ The Englishness of his accent, cool and deep and dark as chocolate, sent a tingle rippling out over her skin.
‘Indeed I am, Captain North.’ And she was, now that there seemed little danger of Coyote catching Raven.
Those dark eyes shifted to look directly into hers. Watchful, appraising, making her feel as though he could see through all of her defences, all of her lies, making her remember who he was, and who she was, making her shiver with awareness that his focus was all on her.
She glanced down, suddenly afraid that he could see the secrets she was hiding, her eyes fixing on his feet that were now as bare as her own and the rest of his crew’s. Her mother always said you could tell a lot about a man by his feet. North’s were much bigger feet than hers, tanned and unmistakably masculine, with long straight toes and nails that were white and short and clean. Strong-looking feet, grounded and sure as the rest of him. Their feet standing so close together, and bare, looked too intimate, as if they had just climbed from bed. The thought shocked her.
She swiftly raised her eyes and found him still watching her. He smiled, not the arctic smile, or the cynical one, but one that told her he knew something of the direction of her thoughts and shared them. Swallows soared and swooped inside her stomach and her cheeks burned hot. Kate was horrified at her reaction. And North knew it, damn him, for the smile became bigger.
With an angry frosty demeanour she turned her attention back to the horizon and focused her thoughts on Wendell and his sweet kind nature: her husband, her lover, the only man for her. She thought of what men like North had done to him and the weakness was gone. Touching the thin gold wedding band she still wore upon her finger, turning it round and round, she drew strength from it and did not look at North again.
The two of them stood in silence, contemplating the view, watching Coyote.
She hoped that he would leave, go back to the work he was normally so busy with, but North showed no sign of moving.
The scene was beautiful and peaceful, but as they stood there seemingly both relaxed it was anything but ease that hummed between them; or maybe the tension was just all in herself.
‘She makes for interesting watching,’ he said eventually, his gaze not moving from where it was fixed on Coyote.
‘I wasn’t watching her in particular,’ she lied.
‘No? My mistake. Pardon me.’ He flicked a glance at Kate.
‘Have you identified her yet?’
‘We have.’
Her eyes met his.
‘La Voile’s pirates.’ He paused. ‘They are following us.’ He waited for her reaction.
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Why indeed?’
She kept her nerve. ‘Vengeance? Or maybe to reclaim their captain’s body.’
‘Maybe,’ he agreed, and shifted his gaze to Coyote.
‘But they will not catch us, will they? Not with Raven’s superior speed. I mean...we are quite safe from them...are we not?’
‘Oh, rest assured we are safe.’ He smiled at her, the small cool dangerous smile. ‘But Coyote is not.’
She felt the cold wind of fear blow through her bones. ‘What do you mean, sir?’ She worked hard to appear cool, calm and collected.
He glanced pointedly at Raven’s sails. Her gaze followed his and she saw to her horror that they were reducing the sail. Raven’s speed was already dropping.
Her heart missed a beat. Her stomach dropped to meet her shoes.
‘You intend to let them catch us!’ She stared at him, feeling the horror of what that meant snake through her.
‘Not entirely. Just to let them get within range of our guns.’
‘Why?’ she whispered.
‘Raven is fast, but not fast enough that Coyote will not fathom our direction to Antigua. Better a confrontation out here under our terms than risk her stealing upon us at anchor in the night.’
‘She would not...’ Antigua was a British naval base, filled with warships that Coyote normally avoided. But given the situation she was not sure that North was not right.
‘Not when we have finished, she will not,’ he said grimly.
She felt the blood drain from her face. When she looked again at the distant horizon Coyote was already a little larger. She kept her gaze on her ship rather than look at him, so that he would not see the truth in her eyes.
It took all of her willpower to stand there beside him, watching her men creep slowly closer to their doom, and betray nothing of the feelings of dread and fear, impotence and anger that were pounding through her blood. Instinctively, her hands went to her skirt, reaching for the weapons that were not there. Instead, she forced them to relax by her sides.
Glancing across at North’s profile, she saw that he watched Coyote with cool, relaxed stillness. Only his dark hair rippled in the wind.
‘What is the range of your guns?’ she asked, her heart beating fast with the hope that she had overestimated Raven’s range of fire.
‘Our eighteen pounders have an effective penetrating range of five hundred and fifty yards,’ he answered without looking round.
Far greater than the two hundred and eighty yards that Coyote’s six-pounders could manage. She felt sick. Her mind was thrashing, seeking any possible way to stop the impending slaughter. But short of putting a gun to North’s head... Her gaze dropped to the large scabbard that hung against his leg, and the leather holster above it...with the pistol cradled within. It was a much larger weapon than her own, but she could manage it all the same...if it was loaded. She glanced up to find his gaze was no longer on Coyote, but on her.
‘I hope that pistol is loaded,’ she said.
He smiled as if he knew it for the question it was. ‘Always. But it will not make any difference to Coyote’s fate. Bigger guns are already aimed and waiting.’
She swallowed, her mouth dry as ash, her heart thudding hard as a horse at full gallop. Coyote would see the guns, but she would not realise their size, or the special powder, or their range. She would not know what she was sailing into before it was too late.
Raven was barely moving now, making the distance between the two ships diminish fast. Too fast. Even with the naked eye, no one aboard Raven could doubt that the identity of the closing ship was anything but Coyote. Every second brought her closer.
Kate’s fingers found her wedding band again. Oh, God, please stop them. But Coyote kept on coming.
‘Eight hundred yards!’ came a shout from the rigging.
She bit her lip, trying to stop herself from crying out. Stood there still and silent as a statue while her mind sought and tunnelled and tried to find a way out for them all.
‘Seven hundred yards!’
She thought of Sunny Jim. She thought of young John Rishley. And the rest. All of them men from Tallaholm. Men with wives and children, with mothers and fathers, and brothers and sisters. Men who would lose their lives trying to rescue her.
‘You can’t just kill them!’ The words burst from her mouth.
‘Why not?’ He turned to look at her, his calmness in such contrast to the rushing fury and fear in her heart.
‘For the sake of humanity and Christian charity.’
‘You care for the lives of the men who abducted you?’
‘Some of them are barely more than boys, for pity’s sake. Have mercy.’
‘Your compassion is remarkable, Mrs Medhurst.’
‘Reverend Dr Gunner is a priest. He will tell you the same as me, I am sure. Where is he?’ Her eyes scanned for Gunner.
‘He is on the gun deck,’ said North, ‘making ready to fire.’
She could see the fifteen horizontal red-and-white stripes and the fifteen white stars against the blue canton of the American flag and the skull and smiling cutlass of her own flag.
‘Six hundred yards!’ the voice called, followed by another from over by the deck hatch, ‘Ready below, Captain! We fire on your command.’
‘Do not!’ Her hand clutched at North’s wrist. ‘If you sink them, they will all die. And no matter what they have done, they are just men seeking to make a living in difficult times.’
He looked at where she held him so inappropriately. Her fingers tingled and burned with awareness. She loosened her grip, let it fall away completely. ‘Please,’ she said quietly.
Their eyes locked, their bodies so close that she could feel the heat of his thighs against hers.
‘I do not intend to kill them,’ he said with equal softness to hers. ‘Only to disable them.’
‘Five hundred and fifty yards and in range!’ the call interrupted.
North turned away and gave the command, ‘Fire!’
Her heart contracted to a small tight knot of dread. She heard the echoing boom of a single long gun and watched with horror as the iron shot flew through the air towards its unsuspecting victim.
But the round shot had not been aimed at Coyote’s hull. Instead, her foremast was cleaved in two, the top half severed clean to fall into the ocean. Canvas and rigging crumpled all around. The men on deck rushed around in mayhem.
Her hands were balled so tight that her nails cut into her skinned palms. She did not notice that they bled as she braced herself for the echoing cacophony of shots that would follow, standing there knowing that she owed it to Coyote and her men not to look away, but to bear witness to their valour. She waited.
But there was only silence.
Kate glanced round at North in confusion.
‘She is, no doubt, too small to carry spare spars and canvas, but these waters are busy enough that they should not have too long to wait for help. Either way Coyote shall not be following us into port, or anywhere else for that matter.’ He paused, holding her gaze. ‘If you care to check, you will be relieved to see not a pirate life was lost.’ He passed her his spyglass and stood watching her.
She looked at the spyglass, knowing she should not accept it. But she could no more refuse than she could stop breathing. The responsibility of a captain to her ship and men ran deep. So Kate took the spyglass and checked for herself the damage to the men and the ship.
North was right. There were no casualties.
‘Let her run with the wind,’ he commanded his men.
‘Aye-aye, Captain,’ came the reply as they ran to increase the sails.
Kate returned the spyglass without either a word or meeting North’s eyes. She was aware of how much she had betrayed, but all she felt right now was wrung out and limp with relief for her men. She offered not a single excuse or explanation.
‘If you will excuse me, sir.’
He did not stop her, but let her walk away without a word.
Because they both knew that she was not going anywhere other than her cabin. They were on his ship. At sea. He could come and question her anytime he chose. And that there were questions he would ask, she did not doubt.
