Chapter 26 #2
Lord and Lady Dryden started murmuring behind her as Jordan came to her side. “I thought you said the Pirate Lord had given up piracy.”
“He has.” She faced them all. Lord and Lady Dryden looked concerned and Jordan looked positively livid. She crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly. “He has,” she repeated more firmly. “Of course he has.”
“Then why is he here,” her brother asked, “chasing after us and flying the Jolly Roger?”
“I don’t know.” She tilted her chin up. “But he must have a good reason.”
“We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?” Jordan strode past Lord and Lady Dryden out of the cabin and into the saloon.
Sara rushed after him as her other companions followed. “What are you going to do, Jordan?”
“I’m going to determine just how ‘honest’ and ‘kind’ your pirate captain really is.”
“What do you mean? What—”
She broke off as the captain entered the saloon, his face mottled with fury. “It’s the Pirate Lord. They’ve ordered us to ‘heave to.’ With your permission, my lord, I’d like to fight. I think we can win, even though we’ve not as many men as I’d like.”
“No!” cried three voices at once.
When the captain stared at her and her companions in astonishment, Jordan grimaced.
“I’m afraid fighting is out of the question, captain.
You see, my sister intends to marry the Pirate Lord, and Lord and Lady Dryden are here to make sure it happens.
Much as I’d like to order you to blow the Satyr out of the water, I can’t.
If I do, one of them might murder me in my sleep, and then you’ll have no one to pay your wages, will you? ”
The captain cast his employer an incredulous look. “So you want us to heave to?”
“Yes.” Jordan’s voice held an edge. “But have your men armed and at the ready, hidden from the pirates. If anything goes wrong, we should be prepared.”
With a curt nod, the captain left. Jordan turned to Sara. “I want you to stay here until I’ve spoken with him.”
“No!” she protested. “You’ll shoot him, Jordan, and I won’t have that!”
“Sara, I’ve agreed to all your terms until now.
You owe me a chance to determine if your pirate captain’s intentions are honorable.
This attack on my ship doesn’t give me confidence in his supposed willingness to ‘retire.’ And I won’t simply hand you over to him unless I’m sure he’ll treat you well. ”
“But Jordan—”
“He’s right,” Lord Dryden interrupted. “I think we should all stay below until we’re sure there’s no danger.”
Sara might like Lord Dryden, but she certainly didn’t appreciate his interference just now.
Apparently, neither did his wife. “That is my son out there, Marcus, and I shan’t sit in here twiddling my thumbs when I finally have the chance to hold him in my arms again!”
“I share your feelings completely, my dear. But no matter what we feel, we don’t yet know this man. He’s unpredictable, and according to Miss Willis, very bitter. I think it’s best to test the waters, so to speak, before we reveal ourselves.”
“Then we’re in agreement,” Jordan told the marquess. He meant, of course, that the men were in agreement, which was all that mattered to him. “You’ll stay here with the ladies? Look out for them if anything goes wrong?”
“Nothing will go wrong unless you make it go wrong!” Sara protested, but both Jordan and Lord Dryden ignored her words. When Lord Dryden gave his agreement, Jordan walked out the door.
“Jordan!” she shouted after him. “Don’t you dare hurt him!”
Coming up beside her, Lord Dryden patted her shoulder. “There now, Miss Willis, it will be all right. Your brother may be hot-tempered, but he does care about you.”
“If he lays one hand on Gideon, I’ll strangle him,” she said fervently.
“Don’t worry,” his lordship interrupted with a faint smile. “If he lays one hand on Gideon, my wife and I will hold your brother down while you do.”
Gideon stepped warily aboard the Defiant with several men. This had been too simple. The ship had heaved to with nary a protest. He motioned to Barnaby, who boarded the ship out of sight of its captain, accompanied by fifteen of Gideon’s best men.
Then he gripped the hilt of his saber as he faced the ship’s captain, a sea-roughened raisin of a man who stood beside the main mast.
The man looked oddly unafraid. “We carry no cargo of use to you and your villains, sir.”
“I’m not here for cargo. I seek the Earl of Blackmore. Is he aboard?”
“He’s aboard,” came another voice from beyond the main mast. A man stepped forward, a pistol in his hand. “I’m the Earl of Blackmore.”
Gideon scanned his enemy with cold eyes, looking for signs of the weak coward he’d expected to find.
But though the man was finely dressed and younger than Gideon had expected, he looked nothing like the noblemen Gideon had dealt with in previous captures.
There was a hardness about him, an edge of stubborn pride, that Gideon couldn’t help but admire.
And he was leveling the pistol on Gideon as if he itched to fire it. “What do you want with me? Is it gold you want?”
“I want Sara,” Gideon said bluntly, ignoring the pistol. “I want my fiancée. Either you take me to her, or I hold you and your ship captive until you do.”
“Or I could shoot you and your cursed pirates. Even now my men have yours under their guns and can pick them off at will if I command it.”
Gideon sneered at him. “Barnaby! How fare the earl’s men and their guns?”
Barnaby and the fifteen other men emerged from behind the forward house, pushing a group of disarmed and disgruntled sailors ahead of them. “Oh, they fare quite well, Captain. As for their guns, let’s just say we’ve added to our arsenal substantially this day.”
The earl scowled as Gideon faced him with a thinly veiled smile. “I’ve been a pirate too many years to fall for such paltry tricks.”
“I still have you under my own gun,” the earl retorted.
“Aye. And my men have you under theirs. Now, about your sister—”
“Jordan, you fool, put that gun down at once!” shouted a familiar feminine voice. Sara ran out from beneath the quarterdeck to stand in front of Gideon, facing the earl. “Don’t you dare shoot him!”
Gideon’s breath stopped in his throat. “Sara!”
She turned to him, her face glowing. “I told you I would return.”
He gave her no chance to say more. Throwing down his saber, he caught her to him and crushed her against his chest. She was really here! “Sara, my Sara,” he whispered into her hair, “you have no idea what I’ve endured without you.”
“No worse than I’ve endured without you.” She drew back, her tear-filled eyes scanning his face with tender concern. “You look far too pale and thin, my love. I’m so sorry. I truly didn’t want to leave you.”
“I know.” He ran his hands over her waist and ribs, scarcely able to believe he held her in his arms. “That’s why I’m here. I was on my way to England to fetch you when I spotted your brother’s ship.”
Sara’s expression turned irate. “Ann told you what happened? Oh, just wait until I see her again!”
“You mustn’t blame her for telling me, sweetheart. I’d already decided to go to England to carry the women who didn’t wish to live on Atlantis.”
Shock spread over Sara’s face. “You . . . you what?”
“You were right about so many things,” he said solemnly, “but especially about the women. I finally learned that. What kind of a paradise is there where people are not free?”
“Oh, Gideon,” she said, her voice choked.
“So I decided to take those women back to England who wished to go.” His voice grew earnest. “And once I was there, I intended to find you and beg you to return. That’s why Ann told me the truth about why you left.
She was trying to keep me from coming after you.
She said if I got caught, all your sacrifice would’ve been for nothing. ”
“You should have listened to her,” Sara protested. “Didn’t you believe I would return? You should have, especially after she told you the truth.”
“It wasn’t you I was worried about.” He looked beyond her to where her brother stood. The earl no longer had his pistol trained on Gideon, but he was scowling at him darkly enough to kill. Gideon’s voice hardened. “I feared that your bastard of a brother would never let you go.”
The earl crossed his arms over his chest, an impudent glare on his face. “The thought did cross my mind, Horn.”
“Hush, Jordan,” Sara said when Gideon stiffened. She lifted her face to Gideon. “What he did was awful, I know, but you must forgive him. He is my brother, after all.”
“Not by blood,” Gideon growled, his gaze still fixed on the earl. “And the man certainly doesn’t deserve to call you his relation.”
“I’ve known her longer than you have and taken care of her much better.” The earl stepped forward, fists clenched, only to find Barnaby’s pistol aimed at him.
Sara glared at Barnaby. “Put that thing down now, Barnaby Kent, or I shall never speak to you again!”
Barnaby glanced at Gideon, waiting for confirmation of her words.
When Gideon hesitated, Sara scowled at him.
“You are not going to have my brother shot, Gideon, much as you may wish to. I know he behaved badly, but so did you. I wouldn’t let him shoot you for kidnapping me, so I’m certainly not going to let you shoot him for the same thing. Do you hear me?”
Gideon suppressed a smile as she stuck her chin out at him.
She was as stubborn and demanding and loyal as he remembered.
Thank God some things never changed. “All right, sweetheart. I won’t let Barnaby shoot your stepbrother.
Besides, it wouldn’t do to kill an earl just when I’ve decided to retire from piracy, would it? ”
When she beamed at him, then reached up to brush her lips against his, he caught her to him and kissed her long and deep, despite the strangled sounds he heard coming from her brother.
When at last he managed to tear himself away from her mouth, Barnaby still held the pistol on his lordship, though a grin split the first mate’s face from one end to the other.