Chapter 11
Nicholas Blackburne was in a foul mood. It had begun at Barataria Bay and had festered all the way across the Atlantic over the past month. The colder the water under him became, the more heated his temper.
He should have known the Lafittes would betray him. All that talk of brotherhood, family ties…. Lies. The lot of it.
Feeling downright ferocious in the back of the barred carriage, Nick ground his teeth with every jolt and bump digging into the irons binding his hands to his feet with a ridiculously short chain. Connell was taking no chances with him.
Not that Nick could blame him. He made daily attempts to escape, and nearly met with success jumping over the side of the ship and splashing into London’s harbor. Even with his hands bound, Nick was an excellent swimmer. Every sailor worth his salt ought to be, though few enough were.
But Nick was too valuable a prize. Connell had not spent five years chasing the currents running along Africa and the Americas in pursuit of his prey to let Nick escape now. The man was dogged in his purpose.
The promise of coin had been enough to secure the help of a nearby waterman bobbing like a cork on the Thames. The traitor had hauled Nick over the side of his boat by the hair.
Now, Nick was wet and wreaking of filthy water, his feet and wrists rubbed raw from weeks of wearing shackles, and the back of his head throbbing where the waterman had smacked him with his oar.
He shivered, unable to rub his arms against the cold. He’d sworn he would never set foot on British soil again. It was too cold. Too damp. Too foggy. Too crowded with folks who didn’t give a jot about him. He had no family. No friends. He had nobody.
The carriage came to a stop, and masses of people poked their noses through the bars holding him inside. Protecting them from him. Like a caged animal.
He heard Connell’s voice, boasting, “That is Nicholas Blackburne. You have read stories about him, sung ballads extolling his conquests as The Blade.” Connell was determined to make certain he got the credit (and the reward) for his capture.
“The Blade,” they whispered. It was hard to tell if they dropped their voices in awe or fear. Dozens of eyes inspected Nick, making him feel like a lion in an exhibition. He roared for good measure, causing several to leap away from the bars and others to laugh.
The opening in the crowd allowed him a view of what was beyond—the gallows—and he shivered again, this time from something other than cold. Already, he could feel the rope chafing against the skin at his neck.
The mob’s exclamations and gasps grew. “The Blade,” they repeated.
Nick tried not to hear them. He’d been stuck with the appellation since he overtook a slave ship with that she-devil, and a handful of those scoundrels got away.
He despised slavers. Men who wrenched folks away from their loved ones deserved to be gutted.
They were how the stories were created and spread by men so grateful to be alive that they spun yarns about their narrow escape with death. They always glorified the details.
Nick hated the stories circulating about him. Most of them weren’t true.
“Is it true you’ve never lost a sword fight?” a boy barely taller than the floor of the carriage asked.
That was true, but Nick gave no reply. Feeding that report would set all the young blades out to test their skill against him … if he managed to escape before he was hanged. If a pirate was good at anything, it was getting himself out of trouble.
Another man asked, “Did you really fight off twenty men with a single sword?”
True, but they were untrained imbeciles. That hardly counted.
A woman asked, “Do you feed off the hearts of your captives?”
Only the contents of their coffers, Nick thought. What did they think he was, a savage barbarian?
A girl sitting on top of a man’s shoulders shouted, “Are you really the most skilled man on earth with a blade?”
Nick scowled. He hadn’t set foot in England for nearly two decades, but he already had a reputation that would send him to an early grave.
While he prided himself on his skills, he’d never claim to be the best. And no matter how much he had practiced over the years, he could not equal Alex’s artistry with a knife. His shoulder throbbed at the memory.
Looking up at the girl, he said, “Give me a knife, and I’ll show ye.”
The crowd guffawed, but he didn’t care. He had to try, to seize every opportunity, or it would be the gallows for him.
Connell threatened the crowd. “The Blade is a dangerous man, a ruthless, bloodthirsty pirate. Nobody is safe until he drops from the gallows.”
One man in the audience jeered, “You’re no better than that filthy pirate, you thief-taker.”
Nick might have been offended, but one sniff confirmed that the man merely spoke the truth. Nick had smelled better.
Most thief-takers, the honest ones, hated that term, preferring to be called something more elegant. Like “enquiry agent” or some such. Connell was no different. To a degree, Nick sympathized. He would rather be called a privateer than a pirate. Privateers—the honest ones—did not hang. Pirates did.
Connell’s voice was stiff, his laugh hard. “Call me what you want. I am the one who will collect the bounty when The Blade is convicted of his crimes against humanity.”
Which was precisely the fate Nick was determined to avoid.
Another voice from the crowd said, “Too bad it’s not Monday.”
Nick swallowed hard. Monday was hanging day at Newgate. Every pirate in the world knew that.
The hairs on his arms stood on end. Someone in the crowd was watching him in that way that piqued the senses and alerted one to danger.
Nick had learned not to ignore those warning signals.
He scanned over the people pressed against the carriage until he met eyes with a man with gray whiskers wearing a high-collared, blue coat with brass buttons and a tall, black hat.
He spoke, but Nick couldn’t hear him clearly. “Darcy,” he seemed to say.
Darcy. What was a Darcy? A surname? A place? An insult he hadn’t yet heard?
The carriage jolted forward, and daylight faded in the shadows of Newgate’s high walls. They looked sturdy. Sturdier than the rotten, crumbling walls of Marshalsea Prison where pirates were normally housed until their conviction. Connell wasn’t taking any chances.
Nick tried to keep his bearings as he was shoved down damp corridors, around curving, dark halls, and up a floor of stairs until he was shoved into a cell. The door slammed behind him before he caught his balance.
Alone in a stone cell, without even a chair to sit on, Nick inspected his new abode—only some straw in a corner and one barred window too high and too small to be of any use.
Shadows passed over the light seeping under his door. The jingling of keys and the groan of a chair being sat on. So, he had his own guard outside his cell. It was blasted inconvenient to have the reputation he did.
At least his chains were off. Nick hunkered down on the bed of straw and tried to sleep. But without the lull of the ship, he couldn’t relax.
He rubbed the ragged scar at his shoulder and saw the blue eyes and raven black hair of the termagant who’d put it there.
Fool woman. When he got out of this place, he’d find her, and he’d strangle her …
or kiss her senseless. He still couldn’t decide which, and his indecision blackened his mood once more.
Alexandra had betrayed him. Her name should fill him with hate.
But he missed her.