Epilogue #3
He raced down to the cabin, bursting inside. Chestnut curls unpinned and tumbling over her shoulders, Susanna bolted up on the cot, her book thudding to the floor. One hand pressed to her round belly, she cried out, “What is it?”
“I think it’s pirates.” He could hardly believe the words as he uttered them. Had he wished them into existence by grumbling over boredom? Oh, what a fool he was.
The blood drained from Susanna’s sweet, round face. “Pirates?”
“I don’t know what else it could be.” He threw open a trunk and dug for his sheathed dagger, cursing himself for not raising the alarm sooner. His mind raced, thoughts jumbled as he grasped the hilt of the weapon and tossed the leather scabbard aside.
The thunder of the crew’s footsteps shook the ceiling, dust motes shaking loose and shouts filling the air. Susanna looked down at her nightgown, despairing.
“There’s no time for petticoats or any of that nonsense.” She threw her flowing green gown over her head, her voice muffled by it. “My God, it really is pirates, isn’t it? Oh, I think I’m stuck.”
Nathaniel helped tug the material down over her swollen belly. She emerged from the folds of soft fabric and peered up at the ceiling, as if she could see through the hull. Footsteps scuffled and thumps reverberated, tense voices shouting commands too distant to make out clearly.
Susanna whispered, “No gunshots. Must be too many. The crew isn’t fighting them. Help me pin this shut.” She had stopped wearing her corset, adopting what was apparently a new French style while she was with child.
After he’d pinned the material enough that the robe-like gown would stay put, drawing a prick of blood from his fingertip in his haste, Nathaniel yanked on his stockings and refastened his breeches below his knees before jamming his feet into his buckled shoes.
He wouldn’t face these brigands in a state of undress.
He tucked the dagger into the back of his trousers and whipped on his sleeveless waistcoat, fingers clumsy on the buttons. But there was no time for his cravat or jacket. Raised voices already echoed down the corridor. He spun about, belatedly hoping to find something to bar the door.
Susanna had apparently had the same thought. “The trunks aren’t heavy enough. Besides, it will only anger them. It’s no use.”
“Get behind me.” He urged her to the back of the cabin, which was barely wider than the breadth of one’s outstretched arms.
“Be sure to mind your tongue,” she said. “You know how thoughts can sometimes go right from your head and out your mouth without pausing for assessment.”
He huffed. “What exactly do you think I’m going to say to pirates ?”
“Shh!” She slapped his shoulder. They waited, listening.
More pounding footsteps, and shouts that possessed an undeniably feral quality. The hair on Nathaniel’s body stood on end, his mouth going dry. Perhaps the pirates would pass them by. Perhaps they’d plunder the cargo and be done with it. Perhaps—
The door burst open, almost flying off its hinges, and Nathaniel barely held in his yelp.
His heart drummed so loudly he was certain the two invaders could hear.
One of them brushed matted hair from his eyes.
They both wore ripped and stained trousers as baggy as their shirts, and their boots were worn out.
The long-haired man’s beady gaze raked them up and down, and he asked his squat companion, “You ever fuck a bitch with pup?”
Nathaniel’s stomach swooped. How do they know? Susanna was hidden behind him. He lifted his chin, forcing strength to his words. “You shan’t lay so much as one filthy finger on my sister.”
Ignoring him, the squat man leered, baring snaggled, yellow teeth. He answered his friend’s question. “Good and juicy, I tell you.”
Behind him, Susanna dug her fingers into Nathaniel’s shoulder. Heart in his throat, he yanked the dagger from the waist of his breeches, brandishing it toward the pirates. “Stay back!”
The two blinked at Nathaniel, then each other, before bursting into raucous laughter. The long-haired man said, “Oh no, we’re done for, Deeks!”
Heavy footfalls sounded in the corridor, brazen and commanding.
Spines snapping straight, the pirates stepped aside as a man filled the doorway, shoulders almost brushing the frame.
He was tall enough to duck slightly as he entered, and his sharp gaze swept the cabin, which had never seemed quite so small.
He wore black from head to gold-tipped toes—open-collared shirt, trousers tucked into knee-high boots, and a long leather coat that flared out behind him.
A pistol was tucked into his wide belt, and a cutlass winked from his hip.
Gold gleamed on the belt buckle, matching the small square earring in his left ear, rings on his fingers, and the tips of those black boots.
The ends of a red sash dangled over his hip, the only splash of color aside from the gold.
He had to be twice Nathaniel’s age, his face weather-worn, a scar jagging across his left temple.
His dark hair was cut fairly close to his head, a surprise since Nathaniel had expected all pirates to have long, unruly hair like the animals they were.
His trimmed beard shadowed his strong jaw. In the low light, the color of his narrowed eyes was impossible to ascertain, but Nathaniel imagined they must be as black as the pirate’s soul.
He might have been the very devil himself.
Nathaniel’s palm sweated around the handle of the dagger, and he hated the tremors in his outstretched arm. His throat was painfully dry, and he croaked, “We—we don’t have anything of value. No gold or jewels worth your effort.”
Susanna added, “Even my wedding ring is plated.”
Tully, one of the Proud William ’s young crew, had entered the cabin.
The man—the pirate captain, undoubtedly—glanced to him.
Tully nodded. “’Tis true. Only clothin’ and trinkets in their trunks.
” He sniffed dismissively, tossing his reddish hair.
“Nothin’ hidden anywhere in here we could find since we left London. ”
Nathaniel had thought better of the crew, but saw now how na?ve he’d been. It must have been Tully who had informed the pirates that Susanna was with child. “What a coward you are, Tully.”
He snorted. “As soon as I got a good look at the flag, I knew we were done for. Everyone knows the Sea Hawk will gut you from stem to stern once you’re in his talons. I ain’t dying for cargo I don’t give a fuck about and a captain who treats us like garbage.”
“Your destination is Primrose Isle?” The pirate—this Sea Hawk—demanded, his tone low and calm.
“Yes,” Nathaniel answered. “It’s a new colony.”
Tully nodded. “Her husband’s there. We’re to drop them off with their father. The old man’s the guvnor or some such thing.”
At this, the Sea Hawk seemed to jolt, but a moment later the ripple had vanished and he was still again, fearsome and dispassionate. Nathaniel thought he must have imagined the hiccup.
Yet a gleam entered the captain’s devilish eyes, and dread slithered through Nathaniel. The Sea Hawk loomed nearer and demanded, in the same deliberate but undeniable manner, “Your name, boy.”
Heart hammering, all he could manage was, “Uh…”
“This one’s called Bainbridge,” Tully offered.
“Bainbridge,” the captain repeated, barely a whisper now. “As in Walter Bainbridge?”
Fingers going numb around the dagger, Nathaniel nodded. He’d have bruises where Susanna clung to him, her sharp exhalations ghosting over the nape of his neck. There was no sense denying it. “Our father.”
“You’re the son Walter Bainbridge killed his wife to achieve?” The captain’s focus sent chills down Nathaniel’s spine.
He couldn’t hide his wince, and had to nod. His mother had never even held him before the rest of her lifeblood drained away. Susanna had been but six, spying through the keyhole, and she’d confessed it all after Nathaniel’s endless badgering when he was a lad.
Strange how he could experience the aching, hollow absence of a touch he’d never had, even after eighteen years.
The captain’s eyes glinted. Good God, the man was enormous.
Nathaniel was tall enough, five feet and seven inches or so, but this monster towered well over six feet.
It was all Nathaniel could do to hold his ground and not stagger back against Susanna.
The tip of his blade quivered mere inches from the villain’s black heart.
The Sea Hawk gazed down at them as though they were prey he was most eager to consume. “Your father is a liar. Corrupt. An evildoer in silk stockings and a curled wig.”
Nathaniel swallowed hard, hand shaking. Could he lunge and push the dagger into this vile man’s heart? Not that he had much love for his father, but who was a pirate to talk of evildoers?
The Sea Hawk’s eyes glowed with hatred. “Your father cheated me. He was tasked with justice, with fairness. Instead he conspired to steal from me. He branded me a pirate when I was a privateer.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?” Nathaniel blurted. As the Sea Hawk’s nostrils flared, Susanna dug her nails into Nathaniel’s shoulder.
“No, they fucking are not,” the pirate gritted out.
“Privateers are licensed. Legal. Privateers follow rules. Laws. Just as your father was supposed to as a judge in the Court of Admiralty in Jamaica. Your father tried to strip me and my men of everything we’d worked and suffered for.
We escaped him, but in the years that have followed, he has never paid the price. ”
Dread consumed Nathaniel. His father’s greed and avarice would once again bring suffering.
If not for Walter’s mounting debts, Nathaniel and Susanna would still be safe at home, waiting until she had her babe before making the journey.
Hollington wouldn’t have had to be sold at all, and now they faced God knew what at the mercy of pirates.
Oh Lord. Please spare Susanna and her child!
Bile rose in his throat at the thought of any harm coming to his sister, terror clammy on his skin. Sweat slipped down Nathaniel’s spine. “I…” He racked his brain for something—anything—to say, some means of escape. His dagger shook, and he licked his dry lips. “I’m sorry.” He had to fix this.
A slow, ghastly smile curled the devil’s lips. “You will be.”