Chapter 1 #2
Three heads turned toward him with pitying glances. "Of course she does," Con spat out. "But she's mad as a wet hellcat at the latest losses. They're running ten to twenty percent."
"Are one of you gobs stealing on the side?" Warrick turned an accusing stare on his brothers, but they shook their heads as one in denial.
"Then who in the name of Lucifer's bollocks is stealing from Rowe Shipping behind our backs?"
Con huffed out a breath he'd been holding. "We have no idea, but you'd better find out...and soon."
"Why me?" Warrick almost whined at his brother's mandate.
"Because she blames you, and word along the quay is she's coming to force you to confess your dark deeds." Con almost smiled at his reveal. "And you're the most charming brother left who isn't spoken for, um, romantically."
"You want me to turn her up sweet just so we can nudge her out of whatever pique she's put herself into?
" Warrick raised his shaggy head, piercing a look at each of his brothers in turn.
"What about Ban? He isn't spoken for." He howled and jerked away when Ban kicked one of his shins beneath the table.
"Ah, but Ban isn't the one pilfering ships along the waterfront, now is he?" Con tried to maintain a serious demeanor, but at Ban's guffaw, they all broke out in laughter.
Warrick gave Gordy a side-eye as they trudged back toward his converted warehouse on Wapping Street. "What's the scuttlebutt on Missus Rowe?"
Gordy gave him an odd look. "She's a respectable woman who married a whoring gambler. She runs the Rowe family shipping business all spit and polish like a proper ship. Why, you could eat off the decks of her ships, they're so clean...or so I've been told."
"But what's she like"
"What do you mean?"
"You know...what kind of woman is she?"
"Dunno. Never met her, but I've heard plenty."
"Like what? What have you heard?"
"She doesn't suffer fools."
"Which is supposed to mean what?"
"When she comes for you, don't act like a damned fool." Gordy glanced away after that warning and then added, as if in a respectful afterthought, "Guv..."
They'd just arrived at Warrick's warehouse hideaway, and he banged hard on the door. The man who let them in was missing a leg and sported a bright green parrot on his shoulder ruffling its feathers.
"Follow me," the parrot screeched, to Warrick's extreme annoyance. The damned bird had been with Elias Mathias, cook aboard the HMS Pelorus, for all of the man's service and had heard those words in Warrick's voice so many times, he almost perfectly mimicked him.
"Are we having parrot stew tonight, Elias?" he demanded.
The man ignored him and stumped back inside the warehouse, the bird squawking all the way.
Sparse and Spartan did not begin to describe the way he'd furnished his headquarters. Unlike his brothers, he had no need to impress anyone and kept his abode simple, imitating the shipboard quarters he'd inhabited for eight years.
There was one long, heavily used wooden table pocked with sword slashes and a smattering of mismatched chairs in a room that passed as his office.
He slept in a hammock slung in his bedchamber that resembled nothing so much as a priest's cell.
Warrick saw no reason to provide himself with anything more elaborate than what his crew lived with on the top floor.
Hammocks were strung up there as well in a spacious, sunny room that spanned the entire building.
His men, as well as Warrick, kept all of their worldly goods in sea chests.
They all dined...raucously...in a bare-bones room off the kitchen.
A long table, chairs for all his men, and a wobbly china cabinet served as a utilitarian dining room.
He'd gone to the Admiralty's auction where the contents of the de-commissioned HMS Pelorus had been offered to the highest bidders.
He'd partially hidden his face with a bandana, put forth a bid no one challenged, and had taken home the simple items on which they'd taken their meals aboard ship.
None of his men had complained when the sturdy bowls, mugs, and plates appeared on the shelves in the dining room.
They were all sailors without a ship, and Warrick had reasoned they'd welcome the crockery full of memories of their time at sea.
Only the cook had given him an evil look and had shaken his head at the thought of eating off their old plates to remind them of their time in the Royal Navy.
When the Pelorus had been de-commissioned, all of his fellow crewmen had been left at the dock without so much as a hope of a job after the war. He'd brought them back to Limehouse as the beginnings of his river gang.
One large sea chest on the main floor with a heavy lock hid an assortment of weapons Warrick and his men favored.
Everyone had a boarding axe, plus there was a large assortment of cutlasses, daggers, knives, and swords.
Rounding out the collection of the usual weapons of destruction were a large number of the compact shotguns favored by Royal Navy men everywhere.
With a shorter length, they were just the thing for fighting in tight quarters.