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PART I

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MARCH, 1780
ATLANTIC OCEAN, TRADE ROUTE

FURY STORMED INTO THE CABIN some time after Elliott had bid George adieu and settled into bed with a barely touched copy of Fanny Hill he had found on her bookshelf, sparse of anything not related to mathematics or astronomy. He opened the book to page twenty-seven, where it was marked by a red ribbon. The pages were stiff, the book nearly pristine, and red dye had leached from the bookmark, betraying the fact that the marker had been in that spot for some great while.

“I despise that woman,” she mumbled at Elliott, then stopped short at the sight of him. “What are you doing on my side of the bed?”

He was too shocked at both question and tone to laugh. “Ah … ’twould be easier for the captain to not have to climb over her lover in urgent situations, no?”

“I am well practiced at climbing over a lover in haste. That is my side of the bed. Move.” Then Elliott cocked an eyebrow at her until she impatiently shooed her hands at him. He stirred himself only enough to shift to “his” side of the bed.

But she had turned, saying, “Rum? Wine? Brandy? Whisky?”

“I’ve developed a taste for that Italian wine. You have more?”

“Aye. The harbormaster in Rotterdam is particularly fond of it.”

“That is your home port?”

“Aye. Come drink with me whilst I tend my log.”

“I would rather you come kiss me.”

She cast a pleased smile over her shoulder from where she stood in a corner of her cabin, fetching that bottle of wine. “Why, Judas, for shame. I cannot neglect my log.”

“But you would neglect mine.”

She laughed and thumped the bottle on the table. “You, Sir, are vile.”

He grinned. “Quite. Come tend my log.”

“Do you know,” she said matter-of-factly, “your smile is a very dangerous weapon.”

As if hers were not. “I shall wield it more often, then.”

“Come,” she said again, pulling a chair out from under the larboard end of her table where her charts, ledgers, and logs were arranged neatly. He arose and took the seat he had occupied for breakfast and noon meals, even as she poured herself a tankard of lemonade from yet another pitcher of the stuff.

“More?”

“Aye,” she murmured, then tipped back the tankard to drink. Her mouth puckered once she had drunk at least half the cup and she shook her head like an otter, then shuddered. “I love it,” she said finally after that little display. “Surely you know the value of citrus aboard a ship.”

He scoffed. “Of course. Oranges. Limes. But I would not dare serve any crew an insipid punch one would find at a girl’s coming-out, with not a drop of spirits. In such volume. And apparently without sugar, too.”

She grinned. “But I have women aboard, and we require lemons for our—”

“Avast, Madam,” Elliott commanded with his hand held up. He knew only enough about a woman’s body to bring her to screaming pleasure. “I ken all I need to ken and have no wish to know more.” He took a measured mouthful of wine and savored it whilst she chuckled.

He relaxed back in the chair to watch her go about a task he had performed every day for most of his career. With a look of pure concentration, she poked a finger in her box of quills, found one that met her pleasure, picked up her penknife and whittled off a shaving or two. She opened another Moorish filigreed box that held her inks and sand, opened a well and her log, dipped the pen, and began to write.

As Elliott observed this, he marveled at her very existence. She was no myth. No selkie, mermaid, siren. She was a woman doing a man’s job, but not any man’s job. Of all the men who made their living at sea, very few of them had the strength to command a ship.

Don’t be fooled by ’er jests an’ whimsies, Cap’n, her lieutenant had told him aside. She ain’t cap’n for nothin’ an’ she’s every inch Dunham’s get. Half of us saw ’er take Skirrow’s ’ead off, an’ we’ve all been in battle widder.

A lock of her peach hair slid across the still-wet page. Without a pause or a care for the spot of black now staining the strand, she smoothed it back behind her ear. After another moment of scratching out words, she stopped and turned away from him to open yet another exquisitely carved box. She took out what looked like an overlarge pocket watch, looked at it carefully, then continued to write.

Feeling a bit disappointed, he could not stay silent. “A watch?”

She did not look up, but a smirk suddenly graced her full mouth—one he wanted to kiss just because it was so lovely. “And what sort of brilliant navigator would attempt to navigate with a watch, you’re thinking.”

“Well, aye,” he grumbled, knowing he had somehow misjudged the situation, but how, he could not begin to deduce.

She offered it to him with one hand whilst she continued to write with the other. “’Tis Harrison’s masterpiece. Well, rather, Kendall’s duplication.”

The world rocked ’neath Elliott’s feet at he stared at chronometer in his hands. Not even he, with his family connections, had been able to obtain one—and his father had exerted no limit of pressure on the Admiralty to get him one.

“The K1,” she added smugly, as if he would not already know.

“How— There is only one in existence and Captain Cook has it.”

“Who can say how many were privately commissioned? I doubt Captain Cook and I have the only two in existence.”

“I see your point.” He turned it over with great reverence, inspecting it. “Fury, would you— That is to say— Did you tell my navigator about this at supper?”

“No. ’Tis the most valuable thing aboard this ship, second only to the ship itself. Very few people know I have it.”

And now Elliott. He cleared his throat. “Ah, well, in that case … ” But there was nothing to do excepting to lay it out to her anyway. “Benjamin is getting on in years, as you noticed—” But that had not stopped the old salt from succumbing to Fury’s charm and monopolizing her attention for the better part of an hour at supper—which fascination had been, thankfully, mutual. “He has asked to be pensioned off once we reach England and I have granted him this request. He has been faithful and loyal to me for many, many years, and it would mean a great deal to him to see this, to hold it, just once before he leaves the sea.”

“You are a good captain to think of him so,” Fury murmured. He looked up into her burnt-sugar eyes, her smile tender, her face plump and soft. “I would not deny him. He deserves great respect. I hope you plan well for him.”

Elliott nodded slowly and gave the chronometer back to Fury. He was about to ask its price when yet another thump on the wall between the captain’s cabin and Kit’s rattled it.

Slightly annoyed at the prospect he might have to listen to that all night, he rumbled, “Madam, why do you allow them to carry on so?”

She scoffed. “I am not their mother, to dictate how they should comport them­selves. I only demand they work for their pay and not disrupt the ship’s business.”

“How old are they?”

“I know not how old Kit is—no one does—but his voice only dropped six months ago and he grew overnight, it seems. He is perhaps … fourteen? Fifteen? Perhaps younger. Who knows? She is barely fifteen.”

And bound to spend her life making babies for some panicked heirless noble facing his own mortality. Elliott snorted. He certainly had no room to pass judgment on that panicked heirless noble—and he had, more often than most, glimpsed the end of his mortality.

But she was still speaking. “ … unfortunate that at his age, Kit knows exactly how to please women—and men—but he seduced her, so for his part, I am simply glad he has found some joy in the act. Most likely this is the first time his participation is voluntary, and because ’tis with a girl his own age whom he likes, I hesitate to set that asunder.”

“And she?”

“Judas,” she drawled, sliding him a wicked glance, “would you deny that having a good lover as one’s first is better than having a bad one?”

He grinned and laughed low in his throat. “Nay,” he purred. “I have very fond recollections of a talented young widow in the neighboring village. She taught me many delightful things.”

An answering grin bloomed upon her face, and in that instant, she looked exactly like her mother. “What did she call you?’

Elliott rolled his eyes. “You’ll not trick any more information out of me, Madam, particularly not my name.”

She huffed. “Well then! Did she bind you and crack a cat ’cross your arse, too?”

“Riding crop.”

Fury burst out laughing. “God’s blood, Judas. What else did she teach you?”

“I’ll demonstrate anon,” he purred. “I doubt very much Kit is as brilliant an instructor as she was.”

She slid him an amused glance. “He is a very kind boy despite his past,” she finally said, “and I know not the worst of it. Truthfully, I am not certain he remembers, so I do not ask.”

Elliott’s amusement seeped away. “But now he is visiting his past upon a young girl.”

She cleared her throat. “Kit knows what he would face at my hand did he ever treat an innocent the way he was treated, but he has never demonstrated interest in anyone until now. In fact, he has never gone ashore since I took him away from Skirrow six years ago. I have been growing quite worried about him.

“As to her, I would have let no one—including Kit—near her did I think she would be harmed. I have no doubt that, once she went ashore, she would find herself at the mercy of some knave with no help in sight. The girl is beautiful, in case it has escaped your notice.”

It had, in fact, escaped his notice.

“’Twould not be long until a man got it into his head to take her, willing or not, and I might not be there to disabuse him of the notion. No one was present to dissuade Rafael from his intentions and I was younger than George. ’Twas only luck I landed in the bed of a kind and generous man.”

Elliott’s eyebrow rose, but with another smirk, she bent back to her log. All he said was, “Thus, here you can watch over both of them.”

“Aye. And control certain aspects,” she muttered absently.

“Such as?”

“Shall I say, there shall be no babes from that girl’s womb whilst she is under my care.”

“I see.”

Fury shrugged as she wrote. “As long as they are happy with each other and not inclined to stray, as long as she minds her sponges and elixirs and caps as I have taught her, there will be less trouble for both of them, either aboard ship or ashore. I shall put a stop to it as soon as I feel it more detrimental than beneficial.”

“Are you almost finished with that, Madam? I have not rutted you since midnight.”

She slid him a glance. “’Tis an à propos description for that beastly bit of business this morn.”

Elliott snorted.

“I beg you one moment more, and then I will rut you.”

Elliott paused whilst she sprinkled sand on the page she had just written. “What of George’s mother?”

“Barely touched her,” Fury mumbled, blowing gently on the ink and sand. “If she has a welt to her name in the morn, I’ll be shocked.”

It was not soon enough that the ink dried sufficient for her to close her log and put away her tools in a careful ritual he found fascinating. She stood, but before he could, she dropped her kimono and straddled him in the chair.

He looked into her whisky eyes that sparkled in the lantern light. He raised a finger and traced the mischievous, lusty smile that had laid him low the moment she appeared in the door of the Bloody Hound. She was the most beguiling woman he had ever met, and he ached for her.

“Now,” she purred, “we may rut.”

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If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.

Pirates!