Captured for the Captain's Pleasure. Ann Lethbridge
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and grabbed one end of the huge spar. Too heavy. It didn’t move. Muscles straining, she heaved again. Hopeless. She needed help.
She looked around wildly. For all that they looked like a motley crew, the privateers were swiftly and efficiently rounding up Conchita’s crew at pistol and sabre point. Not one of them looked her way.
A sailor ran past. She caught his arm. ‘You. Give me a hand here.’ The grey-haired, barrel-chested gnome of a man stopped in his tracks. His button-black eyes blinked.
‘Help me move this spar,’ she said.
He glanced down at Richard. ‘Aye, aye, miss.’ He pulled out a knife, held it over her brother.
Alice’s breath caught in her throat. ‘Please. No.’
The man slashed the ropes free and glanced up. ‘Did you say something, miss?’
Panting, her heart still thundering too hard for speech, Alice shook her head.
The man proceeded to lift one end of the spar and to drag it clear.
‘Perkin told me to get him below deck,’ she said, going to Richard’s feet. ‘You must help me.’
The man looked blank. ‘Can’t, miss. Speak to the captain.’ He rushed off.
She glanced around for someone else. Within the few short minutes she’d been busy with Richard, the privateers, twenty or more of them and all as rough as Perkin, had taken command of her father’s ship and were clearing the deck of torn sails, broken spars and damaged rigging. An acrid smell lingered in the air, the smell of gunpowder from the shots they had fired.
Oh Lord, what a disaster. And they could have been killed. An enormous lump rose up from her chest and stuck firm in her throat. She swallowed the rush of panic. Richard needed help. But who would give it?
A blond Viking of a man was striding aft issuing orders as he went. This must be the captain. She started towards him. He paused to speak to the traitorous Perkin, who appeared to have grown a foot since the privateers came on board. She marched across the deck and planted herself in front of both men. ‘My brother needs help.’
The blond man recoiled. ‘Good God. A woman? What’s she doing on deck?’
A shade taller than his captain and as dark as the other man was fair, Perkin muttered into the blond giant’s ear.
‘You, Perkin,’ she said. ‘Tell your captain this is an honest merchant ship carrying civilian passengers.’
The blond giant raised a brow at his accomplice. ‘Michael?’
‘You know what to do,’ Perkin said and strode away.
‘Simpson,’ the captain shouted. ‘Get your sorry self over here.’
The grey-bearded man who had freed Richard ran over.
‘He wants her on the Gryphon,’ the captain said.
Her?
Simpson’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. ‘Aye, aye, sir. This way, miss.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Alice said. ‘My brother is injured.’ She dodged around the portly fellow and dashed back to her pale and still brother.
A hand fell on her shoulder. She jerked around to find a rough-looking sailor with a drooping moustache and a tarry pigtail staring at her from mud-coloured eyes. He grinned.
She tried not to notice the blackened stumps of his teeth. ‘Take him below.’
The sailor’s eyes lit up. ‘I’ll be happy to take ye below, missy.’
‘Get away from her, Kale.’
Perkin again, with a pistol in his hand and his eyes blazing fury.
Her insides did a strange kind of somersault. The kind that shouldn’t be happening for any man, let alone a pirate even if he had defended her.
‘Back to your duties, Kale,’ Perkin ordered.
Kale seemed to shrivel. He gave a half-hearted salute. ‘Aye, sir.’ He shambled off.
A rather red-looking Simpson appeared at Perkin’s side. Perkin gave him a frown. ‘Damnation, Simpson, get her on board the Gryphon before she causes any more trouble.’ He narrowed his eyes and leaned closer to Simpson and muttered something in his ear.
The crewman’s eyes widened, then he touched his forelock with a wink. ‘Aye, aye.’
‘No,’ Alice said, ‘not without Richard’, but Perkin strode off as if she hadn’t said a word.
‘Orders is orders, miss,’ Simpson said, his black eyes twinkling.
He grabbed her around the waist and tossed her effortlessly over his shoulder. She landed hard on the bony point. It knocked the breath from her lungs. ‘Ouch, you brute! Put me down.’ She thumped him on the back. Kicked at his stomach. ‘I’m not going anywhere without my brother.’
The man’s only response was a laboured grunt. He strode across the deck and dropped her into a canvas bucket hanging off the side of the ship. The scoundrels had rigged up ropes and a pulley between the ships, no doubt intending to steal everything of value.
Oh, God. The cargo. They were ruined.
She tried to scramble out again. ‘I can’t leave my brother.’ Or Selina. She’d be terrified witless. Who knew what a dreadful man like Kale would do? ‘My friend is below deck. You have to bring her too.’
Simpson hopped in next to her and grasped her arm. ‘Be still, miss. I ain’t wanting to hurt ye. Haul away,’ he yelled at a sailor on the other ship handling the ropes.
She clung to the edge of the bucket, her stomach pitching like a rowboat in a storm, staring back at the Conchita, trying to see what was happening. Was someone bending over Richard? She raised up on tiptoes. Dash it. She couldn’t see.
Simpson must have seen her dismay, because his expression turned almost fatherly. ‘Don’t ye be worrying about yer friends. The captain will see to ’em.’
See to them? Why didn’t that make her feel any better? Indeed, her stomach churned worse than before and her throat dried as if she’d swallowed an ocean of seawater. ‘You have to go back for them.’
The bucket bumped against the side of the brig and Simpson hopped out. He made a grab for her. She backed away. The twinkle in his eyes disappeared. ‘Now then, miss, do as I say, or you and your friends will have more trouble than you bargained for.’
She stilled. She had no wish to bring harm to Richard and Selina.
An elderly seaman with a cherry-red nose traced with blue veins hurried up to them. Strands of greying hair clung to his scalp, his bloodshot-grey eyes looked anxious. ‘Anyone hurt?’ he asked Alice’s gaoler.
‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘My brother. He’s received a blow to the head.’
The man, the doctor she assumed, blinked. ‘Hmm. What’s she doing here?’
‘Captain’s orders.’
‘Women. Nothing but bad luck.’ He climbed into the bucket. ‘Haul away, man,’ he said to the other sailor.
Alice clutched at Simpson’s shirt. ‘He will look at my brother, won’t he?’
‘That will be up to the captain.’ He must have seen the protest forming on her lips because he hurried to say, ‘If you do exactly what I says, I’ll make sure he does.’ He pushed her towards the stern, towards the ornately carved walls of the strange-looking poop-deck. It reminded her of pictures of ancient Spanish galleons, only smaller.
Biting her lip, she let him hurry her along.
Simpson opened a brass-fitted mahogany door and ushered her into a chamber lit by the floor-to-ceiling square-paned