The Lost Gentleman. Margaret McPhee
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the rigging.
She bit her lip, trying to stop herself from crying out. Stood there still and silent as a statue while her mind sought and tunnelled and tried to find a way out for them all.
‘Seven hundred yards!’
She thought of Sunny Jim. She thought of young John Rishley. And the rest. All of them men from Tallaholm. Men with wives and children, with mothers and fathers, and brothers and sisters. Men who would lose their lives trying to rescue her.
‘You can’t just kill them!’ The words burst from her mouth.
‘Why not?’ He turned to look at her, his calmness in such contrast to the rushing fury and fear in her heart.
‘For the sake of humanity and Christian charity.’
‘You care for the lives of the men who abducted you?’
‘Some of them are barely more than boys, for pity’s sake. Have mercy.’
‘Your compassion is remarkable, Mrs Medhurst.’
‘Reverend Dr Gunner is a priest. He will tell you the same as me, I am sure. Where is he?’ Her eyes scanned for Gunner.
‘He is on the gun deck,’ said North, ‘making ready to fire.’
She could see the fifteen horizontal red-and-white stripes and the fifteen white stars against the blue canton of the American flag and the skull and smiling cutlass of her own flag.
‘Six hundred yards!’ the voice called, followed by another from over by the deck hatch, ‘Ready below, Captain! We fire on your command.’
‘Do not!’ Her hand clutched at North’s wrist. ‘If you sink them, they will all die. And no matter what they have done, they are just men seeking to make a living in difficult times.’
He looked at where she held him so inappropriately. Her fingers tingled and burned with awareness. She loosened her grip, let it fall away completely. ‘Please,’ she said quietly.
Their eyes locked, their bodies so close that she could feel the heat of his thighs against hers.
‘I do not intend to kill them,’ he said with equal softness to hers. ‘Only to disable them.’
‘Five hundred and fifty yards and in range!’ the call interrupted.
North turned away and gave the command, ‘Fire!’
Her heart contracted to a small tight knot of dread. She heard the echoing boom of a single long gun and watched with horror as the iron shot flew through the air towards its unsuspecting victim.
But the round shot had not been aimed at Coyote’s hull. Instead, her foremast was cleaved in two, the top half severed clean to fall into the ocean. Canvas and rigging crumpled all around. The men on deck rushed around in mayhem.
Her hands were balled so tight that her nails cut into her skinned palms. She did not notice that they bled as she braced herself for the echoing cacophony of shots that would follow, standing there knowing that she owed it to Coyote and her men not to look away, but to bear witness to their valour. She waited.
But there was only silence.
Kate glanced round at North in confusion.
‘She is, no doubt, too small to carry spare spars and canvas, but these waters are busy enough that they should not have too long to wait for help. Either way Coyote shall not be following us into port, or anywhere else for that matter.’ He paused, holding her gaze. ‘If you care to check, you will be relieved to see not a pirate life was lost.’ He passed her his spyglass and stood watching her.
She looked at the spyglass, knowing she should not accept it. But she could no more refuse than she could stop breathing. The responsibility of a captain to her ship and men ran deep. So Kate took the spyglass and checked for herself the damage to the men and the ship.
North was right. There were no casualties.
‘Let her run with the wind,’ he commanded his men.
‘Aye-aye, Captain,’ came the reply as they ran to increase the sails.
Kate returned the spyglass without either a word or meeting North’s eyes. She was aware of how much she had betrayed, but all she felt right now was wrung out and limp with relief for her men. She offered not a single excuse or explanation.
‘If you will excuse me, sir.’
He did not stop her, but let her walk away without a word.
Because they both knew that she was not going anywhere other than her cabin. They were on his ship. At sea. He could come and question her anytime he chose. And that there were questions he would ask, she did not doubt.
Within his cabin Kit sat at his desk, the paperwork and ledgers and maps upon it forgotten for now. Gunner sat opposite him, leaning his chair back on to its hind two legs and rocking it. The afternoon sunlight was bright. Through the great stern window the ocean was clear and empty, the disabled Coyote long since left behind.
There was a silence while Gunner mulled over what Kit had just told him of Kate Medhurst’s reaction up on deck earlier that day.
‘Women are the gentler sex. Their sensibilities are more finely honed than those of most men,’ said Gunner, ‘but...’ He screwed up his face.
‘One might have expected a degree of either fear or animosity towards the boatload of ruffians that took her by force and held her against her will,’ Kit finished for him.
Gunner nodded. ‘It is possible she has an unusually meek nature.’
I hope that pistol is loaded? Kate Medhurst had looked at the weapon like a woman seriously contemplating snatching it from its holster and holding it to his head.
He thought of the essence of forbidden desire that whispered between the two of them, the barely veiled hostility in those eyes of hers and the way her body had responded so readily to his.
He thought of her plunging from Raven’s head and swimming so purposefully towards those rocks. And of their interaction in his cabin, with her skilful deflection of his questions to reveal nothing of herself.
‘I would not describe Kate Medhurst as meek.’ Intelligent, determined, formidable, capable, mysterious, courageous and passionate, most definitely passionate. But not meek. ‘Would you?’
‘No,’ Gunner admitted.
‘Mrs Medhurst was not so unwilling a guest upon Coyote.’
Gunner’s gaze met his. ‘You think she is lying about being abducted?’
‘She never told us she was abducted. We made that assumption. Mrs Medhurst did not correct it.’
‘But you saw how the pirates treated her.’
‘La Voile would have given her to us easily enough. The rest did not wish to yield her.’
‘She was afraid of them.’
‘She was afraid, but not of them...for them.’ He thought of the desperation that had driven her to grab his wrist, to plead for the lives of those men. ‘There is someone on Coyote that she cares for, very much.’
‘A lover.’
Kit thought of the way Kate Medhurst touched so often to the gold wedding band upon her finger. ‘Or a husband.’
Gunner looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘You think it was not La Voile’s body his crew were intent on retrieving. You think it was the woman.’
‘It would explain much.’
‘But not what we saw between her and La Voile