The Lost Gentleman. Margaret McPhee
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in disbelief.
‘And a respectable looking one at that.’
‘A hostage?’
‘She is neither bound nor gagged.’
‘Abducted,’ pronounced Gunner.
‘More likely.’ Kit could see the distinct threat in the body language of the taller pirate towards the woman. The sunlight glinted on the steel of both men’s half-drawn cutlass blades.
‘Is La Voile one of them?’
‘I believe so. Look for yourself.’ He passed the spyglass to Gunner that he might study the three figures.
‘How big a fall in the bounty if we deliver him dead?’
‘Enough.’
‘You convince me, but I cannot deny that I would prefer a more personal approach to the spilling of his blood.’
The two men stood together on the deck of Raven and waited for La Voile to step into their trap.
* * *
It was the sight of the captain of the merchant schooner that sent the first shiver of apprehension rippling down Kate’s spine. There was something about the dark steady focus of his eyes that reminded her of the unnerving stare of the raven that had sat overhead on the mizzen mast not so long since. She pushed the absurd thought from her head and tried to ignore the unease that hung about her like a miasma in the air. This was a hit, just like any other, she told herself, but her eyes checked again for long guns, despite the spyglass having already told her they were absent.
‘Not a gun in sight,’ said Tobias as if echoing her thought. ‘Not a hint of resistance. They are yielding just like all the rest of the British yellow bellies. Cowards! For once I wish they would give us a real fight!’ He spat his disgust on to the deck.
‘Unarmed and faced with our long guns pointing straight at them? Don’t be a fool, Tobias. We should be thankful that their common sense makes things easier for us,’ she said.
Coyote’s long guns had that effect on the British merchant ships Kate selected, allowing an easy progression to locking the two ships together by means of grappling hooks before throwing down the boarding planks. The nameless ship was no exception.
Kate’s crew followed the same procedure, the same routine they were so practised at they could have undertaken it with their eyes shut. She watched the Tallaholm men disappear down the merchantman’s ladders to her cargo deck. All they had to do was take their choice pick of the goods being carried and Coyote could sail away. Same as ever she did. Easy as taking candy from a baby. Yet that same unfamiliar apprehension and anxiety pulled again at Kate, stronger this time.
Her gaze scanned over the merchantman’s deck, finding nothing out of the ordinary, before returning to the ship’s captain once more. There was something about him, something she could not quite figure out. She examined him more closely. He was lean of build with that stripped, strong look that came from years of hard manual work. She could tell by the way his shabby faded coat sat on his broad square shoulders, from his stance, and the way the shadows cast from his battered old tricorne hat revealed sharp cheekbones and a chiselled jaw.
Under his hat his hair was dark, and his skin had the golden tanned colouration of a man who had spent time at sea. Beneath his coat she could see a shirt and neckcloth, both black as any pirate’s. Buff breeches were tight on muscular legs. On his feet he wore leather boots that had once been brown, but were now salt-and sun-faded to a noncolour that defied description. The long scabbard on his left hip was empty. Its sword lay with the other weapons her men had taken from him and his crew, thrown in a paltry pile on the deck before them. The tip of young John Rishley’s sword hovered close to the captain’s chest, should any of his crew decide to defy their captors. John had proven himself a valuable member of Coyote’s crew, but Kate still wished Tobias had sent an older, more experienced member of her crew to hold the merchantman’s captain.
All of these thoughts and observations took place in seconds, her gaze absorbing it in one swift movement before returning to his eyes. Dark eyes beneath the brim of that hat. Eyes that were looking right back at her. The shiver ran over her skin again. Someone walking over her grave, her grandmother would have said. She did not break the gaze, because it was his eyes that were ringing every warning bell in her body. There was something about those eyes of his. What was it...? As she stared into them, she realised.
The captain did not look like a man who was nervous for his life or his livelihood. There was nothing of fear in him, not one tiny bit. His stance was relaxed and easy, too easy. There was an air of quiet, almost unnatural calm that she could sense even across the distance that separated them—him on the deck of the merchantman, her watching from beneath the awning on Coyote. What she saw in that resolute, unflinching dark gaze of his was cold, hard, very real danger. She glanced at Tobias.
‘Something is wrong. Get the men out of there.’
‘What...? Hell, woman, nothing’s wrong.’ Tobias was looking at her in disbelief, as if she had run mad.
‘Do it,’ she insisted.
He glared at her but, at last, grudgingly gave the command.
But it was too late. In that tiny second everything changed. It happened so fast that there was nothing she could do. One minute the situation aboard the merchantman was quiet, controlled, run of the mill, the next, all hell had broken loose. The British produced weapons, and such a host of weapons that she had not seen aboard any mere merchant schooner before. They fought, hard and fast and with an expertise that surpassed Coyote’s crew. It was over almost as soon as it had begun. Easily handled, so that within a minute her crew on the deck of the merchantman were lying face down on its deck; all save young John Rishley, who was being held like a shield before the dark-eyed captain, the boy’s head pulled back to expose his pale vulnerability. A cutlass now glinted in the captain’s hand, as the wicked curve of its blade pressed against the youngster’s throat.
‘Sweet heaven!’ Kate whispered beneath her breath as her blood ran cold at the sight.
At that moment the rest of the British emerged from the schooner’s lower deck and cargo hold. Her men, who had ventured down there for the prize, were being led, bound and gagged.
It was not a situation in which Kate had ever found herself before. Her mind was whirring, her eyes flicking this way and that, seeking a means of escape for them all, but there was nothing. No way out—not with the merchant captain’s blade hard against John Rishley’s throat, if the man really was just a merchant captain, because Kate had seen a lot of British merchant captains, but never one like him. The boy was nineteen years old. Kate knew his mother and his sisters, too. His Aunt Rita taught Sunday School back home in Tallaholm. And Kate had sworn to them that she would do all she could to keep the boy safe. Now a British blade was pressed to his throat and the sight of it stirred such dark terrible memories that almost paralysed her with fear.
He frogmarched John Rishley before him, crossing the boarding plank over which Coyote’s crew had walked without the slightest suspicion of what was awaiting them on the other side. A lanky fair-haired fellow, who wore the robe and collar of a priest, followed in his wake.
‘When did you add abducting women to piracy, La Voile?’ The merchant captain’s gaze was fixed on Tobias. His English accent sounded foreign to her ear, but even so she could hear there was something educated about it. His voice was low-toned, serious, unemotional.
They thought her abducted? She opened her mouth to tell him the truth, to step up to the mark and own responsibility, for everything about him told her he was not just going to let Coyote and her crew go. There was a blade at a boy’s throat. This was serious. The masquerade was over.
But Tobias stepped forward first. ‘Who the hell are you to question me?’ he growled, donning the role of the captain he was coming to believe he really was.
As she and Tobias and Sunny Jim watched, the raven flew down from its perch high