In Like Flynn, page 1
IN LIKE FLYNN
Pirates of King’s Landing - Book 2
LAUREN SMITH
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Lauren Smith
Cover design by Carpe Librum Book Design
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Lauren Smith supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
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ISBN: 978-1-952063-80-0 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-952063-81-7 (print)
PROLOGUE
“Dear God,” Captain Thomas Buck gasped as he wiped rain from his eyes and pushed his wet hair back from his face. He peered through the storm-ravaged sea toward the looming mass of a galleon caught upon the rocks near a reef. It was a beautiful prize, with towering decks and gilded woodwork at the stern of the ship. Lightning cut across the sky, flashing over the ship in distress.
“Cap’n?” A young Scotsman named Joseph McBride joined him at the railing of Thomas’s own ship, the Sea Serpent. At twenty-five he was young for a captain, but his short life had given him plenty of experience on taking command. Every man aboard his ship knew he would sacrifice himself to save them if it came to that.
The Serpent was the fastest sloop in the West Indies, and her crew was proud to plunder under her sails. Even though they were pirates, Captain Buck and his men held themselves to the seaman’s code to aid any ship in distress. They were simply more aggressive as to what cargo they took by way of thanks for their efforts in assisting another ship.
“Drop a boat in the water, Joe, and ask for volunteers. A ship like that is bound to have some riches—and any survivors can be taken on as crewmen or released at the nearest port if they do not wish to serve on board.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n.” Joe called out for a boarding crew, and Thomas checked his belt for his cutlass and pistol before he helped the others lower a boat into the water.
They rowed across the raging sea, and he squinted at the distant tropical island that was half-shrouded in the rain behind the reef. Perhaps whoever was on this doomed vessel had managed to take a boat ashore to safety. If so, they could canvass the island to help any survivors. If not, they could salvage any goods on the ship once the storm died down, assuming it didn’t sink right away from a hull ripped open by a sharp reef. Captain Buck was not like most pirates. He was an Englishman with an Englishman’s honor, and he wouldn’t leave anyone to die on a lonely stretch of forsaken beach.
Thomas gripped an oar and rowed alongside Joe as he and four others fought the waves to reach the other ship. Once they reached it, they could see the hull smashed and hung up on the rocks. The ship was rocking dangerously as the waves battered it. They had only a short time before it sank. Using grappling irons, they lashed their small boat against the galleon.
“Be careful, men! Search for survivors and get back as fast as you can. She’ll be underwater soon.” Thomas grabbed one of the dangling ropes that draped from a broken mast over the side of the ship. He scaled up the side of the listing ship to the deck.
He dropped down onto the quarterdeck and saw loose bits of broken masts rolling back and forth, bumping into a few bodies that lay there. Thomas stopped at the first and rolled the man over. There was a bloody gash across his head, and it looked as though he’d been struck by a beam or washed into something hard enough to kill him. All the masts had snapped off. He could imagine the wave that had swept over the deck and knocked this man into a spar, which had broken his now lifeless body. No doubt many of the crew had been swept overboard.
“Anyone alive?” Joe asked.
“Not here. Check belowdecks.” Thomas stood and crossed to the waist of the ship and took the companion ladder down into the belly of the vessel.
“Anyone down here?” he called out.
A distant shout came from the passageway. “Help!”
He rushed in the direction of the sound. There was a cabin door, locked, at the far end of the ship.
“Hello?” Thomas pounded on the door.
A man’s hoarse voice came from the other side. “Help us! Please!”
Thomas drew back and slammed against the door. The door shattered beneath the impact, and he barreled into a cabin. There was a small bed with a beautiful woman stretched out on her back, her head propped up on pillows. She was deathly pale. The blankets around her were damp and her legs were bent up as she let out a scream of pain.
Beside her, a man clutched one of her hands, watching her face with worry. But as Thomas got a better look, he realized the man was in far worse condition than the woman. He held a hand to his side, and blood was oozing from his fingers around a large and deeply embedded splinter of wood.
Thomas knelt by the man and examined his injury. “What happened?”
“I was aiding the men on deck when a wave hit . . . took out our mainmast. It shattered before our eyes. I took a blow.” He nodded weakly down at his wound. “The others . . . swept overboard. I came back down to help my wife . . . the babe is coming.”
He nodded at the woman on the bed. Thomas turned his face toward the woman, who suddenly convulsed and screamed.
A moment later she collapsed on the bed, and Thomas saw a tiny baby slip from her body into the sheets, covered in blood. He rushed toward the end of the bed and picked up the bloody baby, wiping it with part of the bedclothes. The babe wriggled and then hiccupped before crying shrilly in the cabin.
It was a girl. Her green eyes opened briefly between her cries as he held her, and she stared deeply into him—through him. Her tiny wrinkled fingers curled and uncurled as she fought for her first breaths. What a strong little creature she was, boldly facing the uncertain future that lay before her. It reminded him too much of when he was a lad and how he used to shout into the wind, daring it to hold him back.
“Please,” the woman whimpered. “My baby . . .”
Thomas removed his blade and deftly cut the umbilical cord, the way he had once seen a midwife do in Port Royal a few years ago. He stripped part of the bedsheets from the bed and wrapped the tiny blood-soaked babe in it. He had to give her to her mother—a woman knew best what to do with a babe. He knew little of children and nothing at all about babies. When he moved to hold it out to the woman, her husband spoke.
“Please . . . take our child to safety.” The man’s face had drained of all color, but his green eyes were bright and almost feverish. “I fear we aren’t long for this world.” The man brought his hands together and removed a signet ring from his pinky finger. “Take this. Give it to our child. It’s the truest proof of who we are.”
Thomas took the ring and tucked it into the pocket of his waistcoat. Whoever this man and woman were, the weight of that ring warned him that they were people of consequence. He wouldn’t leave them here.
“I’ll be back for you both,” Thomas promised before he rushed up to the deck. The ship swayed ominously beneath his feet. The babe went eerily silent in his arms, as though she sensed the danger they were in.
“Cap’n. No one else is alive. Many of the crew must have been washed overboard. There isna much to salvage, either.” Joseph came up beside him and gave a jolt at the sight of the precious bundle in his arms.
“Is that a wee bairn?”
“It is. Take it to the boat for me. The parents are still below, both injured. I must help them.” He pushed the bundle into Joseph’s arms before returning to the cabin below.
Thomas halted at the sight of the babe’s father’s sightless gaze upon the doorway where Thomas stood. The woman on the bed drew in a shaky breath, and Thomas moved toward her, intending to scoop her up and carry her to safety. As he leaned over her, the woman raised a frail hand to touch Thomas’s cheek.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked in a whisper.
Taken aback by her question, he had to think about what he’d seen in those few moments before he’d wrapped the child up. “It’s a girl. A strong little lass.”
The woman’s worried expression softened, but the weariness in her warned Thomas she wasn’t going to last long.
“Brianna, then . . . after my mother.” The woman smiled. “A strong name for a strong daughter.”
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Thomas slid his arms around her back and under her legs, but she pushed weakly at his chest.
“Let me stay with my husband. Please. I won’t make it . . . too much blood.” She shifted in the blankets, and he saw to his horror the blood still pooling on the bed.
“But, my lady . . .” He didn’t want to leave this woman here to die alone, not when she had an infant to care for. To live for.
“It’s all right,” the woman said gently. “Promise me you’ll love her as your own. Find her uncle. He will take care . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.
Thomas was lost in her stunning gray-blue eyes and in that moment could deny the beautiful stranger nothing.
“I’ll love her as my own,” he vowed to her.
Why he agreed to that, he’d never know. He wasn’t married, had never even thought of children, but he wouldn’t break his vow to this woman, or the man who’d died protecting her and their child. The moment Thomas had held that child in his arms, invisible threads had wound around his heart, connecting the two of them in a way that could never be broken. He would do anything for the little girl.
The woman closed her eyes and reached for her husband’s hand, holding it, and let out one last slow breath. Then she was still.
Thomas searched the cabin, seeking anything he could find of value that would identify the couple in case the ring wasn’t enough. A pack of letters and a few lovely gowns were all he could find. He wasn’t sure why he grabbed one of the gowns, but he shoved it, along with the other personal items, into a tar-coated bag that would be protected from water before he whispered a prayer for the poor souls of this ship. Then he headed back on deck and tossed the bag down to the small boat waiting on the water below. Joseph assisted him in the climb down, and they rowed back toward the Sea Serpent.
“Where’s the child?” he asked his first mate.
The Scotsman pulled a bundle out for him to see. He had put the baby in a wicker basket he must have found on the ship somewhere.
Thomas examined the baby. “Is she all right?”
“She?” the Scotsman choked. “We’re bringing a lassie on board the Serpent? ’Tis bad luck, that is.”
“She’s an infant, Joe. What harm can she do?” Thomas asked. He’d never held with silly superstitions about women on board ships. The real trouble came not from superstitions but from men hungry for the touch of a woman, and it often led to jealousy and fights among the men. But tempting fate? That was nonsense.
“Wee bairn lassies grow up to be womanly lassies, Cap’n, and those are always trouble.”
“It’s not as though she’s going to be a member of my crew, Joe. We’ll find a nursemaid for her, and she will have a nice life in Saint Kitts. Perhaps even marry a tea planter or some other decent fellow.” But even as he said this, the little babe seemed to protest with a wrinkling of her face in a mightily fierce expression for one so small and new to the world.
“Ah, well, that’s good, then. Give the lassie a nice life and she’ll bring us no trouble,” Joe agreed, seemingly mollified by Thomas’s response.
Thomas gazed down at the child, finding himself smiling at her face. She yawned, her little pink mouth forming an O shape, and she squinted at the storm around them, looking adorably furious. He used a bit of the bedsheet to wipe her face clean of some remnants of blood. The rain misted over her tiny cheeks, and she let out a primal cry that startled the rest of the crew on the boat.
“Keep rowing, lads!” Joe barked. “We need to get away from this storm.”
Behind them, the galleon groaned and slipped off the reef, slowly tilting into the towering waves that soon swallowed her whole. The babe let out another shrill cry, as if she knew she’d lost her parents.
But she wasn’t alone in the world. She had him now. Thomas had vowed he would raise this child as his own. He couldn’t help but fall in love with the dear little girl.
“A female,” Joe muttered again in that Scottish burr of his. “Terrible idea.”
“She’s not just any female. She’s going to be my daughter. I vowed to take care of her.”
His daughter. The daughter of a pirate. And what a bonnie wee thing she was.
It was said that all pirates craved treasure, but in that moment Thomas realized that not all treasure was silver and gold.
CHAPTER 1
Port Royal, Jamaica
1741
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“Wishing ye had a different life, lass?” a voice with a deep Scottish burr asked.
Brianna Holland pulled her gaze away from a trio of beautiful women in fine gowns as they paraded through the market of Port Royal on the arms of their gentlemen. The women’s parasols were poised perfectly to keep the sun off their pale skin.
“No.” Yes, she silently amended.
Joseph McBride—or Joe, as he was more often called—was forty-eight to her mere twenty years. He was three years older than her father, Thomas. The two men were like brothers, so Joe had become an uncle to her. And he knew her so well that he often knew when she lied to him.
“It’s all right ta want things in life, lass. Even pretty things. ’Tis yer right, as a pretty lass.” He nudged her arm with his elbow and nodded at the genteel ladies she had been watching.
“But I’m not simply a pretty lass, Joe.”
“Ye are pretty—for a pain in me arse, that is.” He chuckled when she scowled at him.
“I’m more than that.” She’d spent her whole life proving to everyone around her that she wasn’t a silly creature in a skirt. She was a force to be reckoned with. A pirate, and the daughter of a pirate king.
“Aye, lass, ye certainly are more. No man who knows ye would believe ye were anything less. That being said . . . What’s a pretty dress now and then if’n it pleases ye?”
Brianna’s hands adjusted her leather waistcoat and trousers, more aware than she had been in a long time of her masculine disguise. It had become second nature to her to dress and act like a man. When she’d been younger, it had been harder for her. She’d had to do everything twice as well or twice as hard as any man. But over time it had become natural to her, and she’d grown confident in her life and the challenges she faced. Such as now, strolling about a market, playing the part of a young man.
The short brown wig that covered her hair was tightly pinned into her blonde tresses, concealing her feminine appearance. The wig itched, but she put up with the irritation because she couldn’t bring herself to cut her hair to complete her masculine disguise. If she didn’t have to pretend to be Captain Bryan Holland around everyone but her own crew, she could have ditched the wig, but in a public port like this, it was important that she go unnoticed. And a woman in men’s clothing would always be noticed if she didn’t care to hide her figure with wrappings around her breasts and either cut or hide her hair beneath a masculine wig.
She had a few frocks on her ship, but she had rare occasion to wear them, and she owned nothing so fine as what these women were wearing. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to drift through the market while on the arm of a handsome gentleman. She’d feel as elegant and beautiful as a butterfly. She imagined her attractive escort would be wearing a colorful frock coat trimmed in gold embroidery, and he would bow to her and offer his arm. She would smile, bat her lashes, and demurely raise her parasol against the bright Caribbean sun. He would gaze at her with admiration and desire, and she would lean in and—
Oh, what nonsense. To be a caged creature whose only purpose in life was to be a man’s shadow who birthed children and eased his physical needs. No, that was no life for her. Brianna loved her freedom as the daughter of a notorious pirate. She could go where she wished and do as she pleased. What did it matter if she never had a fancy gent moon at her with stars in his eyes? She had her pick of pirate lovers, if she ever so chose. They, at least, would understand her and her seafaring life, whereas fancy gents would not.
