In Like Flynn, page 17
Buck gave a short nod and left without another word. Nicholas was left alone in the cell as the ship made ready to sail.
Nicholas knew he would never see Brianna again. He had become a pawn between the pirates and the navy, and he had been a damned fool to fall in love with the Shadow King’s daughter.
CHAPTER 14
The bosun’s whistle, calling men to arms, came too late. Nicholas had been sitting on an overturned crate and brooding when he heard the shouts of warning on the deck above, following the piercing whistle. Only a navy ship could cause such distress here.
Buck’s ship was moving fast, no doubt trying to slip out of the bay next to Basseterre, but if Admiral Harcourt was in command, the man would have his fleet surround the entrance long before the pirates knew they were trapped. Both Buck and Brianna would be captured…or killed.
“Hey!” Nicholas shouted at the companion ladder near his cell. Feet thundered overhead as men rushed to open gun ports and roll out the cannons. His thoughts turned to Brianna and the Sea Serpent, striking him with a fear he’d never felt before. He reminded himself that she was more than capable of defending herself and her crew, but that didn’t reduce his fear for her.
His fingers curled around the bars. “I need to see Captain Buck!” he shouted again. He yanked on the iron, but it wouldn’t budge. This was the second time he had been locked up during a major sea battle. It would have shamed him if he hadn’t been so bloody worried. This time it was worse, because Brianna was the one in danger.
Christ, her father was right. He was in love with the woman, and if anything happened to her . . . He stopped to listen to the sudden silence on deck. Perhaps the navy didn’t send too many ships and they—
Guns exploded above him, and the ship rumbled with the angry thunder of their report. Nicholas braced his legs and held on to the bars of his cell as the massive ship quivered with the force of battle. From what Nicholas had briefly seen, Buck’s vessel was a fast sloop in good condition. He suspected it had been beached yearly to remove barnacles from the hull and repair any damage done during its voyages. If it could slip through the gaps between the naval vessels, it might stand a chance. Then again, if the ship took gunfire on its broadside at close range from the cannons, it would sink in minutes, taking him to the bottom and drowning him in the brig. If he drowned in the brig, he’d never find a way to get to Brianna’s ship or stop the navy from firing upon the Sea Serpent.
“Help!” Nicholas shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the sounds of battle all around him.
He broke apart the crate that served as a stool and pushed several planks of wood between the iron, hoping to force the bars with leverage. For a few brief seconds he heard the iron groan, but it did not budge. With a curse, he kicked the bars and pressed his head against them, eyes closed in defeat.
The sound of feet on the companion ladder forced his eyes back open. Buck came toward the cell door, his face lined with concern and looking years older.
“What the devil is going on up there, Buck?”
“The navy has blocked us in. I fear the only way any of us can get out of this is if I surrender.” The cold piratical look faded from Buck’s eyes, and Nicholas saw a man as mortal as any other. “They won’t sink us if I turn myself in, will they? Brianna and her crew might make an escape if I distract them with my surrender. Brianna . . .” He halted on her name, and Nicholas understood the fear in Buck’s voice now. It wasn’t for himself but for his daughter.
“It’s too late. I never planned for her to be caught up in this, but now . . .” Nicholas shook his head. “She was supposed to slip free of the net before it closed around you. That was always my plan. But we both know she’d never run, not when she knows her father is in danger.”
Rather than curse him, Buck’s eyes lit, and he fumbled for the keys to the cell.
“It may not be over yet. I have an idea, but it requires your help and trust. Tell me, what are you willing to do to save Brianna?”
“I would do anything for her.”
Buck unlocked the cell. “Then follow me. We have no time to waste.”
Nicholas hurried after Buck as he moved through the chaos of his ship in the midst of battle. Every man was either at the sails or at the guns. Even the small boys known as powder monkeys were leaping about, carrying powder down the line of guns.
Buck opened the door to his captain’s cabin and motioned for Nicholas to join him inside. Through the windows at the stern, Nicholas saw the harbor of Basseterre and the chaos of dockworkers fleeing as round shots of cannon-balls launched perilously close to shore.
Buck threw open the chest at the foot of his bed and dug through layers of clothes until he found what he was searching for, an oiled leather satchel. He shoved it into Nicholas’s arms.
“Inside this is the key to saving her,” Buck said. “It is proof about her true family.”
“What do you mean, her true family?”
“Aye, she was never truly mine, Flynn. I found her parents on a sinking ship not far from here. Her father was beyond saving, and her mother bore Brianna in the middle of a raging storm right before she died. Before he passed, her father gave me this.”
Buck pulled out a signet ring hanging from a leather cord around his neck and held it out to Nicholas. The crest emblazoned on it was one that Nicholas had grown up knowing. He, like every young English aristocrat, had learned to recognize the crests of the most powerful families in England.
“That is the crest from the House of Essex. But how . . . ?”
“Her father was the duke’s younger brother.”
“Brianna is the Duke of Essex’s niece?”
“Aye.” Buck pushed Nicholas into the passageway. “And with that knowledge, you can save her.”
Assuming he could get to her in time. Her uncle had almost as much influence as the Crown itself.
Nicholas and Buck raced up to the deck and skidded to a stop beneath a sudden rainstorm that rolled toward Saint Kitts. The rain nearly obscured the naval ships in the distance. Bursts of white fire in the storm showed the location of the ships’ guns as they fired.
“Where’s Brianna?” Nicholas asked. Buck peered into the distance, searching for her ship, then pointed to another sloop farther away.
“There! They closed in on the Serpent when the storm rolled in.” Buck cursed. “She’s trying to draw them off. They think I’m aboard that ship.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Before I gave Brianna command of the Sea Serpent, she was my ship for nearly twenty years.”
Nicholas looked between the Sea Serpent and the naval ships, judged their speed and direction, and saw a growing opening where the Sea Hawk could escape, given the right conditions.
Nicholas put a hand on Buck’s shoulder, forcing his gaze away from Brianna’s ship and the crew that was fighting valiantly for her. “Buck . . .”
“Raise the white fla—” Buck started to shout.
“Belay that!” Nicholas shouted over him.
Buck glared at him, but Nicholas shook his head. “If you stay, you both die. If you run, there is a chance I can save her.”
“Are you mad? She’s my daughter. I raised her. I’ll not leave her now.” Buck’s voice broke, and it knifed Nicholas’s heart. How many times had Nicholas heard Dominic’s father speak like this, never giving up searching for his missing son?
“You will see her again, but not from a hangman’s noose,” Nicholas promised.
Buck looked out toward his daughter’s direction once more. “What about you? How will you get to her?”
“I’ll need your jolly boat.”
There was a moment where their eyes met, a father facing the man who loved his daughter enough to risk his life and betray his country. Buck must have seen that in Nicholas’s eyes, because he shouted to his crew a second later.
“Lower the jolly!” Buck bellowed. His men raced to lower the small boat into the water, even as another volley from the enemy landed dangerously close to the Sea Hawk. Nicholas slung the leather satchel over his arm and climbed down the side of the ship, taking one last chance to look up at its captain. Buck stood on the waist deck of the ship, the black flag decorated with a white hawk flying high above him as he gave Nicholas a solemn nod before he and his crew made ready to escape behind a veil of heavy rain.
Godspeed to you, Shadow King.
Nicholas settled himself into the small boat and raised the sails, then headed for the distant battling ships that looked like ghosts as they dueled within the storm.
They were losing. Cannon-balls tore across the deck of Brianna’s beloved ship. Everything seemed to happen so much slower beneath the heavy rain. Men lay on the deck, some blown to pieces, others valiantly fighting on. They’d managed to draw the fire away from her father’s ship and give him an opening to get past the frigates and out into open water where the Sea Hawk could outrun them. But the Serpent wouldn’t be able to make the same escape. Her mainmast was down, and her crew were fighting for their very lives.
“We canna last long, lass,” Joe said. His chest expanded as he sucked in a deep lungful of air. He had been up in the rigging with the topmen to handle the sails, hoping to escape their current position. But the naval ships had caged the Sea Serpent in.
“Where’s my father?” She searched the bay and saw no sign of the Sea Hawk. Had he managed to escape? She could only hope so, because her crew were paying for this chance with their lives.
“He managed to slip away,” Joe said. “I saw the Sea Hawk leave with my own eyes.”
Another deafening burst of cannon fire rattled the ship. They would sink if they took another hit like that.
“Raise the white flag, Joe,” she said calmly.
“Are ye sure?” he asked her.
Brianna saw men bleeding out on her deck; the cries of her crew were drowning her, along with the torrential rains.
“It’s our only chance. If we raise the flag, they will cease firing and our men can swim to shore before the enemy boards us.” They were close enough that most of the men who were strong swimmers could reach shore and vanish onto the island.
Joe nodded and cupped a hand by his mouth. “Raise the white flag!”
She watched the pale flag shoot up the mast and whip wildly as the wind and rain lashed against it. What felt like an eternity later, the other three ships stopped firing upon the Sea Serpent.
“Have our men abandon ship. Now!”
“Are ye coming, lass?”
She nodded. “You go. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Joe gave the order to lower all the lifeboats they had left, and any man who could swim was welcome to go. Her men crawled over the side and jumped into the water as fast as they could, Joe following behind. Brianna raced down the companion ladder, shouting at men she saw still manning the guns to abandon ship. By the time she reached her cabin, she had but a few minutes to gather her beloved possessions—including her mother’s hairbrush—and stuff them into a satchel before leaving the cabin. Booted steps on the deck above made her freeze. The voices she heard were not those of her crew. She listened to her ship groan and the waves crashing against its side, and above that, the masculine voices coming ever closer.
Blast and damnation . . . Her ship had been boarded sooner than she’d expected. Brianna ran back to her cabin and barred the door with a chair, sliding the lock into place. Her mind raced over a dozen possible ideas, but only one gave her a chance to avoid being thought a pirate. She stripped out of her breeches and other masculine clothes and hastily pulled on her red dress. She rushed to fasten the laces at her breasts and tighten the bodice. The voices were louder now, and a fist pounded on her door.
“Open up! You are hereby ordered to surrender.”
Brianna briefly stared at the glass windows of her cabin, wishing now that a cannon-ball had shattered them. If it had, she could have leapt through the hole and dropped into the water and escaped instead of embarrassing herself like this.
“Break it down!” someone shouted outside the cabin door.
Cursing her luck, Brianna pulled the chair back from the door and unlocked it.
She gasped through shining tears as four men stumbled into the room, “Please! Don’t hurt me! I’m not a pirate.” One man was a young officer, while the other three were common seamen. The officer held up a pistol, aiming it at her chest.
“Arrest this woman.”
“No! Please! I was being kept here against my will. Those pirates kidnapped me.” Brianna broke into pitiful sobs, and the men all glanced at each other uncertainly.
The young officer lowered his pistol a little, caught off guard. “Er . . . Apologies, miss. It’s all right . . . please stop crying.”
One of the seamen growled, “Don’t be daft, sir. She ain’t innocent. She’s just a pirate’s doxy,” and lunged for Brianna. She reacted on instinct, knocking the man down with a blow from her satchel. Unfortunately, the other two men managed to grab her arms, pinning her back on the bed. When the young officer tried to intervene, one of the men knocked him out flat with a fist. He collapsed onto the floor.
She screamed with rage and kicked out. “How dare you!” But her cries were ignored as she was pinned down on the bed. Brianna was strong, yet she couldn’t fight the muscles of these two men as they held her.
“Let me have her first,” the one she’d felled snarled as he climbed up from the floor.
“You cannot rape a woman,” Brianna tried to protest. But she knew they would. Bad men were bad men—it didn’t matter what flag they sailed under—just as there were good men who sailed as pirates.
One man laughed. “You’re nothing but a pirate’s whore. That’s different.”
Brianna was going to kill every one of these men in a terribly painful way the moment she had a chance, and she would find her chance . . .
Someone reached for her skirts, and she lashed out, kicking the face of the man who’d touched her. She felt a nose break beneath her boot, and the man screamed in pain. She laughed in triumph.
“You little bitch!” One of the others slapped her with a blow so hard it blacked her vision for a precious few seconds and she tasted blood. Rough hands were everywhere they shouldn’t be. She screamed, a primal sound of female fury that in the ancient days would have called the sea to rise up to drown each man who had dared to hurt her. A pistol fired, and everyone froze.
Gasping for breath, Brianna stared at the man standing in the doorway of her cabin, black rage filling his cold blue eyes. How the devil—? Her thoughts were interrupted when her rescuer spoke.
“Unhand that woman at once,” he said. “Or I swear you shall eat a bullet.”
Slowly, the hands on her body withdrew. Brianna stared at her unexpected savior.
“Who are you?” the man demanded.
“Lieutenant Nicholas Flynn. I’m here under the orders of Admiral Harcourt.”
“We were only having a bit of fun . . . She’s just a pirate’s wench, is all.”
“On that you’re quite wrong. The woman you just accosted is my wife and the niece of the Duke of Essex. He will see you punished for what you’ve done to her.”
“What?” the man scoffed. “Her, a fancy duke’s niece? What’s she doing here, then?”
Brianna had but a moment to take Nicholas’s clever lies and use them to shore up her own story.
“I’m here because I was kidnapped by pirates, you bloody fools. I was on my way to my husband when my ship was set upon by pirates and I was taken prisoner. Now you’ve found me, but rather than rescue me, you’ve dared to assault me.” She jerked free of the men and scrambled off the bed. Nicholas held out a hand to her, and she rushed into his embrace. He caught her and held her close, still keeping one arm raised and aimed at the three men who had assaulted her. The young officer that had been knocked out came around with a groan.
“Are you all right?” Nicholas whispered so only she could hear.
“I’ll feel much better after you give me your pistol and I’ve shot the bastards,” she hissed back.
“Yes, well, that I cannot do. But play along and I might be able to save your life.”
She set aside her revenge plans and gave a big, theatrical sob as she buried her face against his shoulder.
“We didn’t know who the wench was, honest,” one of the men protested.
“There’s my clever girl,” he chuckled before he kissed the crown of her hair the way only a concerned husband would. Later she would digest the fact that she’d had to play the role of Flynn’s wife.
He lowered the pistol and tucked it into the belt on his waist. “The admiral would hear you plead your case. Come, my dear, let’s get you somewhere safe.”
Flynn ushered her up the companion ladder to the upper decks. She skidded to a stop at the sight of her remaining crew. Six of them under guard who hadn’t gotten off the ship in time, their weapons lying on the deck. Her cabin boy was among them. Patrick wore a stoic expression like all the rest. None of them breathed a word as she was forced to walk past them with Flynn’s protective arm around her shoulder. Her eyes burned with traitorous tears at the thought that they would protect her with their silence to their last breath, and she felt like a coward for not admitting who she was and joining them in their fate. But here, at least, she might find an opportunity later on to save them.
The admiral and a few of the captains of the other ships were clustered, speaking together.
“Admiral,” Nicholas called out to him. “A word, if you don’t mind?”
The admiral turned, and his eyes widened ever so slightly as he spotted Brianna.
“Of course, Lieutenant.” The admiral excused himself and joined them.
“Admiral,” Flynn whispered. “I need you to trust me. I can explain it all once we are safely in private.”
“I trust you,” the admiral replied without hesitation.
“Good. This is my new wife, Brianna Flynn, but she was born Brianna St. Laurent, and is niece to the Duke of Essex.”
