I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (34 page)

He filled his chest with air, and exhaled, bringing his hand up to shade his eyes. To steady his temper.

Then brought his hand down. His face was pale with fatigue and whatever other emotions he battled. He quieted his voice with obvious effort.

“And I am sorry. I am truly sorry if you ever thought this would be otherwise. The circumstances are what they are, Violet. I thought I made that clear to you. Forgive me if anything I did led you to believe otherwise. But I honestly don’t believe I did.”

She stared blankly, numbly at him.

Moreheart mattered to you.

And Olivia matters to Lyon.

The way I wish I mattered to you.

She understood now that, jasmine blossoms notwithstanding, she simply never would matter enough to him. After all, he’d had no real experience of love. Just loyalty. Just steadfastness.

He saw her face. He sighed and sank back against the seat of the hack. And gave a short bitter laugh.

“Oh, I’ve survived worse than hatred, Violet. And I’ll survive yours. I’ve known for some time that yours would be the cost of my success, and believe me, I took no pleasure in that. I truly thought you understood. And this is the only thing I regret: that you ever thought otherwise. So hate me if you must. Nothing changes.”

He waited for her to speak.

But there was nothing else to say.

Chapter 22

T he dark, relentless, infamous Bay of Biscay fog had set in the moment he’d irrevocably killed whatever regard Violet Redmond held for him. Flint felt mocked. It rather mimicked his internal state.

It had been inevitable. He would endure.

He was less certain that she would. He’d seen more promising expressions on men who’d just been shot. But he’d never lied to her about anything.

But almost as a punishment, as a way to mock him for being the rudderless man he’d been before he met Violet, for two days out of La Rochelle they’d sailed in this fog. Flint was far too seasoned to find it romantic or mysterious. It was nature’s way of colluding with attackers and hiders and smugglers, when it wasn’t causing shipwrecks. And though he could navigate this part of the coast easily enough—it had been thoroughly explored by sailors before him, every undersea rock formation upon which a schooner could founder painstakingly mapped

—Flint always listened harder in the fog. Sound was deceptive; it bounced about in the mist, deceiving listeners.

And because he was listening harder, faintly, starboard, he heard a series of sounds in quick succession:

A grunt. A thump. Another thump.

“To the guns!” he screamed.

Because he knew even before he saw men spidering up the side of the ship. Knives held in teeth, pistols in waistbands, swords swinging at hips. He knew those sounds as he knew his own breathing: the grunt was likely Greeber taking a gunstock to the forehead if not a knife to the gullet, the thump was his body falling hard, and the third was the pirate landing with both feet on the deck of The Fortuna.

Where was Violet?

He hoped to God she was below.

It was the last thought he had before his men swarmed the deck from everywhere on the ship, and the sound of pistols unlocking, swords unsheathing, feet slamming wood planks as they ran for positions of attack and defense. Flint leaped from the foredeck and shoved a boot into the chest of a pirate who had a leg over the side of The Fortuna; his body sent up a spray of water when the sea swallowed him.

His men, bless their sweet black hearts, were nasty, vicious, accomplished fighters and were hacking at any hands that dared cling to the sides of the ship as though they were vines in the jungle, hacking at the ropes they’d used to scale The Fortuna. Screams and oaths, splashes as bodies hit the water followed. The ring of steel against steel, and the brute thud of bodies striking other bodies in combat.

“Guns, Corcoran!” he screamed. “Man them!”

“Aye, sir!” Corcoran swiftly took up his position there.

For where there were pirates there was a ship, and once they fought back these men, it was only a matter of time before the pirates fired on The Fortuna.

Violet and Hercules, below in the heat of the galley, were arguing over how he should prepare the meat for dinner when what sounded like a herd of cattle thundered over their heads. Violet went still, puzzled, tipping her head back.

But Hercules’s face blanked. His cleaver hovered midair.

And when slowly, slowly his lips curled into a snarl, she understood what hackles were, because hers certainly rose.

“What is it?” she asked faintly.

And then they heard screams, muffled through the layers of the ship. He dropped the cleaver with a clatter, and dove beneath the table, emerging with something she’d never seen before: a scimitar, longer than his arm, with an edge sharpened for death. The blade flirted arrogantly with the dim lantern light. Winking.

The knife slipped from her hand. Her palms were clammy with terror.

“Hercules—tell me what is wrong!”

“Pirates. Stay here.”

Anyone else might have said that with less glee.

Quick as a vicious terrier he scrambled out of the galley and clambered up to the deck. Dear God. She thought quickly through the rush of terror. Could it be Le Chat? But how could it be? They weren’t carrying cargo. Did he know she was aboard?

What the bloody hell was happening?

Flint would kill her if she went up on deck. Perhaps even literally. But if Lyon were indeed among the pirates, he would never harm Flint if he saw her. She fingered the knife, and eyed the cleaver, and opted for the second one.

When a blood-congealing scream cut through the battle din, Flint grinned, knowing he would see Hercules flying up the stairs from the galley swinging his scimitar. Howling his inimitable battle cry, he leaped toward a bug-eyed pirate in a moustache and ludicrously festive striped shirt aiming a pistol straight for him, and whipped his sword up beneath the man’s hand. The pistol flew in a spiraling upward arc and came down, crashing to the deck, skittering across it. And came to a halt at Violet’s feet.

She reflexively seized it and slunk to crouch behind the long boat, her heart clogging her throat. Thumps and roars of pain and shouts of “Duck, Greeber!” and “Look out, Captain!”

ricocheted around her. She tucked up her knees and bent her head between to make herself as small and invisible as possible, but not knowing whether Flint was unharmed or whether Lyon was on board was unbearable, so she peeked.

She ducked when she could have sworn the glittery amber stare of a pirate met hers from across the deck. It was only the flat lozenge of the sun, burning through the fog at last, glancing off pirate jewelry.

The second thing she saw was a disarmed pirate holding a sliced and bleeding wrist in one hand while Corcoran and Hercules hooked their hands beneath his armpits. He kicked and swore in a language she’d never before heard as they heaved him overboard. His screams ended when the water engulfed him.

Sweet Mother of God.

If she survived, she vowed she would never long for novelty again. She rose to her knees again, her eyes just above the edge of the longboat. She watched in a special kind of hell, a heart-swelling awe, as Flint threw his beautiful body ruthlessly into the battle, wading into it, taking and giving blows, bringing up that great sword and hammering it down again against other blades coming at him with murderous intent. He seized any pirates pummeling his men and hurled them to the deck, ruthlessly stomping them breathless; he nimbly, almost happily, ducked swords and fists swung at him. The blood of other men spattered his shirt.

She didn’t see Lyon.

Saw instead scattered amongst the pirates Lavay’s golden head, Corcoran’s stocky body, Greeber’s shining ginger hair. She couldn’t bear it if any of them were harmed. She turned her back on all of it for an instant, leaning against the boat, eyes squeezed closed, her lungs bellows in her chest. She rallied her wits; her breath came in short terrified gusts as she inspected the pistol; it was unlocked. A miracle it hadn’t discharged when it had been kicked across the deck. She didn’t have time to fumble it open to see whether it was loaded. If it had already been fired, it was now useless.

She could always use it as a club or a projectile.

She peeked up again, and in that instant saw Lavay’s golden head flash like a guinea as he fought to disarm a man raining sword blows at him.

And she saw what he couldn’t see: a pirate running toward his back with a sword. She clapped a hand over screams that would have torn her throat ragged. But with Flint’s finely honed instincts, his knack for seeing everything at once meant he was there in a bound. The point was inches from Lavay’s back when Flint ran the pirate through. He pulled his sword free; the body flopped sickening to the deck as though it had never been animate.

Lavay acknowledged his rescue with a salute of a single bob of his head to Flint, his own sword still a graceful, whipping blur in deadly play for perhaps a second or two longer before he disarmed the pirate and ran him through, too.

It was all so savage and hideous and glorious and obscenely…proficient. She trembled. She couldn’t bear to stay there and she couldn’t bear to leave, and she prayed in a way she’d never prayed before, with a wordless passionate sincerity and desperation. She hunched when a deafening roar sent acrid smoke mingling with fog. A great fountain of foam sprayed up over the port side of the ship: The pirate ship was firing upon them.

“FIRE!” Flint roared, even as his sword swiftly parried two men coming at him. “Corcoran!”

The men on the guns obeyed. Flame hissed the length of the fuse and The Fortuna shuddered with the force of the cannon shot. The next sound was the triumphant sickening crack of splintering wood.

The main mast of the pirate ship was cleaved in two, the top still dangling like a man strung on the end of a rope.

And all at once the edge of Violet’s terror was strangely blunted by thrill and the unfamiliar beginnings of bloodlust. She wanted them to win.

They could win.

Even though she knew The Fortuna’s crew was outnumbered.

Bodies were now strewn haphazardly as rag piles on the deck. She saw Hercules’s bald head shining like the butt of a pistol as he swung his cutlass and mercilessly fended off then slaughtered two more pirates who were doing their best to slaughter him. But two more were upon him nearly instantly. He was terrifying indeed. But he was small. Oh, Hercules.

But Flint was there in time—how did he move so quickly? And together he and Hercules neatly and gorily dispatched the pirates.

But when Flint turned again a pirate stood right behind him, pistol aimed at his chest. He froze instantly.

Oh, God, oh God, oh God.

And somehow it took only seconds for awareness of the captive captain to ripple throughout the deck

“Hold your fighting,” the pirate roared.

“Hold!” Flint shouted to his own men.

The commands were unnecessary. Apart from the writhes and moans of men beaten to the deck, all was now stillness. Men stared at the standoff; a few muttered. Flint’s sword was stilled, gripped in his hand at his flank. His own pistol was tucked into the band of his trousers.

Reaching for it would mean instant death.

“Surrender, Captain Flint. Lay down your arms now, and you will be our hostage. We will not kill you. But if any of your men so much as twitch a muscle, I will shoot you now. Does anyone care to twitch?”

The pirate captain’s accent was mysterious but featured extravagantly rolled L’s. He was tall, bony and rectangular; his coat flapped from his shoulders like a flag strung from a line. A red scarf was tied over oily black hair roped back in a queue. His eyes were flat and black. She suspected this was a man who had long ago learned to kill remorselessly, and perhaps had even grown to enjoy it.

Violet remembered a description of another pirate at the viscomtesse’s dinner party. Ugly, they called him. This must be him. He certainly fit the description. This wasn’t the work of Le Chat, then.

Flint coolly assessed his circumstances. His chest heaved from the exertion of battle; Violet breathed along with him, as though she hoped to breathe for him. His shirt clung to him with sweat and blood, his and the blood of other men.

She’d never before seen him at the mercy of anyone or anything. It was unnatural, like watching the sun sink permanently into the sea. It should not be allowed.

“Come now, Captain Flint. Hand your sword to me, and my men will cease fighting. You know you are outnumbered.”

“We were outnumbered. Count the bodies on the deck, sir. You were outmanned. Our numbers are even.”

“And yet I’m the one pointing the pistol at The Fortuna’s captain, which means I’m the one who holds the life of her captain in his hands, which means we have won. Come now, Captain Flint, lower your weapons and we will lower your men in the launch and take your ship. Since you were so unkind as to disable ours.”

“How do you know my name?” Flint was so conversational they might have been sharing a pint in a pub.

“Your legend precedes you, Captain. We know you sail The Fortuna, and that she carries a rich cargo, for we learned of this from Captain Gullickson. We want it. Surely I needn’t explain this to you. You’re not new to the notion of pirates.”

But Violet knew they carried no rich cargo. Gullickson had tried to lure pirates to them! He must have wanted them dead.

“And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” Flint made the word pleasure a masterpiece of irony.

“You speak to Le Chat himself, monsieur.”

Astounded silence followed by a splintering crack as another piece of the pirate ship’s mast crashed to its deck. Which clearly did nothing for the pirate’s temper.

“What bloody nonsense.” Flint sounded amused.

Oh God, Flint. Don’t anger that creature.

“Why do you insult me in such a manner, Captain Flint?” he hissed with apparent nonchalance. Violet saw that his mouth possessed teeth and gaps in equal measure, and felt certain when he spoke his words sprayed over Flint like sea foam.