I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (35 page)

“From what I understand, Le Chat and his crew do not fight like frightened vermin,” he said easily. “In other words, they do not fight sloppily and without regard to honor. You are not Le Chat.”

Don’t goad him, don’t goad him, don’t goad him.

The captain stiffened. “Very fine words from a man who has everything to lose in this moment, Captain Le Snot.”

Juvenile chuckles around the deck, even from the pirates.

Was he trying to get killed? Violet was sweating with terror. Her hands were damp; an ice floe sat in the pit of her stomach.

The pirate captain’s black eyes narrowed viciously, assessing the earl, and he shifted restlessly on his feet. He made a great show of adjusting the pistol in his grip so that the barrel of it aimed directly at Flint’s heart. That heart she’d felt hammering beneath her fingers when he’d carried her down the steps safely to his cabin after she’d nearly drowned. That she’d felt beating against her own when he’d kissed her.

The ice floe migrated to her throat.

This can’t be happening.

The pirate’s matted beard hiked up when his fleshy lips curled in a contemptuous snarl.

“Captain Flint. The time for questions is over. Lay down your arms. If you do not do so now I regret that I will need to shoot you.”

“Flint,” Lavay said quietly. A warning.

A pirate poked the tip of a blade into Lavay’s throat. A bead of red, brilliant in the foggy light, appeared there.

Violet touched her own throat. The bile of rage filled it.

“Oh, I would surrender to a man,” Flint said easily. “But I feel rather silly surrendering to a rat, sir. So I fear my surrender is impossible.”

Oh, Flint.

He stood, solid as his own ship. Hand on the hilt of his sword. Like a gorgeous cornered savage, seemingly relaxed, at ease, at the mercy of this man. In truth, ready to spring like a beast for the kill, even if it meant he would die in the process. Violet bit down hard on her lip to keep from screaming out his name. She wanted to look into his eyes just one more time before he died. Because she knew what Flint likely knew: He was going to die anyway at the hands of this filthy man, who wasn’t burdened by anything like his sense of honor. She knew his own men were likely doomed no matter what he did, or what this pirate said. So he would not allow this fiend to use his honor as a weapon against him, and wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of even the pretense of respect. The pirate was vermin. He’d been lucky, and that was all. And then Flint’s men would die at the hands of pirates after watching their captain die with honor.

And then they would find her of a certainty. She had no illusions about what pirates would do to her when they did.

“Very well, then,” the pirate captain snarled. “I will give you to the count of five to lay down your arms.”

Violet also knew instinctively that the pirate was the sort who would fire on four. And then laugh about how clever he’d been afterward over Flint’s body.

“One…”

Everything about the day suddenly seemed frozen, delineated sharply. The Fortuna’s crew stood perfectly still, helpless, breathless. Above, fog and gunsmoke inexorably drifted away, the work of the sun and a freshening breeze. Encroaching sunlight glanced oddly, picking out things that shone: stilled swords and pistol stocks, earrings glinting in filthy nests of hair.

“…two…”

Sounds were painfully crystalline, distinct. The lap of water at the side of the ship. The sudden flap of a seagull wing. A bird mocking them with its freedom to fly away from all of this. All sounds, all sights, were blows against Violet’s nerves.

Violet stood slowly. She didn’t know how she managed it. Her limbs were numb.

“…three—”

BOOM!

The silence was smithereens.

And the pistol shot echoed endlessly.

Roars of rage, bloodcurdling battle cries split the air. But the groans of misery and protest settled into confused murmuring, then eerie silence, when the impossible seemed true: Flint remained upright.

But his face was expressionless. He held his body utterly still. Hand frozen on the hilt of his sword.

A moment of surprise before the agony sets in, Violet recalled. And that’s when understanding collectively took hold of the men on deck. And every head swiveled to look at the pirate captain.

His face beneath that beard was almost comically stunned.

When realization dawned, his features contorted into surprise, and then horror, and then slackened. The pirate captain’s fingers loosened, splayed, the pistol spilled from it to the deck. Before the stunned eyes of everyone on deck, as red bloomed brilliantly over his heart, and then spread rapidly on his shirt, burbled from the corners of his mouth. And like a sail abandoned by the wind, his body sank, and then he toppled to the deck. Quite dead.

Instantly that primal rustle and clank, the sound of warfare, muscle and weaponry shifting into immediate action to hold captive every pirate who wasn’t dead. And every single man capable of moving spun about to see who’d fired the shot. Violet lowered the pistol in shaking hands.

Flint’s beautiful blue eyes—the word alive, alive, alive sang a hosanna in her heart—bored into her. She nearly sank to her knees. She felt weightless with fierce gratitude he simply existed.

She would think later about what she’d done to ensure that he lived. His face was pale, his skin drawn tight over his face. The fierce emotion in it held her upright. He was the kind of man who could hold up the world, she thought.

“I apologize for disobeying orders, sir,” she said softly.

She turned, her skirts whipping about her ankles, and disappeared briskly down the ladder.

Chapter 23

F lint knew from long experience that the blood-buzz and fury-haze of battle receded only gradually, like a red tide, unless he walked it off, paced the deck to point of physical exhaustion.

Violet. Violet. Violet. Her name thumped like a war drum in his mind, calling to him. He saw in his mind’s eye again and again her precious, singular face, cold and terrified and brilliant with fury and purpose.

But he was a captain, and he had a duty, and he did it.

Briskly, officially, he sent Corcoran to see to whether she was safe below decks; he reported back quickly that she was. He supervised the throwing of two more of the pirate dead over the side of the ship into the sea. Wounded men were sent to the ship’s surgeon to be salved and stitched. He’d lost no men to death in battle, but several were seriously wounded, and Mcevoy had taken a bullet to the thigh, and would be in the sick bay for at least a week, likely, though he’d have the use of his leg.

With cold, swift efficiency, he issued orders for weapons to be collected and inventoried, the deck to be scrubbed, the sails and rigging inspected; he issued compliments for bravery, words of comfort and gratitude for the wounded. There was no room on his ship to house prisoners and he had no interest in keeping pirates alive. The fog had receded enough to reveal a listing pirate ship, its main mast snapped, its hull filling with water from the hole made by the cannon shot. It would sink unless the pirate crew repaired it—if they could repair it. He didn’t care.

Two living pirates remained on board The Fortuna: a surly, startlingly hairy brute who spoke not a single word of English, and after much experimentation with a smattering of words in every language Flint knew, was revealed to be Portuguese; and a boy who couldn’t be more than twelve years old, and who was scrawny, filthy, English, and terrified.

“Shall I drop them over the side, sir?” This was Greeber, nursing a great throbbing blue lump from where he’d taken a sword hilt to the forehead.

“Sir, please, sir…I s-s-served the real Le Chat. I can help ye find ’im!”

The boy stuttered and twitched like a trapped insect. Enormous brown eyes, a pink, pinched nose. His collarbone formed a sharp ridge beneath the filthy shirt. His wrists were bony, attached by knobs, from the looks of it. Potentially a tolerable looking, even handsome lad if he were fattened up a bit.

“Are you lying, boy? You’ll go right o’er the edge, if so, and I will know.”

To illustrate his point, Greeber seized him by the scruff and hiked him up onto his toes and passed him to Lavay as though he were a sack of potatoes, and Lavay got him by the trousers waist and collar and made as if to hurl him overboard.

“Nay, sir! Please, sir!”

“Oh, very well.” Lavay settled him down again, sounding peeved.

“What, then, are you doing with this scoundrel?” Flint gestured with his chin to the dead pirate captain. Who was being hoisted by two of his men in preparation for being hurled over the side. Any men who served and died in his care received respectful burials, with the proper words of God read over them.

The pirates would not. Flint would lose no sleep over it.

“Cap’n Abrega there, ’e stole me from the La Rochelle dock, sir. Needed another ’and, ’e did, an ’e jus’ took me and what could I do? Le Chat, ’e paid me wages.”

“Oh? What is the name of Le Chat’s ship?”

“The Olivia,” the boy said promptly.

The men absorbed this for a moment. It was a stunning moment of absolute confirmation. Then again, the rumor of Le Chat’s vessel wasn’t entirely a mystery.

“She’s a bonnie craft,” the boy added unnecessarily.

“How long ’ad you served?”

“Three ports, sir.”

“And where were the last two ports?”

“To Le Havre and Brest.”

More silence as this was absorbed.

“Where was The Olivia bound when you were taken?” Flint tried.

“Cádiz,” the boy said promptly.

Flint went still. He narrowed his eyes. The boy squirmed again. Doubtless Flint seemed terrifying, covered as he was in blood of pirates and sweat and fury. How would the boy know this of a certainty? But how likely was it that he would produce a destination like Cádiz from thin air?

“D’yer believe this little bastard, Captain?” Greeber gave the boy another nudge.

“You’d betray your former captain, boy, by telling us where he’s going?” he said coldly. “How can I trust you?”

A tricky question for a boy who wanted to live, and had likely been buffeted by life since he’d been born. The life he led now would either make a hard honest man or a criminal of him. Flint still could not have predicted which of those he would become if he hadn’t served Captain Moreheart.

The boy’s Adam’s apple worked in his skinny throat. “I wants to work, sir. I’ll work ’ard fer me keep, only. No pay.”

“But were you not on deck moments before attempting to kill my men by orders of that captain?”

“Aye, sir. But ’e would’ve killed me if I dinna obey ’im. An’ ’e’s dead now, ain’t ’e, sir?”

“Aye, he is dead. You ought to learn the meaning of loyalty.”

“Canna learn it from a dead man. Mayhap ye’ll teach it to me.” Almost cheekily said. Lavay cuffed him lightly. “You will not speak to Captain Flint with anything but groveling respect, you wee turd. He’s the Earl of Ardmay. You’ll bow and do it now.”

He boy blanched, rubbed his ear where he’d been struck. Agog, he stared at Flint as though he’d sprouted a halo or horns or some combination thereof.

He bowed awkwardly. “Beggin’ yer pardon m’lord.” Diffident now, if fascinated.

“Have you yet been to Cádiz with Le Chat?”

“Aye, sir. Please sir, ye’ll find ’im a’ the El Cisne Blanco Inn.”

“If you’re lying to us, boy, I shouldn’t like to be you.” The casual tone was uniquely menacing, and it worked on the boy. “And we’ll know quickly, won’t we?”

That Adam’s apple bobbed again. Brown eyes flared defiantly for an instant, then flickered and dropped in fear and submission.

“What will he be doing in Cádiz?”

Silence.

Greeber gave the boy a shake.

“’e’ll sell silks, won’t ’e? Merchant name o’ Rodriguez meets wi’ ’im in the Plaza de Mina. Dinna ken the time.”

“Greeber, take the boy—your name, boy?”

“Mathias, sir.”

“—Mathias below and lock him up. Get Corcoran and the two of you can lower this…hairy bugger…over the side and see if he can get to one of their boats and then to that ship. I’m not terribly interested in his destiny. And I’ll talk to the boy later.”

The hairy bugger muttered some no doubt filthy sentiment in Portuguese as Greeber shouted for Corcoran’s help to carry out his orders.

Flint, who had done his duty, turned at last.

“Lavay, the ship is yours while I go below. And…” He considered this for but a moment.

“Make sure Miss Redmond doesn’t hear about the boy.”

Because the Fates had sent him pirates today. And thanks to that boy, the Fates could very well deliver Le Chat to him, too, after weeks of chasing an apparition. They’d known it would come to this eventually. Regardless of whatever mad noble motive drove Lyon Redmond, Flint would do his duty.

He would win.

And the courts would decide Lyon Redmond’s fate. May the better player win. Lavay understood. He hesitated only a moment, and then nodded crisply. Resignedly. Gave an ironic twitch of the brow.

“Aye, aye, Captain. Have I mentioned that I’m glad you’re not dead?”

“Your sentiment warms me to the core, Lavay. May I return the compliment?”

Lavay nodded again, as though nearly being killed was all in a day’s work for either of them.

“Are we changing course, then?”

The need to make split-second decisions and accept accountability for them if they were wrong had been part of his life since he was eighteen years old.

“Aye. We’re going to Cádiz.”

He was already striding off.

“We’ll be closer to Morocco, too,” Lavay commented casually as he left. Flint shot a startled look over his shoulder and kept striding. He hadn’t thought of Fatima in days.

He’d looked death in the eye more than once before. Much was made about what a man saw flash before his eyes when he died. But not until today had Flint seen anyone in particular, and today she was all he saw, and now she was all he wanted to see.

“Captain?”

Lavay again. He stopped and spun about. “Yes?” He was curt now.

“She was lucky again, eh?”