My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (10 page)

Jim enjoys fencing, singing, bad science fiction movies, and liveaction gaming.

He lives in Missouri with his wife, son, and a vicious guard dog.

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"DEAD MAN'S CHEST"

copyright © 2006 by Roxanne Conrad.

“Now this," Ian Taylor said with satisfaction, surveying the ship bobbing just outside of the harbor, "is what I call an
adventure?'
He turned a blinding grin on his wife to be as he patted her hand. He had to hunt for it; it only wrapped partly around his wellmuscled forearm. "It's going to be amazing. Better than any church wedding, eh?"

She looked up at him, speechless. He stood six feet, five inches to her dumpy fivefootfour and had the kind of rippling, tanned body usually only seen onstage in gay strip clubs. Silky blond hair. Impossibly white, even teeth. Big blue eyes.

And he wasunbelievably a
romancenovel cover model.

For a woman whose self image most often involved the words "mousy" and "short," meeting Ian had been like being run down by the speeding Love Train. Ian had knocked her off her feet (literally, with a shopping cart to her midsection), and upon reviving her in the parking lot of the local WalMart, he'd set about seducing her by wearing ruffled poet shirts and declaiming flowery compliments.

Their romance two months along, yesterday had been one big, rosecolored dream, and she kept waiting to wake up. But the dream was starting to take on a surreal edge of panic, and all Cecilia could finally sum up in response to Ian's enthusiasm was a wan smile and a quiet, "It looks great."

She supposed it did, if you were a romance cover heroine. When Ian had mentioned the surprise, she'd been thinking with desperate optimism of a cruise ship. Something like a floating city, with beauty shops and bowling alleys and seven ballroomsized dining rooms. (She'd done considerable lastminute research.)

The huge ship bobbing like a cork was, in true Ian fashion,
not
a boring old honeymoon cruise ship. No, this was straight out of some sweeping pirate tale, with towering masts and yohoho on a dead man's chest. It was even flying a pirate flag. Cute.

"When" She tried to banish the squeak from her voice. "When do we" Drown.

Yes, sink and drown, arrrrrr, matey. "Sail?"

"Sail?" Ian echoed, and picked her up to whirl her around in a nauseating spiral.

"Within the hour, Cess! Isn't that wonderful?"

It was a measure of how overwhelmed she was that she hadn't complained about that damn nickname.
Cess.
Ugh.
Cecilia, if you please,
she imagined herself saying coolly, like those heroines in the novels, as she pulled her shoulders straight and cowed him with an imperious gaze.

Of course, none of those women would have gotten themselves into a fix like this in the first place.

Cecilia squeezed her eyes shut and clung for dear life until Ian, and the world in general, stopped whirling. Well, at least she had manly thews to which she could cling. Hadn't had those, a couple of months ago. Hadn't had anything at all but herself.

Ah,
some traitorous part of her heart sighed,
hadn't that just been the life?

With shock, she realized what he'd just said.
SAIL? Within the hour?!

She must have made some squeak of protest. Ian, hair blowing in cornsilk waves on the wind, shirt billowing romantically, looked down at her. "Trust me," he said.

"You're going to
love
this." Somehow, he managed to get her down the boardwalk, mostly by bum'srushing her with an arm around her shoulders. Terror rendered her effectively mute and manageable.

"There she is, Cess. Isn't she beautiful?"

She supposed, in a scary piratical way. The ship was anchored out in the harbor, riding the waves, its skeletal spires draped with ropes like cobwebs in the mist.

The day was clouding over and fog boiling in from the ocean. Perfect. Well, maybe she could use it to slip away.

She'd just taken the first sidle in that direction when Ian pulled her into a smothering embrace. She tried for that squareshouldered dignity she'd been imagining earlier. "Ian, we can't do this. It's impossible."

"Can't? What do you mean? You said you'd marry me, didn't you?"

Well. . . yes. She had. But it had been one of those
yes, of course, someday
things, not a
yes, God, drag me to the docks and throw me on a pirate ship
thing.

"Ian, listen to me," she said. "I really can't"

She paused, because Ian had been walking her toward the edge of the wooden pier, and suddenly there was nothing between her and the greasy, slippery water except his arm and about an inch of foothold. Her voice locked tight in her throat.

Out in the growing mist, she heard the rhythmic splash of oars.

Tell him. Tell him you can't marry him. TELL HIM!

She opened her mouth to do it, and a boat glided out of the gray fog. A black, glossy boat with six men at the oars and another standing straight as a pike with his arms folded. Clearly the man in charge. Pirate in charge. Whatever.

Well, Cecilia thought numbly, you couldn't say Ian didn't go in for authenticity.

She'd never in her life seen a more likely brigand. Sunbrowned skin. A mass of coiling dark hair shot with gray, the lot barely contained by some braids to either side and a battered tricorn hat. He wasn't tall not as tall as Ian, certainly and wore a heavy, antiquestyle coat with corroded brass buttons and fraying bullion on the sleeves. Faded and sea stained.

His eyes were fierce and dark, and under a bristle of mustache and goatee she couldn't see any expression at all. For all she could tell, he was about to draw that frighteninglooking cutlass at his belt and demand that she stand and deliver.

"Ah," Ian said. "Captain Lockhart. May I present my wife to be, Cecilia Welles?"

Captain Lockhart flicked that impenetrable glance from her to Ian and then back.

"If you must," he said, in the most dismissive tone she'd ever heard.

She'd been about to turn around and bolt, but that did it. It came to her in a blinding, angry rush, exactly why she was doing this. She'd found the perfect man, and there was no reason, no reason at all, not to see this for the incredible lucky break it was. She'd be stupid to turn away. Some other woman would be all over Ian like sprayon tan the second she did.

Cecilia squared her shoulders and fixed the ragged pirate with the glare she wasn't capable of aiming at Ian. "Yes," she said. "He must. Is this our ride?"

Captain Lockhart clasped his hands behind his back and easily rocked with the waves that battered the small boat. His face remained bland. "No horses," he said.

"What?"

"Not a ride, love. No horses."

She felt an obscure sense of satisfaction at having provoked even that much reaction. "Our . . . conveyance." That was a good romance novel word.

"Conveyance." She saw a sudden, startling flash of teeth.

"Aye," he said. "It's a conveyance, if you're not too particular about your terms.

Get in, if you're getting. Tide's about to turn."

Ian jumped into the boat with a solid thump and swung Cecilia in before she could suck in breath to protest.

Too late. She sat and clung to the side convulsively as it lurched in the waves.

The leftside oarsmen pushed off from the pier, and the boat began a hideous rocking motion. "Ian, wait! Isn'tisn't anybody else coming? Your family? My friends? We should have witnesses. ..."

Ian patted her shoulder. "Captain Lockhart and his men will sign all of the necessary papers, Cess." She shivered, damp and miserable in her thin Tshirt and blue jeans. "See? I told you it'd be a surprise."

Captain Lockhart cast her a look, raised an expressive eyebrow, and turned to watch the unseen horizon as they rowed into the mist.

The ship was called
Sweet Mourning.
Cecilia knew that, because she saw the name on the stern as they rowed toward it. If she'd thought the ship was big before, well, it was
enormous.
And she had to admit, she felt a thrill when the black glossy mountain of a hull appeared out of the fog. The sails were down, neatly tied to the crosspieces yardarms?and men up in the webs of rigging swarmed like spiders.

Captain Lockhart's oarsmen maneuvered the boat next to the gigantic bouncing hull of the ship, and a contraption that looked like a worn wooden swing came over the railing to hang at the level of the boat. "Right," Ian said cheerfully. "In you go, Cess."

Before she could, once and for all, tell him to
stop calling her that,
he grabbed her around the waist and settled her in the swing.

"Heave!"
Lockhart bellowed, which was offensive, reallyand then she was rising into the air. She grabbed for the ropes. Within five feet, the mist closed in, and she could barely see the boat below; in ten, she might as well have been alone in the fog, suspended like a puppet from a giant's finger.

And then she heard the squeal of pulleys and the creak of rope, and a shadow leaned over the rail and hauled the swing over the side. Her feet hit the deck with a thump. She promptly lost her balance in the dip of a wave and grabbed for the first available hold.

It was the fraying collar of Captain Lockhart's coat. She stared at him in numbed surprise as he distastefully pried her fingers loose and settled her back on balance.

"How did you get here first?" she demanded.

"Climbed," he said, and nodded toward a knotted rope thrown over the rail. It was creaking with strain. Sure enough, the top of Ian's head appeared, and then his reddened face. Captain Lockhart hadn't even broken a sweat. "Now, there's work to be done on deck. You and your"his eyes flicked toward Ian, who was clambering over the railing"your intended can wait up on the quarterdeck."

"I have no idea what that means."

Lockhart grabbed her by the arm, spun her around, and pointed over her shoulder through the thick forest of masts and ropes, up a ladder to a second level. A huge black wheel was revealed by an eddy in the mist. "Quarterdeck," he said, and gave her a push. She glared after him, furious, but he dismissed her and moved on. Ian was there to grab her when she stumbled again. The whole ship seemed to be lurching violently from one wave to the next.

"Isn't
this grand?"
Ian enthused, panting. "She's an East Indiaman. You'll never see a bigger sailing ship, Cess. Nothing like her has sailed the seas for a hundred years, at least."

"Lovely," she said. "Look, he said"

"Normally there'd be about three hundred men on board, but I was told they run with fewer, since they're not really taking on cargo." Ian, on a roll, ignored her.

"Funny story, how I found"

"Ian, the captain said"

"Funny story, how I found the ship, but I was at this pub, and"

"I told you to get to the quarterdeck!"
Captain Lockhart's bellow. The deck was suddenly awash with sailors boiling out of hatchwaysa blur of sunblackened faces, scars, disfigurements. She doubted any of them had bathed in months, and from what she could see of their bare, calloused feet, they'd spent more than half their lives shoeless. She fought her way out of the mob and reached the ladder and scrambled up to the relative sanity of the quarterdeck. Ian was right behind her, broad as a wall. She was grateful for that, because for the third impossible time Captain Lockhart was ahead of them, standing at a military parade rest in his shabby, waterstained coat. He rode the waves with feline grace.

"How did you," she blurted.

He gave her a sad shake of his head, and watched as another wave sent her reeling. "Mr. Argyle, weigh anchor and take us out."

"Aye, Cap'n," said a small man standing behind him, resplendent in a blaring red coat marred by at least three blackened holes in the breast. He had a Napoleonic haircut, fussy little spectacles, and he looked rather sweet until he began bellowing like a foghorn. "Richards! Weigh the anchor! Topsails, Mr. Simonds,
today,
or I'll see you kissing the mast tomorrow!"

A heavy, vibrating clank echoed through the fog, and the ship groaned like a living thing. Repeated commands echoed from one end of the ship to the other, growing distant in the mist. Cecilia clung to the railing and listened to the creak of ropes and the sudden snap of canvas.

She was suddenly sickly aware that her life was totally out of control.

Captain Lockhart had his hands on the massive oversized wheel, moving it by small increments. Steering by feel, she supposed; she couldn't see a damn thing, but his dark eyes never wavered from some distant spot in the mist. Maybe he had an earpiece under that wig. Maybe someone was hiding belowdecks with radar to guide him out. Yes, that must be it. Otherwise . . . No. She wasn't going to think about some
actor
sailing them blind out of a harbor.

Canvas creaked, and she felt a sudden surge of acceleration. Lockhart's face relaxed into something that almost looked like a grin. His fingers caressed the wheel gently, and he shot a glance to the small man standing next to him.

"Eastsou'east, Mr. Argyle. I leave her in your hands." He let go of the wheel, and Argyle stepped quickly up to grab it. "I'll see our . . . guests ... to their quarters."

"Aye, sir," Argyle said, stonefaced.

Lockhart descended, agile as a monkey, to the main deck and threw open a door between the two ladders. Cecilia, following, slipped on the wet decking despite her sneakers. "Get rid of the fancy slippers," Lockhart said. "Bare feet's best. Wouldn't want you going overboard, now, would we?"

The words were bland, but the men working nearby laughed. Cecilia swallowed hard and remembered her resolve. She drew herself up straight and looked Lockhart in the eye.

"I'm sure you wouldn't, Captain," she said, which wasn't exactly the comeback of the year, but it was, after all, her first attempt. "That wouldn't be a great advertisement for your cruise line, would it?"

"Cruise line?" Lockhart echoed, and slowly smiled. "Ah. Yes. Of course."

The cabin was a closet. Well. . . not
quite
a closet, maybe. It had two chancylooking hammocks, a nice porcelain sink and pitcher, an oil lamp hanging from a safety hook, and a closed pot in the corner on the floor. There were also two outfits laid out on the bed something true to the period, so far as her inexperienced eye could tell. Ian's was composed of a nice blue coat, a frilled white shirt, and some gray trousers. Knee boots.