The Blue Diamond (The Razor's Edge Book 1) (13 page)

“So…what’s the plan once
they arrive?”

“Captain Carbonale is a
mighty good captain and all, but he don’t like ta’ get his hands dirty if he
don’t have ta’—if ye read me right. He most likely won’t even set foot off the
Cat
. You can best believe he’ll send
Master Green into port with Captain Shepard, and wait fer him ta' bring his
reward.”

“So, they’ll be heading
straight into the port at Nassau?”

“Yes’m. The Royal Guard will
be waiting fer them there ta’ take possession of Captain Shepard on the pier,
so as I heard ‘em say.”

“And what time might this
exchange take place?” Keara inquired.

“Master Green said we was
ta’ make Nassau by four o’clock Saturday.”

“Can we make it by then,
Ke?” Cass asked.

“If we keep these seas and
the wind, we can make it there before sunrise on Saturday. I’m sure Carbonale
will make it before dawn on Friday.”

“That’s a busy port, ladies.
You could easily move in two small ships like these without him seeing
ye—especially in the dark.”

“My thoughts exactly,
Sandy,” Keara said, tapping her fingertips on the desk.

“Well? How’d I do?” he asked
as he squirmed himself straight in the chair.

“What do you mean?” Keara
asked.

“Well, may I stay on? You
wouldn’t hand me back over ta’ ol’ Blacksnake, now would ye? I’m a cooper by
trade, and mighty damn good one, if I may say so myself.”

“We can never have enough
coopers, Sandy,” Keara said, as she stood and looked back over her shoulder at
Miranda. “Mir, can you tend to the log, please?” Then she turned back and said,
“Thank you, Sandy. We’ll put our heads together and come up with a reward for
your…loyalty to our cause.”

Sandy stood, bowed several
times, and walked to the door. He turned, looked back at Miranda, and winked
before leaving.

“You know what, Miranda?”
Keara said, pushing the logbooks beneath Miranda’s nose. “I’d be willing to bet
he cleans up rather nicely,” she giggled. “But what about poor Tommy? You’re
going to break his heart.”

“Break his heart, ha,”
Miranda mumbled as she went to work.

“So, to get back to why
we’re all here…” Cass stated and folded her arms.

“I say we push this old girl
as hard as we can, get to Nassau before dawn on Saturday, and sneak aboard the
Cat
,” Keara said, slamming her hand down
hard on the desk and nearly shaking the quill from Miranda’s hand.

“You! Calm down over there,
will you?” Miranda shouted, waving Keara away.

“Most of the
Cat
’s crew should be either passed out
drunk, or engaged in town, and if we can make it early enough, we should be
able to get aboard and find Ivory. We’ll have Sandy draw us a map of the ship
so we don’t waste time,” Cass continued as she watched Keara pace.

“I think you’re both addled,
but you know I’m not one to argue. Log is done for now… unless either of you
have anything else you’d like to add or declare?” Miranda asked as she blew the
ink dry.

Cass and Keara stared
pointedly at each other for a moment, and Cass shook her head. “No, we’ve
nothing else on board to note…yet.”

“What do you mean, yet?”
Miranda asked as she rose slowly from her seat.

“Ke?” Cass gestured to her
to speak.

Keara sighed.
 
“I brought the bag. You know, the one we keep
in the…”

“You did what?” Miranda gasped.

“I had to! It’s our back-up
plan,” Keara said in a huff. “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Do
you want to get her back or not?”

“None of this leaves this
room. Understood?” Cass stated firmly.

“Bunch of superstitious old
witches, you are,” Keara stated as she pushed her tricorn on her head of poker
straight, golden brown locks, buckled her gun belt, and slid her cutlass into
its sheath. “They’re just a bunch of shiny rocks,” she snapped as she opened
the door. “I’ll see you on deck.”

Chapter
Fourteen

Master Green knocked firmly
on Carbonale's cabin door and waited a moment for the call to enter. “Maddox, a
few moments, please?”

“Of course, have a seat,”
Carbonale answered, pouring himself a glass of rum. “You?” he asked, holding the
cup up at Green.

“By all means, sir.”

“So, what brings you?”

“Ivory insists there was
nothing else aboard the
Blue Diamond
when she originally took her.”

“Well, of course she’s
lying. Why on Earth would she tell you, or me? Carbonale asked, as he handed a
cup to Green.

“She expects you to come and
speak to her yourself. I told her you would not be doing so.”

“And you would be correct in
that assumption. I won’t be setting eyes on Madame Shepard again, and thank
goodness for that,” he declared as he sat down and raised his cup at Green in a
toast. However, Green did not toast back. “Are we not in agreement, Alphonse?”

“Maddox, I have served at
your side these many years and have never questioned either your authority or
your judgment. However, in this instance…”

“Why this instance? Is it
because she is a woman?”

“It has everything, and
nothing, to do with her sex. Maddox, hear me, please; we are fortune hunters,
and we deal in commodities that we can sell. Granted, this woman has a bounty
on her head worth more than what we can normally acquire when we take a ship,
but selling her to her death is not going to change how you feel.”

“How I feel, you say? And
how is it that I feel?
 
For that matter,
how is that you would even know how I feel?” Carbonale asked as he stood and
strode back across the room to refill his cup.

“Then why don’t you go and
speak to her yourself?”

“I have nothing to say to
the woman.”

“I do not believe that.”

“Do you honestly think because
she woke up in my bed one morning that I feel any differently about her than I
did yesterday, or the day before?”

“Then prove it to me. Prove
it to yourself. If you have any chance at all of finding out what was aboard
that ship that made her so valuable, perhaps asking her yourself may be the
only way to get the answers you desire. That is all I am saying, and now I will
go and get to work. At present, we are on course and should reach Nassau early
on Friday. If the winds hold, and the sea remains calm, you’ll get your fifty
thousand pounds Saturday afternoon as planned.”

Green stood and sat down his
cup. “One final thing; she requested a quill and paper, as well as a
candle.
 
However, as you ordered, she has
received nothing. Sleep well, Captain.”

Green bowed and closed the
door behind him, leaving Carbonale with his thoughts and his rum. He looked at
the clock and realized he’d checked the time just before Green entered the
cabin, and at least two dozen times before that. He couldn’t recall a day when
he cared to check the time so often. He sat back in his chair and turned his
full attention to getting as drunk as he could and falling asleep—if he could
just remove from his mind the image of her glaring at him as she was brought
aboard the ship.

He couldn’t. Thirty minutes
into the bottle, he raised his empty cup and decanter at the cabin boy when he
brought in a tray of meat and bread and sat it on the desk. The boy gave a
knowing nod and, a minute or so later, another full bottle appeared. Carbonale
wasn’t thinking clearly, and since he’d finished entire bottles off in no time
before, he knew it wasn’t the rum fogging his brain, but rather the intriguing
and dangerous woman he’d taken in his arms only the night before.

Fighting against the urge to
turn on himself and his best judgment, he compelled himself not to take the
short walk to Ivory’s locked cabin, but it wore away at his resolve. The
drunker he got, the harder it was to tell himself not to move. He pushed
himself from his chair and staggered to the cabin door. When he pulled it open,
he found an empty hallway that tipped and teetered. He clung to the door frame
for balance, but then fell to his right against it when the ship took an
unexpected hard tilt. He’d hit those bottles hard and fast on an empty stomach,
but he knew the difference between a rough sea and drunken legs.

“Captain, a storm’s come
up!
 
The worst is at least an hour off,
but the rain’s here, and I’ve come to batten ye down,” said the cabin boy as he
rushed up out of nowhere.

“The Shepard woman, has
anyone seen to her yet?” Carbonale asked, squinting tightly and snatching the
boy by the arm.

“I have.”

Carbonale pushed off from
the door frame and rubbed his hand roughly over his face and up through his
hair. Upon hearing the ruckus above him and all around, he knew Master Green had
things well under control, so he staggered off down the hallway looking for
Ivory’s cabin. A crewman rushed towards him and stopped cold. “Captain, all’s
well on deck,” the sailor spoke. He was soaked straight through, still dripping
from the hem of his knickers to his shirt collar.

“Mostly rain, then?”

“Aye, Captain. A wee windy,
but nothin’ she ain’t sailed through before.”

Carbonale patted the sailor
on the back of his soggy vest and carried on, but changed his course from
searching for Ivory to heading to the deck to assess the storm for himself. His
mind was still foggy with rum, and he thought a hard, cold shower would do him
a world of good. The closer he came to the deck, the louder the rain pounded in
his ears. His steps quickened, and each one was more purposefully set to the
floor than the last by the time he reached the doors.

“Get those hatches battened
down before she’s flooded below!” he shouted upon eyeing the puddles of water
around his boots. “Turn that wheel, man! Head her into the waves! Have you lost
your mind?” he shouted at the helmsman and then rushed to the wheel and began
pulling on it himself to bring the ship around into the oncoming swell. “Hold
her steady!”

“Captain, she is all clear
to our starboard horizon. We may have to change course for a while and then
bring her about,” Master Green said, coming up on Carbonale’s side.

“Where’s the fun in that,
Master Green? Some of these men need a bath anyway. Stay your course. You know
she can take it.” Carbonale rested his hand on Green’s shoulder and lifted his
face to the rain. “I love a good storm! Have this deck swabbed when she calms.”

Carbonale leaned on the rail
in the rain for a good hour until the lightning and thunder was on top of them.
The rolling and churning water spanked the ship again and again. It seemed to
be following them, as the distance between them and the distant clear sky
remained the same throughout that first hour. Suddenly, Carbonale was reminded
of his original course through the hallway below. It dawned on him that he was
turning the wet, loosened rings on his fingers, and he thought to remove them
rather than lose them.

 
He was soaked through to his skin, and his
white linen shirt and thick woolen breeches felt as if they weighed twenty
pounds. When he rushed back inside and closed the doors, a pool of water grew
beneath each step he took. He swiped the dark, wet curls away from his face,
squeezing the water from them as he pressed them close to his now nearly sober
head. As the boat lifted and dropped, he walked straight on and shook the water
from his hands and tugged the wet shirt away from his skin. With a firm yank,
he pulled it up over his head, twisted the water from it onto the floor, and
carried on.

Just before he reached his
cabin, he caught two sailors out of the corner of his right eye. They were
facing each other as they stood outside of a cabin door and appeared to be
making a wager of some sort. Their deep, sinister laughter pulled him as if it
dragged him by the arm.
   

“What goes on here?”

The men fell back against
the wall and slammed their hands at their sides. “Nothing, Captain. Just jawin’
is all.”

“You take me for a fool?”
Carbonale shouted, grabbing each sailor by the shirt with his fists clenched so
tightly that his forearms rippled and his chest muscles tensed and thickened.

“It were his idea, Captain!”
the sailor held tight in his left hand shouted, turning his wide eyes to his
left and tipping his head at his mate.

“The ‘ell it was!” the older
and much heavier sailor shouted back. “He wants to pay a visit to the lady,
sir. I telled him it was a bad idea seein’ as how you laid it out fer us that
she was hands-off, but,” the sailor barely finished his sentence before
Carbonale dropped them both and planted a well-placed, face-crushing blow to
the elder one’s right cheek, knocking him cold to the floor.

Carbonale now had both hands
on the younger man and gathered him up to his neck in his filthy shirt, pulling
him up until his toes grazed the floor.
 
Both of his fists pressed hard into the man’s chin. “My orders were
hands-off. That means eyes and whatever filthy thoughts you may conjure in your
imagination as well. You just bought yourself a ticket off my ship when we
reach Nassau, along with your friend here. You’re lucky you failed in this
attempt, or you’d be some fortunate shark’s dinner tonight. Or worse, I’ll open
that door and let the lady do her worst. Do you understand?”

“Are ye gonna lay me out,
too, sir?”

Carbonale took a deep breath
and slowly lowered the man. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Captain. Although I
can’t rightly say I know what it means to conjure, I have a pretty good idea,”
the seaman said as he trembled and glanced down at his mate, still out cold on
the wet floor.

“Get out of here, and take
his worthless ass with you. Don’t let me find you anywhere near here again, and
when we pull out of Nassau, don’t think I won’t be watching to make sure
neither of you sets foot on my ship again. Now go!”

The young man reached down
and slapped the older one hard several times, rousing him halfway to his feet,
and then taking him under the arm and rushing off.

“Maddox? Is that you?” He
heard her voice coming from the cabin door behind him. He was startled and spun
around, realizing he’d heard Ivory, but he swallowed hard while he tried to
decide to answer her or not. “Maddox, I know you’re there. Please, just answer
me.”

When he heard her say
“please,” something within him softened and the lungs full of air he’d held for
nearly a minute released with a heavy sigh, over-laced with a soft, “Yes.”

“I need to speak with you. I
need to reason with you that you must not do this. I—I can’t beg you Maddox,
you know that. I can only appeal to your sense of honor and decency not to turn
me over. There’s still time. All I ask is that you speak to me and allow me the
chance to live. All you have to do is let me go.”

He reached out and placed
his palms flat against the door and leaned against them. The fresh rain water
still dripped from his black ringlets but as it ran down over his back, it
intermingled with the beads of sweat that had escaped during his scuffle. His
head fell forward against the door, barely making a sound. He pressed the
underside of the toe of his left boot flat against the threshold, as if he were
using it to keep her in…or keep himself out.

“I can hear you there…at
least I hope it’s really you. Your breathing from when you pressed your cheek
against mine, it still fills my ears. Now your breath is heavy with doubt,
trying to decide if you’re making the right decision. Do you believe you could
have such doubts if you were, in fact, making the right choice?”

“You don’t even know me.
There is no love here, only the foolish lust of an even more foolish man.”

“Is it foolish to want to
feel the warm touch of another?” she spoke softly, pressing her hands against
the opposite side of the door.

“Don’t pretend your
motivation was anything more than to free yourself, Madame. You made yourself
clear in my bed. You and I were cut from the same cloth, which is why we are
who we are. I won’t pretend that I am anything but a solitary man, but…”

“But what? I will regret
asking you this, but if I don’t ask, I’ll go to the noose never knowing what
might have been. Your duty and your pockets have told you I am nothing more
than cargo to be sold, but what does your heart say? Tell the truth—not just to
me, but to yourself. Close your eyes and remember your hands, when your
fingertips pressed hard into my thighs and you pulled me to you. Do you
remember how you kissed the breath from my body until I had to pull at your
hair to make you release me?”