The Pirate Captain (51 page)

###

With Towers and Smalley scampering ahead, the walk to Hopetown was not a long one, but still provided Nathan more than enough time to visualize in grim detail all manner of perversities that might be befalling Cate at that very moment, each involving captivity and bodily harm.

The coincidence of Harte being at the same place, at the same time was too much. Dark thoughts of collusion and betrayal skulked, even though in his few rational moments, he knew it to be impossible. There was the niggling thought that she was part of an elaborate scheme. His first urge was to dismiss that out-of-hand, for he grossly doubted the Commodore’s ability, to either conceive or carry off something so fantastic. Still, the doubt was firmly in place and not to be dislodged, until he had seen for himself.

Time would tell. The first matter of business was to find her.

Truth be told, he didn’t think the Commodore had the nature for such devious acts, nor Cate the tolerance. He tended to not give Harte much credence, but any man with any amount of power and control, confronted with a beautiful woman, might resort to any amount of coercion necessary to make her more pliable.

If that were the case, he wished he could be there to see that. Cate struck him as one who wouldn’t succumb without a blood-laden struggle.

Unless…

Belay that!

Just exactly which case did you hope for: that she had thrown in with Harte, or she’s been arrested?

There was the chance that it had been as the noisome duo had said: Cate had been drug up to a room to be used like a common whore.

Not bloody likely! She’d castrate
’
im before he could lock the door.

At the moment, Cate being arrested was vastly the lesser of concerns, although it curdled his gut to think of her in chains, lying in one of those stinking cells.

God, the dirt! She’d never abide that.

A flapping overhead broke his concentration. Muttering moodily, he glanced skyward to see Beatrice’s bright plumage alighting in a tree just ahead. Ruffling then smoothing, she tipped her head, scrutinized him, and then threw her head back and squawked.

“Oh, put a stopper in your gob!” Nathan jerked an irritable shoulder. “It’s not as if there weren’t enough pestilences in me life.”

Protesting loudly, she took flight and soared ahead.

Once in town, they pressed to the shadows. Smug in the security afforded by virtue of its size, Hopetown took little notice of comings and goings of such as the likes of them. Besides, any pirate worth his salt knew how to get in and out of any spot on the map without notice. Towers and Smalley hastily led him to
The Rose and Crown
, as indicated by a sign over the door.

Bloody royalists clear out here,
he thought, looking up at the red rose superimposed over a crown.
Put it in your pipe and smoke it, mate.

A quick reconnaissance of the building proved there were no entrances other than the street.

“I wouldn't suggest the front door…” Towers said
in sotto.

“The place is crawling with red-coats,” Smalley finished.

“Did the keep say which room is Harte’s?” Nathan asked, peering up toward the second floor. Seeing both shake their heads in negation, he gave a resigned sigh. “Aye well, on to it, then.”

Bidding them to stand watch—one didn’t dare assume they would know enough to do so on their own volition—he used Smalley’s tall frame as a ladder to reach the edge of a rear balcony. Agility and determination pulled him up and over the rail, landing lightly outside the window.

As luck would have it, the window was open and he slipped in. Too late he discovered that the room was occupied. A man and woman were in bed, sufficiently preoccupied, however, that he judged his chances good of going unnoticed. Tiptoeing, he was well passed halfway when he heard a deep voiced, “Hey, mate! Wait yer turn. She’s on my shilling.”

“Sorry.” Nathan sidled toward the door, tipping his hat. “Concentration, mate. No lady ’ tis flattered to think her charms aren’t sufficient to hold a man’s attentions… or vice versa. Madam.” He flashed a smile meant to charm as he backed out the door. “Please, pray continue. By all means...”

He slammed the door shut behind him and breathed a sigh of relief.

He checked the hall. Rooms were to larboard and starboard. Some doors stood open, instantly eliminating them as possibilities: the good Commodore would definitely desire his privacy.

The first closed door was unlocked, the room empty; same for the second. The third was unlocked, as well, and he pushed it open without pausing to listen.

“Hoy! What the bloody…!”

Occupied.

The next door was unlocked. Leaning to listen, he heard the movement of someone inside and tapped lightly.

“Come in!” It was a female voice.

Nathan's heart leapt. The door was open, before he could heed the internal voice screaming that it wasn’t Cate. He skidded to a halt at the sight of the occupant: female well enough, large, blowzy-haired, and naked.

“Oh, you sweet thing!” Her pendulous breasts wobbled as she charged at him with open arms, squealing, “I’ve always liked the dark ones.”

Her embrace drove Nathan back against the door, the force slamming it shut behind him. His objections were cut off by an onslaught of a tongue to a gagging proportion, while a hand latched expertly onto his crotch. Floundering to fend her off—a bloody octopus, she was!—he groped for the doorknob at his back. At last, he wrested free of her grasp enough to get the door open. He slipped around and outside, pulling it shut as a barricade. He gripped the knob, his arms nearly jerked from their sockets as she threw her weight into tugging at the door, all the while pleading for his return.

Soon enough, the pounding ceased; inside went quiet. He cautiously released the knob. Safe enough.

“I’m getting too old for this,” Nathan muttered, trying to wipe the taste of her off on his sleeve.

Several minutes later, he stood in the hallway, struck with indecision. The other three rooms had been empty. There was no sign of Cate or Harte, leaving him to wonder if they were already done and gone.

Snorting aloud, he instantly negated the idea. He wasn’t made of wood. In the process of imagining what sounds Cate might make in the height of passion, several scenarios of his own doing had come to mind, none of which could be completed in anything less than an afternoon. Come to think on it, however, Harte didn’t strike him as the sort to possess enough imagination to go much past the knowledge of a virgin whore: 10 minutes, and he’d be back to limp as an old sock.

All options exhausted, there was nothing left but to take his leave. Voices echoing up the stairs told him the taproom was still full—no sense in risking that—and no servants’ steps were to be had. And so he backtracked to where he had begun.

Stopping at the door, Nathan listened carefully, and swore under his breath.

This cove has the stamina of a racehorse!

Cautiously turning the knob, he winced at its squeak. Stealthily slipping in, a canny eye for the pair in the bed, he tiptoed through. As he reached the window, one leg over the sill, he felt someone watching. He slid a sideways look to find the woman looking back. Legs wrapped around the panting and thrusting one atop her, she winked, nodding approvingly. He tipped his hat to the whore’s disappointed pout and slipped out the window. Slithering over the rail, he dropped to the ground, grunting softly with the impact. Towers and Smalley still hovered against the shed where he had left them.

“Anything?” he demanded, shaking one leg from the sting of landing too heavily.

“Nothin’, Cap’n.” Towers put a hand to his nose, making a face. “Blimey! What's that smell!”

Nathan’s first urge was to blame Towers; he announced his arrival well in advance to anyone who had the misfortune of being downwind. This markedly offensive odor was, in fact, coming from himself. He raised an arm and set to coughing from the perfume of his noxious assailant.

“She wasn’t there,” he growled, after clearing his throat. “Any other thoughts?”

Like some comical clock pendulum, Towers and Smalley shook their heads in unison. Looking skyward, Nathan silently sought tolerance and guidance from any deity that might be watching.

“All right now, mates, bear a hand,” he said, drawing them to attention. “There is a tall, copper-headed woman and a commodore, probably together, somewhere in this bloody blot on the map. It shouldn’t be a tall challenge to find either one. Spread out and the first one what finds Mr. Cate is to haul his wind back to the
Morganse
with her in tow, toot sweet.”

“Aye, sir!” came a chorus.

“What about you, Cap’n?” Smalley asked.

“Never mind, me. I can bloody well mind for meself. I want her on that ship, with all possible haste. Now, shove off!”

He turned just as a blue blur cut through his view.

Blessed Beatrice, again!

Soaring like some kind of a masquerading buzzard, the parrot circled several times, finally landing on a roof peak, and then carried on like she was possessed by Satan himself. Nathan mouthed several oaths, batting a dismissive hand at the beast.

Beatrice swooped past as he strode for the street, so low as to force him to duck, clacking her beak at him as she passed. Alighting on a shed’s peak just ahead, she bobbed her head and chattered. Not a dozen strides later, Beatrice dove again, scuffing the crown of his hat, then arced off to perch atop a post.

Slowly stalking toward the pestilence, said pestilence incrementally flitted away. Nathan clenched his teeth. It had been a very bad day, thus far, and he was looking for something to kill or maim. Retreating to his steady advance, Beatrice ultimately turned up an alley, and was sitting atop a stack of casks when he rounded the corner. Stopping, he scowled. “Are you trying to lead me off?”

Arching her wings, Beatrice berated him with several guttural cackles.
“Tea time! Tea time!”
she said, bobbing her head with avian urgency.

“Bugger it!” he sighed. “Don’t have any better ideas of me own, might as well follow a bloody bird.”

###

Lady Bartholomew Dunwoody,” Roger Harte announced and made an elegant leg.

“Oh, my sweet dear, Lady Bart will do quite famously.”

Somewhat dazed, Cate found herself making her curtsey before a regal but stout, elderly woman in the marble foyer of a vast house, murmuring some vague salutation.

Harte frowned, worriedly hovering over Cate. “Madam Harper was taken hostage by pirates and only just escaped.”

“Oh!” Lady Bart’s hands flew up to her cheeks—a gesture Cate was soon to discover to be habitual—her small mouth rounding in dismay. “It’s no small wonder the poor dear is so regrettably disheveled. Scurrilous and reprehensible beasts, the lot of them,” she declared breathlessly, a state of being Cate was also to witness with frequency.

“Upon my word, Diggie,” the woman huffed, rounding on Harte. “When are you going to rid these waters of those savages, so a lady might pass in safety and freedom of these indignities?”

Not waiting for an answer, she seized Cate by the arm and whisked her up the stairs.

“Come with me, you poor, poor, bereft child,” Lady Bart crooned. Her motherly tone was in sharp contrast to her heavy lean on Cate’s arm, as if seeking support rather than offering.

“We’ve a bit before tea; I shall see you to a room, so you may refresh yourself. Oh, dear, that hair. Sally?” she called as they mounted the stairs. “Sally? Where is that girl when you need her? Sally!”

Topping the curved stairs, Lady Bart, her ample bosom heaving under her kertch, swept Cate down the hall on a wave of flourish and endless chatter.

“Yes, Ma’am?”

Lady Bart drew up before someone who was far from a girl: middle-aged, stern-faced, and dour-mouthed.

“Sally, there you are! We have a guest—”

“We have several guests,” Sally interjected.

“Don’t be impertinent,” Lady Bart retorted, absent of ire. Fanning herself with one hand, she scurried down the hall with Cate in tow. “Pray, attend Madam Harper. She is in desperate need of all assistance.”

Her Ladyship paused in her march to cast another fretful look at Cate, a hand rising to her cheek. “And this hair. Oh, you poor thing, and so tall. Pity,” she declared, pressing Cate further down the hall. “Those vile creatures wouldn’t even allow you a brush and a mirror. Oh, and where did you ever come by eyes colored such as that?”

Before she could answer, Cate was standing in a large bedchamber, laced, satined, and frilled on every surface that could support it.

“Oh, when I think of the insults you were required to endure,” Lady Bart sighed. “Alone, with all those men…”

She stopped. Her shocked expression gave way to morbid curiosity as she whispered, “They didn’t…
do
anything, did they?”

She held her breath in anticipation of delicious details.

“No,” Cate said. “They were very kind.”

Lady Bart’s mouth drooped with disappointment, but it faded quickly. “
Mrs
. Harper; you’re married then. Where
is
your husband? Oh, how frantic with worry he must be. Perhaps we might send a—”

“I’m widowed.”

“Oh, my condolences for your loss,” Lady Bart said, without a hint of compassion as she pushed open the windows. “I’m widowed myself, you know: lost my dear Harry eighteen years hence.”

Cate considered it possible she had talked the man into his grave.

“He visits most nights,” she went on matter-of-factly, fluffing a pillow, re-arranging a vase of flowers on a table, and then sweeping toward the door. “He always was such a thoughtful dear…”

Her voice faded down the hall, leaving Cate to deflate in silence. Her respite was cut short by Sally’s arrival, laden with brushes, towels, ribbons, and other necessities to wage war against Cate’s state of dishevelment. A small chambermaid scurried in her wake, bearing a steaming ewer. Emptying her arms on the dressing table, Sally stood back with one hand on her hip to survey Cate with a critical eye.