The Secrets of a Scoundrel (33 page)

The jackals were back.

Bloody Simon Limarque and his men.

Well, it was certainly convenient that the Frenchmen were obligingly dispatching the guards for him.

But that left Nick to finish off Limarque.

Gladly.
With a whisper of metal in the darkness, he took out his knife, an icy gleam in his eyes.

Time to even a score.
Then he slipped out of his hiding place and stalked toward his prey.

“Y
es!
” Phillip breathed, seizing his grandfather’s journal off the shelf where he had just found it.

He quickly leafed through it to see if any of the pages had been separated and were lying loose to be auctioned separately, but it seemed to be intact.

He tucked it into his waistcoat and glanced around for his exit. Hearing gunshots outside, he was in no hurry to go out there.

He told himself that Nick surely had the situation under control, then he focused on his own task of finding a way out.

Heart pounding, he jogged around the inside perimeter of the barn, warding off panic to find every exit boarded up, except for the main doors, where he could hear the fight raging.

That was the way the Frenchmen had been trying to break in, and he had no desire to come face-to-face with them.

His only other option was to climb up the ladder to the loft. Here, he was relieved to find the open hay door, but, of course, it was a long way down.

Got to be some rope lying around here somewhere.
He hurried about until he found some. He grasped it with a mental cheer, then ran back to the loft and tied a series of strong knots around the nearest post.

Hope it’s long enough to reach the ground!
When he glanced down from the hay door, however, he stopped, riveted by what he saw below.

Nick came striding out of the darkness unloading a brace of pistols on his enemies, guns flaring as the powder flashed two, three, four times in a row. Men shouted and fell, staggering back with foreign curses.

When one fired back, Nick used his nearest victim for a shield, then dropped him. Out of bullets with no time to reload, he felled the next one with a knife hurled from an expert distance. Phillip gulped as the unfortunate Frenchman screamed and crashed backwards with the hilt sticking out of his chest.

Nick pivoted and warded off his next attacker with a bone-jarring kick in the chest. Another man closed in from his right, but he traded blows with both of them with smooth, swift savagery.

Good God,
thought Phillip, staring in amazement at the spy-warrior in action.

Nick slammed the other fellow’s skull ruthlessly onto his knee and dropped him in the dirt, out cold. The next screamed as Nick twisted him about-face and dislocated his shoulder. He gave it an additional wrench, and the man passed out from pain.

“Behind you!” Phillip suddenly yelled out.

Nick whirled around, ready to attack, just as a tall, lean, sinewy man threw a knife at him. He whipped out of the way just in time, but picked the blade up where it had fallen and hurled it back at the man.

It plunged into his side as he tried to twist away. The man screamed and fell to his knees.

With a look of cool determination, Nick strode toward him, reloading his pistol as he went. “I told you I’d kill you, Limarque.”

“Please!” he choked out, holding up one hand in a token surrender.

“You should never have touched her.”

Bang!

With a single shot at point-blank range, Nick took the Frenchman’s life. Phillip stared in disbelief, well aware of who the “she” was Nick had been referring to.

The body twitched a little, then went still.

One last enemy had run toward the sound of the gunshot, but as he came tearing around the corner, the man took one look at Nick, then spun around and fled.

The area below Phillip’s perch on the hayloft was strewn with unmoving bodies, some dead, others unconscious.

“See any more from up there?” Nick called to him, as they both scanned the landscape.

“No!” Phillip answered after a moment. He felt a little queasy at the ferocious display of prowess—and the utter lack of mercy—he had just witnessed.

Good Lord, did he
really
want to be a spy when he grew up if that was what it was like?

“Come on down,” Nick ordered.

Phillip thrust his fears aside but was still a bit nervous about the descent. Of course, he did not even think about disobeying after what he had just seen. He wasn’t stupid.

While he climbed awkwardly down the rope, his hands burning with his task, Nick took a moment to catch his breath. When Phillip reached the ground, dropping to his feet, he headed over to Nick at once to give him the book. As he approached, he found himself suddenly more than a little intimidated by his fierce Order friend.

“Did you get it?”

He nodded. “Here.”

“Good lad,” he said, but he must have noticed the wary look in Phillip’s eyes, for he paused. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he blurted out, trying to sound natural.

The predatory glint in Nick’s dark eyes dimmed as he realized Phillip had seen everything. “Oh, shit. Are you all right? Of course you’re not all right,” he muttered at himself before Phillip could reply. “Look, lad, it was us or them.”

“Are they the ones that took my mother?”

“Aye.”

Phillip swallowed hard. “Then they got what they deserved.”

Nick’s stare searched his eyes. “Are you ready to go?”

Phillip nodded.

“All right, then. Let’s ride.” He ordered Phillip to follow him with a curt nod, then they stole the dead men’s horses.

All in a night’s work.

H
aving broken into the ship’s arms locker, Gin was loading rifles, one after another, and handing them off to her followers.

In the quiet of the night, fear and desperation haunted the girls’ eyes as each accepted her weapon; but after their long kidnapping ordeal, Gin’s firm air of command seemed to shore up their resolve. For herself, it was time to prove herself her father’s daughter.

Having armed each girl with a weapon, she instructed them in soft whispers on the simple firing technique.

“Everyone got that?”

As farm girls, most of them had at least fired a fowling piece before. A few of them even knew how to load their guns themselves, thanks to the tutelage of farmer fathers or soldier brothers.

Only a few of the girls were complete novices without skills of any kind. “You’re with me,” she ordered these.

Just then, Susannah Perkins returned from her one-woman mission of locking the sleeping crewmen into the mess hall, which served as their communal bedchamber at night. As on most ships of this size, the sailors slept in rows of hammocks hung from the bulkhead, above the long, crude dining tables. “It’s done,” she whispered.

Gin nodded in approval. “Excellent work. That only leaves us the dozen men or so who are on duty now. It’s almost dawn; their watch is nearly ending. They should be half-asleep on their feet at this hour. Now, listen,” she instructed her wide-eyed troops.

“When we go up on deck, each of you pick one man to focus on. Don’t try to cover all of them, just worry about your one target. With half the crew gone ashore and most of the others locked in their quarters, there’ll be more of us up there than there are of them.

“Hold the men at gunpoint, but try not to fire, even by accident, unless you have no choice. The first shot will only wake the rest of the crew, so we must do this as quietly as possible.

“Besides, if we fire first, it’ll make them fight back that much harder against us, do you understand? They’re not going to want to hurt us if they can avoid it—we’re the merchandise.”

Gin did not say it aloud, but she considered herself the one exception to that last point.

When Rotgut realized she was the ringleader here, she did not doubt he would gladly kill her if he got the chance, especially after she had embarrassed him in front of his fellow criminal, Jonathan Black.

“Leave the captain to me,” she added. “I’ll see to that monster personally.”

Then she divided the twenty girls into four groups of five. She designated three to be the other groups’ leaders and gave them their instructions.

Two groups would head forward on the ship, two toward the stern. These, in turn, would split up, one going to the starboard, the other group to the port side of the ship.

From all four quarters at once, then, they would launch their attack, taking over the ship as quietly as possible. “Hide behind the hatches until you see me on deck. Then follow, and do as I’ve told you. Emotions will be running high, so decide now to keep your cool, and no matter how they laugh at us or try to goad us, don’t fire unless you feel your life to be in danger.

“We don’t need to kill these men—as much as we might want to. We just need to put them in the brig until Lord Forrester arrives. He’ll be in contact with the Royal Navy at Corfu Town to come and arrest them, and then we’re going to get off this cursed ship at last.

“Now, go, girls. And if your courage falters, think of Joan of Arc, or Good Queen Bess in her armor facing down the Spanish! We are women, but we can fight,” she whispered fiercely. “Stand firm, and we’ll be free within the hour.”

Her words visibly rallied them. Steeling themselves, her fair mutineers padded off to get into position for their battle.

Gin couldn’t help but feel that even her father would have been impressed.

N
ick and Phillip raced back down the hill and through the sleeping town of Sidári. They returned to the beach at a safe distance from the Seahorse Inn, where half of Rotgut’s sailors were three sheets to the wind, thanks to gallons of free ouzo Nick (technically, Phillip) had paid for in advance.

Perhaps the sailors thought it strange that the host of the party at the
taverna
had not yet appeared, but by now, they were probably too drunk to care. Yes, Nick mused, as they dismounted and strode across the sand, this half of the crew would not be a problem.

It was the other half that worried him.

He had to get out there onto the water to be ready to assist Virginia in her mutiny. Any minute now, he expected to start hearing shots coming from the direction of the slavers’ frigate.

He and Phillip abandoned Limarque’s horses in favor of the dory, running it out into the shallows, and splashing into their seats before picking up the oars.

Nick rowed as fast as he could back out to the
Santa Lucia,
where the Italians waited. When he called to them from the waves to get ready to make sail, they rushed into motion.

He tied the dory to the ladder to be dragged through the water. There wasn’t time to lift it back up onto the ship with the davits.

Phillip climbed up the ladder ahead of him and was surprised to find Rose waiting for their safe return. She was supposed to be in bed.

As soon as Nick was also aboard, he took the captain aside. “Do you remember when I hired you, I said there might come a time when bad business afoot might require some action? Well, that time has come. Get me as close to that frigate as you safely can.”

The tough, weathered Italian followed Nick’s pointing finger with his gaze. He eyed the frigate darkly, then nodded. “That’s the one that took the little girl?”

Nick nodded. “And he’s got more girls on board. Tonight, the bastard gets what he’s had coming.”

The captain gave him a hard-eyed nod, then turned and clipped out a series of sharp orders to his sons. All their usual merriment vanished.

Satisfied that they’d be in range shortly, Nick called Phillip and Rose down through the hatch to the ship’s galley. He beckoned them over to the stove, pulling Virgil’s book out of his waistcoat. “I have a job for you two.”

They looked at him eagerly.

He handed the journal to Phillip. “Start a fire in the stove and burn this thing. Every page. I want nothing left but ashes.”

“Mother will be distraught,” the boy warned. “It is her last remaining token of her father.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But Virgil never should have shared this information.” Nick laid a hand on his shoulder, looking soberly into the lad’s eyes. “Look at what it’s led to. It must be destroyed. Can I count on you? And you, Rose?”

The girl nodded, but Phillip shrugged uneasily. “I’ll do it, but I’m telling you, she’s going to be furious.”

“I’ll explain it to your mother,” Nick hastily assured him. He was going to have a lot of explaining to do to her, actually. “After all that’s happened,” he added, “I think she’ll understand. But if she does get angry, I’ll tell her it was my fault. Now, I’m trusting you to take care of this for me. We can’t risk anyone’s getting his hands on it ever again. All right?”

Phillip nodded reluctantly. “Come on, Rose. Help me build a fire in this stove.”

As the two youngsters got started on their task, Nick wasted no further time, rushing back up onto the deck.

W
hen Gin set foot on the deck of the
Black Jest
, taking her first cautious step out from behind the cover of the hatch, the sudden face full of wind lifting her hair and the rocking of the ship made her slightly dizzy in her wound-up state. Heart hammering, she quickly shook off the sensation. Still, the war of fear and courage in her veins had heightened her awareness to a sharp edge.

She was acutely attuned to the rhythm of the waves and the creaking of the vessel. The intoxicating freshness of the free, open air. The smell of the salt-weathered wood and the tar they used as sealant, and the quiet chuffing of the furled canvas sails. She had never felt more alive.

The stars and planets seemed to sing out from the dark sky. The orange glow of sunrise gathered behind the eastward mountains of the Albanian mainland, where Ali Pasha, the Terrible Turk, reigned.

As she fixed her sights on the sleepy sailor leaning against the foremast ahead, his back to her, she was aware of her followers at her back. The other women glanced around, choosing their targets as instructed.