The Wayward One (The De Montforte Brothers Book 5) (18 page)

“Aye sir.” Dewhurst turned to bawl the order, and immediately, men began to scurry aloft.

But even without the royals, they were gaining, the distance between the two ships closing.

Closing….

Forward, he could see McPhee supervising the gun crew…saw them run the muzzle of the great black beast out through its port and heard the accompanying rumble of wooden wheels against the deck. A moment later a crack of thunder echoed back to him as the gun barked out its demand, and he waited impatiently for the enemy brig to heave to in response.

But she did not.

Indignation caused him to clench his fists. He could, and would, blow that ship to smithereens.

They were beginning to overtake her now, their head-rig starting to obliterate his view of the brig’s stern. Two hundred feet separated them. His Royal Marines were waiting with muskets high above in the tops. Dewhurst was waiting for him to give the signal to load up the larboard battery.

McPhee was back.

“She’s not heaving to, sir.”

“I can see that, Mr. McPhee.” Outrage that the rebels would openly defy a king’s ship made him unusually curt. He had left England in haste, confident that if he could find the American ship on board which Lady Nerissa was imprisoned, his presence alone would cow the damned rebels into surrender. After all, he mastered a Royal Navy frigate—a ship that had more muscle than three of those brigs combined would ever hope to have—and sailors who belonged to the finest navy in the world. He had expected to range up on the American ship and effect an immediate lowering of her colors. Not this. Not sheer, open defiance. He set his teeth, furious. “Load up the larboard battery with chain and run out. If she won’t heave to, we’ll bring down her rigging and
force
her to.”

“Do ye think she’s the same ship that’s got the Lady Nerissa sir?”

“Well, it’s obvious by her build and flag that she’s American, she’s fleeing toward the safety of a French port, and my intuition in such matters is usually correct. In fact— What the
devil
?”

A collective gasp went up as a sudden flash of blue-green, its wearer struggling in the grip of two sailors, suddenly appeared on the brig’s quarterdeck.

“Is that—”

“Oh, my God….”

“By Jove, sir, it’s a woman!”

The Yankee brig had slowed as she began to turn toward the wind, her topsails luffing. Hadley barked an order for his own ship to do the same and to range up beside them.

“Ready on the larboard guns in case this is a trick,” he snapped to McPhee. Fury burned through his veins at the sight of the struggling figure in teal. “I want Featherston’s marines ready to fire down on that bastard the minute I give the word. In the meantime, prepare to board.”

He seized a speaking trumpet, strode to the rail, and all but slammed the instrument to his lips. “I am Captain Lawrence Hadley of the Royal Navy frigate
Happenstance
and I demand that you heave to and prepare to receive boarders!”

The other vessel was as close to the wind as she could get without heaving to and showed no signs of heeding Hadley’s demands. He was just considering whether to fire into her when he saw movement on her quarterdeck, and a lean but powerful figure dressed in a blue and white uniform stepped forward wearing a tricorne and a belt that bristled with weapons. His brows were black and bold, and he was taller than any of his nearby officers or men. Just behind him, Hadley glimpsed the bright blue-green gown that marked the lady’s form, her hair covered by a large round hat as she struggled in the grip of two pigtailed seamen. Bile rose in his throat at the thought of what the rebels had done to her. At how they were treating her. The two seamen shoved the girl forward and she fell heavily against the tall officer, who immediately snared her and crushed her face to his chest to restrain her; in the next instant, he plucked a pistol from his belt and drove it into the rounded felt crown of her hat.

“Saints alive,” breathed McPhee. “He’d kill her right in front of us.”

“He won’t kill her,” Hadley shot back. “She’s his insurance, the only thing standing between himself and my guns.”

“Do you want me to—”

“Greetin’s right back at ye, ye poxy shiteballs!” came the voice of the tall officer across the water. “This is the American Continental brig
Tigershark
, and I’m her captain, Ruaidri O’ Devir. Ye got somethin’ to say to me, or should we let our guns do the talkin’?”

“He’s a bloody Irishman,” snarled Hadley, under his breath.

His second lieutenant, Dewhurst, pressed close. “And a goddamned rebel. He’ll hang for this.”

“Permission, sir, to go rig a noose from the foreyard, myself!” said Tuttle, the youngest of the midshipmen.

Beside him, McPhee, trying to maintain a quiet professionalism in a moment that was growing increasingly tense, leaned close. “I believe Captain Featherston and his marines can get a clear shot at that bastard, sir. Do you want me to give the order to—”

“You fire on him with his gun to the girl’s head and it will be the last damned move you ever make,” hissed Hadley in a voice that turned McPhee’s face white beneath his freckles. He raised his speaking trumpet. “Heave to, you rebel, and release her ladyship to me
now
.”

“Eh, now, Captain! I’m not as dumb as ye likely think me,” called the Irishman, all but suffocating the girl as he drove his pistol hard against her hat. “I’m guessin’ ye’re the poor sod sent to negotiate with me, eh?”

“I do not negotiate with rebels!”

“I’m no rebel, Captain, but a commissioned officer in me country’s navy, just as you are.”

Hadley saw red. “You don’t have a country, and when I am through with you, O’ Devir—”

The Irishman’s challenging smirk was visible even without the aid of a glass. “Let’s cut with formality,” he called. “You want Lady Nerissa, and I want the explosive. Ye got that for me, Hadley?”

“Send Lady Nerissa across on your boat and I’ll send the explosive.”

“Well, now, I appreciate yer offer, Captain, but those aren’t me terms and if I send her across, I’ll have to trust yer word as a gentleman that ye’ll send the explosive in return. I was in yer Navy once, did ye know that? I know how ye do things.” He tightened his forearm over the girl’s back when her struggles began anew. “Ye’ll be forgivin’ me if I don’t place much trust in anyone in yer Navy.” His mocking smile faded and the eyes that met Hadley’s across the water were ruthless and hard. “Now, if ye’re done wasting me time, I’d like to be on my way.”

“You send Lady Nerissa across right now or I shall be forced to fire on you!”

“Unless ye have that explosive and are prepared to make a fair exchange, I’m afraid that’s not happenin’, Hadley. And you and I both know that if ye fire on me, the chances of Lady Nerissa being hurt by either yer guns—” he waved his pistol “—or mine, are pretty feckin’ good.”

“How dare you threaten—”

The Irish captain’s face went hard. “Ye were instructed to meet me under my terms, at Saint-Malo. Do so on Saturday mornin’, and we’ll talk then.” Just as quickly, the darkness in his face was gone as he grinned and touched his hat in a mocking salute. “Top o’ the mornin’ to ye, Captain!”

He turned away, the struggling figure in aqua fighting him all the way, and Hadley felt sick to his stomach as the rebel brute raised his hand and brought his pistol down hard on the girl’s oversize hat. She went limp, and was quickly dragged off by several seamen before disappearing from sight.

His voice trembling, Hadley crooked a finger towards Captain Featherston of the Royal Marines.

“Put a ball right in the center of that bastard’s back,” he ground out.

The marine raised his musket but the moment was lost. Ruaidri O’ Devir had already walked away, swallowed up by his men, and the brig was falling back off the wind and beginning to gather way.

Hadley felt impotent rage burning behind his eyeballs; he could do nothing, and that treasonous rogue out there knew it. Worse, his charging out here ahead of a tangible plan and backed by nothing but his own British arrogance that an inferior ship in an inferior “navy” from an inferior country would defy him, had left him humiliated.

“Stay in pursuit,” he muttered, taking a deep and steadying breath.

“He struck her,” McPhee was saying in horror, his voice hollow. “Captain, he
hit
a woman.”

“So he did. And when I get hold of him, I’ll give the lady herself the honor of hanging him.”

Chapter 14

“Fine young lady you make, Cranton!”

“Aye, he looks damned fetching in a dress, don’t you think, Captain?”

“You can pull the stuffing out of your bodice now,
Milady
, hahaha!”

The men, laughing, wolf-whistling at the red-faced Midshipman Cranton, and clapping their clever captain on the back as they went below, were met by the surgeon and Lady Nerissa de Montforte, garbed in the midshipman’s uniform, as they were coming up from a sick bay that had not seen one casualty of the sea battle that never happened. Lady Nerissa took one look at Midshipman Cranton, who went even redder as he pulled a wadded-up stocking out of his bosom, and her jaw dropped.

“Well, Mr. Cranton,” she said, brows raised. “When you told me you needed my gown so as to clean the sea stains and tar from it, I had no idea that you had…uh, other uses for it.”

Loud guffaws met her remark.

“Really, Captain O’ Devir,” she said, turning to the grinning Irishman. “Your so-called Navy has some odd ways of amusing itself.”

“Odd ways that saved all of our hides,” cried a nearby seaman. “Three cheers for our captain!”

“Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah!”

Nerissa, confused, could only stare at them all. They’d surely lost their minds. “I expected there to be a sea fight, and I’m very glad there was not, but how did you manage to avoid getting blown to the ends of the earth, Captain O’ Devir?”

He just shrugged, his eyes hungry and dark as he took in her long, willowy form, her legs clearly outlined in Midshipman Cranton’s skinny breeches. “Well, Lady Nerissa, ye’re the most valuable person on this ship and that countryman of yers back there knows it. He wouldn’t dare fire on us with you up here on deck.”

“But I
wasn’t
up here on deck.”

“Aye, precisely. But that piece of sh—…ehm, that blaggard back there, didn’t know that. Ye’ll stay in Cranton’s uniform so he doesn’t find out.”

“What? What are you all talking about?”

Lieutenant Morgan, chewing on a piece of dried ginger, was the one who clarified it for her. “Captain O’ Devir would never risk your life by having you up on deck where musket or cannonballs could be flying, so he had Cranton here pretend to be you.”

The youth rubbed the back of his head. “Didn’t need to hit me quite so hard, sir,” he said good naturedly. “I nearly didn’t have to fake being knocked out cold.”

“My heavens,” Nerissa said, as laughter greeted the youth’s remark, and immediately the sailor’s teasing resumed.

“Still think you make a fetching young lady, Mr. Cranton!”

“Can I call on you, my lady?” asked Tackett the sailing master, making an elegant leg to the blushing youth. “I’d love to run my fingers through your hair….”

“Hell, I’d love to run mine through his cleavage.”

“Hahaha!”

“Shut yer gobs, ye rogues,” said Captain O’ Devir. “That’s an officer ye’re talkin’ to. Give him some respect.”

More guffaws, because it was hard to give a man any respect when he stood before them in a lady’s gown, red-faced, fuming, and reaching into his bosom to tear out the other stocking.

He flung it down. “My apologies, Lady Nerissa,” he said, looking like he was about to take a swing at the sailing master. “You should not have to listen to such talk.”

She couldn’t help but be caught up in their high spirits. “I have brothers,” she said, smiling. “There’s not much that will offend me, I can assure you.”

More laughter.

“Besides,” she added, “I think you should be commended for your bravery. I don’t see any of your crewmates or fellow officers here, volunteering for such a thankless job.”

“Aye, give him a medal!”

“And some pins for his hair!”

Laughter, jeers, back-slapping. Cranton reached for his sword, only to remember it was absent.

Nerissa touched his shoulder. “Pay your friends no mind,” she said gently. “While I may not be happy about being held prisoner here, I am most grateful to you, Mr. Cranton, for saving lives on both this ship and theirs. You made quite a sacrifice…and at great expense and humiliation to yourself, as well.”

“Thank you my lady.” He grinned foolishly. “But it was the captain’s idea, not mine.”

Their commander, still eyeing Nerissa with a wolfish gleam in his eye, only shrugged off the praise. “’Tis right she be, Mr. Cranton. Now go get out of that gown and back into a proper uniform.”

“Aye, sir!”

The youth fled, tripped over his hem, and landed in the arms of his shipmates, whose laughter roared forth anew.

The crew’s guffaws ringing behind them, Nerissa and the captain returned to the deck and found their way to the stern to watch the frigate’s progress. She lay a half-mile off, doggedly pursuing them but making no further move to overtake or fire on them. Nerissa breathed a sigh of relief. No blood had been shed. Nobody had been killed or captured. She was still here, still a hostage, yes…but nobody had been hurt and that was more important than anything else. Suddenly aware of Captain O’ Devir’s presence beside her, she looked up at him. His eyes were dark with that same restless hunger she’d seen in them just a few minutes before.