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PART I

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MARCH, 1780
ATLANTIC OCEAN, TRADE ROUTE

THEY LAY IN FURY’S copper bathing tub together late Sunday night after having spent most of the day on the Mad Hangman making battle preparations, with boys and girls coming and going with more information. In the afternoon, Fury had somehow beguiled Old Ben to climb to the Silver Shilling’s main mast platform, where the two master navigators had kept their glasses pointed to the west, talking and laughing as if they were bosom companions.

If Elliott hadn’t had his head bent with Maarten’s and three ships’ officers, all discussing the mutiny’s possibilities, probabilities, and strategies, he’d have been far more charmed by their camaraderie, and possibly jealous.

But now the plans were set and they could do no more until the wind blew. For the nonce, his mind was as weary as his body, and he wished simply not to be called upon to think, speak, or move.

Three lanterns hung relatively close and swayed gently from the force of hundreds of feet dancing and pounding, keeping time to the lively music. The crews were just beginning their night’s festivities after having snored and gamed the morning and afternoon away.

Elliott was behind Fury, who relaxed upon him, her head lolling on his shoulder. He cupped her scar-ridged breasts, but, as usual, she made no sign of feeling his touch and her nipples did not pucker. He plucked at them anyway.

And as he did so, he mused absently upon the things she had brought with her from the Arab world that were, to her, ordinary but to him, extraordinary. This tub, for instance, full of hot water kept hot by three small braziers set in a compartment under the tub, was not a particularly brilliant idea … so why had his countrymen not thought of it?

She yawned.

Aye, with the hot water and warm woman and comfortable head rest, it would not take much for Elliott to fall asleep, either. They had been engaged in some type of unfamiliar, demanding perversion or another since he’d climbed into her window, and he had never tupped a woman so many times in so many ways for so many consecutive days.

He was beginning to feel it. His legs and arse were sore, as was his jaw.

But as for indulging his particular perversion— After last night, he had decided he didn’t want her anywhere near his arse with a cat o’ nine tails in case she was still angry enough to wield it more enthusiastically than he liked.

“Do you not have things you can wrap around your nipples to make them stand?” he asked suddenly.

He felt the vibrations from her low chuckle seep from her back into his chest. “Do you think me in possession of every manner of tool and toy?”

“I do now.”

Her cheek creased with a grin. “Aye, I do, but they slip off.” She shrugged.

He dragged his finger across the nipple that had been sliced in two. “Does this not bother you?”

“Of course it does. ’Tis as if my breasts have been cut off and I must yet contend with these things hanging off my chest. But more to the point, there are days I would give up my command to be able to feel a man’s hands on me there again.”

The trace of sorrow in her voice made her matter-of-factness more poignant to him. “Yet you and Dunham get on.”

She sighed. “I maintain a distance from him for a reason. He, being my father and former captain, is accustomed to being my father and captain. And I, being an adult in command of my own ship, am accustomed to doing exactly what I want. The two are incompatible.” She stopped for a moment. “I love him dearly, do not doubt. I think he may love me, too, though he has never said. Even if he did, even if I knew he did, it would not mitigate the fact that he is and mayhap always will be disappointed in me. I will never be able to make him happy.”

Elliott started. “Why?”

“Because I am female.”

Elliott had no words for that. His father had never held Elliott’s sisters any lower than his brothers. Considering Henry had had a taste for hoydens so much that he had married one, he must have expected to father one or two. Yet here was Dunham, having taken his daughter far beyond anything Elliott’s father could have thought any woman could go—indeed, beyond anything Henry could have thought his sons could have gone—and the man was disappointed in her?

Surely if Elliott ever wanted for a daughter, he would be proud to have one like Fury.

With Fury …

He put that thought away.

“I cannot imagine that, Madam,” he rumbled after a while. “His pride and affection for you were unmistakable. What little of it I saw, that is.”

She laughed without humor. “Mayhap at the moment he publicly chastised me for losing a sword fight to you? In front of the entirety of a port in which I am liked and well respected?”

Elliott sighed. He had forgotten.

“‘Jack, do it this way. Jack, do it that way. Jack, why canna ye do it the way I wantche tae do it? Jack, ye been lazin’ on yer laurels, girl?’”

Elliott did not dare laugh at the mimicry of her father’s brogue.

“He completely destroyed my credibility in Sint Eustatius.”

“Nay,” Elliott rumbled. “He and I were both strangers, and your crews beat mine.”

She drew in a long breath, as if she had needed to hear that from someone who would know.

“That’s why you hate being called ‘Jack,’ though, no? Because ’tis a man’s name.”

“Aye. I sat all night in the Bloody Hound with him, talking, drinking after not having seen him in almost five years. He did not once mention Skirrow. If beheading a captain feared ’cross the Ottoman realm is not enough to garner his approbation, nothing is.”

Even though her voice was light enough, he could hear her pain and could sympathize, if only slightly.

Elliott wrapped himself around her and pressed her to him.

“What order did you refuse that he felt obliged to nigh kill you?”

“I won’t tell you that. You wouldn’t understand. But … ” she said slowly, “that does remind me of something I must ask you.”

He waited.

“Do you fuck men?”

He took a deep breath. She was asking for something other than curiosity. A woman of her occupation and experience should not care.

“What does that have to do with Dunham or daring him to kill you?”

“It just does.”

“And if I did?”

Her heartbeat quickened, but he did not know if that was in excitement or anger. “Yea or nay?”

“Sailors fuck men quite a lot, Fury,” he said calmly, as if she didn’t know, “and very often, it has nothing to do with whether they prefer men or not. But you didn’t ask me if I prefer men.”

She sat up, pulling away from him and covering her breasts. She would not look at him though she turned her head to speak over her shoulder. “Yea or nay, Judas. ’Tis a simple question.” But then she scoffed. “I don’t know why I asked. You would tell me what I wanted to hear anyroad.”

“I don’t know what you want to hear or why. What would you do if I do fuck men?”

“I would … not be … happy.”

“You’re a woman of the sea. Did you not think about the likelihood of that before we began this together?”

Her mouth tightened. Her jaw clenched. She reached out to grasp the sides of the bathing tub to pull herself up. Elliott could see that the idyll was about to come to an end—far sooner than he had expected.

“No, I don’t fuck men.”

She paused and did look at him then. Her face was full of things he couldn’t identify, except one: hurt. But why, he couldn’t imagine.

He stared right back at her. “But I have.”

She stiffened.

“When I was younger.” Why was he telling her this as if he were ashamed? He wasn’t, but for some reason, he felt a need to explain. “I was lonely. Homesick. Angry with my father for forcing me to the sea. Angry with my mother for not protesting more loudly. Angry with myself for not defying him. Desperately missing both the young widow and the merchant’s daughter. I wanted a woman in whom to seek solace, but there hadn’t been opportunity for a woman for a year and there wouldn’t be for another. I was desperate enough to take what I could get.”

She blinked and looked away as if in thought, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that men rutted for other reasons than lust or simple release.

He laughed wryly and rubbed his mouth with his hand. “I haven’t thought about that in years. Command has its advantages, and one of them is being able to decide when to put into port.”

The tension in her body began to leach out of her.

“Fury,” he drawled, wrapping his hands around her shoulders to draw her back. “How can you sail and be so wary or disapproving of men who desire each other? I care not who fucks whom on my ship as long as it doesn’t interfere with my command, and I dare say I have more reason to disapprove than you do.”

She lunged up and out of the water, splashing everywhere, standing over him with that snarl that made him want to plow her immediately. “You have a prick,” she hissed. “I—don’t.”

Elliott studied her face though ever aware of the tension and anger in her body, and tried to sort out what she was really saying.

Because I am female.

And then he did. “You see men as competition,” he murmured.

Her brow wrinkled. “Well, of course I do!” She flung her hands and arms out as if to force the world away from her. “I’ve spent my life competing with men and losing.”

“By all accounts, Madam, Skirrow was the one who lost. His—head.”

“Aye, well, I’ll not be a lover to a man who desires something I don’t have and cannot give him—no matter how seldom.”

Elliott raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to have one?”

“NO!” she roared. She stomped her foot, narrowly missing the prick under discussion, and splashing yet more water out onto the deck. Elliott cupped his manparts to protect them from further demonstrations of her temper. “I like being a woman. I like fucking men. I am happy to compete with men on the high seas, but I’ll be bloody damned to hell if I compete with a man over a lover, too.”

Elliott tipped his head and watched her speculatively. She stared back at him, chest heaving, her expression wary. Fury stood there defiant, daring him to cast her aside, but only a fool of a man would cast this woman aside.

Covarrubias, then, must be a fool.

“Fury,” he murmured, reaching up to catch her fingertips in his, pulling her to him, however reluctantly. He kissed those fingertips, his gaze never leaving her eyes that were filling with tears. “I do not prefer men and I haven’t fucked one since I was twenty-three.” He debated whether to tell her why he hadn’t, then decided against it. Pity was the last thing he wanted from her, and it would give her yet another clue to put together with Croftwood’s tale. “Would you hold a youthful indulgence against me?”

“I don’t,” she muttered. “I simply don’t want my lover to have any longing for something I cannot provide.”

“Fury, with regard to me, your premise is flawed, as you well know. You must never have been enamored of a man enslaved by the need for a particular kind of woman.” His throat swelled with regret. “As unobtainable for you as a prick.”

Her mouth tightened immediately. “I am the granddaughter of a duke,” she growled. “Daughter of his heir.”

He rolled his eyes. “A Scots duke, stripped of his title before your father was out of short pants.”

“Politics!” she spat.

“Aye, and so what. Clan Dunham invariably chose the wrong allies for hundreds of years. And then, not content that the clan somehow managed to survive the Union, your grandfather decided to reassert his Jacobite leanings. What did he think would happen?”

She stared at him for quite a while, her face still and thoughtful. “You are Scots. You know too much of my family’s history not to be, and now I can hear the burr in your voice no matter how you discipline yourself.”

He shook his head. “You may continue to believe it, but it will continue to be false. I am as English as Marlowe.”

The corner of Fury’s mouth turned up reluctantly.

“Fury,” he said briskly. “I have never been terribly particular about bed partners, but now I am tired and getting old. I grew utterly bored of bedsport long ago, so much that my hand and my yard have become quite fond of each other.” She snorted. “I was utterly phlegmatic about fulfilling my obligations until I recently realized that my taste is quite specific, and I find my need for it is insatiable.”

Her eyebrow rose.

“Pirate queens.”

Her eyes glistened in the lamplight, and he pulled her down to him until she again lay sprawled upon his chest. She seemed smaller than she really was when she was against him thusly.

“I am no queen,” she muttered. “That honor belongs to Grace O’Malley.”

Elliott laughed. He should have expected that. “I’m not likely to dig her up to tup her, though, am I?”

He held her to him and caressed her arm, her shoulder, her arse. Her skin was especially sensitive there, he supposed, because the rest of her torso wasn’t. She melted like a dusting of snow in the desert sun when he brushed his fingertips over the smooth, taut curve.

So he did that, and was rewarded with her body relaxing against his and her long, weary sigh. However, the disadvantage of paying attention to her arse was that, instead of arousing her, it put her to sleep.

“The wind will be here soon,” she whispered.

“I know. I don’t care to spend these few hours we have together in argument.”

“Oh, good. Play with my hair.”

“Well, are you not a demanding wench.” He combed his fingers through her hair, making her sigh and her body relax even further. He caressed the soft skin of her cheek and swept back to her ear.

“I love that,” she whispered, though he was barely able to hear her above the rising volume of merriment abovedecks.

He started when Dindi jumped up on his chest and butted her way between Fury’s face and his shoulder. Simply scooping the cat up, he dropped her on the floor. He knew she would be back, but strangely, it did not bother him much. “Nice puss,” he said to her. “Stay there. Next time, I’ll throw you in the water.”

He examined Fury’s mouth, soft and pink, dewy and luscious, and felt privileged that such a captivating woman was his lover. “I fear we may not be able to sleep this night,” she muttered, gesturing vaguely toward the overhead as the noise grew and grew.

The dancing and thumping of those keeping time to rather lovely music was so exuberant it rocked all three ships. But for the fact that there was no wind, they might have well been asail.

“Alas,” he agreed.

A song ended. So did the dancing. It would only be a moment before the next began. Men and women laughed. Someone bellowed. There, a screech of a completion and—

Oh, God yes!

The decks roared with laughter and Fury chuckled.

Elliott tensed when the music did not start when he expected it to and men began to bellow things he could not hear. An enthusiastic roar shook the timbers, and Fury’s body tensed when suddenly men ran hither and thither.

“Lord, not now,” she whispered.

They had planned for the possibility of battle here whilst they were becalmed, but had not thought it a probability. Then …

… a horn.

A French horn, clear and sweet, its sole note cutting through the noise and the night. A signal?

“Fury—”

She laid her hand gently on his chest. “No, wait. Listen.”

Then he heard a cello—tuning itself to the French horn.

Violins joined.

A squeezebox, pipes and drums joined in.

One last bellow was met with an affirmative roar:

“Somebody fetch Cap’n Jack!”

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If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.

Pirates!