A | B | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14A | 14B | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30A | 30B

---

PART II

---

MAY, 1780
CASA DE COVARRUBIAS
LONDON, ENGLAND

“WE HAVE MUCH to discuss,” Rafael said as they lay together, sweaty and panting, their limbs tangled up in each other’s. ’Twas familiar and normal, Rafael’s body against hers, warm and strong. His big, smooth hand caressed her neck, then swept down her shoulder to her arm, then her hip, then cupped her arse.

Celia’s anger with him, ever present but usually dull, was also normal. But now, all Rafael’s other shortcomings were made even more infuriating by the fact that he was not Judas. It was the first time, in fact, Rafael had ever compared unfavorably to any other man Celia had ever tupped, including her husband. In short, Rafael did not kiss, taste, sound, or fuck like Judas, and he certainly didn’t—

“Why have you not touched my breasts?” she demanded.

He blinked, immediately confused and irritated. “Why? They have no feeling. I would rather you feel where I touch you.”

Her mouth tightened. “Touch my breast, Rafael,” she said. He heaved a longsuffering sigh and cupped the right one, but, as usual, she could not feel his fingers through the scars. “Suck my nipple.”

“No. Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

Celia balled her fist where it lay against her thigh. “Why is it ridiculous to want my lover to pay attention to my whole body?”

He stared at her as if she were a familiar face to which he could not put a name. “What is this new thing, Brat? You were not so particular on our voyage.”

“On our voyage, I was lonely and you were convenient,” she snapped without thought, and rolled out of bed to swiftly light candles all ’round the bedchamber.

“Convenient?!”

She said nothing until she had finished lighting every candle in the room, making it quite bright, then she spread her arms wide and turned slowly. “Look, Rafael. Look at me. Me. These scars. What do you see?”

His gaze flicked up and down her body, then settled on her mound.

“Oh!” she shrieked and whirled to find the wrap he had purchased for her.

Mmmm, I am going to make these feel again if ’tis the last thing I do.

’Tis a waste of time, Judas. Pay attention to my arse and limbs.

Allow me to pay your scars—and you—proper homage, Madam, to worship at the altar of your power.

“What has possessed you?” he barked, now throwing off the bedclothes and rounding the bed toward her. He grasped her arms and shook her. “You are different.”

“It was our voyage,” she sneered, shrugging his hands away. “I came to realize that you do not want to look at me or touch me as you used to when my skin was without flaw, but you had that figurehead made and can look at it when you are too disgusted.”

“Oh, the figurehead,” he drawled smugly. “Yes, let us discuss the figurehead.”

“No, let’s discuss what I came here to discuss, which is this business with Bancroft. I will assume, somehow, the court has granted him custody of me.”

“Sí.” Rafael watched her speculatively and said abruptly, “How long has it been since you ate?”

“Hours,” she muttered, more than willing to be distracted by food. She did not know whether she was more angry or hungry, but she needed time to think and she could not accomplish that with Rafael in her ear. “Harriet watches my waist for me, lest it grow too thick.”

“Ah, another bane of your mad existence.”

“Yes,” she muttered churlishly.

“And mine. Your bones poke at me, you look sick unto death, and you are in foul humor.”

“You have always preferred me fat.”

“You are particularly unpleasant company when you are hungry. Food improves your mood. That it also keeps your arse well rounded is expedient.” With that, he strode to the door and bellowed for supper. “Lord Hylton’s concern,” Rafael began as he turned back into the room to find his own wrap, “is that you are well cared for until the end of your days.”

This pulled Celia up short. “He has claimed that for the past two years, but marrying me off has never been part of his plan.”

Rafael shrugged. “I gather he is displaying an urgency he has not before. Today, his new attorneys finally succeeded where his others have failed. He is casting about for a kind man who will not press you overmuch for your charms.”

Celia waved that off. “No title out for a wife would want one who cannot or will not heir for him, much less a madwoman whose tender care he is expected to assume.”

“Any title in great need of the dowry he has settled upon you would accede to any and all conditions, then cast them aside once the register is signed. I, an aristocrat who is also a brilliant and respected professor, having a reputation amongst women as a kind man, and in great need of your dower funds to put my estate to rights, am rather perfect for the job.”

Celia’s anger waned in the face of his willingness to assist her out of this trap she had unwittingly built for herself. “My thanks, then. I have already informed Aunt Harriet I have a tendre for you, so once the contracts are signed, you may spirit us away—”

“Away?”

“Rathbone’s here.”

Rafael started. “Rathbone? I thought you killed him.”

“No. He somehow managed a return berth not long after we ran the blockade. He is in fine fettle and fully enraged. This crusade of Bancroft’s to get custody of me is one thing, but if his purpose is served by handing me over to you, then there will be no need to appeal the court’s decision. You will insist you must wed me in Coimbra amongst your people, then you will whisk Mama and me away immediately and deposit us in Rotterdam. I can resume hunting prizes until Rathbone has gone back to sea, then return, presenting myself as Condesa Covarrubias with no one the wiser and continue to look for Maarten’s documents.”

“You have the entire plot plotted, I see,” he drawled.

“Did you think I would not be able to discern the direction of your scheme?”

“Ah, but there is one crucial detail you have overlooked,” he purred, stepping to her and drawing his finger across her collarbone.

Celia’s spine tingled. She knew that tone, the one of victory, the one he used at the end of any given duel to pronounce his enemy’s death. “What.”

“We will wed.”

She pulled away from him, her mouth open. “What?” she whispered, horrified.

“Why are you shocked? Surely you knew I would wed you when the time came?”

When will we marry, Rafael?

Celia, my love, there is no need for marriage between people who love each other as much as we two.

I thought … We’ve been lovers for so long …

And we shall continue to be so. Is that not simple?

Celia could not think. More problems, piling on one after another, bombarding her. Oh, aye, she was drowning in bad luck. She closed her eyes and spread her fingers out to press her temples. “Rafael, I begged. For years. And then you laughed in my face when I told you I had lain with another man.”

“What would you have had me do? Hunt the man down and put my blade through his heart?”

“It would have been a nice gesture, aye!” Celia was so angry she thought she would burst. “And now you say I should have known you would wed me some day. If I had a sword right now, I would run you through.”

He snorted.

“How much has Bancroft settled upon me?”

“Three thousand pounds sterling.”

“God’s teeth.”

“Sí,” he said flatly. “And I have plans for every last farthing.”

Good Lord, he was serious! “If I give you twice his offer,” she said desperately, “will you withdraw yourself from consideration?”

He hooted. “You have no money! You have never been able to drop a cold pence in your pocket that did not burn a hole through it immediately.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her, looking at her stonily. “Are you … refusing to marry me?”

“Is that not obvious?” she shrieked. “Why now?”

“Besides the money, I need an heir.”

“An heir?!”

“Sí. I need a legitimate son, and I want him from you.”

She curled her lip at him. “May the Lord God himself cast me to hell before I allow you to dictate my womb. Find one of your illegitimate sons and wed his mother.”

Whatever Rafael would have said was forestalled when his servants arrived and set trays upon the rich table in the anteroom where, likely, he had entertained many women. Once they had finished laying out the repast, he said, “Come. Eat.”

In the candlelight, his hair glowed golden as an angel’s halo, and his face was strong and tanned, lined by years of sun, mischief, and amusement.

They did not speak while Celia devoted herself to filling her belly. It was plain fare, but well cooked and adequately seasoned—and there was plenty of it. Once she had begun to feel less like a starving infant, Rafael poured her a fourth glass of wine.

She had just begun to drink deeply of it, when he said blithely, “Tell me, my love. Why did you give Judas my carving?”

She choked. Sputtered. Coughed while she attempted to find an answer to an unanswerable question.

“Give?” she finally said. “I did not give it to him. He stole it! After I humiliated him. He is a pirate, after all. ’Tis what he does.”

“Humiliated him? Do you mean with that sham of a brawl that occurred after you had made it perfectly clear to the entire West Indies that you would not be averse to fucking him?”

Celia gaped at him, rattled by all that had gone before and uncertain of his mood now. “How do you know about that?”

“The seas are awash in gossip, my dear, and all tides flow to the master navigator. I hear everything. And you forget—I was in Virginia the night you and the Hollander ran the blockade. I saw her. On the Silver Shilling. Not on the Thunderstorm, which is her rightful home.” His volume was rising and he had taken a tone she had never heard. “Never mind the fact Judas made it perfectly clear to me that he intends to supplant me in your bed.”

“He did?” she asked carefully. Judas had known, then, before he’d climbed in her stern windows. Celia was suddenly giddy, wanting, but not daring, to squeal like George. Only her painful parting from him kept her from the girlish joy she wanted to wallow in.

“Sí,” he said, then described their brief visit over cards. “Immediately after which he took a whore to his bed.”

Celia’s eyebrow rose. “How many whores did you take?” His mouth tightened. “You were expecting me to display some measure of jealousy?”

“He is fortunate I did not kill him where he sat.”

“Are you jealous?”

He met her look and his eyes narrowed. “Have you given me reason to be?”

She shot to her feet. “You forfeited the right to be jealous long ago, Rafael Covarrubias,” she hissed, leaning over the table, stabbing her finger into the middle of his forehead. Her wrap dragged in what was left of the food. Both glasses of wine fell over.

He batted her hand away from his face, returning her snarl. “Have you fucked him?” he demanded.

“I am not your student anymore, Rafael! And you have never been my commander. You have no hold over me but what I grant you.”

“You will tell me, woman!”

“And if I have?”

He stared at her for a long while, his jaw sliding back and forth. “You would say you had whether truth or no, Brat,” he murmured. “But you are here, with me, so I have to assume your affections have not shifted. Set a wedding date. Make it short.”

Celia’s jaw dropped. “I will do no such thing! I told you I will not marry you.”

“You will,” he growled.

She stared at him, incredulous. “You do not care about an heir,” she whispered. “Or the money. You care about Judas.”

He did not speak, but returned her stare second for second, his mouth and face hard.

“You cannot force me to wed you,” she said slowly.

“I have your name.”

She gasped. “You wouldn’t!”

“Is that a risk you would take?”

“Papa will kill you for this,” she whispered.

A wicked grin spread across his face. “Not before you become my countess!” He waved a hand toward his secretary. “Go pen a missive to him right now. If you post it tomorrow, he may receive it some time in the next two years.”

Rafael was one of very few men who had no fear of Dunham, so she scrambled for another line of reasoning.

“Bancroft cannot force me to wed you.”

“He can,” Rafael murmured. “He is your legal guardian. As you have documented yourself as a simpleton in the eyes of society and your aunt’s petitions have been denied, he has the court’s sanction to do anything he pleases with you—including stuff you away in a madhouse. No one in society will deem his decision to marry you off to me, the exotic darling of the ton, anything but the highest act of service a man can do for his idiot daughter.”

“All because of Judas,” she said stonily.

“Because Judas stole my figurehead and I will not allow him to steal my lover, as well.”

Celia sat back and regarded him through narrowed eyes. “You haven’t been my lover for months now, and years before that. That carving means so much to you that its theft would prod you into doing what I begged you to do all those years ago?”

“Perhaps I realized my error when it was taken and wish to rectify it.” His voice dropped. “Celia,” he said low. “Whatever my other faults, I love you. You know that, and it’s the only reason Dunham hasn’t killed me yet.”

“Aye,” she grumbled, looking down at her plate and swirling a finger in the wine that had spilled on her plate.

“It is true I have a duty to fulfill to my title and estate, but I can do that with any woman. I have always known that when the time came, I would make you my condesa. And now? ’Tis as if God himself arranged the circumstance.”

She said nothing for a moment, considering her next words. “What if I had already wed?”

He scoffed. “You badgered me to marry you for seven years. You would not have wed another.”

“Oh, forgive me. I thought you said you heard everything.”

The silence in the room was long and deafening.

“You lie,” he whispered at last.

“I do not. The next time you are aboard the Thunderstorm I will show you the long list of assets he left me as his wife. Aye, Rafael, I can pay twice Bancroft’s offering—without making a dent in my holdings. Thrice!”

“Who?” he growled, his nostrils flaring.

“Talaat Khersis, the Moneylender of Marrakech.”

“MOTHER OF GOD!” he roared, standing. “You married a Jew?”

“A kind and brilliant one.”

“Well then! Where is this Shylock now?”

“Dead.”

That stopped him for a moment. “Did you love him?” he murmured.

She laughed. “I would never wed a man I did not love.”

“You love me,” he with a vicious purr. “So you have just rendered all of your objections moot.”

“I said I would not marry a man I did not love. I did not say I would marry all the men I love.”

He hissed at her. “A Jew.”

“An Ethiopian Jew. Older than you. And Papa was more than happy to marry us.”

His jaw dropped, and she granted him a serene smile. She had rarely been able to take him unawares, and she relished it.

“Think about that for a moment, Rafael, and compare it to how he feels about you.”

He snarled at her.

She tried another tack. “Let us presume I am willing to fall in with your plan and marry you,” she said matter-of-factly. “I would not abide with you.”

His eyebrow rose and she could see his struggle to recollect his wits. “I lived with you for five years and you are the most difficult woman I have ever met. I would have to be mad to want to live with you.” He waved a hand. “Take to the sea if you must.”

“And the heir? I have yet to bear your fruit. I could be barren.”

“You did not catch with your … husband?”

“Nay.” Of course, he did not need to know why.

“How long were you sharing his bed?”

“Twenty-four weeks and two days.” He gaped at her. “You will respect that part of my life, Rafael, and you will respect my love for Talaat.”

He took a deep breath and turned his back on her to pace, wiping his hands down his face, and then up again.

“Have you been with child?” he asked wearily.

“Aye.”

“With mine?”

“Who’s to say?”

His eyes narrowed at her. “You would say if you did not feel the need to provoke me so. I cannot imagine you would not know.” She shrugged. “Where is it?”

“With God.”

He barked a humorless laugh. “Of course! You have a learned Arab physician at hand who perfected his craft in a harem. And before that, I’m sure you have had countless lessons in back-alley midwifery in any number of ports where there are whores aplenty to ask for advice on how to prevent conception or interrupt one in progress.” He waved a hand. “Cease such nonsense. Do not come to me again drenched in lemon, throw the herbs out—sí, I know you have them—and promise me you will do no harm to any babe I plant.”

“Should I catch, how will you know it’s yours if I do not know?”

He curled his lip. “Shall I tell you I’m jealous? Would that cease your fascination with Judas?”

“Are you prepared to be faithful to me for the rest of our days?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then I make no promises regarding Judas, nor will I lie with you again. I’ll not tolerate your infidelity any longer, Rafael, not as long as you insist I remain faithful to you.” She arose when he said nothing. “I think I shall seek the pirate, then, as he is not quite as demanding as you are.”

“Sit!” he roared, but Celia didn’t move except to stare at him flatly. When he said nothing for several seconds, she moved to retrieve her clothing that lay in a heap on the floor.

“Sí, I am jealous,” he muttered, looking away from her and scratching the nape of his neck.

“Why?” Celia demanded, suddenly angry again—angry for the adolescent whom he had refused to marry, though she had cried and begged. Angry for having just defended him to her mother and regaled her with his virtues. Angry enough for tears to surge because she could not throw a marriage proposal from Judas in his face.

“Why now?” she cried. “You had your chance, Rafael, and you broke my heart! Now my husband is dead, Judas is … somewhere … in England. I think. And you and I have just spent an hour between the linens despite the fact I should have cut you off when you took another lover as soon as I left Coimbra. But I haven’t because I do love you—and you think I should be somehow gratified that you are jealous? Why now?”

He said nothing for a long moment, then looked down at the table to fuss with his linen. His words, when he finally offered them, were so low Celia was not sure she had heard correctly:

“I … don’t know.”

---

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