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 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41A

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PART II

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MAY, 1780
ST. JAMES’S
LONDON, ENGLAND

“WHY ARE YOU TWO in my sitting room?” Elliott demanded when he burst through the doors to his chambers to see his brother and nephew lazing about. “Can I not even undress without you both up my arse?”

“Your, ah … valet … was entertaining us with tales of your adventures while he was folding your cravats,” Niall said blithely.

Elliott scowled at Piefke, who busied himself with the aforementioned cravats.

“And how were this evening’s rounds?”

“Camille,” Elliott announced, as he began his evening toilette with his valet’s help, “is taking the ton by storm. It may be that neither my reputation nor my toilette will be a deterrent to her finding the man of her dreams. Or at least, of her list.” He turned so that Piefke could divest him of his tight coat. “Every unattached chap of the ton was dancing attendance upon her. I’m quite proud of her.”

“Oh? Even Covarrubias?”

He pursed his lips in thought as he recalled what he had observed between Covarrubias, Miss Bancroft, and Lady Hylton from his vantage point across the room.

“Except that one. He showed his face at Sussex’s opera at intermission and spoke to Miss Simpleton, but left by the time intermission was over. It seemed to me Lady Hylton drove him away.”

In fact, there had been much tension amongst the three of them. When Lady Hylton had cast a scowl at Covarrubias, Elliott had the most vague sensation he had seen that profile before. Then Celia turned to Covarrubias and there it was. Hers matched her mother’s.

Though Celia was as blank-faced as ever, she had spoken to Covarrubias at length, which made him scowl at her. She didn’t flinch. Then he took her hand and caressed it in the manner of lovers familiar. Her mother allowed it, but not without a barb, if Covarrubias’s sudden fist was anything to go by.

They were all three too familiar with each other such that they could conduct what looked like a somewhat unpleasant tête-à-tête in the middle of a ton gathering without attracting undue attention.

“There is something not right there,” Elliott said once Piefke had dispensed with every last scrap of lace on his person, then fell into an overstuffed chair across from his brother and nephew. He propped his left foot on his right knee, pulled off his pump, inspected it. “These shoes are ghastly,” he grumbled. “Leave off those ridiculous cravats, Piefke, and get me a whisky.”

He looked up when the man handed it to him only to see Niall and Sandy exchange the type of knowing glance only men who work well together, are good friends or close relations—or all three—could have. There were volumes of information in that exchange Elliott was not privy to.

“What have you not told me?”

Niall took a deep breath. “Our current case is over who gets custody of the admiral’s long-lost imbecile daughter.”

“Aye, I know, and you won the point for Hylton. So?”

Sandy scratched his jaw. “I don’t believe the admiral’s telling the truth about the circumstance of his wife and daughter’s abduction by pirates.”

Elliott stared at his nephew as if he had cursed his mother to perdition. Why had that never occurred to him? “Explain.”

Sandy granted him a solicitor’s solicitous look. “If I could explain it,” he began patiently, “I would have done so already. I think he’s lying. I intend to get to the truth of the matter because I want to know what an admiral has to hide. How better to do that than being the man’s solicitor?”

“He testified on my behalf.” Which had ceased to mean anything some time ago.

Sandy sighed. “Suspecting something and verifying the truth of that suspicion is hardly betrayal. People lie to me all the time, Unk. I have no care for why they lie. I will even go so far as to say the truth is entirely irrelevant. My sole interest is in solving the puzzle they present me when they lie. It’s like being given a gift.”

“’Tis what makes him in demand,” Niall pronounced most unnecessarily.

“And he,” Sandy replied, pointing to Niall, “can follow my logic, no matter how much of a muddle I make of it, present it accurately and clearly in court, and persuade a jury to believe the most farfetched things. I have no interest in exposing the admiral for anything. He has given me a puzzle. I want to solve it.”

Elliott waved his hand for Sandy to continue.

“I find it very odd that an imbecile woman’s father and aunt have been at each other’s throats for two years to gain custody of a person over whom, by law, he already has guardianship. In that case, I must ask myself: What is between them that would make the aunt, acting on behalf of the mother—who is also the father’s wife—fight so viciously to keep her away from her father?”

Two years ago, Elliott would have taken great umbrage at these insinuations. Now he was simply intrigued. He made a note to call on Hylton and see this out for himself. After all, he was not under the admiral’s command any longer, and he was the ranking peer.

“What’s the marchioness’s position?”

Niall smiled, but Sandy replied, “Since Lady Hylton has been caring for their daughter since she was found and has, thanks to the marchioness’s generosity, the wherewithal to continue to do so, ’tis better not to disrupt the current circumstance. All they want is for Lord Hylton to go away and not bother them. Further, Lady Hylton wants nothing to do with the admiral and, so far as anyone can determine, the feeling is mutual.”

“But he’s still their daughter’s guardian,” Elliott said, confused. Many years lay between him and his last law class, but this seemed off. “Why did he not claim his right regardless and do what he wanted?”

“His pockets are not quite as deep as the marchioness’s and he underestimated Lady Rathbone’s ruthlessness in keeping him away from her, so he has made unfortunate choices in representation because of it.”

“Until us,” Niall added.

Sandy nodded gravely. “The argument is that the admiral never demonstrated an interest in finding his wife and daughter after they were abducted. When compared to the lengths Rathbone’s gone to find his daughter, the admiral appears to have been … indifferent.”

“That’s generous,” Niall drawled.

“Further. Instead of setting sail to find them, he simply left America, came here, reported to the admiralty, inherited his estate, and not five years after the abduction took place, set up household with a married woman and had two children with her. He never made the slightest effort to find them though he had the means and opportunity, the implication being that his interest in her now is a bit … nefarious.”

Niall glanced at Elliott pityingly. “It does make one wonder.”

Indeed it did. Elliott was not in the habit of thinking of his mentor in such an unfavorable light, but he had learned much about what happened to a man once he became a bureaucrat and politician.

“We have taken the tack of presenting the girl as a burden on her mother, who is apparently at death’s door, and that the admiral should take over her care to both relieve her of this burden and secure the girl’s future against her mother’s death. We have convinced the admiral to cede time to Lady Hylton for the girl to make the transition from her household to his.”

“You say this has been going on for two years?” Elliott finally asked.

“Since the two of them first showed up on Rathbone House’s doorstep, yes. The admiral started proceedings the minute he heard of it because his wife refused to allow him any access to her at all. The marchioness had him thrown off the property on his bum.”

Elliott looked up and focused on nothing while he reflected upon everything he knew—or thought he knew—of his former commander. “His wife is sick unto death and the marchioness is said to be half-mad and getting no better,” he mused. “I don’t understand the animosity amongst them all, but I do know this man seeks only to see to his daughter’s future before they both leave her.”

“If by ‘see to his daughter’s future,’ one means immediately marrying the imbecile off to any title willing to spawn from said imbecile, then, yes, I suppose.”

“I cannot say it does not discomfit me,” Elliott said low. “However, a man who has evil intentions would not beg his most trusted protégé to marry his daughter for the express purpose of taking care of her.”

Niall’s expression took on a thoughtful mien. “I can accept that, especially as he has been careful in his selection of potential grooms. But!” he continued briskly. “We were hired not only to gain custody for him but to forestall any arguments against a marriage. The marchioness has appealed, but we expect to have that decided in our favor within the next day or so. Ostensibly good intentions aside, to all appearances, your beloved admiral does not seem to have the most admirable of motives here.”

A small, pained breath escaped Elliott and he dropped his forehead in his palm. “I have not yet expressed to him my unwillingness to wed the chit, but I have an interview with him tomorrow morning. I will glean what I can before I give him my regrets.”

“You’ll help us solve this riddle?” Niall asked, surprised.

Elliott raised his head and stared at his brother stonily. “Everyone in this family seems to forget I’ve been at war for the last twenty years. I’m always ‘at sea,’ as if I’m some common merchant in a boat paddling my way back and forth across the Atlantic, not a commander constantly assessing conditions for battle, planning my enemy’s death, and then implementing it. None of you has any idea what I do out there, what I’ve done for most of my life. I dare say you’d cast up your accounts if you were aboard for even one small battle. You say books about men like me are read, but obviously neither of you have read any.”

They looked at each other and, to Elliott’s grim satisfaction, they looked a little abashed. “I didn’t get to fleet commander by blindly trusting men who gave me reason not to—no matter how much I admired and respected them, no matter what favors they had done for me.”

“Unk, that’s a pretty sentiment, but don’t do or say anything that will jeopardize our case. We are representing the man.”

Elliott’s eyebrow rose. “You two really do think I’m stupid, don’t you?” They both flushed, but he relaxed further into the chair, now simply weary. He rested his head on the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “Sandy, do you have any more clues, or do I throw you both out? I am not kindly disposed toward either of you at the moment.”

Sandy cleared his throat and proceeded hesitantly, all traces of condescension gone. “Lady Hylton claims the girl was ripped from her arms and she was left for dead. ’Twas only the kindness of strangers that she survived at all and then did not have the wherewithal to begin looking for her husband, her son, or her daughter.

“Miss Bancroft claims she doesn’t remember anything from the moment she was abducted until the time she washed ashore at some unspecified location somewhere along the American coast. And found her mother. Absent Inquisitors, I don’t remember is the great unarguable loophole. Meanwhile, there are not enough details from any of the stories for a third party to either confirm or deny. Captain Lucien Bancroft, who would have been twelve at the time, has sworn he was not present and does not know what happened.”

Elliott opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling. “You have said you believe the admiral to be lying, but what I see is that there are two liars in this tale, if not three or four.” Noises of affirmation came from across the small table. He continued, “If that is so, they would have had to collude, and the rancor between them is too well documented for me to believe collusion.”

“I,” Niall interjected, “would point out that since Hylton had taken a mistress and had a new family with her, that he’s embarrassed and does not know what to do. And Lady Hylton is understandably angry about this.”

“That would make sense if he were actually embarrassed, but he’s not. He’s furious, and I hardly think a man who loved his wife would be furious that she is not dead.”

“Unless,” Sandy drawled. Clearly he had given this a great deal of thought. “He knew she wasn’t dead and something drove them apart.”

“Or he holds her responsible for the girl’s abduction,” Niall said. “Lady Rathbone holds the marquess responsible for Lady Sarah’s disappearance.”

Elliott waved that off. “That is an entirely different situation.”

“Or,” Sandy interrupted, “they both know exactly what happened, but they each have their own reasons for the lie. If Hylton won’t speak to his wife but their stories match, then neither of them wants the truth out.”

“And assuming Miss Simpleton is, in fact, simple, we cannot guess what she has locked up in her head,” Elliott murmured, thinking about his brief conversation with her. “I had the oddest sense tonight that she is not as simple as she is reputed to be, much less raving.”

“Ah, no, Unk, she is and worse than that. By all reports, she has terrifying fits of apoplexy when either her things are touched by people she does not know or when people she does not know get too close to her person.”

Elliott’s head snapped up. “I have been extremely close to her both times we have exchanged courtesies, and Covarrubias practically hangs off her shoulders.”

Neither Niall nor Sandy said anything, but both looked a bit confused.

“Captives,” Elliott began, sitting up and propping his elbows on his knees, gesturing with his hands, “have a general way about them, like dogs who have been beaten too many times by too many different people to trust any human at all. She, an eight-year-old girl, was taken by armed pirates and kept God knows where for twenty years having God only knows what things done to her. Even I have reactions to certain things that are vestiges from my time aboard the Ocean, and that was fifteen years ago. I was also an adult male officer who was only confined for two weeks.

“Both Covarrubias and I are not only sailors, we are both bigger than one’s average man—ships are not built for men our size—and we both wear swords that are not merely decorative. She has been completely at ease with Covarrubias and not much less at ease with me.” He turned to look over his shoulder at his valet, who was again fussing with Elliott’s cravats. “Piefke, does that sound odd to you?”

“Aye, Cap’n, it does, particularly with that enormous wig and grotesque costuming.”

Elliott grinned. “Have I destroyed your professional reputation, Mate?” Piefke sniffed, but Elliott turned back to his family. “Her behavior with both of us is inconsistent with a woman who has spent twenty years in a pirate hell so hellish she cannot or will not recall. I might have allowed that she has spent enough time with Covarrubias to have grown comfortable with him, but it does not explain her comfort with me. I will also allow that it could be her preferred defensive posture—but you say you have proof she is given to mad outbursts?”

“Affidavits aplenty. Rathbone House maids, footmen, housekeeper, and butler.”

“Yet she attends all the Society events where she will be inundated with people pressing in upon her.”

“Also testified to—she becomes entranced by the colorful gowns and music so that she does not notice anyone else. It is, in fact, a way Lady Rathbone can control her outbursts at home by tempting her with such outings in exchange for good behavior.”

“If she heard Cap’n Jack sing,” Piefke muttered, “she would be cured of her imbecility.”

Niall started, but Elliott laughed. “I dare say you’re right, Piefke. Fury has the voice of an angel.” Elliott was fully aware his tone was veering into awestruck. “Nay, a siren. Tell ’em.”

“Aye, Sirs, that she does. She and her crew sang for hours one night— What was it called, Cap’n?”

“Messiah. Handel.”

“Aye, that. All of it.”

“Piefke! Nay, I believe that was the first half or some such.”

The valet sighed as dreamily as any adolescent girl. “And then she summoned the wind … ”

Elliott snorted. “She did not summon the wind. Did you not see her on the platform with Ben Sunday afternoon? And her girls up in the rigging the rest of the day? They were prognosticating. She knew it was coming and about when it would arrive. Ask Ben if you don’t believe me.”

He started and looked at Elliott as if such a thing had not occurred to him. “She’s not a witch, then?”

“Nay. She has a gift for observation and using men’s imaginations and superstitions against them.”

Piefke growled and turned away.

Both Sandy and Niall were staring at Elliott. “Gentlemen, I do swear to you that woman could sing me straight into hell and I would kiss her feet in gratitude for my own damnation.”

Niall barked a laugh. “You sound like a girl in the throes of her first infatuation.”

Elliott grinned into his empty glass, then reached for the crystal decanter for a third. “Aye, I am a lovestruck fool, and I feel no shame for it, either.” He paused. “Speaking of girls, did you two investigate every man on Camille’s list?”

“Yes,” Niall said. “And I am even more afraid of her now. I could find nothing more than what she had done. How she accomplished that all the way up north and without Mother or Lucy’s knowledge, I cannot fathom.”

He snorted without humor. “They don’t pay any attention to her. Sandy, did you draw up those papers for Sophie?”

“Yes. They’re in your library awaiting your signature. Are you sure that’s a wise decision?”

Elliott took a deep breath. “Some time ago, I was given a round lecture on the measure of a woman’s independence, which is to say, how much any one woman does not have. Sophie does not wish to marry at all, regardless what any husband may permit her to do after she produces two baby boys. Nothing will guarantee a husband who will allow her her interests. Even if she happened upon a man who’d be absolutely delighted with them, she would still be under his rule, and I simply cannot find it in me to subject her to that when she is so strongly against it. After all, ’tis far easier to find a husband later than to get rid of a burdensome one now. Mind, I would not have agreed if she did not have Mother’s sense.”

“This is Fury’s influence, I take it?”

“And her women, aye.”

Sandy drawled, “Is there anything else we can do you for you tonight, Cap’n? Move the world, perhaps? We’ll have to find a long enough lever first.”

Elliott snorted.

A smile teased at the corner of Niall’s mouth before he murmured, “Pirating has made you rather more democratic than the average earl.”

“Fury would disagree with that. By the bye, have you—”

“None to speak of,” Niall said with a yawn. “We know she’s here …  somewhere. All her business is done as Calico Jack, and a filigree cat is her seal. It seems that those who have either met her or sailed with her refer to her as Captain Jack. Those who only know of her or sailors who’ve found themselves on the wrong end of one of her cannons refer to her as Captain Fury.”

“‘Fury’ was a bit of gallows humor that stuck.”

“Interesting. At any rate, she has at least six of her men here with her—” Elliott’s eyebrow rose. “—but no one knows where they are staying. Her correspondence and messages go through a bordello, but we haven’t found which one.”

“Her men’s names?”

“Don’t know. We think the one who carries her seal and her papers is a Greek gent.”

“Papadakos,” Elliott said. “Her second mate.” He stared out his window into the night, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Find him. Ask him if he’d be willing to speak to Captain Judas. If he expresses any measure of suspicion or disbelief, tell him I wish to give Fury new laces for her stays.”

He caught their bewilderment out of the corner of his eye and grinned.

“Aye, that will establish your credentials.”

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