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PART III

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MAY, 1780
ST. JAMES’S
LONDON, ENGLAND

~~~ Celia’s stepfather has just informed Elliott he knows he is Judas ~~~

CELIA STOOD STUNNED, and the silence stretched amongst them while Bancroft awaited any reaction other than that very silence.

Elliott finally broke it. “Admiral,” he drawled gently. “I ken what you mean to say and I ken why you might have chosen to believe such a thing, but at the moment I can only think you’re daft—particularly if you expect anyone to believe it.” When Bancroft opened his mouth to protest, Elliott went on as if he were calming a terrified child. “Perhaps the Lord Admiral has pressed you too much throughout the past years. Perhaps you must take a short holiday in the country. Perhaps—”

“Celia,” Bancroft said abruptly, holding his hand out to her. “Come with me. I will see you home.”

Celia shrank away from him with a squeak and once again took refuge behind Elliott. His broad back flexed and a few stitches of his coat seams popped open when he folded his arms over his chest. “Begone, Admiral,” Elliott rumbled calmly. “The girl wants nothing to do with you, as you can see, for which I cannot blame her. I know that your altruism toward her is born of grief and penitence, but now is not the time to either attempt to assuage it or make an enemy of her protector.”

“If you wanted to protect her so badly,” Bancroft snapped, “then why were you unwilling to wed her as I asked?”

Celia dug her claws into Elliott’s arse cheek. Hard.

“That was a mistake,” Elliott said smoothly. “I find her pleasant company, in fact. Can you break the contract you made with Covarrubias?”

“At this point, I am inclined to think he is the better choice for her.”

“Oh? A man who trained Captain Fury and who is, even now, her lover?”

“What?!”

Celia smothered her sudden fit of laughter by pressing her face into Elliott’s back and her body shook with mirth she feared she could not contain.

“In the three weeks since you have set me to this assignment of finding Captain Fury in the haute ton, I have learned many things, not the least of which is that your future son-in-law—the one you hand-selected to protect and cherish your … ward—is, in fact, almost wholly responsible for Captain Fury’s existence and success.”

“How?” Bancroft whispered.

“What I have gleaned—which parts are, in fact, true, I cannot ascertain—is that Fury landed on his classroom doorstep disguised as a boy, and, when she displayed a curious affinity for mathematics and astronomy, was taken in by him to be trained as a navigator. When he realized she was not, in fact, a boy, he also made her his mistress throughout her course and pressed his advantage with the university to permit her be educated as any male. You are aware the woman is a degreed mathematician, no?”

“No,” Bancroft croaked.

Elliott shrugged. “It may or may not be true, as I say, but the fact that you had not heard such a common rumor makes me believe you are too confident in your ability to assess men and their motives. You cannot have had him investigated thoroughly enough if you did not know Fury was his protégée.”

“He has many protégés,” Bancroft gathered himself to snap. “Why would I think she was one of them?”

“Aye, then. Perhaps you should have paid heed to Rathbone’s reports instead of dismissing him as a man gone mad with regret, and investigated her, as that is how I learned of Covarrubias’s involvement with her. After all, a woman like that cannot have come up out of nowhere.” Elliott leaned forward, and murmured, “Fury is in London, Admiral, and she has been for some time. Further, she knows that we know she is here, and she is as wily on land as she is at sea, if Munro’s to be believed. Do you think Covarrubias was not sharing her bed the entire time he was in Town, before he departed for Spain with your three thousand pounds?”

Celia peeked around Elliott’s arm to see, even in the moonlight, Bancroft’s loss of color. He cast a glance at her, she supposed, to ascertain whether she understood a word of this conversation. But she kept her face blank of anything but wariness, and he averted his gaze in what she hoped was shame.

“In conclusion, Admiral,” Elliott continued softly, “if I were you, I would think very carefully about answers to any riddles I thought I had solved. Then I would think twice and thrice before airing those solutions.”

Lord, the man was a brilliant tactician, and Celia’s overriding need at the moment was to wrap her mouth around his cock.

Just then Elliott twisted to look over his shoulder at her and said, “Celia, dear, I apologize for conducting men’s business in your presence. How do you fare?”

“I am hungry, my lord,” she whispered.

“Quite right.” He glanced at Bancroft. “The marchioness’s only sin with regard to Celia is her diligence in minding the girl’s waist. At this rate, Celia will expire of starvation before her wedding. Do you have any concern for her at all, bid the marquess to order his larders open to her.”

“Certainly,” he said tightly.

In a gesture of at once respect, goodwill, and dismissal, Elliott saluted his former commander, who, somewhat shocked, returned it, then walked away from them, crunching up the pea gravel path until he disappeared into the darkness.

“Dunham sold me into a harem upon reaching the Mediterranean,” Celia mused. “A stroke of divine inspiration, I dare say, with no possible connection between the child he snatched and the Fury Rafael made.”

“I find it quite odd the admiral has not connected Fury and Dunham. Did you not tell me everyone knows Fury is Dunham’s daughter?”

Celia shook herself out of her thoughts. “Nay. I said everyone who sees us together can tell I am his, but in Africa, I am known mostly as the Carnivale’s ship’s master and Talaat Khersis’s wife. Fury is an American with only passing connection to the Mediterranean. ’Twould be far easier to connect Fury to Rafael, but as we see, Bancroft could not do that much.”

“Ah.”

“And that enrages me even more than I have been my whole life, before he confessed to me.”

Elliott raised an eyebrow. “Oh? There was a lull?”

“I pitied him for the weight of the regret he has borne, but now that fragile pity is broken. He has always known how to find Papa with the least bit of effort, which leads me to believe he had no thought at all for my welfare under Papa’s care.”

Elliott grunted. “His opinion of Dunham was far too high to think he would do anything wicked with you. He truly thought Dunham would keep you safe and care well for you.”

Celia’s brow wrinkled. “He told you that?”

“Without names. Clearly his trust was not misplaced.”

She growled. “No matter. My need to run a dagger into his heart has returned fourfold.”

“Do you intend to litter London with dead bodies, then, Captain?”

Celia perked up. “Oh! He informed you of that, too?”

“Aye, and I sprouted a cockstand that very moment, which was deuced inconvenient.”

She sniffed. “One body hardly qualifies as littering.”

“For a certes there will be more before we quit England.”

“Tell me, love: How many men had the motive, opportunity, and capability of taking that pay fleet?”

He started. “Please signal when you intend to change subjects so abruptly, Madam. Five or six of us might have attempted it, including Rathbone.”

“If he sent Kitteridge out with the hope that he would be overtaken and killed, then why is he concerned with the culprit’s identity now that he’s got what he wanted?”

“Mere curiosity. He does not believe any one of us could take the fleet alone. Too, there is the much greater possibility that it was an enemy of England. Even if his curiosity were satisfied, he would never betray me. No matter what, he has always attempted to protect his officers.”

Celia pondered that. “Which makes him as much a traitor as you.”

“And he knows it.”

“But would he protect you if he knew I am Fury, and that you and I are lovers?”

“He already knows Judas and Fury are lovers. It remains to be seen if he can or will justify me as Judas to anyone’s satisfaction.”

Gravel crunched behind them, and they turned.

A man.

Running toward the house.

Elliott bolted after him, more agile than his prey even in high heels. He gained ground quickly, reaching out to catch the man by his queue and jerk him into the eight-foot shrubbery that lined the path.

Celia followed sedately, as her restrictive bodice and six-foot-wide panniers would allow her to do nothing less.

“Celia!”

It was a hiss barely discernible to one who was not listening for it. She rounded a corner to see Viscount Merrill struggling against Elliott, who stood behind him, one arm barred across his throat, and the opposite hand grasping the back of his head.

“Are there any others?”

“Nay. He was awaiting Camille in order to compromise her, which I instructed him not to attempt,” he drawled pointedly.

Celia watched as Merrill gagged and clutched at Elliott’s arm, but to no avail, and she tsk’d.

The viscount crumpled at her feet, his neck snapped.

Without a word, Elliott stepped over his body and offered her his arm. They traversed the back side of the shrubbery searching for anyone else who might have heard what they ought not, emerged far closer to the house, and walked up the gravel path, Celia plodding along dully, dutifully, Elliott mincing and tottering on his ridiculously high heels.

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