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PART IV

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JANUARY, 1781
WILSON’S WHARF
LONDON, ENGLAND

CELIA LEANED BACK against the cold stone alley wall at the Woolwich wharf a little before midnight, her arms crossed over her chest, awaiting her uncle. She had doubted Rathbone would heed her warning to come alone, so she had her men stationed up and down the wharf and on top of the taverns and brothels.

The clip-clop of a single horse’s hooves made Celia lean out from the alley just enough to make out a hunched-over figure on a pathetic nag of a horse (insofar as she could tell horseflesh, which really wasn’t that far) in the faint light from the tavern he passed by.

A glint of metal peeking out from under the figure’s ragged cape gave her all the information she needed.

Ten minutes passed before he was in a position to see her, and she moved slightly so that he would—and he did not disappoint her.

In one smooth motion, he sat erect, threw off his cape and drew his sword with a ring. One loud pistol shot sent his horse out from under him and into the Thames.

“Poor horsie,” Celia drawled as he scrambled to his feet. “I despise horses.”

His chest was heaving as he looked at her, squinting into the darkness. “Come out.”

“Rathbone, really. I come to do you a good turn and you make such a fuss?”

“Why in God’s name would you do me a good turn, and why do you think I would trust you to have done so?”

“You must have, because you came alone.”

“Did I?” he drawled.

“Oh, aye, you did,” she said sweetly, chuckling to herself when he turned and saw that his guards were lying dead on the cobbles bleeding from their necks, her crew behind them with swords, daggers, and pistols.

“What do you want?”

Celia clucked. “’Tis not what I want. ’Tis what Sarah wants and thus, it has become what my physician wants and it appears I will do anything for my physician.”

Rathbone stared at her in confusion. “Your physician?”

“The Arab.”

“Aye then, I know to whom you refer. What’s he to do with this?”

“Unbeknownst to all of us, he has been your son-in-law for lo, these dozen years past.”

Rathbone staggered as if drunk and plopped his arse down on a pier post.

“Be careful you do not follow your horse into the drink, Marquess,” she called softly. “Come into the tavern. We will share a bottle of rum whilst I tell you of Sarah’s travels.”

• • •

“ … THROWN IN THE harem and forgotten until such a time as she attained womanhood. That sultan has a taste for buxom women far past girlhood and skilled in the love arts. He would purchase girls of beauty for the purpose of wedding or selling later. Since his tastes and practices are well known, and he keeps his inventory of girls separate from his women, he can, in fact, claim a woman out of his household to be a virgin on the sale block with veracity.

“Solomon was the harems’ young physician, training to replace the old one. He was taken with Sarah once she began to blossom, but he was more taken with her mind, her curiosity and eagerness to learn his craft. In the course of her instruction, they fell in love. Things proceeded properly from there, and when she was twenty, Solomon asked to purchase her.”

Rathbone cast her a stony glance. “My wife is quite buxom,” he said flatly. “I will not believe a daughter from her to be a stick.”

Celia shook her head. “No, indeed. The dey did not remember her, so they sent another young Englishwoman in her place for his inspection.”

Rathbone groaned.

“Aye, you see the logical consequence of such a deceit, though it took some years to come to light. ’Tis how Solomon came to be shackled in the hold of a slave ship and she came to be the sultan’s favorite plaything until she bored him. Whereupon, she was thrown back into the harem as the lowliest of servants, abused by the women and eunuchs, and was forced to watch her children endure their own abuses.

“When she nearly escaped with them, she was caught and her hands and feet were crushed. She was shackled permanently after that. ’Twas that that broke her.”

Rathbone collapsed over his supper, utterly beaten. For a certes, he did not have the fortitude to fight his way out of this tavern packed with Celia’s crew, even if he wanted to.

“I would never have found her,” Rathbone whispered raggedly.

“No.”

“And the sultan … ?”

“Still alive. He was not in residence when we blew his palace, and we could not afford to stay longer to make certain his soul was consigned to the devil.”

“This man,” Rathbone croaked. “This Arab. He loves her?”

“Aye, he does. Very much. He will need all that love and more to see her through the decades ahead, and those of their children.”

Rathbone rubbed at his temples. “May I see them, too?”

Celia shook her head. “We have created for them safe haven aboard the Thunderstorm these past weeks and have worked to gain and retain their trust. Solomon thought it best they remain there. They are young and you mean nothing to them.”

He clapped his hands over his face and his shoulders quaked.

“The reality is she would be better off dead. Thus, I tell you this to prepare you for your interview with her.”

“Fury—” He raised a hand. Dropped it back onto the table. He was silent for a long while, his fingers busy with his fork, his linen, his cravat, his cuff.

Presently he muttered, “What did you do with my niece and sister-in-law?”

Celia could not help the wave of pity that flowed through her. He cared not a whit. He simply could not bear to speak or even think of Sarah any longer.

“The imbecile has not suffered for her capture and she is, I dare say, quite enjoying her sojourn aboard my ship. In fact, she appreciates my galley’s food quite a lot. I am given to understand your wife would not be happy with the size of stays she now requires.”

The corner of Rathbone’s mouth curled up reluctantly.

“As for Mary, she has lain in the infirmary, taxing my surgeon’s skill.”

He made a vague sound of sympathy. “And Lady Camille?”

“The girl is utterly useless,” Celia drawled. “Or at least she was.” The man snarled at her, and Celia tsk’d. “Oh, now, Marquess, you know better than to jump to assumptions about me. She was useless until we rescued Sarah and the children, whom she is now serving as something of a nursemaid or lady’s companion or what-have-you.”

Her uncle studied her for quite a long time. “How can I know this is not an elaborate trap?”

Celia heaved a sigh of utter frustration. “Rathbone,” she said flatly, “of everything you know about me, what makes you suspicious of such? I’m a privateer who should be out wreaking havoc upon your Navy on behalf of her nascent country but is instead in London, breaking bread with her most dire naval adversary for her own interests. Nothing you know of me should lead you to believe I am interested in such profitless nincompoopery as taunting a man I have already vanquished.”

He worried his bottom lip in thought. “Lord, Fury. How you do confound me.” Then he slid her a speculative look, and his eyebrow rose in question.

She cast him a searing look. “No. If you seek to forget, do it in a bottle. Or better yet, find your way to your wife’s bed, who is a far more beautiful woman than I. I have seen her, Rathbone.”

“Paying homage to you,” he snarled.

Celia rolled her eyes. “To punish you.” When he flushed as if ashamed, she offered, “I, being a woman and cognizant of the gossip swirling about you two and in possession of the thing rumored to be standing between you, have some advice to offer should you wish to hear it.”

“What,” he sneered.

“Talk to her.” Rathbone’s brow wrinkled. “You were a love match, no?”

“Aye,” he muttered.

“Pretend … just for a while … that you are again courting her. Forget your history with her. Forget your command or lack thereof. Forget Sarah and woo your wife. Make her forget Sarah, and remember you.”

He snorted and drawled, “Make her forget Sarah.”

“For all intents and purposes, Sarah is dead. What I would want,” Celia said, pressing splayed fingers to her chest and leaning toward him, “were I Sarah’s mother, is simple confirmation of that. Some news. Something definite. I will give you an hour or a day with Sarah, but after that you can give your wife peace.”

“She would never believe it if I told her.”

“I can manufacture proof. Then you may begin your seduction. And for God’s sake, begin it with tender words and soft kisses.”

The marquess closed his eyes and shook his head. “Fury … why are you doing this?”

She looked down at her own plate, still half full of food. “I had no choice,” she said tightly, suddenly enraged again. She picked up her fork and stabbed the chunk of meat sitting there congealing in its gravy.

Rathbone jerked away from her, staring at her warily. “Ah … ”

“’Tis a debt of honor,” she said archly, raising her eyes to his. “Surely you can understand.”

Rathbone deflated in front of her eyes and he laid his forehead down upon the table. “Do you know,” he said into the table, his voice muffled, “you single-handedly destroyed my career. I cannot even endeavor to purchase a ship, as the admiralty has blocked all avenues of recourse.”

Celia sighed. “You are a weary man and you sail like it. I have told you time and again I have no quarrel with you, yet through no fault of our own, we continue to stumble over one another in the course of our respective tasks.”

He made no reply.

“I am offering you peace for my own purposes, none of which include doing you harm, as you are of no import to me. Do you not care to trust me and take it, I will force it upon you. And then, once you have bid your daughter adieu properly and you are again in your wife’s bed, you will thank me.”

He sighed. “Fine. Where are you moored?”

“Marquess!”

“Dammit, Fury. How are we to do such a thing when neither of us trusts the other?”

“Whether you come voluntarily or not, you will be drugged or knocked cold, blindfolded, tied up, and taken to where she is, then it will be repeated for return. You can simply agree and it will go smoothly at a time that is convenient for you, or you can be abducted at a time that is convenient for me.”

He pushed his face and shoulders up off the table wearily, and sighed. “I shall consider it.”

Celia inclined her head. “You have one week to come voluntarily. When you are ready, send a message here and you will be given instructions. If you have not done that, we will come for you. You will not know where, when, or how. And do you doubt me, look to your career and the hash I have made of it.”

His mouth tightened and his fist clenched. She raised an eyebrow.

“Very well,” he snarled. “Please be so kind as to allow me to be upon my way.”

“My men will escort you.” She held up a hand when he would have protested. “’Tis offered in good faith. Your men are dead. Your horse is dead. You are in an area of the wharf where you will be set upon merely for your boots. You may be chronically unlucky, Rathbone, but you’ve never been foolish. Do not begin now.”

Once Rathbone had departed with Papadakos and four others of her crew in tow, Celia and the rest of her men decamped and headed up the wharf to catch a wherry across the Thames. She left her men at the alley entrance of the Coxcomb and continued alone to the Dovecote, trudging wearily up the servants’ stairs to her cramped quarters on the top floor, which she currently shared with Solomon, Suniyya, and Camille—

—all of whom were awaiting her in stiff silence, which broke as soon as she entered the room.

“Well?” Solomon and Milly demanded at once.

Celia looked at her cousin, who looked away and down. They had not spoken to one another in the weeks since they had departed Algiers, as Celia greatly resented this excursion, which resentment grew with each demonstration that Suniyya had no care for the danger in which Celia had put herself.

“He is suspicious of a trap,” Celia muttered as she turned and began to undress. She relayed the conversation as it pertained to the meeting between Rathbone and his daughter, and ended her greatly abridged rendition while wiggling into a nightrail before falling into the bed she shared with Milly. “By morning, he will have a cadre of men out to comb London. If he doesn’t find us before his week is out, he will set a trap for us. Thus,” she ended wearily, her arm draped over her face, “if he has not sent a message in two days, we will catch him by surprise. Milly, go inform Nonny: No crewman steps foot outside the Coxcomb or Dovecote until then. Bid her get me something to write with and books to read. Oh, and I want my solicitors here tomorrow night.”

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