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 | 41B | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45A | 45B | 46A | 46B | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55

---

PART II

---

MAY, 1780
MAYFAIR
LONDON, ENGLAND

“CELIA!”

She didn’t know where she was at the moment nor who was whispering in her ear.

All she knew was how dreadfully hungry she was.

Her warrior’s instincts bade her be still, however, and glean what clues she could. It was cool and relatively dark, faint light coming from her left and some distance from her feet. She was lying on stone. Vegetation rustled slightly in the sweet breeze. There were many people milling about, their shoes clicking on stone, and there was a man kneeling next to her, bending over her, touching her.

The only man who knew who she was, who could and would protect her, and who, most importantly, would feed her.

Suddenly her nostrils were assaulted by hartshorn. Her eyes popped open and she beheld others standing behind Lord Macaroni in the farthest corner of a balcony.

“Go away,” she croaked, hoping he would understand what she wanted.

“Oh, righto!” he chirped, and turned. “Shoo. If you were hoping for a glimpse of a ruby head, the chance has passed. Let me tend Miss Bancroft.”

Their departure was at once interminable and instantaneous.

“Tavendish?”

“Oh, you too, Hestia,” he snapped. “Shame on you, putting this poor gehl through this nonsense. I shall return her to Rathbone House as soon as possible. Go to church Sunday and pray the marchioness does not ruin you.”

“But Tavendish, you did as much or more to embarrass her.”

“To teach you a lesson. She trusts me, you see. Begone.” Celia was still disconcerted and waited for his signal that they were completely alone. “That was not feigned,” he hissed at her. “What is wrong with you?”

“I’m terribly hungry, Tavendish,” she whispered, knowing how pathetic she sounded—and did not care in the least. “I must eat.”

“My name is Elliott. Use it. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

She growled and clutched at his shoulder, struggling to sit up. “Help me, you ridiculous fop.” He did, but her panniers were wide and her skirts were thick and heavy. “’Tis not my doing,” she grumbled once she was upright, but leaned toward him as much as her stiff stomacher would allow, in an attempt to both quell her gnawing hunger and to be close enough to him to be heard without being overheard. It was almost more than she could bear, not to cup his jaw in her palm and press her nose and lips to his cheek whilst she spoke.

“’Tis my aunt’s,” she whispered. “The last two years I have been able to steal away at night to take meals with my men, but with the marquess home and roaming the house at all hours, slipping back into the house after I have slipped out is nigh impossible. Further, I cannot get to the larder, for my aunt posted a guard to keep me from snitching food. I haven’t had a decent meal in four days.”

“Why is she depriving you food?”

“She thinks me fat. To illustrate, this is my third set of stays in eight weeks.”

“You have much explaining to do, Madam,” he grumbled as he arose. “I’ll get my coach.”

“Elliott, please fetch me a bite once you have done so,” she begged. “You cannot know how dire this is.”

He studied her for a second. “’Twill be naught but a bit.”

She nodded, and allowed herself to relax once he had taken his leave of her with that long, purposeful seaman’s stride she had seen so little of in Lord Macaroni. She thought of the salón and their repartee and smiled, then chuckled. It would be far funnier once she did not have such a crisis to tend, but she was, at this moment, some way past half to dead.

The click of his heels and silhouette of that ridiculous wig moments later gave her reason to relax fully. Soon enough he thrust a wedge of cheese at her, dropped an apple in her lap, and sat beside her to peel an orange, effectively shielding her from any onlookers and eavesdroppers.

“Hestia made no objection?” Celia asked after a few moments but fewer bites, taking her time, knowing that if she ate too fast, it would make her ill.

“Would you?” he grunted and handed her a juicy orange slice, which she took with much gratitude. “She will be fortunate if her husband does not send her back to Cornwall permanently. I may speak to him about it, as a matter of fact, or have Rathbone do so.”

“You’ll come off no better.”

“My goal was to find you and clearly, with this getup, my reputation in Town is of no concern to me. However, since I am the one out here tending you in your distress, whatever boorishness can be ascribed to me for my merciless and flagrantly ribald taunting of Miss Simpleton will be redeemed by the atoning sacrifice of my marvelous breeches to the flagstone.”

Celia snickered. “Lord Macaroni.”

It was then he chuckled whilst handing her more food. “The wretched state of your bosom and waistline was the only thing keeping me from committing myself to your identity four days past.”

She raised her eyebrow at him. “Oh? You have resolved all the other discrepancies of my presence here?”

“Not a one, although I realize that your mother and father are not, in fact, wed to each other as I had assumed aboard the Thunderstorm.”

In the midst of swallowing her bite, she shook her head.

“What I cannot fathom is why Hylton has gone to such great lengths to claim you when he must know you are not his.”

She shrugged and bit into another orange slice. “Until he saw me side by side with Dunham, he thought I was. For eight years, I was his beloved little girl. He is atoning for his sins, as he can no longer bear the grief and guilt should he fail to see me secure.”

“Your mother bears the initial blame.”

“But,” she said around her food, thoroughly uncaring that her manners had vanished, “Bancroft immediately took her son and abandoned her. Had she not taken drastic action, she would have died starving and freezing that winter.”

“What action did she take?”

“She found a protector.”

Elliott choked. “Lud, and what I said about courtesans.”

Celia clucked. “Do not fash yourself over it. She still approves of you.”

He grunted. “Why did Dunham take you, then?”

“What would you have done if your lover’s husband threatened to kill your eight-year-old daughter?”

Elliott groaned softly and shook his head. “Oh, Admiral.”

“Papa knew Bancroft didn’t mean it, but was loath to stay and sort it all out. He thought my mother would be better served by both his and my immediate absence, so … ”

Celia bit into the apple Judas—Elliott—had brought her, thinking it the sweetest thing she had ever tasted. He was here, and he was taking care of her. They were talking at last as their true selves and Celia thought him the most comfortable man she had ever met.

Tears pricked her eyes because of the life they could not have together.

“Celia—” He stopped abruptly and asked, “That is your name, is it not?”

She nodded. “Celia Jacqueline Bancroft. Khersis, if one is being precise.”

“Why did you never take Dunham’s name?”

“Papa did not allow me to be addressed by any surname at all, in case he was wrong about Bancroft’s threat. Bancroft’s name was known all over the Mediterranean even then, as were Papa’s hunting grounds.”

“Hence Jack.”

“He thought ‘Celia’ too delicate in any case. ‘Calico Jack’ served the purpose, and then was adequate for my legal needs once I came of age, as there is only one. Female, with pink hair, yet. For years, Rafael and Señor and Señora Rector were the only ones who knew my name and provenance.”

“Celia,” he said as if it were a foreign word and he were attempting to pronounce it for the first time. “It may be a bit ere I’m accustomed to that, as I only just committed myself to my suspicions. Seeeeeleea. Miss Celia Bancroft.”

The way he said her name was breathtaking. Never had she loved her own name so much now that Judas had said it. “Papa never called me that once he learned my middle name.”

“I gather the mistake your mother will not forgive was his assumption that she and Hylton would go on together?”

She sighed. Took another bite. Chewed. Sighed again. “He was willing to sacrifice his love and desire for her in order that she might keep what was left of her family intact. Lucien wasn’t his son and she had a long-established life with another man she loved and his child. He did not want to take her away from that. Now, let me finish this food and I will explain the rest when we are safer. Fetch me punch, will you?”

Elliott did as she bid. When he returned with a tankard of the stuff she moved to accommodate him more easily on the bench.

In his macaroni façade, it was easy—even for her—to forget what a large man he was.

He allowed her the last of her morsels before speaking again. “I will take you to the Gables and have my staff raid the larder for you.”

“’Twould be safer and more efficient for both of us to hie to the Dovecote.”

“The Dovecote?” he asked incredulously. “’Tis a mean brothel on the wharf. You do not frequent something more sophisticated?”

“I don’t frequent anything,” she muttered, “which is, as you see, the exact problem. Nay, it is because it is close to the wharf. And it is not mean. The madam there serves as one of my clerks.”

He gaped at her. “Your clerk?”

“I have the loyalty of an odd assortment of people in an odd assortment of lands.”

“With an odd assortment of talents, it seems.”

“My men take their meals at the tavern three doors down.”

“The Coxcomb?”

“Aye. We can slip into the Dovecote from the back, and she will have girls to assist me to dress.”

“You plan to undress then?” he purred.

“For comfort. Whilst I am this hungry, I have no other appetites nor the strength to indulge them if I did.” She eyed him dubiously. “And that is not the most alluring you have ever been.”

He sneered at her and she grinned. “You, Madam, are hideous.”

“Elliott,” she whined, “chastise me for my wardrobe later, but for now, I must rest and have a meal as myself. I am finished. Let us to your coach.” She protested when he swept her up into his arms. “I can walk now.”

“Aye, but ’tis better for our ruse if you do not. Feign sleep.”

It was not a difficult order to follow. In fact, she did so rather gratefully. There was nowhere else she would rather be right then than in his arms, her head cradled securely in his shoulder, her secrets safe in his head.

As soon as the sounds of milling guests could be discerned, Elliott’s gait changed from the seaman’s to the fop’s.

“Make way,” he announced with shrill self-importance as he put his foppish heroism on display even as he put his foot up on the first of three stairs from the balcony to the ballroom. “’Twould seem Miss Bancroft’s been ill since shortly after she arrived and had not thought to inform anyone of the fact. Her face is quite hot to the touch, in fact. It could be … pestilential.”

Celia almost smiled at the sound of many pairs of feet skittering out of the way.

“Tavvy,” someone called, “this is all well and good, but don’t you think you should consider your own health?”

“My health?” he hooted. “What can she possibly give me that I haven’t got already?” Celia turned her face further into the brocade of his disgusting coat and smiled. “Don’t laugh,” he muttered in a tone that dared her to.

She held on until she was fully tucked into his coach with him, leaning against him, and on their way to the wharf. Then she began to laugh, fully and freely—finally.

“God, I love hearing you giggle,” Elliott rasped before grasping her chin and kissing her heatedly.

She kissed him back greedily, though as hungry and weary as she was, desire did not find her. But comfort did—quite a great lot of it. Comfort she needed. Comfort he would not begrudge her.

She was a fool to take it. She was suddenly an adolescent of nigh thirty years caught up in the newness and wonder of an attractive man’s attention, not so very different from Fanny Hill in the throes of her first love, in fact. Was she ever doomed to fall in love with men who could grant her deepest desire, but then ultimately fail to do so?

“Judas,” Celia whispered as they kissed, unwilling to stop being a fool. “Oh, Judas.”

“Elliott.”

“Elliott.”

“Say it again, Fury,” he murmured against her mouth. “Celia.”

Celia hummed. “Elliott.” She jerked away from him and glared. “Commander Elliott Raxham.” She slapped his arm. “‘Who?’” she mocked. “Innocent as a newborn all the way through Croftwood’s recitation! God’s bones!”

Elliott burst out laughing and hooked his arm around her shoulders before falling back into the squabs with her cradled in against his body. “You returned fire, Madam. Knowing you have had me at sixes and sevens for half a sennight should satisfy your need for vengeance. The Earl of Iscariot, indeed.”

“I am entirely vexed you did not know me at once,” she muttered.

“My intimate knowledge of your luxurious body denied the truth of your enthralling eyes.”

She nearly preened. “’Tis fortuitous no one in Town will suspect anything by our being alone with no chaperone,” she said softly, “with your left-handed preferences and my idiocy.”

“Left-handed?!” he asked, affronted. “I have taken great pains to make it very clear I’ll stick my yard in any hole of anything that breathes, and God help all the pug bitches in my house.” Celia laughed. “You are only safe because you are the daughter of my former commander—and had I not announced the fact that you are plagued with the plague, even that would be questionable.” Celia’s amusement waned when he demanded, “Explain your starvation, Madam. I subsisted for two years on naught but gruel, weevil-ridden crusts, and rancid water.”

She took a deep breath. “It has always been thus that I must eat great amounts of food to survive. I don’t know why. ’Tis another thing Dunham gifted me, as it is also his Achilles heel. I had never wanted for food until, soon after Skirrow hired me, he threw me in the hold for a month—”

“Insubordination,” Elliott drawled.

She grinned. “Smitty realized I was dying on slave rations and tended me himself the fortnight it took me to recover. I was as shocked as everyone else was, so after that, I was careful to keep stores of food in my cabin.”

“So your galley is not as extravagant as it appears.”

“Nay. Rathbone’s unexpected return has set me asunder in many large ways, and that is one of them.”

“Thus, I am not the only reason you are leaving England.”

“You are a small reason.”

“You wound me.”

“’Twill be far easier to get out without arousing suspicion with your assistance than not.”

“Mm,” he hummed noncommittally. “We have hours yet before your aunt and uncle could reasonably expect you home. That should be enough time for us to confess our sins, and if not, well, there is tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I shall make a point to feed you well each evening because you are of no use to me like this.”

---

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