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PART III

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MAY, 1780
ST. JAMES’S
LONDON, ENGLAND

“ELLIOTT, WHY DO we not end this farce and go directly to the Dovecote?” Celia asked the next evening. “I am famished. My aunt notices every extra dram upon my face and now has restricted my food further.”

“We would, but,” Elliott grunted as he dropped onto the squabs of his coach beside Celia, “my nephew is courting the daughter of Earl and Countess Iddlesleigh.”

Celia bent to dig in the basket Elliott had brought. “That is our first invitation, aye?”

“Aye. The earl bears some animosity for me, as he believes I should have been executed years ago. He also detests my toilette. Sandy’s crimes, on the other hand, are far worse: He is a commoner. And a lawyer.”

Celia snickered.

“I make an appearance anywhere Sandy is invited and expects to encounter Lady Jane so as to keep her father at bay.”

“He is an earl, too? You have no power to keep him at bay.”

Elliott splayed his fingertips over his chest. “Madam,” he said archly, “I am a politician. Think you I do not know who is in whose pocket? And how best to use that knowledge to my own ends?”

Celia burst out into delighted laughs.

“He is no friend to the Yanks, but he is being paid to back Lord Sandwich, who—”

“Is our best English hope for victory at sea.”

Elliott chuckled. “Just so. I make it a point to speechify to the effect that—”

“You speechify?” Celia gasped.

“Often and eloquently.” Celia would raise Skirrow from the dead for a chance to see Elliott speak in the Lords Chamber. “I am very vocal in my insistence on punishing you barbarian bratlings, and, in fact, how to do it. Alas,” he sighed, “no one listens to me.”

Celia clapped her hands to her mouth and squealed in delight, which delight was made better by the mischievous smile he cast at her. “Oh, Elliott, you are incomparable.”

“If I were not,” he said, flicking the lace at his wrists, “I would shoot my tailor for charging me such outrageous prices.”

“My little modiste charged me ten times market and extracted a vow I would never tell a soul who fashioned my wardrobe.”

Elliott laughed. “Smart woman. At any rate, Countess Iddlesleigh is apparently in favor of a match ’twixt Sandy and Lady Jane and thus, continues to encourage his presence. I expect Sandy to offer for the girl soon. Iddlesleigh tends to forget that which does not remain in front of his face and thus I remain in front of his face and will do so until the contracts are signed, if there are any to be signed.”

“Oh, what a caring uncle you are!”

“And brother. Which reminds me. I have hired for you a new crewmember.”

Celia’s amusement vanished. “Oh?” she said, her voice icy.

“My sister, Camille.” Celia’s mouth dropped open and had not closed by the time he finished explaining. “Naturally, I am prepared to take her aboard the Silver Shilling should you not care to assist me in this, although I am loath to do so for obvious reasons. However, she caught me broadside and I could not refuse her.”

“You spoil your women,” Celia muttered with the amusement that had returned.

Elliott sniffed. “On occasion, Madam, I am more my father’s son than my mother’s. He could deny my mother and sisters nothing.”

“Your sister will soon find herself wishing you to perdition.”

“I fully expected her to, and I thank you for your indulgence.”

Celia did not answer, as she had begun to eat in earnest (for she had not lied about Harriet’s dismay with the changes in her face). Elliott relaxed and shared with her his bottle of rum. The silence was comfortable, and Celia cherished it. Again she realized Elliott was not so different from either Rafael or Talaat in many ways, and this was yet one of them.

Likewise, the ritual of putting the food away, stepping down from the coach, and entering the crushed residence was accomplished in the same comfortable silence until Elliott was obliged to commence his foppery.

He led her through the mass of bodies, flirting with everyone along the way, only to come to a halt in front of two young gentlemen and the young lady she already knew to be Elliott’s sister. And if the blue-black hair and ice blue eyes were anything to go by, both young men were Raxhams.

“Oh, Niall, you’re here. That must mean your inamorata may make an appearance?” The young man blushed, but Elliott seemed not to notice. “Miss Bancroft, this is my sister Lady Camille Raxham, my brother Mr. Niall Raxham, and my nephew Mr. Alexander Kerr.”

Celia curtsied, but all three of Elliott’s family members gave her greetings filled with amused condescension. She glanced at Elliott’s sister, who was so ravishing in a tall white wig, Celia could not imagine her beauty without it. And here the girl was, togged so grandly, sneering at Celia.

Jealousy and inadequacy stabbed Celia so suddenly, she could barely breathe.

It did not matter that this child would soon be under Celia’s command, dressed in breeches and struggling to learn how to hold herself upright on the rolling deck of a ship—without stays. It did not matter Celia was far more privileged than this chit who had been forced to enlist a man’s help to control her future. It did not matter Celia was proud of her scars and did not regret her life.

Lady Camille Raxham was and had everything Celia had been stripped of when Bancroft had cast her out for a crime she had not committed. Why it only now struck her when she had been in London society for the last two years, she could not say.

She started when Elliott wrapped his hand over the fist she had unknowingly pressed to her breast. “Come, my dear,” he said imperiously, turning so that he was between her and his sister. “Let us dance.”

Thus, once again Celia found herself dancing with Lord Macaroni at a ball. “What about my family has you overset?” he muttered at her through one turn.

At the next turn, she whispered, “The Simpleton, by comparison to your beautiful sister.”

“Ah.” The gavotte went on, but at the last turn, when their palms and arms met overhead, Elliott whispered, “I love you.”

She gaped at him, but he merely smirked. It was an effort to pull herself back into character before the gavotte ended—

—when she decided she would endure any hardship to follow him into the frontier. Celia had ever ventured where her heart led her and, really, she could imagine no worse heartbreak than Talaat’s death. She had survived that, her flogging, and Skirrow’s attempts to terrify her. And yet more than that. Surely, surely, she could learn how to ride a horse, butcher a pig, and—God help her—cook it.

Couldn’t she?

After the dance ended, Elliott escorted her around the room to accomplish the balance of his usual flirtations whilst keeping an eye on Sandy and Lady Jane Iddlesleigh. When Celia’s presence was remarked upon (as everyone had heard of Miss Simpleton’s illness), Elliott clarified in overly hushed tones that Miss Bancroft was not ill but had rather eaten something disagreeable at Lady Grisham’s.

“You’ve ruined Hestia,” Celia murmured, trying not to smile. “You are wonderful.”

He chuckled. “You would get no agreement on that from anyone.”

She huffed. “I would get agreement from every person in thetonwho wants to tup you, most particularly Viscount Vickers.”

“Do not forget his dam.”

Celia started. “She agreed?”

“Shall we say, she did not immediately disagree. She did, however, accuse me of being vile, do you believe.”

Celia pressed her lips together, then pulled them between her teeth.

“I might believe she intended it to be an insult had she slapped my face for it.”

Celia coughed.

“I expect I’ll hear from her shortly. I have a wager on it at the club. Did I mention that I would fuck them both at the same time?”

She put her hand delicately over her mouth, bowed her head, and tried desperately to still the quaking of her shoulders.

“Why ruin one noble when I can thin out the ranks en masse? I am nothing if not efficient,” he purred. “Don’t laugh.”

Oh, she wanted to tread his toe. She could barely speak, for if she so much as relaxed her lips she would pop. “Cease!” she gritted. “I cannot hold my charade with your quips in my ear.”

“I have another wager, you know: To make Miss Simpleton laugh in public.”

She fought to hold back giggles, turning her face away from the crush of people and down at the floor, closing her eyes and scrunching up her face to keep them stifled. She could not allow him to win, but she was bursting.

“Do not weep or your face powder will streak,” he offered dryly.

That made tears leak from her eyes. “I cannot breathe,” she whispered.

“A fitting end. American privateer Captain Fury expires under the suffocating weight of her irrepressible giggles with nary a prick in sight to make it a supremely glorious demise.”

She began to laugh there in the midst of a throng that would remark it immediately. Now she could only apply herself to hiding it.

But his body tensed suddenly, his arm trapping Celia’s hand in his elbow. “Bloody hell,” he growled, his humor turned to anger in a blink.

Celia, still trying to suppress laughter, looked to his face, which was stony even under his face powder, and followed his line of sight to the threshold of the ballroom where a rather unremarkable older man stood at the side of a grand lady taller than he.

“Mind your persona, Elliott.”

He snapped back to it, but his body was still tense. “Croftwood,” he murmured, still keeping his attention pinned upon the couple.

“Ah … ”

“Aye, that Croftwood. The duke father of your master carpenter.”

“Surely he cannot know—”

“What he knows—and may inadvertently reveal—is that Lord Macaroni is a fraud.”

“Oh?”

“In the Lords, I dress as everyone else and do not display these affectations. About my estate I go about as I do on my ship, albeit a bit more clothed, and he has seen me thusly. Further, he knows well my rather insatiable adolescent appetite for housemaids and village girls, my affaire with the young widow, and that these past weeks I have spent quite a bit of time in the company of a Raxham Village wench. He will not now believe I’ve acquired a taste for men.”

“How soon after making land did you wait before seeking any rotten quim, my lord?”

He slid a glance at her. “Do we compare sins now, Madam, or do you expect me to believe you did not hie yourself to Covarrubias’s bed the moment you found him in London?”

Celia maintained a stony silence.

“As I thought.” He resumed surveying the duke and duchess’s progression through the room.

“You are not angry?”

“I have bigger problems at the moment,” he said absently. “I will tell you this, though: You have ruined me for any other woman.”

Celia didn’t know whether to return the compliment, to kick his shin, or to preen. Thus, she said only, “You know Croftwood well, then?”

“Somewhat. He and my father were good friends and his second son was one of the ones taken captive with us aboard the Ocean. It broke his mind completely. Since your carpenter admitted to not knowing the particulars of the scandal, I’ll assume he also has no knowledge of his brother’s incompetence.”

“I could not say.”

“Croftwood openly despises Society so much that I had not expected—”

“Admiral Lord Hylton.”

Celia jumped as the name boomed through the ballroom, and Elliott’s body jerked as they both looked to the doorway where the admiral stood next to a footman studying the assemblage as if he were meeting someone. Her head began to spin as soon as Bancroft spotted her and smiled, then began his long journey through the crowd toward them.

“Goddammit,” Elliott hissed. “Croftwood to starboard, two points.”

The duke greeted a man who appeared to be an old friend, bending to listen to the other man’s whispers. Then Croftwood’s head snapped to Elliott, who tossed him a cocky grin before sketching an elaborate bow. The duke and duchess stood frozen, gaping at Elliott, which made others direct their attention to him as well.

“I am a Jonah,” Celia squeaked, attempting to stay in character whilst two men approached from opposite directions, both of whom could point to Lord Macaroni as a fraud.

“Celia!” called Bancroft gaily from only a few feet away. He approached on her left and looked at Elliott oddly, as if he had not made his acquaintance. But when he halted, he turned his full attention to Celia, taking her hand and enclosing it in both of his. “Lord Rathbone informed me of your whereabouts, but said Lord Tavendish was escorting you, and I—”

“Admiral!” boomed Croftwood from their right.

Celia’s body was as tense as it had been the night they had blown the blockade, and Elliott was equally stiff.

Bancroft stopped, smiled, made a leg, and said, “Your Grace.”

Croftwood grinned and slapped Bancroft’s back. “Always a pleasure, Hylton. When is your son due in?”

Bancroft’s cheer dimmed a bit. “I’ve had no assuring word that he is alive and well since Rathbone returned. The blockade runners—you heard of that?”

“I did! Damnable business, that, though I have difficulty believing this … Captain Fury … is, in fact, a woman.”

“We did not believe it either, but the marquess assures me she exists and is, in fact, a woman.”

Croftwood slid a significant glance at Bancroft. “And we both know Lord Rathbone has all his faculties, do we not?”

“He is well enough, Your Grace,” Bancroft returned smoothly, “I see no reason to hold his grief against him. Now we only await Tavendish, eh?”

Croftwood stilled and stared, then gestured vaguely toward Elliott. “Admiral.”

It was the first time Bancroft had truly looked at Elliott, and when he realized— “What the bloody hell is the meaning of this, Leftenant?” he barked.

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Pirates!