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 | 56A | 56B | 57 | 58A | 58B | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62A | 63 | 64A | 64B | 65 | 66

---

PART III

---

MAY, 1780
MÉLISANDE GABLES
LONDON, ENGLAND

SHE CAME AT HIM in a blind rage, sword in one hand and dagger in the other, and he let her. His entire family, Celia’s mother and lieutenant, and half the staff were gathered in the threshold of the morning room watching them dance. She was not fighting at her best nor even as well as she had fought him at the Bloody Hound, but it didn’t matter. Elliott was only too happy to help her expend her rage in some manner other than breaking every bone in his thumb, which was now sore and affecting his grip.

He thrust and parried around the morning room, marveling that she could do this in a gown with a longer sword than she was used to. She had jerked her arms forward to deliberately rip her sleeves away from her bodice to give her full arm motion. She had torn her wig off so that her fiery orange braid slithered down her back to beyond her arse. Her stays kept her torso more rigid than it should have been, but they did not have straps confining her shoulders. Her skirts were heavy and inclined to hinder her stance, but she adjusted easily to her encumbrances.

“Covarrubias made sure you could fight in a gown,” he observed between breaths.

“Aye.”

Elliott sidestepped her next swing, which shattered a vase, sending porcelain and water and flowers everywhere. It was the fourth. The draperies and upholstery had innumerable slashes with stuffing poking out. The table Elliott had upended to clear the floor had landed across the room with two broken legs.

Yet it was better than allowing her to curl up as tight as a cannonball to pack herself into a twenty-pounder bore, awaiting the fuse to be lit.

He arched away from a careless swipe, which informed him either her attention or her body was fading.

Elliott drew first blood purposely with a swipe of a dagger down her arm to both draw her back to the fight and free her further from the tight cloth.

His mother was horrified. “Elliott!”

Alas, Celia noticed neither the wound across her arm nor the dowager countess’s cry and continued to rain otherwise killing strikes over and around him, some sloppy and some far too precise for his comfort. In fact, Elliott wasn’t quite sure that he could beat her at all.

And this inferno—long stoked but suppressed—would not be put out any time soon.

Hylton’s betrayal

Dunham’s disappointment

Covarrubias’s inconstancy

Khersis’s death

Elliott’s panoply of sins

Mary’s secrets

Elliott would bear it all—because he could and because she needed him to.

His hair began to loosen from its queue and sweat ran down his face, stinging his eyes. His coat split down the back when he was forced to parry a particularly fiendish thrust and immediately fend off her dagger strike. His chest heaved, as did hers. He was larger and stronger, had a particular advantage because she was still emaciated and, likely, hungry. In addition, he was simply defending.

But Celia had the strength of fury behind her and was so far away from him now she was fighting some faceless, nameless opponent in battle. She lunged and he barely caught it before she ran him through.

She’d kill him were he not careful.

“Lynch!” he called during a lull in which she stalked him around the room, her eyes narrowed with the vacant fearlessness of a rabid dog. “We will be having guests for nuncheon. Make it a feast!”

Elliott was catching on to her tricks, and when she came at him with a sword overhead and a dagger to his throat, he was able to deflect both and catch her.

Locking his hilt to hers, pinning her dagger arm between his elbow and ribs, he dropped his knife and clasped her chin in his hand. “Celia,” he hissed. “You must eat and sleep. You cannot carry on like this.”

She tugged at her arm and growled, but she was weaker than he’d suspected. He simply could not afford to drive her into the ground as it seemed she wished him to do, not even to satisfy her anger.

He kept her captive and still, pressed his mouth against her ear and whispered a litany of love words he hoped would bring her back to him before she broke away and continued to fight until she collapsed.

Slowly, so slowly, her body began to loosen. It could be a trick, so he dipped his head to look into her unfocused whisky eyes. “Seeeleea,” he purred, “my dahling gehl … ”

She blinked and huffed. “Oh, do cease that ridiculous simpering,” she muttered, jerking away from him, thrusting her sword through the now worthless sofa. Elliott watched as she paced around the room, running her hands over her face, dropping her head back. It was an entirely male gesture, so very commanding of her, her gait the natural one of a seaman, which she had taken care to correct whilst in masquerade.

He loved seeing the commander, and would take her rage-induced sword fights over helpless weeping any day.

“I will—” She spoke low over her shoulder and waved a hand, “—pay for the damage.”

“No need,” Elliott murmured, tossing his sword through the sofa she had just murdered, and shrugged out of his torn coat, gesturing to Piefke to come take it from him. As he did, half a dozen little dogs, barking and twirling around, rushed in on his heels. One immediately went to Celia.

Celia stepped away and snarled down on it. When it followed her, clawing at her skirt to be lifted and cuddled, she glared at Elliott and sneered. “I despise dogs. Get it off me before I kill it.”

“No!” the countess and Sophie cried simultaneously as Sophie rushed in to gather them, starting with the one who wanted Celia’s attention. “How could you!”

Celia slapped her.

Sophie screamed and scrambled away from her as quickly as she could with her dogs in her arms.

“Sophie!” Elliott snapped. “Get them out of here. Now.”

“She’s a monster!” the girl sobbed, scurrying and hurrying, her cheek red with a handprint. “How can you love that?”

Celia stood stock still, but for her tilted head as she looked at Elliott with a flat expression. “Aye, Captain Judas,” she drawled. “How can you love that?”

This was the moment he dreaded, had hoped to avoid, but he knew what he must do. He looked at his youngest sibling, who saw him as little more than an annoying but cheerfully indulgent older brother she could poke and prod with impunity. He barked a harsh laugh and said,

“How can I love that? My dear sister, I am that.”

He looked to his mother, who stared at him vacantly, as if she had just comprehended that all the light and joy she saw in him was a mirage. He looked to Camille, who stared at Celia in terror, and he wondered if she would change her mind. He looked to Niall and Sandy, home for nuncheon as they had planned, who were as green as seasick midshipmen after a storm.

His staff and Papadakos, on the other hand, were murmuring amongst themselves, exchanging wagers, grinning and snickering.

Mary was simply resigned, her expression as she gazed at Celia as if she were a sobbing little girl who had scraped her knee, but would not allow her mother to tend it because she thought her mother had pushed her down.

Elliott crossed the room in three great strides, jerked Celia to him, and kissed her. Hard.

She returned it as if she knew he was choosing her over his family, over this life of ease and power—because only this woman knew and loved him for who and what he truly was.

“Stay with me,” he whispered against her mouth, “today, tomorrow, at least through the night so I can care for you. ’Twould be a good thing to put some distance between you and your mother for the nonce. She grieves, too.”

She looked at him soberly.

“I won’t let you starve whilst you’re here,” he offered.

She laughed reluctantly and glanced down at his throat, then raised a hand to fuss with the lace there. “Can you protect me from your women?” she murmured dryly. “I may find myself on a pyre being burnt for a witch after all.”

He grinned. “My crew finds you amusing—possibly profitable, do they keep wagering upon us—and they outnumber my women four to one.”

Her smile was watery and she dropped her forehead to his chest. “Elliott,” she breathed, “you are the most wonderful man.”

• • •

“WELL!” NIALL, EVER the barrister, boomed heartily from the threshold of the thoroughly destroyed morning room, “shall we all gather in the dining room? Breaking bread may break … this. Whatever this is. Which, by the way, was even more entertaining than breakfast. I think I shall expire if supper proves as eventful.”

Still stunned, no one could do anything but follow Niall’s directions. Whilst the lot of the family disappeared, Elliott held Celia to him. “Come, love. You need to eat.”

“How do you know me so well?” she whispered.

“I am you,” he said simply. “You are me. We are … ” He stopped to search for the precise words.

“Barbarian bratlings,” she supplied dryly.

He laughed and turned her out of his arms to press her toward the dining room, toward the people who were terrified of and horrified by her.

“I would Old Ben and Papadakos eat with us.”

Elliott nodded without hesitation and signaled to a footman who had heard her request. It was proper protocol on a ship for both men to join them, as they were high-ranking officers. Here, in this time and place, it was an unfathomable breach of propriety.

She knew that.

She didn’t care.

She needed to dine with at least a few people she trusted.

“My wound has stopped bleeding?” she muttered as she twisted to take its measure, then answered herself before he could, “Aye, then. ’Twill keep through nuncheon.”

Elliott offered her his arm for the few steps to the room, seated her to the right of his place at the foot of the long table. The dowager countess was already at her rightful place at the head of the table, Mary to her right. Papadakos sat on Celia’s right and Old Ben sat across from her, on Elliott’s left. This disrupted everyone and he did not miss that Camille took the opportunity to sit at Papadakos’s right, though she acted as if she were the grand lady of the manor granting a servant a boon. She cast Elliott a glare when he smirked.

Sophie was nowhere to be seen.

There was utter silence as they were served. His entire family noted the respectful deference his staff paid to Celia, seasoned with the occasional salute by men who knew her from the Silver Shilling’s last cruise.

This deference put her at ease more than any niceties his family could show her, and she returned their respects solemnly in the manner of the commander she was.

Mary was the first to break the silence. “Captain Jack,” she said stiffly. Celia looked up the table to where she sat. “You fought well. As usual,” she added with a disgusted glance at the countess.

Celia paused. Then she said, her voice rough, “Thank you, Officer Mary. Be easy.”

“Captain,” Elliott rumbled whilst nodding his thanks to Mary for setting the tone in which Celia would be addressed at table and, hopefully, thereafter. “Eat. Please. We have much to do these coming days and I would have you at your best.”

“Tavendish,” his mother said haughtily, but with a respect she had yet to show him.

“Mother,” Elliott returned.

“I have an idea as to how you and Miss— Captain Fury— Ah, Captain Jack—”

“Celia, please,” Celia said smoothly, with the perfect diction of a high-born lady. “I prefer that on land, amongst people who do not sail.”

His mother visibly relaxed. “Celia,” she said graciously. “I … apologize. To you and your mother both.” She nodded to Lady Hylton.

“And Leftenant Papadakos,” Camille muttered, looking down at her plate and flushing furiously.

The countess’s nostrils flared, but she looked directly at the lieutenant and said, “Please accept my apologies, Officer.”

Papadakos was so embarrassed, his dark face was tinged with pink. He could not bear to look at her and he could manage barely a nod.

Elliott cast a pleased smile at his mother and, shocked, she returned it. “You say you have an idea as to begin implementing our plan?”

“Yes,” she said briskly. “You gentlemen and Camille are expected at Lady North’s masquerade a fortnight hence, are you not?”

“We are, in fact.”

“Celia?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent, then. I have in mind the perpetration of a more explicit charade than the one you and … Celia … have already done. In this case, however, Celia would attend as herself.”

“Which self?” Celia drawled. “I have two or three.”

That wrested a surprised laugh from those gathered.

“However it is you go about on your ship.”

Elliott leaned toward Celia and pointed his fork at his mother, but spoke as if revealing a great secret, “You see that woman there? She is a strategist to put me to shame and, though she is loath to admit it, has a good deal of evil lurking within her—and she needs only the slightest of excuses to put it to use.”

• • •

THAT EVENING, ELLIOTT left Sophie’s chambers after having spent an hour soothing her wounded feelings, attempting to explain Celia—though that was nigh impossible—and praising and petting each of her dogs. He returned to his apartments as satisfied as he could be under the circumstances only to meet Ben in the threshold. The old man smiled wryly and murmured, “Lovely woman, Commander. Were I thirty years younger … ”

Elliott snorted. “She has a taste for older men. I may have something to fear from you.”

Ben chuckled and departed down the hall toward the servants’ stairs. Celia, in a delicious state of dishabille, was ensconced at his secretary, writing in a thick, leatherbound book. When he glanced over her shoulder, she covered the page with her hand and said primly, “Do you mind? ’Tis my private journal, which is not for anyone’s consumption. Not even yours.”

Since that was something he could very well appreciate, he went to his dressing room where Piefke silently assisted him. “Are you well fed?” he called.

She grunted, which he took as an affirmative.

“She ate an entire second supper once she retired and bathed, Cap’n,” Piefke whispered with a hint of approval.

“Excellent. Did you tend her bath and stitch her wound?”

“I did. She would trust no one else. I am … honored.”

Elliott chuckled. “Half my ranks seem to be enchanted by her.”

“You no less, Sir.”

“That is a surety. Leave us now. We are not to be disturbed until breakfast.”

No one in his family had dared question the staff’s rightful assumption that Celia would be sharing Elliott’s chambers and bed for the duration of her sojourn. Further, she would also be sharing Elliott’s valet, as she would not tolerate a female servant who was terrified by her nor a crewman she did not already know from the Silver Shilling. ’Twas the most scandalous thing the Raxham family had ever witnessed.

Elliott smirked when he remembered the looks of horror on their faces, then the frantic no when he had asked them coolly if they had any particular objection.

Celia was in his bed by the time he left his dressing room. He slipped into it beside her and pulled her naked body to his. She melted into him with a kiss, but he whispered, “You have not prepared for me to love you—last night or tonight—and I have no French letters.”

“No need,” she murmured, her eyes closed. “I cannot bear children, do you recall. Why should I continue to deceive myself by staving off children I cannot have anyroad?”

With a resigned sigh, he returned her kiss.

Aye, she was barren.

It was that thought he took into her welcoming body and sowed his seed on ground that would never yield a harvest.

---

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