“Strip him.” I cleared the nervous jitter from my voice and gave Reynolds my back, leaving him to deal with Priest’s unconscious body. “I want him naked and defenseless when we lock him in the hold.”
Where did I put my favorite shirt? Ah! There. I snatched it from the floor and pulled it on over my linen corset.
“Naked?” Reynolds asked behind me. “You sure, Captain?” “Yes.”
Was I? Seeing Priest without his breeches wouldn’t exactly help me let go and move on. But I wanted his humility. I needed it.
“Nudity doesn’t affect my brother like normal folks.” He shifted, creaking the boards with the sway of the ship. “If anything, it gives him more confidence. Especially around you.”
“He hid my compass, Reynolds, and you’re going to search every crease and crevice, starting with the ones on his person.”
“He did what?”
As I updated him on Priest’s latest treachery, I exchanged my slip for a pair of trousers and laced on my knee-high boots.
Fully dressed, I turned to find Reynolds bent over the nude, unmoving form on my bed. “Tell me you found it.”
“Not the compass. But Captain… He was hiding something else.”
The caution in his tone drew me closer. When I reached his side, my mouth dried. My eyes grew hot, and I shook my head, unable to make sense of the ravaged body before me.
From hip to ankle, Priest’s flesh rippled and warped like melted leather.
Dear God, his entire leg was unnaturally bubbled, hairless, scarred.
Burned.
He’d been burned so horrifically and completely on his left side it made my leg throb in sympathy.
“How?” I clutched my throat, recalling the flawless lines of his physique from two years ago. “When?”
“Not recently.” He rolled Priest onto his unmarred side and leaned down for a better look. “He’s fully healed.”
It was a wonder he’d survived the trauma. The burns all but swallowed his leg. He’d clearly lived through it, but at what cost? Had he endured the agonizing recovery alone?
I should have been there for him, taken care of him, for no rational reason I could name. He didn’t deserve my help or my sympathy.
“Put his breeches back on and tie his hands.” I couldn’t look at his ruined skin. Not because it made him less beautiful. But because his suffering made me feel like a failure, like a worthless, absent wife. “I’ll interrogate him once he’s secured in the bilge.”
Reynolds followed my order, restraining and heaving thirteen stones of listless muscle and menace over his shoulder.
I led him out the door and grabbed the first crew member I spotted—a rangy, malodorous, unwashed cabin boy.
“D’Arcy, assist Reynolds down to the hold.” I gave the stinky boy a shove, hurrying him along. “And call for the surgeon. I want Mr. Farrell’s head wound examined before the last bell of the dog watch.” My next order came with all the bark of my mother’s condescending voice. “Then you will find some clean clothes and a bucket to wash yourself.”
“Yes, Captain!” D’Arcy jumped, eager to please.
Reynolds lumbered after the boy, adjusting Priest’s body high on his shoulder. When they slipped around the corner, I returned to the cabin and leaned against the closed door.
At least, I had my father’s boots back. Now to recover the compass.
The hunt stretched late into the night. Anything not bolted down in my cabin was upended, pulled apart, and turned inside out. Even with Reynold’s help, the search was onerous. Frustration fused with exhaustion, and sometime after the last bell, I stood amid the debris and admitted defeat.
“It’s not here.” I collapsed into the desk chair.
“Shall I help you clean up?” Reynolds rehung a Caribbee chart tapestry on the wall and rubbed his forehead. “Or continue the search topside?”
“It can wait until sunrise. All of it. Get some sleep.”
“Will you?” He opened the door and glanced back at me.
Would I sleep? With my husband shackled just a few levels beneath me?
I gave a wan smile. “I’ll try.”
Sleep, as it turned out, proved as challenging as staying away. Priest was the flame to my moth-addled head. Every thought, every emotion, fluttered toward him, incessant. Restless. Destined to die a disgraceful death.
I waited five eternal hours before I emerged from my cabin.
In the faint light of dawn, I ordered a ship-wide search for the compass. As Jade sailed farther away from Jamaica, the crew scrambled to locate the prize, motivated by the extra ration of food I promised to the man who found it.
Leaving them to it, I descended below, beneath the galley, crew’s quarters, lower deck, and deeper still, through the hatch of the bilge.
At the bottom of the ladder, his voice—deep, self-assured, elongating the vowels of his Welsh accent—greeted me from the shadows. “I’ve been expecting you.”
I lit the lantern on the wall, squared my shoulders, and turned to face him. “Tell me about the scars.”
His head tilted, his expression momentarily unguarded and decisively mean. Just as quickly, his features blanked. A blatant refusal to talk.
The iron shackle at his ankle connected to the wall by a heavy chain. He didn’t bother rising from his sprawl in the corner, knowing I wouldn’t step within his reach.
“Were you tortured by someone?” I pulled an empty cask from the stores of water and used it as a stool to sit. “Or were you caught in a battle? A fire at sea?”
His jaw flexed, and he looked away, presenting a distinguished, angular profile the likes of a man born to the upper class. But an aristocrat he was not.
He ate with the same knife he killed with. Kissed noble ladies with the same mouth that spat on their respectability. And conquered his enemies
with a brutality that would never be found among echelons of the British government. He was proud to be a commoner and wielded it well, like my father.
Except my father hadn’t been a lying, cheating husband.
The wound on Priest’s head looked clean. No bandages or stitches needed. Perhaps I should have hit him harder.
His eyes shifted back to mine, and his mouth twisted, sensually, cruelly, provoking memories of its ruthlessness. I had an unnerving suspicion he was aware of the barest lift of my breasts, the slightest shift in my shoulders, every minuscule twitch I made to compensate muscle fatigue and discomfort.
Yet he spoke with cold, unflappable indifference. “You’re still angry.” “You’re still an arsehole.”
“You didn’t sleep a wink last night.” “I certainly—”
“We both know my proximity prevented a moment of rest. But you’ve always had trouble sleeping. It’s the nightmares. Do you still cry out for your mother?” He gentled his voice. “Beg her not to jump?”
Yes.
My throat constricted. “You haven’t seen me in two years. You don’t know me.”
“I know you better than anyone.”
I laughed, a forced sound of disbelief.
“I know you loathe dresses and frivolous accoutrement. You wear a boy’s shirt and trousers because it’s practical. But it also satisfies an innate need to resist your noble blood.” He inspected my clothing with a smirk. “You always wear a hat when the sun’s at its highest, claiming it’s to shade your eyes. But really, it’s to protect your skin. Because you were bred to favor a fair complexion.”
“Lucky guess,” I grumbled. “All based on information I should have never given you.”
“I know that pirating inspires a thrill in you like naught else. When too much time passes between raids, you chew your nails down to the quicks.” He glanced at the grown-out tips on my fingers. “You’ve been busy. Coming off a long successful stretch at sea, I wager.”
Damn his perceptiveness. I balled my hands, hiding the evidence.
“When silent and at ease, you’re the picture of a demure patrician beauty, and those eyes… Christ, they’re so blue and huge, like an innocent, wide-eyed child. They’re beguiling. Misleading.” He fingered the cut on his head and frowned. “The moment someone challenges you, the world is reminded that Edric Sharp sired a vicious force to be reckoned with.”
I hadn’t thought of myself that way, but the observation pleased me.
He gave me the full attention of his gaze, one that seemed intent on settling the debate of our intimacy. “I’m the only one who knows your upbringing.”
“Charles Vane knew.”
“He died four days ago. On your father’s birthday.”
I choked on an ambivalent mass of emotions, resenting his knowledge yet grateful he remembered. “That’s enough.”
“If you hear the words roll over during the heat of passion, you become violently ill. You don’t just relive the Marquess of Grisdale’s assault—shall he rot in hell for eternity.” He flexed his hands. “You also relive the deaths of your parents.”
“Stop.” My voice broke, trapped against a sob. I tried to push it down, pull myself free, but it was like trying to outrun a tidal wave.
Tears began to leak. Rampant and hot, they coursed down my cheeks and gathered at the hand I held against my mouth.
“I know how badly you need the key to your father’s compass.” He blinked, a slow fall of lashes. “Not for the riches it would bring. You desperately hope it will lead you to a letter, words of love or affirmation, something personal he might have left for you before he died.”
Mercy God, how did he know that? I never told anyone any of this. Yet every word was painfully, brutally accurate.
“Where is it?” I slammed a fist against the barrel beneath me.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t give me the satisfaction of wavering in the least.
What did I expect? That he would cough up the compass? Agree to a divorce? Promise to leave me in peace?
I met his stare. “How were you burned?” Silence. A glaring, cold, stone wall of silence. I shouldn’t have come down here.
The man was locked in irons, stripped of weapons, and still managed to overpower me.
I hugged my waist and closed my eyes, wishing with all my heart I could feel my father’s arms around me again. I missed him terribly. My mother, too.
What was the point of anything if I didn’t have someone to fight for and fight with, to love and hate, to miss and be missed?
The only person still alive to miss me was my husband. And despite his unforgivable betrayal, he was the one I missed the most.
I missed the feel of him, the vibration of his voice against my cheek, the comforting, euphoric sensations only he could stir in me. I missed our conversations, his thought-provoking words in my ear while he held me tight against muscle that was molded and buffed like shining armor.
The truth was I hadn’t come down here for the compass. What I sought had been missing for two years.
I wasn’t usually this needy. From the moment I heard about Charles Vane’s capture, I’d been off-balance. Then came his death, Priest’s sudden appearance, the missing compass—all of it was clouding my judgment.
“Bennett.” Silver-gray eyes commanded my attention, glinting like blades, sharp enough to shorten my breaths. They weren’t the eyes of a captive in shackles, for they showed no fear. “I’m calling a cease-fire. A temporary truce.”
“Your games wear thin.”
“No games. No deceit. No seduction. We’re going to yield. Just for a little while.”
“Priest Farrell surrender? That’ll be the day.”
“No. We’re simply going to set aside our disputes. The fighting, name- calling, resenting—it will all be waiting once you’re rested and ready to pick up where we left off. In the meantime, you’re going to walk over here, get some sleep, and I’m going to hold you while you do.”
What he offered was too good to be true. There was a catch, a trick up his sleeve. Only there were no sleeves. No shirt on that delectable body.
That was the trap. Half-naked Priest held the advantage, and when he looked at me, he saw my weaknesses. My vulnerabilities. He knew precisely how to hurt me.
“Stop over-thinking it.” He stretched out his legs and opened his arms. “Be a good girl and come here. Right now.”
I didn’t trust him. Not at all. I was the one in charge. The captain of this ship.
But he’d always been my captain. The one I could depend on while one- hundred-and-twenty men depended on me.
I saw myself slipping off the cask, my tired legs carrying me toward his waiting arms. I saw him guiding me onto his lap. Tucking my head into the warm, solid juncture of his bare shoulder and neck. Rocking me into a peaceful lull. Murmuring in his dulcet Welsh baritone. Stroking my hair, my arm, my face. I saw us sinking into the intimacy of our bodies, breathing into it, into that space where our heat gathered, where our scents mingled and fused, where there was no physical contact yet a full-body awareness of its existence.
It was unreal, just imagining it. Remembering it. I craved the feeling. Yearned to collect it, bottle it, and carry it with me always. Maybe if I indulged one more time…
No, no, I needed to stop. My heart was too broken, my head too crowded with conflict.
Priest had fooled me once, but I couldn’t regret that failure. How else would I learn, if not from my own mistakes?
I blinked, drew in a breath, and forced myself to see what was really in front of me. No matter how hard we tried or how much we changed, the shattered remains of yesterday would never fit into today. Too many broken pieces.
He gazed at me with unblinking focus, assessing my body language, studying my expressions, tracking my every breath.
I couldn’t stand it. “You can drop that silent stare. I’m not that interesting.”
“I disagree.” He patted his lap. “Come.”
“Ask me.” I leaned forward and hardened my eyes. “Beg.”
He made a fierce face, complete with a bestial snarl, flared nostrils, and bared teeth. Just when I thought he would explode, he reined it all in.
“Will you sit with me?” His jaw worked through grinding resistance before he bit out the rest. “Please, sit with me?”
“No.”
“Dammit, woman!” He flew to his feet, rattling the chain and flexing his arms. “Let me hold you for one godforsaken minute!”
“Forget it, Priest. Or better yet…” I rose from the barrel, fighting exhaustion. “Forget me.”
“Never.”
“Why?”
“You know why.” “Remind me.”
“Free me, and I’ll show—”
“Now, now, my unfaithful knave. I cannot trust you aboard my ship unless I carry you as a prisoner, for we both know you’ll be caballing with my men, clapping me in those irons, and running away with my ship a- pirating.”
“Unshackle me, and I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you—” “What will you show me?” My voice rose through several octaves.
“Love?”
“Yes.”
“Love doesn’t betray.” That familiar pain announced itself in the cracks of my voice. “Why did you do it?”
“Believe me…” He dropped his head back on his shoulders and breathed out through his nose. “It wasn’t on purpose.”
“Oh? It was an accident, then? How does that work? Did you fall out of my bed and accidentally land in someone else’s vagina?”
“You think I wanted this?” He leveled his gaze on mine. “I never wanted to hurt you. Hell, I didn’t even know I was capable of falling in love. God knows I never meant for it to happen twice and certainly not at the same damn time.”
I gnashed my teeth. “A person can’t be in love with two people.”
“Wish that were true. It’s caused me nothing but misery and loneliness.” “Give me her name.”
His eyes drifted shut, a deliberate gesture of reluctance.
“She rejected you.” My chest hurt. I didn’t deserve this. “Why are you protecting her?”
“I protect what I love.” His gaze returned to mine, unflinching in its cruel honesty. “Simple as that.”
“I see.” Everything inside me collapsed and burned as I moved toward the ladder. “Last chance to surrender the compass.”
“Can’t do that, Bennett.”
With a boot on the bottom rung, I stared up at the hatch, composing my thoughts.
“If I overlooked your philandering… If I could be the sort of woman who shared her husband with his paramours, all our disputes would go
away. You would return my compass. I would welcome you back into my bed. You would have your lovers on the side. And I would have mine.”
I paused, letting him absorb that last part before glancing back at him.
Fists clenched at his sides, bare feet spread in a warrior stance, mouth a hard slash, complexion red with ire—he glared in shock.
Oh, yes. He’d heard every word.
“Don’t look at me like that, darling.” I cocked my head. “You set the guidelines for our marriage. I’m simply following your lead.”
“No. Hell no. By the Virgin Mother’s blood, I’m warning you.” His breathing accelerated, and his voice strained with barely controlled violence as a long menacing finger thrust in my direction. “I will not share you with another.”
“Know this, Priest Farrell. If you don’t return my compass, sharing is exactly what you’ll do.”
“Bennett!” His roar chased me up the ladder and through the hatchway.
As I strode along the dark passages, climbed up a level, and walked aft to the next scuttle, I could still hear him bellowing my name.
My threat had shaken him, just as I’d hoped. Whether I could follow through on it was another story. Right now I was determined enough to lead a crew member down to the bilge and fuck him in front of Priest. I fisted my hands, angry enough to do all manner of horrible things.
“Captain!” Reynolds stopped me on the lower deck. “How did it go?”
“As expected.” I held up a hand and listened. Either Priest had quieted, or the din from the nearby crew’s quarters consumed his shouting. “Did you find the compass?”
“No.” He wiped sweat from his brow and grimaced. “Searched the jolly boat. Stripped the upper deck and every wall and barrel he passed last night to your cabin.”
“It’s here.” I pushed by him, heading topside. “Keep looking.”
“Jobah spotted sails off the larboard bow.” He waited until I turned around, his voice hushed. “A British slave ship.”
My heart rate spiked. “Sailing from St. Christopher?” “We believe so.”
“Can we take it?”
“Aye.” He flashed a barracuda smile bristling with large, sharp teeth. I grinned with him, teetering on the verge of sudden laughter.
With the cultivation of sugar cane on St. Christopher came the need for laborers. A gluttonous demand for strong, hard-working bodies. Hence the rampant importation of African slaves.
My family owned slaves in Carolina. Native women had cooked my meals, prepared my baths, and styled my hair. I was ignorant of what that meant until four years ago when I met Jobah.
The day I decided to attack his slave ship—a year before I met Priest and Reynolds—it hadn’t been out of heroism or benevolence. I had no idea what was crammed, starved, and shackled together in the cargo hold.
That horrific discovery had earned me a sword through the belly.
My hand fell to the scar that cut across my abdomen. Jobah had saved me that day. Not only had he escaped his chains and killed the guard who stabbed me, but he carried me off that ship and to my surgeon before I bled to death.
Afterward, he could’ve returned to his homeland with the rest of his people. Instead, he chose to stay with me.
Over the years, I taught him English and how to navigate a fifty-gun galleon. And he taught me the value of freedom. His firsthand accounts of his months aboard a slave ship still haunted me. He would always wear the scars of a slave, but he was no longer that man. In fact, he was the best damn pilot on the high seas.
“Prepare the larboard batteries.” I ascended the final ladder and rose from the dark belly of Jade, shouting into the sunlight, “Jobah! Gather your charts and meet me at the helm!”
“Your hat, Captain.” D’Arcy hopped into my path, holding out the black one I preferred that was cocked on three sides.
“Thanks, lad.” I jammed it onto my head as excitement washed over my heart.
Too bad Priest wouldn’t be up here to enjoy this. But he’d made his choice, and that choice wasn’t me.
Shoving away thoughts of my failed marriage and missing compass, I stared up at the mighty double-spoked wheel, which stretched almost as tall as the formidable African man standing behind it.
Jobah’s dark eyes blazed down at me, igniting a fire in my soul.
I hurried up the ladder to his side to prepare our attack and rid the sea of men more evil than me.
