The Pirate's Tempting Stowaway (6 page)

Less than a fortnight later, Clara climbed to the main deck where the breaking dawn sent shimmers of color dancing across the blue of the sea. Her breath caught at the beauty. She clutched the handrail and gazed in wonder at the endlessness of the ocean and the welcome warmth of the sun. After her week of quarantine had ended, she’d greeted every single day with the same awe and delight.
 

She was
alive
.
 

Not just physically, although her health had also been improving on a daily basis. It was more than that. It was the constant breeze in her hair, the taste of salt upon her tongue, the rustle of sails as the wind changed course, the raucous flurry of sailors swabbing decks and swilling grog.
 

She grinned. She was an honored guest aboard a
pirate ship
.
 

The men were coarse but amiable, cuffing the backs of each other’s heads and tossing merry insults about in completely incomprehensible sailors’ cant. They treated each other like family, and they treated Clara like…well, the boatswain had at least stopped muttering
Jonah
under his breath every time she walked past. He now called her
siren
—with the same level of cheek and suspicion.

She tilted her face into the sunrise and laughed. They weren’t sparing her the slightest quarter. She felt like family, too.
 

Her stomach grumbled. Clara quickly made her way to the mess tables.

She could have had anything she wished sent to the cabin instead—Mr. Steele had left standing orders that his meal privileges and private cook were to be extended to her as well—but after months of solitary confinement, she would much rather break her fast amongst a rowdy group of sailors than to spend one more moment trapped in a lonely chamber.

The boatswain was already seated at the mess tables when she descended the hatchway.

“Siren,” he muttered under his breath, and pushed a crust of bread toward the sole empty place setting.

“Good morning, Barnaby,” she answered cheerfully as she took her place at the opposite side of the table. She had no idea if “Barnaby” was his surname or his Christian name, but he was unlikely to be offended by any lack in polite manners.

A tea setting along with two sugar cubes stood next to her empty plate as they did every morning. As she buttered the crust of bread the boatswain had passed her, the kettle began to screech.

“I’ll fetch it,” said one of the swabs, whose duties Clara was absolutely certain did not include tea-pouring.
 

Nonetheless, she thanked him for his kindness and set about fixing her tea.
 

“’Tis a splendid thing I only take one cup of tea in the mornings,” she teased as she breathed in the fresh aroma. “With these rations, I’d have to use far less sugar.” She gave a dramatic shiver. “The
horror
.”

Marlowe, the sailing master, raised an eyebrow in her direction. “You’re the only one who gets them rations, miss. Rest of us suffer along.”

Clara was so pleased at being called
miss
—despite her youth, having a grown daughter at home limited the opportunity—that at first she didn’t register the rest of the sailing master’s words. She turned to him in surprise. “Pirates keep sugar cubes on hand in case ladies visit?”

“Not ladies.” Barnaby swilled the last of his tea. “
You
.”

She bared her teeth to acknowledge the slight, then turned her questioning gaze toward the sailing master.

Marlowe shrugged. “They’re supposed to be for Blackheart’s tea. Now we leave them here for you. Captain’s orders.”

She tilted her head in confusion. Other than keeping her next to him every night with a protective arm locked tight about her midriff, Mr. Steele was often too busy during the day to have time to spare for conversation. She was surprised he even knew how she took her tea. They hadn’t breakfasted together since…the inn.

He was not indifferent to her after all.
 

Clara dropped her gaze back to her teacup as warmth spread through her. The idea that an arrogant, overbearing pirate would sacrifice his limited personal resources just to ensure his captive’s tea was to her liking was…disarmingly romantic.

When the men stood to resume their posts, she followed Barnaby and Marlowe up to the front of the ship, then hesitated behind the mast. Mr. Steele was at the helm, his hands on the spokes of the wheel.
 

He was breathtaking in the morning light. The salty breeze ruffled thick dark hair that was getting long enough to curl at the ends. His pose was casual, but his musculature and his height lent him the appearance of coiled power. He hadn’t shaved since leaving America, and his strong jaw was now covered with a short black beard, the side whiskers of which were sprinkled with salt-and-pepper.

She shouldn’t be attracted to him. A
gentleman
would keep his face clear of whiskers. A gentleman’s teeth wouldn’t flash white against sun-bronzed skin when he smiled. A gentleman wouldn’t steer a schooner with an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth as morning broke overhead.

A gentleman wouldn’t have rescued her from her own prison and manipulated her aboard a pirate ship in order to reunite her with her daughter.

She couldn’t help but find him attractive and shameless and impossible and intriguing.
 

And dangerous, she reminded herself firmly. After her husband’s death, Clara had spent decades crafting a bland life and a safe world for herself and her daughter. The last person she needed to let into her life was a pirate.
 

Being anywhere near him or his ship was inherently perilous. Caring about him from afar would be just as dangerous. She’d already experienced the devastating loss of her beloved husband. Sending Grace across the ocean had been equally as bad. The last thing Clara needed was to develop feelings of any sort for someone who was guaranteed to leave her. Willfully or on accident, he could disappear at any time.

Long absences at sea. Deadly skirmishes. Threat of prison, of the hangman’s noose, of shipwreck and disease. Blackheart was the worst possible match in every conceivable way.
 

Match? For heaven’s sake. She could admire his form and enjoy the warmth of his proximity at night without being so foolish as to get her heart involved.
 

The voyage was almost over. She would simply treat the rest of this journey like the grand adventure it was.
 

A fortnight ago, she’d been alone in her empty cottage, coughing into a threadbare pillow. Today, she’d watched the sun rise over the ocean and then breakfasted with pirates. ’Twas a holiday to remember. The most fun she’d had in years.

She stepped out from behind the mast and crossed over to the rails, from which she could watch Mr. Steele and his crew.
 

Because her only other experience at sea was the crowded passenger liner she’d taken to America twenty-two years earlier, her knowledge of pirates was limited to stories she’d read and the occasional article in the local newspaper.
 

According to lore, a pirate crew was a dirty, foul-mouthed mob of barefoot heathens with razor-sharp cutlasses clenched between their few remaining teeth, dressed in torn clothes or colorful rags that were rotting off their skin from a piratical disinclination to bathe.

Mr. Steele’s crew certainly took deep satisfaction in stringing together so much sailors’ cant and bawdy epithets that it was almost its own language, but that’s where the similarity ended. Most of the men were grubby by nightfall due to a long day of cleaning or cooking or carpentry and other tasks, but they otherwise looked shockingly…normal.

“Tell me, gentlemen,” she called out, propping her elbows on the rails. “How long have you been pirates? None of you have earrings. Or an eyepatch. And no one’s missing any hands or legs.”

Mr. Steele shot her a quelling look. “Difficult to steer with hooks for hands, don’t you think?”

She smiled back at him innocently. “I imagine it would be difficult for a sailor to do many things with hooks for hands.”

“Of course we ’ave eyepatches,” Barnaby cut in. “We only wear them when we need to. Like boarding a ship.”

She straightened her spine with interest. “Eyepatches aid in boarding vessels?”

“They aid in not going blind when you drop from the sun to a lower deck. Switch the patch from one side to the other, and your other eye sees clear as day.”

Clara stared at him, impressed. That was a far more logical explanation for the proliferation of eyepatches aboard pirate ships than to assume they were all so incompetent as to routinely get their eyes poked out—and yet proficient enough to then vanquish their opponent rather than perish in the battle.

“May I have an eyepatch?” she asked Blackheart.

He didn’t even glance away from the wheel. “No.”

“But what if we need to board a vessel?” she asked in a reasonable voice. “I don’t want to be the only one who goes blind from the shock of sun to darkness.”

“You needn’t worry.” He gave her a placid smile. “If we so much as see another ship, I’m locking you in the cabin.”

She didn’t doubt it. “How many ships have you snuck onto?”

Marlowe grinned. “Countless.”

“We don’t sneak,” Barnaby countered. “Ain’t had to. Had the King’s blessing, we did. Letter of marque from the crown.”

She leaned forward, intrigued. “You were privateers?”

“Until the end of the war.” Barnaby rapped his bread against the table. “Much more fun than slogging tents and munitions along the front lines.”
 

Marlowe cast him an amused look. “Plus you had that bit o’ muslin over in Ramsgate, did you not?”

“Frances,” Barnaby sighed happily.

The sailing master chuckled. “Didn’t you have another mort in a tavern in Southampton?”

“Ah, Leticia…” Barnaby wiggled his eyebrows. “Miss that dimber wench. Can’t we drop the siren off in Southampton, Cap’n?”

“No.”

“How about Ramsgate?”

Steele glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t you have sails to inspect and supply stores to organize? It would be a shame if you missed tonight’s card games. I’ll be opening my best bottle of port.”

Barnaby grumbled all the way to the ladder but winked at Clara before he disappeared down the hatchway.

She couldn’t help but smile. Of course the crew enjoyed every minute of their adventures. Barnaby was older, but he no doubt felt young and indestructible and fearless every time they set sail. Clara couldn’t help but feel that way herself.
 
Especially after believing for so long that her life was over.

She leaned back against the rails and fixed her eyes on Mr. Steele. “Now that you’re no longer a government-licensed privateer, what guides you? Do you steal from the rich and give to the poor, like Robin Hood?”

“Course not.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her above his cigar. “I would look foppish in that hat.”

“We
are
the poor,” Marlowe put in. His lips quirked. “At least, we were before we joined Blackheart aboard the
Dark Crystal
. Have you any idea what Royal Navy wages are like?”

She blinked in surprise. “You were a naval sailor?”

Marlowe nodded. “We all were. Then we got keen. Best to work for oneself.”

“More fun, fewer rules?” she guessed.

“Blackheart has more rules than a nunnery,” the sailing master laughed. “No stealing anything of sentimental value. No nicking coin the cull can’t afford to lose. No killing anyone who ain’t actively trying to kill you. No borrowing rum from Blackheart’s private store if you want to keep your fingers. No females aboard the ship for any reason. Present company exempted, of course. We’re being paid to ferry you.”

“No offense taken,” she assured him in a faint voice. She was just a package. A payday. She’d do well to remember that.

Not that she had any wish to be otherwise. Their contract with the Earl of Carlisle was what was keeping her fed and safe. And in a few short days, she would once again be able to hug her daughter. Once she had her family back, she would never let them go.
 

Hers was not a future destined for adventure. It was a future full of peace, of security, of happiness. Just as she liked it.

“How many treasure maps have you found?” she asked to change the subject.

Mr. Steele sent her a baffled look. “Why the devil would you draw a map that could help someone else find your treasure?”

“I don’t know…” Drat. She’d loved the romance of the idea. “So you can find it later?”

Marlowe looked at her with the same bewilderment. “How would you forget where you’d left treasure? Why wouldn’t you sell it for gold to begin with?”

“Maybe the treasure
is
gold,” she said defensively. “Don’t ask me. I’m not a pirate. I learned about treasure maps in the newspaper.”

Steele arched his black brows. “In a news article or the fairy story section?”

Her cheeks flushed. She had loved those stories. Believed them to be based on…something. Someone. Just because
he’d
never had a reason to sketch a map didn’t mean such things didn’t exist.