The Lost Gentleman
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Kate thought of Coyote out there somewhere behind, following Raven. ‘I see.’ She forced the curve to her lips, but inside her stomach was clenched with worry and there was a cold realisation spreading through her blood.
‘Wonderful, is it not?’
Wonderful was not the word Kate was thinking to describe it. The priest was awaiting her reply, but she was saved from having to make one by the arrival of a call that rang out from the crewman in the rigging.
‘Ship ahoy!’
It was the words that until only a few minutes ago Kate had been praying to hear. Now, in view of what Reverend Dr Gunner had just told her, they left her with mixed emotions.
* * *
‘South-south-west.’
Kit scanned the horizon in that direction and saw the tiny spot. Raising his spyglass to his eyes, he trained it hard upon the ship and focused.
He heard the familiar tread of Gunner’s boots strolling over towards him. He heard nothing of the woman, but knew she was there from the reassurances Gunner was speaking to her.
They stood there quietly by his side, the woman between him and his shipmate. Gunner, not wanting to interrupt Kit’s concentration, stood content and quiet in his own meditations.
The silence stretched.
It was the woman who broke it.
‘What do you see, sir?’ she asked.
‘A schooner.’
‘Is it the pirates? The same pirates...?’
He snapped the spyglass shut and turned to look at her. ‘It is difficult to say at this distance.’
He felt that same slight prickle of tension and hostility that emanated from her.
‘Mrs Medhurst is understandably a little nervous,’ Gunner said. ‘I have tried to convince her of our superior strength, but...’ He smiled and gave a shrug of his shoulders.
‘Rest assured, ma’am, if Coyote is fool enough to come after us with vengeance in mind, then, as I am sure Reverend Dr Gunner has already pointed out, we will have disabled her before she is within range to fire her own guns. She has only eight small ones, mainly four and six pounders, nine if you include the swivel gun on the rail, to our eighteen larger.’
‘How can you know that?’ She looked pale in the bright morning sun.
‘I have a very good spyglass.’ He smiled. ‘And I counted.’
She swallowed and did not look reassured.
‘Calm your nerves, ma’am, if La Voile’s crew threaten violence they will go the same way as their captain.’
He saw the flicker of something in those eyes trained on the distant ship before she masked it, something that looked a lot like fear, there then gone.
‘Have I convinced you, Mrs Medhurst?’
‘Yes, Captain North, I do believe you have.’ Her eyes held his and she smiled, but it was not an easy smile. ‘May I?’ Her eyes flickered to the spyglass in his hand.
She could not have known what she was asking. A sea captain did not lend his spyglass lightly. But she stood there patiently waiting, with those Atlantic grey eyes fixed on his. There was no sign of any fear now. She seemed all still calmness, but he sensed that slight tension that underlay her. Her hands were steady as she accepted the spyglass and peered through it, adjusting its focus to suit her eyes. She looked and those tiny seconds stretched.
At last she closed the spyglass and returned it to him, their eyes meeting as she did so.
‘Thank you.’ Her American lilt was soft against his ears. ‘If you will excuse me, gentlemen. I think I will retire to my cabin for a little while, if you don’t mind.’
They made their devoirs.
His eyes followed her walking away across that deck to the hatch, the gentle sway of her hips, the proud high-held head. Despite the faded black muslin, chip-straw bonnet and bare feet, she had an air about her of poise and confidence.
‘She is afraid,’ said Gunner softly.
‘Yes,’ agreed Kit, his gaze still fixed on her retreating figure. She was afraid, but not in the way any other woman would have been afraid. There was a strength about her, an antipathy, and something else that he could not quite work out.
He glanced up to find Gunner watching him.
‘Is it Coyote?’ Gunner asked with just the tiniest raise of his brows.
‘Without a doubt,’ replied Kit smoothly.
* * *
Kate closed the door of the cabin behind her and leaned her spine against it, resting there as if she could block out North and the situation she found herself in.
If La Voile’s crew threaten violence, they will go the same way as their captain. North’s words sounded again in her mind, and she did not doubt them, not for an instant. Not because of rumours or reputations, but because she had seen the evidence with her own eyes.
Her men were coming for her. And they would most definitely threaten violence. Raven’s sails made her fast. But not faster than Coyote.
Sunny Jim was an experienced seaman. He would see the change in Raven’s sails, but he would not see anything that was designed to stay hidden. Not the long-range guns or their number, or the fact Coyote would be hit before she could fire a shot. Not the weaponry aboard, or, worse than any of that, the mind of the man who was a more formidable enemy than any fireside tale foretold.
He would not realise that Coyote did not stand a rat’s chance against Raven.
Have I convinced you, Mrs Medhurst?
He had more than convinced her. She had seen the cold promise in those eyes of his, the utter certainty.
Fear and dread squirmed in her stomach. She thought of Sunny Jim and of how much she respected the old man who had been her grandfather’s friend. She thought of young John Rishley and how he had his whole life to live in front of him. She thought of each and every man upon Coyote. She knew them all and their families, too.
‘Sweet Lord, help them,’ she whispered the prayer aloud. ‘Make them turn back.’
But they wouldn’t turn back. She was their captain. They were coming. She knew it and North knew it, too. If her men reached Raven, their fate was sealed and the knowledge chilled her to the bone.
She couldn’t just let it happen. She couldn’t just let them sail unwittingly to their deaths.
So Kate sat down at the priest’s little desk and she thought and she prayed, but no answer came. And then she remembered the distant islands and how all of the attention of North and his crew would be on Coyote growing steadily bigger. The first tiny hint of an idea whispered in her ear. She knew these waters, all of their layout and what was in them and on them. Any good Louisiana privateer or pirate did. And Sunny Jim was a good Louisiana pirate, too.
It was not the best of plans, she knew that. It was risky. It could go wrong in so many ways. But it was the only plan she could think of, and she would rather take a chance with it than sit here and let her men sail to their doom. Anything was better than allowing their confrontation with North.
Pulling up her skirts, Kate unbuckled the leather straps of her holsters and hid them with her weapons beneath the cot. Then she smoothed her skirts down in place, and, with a deep breath, made her way to the upper deck to wait for the right moment.
* * *
‘We need to veer to the north,’ said Kit. He stood on the quarterdeck with Gunner, the two of them pouring over the navigational chart that covered this area. With one of his men dedicated to watching Coyote full time, Kit could get on with navigating Raven through these waters. ‘Regardless of what the charts say, we do not want to be too close to that cluster of rocky outcrops, or what lies beneath.’
Gunner gave a nod. ‘One cannot always trust the charts and it is better to be safe than sorry.’
‘Bear to larboard, Mr Briggs,’ Kit gave the command to his helmsman. Raven began to alter course ever so slightly, taking her in a broader sweep clear of the rocks.
‘Clearly visible in daylight, but at night, in the dark... I bet there have been more than a few gone to meet their maker by that means.’
The two of them mulled that truth for a few minutes in silence as they watched those dark, jagged, rocky bases ahead. Kit would not mind meeting his maker. Indeed, over the years part of him had wished for death. But not quite yet.
His gaze wandered to Raven’s bow, to where Kate Medhurst had stood for so long, staring out at the ocean ahead of them. Now the spot was empty. He scanned the deck and saw no sign of her.
‘Where is Mrs Medhurst?’ His eyes narrowed with focus.
‘She was right there...’ Gunner stopped. ‘Maybe she wanted some shade from the fierceness of the sun.’
‘Some shade...’ Kit murmured the words to himself and in his mind’s eye saw the dark awning fixed across Coyote’s quarterdeck. Something about the scene niggled at him, but he could not put his finger on why.
‘Probably returned to her cabin.’
‘When the cabins are like sweat boxes and there is shade behind us?’ Kit raised an eyebrow and met Gunner’s gaze. ‘How long has she been gone?’
‘No idea. Could be two minutes, could be twenty. Some time while we were engaged with the charts.’ Gunner was looking at him. ‘Call of nature?’
‘Perhaps.’ But he had a bad feeling. ‘Better to take no chances.’ They both knew he was responsible for her safety while she was aboard Raven.
‘Has anyone seen Mrs Medhurst?’ Gunner asked of the crew.
‘Lady went below some time since,’ Smithy answered from where he was holystoning the deck.
Kit and Gunner exchanged a look and went below.
Kit gestured his head towards Gunner’s old cabin that, for now, belonged to Mrs Medhurst. Gunner nodded and went to knock on the door.
There was only silence in response. Gunner opened the door, then glanced round at Kit with a shake of the head.
‘The head?’ suggested Gunner. ‘I will let you check that one.’ He grinned.
‘You are too kind.’ But Kit didn’t balk from it. He headed to the bow and knocked on the door that led out onto the ship’s head. There was no one outside. But folded neatly and tucked in behind the ledge was black dyed muslin. Kit lifted it out and Kate Medhurst’s dress fluttered like the black flag of a pirate within his hand.
‘What in heavens...?’ Gunner shot him a worried glance.
The two men looked from the dress outside to the open platform of the head.
‘She cannot possibly have... Can she?’ Gunner whispered in horror.
Kit stepped out first on to the ledge of the head with Gunner following behind.
‘Hell!’ Kit had not cursed in eighteen months, but one escaped him now. For there in the clear green water a distance from Raven was Kate Medhurst, swimming smoothly and efficiently with purpose. Oblivious to the two men that stood watching her, and oblivious, too, to the sinister dark shape beneath the water out near the rocky outcrops.
Kit and Gunner’s gazes met and held for a tiny fraction of a second and then they were running full tilt for the upper deck.
Chapter Three
The water was colder that Kate had anticipated and the distance to the rocks looked further in the water than it had done from up on Raven. The cotton of her shift was thin, but it still caught around her legs and swirled in the water enough to slow her progress. But the dive had been seamless and quiet and she was a strong enough swimmer, taught by her father when she was still a girl. He had seen too many people drown and insisted that it might save her life one day. It might save several other lives, too, she thought wryly, if she made it to those rocks unnoticed and was able to flag down Coyote when she passed.
Each stroke of her arms, and each kick of her legs, was careful and as smooth as possible, trying to avoid any splashing or noise that would draw a stray glance from Raven as she cleared the shadow of the ship.
Quiet and smooth.
Breathe.
Keep going.
The three-line mantra whispered through her head. She did not look up and she did not look back. Instead, she kept her focus fixed firmly on the closest of the group of tiny rocky islands that lay in a direct line ahead. All she had to do was swim to it. North and his crew’s attention would all be to the larboard and stern. Kate was starboard and swimming clear. She would have to be real unlucky for them to see her.
Quiet and smooth.
Breathe.
Keep going.
And then she heard the shouts.
Her heart sank.
Keep going. They had what they thought was La Voile’s body; it was enough to secure their bounty. They did not need her. And North was an Englishman and a scoundrel to boot. He would not come back for her, but sail right on.
But the shouts grew louder, more frantic, so that she could no longer pretend she did not hear them. She glanced behind and saw what looked like every man on the ship crowded on to the upper deck. And there, at the stern, she could see North, his coat stripped off to expose his white shirt beneath, busy with a rope. The black-robed priest was by his side helping him and she knew in that moment, whatever else North was, he was not a man who sailed away and left a woman in the water.
She stopped swimming and trod water, knowing that to swim on would only make things look worse for her. One last glance at the tiny rocky islands and freedom. A movement flickered at the side of her eye. She shifted her gaze and saw across the beautiful clear green water the tall grey dorsal fin heading directly her way.
Time seemed to stop. For a tiny moment she froze, then turned and swam as fast as she could back towards Raven and North and all that she had fled. Her enemy had turned, in one split second, to her only hope. She could feel the beat of her heart and the cold sensation of terror as all of her life flashed before her eyes in a multitude of tiny fast frozen scenes. Ben and little Bea. Wendell. Her mother and father. Sunny Jim. Tobias with his dead unseeing eyes. And North. Why North, she did not know, but he was there with that sharp perceptive gaze of his.
She did not look back. She did not need to. It did not matter if North sent the jolly boat down. In maritime stories people always swam fast and made it to the safety of the boat just in the nick of time before the shark reached them. And she wanted so much to believe those yarns right now. But the truth about sharks was that one moment they were two hundred yards away and the next they were right there in your face. They could swim real fast; faster than any man, and faster than a boat could be rowed. If you were in the water and they wanted you, then your time on this earth was over. Those who survived only did so because the shark let them, so her grandfather said. And he should know since he was one of those that did not taste so good to sharks. They took his foot, but not the rest of him.
Fear was coursing through her body, fatigue burning her muscles like fire. Her breathing was so hard and fast that she could taste blood at the back of her throat. She knew the shark must be right there, but she would not yield, not when she had so much to fight for. Not when Ben and little Bea still needed her.
Something big and hard bumped against her, knocking her off course. She pushed it away, flailing beneath the water, holding her breath, eyes wide open to see the big dark shape. The lazy flick of its tail was so powerful that she felt the vibration of it through the water. Her head broke the surface, her mouth gasping in great lungfuls of air as she watched the enormous white-tipped dorsal fin head towards Raven’s stern.
Something landed in the water between her and the shark. Something that was swimming towards her. Something that was North. She stared in disbelief.
A few strong strokes of his arms and he was there before her.
‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.
‘Stealing a shark’s meal.’ He pulled her to him. There was no smile upon his face, but there was something in his eyes that did not match the deadpan voice.
They stared at one another for a tiny moment and she felt as if he could see everything she was, all that she kept hidden from him, from her men, from all the world. As if her very soul was naked and exposed before him. As if he were not North, and she Le Voile. As if he were not British and she American. As if he were just a man and she just a woman with raw honesty and attraction between them. Making her forget about Wendell, making her forget about everything she had sworn, everything she was. All of this revealed, stark and sudden and undeniable in the tiny moments left of their lives. It shocked her, the depth of it, the absurdity of it in this situation.
Someone shouted a warning from Raven’s deck.
Beyond North, where he could not see, the shark circled and came heading straight for them.
‘It is coming back,’ she murmured to him. The dorsal fin disappeared as the shark submerged for attack. Her eyes held to North’s for her last moment on this earth.
North’s arm gripped around her waist. ‘Hold on tight,’ he whispered into her ear, then turned his head to yell, ‘Now!’
She gasped as they were suddenly yanked hard out of the water and suspended in mid-air, swinging precariously. Below them the great jaws of the shark snapped shut as it sank beneath the waves once more.
Only then did she notice the rope around North’s waist that was hauling them slow and steady up to Raven’s deck.
She closed her eyes to the image of the shark and held tight to him, her body pressed to his, her legs wrapped around him in the most intimate way. Nothing mattered other than that they had made it to safety.
She was alive and she could feel the beat of her heart and his. She breathed the freshness of the air and the scent of him where her cheek was tucked beneath his chin. North’s arms were strong around her, securing her to him. His body was warm after the coldness of the ocean. He was strength. He was safety. And by holding to him she was holding on to life.
Her breath caressed his neck. Her lips were so close to its pulse point that she could feel the thrum of his blood beneath them, so close that she could taste him. She was alive, and so was he. And she clung all the tighter to him and to the wonder of that realisation.
But at that moment the voices of the men intruded and she felt her and North’s merged bodies being guided as one over Raven’s rail.
They were safe.
The ordeal was over.
Her face was so close to North’s that she could feel his breath warm and moist against her skin, their bodies so close as to be lovers. Breast to breast. Heart to heart. Thigh to thigh. In a way no other man had ever been save Wendell. She stared up into his eyes, frozen, unable to move, unable to think.
Wendell.
She tried to right herself, but North maintained his grip around her and she was glad because her legs when they touched the solidity of the English oak deck had nothing of strength in them and her head felt dizzy and distant. Somehow the rope was gone and North was sweeping his dry coat around her and lifting her up into his arms, as if she were as light as a child.
‘Let me take her from you, Captain. I will carry her.’ Reverend Dr Gunner’s voice sounded from close by, but North did not release her.
‘I will manage,’ he said in his usual cool way. ‘It is your other skills that are required.’
She did not understand what North meant, but the faces of the men were crowded all around, staring at her, and exhaustion was pulling at her, and it felt such an uphill struggle to think. Every time her eyes closed she forced them open. She knew she was over North’s shoulder as he descended the deck ladder. When she opened her eyes again she was lying on the cot in the cabin they had given her. North was standing over her and Reverend Dr Gunner was there, too, in the background.
North’s hair was slicked back, dark as ebony and sodden. Seawater had moulded the cotton of his shirt to the muscular contours of his arms and his broad shoulders, to the hard chest that she had been pressed so snug against. Only then did she see the scarlet stain on his shirt.
‘You are bleeding.’ Her eyes moved to meet his.
‘No,’ he said quietly, and gently smoothed the wet strands of hair from her face. ‘Rest and let Gunner treat you.’
Before she could say a word he was gone, the door closing behind him with a quiet click.
Gunner opened up a black-leather physician’s bag and stood there patiently. Only then did she understand that the blood was her own.
‘You are a physician as well as a priest?’
‘Priest, physician, pirate...’ He gave an apologetic smile and a little shrug of his shoulders. ‘I never could quite decide.’ He fell silent, waiting.
Kate gave a nod of permission and laid her head back against the pillow.
* * *
Up on the quarterdeck, having changed into dry clothes, Kit stood watching the distant ship creep closer. It was discernible as Coyote now without the need for the spyglass.
He thought of Kate Medhurst lying bleeding and half-naked upon the cot. And he thought of her in the water, her body so slender and pale against the large dark silhouette of the shark. And the way that, even as he dived from Raven’s stern, the scarlet plume had already clouded the clear turquoise water. And more than any of that he thought of that look in her eyes of raw, brutal honesty, exposing the woman beneath with all her strengths and vulnerabilities, and the sensations that had vibrated between them. Desire. Attraction. Connection. Sensations with a force he had not felt before. Sensations that he could not yield to even if what had just happened had not.
As he watched Coyote, his eyes narrowed in speculation. He was still thinking about it when he heard Gunner’s approach and glanced round.
‘It is an abrasion only.’ His heavy leather coat hung over his friend’s arm. Gunner chucked it on to the floor and spread it out to dry in the sun. ‘The shark’s skin has grazed one side of her waist—from beneath her breast to the top of her hip. And the palms of her hands, too, where she must have pushed against it.’
‘How deep?’
‘Mercifully superficial,’ Gunner replied. ‘She will be sore for a few days, but she will heal.’
Kit gave a nod.
‘What I do not understand is what on earth she was doing in the water.’ Gunner shook his head as if he could not understand it.
‘Swimming,’ answered Kit.
‘Surely not?’
‘You saw her.’
‘Maybe she fell.’
‘She did not fall. Her dress was removed and neatly folded.’
‘Not necessarily,’ countered Gunner.
‘She might have removed it for other purposes.’
‘Such as?’
‘Bathing.’
‘With no means to reboard the ship?’
‘A woman might not think.’
‘Kate Medhurst certainly doesn’t strike me as woman who might not think—quite the reverse. I would say, rather, that she has a shrewd intelligence lacking in many a man.’
‘I concede you may have point there. She was not bathing,’ said Kit. ‘She was swimming. With purpose. Away from Raven.’
Gunner nodded. ‘But there is nothing out there save those rocks. Even if she reached them, what would have been the point?’
‘The rocks are not quite the only thing out there.’ Kit’s gaze shifted pointedly to the horizon and the small dark shape of the pirate ship that followed.
‘You cannot seriously be suggesting that she was trying to escape us to wait for them.’
‘I am not suggesting anything.’
‘But you are thinking.’
‘I am always thinking, Gunner.’
‘And what are you thinking?’
‘I am thinking we need to discover a little more about Mrs Medhurst and her presence upon Coyote.’
* * *
When Kate woke the next morning she thought for a minute that she was aboard Coyote heading back to Tallaholm and Ben and Bea, and her heart lifted with the prospect of seeing those two little faces again and hugging her children to her. But before her eyes even opened to see the truth, the sound of English voices faint and up on deck brought her crashing back down to the reality of where she was and what had happened. She remembered it all with a sudden blinding panic: Coyote and Tobias and North; and the shark; and that North had saved her life by risking his own.