Caution to the Wind (2 page)

“What about these two?” asked the man, equally impervious to Bull’s gray glower.

“They ain’t got no experience!” With each word, Bull’s voice rose in volume.

“That so?” He turned golden eyes on them.

Amanda’s heart fluttered in her chest, but she could not look away. He had the outward appearance of a man, but the essence behind those golden eyes was that of an animal, untamed but unafraid, confident of his dominion over the lesser creatures around him.

Strength radiated from him in waves that washed over her and curled about her limbs, binding her wrists and ankles with an unseen force and robbing her of the will to move. He was taller than many of the men around him, perhaps broader of shoulder too, but with a lean build that could not match the bulk of the men loading crates behind him. His power came not from sheer size, but from an energy buried deep within. A shiver rippled through her.

Pursing his lips, he clasped Amanda and Neil by one shoulder each and gave a sharp squeeze. Her shoulder fit easily inside his palm, and his strong fingers dug into the tender flesh below the joint. His touch seared her as though nothing separated skin from skin.

She tried not to flinch when he frowned and ran his hand down her bicep. Instead, she followed her brother’s lead and returned the man’s scowl with one of her own, attempting with every ounce of her being to match his ferocity while her insides took on the consistency of melted butter.

“And they be calling me stubborn,” Bull muttered.

Amanda could swear a smile tugged at the corner of the man’s lips, but judging from the look in his hard eyes, she changed her mind. He wasn’t the smiling type.

Trapped in his gaze as well as his grip, Amanda prayed he would finish soon. Surely, his sharp eyes could see though her disguise even if Bull could not. Amanda’s stomach tightened as though turned on a screw.

Instead, he took his time, assessing, calculating, judging. Everywhere he looked her skin heated. Held tight in his palm, she thought her arm might burst into flames.

Amanda studied him while he studied her. His hair was so black it looked almost blue. Dark lashes framed his golden eyes. She had never seen eyes that color before, not on a man anyway. She might have called him handsome, were it not for the firm set of his jaw and the way he probed her face with his heated gaze.

Her breath rushed across her bottom lip, and she realized she had been watching him, slack-jawed. She snapped her mouth shut and focused on taking slow, even breaths through her nose while he finished prodding and squeezing her.

He slid his palm to the front of one shoulder and pushed as though testing her steadiness. She did her best to hold her ground when he pushed again. She gasped and stumbled backward when he slid his hand lower. The heat that rose to her face matched the heat that outlined the form of his hand. She felt it all, fingertips, thumb, palm, as though his hand still lay across her breast.

Beneath her father’s wool coat, his course tunic, and her wool bindings, her body responded. At twenty-one, she might be inexperienced, but she was not so naïve as to not understand the tightening of her breasts, the tingling in her belly, the weakness in her limbs. That she had never experienced any of these things didn’t stop her from recognizing her uncivilized reaction to an uncivilized man.

“They’ll do,” he said, with a nod to Bull. “See that they’re on board and understand their duties by the time we shove off.” Without waiting for Bull’s reply, he walked away.

The dockside masses parted before his long, languid strides. Amanda stood frozen until his broad back disappeared, swallowed up by the throngs that closed in around him and filled the wake he left behind.

“If that’s what ya be wantin’ then I suppose they’ll do just fine,” Bull scratched a few notes in the ship’s registry. “’Course, it’ll serve ya right, questioning my judgment. You’ll be getting just what ya deserve with these two.”

Bull chucked and Amanda scowled at him. What did he find so amusing if he disapproved of Neil and her so much?

“Well, ya heard the captain,” said Bull, this time speaking to the new recruits.

Amanda’s eyelids fluttered. “Th-that was the captain?”

A chill filled her, replacing the residual heat of the captain’s slow scrutiny.

Of course he was! That his self-possessed assuredness of his position hadn’t tipped her off made her question her judgment. Her reaction to him made her question her sanity. Either way, he posed more of a danger to her than she had first thought, and she would do well to avoid him.

“That he is. Captain Stoakes is his name, but that’s not what his enemies be callin’ him.” Bull’s toothy grin showed a number of gold teeth, but his words were thick with warning.

“What do his enemies call him?” Amanda asked before she could stop herself.

“The Sea Wolf.” Bull’s eyes twinkled beneath bushy brows.

Before Amanda could determine whether the old man was teasing or trying to scare them, Neil chimed in. “Really? How come?”

He sounded far too enthusiastic for his own good.

“On account of the way he stalks his prey.” Bull’s voice dropped to a grinding whisper, like the stones of a gristmill. She and Neil leaned in to hear. “Like the wolf, he is bloodthirsty and merciless. No one who is his enemy is safe. Be glad you’re part of his crew.” The acrid smell of tobacco on his breath assailed Amanda’s nose, but she could not muster the will to pull back, opting to hold her breath instead. “But you’d better be careful not to get on his bad side or...” His voice trailed off, leaving them to imagine the unspeakable horrors the
Sea Wolf brought down upon those who displeased him.

The old man paused, and Amanda assumed he had had his fun. Her breath had just returned to her lungs, when he continued, “If there are women or children on the ships he takes,” Bull leaned back and crossed his arms, “well that just don’t matter none. He tosses them over the side and pretends they were never there.” He spat a dark stream at a gull that had wandered close. The bird squawked in distress and hopped sideways to a safer distance. “Well, sometimes he keeps the women for awhile.”

Amanda scrunched her nose. For a man who hadn’t smiled even once until now, Bull seemed to be grinning a bit too much. Then she remembered the captain’s golden eyes. Hunter’s eyes.

Maybe he hadn’t been teasing.

“Well, make your mark,” Bull said, his voice normal as though he had never spoken of the
Sea Wolf. He dipped the quill in the inkpot and handed it to Neil.

Neil signed the book, then passed the quill to Amanda. Amanda held the sharp point above the yellowed parchment, but hesitated. She couldn’t very well sign her real name, but she had never considered, not even once, that she would need a boy’s name in order to complete her disguise.

“If ya can’t write, ya can just put an X on the line, and that’ll do,” said Bull.

She cast a glance upward but read nothing of Bull’s earlier mistrust in his grizzled face. He believed her. Either that or he followed the captain’s orders without question. Either way, she was in the clear, for now.

Turning her attention to the book, she scrawled the first name she thought of in big, bold script...
Adam Blakely.

“Off you go, then.” He waved a dismissive hand toward the narrow boards leading from the dock to the upper deck of the small ship. “Check in with Mr. Smythe when you reach the top. He’ll be showing ya where to stow your things and be explainin’ your duties to ya.”

Amanda and Neil grabbed their sacks and turned to go. Before starting up the ramp after her brother, she glanced at the page she had just signed. The name of the ship that had become her home ran across the top in large, flowing script.
Registry of the Amanda.

Amanda sucked in a breath. Good omen or bad?

Neither, she decided, releasing the air from her lungs. Amanda Blakely no longer existed in this new world. From now on, she was Adam Blakely, and she would do well to remember it.

A tingling in her shoulder reminded her of the man with whom she would be spending the next few months. Nothing in those hard eyes suggested he enjoyed a good ruse. She would need to be especially mindful of her new status around him.

Amanda gripped the rough rope handhold running along the gangplank with white knuckled fists and trudged up the steep incline. At the top, she stepped over a small rise and onto the deck below. The bustle that greeted her looked more like an anthill than a ship, with all of the worker ants readying themselves for a long winter. Each and every ant knew its job. Not a one shirked his duties.

“Oh, dear,” Amanda tightened her grip on her canvas sack and pulled it higher onto her shoulder.

She had forgotten to follow her own plan. The whole idea had been to stop Neil from signing on to a privateer. Yet, she hadn’t even tried. Instead, she had signed the ship’s registry every bit as eagerly as her brother.

A sailor in striped trousers and canvas shirt shoved her, and she stumbled toward the center of the activity. A circle of other new recruits closed in, blocking her only avenue of escape.

Chapter Two

“Well, it is
your
choice.” Will held up his glass in a half-hearted toast. “And, James, since it is your choice, I wish you every happiness.”

“Oh, come on, Will,” Captain James Stoddard raised his voice above the groans of the two officers standing behind his chair and the din of the post-suppertime crowd in the small inn’s cozy taproom. Unlike his lieutenants, he had earned the right to call the dreaded Sea Wolf by his first name, and his forthright tone spoke of their long association. “You can do better than that. I’m getting married for God’s sake, not joining the Royal Navy.”

Will gave a small nod of acknowledgment.

He opened his mouth to reply, but one of the enthusiastic young lieutenants beat him to it. “I should hope not, sir. Not when we have them right where we want them.”

The other young officer, emboldened by drink, clapped his friend on the shoulder and spoke as though each syllable presented a bit of a challenge. “You got that right. Our Cont’nental Navy’ll have ’em runnin’ back to ol’ England,” he paused, his blonde brows on a slow march toward the middle of his forehead. Then, slopping beer over the side, he poked his glass in the general direction of England, “tail between their legs.”

He punctuated his point with a sharp nod, spilling more beer onto his friend’s polished boot.

Will grunted. “You Navy men are so sure of yourselves. You’ve only been a Navy for what—three years now?” His dismissive shrug pulled at the seams of his blue velvet coat. “Your enemy is the most powerful fleet in the world and has been for almost two hundred years.”

“Yeeees!” The flickering light from the oil lamp in the middle of the table illuminated a fine spray of spittle. “But you’ve seen how weak they are now. We’ve almost as many ships as they do, and ours are much newer!”

He leaned forward, propping a fist on the table, and brandished the glass in his other hand as though fighting an unseen enemy. Will watched the golden waves slosh from side to side, hoping the young man would find an even keel before he upended the entire table.

“No matter how inelegantly my drunken friend makes his point, Captain Stoakes,” the lieutenant beside him righted his friend and cast him a warning glance, “I think he has a good one. The British Navy is weak.”

“They are tired,” Will interjected before the upstarts could make complete fools of themselves by defending the Continental Navy’s anemic forces.

“Tired?” James asked.

Will sighed into his glass, before taking another swallow. His beer had grown warm in the packed tavern, too warm.

He and James had been friends since serving together in the Royal Navy in the years before the colonies declared their independence from England. The closest thing Will had to a brother, he also admired the man’s sense of duty to God and country. James had proven himself a damned fine officer and loyal to the cause. He continued to serve in the Continental Navy long after Will had had enough.

Nevertheless, he found himself dismayed at how little some of the Continental Navy officers, even the best fighting captains, could see of the complete canvas of war between nations.

They saw the power of their ship’s guns. They saw the health of their men. They saw the fullness of their stores. However, rare was the captain who fully understood the political and financial implications of modern warfare. Beyond the bow of their own ship, most were blind.

Will sighed again, resigned to explaining what should have been obvious. “Yes. They have been fighting on two continents.” He twisted his glass, making small wet rings on the linen tablecloth. “In Europe they fought the Seven Years War, and here, in America, they fought the French and Indian War.”

“But they fought the French in both,” the lieutenant argued. “That makes it the same war.”

“A war fought on two fronts is as good as two wars.” Will’s frown deepened at the bemused look on the faces of his audience. “And with the war fought in America, it might as well have been three.”

He waited, his gaze roaming from face to face, hoping for a small glimmer of understanding. Only the flame in the oil lamp flickered.

Perhaps he expected too much. James’s lieutenants couldn’t be much more than twenty. Could either of them remember the savage conflict between the French, their Indian allies and the British? He studied their unlined faces, the vibrant enthusiasm in their eyes and the lack of observable scars that marked so many men tested in battle.

They had been too young to fight, but perhaps they were old enough to hold at least some memory of the bloody struggle. Those who had been there told the stories of the colonists, many women and children, brutally massacred by Indian tribes with a savagery unimaginable to the regimented British forces. Those who had not seen the bloodshed themselves had certainly heard about it. Subsequent years and multiple retellings had done nothing to diminish the horror.