The Jezebel (22 page)

Heart beating wildly, she looked to the skies. Murmuring fast and low, she beckoned the power of the wind and the warmth of the sun to aid Roderick’s onward journey, wherever he might be bound. “I’m sorry, my good-hearted lover,” she whispered as the wind lifted, “for all the misfortune I brought your way.”

Then she put a protection spell on him just for good measure.

* * *

“That bloody Jezebel shot you!” Brady gesticulated wildly, standing upright in the boat next to Roderick, who was slumped in the bottom. “That bitch.”

Despite the pain and disbelief he felt, Roderick was unaccountably angered by the man’s insult.

“We should have strung her up ourselves,” Brady added.

Clyde laughed loudly, which made every man jack of them turn to query his strange reaction. “She saved your life is what she did.” He gave a shrug and another laugh. “If she hadn’t taken the gun from that man’s hand, you’d be dead already.”

That silenced them all.

“What the...” Roderick tried to rise up on his elbow, but pain shot through his shoulder. “Sit down, Brady,” he shouted, “or you’ll capsize the lot of us. We are heavy with men.”

“Aye,” Clyde commented, “sit down, for that would not look good on our headstones. ‘The seamen who lie here all drowned because they couldn’t handle a rowboat.’”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brady snapped, clearly losing his composure after the turn of events. “If we drown we wouldn’t have headstones.”

Roderick cursed, loudly. He went to speak, but gave up the will when he found he was being undressed. His coat was pulled off by one man and his shirt torn open by another. Pressure was applied to his wound with the bunched cotton of his shirt. For a moment the pain threatened to wipe him out, then it eased. He laid his head back and tried to make sense of what Clyde had said. One of the men was attempting to examine his shoulder, but Roderick felt stubbornly fixed on ignoring the gunshot wound—and whence it had come. That wasn’t going to be possible. Puzzled by Clyde’s comments, he had to quiz him on it. “What do you mean, she saved my life?”

“She gladly took the weapon,” Brady interrupted. “We all saw it with our own eyes.”

“Aye, but I’d be willing to wager the other man would have chosen a target somewhere much less forgiving than your shoulder, and it would be a burial at sea we’d be arranging now, not a rest-and-repair task, with the captain alive and well.”

One man dipped his dirk in the salt water, then plucked at Roderick’s wound. “Barely scraped the skin,” the sailor announced. “Your coat and shirt have suffered more.”

Roderick closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. The pain from the exploratory poking he was being subjected to didn’t stop his mind from running with questions. Had Maisie turned the gun on him to save him from a lethal shot? Could she have wounded him on purpose, to protect him and his shipmen?

He couldn’t be sure and never would be, not unless he heard the truth of it from her own lips. But that was not about to happen.

Once his shoulder had been bandaged and his shirt and coat returned, Roderick stared across the water as the four ships sailed away, roundly putting distance between the rowboats packed with men from the
Libertas,
streaking away from them with Maisie aboard. Roderick barely felt the pain of the injury she’d given him. He plucked the spyglass from his pocket and scoured the deck of the navy ship, but could see no sign of her. “They are headed out to sea and back to London.”

As soon as he’d said it, the lead ship abruptly changed course again.

“One ship is now heading north, Captain,” someone shouted from one of the other rowboats.

Roderick frowned. A change of plan? Why did he care? He didn’t trust them not to turn on him, take down his men with cannon. Nothing to do with the woman, Maisie from Scotland.

“They did us a good turn, Roderick,” Brady insisted. “We wanted rid of her.”

Deep down, Roderick knew he was right. They were better off without her. She had caused dangerous friction between him and his men, and she’d taken vengeance on him for her imprisonment. Still, he watched the navy vessels and couldn’t bring himself to respond, instead wondering where they were headed. The only harbor large enough to receive them in the estuary was Dundee.

Clyde laughed low in his chest. “I wonder if they are aware they are carrying a witch.”

“So you admit she’s a witch?” quizzed Brady, apparently still angered by Clyde’s earlier comments.

“Oh, yes, she is definitely a witch.” Clyde paused, clearly enjoying the audience, for the other two rowboats full of
Libertas
men clung close to theirs despite the fact they bobbed about on the brisk sea, the men eager to hear the discussion. “Does that mean she had bad intentions? Maybe not. She’s from the Highlands, where many good healers hail from.”

“It’s true what Clyde said,” a voice declared from the second boat.

Roderick had to twist his neck—an uncomfortable maneuver, given that his shoulder was so tightly bound—to seek out who had spoken. It was Adam, the young Dutchman who she had healed.

When all eyes turned upon him, Adam brandished his hand. “She is a good person. She healed me, and I’m glad of it. If I had the chance, I would thank her by offering her my loyalty for life.”

“You see?” Brady declared. “She has enchanted you all so much you are blind to it. None of you see the danger now, despite the fact we are adrift without our ship because of her, and she has shot our captain. It is the work of the devil, for she has enslaved you all!”

Roderick could see he was going have to take charge of this and focus them on staying afloat, despite his injury. “Brady, be quiet.”

When Brady gave him a questioning look, Roderick nodded. “We must think on our next move.”

It was madness to think of anything else right now. Yet he couldn’t get the image of Maisie out of his head. It was a mercy that she had missed his vitals. Again the thought made him pause. Could Clyde be right, that she was saving him from a fatal shot? Roderick shook his head slightly, convincing himself it was only foolish lust that made him hanker after her. Wanting one woman this much was no good for a ship’s captain. “We head for Dundee, as planned. We owe it to Gregor to be there, if no other reason.”

Other reasons crowded his head, and his heart.

“They have the
Libertas
in tow now, Captain, and they are definitely headed into the estuary.”

“As are we.” He and his men would meet with Gregor Ramsay as arranged many months before. But Roderick could not shake the curiosity he felt about whether the navy vessel that carried Maisie and the man she called her master were now bound there, too.

“Gregor Ramsay will not be happy about this,” Brady commented. “God help our sorry souls if he is there to see the
Libertas
dock in Dundee with the navy standard aloft.”

“No,” Roderick replied, “he will find out because we’ll be the ones telling the tale over a flagon of rum, well away from the British navy.”

His obligation to his fellow shipman, Gregor Ramsay, was his priority now, but he had the wild notion that he could regain charge of the
Libertas.
Once they were sure the navy men were not aware that they followed, they could head safely for Dundee, take back the ship, then await word from Gregor.

Why do I even think it’s possible?
Roderick wondered.

It was a dream born of frustration.

A silence fell over them, all men watching the navy ships,
Libertas
in tow, fade into the distance. Brady shifted and set about putting the oars into position. As he did, the sea fell still and the sun broke through the clouds.

It was uncanny, but the wind lifted again a moment later and the boats bobbed and drifted north.

“Imagine that, the weather is on our side,” Clyde said with a chuckle. “Luck is clearly with our captain, for he is still alive, and now the weather is aiding our journey after the
Libertas.
”

Roderick knew what Clyde was trying to say, but he couldn’t believe it, despite the evidence he’d witnessed the night before. Could it be Maisie’s doing?

Brady quickly regained his position and shouted across to the other two boats, commanding them to take up their oars. Men hastened to the task.

Roderick climbed onto a seat, dragging himself up.

The wind truly was on their side.

“Captain?” Clyde asked, awaiting instruction when he saw Roderick’s attention sharpen.

“Take turns with the rowing, fresh men on the task every half hour.”

“In which direction, Captain?” Clyde asked with a grin.

“Onward to Dundee.” He glanced at the coast, recalling their position before the ambush. “We are well beyond Saint Andrews. The mouth of the Tay estuary is almost within sight. Follow the shoreline. We’ll cling to the southern bank until we reach Newport. If this wind at our back holds we’ll be there by late afternoon. Then we cross to the northern bank.”

“You have a plan?”

“Aye. We’ll enter Dundee harbor under cover of darkness.”

“And then?”

“And then we take back what they have stolen from us.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Roderick and his men rowed into Dundee harbor well after midnight, when the cloud coverage shielded them from moonlight that would otherwise expose them to the men who kept watch over the ships at night. It was, however, the harbor that Roderick knew best in the whole world, for he had played down there as a lad and dreamed of sailing out to sea on one of the ships he saw. That knowledge of the harbor was proving invaluable for this endeavor and made the task of negotiating a stealthy approach relatively straightforward.

They secured the rowboats by tying them one to the other beneath a wooden jetty. Their plans had been made on the way across the Tay, and from the moment they set foot on land Roderick issued commands in low whistles or by signaling with his hands.

Brady went on ahead to estimate the number of navy men who’d been left to guard the
Libertas.
One of their own crew stayed behind with the rowboats in case they needed them to make a swift departure. If all went well, he and the skiffs would be fetched up after they regained charge of the
Libertas.
The other men followed Roderick’s lead in small clusters as they made their way along the dockyards until they found the
Libertas.

When he caught sight of it, Roderick’s thoughts went immediately to Maisie. He should have been relieved to find his ship, but instead found himself thinking of her, and his blood pumped a little faster. In a stolen moment of wry contemplation, he acknowledged his sorry state. Apparently he would never be rid of dreams and desires when it came to Maisie from Scotland.

They hung back until Brady rejoined them. “No more than six men on deck, one on the jetty side.”

Roderick nodded at Gilhooly, who’d been given the most important task of all, that of causing a distraction. It was his specialty. He often went ahead of them when they docked in London to lure the excise men away on false missions.

Gilhooly nodded and pulled a flask of rum from his pocket. Uncorking it, he took a long swig, then sprinkled some on his coat before meandering off down the jetty toward the stern of the ship.

A few moments later Roderick heard his drunken carousing as he bellowed up at the rail. “You up there, fetch out the captain of the
Libertas,
for he owes me wages. I was told the ship had returned and I want my purse now.”

By the sound of it he was making a good show, because there was a lot of noisy stumbling and what might even have been a dislodged barrel rolling across the jetty.

Roderick signaled his men, then jerked his head, indicating they should follow. As they approached the ship he saw that lanterns were being held aloft and predictably being carried to the stern, where Gilhooly had been told to draw them.

Roderick led the way and clambered up the net that hung down from the bow of the ship, wondering briefly at how his wounded shoulder did not give out. He could hear the navy men shouting back at Gilhooly and telling him to go away, for the captain was not available, nor would he be.

That is where you are mistaken,
Roderick thought to himself as he vaulted quietly over the railing onto the deck.

Moving as quickly as he could, he waved the other men up. Once they were crouched behind him, he ducked down and crossed the deck. Using the masts and the shadows they managed to conceal their approach until they came up behind the navy watchmen. Roderick counted five leaning over the railing, lanterns held aloft. The naval officer who was stationed on the jetty below was now in a full-blown argument with Gilhooly. The men observing from the ship were conversing with each other and laughing.

Roderick looked back over his shoulder. He had two dozen men in position, grouped to take one man down each. They were under strict instructions to do as little lasting damage as possible, for Roderick didn’t want the navy to add that to his list of misdemeanors. He was already going to have to rename the ship and register it over again in Holland, in order for them to disappear away to the distant seas. But he knew he could trust his men to handle it well. He raised his hand, nodded, and they went in.

The confrontation was swift and easily managed, Roderick and his crew having the benefit of surprise. When one of the navy men dropped his lantern, it splashed into the waters below, and a shout rang up from the jetty. It was short-lived, for Gilhooly knew precisely when to turn on the officer at his side. With the exception of a few muffled exclamations of rage, Roderick and his men took down their opponents in seconds.

Clyde seemed to have more of a struggle with his quarry for Roderick heard the scuffle. It seemed they exchanged a few words in anger, but Clyde insisted he could deal with it when others stepped in.

Young Adam appeared with lengths of rope from the storeroom, and they bound the men hand and foot, gagged them with their own neckerchiefs and began to haul them across the deck to the hatch.

“Into the hold, Captain?”

“Aye. Take them with you. We’ll release them when we set sail from the agreed meeting point along the coast, beyond Broughty Castle. I’d prefer to let them loose in Dundee, but I don’t want them to raise the alarm before we fetch Gregor.”

While the crew busied themselves securing the navy watchmen below, Roderick did a quick pass through the ship. No one else was aboard. To his amusement, he found that their secret cargo of French wine had not yet been discovered.

When the men assembled on deck, he gave the final instructions. “Bring up the anchor as soon as I am dockside.”

“I will stay with you, Captain,” Clyde said.

Roderick was surprised. The old man hated to be on land. But Roderick knew better than to argue with him. The sooner the ship pulled up anchor and left the harbor, the better. It was also several hours until dawn, when Roderick could make contact with Gregor Ramsay, and the company would be appreciated. Then he thought he saw a mischievous twinkle in the old man’s eye.

Trick of the moonlight, no more, he assumed.

Once they were back on shore, Clyde ran on ahead to alert the shipman who’d stayed with the rowboats to rejoin the ship. Then Clyde and Roderick disappeared into the streets of Dundee in search of a mug of ale and a comfortable seat until dawn broke and the notary’s office opened.

* * *

In the early morning light the two of them made their way to the notary’s office. The streets were no longer deserted. Carts were being wheeled to the marketplace, and Roderick and Clyde moved alongside them as much as possible, hoping their presence would not be noticed by anyone who might recognize them or know of their troubles with the navy.

Even though Roderick had to lurk about like a thief after stealing back his own ship, it was good to have his feet back on Scottish soil. It made him think of forgotten times, of his parents—both long gone to their graves—and of the smell of the bracken as he’d roamed the far hills as a child, hunting with his father. Roderick had to admit there was no place on earth where his feet felt as right as this, on Scottish ground.

They kept their hats pulled down low on their brows as they made their way to the notary’s office. It was there they’d agreed Gregor Ramsay would leave word of his whereabouts. On the one hand Roderick hoped that Gregor was ready to depart, and quickly. On the other, he hoped that his partner hadn’t witnessed the sorry sight of the
Libertas
sailing into Dundee with a navy flag hoisted aloft.

Once the bookkeeper arrived and unlocked the door, Roderick nodded at Clyde. “You’ll wait outside?”

“Aye, I’ll keep watch.”

Roderick had been expecting to be told the name of nearby lodgings. Instead, the bookkeeper handed him a letter written in Gregor’s own hand.

It was with some curiosity that Roderick opened it. Perhaps Gregor was requesting they wait a few days, which would be a problem because the navy would be on their trail soon enough. Frowning, he read the letter.

Roderick,

I hope that you and the men of the
Libertas
have fared well. If you are reading this, it means you did not receive the word I sent to France to notify you that I will not be rejoining the
Libertas
at this time. As you know, I suspected my task in Fife could take longer than the six months we had agreed. That was not the case. The task took very little time indeed to reach its natural conclusion. However, my life took on a very different direction shortly after I parted ways with you.

As you have so often pointed out to me, I needed to be more honest with myself and seek the truth, not revenge. I am not so clear-minded as you. It was in my search for justice that I discovered what I believed to be my true path. And you were correct when you joked it would be a lass that would change my manner of thinking on family matters.

We are headed to the Highlands, and if my calculations are correct and you have returned to Dundee by the agreed date in September, I will shortly be pledging myself to my bride. I would have done it weeks ago, but she insisted that we spend four seasons together in order to see if we were truly well matched. It is a Highland tradition amongst some of the clans. She is a stubborn sort, but I argued it down to two seasons and we will be wed before the old festival of Samhain, so you will see how well matched I think we are.

We have broken our journey north and lodge in rooms in Inverness. I’ve taken this opportunity to write you this second letter. Soon we will head onward to the far reach of the Highlands, to a village called Fingal, where my woman’s clan hails from. She has many kin there and we’ll be able to build a croft of our own. Finally, I will be able to honor my father—Hugh Ramsay—in a way he would have admired, by establishing a good smallholding for my family, just as he tried to do for me.

I will be wed and settled before winter comes, all being well. Raise a glass to cheer us on our way, old friend. Drink to me and my bride, Jessie Taskill.

Gregor

* * *

On his first reading of the letter Roderick was mighty amused at the information contained within. Gregor Ramsay had lost his heart to a woman, and he planned to make his home on dry land! Much like himself, Gregor had been entirely set against such a course, but apparently he’d changed his tune rapidly after spending a few days in Scotland.

Did it affect every man that way? Roderick wondered.

Not only did Gregor’s news startle and amuse him, but Roderick was astonished to find that his cohort was many, many miles from here in the far north. He had to read the letter again to be sure he’d got it right.

By the second reading the laughter on his lips faded as his attention was caught by the woman’s name.
Taskill. Jessie Taskill.
He clutched the letter tightly, reading the name over and over.

Maisie had confided her family name to him. It had to be her sister. Hadn’t she mentioned a twin, and talked about returning to the Highlands to find her? It had to be one and the same.

Memories crowded in on him, other odd things that Maisie had said. She’d quizzed him about carrying another woman aboard the
Libertas,
stating that she felt an odd connection with the name Gregor Ramsay. If that was true, was it her witchcraft that had made her sense the link between him and Gregor, and his new bride? Roderick marveled at the very idea.

Whatever the cause, he knew there was destiny in it. He also knew that Maisie had to find her kin. Regardless of his own needs, his sense of justice and honesty demanded that he supply her with this vital piece of information she had spent her life longing for.

Foreign emotions erupted within Roderick. He needed to find her, to tell her. To see her. How the hell would he ever find her again, though? Futile, fledgling hopes were quickly shattered when he considered that problem.

Thanking the bookkeeper, he took his leave.

“Are we to wait for Ramsay?” Clyde asked when he emerged.

Roderick forced himself to slow his pace when he noticed the old man struggling to keep up with him, having trouble managing his limp on dry land. Clyde was born to be aboard ship. Some men had sworn allegiance to the sea and would never give it up for a woman. Others could be swayed. Gregor had. Could he be swayed, as well? Roderick wondered.

He shook his head. His immediate concern was to find Maisie and tell her about her sister’s whereabouts, not because he must know if she wanted him or not. At least, that’s what he convinced himself of in his frustration.

“Gregor Ramsay will not be rejoining us. He’s decided to wed and stay on dry land.”

Clyde nearly keeled over in shock.

“And you must be off to the ship, for I have business to attend to that will keep me in Dundee for at least a day.”

The old man drew to a halt.

Roderick kept walking, but then stopped. The demand for an explanation was beating against his back as surely as if Clyde had been pounding his fists there. Roderick turned back. “Women, they are nothing but trouble,” he declared.

Clyde pondered a moment, then broke into a wide, toothless grin. “I knew you would see sense and go after the lass. You can’t let a woman like that roam free. She’s born to be with you.”

“You’ve changed your tune.”

“Just because I am wary doesn’t mean I cannot see the truth. That Jezebel is a courageous woman, and a clever one.” He narrowed his eyes. “And if I am not mistaken she has looked after you well.”

“You talk in riddles.” Roderick didn’t want to hear any of it. He felt a duty to alert Maisie to her sister’s whereabouts, but that was all he was going to allow himself to feel.

Clyde chortled. “I see your shoulder does not bother you so much this morning.” He nodded at Roderick’s coat, darkly stained with dried blood.

Roderick was about to respond when he realized Clyde had a point. Gingerly, he rotated his shoulder and found it perfectly mended.

The old man reached over, poked about inside Roderick’s coat and tugged back his shirt. “No blood upon the bandage, she healed you while you rested in the rowboat. You were too busy thinking about the
Libertas
to even notice.”