The Notorious Lady Anne: A Loveswept Historical Romance (13 page)

“She’ll get him down,” he yelled above the wind and the rain.

“She’ll die trying,” Nicholas shouted back. The ship pitched, tearing them apart. Phin stumbled away and Nicholas’s gaze jumped to Emmaline, his heart in his throat. “You can’t let her do this alone.”

Phin struggled against the wind to get back to Nicholas. “You think I should go up there and help? She’d have my head when we came down. Think, man. You’re a captain. There’s no room for all of us up there.”

“She can’t possibly lift him onto the yardarm.”

“You don’t know much about our Anne, then, mate.”

Our Anne
.

No, he didn’t know much about their Anne. He only knew Emmaline, and hadn’t he already determined everything she told him was a lie? He looked up at the life-and-death struggle taking place dozens of meters above the deck. This wasn’t the Gypsy in the white gown he met at Dorothy’s ball, nor the vision in green who boarded the
Pride
.

This was the real woman. Anne. Our Anne. Not his Emmaline.

She lowered herself over the yardarm until the entire upper half of her body rested against it. The boy began to swing from side to side. Emmaline reached down with her other
hand to clutch his arm below his elbow. If he didn’t make it, he’d take her down with him into the angry, wind-tossed waves.

Nicholas’s hands clenched. His heart pounded unevenly. He strained to climb the rigging. To go to her. To help. Every bit of him raged at Phin’s hand holding him back and he found, to his surprise, a prayer running through his head.
Please, God, keep her safe. Don’t let anything happen to her
.

A gust of wind buffeted them. Emmaline’s legs tightened on the yardarm.

The ship’s bow rose, riding a violent wave up, up and up before crashing down. Nicholas and Phin stumbled. A crewman slid by them on his back, yet Nicholas couldn’t take his eyes off the horrible scene above him.

The boy swung one last time, his leg catching the yardarm to straddle it. Emmaline dragged him up with her. He slumped forward. She rubbed his back while the lad gulped in mouthfuls of air.

Phin clapped Nicholas on the shoulder. “See? She did fine.”

Nicholas stood riveted at the base of the mast, looking far up to the yardarm where Emmaline and the boy were securing the sail. Her movements were economical and sure, as if she’d done this a thousand times before. Which, of course, she had.

She was, after all, Lady Anne.

The next day, Nicholas sat with his back to the railing, his anger allowing his fingers to fly over the canvas. He’d spent many an hour mending sails in the service of His Majesty’s Navy. Many an officer refused to do such menial labor, but Nicholas never minded. No one really addressed the issue of his release from his cabin, and he wasn’t about to point it out to anyone. His guess was that his sailing knowledge was needed, even if only to mend the sails. There were bigger things to worry about than a lowly prisoner who didn’t have anywhere to escape to, anyway. The ships were badly damaged, but not enough to leave them foundering. They would make it to
port, but they would limp along the way. Easy prey for pirates, but then, he was with pirates, so what did it matter?

The storm passed as quickly as it came, leaving in its path clear skies and a warm breeze promising tropical islands. Nicholas didn’t want tropical islands. He wanted a cold, drizzly London or a brisk Boston. He wanted to be back on the
Pride
, with his report ready for Kenmar. Not on a pirate ship with a woman pirate who had shattered all his illusions. Who risked her life to save a boy from falling to his death.

Who also stabbed a man and left him to die.

He caught a glimpse of Emmaline out of the corner of his eye and frowned, angry his gaze sought her out, that his mind always knew where she was and what she was doing. She stopped to speak to Phin, their heads bent together. Nicholas’s gut clenched when she smiled up at the man in such an intimate way. His fingers tightened on the needle when she reached out and touched Phin’s arm, leaving her fingers there far longer than propriety allowed.

Bloody hell!
He didn’t know if it was anger at Emmaline or jealousy of Phin that had him seeing red. While incarcerated in his cabin, he’d thought he might have been seeing things that weren’t there. That he’d imagined the closeness between the two. Now he realized that was hope talking. He tossed the sail to the side and closed his eyes against the quaint scene. His head pounded and his body ached. He’d never been as exhausted or miserable in his life. He hated her with all his being, yet he also wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman before. Memories of their time in his cabin pushed his anger away, relegating it to a dark corner of his mind. He despised himself for being so weak as to want someone like her. A pirate. A liar and a thief.

A shadow fell over him and he knew without looking it was her. He refused to open his eyes because he didn’t want to see her blue-green gaze on him, or her white smile and deceptive dimples.

Her hand touched his shoulder, cool and feathery light. His hand twitched, fighting the impulse to reach up to cover hers, to stop her from pulling away.

“Nicholas.”

Slowly, he opened his eyes. She leaned back on her heels and he had to force himself to look away from the trousers hugging her thighs. The jolt of sexual awareness took him off guard, and he gritted his teeth against it.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Against his will, he swung his gaze to her. She wasn’t dressed as a lady, yet her very being screamed woman. The loose white shirt billowed in the slight breeze, outlining perfect breasts and sleek muscled arms darkened by the sun. She reminded him of a Gypsy even more now than at Dorothy’s ball.

“We needed the help.” She indicated the battered ship with a wave of a hand. Delicate fingers, small bones, shimmering pearl nails. So very much a woman. And a liar.

Phin approached and touched Emmaline on the shoulder. “Anne—”

“Cap’n? We need yer ’elp over ’ere,” another sailor called out.

She stood, looked down at Nicholas with sad eyes and walked away.

Nicholas’s hungry gaze followed her. Good Christ, she was Lady Anne, the notorious pirate. He shouldn’t want her, but he did. He shouldn’t have prayed for her safety during the storm, but he had. He wanted to hate her.

But he couldn’t.

“Chow time.” The call passed from sailor to sailor. Nicholas stood, his leg not as stiff as it usually was, now that they were in a warmer climate. He followed the line of men to the one-legged sailor who was also the ship’s cook. Pea soup. Nicholas’s stomach grumbled. It wasn’t the fine meals he’d become accustomed to on the
Pride
, but pea soup was a luxury for these men, and he wasn’t about to turn it down.

He grabbed his bowl of soup and headed belowdecks. Shamus lay on his bunk, shivering in the stuffy cabin. The smell of decaying flesh hit Nicholas like a blunderbuss’s ball to the gut.

He’d returned to Shamus’s cabin several times to check on the sailor. At first Shamus was coherent enough to tell Nicholas his name, but not how he acquired his injury, other than the fact Emmaline caused it. Now the man was feverish and restless, and unconscious more than
awake. Nicholas took rainwater from the rain barrels and bathed the man’s head, but there was little he was able to do. The crewmen confirmed there was no surgeon on the ship other than the carpenter, Taggert, who would act as surgeon if limbs needed to be cut off.

As far as Nicholas knew, no one else from the ship visited Shamus, which told him more than anything that they thought Shamus deserved his injury, and was probably being held captive.

Nicholas settled into the straight-back chair he’d taken from another cabin and gently shook Shamus’s shoulder. Shamus moaned and his eyes fluttered open.

Nicholas held up the bowl of pea soup. “Chow, sailor.”

Shamus turned his head away, but Nicholas was having none of that. The man needed his strength if he was to fight the fever. Nicholas wouldn’t allow him to die on his watch. Why it mattered, he didn’t know, but it did, and Nicholas threw all his extra energy into it.

He spooned the soup into Shamus’s mouth. It dribbled out and Nicholas patiently scooped it back up and tried again.

His thoughts turned inward, and as they were wont to do, turned to thoughts of escape. Constantly he searched for ways off this wretched ship and away from the despicable pirates, but so far there were none, other than stealing a tender and rowing away. He was wise enough to discard that avenue. Maybe when they were closer to land, but even that was a far-fetched plan. He never once forgot the two other pirate sloops following them. Those ships would pluck him out of the water faster than he could say Davy Jones’s locker.

Emmaline took him for a reason and she wasn’t going to be keen on giving him up. She wanted something. Something only he was able to give, else she would have left him with Alphonse or set him in the tenders with his crew.

So what did she want? He could only assume it was the information on the shipment of gold she’d lost, thanks to her decision to save him. But why did she want them?

That was a question he had yet to find an answer for.

Why did Lady Anne, an infamous pirate, want to bring down Blackwell Shipping, the
colonies’ richest shipping company? This was more than a pirate attacking ships for booty. These were well-planned attacks, perfectly executed and aimed at one man, which meant revenge. What had Blackwell ever done to Lady Anne?

As much as he didn’t want it to, the question intrigued him, and reminded him once again of the mission Kenmar sent him on. Wouldn’t Kenmar be shocked to discover the lady pirate he flippantly wrote off as nonexistent actually lived and breathed?

Which led his thoughts in another, totally unwanted direction. Lady Anne. Emmaline. Their kiss. Damn it! The spoon shook and he slopped pea soup over the side of the bowl.

Shamus eyed him warily.

He must stop thinking of her in such a way.

“What are you doing?”

As if his thoughts had conjured her, Emmaline stood in the doorway. Nay, not Emmaline. Anne. Lady Anne with her sword at her side, and her breeches hugging every delicious curve and the white shirt that fell lovingly over firm breasts. Did one wear a corset under a man’s shirt? He yanked his thoughts from such a direction. What did it matter when he hated her with every fiber of his being?

He stood, shielding Shamus with his body, and placed the bowl on the chair. She watched his movements with narrowed eyes, balanced on the balls of her feet as if waiting for an attack.

He glanced over his shoulder at Shamus, who was watching with wide eyes.

“I’m tending to your injured captive since no one else seems to be.”

She raised a brow, amusement making her lips twitch and reminding him of the minx who had enchanted him when they met at Dorothy’s ball.

“You needn’t worry yourself over him,” she said.

“Someone needs to.”

She crossed her arms and he almost groaned out loud when the action pushed up her breasts. No. Definitely no corset under her shirt.

“Are you insinuating that I am shirking my duties to this man?” She tipped her head to
Shamus, who was valiantly fighting the exhaustion overtaking him.

“Insinuating? No, milady, I’m insinuating nothing. I’m
telling
you this man has been horribly neglected after being injured at the tip of
your
sword.”

She reared back, her face losing color. Nicholas stifled his satisfaction. Point in his favor, and proof she was the one who caused Shamus’s injury.

“You will leave this cabin now,
sir
.”

This time it was he who raised his brows. “Is that an order,
Captain
?”

“Most certainly.”

He closed the distance between them, just a few short paces. They stood toe-to-toe and he breathed in Emmaline’s scent of crisp ocean air and the sweat of hard work. She smelled like no woman he’d ever encountered before. Forevermore, he’d want his women to wear nothing but the scent of the ocean in their hair and the warmth of the sun on their skin.

“I take orders from no one, especially not you.
Milady
.”

To her credit she didn’t step back or wilt. Not that he expected Emmaline Sutherland—for that was how he thought of her, regardless of her Lady Anne persona—to wilt. He would have been disappointed if she had.

“This is my ship, Addison. My orders are followed or consequences are suffered.”

He tilted his head, his gaze sliding over her parted lips. “Consequences?” He deliberately made his breath husky, hinting at desire.

Hinting? Hell, no. There was no hint. Desire slammed into him as hard and strong as the waves that rocked the ship days ago. He wanted her savagely. The only thing keeping him from wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing his body against her was Shamus lying in the bed behind him.

Her chest rose and she let out a long breath. Color climbed into her cheeks and her eyes flashed with annoyance. At him or her body’s reaction to him?