The Pirate Captain - By Kerry Lynne Page 0,175

give me leave to say, sir, ’tis nothing on yer account. It coulda been that blessed bird over there,” he said, gesturing toward Beatrice roosted in a nearby tree, luminescent in the starlight, “and they’d go hammer and tongs at each other just the same.”

The moon was past its zenith, dipping behind the treetops at the far side of the bay, when she implored Pryce one more time.

Pryce the Amiable disappeared; Pryce the Bullish returned. “If’n he could have been here by now, he woulda.”

Pryce’s failure to argue further she took as a positive. She shied from the nagging image of Nathan lying in the bushes, injured and helpless.

Pryce glanced toward the eastern sky and a low-hanging Venus. “’Twill be light in a bit.”

“Then, we're going?” Her hopes skyrocketed as she lurched to her feet.

“We’re goin’. Yer stayin,’” he said, rising.

“No, I'm not!” Teeth clenched, her breath came quicker. She tried to hold the fierce pose. Exhaustion and worry weakened her defiance and she wavered. Face crumbling, her chin began to quiver.

“I beg, Pryce. Please. I can’t just wait and wonder. Besides, you need me to show you where I saw him last.”

“Oh, very well. But ye’d best not get hurt! And if ye do, jest keep goin’, becuz we won’t be able to bear ye a hand when the Cap’n goes after ye!”

He had to shout at the finish, because she was already far down the beach.

###

“It’s not a lot,” Pryce said, looking down at the glistening blood, kept wet by the night’s damp. A disquieting number of footprints converged on the churned spot of dirt.

“It’s enough,” Cate countered tartly.

“If’n we’d come sooner, he’d still be gone,” Pryce said with maddening evenness, divining her thoughts once again.

Cate led the small party of Morgansers to Lady Bart’s and where she had last seen Nathan. An internal clock had ticked since she heard him fall. Had he escaped unharmed, he would have met them on the beach. That failing, her best hope was that he was alive and being held. Harte’s “gnat squashed” comment haunted her. It hadn’t been uttered lightly. On the contrary, there had been great intent in those reptilian eyes.

Unbeknownst to her—damn his eyes!—Pryce had dispatched men to check the town, goal, thieves’ hole and garrison. They had returned to the shore with the pink of dawn breaking on their shoulders and empty-handed. It meant Nathan had been taken somewhere else, somewhere that deeds far too heinous to be witnessed could be carried out.

But where?

The garden was heavily trampled. With no clear tracks to follow, there was no way of knowing. Cate tried to take it as an encouraging sign that there was no blood trail, but a thin reassurance it was.

Cate chewed the inside of her mouth. The task of searching each and every one of the plantation’s buildings loomed larger, and the clock was still ticking.

“Hoy, lookit!”

All heads turned to follow Squidge’s point to a nearby tree.

“It’s just Beatrice,” Towers grumbled, waving a dismissive hand.

Beatrice’s head bobbed, markedly agitated. Arching her wings, she squawked, several of the men wincing at her shrillness in the morning’s quiet.

“Cap’n, ahoy!”

They looked to each other, at the parrot, and back.

“Cap’n, ahoy!”

Pryce approached the bird with a narrowed eye. “C’mon, speak up, ya useless pile o’ feathers, or I’ll be a-feedin’ yer carcass to the crows.”

Beatrice rose with a shriek and soared low through the trees, bright against the sky’s pale. Circling back, amid several obscenities, she repeated her cry, and set off. Exchanging puzzled looks, the people shrugged and followed.

The marauding pirates traversed the plantation with shocking ease. Lady Bart’s showed all the signs of having once been a grand place, but it gone to recent ruin. The distant barking of dogs, startled chicken protests, and curious bleats of goats marked their progress, but with no shouts of alarm. Still, with a Commodore and Marines about, extreme caution was required.

Beatrice was their only hope, and a shining one she was. Several times she circled back, seemingly to round them up and hurry them along, repeating her message and coarse remarks. At last, she settled on the rooftree of a squat building. Barrel hoops, wagon wheel rims, anvils, and water vats marked it as the estate’s blacksmith. The Morgansers crouched behind the crumbling stone walls of an abandoned byre. If there any further doubts as to Beatrice’s credibility, the scarlet of two Marines posted at the barn’s double doors was confirmation enough: such security wouldn’t have been necessary if inside was