The Pirate Captain - By Kerry Lynne Page 0,229

getting his attention. Don’t worry, lovely, you’re safe. It’s just that he won’t know that, will he?”

“You lied.”

“Being ’round Nathan this long, I expect you are accustomed to that,” he said, grinning.

“I told you I didn’t want to play juvenile games,” Cate hissed.

His laugh boomed across the water. “He needs a little wake-up call, that’s all. Nathan has never been canny about what he wants. We'll just give him a little shove. I feel like a bloody goddamned Cupid!”

Thomas gave her knee a fatherly pat. “Stick with me, lovely.”

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped, attempting to squirm clear of his reach.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, spewing with mirth. “Yell a bit louder, so he can hear you.”

“Go to bloody hell!”

Thomas drew away in mock fear. “Ho-ho! Outspoken lass, aren't you? I’m beginning to understand what Nathan sees in you.” Elbow on the gunwale, he looked away across the bay, thoroughly pleased with himself.

The boat latched onto the Griselle’s blue hull. Cate rose and tucked her skirt hem into her waistband. The bay’s one or two foot swell meant a difference of between two and three feet in locating her first step. As she reached for it—“timing it with the swell” as she had heard seemingly time out of mind—she privately cursed the nameless fool who decided women should wear skirts. Clearly, it had been a man, because no woman would ever make a decision so markedly impractical. Halfway up the side, a pair of strong arms came over the side and lifted her the rest of the way.

The Griselle’s decks swarmed with activity. The jibs and mizzen filling, the larboard anchor was already on its cathead. Understanding that she was about to go on an unexpected trip, she whirled around on Thomas.

“Where are you taking me?” Cate demanded.

“Stand easy. The point is, you’re not with him.”

“And the point of that?”

“The point of that is Nathan will be half out of his wits, wondering what’s happening to you over here. That little walk on the beach last night was just the beginning.” His grin—seemingly having taken permanent residence on his face—grew even further.

“So I’m just a piece in your little game?”

A burst of laughter broke from Thomas. “No, no. You’re the prize, my dear. You’re the prize.”

Nathan’s enraged shouts reached them. Cate drew a breath to reply, but was cut off by Thomas’s hand over her mouth.

“She’s fine, Nathan. See you in a couple days.”

The deck shifted under Cate’s feet as the ship gained headway. Over the shouts of the crew, she could hear Nathan’s vehement oaths as they slid past.

“That’s Nathan for you,” Thomas mused, leaning on the rail next to her. “Always did have the vocabulary and the imagination to be one of the best cursers ever heard.”

Cate wrapped her arms around herself and hunched her shoulders. “I don’t think I can bear to listen.”

She cast a wary eye up at Thomas, and considered she might have misjudged him. His jovial manner, his friendship with Nathan and, most of all, his resemblance to Brian had caused her to throw caution aside. She fancied herself a keen judge of men’s character and their motivations, and yet with Thomas, had dropped her defenses. Such carelessness could have dire consequences.

“Then don’t, or go below. It’s no matter. We’ll be out of hearing directly,” said Thomas.

Chuckling, Thomas strolled away. She felt the stares and the press of the unfamiliar men surrounding her. It hadn’t been that long ago that she had stood on the deck of another pirate ship, as much a stranger and captive then as she was now. At least, English had been spoken there. That the Griselle had spent most of her time on the other side of the world was revealed in the foreign tongues now heard. The afterdeck there was as crowded as the Morganse’s: afterguard, watchmen, helmsmen, and the like. It was because of Thomas’s presence—as incensed as she was with him—and the safety his nearness provided, that she remained.

Cate stood at the lee rail as the Griselle made weigh. There she could keep an eye fixed on the Morganse, and therefore, Nathan. At first, the Morganse’s red-dripped hull was in full view. When the Griselle rounded the headland, her view was reduced to only the Morganse’s spars and rigging. And then, as the Griselle plowed across the heavy swell of the Straits, nothing. The Morganse’s topmasts would have been visible, had they been swayed up, but those were on deck, her head still bowed.

The oddments of her