“It’s about time.” Reynolds tossed me a speaking trumpet.
I jumped up onto the gunwale, balancing on the narrow ledge, and raised the funnel-like instrument to my mouth.
“What business do you have in my waters, Captain?” I shouted across the restive waves.
He strode to the stern and gripped the tafferel. His lieutenants scrambled around him, and a moment later, a trumpet appeared in his hand. He raised it to his mouth.
“I’m Lord Ashley Cutler.” His voice vaulted the distance, strong and deep. “The commodore of HMS Blitz.”
Commodore? Above captain and below admiral. What a smug little lord.
“Good for you.” I propped my elbow on a rigging cable, leaning casually as I shouted, “How many pissers did you suck to rise to that rank?”
“Strike your colors, pirate! You’re under arrest.”
“Pirate?” I laughed mockingly. “Clean your glass, you preening little cockatoo. I am but only a maiden. Pure and virtuous and very afraid of men.”
“Bennett Sharp, daughter of the convicted pirate Edric Sharp, you shall be taken into custody along with your men and the stolen galleon you call Jade.”
My blood turned to ice, and I almost dropped the trumpet.
He recognized me. How? I exchanged a look with Reynolds.
His eyes widened, fraught with disbelief. “He didn’t accidentally stumble upon you. It’s not possible.”
“No.” I shoved my wind-blown hair from my face. “He must have been tracking me. Probably picked up our trail in Jamaica.”
“Stand down your guns and prepare to receive boarders,” Lord Cutler called. “If you resist, I will show no quarter.”
My heart rate went off like a cannon.
Heavier and faster than Jade, HMS Blitz carried twice as many guns and four times as many mariners. I would not win this fight with strength or firepower.
My mind whirled through every stratagem and artifice I’d used in previous battles, picking apart tricks that had worked for me and those that hadn’t. If I had more time, maybe I could think up a ruse to escape this without casualties.
Movement rippled through Lord Cutler’s men. The forty-yard distance made their features indiscernible, but I could make out two lieutenants walking toward the boat that swung from the stern of HMS Blitz.
Lord Cutler motioned to more soldiers, and they vanished down the gangway ladder, dispatched for some other ominous task.
Dread trickled down my spine.
“Bennett Sharp,” he called through the speaking trumpet. “Prepare to receive my lieutenants, and I must insist that you cover yourself before they arrive.”
I glanced down at Priest’s white linen shirt, the hem tangling around my knees. In my hurry to the upper deck, I’d foregone trousers, boots, weapons, my hat… The only thing I wore was the jade stone and thin shirt.
Oh, I bet that inspired some horrified blushes and gasps on His Majesty’s Ship. Proper Englishmen upheld modesty in a degree I considered ridiculously excessive. Not to mention, they never allowed a woman aboard a navy vessel.
And here I was, standing half-naked on the gunwale of a fifty-gun galleon, laughing into the trumpet with wicked delight. “Do I offend your sensibilities, my lord?”
He lowered his trumpet, holding it behind his back, refusing to answer. Even at this distance, I felt the heat of his glare. The tenacity in it. The man seemed impossible to ruffle.
“I must insist that you invite me to dinner, Commodore.” My amplified voice crashed into the wind. “A woman likes to be courted and wooed before she gets fucked. Just ask James here…” I gestured at the scrawny, gray-bearded tar behind me. “He thoroughly woos your mother with his tongue in her unmentionables before he fucks her.”
The commodore snapped out his arm, the only warning I got before the whistling hiss of incoming mortar rent the air.
My lungs crashed together as the shot punched through the tafferel of Jade’s stern, taking out the stately panels and railings in an explosion of splintered wood. I tumbled off the gunwale, the deck shaking beneath my bare feet as the boom dissipated in every direction.
I waved the billowing smoke from my face and glared at the jagged, smoldering hole in my ship. Thank God, Priest was held far beneath the broken timbers. No chance of injuries.
Only surface damage.
It was a slap in the face. He could’ve demolished the rigging, toppled the mizzenmast, and blasted away anything that would’ve prevented us from sailing. The fact that he didn’t showed what little confidence he had in our ability to flee.
All eyes fixed on me. Under the bulwarks with daggers, in the shrouds with muskets, behind