The Devil's Tide (4 page)

"My only concern is ending piracy," Rogers continued, ignoring Henry. "Benjamin Hornigold was a trusted ally, and now he's spit in my face and returned to the ranks of piracy. I must retrieve him and make an example of him. Mr. Adams, you will be transferred to
Crusader
, where you will report to Captain Dillahunt. You will lead him to Hornigold's destination. That is the extent of your role. Nothing more will be required of you, and afterward you will be free to do whatever you like, with the exception of engaging in further piratical activities. There may even be a position available on Dillahunt's ship, should you desire."

"I understand," Nathan said, a swell of relief rising in his breast. His fortune had shifted as swiftly as the wind, but he knew better than to let the moment overwhelm him. The wind was fickle.

One small detail was nagging at him. "What of Lindsay?"

Rogers paused. Apparently he hadn't considered that. "Her family will want her returned safely, but her recent actions do not bode well her mortality. Lindsay has deprived me of my best man. If anything were to happen to her, I can't say my slumber would be diminished."

"Noted," Nathan said. He wasn't sure what he would do if he encountered Katherine again, but it was good to know that his freedom was not contingent on her survival.

"Nathan doesn't know where the island is!" Henry practically screamed, sweat trickling down his forehead.

Rogers clutched Nathan's collar and drew him closer. "If you require this man, tell me now."

The words came easily. "He's no use to anybody."

Rogers nodded. "Then he will hang with the others." He patted Nathan's shoulder, just above the missing arm, and smiled for the first time. His gnarled jaw did not allow the smile much leeway on the left side. "And before you depart, you will witness the executions."

"I must confess disappointment," Jacqueline Calloway said, strutting around her room in nothing more than a feathered tricorn hat. "I expected them to strangle for minutes on end. The snapping of their necks was shocking, but it was over too fast. I see no real punishment in such a brisk death, do you?"

"You're lucky you got to see anything at all," Guy Dillahunt replied, watching her from the bed.

"So are you," she shot back, turning away from the window to face him. The morning light projected her slender silhouette across the room. The establishment had no name, as yet. It was fairly new, and so far Calloway was the only tenant occupying one of the four rooms on the second floor above the tavern. She wondered how long this place could stay in business with only her to support it, and all of the pirates steering clear of Nassau.

Dillahunt was sitting against the crude headboard, one hand behind his head, the other fingering a polished black pistol with silver sloops set into each side of the grip. Calloway had noted that the gun was never far from his person, which was probably smart for a man of his vocation. Dillahunt was a famed privateer who had lingered in Nassau over the past month to aid his friend, Governor Woodes Rogers, in ridding the Caribbean of piracy.

The covers were drawn to his lean waist. His stomach was etched in muscle, ascending into a broad chest. He had large, bulky shoulders and biceps that were nearly the size of Calloway's thighs. Blonde strands permeated his thick brown hair. Calloway guessed he was somewhere in his mid-thirties. Upon close scrutiny, Dillahunt was not particularly handsome, with a narrow mouth, puffy cheeks, and eyes displaced too far apart. His nose was round and flat, as though he had been punched one too many times, and there was a perpetual crease between his brows. Still, Calloway found him irresistibly attractive. In her opinion, a man did not need a perfect face. Character and strength were far greater virtues, and Dillahunt possessed an abundance of both.

"I've been afraid to ask," Dillahunt said, setting his gun on the cockeyed bedside table. "How old are you? Or, should I say, how
young
are you?"

"I am fifteen as of two days ago," Calloway said, grinning proudly.

Dillahunt considered that, chewing on his bottom lip. "You are considerably talented for a fifteen year old."

"I've been at it since I was twelve," she admitted. Calloway's mother, a beautiful French prostitute named Elise, had raised her in a small brothel at Port Bayou St. Jean in Louisiana. Calloway's father had been an impossibly handsome, raven-haired explorer who her mother had spent no more than a single night with, or so she had claimed.

"Your accent sounds vaguely French," Dillahunt said. "Yet your surname is English, is it not?"

"I don't know anything about names, 'surs' or otherwise," Calloway said. "My mother probably took it off one of her many suitors. We had so many last names, you see."

"Your mother? A stunning woman, I'm sure."

"Prettier than me."

"I doubt that," Dillahunt said, beckoning her back to the bed with a hooked finger.

She stayed where she was, enjoying the soft breeze on her naked back as it swept through the open window. "She was more womanly," Calloway said, trailing a finger over a disappointingly small breast. "I could pass for a boy."

"So you've said," Dillahunt drawled, rolling his eyes. She had been not-so-subtly hinting at joining his crew since meeting him yesterday. "Never met a boy with skin so smooth as yours."

"I'm as tall as you, Captain," she chuckled. Calloway was two inches shy of six feet, with long legs and strong broad shoulders. Her mother said she had gained her stature from her father, who she boasted was near seven feet tall. Jacqueline's piercing sapphire irises, fair complexion, and the faint smattering of freckles about her nose, however, had been gifts from her mother.

Dillahunt gnawed at a fingernail. "I knew a strumpet taller than Edward Teach," he said between bites.

Calloway recoiled at the name. "Do not speak that name to me," she barked. She had good reason to despise Teach, but she wasn't about to share that with someone she had just met. For all she knew, Dillahunt was one of Teach's spies.

"You have a quarrel with Blackbeard?" Dillahunt said, the crease lengthening in his brow.

"No," she lied. "I've just heard unspeakable things about the man."

"Exaggerations mostly," Dillahunt replied. "But not all. He is exceedingly dangerous."

"I told you not to talk about him."

"Fine," he said, raising his hands innocently. "My point was I knew a very tall strumpet. Of course, her hips were wider than yours. Too wide for my tastes. I'd hate to see the plump bastards she popped out of those things."

Calloway ran her fingers through her straight raven hair, which reached all the way to her waist. "If my hair was shorter and I wore boy's clothing, you wouldn't know the difference. There is very little that separates a boy's face from a woman's."

"I can't say I've ever been aroused by a boy," Dillahunt replied, spitting out a curl of fingernail.

"Maybe you have and didn't know it."

"That would be most alarming," he muttered to himself, as if experiencing a revelation. "Where would you stick the bloody thing, anyway? Jesus! I'd not blame a man for taking a cutlass to himself and flinging his cock to the sea, should such urges arise. The choice between a cock that excites for men and no cock at all . . . well that's not really a choice, is it?"

"I can't say," Calloway shrugged. "I don't have one."

"Precisely the reason you are absent clothing in my room."

"It seems to me," she said, tapping her chin with her index finger, "that the only real difference between men and women is what's found betwixt our legs."

Dillahunt screwed up his face. "This conversation has taken a turn for the unpleasant." He retrieved his gun and suddenly became preoccupied with polishing the already spotless silver sloops.

"Well, that and tits," she went on, lowering her head to gander at her own bust, "which I don't have a whole lot of." She checked them often, for fear they might vanish if she didn't. She had hoped they would increase with age, but they had stubbornly refused.

"I'd like my hat back," Dillahunt muttered childishly, refusing to look at her.

Calloway turned and set her palms on the windowsill, inhaling the morning air. Port Nassau was a bustle of activity below, as it always was after a hanging. Nothing brought out the liveliness in a town like an execution. Villagers were conversing with one another in the markets, navy sentries were stealing gossip while patrolling the docks with their long rifles, and several children were playing with turtles on the bright white sands of the beach.

The port was much cleaner now than when Calloway had first arrived a year prior. Many structures had been reinforced and repainted, and the town was beginning to distinguish itself from the lush jungle surrounding its borders. The streets had been cleared of tropical vegetation, which had met little resistance from the indolent pirates as it had threatened to overwhelm the town. Governor Rogers was rebuilding the fort on the hill that overlooked the bay. It was an ominous structure that served as a warning to all pirates who would dare return to the port that had once served as their primary base of operations. He had also erected a new palisade around the fort, strengthening its defenses.

Not a year prior the harbor was crammed with so many pirate ships that it was difficult to see the water between them, but now it was lightly sprinkled with the clean white sails of merchant vessels and a few official navy sloops. Shiny new mounted guns skirted the harbor. A hulking man of war loomed in the distance, near Paradise Island. It was flanked by two heavily gunned navy sloops.

Fashion was gradually blending. It was difficult to tell one woman from the next, as they all seemed to be wearing the same style of dress. England had come to Nassau and had smothered much of its color along with its pirate populace.

Calloway looked past the white beach and into the translucent shoal waters that shimmered vibrantly in the early light. "They can take the town," she murmured distantly, "but they cannot take the water."

"What's that?" Dillahunt called from behind her. "Is it poetry?"

She faced him, propping her ass on the sill and folding her arms beneath her breasts. "You're taking me with you."

Dillahunt tossed the covers away and shuffled out of the bed. He stepped into his trousers and lifted them to his waist, fastening them. "I don't even know you," he said. "You wanted to see the hanging, so I used my influence to get you in, despite a full crowd. I wanted a night's pleasure. We were both obliged. Now you want to stowaway on my ship. What's in it for me?"

"A night's pleasure
every
night," she replied mischievously.

"You've scarred me," he whined, rubbing the back of his head. "If I'm ever to rise again, I'll require a blow to the skull that renders this morning's conversation forgotten."

She leapt off the window and moved towards him. He stared, transfixed by the movement of her hips. She cupped his crotch, which immediately hardened in her firm grip. "This tells me otherwise."

"Seems it has a mind of its own," Dillahunt said, swallowing. "And a shorter memory."

"Why are you getting dressed? I wasn't through with you."

He pulled away, retrieving his shirt. "My ship waits impatiently. We depart within the hour. As we speak, the crew scurries about the deck like rats, inclined to anarchy when starved of leadership."

"How do they feed themselves in your absence?" she drawled.

"That is a good quest—" He paused, scowling. "Oh. You're making fun of me."

"I'm coming with you," she insisted, placing a hand on her hip.

"Some of my crew are former pirates," he said, slipping on a bright red shirt and buttoning it. "They do not tolerate females at sea, and neither do I. It's bad luck. Just ask Jonathan Griffith, if you can find his corpse somewhere at the bottom of the harbor."

"Which is why I will not board your ship as a girl," she said, reaching up and gathering her hair into a ponytail behind her head. "I'll cut it off. I'll dress as a common sailor. No one will know the difference. Except you. At night. When I steal into your quarters."

"Someone will notice that," Dillahunt said, curtness rising in his tone. He dropped to his knees and reached under the bed to retrieve his long black coat. "Sailors have nothing but time on their hands, and they spend that time studying everyone around them. Little details that bore you and me become exciting gossips worthy of reenactment over a campfire. A captain sleeping with a cabin boy, while not exactly suitable for reenactment, would prove particularly exciting gossip. And possible cause for mutiny. Not to mention what could happen to you if your true gender were discovered."

"I'll be careful."

He slipped on the coat and straightened the sleeves. He paused, fixating on her head. "This can no longer be ignored. You are wearing my hat."

"You can't have it." She flicked the white feather that dangled over the brim.

"It's my finest hat."

"Buy another. The market's open."

"Jacqueline," he sighed.

"Jaq," she corrected, raising a finger.

He set his hands on her shoulders and massaged them with his thumbs. "Jacqueline, this next voyage is dangerous business. I must track a former associate of the governor. A very smart man by the name of Benjamin Hornigold." He stared at her portentously. When she didn't respond, he added, "I may be violently murdered for my trouble."

"I thought Hornigold was hunting pirates now."

"Indeed he was," Dillahunt said. "But he's gone on the account with that Lindsay woman, and now I'm hunting him."

"Who?" Calloway replied, playing dumb. She knew exactly who Katherine Lindsay was—everybody on the island did—but she also knew that men liked to inform women of things they thought women didn't already know.

"Some bitch from London who spent too long with pirates. That idiot Jonathan Griffith kidnapped her, and she apparently repaid him by setting his ship ablaze in the harbor."

"Hmm, I might like her."

"She's all mixed up in the head, as women tend to be after enduring fearful circumstances. Rogers believes her to be leading Hornigold to a supposed bounty that Griffith may or may not have stashed before his untimely demise. Promises of gold seem to follow this woman wherever she goes, but so far as I can tell, no one's been paid."