The Notorious Lady Anne: A Loveswept Historical Romance (38 page)

“Do I need to call the constable, miss? This is a busy office and I have no time for girlish foolishness.”

He denied her. She wanted to weep, to scream, to cry out in pain. She wanted her mother,
as childish as that might seem. Something inside her broke free. It wasn’t a physical feeling as much as a knowledge that something was different. What she didn’t know, what she had no way of knowing at that moment but would recognize in her later years, was that the core, the very essence of Emmaline Blackwell had changed. He’d denied her, but he would never deny her again. She would force him to acknowledge her existence. Somehow, some way, Daniel Blackwell would regret ever denying he had a daughter.

Now, eleven years later, Emmaline stood port side of her own ship, with her own crew of loyal men, and watched the
Illusion
cut through the waves, loaded with gold, if Nicholas and her sources were to be believed.

Her anger pulsated through her. An anger she’d lived with for so long she didn’t know what it was to live without it.

I certainly don’t have a daughter
.

Oh, yes you do, Papa. And you’re about to meet her again
.

She spun away from Nicholas and ordered the crew to head for the ship. The crew cheered their agreement and she smiled, but the smile slipped when she caught Nicholas watching her intently, his expression grim.

What did he expect? He’d given her the information for Blackwell’s downfall. She’d told him numerous times not to board this ship, but he came anyway, knowing who she was and what she was about.

If he was disappointed in her, that was his problem.

Cutlass in hand, pistols primed and tucked into his waistband, Nicholas stood with the rest of Emmaline’s crew, fighting the images flashing before his eyes of his last battle.

Never in this lifetime did he think he’d ever be on the other side of such a battle. If caught, he’d be labeled a pirate. Hanged as a pirate. But if he had second thoughts, all he had to do was look at Emmaline and those second thoughts vanished. He’d studied her while she
watched Blackwell’s ships, lost in her own memories, haunted by what transpired between her and her father so many years ago. The sadness inside her echoed inside him.

She was his wife. His pirate wife. He wasn’t here to fight Blackwell, he’d leave that to Emmaline and her crew. He was here to protect her, because he vowed to God he would. And because he needed to. She’d wormed her way into his heart and set up residence there. To lose her would be like losing a limb. Worse. The loss of a limb he could live with and still function. Without Emmaline, Nicholas wouldn’t be able to function at all.

The
Delilah
sailed ever closer to the
Illusion
. They were so close Nicholas saw the captain standing starboard, staring at them through a telescope. He glanced at Emmaline, who stood to his right, her knuckles white on her cutlass, her jaw clenched, eyes narrowed.

“Is it Blackwell?” he asked.

She nodded and Nicholas heaved out a breath. He looked at the man who’d caused his wife such grief. There was nothing to suggest he was evil, but Nicholas knew evil could reside deep inside a person.

Emmaline gave the order to lower the king’s flag and raise the black flag. Nicholas tensed, the fire of battle raging through him. There was no turning back now.

As soon as the black flag made an appearance, a cry rose from the
Illusion
and activity intensified.

Emmaline raised her sword and looked directly into the eyes of her father. Slowly Daniel Blackwell lowered the scope. For several long moments father and daughter stared at each other. Then with a downward slash, Emmaline lowered her cutlass and her crew released the guns. The sound was deafening, plunging Nicholas back to the last battle he’d been in. The last pirates he’d fought. Already men were screaming and wounded were dying. War was a messy thing and the images would never leave him. He wondered how Emmaline did it. How she lived with the memories.

Instantly, Nicholas’s world narrowed and he focused on staying close to Emmaline to protect her back. She raced toward the railing and the tenders waiting to take everyone to the
Illusion
.

Nicholas glimpsed Phin jump in one and Shamus in another. The huge sailor’s look was grim and Nicholas had to look away with a tight feeling in his stomach. A sense of foreboding took over, and he had to shake it away before it paralyzed him.

Once Emmaline was able to board the
Illusion
her course was clear. She cut a swath through the fighting men, heading straight for Blackwell. Nicholas kept pace with her, knocking off would-be attackers intent on killing the pirate captain, while he admired her skill with a sword and her instincts when it came to survival. She seemed to know when someone was rushing her, when to step to the side, when to parry. Often the smallest men were the best fighters, having speed and agility on their side, and Emmaline was proof of that. Her reach was short, but she was able to duck under an attacker’s long reach and get him in the soft underbelly.

His appreciation for her fighting skills rose, and although he didn’t approve of this attack, he was proud to fight next to her.

Already the deck was cloaked in the smoke of the guns and blunderbusses. A few times he lost Emmaline in the smoke, but quickly learned to stay by her side. He’d long since lost track of Phin and Shamus.

Through the drifts of the smoke, he witnessed a few of Emmaline’s men hurrying toward the hold, where the promise of gold awaited.

The thought of the gold bothered Nicholas more and more. He grabbed Emmaline’s arms and she spun, cutlass raised. Quickly Nicholas stepped back, out of the way of the deadly weapon until his presence penetrated the haze of combat in Emmaline’s eyes.

She was like a schooner, sleek and fast and deadly, and God help him, he was drawn to the fire inside her. “The gold,” he yelled over the noise of the fighting.

She nodded, taking a last look behind her, no doubt searching for her father. Nicholas grabbed her arm and together they made their way to the hold, dodging blows, sidestepping men locked together in battle.

The quiet of the hold was almost disorienting. A few of Emmaline’s men were already there, carrying out rich bolts of fabrics and other items they could sell for profit.

Nicholas wound his way around the half-opened barrels, Emmaline’s hand clenched tightly in his. They were out of danger for now, but he found he couldn’t let her go. To watch her dive into the melee had nearly killed him, and ’twas something he hoped to never see again.

He stopped, swung her around and kissed her. Hard. Needing her body against his, to feel her heart thundering inside her, to feel her lips against his. She made a startled sound but kissed him back.

“Good God, woman, don’t ever scare me like that again,” he said when he broke away.

She smiled, her eyes alight. This was where she was truly alive, where she was at her best, and it frightened him that he’d married a woman who enjoyed such danger.

He stepped away from her and his emotions, because both were too much to contain, and visually searched the hold. “Where do you think the gold is?”

Emmaline shrugged. “I care not for the gold, Nicholas.”

He looked at her sharply. The haunted look was still in her eyes and anticipation fairly rolled off her. She wanted to go up top. She wanted to confront her father. It wasn’t enough that Blackwell knew she was the one attacking his ships. She wanted to face him.

“We need to know why he’s transporting gold.”

A glimmer of something caught his eye. He reached into a barrel and pulled out rich, red velvet. A gold piece rolled to the ground and circled its way to the shadows. He and Emmaline looked at each other. He dropped the velvet and reached in again, pawing his way past the fabrics until his fingers closed around a handful of irregularly shaped gold pieces. He sifted them through his fingers, listening to the tinkling as they fell back in.

“There are hundreds more in here.” He looked around at the other barrels. “No doubt all the barrels are filled with gold.”

Emmaline picked a coin up, holding it up to the light to study it. She pulled in a breath and with wide eyes handed it to him. Confused, he took it from her.

“Good God.”

“Macuquinas.”
She looked at the sparkling coins in Nicholas’s hand. Spanish gold coins.

Why was her father transporting Spanish gold coins?

“I don’t understand,” Nicholas said. “The colonies use this as currency. Why would he ship them away from the colonies?”

Emmaline shook her head. She was curious, but more than that she wanted to get back to the fighting. Already the sounds of battle were lessening. Blackwell’s ship was better armed and better manned than usual, but still no match for her crew. At least half of the hold was empty from her men carrying out the barrels, yet all she could think about was her father.

“Britain and Spain are at odds,” Nicholas said.

Pulled from her thoughts, she looked at him. “Odds?”

There was an air of excitement about him that was almost contagious. “Relations are strained due to Spain’s desire to keep Britain out of the trade routes to South America.”

She remembered hearing something about this, but hadn’t paid close attention at the time. World affairs didn’t interest her much. Not lately, at least.

Nicholas sifted through the coins again, but she could tell his thoughts were far off.

Quickly she made the calculations in her head, the ramifications almost unimaginable. “He’s not headed for England or France, but for Spain.”

Nicholas looked at her. “With money.”

“So you have discovered my secret.”

She spun around. Her father stood on the bottom step. Blood was splattered over the front of him, but he appeared unharmed. His hair was more gray than it had been eleven years ago, his shoulders more stooped, but those cold gray eyes were the same.

“Father.”

Daniel Blackwell stared at her with those dead eyes. She suppressed the shiver of revulsion tickling her spine. How could her mother have loved such a man?

“So you’re the one destroying my ships.”

She tilted her head in acknowledgment while Nicholas moved to stand beside her, his cutlass at the ready. Blackwell took the final step into the hold and moved closer. Beside her,
Nicholas tensed.

“I didn’t believe the rumors that it was a woman. An orange-eyed woman who ate men.” He chuckled and spread his arms wide. “Is this what you wanted, my dear, Emmaline? My ship?”

“I want your destruction.”

His chuckle died, those disturbing eyes penetrating. “And they say I’m cruel.”

“Cruel for leaving my mother and me. For promising to return, then finding another wife.”

“Is that what she told you? That I found
another
wife?”

Emmaline’s shoulders straightened while her stomach heaved. “What do you mean?”

Daniel shook his head and took another step. “I mean your mother wished for things that were not to be. I had plans, my Emmaline. Grand plans. Her father ruined them, and so I was forced to my own resources. If he could not give me what I wanted, I would find someone who would.”

“You had no intention of coming back for us.”

“My lovely, naïve Emmaline. Your mother and I never married. I got her pregnant in the hopes her father would force me to marry her, but he refused. Your grandfather ran me out of town. Put me on the first ship to the colonies.”

Her mother and father never married? She was a bastard? “You lie.”

He chuckled, an evil sound that would forever haunt her. “In this I do not lie. I’m many things, my dear daughter, but an adulterer I am not. My wife’s father would disown me and I would lose everything.” He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. As if her world wasn’t being ripped apart.

She glanced at Nicholas, her heart falling to her stomach. ’Twas one thing to try to sweep her past beneath the rug and pretend she wasn’t Lady Anne, ’twas another for a bastard child to marry someone such as Nicholas. The life she’d hoped to have with him was over. If it even truly began at all.

With a sweep of the hand holding his cutlass Blackwell indicated the remaining barrels. “So now you know my secret.”

“You’re shipping money to Spain. For what gain?” Nicholas said.

“Gain?” Blackwell laughed. “Surely by now you know me. I am your enemy after all, am I not? Isn’t it your job to know me well?”

“You’re aiding the Spanish.” Nicholas moved to her right, blocking her. She couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying. All she could think was that everything she believed, everything she thought to be true, had been a lie. Her mother, her aunt, her entire family, lied to her all these years.

Blackwell smiled. “Spain is strong and powerful and I’ve always been drawn to the strong and powerful. Like you, my daughter. You have strength. You have fortitude. Like me, you land on your feet and come out fighting. I admire that.”

“I’m nothing like you.” But his words cut her to the quick, leaving her raw. Was he right? Was she more like him than her sweet mother who always believed the best in people? Her stomach cramped at the thought.