The Notorious Lady Anne: A Loveswept Historical Romance (7 page)

She pushed him off and scrambled to her feet. He stared up at her with dead eyes and a gaping wound where minutes ago his heart beat.

Bugger it all. She’d lost her stiletto when he fell on her. She searched the deck, toeing the dead man out of the way to look beneath him. She had to find the dagger. It was the only weapon she had.

Desperate, she bent down and felt with her hands. The deck was slick with fog and now the blood of the dead man. She ignored the blood, frantic to locate her weapon.

She smiled when she spotted a sheathed dagger tied to his waist. As her fingers closed over it, she was yanked back.

She twisted in her captor’s hold, raised the knife and plunged it toward him. The man stepped back and the dagger whistled through the air, missing him.

He smiled, sickly yellow eyes glowering at her. He was huge. Possibly the biggest man she’d ever seen. His hands were as big as hams, his forearms bulging with muscles.

Emmaline swallowed and snapped a side kick to his groin, but the kick was ineffectual, hampered by a stone’s worth of skirts. Her feet tangled in the fabric and she fell. The man laughed at her puny attempt and grabbed her arm, pulling her up and squeezing her wrist until her fingers turned numb. The dagger fell to the deck and skittered away. He picked her up as if she were no bigger than a bilge rat and carried her through the mess of fighting men.

Anger rolled over her at the irony of falling victim to a pirate attack, and she did the only thing she could—she pounded his back and kicked her legs, but her strikes were futile. Didn’t people see this giant carting off a woman? She lifted her head and brushed her hair from her face. With a sinking heart she observed Addison’s men cowering before the pirates, not even fighting back. They’d lost before the battle even began.

The giant put her on her feet, tied her hands behind her back and thrust her over the side of the
Pride
.

She landed on the deck of the other ship. Immediately, pirates surrounded her, their faces alight with the possibility of a woman and all the things they could do to her.

She scrambled to her knees, off balance with her hands tied behind her. Some sneered. Others looked at her with a light in their eyes she didn’t want to comprehend.

She turned in a circle to keep all of them in her sight. Someone shoved her from behind.

Like a child’s plaything she bounced between them, their laughter echoing through the thick fog. Instead of giving in to her fear, she let her anger take over and memorized the face of each man. One especially foolish pirate grabbed her around the waist and yanked her against his body. She head-butted him. Bone crunched and he howled, blood spurting from his broken nose.

The playful mocking turned ominous and the hands became rougher, touching places no stranger had business touching.

Someone shoved her hard and she fell, landing on her shoulder. Pain shot up her arm and into her neck. Instinctively, she curled into a ball, anticipating the blows and kicks. However, the
hooting and laughter abruptly stopped, followed by a near deafening silence.

The toe of a dirty boot nudged her shoulder. She looked up and groaned at the familiar face.

“Well, lookie here.” Her captor smiled, revealing a row of gold teeth to match the gold hoops in his ears. Black eyes twinkled with amusement from a dirty face. Greasy black hair was pulled back and tarred into a queue. A red rag covered his head. Of all the pirates in the vast ocean to find her, it had to be this one.

Emmaline tried to push herself up, but he stopped her by poking his cutlass in her stomach. “Not so fast.”

Her gaze skittered to the crew of the
Pride
. Bruised, battered, bloody and terrified, they stood in a ragged line behind the pirates.

Samuel listed to the side, one eye nearly swollen closed. Addison stood straight, his shirt splattered with what she hoped wasn’t his blood. His eyes were narrowed in seething fury. Their gazes locked. He took a step toward her but was blocked by the massive arm of the pirate who had dumped her on this ship.

Her captor grabbed her arm and dragged her away. She stumbled behind him, looking over her shoulder at Addison.

“Emma—” The large pirate cuffed him on the side of the head. Addison fell to the deck. She turned away. She’d do more harm if the pirate captain recognized her interest in Addison. Her strength now lay in her bargaining powers.

She turned to the pirate leader and raised her chin. “Alphonse.”

A corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. “Anne.”

“You’re ruining some very well-laid plans of mine.” Emmaline wriggled her fingers, hoping to loosen the knot.

“Do tell.” Alphonse rocked back on his heels, looking at her from under half-closed lids.

Emmaline sniffed the air, her nose wrinkling at the stench of body odor, tobacco and rum. “You need a bath.”

His smile was slow and disgusting. “Care to join me?”

“I’d rather be fed to the sharks.”

Alphonse tapped his fingers against his arm. “So,” he said after some length. “I find it interesting the notorious Lady Anne travels on a Blackwell ship, eh?”

Emmaline shot a quick look in Addison’s direction but they were too far away for him to hear. He’d picked himself up and was glaring at the giant. “What I do and don’t do is none of your concern.”

“Ah, but it is. Because, you see, you are
my
prisoner now.” He smiled. “And quite pleased I am about it.”

What she had to say next made her stomach turn and the blood move faster through her veins. Alphonse was the only thing standing between success and starting over again. She threw her shoulders back and straightened her spine.

“I seek a favor of you.” It should have come out as a polite request. Instead she said it through gritted teeth.

Alphonse threw his head back and laughed. The odor of unwashed body and stale breath assaulted her and she stepped back, suddenly nauseous.

Alphonse settled down to a few chuckles and looked at her in amusement. “And why should
I
help
you
?” His voice turned cold, hard. “I ought to sell you as a slave.” He caressed her cheek, his gaze turning hot. “Or mayhap I’ll keep you for myself.”

She shuddered in revulsion. “Do it”—this time her voice went cold and hard—“and Phin will hunt you down as I’ve hunted Blackwell for these past eleven years. I can promise it won’t be a pleasant death.”

Alphonse winced as fear flickered in his eyes and his face paled. Phin’s reputation was well-known and well-feared, even by pirates of Alphonse’s caliber. An eternity passed as he seemed to weigh the odds of keeping her versus helping her.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked in resignation.

They sat on the deck, exposed to the rain that pushed the fog away hours ago, their hands tied behind their backs. Alphonse’s grappling hooks still attached his ship to the
Pride
.

“Do you believe now,” Addison said into the dark, startling her out of her own musings.

“Believe what?”

“At Dorothy’s ball you said you believed pirates were a thing of fairy tales. Now do you believe they exist?”

She stared at the dreary, gray dawn, searching the horizon and remembering the ball and her harmless flirtation with Captain Addison. She’d had an ulterior motive in approaching him that night, but discovered she enjoyed their conversation. She liked goading him, pushing him past his preconceived notions, and she enjoyed their quick repartee. Their conversations invigorated her and his kisses …

To her horror, her face heated and her breasts puckered with the remembered feel of his hands on them. She rested her head against the railing and closed her eyes. After tonight nothing would be the same. He would discover her true identity, and contempt and revulsion would replace his desire.

He thought he was simply playing with a bored, unconventional married woman, when in fact she was still a virgin. Deadly with a sword, and a better ship’s captain than most men, but still a woman untouched by a man.

That’s not the type of woman someone like Captain Nicholas Addison wanted.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I believe pirates exist.”

Alphonse’s attack on the
Pride
had been nothing but sheer luck on the pirate’s part. It infuriated her that his ill-timed, nefarious duties coincided with and interrupted her own. But more than that, it enraged her that he’d stolen time from her. Time she would have spent with Addison.

“Emmaline.”

“Yes?” She liked that he called her by her given name. Not many even knew she was born Emmaline and not Anne. It made her feel like a normal person.

“I’m sorry about … Well, about what happened in my office.”

Her eyes flew open and she stared up at the stars. Her face grew hotter. Not with embarrassment, as he would probably assume, but with anger. How dare he take her one good memory and taint it with an apology. Now she felt cheap, when before she felt wanted and cherished and treasured.

She’d been wanted before—as a captain, as a pirate, as a warrior, but always as Anne, never as Emmaline.

“Think nothing of it. ’Twas merely a folly.” She was pleased her voice didn’t betray her emotions. If Nicholas Addison could dismiss their kiss, she could as well.

Silence stretched between them and she struggled to battle her humiliation.

“Yes. Well.” Nicholas’s words were husky and he cleared his throat. “What did you and the pirate talk about when he dragged you away?”

Emmaline turned her head and blinked rainwater from her eyes. Nicholas Addison was no fool. He saw that she wasn’t afraid of Alphonse and had in fact stood up to him. Yet she couldn’t tell him the truth.

Alphonse suddenly appeared and yanked her up by her arm. She gasped at the hot needles shooting from her elbow to the tips of her fingers, bringing them to life for the first time in hours and resurrecting the pain of her fall to the deck. She was glad for the pain because it erased the other feelings she wasn’t equipped to deal with.

With a strangled sound, Addison struggled to stand. Occasionally she caught him shifting restlessly and grimacing. She recalled the night of Dorothy’s ball and the hitch to his step, and wondered what injury he sustained that maimed him for life.

He made it to his feet, and with a small hop to put his weight on his right leg, stood beside her, his broad shoulders straight in his tattered shirt.

Alphonse dragged her a few paces away and swung her around. Addison moved to follow, but was stopped again by the giant.

“I’ve done what you asked,” Alphonse growled, his eyes flashing with anger. “I signaled to Phin like you said. He signaled back and should be here soon.”

“Good.” The plan all along had been to have her partner, Phin, follow the
Pride
at a good distance in case she needed backup. If there was any time she needed backup, now was the time.

A swell shifted the ship. Thrown off balance, Emmaline fell against him. He grabbed her arm, his hand brushing against her breast and the paper safely tucked in there. He stilled, his eyes brightening.

“What have we here?” He groped the outside of her bodice. The paper crinkled. She turned her torso away, less disgusted by his hands on her in such an intimate manner than she was afraid he’d find the paper. In the event Alphonse got it in his head to go after Blackwell’s ship himself, she didn’t want him aware of Blackwell’s shipping schedule. But most important, she didn’t want Addison to discover what she’d been about in his cabin. He would start putting the pieces of the puzzle together and come to the correct conclusion that she was, indeed, Lady Anne. She wasn’t quite ready for that revelation, even though it was looming.

Alphonse grabbed her shoulder to keep her still and plunged his other hand down her bodice, squeezing her breast. Addison yelled, and twisted out of the guard’s hands to lurch forward. He lashed out with his foot, catching Alphonse at the knee. Alphonse crumpled, ripping the paper from her dress.

“No!” She lunged toward him, but with her hands tied behind her back she was unable to grab the paper.

The guard slammed the butt of his pistol into Addison’s stomach. Addison doubled over with a groan.

Back on his feet, Alphonse unfolded the paper and frowned in confusion. It was obvious to Emmaline that Alphonse couldn’t read and a sliver of hope took root.

But Addison straightened and moved behind Alphonse to read over his shoulder. His stunned gaze fell on Emmaline. “What the bloody hell …”

Sensing the paper held significance to both his captives, Alphonse grinned and prepared to tear it in half.

“No!” As soon as the word escaped, Emmaline realized her mistake, but it was too late.

Alphonse pulled his dagger and placed the tip against Addison’s throat. Addison stilled, his eyes flashing at her in fury.

“Decide,” Alphonse said. “The paper or the captain.”

She looked at Addison, his head bent back, the point of Alphonse’s dagger digging into his exposed throat. Her gaze slid to the paper fluttering in Alphonse’s outstretched hand. In his grimy grasp he held many month’s worth of planning, and a step toward a goal she’d pursued for eleven years.