no pirate, you know. They welcome him at fancy tables. He’s free to sail wherever he chooses and…kill and loot at will. Because he does so for the governors and the Crown, and he’s somehow…” He shook his head. He was no longer hoping to hide anything from them. Maybe he wasn’t even hoping to survive anymore. “I have never known another man so utterly ruthless and brutal. He’s invincible, and you might as well kill me now, and I can only pray you will do so mercifully.”
“How will he know you were hired by the bald man?” Red asked.
“He’ll know,” the terrified man whispered. “There is talk. There is always talk. Tomorrow they will be talking about the fight tonight.”
“How did he hire you? Was he here recently?” Brendan demanded.
“No…months ago, he paid the bald man. One-eyed Joe. That’s what I heard. And he promised a great reward. That’s all I know. I swear it.”
“Fight?” Hagar snorted. “Intended execution, more like.”
“No one thought Red Robert would go down without taking a few men with him,” the fellow said mournfully. “That’s why there were so many of us. This island is hell, my friends, and in hell, people always talk, and there is nowhere to run.”
Hagar looked at Red. “We can’t take him with us. The man is a coward.”
“I was caught in the sheets!” the fellow implored.
“Can’t trust him,” Peg-leg said.
“We have to kill him,” Hagar said.
The man began to moan softly again.
“Oh, shut up,” Brendan snapped.
A door opened somewhere nearby. People were beginning to venture out.
“Pick up the good weapons,” Red said quietly, and Peg-leg and Hagar hurried to do so, before those who had cowered in their rooms above could come down and, like vultures, prey upon the dead.
Red turned. A man was working at one of the fallen assailant’s boots.
“I don’t have shoes,” he said simply.
Red nodded. “Aye, then, take what you need—except the weapons. The weapons are ours. And see to the bodies.”
She started walking slowly away.
“What about him?” Brendan called after her.
She turned, not sure what to say. She couldn’t order the man’s death. He was right; he was probably a dead man anyway. He was hardly trustworthy. But he couldn’t really hurt them in any way.
Before she could open her mouth, he cried out, “Wait! I can cook. I’m a good cook. Meals are wretched at sea, but I can keep meat fresh longer than any man alive, I can mix grog, and I know a recipe that keeps away the scurvy, too.”
“Any man can make grog,” Hagar said. “Rum, lemon and water.”
“But mine is the right combination. Keeps the growth from the water, makes it good and sweet for drinking. And I know spices and herbs. Take me on as a cook. Please,” he begged.
“He’ll hide in any battle,” Hagar warned.
“He can hide down by the guns, then,” Red said. “Are you capable of priming and loading a cannon.”
“I am.”
“What’s your name?”
“O’Hara. Jimmy O’Hara. Once an Irishman, never an Orangeman. No country of my own.”
She lowered her eyes for a moment. Time had passed, years, and this was a different world….
“Take him on,” she said.
When she started walking quickly toward the wharf, unwilling to stay ashore and determined to take the tender back to the ship, she found Brendan by her side.
And Logan Haggerty on the other.
Hagar and Peg-leg brought up the rear, Jimmy O’Hara between them.
And now, even as the rain fell harder, the alley came alive. All those who had cowered in their rooms above were down in the street.
The bodies of the fallen would be picked clean of whatever coins and trinkets, pipes and tobacco, they might have been carrying in their pockets. Boots and clothes, if in any kind of repair, would be stripped. She could only hope the bodies would be buried, as well.
Most probably they would be, she told herself. The residents wouldn’t want to live with the smell once the sun rose in the morning and the stench of decay set in.
“Where are you going?” Brendan asked softly. “I thought you had taken rooms.”
“The men may enjoy their shore leave, as promised. I’m returning to the ship. Tomorrow we’ll take on supplies. Then we’ll head north.”
“And what about O’Hara?” Brendan asked.
She shrugged. “We’ll see if he can cook.”
“But he tried to kill you,” Brendan reminded her.
“No. He came along because he needed money.”
“What if he plans on poisoning us all?” Brendan asked quietly.
She smiled. “Well, we have Lord Haggerty, don’t we?”
“Ship’s taster,” Logan said, not glancing her way.
“Red…” Brendan began.
“Don’t worry. I don’t believe he’s a poisoner. Neither does our good captain,” Logan said, then looked at Red at last. “I strive to please.”
She stared back at him for a long while. She liked the man, and she hated that she did. Pirates’ honor, indeed. Logan had his own code. He could have escaped tonight. Instead, he had fought for her, and fought well and hard.
“Ransom or no, we will set Laird Haggerty free in the Carolinas,” she said.
He was still staring at her.
“You have earned your freedom,” she said simply.
He smiled slowly. “Have I?” he asked softly. “Perhaps I played this game tonight because I knew the other side would lose.”
“We’d not have found you without Laird Haggerty,” Brendan said. “He threatened Sonya, and then a drunk, to find out where you’d gone. And he was the marksman who killed their leader.”
“You might have missed—and gotten me,” Red said.
“I don’t miss,” he assured her.
“Too bad he isn’t a pirate, eh?” Brendan said, and stepped between them, slipping an arm around both their shoulders.
“Too bad,” she mused dryly.
And too bad that she was.
Better than her other options, she thought, then wished she had never set eyes on Laird Logan Haggerty and his ship.
LOGAN SAT ON DECK, idly tossing bits of dried fish to one of the ship’s cats, a tabby he’d grown quite fond of. The animal was called Rat because he was so efficient at ridding the hold of the creatures who would otherwise ravage their food stores. Rat had a harem of females who did his work with him. He was a huge beast, never afraid, and most of the crew steered clear of him. Rat had an affinity for the captain, though, and Red could pick up the cat and he would purr. The animal was as loyal to their captain as the best hound could ever be.
As were her men.
Those who appeared to have come from some kind of finer life, and those who seemed to have been born swabbies.
Peg-leg was in the captain’s cabin. Logan had just