Porthlowen, Cornwall 1812
“There! It is leaking right there!”
At the shout, Drake Nesbitt looked down into his ship where his first mate and crew were struggling to fix the damage The Kestrel had suffered after crossing the path of a French privateer. Sunlight sparkled on water in the depths of the ship. Hurrying to join his crew, he muttered under his breath as he pulled off his new boots. He had thought the last of the holes in The Kestrel had been plugged yesterday.
He set the boots where the water would not reach them, then joined his crew. They stepped aside to let him examine where water washed into the ship with the rising tide. He pushed away a lantern. Even though it would have helped him see the damage to the hull, he did not want his crew to view his frustration. They must have enough of their own.
For a fortnight The Kestrel had been moored in Porthlowen, a cove beneath the hills rising like broken steps to the Cornish moorland. The mouth of the cove narrowed to a curved strait between high cliffs, providing a sheltered mooring for his ship and a fast current on the tides that would take them back to open water once his ship was seaworthy again.
His ship. He enjoyed saying those words. He had worked hard for years to be able to invest in the ship and finally buy her outright. Now he worked even harder to save enough to purchase another, with his eye on building a fleet of trading ships along the southern coast of England.
He had known it would take time to make repairs, but he ached to be back upon the sea, to know the freedom of moving with the waves, to escape the memories that still gnawed on him whenever he set foot on land. When he steered his ship from one port to another, he could avoid risking his heart as he did once. Then, he had ended up looking like a fool.
Never again.
That pledge had echoed through his head every day and every night, anytime when he was alone and his thoughts caught up to him. He had believed Ruby was as precious as the gem whose name she shared, so he’d offered her his heart, despite the difference in their social standing. He had dared to believe that the daughter of a baronet and the captain of a trading ship could ignore the canons of Society and marry and live happily for the rest of their lives.
It had not been Society that destroyed his hopes. Ruby had betrayed him when, within hours of his setting sail after they had pledged their unending love to each other, she was seen in the arms of another man.
Never again.
Standing up as much as he could in the cramped space, he said, “Close it up, lads.”
Drake climbed to the main deck, knowing that the crew would work better without the captain watching over their shoulders. He sat on the stairs to the quarterdeck and tugged his boots back on. The soft leather was as comfortable as he had hoped when he saw it hanging in the cobbler’s shop. The boots were stylish, too, but he did not care what was de rigueur in Society. Treating himself to a new pair of boots had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, the kind he made with skill. The proof of that was the profit from The Kestrel’s recent voyages where he had followed his instincts with cargoes and routes.
However, he had bought his new boots in Penzance days before The Kestrel was ambushed by French privateers and half their cargo of barley and wheat was ruined during the battle. The other half had been unloaded in Porthlowen. He had sold it for far less than it was worth because the damp grain would have gone bad before he reached the merchants waiting for it in Dublin. Now he had to reimburse the English traders who hired him to deliver their goods. In addition, he had bills to pay for the supplies needed to repair the ship.
Gazing at the masts where the sails were tightly furled, he sighed. Two wasted weeks. How much longer before they could leave Porthlowen and be on their way again? He had never expected it would take longer to handle the repairs than to make arrangements to hand over their French prisoners to the local authorities.
A fierce smile pulled at his lips. The Kestrel had been damaged, but the French ship now sat on the bottom of the sea and the French privateers who had survived were in cells more than fifty miles away in Dartmoor Prison. There, they would stay until the English defeated the French. He had no pity for them in spite of tales of how appalling the conditions were in prison. He was glad there were fewer privateers to hound honest men trying to earn a living in the waters around Britain.
For now, fixing The Kestrel, which had been riddled with shot, forced Drake and his ship to remain in the harbor. He glanced toward the village that followed the crescent cove. Living in a small cottage and staring at the same scenery day after day would be a slow death for a man like him, especially when the siren song of the waves lapped upon the rocks and the sand. He raised his gaze toward the fine house situated where the moor met the cliffs that hid the cove’s entrance. He had been told an earl resided there, but even such a luxurious life offered no appeal to him.
There were times when he imagined coming home to a woman and children who awaited his return eagerly. Sparkling eyes, warm lips, and arms that welcomed him—and only him—into them.
Never again.
Familiar footsteps behind him, echoing hollowly on the deck, broke into Drake’s thoughts. Grateful to escape the memories of his greatest humiliation, he turned. “Benton, what happened below?”
His first mate, a gangly young man who never seemed to gain an ounce, raked his hand back through his sweaty hair, leaving red spikes across his head. “We missed one, Captain.”
“We?”
“I meant I missed one.” Benton shook his head, a glum expression lengthening his usually cheerful face. “I thought I checked every inch of her, but I didn’t see that small hole. We will start at the bow and go back to the stern on both sides all over again.”
“Good.” He allowed himself a smile as his first mate met his eyes. He trusted Benton with both his ship and his life. The crew called them Lightning and Thunder because they had learned that when there was trouble, Drake would be there in a flash, with Benton following quickly behind him.
“It should not take long to fix that one small hole, Captain, or to examine the complete hull.”
“Take the time you need, because I don’t want to get under way and find the ship is taking on water again.”
“Aye.”
Drake paused as he was about to answer. A strange sound, like a faint cry or mew, wafted over the water.
“What was that?” he asked, tilting his head to try to capture the noise.
Benton shrugged. “A gull probably.”
The thin sound came again. Louder this time.
“That doesn’t sound like a gull.” Curiosity urged Drake forward. He reached the starboard railing in a pair of steps. Gripping it, he shadowed his eyes with his other hand. “Look.”
It was a jolly boat, a small boat used to transport men and cargo from a ship to the shore. It was close to the rocks. Dangerously close. Even as he watched, the bow bumped hard against the wall of stone.
Something moved inside it. Was that what had made the whimpering sound? Had someone been so cruel as to toss kittens into a boat and push them out to sea? If he got his hands on—
The rest of the thought vanished as tiny fingers rose over the side