Revenge of the Corsairs Read online

  Kilab! Dogs!

  It was always the women one had to watch out for…

  Rabia abandoned her vigil looking out over the black horizon behind her and headed toward the captain’s quarters she had commandeered as her own.

  It was fortunate she was not without resources. Rabia cultivated useful men just as readily as she did beautiful women. Men. Such simple creatures – money, sex and power in just the right measure would bend every single one of them to your will.

  These men on board the galiot followed her for now, so long as the residual awe of Selim Omar’s power remained. The promise of a share of her wealth would stay their hand for a little while, but she was under no illusion how long that would last.

  Rabia locked the cabin door behind her and regarded the young servant woman who stood swiftly at her entrance. She was the only other female on the ship, a drab, little brown mouse of a thing who did nothing but squeak.

  Squeak! We’re leaving the palace. Squeak! We’re leaving Al-Min. Squeak! We’re on a ship! Squeak, squeak, squeak!

  Rabia supposed one could not be too choosy about a retinue when on the run for one’s life.

  “Prepare a bath and my bed,” she ordered. Fortunately, the girl didn’t squeak this time, she just bowed her head and left to do as she was bid.

  The door swung open. Waiting just outside about to knock, was Toufik, the chief eunuch. He was a middle-aged man and tall; his silver hair contrasting handsomely with sun-darkened skin. He exuded a casual virility that belied his obvious deficiencies in that regard.

  “Enter.”

  The man did so with an elaborate bow. Rabia bade him sit with a sweeping gesture of her hand. He did so, but did not lose his alert though deferential posture.

  Rabia liked Toufik more than she trusted him. He was pleasant to look at and, so far, had proven himself loyal. But he was ambitious. So throwing in his lot with her instead of remaining to deal with the aftermath of Selim Omar’s death he considered a surer bet.

  Interesting.

  “You are safe, my lady. No one followed us.”

  “You disturb my rest to tell me this? That is not news. I expect you to keep me safe. So why are you really here?”

  Toufik smiled slowly as though she had passed some kind of test.

  “Two men on board this vessel have news which may interest you, your ladyship,” he said. “With your permission…” He left his seat to open a small, leather case sitting among the hastily assembled collection of valuables they were able to take with them. He withdrew a jeweled decanter and two small glasses and poured a measure of clear liquid into each, then added water which turned the drink a cloudy white.

  Rabia could smell the anise before the glass reached her hand. Toufik returned to his seat. Rabia sipped and welcomed the heat of the raki trailing its way down her throat – “milk for the strong”, indeed.

  “At least one, if not two, little doves have flown from your aviary.” He paused and sipped from his glass. “The men who told me this were employed by Ahmed Sharrouf.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She had known of Sharrouf although they had not met. The man had proven useful to her husband on a number of occasions. In fact, Sharrouf was instrumental in delivering both Laura Cappleman and Sophia Green…

  “Which two doves?”

  Toufik smiled and downed the rest of his drink. “I believe you have guessed already.”

  “And these men, they are certain?”

  “I made them swear on their lives. And both avow they saw Sophia Green with their own eyes. She was with the English captain… Kit Hardacre.”

  The little brown mouse servant returned to turn down the bed.

  “Get out!” Rabia screamed at her. The girl squeaked once and scurried back out the door.

  Rabia could keep it in no longer. She burst out laughing – the first piece of genuine mirth for days.

  Oh, how had Selim Omar fumed every time the name Hardacre was mentioned!

  Ah yes, her husband had made the mistake of underestimating that kafir. Selim Omar had been at a British Embassy party and had unwisely spoken to his aide about his lust for the two English women – unaware Hardacre knew the language.

  In his own tongue, Hardacre offered him the very worst insult. The only way the man could have offended Selim Omar more was if he had removed his shoe and beat His Excellency with it.

  And there was nothing Selim Omar could do about it – certainly not in front of a roomful of guests and before the British ambassador.

  Three days! Three whole days Selim Omar had spent raging over his impotence.

  Rabia laughed so hard, she actually held her waist to stop the ache.

  “And yet,” she said at last, wiping a tear from her eye, “Hardacre lives despite Sharrouf’s assurance he had squashed the gnat. No wonder the man refuses to show his face.”

  “Sharrouf will only be showing his face at the resurrection of the dead.”

  Rabia raised an eyebrow. “Hardacre’s doing?”

  Toufik shrugged. “These two men are certain he is dead, but who knows how many else? Remember the explosion at the warehouse that day when His Excellency was killed?”

  Rabia nodded.

  “Ahmed Sharrouf and his men caught one of Hardacre’s crew setting up with black powder. They killed him and lay in wait for Hardacre – who just happened to return with the half-caste woman. It was she who told him of Selim Omar’s murder. Sharrouf dispatched these two men to me for confirmation. Not long after, the warehouse exploded.”

  “All killed?”

  “Impossible to say, but likely. The storehouse burned for days. In fact, it was through the cover of smoke I could evacuate your ladyship.”

  “I see.”

  “I hope I did well, Your Excellency.”

  Rabia noted Toufik’s deferential tone and suspected the sincerity of it. She decided not to answer immediately. She opened the cabin door and found, as she expected, Brown Mouse trembling outside. She ordered her to be quick about fetching the hot water.

  “Escape is one thing,” Rabia said to the eunuch. “To be out at sea without a destination – that is as bad as being trapped at Al-Min.”

  “Where is it you wish to go? This ship, as am I, are yours to command.”

  That’s better. That’s what I want to hear.

  The servant girl returned with a large ewer of hot water. Rabia ignored her and turned her attention to Toufik.

  “Ahmed Sharrouf must have had a den. Where is it?”

  “The island of Pantelleria, my lady. We’ll be there at first light,” he answered.

  Rabia would never show weakness before a man who might turn on her at a moment’s notice, but she did not like the sea. She preferred solid ground beneath her feet. A faint smile flitted across Toufik’s lips as though he were privy to her thoughts. Rabia waited a moment to see if the eunuch might confess, but he did not.

  “Be sure that we are,” she snapped.

  Chapter Six

  Laura jumped at the percussive burst of laughter from the sailors standing around the forward mast. Tears filled her eyes. She gritted her teeth against it, hating the way she was driven so much by her emotions these days.

  Every morning, she woke in a panic, expecting to see the familiar walls of the harem, hear the sounds of the call to prayer. She could only calm herself by touching the objects of her surroundings in the captain’s quarters. Every morning, it was the same – touch the bedding, the chair, the lamp sconces, the cool glass on the cabinet – to assure herself where she was.

  The absolute terror of Malik’s daily arrival at their chambers had been so much a part of her life for so long, that to walk out on deck because she simply wanted to seemed like a rebellious act.

  Sophia had suggested she bring her paints out on deck, but now she could only stare at the blank art board before her – white, pristine, pure, and unsullied by a past. A limitless future lay before it. Laura dabbed her dampened brush into a pastille of color and hesi
tated.

  What if she ruined it?

  She’d had no trouble painting when she was imprisoned in Al-Min, so why did she have trouble now? Was it the babe she carried? Did that make a difference?

  She closed her eyes and imagined the picture she wanted to paint. It would not form. It looked like a garden in a rainstorm, grey and indistinct. The brush returned to the tray. It seemed clear enough she was painting the wrong thing. New inspiration – that’s what she needed.

  Laura widened her eyes and forced herself to look at the world as it appeared before her, not as it was in her mind. It hardly seemed that two years ago she sat in this very spot and painted the Calliope’s officers. Proud Jonathan Afua in his dress uniform, a man with such an authoritative bearing he would not be out of place as an officer in the Royal Navy. Today, he was taking readings with the sextant and making notes in the log. He called out a course correction to Elias Nash at the helm.

  Kit Hardacre – she had painted him as an arrogant captain with the telescope across his chest and his foot on a small pyramid of cannon balls.

  Did Sophia ever give the painting to him? Did they keep it? In a perverse way, she hoped they hadn’t. The voyage from England was a lifetime ago. In some respects, she shuddered to recall the works. If she saw them, she would be sure to hate them. What did she know other than the mechanical skills of adding paint to paper? She had been thoughtless and naive back then.

  Such a long time ago.

  Laura expected to see every eye on her. But no. If anything, the men on the Calliope regarded her with a benign, friendly disinterest. All except one.

  Elias Nash watched her, although he’d kept his distance after that first morning following her rescue. She would have sworn she had driven him away for good and, for a short time, had been glad of it.

  Yet something special had happened last night as they sang together, a connection that made her less afraid to draw close. Perhaps it had ended with the night. Now, in the bright light of this morning, the distance seemed greater than ever. Still, she didn’t see disgust in his eyes, or contempt. Laura struggled to put a name to the expression. Instead it was… well, watchful.

  So she watched him in return. At this moment, he didn’t seem to be aware of her as he worked.

  What of the battle which was supposed to have destroyed the Calliope? Had Elias been wounded? With her painter’s eye, she observed the scars on his arms, revealed only because he had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. They had not been there before. Laura knew that with a certainty because she had painted him thus on their voyage out. It had been the only painting of the Calliope’s officers which had not been formally posed.

  Little did Elias know she had spent hours studying him back then. He had been the subject of a new technique she was trying. She had sketched a series of studies of the Calliope’s first officer and had created a composite image of him up in the ship’s shrouds, reaching out to secure a loose line on one of the cross trees.

  With Marco gone and the captain still sorely injured, the Calliope was short-handed. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop but had heard Elias talk to Jonathan about manning the watch.

  Laura watched another man slap Elias on the back and the first officer relinquished the wheel to the new arrival. Did Elias Nash sleep at all? He stepped out into the sun and raised his face to it. The only hint of his tiredness was darkness under the eyes until he indulged in a wide, open-mouthed yawn when he thought no one was watching.

  This man had saved her life.

  She wanted to call out to him, but the words were stuck, so she stared at her blank board. When she glanced back, he was gone.

  Laura cast her eyes over the deck, still looking for inspiration. Sophia caught her notice and she saw again her cousin wearing that deeply satisfied smile of a woman who had found a safe harbor. Her home.

  And Laura wasn’t the only one to notice. Kit Hardacre looked up from his duties and returned his wife’s smile. It was as though no one else in the universe existed. Kit descended from the quarterdeck and picked up Sophia’s hand to kiss it. They spoke in low tones for a moment. Sophia blushed, then took her chair and retrieved her book.

  She was happy for them and wouldn’t begrudge Sophia a moment of it. If anyone deserved happiness it was her cousin and the man she loved. But still, she felt the ache of longing in her own breast.

  Kit approached her.

  Laura hadn’t really noticed before but the captain seemed to favor his right leg. Then she recalled the pronounced limp as he ran with the body of the cabin boy. He had more lives than a cat this man.

  “What happened to your leg?” she asked without preamble.

  He stopped mid-stride. “I could give you the truth, or I could give you the heroic version.”

  “Go the heroic version!” yelled another man nearby, which was met with laughter from the crew. Kit turned to the men and bowed theatrically, which was met with even more laughter.

  “Back to work!” Jonathan bellowed. “Make good time and we’ll be at Catallus by dawn!”

  The promise elicited more cheers.

  “In fact,” Laura continued firmly, “tell me how you came to be at Al-Min at all. We were told… Sophia was told you were dead and the Calliope nearly sunk.”

  Kit eased himself into a chair beside her and stretched out his right leg.

  “We very nearly were. What you see before you was a man so consumed with bitterness and revenge it nearly cost me something more precious than my life.” He glanced over at Sophia who remained absorbed in her book. “It also nearly cost this ship and all the fine men aboard her.”

  His eyes, hazel in color – not quite green, not quite brown – wandered over her face a moment.

  “Even so and even now,” he added. “I can’t bring myself to regret what I did, despite those things. When faced with no good choices, taking the least worst is an act of courage.”

  Laura felt something shift inside her at these words, like a break in the ice heralding an upcoming spring. Something that felt like a trickle of icy water ran along her spine. How did Kit do this? To reach into a place she had locked tight and force her into the light?

  “Take it from someone who understands what you’ve been through better than most,” he continued. “Looking forward is much better than looking back. But how you choose to move forward is up to you.”

  “How?” The single word was a lump in her throat, released as a harsh whisper. “How can I? Every time I close my eyes, I see his face and nothing else. I still feel his hands… his body… on me.

  “The things he made me do…” Laura closed her eyes. Her mind recalled everything so vividly, it was like she had never left. She could even feel and smell the man’s sweat on her skin. “I have no words to describe them. I’m so shamed.”

  “No.”

  Laura opened her eyes, startled at the forcefully delivered word. The face of Selim Omar loomed.

  “Look at me, Laura.” For a moment Selim Omar had Kit’s voice. “Come back, open your eyes and see me.”

  She released a shuddering breath and blinked until her vision was clear and the man before her was, indeed, Captain Kit Hardacre. Then her hearing returned and, with it, the familiar sounds of a ship at sea.

  “Your ordeal is a fever,” he said. “It burns within you. Your mind wants to sweat it out. Let it out, Laura. It will lessen over time.”

  Laura tried a weak smile and was rewarded with Kit’s approving look. Then he shifted on his chair, making to stand.

  “How long did it take for you?” she asked.

  Kit stopped and she felt the weight of his full attention on her. His strength and his vulnerability was etched on his face. And when he answered, it was a confession.

  “Much longer than it should have done.”

  Laura couldn’t look in his eyes any longer. She fidgeted with her hands on her lap instead.

  “You have a home with Sophia and me for as long as you wish, or Sophia will write to Samuel
and arrange your passage back to England. For two years, you had every choice taken from you. But you have choices now. It is up to you to use them.

  “Just think about it.” Kit levered himself off the chair and limped away.

  *

  Let all that dwell above the sky,

  And air and earth and seas,

  Conspire to lift Thy glories high,

  And speak Thine endless praise!

  The whole creation joins in one,

  To bless the sacred name

  Of Him who sits upon the throne,

  And to adore the Lamb.

  Laura opened her eyes as the final refrain of the familiar hymn faded away, the singer now moving to another part of the ship.

  The noise on deck seemed louder than it had been on the voyage. She threw off her blanket to escape the stifling heat of the cabin where the mid-morning sun streamed through the porthole.

  Another thing was different. The ship was barely moving. Strange how quickly she’d become accustomed to the roll of the seagoing deck beneath her feet over the past two days, and she missed it now.

  She had packed her small trunk and laid out a dress, a pretty one in blue, the night before. Laura dressed and made her way up onto the now deserted deck.

  The Calliope stood at a long, wooden pier in a lagoon. She blinked rapidly at the sight of land. Before her was something out of a fairytale. The island sloped steeply down to the lagoon embraced on either side by ridges of black basalt. Little, whitewashed cottages nestled into the hillside. Terraced vineyards zig-zagged their way up to the summit where the hint of a larger structure appeared beyond the rise.

  “Welcome to Catallus.”

  She turned and found Kit leaning against the deck skylight. She noticed his sleeves rolled up and, like Elias, there were scars on his arms. If she was not mistaken, there was also a scar at his temple that disappeared beneath his longish, blond hair.

  “This is your island.” It was a statement, not a question.