Read Online My Lady Pirate by Danelle Harmon - Free Book Online

more with British money than with a British deserter,” Maeve added, in triumph. But it was an empty triumph, for, deep down inside, she did not want to relinquish her captive. Despite his treatment of her, despite the fact he knew just how to raise her ire and seemed to delight in doing it, he had made her feel like a woman again, not the hardened pirate she was.
    Imagine, chastising her for her unladylike language!
    But no. She had learned her lessons too well. He would only break her heart, and it was
    better to get rid of him now.
    Gaining her feet, she put her mug down and went to the rail, there to stare down at the waves curling against Kestrel's black hull. Turlough was down there, drifting on the surface. She could see the dolphin’s pale belly as he floated on his side, one flipper free of the water as though waving at her. Then he dived beneath the schooner and emerged on the other side, blowing out his breath on a rush of sound that was melancholy in the darkness.
    She gazed across the water, the beach, and toward the old storehouse, barely discernible in the gloom—where he was.
    Then she shut her eyes, and, as her father had once done in another time and place, quietly placed her hands on the rail of her ship, listening. But Kestrel was unusually silent, and instead, it was her father’s presence that Maeve sensed. She could almost feel the warmth left by his hands, as though he had stood here just moments before and not all those years ago; she could almost hear his voice again, his laughter, as he’d taught her to sail this very schooner. Her father, her beloved daddy, the dashing privateer captain who’d become legendary in the American Revolution . . .
    “Point her up into the wind, lass, a bit more! Faith, she’s no square-rigger, you know! Let her fly!”
    “But Daddy,” she’d cried, in her eight-year-old voice, “she’s already pointed as high as
    she’ll go! She’ll be in irons!”
    “Faith, lass, I designed her; d’you think I don’t know what she can do?’’ His laughter—
    rich, merry, Irish laughter—had mingled with the wind before he’d come aft to wrap his hands around hers, steadying them upon the tiller, teaching her about ships and sailing, wind and waves and weather. . . “Now, listen to your ship, and she will speak! Always listen, daughter, for she owns the wisdom of the sea, and the day you forget to listen is the day the sea will do you in . . .”
    The memory dimmed, faded, was lost to the silence of the night. Maeve bit her lip and
    swallowed hard against the sudden lump in the back of her throat. High above, a million stars twinkled and winked in celestial abandon; she gazed up at them, wondering if those same stars stood watch over her father now, more than a thousand miles away in New England.
    Then, as she had done every day these past seven years, she lifted her gaze to the dark
    horizon. But there were no lights out there from any incoming ship. It was empty, just as she’d known it would be. Her father was not coming for her. Her mother was not coming for her.
    No one was coming for her, because no one cared.
    “Captain?”
    Quickly, she swallowed the hot lump in her throat. At least she had Kestrel, and all the memories that could never be taken away.
    “Captain? You all right?”
    “Aye, of course I’m all right!” She spun to face them, affecting a hard smile that forbade further comment. “I’m just thinking, ’tis all. My mind is made up. We’ll go find Nelson, but without our prisoner, so that we may bargain. If this man Gray is so blasted valuable to both the British and French navies, I intend to play one off against the other so we’ll get the most money for him.”
    “Oh, Majesty, that is brilliant!”
    She shrugged and turned away, her heart aching.
    “But what if the admiral doesn’t believe we even have such a man in our possession?”
    Sorcha asked, swinging her legs to and fro as she sat astride the big gun. “He may think