Read Online The Pirate Captain by Kerry Lynne - Free Book Online Page B

her queasy.
    A dull ache seemed to have permanently settled behind her eyes. It was a different sort from the pain that thudded where she had hit back of her head. The sense of fulfillment faded and cold fingers of fear clawed her gut again. The price of idleness was time to think. Nothing pleasant came to mind, only broken recollections of the ominous warnings heard on the Constancy . She looked down at her hands, now resting in her lap, and wondered when the trembling might stop. She buried her head in her hands and covered her ears, in hopes that if she was to block it all out, she might wake from this nightmare. A more desperate hope was that she had actually drowned and was dead.
    That would make this Purgatory , she thought, scanning the pirates.
    And a fitting description it was: a soulless, damned-looking lot they were. There was, however, none of the despondency or misery one would expect in Hell’s waiting room. These men laughed and jested, poking good-naturedly at each other as they ate with zeal.
    Through the clamor of men and handling of cargo nets, she felt first through the floor, and then heard the footsteps coming toward her, heavy with irritation and the desire to make that displeasure known.
    “Ah! So the lamb couldn’t find its way through the wolves back to the flock?” Blackthorne jeered as he drew up before her. “Have to be a dull-witted dawcock not to be able to find your way aft.”
    “No one said…You never…”
    “Tach! Must I bid you to breathe, as well?” he cut in, an annoying habit, she was coming to discover.
    Exhaustion and tension had rendered her uncommonly over-sensitive, for his image blurred.
    “Bloody hell, not blubbering again,” Blackthorne said at seeing her eyes fill, as he handed her down from her perch. “Your bladder lie too close to your eyeballs, does it? Shall I leave you with them, so you might truly have something to wail about?” he asked with a gesture toward the men.
    He was back in character, Cate thought glumly as he shoved her back toward the Great Cabin, a considerably more circuitous path with the tables now set up and hatches opened. The affable, engaging captain seen among his men was gone, the glowering, fractious one returned.
    Once in the cabin, she quickly retreated to her previous spot. Standing there, she gazed out the window at the low-slanted sun’s rays. The day was almost over and of prodigious proportions it had been. She hoped never to see another like it. There was, however, the niggling possibility that it might be her last. Fixed on that thought, she was deep in observation of the patterns of light and shadows on the water, committing them to everlasting memory, when she was interrupted by Pryce’s arrival.
    “We’ve cleared the prize of everythin’ need be,” he said, pulling up before Blackthorne, now seated at the table. Behind him, she could see the deck still teemed with the shipping of the Constancy ’s plunder . “We’ve looked from tops to wells. ’Tweren’t no other women yet, exceptin’ the capt’n’s wife there.”
    Pryce looked at her with a coldness that reached across the room.
    “Guns disabled?” Blackthorne asked.
    Folding his hands behind his back, Pryce proudly rocked on his heels. “Aye, sir. Guns spiked and rudder disabled. ’Twill be the morrow earliest afore she’ll be makin’ ready. There be no danger o’ her givin’ chase, nor makin’ port soon.”
    “Well done. Any of her crew come over?”
    The First Mate’s gargoyle-like countenance brightened with pride. “Aye, ten, sir. ’Pears they’d heard of the Ciara Morganse and couldn’t pass up the opportunity.”
    “Very well, then. Pass the word for these fine specimens of seamanship, so they might sign the book.”
    The moment Pryce stepped over the door’s coaming, Blackthorne spun around at her.
    “In there!” he hissed, with a swipe toward a curtained doorway. “And don’t come out until you’re bid.”
    She slunk along the