The Lost Gentleman

‘And always work,’ said Gunner.

‘No rest for the wicked.’ There was a truth in that glib phrase that few realised, Kit thought wryly. No rest indeed. Not ever. ‘La Voile is dead, the job is done. We go back to England and claim our bounty.’

‘And Mrs Medhurst? We cannot touch port in America. We’d be running the gauntlet with the flotilla of French privateers and pirates patrolling their coast. Even with all Raven’s advantages, she cannot match such numbers.’

Kit smiled. ‘We will drop the woman at Antigua when we victual. Fort Berkeley there will organise her return home.’

‘A good plan. But it has been so long since we were in the presence of a respectable woman, one cannot help speculate how her presence would have lifted the journey home. It would certainly have kept the men on their best behaviour.’

‘You are too long from home, my friend,’ said Kit drily.

Gunner gave a smile. ‘Perhaps.’ He was still smiling as he left the cabin, closing the door behind him.

Kit returned to his desk and the navigational charts that lay there. But before he focused his attention on studying their detail he thought once more of Kate Medhurst with her cool grey eyes: proud, appraising, wary and with that slight prickly hostility beneath the surface.

Disharmony between our two countries. He smiled at that line and wondered how a woman like her had come to be abducted by a shipload of pirates. And even more, how she had fared amongst them. For all the strength of character that emanated from her, she was not a big woman. Physically she would not have stood a chance.

Maybe Gunner had a point when it came to La Voile. Kit thought of his blade slicing through the villain’s heart. Maybe it was worth the gold guineas that it had cost him, after all.

He gave a grim smile and finally turned his attention to the charts that waited on the desk.

* * *

Kate forced herself to stop pacing within the tiny cabin in which they had housed her. She stopped, sat down at the little desk and stilled the panic roiling in her mind and firing through her body. Stop. Be still. And think.

Her eyes ranged over the assortment of medical books, prayer books and the large bible on the shelf fixed to the wall above the desk. On the desk itself were paper, pen and ink and a small penknife. She lifted the knife and very gently touched a thumb to test the sharpness of the blade. The priest kept the little knife razor sharp, potentially a useful weapon, but it was nothing in comparison to her own. The feel of the leather holster and scabbard, and their precious contents, strapped to her legs gave her a measure of confidence.

She would not hesitate to use either the knife or pistol on North if she needed to. Not that she thought it would come to that.

Coyote would come for her. It is what she would have done had one of her crew been taken. Regroup, rearm, follow at an unseen distance, then come in fast for the attack. Sunny Jim would do the same. She knew her men—they would not abandon her.

They would come for her and it was vital that Kate be ready. All she had to do was watch, wait and keep her head down. Not today, perhaps not even tomorrow, but soon. It was just a matter of time before she was back once more on her own ship, maybe even with Captain Kit North as her prisoner. She smiled at that thought. The Lafitte brothers, the men who oversaw most of the mercantile, smuggling, privateering and pirate ventures around Louisiana, would pay her well for him. With North off the scene it would be a great deal safer for them all. She smiled again, buoyed by the prospect.

She pleaded fatigue that night so as not to have to join them for dinner, eating instead from the tray he sent to her cabin. Coyote would not come tonight, and as for North... An image of him swam in her head and she felt nervousness flutter in her stomach...she would defer facing him until tomorrow.

* * *

But of North the next morning there was no sign. It was the priest, Reverend Dr Gunner, who sat with Kate at breakfast and the priest who offered her a tour of Raven. She accepted, knowing the information could be useful both to Coyote and to all her fellow pirate and privateer brethren.

‘I could not help noticing that Captain North was not at breakfast.’

‘North does not eat breakfast. He is a man of few needs. He takes but one meal a day.’

‘A man of few needs... What else can you tell me of the famous Captain North?’

‘What else would you like to know?’ He slid her a speculative look that made her realise just how her question had sounded.

‘All about this ship,’ she said.

Reverend Dr Gunner smiled, only too happy to oblige.

Raven was bigger than Coyote, but the lower deck was much the same. There were more cabins and the deck contained not cargo, but long guns. Better gunnery than Coyote carried. So much better that it made her blood run cold. Two rows of guns, some carronades, others long nine pounders, and a few bigger, longer eighteen pounders, including two as bow chasers, lined up, all neat on their British grey-painted, rather than the American red-painted, wheeled truck carriages and secured in place by ropes and blocks. There were also sets of long oars neatly stored and ready for use, something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

‘You are oared,’ she said weakly.

‘They do come in handy at certain times when the wind does not blow. And we are sufficiently crewed to man them easily enough.’ The priest smiled. ‘We are also carrying extra ballast to make us lie low in the water,’ he explained. ‘To give the illusion we are heavily laden with cargo.’

‘You were deliberately posing as a merchantman.’

‘Captain North’s idea. He said that when you have a whole ocean to search for La Voile the easiest thing would be to have him come to us. He said it would work.’

‘And it did.’ A shiver ran through her at North’s cold, clever calculation and how easily and naïvely she had stepped into his trap.

‘It did, indeed, Mrs Medhurst,’ Gunner agreed with an open easy smile as he led her into a room that was lined with wooden and metal hospital instruments.

Her eyes ranged around the room as he spoke, taking it all in, and stopping when they reached the huge sealed butt in the corner. The sudden compassion on Reverend Dr Gunner’s face and his abrupt suggestion that they progress to the upper deck confirmed the butt’s macabre contents: Tobias. She was relieved to follow the priest up the ladder out into the fresh air and bright sunshine. But the relief was short lived.

North was already out on deck, taking the morning navigational reading, chronometer, sextant and compass clearly visible; a man absorbed in his task. The blue-sheened raven sat hunched on his shoulder, as if it were party to the readings.

His shirt was white this morning, not black, and he was clean shaven and hatless, so that she could see where the sun had lifted something of the darkness from his hair to a burnished mahogany. It rippled like short-cut grass in the wind. In the clarity of the early morning light his golden tanned features had a harsh handsomeness that was hard to deny. But even a rattlesnake could look handsome; it did not mean that she liked it any the more.

North saw her then, cutting those too-perceptive eyes to her in a way that brought a flutter of nerves to her stomach and prickle of clamminess to her palms.

He gave her a small nod of acknowledgement, but he did not smile. Indeed, his expression was serious, stern almost. Nor, to her relief, did he make any movement towards her. Instead he turned his attention back to his measurements and calculations.

‘Do not mind North,’ said Gunner with good humour. ‘It is his manner with everyone. He is a man who takes life too seriously and works too hard.’

As she followed the priest over to the stern of the ship, her eyes scanned the ocean behind them and saw the distant familiar shapes of islands across the water, but nothing else.

She leaned against the rail, feel the cooling kiss of the sea breeze, noticing both its strength and direction as she watched the frothy white wake Raven left behind her. Just looking at the ocean, just being on it, never failed to comfort her. Her gaze dropped to the tall lettering that named North’s ship, tall and clear and stark white against the rich black paint of the stern. Raven.

‘There was no name upon this ship when the pirates approached.’ She looked at the priest with a question in her eyes. ‘I am sure of it, sir.’ But was she? Had such a basic mistake brought her to this situation? ‘At least, I thought I saw nothing and I sure was looking to see who you were.’

‘Do not doubt yourself, madam. There was no name for the pirates to see. Look more closely.’

She walked toward the stern and leaned over it to examine the painted name, and saw exactly the device North had used. ‘There is a long black plank, like a frame fixed above the lettering.’

‘Largely invisible from elsewhere. It can be flipped down to cover the name.’

‘How clever.’ So clever that it frightened her.

‘It is, is it not? North is clever.’

‘How clever?’ she asked, needing to know the full measure of the man who was her enemy.

‘Do you know anything of ships Mrs Medhurst?’

‘I do,’ she admitted with a nod. ‘Both my father and grandfather were shipwrights and sailors. There have been sailors in my family for as far back as can be remembered.’