“No,” Chante said without preamble. “We agreed we’d go after Yussef. The men are owed a prize and the spoils.” He pitched his voice low. “If you deny them—”
He didn’t say mutiny. He was too intelligent to even breathe such a word, but he didn’t have to. Nick knew what he was and where. A pirate captain was not the same as an officer of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. A pirate captain served at the pleasure of his crew. He was elected, and he could just as quickly be forced to walk the plank. “I know,” Nick said. “But I can’t risk them.” He nodded to Ashley and Rissa, both of whom were now sitting up on deck. Ashley was rising. “I cannot do it anymore.”
“You’ve gone soft,” Chante said. “Yussef was your target.”
“And it’s my choice to release my arrow elsewhere. Go after him if you want. Hell, go after more lucrative prey, but let me go. I’ll give you the ship and free and clear. I’m done with it.”
Chante stared at him. Nick didn’t want to beg, but he’d do it if necessary. “Mr. Chante—Chante, you and I have been through too much for you to deny me one request. I’ve made you a rich man, and now I offer you a ship of your own.”
“If the men will have me after I lose this prize.” He gestured to The Snake, and Nick knew the struggle he waged. It went against his own nature to turn away from such easy prey, but he had more to live for now.
“They’d be fools not to,” he said. “Save the ship and your men while you still can. Don’t make me beg, Chante.” His gaze was locked on Chante’s dark eyes when the new captain’s gaze moved past him.
“What’s going on?” Ashley asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Nick resisted the urge to look at her, resisted the urge to take her into his arms. He kept his focus on Chante, whose gaze went from Ashley to Nick.
“Stand down,” Chante bellowed. “Set a course for Gibraltar.”
Ashley gasped, and Nick couldn’t resist a smile. “I owe you, Chante. I still know a few men in the navy offices, I’ll call in some favors.”
Chante shook his head. “You owe me nothing, my friend. But after this, I don’t ever want to see you or that one”—he nodded to Ashley—“ever again.”
“Done.” Nick moved away, taking Ashley’s arm and steering her out of the way of the men, now working to turn the ship. There’d been no protest, but Nick had heard the rumbles of discontent. He saw the way the men’s eyes cut at him. They were angry to lose the riches they had already begun to think of as theirs. “Stay close to me and out of their way,” he said, keeping her pinned to his side. “These men are no longer our allies.”
Chapter Eighteen
Despite Nick’s dire warnings, the men left Ashley and Rissa alone. He obviously didn’t realize how loyal his men were or how much they respected him. Most of them would have walked through fire for him. God knew she had.
There were a few who muttered under their breaths or cracked their knuckles and looked her way menacingly. In her opinion, they should have thanked Nick. He’d saved them to live another day, which—she was sure—they would waste going after another ship and thus dying anyway.
She still could not believe Nick had given his ship to Chante. She could not believe he had asked the new captain to let Yussef go. And then she looked at Rissa and she knew. He loved the child, was unwilling to risk her. It seemed even a pirate like Nick could come to his senses.
Miraculously, both she and Rissa were virtually unharmed after facing down the fire. Her garments had holes burned through them, her eyebrows and lashes had been seared off, and a few strands of her hair were black and crackling at the ends. But she only had minor burns on her feet and hands, and Rissa had none. The poor girl was still coughing from all the smoke, but Ashley thought she would recover completely given a few days more. The cough had not stopped her from running and playing on the deck of the Robin Hood.
Nick watched his daughter, his gaze like that of a hawk’s, but his men left her alone. They didn’t blame the child. Most of them had known her since she’d been a baby and would never have done her harm. And anyone could see these pirates had a special bond. They were more than friends. They had become a family of sorts.
After three days, they reached Gibraltar, and the Robin Hood deposited them in a wharf teeming with life. The scents of spices and honeysuckle wafted through the air along with unfamiliar languages that alternately tickled and crashed against her ears. The harbor was filled with every sort of ship she could imagine—English man-of-wars, American brigantines, sleek French frigates, and exotic-looking Eastern vessels. But she could hardly take any of it in because Nick whisked her and Rissa away and into the house of a friend where she was told to stay behind the tall walls and out of sight.
Then he promptly disappeared for two days. Typical, she thought.
But she did not complain. She did not know the owner of the house. She was told the master was away on business. Whoever he was, Nick must have known him well because the master’s servants took very good care of Rissa and her. In a matter of hours, she and Rissa were bathed, fed, and put to bed on soft beds with mattresses filled with feathers and topped with dozens of pillows.
When she’d wakened, she’d found clean clothes waiting for her. They too were exotic and eastern in style. The materials were silk, light and flimsy. She was given a long skirt that wrapped around her waist, a rather tight-fitting bodice, and a pretty shawl to cover her arms. She particularly liked the thin, gauzy veil that draped her hair and whose coins tinkled when she moved her head. She and Rissa spent an entire day in the walled gardens of the house, admiring the fragrant wild jasmine and climbing the lemon trees. Even Ashley climbed a tree after Rissa begged her—anything to keep the girl from asking questions about Nick Ashley could not answer. She’d found the height allowed her to see over the wall, while the leaves protected her from view.
What she saw made her nervous. Everything surrounding them was alleys and walls of houses. Men walked the streets, but she saw no women. The servants had made it clear she would not be safe if she left the residence. Ashley began to wonder if she’d left the prison of the island for a new prison. Would she ever return home to England?
And then she awoke to the flickering light of a candle in the dark bedchamber she shared with Rissa. She almost screamed but bit the sound back when she saw it was Nick. He put a finger to her lips and then removed it and held out his hand, guiding their way with the candle he held. She took his hand, so warm and large it covered her own, and followed him out of the room. He led her to another room nearby. It was similar to the one she and Rissa had occupied, but the windows opened to the city rather than the garden.
Ashley went immediately to the windows and peered out. Though it was dark in the city, she could see the harbor in the distance and the lights of the ships twinkling off the water. Above the water, millions of stars burned in the sky. “I am still in awe at the amazing number of stars,” she said, sighing.
He set the candle down on a table beside the bed. “You can’t see them in London.”
She turned to look at him. He’d also washed and shaved, and he wore clean breeches, Hessian boots, and a white shirt and dark coat. She wondered where he had found such English garb in a place like this. She still wore her Eastern garb, though she’d taken the veil off to sleep. She wished she had it now so she could hide her face from him, hide her emotions. She looked at him, and she was overwhelmed by the breadth of his shoulders, the confident way he stood, the way his dark hair fell over his forehead and contrasted with eyes the color of clear skies. He was so beautiful, and he was hers—or he had been.
“Are we returning to London?”
“That is what I’ve spent the last two days attending to. I’ve bribed and cajoled everyone I know and managed to book us passage on a ship tomorrow. If the weather holds, we’ll be home before the end of the month.”
