Preston jerked his head toward the stern. “Fast asleep, poor lamb. Better drag him off before he’s overcome with smoke.”
Nathaniel gestured with the gun tip. “You lead the way.”
“Very well.” Preston stepped forward as though to comply but then whirled and slashed out with his sword, knocking Nathaniel’s gun to the deck, where it went skidding beneath a pallet of sugar-syrup casks.
Nathaniel drew his sword and struck. The former army major coolly met him thrust for thrust for several minutes. Then Preston stepped back and the two men circled each other warily.
Struggling to catch his breath, Nathaniel scoffed, “This is the career you left Barbados to pursue?”
Preston smiled. “Yes, and I am making quite a name for myself.”
“I must have missed it. For I’ve not heard your name mentioned since you left.”
“That is because I’ve acquired a new name.” Preston gave a mock bow and recited, “They call me the Pirate Poet. And some the Poet Pirate. How fickle is Lady Fame, when she cannot settle upon a name.”
Nathaniel cringed, remembering several island socials this man had attended—without his wife—during which he had attempted to impress the ladies with his long-winded recitations. Nathaniel had heard tales of a poetry-spouting “pirate” but assumed them mere legend. He had never imagined Preston might be that man. He supposed it made sense. The fop always did love poetry. Preston had spent more time composing rhymes than overseeing his plantation—when he wasn’t tormenting his slaves. No wonder he’d failed as a planter.
But the man had always been good at one thing—he was highly skilled with the blade. Once again Preston advanced, striking with startling speed. Nathaniel countered, but his every strike was parried with ease. He fought back hard but with the growing realization that he was the inferior swordsman. Barring aid from Hudson, or heaven, he would be beaten. Sweat ran down Nathaniel’s face. Fear threatened, but he refused to cower before this man. Almighty God, help me.
Preston knocked Nathaniel’s sword from his grasp and kicked his feet out from under him in a blinding blur of motion. Nathaniel landed on the deck with a thump, his breath knocked out of him, his sword out of reach. Preston pinned him to the deck with a sword tip to his throat.
I commit my soul into your care, Nathaniel thought. Please forgive my many sins, for Jesus’ sake. He said, “Take what you want and kill me if you will, but let Hudson go. This is my ship. He only works for me.”
Preston’s lip curled. “Do you suppose I’d forgotten how you lured Hudson away—stole my best clerk? Not to mention the other problems you caused me.”
Nathaniel’s calls for reform had not made him many friends in Barbados. Preston had been chief among his detractors, especially after Nathaniel reported his continuing involvement in the slave trade after it was outlawed.
Still pinning Nathaniel to the deck, Preston called over his shoulder, “Turtle, bring me the master’s chest.” He looked down at Nate once more. “This year’s profits, I assume?”
“As well you know,” Nathaniel snapped, though he’d taken half the money to their London town house to begin paying bills. The remainder was even now hidden in the coach’s lockbox. “I see how it is. Why live off the meager profits from your own ill-managed plantation, when you can live off the profits of others?”
“Exactly so.” Preston’s eyes gleamed. “I hear your father bragged about this season’s yield—the highest in several years, I understand.” The man lowered his sword tip to the chain around Nathaniel’s neck. “The key?” With a flick of his wrist, he severed the chain, speared the key through its hole and tossed it into the air, catching it handily.
“I’ve got it, sir!” the man called Turtle shouted, lifting the two-foot-square padlocked chest in the air. His scar, from mouth to ear, looked like a gruesome leer.
“Take it down to the others. I shall join you directly.”
Here it comes, Nathaniel thought, his whole body tensing. He has everything he wants from me. This is the end. He found himself thinking of Helen. More alone than ever now. And his father. Would he think him a failure? And then he thought of Margaret Macy. Perhaps it was just as well she hadn’t married him. He wouldn’t want to leave her such a young widow.
Preston lifted his sword once more—to bring down the death blow, Nathaniel knew. Instead the man rose with a jerk. “Away with us, me lads! Take our bounty and be gay. Let these good men live, to see another day!” He leapt from the burning deck and swung from a mooring line with impressive agility.
Nathaniel jumped up and dashed to the rail in time to see the man land in the dinghy with practiced ease. Preston smiled up at him and tipped his tricorn.
Nathaniel called down, “Running away? For all your skill and supposed renown, you are a coward, sir.”
Preston’s smile faded. “You risk my sword, saying that.”
“Name the time and place.”
An eerie gleam shone in the man’s eyes. “Your place. When you least expect it.”
The crew began rowing, and the dinghy pulled away, no doubt on course for a waiting ship.
Nate considered jumping in after him, but that would be suicide. He debated rousing the tardy river police, but there was no time. The stern of the ship was burning rapidly now. His ship. The one he had convinced his father to add to their small fleet. The one he had invested in with his own share of the profits.
He ran to where Hudson lay, insensible but alive, and bodily dragged the man away from the burning master’s cabin. A flaming yard clubbed his arm, nearly felling him. Ignoring the bone-deep pain, he lugged Hudson across the main deck and down the gangplank, hearing the alarm being raised at last. Too late. The dinghy was already fading into a dim shape and disappearing behind a row of moored frigates.
Nathaniel ran up the gangplank once more, vaguely hearing Hudson’s groggy voice calling after him to stop but not heeding him. He ran into what was left of the master’s cabin, grabbing what he could of value—monetary or sentimental. A roar surrounded him. The deck below him buckled. He grabbed one last thing. The only thing he had of hers. He ran from the cabin as it caved in, a section of the wall crashing into his left side, searing his temple.
But he did not let it go.
That evening, Margaret sat thinking at Peg Kittelson’s open window, elbows on the sill, her back to the depressing room crammed with toppling piles of piecework, childish babbling and wailing, and meager food. Margaret inhaled the outside air, fresher than the stale apartment, though carrying the smell of the nearby river. She tried in vain to reach an itch through the wig and wished she’d thought to bring a wig scratcher. The narrow lane below, littered with tumbling wads of newspaper and horse droppings, was relatively quiet compared to the clamor of the room behind her.
She wondered if she should try again to contact Emily. Perhaps wait a day or two and knock at the servants’ entrance in disguise. Or would the runner still be on guard, questioning everyone who came to call?
On the distant street corner, three young men sat on the stoop of an ale house. A hulking black-haired man tossed pebbles into the gutter, while his thin comrade whittled and spit seed hulls into the street. The third sat, limbs sprawled, head lolling against the wall behind him in an ale-induced doze.
“Come away from the window, girl,” Peg whispered. “You don’t want that lot to notice you. Blackguards they are.”
Margaret was about to comply when clattering hooves and wheels sounded below. From around the corner came a black coach pulled by two horses. As it passed the ale house, the enclosed carriage all but filled the narrow lane, its brass lamps blazing like beacons in the night.
Joan said from her shoulder, “Might as well light a sign asking to be robbed.”
Joan and Peg receded into the room, but Margaret remained at the window. The equipage and horses were too fine for the neighborhood. The man at the reins, a sturdy man in his midthirties, did not look the part of traditional coachman. No top hat graced his head. No many-caped greatcoat fluttered in the wind.
The carriage stopped on the street below for no apparent reason, and the driver tied off the reins and clambered down none too nimbly. He opened the carriage door and leaned in. “Are you all right, sir?”
She heard no reply.
Margaret looked past the coach to the ale house on the corner. As she’d feared, the ne’er-do-wells on the stoop had taken notice of the carriage as well. The thin man stopped whittling. The black-haired hulk stilled, his gaze focused on the coach, nose high like a hound on the scent. He slowly rose, gesturing to the second fellow to follow and kicking the foot of the dozing youth.
Dread prickled through Margaret’s stomach and along her limbs.
She glanced back down at the driver standing with his head and shoulders in the coach, completely unaware of the danger he had steered into.
“Hello?” she called in a terse whisper, trying to make herself heard. Vaguely she heard Peg shush her in the background. “Excuse me, you there!” she hissed, not daring to shout. She did not want to draw the ruffians’ attention to poor Peg’s window. Only belatedly did she realize she had not bothered to disguise her voice. No matter, for the man had not heard her.