Not many people can stand the motion of a ship’s deck. You’ll be sick right enough.’ Despite his exasperation over her stubbornness, Drum was filled with admiration for her courage, but the rigid, unyielding expression on his scarred face as he looked at her revealed none of this.
Cassandra met his stare, equally resolute. ‘If I am, I’ll get over it. When we reach Barbados the Dolphin is yours to do with as you please.’
Despite his misgivings, Drum gave a twisted grin and a wicked, twinkling gleam shone in his eyes. ‘I would give a thousand pieces of eight to see your cousin’s reaction when you arrive on Barbados unheralded.’
Cassandra sensed he was weakening and seized the advantage. ‘Then you agree to take me?’
He laughed quietly and rubbed his chin, his expression resigned. ‘You have a persuasive tongue—but I don’t like it. I still say a woman has no place at sea. If I do succeed in securing the Dolphin, your presence on board will be a complication. You are an innocent and as such will need vigilant protection. I don’t relish the role of knight-errant being forced on me. God willing we’ll encounter fair weather that will enable me to deliver you to your cousin before too long.’
As they walked on Drum’s eyes were bright with anticipation as he became infused with Cassandra’s enthusiasm. She was Nat’s daughter all right—tall, graceful and lithe, as slender as a wand and as agile as a faun. There was an arresting quality about her face and an inner vivacious light shone from her eyes, showing a passion for life—fire and ice. Her mind was strong, her manner bold and determined—a legacy of Nat’s.
‘There’s one thing we must speak of. Your father amassed great wealth over the years. The authorities have been unable to lay their hands on it. Only myself and the remaining members of the crew know where it is to be located. What is to be done with it?’
‘As to that, I want none of it. It can sink to the bottom of the sea or be given to the authorities. Do what you will with it, Drum. It was obtained illegally and by force. I did not condone Nat’s way of life—and I have to confess that oft was the time I wished it had been different.’
‘His way of life was set from the day he seized the Dolphin.’
‘That I know. Undoubtedly he was a villain—bold and decisive, and he cut a dashing figure—although his daring deeds made him a charming one, and the scale and brilliance of his villainy elevated him to the rank of one of the most notorious pirates that has ever lived.’
‘Aye,’ Drum agreed with a touch of sadness. ‘It did that.’
Tears clouded Cassandra’s eyes, dampening her lashes. ‘He always made me feel ten feet tall, Drum, and I loved him dearly—pirate or not—to my grief and shame. But he never hurt me so I cannot speak ill of him. When I was thirteen years old and my aunt died and he came to see me, the times I spent with him were the happiest of my life.
‘Until then, my life under Aunt Miriam’s dominance had been a complete misery, and she never let me forget the stigma of my birth. There was never a day went by when she didn’t remind me I was her dead sister’s bastard child. Everything I did I did out of a sense of obligation, but, on getting to know Nat, everything I did was to please him, out of love. Now, come,’ she said, walking on with a new spring to her step, the crowd behind them at Execution Dock beginning to disperse. ‘What about these recruits? I must return to Chelsea to get some things and instruct the servants, and in the mean time you have much to do.’
Drum was of a mind to object, to insist on her remaining at Chelsea, and he would undertake the task of finding men who would be willing to take the risk of releasing the Dolphin from her moorings, men who would know how to keep their mouths shut for a price, but he remained silent, knowing the futility of uttering any protestations.
There was only one man who could tell Cassandra Everson what to do—only one man she had wanted to please, who she would ever listen to. But he was hanging from the end of a rope at Execution Dock. It would take an exceptional man—the like of Nathaniel Wylde—to master her, to tame Nat’s illegitimate, wilful daughter. It would have to be a man who loved her, a man who could not be swayed by the false promise of a coercive, dimpled smile.
Captain Sir Stuart Marston strode away from Execution Dock with a profound feeling of relief that it was done. At last he had seen his foremost enemy suffer the punishment he deserved.
On the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England, Nathaniel Wylde had ignored a Royal pardon to surrender himself and continued taking and plundering ships bound for the West Indies. Initially, having no love of Cromwell’s protectorate in England, he had preyed only on Parliamentary ships, but over the years, as his enthusiasm for piracy flourished and his gains became richer, in his greed and lust for more it had come to matter little what flag a ship sailed under if her cargo was worth the taking.
It was almost a year ago that Stuart’s elder brother had been on one of the ships bound for Jamaica to visit his uncle who owned a plantation there, when his vessel had come under attack from pirates. In a heavy mist the heavily laden merchant vessel, having sailed wide of the convoy in which it was travelling, had stood little chance of outrunning or outgunning the two pirate ships—fast single-masted sloops with forty guns between them.
Only a handful of those on board had survived to tell the tale, and Stuart had learned that the captain of the vessel that had led the attack was Nathaniel Wylde, and that after removing the cargo he and his cohorts had left the stricken ship and nearly all those on board to sink to the bottom of the sea. News of this sinking had shocked the Admiralty and public alike in England. Driven by a need to avenge his brother, Stuart had approached the Admiralty and been granted his wish.
He was issued with a privateering mission allowing him to seek out Captain Nathaniel Wylde with his ship, the Sea Hawk, to arrest and bring him back to London to stand trial for his crimes—an unusual concession, for such licence was usually issued to a Royal Naval vessel, but the ships of the Royal Navy were needed in the long-running fight with the Dutch.
After drawing Captain Wylde out of his lair in the Gulf of Mexico, Stuart had hounded him across the Atlantic to the coast of West Africa, which had fewer hiding places than the islands of the Caribbean.
Wylde had put up a fierce fight, but eventually Stuart and the seamen under his command had managed to capture the Dolphin, her captain and half her crew. Along with his ship, Nathaniel Wylde had been brought to England in chains and hanged.
In possession of a feeling of deep satisfaction that he had avenged himself on Captain Wylde for the death of his brother, Stuart proceeded towards the Pool of London where the Sea Hawk, chartered to a private English mercantile company, was moored.
He had only one more mission to the West Indies to carry out for the Company before he was to retire from the sea and settle down to a life of ease at Charnwood in Kent, home to his family for generations, where he would satisfy his mother’s desire that he find himself a wife and provide her with grandchildren and an heir.
Absently his thoughts turned to the tall, slender young woman he had observed from a distance watching the execution of Nathaniel Wylde. There had been an intense look of concentration in her eyes, which had turned to open curiosity when they had met his. Each had briefly assessed the other with an unwavering stare, and the woman’s steady gaze had taken on an iron nerve. It was the measure of a woman confident of her own worth.
Her eyes had been the only feature exposed, but he recalled the long strand of pale gold hair escaping the confines of her hood. It had drawn his gaze like a moth to a flame, for it was the only bright feature to lighten the dreariness
