Once a Pirate (5 page)

The tall, gangly cook sat on a stool. It no longer surprised her to see him using a quill pen to scratch wavering trails of indecipherable numbers on the pages of his ledger. She’d come in several times since her capture, and the man was always working.

“Hello, Mr. Willoughby,” Carly said.

His wizened features softened. “Lady Amanda.”

“Miss Carly,” Theo corrected.

“Ah, yes. Miss Carly.” Willoughby rapped his knuckles on the side of his head. Then he selected several cylindrical tins from a wooden box. Reading the labels, he logged more figures into his book.

“Would you mind heating some water for my bath? Mr. Gibbons said he’d carry the buckets to my quarters.”

Willoughby set a kettle of water on the flames. He gestured to his stool.” ’Twill be a while yet. Have a seat.”

Carly watched him stir the contents of a huge copper pot. The hunk of dried, salted beef had been towed overboard in a net to wash out much of the salt. Then Willoughby had boiled it all afternoon. Now he reached into the water with a ladle and scooped up a glob of the lumpy yellowish fat floating on the surface. “Fresh skimmings, milady. Fetch yourself a biscuit.”

Carly’s stomach roiled. “You’re kind, really, but no thanks.”

“I won’t hear of it, milady. Eat your fill while there’s the chance.” He slathered a thick layer of glistening fat atop a biscuit. “I’ll be selling the lot by noon tomorrow.”

“You go right ahead and serve yourself, Mr. Willoughby. Don’t worry about me.”

He made a tsking sound and ladled the remainder of the fat into a crock to cool and congeal.

The ever-hungry Theo plucked two biscuits out of a basket, handing one to Carly as Willoughby served them soup.

“If you won’t take your skimmings,” the cook said, “I want you to eat this. You’re too thin.”

“I don’t know about that. I could live for a month off my thighs alone.” Carly tapped her biscuit on the sideboard to dislodge any weevils. Hunger had almost deadened her aversion to the creatures that inhabited the bread onboard the ship, but smearing unadulterated, artery-clogging fat on her biscuit was a line she would not cross. The men, though, were more than happy to buy the coveted lumps of lard. Willoughby made a handsome profit selling it.

The curry-scented broth should have been tempting, but she didn’t feel like eating. She propped her chin on her hand and pushed her spoon through the maze of turnips and bits of chicken.

Willoughby resumed his inventory of the tins. He lifted a lid and inhaled. “Ah, nutmeg. The booty from your ship is a cook’s dream.” He thrust the tin at her. “Smell.”

She sniffed gingerly, then read the invoice attached
TO THE BOX. BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY. SHIPPED AUGUST 1820.

Shaken, she dropped her spoon. It splashed into the pewter bowl. Vaguely disoriented, she let her eyes drift closed. The invoice was another brick in an insurmountable wall of evidence. Maybe the last brick.

In warfare as well as life, those who failed to adapt perished. If she wanted to survive this and return home, she had to accept the extraordinary possibility that she’d moved through time. There was the Bermuda Triangle, after all, and the Druids with their circles of stones. Plenty of people had mysteriously disappeared over the centuries. What if she had, too?

But what if this is some kind of purgatory, the place you go if you aren’t quite good enough to go to Heaven?

With that, all the dirty laundry of her sad little past flitted before her eyes. There were the wild Friday nights at the officers’ club. No doubt those had gotten her here. So did picking wimpy strawberries from the green plastic baskets at the supermarket and replacing them with the ripest, monster-sized berries. And she drove fifty-five in the thirty-five mile-per-hour zone each morning on the way to the base because she knew the cops never patrolled that street before six.

God was watching.

If she was truly deserving of Heaven, she wouldn’t have felt compelled to lie about her rich father, saying he’d died before she was born. She would have been strong enough to admit that he’d dumped her white-trash mother after getting her pregnant. And had never once come to see their daughter.

A small, tired moan escaped her. “I should have known it would all come back to haunt me,” she whispered, shoving away from the table.

Willoughby and Theo stared at her with that now familiar look of pity and regret. How could she explain her predicament when she didn’t understand it herself?

Without saying good-bye she fled the galley and ran to Andrew’s quarters. There had to be something she’d missed, something that would explain what had happened to her. A clue she hadn’t seen.

She yanked open the door and stumbled to Andrew’s desk, tipping over a stack of papers, which sent an ink bottle crashing to the floor. Shards of sticky glass crunched under her boots as she tore through Andrew’s books. Keats, Sir Walter Scott, Shelley. Published: London, 1816. “No!” She threw the book against the wall.

Andrew appeared in the open doorway, an ashen-
faced Theo behind him. “Run along, lad,” Andrew said to the boy and closed the door.

Palms raised, as though soothing a wild animal, Andrew stepped toward her.

“What year is it?” she demanded.

“’Tis 1821.”

She crushed her hands into fists. She was a logical, reasonable person, a highly trained professional. Things like this didn’t happen to people like her. She picked up an unlit candle and hurled it at him. “You’re lying!”

He swerved out of the way. “I would not lie to you.” He ducked as a copy of Sir Walter Scott’s
Rob Roy
sailed over his head.” ’Tis 1821, five months since you left your home in India.”

“No!” She clamped her hands over her ears. The vise she’d clamped around her self-control wrenched open. The control had gotten her through her mother’s sickness and death, her fiancé’s betrayal and the catastrophe that followed. But the added pressure of not knowing whether she’d see her home again proved too much.

A sob tore from her, and her face contorted. “Why has this happened to me? Why?”

Startled and dismayed by Amanda’s tears, Andrew snatched her wrists. “Don’t. Before long, you will be in England with your betrothed. The duke is anxious to marry, I’m told. You could have done far worse. Richard is neither fat nor old.” Andrew could hardly believe that he was attempting to make the despicable wretch appear palatable, but he continued nonetheless. “In fact, the ladies find his appearance quite pleasing.”

She searched his face, her dark lashes damp. “I’m not her. Don’t you see? I don’t belong here. You have to help me get home.”

Home.
To a union that would bring her nothing but misery. Richard’s atrocities toward Andrew’s family attested to that. Bile rose in Andrew’s throat, and shame seeped into the hollow place inside him. Using Amanda to punish the duke made Andrew as much a monster as Richard.

Weeping now, Amanda tried to tug away. Awkwardly, Andrew drew her to his chest. She seemed to welcome the embrace, burying her face in the hollow between his shoulder and chest. As he held her, wrapping her petite frame in his strong one, her warm curves molded along the length of him, as though she were a piece that had always been missing.

“There, there,” he whispered, patting her on the back as though this sort of thing came naturally. As though he had held her once before.

He pointedly ignored the disconcerting thought.

Murmuring soothing words and bits of phrases that made no sense at all, he stroked her hair, losing himself in the feel of her until the clock chimed, startling him from his trance. Her tears had stopped.

Good Lord! He was resting his chin on her head.

He propelled her back to arms’ length. Her eyes mirrored his alarm. And for good reason—she was betrothed to another man. He had no right to hold her in this intimate way. Once before he had desired what wasn’t his, and it had cost him all he’d loved. He would not make the same mistake twice.

“Have you recovered?” he inquired in a clipped tone.

She pushed away from him and backed toward the aft bedchamber. “I’d like to be alone for awhile,” she said in a shaky voice.

He had reservations about leaving her. But what
harm would come to her in his quarters? “I’ll have Mr. Gibbons bring your bath,” he said and eased the door closed.

Mortified, Carly sagged against the wall. She knew better than to give in to her fear, her neediness. Yet, that was exactly what she had done. Thank goodness Andrew had wedged his icy contempt between them before she’d revealed how much his comfort meant to her, and how safe she’d felt in his arms.

Smudging moisture from her cheeks, she peered around the old-fashioned cabin. She loved technology, every gleaming, wondrous, timesaving marvel, and now she’d landed in a place devoid of it all. Good-bye electricity, computers, and microwaves. Not to mention showers, Tylenol, and tampons.

There had to be a way home.

An idea rocked her. A crazy, impulsive idea. What if she got into the water? Would everything reverse itself? Hope surged. If the ocean was how she got here, it could very well be her way back. Then she’d see a rescue helicopter. Or the carrier.

She jogged out of the cabin and across the deck. Leaning over the railing, she found the long, narrow shelf below. The chains. There was one on each side of the ship. They anchored the ropes that supported the masts, because the towering poles could not withstand the strain of the wind on their own. No one dared sit on the chains when the ship was running full speed. They were only six feet wide. But getting home was worth the risk, wasn’t it?

She glanced behind her. The captain and crew had returned to their duties. No one was watching her. If she was going to try out her plan, now was her chance.

Hurry.
She gripped a rope attached to the side of the
ship, tested it, then rappelled down, landing hard. Her ears popped with the pressure of the thundering sea. The spray-laden wind slapped her wet hair against her neck, her cheeks. It was like standing two feet from Niagara Falls. She kept one hand on the rope, fighting the urge to chant, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

Suddenly the wind died. The silence that followed was oppressive. The wind had shifted.

The ship pitched sideways, almost jerking the rope away from her. In her haste to clutch the lifeline with both hands, she lost her balance and plunged backward. Frothing gray-green seawater rushed into her nose and mouth. The rope scored her hands like razors.

“Help!” she shouted.

“Man overboard! Man overboard, I say!”

Carly shot a wild glance up to the railing. Andrew was there, shrugging off his coat, his boots. “Amanda! Good God, hold fast!” he roared, fastening a rope ladder to the railing. “I’m coming down!”

Aw, hell.
Her foolishness had gotten her here. Now she was dragging Andrew into the mess she’d created, putting him at risk. She shouldn’t have called for help.

Gulping air, she fought to climb higher on the rope. The cords seared her palms. The waves battered her against the hull. Suddenly she didn’t care what century she’d dropped into or whose identity she’d taken. All she wanted was to survive.

On the chains, Andrew fell to his stomach and grabbed hold of the rope. “Pull yourself to me!”

Her left hand cramped, shooting knifelike agony up her arm. “I can’t!”

Then the greedy swells seized her thighs and hips and dragged her down into the sea.

For one excruciating instant, Andrew thought he had lost her. Her panic, her desperation, rushed into him as though it were his own. But she stopped her slide with the knotted end of the rope.

The ship was slowing, but not fast enough. If he didn’t act fast, she’d be left behind. The ship would return for her, but there were no guarantees that she’d be found.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled the rope toward him, hand over hand. “Now!” he commanded, reaching for her.

She swiped for his fingers and missed.

“Again!” he implored.

Grimacing, she extended her arm, her fingers splayed wide. He lunged for her. The muscles in his back and arms quivered with the strain. When her
cold, slippery hand wrapped around his, relief beyond his experience squeezed his insides. He muttered a prayer of thanks and hauled her onto the chains, supporting her by hooking one arm under her bottom. “I’ve got you,” he murmured against the pulse beating wildly at her throat.

Amanda’s thin arms coiled around his neck. “Thank God.”

He tightened his embrace as an overwhelming need to protect her, to care for her, surged through him. He fought the urge to cover her mouth with his and kiss her with as much passion as he had in his soul.

A resounding cheer erupted.

His men were gathered at the railing above. “Fine show, sir,” Cuddy called down. “Carry her on up. We’ll help at the top.”

Andrew moved her back. He gestured with his chin to the roughly knotted rope. “Are you able to climb?”

“No problem,” she said steadily, though her hands shook when she grabbed the ladder.

He followed close behind, supporting her wriggling, round little rump with one shoulder, while Cuddy helped her over the railing.

“Mr. Egan,” Andrew said to Cuddy, keeping his voice on an even keel to camouflage his roiling emotions. “Let us get underway. South by southeast.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

Andrew turned his attention to Amanda. Her golden brown eyes were downcast. Droplets of seawater clung to her pale cheeks like tears. She looked positively forlorn. A sense of helplessness quenched his fierce relief. She had meant to kill herself, he thought numbly. Short of locking her in his quarters, how would he prevent her from trying again? Weary and
feeling far older than thirty years, he asked, “Is it so horrible here that you must take your own life?”

She squared her shoulders. “I wasn’t trying to commit suicide.”

“Then what the bloody hell were you doing on the chains?”

“I thought if I stood near the water, I could get home. But the wind changed directions, and I fell in.” She beseeched him with her eyes. “Accidentally.”

Surely he had not heard her correctly. “You intended to go . . . home?”

She nodded.

“To India?” he exclaimed.

“Well, no. The United States.”

A choked laugh escaped him.

“I was in the ocean when you found me,” she said in a rush of words. “So I thought that maybe . . .”

Seeing him tighten his jaw, Carly quickly summed up her position. “I hoped I’d go back to where I started. But it didn’t work, so I’ll have to try something else.”

He grabbed her upper arms, hauling her toward him. “I thought your odd behavior was because you were reacting badly to your captivity. After all, you’ve known so little hardship in your short, privileged life.”

“My life’s been a lot of things,” she snapped, “short and privileged not among them.”

He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “But now you tell me that you intended to swim home. I hereby reconsider. Would you like to know why?”

“Not particularly.”

“Not only are you daft,” he informed her glibly, “but you are dimwitted, as well.”

Something close to a growl escaped her, and he laughed, actually laughed, pure delight dancing in his eyes.

Whatever gratitude she’d felt toward him dissolved. “What I did was impulsive and stupid. I put you in danger, and I’m sorry. But you’ve rubbed my nose in it long enough.” She squirmed to put more distance between them, but he gripped her firmly. “Let me go.”

“Hell, no.” He brought his lips to within inches of hers. “I rather like this.”

She froze. Her gaze flew from his lips to his eyes, which he’d focused securely on her mouth.

“Have you ever been kissed, I wonder? Properly kissed.”

She reared back as he leaned toward her.

“Ah, but I suppose I mustn’t toy with the merchandise,” he drawled, releasing her. “Else the duke may balk at the high price I’ve set on your head. We’d be reduced to bargaining.”

“Good luck,” she said sullenly. “The minute he finds out I’m not Amanda, you won’t get a nickel.”

“Haven’t let go of
that
bone, eh? A regular spitfire, you are, and as mad as a snowstorm in July.” He rolled one shoulder, then the other, as though to relieve stiffness pooling there. “But I do enjoy your feisty banter. It invigorates me.”

Heat rushed to her cheeks. The man was playing with her, had been all along. But it was more than that. He was regarding her with blatant interest, making it clear that her totally inappropriate, utterly misplaced attraction was mutual. Oddly, exhilaration shot through her. But she used her discovery to her advantage,
instinctively, the way she would in a dogfight upon uncovering an opponent’s weakness.

If anyone needed to be put in his place, it was him.

She smiled sweetly, and sighed for added effect. “You are so selfless, so brave. You’ve saved my life twice now. I want to thank you.”

He preened. “No need.”

“No, I must. And
properly,
too.”

Wary of the glimmer in her eyes, Andrew folded his arms across his chest. She seized his shoulders. Standing on her toes, she brought her face to his. Her zeal ignited a sharp rush of desire that buried its heat deep in his groin. He tried to push her away, but she pressed her soft belly to his. “Milady, shouldn’t you go inside and change into dry clothes?” he asked weakly.

Her lips curved into a mischievous smile. “Hell no. I rather like this.”

With that, she planted a firm, closemouthed kiss on his lips and marched off. He gazed after her, stupefied.

Blast. He’d been thoroughly trounced.

“Well done,” he muttered, adjusting his collar. Then he picked up his boots, slung his coat over one shoulder, and followed the little spitfire to the main deck.

It took a week for Carly’s palms to heal. The day her bandages came off, she gathered most of her possessions, save her handgun, gloves, watch, and pocketknife, and stuffed them into a sack. Then she waited until late afternoon before making her way to the bow of the ship.

She’d decided to give herself a funeral.

A symbolic, spiritual cleansing. A farewell.

The
Phoenix
was on its way to an island off the African coast, leaving her no option but to postpone her escape until landfall. Curiously, instead of panic, a sense of belonging had suffused her, blending with the sense of déjà vu that had dogged her since coming aboard. Though probably temporary, her life here left her feeling free and alive.

So unlike her past.

She’d been the consummate good girl, striving her whole life to please. Always the dutiful daughter, the understanding girlfriend, the perfect little soldier.

No more.

She would no longer drag the garbage of her life behind her like Marley’s ghost in Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol.
It was time to cut the chains.

Theo coughed softly.

The sound pulled her from her thoughts, back to the old-fashioned sailing ship and the innocent cabin boy who gazed at her with wonder. She smiled at him. “I treasure our friendship, Theo.”

“Aye, me too. I’m glad for all your tales of the flying machines. I could hear ‘em again and again.”

She rummaged through her sack of odds and ends. “If you’d been born in my time, I bet you would have been a pilot.” She plucked out her flight jacket. “Here you go, kiddo. It’s yours.”

Stunned, Theo lifted the garment from her hands, holding the jacket at arms’ length.

“Put it on,” she urged.

His eyes widened as he flushed and hugged it to his chest.

“Go on!”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes,” she said. “Now go eat your supper.”

“Aye, Carly.” Grinning, he stepped backward and stumbled over a knotted rope. Righting himself, he let out a whoop of joy and sprinted toward the stairs that led belowdecks.

Carly returned her gaze to the water. She propped her elbows on the railing, cradling her chin in her hands. About the only thing that hadn’t changed in the amazing events of the last two weeks was how much she loved the sea and sky. Tonight, the water was alight with brushstrokes of mauve, highlighting the sun, a shimmering white-hot ball poised above the horizon. The sky was an enormous blue dome unbroken by clouds or contrails, the white streaks left by jets in a typical twenty-first-century sky.

No craft would traverse the heavens for another eighty years.

She shivered with a poignant sense of loss. She’d loved flying, the freedom and thrill of it. It had been something she was good at. Her career had brought her pride, a sense of direction. It had taken her out of poverty and given her a life, and the financial means to care for her mother.

Though she missed her mother desperately, Carly comforted herself with the knowledge that Rose Callahan had finally escaped her pain. She had been ill for as long as Carly could remember. Their roles had been reversed throughout her childhood. Carly had been the one to take care of the house, cook their meager meals, administer medicines to ease her mother’s pain, using what free time was left to accomplish chores. Which was why, she supposed, she didn’t give a second thought to many of the menial tasks associated with nineteenth-century living.

The relentless wind snapped her pant legs against her thighs, reminding her that as soon as the sun set, the biting dampness would return. She’d better get on with it.

She emptied her pockets. Into the waves went her water-warped notepad, a ruined lipstick, and two leaking pens. She hurled them into the waves and watched them disappear behind the ship. Slowly, reverently, she peeled the fabric patches off the Velcro that held them to her flight suit. It was what she’d been trained to do if she were shot down in war. Since no one here believed her identity anyway, stripping away the bits of cloth gave her a strange sense of freedom. Labels; that’s all they were.

Name tag, squadron patch, flag—she studied them, tracing the shape of her hard-won aviator wings with her fingertip. Then she smirked at the grinning skull and crossed bones on her squadron patch. VFA-60 Jolly Rogers. What if they’d been known as the Neanderthals, instead? Would she have ended up in a cave with club-wielding barbarians instead of on a ship full of pirates? She shuddered at the possibilities.

One by one, she released the patches. They fluttered in the breeze like lost butterflies before spiraling down to the sea.

She lifted her dogtags over her head. “An interesting bauble,” Andrew had called them when she’d tried using them to prove her identity. “Were these all the rage in Delhi?” he’d inquired blandly. Carly snorted with the memory.

The dogtags hit the waves without a splash.

She unfastened the gold chain she’d worn for years. The tear-shaped half-carat diamond was the first gift Rick had given her. She’d come close to throwing it away a million times after he left but never could.

Now she dangled it carelessly from her index finger.

Since childhood, she’d craved a stable family, and the love of a loyal man. That dream had escaped her mother, and Carly had sworn her life would be different.

With Rick, she’d thought it was. He was from a privileged background and had a bright future to look forward to after his stint in the navy. After graduating flight school, they’d shared a luxurious townhouse. He’d paid the expenses, bought her gifts, and taken her on vacation when their schedules allowed.

She’d been seduced by it all. Unlike Rick, she had not grown up surrounded by the trappings of wealth, so she’d mistaken what he gave her for love. That made it difficult to understand why he avoided talking about their future. She must not have tried hard enough to please him, she’d thought. So she’d redoubled her efforts—after all, hard work had earned her everything
else
in her life. She’d given him everything a woman could give—trust, loyalty, love . . . her body. But he’d turned out to be a boy who valued bloodlines above all else.

Wincing, she remembered meeting his parents for the first and only time. In his mother’s disdainful, aristocratic gaze, Carly wasn’t a twenty-seven-year-old fighter pilot respected and admired by her peers. She was that little girl again; the kid who lived in the broken-down, one-room shack and wore donated clothes, whose mother had to clean houses and use food stamps at the local market.

“I’m through with men like you!” Carly balled the necklace in her fist and hurled it over the railing. It swirled on the churning water, an innocent trinket atop impending doom. Then, without warning, it was sucked under. “Good riddance.”

She’d learned her lesson well, from Rick, from her father. Rich men were spoiled and couldn’t be trusted. They ran when times got tough. It had taken her awhile, but she’d finally figured it out.

Cinderella was a fairy tale.

As the sun settled below the horizon, so did her old life. This was her second chance. Tomorrow would be the first day of her new life. This time, she wasn’t going to screw it up.