Page 13 of Any Duke in a Storm

By the time they walked back to the tavern that Narina called home, Lisbeth’s belly was churning with nerves. She did not have a good feeling about this…a feeling that became worse when she took in the unusual state of disrepair of the tavern. She’d remembered it being clean and bustling. Now it was dirty with cheap, broken furniture and a couple drunks holding down thefort and nursing mugs of stale liquor. It stank of old ale and piss. “What happened?”

Narina chewed on her lip and wrinkled her nose. “Porter—the feckless shitsack your shiny knight dispatched—and his men came, demanding protection fees.”

“Notshinyat all,” Lisbeth retorted before she could stop herself. It barely registered that she hadn’t argued the “your” part or protested Narina’s language. Heavens, she needed to put the dratted knave from her mind.

Narina rolled her eyes. “At first, Mama refused to pay the nackle-asses for security that we had never needed, but then bad things started to happen. Thieves would break in overnight. Brawls would start up for no reason at all, buggering all the furniture. The tavern started losing money, and then Mama got sick. One of the bloody ships putting into port brought the yellow fever.” She blew out a breath, looking much too old for her tender years as she poured two glasses of water from a pitcher. “Hundreds in the village died. I got sick too, and I thought Mama was on the mend until she got a second infection, started vomiting dark blood, and was gone in days.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lisbeth said, reaching for the girl’s hand and squeezing. There was nothing worse than yellow fever, especially that second deadly stage with internal hemorrhaging. Over the last decade, the virus had ravaged the lives of thousands of people in the islands. Bermuda had gone through four separate epidemics.

One of Lisbeth’s colleagues in the American government had arrested a man called Dr. Blackburn, a Confederateagent who had paid his cronies to ship and distribute soiled, infected garments from Bermuda to President Lincoln and his allies in the Northern states. If Lisbeth recalled correctly, a month after the president’s assassination three years ago, Blackburn was arrested in Nova Scotia and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. However, the man had been acquitted on a trifle—a violation of Canadian neutrality—since any alleged conspiracy was not toward a Canadian head of state. As far as Lisbeth knew, he’d been in New Orleans in the past year during another yellow fever epidemic.

Narina sniffed and ran a weary hand over her face. “It was bad luck that the fever didn’t take Porter and his bloody meaters. They became rougher and bolder, and Mama’s tenant had spent the last of our savings taking care of her. She had no bleeding choice but to pay the bastards with whatever coin came in…” She let her voice trail off, anxious fingers tugging at the frayed cuffs of her shirt. Lisbeth didn’t have the heart to chastise her words. “And when that money ran out, Porter fancied himself a tavern owner as payment. He told Auntie she had to marry him or he would sell me.”

Lisbeth felt her entire body tense with cold rage. “Why didn’t your mama write to me at the address I gave her in New York? My people would have sent the correspondence to me.”

Her shoulders lifted and fell. “She did. She mailed you dozens of letters.”

Why hadn’t she received any? Lisbeth had met withher counterparts in the customs house in secret several times in New York under the guise of selling smuggled goods. She’d received letters from Bronwyn, the Duchess of Thornbury, who despite her retirement from clandestine operations liked to stay abreast of international politics, but none from Narina’s mother.

There was only one reason Lisbeth’s handlers would not have delivered them—if they felt her mission would have been compromised in some way. But still, Lisbeth felt guilt, followed by a swift rush of anger. Those letters were important, and she had a strong inkling that her handlers were more worried about her beingdistractedthan compromised.

“I have money. Porter is dead and his men won’t bother you anymore.”

Narina lifted her eyes, a dark defiant stare meeting Lisbeth’s that made her own gaze narrow. “Take me with you. On theSyren.”

“TheSyrenis no room for children.”

“I’m not a damned baby, Bess. I’m twelve!”

Lisbeth rolled her lips, frowning at the oath. She’d been barely a handful of years older than that when she’d been running with an unsavory crowd in London, to the despair of her father. However, given the fact that she was on the run in addition to the fact that Davy remained in possession of her private correspondence, the attention on her meant that Narina would be better off here than on her ship. Lisbeth would make sure that some of her crew stayed behind to ensure her protection.

“Where’s your aunt?”

Narina’s thin frame bristled. “She’s not even my real aunt, Bess. She thinks she’s lady of the goddamned manor. She doesn’t even care about the tavern. Or me. She’ll probably be looking for another protector now that Porter’s dead.”

Lisbeth shook her head decisively, noting the mutinous downturn of the girl’s mouth. “Even so, Nari, it’s safer for you here with her. I’ll come back, I promise.”

“Bess, please.”

“I’m sorry, love, but the answer’s no.”

Arms purchase negotiated, paid, and delivered to theSyren, Raphael walked beside Smalls toward the wharves. The man barely said two words, other than grunts and curt jerks of his head in lieu of actual conversation. The whole interaction had almost been nipped in the bud when his contact, the clearly unforgiving and still livid Mr. Crawley, had pulled out a pistol and threated to shoot Raphael dead right then and there on his doorstep. Only the hefty promise of Bess’s coin and the nearly too-late intervention of Smalls had saved his sorry hide.

It wasn’tRaphael’sfault that Crawley’s daughter had taken a fancy to him a few years ago. The girl had been quite determined in her pursuit. Raphael had offered companionship and she had expected wedding bells. Crawley had worn much the same expression when he’d fired into the side of Raphael’s ship and warned him neverto set foot back in Bridgetown. And yet here he was…back in Bridgetown, without a ship, and a gun barrel in his face, facing down old foes to gain the trust of his new ship allies.

At least Raphael hoped they were allies. He was quite certain that Bonnie Bess vacillated between skewering him with her cutlass and feeding his remains to the hungry corbeaux that circled the wharves for carrion. Those vultures would eat anything! Raphael supposed he could stay in Barbados, work odd jobs, and eventually scrounge up passage to Nassau on his own. Despite Crawley’s loathing, he was still owed favors by a few people.

But that would take time, and time he did not have.

No, passage on an exceptionally fast blockade-runner-turned-frigate that had been refitted with weaponry would get him there. He had no idea what business Bonnie Bess had in Nassau or Bermuda, nor did he care. She was a little fish in a very big sea. Raphael blinked. A little,ferociousfish. Like a baby barracuda. But even baby barracudas could rip a man to shreds. Maybe he should be using this time with Smalls to find out more about his temporary captain.

“Thanks for that back there, by the way,” Raphael said to Smalls as they walked back toward town. “Women, right?”

A noncommittal grunt was the reply, or perhaps he’d only imagined that sound. Raphael glanced up to the side. He was a tall man, and Smalls still towered over him. His name was ironic in itself. Perhaps that was a moniker for what might be other less impressive parts of him. Raphaelkept those uncharitable thoughts to himself, however. Insulting a man’s masculinity was a sure recipe for finding himself on the business end of Smalls’s meaty fists. And those weren’t small at all.

“Crawley’s girl wanted wedlock,” he went on in jovial tones as if Smalls had entered into the conversation. “I’m already married to the sea, and the sands are my occasional mistress. There’s no tying this kind of bounty down. I told her this, but the deuced girl would not listen. How long have you been on theSyren?”

He waited, but there was no answer. If he hadn’t heard the man growl a thank-you to Crawley, Raphael would have thought that he could not speak. Plenty of smugglers had their tongues cut out as punishment for insubordination on ships. Dubois had done something similar to his inner circle so they could not betray him. Barbaric in the extreme.

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