Page 7 of Any Duke in a Storm

He certainly had the look of a long-ago pirate. Dashing. Roguish. Definitely dodgy.

His eyes were an unusual gray color with a tawny starburst at the center, made even more striking by his rich brown skin, and his longish nose had a bump in it as though it’d been broken by a fist. Or a shovel. A girl could dream. But it was that mouth—curved into a crooked, ingratiating smile—that made her hackles rise. Everything seemed to be of perpetual amusement to him, those irises alight with something puckish that provoked and irritated. A staunch scoundrel through and through.

Lisbeth had to hand some credit to him, however. He’d passed muster to get them out of port safely, even if he did smell like he’d bathed in a vat of rum. Her crew drank like any other sailors on the sea, but liquor had its place, just like everything else. Drunk mariners made mistakes. Took liberties. Were too loose with their pride and their tongues.

Weredangerous.

She fastened her gaze to him. “Who are you? Who are your people?”

As if waiting for the inquiry, he stepped up beside her at the railing. The pungent smell of rum curled around her, but it was underscored by the salt of the sea and something that hinted of cedar and spice. “What do you wish to know, Captain?”

“All of it. Are you Caribbean? English? European? What brought you here?”

His lips quirked. “Once upon a time, there was a boy, now a man. A strapping, charming man, beloved by all. Especially bloodthirsty Vikings.” She let out a low growl, brows slamming together, and the rotter threw up his hands in surrender with a chuckle that shouldn’t have made her want to smile despite herself. “Very well, the boring version, then. I’m French by birth. My grandfather was one of the initial French settlers in Tobago and my grandmother was a free French Creole woman from Martinique. They had one child—my father—who in turn met and married a free islander from the neighboring island of Trinidad, one descended from East Indian and Amerindian parents. So the first and the last, I suppose.”

That explained his singular looks, Lisbeth thought, and the sun-kissed brown hue of his complexion. She filed away the information he’d offered and let out a tiny mocking huff of laughter. “A sailing master without a ship is like a hermit crab without a shell. Whose ship were you on before? What brought you to Tobago, and why did you need to leave so suddenly?”

A muscle leaped to life in his jaw. The fact that he had to think about his answer made her pause, but Lisbeth waited. Everyone had secrets… She just had to make sure that his were no threat to her or her crew. The last thing she needed to have on her plate was a man with a complicated past bringing his tribulations to her ship. She was in enough of the stew because of Davy.

“A bit of business that went bad, I’m afraid,” he replied. “Trusted the wrong sort and ended up stranded and shipless.”

That sounded reasonable and plausible, but Lisbeth trusted no one she hadn’t thoroughly investigated herself. “Where are you trying to get to?”

“Bermuda or Nassau, the second preferably.”

She frowned, her brain sparking. What were the odds that a sailing master of his skill would choose either of those islands? Both places were strongholds of smuggling activity, ports she’d planned to infiltrate herself. Just like the upper-crust echelons of the Britishton, the smuggling world had rules and hierarchy. Lisbeth would have worked her way in there earlier, but the inner circles were tight and one had to be someone of enough repute to be granted entry.

Could this marauder be her way back in? The hope was a stretch at best, or perhaps she was grasping at straws. Then again, Lisbeth was nearly out of options. It was either that or head back to New York empty-handed with her tail between her legs…and she did not like to fail.

No, when a door closed, a window could be pried open.And this was a window. A very, very,verysmall window, but one nonetheless. What was the harm in seeing him to his destination? And if she discovered that he could be useful, well then that would be a boon.

“Nassau it is,” she said. “And Pirate?”

Those mercurial gray eyes flashed. “Yes, Captain?”

“Keep your head down or you’ll find yourself tossed out with the rest of the slop.”

The corner of his mouth kicked up as he moistened the lower of the two sensuous curves, the drag of the tip of his tongue unmistakable. The bloody knave had the audacity to wink. “Aye, aye. I’ve been told I do my best work with my head down. You won’t regret it.”

Lisbeth’s cheeks heated—in instant irritation, of course—but he was gone before she could reply and cut him down to size, the lewd images she’d shoved away earlier returning in full salacious force. She let out a growl of a laugh.

Blast her floundering luck, she was bloody regretting it already.

Three

From his vantage point in the foremast crow’s nest, Raphael peeled and bit into a juicy yellow mango, observing the crew milling about down below. On his own vessels, everyone had their assigned roles for the most part, but this ship was a tightly run machine. Each sailor and boatswain knew their place. A flutter of admiration crossed his brain. Maybe there was something to be said for a female leader.

Though, he’d been wrong about the crew being largely female. Roughly half of the gunners and deckhands were male, and the surgeon was an enormous pale Englishman ironically called Smalls who was never too far from his mistress’s side. Case in point…Smalls lounged near the frigate’s paddle wheel, a dark gaze fastened to Raphael’s position in the crow’s-nest.

He didn’t begrudge the man his instincts; Raphael was new, not that he meant the ship or its truculent captain any harm. The woman was nothing like he’d imagined. In his head from the stories he’d heard over the past couple of years, Bonnie Bess was a loud, brazen giantess who wore the tokens of her enemies—ears, teeth, fingers—all strung together in a gruesome necklace about her person to remind herself of those who had wronged her. Herreputation for cunning, ruthlessness, and violence preceded her by a mile, and most sailors with half a brain knew to steer clear of theSyren, which was a ship that fired cannons first and asked questions later.

He was probably lucky. No one built a name like that withoutsomegrain of truth to it. Then again, most people underestimated him as well. They thought him a bumbling, sotted fool. While the act worked well to get him into places he wanted or helped him go unnoticed when he needed to be, it wasn’t him in the least. He hadplans…ones he meant to see through no matter the cost.

Raphael took a huge bite of his mango, wiping the sweet juice from his chin with one sleeve. All he had to do was survive the rest of the way.

Five fucking days.

That would get him to Nassau at their current speed. He’d successfully charted a path for theSyrento the Port of Bridgetown in Barbados, where they would ensure they had extra provisions and armament for the remaining four-day journey to Nassau. Strangely, the lethal captain had not argued with his suggestion, which made him wonder if she was evading something—orsomeone—as well. It would not do to find them in the middle of the Atlantic on the way to the island without some form of defense.

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