Page 5 of Any Duke in a Storm

“Cheerful, is she?” she muttered and then rolled her eyes. “Estelle, turn this goddamned ship around,” she bellowed, but the statuesque brunette with the uncompromising mien who had interrogated him was nowhere to be found. She was no longer on the quarterdeck where Raphael had seen her last.

Still panting for breath from her death-defying leap, the woman claiming to be captain shoved the damp locks out of her brow, and Raphael’s eyes went even wider. Streaked, icy-blond, half-braided hair surrounded a heart-shaped face with a pert chin, a down-turned but full mouth, and a pair of sharp light eyes that shone with equal parts grit, loathing, and irritation.

His heart gave a sudden thump. Not what he was expecting at all. This part of Tobago, a port known for its smugglers, thieves, and generally an unsavory sort, attracted rough people of all sexes, but certainly not anyone who looked likeher. He would have remembered.

Fiery Valkyries with murder in their eyes would command notice.

His heart thumped again.

Despite that and the utterly unwanted tug of attraction in his gut, he shrugged it away. His reaction—a very normal biological reaction—could have been because he’d had his hands full with her very feminine charms amoment ago. Considering he’d been locked in jail for weeks with no one but Jimmy for company, it was no wonder certain parts of him had perked up.

That furious stare of hers churned with savagery and displeasure, but he held his ground and kept his nascent desires in check. His instincts warned that, unlike the quartermaster, this lady might not be so easily charmed or hoodwinked. She was mesmerizing in the way a wild hawk was…like something that soared and hunted, and could never be caged. Or tamed.

“So you’re truly the captain,” he repeated. “Of this vessel.”

She tilted her head backward to meet his stare with hers. In the guttering lamplight, a pair of changeling, siren’s eyes leaned toward the darkest green of the ocean. “Did I bloody stutter?”

He opened his mouth to say no and shake his head meekly—because why would he risk his means of escape—but blurted out instead, “What were you running from just now?”

“None of your business. Estelle, come out, you lily-livered coward, and explain the meaning of this before I have your wretched carcass lashed!”

“Promises, promises,” a voice called back, and Raphael blinked. That didn’t sound like distress at all. In fact, it sounded…flirtatious.

The captain scowled as she peered around, her top teeth sinking into her plush bottom lip, and he felt that sensual jolt again. He ignored both it and the urge to leanforward to sample that full red lip himself. She’d probably lashhiminto strips if he tried, and he was quite fond of being in one piece. Best not to tangle with an infuriated woman who had the power to kick him off her ship and right back into irons.

The tall, stoic quartermaster strolled out from the port deck. “Cap’n.”

“Don’t ‘Cap’n’ me. What the deuce is this, Estelle?”

Estelle grunted, her face giving away nothing. “We needed a sailing master. There was no one else, and you demanded to leave in short order, if you recall. I didn’t have time to find anyone more suitable. In fact, I’d lost hope we’d have anyone at all until he showed up.”

“Showed up?” she bit out. “That’s coincidental.”

“Kismet,” Estelle countered, and the captain hissed a curse he didn’t quite catch. “He claims to know the routes and the sea, and has enough navigational knowledge to steer us out of here in one piece.”

Damn right he knew the sea! Raphael puffed his chest, not missing the captain’s narrowed gaze on that part of his anatomy, considering she was standing an arm’s length away. It was a rather nice chest, if he did say so himself. He couldn’t help it—he gave a subtle stretch. Her mouth flattened even more when he noticed her sidelong observation. Maybe his first impression had been off, and hecouldturn on the charm to flick that frown upside down.

Or not, as a long fierce hiss eased from compressed lips.

“He doesn’t belong here,” the sullen captain growled,stalking across the deck to get in her quartermaster’s face. “We’re a vessel full of women and we have no idea who he is. He’s a lowlife and a bottom-feeding pirate! Look at him. He’s a distraction, he smells like a distillery, and he’ll eat everything onboard.”

Rude! Raphael blinked. He’d only eat his share, and surely he didn’t smell that bad. He’d bathed! With soap! Then again, a bucket of water thrown at him once a week for two months didn’t actually constitute bathing.

But what was that about a ship full of women? Now that he looked around at the faces and bodies crowding the deck, he saw that it was indeed true. More than half of the hard-faced sailors were female. Why did that seem unnervingly familiar…like something he should know? A strange feeling of foreboding slunk through his bones.

“Women who can fight as well as any men,” the quartermaster replied, undeterred by the mortal threat in her captain’s voice. “We need a sailing master, Bess. Unless you want to take our chances and guess our way out of here with that reef in the middle of the night. He knows the inlet.”

That deep-water glower just about incinerated him. He could see the captain thinking and considering the alternative of taking her chances without him, and then fuming when she realized she couldn’t. She glared at him. “You better not be lying about what you know, Pirate.”

“I’m not, Valkyrie.” And then he sucked in a breath as her eyes flared with renewed fury at the moniker, the foreboding he’d felt earlier spearing its claws into his gut asthe name Estelle had called her echoed through him like a gong. “Wait,Bess?”

Dieu, was this ship the goddamnedSyren? Of all the vessels he could have stumbled upon, he’d chosen this one! They’d gut him inside a week!

The captain’s grin was near feral, the corner of her mouth kicking up in a way that made his ballocks shrivel with apprehension. “Aye, Bonnie Bess. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

Raphael felt his jaw drop.Everyonewith a pulse knew the name of the dreaded female captain taking the seafaring world by storm who made other captains look like bumbling, inept infants. Her ship was fast, she was deviously smart, and her crew—a disproportionately female crew that was uncommon in their walk of life—was unerringly steadfast. And, by all accounts, vicious.

Rumor had it she had an inflexible code of conduct on her ship. Assault of female crew or prisoners was punishable by beheading, and defectors had their ears removed. The island locals had even made up a sea shanty about Bonnie Bess. If he recalled correctly, there was a part about her skill with bullets and blades, and a razor-sharp tongue that enjoyed inflicting pain instead of pleasure—not that he was interested in validating any part of that.

---