Page 8 of Kidnapped by the Pirate
“No, no. I’m sure it’s excellent,” Plum answered meekly, backing up a step.
“Most men on this ship can’t even sign their names. It took me years to learn. Years of bettering myself word by word. You’re a privileged little piece of shit, and you will sit down, shut up, and pray your snake of a father pays the money he owes. Or you’ll be the one who pays. You and your sister. Her babe.”
In truth, Hawk would never harm an innocent woman or child—or permit his crew to do so—but Bainbridge didn’t have to know that. “Am I understood? Plum?”
Head down, he whispered, “Yes.”
Hawk crossed to the door in two long strides. He slammed it behind him, put the key in the lock, and—
Nothing.
Iron grated as the stubborn lock refused to turn. Hawk jiggled it for a few moments. Of all the times for the lock to seize up, it had to be when he was terrifying a prisoner. For fuck’s sake. Jaw clenched, he threw open the door again. Plum still stood where he’d left him, clutching the blanket.
Tugging his arm roughly, Hawk dragged him out of the cabin, hollering, “Mr. Cooper! Fix the lock. You have ten minutes.” He smiled humorlessly at Bainbridge. “It seems you have a momentary reprieve. It will be the last.”
Chapter Three
None too gently, Captain Hawk tugged him along to the ladder to the main deck. Nathaniel glimpsed the crew’s quarters at the bow of the ship, a cramped space, dark and stinking of sweat and mildew and heaven knew what else.
A cook was toiling over a stove, men stowing their hammocks as the sun rose and pulling out long tables for eating. Then Nathaniel was roughly pushed up the ladder.
On deck, he inhaled the cool, fresh air gratefully, the sun blinding where it peeked just over the horizon. He soaked in all the sights and smells around him, the threat of a month alone in the pirate captain’s cabin filling him with dread that threatened to undo him.
The confinement of a ship was awful enough. To be trapped in that one room? His stomach curdled.
He gazed about, heart lurching as he spotted sails in the distance. Was it the Proud William? Must have been, since no one paid it any mind. Nathaniel watched glumly as it shrank to a speck.
But Susanna was safe, and that was what mattered. He hated that she would be alone for the rest of her journey, especially in her delicate state. Guilt pricked, even though he knew there was not a thing he could do.
He glared at the captain, who at least had released Nathaniel from his vile grasp. The rising sun showed the pirate’s eyes to be a surprisingly vibrant blue tinged with gray. The little square gold earring gleamed.
The quartermaster, a Mr. Snell according to the captain’s gruff greeting, approached. “Captain, the men want to eat some of the salt fish we took. Shall it be given to Cook?”
“Aye.”
Nathaniel’s stomach grumbled at the thought of food, but he’d starve before asking Captain Hawk—no, simply Hawk, because he didn’t deserve any title of prestige or honor. As Hawk and Mr. Snell walked some feet away, conferring in tones so low he couldn’t overhear, Nathaniel examined his prison.
The Damned Manta was a single-masted sloop that had likely once been a merchant vessel. Thick coils of rope crowded the ship. If there had originally been an aft deck near the stern, Nathaniel suspected it had been removed to add more guns. He counted fourteen around the top deck, which was about sixty feet from bow to stern and flat the whole way across.
From a distance, the sloop would appear lower in the water. It would also make for good running, and Nathaniel’s feet itched to race from bow to stern, around the ship’s massive wheel, and back again.
He wasn’t sure how many pirates toiled aboard, but guessed forty-five or fifty men. They seemed to be a piecemeal lot, men of all colors, ages, and sizes, some with long hair, some short; some with cleaner faces and others with ratty beards.
Many wore loose pants, but some were form-fitting. Tattoos and piercings decorated bare skin. One man in a leather vest had dark ink so thick on his arms that Nathaniel at first thought he was wearing a shirt.
High above, a lookout perched on the yard, holding onto the mast. The pirate black still fluttered against the sky, this flag emblazoned with a white bird of prey, wings spread wide, beak cruel. A sea hawk, he presumed.
As he watched, men yanked on the ropes to lower the flag, keeping it out of sight to lure in the ship’s next victims. He lowered his gaze from the sails and rigging. Hawk and Snell now seemed to be talking about him, eyeing him in such a way that the hair on Nathaniel’s arms stood on end.
