Chapter Eight
“You sure you want to do this, Cap’n?” Corky Menadue asked hesitantly as he stood with Nathan on the London dock.
Nathan smiled. “Get my ship back? Damned right I do.”
“I meant work your way over to the colonies.”
“I believe they call them states now.”
“But it ain’t like you couldn’t pay for passage instead,” Corky said, and not for the first time.
Nathan looked down at his first mate. He had inherited Corky when he’d inherited The Pearl, but he’d known the older man most of his life. Corky had been Jory Tremayne’s first mate, and Nathan had pretty much grown up on his father’s ship—until Jory had kicked him off it. Such impotent rage he’d felt back then, but nothing he’d said or done would change Jory’s mind. It was for his own protection, Jory insisted, as if Nathan couldn’t protect himself. And he was haunted by the thought that his father might still be alive if he had been there the night his father was shot.
“Forget about Grigg! I told you, assure you, I’ll see him hanged for you.” Not if Nathan could find him before Commander Burdis did. But he had a ship to find first.
Nathan reminded his old friend, “The other vessels aren’t leaving for another week and they’re not bound for Connecticut, which is where I need to go. This one is actually going about fifty miles west of my destination. Damned lucky, and about time some luck came my way. Besides, time isn’t on our side even if I wanted to waste the coin on passage, which I don’t. The Pearl will be sold if we don’t get there soon.”
“I’m just worried about your temper. Last captain you took orders from was your father and that was five years ago. D’you even remember how?”
Nathan barked a laugh, but Corky added, “And this captain is some kind of nabob, if you can go by the high wage he’s paying us. And I know how you feel about nabobs.”
“You don’t have to come along, you know,” Nathan told his curly-haired friend.
“And what else would I be doing until you come back with The Pearl?”
After Burdis had released Nathan, he’d found Corky and most of his crew in the haunt they frequented in Southampton, where Nathan had settled after leaving Cornwall. At first they’d been shocked to see him and then quite rowdy in expressing their relief that Nathan was a free man. After he’d been captured by the revenuers, they hadn’t expected to ever see him again. He didn’t begrudge them their escape the night his ship and cargo had been confiscated. In fact, he was fiercely glad they had escaped because they wouldn’t have been handed the boon he’d been given. He still couldn’t quite believe he was walking free again.
Burdis turned out to be not such a bad sort—for a nabob. He’d arranged for Nathan to have a bath, a good meal, and his personal belongings returned to him, even his pistol. Then they’d transported him to his home port of Southampton.
After telling his men what had happened and what he had to do now, they’d wanted to snatch a ship for him that very night. He’d been tempted, but with the commander’s terms still fresh in his mind, he’d had to tell them no, that he needed legitimate passage.
“If you steal a ship other than your own, our deal is off,” Burdis had said. “No more breaking laws of any sort for you, Captain Tremayne.”
Too many bleedin’ conditions, but he was going to abide by them since it meant a shot at getting his ship back.
When he’d elected to follow in his father’s footsteps, he’d known it wouldn’t be easy. Still, he’d enjoyed the challenge of smuggling, enjoyed thumbing his nose at the revenuers when they gave chase. They never came close to catching him when he was in the Channel. But constantly having to find new places to store his cargoes had taxed his patience and caused him no end of frustration.
He’d thought he’d finally solved that problem a few months ago when he’d figured out the perfect hiding place: the abandoned house a little ways inland in Hampshire. The house had an extra advantage as its closest neighbor was the Duke of Wrighton. No revenuers would dare snoop around there. But he hadn’t counted on the duke’s having nosy servants. If that wench hadn’t come ghost hunting or meeting up with her lover, which is what he suspected she’d really been doing, he wouldn’t have been forced to move the cargo so soon and wouldn’t have gotten caught because of it.
After he’d sent word to his crew in Southampton to bring the ship to their usual unloading cove, so it could be reloaded, one of his crew must have mentioned the plan to someone in Grigg’s crew. Or maybe someone in Grigg’s crew had heard his men talking about it. It wouldn’t be the first time the two crews had ended up in the same tavern. He preferred to think that than that he had a traitor in his crew. But the ghost-hunting wench was still ultimately to blame.
He hadn’t been joking when he’d told Burdis he blamed a woman for his capture. He should have put more effort into securing her silence. A kiss usually softened them up, but not her. He’d gambled that he’d be able to get her feeling friendly and agreeable toward him, so she’d keep his presence a secret. Maybe he should have lit her lantern so she could see whom she was dealing with. One of his smiles tended to work wonders on wenches, too. But kissing her hadn’t yielded the result he’d hoped for, and he had ended up insulting her instead. He hadn’t needed to see her to tell she was bristling from it.
“We’ve time for a pint and a quick tumble, Cap’n. You game?”
“Thought I asked you to stop calling me that? I’m not your captain for this trip.”
Nathan was bored, though, just standing around waiting for wagons to show up. He glanced around the London dock, but the last wagon had left ten minutes ago and no others could be seen heading their way. There would probably be more, though, and he didn’t want to risk a delay in sailing to America by getting fired because he wasn’t there to unload wagons. Every day mattered with The Pearl on her way to being altered and sold. It was annoying enough that the ship he’d signed on to in Southampton was making this short detour to London to pick up passengers.
“Come on,” Corky cajoled. “We were told to wait, but no one said we couldn’t do that waiting in yonder tavern. Watch from the door for the next wagon if you’ve a mind to, but the rowboat ain’t even back from the ship yet to carry another load. And it’s going to be a long voyage. One more wench to see me off is all I’m interested in tonight.”
Nathan snorted. “You just enjoyed the company of a wench three nights ago in Southampton. Were you too drunk to remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” Corky grinned. “But that was then and this is our last night on land. Three weeks at sea is a bleedin’ long time.”
“The voyage could be as quick as two weeks and besides, you don’t need to be here. You can still head back to Southampton to wait for my return.”
“And leave you without a first mate for the return trip? It’s a shame we heard about this ship too late to get the rest of our boys on her.”
“I wouldn’t have known that her captain was hiring a crew at all if I didn’t stop by to tell Alf and Peggy I’d be gone for a few months.”
Old Alf was the caretaker of a cottage a few miles up the coast from Southampton. Nathan had been steered to the couple when he’d been looking for someone to care for his nieces while he was away on The Pearl. It had proven to be a nicer arrangement than he’d first thought, since the cottage had its own private dock, and Alf let him use it as a berth for The Pearl.
Alf had been generous in that after his wife, Peggy, had agreed to watch the girls for Nathan. He hadn’t even charged Nathan a fee, merely laid down the rule that no cargo was ever to be unloaded there, since he knew what business Nathan had got into. Alf refused to say much about the bigger vessel at his dock, or why she sat empty, and Nathan was in no position to pry when the elderly couple was doing him such a big favor.
“At least you got me on her with you,” Corky said.
“Only because they still needed a carpenter and I bargained to have you included. Alf even hesitated to mention the job, since he knows I no longer practice carpentry. It was his wife, Peggy, who brought it up. Every time I visit the girls, she nags me to go back to work that won’t land me in prison. The old gal worries about me.”
“She’s fond of your nieces and worries they will be left without a guardian again. And she’s right, you know. Look how close you came to fulfilling her fears this time. Are you sure you even want your ship back?”
“Are you going to nag now, too?”
“Is that pint of ale suddenly sounding like a good idea?” Corky countered.