“Why ever not?”
“There is a bit of a calamity onboard. It would appear as if le soul has gone a-missing … again.”
“Ah, dear God.” Bart appeared sick to his stomach.
“Oui! Exactement!”
Cameron scowled at them. “Soul?”
Bart let out a long-suffering sigh. “Not even sure how to begin to explain this … one of our crew—”
“Absalon le lune—”
Bart grimaced at Armand. “He’s not crazy. Per se.”
“Ja, he is!”
Armand’s use of German amused her.
“Anyway,” Bart said between clenched teeth, ignoring him. “Sallie is under the stupidity that his soul was somehow sucked out of him and trapped inside an old rum bottle by a malicious witch.”
Cameron gaped incredulously at the utter travesty of that belief. “What? Why?”
Bart gestured helplessly. “We’ve learned not to ask these questions, as they lead us into a realm of madness from which there’s no escape. And let’s face it, reason and logic abandoned this crew long ago. Therefore, we don’t judge each other over the insanity, for there’s not a member here who isn’t a bit … touched in the head and peculiar in the ways.”
“That is also true,” Armand agreed. “But more so than any other, Absalon is … how do you say? A moonbug?”
She arched a brow. “Moonbug?”
“Lunatic,” Bart said with a grimace. “Roach screws up about half of everything he attempts to say. English is not his native tongue. Stupidity is.”
Roach made a sound of supreme irritation. And an extremely vulgar gesture that left Cameron wide-eyed and gaping—and she’d grown up an orphan, working in one of the most dangerous taverns in Williamsburg, frequented by scoundrels, pirates, and known rabble-rousers. In fact, she prided herself on being jaded and worldly for her age. Yet these men made her feel rather na?ve and prudish.
Suddenly, she heard a loud whooping sound that was followed by cackles of raucous laughter.
“Ach, now! Ye faithless, motherless dogs! Give me back me soul! What’s wrong with the sorry lot of you! What kind of cretin bastards be stealing a man’s soul now, I ask you?”
Bart groaned out loud and slapped himself across the forehead. “I can’t believe I died painfully in order to deal with this shite. I think I’d have rather stayed in hell. At least there, I only had Lucifer and his demons to contend with, and not the Devyl’s bane and his idiots. No offense, but our Devyl scares me a whole whopping more than Old Scratch. Bastard’s deadlier too, and more cantankerous. Never do you know what’s going to set him off. Or how he’ll react to anything.”
Laughing, Roach clapped him on the back. “There, there, mon ami, ca c’est bon! ’Tis better than hell, anyway.”
The look on Bart’s face contradicted that as he rushed forward to deal with the thunderous voices.
Cameron stayed back, unsure of what exactly she was getting herself into on this quest to find her brother and return him home for Lettice, and her own personal sanity and safety. Time was running out, quickly, for the lot of them. Paden had left them all in a bad situation, and he had no idea of it.
Nathaniel had taken ill a few weeks back—as had Lettice, yet Lettice’s illness had turned out to be an unexpected pregnancy only she and Cameron knew about. The girl was to have Paden’s baby, and if he didn’t return in the next few months to make an honest woman of her, there would be hell to pay for the whole lot of them. No doubt, Nathaniel would take his anger over his daughter’s unwed pregnancy out on Cameron’s head if he couldn’t locate her brother. There was no telling what the surly man might do to her in retaliation.
Nor did she wish to find out. Nathaniel barely tolerated her presence in his inn and tavern as it was. Only his fear of Paden kept him in check.
If he learned Paden was dead and that her brother had left Lettice in a bad way …
Nathaniel would pull his protection of her, and Cameron would be penniless, homeless, without friend or family. Alone in a world that didn’t look favorably upon anyone without means, references, or prospects.
Those thoughts scattering, Cameron slowed as she neared the ship and saw the extent of the crew’s utter madness. Men, and women who were dressed as men—so much for her being original—were chasing each other around the deck of the ship as they tossed an old amber bottle among themselves to keep it from the hands of a middle-aged seaman who stood an inch or two shorter than Cameron.
With a scruffy dark beard that was liberally laced with gray, he appeared affable enough. Why they sought to torture him, she had no idea.
Bart let out a fiercely loud whistle. “What manner of blatant stupidity be this? Are ye all daft? Or just wanting your enemies to sneak up and cut your throats while you’re all distracted and screaming about like a bunch of weak-kneed trollops?”
Strangely amused and equally terrified of this group, Cameron stayed on the dock and watched as Bart slowly subdued them and collected the poor sailor’s “soul” from a large Maasai warrior before returning it to the distressed man.
“Zumari!” Bart chided the warrior. “I can’t believe you of all the ones on board would partake of such cruelty.”
“I’d have never, had he not started in on me first!” Zumari’s voice was as deep and lyrical as Bane’s. But his mood was much lighter, in spite of the fact that she held no doubt he was every bit as lethal in a fight.
Cameron was just about to head onboard the ship to join them when she became aware of a small group of soldiers nearing her.
Grim-faced and heavily armed, they stalked past her with a determined stride that didn’t bode well for whatever target they had in mind.
It froze her instantly.
A good thing, too, since that target turned out to be Bane’s crew.
Stepping to the side so as not to be in the middle of whatever mal intent they had, she caught the feral grimace on Bart’s and Zumari’s faces the moment they saw them that said they were both a bit put out at the way fate had decided to treat them this night.
With his legs braced wide apart and his arms crossed over his chest, Bart met them at the top of the gangway and refused to allow them access to the deck of the ship. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?” The icy tone of his voice undermined the cordial words. As did the number of crewmen who came to stand behind him as reinforcements.
The soldiers didn’t flinch, especially not their leader, a dark-haired bloke who bore a jagged scar over his left eye that said he was lucky to still have it. Unlike the others, he wasn’t dressed in uniform. Rather, he wore the clothes of a well-dressed port official, or another privateer captain. “It was brought to our attention that you came into port earlier this day without colors or jack. We’re here to inspect your papers and whatever cargo you might be carrying.”