“Your pardon!” the pirate roared. He jerked upon Skye. “Amateur, indeed!” He started to laugh. “Drop your weapons, man, or she’s mine, dead or alive, your choice!”
Roc Cameron shrugged casually. “She’s a great deal of trouble.”
“I’m what!” Skye cried out, gasping in amazement.
“What?” the pirates exploded in unison.
“You heard me!” Lord Cameron called out, ignoring Skye and addressing the pirate. “She’s a great deal of trouble.”
“Rumor has it that she’s your wife!”
“Aye, my wife, and my headache!” Roc complained, adjusting his weight. “Go ahead! Take her. She’s yours.”
“Dear God!” Skye cried out in amazement. The scurvy coward! He meant to let her be taken by the likes of this man.
“Take her! If she was worth a halfpenny, she’d not have come topside in the midst of this! Take her!”
“Take her!” the pirate cried.
Cameron sighed. “All right. If you must, let her go.”
“You’re mad! You are absolutely mad!” the pirate said. “Back off! Just back off, I’m taking her with me!”
Skye felt that the grip upon her had been released just the slightest bit. He started to drag her forward. She came closer and closer to Petroc Cameron with his clean-shaven, hard aristocrat’s features and smoldering silver eyes. Stikes drew by him.
Skye spat at Stikes. He flinched, startled. His eyes narrowed further as he wiped his face. They were straight before Cameron then, two feet away. The pirate Stikes began to speak. “Now listen to me, your lordship, one move—”
Roc Cameron moved. Skye stared aghast with horror as he drew his pistol upward with a startling speed, aimed, and fired.
The explosion of the bullet rent the air, and Skye was temporarily deaf. She screamed with horror, and she could not hear her own scream, but she felt the blood that sprayed from the pirate and onto her person, and then she was dragged down by the weight of the falling pirate. He fell, stone dead, atop her. She glanced at his face, and saw that it mostly gone, and she started to scream again, hysteria rising within her. She felt the body torn away from her, and she kept screaming.
Suddenly and rudely she was wrenched to her feet. She faced Cameron. His shook her fiercely and she gasped, ceasing to scream at last.
“Why, he’s killed him! ’E’s bloody killed Stikes!” someone shouted. Cameron continued to stare at her, and she stared back. Someone moved behind them and he swung around just in time to raise his cutlass and slay the cutthroat who had leaped toward him at Stikes’s death.
There was movement again all about them. Skye dove for the sword that Stikes had knocked from her hand. Rising swiftly, she looked about herself, but she was safe. Cameron had her behind his back, and he was warily watching the men before him. His own crew had things in hand once again. There was silence. Slowly Cameron lowered his sword. “Mr. Blair! Take ten men. Put the rogues into the hold on the pirate ship. You’ll take them straight to Williamsburg.”
“Yes, sir!”
The danger, it seemed, was over.
Or else it was just beginning.
Skye stood braced against the mainmast as Cameron turned her way again, looking her up and down with a sweeping distaste. “You were told to stay below.”
“There was a fire—”
“Davey was sent to bring you forward, not topside.”
“I did not care to burn—”
“And how will you care, madame, when the lad receives a dozen lashes for failure to obey orders?”
“You wouldn’t!” she gasped. But he would, she thought. A cold fury burned in his eyes. She stiffened, feeling the blood of the pirate upon her and longing for nothing more than to strip away her stained clothing and scrub the terror from her flesh. She raised her chin, frightened now for Davey, who was so ready to defend her always, no matter what punishment it brought upon him. She spoke as coldly as she could and with all the scathing dignity she could muster, hoping to shame him. “If you must mete out lashes, Lord Cameron, don’t hurt an innocent boy. It was my fault, not his. Bring your whips against me.”
“As you wish.”
“What?”
