His Wicked Kiss Part 24

"Tell the carpenters to get down there and check for any leaks!"

"Aye, sir!"

"We got to get the spars down!" he ordered grimly. "They're putting too much pressure on the masts. Strike the topgallant and topsail spars!"

The quartermaster and the bosun exchanged a grim glance, but they, too, knew it had to be done.

"Aye, sir!"

The bosun relayed the order, and the bravest of his tars got their tools together and dutifully began climbing the shrouds.

Jack hated with all his heart to send any of his men aloft in this. Disa.s.sembling the spars from the masts was back-breaking work, even without the wind trying to peel a man off the rigging, and the foot-lines he stood upon coated with ice.

But if they didn't take those huge, heavy yardarms down, they risked being dismasted. The violent pitching of the s.h.i.+p was making all three of his masts bend. They had been ma.s.sive trees once, after all, and could give somewhat in the wind, but the mighty crossbeams of the spars added so much weight to the top portions of the masts that they could snap in half and come cras.h.i.+ng down on them. If that happened, they all would then be at the mercy of the cold Atlantic.

Watching his sailors ascend slowly and carefully much in contrast to their usual carefree speed, Jack could not have been more proud of his crew. He stared at them as the weather dripped down his face.

Any captain's heart would have lifted to see his men working in splendid unison, neat as clockwork, stouthearted and very well trained. They held their posts without flinching or complaint; if one got into trouble, the nearest few rushed to help. No man, after all, could stand alone against the weather and the sea.

As he watched them, Higgins lost his footing and dangled for a moment over the decks, but the two men nearest him grabbed him and pulled him back onto the slick shrouds.

Jack exhaled slowly, his heart pounding. By G.o.d, he would not lose a single man to this b.l.o.o.d.y storm.

Scowling at the tossing sea, he strode across the quarterdeck and took the wheel himself, relieving the helmsman. He threw his full weight against it, refusing to let the wild waters take control of the rudder.

Gritting his teeth, he held it steady 'til his arms shook. Should've been a b.l.o.o.d.y lawyer.

Belowdecks, deep in the lubbers' hold, Eden wasn't faring much better. Martin was violently seasick, Peter Stockwell, moved there from the sickbay, lay moaning in his cot, Rudy the dog was barking nonstop in his cage, while the Nipper complained continually.

"I can't take it anymore in here! It smells like puke!"

"Phineas, you are forbidden to leave here and that is final."

"Why can't I go see Cap'n?"

She had lost patience after the twentieth repeat of the question. "Because I said so."

"I ain't gotta listen to you!"

"Oh, yes, you do. Lord Jack put me in charge of you. You can take the matter up with him after the storm if you like. For now, you are absolutely staying here with me. Why don't you make yourself useful by calming Rudy down? If anyone can get him to be quiet, you can. Will you try?"

"Fine!" He snorted and scowled at her, but bent down with a sulky look and began talking softly to the bull-terrier, poking his fingers through the mesh cage in an effort to pet the dog.

She realized the Nipper's insistence on seeing Jack was simply due to the fact that he was scared-they all were-and being near Jack made the child feel safe. But right now Jack had a job to do, and all of their lives depended on him.

She turned away, satisfied that she had distracted her charge for the moment, and gave poor Martin a washrag soaked in diluted vinegar for the mal de mer. She winced as he retched again, but there was nothing left in him to throw up.

As he sat back against the bulkhead, she molded the vinegar-soaked cloth across his green-toned forehead. "You poor thing. Hang on, dear. It can't last forever."

Peter Stockwell groaned and she went to check on him next.

Because her back was turned for that brief moment, she did not see Phineas wedge Rudy's cage open a few narrow inches. The boy reached one small hand in to pet the dog, determined to calm him, but just as Eden turned around, Rudy shot past the Nipper and ran straight for the door, which Eden had propped open with a chair because of the poor ventilation.

She gasped as the dog flashed out in a streak of white with Phineas right behind him.

"Rudy, come back here!" the boy shouted, chasing the animal.

"Phinney!" She flew to the doorway.

He was gone.

"Oh, I'll wring his neck," she breathed, then rushed down the dark pa.s.sageway after the boy.

She berated herself with every step, awash in guilt and rising panic. Where had they gone? It was so dark belowdecks.

The companionway ahead of her pitched to and fro, spilling Eden into one wall and then the other as she hurried down the narrow pa.s.sage on a zigzag path. The lanterns above rocked from side to side, and any of the furniture that wasn't fastened down traveled back and forth across the planks.

She winced at the motion, her stomach protesting. She had to hold on tightly to the bannister of the gangway as she climbed up to the next deck. She could hear, feel the deep vibration of the sea battering the hull, the s.h.i.+p's creaking like a human utterance of pain.

The men hurried past her, back and forth, with barely a glance. She stopped one of the carpenter's mates. "Did you see the Nipper come this way?"

"No, ma'am. If you'll pardon-"

"Of course." She let go of him.

Finally making her way to the middle deck where the livestock was stowed, she found a good number of frightened animals-chickens, ducks, rabbits in their cages. In the central pen, goats and pigs huddled in the hay.

But no Nipper.

Once more, Eden was zigzagging up the companionway, climbing the gangway stairs and holding on for dear life as the s.h.i.+p bucked and rocked.

A blast of nature's sound and fury greeted her as she stepped outside, instantly wis.h.i.+ng she had worn her new-made coat. Accustomed to tropical heat, she could barely catch her breath in the bone-chilling cold. She glanced up in wonder at The Winds of Fortune riding out the storm under bare poles, a few shredded sails flapping like pennants in the violent wind.

She spotted Jack on the distant forecastle, barking orders at his men. She followed his upward gaze and spied a number of sailors perched aloft, somehow wedged into place despite the pendulum like rocking of the skeletal masts.

They were working one of the horizontal spars free from the masts, lowering it slowly by a system of ropes and pulleys. She had no idea what that was all about, but she had to find the Nipper-and the wayward dog.

"Phineas!" The bitter wind tried to rip her voice away. Searching the decks and praying the little boy had not been washed overboard already, she suddenly saw him. "Phineas!"

He had hunkered down under one of the st.u.r.dy wooden racks that secured the lifeboats in the s.h.i.+p's waist. He had managed to grab Rudy and was hugging the wriggling dog in his arms.

Eden waded toward him through ankle-deep water, snow clinging in her hair. She shouted for him to come out from under there, but again, the brutal wind s.n.a.t.c.hed her words away.

She saw he was too petrified to move and realized grimly that she was going to have to make her way to his side, pry him bodily out of his hiding place, and bring him back belowdecks herself.

She brushed the stinging salt out of her eyes, braced herself, and went to collect her errant charge.

"What the 'ell are you doing here?" a deep voice barked at her.

She looked over and saw Mr. Brody draped in a black oilskin like the one Jack wore. The master-at-arms came trudging toward her.

Jack heard Trahern shout. He looked in question toward his lieutenant on the quarterdeck. Trahern pointed at the s.h.i.+p's waist.

Jack followed the gesture, saw Eden, and let out a curse. What in blazes was she doing on deck at a time like this? She was walking toward the lifeboats-then Jack spotted the boy and dog. Moving around the wheel, he narrowed his eyes against the las.h.i.+ng rain. He might have panicked with all three of them in such danger, but Brody was already on the scene.

The grizzled old master-at-arms took Eden by the elbow and hurried to help her collect the boy. Brody got a rope and looped it around the dog's neck, tugging the crazed bull-terrier toward the hatch that led back down to safety.

A step behind him, Eden pulled Phineas by his hand. The boy must have gotten away from her, but she appeared to have gotten the situation under control.

He waved his thanks to Brody, who was in the process of escorting woman and child back below, then shook his head with a harrumph.

Just as he moved back to take the wheel again, he heard a sickening crack from above.

The men aloft yelled.

They caught the spar, thank G.o.d, before it fell-but a thick, tangled knot of sheets and tackle came free without warning, swinging down across the decks.

Jack watched in horror, unable to stop it, as the loose rigging arced across the s.h.i.+p's waist and slammed into Eden, sweeping her over the bulwark.

He roared, already in motion.

For a second, she clung to the loosed shrouds, flapping free over the rail, a look of stunned terror on her face. The Nipper ran toward her.

Then a powerful swell rose up and engulfed her, greenish gray, stone-colored: Her face vanished under the wave.

When it receded, the wet, heavy rigging still remained, tangled over the side of the s.h.i.+p, but it was empty now.

She was gone, taken by the sea.

Jack gave the helmsman the wheel, threw off his oilskin and leaped off the fo'c'sle, running toward the leeward rail. He roared at the boy to get below and spotted Eden in the water, struggling to keep her face above the waves.

The chaotic surface currents were already drawing her farther away from his s.h.i.+p, and the cold would claim her within minutes.

"Give me a rope!" he screamed.

"The boats, sir! Shall we lower 'em?"

"No time!"

Trahern handed him a rope, which Jack tied around his waist and knotted with swift expertise, jerking a nod at a nearby block and tackle. At once, Ballast ran the other end of the rope through the pulley.

"When I signal you, pull us up, and not a second before."

"Aye, sir!" the big gunner vowed. Several men gathered behind him to help lend muscle to the task.

"What if you can't get to her, Jack?" Trahern demanded. "Five minutes, and I'm pulling you in."

"Don't you dare pull me in 'til I have her."

"Jack, you'll both die-"

"That's an order! I'm coming back with her or not at all." Ignoring the unsteady bobbing and weaving of the wood beneath him, he climbed up onto the rail and dove off.

It was a long, cold drop down into the sea. The waves embraced him with a frigid clutch.

Jack shot to the surface again with a mighty gasp for air. The cold seemed to suck the breath right out of his chest, and he was painfully aware of the sea's sublime power; he was at its mercy now along with Eden.

They both could live or die as the waves saw fit.

Treading water, he turned this way and that, but he could not see her through the dividing crests of icy water.

"Eden!"

He couldn't find her.

He glanced back at his men, watching from the rails. They pointed frantically to his larboard. He turned.

"Eden!" He began swimming hard in that direction until he caught a glimpse of her.

"Jack!"

He heard her shriek his name before another frigid wave drowned out her voice.

Jack swam harder with powerful kicks, his shoulders already aching from fighting the wheel for the past hour. At least now he was going in the right direction, but if he didn't reach her momentarily, the cold would lull her struggles with its killing lethargy and he knew that she would drown.

The next glimpse of her showed him a terrified, bedraggled girl whose face held a sickly white pallor.

A girl who had tried to tell him that she loved him.

Her dark skirts were billowed around her, the heavy material that he had insisted on for her warmth threatening to pull her under.

"Hold on, Eden!" he choked out. "I'm coming!" Jack refused to admit the knowledge that he was beginning to tire. No, he was not as young as he'd once been, closer to forty than he was to twenty. The cold and power of the North Atlantic in her wrath could suck the strength right out of a man, and he had been fighting this beast of a storm since last night.

G.o.d, make me strong enough. Take me if You have to, but don't let me lose her.

The waves were not so violent if you didn't fight them, she had realized.

Their motion had become almost soothing, like swinging slowly in a big hammock made of ice. A moment ago, she had been so freezing cold that her skin hurt as if she had been burned, but it had pa.s.sed and she felt much better now.

The sharp edge of the pain had begun to dull. She supposed she must be going numb, in addition to having swallowed a good deal of vile seawater. Through her shroud of sleet and snow, The Winds of Fortune seemed so very far away.

The last thing Eden remembered before the cold stole her senses was Jack reaching her in the icy water, his arms wrapping around her with a steely grip. Her head fell onto his ma.s.sive shoulder. So warm.

Yet he was trembling, too.

"I've got you, sweet. Hold onto me. Stay awake, Eden!"

"Don't let me go, Jack," she murmured.