Lord of Pirates Read online

  She dropped her pen in its inkwell and stood. Only a desperate person would call at the house of a physician at this hour, someone in dire need of aid. With her father gone to Boston to visit with an old associate from London, Lizzie would have to see to the patient as best she could. Although she had not been permitted to attend university, she had served as her father’s apprentice for nearly half her twenty-eight years. She only hoped the problem was one with which she was already familiar. After all, she was unaccustomed to practicing on her own.

  The knocking grew in intensity. There was no time to tarry. She secured the wrapper she’d donned over her night shift. Although she was hardly dressed to receive a visitor, she had little choice. Taking a candle with her, she left her bedchamber and navigated her way downstairs.

  By the time she reached the front hall, the ever-efficient Jeremiah and Judith, her father’s faithful retainers, waited.

  “Shall I answer, Mrs. Winstead?” Jeremiah asked in grim tones.

  Philadelphia was still relatively young and could, at times, be quite rough. However, Lizzie could never deny care to someone in need on account of a misplaced sense of caution. Indeed, her father had asked her to carry on in his absence should the need arise.

  Praying it was not some drunkard or scoundrel at their door, she nodded to Jeremiah. “Please do, Jeremiah. I’m certain it must be one of Papa’s patients.”

  “Yes, madam.” Raising his candle high, he swung open the front door to reveal a large silhouette.

  “I need to see Dr. Crawley at once,” announced their guest in a voice as low as it was commanding.

  “He’s not at home,” Jeremiah responded. “Can I help you in some way, sir?”

  “Rouse him from bed if you must. Damn my blood, I don’t have time for a servant with a cane up his arse.”

  Irritated at the man’s rudeness, Lizzie swept forward. Jeremiah was of slight build with graying hair and a gouty limp. If their unexpected guest wanted to cause trouble, he easily could. Best to try to tamp down a problem before it began.

  “I’m afraid my father is out of town, sir.” She tried to peer through the murkiness of the night to see the man’s face but could discern only long hair too straight to be a wig. The brim of his hat hid all else from her view.

  “Lizzie?” Disbelief underscored the stranger’s tone.

  Something about that rough, demanding voice sent a trill down her spine. A trigger of remembrance flared in her stomach. His use of her father’s pet name for her more than startled her. She could not shake the sense that she knew this man.

  But how and who?

  She stiffened. “Sir, do I know you?”

  “Indeed.” Silence descended for a beat, interrupted only by the slashing rain and violent rumble of the storm beyond him. “I’m an old family…friend. Might I have a private word with you?”

  When she hesitated, he spoke again, cajoling. “I beg of you, Lizzie. It is a matter of life and death.”

  He spoke like a gentleman but hardly looked like one even in the dim light. That he would not reveal himself before the servants was particularly telling. Her instincts told her to shut the door in his face, bar it, and never think of him again. But there was an urgency in his tone, a pleading almost. Her heart was ever too soft.

  “You may come inside,” she conceded after a long pause. “Judith, please put on a pot of water for tea.”

  “Mrs. Winstead,” Jeremiah protested, giving voice to her private concerns.

  “Our guest is a family friend, Jeremiah. Please stand by should we need you.” She would give the man the privacy he requested, but not the opportunity to do mischief. If Jeremiah remained within earshot, she would feel somewhat safe, at least. She inclined her head to the mysterious man before her. “Follow me, sir.”

  Lizzie led him into her father’s study and lit a handful of tapers. The light afforded her the opportunity to make a closer inspection of the man. He wore a greatcoat over the customary fearnothing jacket of seamen, and a pair of breeches and boots much finer than the rest of his garments. He appeared thoroughly sodden from the rains. His hair was dark, perhaps black, his features mostly obscured by a beard. He looked, in fact, like a man who was dangerous.

  She placed her candle on her father’s desk and clasped her hands at her waist, trying to staunch the unease sliding through her. “Pray explain who you are, sir, and what brings you to our door at this time of night.”

  “First, I must have your word that what I tell you remains between us only.”

  Lizzie scoffed. “I hardly think you’re in a position to make demands of me.”

  In two strides he closed the distance between them. His large hands clamped on her waist, which was nearly naked without her customary stays and stomacher. She felt the heat of him through the thin fabric as the salty scent of sea water assailed her. He yanked her flush against his body.

  Excitement mingled with fear as he held her. It had been years since a man had touched her so intimately and she was shocked to discover a stranger could have such an effect upon her.

  “Listen closely, Lizzie. You’ve a gouty old man and woman for protection and nothing else. I haven’t the time to play bloody games with you. I’ll have your promise or you’ll pay the price,” he growled.

  Beneath the commanding boom of his voice hid a lingering sense of familiarity. Comprehension hit her with the force of a runaway stallion. She knew the man before her. Hand shaking, she reached up and traced the strong edge of his jaw. The bristles of his beard tickled her fingertips. She studied his eyes, his sensual full mouth. He had changed much, but beneath the grizzled façade of a seaman she recognized the first man she’d ever loved.

  “Edmond,” she whispered. “Can it be? Is it you?”

  “I’ll have your promise, damn you,” he insisted, giving her a soft shake.

  “I promise.” She said it with ease, knowing now why he’d been so secretive, so distressed.

  The suitor of her youth had run off to the navy and instead of pursuing an honorable career, he’d become one of the most feared pirates in the realm. Captain Edmond Grey’s exploits were legendary. He was a wanted man, the Scourge of the Atlantic. If anyone learned of his presence on shore, he’d be arrested or murdered on sight. Just the year before, the infamous pirate Blackbeard had been killed in Virginia, his severed head hung from a ship’s bowsprit as warning to all who presumed to follow in his path.

  “I’m entrusting you with my life, Liz—Mrs. Winstead.” He paused. “Where is your husband?”

  He had taken careful note, then, of Jeremiah’s form of address. Sadness swept over her. Her hand stilled at Edmond’s chin. She had loved her husband, but never as she’d loved the wild man before her. A decade had gone by since he had walked from her life, and yet a day hadn’t passed that she had not thought of him, of what might have been.

  But she must not allow her feelings for the suitor she had once known to impede her decisions now. The past was where it belonged, and that old Edmond Grey had been replaced by she knew not what manner of savage.

  “Your husband,” Edmond pressed, an edge to his voice. “Where is he?”

  She blinked, returning to the present. To this bleak night and the storm and the ghost from her past it had somehow resurrected. “He passed on five years ago.”

  He swallowed. “Hell, I’m sorry to hear it. I’m sure he was a good man.”

  “He was, thank you.” She forced a small smile to her lips. “He has gone on to a greater reward. Now tell me, Captain Grey. What has brought you here? Have you any idea how much danger you’ve put yourself in?”

  “Of course I know.” His grip on her waist tightened. “I wouldn’t be here unless it was necessary. I need a physician, Mrs. Winstead. We ran into a skirmish with a navy frigate. The Freedom is faster and we outran them, but our casualties were heavy. Our ship’s surgeon was killed, many others wounded.” He stopped, his voice breaking. “My brother Thomas among them.”

  The phys
ician’s daughter in her suddenly took precedence over the woman who had once loved the man before her. Or at least the young man she’d thought him to be. This dark, bearded stranger, so much taller and broader than he’d been in his youth, was unknown to her. A criminal. A man she dared not trust.

  “How bad is it?” she forced herself to ask.

  “Very bad.” He set her away from him and turned to pace the length of the room. “He took a musket ball to the head.”

  Lizzie gasped. “He is still alive?” It was almost unheard of for any man to survive an injury to the head.

  “He is breathing, yes. I haven’t any idea how bad it is. I’m afraid…damn my blood, I’m afraid he’s going to die. It’s all my fault. I should have bloody well told him no when he asked to come away with me. I knew the risks I was taking and I didn’t give a damn. I shouldn’t have allowed it.” With a cry, he slammed his fist into the wall.

  Her heart gave a pang at his raw grief. Hesitant to intrude upon his anguish, she approached him slowly and placed a hand on his coat. “You must not blame yourself. It was Thomas’ choice to follow you.”

  A knock at the door interrupted them. Judith entered at Lizzie’s request, bearing a tray of tea. Lizzie smiled to reassure the concerned maid. “Place it on the desk, if you please, Judith. You may go, thank you.”

  Lizzie turned to the tea service, dear to have in the Colonies, and fixed two steaming cups, finding comfort in the familiarity of the routine. Edmond’s presence and his revelations had shocked her.

  She offered a cup to Edmond, hand shaking. “You look as if you could use warming.”

  He let out a bark of bitter laughter. “I prefer rum, my dear Mrs. Winstead. I have mere hours to find a physician for my brother before my ship returns for me.”

  Mrs. Winstead. Although it was a name she had answered to for years, hearing it uttered in his low, gruff rumble felt odd. She blinked, dispelling the errant realization. This man is a stranger to you, Lizzie. You cannot trust him or allow your past association with him to cloud your judgment.

  What had he wanted? Ah, yes. Rum. She gave him her most disapproving frown. “I’m afraid we haven’t any spirits, sir. Besides, tea is far better for the constitution.”

  Edmond accepted the cup, his dark-brown gaze searching hers. “You sound like my sainted mother.”

  Lizzie bowed her head, peering into the contents of her tea as if it would provide her the answers she sought. “I am no one’s mother.”

  If only she could have repressed the twin threads of sadness and regret in her voice. Many times she had wished she’d been able to conceive with her husband. Having a child would have made her loneliness more bearable. She had Father, of course, but each year that passed left her increasingly aware that one day, she would be alone in the world. Even if she married again, her childless marriage to Richard suggested she was barren.

  “I’m sorry, damn it.” Edmond took a draw of the tea, bringing her focus back to him. “I haven’t been in polite society in years. I’m not fit company for a lady like you.”

  “You haven’t thrown me over your shoulder and carried me away to your ship yet.” She hoped her attempt at levity would lighten their conversation and steer them into safer subjects. Subjects that did not involve the past and her ocean of regrets.

  Instead, his gaze darkened as it roamed slowly over her body. She became aware of how few layers of fabric separated her from him. Two to be precise. Edmond Grey was frighteningly handsome and looking at her in the way a man had not looked upon her in some time. A rush of warmth pooled between her thighs, and her cheeks went hot.

  “Not yet.” Warning darkened his words, serving as a reminder this was no social call. Captain Grey was no lovesick suitor from her youth, returned to woo and win her. He was a lawless ruffian.

  She ought to fear him and the depravities it was said he’d committed in his treasonous plundering of the seas. Instead, her feelings for him, despite the intervening years, had never altered. They thrummed within her now like a steady ache.

  Her initial anger, fierce and painful as a blade, had dissipated over the years, leaving sadness in its wake. After time had gone by, she’d recognized the struggle he must have faced, trying to make his own mark on the world, not wanting to hurt her. The girl she’d once been saw before her not the feared pirate he had become but the charming young man she had known.

  Part of her longed to comfort him, take him in her arms. She physically ached with how much she’d missed him. As she’d promised, she’d never forgotten. She’d loved her husband, but she had not forgotten Edmond Grey.

  Best to quell such troublesome thoughts, she decided. She should be worrying more about how to best help his wounded brother and less about unrequited emotions for an outlaw. There could be no future between a respectable widow and a pirate, even had she wished it.

  Which of course she did not, and so she forced away any lingering, unwanted warmth his return had kindled within her. “How can I help you, Captain? My father won’t be home for a fortnight at least. I fear it’s too long for Thomas to wait.”

  Icy dread settled in her stomach. In truth, she knew his brother would not survive the length of time it would require her father to journey back to Philadelphia. If Thomas even survived the night, or another scant handful of days, it would be a miracle.

  “I cannot afford to remain moored in one place for a fortnight.” His regard turned sharp, deliberating. “What of you, Mrs. Winstead? If I recall correctly, you were ever at your father’s elbow, the son he never had. Hell, I never met a woman as well-read as you, and that was years gone now. I imagine you’ve read dozens more books since.”

  “Perhaps hundreds,” she confirmed before thinking better of the admission. It was rare, she knew, for a woman to be treated to the education her father had given her. She could only hope she’d proven worthy.

  “Can you tend to him?” He crossed the distance between them, vibrating with intensity. “Would you tend to him?”

  Her? Aboard a pirate ship? Amidst a band of cutthroats and scoundrels? She pressed a hand to her heart, staring at the man who had walked from her life with such calm only to return with the force of a tempest. “Good heavens, I am not a physician, Captain Grey. Can you not find someone else? My father is not the sole doctor in this city.”

  Edmond shook his head, his hands, large and dark with sun and roughened from life aboard a ship, seized on her arms. He was so near she could smell his scent, a decadent blend of rain and the sea and the man she had once loved. “He is the only man I would have trusted. It’s far too dangerous.”

  “Surely you have the coin to persuade another,” she persisted, attempting to withdraw from his grasp. But he was stronger, and he held firm, and she had to admit that being within his hold did not feel alarming or even wrong.

  It felt…right. His heat and potency seeped into her through the thin fabric barrier keeping her bare skin from his. A disquieting frisson of awareness danced through her before she could tamp it down.

  He lowered his head, his dark gaze searching hers for a moment, almost as if he attempted to judge whether or not he should proceed, before his brow snapped into a frown. “There is a price of one thousand pounds on my head, Mrs. Winstead. Dead or alive and preferably dead. While I could pay a considerable amount to any doctor, it would be far more worth his while to shoot me and be done with.”

  She gasped. The sum was an outright fortune. Why, the governor of New York only earned a wage of twelve hundred pounds per annum. “One thousand pounds?”

  His jaw hardened. “Turn me in to authorities at your peril, madam.”

  How could he imagine she could ever turn against him? “You never knew me at all if you think me capable of such betrayal.”

  “Damn it.” His grip tightened on her as he seemed to wage an inner battle. “Of course I trust you, Lizzie.”

  The way he said her name then—tinged with reverence and the remembered intimacy of their youth—softened
her. Weakened her. How impossible it was to believe he was capable of committing such crimes on the sea. To imagine he had changed so much from the sweet, handsome lad who had stolen kisses from her.

  In that moment, she realized he could never truly be Captain Grey to her. He would always be Edmond. “Tell me what happened.”

  This time, he did not vacillate. “We were on our way to Maine to careen the ship. We were close to Philadelphia when the frigate attacked us. I had heard your father had come to the Colonies some time ago and settled here. I knew he was my last resort. But now it would seem that you are.”

  She could not deny the surge of longing within her at his words. She wanted to help him. Wished she could promise him she could heal his brother’s wound. But the obstacles between them and such an outcome were insurmountable.

  Lizzie shook her head. “I have never performed surgery. If the musket ball is yet in his skull, I cannot help him.”

  “It was a grazing blow, but infection set in.”

  “Infection.” The dread swirling through her gathered the weight of a hundred stones, settling on her chest. Infection was tantamount to a death sentence ordinarily, let alone on a ship with no surgeon floating at sea. Dear God.

  “Lizzie, I need your help.” He released her arms and took her hands in his, a gesture that both moved and surprised her coming from a man who appeared so outwardly hardened by the life he’d chosen.

  Helping a pirate was treason, whether or not he was the lost love of her youth. She could not make the decision frivolously. Indeed, she ought not to even be contemplating such a ludicrous, dangerous, foolhardy act. And yet, how could she deny a wounded man the chance to live? And how could she turn Edmond away?

  Still, her mind warred with her heart. “I cannot board your ship, Captain. You are thieves at best, murderers at worst.”