Page 41 of Storm over the Caribbean (Storm and Silence Saga #8)

I cast another glance at the pirate leader, who by now was trying to swim in the massive pile of gold. It was very nearly large enough. Turning my head, I looked over at Mr Ambrose. “Good taste?”

He sent me a silent look back. The meaning was obvious. Of course. After all, it’s gold.

I made a mental note to prevent my dear husband from influencing our child’s upbringing at all costs.

“Ha! Hahaha!” Suddenly resurfacing from the gold, Gaptooth stumbled to his feet and slapped Mr Ambrose on the back hard enough to smash a marble pillar.

Mr Ambrose didn’t even budge an inch. “Hahaha—ow! Haha! Good man! Good man! You did a wonderful job! Everyone, get out our best whiskey! Roast some meat! We’re having a feast for our new crew member! ”

Another thunderous round of cheers went up from the crowd. Moments later, people rushed to the casks and camp fires, distributing drinks, skewering meat to roast, bragging about the thousand and one things they would buy with their newfound riches.

“Three cheers!” Someone shouted. “Three cheers for our heroes!”

“Huzzah!” The pirates roared. “Huzzah! Huzzah!”

I leaned over to Mr Ambrose. “Is it just me, or did they forget the fact that you broke the neck of one of their men just a few days ago?”

“I brought them gold.” He gave a shrug, as if that explained everything. Taking all things into account, for them and him, it probably did.

Narrowing my eyes, I lowered my voice. “Will I have to expect you to want to replace your dear wife just as easily?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Because—”

“Do you have any idea how much the last wedding cost? I won’t be paying for another one.”

“Come on, you two!” Someone shouted before I could give my dear husband a kick in the bollocks. Suddenly, Jackal appeared behind the both of us, slinging his arms around our shoulders. “Don’t just stand around here! Join us! Come drink some rum and roast some meat!”

“You know, I think I will.” I smiled at him, then sent an intense look at Mr Rikkard Ambrose’s family jewels. “And I think I know what I’ll be roasting first.”

“Great! Come along!”

The bad news: Mr Rikkard Ambrose’s bollocks were still intact by the end of the evening.

The good news: it was the best feast I’d ever been at.

And, considering the number of dinners, balls and buffets my aunt had dragged me to in an effort to marry me off, that was saying something.

Somehow, it was much more satisfying to sit on the beach with a bunch of pirates and eat crispy roasted meat on a stick than to sit at a dinner table with three dozen people I didn’t know and discuss the weather while minding my table manners.

“Hey! Give me another slice!”

“Ha!” The man turning the metal skewer gave a bark of laughter. “Aren’t you fat enough already?”

My eyebrow twitched.

Oh, I’m fat, am I? I wonder, would that still be your opinion if you knew you are facing a pissed off pregnant lady with a serrated knife in her hand?

But before I could get my just revenge—or my slice of meat for that matter—a sudden shout came from the lookout at the shore.

“Ship! Ship on the horizon!”

In a blink, the festive mood was extinguished. Gaptooth, who had still been playing with his gold a moment ago, leapt to his feet, his paunch jiggling.

“What? What kind of ship? Is it the navy?”

For a long moment, no answer came. Then, after a time that seemed like an eternity…

“The captain! It’s the captain! He’s coming back!”

“Captain?” Blinking in confusion, I pushed myself to my feet. “What captain?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” With a giant grin on his fat sack of a face, Gaptooth strode forward. “I ain’t the leader of this merry band of cutthroats! No, that honour belongs to the captain! Just wait till he hears about all we’ve done!”

Grinning like a Cheshire cat who had indulged in a lot of cream recently, the fatty grabbed two fistfuls of gold and marched down towards the beach.

Well, when I say “marched”, I mean “waddled”.

By the time he reached the shore, the ship had already dropped anchor, and people were clambering down the side into a dinghy.

One man stood at the little boat’s prow, while the others started to row as if the hounds of hell were behind them.

I swallowed.

“Is he…?”

Jackal nodded. “Aye. That’s the captain.”

With a crunching sound, the dinghy hit the sand, and the man they called the pirate captain jumped ashore, stalking forward.

An excited whisper went up from the crowd.

They were clearly excited to find out what their captain would say about their accomplishments.

Gaptooth walked towards him, grinning broadly, displaying his fistfuls of gold.

Only I seemed to notice the thunderclouds roiling above the captain’s head, and the lighting flashing in his eyes.

“Welcome back, Captain!” Still grinning widely, he held out both hands, filled with gold. “Look what we’ve got!”

“What,” the captain demanded, his eyes gleaming like freshly polished blades, “is that?”

“Um…that?” Gaptooth looked down at the gold coins in his pudgy hands. “That’s gold, Captain. We—”

“Not that .” Lifting his arm, the captain jabbed a finger at the gold—then swept said arm towards the ocean, and more specifically, the Royal Navy ship anchored there. “I’m talking about that .”

“Well…” The fat man glanced between the navy vessel and the captain, an unsure look on his face. “Don’t you know? It’s a ship. You know, for travelling on water? You just stepped off your own, so…”

“I know it’s a bloody ship, Gaptooth! What I want to know is why a ship of the goddamn Royal Navy is anchored at my camp’s beach!”

It suddenly seemed to dawn on Gaptooth that his captain was not as elated about recent developments as expected.

The fatty cleared his throat. “Err…because…I put it there?”

Judging from the wrathful glare he received in reply, that was not an adequate answer.

Straightening his spine, Gaptooth met his captain’s gaze. “Sorry, Captain, but I don’t really know why you’re so pissed off. We got a new ship. We got plenty of gold. There were no survivors. What’s the problem?”

“The problem, Gaptooth,” the captain snarled, stabbing a finger into his deputy’s wobbling belly, “is that I left orders to attack only very specific ships, on very specific shipping lines, as per our sponsor’s orders!”

My hands clenched into fists. Leaning towards my husband, I whispered, “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Indeed.” Eyes narrowed infinitesimally, Mr Ambrose gave an affirmative jerk of the head. “It seems that our assumptions were correct.”

“So what are we going to do n—”

“Shh!” He lifted one long, elegant finger to his lips, not taking his eyes off the pirate captain for an instant. “They’re talking.”

“—clear, direct orders!” hissed the captain. “And you, my dear friend, decided to not only ignore those orders, but go and attack the bloody biggest navy in the world ? Are you as thick as your paunch is?”

Grumbles rose from the crowd that had been celebrating and smiling just moments earlier. Gaptooth’s fat face reddened. “We didn’t exactly have a frigging choice! We were just sailing along, and they fired their cannons at us before we could—”

“You could have run! You could have turned your ship around and not attacked the frigging Royal Navy! You know perfectly well we were hired to only attack the ships of—”

“We’re pirates!” The growl that erupted from Gaptooth’s throat was like the rumble of a volcano. A fat, lazy volcano, but a volcano nonetheless. The pirates had long stopped cheering and were watching the scene with intense attention. “Pirates! We attack who we want, and take what we wan—”

The captain bared his teeth. “Did I ask you to talk back to me?”

“No, Captain . But—”

The captain moved in a flash. One moment, Gaptooth was standing there, the next, he was lying on the ground with a bloodied mouth, the imprint of a fist on his face. With a growl, the captain cracked his knuckles.

“Did. I. Ask. You. To. Talk. Back. To. Me?”

There was a moment of silence. Well, if you didn’t count the grinding of Gaptooth’s rotting teeth. For a moment, he looked ready to jump up and fight—then lowered his head. “No, Sir.”

“Good.” The pirate captain’s steely gaze swept across the crowd. “Anyone else want to challenge my authority?”

Silence. Absolute silence hung over the beach.

That is, until—

“Yes,” came a far too familiar voice from beside me. “I.”

And Mr Rikkard Ambrose stepped forward.