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R ose was only slightly surprised at the spartan nature of Fonteyne’s cabin. She tossed her hat onto his desk and immediately took a seat in the captain’s big chair, forcing Fonteyne to sit at the dining table.

The two stared at each other in silence, their private thoughts crackling in their heads until Penman, accompanied by Duardo, appeared in the cabin several minutes later.

Without taking his eyes off Rose, Fonteyne asked, “How fares the rest of the crew?”

Penman nodded to acknowledge Rose before he answered. “Nothing that cannot be fixed with a needle and thread. The lad who fell into the sea has been retrieved, unharmed. They are mostly suffering from shock and … well, to be frank … embarrassment.”

Rose, noting the look on Fonteyne’s face, reached around to a sideboard and fetched a bottle of rum and some short glasses. Her intent was halted briefly by the display of captured pennons nailed to the wall.

Doubtless he had expected to hang hers among them.

She poured out four measures of rum, two of which Duardo placed on the table in front of Fonteyne and Penman.

Both men took the offering and drained their cups in a single swallow, the heat and burn of the potent liquor barely causing a squint.

Penman leaned in to inspect Fonteyne’s wound and made a clicking sound with his tongue. With thumb and forefinger, he pulled a fat sliver of wood out of the torn flesh, which exposed the white of the bone and started a fresh streak of blood flowing over the captain’s left eye.

“What do you intend to do with my ship and crew?” Fonteyne asked, his gaze still locked on Rose.

“That depends entirely on you,” she said.

“How so?”

“First things first. Let the doctor make you a pretty new scar, then we can talk without fear of a needle stabbing you in the eye.”

Penman cast a crooked smile over his shoulder. “I assure you, my hand is quite steady.”

“It isn’t your hand I’m worried about.”

Fonteyne maintained the glare that had sent many a grown man cringing into a corner but seemed to have no effect on Rose St. Clare.

“Get on with it, man,” he growled at Penman.

The doctor had already threaded a needle. He swabbed at the blood and pinched the raw edges of the gash together then proceeded to close the wound with a row of tiny stitches. Rose watched for the first few weaves, then thumbed casually through the logbook Fonteyne had left on his desk.

When Penman was finished, he snipped the thread close to the last knot, then looked to Rose.

“Might I trouble your man for another tot of rum?”

“Duardo is not anyone’s man,” she said coldly. “So if you wish another tot of rum, you can ask him yourself.”

Penman looked at the giant black man. “My humble apologies, sir. Ill breeding on my part.”

Duardo sneered and carried the crock of rum across the cabin, stopping so close that Penman had to tip his head back in order to see his face.

When the doctor’s cup was refilled, Duardo lifted the jug and poured several enormous mouthfuls of the liquor directly down his own throat before returning to stand by Rose’s side.

Penman took a small swallow, but soaked the rest onto a square of linen, which he then pressed over the wound on Fonteyne’s brow before binding it with a long strip of bandaging. When he started to wipe at the rest of the blood on Fonteyne’s cheek and neck, his hand was pushed impatiently aside.

“I will ask again: What do you intend to do with my ship and crew?”

Rose offered up a faint smile. “How unfortunate we could not have worked together as allies in Lafitte’s company. I suspect he will need all the help he can gather around him to block the British from taking New Orleans.”

“What makes you think Lafitte would risk so much as a longboat defending a city that has turned its back on him. He was in a New Orleans jail cell for the past month, charged with piracy and profiteering. A warrant has been posted to put him there again alongside his brother, Pierre.”

Rose frowned, then slid her glass over for Duardo to refill it. “What about you? Where do your loyalties lay?”

He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I hold favor with neither the American naivete nor the British arrogance.”

She leaned back and planted her boots squarely on the corner of his desk, her ankles crossed. “Speaking of arrogance, it was rather pompous of you to come after us on your own.”

“How can you be sure that I have?”

She smiled and tapped the open logbook on his desk.

“Your entries are quite detailed. Mentioning the presence of a second or third ship in your company would surely be considered worthy of note. More worthy than—” she paused and leaned forward to read— “two barrels of fresh water lost in the storm.”

Fonteyne shrugged. “Fresh water is important.”

“As would be concern for another ship …or ships …if they were caught in heavy weather with you.” When he said nothing, she smiled again.

“Ramsey does the same thing. A habit he acquired while serving in the Royal Navy. Quite annoyingly, he keeps a record of everything said or done in the course of a day, counts every shilling spent, every bottle of wine consumed. But then …if I recall correctly … that was how the two of you met, was it not? You also served under Nelson?”

The tarnished gold eyes simply stared.

“I expect that was why you were so vexed when Ram refused to help you get your men back.”

“In the end, I took them back without his help.”

“You do realize that you had put him in an untenable position. He’d only been governor for a few months.”

“Whereas I had been his friend for ten years. But he made his choice and I made mine, and here we are.”

“Yes. Here we are. And to answer your question, if your crew submits to my command, if they make no attempt to overpower my men or take back the ship—an action that, I promise you, would fail—then we should have no reason to lock the lot of you in irons.”

Fonteyne tipped his head as if calculating the weight of the threat against the vow he had made to Lafitte, that a woman would only become captain of his ship over his dead and rotting body.

Avoiding her gaze for the first time, he leaned forward and snatched up a pouch of tobacco that was lying on his desk. “For the time being, you have my bond that neither I nor my crew will offer up any resistance.”

“For the time being?”

He took paper out of the pouch and rolled a line of shredded tobacco. “Aye, for the time being, for I confess you have aroused my curiosity.”

“Curiosity can be a dangerous thing.”

He licked the paper to seal it and twisted both ends tight. “No more dangerous than a woman’s mind, I warrant.”

“I think I shall take that as a compliment.”

“Take it however you like.” There were sulphur matches in a small Chinese urn on his desk, but reaching for it would have meant walking around behind her.

Instead, he set the pouch and the rolled cigar to one side then stood and tugged the hem of his shirt out of his breeches.

“You have no objections if I find a clean shirt?”

The blood from his wound had soaked the one he was wearing almost to the waist. She started to wave a hand in assent, then changed her mind.

“Duardo.”

The big man walked over to where two large sea chests were pushed against the berth. In the first, he found two knives and a small throwing axe. In the second, he found a brace of pistols.

Fonteyne gave another little shrug. “I forgot they were in there.”

Under Duardo’s watchful eyes, he finished stripping the stained shirt over his head and tossed it into the corner.

With his chest bared, every muscle and sinew seemed carved from solid oak.

His skin was tanned dark from the sun, his shoulders and arms flexed with strength.

The well-defined bands across his belly led the eye downward to where other shapes were equally well defined through skin-tight breeches.

There were also myriad scars criss-crossing his body, some of which Rose distinctly remembered tracing with her fingertips. She forced herself to look away, refusing to let herself remember.

She leaned forward and reached for her hat. “Will I be able to trust your helmsman to follow my orders?”

“That would depend on what those orders might be.”

“For now, simply to keep apace with the Cygnet and the Pride . My crew is perfectly capable of sailing her, but I should hate for an unfamiliar hand to set the sails wrong and snap another mast by mistake. Or run her aground. Or?—”

Fonteyne cut in. “Nate can be trusted.”

“Excellent.”

She looked at Duardo and nodded at the rack of swords behind Fonteyne’s desk. Duardo gathered them under his arm then carried them out of the cabin.

Rose offered up a crooked smile as she put a hand to the door latch. “I am prepared to take you at your word, Captain Fonteyne, that there will be no trouble on board. But make no mistake, sir, this ship is under my command now.”

Fonteyne gave an exaggerated bow as she exited the cabin, but once the door was closed, his face hardened and he muttered under his breath, “For the time being, little Rose. For the time being.”

Rose’s bravado lasted until she reached the upper deck. There, she grabbed the rail, drew a deep breath, and blew it out in a huff to ease some of the tension in her body.

Some, not all.

As shocked as Fonteyne had been that his ship had been taken so completely by surprise, Rose had been equally shocked that her audacious plan had worked.

Billy Burr and Duardo had each thought her mad, even Stubb had protested mightily when he heard her intentions, but she had regarded the attack as possibly the only opportunity they would have to gain the upper hand.