Page 6

J ean Lafitte scratched a muttonchop whisker, yawned, and kicked Sauvinet hard under the table to stop him snoring.

Judging by the clang of pots and pans from the back of the tavern, it was coming into morning.

The bottle of rum … or was it the second or third?

... was empty and Jean’s head was starting to feel as if it was floating up near the ceiling.

It had been a profitable week by Sauvinet’s calculations.

Two prize ships had been taken off the coast of Bermuda by Captain Jefferson Jayson, one of Lafitte’s privateers, their cargo bays filled with a rich trove of wool, and English linen.

All three of Fonteyne’s ships had been equally laden with valuable contraband.

Offloaded to the storage sheds, the cargo would be sorted and transferred onto the flat-bottomed barges that could maneuver through the reedy waters of the swamps and mangroves where the deeper keels of British patrol ships could not venture.

In turn, the crews would take on bales of cotton and tobacco for the run downriver to be loaded onto other ships bound for England and the Continent.

A thousand dollars a week clear profit was not unheard of and in that respect, Lafitte hoped the war dragged on for another year or more.

However, the news that Washington City had been overrun and the President’s House burned to the ground was admittedly disturbing.

If the girl was right about the imminent arrival of a British fleet in the Gulf, it was only a matter of time before the English bastards turned their efforts to gain control of access up the Mississippi.

Lafitte was not particularly patriotic, but if New Orleans fell into British hands, he could piss every sou of profit away on the dung heap.

Up to now, the British representatives in Louisiana assumed Lafitte’s trade was mostly in cloth, sugar, rum, and assorted household goods; supplies in demand since the embargo had been put in place.

And until recently, as long as they got their share of the profits, the revenuers left him alone.

Unbeknownst to anyone outside of Barataria however, his barges had also been transporting gunpowder and guns, squirreling the caches away, anticipating a time when such stores might be needed.

The bay containing Barataria was fifteen miles long and twelve miles wide, protected by two barrier islands, Grande Isle and Grande Terre.

The land flanking the bay was mostly swamp and marshland, riddled with a maze of inland waterways that made it prized territory for privateers and smugglers.

Several times in the past the British had tried to flush Lafitte out, but with no success.

The Pirate King’s warning system rivaled that of Elizabeth’s legendary coastal beacons that had alerted England to the approach of the Spanish armada over two hundred years ago.

At the first sign of trouble, vast quantities of contraband could be made to disappear into the marshes leaving no trace behind.

Lafitte stretched to ease a kink in his neck and jumped slightly as the door to the tavern flew open and slammed into the wall.

Sebastien Fonteyne thundered into the room like a black wind, his hat crushed in one hand, his other holding a wad of cloth to the side of his head.

An expression of pure murder darkened his already ominous features.

Lafitte could see the cloth was spotted with blood.

“What the devil happened to you?”

“That little bitch happened. She had someone waiting outside to jump me. I’ve a lump on my head the size of the fist I plan to greet her with the next time I see her.”

“The hell you say.” Lafitte grinned. “A righteous little firepot. Clever, too, if she managed to get the best of you. We must mark this day down in the logs.”

“That might be difficult.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning … the Pride is gone and I assume your logbooks have gone with her.”

Lafitte blinked. “What?”

“Your ship. She’s gone. She’s not in the harbor. And unless you ordered your crew to move her …?”

Lafitte stood up so quickly the table tipped and crashed onto its side, taking Sauvinet with it.

He ignored the accountant’s spluttering and strode to the door, knocking aside a man rolling a barrel of beer into the tavern.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle but was cool enough to clear some of the rum-soaked cotton out of his head.

He ran a short way along the boardwalk until he could see the full expanse of the harbor and the black, empty mooring where the Pride had been at anchor all week.

His lips moved with a litany of curses in a mixture of French, English, and fiery hot Cajun.

When Fonteyne walked up beside him, Lafitte’s rage had turned his face purple. “Who? Who would dare do such a thing?”

“I am not a great believer in coincidences, are you?”

Lafitte whirled around. “The girl? Are you suggesting the girl took my ship? ”

“She was a little angry when she left the tavern.”

“Angry enough to sign her own death warrant?”

“Angry enough to make a point.”

“ And to do this she stole my ship? ”

Fonteyne looked out over the harbor. “So it would seem.”

Lafitte was almost apoplectic. “I want my ship back! I want my ship and I want the girl! I want to see her lashed to the rigging, stripped naked, and flayed to within an inch of her life!”

Fonteyne touched the throbbing lump on his head. “It will be a pleasure to wield the cat myself!”

“That you will, my bold captain, just as soon as you catch her.”

“ Me ? My crew has just come in from three months at sea. Two of my ships are on their way to Galveston for repairs.”

“Are you saying you need all three to find one little girl and get my Pride back?”

Fonteyne drew a deep breath. There was no sense arguing with Lafitte when he was hopping around like a bantam cock, and in truth, he did have his own score to settle with Rose St. Clare.

At the same time, it was difficult not to admire the sheer guts it had taken to board Lafitte’s prized ship in the middle of a harbor full of cutthroat pirates, overpower the crew of the Pride , and sail it away without causing so much as a ripple.

He growled low in his throat. “Give me a day to roust my crew out of the brothels and we’ll hunt her down.”

“Bring her back, ‘Bastien. Bring her back in irons. And, presuming you don’t have to sink her to do so, you can add her bold little ship with it’s thirty-ott guns, to your fleet.”

“And the Hyperion ?”

“That too,” Lafitte nodded.