Chapter 238: Why Don’t You Find Out*

Anne looked at the offered hand, then at the netting, then at the black water sliding beneath both of them.

"He’d better be worth the rope burn."

She hung the lantern on a cleat and swung over the rail without much thought. The net had clearly been designed with the thought one foolish sailor was quite enough, and a second would have been a show of stupidity.

It sagged, swung, and dropped her onto James in a tangle of elbows, knees, and copper hair. A lock of it got into his mouth and seemed determined to stay there.

Above them, the bowsprit groaned like it had been forced to hear the same joke for the fourth time.

Then a swell lifted the Rose’s bow.

The mesh snapped tight and dropped, and for one stomach-turning moment the net stopped being a floor.

"Christ! James!"

"I’ve got you!"

"You’ve got my hair!"

"It’s holdin’ better than the rope!"

They grabbed each other and the stay at the same time.

The net came back up, caught them, and gave them a smug little bounce. Below, the sea hissed like it had just been robbed of his tip.

"Boot’s through a rope," James panted. "I’m the anchor."

"And if the boot goes?"

"Then I’m a very short-lived anchor, lass."

Anne started laughing.

James followed, and soon the whole tangle was shaking with it. Two grown pirates were giggling like children caught robbing a pantry, bound together from ankle to ear above the sea.

Anne reached up and pinched out the lantern.

The night became stars and black water.

James’s hand found her rear and slapped it, the round curve of her yielding sweetly beneath his palm. The sting brought a flush of heat with it, and she felt herself press back into his hand before pride remembered it was supposed to object.

"Do that again and I’ll break it off."

He did it again.

She didn’t break it off.

"That’s a fine broadside, lass."

Anne snickered. "That’s a first-rate, you clod. A hundred guns, every one loaded, and you’ve just fired on her without so much as hailing."

"Should I have struck me colors first?"

"You should’ve sent a herald, three weeks’ notice and a sworn statement from your priest."

"I haven’t got a priest."

"That explains the lack of decency."

They snuggled after that, more or less as the netting permitted, though it took a good deal of swearing and one ear-pinch to accomplish it.

At last Anne’s head came to rest on his shoulder, and the net stopped creaking. Astern, the fleet’s lanterns trailed across the dark like a procession of heavily armed drunks making their way home from a wake.

"I don’t mind her, you know," Anne told the sky. "Milagros."

James, wise for once, kept his lips shut.

"That mouth on her could start a fight in an empty church. Best sport I’ve had since I learned to splice."

She picked at a strand of the mesh.

"Still, there’ll be stretches I want kept for us two. Just us, like this. That’s all."

"Anne."

"Don’t make a speech. I can see you loading the charge already."

She flicked his ear.

"Put the match out."

"Shame, that, seein’ as I had grand plans for a harem."

"A what?"

James chuckled gravely. "Silk cushions, a fountain that pours rum, a wee man to fan me and a second wee man to fan the first, thirty lasses in the east wing, Doyle’s cellar in the west for balance, and a bath the size of the harbor."

He was warming to it now, and she knew it, and he knew she knew it.

"I’ve had Sawyer draw the doors. He thinks it’s a chapel."

"A chapel?"

"For worship. I’ll be the god."

Anne bit him.

She found the meatiest part of his neck through the shirt and closed her teeth on it.

It stung like a wasp.

She snorted, letting go. "That’s for blasphemy, and here’s a favor. Stack lasses like ships and you’ll be wrung so dry your poor prick takes holy orders, and nagged so deaf you’ll never hear him chantin’."

"That’s a fair point."

He grinned up at the sky.

"What I’ve got in my arms tonight is already more than enough."

The Rose breathed beneath them, and the sky swung slowly overhead.

For a while, the sea did all the talking, which was probably just as well. When Anne spoke again, the sharpness had gone from her voice.

"So what now? Havana’s behind us, what’s the plan?"

James didn’t answer at once.

The year was coming toward its end. The trade winds had reached into their winter habit, steady and fair. The hurricane season was putting its knives away, and three years past Utrecht every port from Nassau to Havana counted itself fortunate to have survived Europe’s war.

It was as good a stretch of the Caribbean as he could hope to see, but James was the only soul in the fleet who knew there was a trap hidden in it.

An autumn would follow with a king’s clerk sharpening a pen. History had a habit of bending around the people caught standing in it, and even if James had already bent it some himself, he found no comfort in what he had done.

He held Anne against his chest and watched the sky swing overhead, keeping all of that to himself.

"Right, then," he chuckled. "We go home. That’s the plan."

"Home."

"Concordia. We take a prize here and there, otherwise we simply enjoy life."

He said it lightly, but his thumb had started drawing slow circles across her back.

"There’s much to do and build. I’ve a head full of the lot, and it’s paid for."

"Paid for by who?"

"The spirit picked up the tab."

"The one who asked after me?"

"Terrible one. Very generous."

James shrugged against the mesh. "The chairman got to stand still enough to watch it all grow, lass, and the goat’s no use. He eats the plans."

Anne pulled a face like she had been offered boiled cabbage at her own coronation.

"Stand still. For how long? A week? I’ll be stabbin’ the furniture by Thursday."

"Then we’ll have no furniture."

"Good. I never liked yours."

She sighed into his neck, although it was only for the show. "Fine, maybe I could stand a stretch of it. It’s a waste, always sailin’ past what we’ve got toward the next fight."

"Was that an admission?"

"Tell a soul and I’ll say you were drunk."

A few more seconds passed with nothing in them but the creak of rope.

Then Anne planted both hands against his ribs, pushed herself upright, swung a leg over him, and lay astride his lap, straddling his hips as the net swayed beneath them.

"If we mean to enjoy the months ahead, we’d best start them properly."

She rocked her hips against him, unhurriedly, drawing the motion out just enough to make him feel every inch of it. The net swayed beneath them, ropes creaking softly with each languid pass, and she paused at the end of one, watching his face, then did it again with the faintest smile before slipping her fingers into the laces of his shirt and beginning to loosen them.

Her lips found his neck, teeth first, then tongue, while the lush swell of her breasts pressed against his chest, soft and warm beneath the thin cloth of her shirt. Every hot breath brought them against him again, their weight and fullness impossible for him to ignore.

Anne lingered at his neck, enjoying the closeness, then kissed the place she had just bitten.

Then she whispered against his skin. "One good roll of the ship, and we go over together, still tangled. Best tale in the Caribbean, right up until we explain what we were doing."

"Jim’d put a mermaid in it."

"A jealous one, with a grudge."

She dragged his shirt open and bit his collarbone.

"Rope’s given twice already tonight. Third time pays for all."

"The boot’s there."

"And if the boot goes?"

"Then I’m a very happy anchor."

His hands closed around the soft curve of her rear and drew her snug against him. She melted into the pull, and when he caught her earlobe between his teeth, a low moan slipped from her throat, warm and husky, almost a growl.

Somewhere in the middle of it, he remembered to ask, "Anybody likely to come wanderin’ up this end of the ship tonight? A bosun? A cabin boy? A bishop who took a wrong turn?"

Anne never missed a stroke. "I told the whole watch to stay away of the prow, on pain of gutting. Then I told the second watch the same, so they’d know I meant it."

James stopped, his hands still full of her.

"So this was your plan all along?"

She smiled against his lips, sat back, and pulled her shirt over her head. It came away in a single motion, leaving her bare to the waist, her full breasts rising softly with each breath in the cool night air.

"Why don’t you find out?"

The shirt went out into the night.

The netting groaned and took the lot, swinging them out over the drop and back, then out again, to a rhythm that had very little to do with the sea.

Her breath came hot against his ear and her nails found his back.

Beneath them, the black water slid on regardless, none of its business, all the way to Concordia.