Ranulf didn’t answer as he fought his fear and the sickness roiling in his belly.
Kiernan regarded him with sympathy. “At least we’re running before the wind, or I think the captain would have refused your request, despite what the owner of this vessel had to say.”
“If he had, neither he nor his master would have been welcome in Penterwell again, or any port Lord Merrick commands.”
Fortunately, it hadn’t come to threats. It would have taken more bravery than most men possessed to refuse Ranulf when he came seeking aid that day, so the merchant who owned the vessel had swiftly acquiesced.
“How long before we reach them?” he asked.
Kiernan grabbed for the gunwale as the ship dipped and rose again. “I don’t know, but the captain’s doing his best and this is a fine ship.”
And then, as if God Himself had heard his question, a cry went up from one of the men on lookout up in the rigging. “There! Off the port bow!”
His heart soaring with hope, Ranulf peered through the rain. “I’m coming, Bea,” he whispered as new vitality and strength filled him. “I’m coming.”
“MORE SAIL!” Pierre shouted to the men up on the yards as he stood at the wheel of his ship. “Let the sails out full!”
“They’ll be torn from the masts!” Barrabas bellowed over the howling wind. “Reef them or we’ll lose them! Bring us closer to shore.”
“And let that ship catch us?” Pierre demanded, looking once more over his shoulder at the vessel nearing them. “We are already too close to the shore. There could be rocks.”
“I told you those women would bring us bad luck!” Barrabas shouted, the rain running down his fiercely angry face. “You’re going to kill us all, you bastard!”
Pierre gripped the wheel more tightly as he swayed with the motion of the ship. “I’m still captain here!”
Above the moan of the wailing wind, a shriek pierced the air and Gustaf fell from the shrouds into the heaving sea.
“You see, damn it?” Barrabas roared as he swiped the water from his face. “We’re cursed! Cursed, you bastard! Give me the wheel!”
“Do as I say or go below!”
Barrabus shoved Pierre away from the wheel and turned the ship toward land. “I’m not letting you kill us and all for a woman!”
“Fool, you don’t know this coast the way I do. There are rocks—”
“There’s a cove, isn’t there?” Barrabas called to one of the men clinging to the rain-soaked rigging.
With his arm wrapped around the yard, the man pointed up the coast.
“We can’t put in there,” Pierre protested as he swayed with the bucking deck. “They’ll find us, and then they’ll hang us.”
“Not if we kill them first,” Barrabas said, his eyes on the sea ahead and the coast beyond.
He didn’t see the flash of the dagger that killed him, slitting his throat so that the only sound he made when he died was that of his body falling on the deck. Nor did he hear the terrible crunch of splintering wood, nor feel the lurch of the ship as it struck a rock lurking below the surface of the ruthless, surging sea.
BEA ANDWENNA HEARDthe cracking wood and the rush of water as the ship shuddered to a halt, throwing them to their hands and knees.
“We’ve run aground,” Wenna cried as the ship rocked with the slap of the waves.
Like Bea, she was still clutching one leg of the chair Bea had smashed against the table and she held tight to it as she crawled to check Gawan in the nest she’d made for him in the cot.
“Pierre and the others will have even more to worry about now,” Bea said. “They won’t be thinking about us.”
She struggled to her feet and, with renewed determination as well as all her might, threw her shoulder against the door.
“THEY’VE RUN AGROUND!” Kiernan cried.
Knowing what that meant, Ranulf stared at the wrecked craft. The smugglers’ ship had hit a rock or reef. Yet although it had stopped moving forward, if help didn’t reach the damaged vessel soon, it would be dashed to pieces by the waves, and everyone in it hurled into the sea to drown.
