Splinters scattered through the moonlight. Smoke choked Elizabeth’s throat and burned her eyes. She could not see Fitzwilliam, but she felt him behind her. While his touch was a comfort, it also meant his back protected hers, thus exposing him to peril. She reached behind her and latched on to the fabric of his shirt, tugging him along faster until they rounded a bulkhead.
The night was clearer away from the debris. Lord Matlock and Colonel Fitzwilliam wiped their faces with handkerchiefs. Nick and Alexandra had stayed behind. Elizabeth had known they would, but she had hoped they would flee for safety. She held her breath, trying to calm her racing heart as one realization led to another and sent her heart galloping anew. The gentlemen—Fitzwilliam—would join in the fray. Not for the excitement most men felt at the prospect of afight or the glory they stood to gain when they boasted of their narrow escape, but because they would protect the people they loved. They would stop the fight.
Fitzwilliam’s honor put him in danger, and there was nothing Elizabeth could do. She could not plead with him to change when it was his very character which had won her over.
He caught her hands in his and looked into her eyes. “Stay here.”
Elizabeth had known it was coming, but her heart still leapt into her throat. She had to help stop the fight. But how? How could she—or anyone else, for that matter—stop a fight amongst men who lived for danger? Granted, the men aboard theFancyhad tempered their habits and speech in her presence, a fact of which she was grateful, but she had observed their struggle to do so. And the men who had assaulted them with cannons would not cease their attack merely because she politely demanded that they stop. They would sooner shoot Fitzwilliam and laugh than comply.
Elizabeth pinched her lips together and looked away. Would that the right words would come to her. She could not lie to him. Nor could she make a promise she had no intention of keeping.
Colonel Fitzwilliam and Lord Matlock were already gone. Only she and Fitzwilliam remained on the walkway behind the bulkhead.
His grip on her hands tightened.
She met his gaze, lips parting—
Boom!
Elizabeth screamed as the ship groaned and shook. She grasped onto the most solid thing nearby—Fitzwilliam. She clung to him, more terrified that he would come to harm than that he would leave her alone. If anything happened to him…
His palms rubbed against her cheeks, and she protested when the night air chilled her where his warm body had been. Before words came, he pulled her to him and pressed his lips against hers. She leaned into him, tracing a path up his chest and around his neck, tugging him closer by the curls at his neck.
She never wanted it to end, but it had to. Pulling away, she looked into his eyes—dark and so full of devotion, it would have taken her breath away had she any to spare. She pressed her fingertips to her mouth, determined never to forget the feel of his lips against hers, his breath caressing her cheek, the roughness of his whiskers against her skin.
“She’s goin’ down! To the pumps!” a sailor shouted from below.
“I must go.” He dropped his hands from her and bolted away before she could stop him, the burning in his eyes haunting her. She had not liked Fitzwilliam’s stares before she understood his motive in watching her, but what if that was to be the last one? What if that first kiss was also their last?
Elizabeth balled her fists and stiffenedher arms. She could not accept it. Saying a quick prayer begging that their lives be spared, she left the relative safety of the bulkhead.
The deck swarmed with men, swords glinting in the moonlight, pistols raised and ready.
She ran forward. She had no plan, but she knew she had to try something. A sail snapped above her in the wind, the rope holding it quivering in front of her. She stopped and looked up, calculating the trajectory of the sail if she cut it. The men could not fight if they could not see with the canvas covering them. It might work.
A dagger sailed past her head, burying itself in the mast. Heart thundering in her ears, she pried it loose. It was just the tool she needed to drop the sail.
“Halt! Halt, I say!” a voice bellowed through the smoke and fog. “I said we capture him alive, not blast him out of the water, you fools!”
Confused silence ensued. Elizabeth stepped out from behind the mast, knife in hand. The men were at a standstill, the line distinguishing the enemy parties widening.
Seeing her opportunity, Elizabeth weaved through the crew, twisting and shuffling around their drawn weapons, her eyes searching for Fitzwilliam.
He was at the front of the fray, too near their foes. He and Nick bent over a supine figure. They appeared unharmed—thank the Lord for that!—but Alexandra…
Jaffa held her bleeding head. Gently, he wrapped alength of cloth around her wound, talking to her softly all the while.
Elizabeth dropped to her knees beside him, next to Fitzwilliam. “Is she alive?” she asked, looking for the rise and fall of breath and seeing nothing.
Her fingers trembled so much, the dagger fell with a clatter to the deck. Alexandra was many things (not all of them pleasant), but Elizabeth had imagined them becoming friends as their husbands closed the gap which had separated them since birth. She mourned the future she had looked forward to.
“If she has a pulse,” Jaffa said, “it is very weak.”
Elizabeth’s heart ached to see Alexandra’s happy ending, her promising new start, come to an abrupt, twisted halt. She did not want to believe it.
Nick pressed Alexandra’s hand against his chest, as though his heart could beat for her. The guttural sound he made filled the night and demanded respectful silence.
When Alexandra did not respond, Elizabeth ached for him.
