The Pirate's Daughter

‘Give him courage to show no fear,’ Cassandra whispered, her life and soul concentrated in her eyes as they remained fixed on the condemned man. ‘Let this soon be over.’

Nathaniel Wylde seemed not to hear the chaplain asking him to repent of his sins as his eyes did a broad sweep of the crowd, suddenly becoming fixed and intent on someone standing apart. His expression froze, but then his eyes narrowed and a slow smile curved his lips as he raised his hand in a courtly flourish of a salute.

Curiously Cassandra turned and followed the line of his gaze, wondering what it could be that had caught his attention and caused him to smile at the moment of death. She saw a man who stood alone, away from the crowd, shrouded in a black cloak and wearing a tall crowned hat. She could not make out his features, but she could see he was as dark as her father was fair. She felt a strange, slithering unease. The man had an air of command she had never encountered before, not even in her father. Everything about his manner warned her that he was an adventurer.

As if the man sensed she was staring at him, he twisted his head towards her. The meeting of their eyes was fleeting, and before Cassandra could take stock of his features he turned quickly and walked away with long ground-devouring strides. The man’s self-assurance was infuriating. Feeling the tensing of Drum’s figure beside her, she tore her eyes away from the man’s departing figure and faced the gallows—just in time to see her father swing to his death.

A violent pain shot through her and she turned away. ‘It is done,’ she said through her breath to her companion, whose pain was as great as her own. ‘This is the darkest day of my life. Come. Let us be gone from here. I have seen enough.’

Together they walked away from the river, away from the crowd, and, although her body still functioned automatically Cassandra walked with blind steps, for her father’s death hung all about her.

Drum broke the silence. ‘I must return you to Chelsea.’

‘No.’ The strangling tension in Cassandra’s chest began to dissolve, and she drew a long, full breath.

Drum halted his stride and looked at her sharply, warily, waiting for her to continue, sensing she had something other than the execution on her mind.

‘I don’t want Nat to remain hanging on that rope for the tide to wash over him,’ Cassandra said, her voice quivering with deep, angry emotion, ‘for the crabs to eat at his flesh, and then to be hung in a metal cage at some point in the estuary for the crows to pick at. When the water covers him I would jump into the Thames and cut him loose myself if I could.’

Drum paused and looked at the lovely, spirited, unhappy girl. There was such a fierceness about her that he didn’t doubt her words. ‘There’s nothing you or anyone can do for Nat now.’

‘Yes, there is, Drum,’ she said, turning to look at him, her features swept clean of sorrow and a decisive hard gleam in her eyes. ‘There is one last thing. There is still his ship—the Dolphin.’

‘The Dolphin has been impounded and is moored further up river awaiting her fate.’

‘Then you must be the decider of what her fate will be, Drum. Get her back—and then she is yours. Does that not appeal to you?’ she said forcefully, trying to infuse some of her enthusiasm into the lofty pirate. ‘Imagine it! That is what Nat would have wanted.’

Drum stared at her incredulously. ‘Forget it. It’s not possible.’

‘Not possible?’ Cassandra argued heatedly. ‘Why, Drum, I’m disappointed in you. Since when has anything been impossible for you? Come, now. Do not tell me your spirit of adventure has deserted you,’ she mocked, with a smile to take the sting from her words.

‘Me and my spirit of adventure departed company when I heard Nat had been taken,’ Drum grumbled. ‘Besides, where will we find the men to sail her? Half the crew who were captured along with Nat have already been hanged.’

‘That may be, but there must be scores of out-of-work seamen and dockers living among Wapping and Rotherhithe’s rat-infested streets and alleyways who would be willing to join you—for a price.’

‘Aye, and a high one at that if you want them to assist in stealing Nat’s ship from under the nose of the authorities.’

‘And Nat’s body. Find someone to recover it at high tide when it’s submerged by water. Let the sea be his final resting place—not some gruesome gibbet at Tilbury Point, for all to see and gloat at. Were I a man I would do it myself,’ she said, her eyes blazing with the fighting spirit of a rampaging firebrand, ‘and see to it that all those responsible for bringing Nat to this suffer the same fate.’

Drum regarded her with disdain. ‘You are loyal, but misguided, and very much like Nat.’ Deep in thought, he began to pace to and fro, for it would be no easy task to carry out beneath the eyes of the night watch. Once his mind was made up to do as she suggested, his attitude changed radically. After weeks of lassitude he had something to focus on, a goal, and he would pour all his energy into achieving it. ‘There are some I know hereabouts who remain loyal to Nat.’

There was something in his voice that made Cassandra’s heart beat afresh. ‘So you will do it?’

‘Aye—I’ll do it—but it will be a desperate, dangerous undertaking. Let’s hope that providence favours us and the heavy cloud remains, making it a moonless night.’

‘You’ll succeed. I know you will. Oh, how I envy you. There are times when my life spent at Chelsea stifles me. How I long for the kind of freedom my father enjoyed. It was kind of you to think I should know of his plight, and kinder still to risk coming to tell me.’

At this time Cassandra didn’t know how she would cope with a world without her father in it. She had few friends, and cousin Meredith had been in Kent visiting her paternal grandmother for weeks now. When she was at home, fond though Meredith was of Cassandra, the house and garden and entertaining her brother John’s friends were her passion—and the extent of her interest. A terrifying vista of emptiness lay before Cassandra. On the plus side John was on an island in the Caribbean. She fixed Drum with a steady gaze as a wave of recklessness came upon her, and she said bluntly, ‘Take me with you.’

Drum ceased pacing and looked at her as though she’d taken leave of her senses. Her words set his mouth in a thin line. ‘Out of the question! What you ask is absurd.’ His voice began to rise and he checked it. ‘Women don’t belong on pirate ships,’ he told her firmly, unable to hide his opinions where women and ships were concerned.

Cassandra’s eyes widened with pleading, and she smiled in a way that had never failed to melt Nat’s heart.

‘And don’t look at me like that,’ Drum growled, hardening his heart against the coercion of her smile. Such sentiments spelt his ruin. ‘I’m not like Nat, who you could wind round your finger like a strand of cotton.’

‘Please, Drum. There’s nothing for me here. Time and again I’ve sworn to leave when the opportunity presents itself—and this is it. Following Nat’s last visit—a visit that was witnessed by our neighbours—some people have come to know who I am, and they’re not kind. They call me names, the favourites being that I am a bastard—a pirate’s spawn—and there are worse.’ There was an edge to her voice that hardened her tone. ‘Oh, my Lord! How I hate those people. Until then I hadn’t realised the extent of John and Meredith’s protection.’

Drum checked the words of sympathy that rose to his lips. She had no need of them. There was nothing self-pitying in her, in the anger that flamed on her cheeks and set her eyes on fire. Beneath the serene grace was a soul craving excitement and adventure, a spirit struggling to be set free. Drum shook his head, his brows drawn together, for it boded ill, he was certain.

‘Nat wouldn’t thank me if I put you in danger. Do you think he would have allowed you to leave your Cousin John’s protection?’

‘Domination,’ Cassandra countered coldly. ‘I love John and Meredith dearly, but the kind of life they plan for me—married to some man I would never set my cap at—fills me with dread.’ Secretly she dreamed of marrying a man who was dashing and handsome, bold and with a sense of adventure—a man like Nathaniel Wylde.

Drum squinted at her sideways. ‘And what makes you think life on the high seas is a playground? Although I suppose the tales Nat filled your head with would have you think so.’

Drum was right. Cassandra had fallen beneath the spell her father wove. The stories he had regaled her with had been more potent than the strongest wine. But she was neither deceived nor disillusioned by them and had long since decided that the dashing heroes of Nat’s tales were outlaws, careful to keep well ahead of the law.

‘Nat’s life was fashioned by his own hands,’ Drum continued. ‘We were alike. Our souls fed on the same spirit of adventure and a desire to succeed in all we set out to do. Nat was a man of fire, who thought nothing of life if it held no challenge—and such consideration he felt for his daughter was a twist of character you would not expect in such a hardened rogue. But I knew him too well to interpret it as weakness.

‘Regardless of the risks, he was drawn back to you time and again like a lodestone, and there were times when it almost cost him his life. I loved Nat like a brother, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a notorious pirate with a well-deserved reputation for villainy.’

The colour slowly drained from Cassandra’s face. Drum saw it and forged ahead, refusing to spare her, determined to get it out in the open and make her see Nat for what he was. Too much sentimentality was unthinkable.

‘You’ve convinced yourself Nat was practically a saint, who could do no wrong. The truth is he was much closer to a devil than a saint, and everyone knows it. You were naïve enough to believe his boast that he would never harm anyone.’

‘He was still my father and I loved him,’ Cassandra remarked defensively.

‘You loved an illusion, an illusion you created out of the tales he spun because you were innocent and idealistic.’

‘I know that,’ she said, fighting to control the wrenching anguish that was strangling her breath in her chest, ‘and blind, gullible and stupid. But I refuse to believe that the man my mother fell in love with was all bad. He was my life, my king, and the sea was his own special realm into which I have always dreamed of being initiated.’

‘Love blinds you. There’s much you don’t know about Nat.’

‘I know, which is why I want to feel what it is like to experience a little of what he did.’

‘And risk capture—even death?’

‘Yes. Please, Drum, take me with you.’ Her eyes implored him to comply. ‘I don’t fear the consequence of my actions. I don’t care if I die tonight or tomorrow or in the weeks to come.’

Drum looked at her, and then away again. ‘That is why I want you to stay here, for the same reason.’

‘Cousin John is in the Caribbean at this time on Company business. Meredith is in Kent visiting her grandmother and isn’t due back for ages yet. I’ll leave her a note explaining where I have gone. She’ll be angry, I know, but I’ll be halfway across the Atlantic by the time she returns to Chelsea.’ She dismissed her cousin without a second thought as she concentrated on the reckless, foolhardy plan forming in her mind, which was beginning to take on a positive shape.

‘You have it all mapped out, don’t you?’

When the good side of Drum’s lips turned down in censure, Cassandra’s resolution to stay calm faltered and she fixed him with a fierce stare. ‘I’m not so chicken-livered that I will faint on finding myself the only woman aboard with a shipload of men,’ she said, voicing her impatience. ‘Besides, if they respect Nat as much as you say they did, as his daughter I’ll be safe enough.’

‘I expect you would.’ Drum raised a brow in mock reproof. ‘I was considering your sensibilities.’