Sweet Piracy Read Online Free

There was a steady stream of traffic plying between that Spanish port and New Orleans. Finding a ship homeward-bound should be no problem.
    Doubts about this circuitous route plagued Caroline from the moment the plans were made. Once in England her hesitations were reinforced by the tales of the unofficial blockade of British shipping by America’s legal pirates. Not even the Irish Channel, the British Channel, or the Bay of Biscay was safe from them, according to one report. Still, the war was nearing its end. The danger was not so great as in the past. The thought of retracing their route back to France was too wearisome to be borne. Papa and Maman and all the little ones waited in New Orleans. They turned their faces toward home and set sail within a week of landing at Dover.
    It was not a pleasant voyage. Gray days of lashing rain and high seas followed one behind the other. Confined to a small airless cabin, tending Amélie who had fallen prey to seasickness, Caroline found it hard to keep her doubts from transforming themselves into a dismal premonition of disaster. Then, eleven days out from England, it ceased to be necessary to try.
    They were awakened in a pink-tinged dawn by the boom of a cannon. The British merchantman carried no guns or armaments. She was no match for the sleek ship with the lines of a Baltimore clipper which had put a shot across her bow.
    From the porthole Caroline and Amélie watched as the privateer moved in for the kill. Seeing the great, black, spread-winged bird of prey which served as a figurehead and the proud name emblazoned on her side, Aiglon Noir , the Black Eagle , they could hardly be blamed for expecting the worst.
    If the captain and crew of the merchantman resisted in any way, there was no indication of it. The sound of grappling hooks being set, the grinding of the ships’ hulls together, the triumphant sound of the boarding privateers had a nightmarish quality.
    The side of the other ship blocked the porthole of the cabin, leaving it dim. At the sound of feet pounding along the companionway, Caroline snatched up the small pistol, a parting gift from her uncle when she had left his house to make her own way, one she always carried with her. Her mouth set in a grim line, she stationed herself behind the door.
    Still in her nightgown of virginal white, Amélie dropped to her knees beside the narrow bunk, with her hair spread in disarray upon her shoulders. She presented an angelic picture, but Caroline could not feel that the privateers would be suitably moved by it.
    They could hear other cabins being entered and searched. The footsteps, the jovial shouts and called orders, drew nearer. Amélie’s fingers clenched convulsively on her rosary, while Caroline gripped the wood-grained butt of her pistol, glancing one last time at the priming. The voices and footsteps paused in the corridor outside the cabin. The lock was tried. Then came a splintering crash and the door flew open, swinging on its hinges to bound off the cabin wall.
    Caroline sidestepped, halting in the center of the tiny cabin. In the brief moment of quiet she heard Amélie’s soft sigh as she fell forward in merciful unconsciousness. She had no time to look to her. A man, tall, broad-shouldered, black-bearded in the Spanish style, detached himself from the group gathered beyond the opening and stepped over the threshold.
    The man carried himself with an easy air of command though his dress was casual. He wore a white shirt of cheap muslin without the decency of a cravat or shirt studs to hold it closed. His breeches were tucked into knee boots with wide revers. The red sash at his waist held a brace of pistols and a wicked-looking knife with a curved blade. He wore his dark hair long, tied back with a sealskin bag. In his sun-bronzed face, his eyes were narrowed, obscuring their color behind a screen of womanishly long lashes, though there was nothing soft about him. His presence in the small cabin was