“John MacBride, Montrose Shipping.”
Thoughtful for a moment, Daniella looked to Eliza. “Doesn’t Darius sail for Montrose?”
Eliza nodded. Her brothers and sisters, even she, hadn’t questioned the captain further. They had believed him immediately. “He is a prisoner, Daniella. The same as we were.”
The captain snorted and a wry smile stretched his lips although the action appeared to make him very uncomfortable and then it was gone, but his eyes were brighter as he asked, “How do you know Darius?”
This time it was Daniella who smiled. “She married him,” she said, indicating Eliza with a tilt of her red-haired head.
“Is he close?” Captain MacBride asked, his tone flat as though he already assumed the answer would be no. “Will he come to look for you?”
Before Eliza could answer, before she could tell him the fire had trapped them preventing rescue or escape, the ship shook around them and the sound of thunder deafened.
“The shot,” Daniella said with a groan. “The fire must have reached the munitions.”
Gabriella took Eliza’s hand in her own. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “This is all my fault.”
Eliza squeezed her fingers and backed everyone against the far wall of the ship next to the captain in his chains. “We’ve all made mistakes, Gabriella, but I don’t blame you. You did what you thought needed to be done.”
“But if I hadn’t—”
“We might very well be in a different kind of hell if you hadn’t,” Nathanial told her, his hand on his sister’s shoulder in a show of support that was maybe too late coming.
Another booming noise rocked the ship, even louder this time if it were possible. Eliza hugged them all to her, the little ones in the middle as a tear rolled down her cheek. “At least we are together.”
There was a part of her that wasn’t afraid to die. She hoped it was a quick death followed by eternal peace. Although now that she’d killed a man, she and Gabriella would probably both be going to hell, escorted there by fiery explosions. The other part of her, the part that had wondered at what it would be like to have a carefree life alongside Darius in America, howled at the injustice of it all. She’d glimpsed a happiness for herself she had neither asked for nor expected. That part of her wished she’d never met the man. But how could she regret any of it? She now knew what it felt to be thoroughly well loved and to return that love with little reserve.
Eliza Penfold knew very little about the true love between a man and a woman but her heart knew it. Her heart had known it well before her mind had. She’d fallen in love with her husband, the man who’d tried his hardest to help them only for her to stumble in her belief of him at the final hour. The man who had been willing to give it all up to carry them away with the wind and show them a better life and she had all but told him he couldn’t.
The cruellest injustice was that she would never be able to tell him what she really wanted to, that he mattered to her. That he had become a part of their family. That she believed in him and needed him to save her even if it was from her own stubbornness.
For all the times she had let him deny it, he really was her knight in shining armour but she had walked away with her dragons instead of letting him slay them all for her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sweat poured from Darius’s forehead and trickled down cheeks covered in God knows what from God knew where. He coughed from a mixture of sulphur and smoke as another wall was blown to smithereens. It would take too long to break their way through and the fire had well and truly taken hold of the upper deck. The captain’s cabin was gone, as was the first mate’s quarters and half the upper stern. Benny played runner and reported the inferno’s progress as they made little of their own just above the waterline.
“Two masts alight now, Captain, and we’ve gained the attention of the harbourmaster. They’ve ordered the ship’s evacuation.”
Darius gritted his teeth. “Go then. I’m not leaving.”
Marcus laid a hand on Darius’s shoulder but he shrugged him off and made for another cask of powder. This should be the final wall. Four solid obstacles. Thicker than he had anticipated but not stronger than the gunpowder blasting the timbers apart. Two had fallen already and they had been lucky in the direction of the blasts so far. They were still a level above where the bilge sloshed so they had a measure of carelessness available. He should have called the order for everyone to leave but he needed help. Even the rats would have sense enough to have abandoned ship but God help him, he needed his men at his side when he reached the final wall. He needed the men above with their buckets of water. They were never going to put the fire out but Darius would need a clear line of escape once he broke through and found them.
“What if they are already gone? The fire may have sucked the very air from the room by now.”
Darius searched the reddened gazes of the five men present until he landed upon Trelissick’s soot-stained face. Trelissick shook his head. Darius bent his in acknowledgement. “We’re staying.”
Benny didn’t hesitate. He took off back through the explosion holes yelling, “Every man hold his position.” And “Steady, lads, not long now.”
The ship shuddered and leaned towards the portside with an almighty crack and another shudder as she righted herself.
The mast must have fallen.
He was joined by Trelissick and Marcus as they heaved barrels out of the way and pushed aside the very little that was left. Darius thanked ‘Mr’ Smith in a way. She had cleared out whatever booty had remained from their last raid, if
