Claire Merchant

Preface

Corey’s Lady Luck

I never thought that being a lady would turn out to be such an advantage. Not that it affected me adversely before – it had never really been an issue. No one ever saw me as different, and that didn’t bother me. I was just one of the lads. But, now it was as if a whole new world had been opened up to me like the ugly duckling had finally realised she was a swan all along. Only now it meant that there was a different set of responsibilities that I needed to consider and different expectations that were necessary to conform to.

I looked around at the faces of the gawking sailors and smiled with smug satisfaction. As I reached for the bottom of my large hoop skirt and took a step towards their leader, the crowd parted like a shark’s fin as it tore through the water, sending ripples across the surface. The captain lowered his gaze in silent salute before returning his eyes to mine as his gloved hand extended towards me…

Chapter One

Morgan’s Tooth

“Corey, I need you to help hold Morgan down,” Kai called from the port side of the deck.

Morgan whimpered pathetically, clutching his jaw as Kai maneuvered a pair of giant pliers into his mouth. I pursed my lips. Dentistry aboard a ship wasn’t as sophisticated as on land – a bottle of rum and some pliers was all it took.

“Aye,” I replied, tying off the rope connecting to the foresail.

I looked to Captain Lear, standing at the helm on the forecastle deck, and he gave me a nod. I jogged down toward my shipmates. The oversized hand-me-down boots that I wore clapped noisily on the weathered wood of the deck.

“Hold his shoulders,” Kai murmured to me in his rough, Scottish-accented voice as I closed in.

I glanced at him and rolled up the sleeves of my baggy white shirt, then tied the ends around my small waist. I noticed that it was splotched with dirt and grease, so I made a mental note to drop it over the side for a rinse later.

“Dyl, you got his legs?” Kai asked, glancing down at Dylan.

“Aye.” He nodded as he tightened his grip on Morgan’s ankles.

Kai drew in a deep breath and curled his fingers around the pliers, resting his free left hand on Morgan’s chest. Morgan looked up at me, and the moisture budding in his aqua eyes trickled down the side of his face. I gave him a tight, reassuring smile and brushed his sweaty light brown hair from his forehead, then secured my hold on his shoulders.

“Ready, Corey?” Kai said flatly.

I looked up at him and took a deep breath. “Aye, go for it.”

Morgan moaned as Kai tipped his head and clamped down on the handle of the pliers.

“On the count of three,” Kai began. Morgan squeaked in anticipation, and Kai smiled wryly. “Two…” he continued before squeezing and pulling on the tooth in a smooth yank.

Morgan wailed a howling cry as Kai pulled the bloodied tooth from his mouth, his body thrashing around with pain. I stepped back as Morgan sat up, pushing Kai’s hand off him as a pool of blood streamed from his mouth.

“Corey!” Kai growled. “Grab that rag.”

I froze and then snapped into action, pulling the relatively clean strip of cloth off a nearby wooden beam and handing it to Kai. He grabbed the bottle of rum and soaked it before wedging it into Morgan’s mouth. Morgan gagged a little and tried to speak, but his protest was muffled.

“Hold it there, you git,” Kai muttered. “It’ll clot the cavity an’ stop it from bleedin’.”

Morgan exhaled, holding the rag in his mouth. Kai took a swig of the rum and handed the bottle back to Dylan, and then headed towards the captain’s cabin to return the tool, all the while gingerly wiping the blood and saliva off his hands with the bottom of his once-white shirt that was now a shade of brown.

Dylan stepped back and finally freed Morgan’s legs. Morgan threw them over the edge of the makeshift bench—a flat piece of wood balanced on two barrels—and spat out another mouthful of blood. Dylan patted his shoulder and handed him the bottle of rum. Morgan removed the rag, tipped the bottle into his mouth and gargled, then spat it out in the general direction of the side of the ship.

“Don’t waste it, Morgan,” Dylan complained. His accent was a mixture of Irish and English origin.

“Waste it?” Morgan mumbled in his thick Irish drawl. “Are ye mad? I’ve just had me tooth ripped oot. I’m swallowing pints of blood.”

“All right, lads, back to work,” Captain Lear called with clear English inflection. “Morgan, you right, mate?”

“Aye, Capt’n.” He sighed, spitting at the floor again. “Just feel a wee bit like I’ve been shot in the face is all.”

“Look alive, Corey. You’re a stunned mullet,” Lear said.

I looked up and took a deep breath as the two remaining boys turned to look at me. Dylan laughed at my expression while Morgan continued to gingerly rub his jaw.

“Love, it’s your turn to keep watch now,” the Captain reminded me. “Morgan’s shift is up.”

As Foreman of the crew, I should have known this. I guess it had just fleetingly slipped my mind because of the fountain of blood flowing from Morgan.

“Aye.” I nodded and pushed my hip-length hair from my face.

It had needed cutting for a while, but the last time I’d attempted it with a hand knife, I had done more harm than good. My hair just shredded in different places, leaving the ends in worse condition than they’d started. Since then, I’d given up and just decided to grow it. I tended not to treat it as any more maintenance than short hair, so at the moment, it was a matted mess of black dreadlocks.

“If it’s all the same te you, Capt’n,” Morgan mumbled. “I’d like te do Corey’s watch shift too. I can’nae see me doin’ a lotta good otherwise, I’m a wee bit light-headed.”

“Aye, lad, it’s all right with me,” Lear replied. “It’s Corey you need to ask, though. You report to her, after all.”

Morgan raised his eyebrows and bit down on the cloth again.

“Corey?” he said.

“Yer asking me te trade navigational watch for cleanin’ yer blood off the deck?” I asked flatly.

My accent was not one that could be picked. It had sort of a mixture of all the British and Irish inflections – no doubt a result of spending my entire life aboard a ship with sailors from the different areas.

“Aye, I guess I am.” He chuckled. “Is that a’right with ye?”

I rolled my eyes. “Smartly, sailor. Keep a weather eye out.”

He nodded once, his mouth crooking into an uneven smile, and stood to hoist himself up Jacob’s ladder to the crow’s nest.

I turned back to Dylan, who raised his eyebrows.

“We scrubbing the deck then, lad?” he asked.

I gave a stern nod.

Dylan smirked. “I’ll get the buckets.”

He disappeared down under the hatch, and I turned to the edge of the ship to grab the two mops we’d thrown there before. I couldn’t help but take pause at the enviable scene in front of me. The crystal blue-green ocean stretched out for miles, reaching all the way to the horizon with not so much as a trace of land in sight.

I had been a crewman on Lear’s ship Lady Adrienne for seventeen years. It’s the only life I’ve ever known since Lear had found me on a pier in the port of South Coast when I was only days old. Abandoned on a port – not exactly a promising way for anyone to start their life. I never knew my birth mother, so the sea became my guardian. Captain Lear was the closest thing I’ve ever known to a father.

My crew were like my family, but they seemed to come and go frequently. After me, Kai had been with Lear the longest, five years, making him the captain’s First Mate and the second in charge. I’d never wanted the responsibility of being the captain’s right-hand man. I never needed the title to know where I stood with Lear. Instead, he insisted that I be made Crew Foreman, making me report to Kai but still sitting a little above the rest. Dylan had joined us next, about three years ago, and Morgan a year after that. Despite the order in which they joined us, Morgan was Lear’s Second Mate and navigator, while Dylan was Third and the ship’s Safety Mate. We had four other lads that helped us run the ship and, regardless of where we sat in the pecking order, the hierarchy was nothing but a formality. Everyone was equal, and everyone played their part and contributed skills that were integral to our smooth sailing. Some called us pirates, and maybe we were, but given the Golden Age was well and truly behind us, we consider ourselves to be more buccaneers, sailing from port to port in the hopes of selling or trading anything we came across for something better. Captain Lear says that there aren’t too many proper pirates around anymore, the ones that pillage and plunder, but there are still some out there. I only hoped never to cross them.

There was a creak from the stern, and my head snapped up, expecting to see Dylan with the buckets. But, instead, Kai wandered down the deck. His dirty shirt was in his hands, and the midday sun reflected off his burly frame. He wiped the back of his arm across his forehead, and the handkerchief that was tied loosely around his wrist soaked up the small beads of sweat in its path.

“Shouldn’t you be doing something, Corey?” he asked.

“’M about te mop up Morgan’s blood,” I answered. “Dyl’s gone te get buckets.”

“Aye, the buckets.” Kai nodded. “Ye mean those buckets?”

He pointed towards the bow, where tucked in the corner of the starboard stairs leading up to the fore cabin sat the two wooden buckets in question.

“The scurvy lubber,” I muttered. “Where’s he gone te then?”

“I’ll give ye two guesses.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sirena.”

Sirena was Dylan’s lady. She was a pristine and elegant Welsh lass that he’d picked up on our last voyage. I guess it was a few weeks ago now. She insisted on spending her days below deck where the crewmen slept rather than on the Main Deck. I didn’t know or care why. Maybe it was because she didn’t like the way the salty sea spray dried out her abundant strawberry blonde curls. Everyone had objected when Dylan asked if she could join us, but he maintained that if I was allowed on the ship, then there was no reason why his lady couldn’t be. I’d laughed at the time since no one saw me as a lady on here. Lear had tried to explain that her being female wasn’t the reason for the objection, but eventually, he gave in. All it meant for us was that we’d have to make berth more often with an extra mouth to feed and that we all had to hear her complain about the sanitation on the vessel all the time.

“Never underestimate a lonely man,” Kai said with a wry smile. The comment pulled me back into the present.

“More like a dead man.”

“Don’t be so hard on him, laddie.” Kai chuckled, reaching up to grab a rope, which was attached to the foresail.

I blinked, watching as every muscle in his abdomen constricted as he stretched. Kai glanced back at me and turned, probably to remind me that there was more to do than stand around like a mullet. But then I heard the hatch open and spun around to see Dylan pushing the adjoining doors up.

Kai looked at me with amusement. Dylan’s cheeks looked slightly flushed.

“I thought they were down there, but they ain’t,” he called.

“Aye, you git, they’re over there,” I replied. “You should’ve bought your lass. She could’ve helped with the scrubbing.”

“Nuh.” Dylan huffed, stumbling down to get the buckets. He grabbed them and continued to the edge of the ship, taking hold of a fastened piece of rope and swinging to scoop some seawater from below. He hurled the first bucket up and then filled the second before turning to face me again. “This kind of stuff ain’t for a lady.”

I rolled my eyes and threw him a mop, which he caught easily in his left hand.

“Get to work then, ay,” I ordered, jabbing the mop in one of the buckets. “We might as well do the lot.”

“Aye.” Dylan nodded.

We’d gotten a good bit down the deck when Lear cleared his throat.

“Kai, lad,” he said. “Can you take the helm? I’d like to speak to Corey for a wee minute.”

I looked up as Kai stopped rolling some rope up and glanced at me, then dropped it at his feet and paced agilely up the stairs two at a time. Lear made his way down. His head lowered as his shaggy blondish-grey hair fell over his forehead. As he reached the bottom, he glanced up.

“Corey.”

His finger curled in a gesture that told me to follow him. I looked at a nearby crewman, handed him the mop, and then followed Lear into the captain’s cabin. It hadn’t changed much over the years. It had a desk, a telescope, candles, swords and artillery, and, of course, some drops of liquor.

“You wanted to speak to me, Capt’n?” I asked.

He walked around to sit at his desk. “Aye, Corey, I did.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, love, nothing like that.” He smiled.

The creases around his soft, blue eyes became prominent. I played with the sash around my hips that was keeping my baggy trousers up.

“Then what is it?”

Lear exhaled. “You’re seventeen years old, Corey. I’m thinking it best you start behaving a little more ladylike.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means, lass, that maybe you ought to act less like the lads and more like Sirena.”

“Are you sayin’ you don’t want me helpin’ anymore, Capt’n?”

“No, of course not. I just mean wearin’ old boots and shirts ain’t really for ladies.” He sighed. “You should be in dresses and nice clothes. You should have nice hair that’s not been cut with a pocket knife.”

“But why? When? How, Capt’n?”

“We make port in a few days, Corey,” he explained. “And when we dock, I want you to go with Sirena to get some things. Get cleaned up and some clothes that fit you – whatever you need.”

“But I don’t have any money, Capt’n.”

He pressed his full lips together and pushed a wooden box towards me. “I’ve been savin’ a bit extra from our sales and puttin’ it away.”

I pouted at it and opened the lid. Inside there was more gold than I’d ever seen before.

“This is far too much,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t need that much. We need new—”

“Corey,” he interrupted, silencing me. “I want you to accept it. If your mother were about, she’d be doing the same thing.”

I bit my lower lip. “Then what, Capt’n? Am I still Crew Foreman, or do you want me to stay down in the hold with Sirena all day?”

“Gracious, love.” He chuckled. “You make it sound like punishment.”

“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do when I get ladylike. Can I still do the rigging and sails, or do I have to try and stay clean and… stuff?”

“You can still do the rigging and sails, love.” He smiled, stood up from behind his desk, and walked around towards me. When he was within reach, he rested his hands on my shoulder. “But as for the tooth-pulling in the future, why don’t you just leave it to the lads, eh?”

My eyebrows pulled up. “Aye, that sounds a’right te me.”

“However,” he continued as I turned to leave. “I’d like you to spend some time each day with Sirena. She’ll teach you things that I can’t.”

My forehead creased. “What things?”

“Lady things, of course.” He chuckled. “That’s why I wanted her aboard with us.”

“But why? How am I going to get me work done if I have to talk lady with Sirena?”

He sighed. “The rest of the crew will pitch in—”

“But I don’t want to, Capt’n. I like the way things are.”

“This isn’t a negotiation, Corey. It’s for the best.”

“But—”

“As you were.” He nodded, heading back to sit at his desk.

I waited for a moment for my head to wrap around what had just passed and then frowned and turned on my heel to head back out to the crew. I pushed the door with too much force, sending it flying back to hit the corner of the staircase, and saw several crew members look up as I stormed up the ship. I mumbled curses under my breath that there was nowhere that I could go for some privacy. Sirena had seen to that.

I walked as quickly as I could manage in the loose boots down to the bow of the ship. I stumbled up the stairs, kicking off the boots when they inhibited my movement and continued onto the forecastle deck to sit at the front, letting my legs dangle over the side.

“Morgan!” I heard Captain Lear call. “Let Dylan take over. You’re lookin’ green, lad.”

“Aye, many thanks, Captain,” Morgan replied.