Jeremy got swarmed for a moment when his four contenders converged on him, but he was able to knock one out and push the other three back so they fell over their mate. Then he quickly went after the pirates who still had weapons. But for a moment during the brawl he came face-to-face with Damon and could have knocked him out as well. She saw her brother pause, seeming to consider it! She was about to yell something nasty at him when a pirate stuck a pistol in his back. Damon saw it and tackled that one away from Jeremy. Jack smirked, but her brother would still get an earful from her later about not honoring deals.

That’s when an arm went about her neck, half choking her, and the tip of a dagger pricked the skin below her ear. Filthy black silk covered the elbow under her chin. She knew only one of the pirates wore that dark color. An icy chill ran down her spine, but then she got angry at herself. They’d been so close to winning and it was her fault that they wouldn’t! She had to fix this.

“How’d you get up here?” she asked Dr. Death. “I would have seen—”

Foul breath crossed her cheek when he said, “Was already up here, pretty. Snuck up as soon as ye ran back to the cap’n to get him to leave his post, and I hid on the other side of his cabin. Fights are boring. If ye’ve seen one, ye’ve seen them all. But ye ain’t boring, wench, and there’s a nice bed only feet from here where we’re gonna do a little bouncing.”

“Take a look below. Your friends are done for.”

“Then I guess they need to be helped up and given back their weapons, eh? And what do ye think will make the cap’n do that?”

He started to laugh, and of course he would, he was holding a knife near her throat—exactly what she’d been warned couldn’t happen if Damon’s side was to win. But she’d slowly been pulling the pistol out of her pocket so Dr. Death wouldn’t notice, horribly aware that shooting someone behind her whom she couldn’t see wasn’t guaranteed to be successful. She had to turn her head enough to see some part of him she could hit because she didn’t dare miss when she had only one shot. So she leaned into his elbow even though it cut off her breath for a moment and shot him where it would hurt him enough to let her go.

He didn’t. He cackled like an old hen instead. “Oh, yer funny, girl. The reason I’m a sawbones is I had to cut off my own foot when I was a youngun. Ye just shot an empty boot.”

The firing of the weapon drew a lot of attention her way, though, and just that momentary distraction provided enough of an advantage for Jeremy, Damon, and the others to beat down the last of the pirates who were still standing. But that wasn’t helping her situation, which could give the upper hand back to the pirates, and she wasn’t about to let that happen if she could help it.

“I think I set your boot on fire though.”

“Nice try, girly.”

“You can’t smell it burning?”

That got him to lift his leg so he could at least see the empty boot, which loosened his hold on her a little, and that’s when Damon dove at him. She grunted as she got knocked aside, but the pirate went down with Damon, and a furious punch knocked the pirate out. She almost laughed when she saw that Death’s boot really was smoldering.

But Damon was already pulling her to her feet. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Just a scratch.”

Of course Damon had to see for himself, but then he was hugging her fiercely. “Next time, can you do what I ask?”

“I could—maybe.” She grinned. “But if there isn’t a next time, then we don’t need to find out if I will or won’t.”

“Not a good answer, Jack.”

She laughed. “For me it was.”

Chapter Forty

JACK AND DAMON WENT for a stroll around the deck after dinner to watch the sunset. Such brilliant orange and gold reflected so perfectly on the water of a becalmed sea was a magnificent sight. It was a pleasure to be on the ship now that the pirates were locked in the hold. The winners had had quite a celebration the day they’d won. Damon had even had the pirates’ hoarded rum brought topside. But then the wind had died that night and no one had been happy about that—except Jacqueline. And six days later, she was still enjoying the calm because it gave her more time to spend with Damon. Now if her brother would stop being so annoying and find somewhere else to sleep . . .

She remarked, “I know all sailors hate a becalmed sea, and I thought that’s why you’ve been so vexed, but—is it my brother instead?”

Damon gave her a wry look. “A little of both.”

He directed her to the quarterdeck stairs since neither of them was in a hurry to return to his cabin, where Jeremy and Percy were playing chess. When the game was over, Percy would leave, but Jeremy wouldn’t. He’d come into the cabin with a hammock after the pirates had all been tied in the hold and had warned Damon that was the only way he wouldn’t beat him senseless for ruining his sister. Jack didn’t get a chance to offer her opinion—well, she did later when she was alone with Jeremy, but nothing she said would change his mind about the sleeping arrangements.

She sat on the step below Damon, cocooned between his thighs, using him as a nice backrest as she gazed up at the sails, which were still flat and motionless. His hands circled her neck gently, his thumbs rubbing the skin below her ears. She was going to get frustrated again!

“We were so close to the islands.” Damon sighed. “Now this.”

She stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed her ankles, trying to ignore his caresses, which was nearly impossible, so she distracted them both with “So? There’s really no reason to worry until we’re out of fruit. But your supplies aren’t running low so we’re not at risk of getting scurvy, and your men have even been fishing, though I wish they wouldn’t,” she added in a mumble.

“Unless this calm stretches for leagues in all directions, your father will be disposing of Lacross without me and—”

“Wait, what?”

She turned about to face him, but remembered that the first night of the calm he’d asked them where James was sailing to. Jeremy, still not on friendly terms with him, had goaded, “Exactly where you thought he wouldn’t go.” But she hadn’t realized that Damon had been left thinking that James was ahead of them simply because he’d left London two days before Damon had.