The Rogue Pirate’s Bride by Shana Galen Read Free Book Online

supposed to. He would laugh now if he could see her hiding on the deck of a pirate ship and hoisting open a crate of… medicine.
    She studied the little vials, packed securely in straw. Pulling one out, she noted it was morphine. Another, laudanum.
    She sat back on her haunches and considered. Of course a pirate ship had as much need of medicines as any other vessel. But usually the ship’s doctor took charge of it. She moved that crate aside and opened another. More vials.
    These two crates alone were worth several hundred pounds, and she counted seven more of the same size yet to be stowed in the hold. Beyond that were the larger crates the sailors were handing down into the hold. She did not think they were medicine vials. Weapons and ammunition? But how many weapons did a pirate ship need?
    “Is that the last of the rifles?” one of the sailors loading the cargo asked another.
    “Should be. Then we just have those.” He gestured to the crates sheltering Raeven, and she tried to squeeze herself into a shadow. It didn’t surprise her that her guess had been correct. She’d seen too many boxes and crates of rifles, bayonets, swords…
    They were the trappings of war. And that begged the question: was Cutlass going to war?
    She shook her head, knowing she needed to shimmy along that dock line before it was cast off but unable to stop staring at the Shadow’s cargo hold.
    Its too-full cargo hold.
    Perhaps Cutlass wasn’t going to war. But Cutlass sailed for Spain, at least under its letters of marque. Had he acquired this cargo for Spain? Why? Spain had signed the Treaty of Amien, just as Britain had. But perhaps Spain did not intend to honor that treaty. Perhaps while it made gestures of peace with one hand, with the other it gathered the weapons of war, supplied by its privateers, of course.
    Could Spain be looking to attack Great Britain? The treaty returned Minorca to the Spanish, but Britain kept Trinidad.
    She fisted her hands, fresh anger at Cutlass churning through her. The sailors finished loading the last of the rifles, and she knew she had to move. As much as she wanted to punish Cutlass, it would have to wait.
    With a last look around, she crept back to the deck rail. She hoisted one leg over, grasping the dock line with one hand. Perhaps she could…
    “Maine!” she heard Cutlass’s voice cut above the din of the sailors working. “Maine!”
    Devil take it! She released the dock line and ducked down again.
    The thump of boots shook the deck as men scrambled to get out of Cutlass’s way.
    “He’s on the fo’c’sle, Captain,” one sailor offered.
    “Go get him,” Cutlass ordered, and more boots thumped. “And search the ship. I’ve lost my cabin girl.”
    Raeven ground her teeth to keep from spewing venom at him. She was not his cabin girl. Not his anything.
    But she was out of time. She peered over the rail again, saw the dock line and, beneath it, the long drop to the water. But she’d been raised on a ship and was a veritable monkey. She easily latched onto the line with both hands, her feet swinging up to wrap around the rope. She made her way across the line toward the quay, hand over fist, looking behind her several times to judge the distance to the bollard.
    Finally, she dropped her feet into the water beside the quay and, transferring her grip from the dock line to the dock, she swung her legs onto it. But she must have been more fatigued than she realized, because she misjudged the distance and smashed her knee. With a curse, she crawled onto the quay and rolled into a ball, closing her eyes against the scream of pain in her knee.
    Finally, she groaned and stared up at the Shadow . The next time she saw the vessel, she vowed it would be in pieces.
    Cautiously, she rose to her knees. She was bruised but not badly injured. She was relatively certain her knee would be sore for a week, and her gloveless hands were raw and bleeding. But nothing was broken. She limped away from the ship,