The Raider (Montgomery/Taggert 9)

“He can make an example of someone else. Get your big, fat body away from this door and let me out.”

“You can say whatever you want to me, but you’re not leaving here. That Englishman would love to have a reason to string someone up. I’ve seen his type before. He’d love to hang you from the crow’s nest and then set the ship afire. All I want is to keep you alive, whether your ship burns or not.”

“It’s none of your concern. It’s my ship that man means to burn. Open this door.” She began to push at him, using all her strength, digging her heels into the floor, her back against his side, but she couldn’t move him.

“Jess,” he said in a gentler voice. “If you go out there and try to fight that man, you’ll end up dead. I’m not going to allow that.”

“Allow it!” she screamed at him. “Who are you to allow or disallow anything to me?” She pushed and pushed at him until her energy began to sag—and she began to remember what the admiral’s man had said. They were going to burn her ship.

She slid down Alex and hit the floor. “My father gave me that ship,” she whispered. “It was the only thing he ever gave me except brothers and sisters to raise. None of the boys wanted it. They wanted to sail the oceans on a big ship; they wouldn’t have anything to do with the smelly Mary Catherine, but Eleanor and I saw it as a way to feed Mother and the kids. Do you know how hard it was to get anyone to teach a girl how to sail?”

She sat there, leaning against Alex’s leg and began to think about what it would mean to have no ship. “Kit helped me some. And Adam was always there to teach me a new knot or two, but mostly it was old Samuel Hutchins. Remember him? He died a few years ago.”

Alex slid down beside her, so that she leaned against his shoulder, and handed her the whiskey bottle. “I used to laugh at you. I was so jealous that you were younger than I was but you had your own ship.”

Jess took a healthy swallow of the whiskey. “You said no girl should be allowed on a ship, much less to own one, and you said the Mary Catherine didn’t deserve the name of a ship.”

“True, I said that, but I would have traded everything I owned for your ship or any other. My mother didn’t want to let me go to sea. She said she’d lost two sons to the sea and she wasn’t going to lose her baby.”

Jess took another deep drink. “She was right. Look what happened to you. You lost your manhood and she died before she saw her

best sons again.”

She didn’t see the look on Alex’s face. “The Mary Catherine may have had problems, but she was good to me. Oh, God, Alex, how am I going to feed the children?”

Alex put his arm around her so that her head rested against his shoulder. “I’ll help you, Jess. I’ll be there to help you.”

She pushed away from him. “Like you were today? Is your idea of help to run from danger?”

“I believe I have the sense to run when the odds are stacked against me,” he said stiffly. “What could you have done against the admiral and his soldiers? I tell you, that man would have loved to hang someone. And he has every right.”

“At least the Raider isn’t afraid of his own shadow like the rest of you in this town are.”

Abruptly, Alexander stood and glared down at her. “You and your Raider! It’s that idiot who got the town into this mess. If he’d kept his nose out of it and hadn’t gone seeking glory, your ship wouldn’t have been burned and several lives including your own wouldn’t be threatened now. If anything, you ought to be hating the man, not praising him.”

Jess stood, hands on hips, and glared at him. “Don’t you realize that something has to be done about the way the English treat us? The Raider realizes that. We don’t have nearly the rights that the English have. How can that man burn my ship just because he wants to? What course of action do I have?”

She didn’t bother to give him time to answer. “Let me tell you this, Alexander, you may be a coward, but that doesn’t mean that all of us are.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve heard of things that are happening in the south. There have been pamphlets written, speeches made. Maybe something like that can be done in Warbrooke.”

Alex leaned against the door. “Jess, you’re talking treason,” he whispered, looking at her pretty neck.

“It’s not treason if we are free of England and we’re our own country. Then it’s patriotism.”

He held out the bottle of whiskey. “Drink this and let’s talk.”

“Ha! I’m to trust you? A coward like you?”

He leaned forward until he was nose to nose with her. “I’d like to remind you that I saved you from Pitman, that I saved Abigail’s neck, and today I probably saved you from hanging. That doesn’t sound very cowardly to me.”

She rubbed her bruised arms. “I don’t like your methods.”

“We can’t all be your romantic Raider. Besides, I thought you were convinced he was dead.”

“Don’t say that! Let’s go to my house and—”