The Iron Rose Read online

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Excerpt: My Love Forever

  Copyright

  To the newest ray of sunshine in our lives,

  Payton Taylor Glenna Canham.

  Grammy and Grumpy have been waiting

  a long time

  to spoil a beautiful little girl.

  Prologue

  August 1614

  As she had often heard her father say in the moments before the first broadside was fired, it was a fine day to die. The sun was a searing white eye in a sky so blue and clear it pained the soul to stare upward too long. Staring anywhere for even the briefest split second was not an option, however, for in the blink of an eyelash there was another flash of cold steel, another shock of contact as the two blades clashed together, sliding their full length in a shower of blue sparks.

  Juliet was beginning to feel the strain in her wrist. She withstood her opponent’s enraged offense as long as she could, then broke away, spinning and crouching low in one fluid motion, letting instinct take over where strength was failing. A second shadow loomed behind her, the face bloodied but the eyes focused with lethal intent, and Juliet cursed. She sprang to the side but found herself cornered, the flames of a burning spar on one side, the fat barrel of a twenty-four-pounder demi-culverin on the other. The two Spaniards, desperate for their own lives moments before, saw her predicament and closed rank, crowding her against the rail. One of them muttered under his breath and grabbed his crotch. The other laughed and licked the filthy tips of his fingers in agreement.

  Juliet’s sword slashed out in a brilliant flare of sunlight. The laughing Spaniard saw those fingers fly off his hand and land with a skitter of red splashes on the deck. While he was busy finding the breath to scream, she swung on his cohort and cut a wider grin on his face, one that went from ear to ear and severed the jugular clean through. She used her boot to kick him aside when he started to fall forward, then leaped gracefully over the twitching body as another snarling attacker rushed to take his place.

  Juliet raised her sword, her slender body braced to meet a mighty downward stroke intended to cleave her skull in half. The impact shuddered through her arms and jarred her shoulders, bending her back over the gunwall. The savagery of the blow drew a grunt, then a curse, but she was able to deflect the blade long enough to reach into her belt with her left hand and unsheathe her dagger. The blade was eight inches long, sharp as a needle, and it went through the Spaniard’s leather doublet like a finger through lard.

  Juliet barely had time to regain her balance when she caught the glint of a steel-pot helmet. The arquebusier stood just out of reach of a sword thrust, calmly balancing his weapon on a handy length of broken timber, the fuse smoking, the trumpet nose aimed squarely between her eyes.

  Trapped against the gunwall, she could do little but watch as his finger squeezed the trigger to release the mainspring. She saw the serpentine lock trip forward and touch the fuse to the priming pan. The powder ignited in a small puff of smoke, lighting the main charge and sending the two-ounce iron ball exploding down the barrel.

  Out of nowhere, a streak of violet and silver lace cut across Juliet’s path. A slash of steel knocked aside the snout of the blunderbuss just as it discharged its round, and the shot went wild. The stranger’s sword glittered again, finding a vulnerable gap between the arquebusier’s iron cuirass and the exposed band of skin beneath his helmet, and the Spaniard heeled backward in a gout of bright red blood. Juliet saw the flash of a grin as her rescuer turned and extended a gloved hand to lift her away from the rail. “Are you all right, boy?”

  Juliet found herself staring into the deepest, darkest blue eyes she had ever seen. They were partly shadowed by the brim of an elegant cavalier’s hat, the one side cocked up at a jaunty angle, topped by a plume dyed the same shade of violet as his doublet and breeches.

  “Boy?”

  Instead of answering, Juliet drew a pistol out of her crossbelt and fired it, her finger squeezing the trigger before the surprise could register on the stranger’s face. The shot was propelled past a broad shoulder and thudded into the chest of a Spaniard who was about to slay one of her crewmen at the opposite side of the deck.

  The midnight blue eyes followed the shot, then flicked back to Juliet. The grin reappeared, wide and very white through a neatly trimmed moustache and imperial.

  “A fine shot. And yes, I can see you are very much all right.”

  He touched the brim of his hat in a salute, then was gone, leaping over what was left of the taffrail to rejoin the mêlée taking place on the main deck. He was not two heartbeats out of her startled sight when a massive, ear-shattering explosion rocked her off her feet and threw her hard against the barrel of the cannon.

  Juliet averted her face as a blast of heat laden with particles of stinging debris swept across the deck. A huge pillar of red and orange flame rose to the sky, and the accompanying screams of those men caught in the open seemed to take the last of the Spaniard’s resolve with them. By twos and threes the soldiers began dropping their weapons and spearing their hands upward in surrender. Some fell onto their knees; others raised their steepled hands to pray for mercy.

  Juliet scrambled to her feet and ran to the rail. The waist of the galleon was a shambles, with bodies littering the deck from stem to stern. The explosion had not come from the Spaniard’s powder stores, as she had initially feared, but from the deck of the much smaller English carrack that was bound to the galleon’s hull by grappling lines.

  It was this distraction, when the Spaniard had closed for the kill and boarded the English merchantman, that had allowed Juliet’s ship, the Iron Rose, to emerge almost unseen from the banks of haze and drifting smoke. She had come in under full sail and poured a series of crippling broadsides into the exposed side of the galleon before snaring it within her own cobweb of thick cables. A cry of “up and over” had sent the crew of the privateer swarming eagerly over the side to join the fray. The crew of the beleaguered English vessel, perilously near the brink of defeat, had rallied as well and now, despite the fact that the two smaller vessels were shockingly outmanned and outgunned by the behemoth warship, the Spaniards were surrendering!

  Chapter One

  “We were lucky this time, lass. Dead lucky. There’s a brace o’ mortars in the stern that would’ve ripped our guts out sure as they ripped out the guts o’ the Englishman, given half the chance. Sheer bloody luck o’ the devil it was, an’ I’d be damned to believe it if I hadn’t seen it with me own eyes.”

  Nathan Crisp was quartermaster on board the Iron Rose. He stood all of five feet tall, which put his eyes on level with Juliet’s chin, but he had the neck and shoulders of a bulldog, and could lift a man twice his size without straining a muscle. What he did not know about the sea, about guns, about sailing in fair weather or foul, did not bear knowing, and despite being crusty as a barnacle at times, Juliet trusted him as implicitly as she trusted her own instincts. />
  “How badly is the English ship damaged?”

  Crisp shook his head. “I’ve yet to go on board and have a good look, but she’s well down below the waterline an’ the only thing holdin’ her up are the cables attached to this bloody galleon. That last explosion took out her magazine an’ half the upper deck.”

  Juliet scanned the hazy line of the horizon. “We have but a few hours of daylight left and a great deal to do before we can get underway. Where do you suppose the captain of this beast is hiding?”

  “He scuttled below like a rat when this lot began to throw down their swords.”

  Juliet’s eyes were pale, silvery blue, and at Crisp’s words, they sparked with darker flecks of anger. “Hell and damnation! He’ll be after throwing his manifests and logs overboard before we can see them.”

  The hatchway leading below to the captain’s quarters was locked from the inside, but a few strokes of a battle-ax reduced the escutcheon to a decorative scrap of iron on the deck.

  Juliet, holding two loaded pistols before her, led the way along the narrow passageway to the great cabin. As on most Spanish galleons, the captain’s quarters assumed the entire breadth of the stern, and Juliet stood aside while Crisp smashed through the heavy oak door. In the instant it took for all the crimson velvet and gilded furniture to register on her senses, she saw two officers standing by the ruined mass of cherrywood that had once been a magnificently appointed escritoire. The capitán de mar, identified by the ornamented breastplate and wide, pleated neck ruff, was swabbing his forehead with a lace handkerchief while the officer beside him was stuffing papers and ledgers into a bulging canvas sack. The latter wore a cuirass dented from battle damage, and his face was streaked black with soot beneath the curved rim of his cone-shaped helmet.

  Juliet raised both pistols, aiming them squarely at the captain’s chest.

  Crisp did likewise, grinning wide over a minimum of uneven front teeth. “Ah, but it’s a clever lass who knows her enemies so well.” In a louder voice, he addressed the two Spaniards. “Now then, what manner of foolery do we have here? Should we be thankin’ ye kindly for actin’ so quick to gather yer important papers together? Or should we be thinkin’ ye’re eager to hide something ye’d rather we didn’t see?”

  The captain was heavyset, with a girth as round as a barrel and legs the size of tree trunks squeezed into stockings so tight the seams were strained. His face was red, running with sweat that dripped onto the top of the desk as he started muttering under his breath to his first officer.

  Crisp scowled, for he knew only enough coarse Spanish to tell an enemy to drop his weapon or the sharks would be feeding on his spleen.

  It was Juliet who smiled and said in soft, perfectly accented Castilian, “And if he should indeed take one step toward the gallery door with the intent of throwing that sack overboard, Señor Capitán-General, I shall blow the top of his head off. His first,” she added, shifting the aim of her guns to make her meaning clear. “Then yours, of course.”

  The captain looked over, startled by her fluency, and another droplet of sour sweat fell on the desk. He bore one small bruise on his forehead, the flesh an angry blue, and it was to this blow Juliet credited his blinking dullness for he did nothing but continue to stare. The officer by his side was a soldier, however, not merely a posturing figurehead. He stiffened with indignation, so much so the reflections of sunlight from the broken gallery windows cut briefly through the shadows beneath the rim of his helmet.

  His eyes were small and close-set, black as empty sockets. Rage tightened his lips to a thin line as he responded to Juliet in equally excellent English, “You dare issue your paltry threats! Do you know to whom you speak with such crude impertinence?”

  “I have no doubt you feel obliged to enlighten me.”

  His voice was a mere hiss of sound. “You have the effrontery to stand before Don Diego Flores Cinquanto de Aquayo.”

  “Aquayo,” she murmured. Juliet searched her memory for the name—mentally giving thanks to the taskmaster who had drummed into her the importance of knowing every ship that patrolled the Caribbee—and came up with a match. “Then this must be the Santo Domingo.”

  She tried to keep her voice level, her breathing even, but she could feel the sudden pounding of blood in her temples. She could also hear the involuntary catch in Nathan’s throat and guessed that he had almost swallowed the glutinous wad of tobacco leaves he customarily chewed during an engagement. The Santo Domingo was one of the largest and finest warships in His Catholic Majesty’s fleet in Nueva España. At eight hundred tons, mounting fifty-two heavy guns, she had been touted to be both invincible and unsinkable. Moreover, at last count, she had been credited with the capture or sinking of at least fourteen privateers from three nations who hunted along the Spanish shipping lanes.

  “You are a long way from Vera Cruz,” Juliet said calmly. “I would have thought, after you escorted the new viceroy from Hispaniola to San Juan de Ulloa, you would have remained to help celebrate his appointment.”

  “You are very well informed,” said Aquayo, gasping for breath—or belief.

  Juliet tipped her head to acknowledge the compliment. “We pay very high bribes to your port officials to ensure it is so. As for my threats, señor maestre”—Juliet switched her focus back to the military commander as she caught his hand inching toward the butt of a pistol that was partly hidden in the debris on the desk—“I can promise you they are not the least paltry, for at this close range, I expect the shot would remove the greater half of your skull even if my aim wavered by a twitch or two.”

  “An’ that’s never happened in all the years I’ve known her,” Crisp warned dryly. “So unless ye want to insult yer capitán-general more by having yer brains splashed all over his fine gold braid, I suggest ye set the sack down slowly an’ step carefully to one side.”

  The officer’s coal black eyes narrowed and Juliet could see him weighing the odds of his reaching the gun and surviving long enough to fire it. He wore the thin moustache and pointed beard favored by the Spanish nobility, yet the fact that his rank had been earned through military service and not by royal appointment like his captain suggested there was some illegitimate taint in his bloodlines somewhere.

  “You must be the one they call la Rosa de Hierro,” he murmured. “The Iron Rose.”

  “My ship is the Iron Rose, señor. Those aboard her call me Captain.”

  “I will call you puta,” he spat, “and it will give me great pleasure one day to spread your legs and encourage my soldiers to repay you for the trouble you have caused today.”

  Juliet pursed her lips to give the insult the consideration it merited. “I am sure their efforts would bore me, señor, as do yours.”

  “Spoken like a true whore-bitch. Just like your mother before you.”

  Juliet’s expression did not change, but her eyes turned as cold as frost, a sight known to raise the hackles of those aware of their own mortality.

  “You know my mother, señor?”

  A smirk spread slowly across his face. “We are also well informed, puta, although the reputation of Isabeau Dante—a whore of such magnitude—comes without cost.”

  The Spaniard’s grin was still full of insolence and arrogance as Juliet adjusted the aim of the pistols, gave the triggers a quick caress, and blinked through the delayed ignition of gunpowder. Both wheel-locks spun and fired simultaneously, the result of the twin explosions causing Aquayo to cross his arms over his head and drop to the floor with a scream.

  “An insult to me is one thing, señor maestre,” she said evenly, watching the army officer stagger back against the bulkhead in shock. “But an insult to my dear mother … well … that is quite another.”

  With the logs and manifests sent safely back to the Iron Rose, Juliet accompanied Crisp on board the English carrack to assess the damage. In truth, there was not much left to assess, for her masts were gone, her rails were little more than jagged spikes, and what timbers remain
ed intact on the upper deck would not do so for long in light of the fires that raged from above and below. Dead and pieces of the dead were strewn everywhere, lying in rivulets of blood that flowed to and fro across the planking with the motion of the ship.

  “How long before she goes down?” Juliet asked softly.

  “She’s drinkin’ the sea faster than any ten pumps could spew it out. Nog’s checkin’ now, but he thinks she’s been holed below the waterline. Looks to me like the Spaniards weren’t in the mood to take her back to Havana. Or to leave any witnesses behind.”

  Juliet nodded grimly. “Target practice. For their gunners as well as their musketeers. How many survivors do you estimate?”

  “I counted less than forty who can stand on their own,” he said. “Only two of those appear to be officers. There’s another score an’ a half with minor wounds, but easily twice that number who’ll be dead if we try to move them. I’ve not made a tally of the Spaniards yet, but I’d say we accounted ourselves well. We’ve less than a dozen injured an’ only one death.”

  “Who?”

  “Billy Crab. Caught a musket ball in the brain.”

  Red hair, a lot of freckles. Juliet knew every member of the crew well enough to take each loss personally.

  “Who is in command here?” Crisp asked, raising his voice to be heard above the whoosh and crackle of burning fires.

  “I must assume I am.” One of the two officers Crisp had already identified limped forward through the smoke. He was young, perhaps five and twenty, but it was obvious he was no stranger to combat. His face, handsome enough on the one side, bore telling scars on the other. A melted plate of stretched, shiny flesh distorted the entire left side of his face from above the temple to below the starched line of his collar. His ear was a curled mass of pink skin, and his cheek, when he spoke, was stiffened by the scar tissue, setting his mouth at an odd cant.

  Juliet, who had seen far more hideous disfigurements over the years, was not as concerned with the officer’s appearance as she was with his character. The galleon was a huge and cumbersome ship, and would be difficult to sail without the help of the English seamen.