Free The Rebel Pirate by Donna Thorland

Benji at the assemblies. And he could ride and fence and shoot better than anyone. And he can handle the
Sally
almost as well as Father. If he had been home, he would have had command of her, not Molineaux, and you never would have caught us.”
    The Ward family, it appeared, held a universally low opinion of the seamanship of anyone to whom they were not directly related.
    The boy had scampered off soon after that, leaving Sparhawk staring up at the canopy and mulling his next move. The beefsteak was beginning to sound like a very good idea. His stomach gurgled, the sound loud enough to echo in the empty room. He watched the sun begin to set through the window—it would have been a pretty chamber when it was carpeted and papered—then decided to venture downstairs.
    The house must have been older than it looked, because it was built to an antique plan with a central chimney. In front was a modern staircase in two flights, handsomely carved with twisted rope molding. The entire structure was one room deep on either side, and some of the fireplaces still sported fashionable paneling—though others had clearly been stripped of even that.
    He arrived on the ground floor to find the parlors chilled and dark, but light and warmth emanated from the far corner of what had once been the dining room, where a narrow batten door led into a service ell.
    And there was music, of a sort: a low baritone rumble that started and stopped, the cadence, if not the tune, familiar; a sea chantey, but not one of the navy’s.
    The song drew him to the door, and when he saw through the crack that the chamber was unoccupied, into a kitchen with another door at the far end, from whence the singing came. There was no fire burning in the cooking hearth, but the room had a borrowed warmth from the chamber beyond. And a familiar air to it, something of his West Indian childhood—his real youth, not the manufactured tale of Shropshire summers that he and McKenzie had concocted—in the faint aroma of lime and molasses and the low-slung Campeche chairs beneath the window.
    As he listened to the song drifting from the room beyond, and fingered the worn velvet of his borrowed coat, a suspicion stole over him, preposterous and at the same time, somehow inevitable.
    He almost missed seeing the heavy-bladed cutlass propped in the corner. Someone had used it recently to bank the fire. It was blackened with soot and dulled by age, but there was no mistaking the tassel that hung from the guard: eight dark red ribbons strung with shark’s teeth.
    The girl’s name was Ward.
    Her father was a captain.
    My father could make Barbados faster than any captain in Salem.
    In a ship with a heavily tattooed crew.
    Among whom was at least one pickpocket who had tutored Sarah Ward.
    Mr. Cheap sailed with the Brethren of the Coast.
    A name rose up out of childhood memory and bedtime stories, a bogeyman to put fear into the hearts of island children raised on soft breezes and sugarcane. A ginger-haired giant with a shark-tooth-tasseled cutlass.
    “Red” Abed. Captain Abednego Ward.
    Sparhawk had fallen into a nest of pirates.

Five
    Sarah backed toward the door. Coming to Wild’s house had been a mistake. This woman knew about the flint and the French gold, and now she knew that Sarah Ward and the
Sally
were back. Which put the
Sally
, the Ward family, and Sparhawk in terrible danger.
    “I’ll call on Elizabeth another time,” Sarah said, feeling for the latch behind her.
    “Very well,” said Angela Ferrers. “I will interview your charming little brother instead.”
    Sarah froze. She did not want Ned anywhere near this dangerous creature in gray silk. Ned could not keep a secret to save his life—or Sparhawk’s. If a Ward was going to match wits with this woman, it was going to be Sarah.
    “How do you know about the gold?” she asked.
    Angela Ferrers gestured once more toward the empty chair at the table. Sarah took it. The young widow nodded with satisfaction