Fortune Trilogy 1 - Fortune's Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page B

dead or alive.”
    Lacy heard a shout and the rattle of steel, then the horses clattered away down the street. Ben clucked to his own team and slapped the reins over their backs. He began to sing softly.

    “Oh, I’ll give you gold, and I will give you free,
And my youngest daughter your wedded wife be,
If you sink ‘em in the lowlands, lowlands low,
If you sink ’em in the lowlands low . . .”

    Lacy sighed with relief. “God help us,” she whispered to James. “That was close. They were soldiers from the prison, certain. I’ve heard that Yorkshire man before.”
    “Mmm,” James agreed. “Too close. I’ve no wish to be skewered like a roast duck on a pike.” He shifted his weight under her. “Could you do something for me, I wonder?”
    “What?”
    “You’re so heavy, I’m suffering cramps. Could you turn over, do you think?”
    For an answer, she gave him another sharp jab in the ribs.
     
    Sometime later the wagon stopped again. Alfred and Ben jumped down, opened the double side doors, and pushed back the lid of the coffin. “Out of there,” Alfred ordered. “Quick now.”
    The moon was a dim crescent, the sky a bowl of swirling clouds hanging close to the earth. Lacy smelled the river, inky-black beyond dark muddy banks, and heard the sounds of the swift-running water. The Thames was an open sewer, but still the churning current smelled sweet to her nostrils. Rivers ran to the ocean, and the ocean meant freedom.
    She gripped her arms and shivered with joy in the damp night air. Then she chuckled softly as she remembered the old saying. A Cornwall girl has salt water in her veins instead of blood. “S’truth, I reckon,” she whispered.
    “Shhh,” Alfred warned. “What are ye babbling on about?”
    A shadowy figure whistled from the water’s edge. James moved close to Lacy and put an arm around her protectively.
    “There’s Toby with the boat,” Ben said as Lacy opened her mouth to protest James’s action.
    Alfred glanced at James. “We’ve no way to get that collar off Lacy or we’d leave ye here, pirate,” he said roughly. “As it is ...” He shrugged. “We’re bound downriver and hence to Cornwall. Are ye wi’ us?”
    James made a sound of derision and rattled the chain that linked him to Lacy. “Have I any choice?”
    “What of the wagon?” Lacy brushed James’s arm away.
    “Toby will take it out of the city and leave it somewhere,” Ben explained. “No need to show the watch how we got ye free.”
    Without wasting time, the four made their way down to the boat. Toby threw a line to Alfred, then wished them luck and headed up to the wagon. James caught Lacy firmly by the waist and swung her into the boat, then vaulted in behind her. Ben took the tiller; Alfred pushed the two-masted pink clear of the dock and leaped on deck.
    “Hie yerselfs forward,” Alfred said, as the current swept the small boat out into the river. “Conceal yerselfs in the cabin, and take care not t’ damage the goods.”
    “Is she seaworthy?” James asked Lacy as they moved toward the low deckhouse.
    “The Silkie?” Lacy sniffed. “I’ve crossed the channel in her in a storm that would turn your stomach inside out. She doesn’t leak, and she leaps over the waves like a dolphin. Hellfire and damnation, man. A good sailor could take the Silkie to the China Sea and back.”
    “What goods are they shipping?”
    “Best not to ask.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “We pay no tax on it, I can tell ye that much.” She led the way through the hatch and down two steps to a cramped cabin, too low for James to stand upright.
    “Ouch,” he protested.
    “Watch your head,” she said. “Come this way, will ye.” She tugged at the chain and felt her way along the cuddy wall until she found a stack of blankets. “I dare not strike a light,” she explained. “We’ll have to make do in the dark.” She didn’t need to see; she knew every inch of the Silkie. And because she was familiar