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  Captain Mountjoy looked at Philip. “You had better close the door, my lad. It seems I have a lesson to give before we even warp out from the dock.”

  Lady Evangeline’s pretty face betrayed great confusion, then. She looked at Mary, and then at Philip as he returned from securing the door. Finding no help there, she concentrated her attention again on the captain.

  “I am told, sir, that you know who I am. I have certainly come into a dire condition, but I am of noble birth, and I expect to have it in my power in future to confer upon my friends...”

  “Pray remove your clothing. Both of you.”

  The expression upon Lady Evangeline’s face froze into a stare of disbelief. Evidently she wished, very deeply, to believe that she had mistaken the sound or the meaning of the captain’s words, but at the same time, since he had spoken so very plainly, she could not accomplish the mental feat.

  “My lady,” said Captain Mountjoy in an easy, mocking tone that conveyed the furthest possible attitude from the respect that the phrase would have entailed had the captain of a true merchantman spoken it, “I wish you to have no illusions on the score of what sort of vessel you have boarded. Thus, I shall need you to remove all your clothing. You are going to be whipped for your insolence, unintentional though it surely was. Pray do not compound it by an intentional failure to obey me.”

  “But...” Lady Evangeline looked desperately at Philip again. Now he had no choice but to make plain the trick he had played, nor did he wish to feign any kind of innocence. A young lady who had run away from home needed protection, and although naked service aboard a pirate ship would seem degrading to both the girls who had now come into Captain Mountjoy’s power, protected they would certainly be.

  “My lady,” said the young man with a bit more respect than the captain had used, but still without the deference Mary Smith might have said he should have shown, “I must tell you that Mary here was mistaken in her ideas about the sort of ship the Royal Anne is. You must do as Captain Mountjoy tells you now.”

  Lady Evangeline’s lips parted, but no sound came out. Philip knew the captain meant to have this noble girl as his own submissive bedmate, but in her eyes the younger man saw something that changed the way he thought about her fate entirely. She had looked to him, her maid’s supposed cousin, to rescue her from a marriage that would have sentenced her to a life of boredom at best and cruelty at worst. Now her gaze pled for rescue from the much more exciting destiny into which he had brought her—but with a spirit and a freedom that stirred Philip so thoroughly he knew he must somehow alter the captain’s intentions.

  By no means did Philip intend to set Lady Evangeline Hobberly truly free, in Virginia or anywhere else. What would await her there, even should she manage to secure a station that guarded her virtue, would by no means suit what the first mate saw in the girl’s eyes.

  He knew, however, that he must have her for himself, and he must have her submission not because she feared the strap or even the cat, given over a barrel—the most severe punishment a girl might suffer aboard the Royal Anne. Philip wanted Lady Evangeline panting with the same need for fucking she had shown with her maid in bed the previous night, not by any man in authority over her but by the young man who had given her adventurous spirit scope to act in the world beyond the drawing room of Hobberly Hall.

  “Surely...” she began, speaking to Philip as if in order that she might not have to look at the captain. “Surely you will not do this monstrous thing. I do not know what sort of ship you mean... I do not, for surely...”

  Captain Mountjoy spoke abruptly, his voice full of cruel amusement. “Oh, but I think you have indeed guessed the truth, my lady. At all events, it matters not at all to you now. I am the captain of the Royal Anne, and I require you to remove your clothing, for I am going to whip you.” He turned to Philip and spoke again with mocking politeness. “Mr. Norris, pray assist her ladyship in her disrobing, if you please.”

  Lady Evangeline had turned toward the captain as he delivered himself of the news she had indeed so obviously dreaded. Now she moved to place the bulkhead at her back, withdrawing from Philip, who began to advance slowly toward her.

  “My lady,” he said, “if you obey the captain, your service on this ship will be easier for you to bear. Do not make me rip your fine clothing. Let Mary here help you off with your gown and your shift, and learn your lesson like a good girl. Then when the time comes to serve, as you must, it won’t go so hard with you.”

  Philip tried as he spoke to look into the lovely girl’s blue eyes the message that he meant to care for her, that her life had changed beyond even what she had supposed and that she would in one fashion or another soon learn the way of a man with a maid, but that he meant to make her amorous duties as pleasant as they might be for her. He thought he saw in the slight furrowing of her brow that Lady Evangeline had gathered something of his benevolent intentions. It nearly made him try to protect her from what she had in store here and now in the captain’s quarters. Much as he would have liked to accustom the girl gently to her new life at sea, however, he had no alternative: Philip could not allow her to escape her first lesson from Captain Mountjoy. Like every young woman brought aboard, she must undergo what the captain considered a proper initiation in the ways of the Royal Anne.

  Now Mary, who had stood by with a horrified countenance as her promise of safety turned to a very different sort of proposition to that upon which her mistress had relied, made an effort worthy of one far above a chambermaid’s lowly station. The brown-haired girl stepped fiercely between Philip and Lady Evangeline, her hands clenched in little fists before her midriff and a defiant expression upon her face.

  “I shall do no such thing, Philip Norris! Everyone said you would come to no good, and here you are a pirate, on a pirate ship, and deceiving good girls into perdition!”

  Captain Mountjoy let out a guffaw, and Philip couldn’t help smiling at Mary’s bravery. The maid’s face grew even more rebellious as she faced her old village playmate, so close in those days that they had called each other ‘cousin,’ but then she cast a look at the captain that betrayed the fear she truly felt. And should feel, Philip thought, for Mary had of course done nothing but let her own backside in for as uncomfortable an initiation as her mistress would feel.

  At that moment, however, a knock came at the door, and the cry outside it that all stood ready to warp out into the harbor.

  “Tie these girls up, if you please, Mr. Norris,” the captain said, “and let us see to catching the tide. We shall strip and whip them before the men, and then break them in, once we have the harbor at our backs.”

  Chapter Three

  Evangeline watched the captain, the most odious man upon whom she had ever laid eyes, depart from the cabin. She heard his voice raised in command as soon as the door had closed behind his horrible back, and she turned again to Philip with a renewed plea in her eyes.

  She had seen something there—perhaps not real kindness, or real sympathy, but certainly a compunction of some kind when it came to carrying out Captain Mountjoy’s dreadful commands to the fullest degree. Now, however, though Evangeline could still discern less cruelty in Philip than she had seen in his superior officer, his eyes showed nevertheless a firmness of purpose and his chin a resolve that gave her little hope.

  Before he could say or do anything in furtherance of the captain’s order to tie the girls up, though, Mary flew at him, her arms flailing.

  “You!” she managed to shriek, as he easily overpowered the maid, taking her wrists into his strong hands and holding them tightly before Mary’s nails could reach his face as she had tried to do. The dark-haired girl turned her head to her mistress. “Fly, my lady! Off this ship... out the window... over the side if you must.”

  But Philip had begun to shake his head, and though his words seemed to hold some of the regret Evangeline had seen before in his eyes, he spoke with the clear intent of doing Captain Mountjoy’s will.

  “My
lady, do not think of it,” he said before Evangeline could even start toward the window at the stern of the ship, to see whether she could get it open or perhaps burst through it by the force of her body thrown against its glass panes and wooden lattice. “Through the door the men will tie you up more tightly than I mean to, and through the window you’d be cut to ribbons before you even reached the water where I am quite sure you would quickly drown.”

  Evangeline watched Mary’s face crumple into sorrow, and felt her own countenance go through a like transformation. She could see on her maid’s lips that the girl thought this disaster her fault for assuring Evangeline that the noble girl might find safety with the aid of her cousin.

  “Mary,” she said, “do not... do not blame yourself. It was my choice to fly from home.”

  She looked at Philip, and she remembered the captain, and a black despair settled upon her as the tears flowed from her eyes. Slavery seemed to lie in every direction. Evangeline thought for an instant of begging Philip for a promise to return her to Hobberly Hall, in exchange for the assurance of some huge ransom, but even if she should do so, would she not quickly be married to the man from whom she had lately flown?

  “Come now, my lady,” Philip said, drawing Mary by her wrists toward a sturdy chair, “sit down upon the other chair, here, and let me tie you, as I will tie Mary too. You have a whipping coming, and I am afraid you must soon lose your maidenhead, but if you behave yourself the captain will not mistreat you.”

  “Not... mistreat me?” Evangeline’s face blazed hot as the sun and her lips remained parted after she had uttered the incredulous words. How could the young man say in the same breath that she must... have that done to her, against her will... the whipping and the other thing, and that Captain Mountjoy would not mistreat her?

  Her conduct abed with Mary the previous night suddenly came back to her, and the way she had demanded the shameful service of her maid, the retelling of the lewd tale of Mary’s defloration. The girl who had spent under her maid’s fingers, imagining a man having his way with her as John had done with Mary... what was mistreatment, for such a wayward runaway?

  “How could you, Philip?” Mary pleaded now with the broad-shouldered man who seemed to Evangeline to bear the stamp of his village origins with such striking confidence. She might, she thought suddenly, have mistaken him for a soldier or even one of the naval officers who had dined from time to time at Hobberly Hall.

  “Sit you down, Mary,” Philip replied, enforcing his words with a pressure upon the girl’s waist and shoulders that lowered her into the heavy oaken chair, her red, tearstained face still turned up in complaint. Philip pulled from his pocket a length of rope, and Evangeline watched helplessly and with a strange mixture of emotion she did not wish to contemplate as the first mate went behind the chair to bind Mary’s wrists.

  “You do not know what it is like,” he said very simply, “upon the seas.” His voice suggested to Evangeline that he felt no need to excuse himself for his deeds in furtherance of Captain Mountjoy’s ends, though perhaps he took no pride in them, either. He sounded, to her ear, like a man confident in the basic, natural justice of what he did—one in hope, though that hope be not a robust one, of making the ground for his confidence plain to two young women who he supposed could not comprehend his meaning, in their lack of experience of the true ways of the world.

  It made her cheeks blaze, because he was right: how could two girls, whether baseborn or noble, know what it was like upon the seas?

  “Sit you down, my lady,” Philip said, standing up and paying no heed, Evangeline thought, to Mary’s furious glare at him. Evangeline looked at the other chair, facing Mary’s at the side of the captain’s table.

  “Philip Norris,” Mary said, “you are the most vicious rascal who ever lived. Set us free this instant!”

  Philip turned to her with a stern look upon his face that Evangeline had not seen there earlier. He reached again into his coat, and he withdrew a handkerchief, which he stuffed into Mary’s mouth, holding her chin firmly as her eyes went wide.

  “Mary Smith,” he said, “I am doing this to teach you, and your mistress, of how you must resolve to act now. What I do, I do only so that you understand that the captain and my shipmates will do much worse, and with much less provocation.”

  The maid made muffled cries, then, as Philip took a knife from his belt. Evangeline cried out in protest, thinking his words had been a sham, and he meant to hurt Mary. She scrambled to sit in the chair as he had commanded, hoping thus to avoid harm for her friend and servant, for whose plight she felt terribly responsible.

  But Philip, with his dark eyes locked on hers, turned the knife so that he could slide it down Mary’s chest, inside her gown and her shift beneath it, and he said, “Mary, you will I fear have to sew your clothes, but I can promise you will not need them for a long while.”

  Then, with a practiced and almost savage movement, he cut through Mary’s clothing, so that her bosom came spilling out, naked, with her sweet nipples, the size of a silver penny, pointing straight at Evangeline. In the quiet of the captain’s quarters—where even Mary’s muffled protests had given way to little heaving sobs—the cries of the sailors... no, the pirates, Evangeline thought... came loud above them, where she knew the captain must stand on the quarterdeck. The creaking of ropes sounded like a sentence of doom as the Royal Anne began to make way out into the harbor, drawn by the cable and the anchor at its end, the crew heaving at the capstan to warp her out from the dock.

  “Do you wish me to do the same to you, my lady?” Philip asked, raising his eyebrows inquisitively though Evangeline’s position in the chair indicated her answer clearly, she thought—she had complied, after all, with his command to sit down!

  Mary’s face, so red, and her eyes, so wide and beseeching, made the sight of her pretty breasts so much more moving to Evangeline that the mistress thought she might faint with the mixture of emotions and sensations she felt. She looked at Philip and shook her head, slowly at first and then more rapidly.

  He advanced toward her then, his strong body looming over her and his knife still in his hand. Evangeline gave another little cry, for the thought of the stripping and whipping promised by the captain came upon her mind—and her body—very urgently. Would it matter if Philip should cut the clothes from her now, or later? She and Mary were to be stripped, and whipped, and...

  Broken in. Those were the words the captain had used... then break them in. The thought made her whimper through her nose as she watched Philip, standing in front of her now, put his knife back in his belt, and fetch another length of rope. He looked down into her face, and she saw that his own blue eyes held resolve but also something that confirmed the impression she had gotten previously... not regard, or even pity, but a sort of carefulness. This man, with his rough handsomeness, meant to break her in with his shipmates, but he also wanted to ensure that the girls only received what they could bear.

  What we... Evangeline swallowed hard, because the word that floated into her mind made her cheeks blaze. What we need.

  What we deserve.

  Looking up at him, she felt her lips part, because she could see he wanted to touch her body, awaken her body, in the ways her governess had taught her to think shameful and Mary had taught her to think delicious despite and even because of their wickedness. Their eyes seemed constrained by some half-sensed force compounded of a noble girl’s longing for more than her father’s manor promised and a village boy’s ambitions of self-mastery through a life of adventure. More lurked there, too, in that mutual gaze: the wantonness of Evangeline’s needy hips and the dominance of Philip’s broad shoulders.

  The creaking of the Royal Anne’s ropes and Mary’s continued muffled protests as she sat with her breasts shamefully exposed, the cries of the pirates and the cursing of Captain Mountjoy heard from above them through the planks of the quarterdeck that made the ceiling of his cabin... all seemed softer as she looked into Philip’s eyes, her
own going very wide as his narrowed almost quizzically, as if he, too, felt the need to puzzle out how they might relate to one another, heiress and pirate.

  To his captain she represented a prize and a plaything, and Evangeline’s heart pounded in her breast as she found in Philip’s face the selfsame hunger to have her... yes, to break her in... just as he pleased. But what made her eyes go wide came from a different direction, for beside the hunger she saw the other thing, the care.

  It vanished into a hard expression, then; a decisive downturn of his chin and a hardening of his brow, as Philip moved behind her and began to twist the rope around her hands. Evangeline couldn’t help turning her head and struggling instinctively against the discomfort of the binding, but he said very sharply, “Hold still, girl, or your gown will be cut and your titties will come out, just like Mary’s.”

  Evangeline turned forward to look at Mary, with her bosom exposed and her hands tied behind her, the poor girl’s face bright red, and she knew she couldn’t bear to have the same done to her. She had never imagined a man could do that, or that it could serve as a punishment and a lesson. It seemed so terrible, the more terrible because of the turmoil it caused in her belly and down below her belly, to see her maid like that and, in her mind’s eye, to see herself thus exposed, both of them readied for the pleasure of the captain and his piratical crew.

  Readied for breaking in.

  Readied for fucking, whether we wish it or not.

  Chapter Four

  As he finished tying Lady Evangeline’s wrists, Philip fought the urge to free her bosom despite her obedience: to free it, as he had freed Mary’s, and to fondle the mistress’ sweet breasts, too, as he had not fondled the maid’s. Something so very alluring sat in the eyes of the noble girl, so conscious of his hunger for her and so welcoming of it in spite of her innocence, that he had to fight with his emotions on what seemed two different fronts: as he felt the soft skin of her arms and restrained them behind her, he wanted both to kiss her tenderly and to strip all her clothes from her lovely body so that he might teach her the ways of Cupid’s groves—their darker, shadier paths in particular.