Lord of Devil Isle

  Lord of Devil Isle

  Connie Mason

  LEISURE BOOKS NEW YORK CITY

  Excerpt

  “THE POST AS MY MISTRESS HAS BEEN VACATED. WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN APPLYING FOR THE POSITION?”

  “Captain Scott!” She raised a hand to slap him, but he caught her wrist and held it fast.

  “Miss Upshall, you are far too highly wrought,” he said silkily. He brought her wrist to his lips and brushed them across her pulse point, never taking his gaze from hers.

  She tried to pull away, but his grip was firm and persistent. Like a bird charmed by a snake, she lost the will to resist and allowed him to continue to hold her hand.

  He stroked the back of it with his thumb. Tendrils of pleasure followed his touch, ebbing and flowing like a rising tide. She knew she shouldn’t allow it, but it felt amazingly good.

  “In my experience,” he said softly, his voice a low rumble, like a lion’s purr, “when a woman protests this much, it means she hasn’t had the attention of a man recently and is in desperate need of it.”

  That broke the spell.

  “You conceited swine! Perhaps if you consorted with women other than barmaids and trollops, you’d recognize a lady’s revulsion when you see it.”

  His gaze dropped to her breasts, where the hard tips showed like a pair of raised buttons under the man’s shirt she was wearing.

  “Believe me, Miss Upshall. I can read the signals you’re sending, and revulsion is not in evidence.”

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Excerpt

  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

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Acknowledgments

  Praise

  Other Books By Connie Mason

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  1775, Bermuda

  Formerly known as Devil’s Isle

  Nicholas Scott wondered how much longer she’d last. Judging from the helpless little sounds she was making, his mistress would be fit to burst if he didn’t let her come soon. Her muscles began to tighten. Her back arched.

  Magdalen’s release always made her whole body whip in shivering waves, like a beautiful fish writhing on the hook. He loved playing her, letting the line run out before he drew her back to his net. Nick took a taut nipple into his mouth and bit down hard enough to make her breath hitch.

  She lifted her hips, pressing her hot mound against his hand. She was well and truly caught this time. He smiled in satisfaction as his talented fingers drew her closer to her peak. Any man who could make his mistress dance on the edge of pleasure this long had a right to a certain smugness about his bed skills.

  She rolled toward him and hooked a leg over his hip, running a smooth heel along the curve of his buttocks and down the back of his thigh.

  His balls throbbed and drew into a tight bunch. The little minx had skills of her own.

  He ached to bury himself in her softness, but Nick considered it a point of honor not to take pleasure before he gave it. Love was never part of the bargain with Magdalen, but bliss was coin he traded freely. A man could afford to be generous with his cock. Only a fool trusted a woman with his heart.

  A flash of lightning illuminated his bedchamber, revealing Magdalen’s sweetly rounded, sweat-slick body in stark flickers. Outside the multipaned windows, the jalousie shutters rattled with the force of the storm rolling over the island. Rain lashed the lime-washed roof, sluiced down the gutters and emptied into the cistern beneath Nick’s fine, stout home. The wind moaned in tandem with Magdalen.

  On a wicked night like this, what else did he have to do but torment his mistress with unrelieved passion? She was already beyond pleading.

  She came with the next crack of thunder, convulsing under his hand and crying his name.

  “About time,” he chided as he settled between her splayed legs.

  “As if you didn’t enjoy making me beg.” She squirmed down, teasing against the tip of him.

  “So much that I’ll see you do it again before we’re through, wench!” he promised.

  Her throaty laugh carried a challenge he was more than ready to rise to, but before he could sheath himself in her slick wetness, someone pounded on his chamber door.

  “Cap’n! Cap’n Sc-scott!”

  “Go away, Higgs!” Nick bellowed at his first mate.

  Peregrine Higgs was a fine sailor, and he never stuttered when a deck was surging beneath his feet, but dry land seemed to clamp his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

  “B-but, Cap’n.” The banging resumed with urgency.

  “Keep it up and I’ll have to gut you, lad. I’m thoroughly engaged at present,” Nick growled. He plunged into Magdalen, determined to ignore his first mate. Magdalen’s breath hissed over her teeth as she expanded to receive all of him.

  Higgs beat on the door as if it were a drum.

  With a curse, Nick pulled out of his mistress and stomped to the door, the musky scent of sex clinging to him. Heedless of his nakedness, he threw the door open.

  “Unless the Second Coming is upon us, you’re a dead man, Higgs.”

  “S-sorry, Lord Nick.”

  Even though England had sent Bermuda a governor, the island folk still called Nicholas Scott the “Lord of Devil Isle,” looking to him for practical leadership. If they could see him now—naked, enraged and fully roused—they’d surely shorten the title to just the “Devil Himself.” Broad-shouldered, lean-hipped and generously endowed, Nick was a sight to make any woman melt.

  And any man doubt his own masculinity.

  Nick’s black scowl made Higgs stumble back a pace. The first mate studied his own boot tips with complete absorption.

  Nick glowered at him. “Well?”

  Higgs tugged at his forelock, but kept his gaze glued to the floor. “B-begging yer pardon—”

  “Out with it, man.”

  “Sh-shh-ship on the reef.”

  Here was a matter more urgent than even Magdalen’s soft wet secrets. “Why didn’t you say so? Sound for the crew.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.” Higgs was off at a run.

  Nick loped to the window and cranked open the shutters. Rain streaked the panes in gusting sheets, but he could still see well enough. He’d picked this spot to build his home for its commanding view of the treacherous reefs that ringed Bermuda. The squall was letting up as the storm moved eastward. When the clouds parted, moonlight showed the dark blot of a ship in distress, caught on the island’s jagged teeth. In concentric rings, the ship-killing reefs lurked barely beneath the surface of the waves, waiting to claim the unwary mariner.

  “Oh, Nick, never say you’re going out there. Not on a beastly night like this.” Magdalen sat up, arms
crossed beneath her plump breasts.

  “There’s no help for it. Ships tend not to founder in fair weather.” He bent to fetch his discarded slop trousers, tugging them up over his hips without bothering to don his smallclothes. There wasn’t time. “If we can beat that cursed Bostock and his lot to the wreck, it’s as good as a pirate’s prize to me and the crew.”

  The long arm of British civilization had reached even this distant Atlantic outpost. The island’s appointed governor saw to it pirates danced a hempen jig in short order. Folk came all the way from the southernmost tip of the archipelago to St. Georges when there was a hanging to be seen on the dock. Piracy no longer paid, but a salver was hailed a hero and awarded the foundered vessel, not to mention its valuable cargo, for his trouble.

  Nick’s crew would divide the wreck’s stores—fine woolens, crockery, foodstuffs and livestock, perhaps even some serious coin. Once he claimed the beleaguered vessel as his, Nick could wait for fair winds to winch the hull off the reef, repair the damage and sell it, if he wished.

  Of course, he could always use another ship for his salt-raking runs to the Turks. Despite his threat to gut Higgs earlier, Nick figured his first mate was almost ready to captain his own vessel, sailing under Nick’s colors.

  Sullenly, Magdalen rose from the bed and helped him pull his long shirt over his head.

  “I might be gone when you return,” she threatened and gave him her back.

  He swatted her bare rump. “No, you won’t.”

  She turned and molded herself against him, grazing the drop front of his trousers with her hand. His cock strained toward her of its own accord. She laughed, low and musical.

  “No, I guess I won’t be gone.” She rocked against him, pressing kisses to his neck. “But it’s so horrible out. Just this once, why don’t you let Bostock have it?”

  That bastard’s already taken enough from me. The words almost escaped his lips, but he bit them back. Magdalen Frith might share his bed, but that didn’t entitle her to a share of his private pain. The ledger of wrongs between him and Adam Bostock was woefully lopsided and the reckoning long overdue. Nick waited only for the opportune moment, when he was sure his final victory wouldn’t taint anyone else. Perhaps on that day, the ghosts could finally be stilled.

  But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to outsail the man at every opportunity in the meantime. Nick pulled out of Magdalen’s grasp and shrugged on his jacket.

  “Don’t wait up.” His gaze raked her wolfishly, and he flashed a wicked grin. “I’ll wake you when I return.”

  Magdalen climbed back into the sumptuous bed and plumped a pair of pillows behind her head. She stretched like a cat, arms and legs spread wide, then sat up straight and hefted her own breasts, pinching the mulberry nipples taut, offering them to him.

  “Sure you won’t stay?”

  “The wreck won’t wait,” he said over his shoulder. “Your lovely tits will.”

  He slammed the door behind him just in time to miss the crash of crockery on the other side. Nicholas shook his head. “Damn. Shouldn’t have had that tea in bed. There goes the last of the Wedgewood.”

  Higg’s signal bell clanged over the rush of wind through the palm trees. Nicholas slid off his horse’s back and tossed the stallion’s reins to a “wharf rat,” one of the boys who haunted the docks. There were always a few around, lolling behind barrels of pitch or coils of rope, hoping for a berth as cabin boy on one of the bigger ships that put in to St. Georges. Nick sent tuppence sparkling in the air after the reins.

  “Walk him back to his stable and tell my steward I said to give you another pence if the horse isn’t lathered when you arrive. There’s a good lad.” Nick strode up the gangplank and onto the Susan Bell. “Belay that racket, Mr. Higgs. You’ll wake the governor. Lord knows, the honorable Mr. Bruere needs his beauty sleep.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.” Peregrine Higgs stopped tugging the cord on the ship’s bell and ordered the remaining wharf rats to loose the mooring lines. “All hands present and accounted for, except Digory Bock. Tatem says Bock had a tooth drawn at the barber yesterday. He’s been nursing it with a bottle of rum ever since.”

  “Very well. Make a note in the ship’s log that Mr. Bock shall not receive his customary share of this night’s gain.”

  “Aye-aye, Cap’n. I’ll see to it immediately.”

  Nicholas was no longer surprised by the change in his first mate’s speech once he was aboard ship. Perhaps Peregrine Higgs just needed to be where his world made sense for his tongue to work freely. Whatever the reason, Higgs never gave Nick cause to regret elevating him to first mate.

  Nick’s crew scrambled over the Susan Bell, shinnying up the rigging and making her ready to sail into the blustery night. A two-masted sloop, she was shallow on the draft, quick as a whore’s trick, and answered to the helm like a lady, gently bred.

  Nick set his face against the wind and rain and took the wheel himself. He piloted her out of St. Georges Harbor, muscling her through the narrow path between the little stepping stone islands that dotted the waterway. The Susan B’s running lamps were lit. Once she cleared the mouth of the inlet, the souls on board the wreck should be able to see that help was coming.

  He hoped the captain of the wreck would heave to and surrender in time for him to save whatever crew and passengers were aboard. Sometimes, a ship’s master refused help, knowing he forfeited his ship and all his goods by accepting aid. Nick hated to see lives needlessly lost.

  Nicholas fingered the pistol he’d shoved into his belt at the last minute and decided he’d help the other ship’s captain make a quick capitulation, if need be. This wasn’t a forgiving night to be abroad.

  The back side of the squall buffeted them. Nicholas shouted an order to lay on as much canvas as he thought the Susan Bell would bear. Her sails billowed out like a woman’s breasts, and the ship quickened, running before the wind like a tart leading her lover a merry chase.

  “Shall I relieve you, sir?” Peregrine Higgs was beside him now, ready to take the wheel.

  “I stand relieved.” Nicholas gave up the helm and strode to the heaving rail, pulling out his spyglass. He trained the lens on the wreck.

  She was a brigantine. Not a slaver. They’d have caught wind of her by now if she carried a hold full of human misery. She was a fine merchantman, no doubt full of goods bound for the Colonies. But now she canted on her side like a beached whale, her canvas spilling wind. The sea poured in through a breach near the waterline. Nicholas counted twelve guns along her port side. Well armed meant she was richly loaded. There seemed to be a small fire on the poop, but the steady rain kept it from taking hold.

  “Praise be to God for small favors,” Nicholas murmured. Fire at sea was a sailor’s worst nightmare.

  He scanned the horizon, but he didn’t see any sign of the Sea Wolf, Bostock’s cursed black-sailed schooner.

  “Bring her smartly along the port side, if you please, Mr. Higgs.” Nick smiled. This was going to mean a windfall for him and his crew.

  “A sail, Cap’n,” able seaman Tatem called out. “A point off the port bow.”

  Lights winked suddenly on the far side of the wreck.

  “Bostock,” Nicholas muttered. “The bastard’s been running dark and crept in close without showing himself. But we can still beat him. Loose the t’gallants.”

  More canvas unfurled and the Susan Bell leaped forward, surging toward the wreck.

  “Man overboard! Starboard bow.”

  Nicholas leaned over the rail, straining to follow the line from Tatem’s outstretched arm. A wail soughed through the rigging, too high-pitched to be wind.

  “A woman,” Nick muttered. The dark form in the water disappeared as a wave crested over it.

  “I make three souls there,” Tatem said, his eagle eyes narrowed to slits. “Clinging to a spar.”

  And at least one a woman. If she was bleeding…

  “Any fins in the water?” Nick demanded, looking back over his s
houlder at the wreck. He was closer than Bostock. By rights, the brigantine should fall into his hand like a ripe plum.

  “Not yet.” Tatem was so farsighted, Nick often relied on him more than his spyglass. “But if they keep up that caterwauling and thrashing about, it won’t be long.”

  Nick had spotted a fourteen-foot tiger shark off Spanish Point a week ago but hadn’t been able to spear the beastie. It faded into the Bermudian blue and disappeared in the deeper water off the shelf as soon as Nick’s jolly boat hit the water. If that monster should be about now, it’d make quick work of a body adrift.

  And it might have friends.

  If Nicholas continued on to the wreck, the current would carry the castaways to Iceland before he found them again in these heaving seas.

  Assuming they somehow managed not to become fish food in the meantime.

  “Heave to,” Nick roared, both to be heard over the wind and because his frustration wouldn’t let him give the order without shouting. Why had the lubbers abandoned ship?

  And why, by all that was holy, couldn’t the fools be bobbing in the deep near Bostock’s Sea Wolf instead of his vessel?

  “Mr. Tatem, lower the boat.”

  As he climbed over the gunwale to take the tiller of the jolly boat, he saw mooring lines fly from the Sea Wolf to the wounded vessel.

  He’d lost another prize to Adam Bostock.

  Nicholas gritted his teeth. If sharks didn’t get these idiots in the water, he might have to kill them himself.

  Chapter Two

  The broken-off hatch cover was barely big enough for the three of them to cling to without losing buoyancy. Sobbing and shivering, Sally tried to scramble up on it again, but Eve pulled her back.

  “Just hang on,” Eve ordered as a wave broke over the women. “It’s not big enough to ride.”

  The frame of canvas-covered wood was only about four feet square. Eve Upshall didn’t voice her fears about what might happen if they should lose this little bit of flotsam keeping them afloat. It might just push her friends over the edge. Penelope was lock-jawed and saucer-eyed. Sally was near hysteria already.