Eden waited with her heart in her throat.

After another nerve-racking moment, he prowled on.

Just when she started to exhale, a light, swift tapping sound scampered after the captain-was that a dog? The animal stopped suddenly. Along the crack at the bottom of the closet, an eager, rapid snuffling sound arose. Eden's eyes widened in the darkness. She could just make out the tip of a black canine snout. Oh, no...

An explosion of wild barking erupted from the other side of the closet door. She gasped and fell backward against a pile of hard cork life buoys. Panic rose up swiftly, instinct readying her to fight or flee.

"Rudy! Here, boy! Enough o' that!" the officer scolded. "What mischief are you into now?"

Slowly, the hard, firm footsteps returned.

"I think he's cornered one of the ship's cats, my lord."

Their ominous rhythm stopped on the other side of the door. "We'll see."

Jack grabbed Rudy's collar and handed the dog off to Peabody with a nod silently instructing him to take the animal away. He paid no mind to the other officers who had come out of the wardroom and crowded into the pa.s.sageway to see what had caused the commotion.

Turning once more to the closet with narrowed eyes, Jack waved the men back and drew his cutla.s.s in case he was wrong about their stowaway's ident.i.ty. G.o.d's truth, he still wasn't sure if he believed his eyes after the vision of that lithe figure he had spotted in the corridor, standing in a sunbeam.

Warily, he gripped the latch and suddenly threw the door open, thrusting his free hand blindly into the closet. As his questing hand grasped the front of the miscreant's clothing, a small yelp rose from the darkness.

"Come out of there!" he boomed, hauling the stowaway out into the open.

Despite the fact that he'd already guessed it, seeing her again, eye to eye, shocked him to the core. It was Eden Farraday, all right-looking a mess, trapped, and terrified of his wrath.

Jack released her as though he had been burned.

His flabbergasted stare traveled over her, from the soiled bandana tied around her head to the dirty shirt, men's waistcoat, and oversized breeches she wore held up by a length of knotted cord, all the way down to her scuffed, dusty knee boots.

He could hardly find his tongue. "You're going to show up in London looking like that?" he blurted out, still dazed.

She let out a war cry at his cynical greeting, and perhaps he should have known better than to corner the little wild thing, for even as he stood there in astonishment, she attacked, flying at him. She shoved him aside with what he guessed was all her might, though he barely budged, then she launched past him.

He reached for her, but in the blink of an eye, she ducked under his arm and fled. He pivoted and grabbed her, but only got the canvas knapsack on her shoulder. The girl herself kept running.

Jack suddenly looked down and realized she had nicked his pistol right out of its holster on his hip. Now he glowered.

"After her!" he bellowed at his men.

"Her, Captain?" one echoed in surprise.

The young midshipman blanched at Jack's h.e.l.lish glance.

They scrambled to obey.

d.a.m.n her, the maddening minx!

He was right behind the pack of his men, stalking with heavy footfalls down the dim companionway. He'd ring her b.l.o.o.d.y neck for that stunt. How dare she take his weapon-with so many of his men there to witness it? How could he have let her?

Ah, but a beauty like Eden Farraday was made for making fools out of men.

"Where do you think you're going to go?" he roared as she went pounding up the gangway like the fox with the hounds at her heels. "We're in the middle of the d.a.m.ned ocean!"

In her panic, she dashed out onto the upper gun-deck, no doubt blinded by the blaring sunshine after so many days belowdecks.

The baying of his men had roused the crew on duty topside, and by the time Jack reached the top of the gangway, his horde of l.u.s.ty tars had their stowaway surrounded.

"Easy, now, there's a bold lad," good old Higgins was saying, trying to contain the situation.

"Lad or la.s.s?" another sailor yelled. "Cap said it's a her!"

Shocked murmurs rippled through the crew as the rumor traveled across the decks.

Jack saw that although she was ringed in on all sides, the girl struggled to keep them all at bay with her jungle machete in one hand, his stolen pistol in the other.

"A her?" the men were murmuring.

"It can't be," others scoffed.

"He's wearing breeches, ain't he?"

"So? You never heard o' them Queer Moll clubs where the gents prance around wearing ladies' gowns? She could be the opposite of their sort."

"Or a lady pirate, like Mary Read or Anne Bonny!" another helpful soul chimed in.

"I'm not a lady pirate, you mongrels!" Eden hollered at them, but this did nothing to resolve the question. "Stay back!"

Hearty laughter spread across the decks, but Jack frowned, squinting against the sun. This was hardly the sort of thing he cared for his sailors to discuss in front of a young girl, but a dose of male crudity might be exactly what she needed to ill.u.s.trate the fact that the world beyond her green paradise was a dark and strange and frequently dangerous place.

Maybe then the chit would learn she could simply not carry out whatever mad adventure popped into her head. G.o.d, she was as bad as her daft father, he thought as he restrained the surge of protective instinct that coursed through him. Folding his arms across his chest, he let the lads taunt her for a moment while he remained in the shadow of the ship's waist, close enough to intervene if need be. For now, he decided to give her a minute or two to test her mettle. The minx got herself into this. Let's see how well she can get herself out of it.

With raucous humor, the crew continued debating the mystery of their stowaway's gender. Their confusion was understandable, given her boyish clothes and the nimble way she wielded two weapons at once-a fact that infused Jack with an absurd sense of pride in the little tigress.

She had lost weight since their jungle encounter; with her hair tied back beneath the kerchief, her delicate features had been sharpened by hunger. Her athletic leanness had dwindled to a wiry, waiflike fragility, and she was looking decidedly bony, the loose, masculine clothing hanging off her thin frame. But although her smudged, pale face bespoke youthful strength, fierceness, and grim resolve that might have belonged to either s.e.x, for all that, she was just a girl.

Nervously scanning the wall of dirty, sweaty, rough men that ringed her in, her gaze stopped on Jack, her green eyes flashing out a heart-tugging plea for help.

Finally, she seemed to have gotten a good look at his crew and had apparently realized that, aside from her knife and the two bullets in Jack's double-barreled pistol, he was her only possible protection.

He merely lifted his eyebrows and sent her an attentive smile, waiting to see her next move.

At his show of amused indifference, her pleading gaze of a moment ago hardened to one of defiance. A stubborn gleam came into her eyes as if to say, To h.e.l.l with you, Jack Knight. I don't need you, anyway!

Hmm, he thought. Having dealt with innumerable unruly and c.o.c.ky youths before, indeed having been one himself ages ago, he had long since learned how to manage such creatures. They usually made fine sailors after a few months of his pounding them into submission. Eventually they realized that one of them was going to break and it wasn't going to be Jack. Some navy-style discipline was all it took; their juvenile aversion to authority merely required a bit of taming.

But all those countless young sailors he'd subdued had been males, he realized a tad uneasily, and though his crew might still be in the dark on the matter, Jack was acutely aware that their little stowaway was very much a woman-a species, G.o.d knew, that operated under an entirely different set of nature's laws.

Trahern, in charge of the watch, now marched onto the scene. "Leave off! Back to your posts! The captain will deal with the lad! Leave the boy alone, all of you!"

Jack arched a brow sardonically to find Trahern still innocent of their stowaway's true ident.i.ty.

One of the sailors tried to educate him on the matter. "I'm tellin' ye, Mr. Trahern, that there ain't no lad!"

"Aye, it is!" another argued.

"You're blind! I'll bet ye grog rations."

"I'll take that wager! Look at the eyes, aye, you can tell by the mouth of 'er!"

The sailor rolled his eyes. "Pretty little girlies don't use guns!"

"So, what are you, then?" big Ballast the gunner demanded, sauntering up to her without fear of her weapons, his gold tooth flashing, his bald head gleaming in the sun.

Jack tensed a bit, looking on. Every ship had its chief troublemaker, and on The Winds of Fortune, that distinction belonged to Ballast, the surly gunner who fancied himself first among the crew and obeyed only two people on the ship: Mr. Brody and Cap'n Jack.

"La.s.s or lad?" he taunted her. "Show us your bait-'n'-tackle and settle the wager!"

"Stay back!" she warned as Ballast, laughing, made a swipe to grab her arm and missed.

Eden nimbly twisted clear of him.

"Aw, don't be like that," he persisted, circling her, while most of the crew laughed at their sport. "We want to see what you got!"

"Leave the kid be, Ballast," Higgins spoke up, taking a brave step toward the much larger man.

Ballast shoved Higgins and sent him falling back against another cl.u.s.ter of sailors, who caught him. "Why don't you go lick Cap's boots for a while? That's all you're good for!"

Jack was already in motion, marching forward to break it up, but at the last moment, Ballast reached out with a bold laugh, trying to grab her again, and Eden reacted in self-defense, her blade flashing in the sun; Ballast fell back with a garbled curse, a nasty slice across his tattooed forearm.

The crew's raucous laughter turned to shocked gasps.

"Why, you little maggot." Ballast drew his knife. "I'll gut you for that!"

"Try it if you want a bullet in your brain," the girl replied with admirable self-possession. "But I overestimate you, sir. It's clear you haven't got a brain at all!"

At that moment, a gust of wind whipped away the handkerchief tied around her head, and her gorgeous mane of coppery locks came tumbling down around her shoulders, blowing in the breeze.

Every man present gasped aloud-and stared.

"Enough!" Jack jumped down off the quarterdeck into their midst with his cutla.s.s drawn. "This girl is under my protection," he announced as he pa.s.sed a brutal glance across the crowded decks. "If any man lays a hand on her, I will personally hang him from the bowsprit. Understood?"

There were a few sheepish "Aye-aye, sirs," as the men cleared out of his way.

Ballast repented of his rash behavior now that his captain was on deck. He lowered his shaved head as he gripped his bleeding wound. "We, uh, found the stowaway for ye, Cap," he mumbled.

"So I see," Jack said crisply. "Get to the sickbay. You are bleeding all over my deck."

"Aye, Cap." Ballast sent Eden a look of lingering disbelief as he went slinking off to seek the surgeon's care. Jack would deal with him later, and the gunner surely knew it.

"Back to work, men!" Trahern commanded.

"You heard him, ye malingerin' rotters!" Brody barked, reappearing on deck at that moment after his fruitless search of the orlop deck. The men looked lively at the master-at-arms' gravelly bellow.

Jack sent Eden a wrathful glance. It was nice to know the chit could take care of herself, but b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!

He turned to her, read the belated terror in her eyes, and suffered a sharp pang of self-reproach for letting them make sport of her. Still, he trusted he had made his point.

Jack held out his hand. "Give me back my gun."

Her green eyes were wide, still filled with fright. She swept the surrounding crew with a rattled glance. "Not on your life," she said with a gulp.

"Eden, you're already a stowaway, and you stole my weapon in front of my men," he said softly. "Don't make this any worse for us both than it already is."

She wetted her lips with a nervous flick of her tongue and again eyed the crew. "But, Jack-"

"I'm the one you'd better worry about now," he warned in a low voice. "Give me back my d.a.m.ned pistol."

He waited immovably; the crew paused in returning to their tasks and looked on in palpable tension as the fierce little female stowaway dared refuse the captain's order.

Jack flicked his fingers impatiently, beckoning her to hand the gun over; he stretched out his waiting palm.

The same hand from which she had dug out the splinter. In the old parable, the lion never forgot the kind deed, and spared the youth who had helped him.

Jack stared at her intensely.

She agonized over the decision, the war of emotions transparent on her lovely face, but after a long moment, she slowly yielded, handing it over.

Jack clasped his weapon and thrust it back into its holster. "There. Wasn't so hard, was it? Now the knife."

"No!"

He flicked his fingers again.

"It's mine! You can't have it!"

He stared at her.

"No, Jack, please," she begged him in a pitiful whisper.

"Hand it over," he answered in a hard tone. "You've got no choice."

"You're a bully!" she yelled with a flash of renewed temper.

He raised an eyebrow. But he had ways of getting her compliance. "Hand me that knapsack," he said to Trahern, who had taken hold of it. The lieutenant handed him the canvas knapsack that Jack had pulled off Eden's shoulder. "What's in here, my dear?" he asked her, for the bag was very light.

When she failed to answer, he opened it and glanced inside.

Aside from an orange in the side pocket, stolen from his cargo hold, the knapsack contained nothing but some pressed leaves in waxed paper.