Trade Winds Read online

  Trade Winds

  A Lords of Sin Novel

  Angel Payne

  This book is an original publication of Waterhouse Press.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

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  Copyright © 2019 Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Design by Waterhouse Press

  Cover photographs: Shutterstock

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  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Continue the Lords of Sin Series with

  Excerpt from Promised Touch

  Also by Angel Payne

  About Angel Payne

  Prologue

  January, 1770

  Off the coast of His Majesty’s Royal Colony, Isle of Saint Kitts, West Indies

  The world was chaos.

  The sea’s most feared predator clawed its way into the Gabrielle’s Hope. The talons of fire were merciless, clawing into every inch of the planking, skids, and decks of the vessel that had been home to the seventy-four passengers and crew members who now swarmed at her rails, a mass of panic.

  “Pirates!”

  The horrified gasps spread fast. Women fainted but awakened to the news that brutes had boarded, raided the captain’s private hold, and left, apparently not interested in anything or anyone else.

  “They just left us here to die, is all!” someone wailed.

  The chaos rose to a crescendo. Screams were thicker than the smoke. A stampede surged across the main deck and back again. A brawl broke out on the quarter deck; two crewmen fought over the last jug of ale.

  But the most terrified cry of all wasn’t a bellow, a wail, or a sob. It was the barely- discernible call of an eight-year-old girl, clinging unnoticed to the side of a stairwell as the crowd jostled past her.

  “Mummy?”

  Golden cried it over and over through the smoke. She was jarred loose from her hold on the stairwell, slammed to the deck like a forgotten parcel. “What’s happening?” she whimpered, reaching behind to push herself up. “Where’s Mummy? And why is everyone crying?”

  Dear mercy. She’d wandered off for but a moment, just long enough to gaze at the pretty red flag on the other ship off the bow Daddy called the port side. She’d hoped so badly to see another little boy or girl standing beneath that grand banner, looking for a friend just like she…

  That was when the first shriek cut the air. Seconds after, the acrid tang of smoke had hurt her nose. She’d turned back to Mummy, only to find a cloud of gray, stinking air.

  “Mummy? Where are you?”

  Golden’s stomach knotted when she still couldn’t find the tapered, ladylike hand she knew so well. It was the hand with the sapphire ring on it, the one with the stones shaped like a fish. She had named the fish Nirvana, the pretty word Daddy told her meant “paradise.” For that was where they were going, he’d told her, a paradise in the New World to start their new life together.

  Where is she?

  “Mummy! I can’t find you!”

  She chewed her lower lip, struggling to be brave. She gulped back tears. They burned her throat along with the smoke and soot. Daddy had been so proud of her, calling her his “good little sailor.” Good sailors weren’t afraid of anything, and they didn’t cry.

  But she couldn’t help her scream as the ship lurched, and a mighty groan of timber signaled the death throes of the lower decks. Flames ate their way up the mainmast before igniting the sails into a wall of fire.

  Things were a frenzy now. Everything was loud and confusing and hot, so very hot.

  “Mummy, Daddy, where are you?” She pushed out as much volume as her lungs would allow. “I’m here. I’m here. Please help me. I can’t find you!”

  A resounding crash sounded somewhere below. The ship jolted and shuddered. There was more screaming, filling Golden’s ears, drowning out her thoughts. She was shoved and jostled as people wrapped themselves around bulkheads to defy the worsening slant of the deck. Like them, Golden stretched out with all her might, praying for something, anything, to latch on to. But she was too small. And everyone else was too desperate.

  The ship lurched again.

  Her worst fear came true.

  She slid faster down the incline. Faster.

  Until there was no more deck below her.

  “Mummeeee!”

  The water closed around her, an endless black monster. She opened her mouth to scream, but the liquid beast invaded her insides, too. She flailed and fought. Her blood raced. Her head was surely going to explode. No! You’re not going to eat me alive. You’re not going to kill me. You’re not going—

  “Help!”

  She greedily inhaled the sooty air as she came up. After another massive gulp, she repeated the shout. Sea water wretched back up her throat, making her cough and sputter as she grabbed for a passing piece of driftwood. Chips of white paint came off on her hands as she took hold of the plank. She twisted her head to read the wood beneath her: –lle’s Hope. A gruesome feeling twisted her tummy.

  It was nothing compared to the feeling of beholding the atrocity before her.

  Not her wildest nightmares, not even the scariest stories Mum read her from the Bible, were this dreadful. The flames ate at the sky, their roar second only to the wails and shrieks that came from what was left of the Hope. She stared in horror at the burning body-things that were cursed enough to still live, racing aimlessly about, finally plummeting to their black water graves. Then she could stand it no more and she squeezed her eyes shut, hoping it would all disappear with the simple task of ignoring it.

  It didn’t. The screams were proof of that. She couldn’t ignore them. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she begged to the roiling air. “Pray for us—oh, please just hear me, Sweet Mary. I need you!”

  “Golden?”

  Like the miracle she pleaded for, it came. Golden snapped her head up, heart pumping with hope.

  “Mummy?”

  “Golden? Oh, Golden. My baby. My little girl.”

  Her elation was slashed by the sorrow in Mummy’s voice. It sounded like she was crying. Even more horribly, it wasn’t coming from the sky at all. Or anywhere near her in the water.

  It was coming from the ship.

  “Mummy!”

  But her volume was for naught. She watched, helpless and agonized, as Mummy stumbled along the one remaining deck of the Hope.

  “Golden.” Her voice was still so hopeless.

  “I’m right here. Here!”
/>   “Golden, I love you.”

  “Don’t say it like that. Please. Don’t say it—noooo!”

  She lunged toward the fiery shell of the ship as the ocean swallowed it.

  Golden didn’t stop screaming until her throat dried into a rasp.

  And then the awful silence came. And with it, the sea monster.

  It sneaked up with a clickering noise that sounded almost friendly, and a nudge of the same intent. But when Golden turned, the slimy gray snout was another matter. Her gulp felt like a rock in her throat. She was so petrified, she could only stare back at the big thing, wordless. Daddy had chided her about thinking of silliness like sea serpents, but as she gaped at the thing’s big fins, long tail, and the two round blue eyes, all she could think of were the stories the town bullies had told her before they’d left Shropshire. Dear God, she’d take back all the equally nasty insults she’d issued by way of her fists, if only the monster would go away.

  She gasped as the creature did just the opposite. It slowly dipped under the water then glided in a smooth line toward her. Her whole body went numb, except for the horrible throbbing of her chest.

  A hole in the beast popped open. From that, it spurted air at her. She screamed and thrashed, falling back and barely keeping her hold on the board.

  The serpent followed her.

  “Go away!”

  The gray snout defied her, rising from the water just beyond her legs. Not that she could move them; she was horribly tangled in the layers of her dress. And numbing fear.

  The beast submerged just before it got to her. Then there was only long, awful silence—interrupted by the ruthless pounding of her heart.

  Until the slimy thing lifted her out of the water.

  Golden shrieked. All the air left her body as she slapped the water and began to sink. Once again, the snout nudged her and brought her to the surface.

  She took a few deep breaths before she opened her eyes again. The calm blue eye was still there, watching, waiting. Something deep inside told her to reach out, that it would be all right.

  She tentatively wrapped her arm around the large top fin. The beast made another clickering sound in reply. It seemed a very happy sound.

  She smiled and wrapped her other arm around the fin. She pressed her face against it, closing her eyes in contentment.

  When she opened them again, seemingly a moment later, her friend was gone. She was no longer wet. The world had transformed. Everything was very white. White, clear sun. White, sandy beach. White, white eyes that gazed down at her from a face of dark, dark skin.

  Golden bolted up with what she could manage of a shriek. She scrambled backward then jumped to her feet.

  A soft chuckle rained on her as she fell down at once, drowning in dizziness. She rolled over and glared.

  Her anger turned to wonder. Mercy. The dark, dark skin covered the form of a man. He was tall and gangly, reminding her of Daddy’s pipecleaning wires. He had funny, clumped-together hair. It looked like a black bramble bush atop his head. She got to her feet once more, slowly this time, as her fear changed to consuming curiosity.

  But she stopped short when she noticed more of his kind behind him, pointing at her. Golden frowned back.

  “Staring is impolite,” she snapped.

  They ran to the edge of the jungle, just beyond the rocks. Only the first man stayed, leaning against a long, fancy-looking walking stick with a pointy end on top.

  “Forgive them, little one,” he said gently. “They not see many like you before. You come from far, ah?”

  Golden nodded slowly.

  “You be safe, no worry.”

  She burned with wonderment again. How did he know exactly what she was thinking?

  “I am Guypa, the Arawak leader.” He pressed a proud hand to the string of seashells around his neck. “When I see the dolphin bring you, I ask Yani, our shaman, what he think of this. He says it be a good sign, maybe a holy sign, he not know what yet. The dolphin bring you. Is good for Guypa now.”

  “The dolphin?” she pondered. “The…the big sea monster?”

  The man smiled. It showed nearly all his teeth and made Golden feel warm inside. “Ah. Yes. He would seem like that to you, little porpoise.”

  “My name is Golden,” she protested.

  “Fine. We call you Golden. But to some of my people you be always porpoise girl, the sea goddess. You have hair of the sun and eyes of precious yellow stones.” He swept an arm toward the water. “You came from the fire on the ocean.”

  Golden gulped as he said the words. “The fire on the ocean,” she whispered, blinking back the tears again. She would not cry, she vowed with all her heart. Good little sailors were brave…

  Again, as if knowing what she needed, the man put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed softly. “I know, little one,” he murmured. “We watched the fire from our mountain. We prayed for your people. We prayed to Agwe, the great god of water and the boats. We even dyed a ram blue and sacrificed it to him, a thing that is very long and—how your people say it?—ahhh yes, costly. Then we prayed to Ogoun, the god of war and of fire, and we even make prayers to your god Jehovah.”

  He let out a long sigh that drew Golden’s face up. The expression on his face was like someone had showed him the pain of her own heart. His kind eyes were pinched and hard as they gazed out over the ocean. “But nothing worked, little Golden,” he continued softly. “Nothing ever does. Nothing can destroy him.”

  “Him?” She stepped closer to him and yanked on the soft animal skin that draped his skinny hips. “Him who? The one who took Mummy and Daddy?”

  “Him, Golden.” His voice was suddenly hard. “Yes, the one who take your ship. The one who takes all the ships. The monster who brings terror on all the islands and takes from all our people, too. He start four moons ago and does not stop yet. For that, he makes us fear the moonlight now, instead of dancing in it. He is the evil one, little Golden. The Moonstormer.”

  “The Moonstormer.”

  She repeated it in a slow whisper. For even in her eight-year-old mind, Golden knew the word had changed her life forever. Even in her eight-year-old heart, she understood the commitment that name had assigned to her life.

  Because deep within her eight-year-old soul, she’d just learned how to hate.

  Chapter One

  January, 1782

  The Gaverly Villa, Grand Abaco Island, Bahamas

  “God’s rot, I hate nights like this.”

  Mast Stafford looked up as his friend mumbled the expression for the fiftieth time this evening. Wayland, Lord Gaverly, Earl of Pemshire, made an impressive sight standing at the window of the hilltop villa, his hearty frame all but dominating the alcove. But tonight, the man’s stature seemed out of place when it housed a tone as hollow as the Caribbean wind that gusted outside. A tone, Mast admitted, that was frighteningly out of character for his normally robust, outgoing friend.

  Aye, something was out of kilter. But Mast had known that three weeks ago, when he’d received the note entreating his presence here as fast as the sails of his brigantine, the Athena, could carry him. He’d not wasted a moment to comply. He owed his captainship, perhaps his life, to this giant with the face of a bull and the loyalty of a basset hound. Mast’s love and knowledge of the sea had been learned at the elbow of this man, when Gaverly had been his captain. But beyond the passion and the wisdom, Wayland had given him the greatest gift. Hope. Mast had finally started to think about building a better life for himself.

  So he’d come, straining the limits of his canvas and his men in the name of his friend and mentor. Only once he’d arrived in Abaco, the urgency had become confusion. His friend had greeted him personally at the dock when they’d arrived, despite the fact that Wayland was decreed by his king into hiding here as the French-English conflict in the West Indies intensified. Wayland’s true home of Saint Kitts, several hundred miles south, was the next likely hot spot. As if he weren’t King George’s closest confidant and
a top target of the enemy but some merchant with no care in the world, the man guided Mast up to the villa, escorted him to a luxurious drawing room, and instantly brandished crystal tumblers of Jamaican rum.

  Thus passed the afternoon. A crier in the town below called out one, two, then three o’clock. Not a word regarding the ominous missive. Dinner was served. Still not an utterance. Five o’clock. That brought a two-hour accounting of Wayland’s latest letter from “that nervy fop across the ocean,” as he affectionately termed his king in private. England was fine, thank you, though the only thing anyone in London agreed upon these days was the need for overseas conquest and that everyone’s mistress had gone too far in copying their Paris counterparts when coiffures had started to measure three feet high.

  Seven o’clock. Wayland spat his fifty-first curse at the weather. Mast forced down his fifty-first urge to scowl. He took a mannered swallow of his rum, resolving to leave when the tumbler was empty if Gaverly didn’t come up with something more engaging than court gossip by then.

  That was when Gaverly turned and met his eyes.

  Eerie, came the first word to Mast’s mind. If his friend’s voice had been peculiar, then Wayland’s face, normally alive with the vibrancy of a man half his age, was outright surreal.

  “Mast…you know you’re like a son to me, lad.”

  It was likely the only statement that could leave him speechless. This was the kind of mush a man like Gaverly saved for his death bed, not an evening of tossing back rum with the friend who’d once been just a dock waif begging for work aboard his ship. But Mast found it impossible to believe Wayland would be dying any time in the next century. So what the curses was he babbling about?