Page 91 of The Pirate Queen

“Talking.”

Gutty’s hand twitches at his side near the scabbard where he keeps a lethal twelve-inch dagger. Mendoza shifts backward, his eyes narrowed.

“Be careful,” Grace says, but keeps her voice light.

“You can’t mean to help them?” Gutty asks.

“I haven’t decided.”

“You’ll sign the death warrant of everyone on this island.”

“Look around, Gutty. Do you see any English? Because I don’t. We have time.”

“Time to what? Where will you put”—he pauses to do a rough head count of the bedraggled sailors—“six dozen Spanish sailors? Where will you house them? How will you feed them?”

“By my count it’s over eight dozen.” She glares at him. “And the decision isn’t yours regardless, but g’wan. Say whatever ’tis you’ve come to tell me.”

“They aren’t worth our lives. A single villager lets slip that we’re harboring the wrecked crew of a Spanish galleon, and Bingham will raze this entire island. He’ll not be leaving one of us alive.”

“And how will Bingham know?”

“Because your brother sent word,” Gutty says. He reaches into his shirt and pulls out a letter. Hands it to her. “Bingham arrived in Westport last night. He’s been sent to eliminate the Spanish threat.”

Commander Mendoza steps forward and reaches for her arm. Grace shifts away even as her men shift forward, blades drawn.

“Por favor,” he says, then floods her with a torrent of pleas or promises. She doesn’t know which, because she can’t understand a word of it.

Grace sighs. Curses.

“Gather the others,” she tells Gutty. “It’s time to rid ourselves of these drowned rats.”

Sir Richard Bingham enters the Great Hall of Clare Castle, surrounded by guards. There are four men with him now, and another eight outside. Not enough to threaten her—not with the Murray twins beside her—but certainly enough to make his presence felt.

Bingham has trimmed both hair and beard. Dressed for the occasion in a gray silk doublet and leather jerkin. Cloak and breeches and boots. He’s left the gloves behind, however. Too formal on a day he means to play soldier.

He looks around the Great Hall and Grace feels the violation of his gaze—worse, in many ways, than the times he raked his eyes over her body while looking for some weakness. This is her home. Where she lives. The whitewashed walls and tapestries, the swept floors and heavy table do not seem to impress him. They wouldn’t. Bingham has spent much of his life at the English court, a place where everything is gilded.

“This is an unexpected visit,” she says. Grace does not rise to greet him, but remains seated at the head of the table, hands folded in her lap. It has been two years since this man ordered the death of her eldest son, two years since he imprisoned her in Dublin Castle. “To what do I owe the honor? Governor?”

“It was a mistake to release you from Bermingham Tower,” he says.

“It was not your decision. As I recall.”

“I had not realized The MacWilliam was your son-in-law.”

“ ’Tis not my fault that you govern Connaught so poorly you do not know one chieftain from another.”

“No. Perhaps not.” He moves to the hearth and inspects the tapestry that hangs above the heavy wooden mantel. It shows a hunting scene. Horsemen chasing a great tusked boar through the woods. The hunters carry bows, but every arrow flies wide of the boar as it escapes. “I would have thought you would commission a maritime scene.” He dismisses the tapestry with a flick of his wrist.

“You do not know me at all. And I did not commission that tapestry. My father did. Now why are you on my island?”

“I was told that you were summering here.”

“Only the English use summer as a verb. How did you get to my island, Bingham?”

A mean smile quirks the edge of his mouth as his men study Finn and Murray with narrowed eyes. “I had the great fortune of finding one of your kin in Westport. As I am here on official state business, he agreed to ferry myself and a handful of men across the bay so that we might discuss an issue of some importance.”

Grace is quietly cursing her brother when Merrick steps into the room with a wary gaze.