Captain Drew - Penelope Rivers.pdf

(1487 KB) Pobierz
P age
|
2
Captain Drew
Copyright 2011 by Penelope Rivers
ISBN: 978-1-61829-029-8
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book
may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to
share this book with another person, please purchase an additional
copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase
it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and
purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of
this author.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission of the publisher, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or book reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,
and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by New Line Press
Cover by Fantasia Frog Designs
P age
|
3
Captain Drew
By Penelope Rivers
The sun rose swiftly over the side of Captain Drew’s ship, and he
peered out upon the water with narrowed eyes, his mouth set. Captain
Drew’s boat was a large enough vessel with many ship boys and
plenty of helping hands. There was only one problem: no women.
They were bad luck, as everyone here well knew.
This was why he had had some trouble with his ship boys in the past.
They were good enough workers, but a man will be a man, especially
when they got an inkling for something more than their own hand. He
had had to call a few of his shipmates off of each other from time to
time. At first, this was something that made him uncomfortable, but
now he had learned to live with it—that as well as being alone.
That was why he had been shocked when he found a man that he
actually deemed attractive sitting on the edge of the dock when they
pulled into the port to replenish their supplies. The man was a slightly
skinny creature with pretty blue eyes like the sea at calm with blonde
hair so vibrant that it was as if the sun itself had taken a paintbrush
and swiped it across his forehead. When the man saw him looking, he
smiled shyly before turning away to talk to the brown-haired person at
his side. The “sun god” did not look in his direction again.
“What are you looking at, Captain?” asked his second-in-command, a
man named Edward who had been his shipmate ever since he had
been captain. “Did you see a pretty lass? I’ve never seen your eyes
bog out of your head like that before, except for when we caught those
P age
|
4
swordfish.”
“It was nothing,” he lied, not fully wanting to admit the truth. It was
not a lass that he was eyeballing at all. “What are you doing, wasting
time talking to me for? Go get drunk with the rest of the men like you
usually do.”
“Aye, aye,” replied Edward, still looking slightly concerned, as well
he should.
With a sigh, Captain Drew headed off of the deck and cast one last
fleeting glance at the man with his feet dangling above the sea. The
man wore the clothes of a nobleman with no patches and bright,
beautiful material. His boots were even hole free. There was no way
that a man like that, so obviously from rich livestock, would be
interested in joining Captain Drew’s crew that was mostly comprised
of orphans. Being a sailor was not easy, even if one loved the sea the
way that Captain Drew did.
“Hey, Captain,” one of his men yelled, “what should I do with these
barrels?”
He growled underneath his breath, heading over and saying, “What do
we usually do with barrels, boy?”
It was a long haul for a man at sea.
***
The sound of the fiddle played in the background as he chugged down
a quart of ale. Captain Drew’s face was set as he watched his men get
drunk, like usual. Some of them had their fingers around the waists of
local girls and the rest, usually the less attractive or the least
charming, were setting themselves up to squander their pay on the
prostitutes that frequented the ports for this very purpose. One of these
P age
|
5
girls, probably a local one judging by her attire, approached Captain
Drew with an eager expression. She was pretty, redheaded, and
wearing a full skirt that flared out at the bottom. Any of his men
would be so lucky.
“You’re Captain Drew?” she asked quickly with a slight bow. “Your
men were speaking about you. Apparently you’ve had your fair share
of adventures, and I—”
“You don’t want to tangle with a sea captain,” Captain Drew growled,
picking up his pipe and shoving one end of it into his mouth with a
less-than-dignified expression upon his face. “We’re rough and
mean.”
The lady looked disappointed as she headed off towards another table,
possibly continuing her quest to find a husband. As Captain Drew
growled and shoved a drink down his throat, he heard someone say
from behind him, “She was quite attractive, you know. I’m surprised
that you turned her down.”
Captain Drew, hearing the sound of the chair to his right squeaking
into place, automatically assumed that his companion was one of his
shipmen. “Aye, she was pretty, but you would well know that I don’t
tangle with any of the females here.”
As he turned around to squint at the person that had talked to him, he
gasped and sloshed ale all over himself. The person sitting at the table
next to him was not one of his shipmen but was instead the beautiful
man that he had spotted earlier when arriving at the port. The man had
changed clothes and was now wearing crème colored britches with a
red tailcoat overtop. There was a sparkling grin to his gleaming eyes.
“You!” cried Captain Drew loudly, as if this would make any sense.
This man had no idea that Captain Drew had been watching him at the
dock.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin