But wealthy widow Rebecca DuMaurier, a brown-skinned African British royal court favorite has more personal cares. She’s running from a forced marriage to a famous white-haired earl and heroic general; going to her birth home in her stormy ocean-tossed Cornwall county, just to find a moment to breathe and think; but a many-faced Irish Catholic pirate troubling the Protestant English now sails her shores, walks among her neighbors and servants, and hides his ship in a cliff cove near her home.
Becca’s beloved rocky, treacherous Cornish coast proves a slippery stepping stone for the lively courtier runaway bride, her soldier English fiancĂ©, and an intriguing, enigmatic gentleman and self-professed pirate with brown skin, many accents and faces Lady Becca will meet when he saves her life then steals her heart. However, her soldier is a tenacious man and it’ll take more than the ends of the earth and the wide ocean to escape his reach. Plus, on a ship of pirates, who’s to say all of them will welcome the lady's entry into their captain’s life.
Historical Romantic Adventure Fiction
The Hawk on the Celtic Sea;
November, 1688
Draft, Chapter: BECCA GETS BLOODY
The bottom of the ship left her feet just as—.
B-BOOM!!!
Becca fell securely back into the Present.
The Hawk was hard in the grip of a heaving tempestous sea as the assaulted little ship reverberated with bone-jarring intensity, bespoiled by cannon shot and quick turns as The Hawk snaked down along the sickening edges of swells to briefly hide at the bottom of them, before nauseatingly rising up, like sliding up a wall, as all clung to whatever they could and water sloshed everywhere and many a thing not secured ended everywhere upon the floor with Her Ladyship.
Out of nowhere, Ezekiah helped her back onto her feet, then led her foreward by hand, through the dancing chaos of cannon, whilst the flooring heaved out from underfoot and the walls tilted in to strike you.
“He needs you safe, Lady ... March….” He stopped talking, not certain about her titles or how to address her, whilst under duress himself.
He dragged her across the deck lined on both sides with open ports and loaded cannon, and someone opined:
“That woman’s a Jonah. Throw her over for the Dutch to fish out and be their plague!”
She looked about to see who’d said that or the shocked reaction of the men, and saw only men and powder boys at their posts.
“This is the safest place.”
Ezekiah left her in the medico’s tiny cabin, adjacent to the surgery, from where hard smells and sounds came. Men moaned. One shrieked in terrible pain, fear, or both. Becca understood the man having fear, because she was feeling her own coursing through her. She even feared that her fear was about to be terror soon, as the scents of frightened men undermined her control.
Watch the physician, not phantasms in your mind!
He seemed an appropriate fellow, this medicine man; but whether he was a full physician or even trained in any formal or useful surgical skills, Becca could not tell, from this distance; and didn’t recall anyone saying he was. Actually, she hadn’t known there was one aboard, had not seen him, as far as she could tell, at this angle; but, no one had mentioned him in his medical capacity, nor had she been formally introduced to him. However, since few to none of the men had conversed congenially with her, nor volunteered appropriate introductions, her ignorance was quite the obvious thing.
She was abruptly distracted from her offended thoughts on a lack of basic, common civility, when the ship heaved in a great roll, and the Marchioness did likewise; emptying her stomach more than once in a Heaven-sent bucket, perhaps placed for her, in that area so densely fetid with a mix of cold fear’s musk, hot blood, pungent urine, and excrement.
Disgusted with herself, Becca proclaimed her intention, “I will not be useless here, not now, not when there is need.” Thankfully, the storm was softening its rage, the sea settling from angry swells to less nauseating ones.
She rinsed her mouth, ate a bit of salt she’d found by a neglected meal, to angrily force her stomach to settle by salt and by Will, then stepped from her shelter into the main space.
“Hold still, Liam,” the medico commanded. “Hold still, man!
“How can I be of help to you, sir?” Becca said clearly to be heard above the battling above between Pirates and Dutchmen.
The medico looked up and stared at her as if not knowing what she was or from where she’d come; then he ignored her, whilst fully engrossing in Liam’s concerns. She now recalled the Medico’s face, one of many men, to whom she’d not been introduced. He had had the appearance and manner of a gentlema—.
Wait. She abruptly recalled someone saying his name. She must have cataloged it, without thinking much on it; it was a necessity at Court. Watching him handle this chaos in a competent fashion, and how the men sought his help, she had her answer; he had true education as a physician.
And whether he liked her or not he needed another pair of hands.
“Crace, isn’t it? Doctor Crace, how can—?”
“Ignatius Crace, Lady Cornwall. If you truly want to help, bring over that ointment there. In the blue jar,” he commanded. “Please,” he added, self-consciously.
She obeyed, whilst both Crace and the injured pirate seamen watched her, in disbelief. She held the jar out to him for his use, Crace said nothing, only continued staring, as the injured man, Liam—she recalled Liam’s face now as well. Plus, he was just “Liam” to her now, they all were, not merely a sailor … nor pirate even, any longer, but a frightened-eyed, injured man needing help, like all the others here.
“Shall I open it for you?” she queried, and her voice, her gentle questioning manner roused Crace from his stunned reverie.
“Yes, my lady. But, wrap this around you.”
He handed her a length of sturdy clean-ish canvas, well, it was clean until his fingers left bloody finger marks. She tucked a corner of the fabric into her busom and wrapped it around her clothing, and thus Lady Cornwall entered Dr. Crace’s medical service; helping him pull blood-stained finger-long splinters. For some time, she had her own line of injured; dabbing ointment on burns from the hot cannon, cannon tapers and one from a coal brazier that had made searing contact with a man’s face, then his bared foot. Becca had gingerly swathed that handsome man’s face then tended his singed foot with the soft aromatic goose grease ointment from the blue jar.
“Lady Cornwall I need you. Talk to him,” Crace commanded her, when he began preparing to cut upon a man’s messy adominal wound.
“What?” she said, in utter incomprehension.
“Distract him, my lady. Say anything, please. Look at the Marchioness, Diurmid. When surrounded by dark ugliness, man, look to beauty and its light.”
“Mm. Oh. Well...,” she stuttered, before....
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