The Captain of All Pleasures

London, 1856

Nicole Lassiter's first tingle of alarm came the moment she stepped inside the squalid tap house and its fetid warmth rushed over her face.

Silence blanketed the den as the patrons inside took her measure, sensing she was out of place in the prostitute-laden tavern. She hadn't dressed to attract notice. She wore boys' pants and a shirt under an unadorned cloak. A hat covered most of the bright hair she'd prodded under it. Still they stared.

Her breath shuddered out. She was here on a mission to find Captain Jason Lassiter, Nicole reminded herself. And now that she'd arrived alone, she would merely have to do her best not to get killed. With an upcast chin and an offhand gaze, she plowed through the throngs of roughnecks peopling the tavern. The tinny music from a badly tuned fiddle at last resumed.

Obviously, the information she'd received pertaining to Lassiter's whereabouts was mistaken; her father would never come to a place like this, a place where sailors found "company" before they shipped out. When a deckhand had told Nicole where her father was, she'd assumed the Mermaid had gone under new, less nefarious management since she'd been away.

This was certainly not the case. One last sweep over the place, and then she could go back and throttle the deckhand for his prank. One last --

Her father was here.

With a heavily painted light-skirts hanging all over him.

At least, part of her hung over him. Breasts like two hemispheres of a globe perched on the tight line of her bodice, threatening to free themselves with each of her throaty laughs. And Lord help her, Nicole thought as her face screwed up in shrinking expectation, the woman laughed a lot.

Nicole marched toward him through a gauntlet of human sweat, gin-spiked breath, and loose, unlaced bodies. At the sight of her, her father's jaw dropped and then snapped closed, bulging at the sides.

Here we go....Jason Lassiter was a fearsome-looking man when angered. His eyes became wild and his face flushed to match his red beard and hair. That she hadn't forgotten. But she had minimized how angry he would be when she'd decided to come here tonight. There was no choice. She was running out of time.

She proceeded with a pained, set smile until she stood before him.

"Nicole," he ground out between his teeth, "what in the hell are you doing here?"

Her gaze flickered over the whore's rouged nipples, boldly cresting her bodice. Rolling her eyes, Nicole retorted, "Just what in the hell are you doing here?"

With some muffled words and a pat on the woman's arm, her father shooed the prostitute away, then sharply motioned for Nicole to sit. "I came here looking for information," he answered brusquely.

"Ohhh," she said as she gave him a frown of disbelief. "Is that what they're calling it now?"

"That's clever," he replied with thick sarcasm, absently raising his mug. Nicole wrinkled her nose at the dented and grimy container. He looked in it, frowned, then placed it well away from him. "I'd planned to meet a man here who knows about the sabotage. It happens that he's connected with that woman." With a slightly wounded look, he added, "You know me better than that."

Nicole nodded grudgingly and gave him a small, apologetic smile. It lasted only seconds before she became serious at the mention of sabotage. Sailing in these times was perilous enough, with captains setting speed records and shipbuilders fearlessly pushing new designs. Masts rigged to snap and rudders set to be lost in the first heavy storm made it deadly.

"Tell me you have some idea who's doing this," she said. Her father's shipping line hadn't been targeted -- yet -- but he'd decided to take the offensive.

"I'm finally getting some good leads," he said in a manner that closed the subject. "Now, what in God's name are you doing here?"

"Well. I've been thinking..." But as she started the speech she'd rehearsed during her trip from Paris, with all her reasons why she should sail with him in the upcoming Great Circle Race from London to Sydney, the doxy appeared again, sidling up to her father. Giving Nicole a nasty look, she began a provocative whispering in his ear.

Her father wasn't sending the woman packing anytime soon, and Nicole wasn't about to watch their murmured conversation. Turning from them, she dropped her chin onto the back of her chair and settled in to watch all the British tars and explicitly dressed women while they "mingled."

The earthy scenes had her wide-eyed. She imagined these sights would only add fodder to her late-night dreams, dreams in which a dark, faceless man...did things to her. Things that she'd seen between couples on the quay. She sighed. What would she dream tonight...?

A loud thud shook her from her musings, and her gaze turned to the front door as three men marched in out of the cold.