The Pirate Captain (60 page)

Nathan straightened and cleared his throat. “Best away.”

By the time the town was behind them, the moon shone bright, painting everything in either flares of silver or swaths of impenetrable black. Nathan spoke only as necessary, but whether it was in the spirit of stealth or that he had nothing to say, a rare occasion indeed, was unclear. His breath came far more ragged than walking would account, his usual cat-like step hitched and uneven. His face was either turned downward or slightly away, unseen at any angle.

They stopped at one point, Nathan claiming perhaps she might desire a rest, although he seemed the tired one. Gesturing her atop a rock, he lowered himself to the ground at her feet, and with a muffled groan, leaned back. They sat quietly, each retreating into his or her thoughts. Near enough for his sleeve to brush her leg, she felt a distance between them, nonetheless, of a far different sort than the physical boundary so carefully maintained.

“What did you do to Sally?” Uttered as a whisper, it was still startling amid the chorus of night creatures. Cate instantly regretted broaching the subject, the answer quite possibly inviting far more than she desired to know, but the silence was torturous.

Nathan glanced up. “Eh?”

“Sally, the servant woman back there; what did you do to her?”

“Oh, her.” He smiled faintly and rubbed his arm, wincing. “Nothing…much.”

“You made quite the impression, whatever it was.”

“Oh, aye?” The smile grew devilish. “A gentleman never—”

“Gentleman?”

Looking away, Nathan shifted as one does when in search of a comfortable position when one wasn’t to be had.

“Did he hurt you much?” Cate curbed her concern, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate being smothered with it.

Nathan jerked, and glanced up to discern how much Cate knew of his capture, the moonlight flashing on the bells in his mustache.

“Not much,” he said at length to the ground between his feet. “A good lick to the head brought me down, but no…I’ve been worse.”

He fingered the raw marks at his wrist. The sight of the twisted and torn flesh spurred her disgust for Harte another notch.

“I could have sworn I heard a woman screaming.” Nathan looked up at the end, his lilt alluding to her performance outside the smithy.

“You must have been delirious,” she said, batting her lashes in overt innocence. “Why did he do it?”

“Who? Harte?” His mouth pulled down, weighing that. “Don’t rightly know.”

“You’re lying, Nathan,” Cate said in quiet evenness. “I can tell.”

Nathan threw up a look of exasperated irritation over his shoulder. “Seems I vex him, a bit…maybe.”

“There’s more to it than that. You hate each other enough to want to kill each other?”

He was both surprised and intrigued by the question. “Nah. Could have several times over, if was all that simple. Nothing more admirable than a dedicated enemy, eh?”

Nathan grinned at Cate’s puzzlement. “We give each other purpose: if he kills me, the last great pirate ship of the West Indies is gone. Then what ladder would he climb to his success?”

“He needs you?” The line of logic was astounding, and yet in keeping with what Pryce had said.

“Exactly,” Nathan said, pleased by her quickness.

“And what do you gain out of this?”

A shrug was cut short by a wince and a pain-laden grunt. “Can’t be the greatest pirate without the greatest escapes, now can you?” he said, with a square-toothed grin.

Cate gaped at him. “That’s it? To perpetuate your fame?”

“There’s worse motivations.”

“I suppose that would be in the eye of the beholder. He
will
have you hung, you know.”

Nathan looked off into the forest. “He’ll try, at any rate.”

“You say that as if he’s tried already.”

Nathan nodded. Two fingers at his knee stirred.

“And you’re here to tell of it, so I’m obliged to assume he failed,” Cate said, growing annoyed with his coyness.

“Barely, the last time.” He winced at the recollection then brightened. “Who knows, maybe third time will be the charm.”

“But, if he needs you, why did he try to hang you twice?” Cate asked, bracing her head in her hands.

“I’m still alive.” It was said as if that simple point explained everything.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” She buried her head deeper; exhaustion was settling in worse than she thought.

“Doesn’t have to. Are you worried for him?”

Cate made a disgusted sound deep in her throat and shuddered. “God, no. The man is unsettling.”

Nathan snorted and chuckled dryly. “A categorical dismissal, if ever one was heard. No worries, luv,” he said over her protests. If the pat on the leg was meant to be reassuring, it wasn’t. “Your secret is safe with me.”

Nathan rose, grunting with the effort of straightening, and extended a hand. “C’mon. Pryce will be cataleptic by now, the ol’ shellback.”

Nathan’s taciturnity didn’t improve, making a long walk an endless one.

By the few glimpses the moonlight allowed, he had taken a beating, one that would have put many a man to his knees. Cate’s eyes brimmed and her heart wrung. Bleeding and battered, putting his distrust and disillusionment aside, he had single-handedly braved a commodore and Marines to come for her. And yet, now he would barely look at her.

The man was blessedly confusing.

They had been apart for just a short time, but it seemed more a decade, someone so familiar now a stranger. Conversation that had once come so easily was, now strained, neither able to find something to say. Speaking came with great discomfort for Nathan, but there was a larger discomfort: a tall, blue-uniformed and gilded one who stood between them. There was so much to be said, and yet neither could bring themselves to it.

Pride is the mask of one’s own faults.
The Old Hebrews had it right. It would seem both of them suffered from a hearty dose of protectiveness of their dignity. In dire need of a distraction from Nathan’s bristling silence and her own darkening mood, Cate took the opportunity to relate all she had learned at Lady Bart’s table.

“How do you know of all this?” His surprise quickly melted into suspicion.

“Roger—Commodore Harte—he and Lady Bart said as much. Don’t give me that look!” Rounding in front of him, she jammed the finger into his chest, not sorry to see him wince.

“What look?” Nathan asked.

“You know exactly: the what-did-you-do-to-learn-that look? I didn't do anything
you
wouldn’t have done.”

“That’s hardly a recommendation,” he muttered, rubbing the spot.

Cate propped her hands on her hips. “Would you have bedded him?”

“No!”

“Well, see: neither did I!”

“That hardly proves anything,” he grumbled as he brushed past.

“Is this what we have to look forward to for the next…
whatever
,” she shouted, striding to catch up. “You’re accusing me of bedding everyone in breeches to come along?”

Nathan wheeled around, the moonlight flaring on his thunderous glare. She pulled up in front of him, and crossed her arms.

“Mebbe,” he mumbled. He pivoted away, picking up his pace.

“Oh!” Vibrating with frustration, Cate followed close on Nathan’s heels. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned with what you know, rather than what you think you know?”

“You don't know what I know,” he barked over his shoulder, bells jangling in the heavy air. “You only know what you think you know, because that’s what I want you to know, because you don't need to be knowing any more than what you already know.”

Cate skidded to a halt. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t have to make sense.”

“Well, it would help those of us around you, if you did,” she called to Nathan’s fading image as he stomped away, puffs of road dust spurting with each step.

Shoulder to shoulder they walked, huffing in silence. The sparkle of the bay was finally visible, the relieved face of Mr. Pryce soon after.

Cate made a point of sitting next to Nathan, but he moved to pose at the bow, his image a dark blot against the gunmetal of sky and water. He turned once, directed a terse nod to her, and then turned away, his expression lost in the darkness.

As the oarsmen pulled in rhythmic strokes, she looked up at the
Morganse
’s yards, spreading overhead like welcoming arms. Whether the welcome was for her, or reserved for the returning lover who stood at the bow was unclear. A dash of azure brilliance marked where Beatrice roosted on the mainyard. A soundless press of air and a dark arrow-shape were the only indications of Artemis swooping past. She arched a steep curve and dove down below deck.

Exhaustion settled in Cate’s limbs. It was visible in Nathan as well, his shoulders sagging, his movements sluggish. The joyous relief of stepping back on the
Morganse
’s deck was tempered by a heavy feeling, as though wading upriver.

She stumbled past Nathan and Pryce, deep in conversation, to the cabin, where she collapsed into a chair. Eyes closed, she basked in a glorious sensation: home! The walnut walls curved around her like a mother’s arms, the creak of the board overhead as soothing. The voices of the ship and her people were as familiar as a family, the smell of pitch, wet wood and salt-soaked canvas more enticing than pies baking in the kitchen.

The brush of leather and a jingle announced Nathan’s arrival. Eyes still closed, Cate tracked his progress through the cabin by the changing sounds of his step: a light clump on the wood, muffled thud on the Turkish rug, and finally, a soft scuffing as he stopped somewhere very near. Feeling the weight of his stare, she opened her eyes directly into his, bloodshot and swollen.

“You look bloody awful,” she said.

Uttered in jest, it was true. The cabin’s light, revealed the damages incurred at Harte’s hands. The smudge of several days’ beard melded with the bruises and dark circles framing swollen eyes. Nathan’s nose and mouth were puffed. A split spanned the width of his lip, up into his mustache, the bells there crusted in dried blood. One cheekbone, abraded and distended, caused the eye to pull oddly at the corner.

“Thank you,” he said grimly, bobbing a mocking bow. “Always look forward to meeting an admirer.”

Dropping his hat on the table, Nathan sat with the slow-motion of a person who thought they might never do so again. He gingerly rubbed his face, the stubble of his beard rasping on his hands. He went still then, staring catatonically at a spot on the table.

“When was the last time you slept?” Cate asked.

Stirring from his torpor, Nathan opened his mouth to reply then stopped, his brows nearly touching in puzzlement. “Day before yesterday,” he said slowly. Straining to think, he finally gave up and shrugged. “Mebbe.”

Struggling against her own tides of weariness, she grasped for a lucid thought. Exhaustion often led one to cleave onto the smallest of minutiae, as if that one last grain of thought might keep one from slipping into oblivion. “That shirt will need washing.”

Nathan peered down at the reddish-brown stain that spread over one shoulder and down his chest. He gingerly plucked at it with two fingers, mouth quirking. “Then it would appear your life will have purpose.”

He squirmed in the chair in an attempt to find a comfortable position, wincing at every movement. He finally heaving a hitching sigh, and fell forward like a toppling tree onto the table. Head cradled in his arms, his braids were a glossy snarl about his shoulders.

Cate pushed up from her chair and fetched her blood box from atop a locker in the corner. Sitting it on the table, she took out a jar, marked Number Thirty-seven in Roman numerals, containing the ointment professed to “cure anything from pox to palsy.” A tap on the arm was signal enough for Nathan to extend it. Under the swinging light overhead, the puffed and scabbed knuckles told the tale: he had fought the Marines, until he was down to nothing but his fists. His right wrist had been protected by the strip of cloth that secured his palm protector. The left, however, was raw, the skin torn. He had fought against the shackles that had held him, as well.

Cate cupped Nathan's hand in hers, his pulse just under her thumb, and scooped a bit of ointment. Jelly-like at first, the warmth of her hand soon rendered it spreadable, and she dabbed it on the abused skin. An eye ticked, but he remained otherwise immobile against the stuff’s sting.

Nathan stirred at the clatter and rumble of the kedge anchor being hauled in. The ship shifted and gained weigh. He reached for the rum bottle in the middle of the table, took a pull, and then settled his head on his other arm.

Her purpose was twofold: tend his wounds, but more in hopes of a physical connection. It was a desperate bridge and a thin one, but a spoonful of soup was a feast to a starving soul. The deep chasm still yawned; Cate wondered what steps would be necessary to make amends and regain his trust.

“Thank you, Nathan,” she said. A first step.

“For what?” he asked into the folds of his sleeve.

“For coming to get me.”

“Twice.” He hissed sharply when she touched an especially sore spot. “I had to rescue you twice.”

Nathan’s reference to his deeds as “rescue” brought a smile; a knight in shining armor wasn’t quite the image she carried, but the intent had been much the same.

“I enjoyed it so much the first time; I thought we might try it again.”

He made a disgusted, guttural sound in his throat. “Bloody woman. Shan’t be surprised if you did. Torture me to me dying days, you will.”

Cate bent to reach the backside of his wrist and recoiled. “What is that smell?”

It took a moment, but then she recalled where she had smelt it before, twice: once in the bedchamber at Lady Bart’s, and again, while hiding in a doorway in Hopetown.

She pressed her hand to her nose, the ointment’s rosemary, camphor, and alcohol masking it somewhat. “What is that?”

“I told you, it’s from a whore,” Nathan said evenly.

An inadvertent turn of the head and gap of his collar revealed the scratches on his neck. There was no mistaking the claw marks left by a woman’s fingernails. Cate stiffened as several images flashed through her mind.