The Pirate Captain (61 page)

“You shouldn’t be going with whores.” A flush of embarrassment heated Cate’s cheeks at having broached the subject. There were no secrets as to how a sailor filled his time ashore.

A blood-shot eye peeked over his sleeve, a smile curving the split lip. “No better than commodores, eh?”

Face blazing, she dropped his hand. “I didn’t—“

“Neither did I,” he said evenly, sitting up.

Cate fixed Nathan with a steady gaze, looking for the familiar mirth that usually accompanied his sarcasm. She found none. “You don’t believe me.”

“Neither do you.”

She closed the blood box’s lid more forcefully than was necessary. “I’m not in the habit of apologizing for something that I didn’t—“

“Neither am I,” he said, rising. She flinched as each barbed word found home.

Nathan could be caustic, but his barbs were usually blunted by a quirk of the mouth and a teasing glint in his eye. His voice too broken by exhaustion to be of any guidance, she searched his face. The ravaged features were those of a stranger, contorted not only by swelling and bruising, but things never seen before: disgust, suspicion, and worst of all, disappointment.

“I had four older brothers; I don’t need another—“

“From all appearances, you do,” he said with irritating levelness. He pressed closer. Determined not to give way, she fell back a step, nonetheless.

Hot tears pressed behind her eyes as hurt, anger, and resentment collided.

“I will not be owned by anyone,” she said, balling her fist. She was not about to be used like a piece in one of his circuitous games. He was assuming to set himself up as her lord and master, as if she needed shepherding to prevent her from bedding every man encountered. It was as she had suspected and feared: he wanted no part of her, but neither did he want anyone else to have her, most especially Harte.

The small hopes she had nurtured popped like bubbles in a boiling pot. The warmth of home dissolved into no more than a foolish whimsy of a desperate mind.

“Payment comes in many forms.” Nathan's distorted lips curled to reveal a flash of gold.

“How dare you! You presumptuous bast…!” Cate sputtered, fury striking her speechless. “I keep myself to a higher standard. Rest assured, it is a matter which will
never
be of your concern.”

“Never?”

“
Never
!”

Something flickered on the battered face, flinching as if Nathan had been poked in the ribs. He spun away to the window and stood, one hip cocked, an arm braced against its frame. The sea breeze lifted the tails of his headscarf and curled them about his shoulders as he scanned the gunmetal-and-silver nightscape. He glanced over his shoulder, his gaze settling on her wedding ring, gleaming dully. Looking back to the night, he nodded vaguely, as if concluding a private conversation. He pivoted on his heel and headed for the door. There he paused to give an elaborate, but hitched bow.

“I bid you good e’en, fair lady,” he said, baring his teeth. “Have no cares. Your sanctitude is safe.”

Chapter 10: Devil’s in the Details

C
ate woke to the rumble of thunder. Snuggling deeper under the quilt, she listened to it reverberate across the water, and then the intermittent patter of raindrops. Hermione gave a plaintive bleat, taking rain as a personal affront. A freshened gust heeled the ship over. The shower grew to a downpour, drumming the deck overhead. Someone in the salon slammed the windows shut.

Nathan had been puzzled by her preference for them to be open. He pointed out, in barely camouflaged impatience, that the wind that came through the windows was the same as what blew through the door, making one or the other superfluous.

“Is there some tariff on open windows?” she had asked.

Muttering darkly under his breath about females and the parts of various animals, he stalked out, leaving her to her precious air.

A storm-driven puff delivered a fine mist through the port. As she considered waiting, the influx increased. Sighing in resignation, she rose to close it. From the corner of her eye, she saw the reddish brown blur of a rat scampering along the wall and under the curtain. She was stepping into her skirt when she heard the padded rustle of His Lordship in hot pursuit: a startled squeal, a furry scuffle, and then silence. As she combed her fingers through her hair, the heady aroma of coffee and baking scones met her nose.

Home!

Rounding the curtain, Cate caught Jensen setting a steaming pot and cup on the table.

“Joy o’ the morning, sir,” he beamed. She winced at his enthusiasm and wondered in his wake, if that shining face ever met a day with anything less.

Mindful of the peril of the first sip, she bent over the cup to inhale the curls of steam.

“Oh, you’ve risen, finally.” Nathan stood in the doorway against a pounding backdrop of rain. He shook off like a great dog in a spray of droplets. He slogged across the room with a somewhat stiffened step.

“You’re soaking wet,” she said.

Nathan stopped in mid-step to peer down at himself and gave her a queer look.

“Aye. You know it’s raining out there, don’t you?” He jerked a thumb first toward the door, and then jabbed a finger at the cup before her. “Or hadn’t you had enough of that to be able to notice yet?”

“I’m not that dense of a morning,” Cate pouted, hovering over the very same.

“’Tis all in the eye of the beholder, darling,” Nathan said with a mirthless laugh.

A soggy squish marked each step as he came round the table. Rain, glistening in the sable chest hair, plastered his shirt to his chest, the tattoo over his heart ghosting through the wet linen.

“Do you want a towel?” she asked.

“Eh?”

“A towel? So you might dry off?”

Water pattered the rug. Nathan shrugged her off with a reproving glance. “If a man can’t bear to be as wet as Neptune, he’s no business at sea. Besides, bear an eye: ’tis clean.” He plucked at the shoulder of his shirt.

She eyed the bloodstains, now brown, but faded. “Almost.”

“Almost enough.”

The downpour outside stopped, the sun breaking free in almost the same instant. A sultry warmth wafted through the cabin, stirring the tails of Nathan’s scarf about his shoulders. Sipping her coffee, Cate watched him ruffle through the clutter of papers, logbooks, and charts. Like his shirt, Nathan looked only marginally better than yesterday. The bruises were predictably more discolored, but were no larger, the swelling lessened.

A game of eye tag ensued: glancing, looking away only to glance again. Groping for something to break the tension, Cate put down the cup and asked, “How’s your head?”

Said body part jerked up. “What?”

Noting that was the second time Nathan had been either hard of hearing or forgetful, Cate rose and rounded the table.

“Your head,” she said. “You do recall being hit in the head yesterday, don’t you?” Hard enough to “bring him down,” as Nathan had so eloquently put it, there was the possibility he was injured far worse.

“Of course. I’m not daft.” Nathan ducked his head and batted her away when she reached to investigate. “I’m fine: rosy-cheeked, right as rain, in the pink, contentedly and serenely, in full feather, fine!”

Conceding—at that point, if he bled to death she didn’t care—Cate returned to her chair. The mood in the room being no better, she tried a different tactic.

“Where are we headed?”

Nathan looked up and there it was again: scorn and suspicion, the same as seen in the bedchamber at Lady Bart’s.

“Wondering as to what shall be awaiting upon our arrival?” His inquiry came with far too much edge to be comfortable.

“Are you implying I would play part to playing you the fool?”

His features so distorted by the swelling, Nathan’s smile was nearer a sneer. “No, I don’t imagine you that diabolical, but His Courtliness is. There’s every possibility he played
you
the fool.”

“But he thought I was trying to escape—”

“And you did nothing to change that opinion, did you? Pillow talk can be very persuasive. No matter, luv,” Nathan went on, cutting off her incensed sputtering. “Your beloved’s plotting is all for naught.
If
as you say, Lord Creswicke’s betrothed is on her way, then there’s only one course to be had. We will be waiting, but not where Commodore Vaingloriousness shall expect. ’Tis a fair anchorage, with a good view.”

Cate forbore asking “A view of what?” It didn’t go unnoticed that he elaborated no further. He resumed rifling the charts and papers, while she tried to decide if his churlishness was intentional, or if he was just having a bad morning. The former won.

“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?” she blurted. Her mother had admonished her often for her lack of modesty, but anything was better than this insufferable cat-and-mouse. It was hardly a shot in the dark, however.

The dark eyes came up, measuring. Twisting his jaw sideways, Nathan toyed with a corner of a chart. “Mebbe.”

From high above outside came a desperate cry. Cate was instantly to her feet and behind Nathan speeding for the door. She heard the en masse gasp from all hands on deck. She reached the door in time to see a blur of a body fall. She heard the sickening thud of something like a hundred weight of wet meal landing. Nathan was several strides ahead of her. He spun to intercept her as she raced forward, stepping at the same time to block her view. Over his shoulder, she caught a glimpse of skewed limbs and a ragdoll-like form lying in a pool of glistening red. Ashen-faced, all hands converged over the grisly sight. Cate ducked one way and then another to see around Nathan, but was blocked by his body, while at the same time backing her away, until she stumbled over the coaming into the cabin.

She jerked away. “I’m not a child. Who was it?”

Nathan drew a shaky hand down the curve of his mustache and looked to the floor.

“Dammit, Nathan,” she said to the top of his head. “I know someone just…”

He looked up, his swollen features pinched with a combination of restrained grief and abject concern. His hand stirred, as if to reach for her, but then thought better.

“Jensen.”

It came in a barely recognizable rasp.

Like rusty cogs, Cate’s mind ground, trying to absorb what he had just said. “Who? But, how…? I mean… He was just…?”

She abandoned the thought, for both of them knew exactly how it happened, how quickly Fate could strike. Whether on a battlefield or on the deck of a ship, a man could be standing one moment and dead the next. Stray musket balls, lightning, seizures, falling trees…or a fall from the yards, Fate could have its way without notice and without explanation.

Cate must have stood quite stricken, for Nathan shook her as if waking her from a deep sleep. Chin quivering, she crumpled into his arms and sobbed. He held her, gently swaying and absorbing her feeble blows as she pounded his chest in tear-choked fits. She cried over the death of someone so young. She cried in frustration of the snuffing out of promise and unfulfilled hopes. She cried because, in a world so defined by violence, it was too cruel to see someone’s life taken so mundanely, no more than Death’s afterthought: “Oh yes, I meant to take him.” And yet, Death never made sense. God, the Devil, or whoever was in charge of such matters, worked on a string of logic no mortal could fathom.

At last drained, Cate was left sniffling and hiccoughing. An arm still about her shoulders to steady her, Nathan reached for an amber bottle.

“Drink up.” The words came gently enough, but bore the edge of a man expecting his commands to be heeded.

She ducked away, but finally succumbed under his persistence. He observed closely as she drank.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a querulous gasp.

“No worries, luv.” Nathan’s smile was meant to be encouraging, but faltered.

Sniffing loudly, she sputtered in embarrassment of an abundantly running nose.

“Here, blow.” He offered his sleeve.

“No, it will make a mess. Don’t you have a handkerchief?”

“Not that I’d find in a timely fashion. Mother Nature’s washroom is but through that door. Now, blow.”

Need overcoming discretion, she did, laughing unsteadily when he crossed his blackened eyes and missed her nose—first to one side and then the other—before dabbing it.

A preemptive cough broke them apart. Pryce, Hodder, and Pickford, captain of the maintop, filled the doorway, solemn and miserable. Nathan hesitated, uncertain as to whether it was wise to leave her. Swiping her eyes, she bid him away. He roughly herded the trio outside to what he deemed most likely out of earshot, a miscalculation, given his level of anger.

“What the goddamned hell was he doing up there?” came Nathan’s ragged voice.

Cate flinched at his vehemence, pitying anyone in its path.

“Sweet suffering Jesus! What muddle-headed ass sent a lad, who can barely manage the companionway without stumbling over himself, to the tops?”

“He’s a fair eye,” said Pickford, defensively.

“He begged leave to prove himself, desirin’ to join the topsmen. So we…I let bid him as lookout,” Hodder interjected, even more wretched.

“T’was by my leave, Cap’n,” Pryce said in low-voiced solemnity. “I been denyin’ ’im for a fortnight. I finally…give in,” he added bleakly.

“Out o’ me sight, the lot o’ ya’s. By the tail o’ Satan, a sorrier lot I’ve never laid eyes on. Miserable excuse for command.” Nathan growled.

Nathan’s lashing out was unfortunate. Cate’s heart broke for all, but Pryce especially. Blame would abound all around, but Pryce cared for his charges as a father for his children. Jensen had held a special place in everyone’s heart, but Pryce would take this loss as personal.

“No, hold off,” Nathan said on the heels of his outburst. There was a tense pause. “Out of line, I am, as you’ll all agree, I dare say. You did no different than what’s done a dozen times a day, and then some. Go make your peace with your makers, mates, for you’ll punish yourselves far longer and draw more blood than I. I beg your leave. We’re all a bit…”

His apology died in a flood of effusive deprecations and apologies.