The Pirate Captain (80 page)

“No, not always, if the man is gentle and attentive,” Cate said carefully.

Prudence’s lower lip protruded, as if she meant to argue. Regrettably, if pressed, Cate would be obliged to admit that no matter how well-meaning the man might be, the first time was always—had been—painful.

What was it like to be in bed with a man?

Running a hand along her arm, Cate recalled in vivid detail what couldn’t be shared with a young girl who, in all probability, had never been kissed: snowy, Highland winter nights under quilts, with a man who wanted nothing more than to bed his wife. How could she describe the long arms and warm hands which held and caressed, the murmurings and exploring, lying languid and flushed, pleasures and pleasing—

“You loved him, didn’t you?”

Cate jerked at the sound of Prudence’s voice.

“My husband? Of course,” Cate said unsteadily. She dashed the wetness from her cheek with a trembling hand. “When you’re with the man you love, you’ll look forward to doing those things.”

Cate couldn’t help but smile at that.
Ah, yes! All of them, again…and again…and…

Prudence’s expression hardened into that of one accustomed to being told anything but the truth. “And if you don’t—love him, that is?”

Given what Cate knew of Creswicke, she felt as if she was tossing a lamb to the lion. Rubbing at a sudden pang in her temple, she tried desperately to think of a way to not dash the girl’s hopes, while not building unrealistic expectations.

Damn you, Father Collingwood, wherever you are!

“Well, sometimes love takes its time,” said Cate, lamely.

God, as if the child had any.

Whether satisfied, disappointed, confused, or embarrassed, Prudence allowed the subject to perish. She bent over her stitching with renewed purpose. Cate sat on the sill, ostensibly supervising. She stared at her hand clenched in her lap, her ring gleaming dully, and battled the memories now unleashed. She had learned long ago that once the floodgates were opened, blessed little would stop them. Thomas’ resemblance had brought Brian so very near.

Brian’s face rose up, his lake-blue eyes glowing with need. She looked up to see him leaned against the firemantel, the flames gilding hip and thigh, shining like a copper helmet on his hair. She blinked and he was in bed, head pillowed on his arm watching her undress. He lifted the blanket, inviting her in. She closed her eyes and they were under the stars, making love their last night together, his mouth and hands memorizing her every surface and curve.

Cate’s breath caught in a half-choked sob. Tears welling, she lurched to her feet, stammered a vague excuse and ran from the cabin. Solitude was what she sought, but it was a ship; there was no privacy. She ran to the forecastle and pressed her forehead hard against the rail, in hopes the pain might erase the anguish. The swirling visions only came faster, crushing and devastating, threatening to drive her to knees.

“Are you well, luv?”

Cate whirled around at being touched. Too shaken to speak, she stared at Nathan through a shimmering blur of tears.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said, softly. The vertical lines of his face deepened with concern.

Nathan shook her gently by the shoulders and called her. She dimly thought how rarely he used her formal name. The fact he did so now showed the level of his alarm.

Her mouth moved, but no words came. She began to quake. Emanating from deep within, the tremors jolted through her, until her bones seemed to rattle against each other. She swayed then crumpled against Nathan and sobbed. She clung to him, fearful of the great pit that yawed at her feet, where demons named Isolation, Heartbreak, Loss, and Hopelessness waited. She cried for things she hadn’t cried for in years, things thought forgotten, and then from the pain of having done so. There were the things she had, and those that she never would. She pounded at his chest at the unfairness of it all.

Time was lost; Cate had no idea of how long Nathan held her. Slowly she quieted, the floodgates closed, and the ghosts retreated. Still, she clung to him. His shoulder under her cheek, so solid and warm, he promised the safety and protection she hadn’t known for so very long. Defender? Provider? Confident? He was so many things, and yet no knight in shining armor.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffed. “It’s not…”

“Hist, now” he murmured against her cheek. “’Tis all well. Ol’ Nathan is here. You’re safe.”

Cate sank against him, molding her to his body as he swayed with her. Gradually the tension drained, her muscles twitching and jerking as they released. Her face hot and swollen, eyes throbbing knots, she sniffed again. He offered his sleeve, encouraging her to blow. Embarrassed, and with little choice, she did. Murmuring nothings, he dried her face with his other sleeve, then brushed away the strands of her hair stuck in the tear tracks.

“God! I’m a mess!” she choked, dashing at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to make such a fool out of myself. I just…all of a sudden…I…”

“No worries, darling. You were crying for him.” Nathan thumbed away a few straggling tears. The corner of his mustache lifted in a smile that failed.

“How did you know?”

Nathan gave a tight-lipped smile, the corners of his eyes pinched with resignation. “The only time you cry thus is for him. You love him; ’tis no crime that you grieve for him.”

“But you shouldn’t have to put up with a sniveling woman,” Cate said, toying with a braid at his shoulder. “It’s not fair.”

He flipped a hand, making a poor attempt at levity. “Ah, trifles, mere trifles. If I minded, I wouldn’t be here, eh?”

Putting a finger under her chin, Nathan brought her face up to meet his. “I promise, I’ll find him. If he is anywhere on this earth, I will find him.”

“He’s dead, Nathan.” Cate's voice quavered, threatening to break again.

“So you keep saying,” he said tolerantly, and drew her close once more.

It felt so good to be held; it had been years. Until then, she hadn’t realized how desperate in need she was for the touch of another human. Other than being snatched, grabbed, or accosted, in had been years since she had been held by a man for the mere sake of it. His shoulder solid beneath her head, she could smell the tear-dampened linen of his shirt.

Nathan stiffened and he pushed her back to hold her at arms’ length.

“You need off this ship, and I shan’t take no for an answer, nor do I want to hear or care about Princess What’s-Her-Name.”

Cate’s hopes soared at the prospect. Leaving the ship could mean escaping behind the ghosts currently haunting.

“It sounds wonderful! I’ll go tell Prudence.”

Nathan made a guttural sound of disgust. “Do we
have
to take the Princess of Darkness? I know! We’ll lock her up!” he declared, with an inspired finger to the air. “We’ll put her in the hold; the bilge rats deserve her. No, that won’t do. Hermione doesn’t deserve that. We shan’t have milk for a week. Why can’t we just leave her to annoy the anchor watch for the day?”

“We can’t just leave her.”

“Why not? Why does she have to follow us like some wharf cur?”

“Because you brought that wharf cur aboard, and now it’s…
she’s
your responsibility. You made an agreement: Creswicke gives you the money and you give her back safe. How is it to look if you arrive with an injured or damaged hostage?”

The dark slash of brows shot up to the edge of his headscarf. “Damaged? First of all,” he began, ticking his points off on his fingers. “
Damaged
is exactly what they are expecting. She’s on a pirate ship, ergo she’s assumed
damaged
. Secondly, I don’t give a buggering damn what they think, as long as they pay. And thirdly, how did I wind up arguing when all I wanted was to do something nice. How the bloody hell did that happen!”

“You keep saying you want me to relax, but how can I, if I’m worried about her?”

Agitation growing, he began to pace, hands spiraling skyward. “Hell and death, there’s no telling what the little petticoat might do next. She’s constantly ordering you about like you’re her damned chambermaid. In less than a day, she’s taken over me cabin, has you sleeping on the deck—in an utterly reproachful mood, I might add. You’re crying, and you’ve begun talking to yourself.”

“I do not.”

“Aye, but you do.”

She bit her lip. He wasn’t entirely incorrect. “Perhaps to her I am the chambermaid. Do you remember an older woman with her?”

“Aye,” he said after a pause to recall. “Caterwauled enough to raise the dead, she did. We were in no need of a grannie.”

“Well, in retrospect, bringing
the grannie
would have made things ever so much easier. That was her nanny.”

“I’ll remember that the next time I kidnap a sixteen-year-old,
if
I ever grow
that
desperate again!” he said, with a suffering roll of his eyes. “You should be subservient to no one. If I hear her bark one more order—”

“She doesn’t bark—”

“If I hear her bark one more order at you,” he repeated evenly, narrowing a malevolent eye, “I’ll…well, I’ll…I’ll do something, and it shan’t be pleasant.”

Muttering several unrepeatable oaths, Nathan surrendered by throwing his hands in the air. “Fair enough! Anchor watch didn’t do anything to deserve her anyway. To leave her, I’d be losing men overboard hither and yon, like rats off a fire ship. Probably have to shanghai me next crew, since no one what knows a bowline from a ratline would board this ship else.”

Chapter 15: Falls of Our Existence

T
his is wonderful, Nathan.” Her head pillowed on the folded quilt, Cate stretched out on the luxurious carpet of moss.

Nathan plopped down next to her, grinning. The sunlight filtered through the dense greenery in broad bands of yellow. The fine mist from the nearby waterfall glistened like fairy dust on his braids and lashes. “I give you joy of your pleasure.”

They had come ashore earlier that afternoon. Unshipping Prudence, however, had been quite the ordeal.

“This isna going to be easy,” said Mr. Cameron, standing next to Cate at the rail. Realizing he’d been overheard, he explained in his Scots brogue. “’Twas a fair wrestle t’ bring her aboard.” He sighed, woefully shaking his head. “’Twill be no better achievin’ the reverse.”

Cate leaned closer to Cameron to ask from the corner of her mouth, “How did you get her aboard in the first place?”

He mouthed the words “Admiral’s chair,” with reserved contempt.

It was a contraption beneath the dignity of every able-bodied seaman, reserved for the incapable and the inept. No more than a wooden slat looped in a rope dangling from a yardarm, it resembled a swing rigged in a play yard. At the whim of ship, wave, and wind, it could be a precarious ride.

“I’m impressed anyone was able to get her in one of those,” Cate said, more to herself.

“Alone, nay…exactly.” He smiled slyly as, in typical Highlander style, he allowed the suspense to build. “In the Captain’s lap.”

Sputtering a laugh, Cate tried to visualize that, but found it unnecessary, since it was being played out before her.

Situated deep in a seat, Nathan hooked an arm around Prudence’s middle tightly enough to elicit a squeak of protest. With the grunt and sweat of those manning the halyard, the sling rose. Eyes round as shillings, Prudence squealed and kicked. It was difficult to be sure if it was an inopportune pitch of the ship, or a bit of tomfoolery on the part of those controlling the line, but the chair took a wild arch out over Cate’s head as she clambered down the accommodation ladder. She looked up to a grim-faced Nathan, half-submerged in a billowing cloud of yellow skirts. With a grunt of satisfaction, he released his burden into the awaiting launch several inches premature. Prudence landed in an inelegant heap in the bilge water.

Nathan gave every hand in the longboat the benefit of a glare that forestalled further comments. As they pushed away from the
Morganse
’s side, Cate retreated to the furthest point of the bow, where she could hide the smile that couldn’t be suppressed. The palpable tension transformed the short journey ashore into something akin to Purgatory, everyone present obliged to listen to Prudence, striving futilely to keep her skirts clear of the water, and bemoaning the destruction of her shoes and lack of a hat.

“A true lady simply never goes out in the sun without one,” the child sniffed.

Prudence’s third, or perhaps it was the fourth, repetition of said guideline was cut short by Nathan’s arm snaking out to snatch a hat—a thoroughly disreputable, sweat-stained affair—from an oarsmen and plunking it on her head. Its floppy brim sagged nearly to her nose, but delivered silence.

Once ashore, Nathan made a final, valiant attempt to leave Prudence behind, citing her dress and patent-leather slippers as unfit for traversing rough terrain. He was no match for the either woman’s stubbornness. Shaking his head as he muttered darkly, he struck off with his female entourage in tow, with a rucksack under his arm and the blue and yellow quilt from the bunk over his shoulder.

Nathan led them down the sugar-white shore to where a stream met the bay. There he turned inland, his battered leather tricorn a compass needle pointing the way. Once again, Cate plunged from a world of saturated blues into a verdant tapestry of color. The shrill cries of gulls gave way to the chattering of brightly plumed flocks of small, parrot-like birds. Her venture inland a few days before had been through a claustrophobic press of green. Here they walked under a park-like canopy of palms, her neck aching with trying to see their crowns.

Nathan regaled them with one story after another. Cate only half-listened, smiling to herself at the not-so-subtle variations from versions she had heard many times over. She wondered how historians centuries later would reconcile the inconsistencies: was it a monster or a monstrous wave which had sank the ship; a plague or marauding natives that wiped out the marooned crew; a ghost or a precocious sea goddess that had stalked the decks; had the heroic captain been shot five times or stabbed four?