The Pirate Captain (91 page)

Cate then shook her head. It would be too much like seeing Brian go with another woman.

“Maybe he has someone on the
Griselle
,” Cate said aloud.

There was Prudence’s current young man, or the noble Biggins. Cate instantly negated both. Youth is fine for energy, but couldn’t be depended upon for the skill or finesse required. Prudence needed to experience something more than a furtive tussle in the bushes. And to foist Prudence off on someone else would be too much like selling her.

“Will you clap a stopper on it!” Eloquent with frustration, Nathan spun and stomped away. “Stop meddling! You’re worse than she is.”

“But, Nathan…!”

“Suffering Jesus on the cross, now, what?” he whimpered, scuffling to a halt.

“Maybe you might think of it as an opportunity,” Cate said coming around Nathan, who now stood with his shoulders slumped and his head hanging.

“Opportunity?” he said blankly, looking up. “What the bloody hell does that mean?”

“I mean, let’s take the pragmatic approach: when was the last time you were with a woman?”

For the second time in as many minutes, she rendered him speechless.

“I will not stand here and discuss this,” Nathan hissed and brushed past.

“C’mon, Nathan. There’s no secrets on a ship,” she called to his back.

When she saw that he had no intention of stopping, she jogged to catch him up.

“I know it’s been a while,” Cate said, now a bit breathless. “Unless you really did stop for a whore while you were looking for me last week. Are you used to going this long?”

He vacillated at an alarming rate, from blenched to flushed and back. “Enough!”

She fell back a step, now thoroughly offended. “I was only trying to help.”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Hunching his shoulders, he strode away, the sand spurting from under his heels.

“We still haven’t decided about Prudence,” she called after him.

Wheeling, he stormed back to loom over her.

“I am Captain of this ship, and as Captain of this ship, I decide, and I’ve decided the subject is closed.” He jerked a conclusive nod and spun away. “Bloody woman!”

###

"Any reason why Nathan is avoiding you like you have the French pox?”

Cate looked up at Thomas with a tentative half-smile. “Has he? I hadn’t noticed.”

Thomas laughed and gave her a teeth-jarring brotherly pat on the back as he passed. “You’re not near as good o’ liar as he, by half.”

Still chuckling, he ambled away, leaving Cate sitting on a log. As much as she wanted to deny it, he was correct: Nathan had been avoiding her. He had not spoken, nor looked her direction since their conversation on the beach. An odd sort of avoidance-hide-and-seek-eye-tag had been transpiring all evening. Several times, he had brushed near enough for her to attempt to catch his attention, but had sped by, pointedly ignoring her. A few times she thought to have him cornered, but he slithered away, feigning rapt fascination in a crewman sharpening a stick or a bird flying past.

She was miserable.

Every variety of regret and self-remonstration ate at her as she wondered what on earth had possessed her to suggest Nathan deflower Prudence. Impulses can be horrifying things. Heaven knew, no one should be more familiar with that phenomenon than Nathan, but that didn’t render him more forgiving. That he might never speak to her again clawed at her, the prospect of being sold monumentally increasing. If it was to be the case, then fair enough, but it wouldn’t come to pass without first having her say. If he wished to toss her from the ship after, there would be nothing to stop him. As miserable as she was, marooning, and a slow death from thirst and starvation would be a blessed end.

It was later that night, when Cate finally caught Nathan in the undulating margins of the firelight, perched atop a cask. At seeing her approach, he intensified his attention on the orange he was peeling with his knife, but for once he didn’t take flight. Cate sat on a puncheon at his knee and waited. At length—long enough to cause her to think her ploy might not serve—he lowered the orange and his guard.

“What?” Nathan's tone wasn’t churlish, just unsure, with a tinge of wounded little boy.

There had been plenty of time for Cate to think what she might say, if the opportunity arose. Now, with Nathan’s dark-framed eyes on her, every word and sentiment she had collected became woefully inadequate. With a cautious sidelong look, she wondered what it would take to make amends. Recollections of her apologies to Brian came readily to mind. Those, however, had required long nights on the floor before a fireplace. Not much guidance there.

It brought Cate squarely before the motive behind her latest blunder: ruffled feelings. She had wished to inflict the same hurt Nathan had dealt her when he had trifled with her a few nights earlier, and then suggested she might be sold, again toying with her. That had been her intention, but her darts had been far less accurate than his.

Love could erase so many hurts.

Dammit! Why can’t I stay angry with him?

She had agreed to remain on the
Morganse,
but it had been a deal with the Devil, her Purgatory at her elbow every day. It was torture to have Nathan so near, and yet so very far: the smiles, the glances, or, as at that moment, his leg brushing her arm, his fingers caressing the smooth skin of the orange. Very briefly, she allowed herself the luxury of visualizing what else those fingers might be capable of.

“Are you well?”

She jerked. “What? Huh? Oh, certainly…why?”

“You had an odd look, like you’d swallowed a bug.”

Cate hoped the darkness obscured her flaring cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Nathan. I didn’t mean to put you in such an awkward position.” They were vacuous words, but the only ones available.

The bells in Nathan's mustache flared in the firelight. He made a face, acknowledging her apology, while at the same time asserting his own disapproval.

“I’m sure in all that blithering madness, there were good intentions. Most insane proposition I’ve ever heard.” His hands stopped in mid-motion so he might regard her. “What in all that is holy ever possessed you?”

“I don’t know.”

Go ahead
.
Allow him his revenge. Your atonement is nigh.

Time can sometimes be a burden, and time was exactly what she had to realize what a blundering dolt she had been.

Absolute lunatic!

She belonged in Bedlam for such thinking, which was the very place she was likely to land, if he didn’t forgive her.

“I just…I just wanted to help her…somehow. I thought maybe…I mean if she…”

“Go ahead, say it: if I bedded her, Creswicke wouldn’t want her.” Wielding the knife in deliberate strokes, Nathan chuckled. “Soiled goods, is it?”

The realization was a gut punch: the dirty and vile pirates, sullying the pristine innocent. She had fallen into the same pre-judging and misjudging as those detestable people in Lady Bart’s drawing room.

“Something like that,” Cate mumbled to her lap.

Nathan posed indignation, with enough exaggerated flair to rub salt in her wounds that bit more. “I’m not sure if you’ve complimented me charms or insulted me morals.”

He was toying with her now, a good sign.

“I’m sorry, Nathan. I never meant…I mean, I never thought…”

Nathan bumped her with his knee. “No worries, luv.”

He slipped a section of orange into his mouth. “With all due respect,” he began, cheeking the fruit. “There are only a few flaws, minor oversights in your grand line of thought.”

He paused, ostensibly to chew, but in fact to inflict further revenge by causing her to wait. “First and foremost, what you are suggesting
might
happen, will already be assumed.”

“Just by virtue of being here?” She groaned at her dumbness. She had personally experienced that very phenomenon in Lady Bart’s parlor. “The benefits of a reputation: no woman is safe when you’re about?”

Nathan bobbed a bow from his seat, accepting the mantle.

Cate had heard the stories, not only from those on the
Constancy
, but from Nathan himself. Rampaging, pillaging, plundering, and ravishing—indeed!

“But Creswicke wouldn’t think that, because…Oh! I forgot: his mother and sister.”

The oversight left her feeling even more foolish. Nathan had indeed done—and openly admitted—to that very thing, with two Creswicke women; a third would be readily assumed.

He straightened to peer down the long edge of his nose. “As I’ve said, I’ve never taken a woman unwilling in me life.”

“Just used your charms,” Cate mused, wincing. It seemed everyone had experienced those benefits, except her.

Nathan popped another orange segment into his mouth and offered her another. She took a piece and pensively chewed.

“The other error in this tangled thicket of thought is that Creswicke doesn’t care a rat’s ass about social standings, nor welfare of the love of his heart. She could be pricked as a witch or branded a traitor, and it wouldn’t make a wit’s bit o’ difference. Money and power is the motivation in this evil,” Nathan added with a sage nod.

“So, darling, it would appear your little escapade would have been unwarranted. Thank God I didn’t act on that one!” he finished with dramatic roll of the eyes and a mirthless chuckle.

Thank God, indeed!

Cate couldn’t begin to imagine the damages that would have been wrought if Nathan had pursued her suggestion. She knew herself well enough to know that she could never forgive him for doing something so calculated and crass. And yet, it would have been by her hand, with enough blame to endure for a very, very long time.

“So, I was wasting my efforts,” she said.

Nathan waved a casual hand, exonerating her with that single motion, the dance of the flames catching his rings. “Not wasting: misdirecting. You were only doing what you do best, luv: caring. ’Tis a bloody rare commodity in these waters,” he added softly.

The compliment was his peace offering, and she accepted it with grace.

“Caring doesn’t feed the dormouse,” she sighed. “But I can’t help but feel the need to do something to help her.”

Nathan leaned to brace his elbows on his thighs to peer at her more closely. The firelight caught in the cinnamon flecks of his walnut orbs. “What is it about this girl? Arranged marriages happen all the time. What’s so different about this one?”

His question wasn’t any different than what she had been asking herself for days. From the moment she had seen the cowering soul in the corner, she had experienced a maternal surge heretofore unwitnessed.

“I don’t know,” was all she could manage. “I just…”

Their heads turned at the sight of Prudence, strolling past at not great distance. At her side was a young, tow-headed Griseller—most notably not the noble Biggins
.
Smiling wistfully, Cate looked up into Nathan’s ironic smirk.

“It would appear you’ve been replaced,” Cate said.

Nathan scowled as he considered his competition. “Revered and copied, darling, but never replaced.”

He paused for a second inspection. “Not exactly up to me high standards.”

“I would say she is willing to suffer the deficiencies.”

They watched Prudence and her new suitor stroll away. Heads tilted together, the two youths were a stark contrast: blonde and dark, bright and faded, refined and barbaric—but, in spite of it all, bonded by the exuberance of youth.

“Young love,” Cate mused.

“Nothing like it.” Nathan’s countenance darkened. “Should she be going off like that ? You said she doesn’t know anything about lads.”

“Watch; she knows exactly what to do.”

As if on cue, Prudence coquettishly tilted her head and laughed, the delicate sound drifting on the breeze. Her hand fluttered to the neckline of her bodice and her hips swayed in a measured increment.

Nathan made a rude noise. “Aye, I see your point. A real man-eater that one, and the poor bugger doesn’t have a clue.”

Shaking his head, the frown returned. “Still don’t like the idea of them going off like that.”

Cate turned to give him a curious look. “Since when do you sound like the protective father?”

Growling under his breath, he lurched to his feet and stomped away.

Cate shifted in discomfort. Since the incident with Bullock, in spite of his intention to be covert, she had been aware of Nathan’s increased vigilance. If there had been no secrets before, she had even less privacy now. A watchful eye was on her every move, as evidenced by Nathan’s relieved look when she came out of the privy—err, roundhouse—and a “I was wondering where you were.” The concern was touching, but it was a bit tiresome and extremely constraining.

When they had first landed, Nathan had been forced to tip his hand when he insisted that she was not to be alone,
ever
…even when answering the call of nature. It was irksome, not to mention embarrassing, to have to announce her needs, and then be watched over the while. Given Nathan’s precise personal barriers, it was a level of intimacy for which she was not prepared, not to mention the difficulty of trying to time when she needed to go with intervals when he wasn’t otherwise occupied. Granted, there were no secrets on a ship when it came to bodily functions, the seat of ease right off the salon, but having someone waiting within a whispering shout away was altogether too awkward.

Feeling the need just then, Cate checked up and down the beach. At the moment, Nathan was occupied, as was everyone with the raucous festivities. And so she rose, confident she could sneak off and return before she was missed.

The moonlight shafted through the forest, reducing its verdant palette to tones of silver, grey, and black. As Cate picked her way through the bushes, she ran through a mental litany of the do’s and don’ts as given by Pickford and others. It was a delicate balance between finding the proper seclusion, while on alert for poisonous plants, insects, and reptiles, and yet not venturing too far. Since childhood, she had possessed a strong sense of direction, but was still careful to keep the bonfires within sight.