Seize the Fire (24 page)

"Warned you," he rasped.

"Let go of me!" She jerked her arm away.

"Princess." He rested his face in his hands for a moment, spreading his fingers through his wet black hair. He cleared his throat. "Princess. I didn't…tell them."

"Bastard," she said.

He lifted his head. There was such distressed confusion in his face that for an instant she felt a flicker of shame. "I didn't tell them," he croaked. "I could have. And they wouldn't…they wouldn't have—" He lost his voice in a choking cough and gestured toward the door.

She narrowed her eyes. "I despise you."

He looked confounded, blinking up at her with water still shining on his brows and lashes. "You don't understand. You don't…know—"

"I understand." She pushed his hand away. "You think because you didn't play me foul again, I should feel awful for what they did. I should feel sorry for you. But I don't. I detest you and what you are,
Sir
Sheridan. I wish I'd been the one to beat you myself."

He sat looking at her. The bewilderment faded slowly; his thick lashes lowered and his mouth went sulky. "Well, so do I," he muttered." Given the choice."

"Stand up, if you please." Frightened exhaustion made her voice sharp. "You've ruined the blanket."

He flashed her a look, petulant and dangerous—like Lucifer brooding on some secret fantasy of rebellion. But he did as she ordered, pushing himself off the berth with that soft rusty sound that seemed to come out of him involuntarily. He bent across the bed and gathered the wet blanket in a ball, hanging over it supported on both arms for a moment until a paroxysm of coughing passed. He was shivering as he tossed the woolen spread in the corner. Reaching past Olympia, he pulled open the locker and probed in it.

"No more blan…kets," he said, with a catch and a quick breath. "Would it displease Your Bloody Highness if I borrowed this fellow's…clothes?" He coughed, once and hard, and then leaned on the locker. "Or am I to be exe…cuted by frostbite for my crimes?"

"I don't care."

He shook his head. "You'd better…c-care. If I'm sick or dead at daybreak, our friend Buckhorse'll take it out of you, sis…ter dear."

Olympia bit her lip, recalled forcibly to the fact that he appeared to be her sole protection, in spite of what he'd done in Madeira. She glared at him. "You probably can't sail this ship anyway. You probably aren't even Sir Sheridan Drake at all. I don't doubt you murdered the real Sir Sheridan and took his place before he ever got to Norfolk."

He rested his head and shoulders against the locker. A drop of water fell from his hair onto his bare collarbone, and he shuddered. "I suppose you can take a…chance on that if you…like."

His voice sounded queer. Suddenly he spread his hand on his belly where Buckhorse had punched him. The golden crescent-and-star twisted, falling over his fingers. As Olympia watched, his face went pale and stark and his knees began to buckle. He slid slowly down the locker, each breath a deep vibration of distress.

Olympia felt her own insides squeeze in spontaneous empathy. She wasn't used to being hard; she'd have felt sorry for a snake that looked so wretched.

Which was exactly what he was. A snake.

"Here." She took off her cloak and threw it around his shoulders where he huddled on the deck. He wrapped his fist in the cloth, gripping it until his fingers turned white. He sat still, not even breathing, his head bowed into his knees and his neck corded with strain.

After a long minute, he tilted his head back against the locker and began to breathe again in deep, relieved gasps. "God," he mumbled, "I wish that would stop."

Olympia frowned at him. "What's wrong?" she demanded.

He gave a weak shrug. "Nothing fatal, I'm…s-sure you'll be sorry to hear. A residual…twinge, courtesy of Mr. Buckhorse." He lifted his thick lashes wearily. "Not so bad now, but quite an experience when somebody's pouring water down your…nose."

She pressed her lips together. "Can you get up?"

"Of course."

She waited. He made no move to change position.

She bent over impatiently. "I thought you said you could."

"Tomorrow. Next week. Don't—" He curved away from her hand. "Don't touch my…face, thank you."

Olympia drew back, frowning at him. The only signs of his battering were a smear of blood on the back of his hand where he'd wiped it across his mouth, and a faint darkening at the corner of his left eye. "You don't look very badly hurt to me."

"Someday," he said in his hoarse, mild voice, "I'll bash your head in to broaden your education."

She glared at him. "You've already broadened my education quite sufficiently, I assure you. Get up. You're going to be ready to sail this ship for those men tomorrow."

He looked up at her, his gray eyes darkened to infinite frosty shadow in the lamplight. "Decided to…throw in your lot with a different…devil, princess?"

She came near to saying that anything would be preferable to him, but the thought of Buckhorse and Cal and their convict gang made her pause. "I'm not throwing in my lot with anyone," she snapped. "You and your treachery have taught me that much, you may be sure."

"Lesson One," he said, grasping the locker door and hauling himself to his feet. With a wince, he ran his fingertips gingerly down the side of his face and gave her a painful smile. "The hardest one to learn."

She looked at him leaning unsteadily beside her as if he were the village drunk. She thought of a hero in a glittering captain's uniform, with a gold star and white gloves and shimmering epaulettes. Tears rose in her eyes, sudden and devastating. She turned away, tucking blindly at the bedding. "Yes," she whispered. "Hard to learn."

When she finally turned again, having blinked back the telltale weakness, he was still standing against the locker. His eyes were closed. He looked, she thought, strangely melancholy, where a man of any sensibility at all would have looked guilty or desperate or angry or afraid. The cloak hung from his shoulders, half falling, but he seemed not to care.

"Lie down," she said.

He opened his eyes. For a moment she thought he was going to say something, but then he obeyed her, moving onto the bunk as carefully as an old man. Olympia caught up the cloak and leaned over to lay it across him. He grasped her arm.

"You, too, Princess."

"What?" She tried to draw back.

"You can't stand…up all night."

"There's a chair. I'll sleep in it. I'm not the one who has to have his wits about him at daybreak."

He held her. "To keep me from taking a chill, then." He looked at her with an intensity she could not interpret. "We don't want to disappoint your…friend Buckhorse."

Olympia pulled away. She turned down the lamp and felt for the chair. It was hard and very cold.

"Princess," he said, a soft plea out of the dark.

She sighed and sat down on the edge of the berth. His hand found her, shaping her arm and pulling her steadily down. The berth was chilly and damp. She deliberately faced away from him as she lay down, holding herself to the far edge, as distant as possible from his body.

He gave a muffled cough and cleared his throat. With slow, shaky moves, he spread the cloak over her. Olympia felt the tears rise again, stinging her nose and eyelids.

He rested his hand against her hair.

"Princess," he said, "I meant for you to go home."

She made no answer. The warm moisture slid down her face and plopped onto the damp bed.

"So…" the rusty voice whispered behind her. "Why the hell didn't you go?"

Morning was gruesome. Sheridan awoke sharply from a dream of battle, of turning over a mangled body and finding a woman's face, her bloodied hand reaching for his throat—but as his bayonet plunged in defense, the face turned into his own face and he couldn't stop the weapon; it tore into his belly, shooting pain that jerked him into panting consciousness.

He lay still for a moment, holding his stomach, trying to find reality. As the muscle spasm passed, Her Royal Highness rolled over in Her Royal Sleep and bludgeoned him again in the stomach with Her Royal Elbow. It took him another full minute to get his breath back.

He worked his battered body out of the bunk, climbing over her by agonizing increments. He was ravenously hungry, but that was an ancient and familiar discomfort. Dressing in the late first officer's clothes was far worse torture. Sheridan's torso looked as if an elephant had been waltzing on his ribs.

He tried some experimental stretches. There was a fierce catch in his left side when he moved in one direction. His tongue was swollen and aching where he'd bitten it the night before.

He sighed, wincing even at that small motion, and lifted his arm with a violent grimace to drag the brass
teskeri
over his head. He pulled on a shirt and a pair of dry trousers by tiny progressions and stowed the Sultan's crescent-shaped brand in a safe pocket, concealing it with a familiar sense of release. He peered in the mirror. His face looked strange, almost frightening, faintly blue over both temples and down the side of his jaw, the rest darkened by beard shadow. The lightest touch made him cringe. He looked at the shaving equipment organized neatly below the mirror, almost turned away and then glanced toward the berth.

His princess lay curled, buried up to her nose, her hair a bright flood of sunlight in the chilly dawn. He looked back in the mirror at his spooky appearance, all black and pale and haggard. He decided to shave.

By halfway through the procedure, he had serious doubts about his sanity. It hurt like the devil, and the water was freezing. Viewing himself from both sides, he couldn't see that he looked any better. Possibly worse. But he finished, cursing under his breath, and managed to ease into the mate's peacoat. It was too tight across the shoulders, but he couldn't move without gasping anyway, so it suited his situation.

He slowly and systematically looted through the locker and cabin, filling his pockets with any small item he could carry: flint, needles, loose change, soap, traveling chess set, two tallow candles—anything that would fit. He had a bad feeling about his future, which always brought out the guttersnipe in him.

In the midst of his quiet plunder, he reached across Olympia's sleeping form to lift a magnifying glass from a hook on the bulkhead. One lock of shining hair spilled over the side of the berth. He paused, looking down at her, and ran his fingers carefully over the strands.

So soft. He wondered what had happened to the little satin boots with pearl buttons that he'd bought.

Thrown overboard, more than likely. She seemed just a bit aggravated with him.

Lesson One, Princess. The hardest one to learn.

He turned away. With his eyes closed, he leaned against the locker and listened to the ship, putting together the sounds and motions that had been drifting at the edge of his awareness all night. The brig had a sharp chop to her while lying at anchor, which might be her natural action or might be several other things, all of them worrisome. He tried the door handle. It was open.

So much for imprisonment. Sheridan peeked out and found Cal snoring in the dawn shadows at his feet. Stepping gently over the prone body, Sheridan located his knife where it had been thrown aside the night before, wrapped it in a rag, stuck it through his belt beneath his coat and headed up the companionway ladder.

There was no watch, as he'd reckoned there wouldn't be. He stepped on deck, the wind catching his hair with gale force. The tide was up. He saw instantly that they were in trouble; the ship had broken her sheer and drifted over the chain cable, now riding the anchor on far too short a scope. Every wave brought up her bow, jerking the chain taut against the hawsehole and bitts with a sinister smash.

"Buck—" Sheridan bellowed down into the cabin, then clutched at his ribs, instantly chastened. "—horse," he finished in a far less enthusiastic tone, adding, "I'm turning out all hands!"

He left it at that. They could come if they pleased; he'd warned them, at least, so maybe they wouldn't shoot him where he stood as soon as they got on deck.

Holding his belly, he limped toward the forecastle, stepping over the stiff body of the chief mate still lying in an ugly black stain of frozen blood. Sheridan took an extra moment to bend painfully and seize the late hero's woolen cap. He crammed it over his ears.

In the forecastle, he managed to rouse some of the crew, who appeared to have found their way into the liquor stores—the besetting weakness of sailors in every crisis. He'd warned Buckhorse, but Buckhorse wasn't the listening kind. Before Sheridan had them organized, the convict leader and Cal came pelting up the companionway.

"Stand!" Buckhorse aimed his pistol. "You! Stop 'er right there!"

"The tide's in," Sheridan said, with as much calm as he could muster when faced with a loaded gun. "She's riding far too short. We'll drag or break loose if we don't do something about it."

Buckhorse pointed his weapon at the nearest seaman. "What's 'e mean, then, hey? That true?"

The youngster looked anxious. "I dunno, sir."

"What d'ye mean, y' don' know? You a navvy 'r not?" Buckhorse fired the pistol at the youth's feet. The deck splintered and the crewman leapt aside with a screech.

"I don't know!" he cried. "I don't! This is my first time out."

"Well, I guess that makes you pretty damned useless, don' it? You'd best make certain I don' take ye in dislike." Buckhorse waved the pistol at the others. "What about it? This bastard right? He's a liar, mind ye; a rum 'un and a liar, and that's a fact. What d'ye think?"

A big African crossed his arms, shifting from one foot to the other. "He lyin' agin, then, sir. Captain Webster, he were a thorough-goin' seaman. He never did do nothin' wrong like dat."

"Look at the chain, for Christ's sake," Sheridan said. "The tide's come up."

Buckhorse pointed his gun at another man. "What's yer guess, then? You reckon this 'ere gennelman toff's plannin' mischief an' trying t' hoodwink honest folks?"

An excited discussion erupted among the sailors. Sheridan waited, feeling the ship haul and tug at her short cable. Something gripped his arm. He looked down to find Olympia blinking in the wind.