The Pirate Captain (101 page)

Gradually, her racing heart slowed. Breathless anticipation eased into tempered impatience, which faded into uncertainty as the watch bell clanged its increments of time.

One hour…two…three…

I could be a while…

###

Cate woke sometime later, with no way of knowing the time.

To her, time was relative on a ship. Granted, the grains of sand in the glass perpetually sifted away, but there were four sizes. Beyond their increments of half minute, half-hour, hour, and four hour, they were of little guidance. The watch bell clanged with meticulous regularity, but the intervals tended to blur together, their intricacies lost.

As best she had been able to gather during her sojourn at sea, albeit brief, at any given time the bell rang there were five options. Six clangs of the bell could mean it was either three, seven, or eleven in the morning, or three or eleven in the evening. She prided herself on her intelligence and quickness of mind, but the entire concept she found staggering.

With a finite amount of patience, Nathan attempted several times to explain. Suffice it to say, the sessions never went well.

“Why can’t you just ring it like any other clock?” she had argued testily.

The questioning of such a time-honored tradition caused him to puff with indignation. “It’s not a bloody parlor clock.”

“But it’s still a clock. If it’s five, why not just ring five? If it’s nine, why not ring nine?”

“That makes no sense a-tall! You can’t have the goddamned ruddy thing banging away. The crew would be deaf by the end of their watch, besides not a soul having a wink of sleep.”

“So, those four bells just now, meant it’s…?”

“End of the dog watch,” he said with a narrow look.

She closed her eyes, summoning patience. Sorting out the watches was even more elusive. She was yet to comprehend why the First Watch began at eight o’clock at night. “Which means…?”

Nathan frowned as if she were dim-witted. “Six o’clock.”

“Morning or night?”

“Bloody hell!” Nathan threw his hands up as he bolted from his chair. “Any slab-sided, Dutch-built fool can look up and see if ’tis day or night. Besides the fact there’s no dog watch at six in the morning. Honestly, darling, I’m worried for you. A simple cabin boy can grasp it! Hell, even Hermione knows it!”

Shaking his head, he had walked away.

Consequently, Cate resorted to her own concept of time: Either it was day or night, early morning or late morning, noonish, early afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, or night. Sometimes, night could be divided into late and really late, but such distinction was rarely significant.

However, at that moment, it felt very late.

I could be a while.

She sat up and flung back the quilt, the chill of the night air cutting through her worn shift. A sliver of light slipped under the curtain. True enough, it meant someone was in the salon, but it also meant it was all right for the light to be lit, the threat of the ship pursuit was past. Aboard a pirate ship, the Captain’s cabin was considered public domain, his table open to anyone who cared to dine. It was a privilege rarely exercised, but the possibility was always there. Pryce, Hodder, Kirkland, Millbridge, or a number of others could be in the cabin on some manner of business. In any case, she wrapped the quilt around her before going out.

Nathan sat in the relative quiet of the ambient voice of his ship. A small collection of candles in battered holders sat on the table in a molten glow. Slouched in his chair, his bare feet were crossed on the table. His head tilted back, he stared at the beams overhead, the scar at his throat a shadowy slash. She was nearly to the table before he heard her. He jerked up, his bells jangling softly, and blinked.

“’Ello, luv.”

His speech was thickened, either from sleep or lack thereof. As he sat up and a bottle he held came into view. He made preparations to stand then decided against it. Instead, he hooked a chair with his foot and slid it closer, then gestured for her to sit.

“Did I wake you, darling? I’m sorry; I thought I was being quiet.” It was uttered with marginal sincerity, the candlelight flashing on the gold of his teeth as he bared them ever so slightly at the end.

Cate busied with arranging the blanket in the chair around her, not from modesty, but as an excuse to avoid meeting his gaze. “No, I just woke.”

It was only a small lie. A twitch of a dark brow revealed he recognized it as such.

An awkward silence filled the space. Nathan struck a blank gaze at the table. His straight-nosed profile sharp in the candlelight, he was deep within himself. There was an unfamiliar slump about the usually square-set shoulders and a mood she couldn’t identify. A gap loomed between them, now more vast than her first day aboard, when she had sat in that very chair. She propped her head in her hand and wondered.

I could be a while.

And, indeed, Nathan had been a while. Cate had waited…and waited, but apparently, not long enough. Sometime in the darkness, she had fallen asleep. In hindsight, perhaps the lavender hadn’t been a wise choice. Ordinarily administered to ease headaches and minor pain, it might have had a more sedative power than credited.

Had Nathan come back—or not? It was a question she couldn’t bring herself to ask; there were no good answers. When they parted, he had shown every intention of coming to her, but did he? Or had second thoughts prevailed? In typical Nathan fashion, was he hoping the situation would go away, forgotten? She found herself faced with the choice of where to put her faith: with six weeks of past behavior, or a flash of passion?

Nathan took a swig from the bottle, and then looked up, as if he had forgotten she was there.

“Have a nip?” He made a feeble attempt at one of those smiles intended to charm.

Cate took the proffered bottle. The rim glistened from where Nathan had just drunk, and she made a point of turning it in order to use that same space. She winced when the raw liquor touched her throat. As she passed the bottle back, their fingers brushed, his seeming to reach for hers. It was ever so brief, but enough to make her heart jump.

“Is there a…problem?” she finally threw into the silence. It was woefully inadequate, but sounding inane was better than the waiting.

Nathan stared at the bottle as he pensively rolled it between his palms. A smile slowly grew, as if to a private joke. He looked up with an intensity that made her breath catch.

“I’m gathering courage, luv,” he said so very quietly, inordinately so. “The courage to take something.”

Cate was struck a bit odd. Nathan was a pirate; rarely did she consider them to suffer the burden of restraint on taking anything they desired.

She had learned it was often necessary to be patient when trying to follow Nathan’s train of thought. Often perplexing at first, he had a tendency to make sense…usually.

“Do you know what it is to want something?” Nathan began conversationally, his gaze fixed on the bottle. “’Tis right before you, within your grasp, and yet so far from reach it might as well be on the rings of Saturn.” He ended with a skyward flair of fingers.

“It’s not anything you’d considered to fancy or seek,” he said without waiting for her answer. “And yet, you know from the first that it is something for which you have searched all of your days.”

Nathan stared at Cate with great intent, as if waiting for an answer to a question unasked. Bottle in hand, he rose with startling abruptness to prowl the room like a great cat.

“And then you realize,” he said, “’tis something not to be yours a-tall. Meant for another, a treasure never intended to be shared. ’Tis unworthy you are, the Fates whisper.”

He drew up before the window. He leaned his arm against the frame and cocked a hip. A breeze lifted the tails of his scarf and coiled them about his shoulders. He gazed at a sea glittered with gunmetal and silver.

“But then you find yourself thinking, ‘Just once,’” he said softly to the night. “Not forever, for that would be too grand. But just once, if you were to reach out and take it, and be damned the consequences.”

“What led you to believe this…something wasn’t—?” she began.

“’Tis the treasure of another,” Nathan sighed over his shoulder in utter defeat. “Once claimed is twice possessed.”

Nathan resumed pacing. As he moved on a feral path in and out of the shadows, Cate noticed his bare feet once more. The candlelight caught the gleam of freshly shaven cheeks and glistened on droplets of water in his beard and chest hair. She surveyed the room with a new eye. His coat and sash were flung over a chair in the corner, his hat and belts tossed on the table. Boots and socks laid scattered across the floor. Under closer observation, they formed a loose trail toward the curtain.

Yes, he had come back.

She recalled awakening at one point. No one had been there, the movement of the curtain assumed to be from the motion of the ship.

Yes, Nathan had come back. He had kept his word and she…

Cate braced her head in her hand. The regret that sickened her just then had to have paled in comparison to Nathan's abject disappointment. There was no gracious way of saying someone’s arrival hadn’t been sufficiently exciting to keep one awake. To many a man it would be an insult, a deep unforgivable affront.

What he was about, however, was no longer a mystery. He was afraid to ask the same awkward, humiliating question she couldn’t bring herself to pose.

“But what if…?” Cate gulped, words not being where she had expected. “I mean, what if the Fates were to, umm…change their minds?”

Nathan paused in mid-step and looked off to consider, his jaw twisted thoughtfully to the side. “Only a cuckle-headed dolt would think it possible,” he said, and then added with a wistful smile, “But if I was that fortunate cove, I’d treasure it, cherish it as no other has or could.”

Cate shifted self-consciously and wiped her suddenly damp palms on the quilt.

“What if you find you’ve misjudged, that this…something isn’t all—?” she asked. Anticipation could be a lethal enemy, meeting expectations a daunting prospect. It was no secret that he was far more practiced than she in the art of lovemaking. One man, in her whole life, compared to how many women for him?

“Noo…” Nathan said gravely. It was uttered so softly she could barely hear it over the tinkle of his bells. “Not possible. I’ve observed this something for a time, now. So much, so remarkable…”

His mouth moved wordlessly, and he finally surrendered. “Nay. Dreams are fulfilled in so very many ways.”

A glowing rush surged up to her face and other parts below. “Once, then, is all you’d desire of this…something?” The hoarseness of her voice wasn’t completely a result of the rum.

Nathan made a scornful noise. “Hardly. A lifetime wouldn’t allow for what could be.”

He flopped in the chair and sighed, dejected. “But, if it came to pass the once ’tis all I was allowed…” His head fell back against the chair, and he looked again to the smoke-darkened beams. “Then, I would have the once, and would be obliged to find a way to live with that.”

Too restless to sit, he rose again to stand at the window.

“If you’ve wanted this something, why haven’t you taken it before now?” Cate asked.

Nathan turned to her with a look that turned her spine to water. Boring into her with an avidity-sparked cinnamon and amber gaze, he knew better than anyone of how to hide his thoughts, but he hid nothing now.

His voice dropped to a throaty purr. “’Twas not mine to have. To take it could be to lose it, and then…” He looked away, his shoulders moving under his shirt finishing the thought.

Cate drew a deep breath. A kindred spirit had been mirrored in those eyes, one who had suffered and burned the same as she, desire and longing that neither had words for.

Words, however, had served them poorly.

She rose and walked purposefully to the doors. She swung them closed, the sound of the bolt sliding home punctuating an end to conversation. As she came back across the room, she allowed the quilt to slip from her shoulders, and halted as near to Nathan as possible without touching. A breeze wafted through the cabin. Clad only in her shift, she shivered, but not from a chill.

She plucked the bottle from his hand. “Just how much of that rum have you had?”

Nathan lowered his lids. The heavy lashes fanning dark crescent over his cheeks, he looked up through them and smiled crookedly. “Not much.”

Cate set the bottle on the table, and then pressed her body against his. “Then you’re not so drunk, are you?”

“No.” His breath stirred her hair.

“Good, because I want to show this fortunate cove something.”

Cate plucked a taper from the table and put out her hand. As she led him toward the curtain, Nathan reached to retrieve his baldric and pistol, and shrugged self-consciously. She nodded in mute acknowledgment of the facts of his world: above all else, one must always be on guard.

From the time she took Nathan's hand, until she put the candle into the wall sconce by the bunk, Cate's mind was flooded with a myriad of reasons as to why she should stop. Instead, she turned into his arms and allowed his kiss—so fervent it arched her backwards—to erase them all. She thrilled as her hands splayed across his back, tracking the cords of muscle taut over bone. A stronger thrill rolled through her at the brass hardness against her leg.

“I have to warn you,” she said. “I haven’t done this in a very long time.”

“Well, ’tis not something readily forgotten,” Nathan said dryly.

“It’s been five years.” She spoke with some effort as his tongue flicked her earlobe.

Nathan drew back, scowling as if he thought surely he had misunderstood. “Five years?”

“Nearly six, now.” She took the brief interlude to catch her breath. It had been nearly six since she and Brian had…

No, not now. Go away!

“Five years.” Nathan angled his head and viewed her as if she was a new variety of animal. Then he straightened, ready for the challenge. “Five years. Aye, well, as I recollect, not much has changed.”