The Pirate Captain (110 page)

The clothing arrived directly. Nathan snatched, missed, and snatched again at his shirt lying on the bunk. He drew himself to full height and growled, “A bit o’ privacy,
if
you please.”

“You should rest.”

“Pray, mind the oars in your
own
boat,” Nathan said censoriously. Only the most generous could have called his showing of teeth a smile.

Fine tremors coursed through her as his image was blurred by several shades of red. She hadn’t expected effusive thanks to be lauded upon her, but a little acknowledgement would have been appreciated. Ingratitude seemed no more Nathan’s nature than the dreaded “indolence.”

Still deep in that same tinted haze, she didn’t remember going to the curtain, but did hear the clatter of the rings when she snatched it aside.

“Then by your leave,
m’lord
!” She hoped he didn’t hear the quaver in her voice. Amid another jangle of rings, the curtain was yanked shut behind her.

Once alone, she sagged against the bulkhead, tears stinging the backs of her eyes. Voices rose from the galley companionway, and she ran to the corner of the salon and locked herself in the convenience. There she sobbed into the folds of her skirt.

The day failed to improve.

Several days’ bed rest would be normally prescribed after what Nathan had just suffered, but a ship wasn’t a normal place, especially one staggering under such storm damage. Nathan was still pale and drawn, the glow of health yet to return. There were dark smudges under his eyes and an uncommon sag to his shoulders. He flared at delicate suggestions, not only from Cate, but Pryce and Millbridge, that he should rest. Seeing Nathan periodically cradle his hand in the crook of his other arm caused everyone to make allowances. That sympathy, however, was quickly dissolved by uncharitable thoughts in the face of his ill-tempered bursts.

Cate tried to shake it off, crediting Nathan’s contrary behavior to his concern for his ship. Keenly aware of the toll the last few days had taken on everyone aboard, she scolded herself for being thin-skinned and testy.

Cate thought it her imagination at first, but she gradually came to realize Nathan was making a point of being where she was not. Over a hundred feet of ship suddenly wasn’t large enough. Twice, while she mounted the windward steps, she saw him exit the quarterdeck by the leeward. When she came into the cabin, he rose abruptly and brushed past her without a word. She was left standing in his wake, confused and feeling as cold and empty as the coffee cup he had left on the table.

That night, Cate glumly picked at the plate Kirkland had left. For the third time that day, Nathan had come to the cabin, saw her, pivoted, and left. The report was that he now sat on the masthead—God knew how he got up there, one-handed—threatening bodily harm to anyone who ventured near. Beatrice grew quarrelsome—more so than was her usual—and Hermione declined her evening tobacco quid.

The memories of the fervor of his kiss and the warmth of his arms, his body pressing against hers, responding so readily to her touch, had faded incrementally under his cold glares and icy shoulder. It was quite clear it had all been an anomaly. It was unsettling how one could be so passionate one point, and so distant and surly the next.

She braced her head in her hands. “This is Nathan. What the hell else did you expect?”

The thing that weighed most was the one she could barely admit: Hattie.

Hattie.

The name loomed over her like a mythical being. It was like being the second wife after the untimely death of the beloved first: living in the shadows, always measured, always seen through a tinted lens.

You remind him of her.

No more chilling or damning words had ever been uttered.

It was clear that Cate was but a substitute. A fascination and wonder it was, as to how Nathan could continue to love the very one who had so cold-bloodedly betrayed him, but there it was. Cate stood at the curtain looking at the bunk, and wondered what pleasures he and Hattie had enjoyed there. She couldn’t help but wonder if a few days earlier, when Nathan had closed his eyes, had it been his precious Hattie he made love to? It had been his precious Hattie he had called for when fevered. His disappointment at finding Cate standing there instead was evident. The whole situation was so much like a drunk after a binge, during which ugly things had been said. Now sober, the drunk didn’t recall anything, and assumed everyone around him to do the same, any hurt to be forgotten. The difference here was that Nathan had been the drunk. And yet, he was the one acting hurt. Worse was a strong edge of resentment about him, as well, as if Cate had somehow sought to deceive him.

A part of her wanted to tell Nathan, “Have the bitch and be damned!” Except her heart told her what she already knew: there was no leaving him. The question was how much more wretched she would become, in her desperation to be with him? How long would she allow him his illusions? Sadly, the question was more how long before he was done with her?

Neither did the second day improve.

The ship cracked on with an uncommon press of sail. Looking nearly as haggard as their Captain, many of the crew cast an eye skyward at the show of canvas, and surreptitiously crossed their fingers or touched their charms.

“The Cap’n knows ’is ship better than any pigtail-swingin’ tar aboard, but this…” she heard Hodder mutter.

The rare times Nathan spoke to Cate—and blessedly rare they were—he was churlish and distant, often curt to the point of cutting. His most loyal, including Pryce and Millbridge, scowled in his path, as puzzled as she. Nathan’s growing moodiness brought her to almost regret having nursed him to health. “Health” however, was barely applicable. He was even more slumped and hollow-eyed, the dark circles there deepening.

As Cate swung from confusion to fury, she sank deeper and deeper into misery, all the while smiling in desperate hope that it was all her imagination. When the smile failed, she locked herself in the convenience and sobbed into the towel, now kept in the corner for just such moments.

That night Nathan came up missing. Cate was seized by panic, envisioning him laying somewhere, fevered and helpless. He was at last found sprawled on the bowsprit. Arm hanging limp, a rum bottle suspended between two fingers, he stared at the night sky.

The next day, the
Morganse
finally cleared a point on Blue Goat Island, Cogburn’s Island, her destination, could be seen ahead. The bay, where they were to rendezvous with the
Griselle
, was to its north, but so was the wind, or nearly so. It meant a long tack: angling out as close to the wind as the
Morganse
would bear, until far enough out when she came about—wear around, that is, bringing the wind more or less behind her—it would be in a direct line back into the bay.

Cate had hoped the prospect of joining up with Thomas might sweeten Nathan’s mood.

It didn’t.

Nathan flew into a black rage at Mute Maori, at the helm, for turning too soon. It was now a decision made by the helmsman, but that was a minor point. Doing so had caused them course to fall short of the targeted point of land. It meant they would have to tack again.

“Goddamned current is what it is,” muttered someone from behind Cate, standing at the waist. “Any blighter worth ’is salt could see it.”

Cate stood at the lee rail as the
Morganse
drew nearer and near to the Cogburn , a trio of masts poked their heads above the treeline, indicating a ship sitting on the island’s far side.

“Is that the
Griselle
?” she asked against the backdrop of Hodder’s bellow of “Ready about!” and the pounding of feet as the hands raced to their stations.

Busy with the ship, Pryce only glanced. “Aye, ’ tis her.”

“How did they get here ahead of us?” If two ships departed from the same point at the same time, one would expect the fastest to arrive first, and that was the
Morganse,
hands down.

Pryce shrugged. “Better winds. Shorter course. Probably wasn’t obliged to scud so far afore the storm.”

The outward leg of the tack required two flips of the glass out, during which Nathan bawled out two of the ship’s most seasoned topsmen for being laggardly aloft, brought the
Morganse
into position. In the long rays of the late afternoon sun, she pirouetted as prettily as a ship might and angled toward the bay. It was four more turns of the glass, however, before the reef was cleared and she slipped into Cogburn Bay. A unified sigh of relief from all her people seemed to give an extra push on the sails.

They hailed the
Griselle
as they passed, Thomas at the taffrail, shouting back. The
Griselle
couldn’t have been long arrived, for her boats were clustered at her side like chicks around a hen, and the beach stood empty.

Even with his ship settled on her mooring, Nathan’s snappish mood didn’t improve. He flew into tirades at minor oversights and nonexistent mistakes: the yards were crooked, reeving too sloppy, lifting tackle too high, and sheets improperly stowed. At the end of one such berating, he reeled off into the cabin.

Cate stood at the capstan, when she realized every eye aboard was turned on her. From the f’c’stle to the quarterdeck, from the tops to the waist, she saw expressions in varying degrees from imploring to warning, pleading to accusation. Nearly ten score of innocent bystanders were taking the brunt of what was clearly something between her and Nathan, no matter how desperately she wished otherwise. With a nod of vague acknowledgement, she trudged into the cabin, with no clear idea of what she meant to do.

Nathan sat at the table, snatching through the charts, grumbling about a missing divider. Cate took it as a small victory that he hadn’t sped from the room when she entered.

“Problems finding something?” she asked lamely.

Nathan didn’t look up, but his mouth took an ugly curl. “Problems seem to be me specialty lately.”

Cate was in the process of steeling her nerve when she discovered she couldn’t breathe. The condition was not entirely the fault of the closed windows, a rare oddity. She moved to open them, if for no other reason than to stall further.

“Leave it!” he growled, with a tone that suggested he had been waiting for her to do exactly that.

“I just thought we might—”

“It’s the same damned air what comes through the door. Leave it!”

Cate flinched at the cut in his voice. She began to pace, charity and the driving need to do something to churning her gut.

“You need to eat,” she said, at last drawing up to the table.

“No. Thank. You,” he said without looking up.

“Allow me to pass the word for Kirkland?”

Nathan gave a thunderous glare from under his brow. “I had one mum; I shan’t be in need of another.”

“But you haven’t—”

Nathan slammed down the dividers with a force that sent his pencil skittering off the table. “Clap a stopper on it!”

Cate considered turning and leaving, just as she had seen him do over the last two days, but hesitated. She was driven by what some would call determination. Other less charitable souls might have flung words like “stubborn,” or even “bullish,” in her less-stellar moments. Whatever it was, she was resolved to seeing this to a head.

In that spirit, she went to the galley for some hot broth.

“Here, I thought…” she said, and slid the mug before Nathan. She had bid Kirkland put it in a mug, so Nathan mightn’t be obliged to sit, which he seemed so disinclined to do when she was about.

His eyes fixed on the chart, it was shoved aside. “Away, you meddlesome pestilence.”

Her cheeks flamed. Nathan could be edgy, even brusque, at any given point in the day, but never so vicious.

“What in the hell is eating you, Nathan?” It came out more confrontational than intended, but what was done was done. “You’ve been prickly as an old bear. You snap—”

“Bugger off, strumpet!”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “You meant that!”

“At last, the dull-witted dolt comprehends!” he extolled to the ceiling.

Her fist curled, but then she thought better.

“No,” she said, recomposing herself. “I’m not going to—”

In a sharp jangle of bells, he lurched to his feet with a suddenness that caused her to stumble back. He stormed to the windows and stood for some moments, staring out at the evening just settled.

Nathan whirled back around, his braids arcing with the momentum. “I want to know whose it is?”

“Whose what is?” she stammered.

He crashed his fist on the table, the broth spurting up out of the mug. “Goddamn it to fucking hell, woman, do not vex me!”

“You’re raving.” She eyed him from a distance, thinking perhaps the fever had returned. He was not hale, by any means, but neither there were any signs of fever. If anything, his hand seemed to have gone forgotten, perhaps the result of a great quantity of rum. The air was thick with its sweet smell.

Nathan stalked toward her, his voice falling to a threatening rumble. “I have been more than a gentleman. I’ve given you everything what could possibly be provided on this ship. I’ve never made so much as a gesture towards you. God knows I could have, but I never laid a finger on you.”

“I’m to be grateful you didn’t throw me down and take me the first night?” she asked, backing away.

“But I didn’t! And this is me thanks! Tell me whose it is! If he took you unwilling, by God, I’ll see his balls swinging from me bowspr’t. Hell, I’ll hold him down so you can cut them off yourself, but you have to tell me who!”

First time since her first day aboard, Cate was afraid of him. His beard had grown to a deep ebony bush, and obscured his face, so similar to that day. The dark smudges under his eyes rendered him even more sinister. His sword and pistol were across the room. She eyed the weapons at the mizzen and in the urn at the door as she continued to back away. She didn’t think he would use them against her, but he also looked the right Tartar, and capable of anything.

“Nathan,” she began levelly. “I don’t understand—”