The Pirate Captain (83 page)

“No thanks to my brothers, I’m afraid I wasn’t near so uninformed,” she went on. “I was called before the headmistress, more times than I care to think, for dispelling a number of misconceptions, when it came to all that.”

Nathan sat up to consider her through a slitted eye. Only one side of his face had been shaven and only a small patch, at that. It gave him an odd, half-cocked appearance.

“I can see where you might have been quite the adventuress. The lads must have been pounding at your door,” he said.

“They tried,” Cate laughed mirthlessly. “Thanks to my brothers, I also knew how to defend myself.”

He clapped a dramatic hand on his chest. “A heartbreak for all!”

He sobered to ask, “And how does the granddaughter of the third cousin to the Spanish Crown come to be in Virginia?”

He was of course referring to her outburst earlier, and a regrettable one it was.

“A circuitous route, to be sure,” Cate finally said.

“Pray tell,” he said, his interest growing. “You say you lived in the Highlands, yet you sound like no Scot I’ve ever heard. You say you grew up in the Colonies, and yet you speak Spanish like a native. I’ve heard you with Ferrero and Novello,” he added as an aside.

It was a bit startling to learn that he had been observing her so closely. She was unaccustomed to anyone taking such notice.

“I was born in Nueva España. Tejas, the far northern region.” she said finally. “What with prejudices and suspicions as they are, I learned it was easier to just say I was from the Colonies.”

“I knew I’d never heard that accent before. So, from Tejas to Virginia.” It came more as a conclusion than question.

“Not quite. My mother passed when I was fourteen.”

A shadow crossed Nathan's face, revealing that he too had known the hollow feeling of a world suddenly gone empty. As a child, he too had stood at the edge of a grave, straining to understand the words spoken about a benevolent and forgiving god, who would answer prayers, and yet not possessing the strength to pray hard enough, or apparently so, for they were never answered. It was a dark path of recollection that she thought neither of them desired to follow.

“It was but a few weeks after Father announced he had no means to raise a daughter. So I was sent to Charles Town to live with an aunt and uncle,” Cate said grimly.

His continued silence pressed her to go on. “They sent me to be schooled in Virginia.”

“And the lads of Virginia were forever grateful.”

Cate's cheeks heated at the hidden compliment. It was a small one, but rarely had he alluded to her looks or appeal.

“Have you ever been to either, Virginia or Charles Town?” she asked, hopeful for a capricious bit of irony, the small thrill of having almost crossed paths years ago.

Nathan pressed his lips, one foot waggling in thought. “Virginia? Nay. The Chesapeake ’tis waters reserved for those who know her. Charles Town, aye, regular-like for a bit, until everything…”

He faded off, realizing that his point was taking him where he didn’t wish to go.

He waved away the thought and cleared his throat. “Prime pirating waters thereabouts.”

Uncomfortable with talking about herself, Cate turned her attention to Prudence once more. At no portion in her life could she recall having been so pampered or indulged.

Nathan sat up and peered intently at her. “Married at eighteen for several years…” he began tentatively.

“Four.”

“Very well, so it shall be. Alone for five…” he mused, tapping his finger on his chin.

“Why don’t you just come out and ask how old I am?”

Nathan smiled, abashed but unapologetic. “Me mum taught me ’tis a wise man what never asks.”

“And an even wiser man never risks guessing.”

His smile widened. “Wise words.”

Cate allowed him to wait a bit longer. It was disconcerting, for it was the most personal inquiry he had ever made. “Last year was the twenty-seventh time I celebrated a birthday.”

A brow lifted ever so slightly and his mouth twitched. “I had thought you to be a bit younger,” he said carefully.

“Is that wishful thinking or a heavy-handed attempt at politeness?” she asked lightly.

“Which answer will gain me the most dispensation for having dared such hazardous waters?”

Cate waited, and finally threw into the silence, “Turnabout is fair play.”

His arms resting on bent-up knees, Nathan rolled his eyes skyward in calculation. The answer surprised him. “There was a time I never thought to live to see it. ’Twas thirty-two years ago Mum laid in childbed with me,” he said, looking down between his legs.

She was careful to keep her features immobile. All things considered, with everything that had happened to him, she would have thought him to be bit older.

Nathan fell quiet again at the mention of his mother, the dark brows drawing together. She looked away, to allow him his solitude.

“We have to do something for her, Nathan.”

He looked up, following Cate's gaze toward Prudence. A dubious curl lifted his lip. “Why?”

“She’s but a child. We can’t send her off to be married to some—”

“Bastard,” he put in bluntly. “Why not? Arranged marriages happen all the time.”

Cate watched Prudence, hat brim flopping as she flitted from flower to flower like a yellow-flounced butterfly. “I can’t imagine being in a loveless marriage.”

She turned toward Nathan, one eye closed against the sun. “Can you?”

He shook his head resolutely, the clatter of his bells muted by the moist heavy air. “Me? Not in life.”

“Not even for money and position?”

He straightened. “Are you suggesting something?”

“No, no, just inquiring: if there was money or position, or whatever it was you had always sought, would you marry just for that, no love, not even attraction?”

Nathan barely took time to consider. “Nay. ’Twouldn’t be worth it.”

It was a great relief to hear. Nathan was a pirate, living in a world in which treasure and prize were everything. She didn’t think him capable of him being so cold or calculating. Thomas had said riches held no interest for Nathan, and she had witnessed nothing to the contrary. But still, she harbored a niggling seed of doubt.

Chin resting on his arms, he fell quiet for some time. Thoughtfully touching his tongue to his lip, he peered cautiously at her from the corner of his eye. “Was your marriage arranged?”

Cate hesitated. Aside from her earliest hours aboard, it was the first time Nathan had ever inquired or even eluded to either her marriage or her earlier life. Whether it was because he was uncomfortable with her having had one, preferring not to hear about Brian, if he thought it too distressing for her to discuss it, or if it was just general lack of interest on his part she couldn’t tell. It occurred to her then, that perhaps he thought her objections to Prudence’s arranged marriage reflected on her own. In any case, the question was posed so shyly, she couldn’t in good conscience refuse him.

She shifted. “In a way. We were already in love. Neither one of us could have been forced into it else. We didn’t dare hope to be allowed to marry. Brian had been promised, some twenty years before he was born, to a girl in another clan. It was part of a peace treaty that his uncle, the head of the clan, decided he wanted out of. If it was broken outright, there would have been war. So he broke it indirectly, by having Brian marry someone else.”

“You?”

“If I had been a member of any other clan, our marriage would have started another war. Since I wasn’t even Scots…” Cate lifted her shoulders, allowing him to complete the thought.

“Violent politics.”

“You have no idea,” she said with an emphatic roll of the eyes. “More violent and treacherous than any pirate ship.”

Pyramiding his fingertips, Nathan examined them thoughtfully. “I would think marriage is not an easy thing: always waking to the same person, week after week…?” He lifted one brow in subtle inquiry.

“But, that’s the point. Marriage is the desire to wake to no one else.”

“And when the wanting wears off?” He posed the question with air of one who already knew the answer.

“Never does.”

He scoffed, but Cate pressed on. “You may be angry all day, with all of life’s little irritations, but at night…” She sighed dreamily. “At night, you can’t think of anyone else.”

Nathan stared with an odd mix of caution, skepticism, and curiosity. “Don’t you tire of…?” His fingers swirled the air in suggestion.

“The same person doing the same things?” she asked.

Nathan's implications were clear enough, the concept not lost on her: a man and a woman married but no longer husband and wife, existing in concentric circles of coexistence, never physically touching. For her, such marital malaise was unimaginable. Her first night with Brian had been as passion-laden as the last. But their union had existed only a little over four years. What if Providence had allowed them 10 or 15? What then? Would she have grown weary of bands of moonlight floating across muted shapes under a quilt? Would the fire’s glow on bared arms or the candlelight on a chest become wearisome? Would the absence of sighs and muffled moans into pillows be a welcomed relief?

The ragged sound of Nathan clearing his throat snapped her back.

“Sometimes you might…maybe…” Cate stammered, cheeks flaming. “But mostly, you look forward to it. Anticipation has its place; ’tis sweet nectar. A lot of times, it’s not necessarily what they can do for you; it’s what you can do for them.”

He smiled, the high cheekbones rounding. “Laying on of the hands, eh?”

“Exactly. And when you need said laying-on, they will know exactly what to do.”

“And if they don’t?”

Typical Nathan, he had found the hole in her argument with the same precision as a musket shot.

“Well,” she began slowly. “Either you haven’t been married long enough, or you’re married to the wrong person.”

“Exactly my point,” he exclaimed, stabbing an emphatic finger skyward. “How do you know who’s right or who’s wrong?”

Cate shifted irritably. “There’s no checklist. I don’t know, you just know. There’s a little voice—at least for me—that said ‘this one.’ Of course, there always the Demon of Self-doubt.”

Nathan leaned back on his elbows and rocked. “I don’t have demons,” he said glibly.

“I think you have more demons than you care to admit,” she said, and then added in the face of his dubiousness, “You have to be honest with yourself: is it love, or is it lust?”

The walnut eyes narrowed. “Is there a difference?”

“I think so, yes, a vast difference. Don’t you?”

He squirmed, looking in every direction but hers.

“C’mon, Nathan. Surely you’ve thought about it.” Cate nudged him encouragingly on the shoulder. “Come on.”

“Oh, very well. Bloody parlor games.” He blew the long breath of a one about to exert a great effort. “Lust is…”

His voice lowered as he sank deeper in thought. “Hungers of the flesh: looking forward to the next whore, before you’ve finished with the first. It’s the having, nothing more, which is not to be dismissed,” he added, wagging a finger. “It’s served me well for many a year.”

“As I can well imagine.” Cate looked away, fearing Nathan might feel compelled to elaborate. Knowing of Nathan’s escapades was one thing; having them described would be quite another.

His mouth compressed into a grim line. “There are other manifestations.” He glanced at her, and then away. The hand on his leg curled into a fist until the tendons stood out. “Lust can be wanting, wanting so badly you shake with it, knowing it’s within your grasp, but you can’t have it. You can’t touch it, and yet you know if you don’t have it soon, you’ll likely perish.”

Unprepared for his ferocity, she was stricken momentarily speechless. “And love?” she asked in a hoarse rasp.

Nathan sat unnaturally quiet. The leafy shadows laced over the line of his nose and high cheekbones. A lifetime flickered across his features, the corners of his mouth sagging with disappointment, disillusion and doubt.

“I think I’ve only known lust.” He sounded moderately surprised by the revelation, and then looked embarrassed. “Infatuation, a few times…maybe. Probably more than a few, truth be told.”

She ducked her head into the line of his sight. “Never been really, truly in love?”

Nathan lifted one shoulder and dropped it. “Thought I was; certainly felt like it, at the time, at any rate. If anyone had asked, I probably would have said ‘aye.’”

“What happened?”

“It ended,” he said without remorse. “Sometimes, it was them; most of the time, it was me.”

Stretching his legs, he crossed his ankles and waggled one foot. “It didn’t last; few weeks, few months, maybe a year, and then it was over.”

“Leaves a vast hole, doesn’t it?”

The dark crest of his lashes lowered, veiling his thoughts as she had seen him do so many times. He went inward, where she, nor anyone else, would ever be allowed to go. The answer was so long in coming she thought perhaps there wouldn’t be one.

Finally, it came, his graveled voice a rough whisper. “Aye.”

They fell quiet, each immersed in settling the dust of disturbed ashes. Combing her fingers through her hair—now dry enough to begin to bloom about her head—Cate tried to imagine what it would be to bear such losses, supposed loves that either faded or soured. Comparatively speaking, her life had been simple: one love, one loss.

Nathan reached to seize the cheese and bottle. Experimentally sloshing the latter, he uncorked it and offered it to her. She took a drink; the cider was sweet while at the same time carried the tang of having begun to ferment. It made her slightly lightheaded and a lot lazy. He cut a piece of cheese, but she declined, not wanting to spoil the cider’s pleasantness.

Taking a bite, he slowly chewed while examining the remaining bit in his fingers. “Never found anyone what made me want to take that final oath.”

“Final oath? You make it sound like a death sentence.”

“Well, you have to admit, ’tis the end of a lot of things,” he said judiciously.

“And the beginning of so much more.”

Cate bit her lip as she measured her next words. “All those times, before,” she began delicately, “maybe those were just flings, infatuations. You haven’t found the right person, yet, that’s all.”