The Pirate Captain (12 page)

She looked down, fingering a pink satin sleeve, heavily ruched with lace. “Certainly, in a couple of days, but I’m not sure how practical any of this is going to be. These are ladies' things: silks and satins, and fine laces.”

“You're a lady.”

“Hardly.” Cate made an unladylike caustic noise. “It's not usually the first word to come to mind when describing me. Regardless, I don't think any of these would be appropriate for a ship of this…nature.”

“You mean a pirate ship?”

She met his dark gaze squarely. “Yes, a pirate ship.”

“No worries, luv.” A flash of ivory split the beard as he grinned. “’Tis many a far stronger man what shrinks at the word. Hell, some days I struggle with it meself.”

The humor faded, suddenly becoming very distant. And then he shook his head, as if to rid himself of a thought.

“Aye, these are very fine things,” he murmured, fingering an azure brocade sleeve.

“All in good time, but in the meantime, I’ll be in need of something.”

Mr. Kirkland’s arrival brought them back to the table. A plate of toast awaited, with a small dollop of jam, a sliced orange, and a battered silver knife. The honey jar had been slid from the teapot next to the plate.

Blackthorne sat, only to rise abruptly and head for the door.

“Is there anything else that I…er, we can get you?” he called over his shoulder.

The offer held the tone of being meant only in jest, and yet it held a strain of sincerity.

“Some hot water,” she said in a surge of unadulterated self-indulgence.

That stopped him in his tracks. “Eh?”

“A basin and some water…to wash with.” Her heart quickened at the prospect. A trans-Atlantic voyage demanded severe conservation of fresh water, and hence no allowance for a luxury such as washing. She had no soap, but the thought of hot water alone sent a thrill through her. His puzzled look gave her a sinking sensation that she might have presumed too much.

He saw as much and his gaze softened. “Treasure is in the eye of the beholder, is it not?”

Mirth lit his eyes as he bent an elaborate bow, touching his fingers to his heart, and then lips. “Your wish is but me command, m’lady.”

###

Hovering fretfully at the top of the companionway, Mr. Kirkland indulged Cate in four more pieces of toast, another orange, and enough tea—alas, not coffee—to float the ship. Now anchored by food, she felt considerably steadier. Kirkland then brought a steaming ewer, a porcelain basin ringed with images of frolicking cherubs, and a sponge.

“Picked and cleaned it, myself,” he beamed.

From a chest of drawers, he produced a length of cloth intended as a towel. Face burning with embarrassment, he then scampered away.

She moved her toilet to the sleeping area. The curtain posed a flimsy barricade, but it provided the impression of privacy. Modesty demanded she keep the quilt about her—prying eyes and all—but pragmatism pointed out the impossibility. She poured a measure of water into the chipped basin, and shed both quilt and shift.

It was her first opportunity to inspect the damage from Chin’s knife. Lying just above the full of her breast, the length-of-a-finger cut was now lightly crusted with dried blood. The nicks on her ribs and midriff were bright with newness in comparison to the white lacework of old scars. Those, which ran from the curve of her ribs to the flat of her belly, had been long forgotten. It had taken the threat of another blade to call them back to mind. In consideration of all the damage from so long ago, it was a puzzle how Chin’s knife could have prompted her to react as if she had been nearly eviscerated.

Troubling, but she shook the thought away.

Later, all very much for later.

A basin and a sponge wasn’t a real bath, but it was luxurious compared to the wooden bucket of seawater and the hem of her shift, the sum total of her ablutions for the last two months
.
The water was dank but fresh, not salt. It was glorious. In spite of its initial warmth, it cooled her skin and sent goose flesh creeping up her arms.

She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to ponder Captain Nathanael Blackthorne.

It hadn’t gone unnoticed that he had effectively eluded answering her questions regarding his intentions. In fact, he seemed to ricochet between not wanting to say and not knowing. Neither thought was comforting. It still remained to be seen if he would rise to the bait and turn her in for the reward. Initial impressions had been his interest was only mildly piqued, but if she had learned anything about the good Captain, it was that he was a master at keeping his council.

As Blackthorne sat sipping tea, he had appeared benign enough, but even a lion could look peaceful when sleeping. She had eyed him at the table, wishing she had paid more careful attention to what the Constancies had told of him. So much had been said, it was nigh impossible to separate the horrors and misdeeds credited to Blackthorne from the other names bandied about. She fancied herself a good judge of character, but Blackthorne was a difficult to fathom, partly because his features were so buried and partly because he was rarely still. He shifted roles like an actor. Was the real Blackthorne the bully she had met in the cabin or the compassionate one met kneeling next to the wounded Chin? Or was it the disarming charmer who had just taken his leave, the inscrutable temporarily tilted aside? Or was it all an act, with the single intention of getting her to drop her defenses?

No, only the foolhardy would be sucked into believing any of the façades. The malignancy, which most assuredly lurked behind the curtain, rendered him doubly treacherous. Besides, even if the Captain indeed proved to be benevolent, there were still a hundred and twenty-some pirates aboard who were not.

As she dried off with the scrap of towel, she glanced about the dim room, curious for an insight as to Blackthorne, the man. It was, however, more austere than the salon. Aside from the quilt, the narrow bunk sported a worn canvas-covered mattress and a faded checked pillow. At its foot sat a sea chest, with intricately knotted rope handles. A small stand was next to the bed, a sconce over it. Atop the stand was a stack of books:
Catullus
, something in French that she couldn’t read, and
Moll Flanders
. Eclectic taste, to say the least. A dull gleam in the bunk’s corner caught her eye—a bottle wedged there. Uncorking it, she sniffed: Madeira. A washstand in the corner, a low stool, a row of empty pegs on the wall, and a hanging locker containing a disreputable rain tarpaulin completed the room.

No extra clothing, no luxuries, no hints of the person or his past; contrary to his colorfulness of character, Nathan Blackthorne, famed pirate and scalawag, was a man of simple needs and tastes.

Suddenly guilty for having invaded his privacy, she turned to a more pressing problem: clothes. Donning the soiled and crumpled shift once more, she went through the now empty salon to the trunks. She held little hope of finding another shift. Several had been soiled during the women’s illness, and in the spirit of decency, she had dressed each in a clean one before burial.

She hesitated at the side of the largest trunk, chewing at the inside of her mouth. The owner of this trunk had once been alive, breathing and talking, loving and being loved. Now, Mrs. Littleton was gone, leaving nothing but a few possessions to mark her passing. Gathering her resolve, she lifted the lid and groped through the tangled mass. She held a hope, though a desperate one, that the pirates had been thorough enough in their pillaging of the
Constancy
to have found her little bag, the one she had so carefully hidden, so that it wouldn’t be found. For her to find it there would have meant Providence had smiled upon her, a rare occasion indeed. The backs of her eyes began to prick at the thought of what had been lost. She shook it off and set to digging with more intent.

Just as her hand hit something hard—a hairbrush, it felt like—the clump of boots announced Nathan’s arrival. She rose and bobbed a curtsey. Slightly flushed with exertion, his arms were laden.

“I come bearing gifts,” he declared.

He reached as if over an invisible barricade and dropped the cloth bundle he bore into her arms. She shook it out to find a man’s shirt and breeches.

“They'll answer fine. I can't recall the last time I wore pants, but it's certainly better than a quilt,” she said.

“The hold’s full o’ swag, but nothing seemed…” He struggled for a word, and finally landed on “Appropriate,” but winced, not happy with that one either. “We’ll be putting in on the ’morrow, the next day the latest; perhaps we can find something better then.”

The breeches were sky blue velvet, the shirt a fine lawn, with deep-laced cuffs and collar. As she held the shirt up for inspection, it was difficult to overlook the elegant fabric’s transparency. Suitable for a man, under a waistcoat and jacket, it was otherwise quite revealing.

“Oh! I brought this, too.” From his sleeve, Nathan pulled a long strip of cloth, its ragged edges evidence of having been torn from a larger piece.

“It’s for…well, you know…it's…” He cleared his throat meaningfully and crisscrossed his chest. “It's to help with…things.”

Agitation radiated from him like heat from a brewing pot, his displeasure seeming to stem from the very items he had just given her.

“You're not one of those men who think women shouldn't have legs,” she cried.

His discomfort gave way to indignation. “The last woman I knew to wear breeches tired to kill me.”

“And somehow, it was the breeches’ fault?”

“What else?”

She thought him to be jesting, until she saw his deadpan expression.

“I'm sorry,” she sputtered, holding up what was meant as an apologetic hand. “I'll try to give warning, if I’m taken by the urge.”

“I would appreciate that,” he said coldly.

The smell of dankness, wet wood, stale body odor, and old vomit met her nose, strong enough to be smelt at arm’s length.

Her stomach rolled and she blurted, “I’ll need to wash these.”

“Excuse me?”

“Wash. They need washing.” Even if it meant using seawater, the smell of that would be far preferable. Standing in nothing but an oversized shift was hardly the time to be particular, but on some things she was unwilling to compromise.

His lip lifted, wrinkling his nose. “Why?”

“Because they smell.”

“Like what?”

“Any manner of things. Sniff.”

She shoved the offensiveness under his nose. He obligingly bent, audibly sniffed, and straightened. “Not bad. I’ve certainly smelled worse.”

It was all too clear that it could have smelled like a dead horse and he would have said the same.

“Not on me.” Tension was making her more sensitive and truculent than what was customary.

“Have you any concept what it took to find those for you?” Blackthorne demanded, propping his hands on his hips.

“No,” Cate said, somewhat chastened. “But I'm not wearing anything that smells like…that.”

“I don't give a bloody damn if you lie naked in the bunk for the next fortnight.”

With a disgusted growl and an angry swipe, he turned and made for the doors, veering at the last to the rail at galley companionway.

“Mr. Kirkland! The
lady
desires to wash.”

Blackthorne made a great show of walking the boundary line. Just short of the door, however, he trounced his foot down on her side, making a defiant gesture behind him. He skidded to a halt before a mass of gape-mouthed crewmen gathered at the door.

“What are you looking at, you bunch o’ knot-headed laggards?” he cried, scattering them like chickens from the garden gate.

###

Cate’s face heated with embarrassment as she stood next to the bunk and ran her hands over her rear and down her thighs. There was no looking glass. Only self-consciousness was her guide. It was awkward to be wearing pants. She had worn them as a child and into her later years of youth, but rarely since. Inordinately large, the shirt and breeches barely touched her body. Even with the shirt’s voluminous tails tucked in and the ties at the back drawn tight, the waistband still hung precariously at her hips. A belt might have answered, but there was none.

With an experimental shift of her shoulders, she tested the bindings around her chest. She smiled privately at Blackthorne’s fretfulness, but was grateful for his thoughtfulness. Modesty had never been her burden. She didn’t consider herself large-breasted, but in view of the lawn’s sheerness, precautions were necessary. She checked the binding’s knot a second time. Short of walking about with her arms crossed, she was still unsure as what to do about the neck opening. With one of the ties missing, it gaped nearly to her navel. The binding prevented exposure, but the draft was disconcerting.

What I wouldn’t give for some stays just now.

Mrs. Littleton’s and young Lucy’s were in the trunks, but either would have required extensive alterations before they could have been serviceable.

The shirt was for the most part dry and clean, or rather
cleaner
, there being a limit as to how much could be attained with cold seawater. The breeches were still damp and quite crumpled; the velvet unappreciative of being washed in a bucket. The state of undry, however, wasn’t unpleasant. She was not yet accustomed to the tropical heat and the breeze through the damp cloth was quite refreshing.

She tentatively pushed aside the curtain and went out into the salon. Its empty state was a reprieve to having to face anyone. In spite of the stern’s expanse of open windows and the breeze through the cabin’s double doors, she was in desperate need of fresh air. With no wall or encumbrance other than a forbidding seam in the planks, she still felt trapped. Careful to stay on her side of that demarcation, she paced and wondered if she was to be allowed out of the cabin. No mention had been made one way or the other. No guards were in sight, although she could feel eyes on her.

The boundary line imposed by Blackthorne ended perpendicular to the coaming, a raised barrier at the bottom of the door to prevent water from pouring in. Whether the coaming was part of her limit was unclear and Blackthorne…er, Nathan was nowhere to be seen. His voice could be heard now and again, broken by wind and ship.