The Pirate Captain - By Kerry Lynne Page 0,300

clamped his lower lip between his teeth and shook his head with a rustle of bells.

“I said I wanted to stay,” she said evenly.

“You should be where it’s…”

“I’m where I want to be.” Fears began to rise that he meant to send her away. “And I’ll suffer anything to…” Cate checked herself, for she was on the verge of making a confession which no one wanted to hear. “You declare yourself guilty of allowing me to be where I desired? That’s a strange Court of Justice your running, Captain Blackthorne.”

Cate touched Nathan's arm and gazed earnestly up into the dark, troubled eyes. “I’m exactly where I want. There is no place else.”

Nathan smiled faintly, somewhat appeased.

He shook off his mood to say, “But Prudence is back, safe and sound amid the fold once more. You should be skylarking in the rigging with joy. Instead, you’re skulking about like we’d just sent her to Jones’ Locker.”

“I have to help her.”

Nathan slumped in his chair and propped his head in his hand. “You’re making no sense a-tall.”

“You know Creswicke better than I. Can you honestly say you’re comfortable with leaving her to a man like him?”

Nathan shrugged, looking off. “I can sleep with it.”

“Well, I can’t.”

Looking up, he smiled crookedly. “So you propose to right the wrong, by doing another wrong, to save her for her own good from something which she might well desire to do. You’ve been tying too many knots, darling. That’s positively convoluted; it has as more turns in it than a Spanish bo’lin.”

“I’m not talking about taking her again, but what’s so wrong with allowing her a choice?”

Nathan rolled his eyes to the beams overhead and said under his breath, “Where have I heard that before?”

Cate winced. A few days earlier, she had indeed uttered those same words in the fervor of offering a different kind of plea on the girl’s behalf.

“You think I’m as half-crazed and misguided now as I was then?”

Nathan regarded her balefully. “’Tis but a strake one way or t’other.”

Heaving a sigh, Nathan closed his eyes like a man commending himself to the gallows. “So put a name to what’s in your mind.”

“I have no idea.”

With an exasperated gasp, Nathan buried his face in his hands.

“Well, have you always gone into every action, with your every move planned to the letter?” Cate demanded defensively.

“Of course!” Both knew that to be a blatant exaggeration. “A man without a plan is a man what plans to fail, or get himself killed, as the case might be. Be warned, you darling, best intentions are often not appreciated. They can be a sour fruit.”

Cate dropped into a chair, tiredly rubbing her temple against a headache, which for a week seemed to have taken up a permanent residence. “All I know is I shan’t be able to live with myself, unless I’ve at least tried to do something.”

“Fancy it will allow you to sleep, do you?” Nathan asked. “Allow me to be so bold as to say it will help precious little. I don’t expect a place in line at St. Peter’s gate all for the cause of a few ‘I’m sorry’s’ But for you.” The walnut eyes grew gentle. “For you there shall be a golden pass, for there is no badness and you shall go to the front of the line. I’ll put in a word, if you like, should you think it might help, but mum might be best, all things considered.”

Another crooked smile appeared; the one which came with uncertainty. The sight of it tugged her heart, as it was meant to do. It was one more coin in the price of being with him.

Nathan narrowed an accusing eye. “Putting the curse of your perpetual happiness on my shoulders, eh? Bloody heavy burden, that one. Could haunt me the rest of me days.”

Drumming his fingers on the table, Nathan slammed the flat of his hand. “Oh, very well. Deliver me from well-meaning, good-hearted, meddlesome women. They don’t call me Daft Nathan for nothing. I just hope they don’t call me Dead Nathan.”

###

The late afternoon shadows of the trees crawled like fingers across the stilling water, as the Morganse slipped into the back bay of Hopetown. Under jibs and staysails, she passed through the reef and stood in with a familiarity that almost rendered the lead lines a formality. Cate paced the forecastle while the longboat was roused over the side, for only one would be going ashore. To be there and gone before even