dropping it several times, her chest tightening until breathing was no longer a natural thing. She chided herself for being as nervous as she had been on her wedding night.
No, not Brian…not now…not ever.
She couldn’t think about him now. He was gone…and Nathan was there, so very there.
From overhead came the hurried stump of footsteps. The floor beneath her feet shifted as the Morganse began to move out of the bay. In the moonlessness, it would be a treacherous passage. By means of lead lines and her master at her helm, the ship felt her way through the shoals and reefs like a blind person in a narrow corridor.
When finished bathing, Cate slipped naked under the quilt, feeling as fresh as a nymph. She was seized by the fear of appearing a little too eager, and jumped up to snatch her shift from the stool. Slipping it on, she tied the bow at the front with extra precision, and then settled in bed once more.
It wasn’t long before ship leaned on a larboard tack. Cate shifted with well-practiced ease to wedge herself more comfortably. The Morganse was sailing hard, her urgency felt through the thrum of her rigging and rush of the water sliding past the hull. With Harte and his warships standing in at Hopetown, pursuit was a real threat. It was difficult to erase the image of the Resolute at the Straits, in all her 80-gun glory. Cate regretted not having fully appreciated the risk under which she had placed not only Nathan, but the Morganse and her people, when she had pleaded for help for Prudence. Granted, Nathan had grumbled and chaffed, but with no more ire than if she had asked him to pass the salt. There had been no remonstration, nor recrimination from anyone, but then no one had been injured…yet.
She was familiar enough now to know the difference between the clamor of sailing and that which rose from eminent danger. Pryce and Hodder’s bellows and the fainter hails from the forecastlemen and topsmen all indicated they were in the clear. Nathan’s destroyed voice couldn’t begin to equal that of the First Mate or Boatswains, but authority compensated where volume failed. The only thing now to be heard was the all-encompassing desire to put as much sea to the ship’s stern as possible.
The deck prism as her light, she lay in its ethereal greenish glow with nothing more to do than to think.
He wanted her!
The shock was as strong then as it had been on that dark road. Touching her fingers to her lips, she could still taste Nathan's kiss, and feel the press of his body against hers, urgent and needing…Yes, so very, very in need.
He wanted her…but Nathan couldn’t possibly burn for her the same way as she did for him. It would mean he had suffered the same ache and need that coiled like a serpent in her belly and constricted to the point of verging on pain. It would mean he had woken in the night panting and writhing with avidity, and then walking the decks, for nothing else would appease the cries of the flesh.
It was a wonder how two people could have lived in such parallel worlds of desire and denial. She regretted for having been so blind, for having made him suffer—for making both of them suffer, for that matter. A steadier thought pointed out it hadn’t wholly been her fault: the King of the Arcane had ruled his realm in convincing fashion.
With nothing but time, she reexamined every moment with Nathan, from the first day, when she stood dripping in the cabin, until just a few hours ago, trying to glean out the oh-so-very-subtle hints only hindsight could illuminate. So many questions were answered, and yet from each answer rose another question.
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