Prudence,” she called after him.
Wheeling, he stormed back to loom over her.
“I am Captain of this ship, and as Captain of this ship, I decide, and I’ve decided the subject is closed.” He jerked a conclusive nod and spun away. “Bloody woman!”
###
"Any reason why Nathan is avoiding you like you have the French pox?”
Cate looked up at Thomas with a tentative half-smile. “Has he? I hadn’t noticed.”
Thomas laughed and gave her a teeth-jarring brotherly pat on the back as he passed. “You’re not near as good o’ liar as he, by half.”
Still chuckling, he ambled away, leaving Cate sitting on a log. As much as she wanted to deny it, he was correct: Nathan had been avoiding her. He had not spoken, nor looked her direction since their conversation on the beach. An odd sort of avoidance-hide-and-seek-eye-tag had been transpiring all evening. Several times, he had brushed near enough for her to attempt to catch his attention, but had sped by, pointedly ignoring her. A few times she thought to have him cornered, but he slithered away, feigning rapt fascination in a crewman sharpening a stick or a bird flying past.
She was miserable.
Every variety of regret and self-remonstration ate at her as she wondered what on earth had possessed her to suggest Nathan deflower Prudence. Impulses can be horrifying things. Heaven knew, no one should be more familiar with that phenomenon than Nathan, but that didn’t render him more forgiving. That he might never speak to her again clawed at her, the prospect of being sold monumentally increasing. If it was to be the case, then fair enough, but it wouldn’t come to pass without first having her say. If he wished to toss her from the ship after, there would be nothing to stop him. As miserable as she was, marooning, and a slow death from thirst and starvation would be a blessed end.
It was later that night, when Cate finally caught Nathan in the undulating margins of the firelight, perched atop a cask. At seeing her approach, he intensified his attention on the orange he was peeling with his knife, but for once he didn’t take flight. Cate sat on a puncheon at his knee and waited. At length—long enough to cause her to think her ploy might not serve—he lowered the orange and his guard.
“What?” Nathan's tone wasn’t churlish, just unsure, with a tinge of wounded little boy.
There had been plenty of time for Cate to think what she might say, if the opportunity arose. Now, with Nathan’s dark-framed eyes on her, every word and sentiment she had collected became woefully inadequate. With a cautious sidelong look, she wondered what it would take to make amends. Recollections of her apologies to Brian came readily to mind. Those, however, had required long nights on the floor before a fireplace. Not much guidance there.
It brought Cate squarely before the motive behind her latest blunder: ruffled feelings. She had wished to inflict the same hurt Nathan had dealt her when he had trifled with her a few nights earlier, and then suggested she might be sold, again toying with her. That had been her intention, but her darts had been far less accurate than his.
Love could erase so many hurts.
Dammit! Why can’t I stay angry with him?
She had agreed to remain on the Morganse, but it had been a deal with the Devil, her Purgatory at her elbow every day. It was torture to have Nathan so near, and yet so very far: the smiles, the glances, or, as at that moment, his leg brushing her arm, his fingers caressing the smooth skin of the orange. Very briefly, she allowed herself the luxury of visualizing what else those fingers might be capable of.
“Are you well?”
She jerked. “What? Huh? Oh, certainly…why?”
“You had an odd look, like you’d swallowed a bug.”
Cate hoped the darkness obscured her flaring cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Nathan. I didn’t mean to put you in such an awkward position.” They were vacuous words, but the only ones available.
The bells in Nathan's mustache flared in the firelight. He made a face, acknowledging her apology, while at the same time asserting his own disapproval.
“I’m sure in all that blithering madness, there were good intentions. Most insane proposition I’ve ever heard.” His hands stopped in mid-motion so he might regard her. “What in all that is holy ever possessed you?”
“I don’t know.”
Go ahead. Allow him his revenge. Your atonement is nigh.
Time can sometimes be a burden, and time was exactly what she had