intervene. Even Brian tried to bargain, and then outright threatened the man, but nothing helped. They found her frozen to death in the bottom of a burn. She had run away…again.”
Nathan considered for several moments from his chair, his expression growing grave.
“No, I’m not buying it.” He rose to circle her. “You’ve been at loose ends since Prudence was shipped, before, come to think on it. It’s not the ladyship, nor a churlish father, nor some damned arranged marriage something or other. It’s something else…”
Cate bristled, for no one liked their motivations questioned.
“It’s the kidnapping.” She drew back at her outburst. At first, she wanted to reject it out-of-hand, and yet at the same time, was relieved to have it off her chest.
“It’s wrong. I was uncomfortable with it from the first, especially for someone so young.”
“And how were we to have known that?” Nathan said, leaned against Merdering Mary’s barrel.
“You didn’t, but it doesn’t make the deed any less,” she said peevishly. “You have no idea what it’s like for a woman to be taken: the terror and cold dread, being frozen with fear of what’s to happen next.”
Nathan reached to seize her by the arm and turn her to face him. “But it wasn’t like that for you…was it?”
“The first time…well, both times, yes,” she said to the floor.
“First?”
“Oh, umm…” She sidled away.
Dammit! It was the hazard of giving way to one’s emotions: the inadvertent inevitably tumbling out.
“I was taken once before, a year or so after we were married. Deserters…I was…It was…”
Cate's voice caught and she waved Nathan away, the handkerchief on her finger like a flag of truce.
“Here, at first, yes, I was scared beyond words.”
Weeks had passed, but the anguish was fresher than she had imagined. Her heart picked up that same pounding rate once more, and a cold sweat prickled her spine. That terror must have shown on her face, for Nathan came round to stand over her. So caught up in the emotions once more, she cringed.
“You were never in danger.” His voice quaked with fury.
“I know that.”
“No one was going to lay hands—”
“But I had no way of knowing that, did I,” Cate said levelly. “It was the Ciara Morganse, the dreaded Captain Nathan Blackthorne. Anyone would wish to escape,” she said, glancing toward the windows.
They had fought her first day aboard. Thinking Nathan sought to violate her, Cate had bitten him and tried to jump. It had been folly, but hindsight always came through a clearer lens.
“It was either stop you, or watch you kill yourself,” Nathan said, following her thoughts. He studied Cate, regret knitting his brows. “You were that afraid?”
She forced a smile. “Water over the decks, as you like to say.”
He was barely appeased.
“I didn’t object to the kidnapping at first,” she said, returning to her initial point. “Because I knew there was little danger. I knew I would be here to aid and protect, save whoever it was from what I had to endure.”
“Endure, eh?”
The glumness in Nathan’s voice caused her to stop.
“Please, I don’t mean to reproach you,” Cate pleaded. “You’re doing what you must. It’s me. I can’t…I can’t—”
“Bear to be brought so low,” he said, sinking further.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Not quite, but so very, very near,” he said, bitterly.
“I understand why you loathe Creswicke, and I am in fullest sympathy why you want to do everything in your power to make his life a misery.” God, she was making such a hash of this. “But I’m uncomfortable with—”
“Being drug down and obliged to wallow in the gutters with the rest of us.” Nathan thumped his fist on the brass back of the great gun. “And so this is what I’ve done: made you do what you wouldn’t else, until your conscience won’t allow you peace.”
“No, no, I don’t mean that it’s your fault,” Cate said, clutching his arm.
“Aye, but it is.” The walnut eyes were sharp with hurt. Nathan made a caustic noise. “Pirate, darling. Not much more to be said. It’s what I am. It’s not a pretty world, but ’tis the hand I’ve been dealt, and by the Great Lucifer’s horns and tail, I’ll do what I must.”
Nathan's shoulder slumped. He raised a hand and dropped it to his side in surrender. “But you…you didn’t choose this. You don’t deserve…this…”
He moved to the window and stared out. “I should have gotten you away from all this,” he said, more to himself. He looked over his shoulder toward her. “You tried and…”
Nathan