lavender hadn’t been a wise choice. Ordinarily administered to ease headaches and minor pain, it might have had a more sedative power than credited.
Had Nathan come back—or not? It was a question she couldn’t bring herself to ask; there were no good answers. When they parted, he had shown every intention of coming to her, but did he? Or had second thoughts prevailed? In typical Nathan fashion, was he hoping the situation would go away, forgotten? She found herself faced with the choice of where to put her faith: with six weeks of past behavior, or a flash of passion?
Nathan took a swig from the bottle, and then looked up, as if he had forgotten she was there.
“Have a nip?” He made a feeble attempt at one of those smiles intended to charm.
Cate took the proffered bottle. The rim glistened from where Nathan had just drunk, and she made a point of turning it in order to use that same space. She winced when the raw liquor touched her throat. As she passed the bottle back, their fingers brushed, his seeming to reach for hers. It was ever so brief, but enough to make her heart jump.
“Is there a…problem?” she finally threw into the silence. It was woefully inadequate, but sounding inane was better than the waiting.
Nathan stared at the bottle as he pensively rolled it between his palms. A smile slowly grew, as if to a private joke. He looked up with an intensity that made her breath catch.
“I’m gathering courage, luv,” he said so very quietly, inordinately so. “The courage to take something.”
Cate was struck a bit odd. Nathan was a pirate; rarely did she consider them to suffer the burden of restraint on taking anything they desired.
She had learned it was often necessary to be patient when trying to follow Nathan’s train of thought. Often perplexing at first, he had a tendency to make sense…usually.
“Do you know what it is to want something?” Nathan began conversationally, his gaze fixed on the bottle. “’Tis right before you, within your grasp, and yet so far from reach it might as well be on the rings of Saturn.” He ended with a skyward flair of fingers.
“It’s not anything you’d considered to fancy or seek,” he said without waiting for her answer. “And yet, you know from the first that it is something for which you have searched all of your days.”
Nathan stared at Cate with great intent, as if waiting for an answer to a question unasked. Bottle in hand, he rose with startling abruptness to prowl the room like a great cat.
“And then you realize,” he said, “’tis something not to be yours a-tall. Meant for another, a treasure never intended to be shared. ’Tis unworthy you are, the Fates whisper.”
He drew up before the window. He leaned his arm against the frame and cocked a hip. A breeze lifted the tails of his scarf and coiled them about his shoulders. He gazed at a sea glittered with gunmetal and silver.
“But then you find yourself thinking, ‘Just once,’” he said softly to the night. “Not forever, for that would be too grand. But just once, if you were to reach out and take it, and be damned the consequences.”
“What led you to believe this…something wasn’t—?” she began.
“’Tis the treasure of another,” Nathan sighed over his shoulder in utter defeat. “Once claimed is twice possessed.”
Nathan resumed pacing. As he moved on a feral path in and out of the shadows, Cate noticed his bare feet once more. The candlelight caught the gleam of freshly shaven cheeks and glistened on droplets of water in his beard and chest hair. She surveyed the room with a new eye. His coat and sash were flung over a chair in the corner, his hat and belts tossed on the table. Boots and socks laid scattered across the floor. Under closer observation, they formed a loose trail toward the curtain.
Yes, he had come back.
She recalled awakening at one point. No one had been there, the movement of the curtain assumed to be from the motion of the ship.
Yes, Nathan had come back. He had kept his word and she…
Cate braced her head in her hand. The regret that sickened her just then had to have paled in comparison to Nathan's abject disappointment. There was no gracious way of saying someone’s arrival hadn’t been sufficiently exciting to keep one awake. To many a man it would be an insult, a deep unforgivable affront.
What he was about,