exhalations, chairs were jerked and a bottle was set down with far more force than necessary. It was growing late, the sun too weak to push through the after gallery’s thick panes. She heard the scrape of a flint struck and saw the glow of a candle grow on the glass.
Nathan scuffed to a halt and heaved a resigned sigh. “So what passage must I pay to escape this Purgatory?”
Cate glared over her shoulder. “I’m no pirate. At least I know right from wrong.”
“As do I,” he conceded readily. “However, I am a pirate, which renders the latter entirely superfluous.”
There was the agitated rustle as he set to pacing once again. “Worrying about right and wrong can get a soul killed,” he grumbled, half under his breath. “And I can’t very well conduct what need be conducted, if I have to live in mystery of what’s to greet me upon me return to me own bloody damned ship.”
“In that case, I’ll strive to keep myself and my opinions out of your business.”
Nathan scuffed to a halt behind her. “How’s about if we negotiate, opting, of course, to overlook said opinions?” His testiness gave way to his more familiar tease. “Truth be told, I rather fancy having you in me business.”
Cate peeked over her shoulder and was met with a smile, one meant to charm. Her face heating, she nodded.
“Capital,” he declared. “Now, how’s about I call Kirkland? The man’s near apoplectic worrying you might go hungry.”
###
It was that half-time of neither day nor night, when the light grew so thin the world became like a child’s drawing: a place of two dimensions, flat people moving against a paper backdrop, shore, trees and mountains all existing on the same plane.
Nathan lingered at the cabin door. He drew a breath as if to say something, but didn’t. This repeated several times gave her hope—vague, but hope nonetheless—that he might change his mind and allow her ashore. Settling his hat carefully on his head and his faded-to-near-colorless burgundy coat on his shoulders, he stepped over the coaming and was gone.
From where Cate sat, she couldn’t see the boats pull ashore, and perhaps it was best. Seeing him head off to the uncertainty of battle or accident was an unpleasant prospect. Not to be melodramatic, but she knew first hand how capriciously Providence could strike, how easily one’s life could be turned into something unrecognizable. It wasn’t beyond reason to think she might never see him again.
She shook away the thought and set to delicately thumbing through one of the volumes stacked next to the chair. Sticky with pitch and tar, her hands were a mess from picking oakum. They were covered with fuzz, which no amount of wiping could remove. The book was in French, a language with which she had but passing familiarity, and so she picked out what words she knew and guessed the rest. It was a thoroughly inefficient way to read, but it passed the time, the ultimate goal. Kirkland brought her a plate shortly. Having little appetite, she picked bits from the softtack, chewing without tasting. He took away the virtually untouched meal with a suffering eye, leaving a mug of broth in its place. She drank out of obligation.
Cate peeked through the sidelight once more at the hostages, barely visible where they huddled against the forecastle. She felt as much a captive as they. Her future might well be more tenuous than theirs. She wished she could advise them not to worry; she was reasonably confident no harm would befall them. These were pirates, but not the rapacious, plundering barbarians they were purported to be. There was a good chance, however, that point being advertised could be detrimental to their—and therefore her—success.
The grog dispensed, the men gathered amidships instead of the forecastle. The wealth laid at their feet, and the knowledge of more to come, put them in soaring spirits. They indulged in vast speculations of the prize to come and what the kingly sums might purchase. The lure of piracy was of little wonder: fortunes exceeding a lifetime of labor could be had in a day, squandered the next, and regained the next. The bell clanged. A bellowed “Pipe down!” sent them to their hammocks, although many opted to sleep on deck.
She roamed the cabin, looking for something that wasn’t there. Being alone for five years had taught her much in the way of loneliness, but the emptiness she suffered now was a wholly unfamiliar sort: