“My hands are cold.” The words popped out of her mouth, surprising herself.
Roe looked to her, his eyebrows lifting.
She stood from the bed, moving to stand in front of him. “My hands are always freezing.” She lifted her left hand, pushing aside his fingers, and she set the back of her knuckles onto his swollen cheek. The roughness of dried blood rubbed against her skin.
His head jerked back slightly, his eyes suspicious on her. But then he stilled, letting her lay the cold length of the back of her hand along his cheek.
“The cold helps the pain. Or at least it always did with me. And cold is easy to find in Scotland. But I don’t think there’s anything cold on this ship except for my hands.”
“Aye, that one is cold.” He reached out to grab her other hand. “Is this one as well?”
She pulled her fingers out of his grip. “Don’t warm it. I’ll use it next once my left hand warms up from your skin. You’re seeping heat like a smithy’s forge.”
His gaze went up to her face and an odd flicker of curiosity ran across his steel grey eyes.
Curiosity at her own actions that hit her just as hard.
She had seen him wince and immediately jumped to her feet to ease the pain.
It was true that she didn’t like seeing others in pain—she’d lived through too much agony in her own body to see anyone else suffer the slightest malady. But this was different. This was Mr. Robert Lipinstein. The very man she’d sworn would never find a day of comfort in his life.
Yet she was comforting him.
And she didn’t hate it.
Her hand still on his cheekbone, Torrie cleared her throat and looked at the closed door. “Weston is angry—is he a threat to the others?”
“Yes. But mostly to himself. And he’s the best fighter we have on board.” His fingers ran through his dark hair. “He just needs…managing at times. I’m just lucky he’s slower when he’s soused or he would have tossed me overboard. It’s nearly happened a couple of times.”
“Why keep him on the ship?”
Roe shrugged. “Loyalty. He’s saved my life more times than he’s tried to kill me. And I was him once upon a time.”
She stared down at his dark hair. “You were?”
“Aye. Raging at any and every thing that moved.” He lifted the silver tankard to his lips but didn’t take a drink. “I know that feeling well.”
The heat of his cheek had seeped into the back of her hand so she flipped her fingers over, the cold inside surface meeting his bruised skin. “But you’re not like that now?”
“I attempt not to be. I had to stop being that person.” He took a sip of brandy.
Her hand moved with him as his head tilted up with the drink. “When did you realize it?”
“In prison. The beatings I would take because of my temper eventually got old. So I finally stumbled upon the fact that I had to kill the anger.”
She nodded. “I know that—have lived that—not being able to be the person I was.”
His eyes lifted to her. “The fire?”
She gave a half nod. “I’ve been killed twice in my life. Once on the day of the fire. I was never the same. The person I was, was killed, through and through. That one happened to me.”
Her right thumb and forefinger meshed alongside her skirt, her nails digging back and forth into the pads of her fingers. “And then I had to kill that person I became after the fire—the rage and the hate and the monstrosity of a human being I became. I had to kill that wretched person I was—I did it on the day I left Vinehill. Buried her and never looked back.”
He sat upright, his face moving away from her left hand as he leaned back in his chair and his look centered on her. “And what were you left with?”
A rough chuckle crept up her throat as she moved the back of her right hand to his cheek. “Nothing? I have never been the same and I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what I am now. The only thing that I’ve been able to discern is that I do not belong. I do not belong anywhere. As much as my husband adored me, I never fit into his world like he wanted me to. I could smile, I could go about the business of dinners and balls and opera and the rides in Hyde Park. Even though I tried, I never belonged in any of it. I knew it. He knew it.”
“Have you considered returning to Wolfbridge and your cousin?”
She shook her head. “Sloane has her own life. She would welcome me into it, I know. But it’s her life. Not mine.”
His look dipped downward for a long moment. When his forehead eventually tilted up, his grey eyes pierced her. “Why did you do it, Torrie?”
“Do what?”
“Why did you go into the fire after them—your family? Why stay in the cottage—you had to have known the roof would collapse. You knew it was death.”
For all she didn’t know who or what she was anymore, she knew this.
She met his look, her words immediate and steady. “You run after the people you love, Roe. You run like hell into hell. You do whatever it takes to save them.”
He scoffed, shaking his head, his gaze and his face moving away from her.
“What? You don’t have people you would die for?”
Roe shrugged and took a gulp of his brandy.
Her look narrowed at him. “No one?”
“No. No one, Tor.” He stood up, setting the tankard onto the desk with far too much care. “And I have to check on Weston to make sure they didn’t toss him overboard.”
He walked out of the room without once meeting her eyes.
Walking away from her again. Every time the questions got too hard. Every time.
For all she had seen of the man—of the man on board this ship and not the one she had thought he was—he was still a complete mystery to her.
A mystery she wasn’t sure she wanted to solve.
Damn that she was too darn curious for her own good.
{ Chapter 8 }
From the quarterdeck Roe looked down at Torrie walking about the main deck. It wasn’t the deep stretching that she liked to do in the wee hours of the morning before the crew was awake, but it kept her legs moving and that kept her spirits up.
With her dark hair in a long braid pulled forward over her left shoulder, she rounded the starboard side of the ship, dodging Peck as he hauled a bucket to dump over the side of the ship. She smiled and Peck grumbled an awkward bob of his head to her. The men hadn’t exactly embraced her in the past week, but they’d managed to stop giving the sign of the cross every time she crossed their path. Another week on the ship and they might even produce a smile or two for her.
To her credit, Torrie didn’t let the lack of acceptance faze her. She kept her head high, the smile on her face regardless of how many scowls were directed her way.
Just another reason he needed her off this ship. Not only for the peace of his men, but for him. Every action, every step she took, dragged him further into his obsession with her.
He needed to get her to Port de Brest, and soon. The winds that had picked up in the last day helped, though not nearly as fast as he’d like for how they had drifted off course.
But until he could get her to port and on her way back to England, he may as well make her as comfortable as possible. And that meant talking to her in front of the men, showing them, again and again that she was a welcome addition to the ship.
He shuffled to the edge of the quarterdeck, pausing for just a moment to watch her before he descended onto the main deck and intercepted her path along the mounded coils of rope.
“Poley found a sack of sugar.”
Her feet stopped at his voice and she turned to him, a bemused smile on her face. “He did?”
Roe inclined his head to her. “He did and he was so excited about it he had to come report it to me.”
Her perplexed smile went wider. “And?”
“He went directly about making some treats for you. He’s quite excited to serve them to you, being a proper lady and all.”
&n
bsp; She laughed. “That is sweet of him.”
“Pun intended?”
“Aye. A poor one, I am aware.” A gentle ringing of a chuckle floated into the air from her throat. “At least I have one champion on board.”
“I’d say more than one.”
“You would?” Her head tilted to the side, her green eyes intent on him. “Please point out the others to me when you see them, for I believe they are quite sparse—one would think I stole all the rum and tossed it overboard.”
Roe laughed. “You’ll win them over—just don’t do that to their rum.”
Her right cheek pulled up in a half smile. “I have now been advised.”
“Speaking of which, I also need to advise you to smile and choke down whatever Poley brings you when he’s done.”
“Choke down? Why on earth—he has sugar, what could go wrong?”
“There’s a reason we hide sugar from him. I don’t know how he’s so inept at it, but he experiments with it and I have never once eaten one of his ‘treats’ without my tongue curling and then not being able to taste anything for weeks. I think he’s convinced just as much salt needs to go into his concoctions as sugar.”
Her hand lifted, covering her mouth as she laughed. “How could you do this to me?”
“There was no stopping him. So I can only pre-beg for your kindness on the matter.”
Her hand dropped from her face, though the smile still held on her lips. “I am well-versed in politeness, Roe.”
“You’ve never tasted one of Poley’s experiments before. Just don’t crush his spirit. That is all I ask.”
She nodded, her chin determined. “I will endure whatever comes before me.”
“Thank y—”
“Cap, Cap.” Des’s bellow from beyond the helm cut across the din of the deck.
Roe looked over his shoulder to see Des leaping from the quarterdeck and running across the main deck to him.
He turned from Torrie. “What is it, Des?”
Des leaned past him to look at Torrie, then his frantic eyes went to Roe, his voice low. “The Minerva.”
Roe’s look snapped to the sea, searching. “What? Where?”
“Rigging monkey just spotted it. Six, seven miles south.”
Roe spun in a circle, his eyes squinting as he looked across the glittering water. Nothing. Only the mirage of a far-off ship that could just as easily be a tall swell.
He looked to Des. “You are positive?”
“Aye.” Des pressed a spyglass into his hand. “You’ll need to climb to see it.”
His heart thundering in his chest, Roe shoved the spyglass under the top band of his trousers as he ran toward the main mast. He clawed his way up footholds and rope until he had clear sight of the horizon.
Wrapping his arm around the mast, he yanked out the spyglass with his free hand and set it to his right eye. He scanned across the water one, two, three times, passing over the ship repeatedly before jerking to his left, finally spotting it.
A four-masted schooner. Two sails were high on the distinctive red painted masts—four bold blades jabbing at the sky, blood dripping down them. The Minerva. Only one ship like it in existence.
Finally.
He jabbed the spyglass in along his trousers and scampered down the mast, jumping and dropping to the deck the last ten feet. He landed with a thud, his hand flat on the deck for balance and Des was to him before he stood.
“You saw it too, Cap?”
Roe nodded, his voice hushed. “Aye. It’s the Minerva.” He leaned into Des’s ear. “Did anyone else hear?”
“I don’t know. I told the lad to keep it to himself for the moment, but I don’t know if he told others when he was finding me.”
Roe’s mouth pulled back in a grimace as he watched Torrie cross the deck opposite them, going back to her stroll. “Dammit.”
Des followed his gaze. “I know, Cap.”
“We’d be after it already if not for that.”
“The ‘that’ is a her, Roe.”
“I bloody well know it.” His look swung to Des, his hand running through his hair. “Shit, Des, it’s been a year—and we’ve never been within striking distance before.”
Des shook his head as his arms clasped over his chest. “You know we can’t attack the ship with the lass aboard.”
Roe looked to his right, his stare watching Torrie as she stepped her way through coils of rope. His gaze traveled from her to the men on deck. Several of the men had slowed in their work, watching him and Des. “Hell. They know. We have to attack.”
“Roe, we can’t.”
“Our choice just got taken from us, Des. If we don’t attack, there will be mutiny—both you and I overboard—and then do you want to imagine what will happen to her? They’ll turn into bloody jackals.”
“We don’t know that.” Des looked about the crew, worry creeping into his eyes. “We can’t attack, Cap.”
“We can.” Roe expelled a long sigh. “We can. She’ll be safe. Have we ever even had one enemy board the ship?”
Des shrugged. “There was that one.”
“That one doesn’t count.” Roe’s fingers started tapping on his thigh. “The boy was running from his own captain.”
“We didn’t know it at the time.”
“Aye. But we caught him before he could get far. Plus he was small and wiry.” His look swung to Des, piercing him. “We’ve been waiting a year for this. You know it as well as I. There’ll be mutiny if we don’t pursue the Minerva.”
Des’s look went down along with his head, until his shaded eyes lifted to watch Torrie stepping along the edge of the deck. “And if we do pursue it and she lands in the midst of it?”
Roe’s lips pursed, his stare set on Torrie’s profile as the wind whipped dark strands across her cheek. “She’ll be safe.”
“Just because you say it, doesn’t make it so, Cap.”
“It does. Nothing is going to befall her. I won’t let it happen. You won’t let it happen. We’ll abandon the attack if she’s in danger.”
“So you do care what happens to the lass?” Des’s head tipped to the side as he watched Roe.
“Of course. Why would you think I don’t? We have a responsibility to set her back on shore.”
“I wasn’t sure.” Des nodded. “And that is all? You care as far as setting her boots safely back on land?”
“Yes.”
Des’s hand ran along the back of his neck. “For if we do this—if we go after the Minerva—I need to know how important Torrie truly is. If I’ll be laying down my life for her if necessary.”
Roe’s lips pulled inward, strained, for a long moment. He exhaled a long breath, his head shaking as his voice dropped to a whispered rumble. “My life. Your life. Whatever it takes. She stays safe.”
Des nodded, his lips pursing into a grin. “I thought as much. I’d already forfeit my life for her if necessary, but I just wanted to hear you say it, Cap.”
Roe’s hand clamped down onto Des’s shoulder. “Watch it, mate, or I’ll be forced to strangle that smirk from your mouth.”
“It’s worth it to see your face, Cap.” Des’s grin widened. “Off to battle, then. I’ll round the forces.”
~~~
The entire crew had jumped alive around her. What had been a lazy day on the deck was now the complete opposite.
She wasn’t sure what was happening. Why Roe had scampered up the main mast with the pluck of a lanky boy. Why every man was now flying around her, running, yelling, bodies so fast in motion she was stuck in one spot on the far end of the deck, afraid to step into the fray and be barreled over.
If she could reach Roe’s cabin, she would be out of the way and in less danger of being accidently pushed overboard. Or so she hoped. But every time she started to take a step into the fracas a hard shoulder or hip would bolt past her, knocking her back into place. The first step into the mayhem of men was the worst, and she couldn’t even accomplish that.
An arm
wrapped around her shoulder and yanked her into a hard mass of a body.
She looked up. Roe. Of course he’d have no problem shifting through the chaos of the deck.
She’d assumed he was directing the havoc around her, but he seemed oblivious to it as he shuffled her along the railing, weaving her amongst the frantic men and toward his cabin. The bustling bodies ran into him as well, but bounced off of him like flies on a window.
It wasn’t until he ushered her into the confines of his cabin that he released her.
He immediately went over to the chest at the end of the bed filled with various weapons and started rummaging through it. “Tell me you’ve held a blade before, Torrie.”
“Held a blade?” She looked from him to the window and all feeling in her face drained away. “We’re under attack? A ship is after us?”
“Not exactly.” Steel clanked onto steel in the box. “We’re about to attack.”
Her tongue went dry and she shuffled a step backward as her hand went to her bare throat. “We’re about to attack? Attack another ship? You widnae.” Her Scottish lilt was in full force, words flying from her mouth.
“We can and we are.”
“But—but—but why?”
“You didn’t tell me if you knew what to do with a blade, Torrie.” He pulled free a short sword, the handle wrapped with thin cords of leather. “This one—this should be light enough for you.” He flipped it in his hand, holding onto the blade as he held out the handle to her. “Tell me that as a Scottish lass you know what to do with this.”
“Aye, I ken enough.” She wrapped her hand around the handle of the blade and took it from him. The leather smooth under her palm, it instantly felt like an extension of her arm. He was right—it was weighted well for her, short but very wieldable. “Lachlan and Jacob made sure I could protect myself with various blades.”
“Then I owe them a thank you.” He dropped to his knees, pulling out blade after blade from the box and flinging them onto the bed.
“But why? Can this attack not wait until after you’ve dropped me off in port?”
“We’ve been after the Minerva for a year, Torrie. This is as close as we’ve come to it—it’s slipped through our fingers three times.”
The Steel Rogue: A Valor of Vinehill Novel Page 8