Unlaced

by Jaci Burton

  No man survived longer than a year on the rowing bench of a Trinitarian galley unless he was made of iron and whipcord. John had lasted three. It would have been better to have drowned, like so many others that terrible day, but the gods hadn’t permitted it, curse them. He and Nathan had been plucked from the sea, saved from a quick death only to be granted a slow one.

  Ma had wept over his limp, though he’d managed to prevent her from seeing his back. She’d run gentle, work-roughened fingers across the blue tattoo on his cheekbone, just beneath his eye. Three Trinitarian characters in the old script, each flowing and ornate. Beautiful in their own horrible way.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Property of Pasha Imaran Indivar Imalani,” said John shortly. Which stopped the conversation cold.

  So now he’d trailed all the way back to Caracole, and to The Sailor’s Lay, the nearest tavern to the headquarters of Torza’s Band, where the nightmare had started. There was the bar where he and Nathan had bellied up, laughing, for the round of drinks the recruiting sergeant bought them. It could have been yesterday, save for the new scars gouged into the thick wood.

  And the scars on his soul, deeper even than the ones he bore on his body.

  I should have known, thought John, snarling at a serving wench who stared a fraction too long at his face. When he looked at me like I was a side of prime beef . . .

  “Lammas?” said a voice at his elbow. “Is that you?”

  John whirled, his hand dropping to the long curved blade sheathed at his waist. It, too, was the property of Pasha Imaran Indivar Imalani. Or it had been.

  He glared into the stranger’s stubbled face, not speaking. Waiting. The man’s hand dropped and he took a step backward. “Brother’s balls, it is! We thought you were dead.” His face creased into a tentative smile. “Sergeant Rhiomard. I was in Torza’s Band before I joined the Queen’s Guard. I was in Third Company. I taught you quarterstaff, remember?”

  “Yes.” John licked his lips. His voice was creaky from disuse. “You whipped my ass.” The Sergeant didn’t need to know the scars across his back still pulled. They slowed him down.

  “Not for long. You were too good, too focused.” Rhiomard’s gaze flickered across the tattoo and away, but he was wise enough to say nothing. “Buy you a drink?”

  “One. Thank you.”

  They leaned against the bar, almost exactly where he and Nathan had stood that night. The irony of it felt like a boulder in his throat, choking him. Carefully, John swallowed his ale, trying to concentrate on the nutty brown taste, savor it.

  The other man was talking, his voice a background rumble. Gossip about the old days in Torza’s Band, something about better conditions in the Queen’s Guard.

  Abruptly, John couldn’t take it anymore. The fusty tap room closed in on him, stifling. “Do you know a woman called Margaret Mackie?”

  Rhiomard stopped in mid-sentence and his face shuttered. “No,” he said, straightening up. “And I’d best be off.”

  Shit! He hadn’t meant to insult the man. Ah, what the fuck did it matter anyway? “They call her Meg,” he said.

  Rhiomard turned and his gaze narrowed. “What does she look like?”

  John’s heart began a slow slamming beat, the rhythm of the oars to the sound of the drum. Spots swam before his eyes. “Tall for a woman. Fair.” He pulled in a breath. “She’d have a Cressy accent. Like me.”

  Rhiomard stepped closer, balanced on the balls of his feet, his hands loose and open. “What do ye want with Mistress Meg?”

  Shit, he could barely remain upright, his knees had gone. His hands shook so badly, he dug one into his belt, wrapped the other around the hilt of his sword. Words felt like marbles in his mouth. “Is she—? Married?”

  The Sergeant thought about that for an eternity. “No,” he said at last and the room swooped and spun.

  From somewhere out of a deep well, John articulated the question. “Where . . . is . . . she?”

  A hard hand grabbed his biceps and he was so rattled, he permitted it. “She works at The Garden. And I ask again, what do ye want with her?”

  She was my whole world. She still is.

  Aloud, he said, “We’re from the same village. What garden?”

  Not long after dusk, Tansy scratched on Meg’s door. “Mistress Meg?”

  Meg had just kicked off her shoes and made herself a soothing tisane of mothermeknot. She wasn’t best pleased. “Is it the laundry again? I thought I—”

  But the little apprentice shook her head. “No,” she said. “There’s a man asking for you. He gave me this.” And she held out a chit, one with Meg’s mark on it.

  She sighed. “I’ve already told him no,” she said. “Go back and say I said he’d be much better off with Bertha or Chuoko.”

  Tansy hesitated, her pretty little face oddly intent. “It’s not him,” she said. “The Sergeant, I mean.”

  The Garden was like a family. Or a village. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. Of course Tansy was aware of Rhiomard’s interest.

  “He’s one of the biggest men I’ve ever seen. There’s a mark on his face.” The girl brushed her fingertips over one perfectly sculpted cheekbone. “A tattoo, I think. Mistress Rose says it’s rude to stare, so I didn’t.”

  “Where did you put him?”

  “In the Spring Green Parlor. With a tisane and a plate of those nut scones you make. But I can move him to the Pavilion of Fallen Blossoms if you want?” She cocked her head to one side like an inquisitive bird.

  Meg’s brows rose. Tansy was insightful for one so young. All Rose’s courtesans were trained as independent businesswomen and this girl was going to be a fine one, an agile mind working behind a face as lovely as a flower.

  Meg had to smile. “Tell me what you would do,” she said. “Make it an exercise. What do you think of him?” This was a game Rose played often with her apprentices. A courtesan’s livelihood depended on being able to sum up a client’s character at first meeting.

  Tansy settled into one of Meg’s comfortable armchairs. “Dangerous,” she said decisively.

  “Oh.” Meg hadn’t expected that. “In what way?”

  “His eyes are full of terrible secrets. He limps and when he moves, it’s”—Tansy moved her shoulders—“stiff somehow. As if he’s being careful. He’s wearing a Trinitarian sword and I bet he’s got other blades as well, where you can’t see them.”

  “What do you know of Trinitarian swords, little one?”

  Tansy shot her shrewd glance. “My uncle had one. From the wars.”

  “Perhaps we’d better send him on his way then? The doormen will see him off.” Meg watched the girl’s face.

  “Oh no!”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s so sad, Mistress Meg. And the way he said your name . . .” Tansy trailed off, then recovered. “He won’t hurt you, I’m sure of it.”

  Now completely intrigued, Meg rose and reached for her shoes. “All right, I’ll go. I can always ring for help if he’s a problem.”

  “Mistress Meg?”

  She paused at the door. “Yes?”

  “I forgot to say.” Tansy grinned. “He’s really quite handsome. In a rough sort of way. Smoldering, you know?”

  Meg chuckled. She was still smiling when she entered the Spring Green Parlor and the man turned from the window at the sound of her step.

  Six

  The man’s back was to the light, and for a moment, she couldn’t make out his features, but Tansy hadn’t exaggerated. He was huge, with massive shoulders and a deep chest.

  “Meggie,” he said. He moved abruptly, then was still.

  The world stopped. Just stopped. As though the Sister had raised Her hand and snatched it out of the air like a child’s ball in a game of catch.

  Meg’s stomach surged up into her throat, then dropped just as sharply back into place. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Meg,” said the man, taking a step forward. “Don’t y
ou know me?”

  “You’re . . .” Meg held up a hand as if to ward him off and he halted, staring down at her. “D-dead.”

  “No, not quite.” The man smiled, but it was a travesty of John’s smile, the one that used to light up his dark eyes.

  Meg fumbled behind her for the door frame and hung on. “The clerk at Torza’s told me . . .” She had to stop to breathe. Her fingertips were tingling, in a way that presaged a faint. “The ship went down.”

  “It did. But I was saved.”

  “Wait, wait.” Meg rubbed her brow. “I have to . . . I need to . . . Are you real?” She stretched out a trembling hand, needing the evidence of her senses.

  It was taken in a strong, comforting clasp and John drew her over to the sofa. “Are you all right?”

  They sank down together, hands linked. “N-no,” said Meg. His hand felt so big, so hard, even the palm covered with calluses. Where they touched, her skin stung with sensation, as if the contact burned. Tremors ran up her arm, entering her chest, making her heart flutter so hard it hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” said John. “I’ve had a few hours to get used to it. You haven’t.”

  Completely bereft of words, she stared into his face, drinking him in, the proud, slightly beaky nose, now with a bump on it, the straight, slashing dark brows. So much the same—and yet so very different. There were lines graven into his brow, beside his nose, his mouth. His lips, once so soft and satiny-looking, were tightly compressed. And on his cheek—

  Meg reached out with her other hand and cradled his jaw, noting absently that he must have shaved before he came. “Show me,” she whispered. And slowly, reluctantly, John let her turn his head to the light.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “A Trinitarian slave brand.” The words came out clipped and low, as though he hated the feel of them in his mouth.

  “You were a slave?”

  All expression smoothed out of John’s face. He could have been a statue of himself, hewn in some dark, tortured wood. “Three years on the galleys.”

  Meg gaped, dizzy with shock. “I can’t”—she shook her head—“can’t imagine it. What it must have been like.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you can.” Though his mouth twisted, John lifted a hand as if to touch her cheek, then dropped it again. It trembled, very slightly. “Meg, you look wonderful. Are you working . . . Do you like it here?”

  Regaining her senses a little, Meg stiffened her spine. “Yes, I do. Very much.”

  The silence lasted a long time while they stared. Eventually, she said, “Did you try a nut scone?”

  “I ate them all,” said John vaguely. “Meggie, I know I have no right to ask, but—”

  Meg jerked herself free and rose to pace to the window. She stared out at the pale gleaming shapes of the night-blooming flowers, their heads tossing a little in the evening breeze off the sea. “No, you don’t have any right at all.” She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling with a world turned inside out. “You should know . . . first, I have to say . . . it’s beyond good to see you, to know you’re all right.”

  Behind her, the couch creaked as he shifted, but she didn’t turn.

  “John, you left me.” She couldn’t stop the stupid quaver in her voice. “All the promises you made, they were just lies. What, was I too much the country bumpkin?” Her mouth twisted. “Too fat, too stupid? You left me.”

  “That’s not how—”

  Whirling around, she overrode him. “I haven’t been whoring myself either, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not that it would matter if I had, but I didn’t want anyone, not after . . .” She had to stop to catch her breath.

  This time, he waited her out.

  “I started here as kitchen maid and worked my way up to Housekeeper. Rose and the boys and girls, the kitchen staff, Mistress Prue, the bookkeeper, the gardener”—she gestured—“they’re my family. My friends.” Fortifying herself with an even deeper breath, she fell into that dark gaze. “I’ve done well.”

  “Yes, you have,” he said, his voice a deep, gentle rasp. “Have you finished now?” That was one thing that hadn’t changed, the natural dignity of him.

  Meg felt the heat rise in her cheeks. She gave a graceless nod.

  John rose to his full height. Sister, there seemed no end to him! He must have gone on growing after he enlisted, because surely he hadn’t been so big at nineteen?

  “I was shanghaied, Meg. A drug in my beer.” A ruddy flush stained his cheeks, making the tattoo stand out dark against his olive skin. “You said it, a country bumpkin. How they must have laughed. You don’t have to believe me, but that’s the truth of it. By the time I came to and started puking my guts out, we were miles out to sea, with a fair wind at our back.”

  His lips took on a thin, bitter line. “I spent the first three years learning how to fight. I’m still very good at it.” He shrugged, the movement strangely cautious. “I tried to desert four times. They almost killed me after the last effort.”

  Gods, so he hadn’t, he hadn’t . . . Reeling, Meg wet her lips. Sweet Sister, what next? She didn’t know if she could take any more. “The clerk said you’d been disciplined.”

  “I was angry, Meg. And I used what they taught me.”

  All that and then three years on the galleys. Godsdammit, it was a wonder he was still sane. She cast him a sidelong glance, wondering. Anger seethed beneath the surface, leashed by his rigid control. Angry? That was a pale description. Furious. Hell, so was she.

  “How—how did you get away?”

  The look she got chilled her blood. “The Captain-Pasha employed a new whipmaster, an arrogant fool. I taunted him ’til he stepped too close. Then I”—he hesitated for a split second, then forged ahead—“strangled him with my chains and used his keys to free the others. After that . . . we killed them all.”

  “Sister save me!”

  “I’ve changed, Meg,” he said, his voice curt. “I can’t bring back the boy I was, but I wanted to . . . I had to see you, explain.” He swallowed. “I don’t expect anything. I just had to see you.”

  “Gods, let me think.” Meg flopped back on the couch, her head in a whirl, John following her down. She discovered she was gripping his hand with the strength of desperation—the only anchor in a world gone mad.

  All she could think of was the waste, the godsforsaken fucking waste. All those years they could have been together, making a life, a family . . . Praise the Sister, She’d sent him back, but why had She taken him in the first place? Why torture them both like this? Ah gods, it was cruel!

  Because this was not the John of Meg’s girlhood. This man was deeply wounded, damaged. And yet she’d spent years blaming him, hunched over the hurt in her heart, unable to forgive. No wonder she’d never moved on. If truth be told, it was an emotional habit she was finding difficult to break even now. She hated him as much as she’d loved and longed for him. Gods, she’d actually believed John Lammas didn’t want her, the John who’d sworn he’d loved her! Like a fool, she’d measured her worth by his apparent rejection. No wonder she’d never been able to sustain a relationship with another man.

  But none of it had been his doing, none of it at all.

  Uneasily, Meg recalled the image in the mirror, the quirt in her hand, the bloodlust in her heart. The bloody stripes on his back . . .

  Oh gods, the way he moved. Three years on a slave galley. With a whipmaster.

  Her stomach lurched and she had to bite her lip hard to get through the pain and the horror.

  John’s fingers tightened on hers. Then he lifted her hand and pressed a soft, moist kiss over the pulse in her wrist. She choked.

  Oh. Oh.

  That hadn’t changed. If anything, the years of his absence had intensified his physical effect on her. Meg’s entire body tingled, suffused with warmth, head to heels. The flesh between her thighs throbbed with sweet wet tension. But she got through that, too, disciplining her breathing. Because she wasn’t a girl any longer
.

  I’m yours, she’d said to him that night in the barn. Always.

  Clinging to John’s hand, her eyes closed, Meg thought back over the years, over her lackluster attempts with other men, the new life she’d made for herself. She’d been busy surviving. She hadn’t thought of her lost love every moment of every day. But inevitably, as she drifted into sleep, alone in her soft bed, some element of him would weave its way into her fading consciousness—his eyes, his deep voice, the touch of his big hands.

  She’d told him true so long ago. Despite his apparent betrayal, there’d never been anyone else for her. Never would be.

  A Sister-given second chance for happiness. But oh gods, it was going to be difficult. For both of them.

  Meg opened her eyes. “What are you going to do now?”

  She caught him staring at her breasts, his eyes hot and hungry. When she spoke, he jerked his gaze up to her face, flushing. “That depends on you. I know what I want.” His grip tightened, crushing the bones in her hand. “I want my Steady Meggie back. Nothing else matters.”

  Abruptly, he released her and rose, as if he needed to put some distance between them. He widened his stance, his hands clenched at his sides. Parade ground rest, she thought.

  “Meg, I’m damaged goods.” His smile was more like a grimace. “Branded like a milkbeast. I don’t see how any woman would still want me, let alone you. But you see, I kept hoping, all that time. It was all I had. I couldn’t . . . couldn’t help it.”

  He was shaking, she realized, bone-deep shudders that traveled right though his powerful frame. When she opened her mouth, he held up a hand. “No, don’t speak. Let me get through this. You should know. Before you speak.” He began to pull his shirt out of his waistband. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been wounded.”

  “No, you don’t have to—”

  “Yes, I do,” said John grimly. “I caught a halberd to the muscle in the left thigh. That’s why I limp. I will always limp. But I won’t embarrass you by dropping my trews.” He ripped the shirt off over his head and stood facing her, the bands of muscle in his chest washed golden by the lamplight.