by Eris Adderly
Edmund.
The dream fled her as a shadow before the light, but the ardent press of her phantom lover remained. Wet from mirages that seduced from the other side of sleep, and still humming with unfulfilled longing, Hannah turned without thought to fall into a greedy kiss as though there were no boundary between dreams and reality at all.
So much warmer in real life.
Small, hungry noises were the only sound in the cabin for a time as she and the captain devoured each other with ravenous mouths and clutching hands. His lips were on her throat now as they lay facing each other on the thin mattress, and his fingers gripped her shoulders as if she needed some sort of prompting to crush herself against him. Lower his mouth went, a thumb brushing an erect nipple through her shift.
“Oh please …” she breathed. Whilst he may have thought it a plea for him to go on, and it was, Hannah supposed, it was first an entreaty to her own rational mind. She only wanted it to stay asleep a while longer and let her have this pleasure, this connection once again before slashing in with its scythe and denying her a moment’s gratification.
His tongue reached the sensitive tip of her breast and toyed with it, the intervening linen adding a heady, forbidden element to the caress. Hannah groaned in frustration and he took the bud into his mouth, damp cloth and all, and pulled at it, suckling. The ache between her thighs would not be ignored and she palmed the muscle of his backside, grinding him further against the treasure she knew he wanted.
In a second, the captain’s hands were clawing at her shift, rucking it upward, and she at his breeches, in the other direction. She whimpered when the weight of his need fell, burning against her thigh, sliding along the sea of moisture there.
Oh please oh please YES.
“Oh God, Hannah, yes.” His voice was husky and lined with what perhaps was relief, as he gripped himself and began to manoeuvre between her thighs for position. “I knew it must be so, that you must care for me as well.”
Those last words rung out like a bell, and Reason woke inside Hannah with a start.
Hannah! Have you lost your bloody mind? Remember your uncle in all this? You’ve no business giving yourself up this way again. Think with your head, and not that mess between your legs!
She growled as one does when a parent reminds them for the hundredth time to behave and pushed at the captain’s chest with her hands. And such a pleasant chest to put one’s hands on, at that, she whined to herself in regret.
“Edmund, no.”
“Shhh, Hannah, I have you,” he reassured her without thinking, his concentration on nudging for entry. It took everything in her power to muster the will once more to squeeze her thighs tight against him. It would be so much easier to accept him inside just one more delicious time, and let the cards fall where they may. So much simpler …
“Stop.” She put down the word like a barrier, shifting her hips far back from his. “I’m sorry, Edmund, I was dreaming and … I should’ve never kissed you. I can’t. I … can’t.”
A quiet desperation tripped her up at the end of her words. It was dark enough in the stateroom that she couldn’t clearly discern his intent from the lines of his face, and she held herself tense and fearful that her refusal would go unheeded. It had happened before, and more than once.
He seemed to seethe in the silence, but his voice belied other emotions when he managed to bring himself to speak.
“What will it take, Hannah?” To her surprise, the desperation was his now. This was not the reaction she’d anticipated. “What must I do? For us to even … be?”
He sounded as though he was in earnest, and she considered her response for a moment instead of simply flinging barbs at him. He wouldn’t do as she wanted, this she already knew, but Hannah would be honest, and at least he would hear it aloud. There could be no questions, this way.
“Turn the ship, Edmund. Tell Osbourne. Have him chart a new course. Go anywhere. Anywhere except Boston, and I will go with you. You and Benjamin. Please.”
There. It was out. A revelation, even to her. She might forgive everything, in time, such were the pull of her emotions, if he would only turn away from this plan she could never condone.
The captain made an animal noise of frustration and shifted his grip back to her shoulders, not quite shaking her but moving her with a single firm jostle as if to thrust acceptance of his stubbornness onto her. “You know that won’t happen, Hannah. Why can you not accept it? Accept us?”
“What could my uncle possibly mean to you?” she asked, bewildered by the conviction behind his pursuit. His fingers were digging in, growing painful, and she tried, without success, to roll her shoulders out of his grip. “Will your life be so much improved once you deliver him to Kingston? To what end, Edmund? To what end?”
Her last set of questions made his hands fall away, and he rolled onto his back, felled by an invisible blow. Perhaps she was turning him? Hannah decided to risk baring herself further, hoping she had a wedge between him and his injurious goals, which she could drive in further by making her feelings more plain. She placed a tentative palm over his heart.
“Will some whore in Nassau give you this, Edmund? Will you care whether she sighs your name, or dreams of you? Is that what you want? For life to return to what it was before you and Benjamin found me on your ship?”
Tension gripped her chest as she held her breath, waiting to see if her gamble would pay off. The moment in the dark grew long and intolerable until she felt him exhale.
“It will never be what it was before I found you, Hannah.”
Her fingers slid over his chest as he levered himself up and out of the berth with no further elaboration. The pale shape of his shirt moved away from her through the cabin, marking his silent retreat among the shadows. She heard the latch turn and watched the shirt disappear along with any hope for understanding or reversal as the door closed again behind the captain.
Hopeless. Hopeless. The tears were ready again now.
Damn that man.
* * * *
Edmund didn’t go so far away as the widow might have expected after his failed attempt at reconciliation. She wasn’t aware, as far as he knew, but he’d been sleeping in the council chamber for the past three nights.
You didn’t try to ‘reconcile’ with her, Blackburn, you tried to get your cock wet. Don’t carry on as if you’re some gentleman.
He made a face of disgust no one else could see in the darkness and pulled out one of the council table’s chairs for himself, taking care not to drag it across the floor. He sat, resting his head on the backs of his folded arms and stewed in his own miserable company.
The first two nights in the cabin outside his stateroom had provided him with a stiff-backed semblance of rest, however intermittent. He could have taken up a hammock further below decks, but he wasn’t interested in setting even more tongues to wagging among the crew. And Benjamin had spoken little to him since the night the quartermaster had stumbled into the midst of Edmund’s first altercation with the woman he’d left in his bed.
Her discovery of the whole Prometheus affair before they’d even set foot in Nassau should have doused this entire unmanageable fire in his breast and put the matter to bed. Not that he’d wanted it doused, he admitted, but it was what he knew must happen.
But then she’d attempted that foolish escape and the flames of his irrationality had ignited once again. Edmund was, to a great degree, ashamed of his actions that night. Not for unloading his pistol into that swine’s head in the alley, of course. That had been mere necessity, and another drunk whom no one would miss.
No, the way impulse and emotion had gripped him that night was what bothered him. Anger that she’d endangered herself. Fear that he’d nearly lost her. Completely unwarranted hurt that she’d wanted to be away from him at all. And he’d channelled those forces in a way that bore no excusable resemblance to their root ideas in the tangible world. Had he been using the practical head that had served him so well ove
r the years, he would’ve seen that painting her backside red with a belt and forcing himself on her would do nothing to improve her opinion of him. But his practical self had been jostled out of the way with an alarming frequency of late, to make room for a new facet of himself: one consumed with unfamiliar longings.
He shifted in the chair, jouncing his right leg with vigour, trying to shake the pins and needles out. The widow had the berth because he could no longer bear to see her sleep on the deck, but it was doing no good for his sore muscles to continue spending his nights in this position.
Earlier tonight, he’d thought to steal into his cabin long after he was sure she’d be asleep, and simply have a moment to stare at her face when it was slack with repose instead of scowling at him, as it typically was when she was awake. It seemed the only way he might enjoy seeing her at peace again before the time came for them to part ways in Boston.
But again, sense left him in her presence, and he’d climbed up to lay beside her. And then her scent was there, calling him with every breath he took. The soft murmurs she made in her sleep, and the way her top ankle crossed over the pale calf beneath it—the woman stirred him in some way over which he seemed to have no control. In mere moments, he’d been touching her, and more, she’d been responding.
When she’d come awake and rolled straight into his kiss, though … Edmund grit his teeth in the dim space. Again, his breeches were tight, and he had to reach and make a crude adjustment. She’d been with him then; she was his. At least right up until the moment she wasn’t.
Perhaps the worst part of the encounter was that she’d offered him the very answer he was seeking: a way to keep her. And he couldn’t give it to her. The widow wanted the one thing he wouldn’t give up. A woman wasn’t going to deliver his father’s estate to him, nor help win the old man’s favour in any other way, no matter how fine she was. Or intelligent. Or lovely.
There was no use in contemplating the matter in circles this way. He was only picking at a wound; keeping it raw while he expected it to heal. If he waited long enough, Hannah Collingwood would be an amusing memory: a spectre, immaterial, which couldn’t harm or distract him.
As Edmund tried to settle into some not entirely uncomfortable position and find his way to sleep, though, it wasn’t any red-tinted lustful image that filled his mind. What haunted him was the serene expression he’d seen on the face of the dreaming widow in his stateroom, and how ideal it would be to drift off to such a vision every night.
You’re so sure you know how happiness is measured, Edmund. You think one person offers you much and another, little. Are you certain you don’t have them turned about?
He was lucky that sleep reached up from the depths and took him then, so he didn’t have to set about answering his own questions. All slumber promised was blessed, blessed nothingness for a time, and he accepted the offer as a more pleasant alternative to troubling thoughts and disturbing notions.
* * * *
The captain of The Devil’s Luck stretched his neck to one side and felt a muted crack as he descended from the quarter deck, his steps pulling him toward the forecastle. He’d eased some of the stiffness at the base of his skull with the satisfying pop, and after a lengthy morning discussion with Osbourne about their heading, he was ready to hunt for his quartermaster. His tired mind wanted to hear no more about longitudes and latitudes just now, and it was time he spoke with his friend either way.
A pace or two past the main mast, Edmund saw the very man he sought striding in his direction. The two of them needed to speak, and it was best not put off any longer. The navigator had given them about ten or twelve more days before they would make port in Boston, weather allowing, and Edmund needed to be on more solid terms with Till well beforehand.
The bald man had been sullen and distant since the night he’d walked in just after the disaster with the widow and the belt. I won’t be part of this, Edmund, he’d said, in an unexpected deviation from his normal agreeable manner. It appeared Edmund had found a bit of ground where Benjamin would simply refuse to set foot. Clearly the man didn’t agree with Edmund’s methods, or perhaps his heated reasoning at the time. It was rare to see his oldest friend give such a refusal.
Matters had to be rectified between the two men, and soon. He couldn’t command a ship this way: his crew seeing him and their quartermaster at odds. Soon there would be divisions among the men; sailors would start to test boundaries. All extremely unhelpful. And more, he didn’t care for his oldest friend being cross with him for such an amount of time.
As the pair came together under the late morning shade of the sails, he saw Till’s lips were twisted into something between grim and considering.
“Captain.”
Ah, very formal still this morning, eh, old friend?
“Mr Till,” he said, greeting him in kind, not sure how to broach the subject of the recent distance between them.
Till brandished a spyglass, offering it to Edmund, and slapped it into his waiting palm when he signalled he would take the cylinder of brass and lenses.
“You’ll want to see this,” Till said, turning his sizable frame to move back in the direction Edmund had already been headed, expecting to be followed.
Edmund obliged, spyglass still in hand, and trailed the quartermaster until the both of them stood atop the forecastle.
Out of habit, his eyes scanned the horizon, and right away he saw what it was that Benjamin had brought him to see, even without the aid of magnification.
A ship. Or at least a dark smudge on the horizon he knew would be a ship, once he saw it more clearly. He brought the glass up now and a two-masted schooner leapt into view. So. This was why his friend had sought him out.
“You’ve an eye for this one, Mr Till?” Edmund asked, already knowing what the answer would be.
“It’s been quite a while, Captain. Since before Bristol.” The tattooed man reminded him that they’d indeed gone for a longer stretch than usual without taking another ship. Edmund—and Benjamin as well, if the man would admit it—had been all too distracted between Bristol and Nassau, and hadn’t actively sought out any prizes.
Aside from the widow’s favour, and look where that’s got us.
“You make a point, my friend,” Edmund said, trying to be warm toward the other man. He didn’t want to continue in this awkward, formal manner, not if the day was headed where it now seemed it would.
“The men respect you, Captain, but we both know they’re here for the take. Why else put up with Adams’s singing and weevils in the tack for weeks on end?” Till’s gruff jest told Edmund his friend might be willing to meet in the middle. The quartermaster went on, though, his words taking a serious note once more.
“If we do manage to lay hold of Prometheus, as you’ve planned, Captain, well … I know what it’ll mean for The Devil’s Luck once you return the old man to Kingston. I don’t think the crew knows yet, but I suspect they’ll be none too pleased when they find out their captain means to give up his ship.”
“Will you take over command, then?” Edmund teased him with an affable smirk.
Till pressed his lips together in response, and shifted the focus of his eyes away from the captain’s.
“Let us worry about the meal we need to eat today,” Benjamin said after a held breath, his jaw tight, “and not the one we need to prepare next winter.”
Edmund sighed and nodded at this. Yes, there was an entire long conversation for another day altogether. Who would take over The Devil’s Luck once he had the run of his father’s estate, if not Benjamin? Certainly he would prefer if his friend would join him in Kingston, perhaps once again willing to work by his side if he could forgive Edmund for the loss of Hannah, but he doubted the other man would be ready to abandon the sea. Hezekiah was capable, but would the crew follow a former slave? Osbourne had the navigational skills, but an ability to lead men … he thought not. He gave a brief shake of his head, storing the tiresome debate for later.
“Captain, if your plans go as you hope, this may be one of the last opportunities for this crew, as it is, to fill their purses. Many of them are here out of loyalty to you, and no particular love for one another. If someone else were to have command … I don’t think they all would choose to stay on.”
He was not accustomed to such a speech out of his quartermaster, and he tilted his head, considering what the man had said. It was true. The crew was not on board to satisfy Edmund’s personal vendettas at the expense of their own pockets. Benjamin spoke again, echoing his thoughts.
“The crew need this, Edmund. And they deserve it. Let’s do what we’re on this ship to do in the first place, and stop worrying about everything else for a day or two.”
His friend was right, and he said as much, with a decisive nod. “Agreed. I’ll go back and find Osbourne and tell him what we’re about. He’s going to love having to work up all those figures again. Find Mr Grey and tell him I want us to handle this one the way we did that packet near Florida last fall. He won’t like it—we both know the tactic doesn’t heat up nearly as many cannons as he’d prefer—but tell him it’s what we’ll be trying first, either way.”
Benjamin was grinning at him now, some of his usual temperament returning as he saw Edmund falling back into his proper role again. It was good to see his friend without a scowl on his face for the time being, but he knew the two of them would still have to discuss larger matters, once they had the affairs of the present sorted. But for now, those troubles could wait.
“Let’s fill that hold, Mr Till.” Edmund collapsed the spyglass into itself, gesturing with it above his head as he strode aft toward his own preparations, away from the quartermaster. Benjamin’s receding voice started calling out names and orders before Edmund was halfway back down the deck.
Pirates today. Worry tomorrow.
It was as it should be, for now.