She nodded, actually understanding and not wanting to enlighten his crew with her real status. He didn’t trust them, not fully, and therefore, she certainly wasn’t going to either.
Making the book would give her something to do, besides think about more sex—or how he must feel about his curse. He left the room and she pulled out her work bag. And argued with herself the entire time.
You care about him.
No, I don’t. It’s just that the sex is good.
It’s more than sex.
You’re lying to yourself again.
No, I’m not.
None of this is real. I’m going to wake up back in Vallejo.
You don’t want to….
“Shut up!” She viciously sliced too deeply into the paper and scored the table.
Damn it.
***
He was not ready to discuss the inevitable shrinking of his allotted time as a normal man. There should be no more acceleration of his curse until the anniversary of his birth. He had a few more weeks to bring it to an end.
After the meal, she handed him the new red book and apologized for damaging the table.
He waved away the apology and turned to another subject. “I assume the crew of the Quill has told you of the celebration in Tortuga?”
“Yeah. Everyone is talking about it. They’re planning what to wear, visiting tailors, hauling out more jewelry and sparkle than I’ve ever seen! It ought to be a real treat to see them dolled up that way.” She chuckled.
He tilted his head toward her. “And you? Some lovely gown? You will wear the pearls I gave you?”
“I guess. I’m having a shirt made, and figure I’ll buy a skirt.”
“Mrs. Pawes, that won’t do. The entire island will sparkle and shine. You need something impressive.” He knew the tailors of Nassau and could get back there and make sure she shone.
“Why? Impress who? I’m simply an old wom….”
He shot to his feet and strode away from her. Her insistence on seeing herself as useless and worn out grew tiresome! With a growl, he turned to stare at her.
She’d stopped talking and looked away from him. Slowly, she lifted one leg, followed by the other and rested them at the very edge of her chair. Her arms wrapped around her calves. She swallowed. “Alan, I am old. It’s a fact. No one is going to be impressed by me. If I wore a fortune in precious stones, the sparkle would impress them. Not me.”
“Balderdash! My God, woman! What is wrong with you? Don’t tell me I am the only man who wants you? All those lusty lads on the Quill? None of them have followed you with their eyes, slid up next to you on deck, helped you with lines? Done your fetching?” He strode back to stand directly in front of her.
He recognized a fire in her eyes, even though a tear dripped down her cheek. She let go of her legs and stood up, pushing at his chest. “Don’t tell me those young men see me as anything more than a mother! If they help me, it’s because of that! They do not want to fuck me!”
She screamed that last word.
He snickered, turning away. “Yes, they do.”
“If they do, it’s because men want to fuck every woman. Any woman that is handy!”
“Oh, how stupid!” He gazed at the ceiling of the cabin.
“I am not stupid.”
“Oh, yes, you are. You are stupid, blind, and a liar.” He spoke to the fourth ceiling beam from the right.
“What?”
He heard her stalk up behind him before she poked him. “I am not stupid!”
“Yes, you are.” He turned and loomed over her, gripping her shoulders before she stepped away. “They want you. They dream about you. Wonder what secrets your body holds. What it would feel like to lie atop you, gaze down into the depth of your deep, brown eyes.”
Another tear ran from her right eye.
“Precisely the way I dream of you, when you are not with me.” He spoke slowly, weighing each word with meaning and worth. Damn it. He did dream of her.
“But…but you aren’t…you…,” She stumbled over words. “I mean, you don’t…” He strained to hear the word, but she said it. “…count. Oh, hell.”
“I don’t count? Because I’m not young? I’ve fucked hundreds of women, am more experienced than most of those young men will ever know, and I want you. Desire you. Find you impressive each time I see you. Save for at this moment. Your blindness on this issue is not impressive. I count, Mrs. Pawes. So. Do. You.”
She silently wept. No sobbing, no sniffing, only tears, while she appeared to study his face, his eyes, his lips, his chin…. She lifted a hand and lightly touched his jawline. Her fingers lingered along the bone, stroking the scruff as if it were silk. It felt good. Intimate.
“I’m sorry. You count—I know you count.”
“And?” He waited for her to say it.
“I’m trying to count. But I don’t know how to.” She inhaled quickly, close to breaking down.
“Why don’t you know this?” he whispered. “Who beat you down? Who dared to leave you this uncertain of yourself?”
This husband of hers? He’d kill the man if he weren’t already dead.
“No one, Alan. Only me. And life. Where—when I live isn’t kind to women my age.”
“You live here now. Believe me when I say you are desirable. I find you…irresistible.” He covered her hand with his, eased it from his jawline to his lips. Pressed a kiss to her palm. He kept his eyes on her, looking for her to believe him. He needed her to believe him.
To trust him. To….
No. Not love. He wouldn’t risk that. Not yet.
He dropped her hand and turned away.
“Alan? Did I do something wrong?”
Damn, he would undo her confidence! He took a deep breath. “No, no. Not you.” He quickly turned to smile at her. “Come to bed with me. I will prove to you what I say is real.”
He wiped the tears away. “I want to spread your legs, Emily.”
She looked away quickly, almost blushed, snorted.
Something crossed her face, but it was impossible to interpret. Disappointment? Grief?
A shout from the deck called eight bells, midnight. The night was already too far gone! There was never enough time.
She turned and walked toward his bed, untying her robe to drop it across the covers. This strange woman from another time and place slid between the sheets, then turned to wait for him.
The blood roared to his head. To tell her! Explain! Plead with her! She lifted a hand, cradled her breast, and pinched the nipple. “Too bad you don’t have another ring.”
Words fled. At her side in a moment, his hands trembled and his clothes dropped to the deck.
When she welcomed him, held him close with a divine comfort while he sank into her, his soul trembled and a shiver ran up his back.
***
He woke her hours later with a great shout that set her heart stuttering. She shot up, reaching for him. He shook, shivering as though encased in ice water.
“Alan?”
He turned a blind eye toward her voice; the last candle in the cabin shed enough light for her to see the sweat on his brow.
“Alan?” She wiped his face with a corner of the sheet.
He moaned.
And shivered again.
She pulled the covers from where they’d fallen at their waist, making certain he was covered, and cuddled close to him. She lightly shook him. He flinched then violently jerked.
“Captain Silvestri!”
What the hell was going on? Was he sick? Was it his heart? A sudden fever? What the fuck should she do? “Wake up!”
He started awake, turned his face and stared at her. “I felt them. I felt them all.”
“What?” She touched his face. Was he delirious?
His eyes darted past her to the window at the stern, about a foot away. Before she said another word, he covered her body, arms wrapped around her, and buried her underneath him.
“Quiet!” He hisse
d.
She froze, feeling a chill when his sweat dripped onto her. Since when was sweat icy? Her mind wrestled with the idea. Did he spy something out the window? Or was it just a night terror? She’d never experienced a nightmare so vivid it broke into the waking world, but she’d read about them.
He trembled again then slowly relaxed. He moved off her, placing himself next to the window, his front to her back. He quieted her questions.
“I sometimes have hard dreams. Nothing more.” He kept his arms around her, legs entwined with hers. The covers were tight around them. It seemed an oddly desperate bit of protection, or a clinging to keep her close?
He kissed the back of her head and murmured reassurances until the length of the day overcame her unease and the motion of the ship lulled her back to sleep.
The next day, the ship returned to St. Marteen. He diverted every query she raised and made certain she left the ship unobserved, straight to a boarding house.
“The Quill will return tomorrow. I will see you again, soon.” He nearly bruised her lips with the strength of his farewell kiss.
While he walked away, she sighed. Tall, confident, and scared to death of something.
Three days later, she discovered her mirror gone from her pack.
Chapter Sixteen
He ordered the ship leave St. Marteen after stepping back aboard. He savored the experience of the short visit with Monsieur Jason of the dyers guild, to make plain his unhappiness at the treatment of Mrs. Pawes. They’d do damage to themselves, waiting for his curse to strike them. It wouldn’t—he already knew that. The situation fell too far from him personally.
The amusement found by worrying them would suffice.
The Immortal dropped anchor off the small baths the Quill’s crew preferred, and he left them to entertain themselves. He carried a small pack to the other side of the peninsula, aiming for the large bath he’d enjoyed with Mrs. Pawes.
The shadows lengthened into true dusk while he cleansed himself, using the powder Mama Lu gave him. He waited for dark and pulled out the mirror. He’d wrapped it well, protecting the glass from accidentally breaking. According to Mama Lu, this mirror was a precious gift. He would make certain he returned it to Emily intact.
He traced the face of the Kraken, almost smiling at the black eyes, so evident in the bleached white of the rest. He ran fingers up and down the tentacles. He swore, they almost gripped him. He didn’t know where this artifact came from, but it was powerful. He set it down and arranged spell items upon it. First, the needle he’d used to place Emily’s nipple ring. The one she used upon him. A small scrap of fabric, he’d collected their combined sexual fluids with. He lifted that to his nose first and inhaled slightly.
Divine.
A hair from his head and a hair from hers. And lastly, the seal from the last letter he’d received from Mick, denouncing him. It held fury and anger. But it also acknowledged their long friendship. The letter he kept—the seal would suffice to make the connection.
A sliver of moon rose from the sea as he walked into the surf. The water chilled him slightly, but nothing like the nightmare the night Emily held him. He’d seen her, Glacious. A frost appeared on the glass and her eyes studied him. Studied them.
He shook the memory off, praying it had been nothing more than a lingering effect from the nightmare. He walked until the water hit him below his waist and stopped. He held the mirror flat, barely above the water, as Mama Lu told him. A ripple of water reached for it, which was certainly strange. Well, spells should be unusual. He lowered it minutely, and the next ripple kissed the mirror, stirred the powder Mama Lu told him to sprinkle atop the rest.
A ripple flowed away from him, counter to the sea’s course. It disappeared toward the horizon, barely visible in the bare light of a crescent moon. And he waited. Mama Lu said to be patient.
“Ya gonna get a sign. Some message or vision ’bout what way ta go. Wait for it!”
He heard her melodic cadence even now, floating above the sea. The quiet of the night, the lack of any breeze, nothing stirred the trees at his back. No birds called. He looked up at the stars; they blazed down at him.
He sighed and turned his head back to the horizon.
He fought the instinct to scramble away from the great, bulky head of the albino Kraken, not three feet from him, bobbing above the waterline. He swallowed and mastered his fear, while his heart galloped loud enough for the world to hear.
Two tentacles, wider than his waist, drifted to his sides. A fingerling tip brushed the back of his left thigh. He’d never felt so exposed, so vulnerable, small, and insignificant in his entire life.
Gazing into those black eyes, he slowly relaxed. There was no threat there. Simply interest.
Another tentacle snaked up his back, draped across his shoulder like the arm of a casual friend. A suction cup the size of his palm paused at his pierced nipple, brushing the metal as if tasting it.
Wonder where Mama Lu got this ring? It seemed to interest the Kraken.
They eyed each other—two old warriors, in a moment out of time.
He broke the silence. “Old Monster, you know me.”
A blown breath stirred his long hair. It hinted at a depth of ocean impossible to imagine. Cold, colder than Glacious. He shivered.
The head rose, until they were eye to eye.
“I’ll lead you to her, if you will come. I know she hides from you. She steals from you,” he whispered. They were two Old Monsters, conspiring in the night to take down an evil woman who haunted them both. “Help me protect the woman I care for from the ice queen, Old Monster, and I will give you whatever you desire. Anything.”
He should have said he loved. He knew it, but the words stuck in his throat.
A small tentacle slipped from the water and swept the items from the glass. He peered down at the mirror. Glacious’ ice palace rose from its surface. It spun and shattered, pieces floated atop the reflection, sank away.
He chuckled. Another sweep of that tentacle left something. He picked it up and held it to the scant light. A white disc on a slender chain. He studied it and finally the image came clear. An etched Kraken.
“For my woman?” He stopped, looking up. The Kraken was gone.
He’d received the only answers he was going to get. He’d take the disc to Lu. Clearly, the Kraken would help with Glacious. What it would ask in return he didn’t know. But he’d pay whatever was asked. He draped the chain over his head and returned to the shore.
He’d get the mirror back to Emily in Tortuga. Ten days remained until the party. Afterward, he would sail north to find his queen and bring about her destruction to return a free man or die trying.
***
Emily returned to the ship with a sense of unease. She’d barely slept the one night she’d spent in the boarding house. Instead, she stood at the small window, staring out at the city. It wasn’t a busy port, like Tortuga. Once night fell, it fairly closed its doors and rolled up its streets. She had nowhere to spend her restlessness.
She fretted. What did he mean? Those words he’d spoken, as he woke from the nightmare haunted her. I felt them, I felt them all?
What did he feel? And what had he seen, or thought he’d seen? What would make the man she’d come to know exhibit such fear? Was it personal fear or was she involved? Just too many questions and no answers. No wonder sleep proved evasive.
She breathed on the window, leaving a small vapor cloud. She traced his initials, AS. An impish grin crossed her face.
Wonder if his middle name begins with an ‘S’?
It would leave her a legitimate insult, since he’d ruled out SOB and bastard. Quite clever of him, actually. She wiped out the initials and sat back on the bed.
What would scare him? With his curse, he couldn’t be scared of enemies, of accidents, food poisoning, infections…. She played with the ring at her nipple. Fear of infection kept her from doing this more than fear about how it might look to others. She never truly care
d about things like that. Well, not with physical things.
She labored at being polite. She did her best to be thoughtful and aware of how others might be hurt by what she said or did. If her appearance offended someone? Fuck it. But it had bothered Tom.
Insecurities plague everyone, she figured. Again, what would make Silvestri insecure? A threat to the security his curse offered?
Though she didn’t think he enjoyed his curse. Or consider it an agent of security. A beautiful woman offered him good luck, and being fifteen, he took it without a thought. She didn’t know his exact age, but he’d carried the weight of that decision a long time.
And could claim no friends, no family, no one to talk with because of it. He didn’t trust his crew, that much was certain. And that confused her. A captain should be able to rely on his crew for more than just practical matters. She supposed he believed in their ability to run the ship, to obey orders, but not with any sense of camaraderie.
The idea of living so long aboard a ship without a friend made her sad.
Her life was solitary, too. Even when Tom was alive, they lived a lonely sort of life. They went out to events like the pirate festival, renaissance fairs and other historical enactment celebrations. They went to science fiction conventions, attended concerts and craft fairs, then they went home. They never had company over, never went to the homes of others for dinners, or parties.
It wasn’t strange to her. It was how they lived.
Here, in this odd delusion she presently inhabited, society was different. The crew of the Quill certainly did their best to afford privacy to each other, but not to the extent she was familiar with. They often left the shower with towels barely wrapped about themselves. Sometimes they sprawled about the deck, mostly nude, to dry after a good swim.
No one hid who they slept with or when.
Save for her. But she was sleeping with the enemy.
Which turned her thoughts to Mick. Did he actually hate Silvestri? She entertained some doubts. Climbing off the bed, she paced in the small confines of her room.
Were they enemies? Silvestri didn’t act like an enemy. He went out of his way to avoid the Quill. Was it to protect Mick?
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