“Stand down, Ke. First, how do you know any of this?”
“I’ll stand down, but you have to explain this to me. Are you certain you weren’t drugged or something?” Keara took her signature stance and burrowed her hands into her waist.
“How do you know about Maddox and me?” Ivory repeated. She flew to her feet and slammed her hands down hard on the desk.
“Because when we reached the cabin where he was holding you, he was there. He gave us some bullshit story that he was there to let you go.”
“Let me go?” Ivory’s voice softened.
“Why the hell else would he let you go, but for some intimate reason? We certainly didn’t believe he’d just had a sudden change of heart.” Keara was now on her feet as well, staring into Ivory’s face. Ivory spun away from her cousin’s prying gaze and walked to the window. She stared at the waves, as every churn and bubble behind the ship led her further from Maddox. Keara waited for an answer and took her seat.
A few minutes passed in silence. Then, Ivory finally spoke as she continued to stare out the window at the growing distance. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine any of this, Ke.”
“How’s about you share some of that imagination with me, then?” Keara rose and walked to the window and stood next to Ivory. She joined her in staring out at the ocean, trying to see whatever it was Ivory was seeing.
“What is there to explain? I let my guard down and…”
“It’s alright to say the word.”
“Not for me, it isn’t alright.”
“And why is that? Because you’re the all-mighty Ivory Shepard?”
“Well, when you say it like that it sounds…”
“It sounds exactly as it is. You have a great deal of weight on your shoulders, and you’ve carried it alone for a long time. So what? It had to happen eventually...even to you.” Keara leaned back against the window sill, folded her arms, and pressed them into her midriff. “I have to hand it to you, though—you picked one that you can’t have. I’m sorry, Ivory. That’s gotta sting a bit.”
“There was no picking involved, trust me on that. I know you’re right, though. Maybe I just think it’s more than what it was...whatever it was. Or, maybe I was trying to seduce him into loving me so he’d change his mind. As I stand here now, trying to recall the entire thing, it’s veiled and covered in mist.”
“You’d sooner cut off your own arm then stoop to that. You of all people—well, after what happened back in Charles…”
“Don’t…” Ivory blurted out. Her chin raised and her jaw clamped tight.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I know you better than anyone, and I know you’d never sell yourself that way.” Keara unfolded her arms and leaned back, but turned her head and spoke away from Ivory. “By the way, he got your letter. He was holding it when we found him in your cabin. Did I tell you he busted in the damn door?” Keara laughed. “I’d say that, if he told us the truth as to what he was doing there, he feels much the same as you, the poor old swab.”
“What a pair we are; he with his change of heart too late to matter, and me with my own heart shrouded in pride and fear. I’m not a fool, you know? I realize this morning was the last time I’ll ever lay eyes on him again.”
“Wait, you saw him? Cass said he escaped… but you saw him? Where?”
“Richard, the boy who came with me, found a dinghy tied to the adjacent dock and “procured” it for us from a man headed into town. He appeared to be drunk and wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon. As it turned out, that man was Tommy.”
“Tommy? Tommy Boston? But I put his ass on the Jade because of Miranda! What happened?”
“You must have pissed him off pretty good, because he tried to take me himself for the bounty. Maddox stopped him.”
“So he ended up letting you go after all?”
Ivory nodded, as she at last turned and looked Keara in the eye. She swallowed hard and a cold shadow covered her face. “But, I can never see him again. Understand?” she whispered as she embraced herself and ran her hands up and down the outside of her arms.
“Why don’t we get some grub and some fresh air? Let’s put all of this aside for now and tend to business.” Keara took Ivory’s hand and squeezed it hard, then pulled at her to get moving. “Oh, damn,” she said, stopping at the cabin door.
“What is it?”
“I need to tell you that I…” Keara paused, scrunching her face into an apprehensive grimace and continued, “I brought the diamonds just in case we’d have to buy you back, but don’t worry! They’re safe and secure.” Keara threw up her hands as if protecting herself from an impending blow.
“You what? Do Miranda and Cass know about this?” Ivory cried as she reached past Keara and held the door closed.
“Yes, and I’ve already had my ass reamed for it, but it was the only thing I could think of at the time.”
Ivory sighed. “I’ve held onto those things for far too long anyway. Once we’re back in Port Royal, we’ll load up and take the Jade up to Charles Towne to get rid of them.”
“Ivory, does this mean you’re finally ready to give all this up and be a lubber? Oh, and about the Jade…”
“Are you out of your bloody mind? No! What it means is we can finally go straight, Ke. We can stop running and put this filthy business behind us. But I will never give up this life.” Ivory looked around the room as if she were being embraced by it. “I’d have to have a damn good reason to stay off the sea, and I sure as hell don’t see one right now. Now, what about the Jade?” Ivory began to reach for the doorknob, but Keara remained in her way, pressing her back against the door. “Ivory, wait…everyone aboard knows about you and Maddox.” Keara looked at the floor and then slowly raised her eyes at her cousin. Ivory grabbed the doorknob and pulled, forcing Keara forward on her toes.
“Like you said…so what?” Ivory growled.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Ivory ordered all hands on deck and commanded that the Jade be brought aside and tied on, her crew obliged with vigor. They rushed about, shouting out to each other with a renewed and joyful timbre. The crew behaved as if a great burden had been lifted. The relief of having their captain back at her post filled the air with laughter and levity as they pulled lines and swung grappling hooks over the waves to the Lady Jade.
Ivory stood on the top step of the Cutlass’s quarterdeck, hat in her hands, and tilted her head back to draw the morning sun upon her face. The men fell silent at Keara’s order, as Ivory cleared her throat. Keara stood looking up at her from the bottom step, and Richard scrambled to take a seat just below her. The young boy gazed up at Ivory as if she was his queen and he was her most loyal knight. Her white tresses, brushed back and tied into a soft plait, blew softly over her left shoulder as the menacing short lock of hair came loose and swept over her cheek.
“On behalf of myself and the crew of the Lady Jade, please allow me to give you my warmest and most sincere welcome back, Captain Shepard,” Phineas Jackson stated, as he climbed aboard to join the rest and await her address.
“Captain Jackson,” Ivory replied with a nod. “So, how have you been enjoying my lovely Lady Jade?”
“She’s a fine lady indeed, Captain. I’m ever so grateful to care for her, indefinitely. I can assure you I will treat her with respect and admiration, as I would any fine lady of her stature.” Phineas removed his tricorn and bowed, looking Ivory straight in the eye throughout.
“Indefinitely?”
“Yes, of course your quartermaster explained to you…”
“Ivory, I’ll explain later,” Keara interrupted
“Oh, you’ll tell me now.”
“Captain Jackson agreed to be our consort to Nassau under the condition he would take possession of the Jade upon the completion of our mission.”
“You’re right. Explain it later,” Ivory snarled. “Captain Jackson, we appreciate your help. You and I shall speak later as well. Now, on with this,” she coldly declare
d as she turned from them and faced her crew.
Her right hand rested easily on the pistol in her belt, and her left hand waved her hat about whilst she spoke. “Gentlemen! First, please allow me to thank you for everything you did to return me to my home. It’s a rare crew that would want their captain back once stolen, so I am quite thankful for that, indeed.” Ivory cocked her head and looked down at them as she shifted her eyes back and forth with a devilish grin. The men broke into a hearty, yet respectful, level of laughter and was silenced again with a wave of her hand. “You’re a good lot of the right sort of sailors and…other things we won’t mention. But none-the-less, you’ve stood with me, fought with me, and sworn your lives to me, so I’ll not stand before you and lie or deceive you. I’m before you now, to tell you the honest truth!”
The sun beat down hot and her head was pounding. She hoisted up her worn black leather cavalier and popped it on for relief. Perspiration rose from her skin until she glistened like the sea itself. “Listen to me. You fought bravely against Blacksnake’s men to protect the Diamond, and yet, he had no intention of ever taking her…only me.”
A hush, more solemn than the quiet of a dead man’s sendoff into the sea, fell over the crew as they gathered beneath her in a variety of stances, awaiting her next breath as much as her next word. Their faces crinkled and crunched, and their eyes pinched practically shut from the blinding sun, but when they watched her eyes close and then blink open again, the fire in them blazing, the men turned to stone. With a deep, chest-heaving inhale and a deflating blow of escaping emotion, Ivory locked eyes with them all as she ended her pause.
“There was, as you all now know, a ridiculous bounty of fifty thousand pounds on my head waiting for him in Nassau, at the request of the merchant company from whom we took the Diamond. I was captured several days after the Diamond went down. Nearly dead, I was then taken to Blacksnake’s home in Kingston where I was fed, clothed, and well cared for.”
“Let me slit him ear ta’ ear fer ye, Cap’n! I’d get it done fer ye handsomely, too!” shouted one of the animated, grimy sea dogs as he poked his sword into the air above him, and the rest cheered him on.
“There’ll be no cutting of throats—handsomely or otherwise. This man, Captain Carbonale…Blacksnake, or whatever you want to call him…finally remembered the oath of our brethren and set me free. He found his rightful way, and we shall give him and his crew full quarter.”
Keara’s face turned up at Ivory with an expression of complete shock. Ivory gazed back without so much as a flinch, knowing full well she’d escaped and was giving the crew an inaccurate account of the early morning’s events. However, knowing that Maddox had intended to free her, and ultimately had when saving her from Tommy, was truth enough in her mind to excuse her choice of words. She showed Keara the flat of her palm and continued, fully expecting to owe her cousin an explanation at the conclusion of her speech.
“Throughout my ordeal, I found Captain Carbonale to hold some measure of dignity and honor, although for a brief time, he did intend to trade me for his own selfish greed. As you can all plainly see, I am myself and nothing has changed. I’m as whole as I was prior to this incident and shall continue my duties as your captain until such time as you no longer feel I am suitable for the job. Full canvas to Port Royal, if you please, Mister McCormack. Alright… all of you, back to work.”
Ivory stood at her post until the last hand slapped its mate and the final shout of not only the acceptance of her words, but of the woman herself, was replaced by the usual chatter and banter amongst the crew. Keara stood waiting with her arms folded at her chest. “Follow me,” Ivory said over her shoulder, as she carried herself with a rigid countenance to her quarters. She held the door open for Keara and then slammed it, hard.
“What was that all about?” Keara demanded.
“That was what they needed to hear, and that is all.”
“They needed to hear that, or you needed them to hear it?”
“They are one in the same.”
“The hell they are!”
“What would you have me do, Ke? It’s better for all this way. Look, I want this behind me, and in order to do that I must have the crew put it behind them as well. None of us are without some fault. You handed my fucking ship over to Phineas Jackson, for Christ’s sake! Perhaps we should discuss that well-thought-out decision.”
“We did what needed to be done to get you back!” Keara protested
“I understand that, and I appreciate everything you’ve done, but we must keep what’s between us…”
“And me, right?” Cassandra said, as she opened the door and stepped inside.
“Yes, you, too. Cass, tell her it’s for the best.”
“It is for the best, Ke. I’m not choosing sides, either. I’m only stating what I believe is true, and the truth is, I offered him the Jade, not Ke. I also told him should we take the Cat, he could have her instead,” Cassandra said, taking a seat and folding her hands in her lap.
“Quite the barterer you are, Cass,” Ivory barked. “Look, Ke, you have to see it this way. There is no other explanation necessary for those men. We are all equals here. I don’t ask them what, or who, they do when they aren’t under my command, and I do not owe them the explanation of my personal affairs.”
Keara turned and looked at Cassandra as she sat nodding her head. “Well, of course you’d agree since your ex-lover is his right hand.”
“That isn’t fair. Tell me again how long you and James have been sharing sheets and no one knows?”
Cassandra’s sarcasm was on point, and Keara had no rebuttal worthy as a reply. She walked to the door and squeezed the doorknob in her hand. “James is not, nor has he ever been, our enemy. But, based on our earlier conversation, Ivory, I suppose my shock at your version of how you came to be back in this cabin is understandable, and I’ll not be a bitch about it anymore. If it’s your decision to cut Blacksnake free of any retaliation, so be it.”
“Thank you, Ke. I know it takes a lot for you to say that to me, and sometimes I need your loyalty first and your judgment last. Enemy or no, you know my heart, and although I have no desire to pursue Maddox to either thank him or cut off his fucking head for what he tried to do, I still prefer him in one lovely piece.”
“And why is that?”
“Despite what most, perhaps even you, believe, beneath it all I am human. Even if all I’ll ever have is the memory of his affections, I’d still prefer him whole. Although, looking back, I did chop up most of those memories myself in order to rid my heart of him,”
Keara looked back and gave Ivory a small, albeit genuine, smile and left the room. Ivory walked to her desk and sat. She dropped her face into her folded forearms and sat silently for several minutes before Cassandra finally drummed up the nerve to speak. “It isn’t as if you’re the first person to ever fall in love with your captor.”
Ivory began to laugh. It started as a low and breathy chuckle, but she evolved quickly into a wheezing, snorting full-on hysteric, until she fell back in her chair holding her stomach.
“I didn’t realize I was being funny.”
“Oh, Cass, it’s not you—well, yes, it was what you said, but the truth is, it is all quite funny now that I see it in that light. Not to mention the irony of my entire life.”
“I’m completely confused now, thank you very much.”
“No, no, I’m sorry.” Ivory leaned forward across the desk and stretched her hands out to Cass, who easily took them.
“I know. I’m your comfort,” Cass mumbled.
“Yes, you are. Do you mind?”
“Have I ever?”
“I knew the morning of the Spanish raid,” Ivory continued. “Oh, hell, maybe I knew before that. But, when you…”
“Ivory, you don’t have to…”
“No, I do. Did I ever thank you, Cass?”
“It seems like another life, now. I’m certain you did, though.”
“Well, thank you. Th
ank you for keeping my secret, and for taking care of me.”
“There are no thanks required for such things. That is what we do for one another, and what has held us all together for so many years.”
“I never wanted to set eyes on any man for the rest of my life. For a time, I wanted them all cut into pieces and fed to the fish. I certainly never wanted to belong to one. I wanted justice that never came. I wanted blood. I wanted them all to die at my own hand.”
“Well, you did your worst, for a young girl… I’ll give you that.”
“That wasn’t my worst—not even close. I’ve had such evil things in my head I could never explain, for fear of you all running as far from me as you could. If I told you half of what I’ve imagined, and a fourth of what I’ve actually done, you’d have fed me to the fish years ago.”
“If we wanted to feed you to the fish, we’d have done it when you took the Demon Sea.” Cass laughed, still holding tightly to Ivory’s hands. Ivory’s cheek had remained pressed to the desk since she took her cousin’s hands. Her eyes focused ahead, away from Cassandra’s, although they were seeing the same vision of what now lay far behind.
“Enough of this. The pains of our past can only harm us in our thoughts, and giving voice to them only gives them air to breathe,” Ivory spoke with finality.
“I love you, Ivory.”
“I love you, too.” Ivory raised her head a few inches and finally looked up at Cassandra as she let go, and fell back in the chair with a thud. “I’m sorry. You came here to speak to me about something else…didn’t you?”
“It isn’t important. We can speak later. I’m sure you have so much to do.”
“Please, tell me.”
Cassandra sat still and looked down at her hands as they fiddled in her lap. “It’s Alphonse. I don’t know what to do.”
The Blue Diamond (The Razor's Edge Book 1) Page 19