19 Nathaniel
Chapter Nineteen
Nathaniel
L ocke led Mae down the hall in silence. He didn’t know how to begin. He had expected her to say something, anything. But the silence continued, making him feel worse.
A thousand thoughts seemed to rush into his head at once. And in Mae’s presence, he had no hope for focus.
They stepped up a staircase. Farther down the hall, he held open a door into darkness.
“Your room?” she asked.
Locke struck a match and lit the lamp. He was grateful one of the maids had taken the time to tidy up his quarters. His bedsheets, usually left in complete disarray, were in perfect order.
Still, inviting Mae to his room was hardly proper. He expected her to object at any moment. Rather, she looked around, evidently not knowing where to sit or stand.
“This is very untoward, I know.” He shut the door. “But we must be alone.”
Mae nodded, waiting for him to continue. He swallowed a burst of fear. No one else could put him on edge like this.
“Striking that deal with Ellsworth has become my lowest deed,” he began. “I won’t tell you I hadn’t a choice. I did. Even if…” He paused, searching. “It should not matter what your father did. That is nothing to me now and what I said earlier is true. I was never going to allow Ellsworth to harm you. The fact that he did… It ate away at me.”
“I’m no idiot.” Mae sat down on his bed. “I knew it all along.”
She had almost forgotten it entirely. Whatever thoughts he’d had then didn’t matter. The new deal he had made had proven all she needed to know. Damn the rest.
Locke felt his jaw go slack. “Then why help us?”
“I thought I’d find a way to outsmart you two. I almost did, didn’t I?”
“You should despise me.”
“What he did to you was awful,” she said. “My father, I mean.”
“Yes, but I knew it could never justify—I don’t know why I didn’t see it coming. I allowed Ellsworth to come too close…”
She lowered her gaze. For her, there must have been no escaping the subtle anxiety his name produced. He hated that he was still out there breathing, even if it wasn’t for long. His name served as a reminder for him too. He saw her in the cellar again, atop a heap of dirt and dust, bleeding, barely able to breathe. He had cheated death on many occasions but never had he been more grateful for the serum. The black magic had saved them both.
“Despite what you may think”—he sat beside her, some distance away—“I wasn’t thinking of the sapphire that day in the cellar, not even revenge. When I look at you, I don’t see Alastair. You remind me of a much greater man… Your grandfather.”
A long pause came near to driving him mad. By the time she spoke, she was surprisingly calm. “Precisely how old are you?”
Locke tried to make sense of her expression. There was no disbelief, contempt or panic, only curiosity.
He rubbed the tensing muscles of his neck. He could not let himself feel relief yet. “I’m only three years younger than your father.”
Mae did the math. “Fifty-eight,” she murmured.
“Old enough to know Nathaniel for almost half my life.” He hadn’t expected speaking of her grandfather would pain him so much. But it did. The man had been like a father to him. His greatest ally.
“Your grandfather, he was the fiercest yet most considerate man I had ever known. At sea, he held himself to the highest code. Learned from the greatest teachers. A natural-born leader if I ever knew one. Together, we plundered more wealth than your family had ever seen.”
Wealth that for years he’d believed had been meant to be his. And yet, he cared nothing for it now.
“And just how did you come to meet him?” Mild surprise flickered across Mae’s features. “Tell me everything.”
Her eyes demanded it. There was no backing out of the story now.
“I was alone,” he said. “My father and mother both dead.”
It didn’t matter how many years had passed, Locke still remembered the exact moment he had discovered their bodies. They had been curled up in bed together, their skin as pale as milk and covered in sores. He swallowed, ashamed at all the bitter crying he had done. But there had been no one around to notice at the time. No one around to care.
“Smallpox had taken the whole village. So at thirteen, I set out on my own.” To this day, he still wondered why he had been the only one to survive. Of all the better men, why him?
“My father taught me how to trap and hunt. After some wandering, I took up residence in the woods.”
Was it his imagination or had Mae leaned in closer?
“Your grandfather and I were neighbors and for a while, we were nothing more,” he went on. “Then one day, while I was foraging, I heard hooves. Fearing discovery, I climbed up a tree, but in my haste, I slipped…”
“My grandfather rescued you?”
“Nathaniel was hunting at the time. From the fall, I had broken a couple of bones. But taking me to your estate, he helped me heal. For days, he even kept me company .
“I think he knew my parents were dead. He never asked where I’d come from. He simply told me the forest was no place for a boy. I had never lived in anything more than a hovel. When I saw the great Blackthorne estate—”
“You lived there?”
“Yes. You can imagine my appreciation. Never had I seen halls so vast, walls so adorned, furniture with carvings so intricate. It was like living in a dream.
“And yet despite my modest upbringing, your grandfather treated me no different than his own son—your father—like I was one of his own. While I healed, he told me stories. He talked most of the sea: the strange creatures, the daring battles, the relentless storms. He said if adventure was what I was after, it was a good living in this world.”
He smiled to himself. The memories almost forgotten had been the warmest he had ever known.
“‘Are pirates not criminals?’ I asked him. “‘Why not join His Majesty’s Navy or board a merchant ship?’ ‘Because captains are cruel and unjust and your wages may never come,’ he replied. ‘But as a pirate, I could experience great adventure.”
He was grateful Mae could hear the tale now. He wanted her to know the kindness of her grandfather. He had been so many things to Locke: a father, a mentor, a friend.
“I don’t know why he took me in. Perhaps he sensed something in me. Something like bravery, I’d like to think. He even taught me to read. I managed to learn quickly and caught up to your father. He was a great lover of books too.”
“You knew him well. Perhaps better than I.”
“We grew up together. ‘Alastair, come meet your new brother,’ your grandfather told him. ‘He’ll be joining us at sea.”
“How old were you then?”
“Just fourteen, if you can imagine. Your father and I, we learned everything together—strategy, how to wield a sword, pistol, dagger— everything… He was a bit perturbed by my eagerness, I think. He was always trying to outshine me, even if I was three years younger and no blood relation. In my eyes, I could never compete.”
Mae shook her head. “A simple ship builder. Until recently, I thought he was nothing more.”
“People can be many things. I, too, wanted to be so much more than the shopkeeper my father had been. I decided I wasn’t a child anymore. I would build my own manor. I would live independently and make a life of my own.”
Secretly, he had aspired to build a home as great as the Blackthornes’. A dream that seemed silly and materialistic now.
“I almost succeeded,” he said. “At sea, sailors quickly surrendered under your family’s flag. We smuggled freshly minted coins en route, stole whatever we could from merchant ships, and traded the loot for gold or jewels.”
But it hadn’t all been gain, he didn’t dare admit. He recalled the battles that had turned bloody. The terrible men who had deserved to die. The good men who hadn’t.
“It was far more money than I could ever dream of, but soon, it wasn’t about the spoils. It was about the adventure—though I suppose that was what piqued my interest in the first place.”
“When did you find the sapphire?”
“I was twenty-five and I remained twenty-five until Alastair snatched the sapphire from me seven years ago.”
“So even though you are far older, you’ve only aged thirty-two years.…”
“It meant I could keep on smuggling and that’s what I did. We kept on smuggling. Somehow, the gold was never enough. I was missing something and not a kingdom’s worth of gold could fill that hole.”
He cleared his throat as if that might rid him of the ever-present ache. “In the end, our good fortune didn’t last. Laws were passed. The seas were better patrolled and officials stopped overlooking our crimes. I could sense the end.”
“How long before anyone noticed you weren’t aging?”
“It was your father and likely the servants too who first noted it when I returned to demand my share of our profits. Though I showed up at his doorstep, Alastair refused to me step inside. I wanted to tell him all. After thirty years at sea, I was supposed to be in my fifties, like your father. Instead, I looked as if I were still in my twenties. I had to tell him something. But he didn’t even let me explain. He was convinced it had to do with the devil and demanded I leave.
“I was set to leave never to return again when he came to my manor in the woods.” Locke tensed at the memory, his words rising. “He poisoned me. Right in my own home. With the very wine I had offered, he left me for dead. He watched me as I choked, smiled even as he swiped my sapphire. ‘I always fancied this rock.’ He laughed. ‘Since the day you took it, I’ve wanted it.”
“That’s awful.” Mae grasped at her throat. “I never thought him… I just never… All of this when I was just a child,” Mae murmured. “All of this at a time when my father and I played guessing games, when he told me fairy tales on the lawn… I had no idea.”
Seeking reprieve from the dreary subject, Locke regarded her in the haze of the weak lamplight. Her eyes shone the very same as they had that fateful day in the Northern Woods. Since then, she had changed him, just as Nathaniel had done.
She had softened him. And despite all his years, every experience and sensation with her felt like his first.
“You’re nothing like your father. He was greedy,” Locke said. “More so than I. Superstitious too. He had envied the sapphire for years—particularly all of the luck it seemed to bring me. What irony.”
“He never did discover its power, did he?” Mae sounded disappointed, almost.
“Apparently not. Sometimes, I think he took it out of spite. He knew how much I liked the thing.”
“But the poison—you survived somehow,” she said with glossy eyes. The story had clearly made her emotional. Because of what she had heard about his father or himself, perhaps. Maybe both.
“Yes. Thanks to the serum, I could claim revenge. I thought I could surprise your father, hold his life for ransom, just as we did at sea. I wasn’t expecting the Silver Order to find me. He demanded the sapphire, wherever it was, be returned. But there was no chance your father would return it. The sapphire, I suspected, had been stored up with our spoils, out of reach. I had no choice but to run. For seven years, that’s what I did. I lived from city to city, smuggling and thieving as the opportunity arose. It was the only way I knew how to survive.”
“When you returned, my father was dead.”
“Nothing was as I expected. The business had faltered. Your father… How…” His voice quavered. “How did he—”
“Pneumonia,” Mae said. “It happened so suddenly that winter. First a cough then an inability to stand and finally…”
“I see.”
Mae disguised her pain well, but Locke could imagine the desolation of that winter and all the years that had followed, not to mention the last couple of weeks. He wished now that he had been kinder. If only he could manage to come up with better words of remorse. For her sake, at least.
“One day, that could be my fate too,” Locke said, her gaze captured by his every word. Taking her hand, he placed it over his chest. She flinched at the pulsing of his heart like that of a frightened beast. “I have a heart, the same blood as you. A blade would stop its beating no different than yours. Without the sapphire, I’m aging again. My time here is limited too.”
These last few days, every second, every word had become precious to him. The last decade seemed a century, but the last couple of weeks, an instant. A flame now extinguished.
“You can’t stay.” Mae stood up and paced away, her voice sharp and demanding. “I can’t let you.”
“Please abandon this fight.”
“I’ve seen my future too, you know. I am always wondering what has become of you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Those guards. They would be on us in an instant.” He went after her, even if it was only a few steps in that room.
“They’re afraid of you. I saw it in that man’s eyes when we arrived. We could use that somehow.” Her face brightened. “We’ll escape. Right when Miss Rosewood leaves.”
“I’ve already lived that life, Mae. I won’t have it for you.” He would sooner endure a thousand more years of it than allow that.
“Why? Because you pity me?” She pulled back. “Because you feel sorry for what has happened?”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes.
“But—don’t you feel anything for me?”
“Of course I do. Since the start.” Finally, he’d said it. As much as he had dared to. Two insignificant words that meant so much. Pointless as it was.
“Truly?” Mae’s mouth parted, her fingers twisting around each other. “But still you mean to stay?”
She bit down on her lower lip, her chin trembling.
“It’s the rightest, most noble thing to do.”
Soon, she would forget about him. She just needed time.
“Hang the noble…and honor and decorum and pride,” she said in harsh reply.
Could he have heard her correctly? He tried to read her eyes, but a deep sadness in them had not wavered.
Then something in her gaze shifted. A look that made him itch with lust. He feared what he might do when she took another step forward. But it was not his actions alone he needed to control .
Stilling him, she came close.
“I don’t care for any of it.” She needed only whisper now. “Not in the least.” She gripped his arms tighter. “Not since I met you.”
He thought he knew what she wanted. But watching her, he hesitated. He had to see. To be sure she wanted this.
He sucked in a raspy breath. Though neither of them seemed sure, temptation persisted. Her scent too strong, her lips too close. He could not bear it.
Leaving his mind and all hope for reason behind, he pulled her in. There was only the taste of her, all sweetness and warmth.
She pushed back and, before he could think why, she pulled her dress down from her shoulders then tugged at her drawstrings. Her gown disappeared, replaced by her skin. Like gold, she gleamed in the gloom. In the next instant, he saw all of her, the dress now a puddle on the floor.
His jaw went slack, his body tightening at the sight.
For a moment, he feared interruption from Pierce, a servant—anyone. But lifting her up into his arms, he would let nothing stop them now. Not even if the room around them burst into flames. He wanted to drink her in many times over and each time with less restraint.
The rules didn’t exist. For one more instant at least, she was his.
*
Lying in Locke’s bed, Mae inhaled. His scent was all around her. Wonderful sensations still pricked over her skin, filling her with warmth.
She did not want to leave, but her stomach rumbled for the dinner she had missed. She considered going to the kitchens herself but discarded the idea. What if a servant saw her leaving his room? What if —
Catching her off-guard, footfalls clicked in the hall.
A bad feeling settled over her. In the glow of the dying fire, she could only make out shadows.
“Locke?” Mae sat up. A figure was in her room now. But it wasn’t Locke. The slim silhouette was that of a woman.
Miss Rosewood.
“What are you doing here?” Mae gasped. She was, after all, completely naked. In the weak light from the hall, Miss Rosewood seemed to know it too.
“I might ask you the same. If it were not so obvious.”
“Miss Rosewood, please. You should not be in here.” Mae wrapped a sheet around herself and leaped out of bed, grateful Locke was gone.
“Is that shame I detect?”
The comment should have awakened her inner rage. Instead, her voice softened. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Even if she had caught the attention of the servants too, she didn’t care. That evening had been worth every risk.
“Why is that?”
Unable to see much in the darkness, Mae searched restlessly for her clothing piled across the floor. Reaching out, she felt the sheer fabric of one of her underskirts.
“Just turn around,” Mae barked.
Miss Rosewood scowled but obeyed nonetheless.
Mae dragged on her clothing, but hang it, she was still missing her corset.
“I thought you were better than this.” Miss Rosewood picked it from beneath the bed and threw it at her. “You’re—you’re not even married. Now that you’ve done this, he’ll never ask for your hand. But—oh… This isn’t even the first time, is it?”
“Why have you come?” She worked to finish lacing her corset, thankful the one they had lent her laced up in the front, not back. Otherwise, she would have needed Miss Rosewood’s help and that was the last thing she wanted. It was more likely they’d never speak again.
Though sloppily, Mae stepped into her dress and pulled it up over her shoulders too.
“Here.” Miss Rosewood gathered Mae’s shoes. “You’ll need these.”
Mae took them. Already, she felt sorry. Considering all Miss Rosewood had been through, perhaps her anger was justifiable. She deserved some leeway. “Miss Rosewood, I—”
“I know he chose you instead. I even released him from our engagement, but do you have to rub it in my face?”
“I didn’t plan for this.”
“What would you have me believe? That he forced himself on you?”
Mae bent down to the floor again. Where was her key? She was never to let it out of sight and here it was: missing. She really had been careless.
Frantic, she patted the floor around her until, beneath the bed, she felt it. She took in a breath of relief and tucked it away into the top of her corset.
She had no delusions. Despite what had just happened between them, Locke was still sure to stay here among the Order. But at least her future was safe, financially. In all other aspects, she hadn’t much else.
“Is it not enough that you ruined me?” Miss Rosewood continued her flouncing.
“I didn’t think you’d chase after us.”
“I loved him. Of course I followed, I thought… I was so sure I could change his mind. I was so sure I could save him from a trollop like you.”
The phrase, so malicious, angered her this time. What she had with Locke went deeper than those last few hours. What existed between them had been real—even if it could not last.
She was glad Locke wasn’t here to hear this, but at the same time, his absence said everything. She had a feeling he meant never to return. Perhaps it was better that way, to end things like that.
“You’re right.” Despite being decent, Mae felt naked again. “He’s already left me.”
But this only seemed to infuriate Miss Rosewood further. Her face contorted with it. “Then why did you do it? He wanted to marry me first. But you stole him away. It was you. You sought to ruin me.”
Where were these words earlier? Miss Rosewood had only wanted to make it seem like she had forgiven her. Maybe she was just trying to appease Pierce so he wouldn’t lock her away again. Truth was, she really hadn’t forgiven Mae at all.
“How long have you been planning this?” Miss Rosewood demanded.
That was the last straw. “I planned nothing of the sort.” She grabbed Miss Rosewood’s shoulders, seeing no other way to drive home the truth. “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to betray you.”
Miss Rosewood had to believe her. These last two years, she’d thought they’d liked each other. But Miss Rosewood wrenched away, not with a look of distress but with a smirk. “ Mr. Ellsworth. ”
“He is only trying…” The words drifted away. Mae knew instantly what was to become of her. The name had been a signal. Inside the room, she could make out the outline of another intruder.
She didn’t need candlelight to know it was him. When he entered the weak flicker of the firelight, the sight of him, disheveled and greasy with sweat, stunned her to silence. His eyes seemed set on two things: violence and suffering.
Mae fumbled backward, gripping the bedsheets, desperate to create distance, but it was no use. She was trapped.
Before she could scream, a hand clenched tightly across her face. And it wasn’t just his hand. She felt the coarse fabric of a rag and a harsh chemical sting.
In the few moments before unconsciousness settled over her, she knew she was dead. For the best, she supposed.
She hadn’t much of a future without Locke either way.