Chapter 13 #2
“Are we at war, Captain? I suppose I’m glad I read that book on naval tactics then.”
He feels that damnable blush begin to heat his cheeks. “Nay,” he says. “I thought, when you wanted to speak with me, I thought…” he trails off, feeling even more awkward and foolish now than he had a moment ago.
She squeezes his forearm then. “Firstly,” she says, “I wish to thank you for my new slippers. They’re marvelous.”
Her smile dazzles him.
“And secondly, I’d like to discuss Rogers.”
He stiffens again, just as quickly as he’d melted into her smile a moment ago. He should toss Rogers overboard. Or perhaps plant a facer on the man and then toss him overboard.
“What about Rogers?” he asks, knowing that he really has to get a hold of himself.
“I think he knows I’m not really your wife. He asked me a great many questions.”
“Aye, he’s aware.” He narrows his eyes. “What kind of questions?”
“How I know you. Who my family is. That sort of thing.”
“And what did you tell him?”
She smiles, the sweet one that he knows hides a mountain of trouble beneath it.
“I told him I am Mrs. McGann. And that I felt ill the past few days, but I’m much better now and glad to be up and about. I thought you’d want to know what I said so we can keep to the same story.”
“Aye.”
And he’s just on the precipice of an exhale; the conversation going much better than he thought it would, when she says, “Captain McGann—” in a tone that makes his stomach plunge right back down to his feet.
“You ought to call me Andrew.” He’s stalling and he knows it. “If we’re to be married.”
“I suppose I should,” she says, and then she touches her cheek again, as she had below deck. “Andrew, you kissed me.”
His cheeks flame hot once more. “Aye. I apologize for it.”
“Don’t. I don’t mind. It’s only that before…”
She stops, and now she’s the one who blushes.
Her pale, white skin turns a lovely shade of pink when she does, and he realizes he’s never seen her do it before.
The damned woman is always making him blush.
Him, the sea captain and salty tar by-blow is always tinged with the color of embarrassment around her, while she, the supposedly sheltered debutante, has never even turned the slightest shade of crimson.
Absurd.
“If the mothers of the ton are to be believed,” she begins again, “the world is full of men who want nothing more than to take unwanted liberties with unsuspecting young misses. But I must say… noting that my experience here is somewhat limited… that hasn’t been true at all.
Unless, of course, it is only me with whom men do not wish to take liberties.
But, drat it all, Andrew, what I am trying to say is that you kissed me and I want to know why. ”
He says nothing while she stares at him expectantly. He shifts his weight back and forth on his heels. He sucks the air in between his teeth.
“Alright,” she says in the face of his silent fidgeting.
“Let me ask you this way instead: why is it, Andrew, that when I tried to kiss you, you recoiled from me as if I were made of arsenic. But you seemed, just a few moments ago, to quite enjoy kissing me? I realize a kiss on the cheek is not the same as one on the lips, but…”
She’s talking about that night. That awful night. And he’s going to have to explain himself to her. He doesn’t want to. How can he explain how it felt to have her want him only for a bit of fun when he wanted her for everything? And then to have her prove it by throwing a bag of money at him.
Yes, she’d tried to kiss him six months ago and he’d refused, but that wasn’t near to the whole of the story.
The whole of the story is that she’s an earl’s daughter who tried to purchase herself a bastard by-blow.
Or worse than that, a daughter of the aristocracy buying the grandson of a woman formerly enslaved by said aristocracy.
He wouldn’t have it. Not then and not now. No matter how much his cock twitches in her presence. He glances down as if to warn it into submission.
“What did I do wrong?” she finally asks, because he still hasn’t spoken. “Was I too forward? Or is it that you’ve never wanted to kiss me and this morning you were only being polite?”
“Menace,” he says before he can stop himself, “There has not been a day that I did not want to kiss you since the first one I met you. Or,” he adds at her furrowed brow, “that I did not want you to kiss me.”
“Then I confess I do not understand.”
Nor do I.
He takes in a deep breath. “The last time I saw you before—” he gestures broadly to indicate her presence aboard his ship. “You were engaged to be married and not to me.”
And that’s true.
What’s also true is that every time he turns that night over in his mind, he feels nauseous. As if the whole evening had been distorted, like a reflection in a sideshow mirror.
Because everything he wanted had been there within his grasp: Catherine West seeking him out. Catherine West within arm’s reach. Catherine West leaning in for a kiss.
And yet, despite what it looked like on the surface, that night wasn’t a fulfillment of his desires. It was an ugly negation of them.
Because he wanted her for forever and she wanted him for a night; within his grasp and yet never further away.
“And now?” she asks and takes a step toward him. “What do you want?”
He stares at her as discordant impulses war within him.
What do I want?
He wants to take her in his arms and kiss her again, giving himself over entirely to whatever this thing is that pulses between them. He wants to give her shoes when she needs them and keep her safe and watch every sunset of every evening gild her face.
But he also wants to be free of that kind of desire. He wants to keep his heart firmly in his chest where it belongs and not smashed on The Elphame’s decks into smithereens. He wants to lock himself down and store away his wants and impulses deep inside his mind’s brig, never to be let out again.
Because no matter how she smiles at him or thanks him for the slippers or touches her cheek, she will always and forever be an earl’s daughter and he will always and forever be a bastard sailor, and there’s no spit of land large enough to bring the two of them together.
And he just doesn’t have it in him to let her break his heart again.
“Please, Andrew,” she says and reaches for his hand. “Please tell me the truth.”
His heart bends toward that word, “please” as it always does when it comes from her. But he pushes away that weakness with everything he has.
“I want you as my wife in name only — and nothing more.”
She closes her eyes and turns her head away as if he’s slapped her. “Perhaps we should set some rules of engagement after all,” she says.
“Aye. No more kissing.” It goes wrong every time, the kissing.
“Yes, if you like.”
He doesn’t like it at all, but it is for the best. No more looking glass distortions. No more hurt.
“Captain!” the first mate calls, and they both turn to find Rogers rushing up to them. “Come quickly. There’s been an incident that needs your attention right away.”
McGann nods and follows his first mate, drowning in shame, relief, desperation, fear. And want.
Always, always, want for the woman he cannot have.