Chapter 26
Chapter
Catherine doesn’t remain long in the captain’s cabin. She can’t, not without knowing what’s happening above. The ship has fallen into an eerie silence, all the more notable since it had been chaos moments before.
Where’s Andrew?
There are no more orders being given that she can hear, no blasts of cannon fire. Nothing but the slow seep of seawater coming in below the doorframe.
She should be able to hear Andrew’s booming voice, ordering the men or surveying the damage. The ship should be moving. Something should be happening. Not this quiet stillness.
She recalls his story from when he saved her from being robbed or worse in that alleyway of Covent Garden. It was the silence that had told him something was wrong. There should be noise after a carriage accident, he’d said, not quiet.
She now knows what he meant. There should be noise in a sea battle too, shouldn’t there?
Drat it all to hell, Andrew.
He’s hurt. She’s certain of it. And she isn’t going to sit here with freezing cold seawater lapping at her feet while he’s somewhere out there injured.
She cracks the cabin door open and peers down the passageway.
There’s an inch or more of water coating the deck now.
When she shut herself in, there had only been a few sporadic pools.
She left Rogers lying prone on the boiler room floor.
Face up, she thinks. But if the water pools deeply enough around his head and face, he’ll drown.
She hesitates, her hand still on the door handle.
James is out there somewhere, and she only had surprise on her side once.
Next time he’ll know what to expect and she’ll have no chance at all.
Blast.
Think, Catherine.
First things first.
Make a plan, as Andrew would. Assess the situation, find Andrew and alert him to James’s duplicity if he doesn’t know already, and then find someone to help her move Rogers.
There.
It isn’t much of a plan, but it’s as good as she’s going to get. She hurries out of the room, closing the door securely behind her to keep out as much of the rising seawater as she can.
Her mind fills with dismal thoughts as she goes. The ship is under fire. James is still out there somewhere with a knife. Andrew is hurt or worse. And The Elphame is sinking.
She is no one at all to be able to handle any of these things, much less all of them. But she keeps moving nonetheless, making her way down the cold, water-logged passageway and eyeing with dismay the destruction the cannon fire has done to the ship.
The galley, the mess, the berthing—all have taken significant damage. But at least the cannon fire seems to have stopped.
She doubles her speed as she climbs the ladder to the main deck and emerges in the bright sunshine just in time to see The Elphame’s flags cut down in surrender.
Where is Andrew?
Her eyes scan the deck with increasing anxiety. The crew is clearly disoriented; men stand alone or in clumps, having seen their colors go down but not understanding what to do next. She doesn’t see McNeil or Andrew anywhere.
She looks to the black schooner that is now alongside The Elphame and, heavens, rope ladders attach the two ships together.
Where is—
Andrew!
Her eyes meet his. He’s bound and tied on the port side, near those ladders. James stands over him, giving directions. A few other men clad in black that she doesn’t recognize are standing guard, holding muskets. No wonder the crew isn’t moving.
They’ve been boarded by… heavens again, by whoever those men are. Andrew looks directly at her; his emerald eyes holding her gaze before he flicks them back to the ladder she just came up and gives a short, jerking motion of his head.
He wants her to duck and hide.
No—She doesn’t want to.
She shakes her head. She can see he’s hurt, a bloody bandage tied to his thigh. She wants to go to him, to help him, but she can only watch his pupils flare. As if he could will her back down that ladder and to safety by the intensity of his gaze alone.
She shakes her head once more and watches as a look of pleading flashes across his face.
“Please,” he mouths to her. She can’t hear him but she knows what he said. Please.
Alright, Andrew, she thinks, capitulating. Alright.
She ducks back down the ladder with her heart hammering away in her chest. She wants him here, with her. His safety and his warmth and his strength. But she cannot have him, not right now.
This is the moment in her life when her luck has run out.
She always knew it would come—that day when her cousin wasn’t generous or Andrew wasn’t lurking in the shadows, ready to come to her aid.
She tried to prepare for it, and for that, she’s glad.
Because she’ll have to rely on her own strength now.
Her own notions of safety. Her own courage and strategy.
And she’ll have to use those things to help him.
I will come for you, Andrew, she thinks.
She needn’t be helpless, even if she is afraid. Even if she’s been taught her entire life that helplessness is her birthright, she’s not going to indulge in it. Helplessness belongs inside the gilded cage, not out of it.
And by heavens, she is out of it now. So she may as well act like it. She turns down the long passageway to find Rogers.