Chapter Two #3
He stumbled back into his room well past midnight, even though they’d surely have permission to sail in the morning, and found Wes curled up in his bunk on one side of the room.
He wasn’t as tall as Delauney had thought, now that he wasn’t scowling and giving exasperated orders.
He was about the same height as Delauney, but skinnier, less sturdy, as though a stiff breeze could send him toppling over the deck.
How could an unassuming submissive be bold enough to order one captain about and openly defy another?
Was it something that ran in the family?
Ferrin certainly didn’t seem to have a problem speaking to the king, but he was a dominant.
He wondered what it must have been like, growing up in a household where submissives could make demands instead of coming at everything sideways with a soft word and a smile.
“You can stop staring,” Wes said. Delauney jumped.
“I was just looking for something,” Delauney said. “I hope I didn’t run you ragged today.”
“You barely gave an order.” Wes’ voice was husky with sleep. “Do you usually miss meals?”
“Ned fusses often enough,” Delauney said, turning his back as he changed into his sleep clothes.
The bunk behind him creaked. “My sister does that. Did that. I don’t know if she still does. She’d start reading and forget to eat. Sometimes she wouldn’t hear us if we were yelling in her ear.”
Delauney twisted round to look at him. He’d done much the same in his childhood, though not with books.
He could barely make it through a page without getting a splitting headache or pressing his finger to every word so they didn’t, in his brother’s words, run away.
His brother Leo had been nearly eight when Delauney was old enough to talk, and had no reason to care for an accidental brother.
Still, he was the only one who noticed when Delauney stayed up all night with his telescope or skipped out on his lessons.
It worried him, so Delauney tried not to be the sort of brother Leo had to worry about.
“Time can get away from one,” Delauney said carefully.
He didn’t want Wes to think there was something wrong with him.
De Mazets didn’t go in for that sort of thing.
They were friendly. Cheerful. Agreeable.
There was nothing agreeable about someone who forgot to eat and couldn’t keep their affairs in order.
“I’m pretty good at keeping time.” Wes didn’t meet Delauney’s gaze, but he was looking vaguely in his direction. “I don’t know anything about the rest of it. How to be a valet, that is.”
Delauney sank into his bed. “I don’t know anything about how to be a man who needs one. I’ve always managed quite well on my own.” There was a long, pregnant silence from Wes’ end of the room. “Yes, even with the...”
“Piles,” Wes said.
“Even so. I can’t be perfect, can I? I’d be hounded by suitors otherwise.”
Wes made a soft sound that was very nearly a laugh. “Do you think you’re perfect enough to keep your crew from rebelling when they find out that you’ve brought a mutinous sailor into their midst?”
“I assure you, Wes,” Delauney said, “I can keep a secret if I must.” Wes fell silent. “I can! And you aren’t about to make it a habit, are you?”
“So long as you don’t beat children, we’re fine,” Wes said.
Delauney shuddered at the thought. “It would have been a far more terrible crime if no one had intervened on that boy’s behalf.”
Children weren’t traditionally protected in Staria.
Before King Adrien de Guillory had been crowned, his father had hanged members of a noble family for treason.
The de Valois house had once been inseparable from the de Guillories, and in the course of a day, only one of them remained.
The others dangled from the noose for what had felt like hours while the crowd watched, drinking in the scandal of members of the nobility brought low.
The youngest de Valois had still been a child.
Delauney had felt shaken in the aftermath, as though he’d stepped off his ship and into a Staria he no longer recognized.
He’d still been a young man then, too na?ve to believe that a child would be hanged for treason.
Despite the truly staggering amount of drugs he’d taken that night in a vain attempt to forget it, he could never erase the sight of a child’s body hanging from the gallows.
Perhaps that was why he’d rescued Wes. Perhaps he couldn’t let someone who protected a child be driven to their death in Mount Hazel.
Delauney looked over at Wes. Wes was watching him, his dark eyes shadowed, the faintest curve of a frown on his lips.
He looked like he’d walked out of a painting, one of the ones Delauney’s aunt liked, full of pretty young men with lithe bodies and silks fluttering in the breeze, but his face held all the signs of a right bastard.
“You should rest,” Delauney said at last. “We’ll both have work in the morning.”
He lay back down, but he could feel Wes’ gaze on him in the dark, inscrutable and keen, for a very long time.