Chapter Three
Wesley woke to the low drumming and cry of voices that signaled the Manatee’s departure.
“Shit!” Delauney stumbled out of bed. He’d apparently kicked off his trousers in the night, and Wes had a full view of everything the poor fellow had to offer.
It was almost difficult to look away. He’d seen his fair share of pricks over the years, but Delauney’s was the sort most people claimed to want in theory but could never handle in practice.
It was a marvel that Delauney could walk.
“Trousers,” Delauney said, whipping around. His ass was so pale it practically glowed. “Where are the clean trousers?”
Wes realized that it was probably his job to lay out Delauney’s clothes the night before. “Sit down and I’ll find some.”
“But you have your own...” Delauney’s voice trailed off to a whisper. “Oh, yes, valets do that sort of thing, don’t they?”
“You should know, you’re the noble.” Wes fished a uniform out of the closet and tossed it on the bed. “You did say you had a valet before?”
“Yes, but Ned sort of...” Delauney waved a hand. “Reassigned him after a while. I kept forgetting to ask him to do things for me, if you must know.”
“I can see that.” Wes ignored Delauney’s slightly wounded look and grabbed his own work clothes. “For example, what do I do now? Follow you around?”
“I suppose?” Delauney’s voice rose dangerously high. “We’ll figure something out.”
Wes wanted to say that as his captain, Delauney should be doing the figuring, but he suspected that would be useless.
Setting sail on a ship the size of the Manatee wasn’t as complex a task as it would have been on one of King Adrien’s larger ships, but it was still a slow process.
Moving a ship was a bit like moving an anthill.
It didn’t look like much from the outside, but under the surface, a whole crew of workers were scrambling to make sure nothing collapsed.
Even captains weren’t excluded from the scramble.
Wes started privately noting everything Delauney forgot on his way to the deck.
Breakfast. Brushing his teeth, which a captain could very well do, even if ordinary sailors had to get by.
Shaving. Fixing the collar of his uniform.
Perhaps he was too busy for it, but Wes wasn’t sure.
“Sir,” Wes said, as they stepped out into the pale gray light of dawn. “Do you normally eat while you work?”
“What?” Delauney looked a little panicky. “Oh. You must be hungry. You should eat something. Come back to me in a moment; I’ll be at the helm.”
Wes couldn’t risk giving him a sarcastic look out in the open. Ned was already approaching, looking like a chiseled god of the sea strolling across the deck of a ship for a lark. Wes fled to the kitchen. He didn’t think he could handle two relentlessly cheerful noblemen so early in the morning.
Delauney was at the stern with Ned when Wes returned, looking as though he’d forgotten Wes entirely. He seemed even more baffled when Wes handed him a piece of bread studded with currants and told him that a proper meal would be waiting for him in an hour, thanks to an exasperated head cook.
“Oh, no,” Delauney said, shoving half of the bread in his mouth with the air of a starving hamster. “I couldn’t. I’m sure that I had breakfast in any case.”
“You didn’t,” Wes said.
While the rest of the crew worked on actually taking the ship out to sea, Wes tried to untangle the knot that was Delauney’s daily life.
He cleared out the rest of Delauney’s room, stopping only to drag Delauney down to his rapidly cooling breakfast. He scrubbed the floors, took in more washing, rearranged the desk, and put all of Delauney’s papers in a set of crates he’d lugged up from the hold.
The crates weren’t particularly attractive, but they kept the papers from spilling all over the floor when the ship started rocking.
He checked the closet last, waiting until Delauney was distracted at the wheel to open the closet doors.
They swung wide, revealing a truly alarming series of phalluses, soft floggers, and paddles.
Half of the closet rattled cheerfully, paddles clacking together with the movement of the ship.
There were several boxes of rope in the back as well, but they were hopelessly tangled.
Wes remembered Delauney saying something about wriggling too much when he was restrained. Wes supposed that he had enough experience to know. He carefully closed the closet again.
When Delauney finally came down for dinner, he stopped in the doorway of his room with a look of surprise on his round, open face.
“Oh,” he said, stepping tentatively inside. “Oh!”
“New paper goes here,” Wes said, nudging a crate with his foot. “Paper that needs to be sorted goes here. Everything you want to throw away goes in this one.”
“I could kiss you,” Delauney said. He checked his chest, which was finally full of clothes instead of the detritus that couldn’t fit on the floor. “You found the blue vest with the fire dragons on it! Very well done, Wes. This is an exemplary job.”
Wes felt another tickle of pleasure at the praise, but he couldn’t hide his smile quickly enough. Delauney caught it and smiled back.
“I do like you,” he said. He swept past Wes and into the dining room, where Ned and his family were already holding court.
Wes stubbornly tried not to react. He wasn’t like his stone-faced brother or his careful sister, who could hide their emotions behind bland masks.
Delauney was a wealthy, privileged noble, but Wes found himself wanting Delauney to like him.
He was like a dog, really; a big, bouncy one that tried to befriend every cat on the street.
Wes couldn’t help but feel a little charmed by him, which was concerning.
Wes hadn’t been charmed by a single noble in his life, and he didn’t want to break that habit now.
Wes took his dinner on the deck with Vee and her mates, who politely made room for him in their circle.
Gregory was with them, but he was too engrossed in petting an ancient, purring tomcat to notice Wes’ arrival.
The tomcat blinked slowly at Wes before rolling onto his back and stretching his paws.
“It seems quiet here,” Wes said. “Is this how it always is on the Manatee?”
“You’re just comparing it to the way Captain Lennox runs things,” Vee said.
A man in the circle flinched. “You served under Lennox? Here, Henrietta, give him an extra piece of bread. He probably needs it.”
“We weren’t starved, you know,” Wes said. He took the bread regardless.
“I saw Lennox flog a man to death,” the man said.
He was an older sailor, almost Will’s father’s age, with a worn red cap over his bald head.
“He was a new captain then. He thought he heard the fellow spit behind his back. Captain de Mazet had just signed on, poor man. He didn’t have the stomach for Lennox’s ship. ”
“Did you follow him here?” Wes asked, curious. Several of the sailors in their circle grinned.
“It took him a while to become a captain,” the man said.
Wes had a feeling, by the way the others were eyeing him, that he’d told this story before.
“But when he got the Manatee, he poached half of Lennox’s crew.
Must’ve spent a fortune bribing the council to transfer us, but he never said a word about it. ”
“He can afford it,” one of the others said. “Have you seen the state of his carriage every time he leaves for Duciel?”
“And he only goes there for the whores,” another sailor said.
“What’s wrong with the whores in Diabolos?”
“Most of the career sailors here are from Lennox’s old crew,” Vee said, talking over an animated conversation about the quality of courtesans in Staria. “It seems like he’s carried on the tradition with you.”
Wes wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He could understand why someone like Delauney would want to undermine Lennox, at least. They were as unlike each other as any noble officers could possibly be.
Delauney seemed like the sort of fellow who would burst into tears if he had to kill a spider, while Lennox’s mother probably was one.
He was just heading back from dinner when a tall, sunburned Mislian stopped him.
They were a mage, their black eyes signifying a bond with one of Mislia’s demons.
Usually, demons didn’t like the open water, so there were only a handful of Mislian mages in the Starian navy.
It was a surprise to find one on a ship that spent so much time on deployment.
They weren’t wearing a uniform, either, dressed in a colorful green and gold tunic with bright blue hose and pointed shoes.
The style was at least a century behind the times, and it looked like it belonged to a jester rather than a sailor.
“You’re the captain’s new valet,” they said. It wasn’t a question. “Our name is Oculus, but Lord Peter calls us Alain. You may do the same.”
“Our name?” Wes asked.
Alain smiled without showing teeth. “Yes. We are Alain. We have been observing you.”
“Oh.” Wes tried not to back away from Alain’s uncanny smile. “Have you?”
“Yes. We serve Lord Peter’s family. In a way, we have been a valet and a lady’s maid for over two hundred years. It appears that you may be suitable for the captain.”
“Thank you,” Wes said. He’d heard of some Mislian mages having unnaturally long lives, but Alain seemed no older than twenty. “I should probably lay out his clothes for tomorrow.”
“You are trying to politely avoid us,” Alain said.
They didn’t seem particularly upset by it.
Instead, they took a step closer, winding an arm around Wes’ elbow as though they were two friends taking a stroll.
“We understand, but it is unnecessary. We will instruct you in a valet’s duties, and we will become very good friends. ”
Wes tried to protest, but Alain dragged him along, still smiling faintly.
“Why haven’t I seen you before?” he asked, trying to slip free of their grasp as they walked into the captain’s cabin.