Chapter 8 #2
Not that Everard didn’t already know that.
“You haven’t changed at all.”
The shirt went in one easy pull.
“I’ll agree with you there,” D’Arcy said. He raised an arm and sniffed. “Ugh. Excepting I smell like rank seaweed. Apologies in advance.”
He moved round to his side, pulled down the sheet, and climbed in. He rolled onto his stomach, which, all things considered, couldn’t have been totally comfortable.
“Never think of it,” Everard replied, sliding farther over. He’d forgotten how very much space the man took up.
“Think of it too often,” D’Arcy mumbled.
Everard slid down to his own pillow. “Preston.”
“Wmph.”
“Did you pay that marine to keep him safe?”
One hazel eye opened, blinked. “No.”
“No?”
“Nuh-uh. That’s Bellingham St. Clare for you.”
“So, you did put him on as guard!” Everard said triumphantly. “And you said they weren’t your mar— Eemph.”
D’Arcy had put a hand over his mouth. And he did indeed smell like seaweed—seaweed and sugar.
“Lower your voice, for fuck’s sake,” he whispered. “Yes, I put him on your pirate’s guard. Last night, before supper.” The hand slid free. D’Arcy sighed. “Look, it’s not for me to say. Not my place. But you think there’s anything that happened on my ship that I wasn’t aware of?”
Saint Cunt.
“You mean…”
“Mm. He was a deserving prick.”
Everard was silent for a long moment. “Jesus.”
“Mm-hmm.” D’Arcy snaked his arm over Everard’s waist. He left it there, heavy and warm. “Nobody raids Maud’s. We’re safe here. Go t’sleep.”
Sometime later, Everard woke. He pulled on the creased-but-now-dry knee breeches, took two bites of leftover bollo, and opened the door to a domestic scene.
There was D’Arcy in the corner armchair, an unfolded Niagara Independent in his hands.
Bellingham St. Clare lay upon the neatly made four-poster, reading a pocket-sized King James Authorised Version.
Vitaliy sat on the little spindle-chair in the corner: knees wide, chin back.
He was being shaved by—Everard blinked—the steady Thom.
“Morning, sir,” Thom murmured. “Met your pirate.” The razor—Everard’s razor—made a soft shushing scrape-scrape-scrape over the hollow of Vitaliy’s cheek.
“My…? Er... morning, Thom.” Everard cleared his throat. “It is still morning?”
Thom nodded. Scrape-scrape-scrape. “Yessir. A hot one, though, surely.” He swished the razor in steaming water; the noise made Everard’s skin erupt in goose-pimple chills.
From behind his paper, D’Arcy snorted. Vitaliy, however, didn’t even blink—his blue eyes continued staring straight up to the ceiling. He barely seemed to breathe.
Did the man never twitch? Was he never nervous? He was positively Newtonian.
“You got out of Bess’s all right, then?” Everard asked. “No trouble?”
“No, sir. No trouble.” Thom indicated the table with a nod: there was Everard’s little dome-top trunk, atop it one of his own clean linen shirts, a summer-weight waistcoat.
“Thank God.” Everard shoved the remaining bollo into his mouth—hours old and with sugar gone sticky, it was nonetheless delicious—and threw on the shirt.
“Wasted as a ship’s boy, that one,” D’Arcy remarked. “Shaves like a valet.”
Everard grunted agreement. He knew that, although his own face barely required biweekly attention. Had Vitaliy asked to be shaved? Had Thom offered? D’Arcy still had last night’s sable stubble, so clearly he hadn’t intervened on his own behalf.
Thom drew the razor away from Vitaliy—who was still perfectly unmoving—and smiled. “Thank you, sir. My ma ’n pa are both in service in Montreal, so I know my way about shaving. Though… the French are not so hairy, I think. Like you, cap’n.” He bent, focus renewed.
Now Vitaliy looked at Everard, sidelong. There was a slight crease denting the end of one blond eyebrow, a tiny furrow of query above the other.
Was he remembering? Impossible to say.
“Unless they’re Breton,” D’Arcy added, oblivious; he turned a page. “Look out then. They’ve pelts.”
Vitaliy’s glance slid back to the ceiling. Thom scraped carefully round the soft, curly sideburns, scritch-scritch-scritch.
Watching the man be shaved felt intimate. Commonplace, and astounding. Vitaliy hadn’t been hanged; he lived. Surely, he couldn’t be a true criminal, a pirate after all, sitting there so handsome and quotidian and ordinary.
Everard stared, knowing it was awkward behavior. He wanted to be looked at again. Looked upon and maybe even thanked. Instead, he was ignored and—
Thwack. Paper cloth hit him in the chest. He clutched at it and glared at the culprit. D’Arcy raised insolent, sleek eyebrows.
“They were looking for you,” he drawled.
“What, at Bess’s?” Everard’s heart sank. “Already?” Had they been rough with their demands? Did she know of his charges? Had he kept the good widow from anything at all?
“At the docks,” came a soft, deep voice from the bed: Bellingham St. Clare. “Marine patrol. They were dawn seize orders.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” Everard said. “I was told it was to be dawn, but that was aboard a ship in harbour. I didn’t think they’d put out a goddamned redcoat patrol for a witness!”
Just what in hell had Vitaliy done in his pirating? Had the admiralty ever been so dogged in their pursuit of one, save Blackbeard? Special-order marines, a covert court-martial…
The marines. He paused, suddenly realising. “You’re who told Preston about my impending arrest. Aren’t you, Private?” The address slipped out of long habit. He really mustn’t do that anymore—as it was no longer his right.
D’Arcy stood from the armchair. “Everard…”
The young man went so pink that his freckles nigh on disappeared, but he nodded. “Yessir.”
“Then thank you indeed, Mr. St. Clare, for informing him,” Everard said, turning to face the bed.
If Vitaliy could not recognise his own sacrifice, he could bloody well recognise the poor marine’s.
“Though I very much regret you had to be further dragged into this, and hope you don’t come to feel the same. ”
They were the right words with the wrong tone, that sounded insincere even to his own ears. Mr. St. Clare ducked his head to his miniature scripture, his flush deepened to crimson.
“No, sir.”
Everard pulled on his day waistcoat with especial vigor—to hell with doing up buttons. “No, no—if everyone would please cease calling me sir!”
Vitaliy’s glance snapped back to him; this time, his brow was unmistakably furrowed, but Thom was finishing the last scrapes over his skin.
Thom withdrew, stropping the razor with wide eyes. Vitaliy sat up, put hands on his knees—
Nothing. Still nothing. He was a statue, bloodless except for an inevitable nick by his jawbone that let a tiny drop of red.
D’Arcy took him by the left arm, spoke into his ear. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” He pulled. “Stop glaring. Come on—breakfast. You need it.”
“And then what?” Everard spat. He tried to shake free, but D’Arcy held his elbow fast. “After breakfast, what? And what about the patrol?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
What now? What now?
“After breakfast,” D’Arcy said, unperturbed, “lunch. Then a nap? I haven’t had an undisturbed nap in years, seems like.” He made to open the door. “Or we could fuck; haven’t done that in as long—”
He hissed, and let go Everard’s arm. Vitaliy was there beside him; he had plucked D’Arcy’s hand free and dropped it, like moving a kitten.
It seemed to have taken as much effort. Then, ignoring D’Arcy’s grunt of protest, he stepped forward, and—slowly, watching for Everard’s flinch—reached and smoothed down the lapels of Everard’s waistcoat.
“What are you doing?” Everard asked stiffly.
“Dressing you. Might I?” Vitaliy asked.
“I—er—all right?” This close, he could feel the heat of Vitaliy, the life of him. He still had translucent lines of lather on his cheeks. He smelled like olive-oil soap curing in the sun.
One by one, Vitaliy began to do up the little brass buttons of the waistcoat. Everard didn’t move; neither did anyone else.
Vitaliy said, “I will tell you what after, if you wish to listen. You’re due at least that. Regardless of the circumstance, I owe you my life.”
There it was. And Everard didn’t know what to feel after all.
“I’m not due a thing,” he insisted. “I wanted—”
“I owe you my life.” Vitaliy finished the last button, trailed a knuckle back up the neat line. He met Everard’s eyes and stepped back. “I can maybe give you a different one?”
Everard stared. “Never say you’re actually a pirate? A real one? You said you were Russian.”
The room was silent. Everyone, even Thom, looked at him. D’Arcy sighed, and flopped back into the armchair. “Only you, Ev,” he muttered from behind an arm.
“You didn’t know?” Vitaliy asked. That brow furrowed again.
“Your charges, you mean? I didn’t hear them. Well, I hear them, but don’t listen,” Everard explained. “Else they get… affixed. Stuck.” He gestured inanely to his head. “Words read aloud are too close to seeing words on a page.”
Deeper furrows. “Ah? But—”
“Yes,” Everard affirmed. “I know it makes no sense at all.”
Vitaliy shrugged. “Charges aside, my flotilla steals weapons from those who shouldn’t have, gives them to those who should. For this they call me pirate.”
Everard goggled. “Your flotilla?”
Vitaliy hesitated, drew a hand through his as-yet-unbound hair. In three years it had only got longer and more subtly white-gold, not quite yet turning silver: unbraided, it reached the ties of his shirt and beyond, ends curling to mid-chest.
“I’ve missed something here,” Everard said slowly. “A flotilla. Weapons. I thought… freshwater. Furs, tea, that sort of Lakes pirate. Not…” He was at a loss. “Who the devil are you?”
“You know my name.”
Vitaliy Gray. Everard’s heart beat faster. “Yes. Yes, I’d thought so.”
“You do,” Vitaliy insisted.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” D’Arcy interrupted from across the room. “He’s Vee. He’s always been Vee.”