Chapter 14
Fourteen
“Lovebirds, hello!” came a loud call from below the rail: Romilly René.
She quick-stepped up the ladder and over, skirts and lace flaring.
Romilly René was a tall Frenchwoman of about Everard’s age, with thick brown curls wrung into corkscrews, and from the look of it, a fondness for powder and rouge, shaped beauty marks, and quantities of lace.
Like Vitaliy, she was slightly out of current mode; also like Vitaliy, the old fashion suited her well.
Everard imagined she’d been born a half-century too late, and the world had simply refused to conform to her, instead of the other way round.
She strode onto the quarterdeck, imperial as a queen, and Everard tipped his hat.
He didn’t bother asking himself how a staggeringly beautiful woman in a bow-strewn waistcoat, sword belt, and panniers came to be elected pirate quartermaster of a seven-ship fleet, captain of an all-women rowing crew; his world-views had been turned quite upside down since a small village’s worth of people had cheered at seeing him kiss another man.
It merely was; the rest seemed irrelevant.
How she climbed the ratlines in Rocaille panniers, however…
Perhaps they were detachable, like a cape. He had less than zero knowledge of women’s clothing beyond the visible superficie.
And in any case, she wore a proper hat, a functional-looking straw broad brim with ribbons and a feather.
“Fleet master René,” he greeted.
“Matelot Everard! Good to see you once again,” she said sincerely, in English.
She turned aside, and greeted Vitaliy with busses on each sharp cheek.
She was tall enough that Vitaliy didn’t have to bend much for her to reach him; a good thing, because Vitaliy had put on a pair of tight breeches and equally restrictive cornflower-blue waistcoat, neither of which Everard had seen upon his person before.
His hair was neatly braided, tied with matching blue ribbon; Everard hadn’t seen that before, either.
“I am sorry, mon cher,” René murmured to Vitaliy, low and close.
“I have brought one thing you wanted and one you did not.” Vitaliy looked startled, exhausted blues darting quickly over to Alarie—who had just come upon the gangway presently—before his face settled into flat neutrality, and he nodded.
Of course, then Everard wanted to know what she meant and, furthermore, which was which; wanted and not—but he was distracted soon enough by Louis-Michel Alarie himself standing before him.
And good lord, as judgments—descriptors—went, handsome wasn’t up to snuff. Not even very. Dandy was still accurate. But handsome had been Alarie’s bearing… at a distance.
Up close, the man was downright head-turning.
He had honest, liquid-brown eyes, as darkly lashed as D’Arcy’s, but more perfectly spaced and set; also the straight nose and dusty-pale complexion of a Grecian bust. His lips were plush, pink and curving; his smoothly shaved jaw hadn’t yet lost a bit of definition, because he couldn’t have been more than five-and-twenty.
Everard’s stomach did a hop-skip, jealousy and wariness and appreciation all in one. He saw now precisely why Vitaliy had put in the effort he had towards his appearance. Might he have a history with him, too? he wondered.
Although, he thought, their own history hadn’t warranted any such effort.
Alarie came close and greeted Everard in the Continental way, the same as Romilly René had done, cheek to cheek. Everard didn’t smell a whiff of hair grease, powder, or scent as he endured, just French soap and warm skin.
“You, then, are the infamous English matelot,” Alarie said, in French.
For the umpteenth time, Everard was not English, he really wasn’t— “Yes. Everard Anderson de Anglada, and pleased to make your acquaintance, Governor.”
“De Anglada,” Alarie murmured as he looked him over, up and down, distant and cool.
Ah. Head-turning, surely, pretty, definitely; but there was something… missing in that assessment, at least for a man Everard had assumed had a specific kind of history with Vitaliy. A certain recognition, unmistakable understanding; both were completely absent in the face of stone.
For while Vitaliy could also go as still and blank and impersonal as a statue, he resonated with awareness and recognition. This man was a statue—at least where other men were concerned.
“Glad to see you exist as more than rumor, matelot.” Alarie patted Everard’s shoulder. “A Navy man gone pirate… but it is peacetimes, yes? And piracy is what comes of the scraps the English give their career men. I cannot blame you at all.”
As though Everard’s move to piracy had been financially motivated, not personal, hadn’t been done to save a man’s life?
This, from a commissioner of a tiny thread of an island? A man not more than five-and-twenty?
“Surely,” Everard agreed. It cost him nothing, really. At least Alarie hadn’t said anything about the hand or called him Blackhand.
Alarie smiled, and turned to Vitaliy.
“Mon ami Vee, no assemblage for me?”
To Everard’s surprise, Vitaliy was blushing, two ruddy spreads over the tan of his cheeks. “The storm was a hard one, Governor,” he said crisply, and made a short bow. “The Sévère crew are still at leisure, and I saw no need to disturb them.”
Flushed, maybe, dressed and brushed to the nines, also; but Vitaliy wasn’t backing down.
Alarie looked surprised for a moment. “At leisure still, and it has been a whole half-day?” Then clicked his tongue, self-recriminating, as René inhaled behind him.
A hell of a thing to imply laziness in the Sévère crew, in Vitaliy, and the man knew it; he backstepped quickly.
“No, no, of course, mon frère, I am sorry. The Birch was beneath the squall. A surprisingly competent crew in a storm, and all of them les femmes!” he murmured conspiratorially.
“But I must congratulate you in this, Vee. The best transport a man has had on a ship in time’s memory, I daresay. ”
Vitaliy looked conflicted. Behind him, René rolled kohl-dark eyes. She swished over to the gangway to negotiate the belay of some kind of cargo.
Alarie pulled Vitaliy aside, pointedly away from Everard. “But have you received my letter latest? It is maybe not enough compensation now, given circumstances of your liaison récente. I confess not knowing the upkeep of a husband as compared to a wife, but…”
Vitaliy let himself be dragged down to the weather deck. He didn’t look back.
Everard was left alone, feeling contemplative and oddly resentful, until:
“Ladies’ man,” D’Arcy sing-songed softly into Everard’s ear.
He jumped. “Preston. Where the devil—?”
D’Arcy steadied him with a hand on his back. He was hatless, dressed in his de-epauletted captain’s coat and tapered pantaloons; three pistols hung on his belt, no surprise. “Every bit of him. Don’t even try.”
“I rather gathered—”
“I know, I know. Emerald satin. Even so.” D’Arcy smiled sidelong. He had excellent instincts towards sniffing out men like them; a skill sharpened by years of navigating public schools and tonnish ballrooms—whilst being very attractive.
“I don’t know what that has to do with… Neither you nor I wear emerald.”
“And yet.” D’Arcy grinned. He nodded to Vitaliy on the gundeck beneath them, who was totally leaned in to the dandy revolutionary’s words, like he spoke gospel instead of straight insult. “But he doesn’t know.”
“I can see that,” Everard said stiffly. “Thank you.”
“Or perhaps doesn’t care?” D’Arcy said. “Small wonder; with that face, it’s a weapon. You think the war would’ve gone the same, if Ol’ Boney looked like that?”
Everard didn’t bother to answer seriously, only took D’Arcy’s arm in his. “You are a menace.”
They paced the quarterdeck like taking a promenade.
“Have you forgiven me, then?” Everard asked.
“Might have begun to do so, for the majority part.” D’Arcy patted his arm.
“Menace is that pretty-face Frenchman, make no mistake.” He hummed.
“Although I certainly wouldn’t mind enthralling a pirate captain to my own gain, even were Varfolomey a woman.
Five sloops, a galley frigate, and a meregildo for my navy? Absolutely.”
Alarie wanted Vitaliy for his navy?
Of course he did. Who wouldn’t?
“You deal perfectly well with women, Preston.” In bed and out of it. It was another reason D’Arcy was so shrewd: he had no whispered reputation or specific social circles to signal others what he was; it was left to him to chance whomever he would.
D’Arcy dimpled. “True.”
An awful thought occurred. His indifference to Everard aside, could Alarie be similarly minded to D’Arcy?
“You don’t think they have…?”
“Fucked?” D’Arcy finished for him, and laughed. “Christ, no. Knowledge does not enthrallment make. That there is a man left curious.”
“Oh.” Everard harrumphed. “I suppose.” Was that what Everard lacked? Novelty? New-polished shine? He’d been had, quite thoroughly, and more than once; perhaps Vitaliy had simply moved beyond the already known.
A man can’t change so much in three years.
I don’t agree, Vitaliy had said.
Were those the words of a man bored by prior acquaintance? Surely not. But then…
You can’t expect the decisions of the future to produce the same results as the past.
Everard scowled.
D’Arcy laughed more. “What a fierce face you make.” He leaned in, whispered, “You’re more than pretty novelty, Ever. Only say you’d like me to demonstrate.”
Everard gave him a look: half fondness, half exasperation. He knew D’Arcy knew he appreciated the sentiment from the way the man’s eyes crinkled at the corners in response.
“How is it below?” Everard asked, after a comfortable silence. “Is piracy as you imagined it? Your French is up to par?”
“Oh, sod off, my French is and always has been magnifique. But yes, it is every belowdecks ever imagined.” He pouted. “With significantly less roving and thieving than I’d hoped.”
Everard laughed. “The Sévère is too big to go roving. She’s more of a floating station, as I understand.”