Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
“Ifeel as though I’m sitting in on a honeymoon,” D’Arcy complained to Everard on the third day, on occasion when Vitaliy was gone afuera.
“Of a marriage of obligation and dowry,” he added, the rasp of his endangered voice not enough to conceal his acute sarcasm.
“And… knitting. For God’s sake, Everard, don’t hold back the fight on my account. ”
But Everard had to hold back; there was no alternative. If Everard confronted the true reach of his fury at Vitaliy’s absurd stance, at his inaction, he might burst at all seams with no regard to casualties.
It was a good thing Vitaliy would be gone to shore for the junta.
That was all.
On the fourth day, the Sévère sat anchored in the bay of hot, palm-strewn Port-au-Prince.
With some careful maneuvering, the San Telmo had ridden in convoy, Romilly René at her command.
It made Everard nervous, giving the woman what she’d wanted after all; but the alternative was to split either from Vitaliy or from D’Arcy, neither of which was bearable at present. And she hadn’t cut and run—yet.
Ha?ti was possessed of a beautiful port: above the palms and beach and town centre rose three verdant mountains.
Atop the southernmost and tallest, three sea-facing walls of a star fortification stood halfway constructed in white stone, already studded with cannon.
The message was clear: Ha?ti would hold its own against those wanting to take advantage of its new, probate statehood.
But thanks to Vitaliy’s missive ahead of them to President Pétion, they’d been recognised and hailed upon arrival, and neither ship had been shot through.
“Are you sore to be missing General Mina? Simon Bolívar?” D’Arcy asked that hot afternoon, rather obvious in his intent; Everard had been pacing the cabin for the past quarter hour at least. Vitaliy had managed to make the junta appointment, and was there now, sitting in a palace with unnumbered state-makers and influentials—to most of whom he’d sold crucial weaponry.
And he considered himself not a king?
Everard ran his hands through his hair. “No,” he said. “Not precisely. I’ve no taste towards filibustering, and no doubt someone would only want to recruit me for the job. If not Mina or Bolívar, then another.”
D’Arcy hummed. “Surely.” He groped for his teacup and saucer, sipped tranquilly, and then: “But perhaps you flatter yourself?”
Everard stopped pacing. “I beg your pardon. Experience aside, my command of Spanish alone—” He sighed. There was no need to be defensive towards D’Arcy, of all persons. “But you are grumpy. Is it you that’s sore to be missing the junta?”
It was an insincere retort; D’Arcy confirmed it with a snort.
“You know I’ve no interest in rebellion, revolution. Dem-oh-cracy,” he said, crisp and sardonic. He replaced the saucer, pulled shut the mosquito-net, and pushed himself higher on the pillow, groaning softly. “You see where equality and fairness has got me?”
So says the ton-born, third son of an earl.
Everard grit his teeth. “I will have your recompense, Preston. No matter what Vee says. I swear it you.”
D’Arcy lay back with a hum. When he closed his eyes, the asymmetrical swelling of his nose and his blacked left eye seemed rather pronounced.
Everard felt the sting of remorse. “I am exhausting you.”
After a moment, D’Arcy gave a sharp nod. “In the worst way, I’m afraid.” He cracked open one eye. “Read to me from that head of yours? I’ve read everything to be had in this godforsaken cabin.”
Everard pulled his chair close, penitent. “Of course.”
On the seventh day, Vitaliy made an unplanned visit back from shore, brief and without ceremony.
Everard was within the printing parlour, sweating his bollocks off beneath the heavy apron, but working, useful at last; word had travelled quickly that there was a floating press arrived, with no commitments or restrictions and, most importantly, fresh ink and paper.
In accepting the jobs, Everard had been judicious in estimating how much time he would have to hand for printing, with D’Arcy laid up and him with nothing else to do. Unfortunately, he’d been less judicious in estimating how much two hundred impressions an hour would take out of him physically.
Thom had taken a shift or two, but his heart wasn’t in it, and Everard felt guilty of wasting the boy’s time.
Felt Thom was maybe obliging him for the sake of his prior servitude.
And since Everard was equally as incapable of paying him now as he had been when they’d slipped over the side of the Netley, he’d insisted Thom leave him to it.
Everard was rolling back the carriage on a wet page as Vitaliy crept into the parlour.
He had obviously just come from Government Palace: he wore a fanciful blue waistcoat—the one that seemed as pasted upon his body as wall-paper—and a curly, out-of-date wig.
His stance was anxious, with hands held behind his back, and he wore no weapons.
He had never looked less like a storybook pirate. He was beautiful nonetheless.
Everard waited, panting slightly, swiping at his forehead with his shirt.
“Yes?”
“Good evening,” Vitaliy said, hesitantly. “How is she faring?”
“The ship?” Everard raised his eyebrows. “Or the press?”
Vitaliy’s gaze dropped. “The press. I can see the ship is—”
“She’s not rusted yet,” Everard said, rudely. He peeled the page from the carriage and slotted it into the drying rack.
There was an awkward silence.
“Preston’s back on his feet,” Everard said, his back turned. Not that you’ve asked.
Another pause. Vitaliy said, “I passed him on deck. He looks well.”
It was unmistakably a gentle reprimand, and well deserved on Everard’s part. He turned round.
“I’m sorry—I don’t have much daylight left to hand, and two hundred pages yet to impress…” The Stanhope was a dream of efficiency, but Everard was tired.
Vitaliy took one sideways step. “No. I am sorry. Only…” And then one forward step. His hands came out from behind his back, holding something: a wooden, leather-covered, conspicuously triangular box. A blush bloomed pink on his cheeks as he balanced the box—a hatbox?—upon a pair of stacked crates.
It was a hatbox. Everard blinked, his heart suddenly caught on his sternum.
“I know you do not like… things,” Vitaliy said, still not looking up.
“But you had brought only the one hat, and you seemed to… care for it.” He made a quick, compulsive fist with his left hand, and then splayed it, held out a flat palm and pushed it towards the hatbox. For you, the gesture unmistakably said.
God, Everard was an ass. Maybe he was still angry, but that didn’t mean he was excused to act like this.
“I do like hats,” Everard said. “I like hats quite a lot.” And he was sure that he’d never told Vitaliy how much, but he had obviously divined it anyway. “Is… that a hat for me?”
Vitaliy glanced up. The cautious, hopeful glimmer upon his face was nearly enough to bring Everard to his knees from shame.
“Yes. It’s meant to be. I hope it is recent enough in style…
I was not confident about lace.” He pulled the wig from his head and gave a tiny smile.
“I’m not the best judge of such things. Perhaps obvious. ”
“No,” Everard said, and Vitaliy’s smile fell away.
“I mean to say, you’re wrong. It’s not obvious at all.
You look very nice. Beautiful,” Everard said hastily.
“And I’m sure the hat is beautiful too. But, er, the ink…
” He gestured over himself, his apron that was covered in ink and bits of paper fluff. “I wouldn’t want to…”
“No, I understand.” Vitaliy plunked the wig unevenly back upon his skull. If Everard hadn’t had ink hands, he would’ve centered it for him, pushed those fine blond hairs back into place.
“I should not have…” Vitaliy trailed off with a grunt. “I will let you to it. I must get back myself.”
“Vee,” Everard said, “wait—you could—show…”
But Vitaliy was gone—before Everard could even utter the smallest of thank-yous.
On the ninth day, the ship Vuelte of Vitaliy’s fleet came into Port-au-Prince, all the way from port New York; D’Arcy was well enough by then to lean upon the quarterdeck rail and make a stream of quips at her loading and unloading.
“So—let me make this straight,” D’Arcy said. “They are taking the vanilla, that has been paid for, from us, onto the Vuelte, to Philadelphia. It goes then to Europe. There’s Haitian coffee—that has also been paid for—which also goes to Philadelphia.”
“And Halifax,” Everard added. There was coffee; there was sugar; there was tobacco and indigo. Incoming on the Vuelte were beans, oats, corn, peas, lumber; all of these could not get to or from Ha?ti by traditional means, since she wasn’t recognised for legal trade by England or America.
He didn’t mention Vitaliy’s taking a net loss on the coffee.
It was such an odd thing for a pirate to do, it was almost suspicious.
And both of them were all too aware of the thousands of American small arms being loaded into the depths of the Sévère: paid for with pirated Spanish silver and Vitaliy’s slowly eroding sensibilities towards ways and means.
Intention matters.
“And Halifax! There’s no Navy there at all,” D’Arcy said sarcastically.
“Vee isn’t going to Halifax any longer. He’ll stay with me on the Sévère.”
D’Arcy sighed, slumping onto the rail. He winced as his elbows hit. “I ought have joined a merchantman.”
Everard eyed him. They both knew profit shares weren’t why D’Arcy had signed Vee’s articles.
Motivation matters.
“That path would quickly land you in Halifax,” Everard said, “in a hulk.”
“Not likely,” D’Arcy came back with. “Me, they’d send to Portsmouth, the better for my father to watch me swing.”
Everard couldn’t bear the thought. “The earl would pay your way, surely?”
“Yes—if only to avoid the scandal. Though if I’d a say, he wouldn’t.”