Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Everard flew down the ladder with the sure tread of a conquering hero, with his heart in his throat and his breath short.
The swiftness of his decision shocked him, but like a few other decisions he’d had to make on the spur of the moment lately, it felt right.
And not just because Alarie was an overstimulated, insulting ass—no, he could have wooed and wined Everard to limpness with smiles and promises of glory, and he would’ve had the same answer.
Why would the man think he would refuse the glorious Sévère, only to take the position of admiral? It made no sense.
Inside the greatcabin, Vitaliy and D’Arcy had reversed the strict positions they’d kept the whole week long.
Vitaliy had partially reclaimed the cot and was seated on the edge of it, pushing himself back and forth with socked toes.
His shoulders were hunched, his head was bowed, his hair loose around his face.
He didn’t at all look like a man in temper; he looked either desolate or very drunk.
D’Arcy sat in the opposite corner, slumped in the plush armchair, totally sober, knees splayed and head back.
Everard didn’t deceive himself that he didn’t know what the two of them had been discussing. No matter. He could set them straight.
But neither would look at him, and that seemed a bit of a prerequisite. He cleared his throat, a difficult task when he was breathing so.
“Alarie’s offered—”
Vitaliy stood, and in three steps that utterly ruled out any potential inebriation, was in front of Everard, reaching—
Everard put out his own hand, upraised in welcome—
—but Vitaliy outstretched a sideways palm.
Everard stared like he’d never before seen a handshake greeting. He took the hand instinctually, felt the dry sailor’s rough of Vitaliy’s palm, and looked up to see Vitaliy’s expression flat and tired and unfeeling. He frowned.
“Louis-Michel is more fortunate than he knows,” Vitaliy said. His lips moved, but the rest of it was lifeless. “The position will suit you and the San Telmo well.”
“What—the San Telmo? No.” Everard tugged his hand free. “It— You think so?” he demanded.
“He has been looking for you a long while.”
“Not me, surely—”
“Someone like him: looking for gain and glory. Someone like you.”
Everard shook his head. “No—”
But Vitaliy went on, ruthless, as though it were all of it foregone. “He asked me find an admiral for his navy, since I would not be that for him.”
Everard took a step back. “He asked you? And what did you promise him?”
“Nothing. But naturally I thought of you—that you might have it all back, everything you had lost. A ship. A position.”
A different life. “You mean to say he’d asked you before… before all of it.”
Vitaliy nodded, once.
“Before the court-martial? In Cartagena?”
Another nod.
“And the—the matelotage?” Everard said weakly.
“It would be considered ironclad assurance for Louis-Michel.”
“Tied to you, I could assuredly be kept in line? A good little pirate admiral.” Everard sneered.
Vitaliy shrugged. “That is how he thinks, if it isn’t the truth. And it wouldn’t be a bad thing. He won’t manipulate you with Varfolomey backing you. Easy enough to go along with, yes?”
Easy enough. The words cut knives through Everard.
“I’m sorry, ‘go along with’?”
Could their matelotage still be false for Vitaliy? A convenience? A… tool?
“You’ve… used me to placate him. That pretty French bastard.
That’s what I am to you? A political tool?
Some kind of alliance?” He staggered back—Vitaliy reached out, stopped himself quick with a press of flattened lips, as if afraid—and Everard stumbled, shoulders back into the closed door to the parlour, meaning to flee.
But—the parlour, where the Stanhope press sat. The parlour, with dangerous paper and ink and even more dangerous words.
The press had been a gift. An option. An alternative. Vitaliy had, in fact, encouraged him off and away from the Sévère.
Alarie’s motivations weren’t Vitaliy’s. They couldn’t have been. Vitya wouldn’t have manipulated him for the sake of Alarie. Because at no point had it seemed like Vitaliy wanted to utilise Everard for anything—so much so, in fact, that Everard had felt quite useless. Kept.
It had been by design. Not making Everard feel useless—that was Everard’s own insecurities clamoring—but Vitaliy had carefully not obliged from him anything. Not a single thing. He’d wanted piracy to be Everard’s choice. Had given him options.
That didn’t mean he didn’t want him to stay.
Everard glanced beyond Vitaliy to where D’Arcy sat lounged, totally unselfconscious to be eavesdropping. The very fact he wasn’t up in arms at Everard’s side, in defence of him, said almost everything.
Then D’Arcy looked up and smiled. Winked.
If it weren’t real, he wouldn’t have done it.
Almost everything.
“I don’t believe you,” Everard said quietly. “I think you are lying to me, Vitya.”
Vitaliy’s eyes widened. His skin was flushed in reverse, the pale chest blooming red beneath the laces of his shirt, his tanned face blanched grey as bone.
“That’s what Alarie wants, maybe. But that wasn’t what you wanted, when you asked me to be your matelot.
” Everard stepped closer and put hands up to either side of Vitaliy’s face, threaded his six fingers through soft hair as gently and insistently as the first day they’d met—Come here, come here, come close.
Vitaliy, who had wept to be used as a weapon. Vitaliy, who had been pressed and made into a king’s soldier and spy and people’s pirate and revolutionary’s filibuster and—while he slept, most vulnerable of all—other men’s lover.
Vitya wanted him. Had wanted him. Wanted so badly now, he shook with devastation.
Everard said, “You wanted me.”
Vitaliy let out a trembling, uneven breath.
“I did,” he confessed. “Yes. Yes. You are brave, and considerate, and very intelligent, and selfless and loyal, and I think war does not… the Navy did not deserve you,” he said fiercely.
“Neither do I. You should have the San Telmo, your own fleet, and gain and glory. But I want you here anyway. I want you because of it.”
Everard said, “Vitya…”
“That’s truth. The rest of it was a lie. I’m sorry. But here you are wasted, and everyone knows it. I thought you maybe wanted—if I could make it easier, make it justified for you to go…”
“Listen.” Everard put his forehead on Vitaliy’s, felt the man bring his hands over Everard’s wrists—maybe to break his grip, or maybe just to touch him.
Everard said, “My answer to Alarie was no. I told him absolutely not. No. Never. I don’t want to be his admiral.
I wouldn’t be his bloody king if he asked.
I have what I want,” he said firmly, and clutched tighter, moved the tips of his fingers across the sensitive nape.
Vitaliy shuddered; his eyes closed. “I have it here. It isn’t the San Telmo, or an admiralty, or a fleet, or glory. It’s here. With you. That’s all.”
He leaned in—Vitaliy’s hands over his wrists spasmed, and his breath came in hot, sweet puffs from that quiet, perfect mouth—
Distantly Everard heard the creak of upholstery, high-heeled boots stepping as quietly as they could manage with the halting limp; his haze broke apart in waves as he turned slightly.
D’Arcy put a hand on Everard’s shoulder as he slipped past. He murmured the familiar, wry “Finally. Don’t kill each other.”
“No,” Vitaliy said loudly.
D’Arcy froze, his hand on the latch.
“No?” Everard said, startled.
“Lieutenant,” Vitaliy said, softer. His eyes were open, blue-black, pupils wide. His thumbs stroked at Everard’s wrists, over and over, as he drew back slightly. “Lieutenant, he means you as well.”
Had he?
“What?” D’Arcy’s eyes flew up to Everard’s, wide and shocked, still layered with yellow-purple bruising; they flitted over to Vitaliy and back. His mouth opened, shut. “I don’t… think so,” he croaked. “Ever…?”
Yes. Of course he had.
Everard smiled waveringly, for now it was he who shook: with suppressed laughter, with delighted terror, shivering up from his gut, his groin. His heart couldn’t take it.
“Yes,” he whispered. “He has it right.”
D’Arcy’s eyes were narrowed, all-black, disbelieving. He swallowed.
Vitaliy’s hands dropped away from Everard’s wrists; they shared a look. Vitya nodded.
Everard slid his left hand free from the warm nape and beckoned.
“You’re here, too, Preston. Or do I not have you?”
D’Arcy reeled.
“Don’t be… dense,” he whispered. “You’ve had me since you first put eyes on me, no question. But—Vee?”
Vitaliy smiled. “Yes, lieutenant. If you are well enough.”
D’Arcy inhaled sharp. “You— Oh, sod off. Am I well enough?” He made an airless, rueful laugh. “Neither of you has the least idea.”
He stepped forward, halted—then circled round them, once, twice, as though working out the approach most ideal. His limp disappeared, and the rest of his injuries seemed to have dropped away; he was as tense as a stalking predator. One of the sleek, sable-red, sharp-toothed ones.
“Think I’ve been at a stand for days, watching you two circle. Christ. Am I well enough. I’d have to be dead.”
Vitaliy’s pulse was wild beneath Everard’s hand at his clavicle. His own heart was in much the same state, running so free and unrestrained, he was sure it showed in the buttons of his waistcoat.
D’Arcy stopped behind Vitaliy, close enough that his breath moved the fine-silk hair, warmed Everard’s fingers.
And then he pounced.
He put his hands to either side of Vitaliy’s hips and pulled—not quite far enough to break Everard apart from him—and nuzzled close where Vitaliy’s shoulder met his neck.
Vitya sucked in a breath and clutched tight at Everard’s elbows; his head fell back and his eyes closed.
D’Arcy slid his hands up, up, up across Vitya’s chest. He met Everard’s eyes.
“Mine,” Everard mouthed. D’Arcy nodded.