Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Nearly what?
Days later, it kept Everard up at night, nearly what.
The Sévère floated hove-to just outside Port-au-Prince.
Five bells and the moonlight on the face of the clock on the desk told Everard it was half-three in the morning.
Vitaliy slept beside him in the tiered trundle—for the cot did not, in fact, fit three—oblivious, trusting, contentedly fucked out.
On Everard’s other side, limbs entwined with his like a sucking nautilus, D’Arcy was rather less oblivious to his wakefulness.
“Got more sleep doing night watches,” D’Arcy murmured in his ear. He patted Everard on the hip sleepily, and pulled him in even closer, spoonlike. “Tense in all the wrong places. What t’devil’s wrong?”
“Would I could tell you.”
D’Arcy harrumphed into his hair, sounding amused. “As though you’ve secrets.”
He didn’t. But you do, Everard thought. You do.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Everard said crisply, “because I haven’t an idea why.”
“You’re… too happy?” D’Arcy taunted. “Too wealthy? Too well fucked?” He shifted suggestively and kissed his nape. “Can’t remedy that last. Sorry.”
Everard stiffened. D’Arcy harrumphed again, less amused this time, and retreated onto his back. The cots clicked together softly, canvas-on-canvas. Vitaliy didn’t stir. He woke for nothing less than guns or vigorous shaking, sometimes both.
D’Arcy sighed. “What are you worried for?”
“Everything,” Everard said honestly.
Another sigh. “… In order of severity, then? Surely, you’ve nothing but lists in that brain.”
Everard didn’t deny it, though they were more concurrent tallies of time and space, spinning lists going round an infinite axis like a star—
“Ascending or descending?”
“Descending, of course. Ass.”
“Fine! La Corona,” Everard said promptly.
Nearly what. “Mutiny. A hurricane.” Nearly what.
“The Vuelte sinking in the Gulf Stream, and the crew’s shares for the year with her.
Two thousand small arms we’re to deliver to México.
Jean Lafitte intercepting us.” Nearly what.
“Every time you’re out of my sight, that the next time I see you you’ll be—”
D’Arcy nipped his shoulder. “I told you not to worry.”
Everard scoffed. “Then I shall worry for St. Clare. Thom. Anyone who has associated themselves with me—”
Another nip.
“—ouch! Stop that, you—you—pup.”
D’Arcy smothered his laughter with Everard’s chest and a hand. “Not quite. Look, Thom’s very well liked, nonthreatening, and a boy, besides. Even pirates have scruples,” he said, not unironically.
“And St. Clare?”
D’Arcy sobered, notched his chin into the hollow of Everard’s shoulder. “I’m not not worried for Bell,” he said carefully. “But,” he said hastily, as Everard inhaled, “it isn’t for that, or other reasons you might assume.”
Everard didn’t know what to assume, except that he knew D’Arcy didn’t spend every night in the greatcabin.
“I have no wish to intrude on your relations with—with other men,” he said, flushing with heat D’Arcy doubtless felt bloom beneath his fingers. “None of my business, obviously. But—”
“I’m not fucking Bell,” D’Arcy interrupted flatly.
“Er…”
“And it wouldn’t make any difference if I was. Nobody cares. Hang a moment; is that what you thought I was beaten for?” D’Arcy said, aghast.
“I— Whatever else would it have been for?”
“Because these past days, we’ve been extremely discreet,” D’Arcy said sarcastically. “Especially that time in the dining parlour—”
“Oh, God.”
“—with all the windows, and Vee—”
“I do recall it,” Everard gritted out. “Thank you.”
D’Arcy grinned. “Then I will enlighten you to other revelations. You two matelots may be uncommon in the year of our lord 1816, but nigh on the majority of these pirates are like-minded, Ever. That’s half Varfolomey’s infamy in itself, albeit written between the lines. Have you gone belowdecks of a morning?”
Even lit by blue moonlight, Everard was sure he was positively scarlet. “Well, yes—”
“And you a Navy man, too.” D’Arcy chuckled. “Christ.”
“I figured them especially loyal,” Everard muttered.
D’Arcy collapsed into laughter. “Secretly Puritanical, these pirates. Extremely invested in maintaining the monogamy of a barely legal matelotage.”
Everard hushed him. “You’ll wake Vee.”
“I shan’t, as he wakes for almost nothing.” D’Arcy pulled in close anyway, and whispered: “I’ll fuck you off the weather rail, Everard, with all hands to witness. Then you’ll see how much people care for it.”
“Good lord. You will absolutely not—”
“Bent over the stanchion—”
“Then why?” Everard interrupted hotly. “If they don’t care I was—stepping out, so to speak—why would they target you? In fact I’d rather thought—”
“Oh, no.” D’Arcy sighed.
“Er.”
“… yes?” D’Arcy encouraged, sounding resigned.
“That Vitaliy had in fact done something to remedy… well, the act of—er, claiming—it affords you much the same understanding…?”
D’Arcy stilled. “A man doesn’t need an ulterior motivation to fuck me.” All teasing had drained away from his voice; he sounded actually, truly offended.
Everard shifted away. “Of course not. But the situation…”
D’Arcy raised up on an elbow, leaning in and looming. “And Vee hasn’t claimed me, publicly or not. Nor,” he said, making a face, “do I want him to do so.”
“But it was—don’t you think it might have occurred to him it was—”
“If you say convenient, Everard Rubén, so help me—”
“Fine. Vitaliy’s overture towards you came solely whenceforth behind his balls.”
“Jesus Christ, the man hasn’t got magic spunk. Sleeping here affords me nothing. For one, it’s hardly unprecedented, and if you’d spent more than a moment speaking to any of the crew, you’d know—”
“Thank you, I don’t wish to know,” Everard said vehemently. “But then why would they not reattack?”
“Cannot this wait ’til dawn? It’s three in the morning.”
But Everard had already broached the impossible topic, and now it felt too large to be taken back into himself yet again. Wait ’til morning? If he did, it would bubble and fester.
“You do know why. By God! Does Vitya?”
“—Breakfast? Let a man get some porridge in him?”
“For he did nothing. Told me not to worry, as you did, but let me sit with it, day after day, while he knew. You both of you knew.”
D’Arcy groaned.
“For that matter,” Everard realised, “I believe he wouldn’t have—have—with you—at all. In the first place. If that was the danger, the impetus. He wouldn’t have even touched you. Don’t you think?”
“You have him pretty well pegged, I daresay,” D’Arcy muttered.
“He knew and yet he told me he would do nothing for it because of his morals. His principles. But surely, the only reason he would truly do nothing is because he knew it hadn’t a chance of being repeated.”
“Everard, I think maybe… later, on occasion Vee is awake—”
Everard sat up in the cot, threw off the sheets and D’Arcy’s lingering grasp.
“Ev, what’re you…”
Everard swung out, tromped round to the trundle cot, put both hands to Vitaliy’s shoulders, and shook him.
“Jesus, Everard!” D’Arcy leaned far over across the cot and pushed him, hard, breaking his grasp; Everard stumbled backward.
Vitaliy awoke with a sharp, startled inhale, fists clutching the sheets tight as he hauled himself half-upright. “Wha—?”
“What in hell’s wrong with you?” D’Arcy spat. He leaned to put a hand on Vitaliy’s shoulder, rubbing vigorously. “’S’aright, Vee, you’re safe; it’s only Everard being an ass. Breathe.”
Vitaliy’s eyes were wild, his breath gulping. He looked bewildered and… rather betrayed, if Everard was being honest with himself.
“Shh. Breathe,” D’Arcy murmured. He glared up. “Christ, Everard, that was cruel.”
“I…” God, yes. It had been.
“You told him,” Vitaliy croaked. “But it is dark—what hour is it?”
“Too goddamned early is what.” D’Arcy swung himself out of the cot.
“Half-three…” Everard glanced over. “No, four now. Told me what?”
He was surely an ass. But by the sound of it, also a righteous ass.
“It could not wait ’til morning, Lieutenant?” Vitaliy whispered. “I am so tired.”
His quiet, weary voice knifed through Everard. Nonetheless:
“Told me what?” he demanded.
Vitaliy shut his eyes, his brow furrowing, looking more than anything else in pain as he sank back down into the bedding.
D’Arcy put his arm in Everard’s and frog-marched him to the door. “I’ll sort it, Vee. Go back to sleep, if you can. You,” he said to Everard, “you are what needs sorting, God help me. Come with me. You don’t deserve to breathe his air just now.”
“But—” Everard didn’t disagree, but he still wanted answers. He twisted round, resisting: but Vitaliy was already asleep, curled around his pillow, hair spilling like silken gold thread over bulky shoulders, lips pale. So beautiful it hurt, and why had Everard woken him like that?
D’Arcy dragged him through the companionway and onto the quiet weather deck, across to the bow, the forecastle, and there, as though he had just pulled Everard away from a fistfight, he let him tug free at last.
“I’m not dressed!” Everard spat.
“I can’t believe you did that,” D’Arcy said, low and weary. “He needs every bit of sleep he can get, and not to be startled from it like we’re back at war.”
Back at war?
“We’re pirates!” Everard clung to the rail and began to lose his breath. “When have we not been at war, pray? Anyway, how d’you… how d’you know about his sleeping?”
D’Arcy hadn’t shared their bed for nearly long enough for that. There hadn’t been any episodes recently. Unless Vitya had warned him?
“Don’t you love him?” D’Arcy said fiercely, ignoring this. “You don’t act particularly as though you do. But then”—he laughed—“you never have. The Navy got hold of you far too early.”
Everard squeezed his eyes shut. There on the deck, they were so exposed—others would overhear, would see—he had hardly any clothes on. The Gulf breeze was warm, but lifted his hair from the root and gave him gooseflesh all over. How could D’Arcy know about Vitya’s sleeping? Unless… unless.
One other. Once.
“Do you and he know each other?” Everard demanded. He clutched one arm round himself and shivered. “Have known each other previously? Is that what’s to tell?”
But D’Arcy went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “You’ll be the luckiest goddamned fuck on the ocean if he trusts you to share his bed again, Ever.” He put his face over his hands and groaned. “But he shall anyway because he’s Vee and he does love you, you absolute self-centered donkey.”
“I know…” Everard didn’t know a single goddamned thing.
“I know he does… Please.” His knees no longer seemed to work.
He slid to the decking, bent his legs in front of him so he wouldn’t keel forward.
“I’ll take my dressing-down as you see fit, and well deserved. But please, not out here in the air?”
D’Arcy eyed him with distinct sympathy, anguish, regret. Like it’d been his trust that Everard had shaken out of him.
“Fine,” he spat.
To the hatch he went, slid down the ladder silently; he was still barefoot. Everard stood and followed, shaking.
The farther belowdecks they went, the trembling uneasiness receded in fragments, chipping away until Everard felt nearly his usual self again.
Nearly.
They made it to the orlop before D’Arcy ambushed him, a hand over his mouth and an arm thick around his chest. He flattened Everard tight between his stone-stiff body and the hatch’s panelling.
Everard was still too teary and startled to react; that was, until he heard the noises coming over D’Arcy’s harsh, shallow breath at his ear.
He gasped—D’Arcy’s hand became painful over his mouth.
Fucking noises, somewhat distant. Slapping flesh, grunts and groans, several. A pause, laughter; more fucking noises. Several voices, encouraging, cajoling—more slapping—a vaguely familiar whisper, like scripture—
Everard fought the hand; D’Arcy released him but was still frozen against him. He put his head on Everard’s shoulder and shook, just for a moment, trembling; then lifted his head and met Everard’s wide eyes with teary hazel ones.
He pointed up to the third gun deck, to the right of Perran’s workshop, where the carpenter’s mates had slept before they’d gone aboard the San Telmo. The doors were solid for fireproofing, the panelling reinforced—there, they wouldn’t be overheard.
Everard nodded. They slunk up the ladder once more, quietly as they could go.
As soon as D’Arcy shut the thick door behind him, Everard whispered, “Was—was—what was—was that—?”
“Absolutely none of your concern?” D’Arcy dashed away tears and glared.
“None of my concern,” Everard agreed quickly. “Er… but a consensual none of my concern?”
“For fuck’s…” D’Arcy sighed. “Yes. I… believe so. So far as I can… Yes?” He raked his hands through his curls, making them fluff every which way. “What d’you take me for, anyway, that I would stand aside if I thought it weren’t?”
Someone with secrets I can’t conceive of. “No,” Everard said, rather patiently, all things considered, “I merely wondered if I’d have to back you against a half dozen pirates with fists alone.”
“Oh, well, then.” D’Arcy slumped into a bunk, sending a cloud of sawdust flying.
“So…” Everard hesitated.
D’Arcy groaned. “Christ, no, sod off.”
“You really aren’t…?”
“No. For the love of God, no.” D’Arcy laughed, gave into desperate snorting, face in an elbow. “I don’t know why it’s funny,” he said at last, sighing. “As neither of us is qualified to judge.”
“Definitely not,” Everard agreed.
The thought of that—they and Vitaliy, and everything that had transpired between them—sobered them both considerably.
Everard sat beside D’Arcy, hunching so he fit in the cot. He wove his left hand in the other man’s, held it tight with the thumb.
D’Arcy groaned again, leaned away. “No, no, no. Should’ve stayed abovedecks, where we’d be overheard,” he muttered.
But Everard wouldn’t be dissuaded. Not now.
“What don’t I know, Preston?”