Chapter 38 #2
With the Americans turning the other cheek, Vitaliy had, using the San Telmo’s massive guns and the Enemistad’s speed, brought Lafitte’s privateers to their knees.
He’d demanded Lafitte trade Everard for information on American interest in Florida—information that was vastly outdated and useless, he assured Everard later.
It had worked.
The Anemone had been the price of the pirates of the Sévère for taking the trouble of sailing into Lafitte’s territory for the sake of one man. Alarie had left the Anemone behind, left her neglected, so she clearly wouldn’t be missed, they reasoned.
Vitaliy had agreed. Everard wondered now to what else he would’ve agreed to get them to back him. He wondered if he would’ve agreed to nearly anything.
The other price had been that D’Arcy was obliged to then take the San Telmo and her prize north to sell in Boston—something about smoothing feathers for having defected from the Royal Navy before he’d had leave to from his espionage overlords.
Everard was selfishly glad he’d still been half-delirious when D’Arcy had initially gone, selfishly glad he’d been too sick to worry properly that D’Arcy would be caught and taken in as traitor. He’d worried enough as it was, until they’d had word.
But no; D’Arcy had been successful. It was only now that D’Arcy was returning on the Enemistad.
Now Everard paced the Sévère’s weather deck from sunup like a crazed man, amusing Vitya and every other crewman there was to witness. He only stopped pacing as the Enemistad’s gig finally, finally pulled up to the hull.
“Everard!” a familiar, dear voice called from beneath the rail.
“About time, Preston,” Everard called back.
D’Arcy appeared, grinning, clean-shaven. He had a new contusion just above his left temple. His curls were ridiculously long and pirate-like. He looked wonderful and hale and—
He was helping a woman aboard.
Absurd. Women didn’t climb the ladder—they were hauled in on chairs—but of course neither René nor her crewwomen abided chairs—
This woman was wearing shirtsleeves—with corset over—and trousers.
She pushed away D’Arcy’s hand like she resented it and shook out her half-queued, curly hair.
She had instant sea legs, the steady and adaptive stance of a natural, and when she narrowed hazel eyes in apparent contemptuous survey of the Sévère, she resembled nobody so much as—
“Ever,” D’Arcy said amusedly, suddenly before him, “you’ve looked less stunned when I pulled you out from bricks and harbour mud.” He leaned in, peered close, and smiled. “But you look well enough for a kiss.”
“Er—mmph.”
D’Arcy pulled him in, arm around his waist, and did just that.
“There,” D’Arcy said, with a sigh. “That done”—he steadied Everard on his own suddenly unreliable sea legs, and stepped back—“please be obliged to acquaint yourself with my youngest sister, Princey.”
Said sister was glaring up at slightly frowning Vitya. He shot them an alarmed flash of a glance: the split-second panic of a man encountering someone else’s responsibility and having no idea what to do about it.
Everard cleared his throat. “Miss Princey.”
She spun to face him. “Lady Princey,” the young woman declared archly. “At least to two-timing, polygamist bastards like yourself.”
Everard stared. Somewhere behind him, Romilly René was cackling and muffling it—ineffectively—in her sleeve.
D’Arcy sighed again, rather less contented this time.
“Please, God,” he muttered, “tell me there’s been a recent rum take?”
René came forward and rescued them all, drawing Lady Princey away into her long-nailed grasp.
Another matter for another time. Everard was intent.
He put his fingers to his lips. “I think I can do you one better than rum.”
D’Arcy’s own lips drew up into a lopsided smirk. “Oho?”
Everard glanced over. Vitya was watching them steadily, eyes wide and knowing. But before Everard could make any sort of invitational gesture, Vitya flushed, ducked head and shoulders—a sort of nod, almost not one—and walked across the gangway to the Enemistad.
Away.
As clear as day.
Fine, then.
Predictably, D’Arcy did not require convincing.
“When, where, and how d’you want it, again?” he asked breathlessly. “Quite like that?”
Having been informed of the plan, D’Arcy had been enamored.
So enamored he’d bent Everard over his desk in the greatcabin, removed his sapphire ring—Because why not prove your point now?
I know you can take it. It could be now.
He could walk in any moment, he’ll come in and see you spread for me, see how well you take it—and had him then and there with his fingers, steady and fierce and fast.
Everard’s head hadn’t yet stopped spinning, but his heart still beat; he hadn’t perished in extremis; D’Arcy was really very, very good.
Even if Vitaliy hadn’t come in.
D’Arcy added into his ear, “Or something more drawn-out, perhaps?”
Everard groaned. “Get… off,” he said clearly, “and give a man a moment.”
D’Arcy straightened and complied, stepping back with a last swat and affectionate caress over Everard’s skin; he didn’t seem to want Everard to reciprocate. His boots clacked on the deck, and only then did Everard realise neither of them had earnestly disrobed.
It had been a long few months.
D’Arcy gave him more than a moment: he washed hands, tossed the basin water down the head, replaced it; then walked to where he’d thrown off his coat and rummaged in its pockets.
Everard decided to make a night of the fading light.
He cleaned up, shucked shoes and breeches and stockings, and sat in the armchair.
The rest would bide. Vitaliy would return eventually.
He put his head back against dizziness. Even undressing was still a bit tiring. “Missed you, Preston,” he murmured.
D’Arcy brought forth from his coat pockets two bright fuchsia pitahaya fruits and a small knife. He sat on the arm of the chair, cut the fruit and peeled it, then put a slice of it on the knife end, pushed it close to Everard’s face.
“Eat.”
Everard scowled at the white-fleshed, black-seeded stuff. “I do eat. Whatever happened to ‘missed you, too’?”
“I said that a dozen times at least, three fingers deep.” D’Arcy pushed the fruit closer. “But if you hadn’t heard it, I suppose I can’t blame you, poor, deprived thing, you.”
Everard glared.
D’Arcy smiled tranquilly. “I don’t mind doing what Vee won’t. Eat, or I will call in Rob the cook with a full spread.”
Everard ate. “Vitya’s concern is silent,” he accused, when he had chewed, swallowed, licked his lips. “And unforced.”
D’Arcy gave him a look and put forth another slice. “Forced. Surely. Any louder with your assent, Ever, and Vee would’ve heard you on the Enemistad.”
Too true. Everard harrumphed and ate. It was a good pitahaya anyway, perfectly ripe and hardly bruised at all from being unceremoniously dashed onto old-growth pine. D’Arcy ate two of eight slices from both fruits himself; the rest he gave to Everard.
“He does ensure I eat,” Everard said, feeling as though he must defend Vitya. “Only, he doesn’t lob threats to do so. And he has done so since Galveztown. Along with… everything else involved in my convalescence.”
D’Arcy nodded. “Of course.” He squeezed Everard’s thigh. “He loves you, and was terrified to lose you.”
“I don’t see why,” Everard said lightly. “He wouldn’t have let me do anything but survive, I think.”
D’Arcy raised eyebrows. “Don’t make light. He’s quite aware how lucky we are you lived. Nothing doing with his will or anyone’s. Except maybe yours.”
“Speaking of his bloody will: Ought we discuss where, what, and when?”
Sable brows climbed higher. “Oh, you were speaking seriously?” Then they lowered in sheer Gallic disapproval.
“Talk is one thing. A bloody exciting thing, I’ll grant you; but I’m not going to ambush a man with the draw of a knife like that.
” He put up a restraining finger. “Much less a man with an arbitrary count of yeses he must meet to proceed in receiving fellatio. No, sir.”
Everard was flabbergasted. He’d felt sure D’Arcy would agree, and then they’d just done what they’d done…
“But—what? You waited for his yes—surely, he won’t mind! Given the number of times you and I—in his presence—” His presence and then some, he added mentally. Under his touch.
“I waited for his yes because I’m not suicidal,” D’Arcy said, “nor a bastard. Come off it, Ever.”
“Only that?”
“All right, and because I’m fairly fond of him, in spite of him. Because you love him. No, I shan’t set him up against his consent.”
“It wouldn’t be—”
“Oh, no? Did he explicitly say he’d like to walk in upon us fucking, on the off chance?”
“Well—”
“Or set a date for it? Or—no, listen—did he, in reality, walk onto a different bloody ship at the first obvious opportunity for it? Hmmm?”
“He would never walk in knowing—” Everard paused. “Ah.”
D’Arcy threw up his hands. “And thereupon we have reached it.” He stood. “I’ll fuck you even if he won’t, Ever, but I won’t manipulate him into doing so.”
“It’s not manipulation,” Everard insisted, fairly horrified. “He isn’t obliged to— The man likes proof, is all. If only he saw me—and you—”
D’Arcy looked him up and down. “And so you have it alrea—”
The door to the printing parlour crashed open.
D’Arcy spun, drawing his pistol from somewhere; Everard thought maybe the floor. By the time Everard could look round him, D’Arcy had cocked the thing, levelled it, and just as hastily pointed it to the floor again.
“Vee, what in hell. Warn a man.”
By the looks of it Vitaliy hadn’t even flinched being drawn upon: he was a man with singular intent.
His pupils were huge, whites showing all around beneath careless rings of kohl, lips pressed so tight, they were ivory white.
His blue stare flicked up and down, assessing the threat of his fellow spy, dismissing it.
“Loaded?” He was breathless like he’d run the length of the two vessels, and taken a turn rowing the Birch, too.