Chapter 19
Archer managed not to flee until all of it was over: Ruby off to her own chamber with her friends, the princess satisfied, Neri armed with assurances and delicacies for his maestá and her dog.
He made himself wait for calm waters. For reefed sails and no wind.
Then he left. He took himself out the back door, stripped off his paint-smeared shirt, and poured cold water over his head, the scent of the ocean drowning out walnut oil and Ruby’s amber warmth, which still lingered somewhere on his skin.
He’d watched her, there in the parlor, with a sense of impending doom. She’d put her chin up and plunged forward like a sailor at battle, all honor and stubborn bravura. She would give herself up—give up her dream, if it meant saving the princess’s life.
And she didn’t see—
Ah God. It was his own fault, every part and parcel of it. He’d lied to her from the first. He’d made it impossible for her to know the import of what she’d done.
We will not let you down, she’d said, and he’d felt the words crack the air like cannon blasts.
He brushed water out of his eyes and tossed back his hair, crumpled his shirt in a ball, and spun toward the—
He froze in his attempt to make his way down to the beach.
Ruby was in his path. She’d changed out of her pretty ruffled thing and into a different pretty ruffled thing—she always looked so goddamned edible, so unbearably, torturously delicious.
Her mouth was very pink and her eyes were very blue, and he could see the handful of bruises he’d left on her neck, for Christ’s sake, marching in a line of ferocious desire from her poppy-orange beribboned bodice all the way up to her perfect, delectable ear.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, and moved to go around her. “I’m—I didn’t—”
Bloody Christ, the woman made him forget how to talk.
“I’m for the cove,” he managed to say. “I mean to look for the remains of the princess’s dinghy, if I can find it. Or anything else that’s somewhere it should not be.”
His casks were hidden. And his silks, and his sculptures, and his illicit goddamned stockings. He wasn’t worried about the princess discovering his smuggled goods—not really.
And still, fear was a weight in his belly—an anxious tension tangled up with his feelings for Ruby, with his guilt, with his painful unchecked desire.
“I’ll come with you.” She fell into step beside him on the path, and her hand twitched toward his, and then fell back.
Uncertain. She was still uncertain of herself, of how she would be received if she made an overture toward him. And why wouldn’t she be? They had made each other no promises. He could not offer her anything beyond this patch of space and time—vivid and fleeting as the sunset.
It was, he supposed, already over.
His chest hurt. He kicked a rock on the path hard enough to send it exploding into a nearby clump of gorse. “There’s no need.”
“No,” she said slowly, “but I thought perhaps we could talk. About—the princess. About—”
“You ought to stay here at the house.” He was still striding along, and she was keeping up with him, a little flouncy confection made of steel and willpower. “It’ll be safer with everyone around.”
“Surely it will be safe on the beach,” she said doubtfully. “It is a beach. We can see someone coming from nearly any direction.”
“There are caves and cliffs and—” He broke off, glowering at her bare fingers. In her haste, she’d forgotten her gloves. “Never mind. Fine. Come then, if you like.”
She walked beside him in silence for a time—he’d scarcely ever known her to keep silent, and certainly not for a whole quarter hour—and her mouth only twitched once, when he launched another pebble off the side of the cliff.
“You said you wanted to talk,” he said finally when they were nearly down to the cove. “And you’re not.”
“Not—what?”
“Not talking. Not—”
He didn’t know what the hell he was saying—of course she wasn’t talking, he was acting like a sulky polecat, she was no doubt terrified—but he didn’t explain himself. She didn’t let him finish.
“What,” she said crisply, “in the world is the matter with you?”
Ah. Not terrified, then. Of course she was not. When had she ever been what he expected?
“Nothing is wrong with me,” he snapped, in a startling display of maturity and good sense.
“I don’t believe you. You are scowling, for heaven’s sake. Brooding. I’ve never seen your face make that expression before. Are you hungry? Do you require some sustenance? Is that the explanation for your mood?”
There was certainly something he wanted to devour—
He whirled toward her. “This,” he said wildly. “All of this. It’s not going to work. It’s a goddamned natural disaster.”
We will not let you down.
Fucking hell. Of course he would let her down.
There was no good outcome here, no chance for success—no way to protect his crew and have Ruby and untangle the plot against the princess.
Her father would learn the truth; Archer would lose his position and his crew.
He could no longer keep pretending that he could be everything, juggle a dozen balls and never let one drop.
He could no longer let his people believe that they were safe, because they weren’t, not anymore.
A thousand decisions in his past, one after another after another, had made all of that impossible.
“What do you mean?” she asked. Her eyes looked like smoked glass in the sunshine reflected off the sea.
“This plan. Your scheme to have your father investigate while we hide the princess.”
She flushed a little and straightened the ribbon at her waist. “I do not think it bound to fail. My father is knowledgeable and well connected. He—”
“I don’t mean that it’s going to fail. Of course it won’t. Your father will find out everything.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to—”
“I am Quenby.” His voice came out low and furious. “That is what your father will find out. I was Quenby, and I am a confidence artist and a smuggler and a goddamned professional liar, and your father saw me at Gravesmuir’s dinner, and so did you.”
It felt like relief and ruination at the same time. He wanted to cup her face in his palm. Tangle his fingers in her ribbons and beg her to pretend she hadn’t heard.
He didn’t.
“I’m a bastard,” he said. “A spinner of tales and a peddler of horse shit. If your father pulls the wrong thread in his investigation of Verdura, the fabric of our lives here at Pomeroy House will unravel. And I cannot”—he had to force the words out past the tight knot of his jaw—“I will not ask you not to write to him. I won’t make you lie on my behalf. Not to your father. Not for me.”
Her pointed chin tipped up, her mouth firm, her eyes cool. “I know,” she said. “I already knew that you were Quenby.”
“You . . .” He stared at her. “You—what?”
“I suspected it the very first day. I recognized you, do you not recall? I knew for certain in the inn when you had plaster dust all in your hair, and even if I hadn’t sorted it out on my own, you told me yourself.”
“I never said a single thing—”
“This morning,” she said. “On the stairs. You said the first time you saw me, I was sparkling all over. You remembered me from Gravesmuir’s dinner party.” She touched his arm, and the brush of her fingers made his head spin. “I’ve known this whole time.”
He tried to make sense of what she was saying. The breeze off the sea was cool on his skin, and he could hear the birds as they cried and wheeled above the waves.
Ruby knew. She’d known all along.
She’d known he was Quenby when she’d pulled his mouth down to hers in the cove. When she’d slept, velvet-soft and vulnerable, all night in his arms.
She’d known when she’d spoken to the princess.
We will not let you down.
“I knew,” she said. “My father—” She paused for the briefest moment on an unsteady breath.
Her mouth crimped a little as she wrestled down the tiny hesitation.
“He will not recognize you. I will not reveal your secret identity, and he will not suspect it. You are Captain Malcolm Archer and only Captain Malcolm Archer when it comes to my father.”
His chest hurt. “I don’t think—”
“No,” she said, “it will work. I’ll make it work. I will burnish your reputation and praise your stalwart protection of the princess. I will make certain that my father sees you as nothing less than a hero.”
“Ah God,” he said, and he couldn’t help himself. He put his hand to her cheek and brushed back the tangled buttery curls that the wind had pushed across her mouth. “Ruby.”
“I can protect you,” she said stoutly, “and the princess. I can manage it. I can do this.”
“Oh pet,” he said, and bloody Christ, she was so radiant in the light that she hurt his eyes to look at.
So bright he thought he might weep. “It won’t work.
It’s not”—she’d opened her mouth to speak, and he forestalled her—“it’s not you.
You could do anything you set your mind to, of that I have no doubt.
But I’m not—” His throat wanted to close.
He didn’t want to say what had to come next.
“I’m not Captain Archer. I’m no more a naval captain than you are. ”
Her lips parted beneath the seeking touch of his hand. “You’re—what?”
“I used to be. I—”
Oh Jesus, he was going to tell her everything, wasn’t he? He was going to open his mouth and pour out every scrap of his stupid, stupid heart.
“Come here,” he said instead. “Come with me.”
He took her by the hand and drew her down the path—not all the way down to the beach, not this time, but to a cave, half disguised by brush. And then he brought her inside.
“What is this?” Her voice was curious, wondering—trusting.
He found he could scarcely bear it. “A tunnel. I learned of it from Gill Oliphant, a free trader who lives in St. Petroc’s, when we first came here. When I was looking for some way to feed and house my crew.”