Chapter 25 #2
“My father can get us into Verdura’s townhouse,” she said. “He could procure an invitation through diplomatic means, use his connections to help broaden the search for Tamsin and the princess. This time, I know I can persuade him.”
Her father had let her down before. But she knew that he cared about Monfalcone, if nothing else. This time he would not think her story false. They had Zenobia’s collar to convince him. They had Signor Neri.
Archer shook his head. Opened his mouth to speak.
But Ruby cut him off. She fisted her hands at her sides, trying to project confidence the way that Archer always did. Trying to persuade him through sheer force of her own hope that everything would be all right.
“I know you’re worried that my father might recognize you as Quenby,” she said.
The words had come out almost a whisper, and she made her voice louder, carrying, so that he would know she meant it.
“But he won’t. He saw you only once, and he was paying far more attention to my debacle than to your face.
I will tell him who you are and swear upon my life that I never met you before Pomeroy House. ”
Archer’s eyes were locked on hers, his fingers knotted around the rope. He swallowed. She watched the bob of his throat, pale in the moonlight.
And then Lamentation spoke.
“I’m sorry?” he said. “What? You—knew the captain? Before Pomeroy House?”
Ruby turned to him, hastening to explain. “I did not know him. Not in truth. I only saw him at a dinner party, posing as Professor Quenby. And—and my father saw him too, but he looked so unlike himself. I don’t believe my father would draw the same conclusion I did. I think—”
She stumbled to a halt. Lamentation’s face had gone stricken, his cheekbones growing tauter and sharper with every word she spoke, and somehow—
Somehow she was doing this. Somehow she was making it worse.
Lamentation’s gaze shifted from her to Archer. “She knew?” he demanded. “She knew all this time? And you didn’t tell us?”
A muscle in Archer’s jaw leapt. His legs were braced apart, and he was still as a stone despite the pitch and yaw of the deck. “She knew,” he repeated. “And I didn’t tell you.”
* * *
Archer felt torn straight down the middle as he watched them. Lamentation stood still, stunned—as though he’d been shot. He looked the way he had the day after the Swallow, when Archer had told him he was leaving the navy. Not by choice.
He looked as though Archer had betrayed him.
And Ruby—
Ah God. Ruby. Her clear gray eyes flicked from him to Lamentation and back again, and he could tell by her face that she didn’t know what had happened. He could see—in the tiny curl of her shoulders, in the way her face tipped down—that she thought Lamentation’s shock and anger were her own fault.
But the fault was his. It had been from the very beginning.
Anguish was a fishhook in his guts. He couldn’t find any words, didn’t know how to tell Lamentation the truth. He had to keep lying to his crew, because he needed them to believe he had the situation under control.
But he didn’t.
The Vulcano was empty. He had a brace of pistols on his chest and a dog’s diamond collar in his hand and nothing on his lips but false assurances.
The truth was, he didn’t know how to find the princess. He didn’t know what came next.
“I didn’t want you to know,” he said to Lamentation. “I wanted you to think that the risk from the Quenby scheme was over. I wanted you to believe that you were safe.”
“But we weren’t!” Lamentation’s voice cracked on the words. “We weren’t safe. You knew we weren’t.”
“I thought I could resolve the situation before you came to any harm. I thought—”
Ruby broke in. “There was no danger to any of you. Not from us. The three of us agreed we would not reveal what we knew.”
Lamentation drew back, as though her interjection stung.
His throat worked as he looked at her and then looked back at Archer.
“But you didn’t know that,” he said. The words were low, fractured—the rhythm of his voice broken, like a clock out of time.
“When she came to the door and you recognized her face, you had no idea what she would do. Who she would report to. And still you let her in our house and told us nothing of the risk.”
Archer felt like his chest was caving in, a solid sucking gravity inside him, drawing his bones and organs tighter and tighter.
He had wanted to protect them. He didn’t want them to be afraid.
He’d wanted them to believe that he was strong enough and competent enough to keep them safe. That he was more than a convict or a disgraced sailor, more than an alley dog with too-sharp teeth and no future beyond bread and irons. More than what he’d been.
But as he looked at Lamentation, he felt nauseous, almost fevered.
He could tell himself all he wanted that he’d had the best of intentions. That he’d done it for them.
But that too was a lie. It had not all been selfless. He’d wanted them to believe in him so that he could believe it too.
“What would have happened to us,” Lamentation demanded, “if Ruby had written to her father that very day and told him you were Quenby—if they’d carted you off to jail? What would have happened to Gerry and me if you left and never came back?”
Archer swallowed back the hot agony in his throat. “They wouldn’t . . . Ruby wouldn’t have done that.” His voice was hoarse.
Lamentation looked hurt now, which was far worse than furious. “It’s not about Ruby,” he said. “It’s about you, keeping your secrets again. Lying to us—for our own good, was it?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t make sense of anything just now. He didn’t know what it had been like. He could not remember anything beyond his own vast need and fear and shame.
It didn’t matter anyway. Lamentation pushed his hair off his damp forehead and jerked his chin up. “I’ll set the goddamned sails. But I’m not going with you after that. To the ambassador’s house. Or to Penney.”
Lamentation spun and stormed away. His boots slapped solidly against the slippery deck, and Archer could see him as he’d been a decade ago: wiry and mischievous as he clambered up the mast, blond curls whipping in the wind. A boy. A sailor. His.
Gerry stood alone on the deck. His gaze followed Lamentation and then, slowly, came back to Archer. “I understand why you did it,” he said. “But you needn’t have.”
“I—”
“Don’t apologize,” Gerry said. “And don’t lie.” He broke off. Looked to Ruby and then back to Archer. “He thinks you chose Lady Ruby over him. Over us. The same way you chose Penney.”
The words stung—scored at his skin like a rope racing hot through his palm.
He hadn’t. Or else . . . God. He hadn’t meant to.
He couldn’t find his bearings. Memories seemed to batter him, a brutal cascade of waves.
The Victorious plunging toward them, his orders raw in his throat, shouted, pointless. They were going to be hit, there was no time to turn—
Gerry in the sea, eyes dark above the water, and Archer’s weightless terror as he’d leapt from the deck—
The room he’d lived in with his mother, the ice in her cup, her hand atop his—
When he’d been released from prison, he’d rushed straight home, ignoring his own dizzy hunger, heedless of the raw marks the irons had left on his wrists. He’d burst into their room and then hesitated, confused. Disbelieving.
Someone else had been inside. Some other woman.
He couldn’t recall what she’d looked like, nor even what she’d said.
Somehow, the stranger must have told him that his mother had died, but he couldn’t remember the words.
The blue delphiniums his mother had kept at the window had been gone and so had her books, and he kept on having to reach out to find the wall behind him.
The world had rearranged itself: beneath and above and around him.
She’d died. And he hadn’t been there.
He couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t keep pretending that safety was almost within his grasp. That he was one fancy step away from having everything under control.
He wasn’t.
He watched Gerry go after Lamentation, following the curve of the hull until he vanished from sight. And then he looked at Ruby. She was standing very still, her fingers locked together, her lips parted as she looked at him.
“Wait,” he said abruptly. He caught her by the shoulders, pulled her close, and pressed his palm to her back. “Wait. Will you wait? I need to—” He gestured at the dinghy, helpless and wordless. “I’ll be right back. I’ll be—”
He couldn’t lie. But neither could he tell her what he meant to do—not until he knew for certain he could bring it into being.
“Wait for me,” he said. “Please.”
She took him in. Her gaze was clear and sharp, and he thought she could see the vicious storm within him, the jagged rocks beneath.
“I’ll wait,” she said very softly, “as long as you need.”