Chapter 14
When Alister came to this mansion, he hadn’t expected to see Rosetta sitting down, having tea with his mother.
When they’d told him she was busy with a client, he’d gone into a murderous rampage, wanting to kill the man lying with her. He’d warned her if he came here and found out she was sleeping with a man, despite his father being dead for years, he’d kill him.
He knew she still worked, despite Alister regularly giving her so much money she didn’t need to anymore. He just didn’t want to know that the faces his mother had been beneath were still alive.
So, to find Rosetta with her instead... that had come as a surprise.
Not once had he ever come here and found his mother having tea with a woman who wasn’t a girl working for her. He figured they must have a close relationship, and he’d been curious to unveil exactly what it was.
He knew the secretive Rosetta probably wouldn’t have told him if he’d asked. Part of him had wanted to back away, knowing if he entered this room that the truth of his relationship with Lillian would be revealed.
He just hadn’t realised he should be worried about his mother finding out about the fact that he’d been with Rosetta! Or currently was. Whatever.
However she saw it, it meant his ear was copping a firm yanking!
“Let go!” he finally yelled in a stern, firm tone when she hung on tight.
He was moments away from being truly furious. However, Alister wouldn’t lash out at her, wouldn’t dare touch or grab her in any way that was aggressive.
These two women weren’t the same.
Rosetta was strong, and he saw her as such. She could take his strength, his brutality, and had proved that repeatedly. She even seemed to like it.
His mother was older and had always been a little frail and fragile. She was often sick. He feared, truly feared, that if he grabbed at her in anger like he did Rosetta, he’d break her.
With one last tug, she finally threw his head back.
Lillian folded her arms across her chest, anger and disappointment clear on her face. Alister hated it when she looked at him with that expression, and he gnashed his teeth tightly.
He turned his head to Rosetta so he could yell at her. “What did you–”
His words were cut short when he saw her head in her hands, as if she was either ashamed or embarrassed. He didn’t like how it felt to know that.
Well, shit. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but he couldn’t blame either one of them for talking to each other when they didn’t know the other’s relationship to him.
He grabbed his glass of whiskey and threw his head back to down the whole thing in one go.
I shouldn’t have come into the room. He’d just wanted to spend time with his mother before he left port, like he always did.
He always came on the last day. It was generally when he was the calmest after being out at sea for so long. He liked to adjust to the land before he came here to be weighed down by the despondent emotions that would sink him when he was with her.
He’d gone to the florist first, the same one Rosetta had stopped at the day before, so he could buy her the healthiest bouquet of white gardenias. He’d been performing this task since his father died, taking over for him in his death.
Finally, Rosetta lowered her hands to look at them, slowly drawing them down her face and hollowing it.
“I’m sorry. I-I should leave you two to be reunited,” she said, turning her head to the table and sliding her chair back.
Alister pushed it back in, making her gasp. “Nay, stay.”
Whatever he was being punished for had already been dished out.
He watched Lillian’s lips purse. “I also want to give you something before you leave.”
She got up and walked over to the side table next to her bed to open the drawer. She wants to give Rosetta a gift? That was strange. Just how close are they?
“Because he’s here, I know I can give you the last bottle I have.”
She started to hand a medium glass vial to Rosetta, and he took it before she could. He inspected the clear liquid.
“What is it?”
“A perfume,” she answered him. “I make it from the gardenias you bring me when they’re starting to die.”
Alister fell back in his chair with a shocked laugh.
No wonder Rosetta often reminded him of the sweet memories he had of his mother; she’d been wearing the flowers he brought her the entire time!
He gave it to her, his laughter still rolling as he shook his head. What are the bloody odds?
“Thank you,” Rosetta said quietly, staring at it with a frown, like she’d come to a similar realisation as him.
“Were you the one who dressed him?” His mother gave him a bright, warm smile. “You look so handsome. I’ve never seen you look this clean and nice before.”
She started playing with the ties of his tunic and his eye fell on Rosetta, whose cheeks seemed a little redder than usual. He blinked. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her blush when it wasn’t from arousal.
“Aye.” He sighed. “She told me I looked poor.”
“Of course she did! When she’s honest, she’s brutal with it.
” She let out a giggle, and he finally saw the expression on Rosetta’s face curl into something lighter.
“You did look poor, my dear. You dressed for comfort on the seas, not the niceties of land.” Then she turned her attention to both of them.
“Anyway, you have yet to tell me how you met.”
Alister leaned back in his chair and put his arm around Rosetta’s, patting her on the shoulder.
“I let her borrow my ship so she could get hers.”
“Borrow?” Rosetta screeched.
He grinned, knowing his words were exactly what she needed to brighten up. Getting her riled up was Alister’s sure-fire way of getting her to stop being so upset. He did it often.
“I stole his ship from him and left him in Dunecaster, so he could watch the back end of it sail away!”
“But he obviously got it back,” Lillian said with a raised brow and an upward curl to her lips.
“So? I still had to convince him to help me get the Laughing Siren, and that was no easy task.”
“She tricked you, didn’t she?” Her smile turned knowing. “Rosie’s always had a way of using that mind of hers.”
He was about to agree, since it was so obvious, but his words fell short. His grin faded.
“Wait.” His head turned to Rosetta. “Why does she get to call you Rosie?”
Rosetta looked surprised that he’d asked. I want to call her that.
“Oh my,” Lillian gasped, placing her forehead against her fingertips in disappointment in herself. “I always forget you hate being called that because of–”
She didn’t finish her sentence, instead looking at Alister warily.
“It’s fine.” Rosetta sighed, gesturing towards him. “He knows. He was there when I killed him.”
“I hated that man from the moment I first saw him!” his mother yelled, her thin fingers curled into weak fists on her lap. “He was a horrible, rotten cretin!”
“How the hell did you meet him?” Alister did not like the thought of Theodore Briggs being anywhere near his mother.
They both threw a hand at Alister.
“Long story,” Rosetta answered. “Could we move onto something else?”
A knock sounded at the door.
“Rosetta?” a man called.
Why is a man calling for her here? A brothel.
“Don’t come in!” Rosetta yelled. “Go wait out front, Naeem. I’ll be out soon.”
The tension in his shoulders relaxed.
Her eyes fell back to Alister. “He wasn’t at the ship this morning and I knew I had to come get him, otherwise he wouldn’t have woken up until noon.”
“That’s right, you’re sailing away today,” Lillian murmured. A deep frown of worry and sadness crept over her, clouding her eyes. “Both of you.”
“Aye.” Alister nodded. “Got ships and crews to lead.”
She sighed, as though she hated it but understood, until her head snapped to the side, as if she suddenly realised something.
She pointed her index finger at Alister with deeply disappointed eyes. “I should yank on that ear of yours again!”
Alister never surrendered to anyone – except his mother. He put his hands up. “What did I do this time?”
He didn’t even know what he did the first bloody time!
“How dare you make this girl pay for her crew to enjoy themselves here by herself because of what you’ve been stupidly doing with each other!”
He slammed not only his fist, but his entire forearm on the table as his head snapped to Rosetta. “You did what?”
She cringed while his mother flinched.
“O-oh,” she stuttered, covering her mouth with her fingers. “You didn’t know?”
“What the fuck did you do that for? That must have cost a bloody fortune!”
“What I do with my–”
He put his hand up to silence her. “Don’t need to hear it again, lass. How much do you have left?”
She turned her head to the side, as though she was dismissing him, and yet she dug into the slit in her dress to get her purse. She threw it on the table so he could hear it only had about three or four coins in it.
“I didn’t mean on you. I meant all together.”
Without looking at him, she gestured to the purse on the table again.
No, it couldn’t be. He picked it up and looked inside to confirm he was correct.
“This is all you have left? You had over six hundred pounds for your own personal pocket.”
She’d spent almost every coin she had on her by coming to port. He now realised she didn’t have any personal funds to lean on should things go astray when they went back to sea.
What she had left was barely enough for a meal.
“What...? Why...?” He pressed his fingers against his crinkled forehead in disbelief. “How could you be so stupid, Rosetta?”
When she didn’t say anything, squeezing her arms across her chest tighter in defiance, he bashed his fist on the table again.
He snapped his head towards his mother when he felt both her hands cup one of his. She shook her head at him as if to tell him ‘no,’ like he shouldn’t be angry!
She reached up and brushed her slender hand against his cheek in a comforting gesture to settle him. “She’s a woman, Alister.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“This is none of your business, Lillian,” Rosetta bit. “Stay out of it.”