5. Cinders and Ashes
CINDERS AND ASHES
Cursing Jack under her breath, Cecily didn’t linger.
She slipped down to the crew’s quarters with its hammocks and bedrolls and found herself a shadowy corner in the crook of the wall. There she sat on the hard boards, leaned against the wall, and pulled her legs to her chest.
Rest came, but not sleep as her eyes slipped shut, her ears perked for any sound of someone approaching.
The absence of her shiv felt like a missing finger, and without it she felt so exposed.
She doubted Jack would hold on to that bit of bone, but on the chance that he did, perhaps she could find it and steal it back. Or she could make another…
Behind her closed lids, she saw her little home and the smiling footman standing in the entrance. He beckoned her inside and shut the door firmly behind her.
Deep within the house, a warm bath awaited her. A high window cast the washroom in golden sunlight as Cecily stripped and sank into water filled with suds and rose petals. Wrapped in lovely warmth, her breaths grew calm and even.
But then reality began tugging at her. She wasn’t sure why, so she left the bath, pulled on a gown, and wound back through the house toward the front door. The footman bowed as she left, and she opened her eyes.
Many of the crew had returned to their quarters, but they weren’t sleeping. Her cheeks flushed as she realized she was surrounded by the natural consequences of lonely pirates, grateful women, and a night of drinking and gladness.
Heart pounding, she got up, pointedly ignoring the bodies around her as she picked her way toward the steps.
The main deck was deserted, and she scurried to the bow where she crouched behind the foremast. A chilly breeze moved over the ship, checking the closed sails and whispering darkness and brine against her exposed cheeks.
High above, the stars promised a few more hours before dawn. Cecily settled down against the mast, closed her eyes, and found her footman and her front door once more.
When she returned to her bath, the water was still warm.
“A little cold out here, isn’t it?”
Cecily startled from sleep with a ragged gasp, her hand flying for the shiv that was no longer in her boot. The stars were gone, and silvery fog hung around the ship, casting the barren deck in shades of blue and gray as it waited for the sun to rise and burn it away.
Jack stood a few feet away in the same coat from last night, lounging against the rail to her right. “I looked for you everywhere,” he said. “I half thought you’d thrown yourself overboard when I didn’t find you with the rest of the crew.”
She pressed a hand over her racing heart and leaned forward to rest her head on her knees. What she’d give for her little knife, if only to help calm the blood hammering through her veins.
“Are the crew’s quarters not to your liking?” he asked dryly. “I could arrange for you to sleep in the brig, if that’ll feel more familiar.”
She shook her head to clear it. “If it’ll keep you away, I’m sure it’ll work just fine.”
He snorted. “Why’d you sleep out here?”
“Why do you think?” She lifted her head and scrubbed the sleep from her eyes. “It was like trying to sleep in a brothel.”
He raised a perfect brow. “You’ll risk death and challenge a pirate, but sex is too much for you?”
She sniffed. “I’m rather pious.”
Piety had little to do with it. Contrary to what the women had been led to believe, sex was the last bit of innocence she had to her name, and she’d guard it however she could.
And even if privacy was of little consequence to the others, she’d never been comfortable with the proximity.
Now that she was out of a cell, she could finally seek peace and quiet.
“Really?” he mused, clearly skeptical. “Then how’d you get a bone shiv?”
The shiv in question appeared in his hand. He turned it over in his fingers, inspecting its pointed edge and small serrations. Her heart quickened at the sight of it.
“I made a bone shiv,” she said, eyeing the knife in preparation to snatch it, “and I’m still pious.”
“Hm.” With a flick of his fingers, the crude weapon went flying over the side of the ship, into the sea.
“No!” Cecily lurched to her feet and threw herself toward the rail. As she did, Jack stepped away, but it was too late. The bone was gone.
She jerked her head toward him, her blood roaring for an entirely new reason. “You had no right. That was mine!”
The hours it had taken her to make it. The comfort she’d found in holding it, knowing it would hold everyone at a distance—gone in the space of a heartbeat.
“I had every right,” Jack said. “Besides, should you earn the right to carry a knife again, you can do better than that. It was too blunt, anyway.”
“I hope that cut hurt like hell.”
“Oh, it did.” He drew his finger down the length of the raw, red wound on his cheek. “Which only emboldened me to throw it away.”
“I don’t need a shiv to hurt you,” she said through her teeth.
“You’re awfully prickly for me not having done a thing to you.
I understand your irritation yesterday, and I’ll admit shoving you across the gangplank was rather brutish.
” A breeze pushed strands of tawny hair into his eyes.
As he pushed them back, his piercing blue gaze commanded her attention.
“Honestly, your demeanor makes me wonder about you. I’ve thought about you quite a bit, actually—though not by choice.
I have better things to occupy my time.”
She turned away, glaring at the water as though it might return her shiv.
“And unfortunately I have to mind you,” Jack went on, “which doesn’t help the curiosity. You are a puzzle. A rather irritating one.”
She shot a dirty look over her shoulder. “Do you ever stop talking?”
“Not until you start.” He jerked his chin toward the main deck. “Follow me.”
Heaving a sigh, she followed him to one of the large warming drums from last night. Embers still glowed in a mesh bowl at the top.
“Copson told me to put you in the ashes,” he said, then gestured to the drum. “Ashes.”
She glanced at him. “What, you’re going to burn me?”
“Not unless you really irk me,” he mused.
“No, the fire burns in the top and the ash falls into the bottom. There’s a door to clean them out.
” He pointed to a latch near his boots. “Of course, everything is hot and the ash blows, so it’s done early to avoid disturbing the crew.
” He glanced to the east, where the fog was brightest with the rising sun.
Then he brought those hard eyes back to her and said with biting humor, “Looks like you haven’t got much time. Better get started.”
She scowled at him. “With what? Do you have tools for this, or am I to use my bare hands?”
“Ask me nicely, Cecily.”
Anger burned down her spine. “Please, Jack,” she spat, and then spoke each word as though it were a stab of the shiv she no longer had. “Do you have tools?”
Jack’s lips quirked. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“I despise you.”
“Likewise. I’ll be happy to provide you everything you need, so long as you stop being so damn frigid.”
She balled her hands into fists and huffed.
Nice. She could be nice. She closed her eyes and imagined Hester in front of her.
“Please may I have some tools,” she said in a rush, her voice lighter.
When she opened her eyes, Jack was moving across the deck.
He returned with a bucket, a small trowel, and a falsely pleasant smile.
In an overly kind tone, he said, “Thank you, Cecily.”
Cecily was no stranger to hard work or tending fires, and she doubted she’d mind this as much as Copson wanted her to.
The only trouble would be the blowing ash—and the first mate watching.
Kneeling before the first drum, she flicked the latch open.
The wind promptly swirled inside, captured the hot ash, and blew it into her face.
She clamped her eyes shut until it stopped pelting her skin.
Beyond the drum, Jack stood by the mainmast. He looked amused, or like he was plotting. Cecily eyed him warily as she began scooping ash into the bucket.
“What,” she said when she couldn’t take his stare any longer.
“You won’t sleep in the crew’s quarters,” he said.
“Not without a knife, which you aren’t inclined to let me have.” Besides the others’ evening-time proclivities, the crew’s quarters felt too open, too exposed. At least on the Sparrow, no one could reach her through the iron bars.
“Why do you need it?” Jack asked. “To protect yourself?”
She didn’t answer.
“To feel protected, maybe?”
Cecily scooped ashes and ignored him.
“What if I made you sleep in my quarters?” he asked with false brightness. “You could curl up in the corner like a cat.”
She stiffened. “Then I’d show you how I can make a shiv out of a lot more than a bone.”
He laughed darkly. “I don’t doubt it.”
Shutting the little door, she imagined gold and a home all her own.
She held on to the thought as she padded to the side of the ship to dump the ashes.
With Hester occupied, Jack was her only option for meaningful company.
But they would have to dock eventually, and she could put up with him for a short time, even if he set her teeth to grinding.
It was better than prison, she reminded herself. Anything was better than prison.
She moved to the next drum and sank behind it, blocking her view of Jack. He let her work in silence, and it wasn’t until she was on the fifth and final drum that he spoke again.
“How does a pious girl like you end up as a prostitute?”
She nearly dropped the trowel as the label—prostitute—raked over her flesh.
If he had asked her about the other women, he’d no doubt asked them about her. Of course they would say she was a prostitute; that’s all they knew, and they’d have no qualms sharing it.
Jack couldn’t see her from where she crouched, so she took a moment to compose herself before answering, “I’m not a prostitute.” Her voice was calmer than she felt, and she was grateful for it.