7. Sold Souls #2
She swallowed her fear. With Morgyn, a few words could have a dozen meanings and intentions. And while Cecily was so often eager to give in to impulse, it was a concentrated effort to rein her tongue at the risk of saying more than she ought—and giving Morgyn more than whatever she already had.
“Didn’t need to kill him,” Cecily said mildly. “Threats go a long way. Or don’t you remember?”
Morgyn gave a thin smile. “How could I forget how intimidating you always try to be? It was only a few days ago that you last told me you’d like to gut me and couldn’t carry through.
Then you botch your attempted murder on the first mate and they didn’t do a thing to you beyond giving you chores.
” She moved to pick a fleck of ash off Cecily’s shoulder but ended up pressing it into her shirt. “Lucky, lucky girl.”
Cecily shrugged away from the touch, keeping her disgust from her face. “Didn’t know the articles yet. Weren’t you lurking close enough to hear that day? I could have sworn I felt your evil eye.”
Morgyn didn’t take the bait. She picked at another fleck of ash, and Cecily’s needle almost found its way through her wrist. “What did a lovely man like Jack do to deserve your ire anyway?”
There were more colorful words to describe him other than lovely, many of which Cecily was tempted to lob at Morgyn just now. Unable to help herself, she batted Morgyn’s fingers away. “He was a prick.”
“Because he tried to save you?”
Cecily froze. Morgyn’s smile grew.
“I saw what happened,” Morgyn said, and she settled a tender hand on Cecily’s shoulder. “I suppose I was lurking like you say I was. Really, I thought it was funny—what bad aim you have.” She tsked. “It’s a shame. Most people would adore being saved by a man so handsome.”
Morgyn was goading her. She didn’t know Cecily was a murderer, but rather assumed she was a clumsy little rebel with an aversion to being touched.
And because Morgyn had seen Cecily lash out once already, and because it had been with a blade and looked like attempted murder, there was certainly a part of her that knew she could get Cecily to do it again in a way that would earn the captain’s ire.
This was how she would get her revenge—through Copson and his laws.
“Susan was supposed to gut fish today,” Morgyn went on. “I told Jack you might be better at it. At the very least, you could use the practice.”
When Cecily lifted her gaze to Susan, the woman’s eye twitched. A few seconds passed, it twitched again—and for the first time ever, Susan wasn’t shrinking from her gaze.
As though she wasn’t afraid of her.
Shit.
Cecily inhaled slowly, attempting to smother the flames of rage billowing higher. They had done some version of this taunting so many times that it was a wonder how Morgyn still managed to get a rise out of her.
“How kind. Though I was raised around animals, so I’m used to gutting chickens and pigs,” Cecily said pointedly, her words edged. She returned to the sail, doing her best to appear unbothered. “There’s something soothing about the process.”
She had never particularly enjoyed cleaning dead animals, but that was no matter.
“We’ll be happy to give Jack plenty more ideas, if you like,” Morgyn said, inspecting her nails. “He must really enjoy the work you do.”
Cecily stabbed the needle through the canvas, slowly pulled the thread, stabbed it again, and pulled. Behind Morgyn, Jack watched from the quarterdeck, so she smiled at the ladies as though they were all the happiest of friends as she said, “Go to hell.”
Morgyn glanced at Jack. Then she smiled and laughed once. “Lead the way, sweet Ces.”
Cecily continued sewing.
“Why’s he so interested in you anyway?” Morgyn asked. “He wants to know everything. Where you’re from. Why you’re here. Why you’re such an awful little thing.”
“Maybe she’s his whore,” Thea said, her lips too thin to hide her ugly teeth. “And that’s why she creeps out of the crew’s quarters every night.”
Cecily’s cheeks flamed. No one but Morgyn had dared to insult her so boldly in prison.
The other women had always resorted to cowardly whispers behind her back, too scared to say those offenses directly to her face.
Their newfound bravery would not bode well for her, but she grinned anyway.
“Wouldn’t that be fun. He’s practically a prince.
Morgyn, weren’t you a princess once? Or twice? ”
Morgyn once again ignored Cecily’s jibe. “I doubt he’d object if you slithered into his bed. You’re so pretty, after all.”
Susan frowned, looking unsure. “Slither,” she said, and her deficiency of wit came with a welcome lack of cruelty. She looked to Morgyn for affirmation and was ignored.
Cecily, too, disregarded Susan. In the back of her mind, the front door of her little home flew wide open, inviting her to remember a place and time when she’d never known what it was to ache for another person’s death.
In her ignorance of Cecily’s past, Morgyn truly thought she was safe. She assumed she only risked a flesh wound or a broken bone, but certainly not death. She didn’t think Cecily could—or would—carry through.
And why should she think that? Cecily hadn’t killed anyone in prison. She probably could have, but the only person she’d truly wanted to do away with was Morgyn, and only her desire to not be a murderer had stayed her hand.
But Morgyn wanted Cecily to try, because if she was successful, Cecily would lose everything.
A week was too long. There would be no peace, no forgetting the debts between them or settling this in any way other than blood. It was getting old and it needed to end—without Cecily losing her money or her life.
Her fingers tightened on the needle, and she almost blurted the one thing that might make them all fear her enough to leave her alone.
Without thinking, without a plan—impulsive, as always, with no regard for herself or her peace beyond if this very moment when she just wanted Morgyn and her henchwomen afraid enough to leave her the hell alone—
Bold things for you all to say to a murderer. What lucky girls that you’re still alive.
Her mouth opened, the words forming on her tongue and by God it would feel so good to make them afraid—
But then Hester’s voice interrupted.
“Leave her be, Morgyn,” she said as she came to stand beside the trio. “Please.”
Cecily’s words shuttered to a halt so abruptly that she coughed.
Morgyn threw her arm over Hester’s shoulders. “Oh, we were only teasing.”
“We were only teasing,” Cecily agreed in the same airy tone, though her mind reeled with what she’d nearly done. She would have blurted her most cherished secret, her hidden sin that would never stop haunting her.
After a day of agonizing over this very thing, she couldn’t help but wonder what in the actual hell was wrong with her mind that it was so easily blinded.
Hester shot her a disapproving look. To the others she said, “Leave her be.”
Morgyn tapped Hester’s chin. “Alright, but only for you.” She smirked at Cecily, then reached out to tap her chin too. “It’s always such a pleasure, sweet little Ces.”
Cecily didn’t answer as the three moved off, resisting the urge to scrape the skin off her face where Morgyn’s finger had been.
Hester rounded on her. “You’ll make it worse for yourself if you fight with them.”
She lifted her brows. “We weren’t fighting,” she said, though her voice trembled, still shaken by what she’d been so close to revealing. She reached for casual, cutting humor as though that might steel her. “We were having a wonderful time. Later we’ll braid each other’s hair—”
“You can have something good here.” Hester’s voice came as harsh as she’d ever heard it. “Stop fighting it and try to have a life you can love.”
Balking, Cecily said, “I’m not going to stay here. There’s better—”
“Better!” Hester braced her hands on her hips. “This is the best many of us will get, and probably the best you’ll ever get. At some point, you’ve got to accept what you’ve been given and live. Fighting with the others won’t help you.”
Cecily’s breath left her all at once. The two hadn’t spoken much beyond brief greetings each morning and at supper, and being scolded certainly wasn’t her ideal reunion.
“I didn’t ask her to come over here.” She didn’t bother adding that Morgyn had been testing her.
Making herself a victim would impress no one on this ship, least of all herself.
“You never would,” Hester said, but it wasn’t barbed—like she understood that Morgyn was a beast, despite their rapport. “But a little kindness wouldn’t kill you. None of us has been spared hardship.”
Kindness absolutely would kill her, but she wouldn’t fight about it with Hester.
“Just be less prickly,” Hester said with a sigh.
Cecily narrowed her eyes. “That’s what Jack called me.”
“Jack didn’t say it only to you.”
She glanced at the captain’s son on the quarterdeck and didn’t feel satisfied that the cut on his face went deep enough. Giving her Susan’s work, talking to Morgyn, calling her prickly behind her back.
It wasn’t any worse than what she was doing, but she hated him more for it anyway.
“Fine,” Cecily said. “I’ll…try.”
And though it was a lie, it seemed good enough for Hester.