14. The Four #2
Within a few minutes, they reached a pristine little cove of white sand and clear blue sea.
Far off the shore, a natural wall of rock held back the forest, creating a perfect arc of beach that was clearly lived in.
The men marched through, grabbing liquor bottles hidden in the rocks next to bedrolls and ratty furniture.
Cecily paused, taking in this perfect hideaway with its rowdy, happy group of friends. They were more like a family, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d just walked into someone else’s home.
Across the cove, Jack plucked a bottle from behind a boulder and clinked it against one Greyson pulled from a bush.
He lifted it to his mouth and downed several gulps, his hair catching the sun as it fell away from his face.
When he lowered the bottle, his cheeks were flushed, his scar stark and red against his tan skin.
His gaze locked with Cecily’s. Though he smiled for his friends, the happiness vanished from his eyes.
Then he looked away, lifted the bottle, and took another long drink.
She turned away too, facing the sea as she attempted to quash the well of anguish that threatened to pull her down, wishing more than anything that it would turn back to hate.
It was so much easier to hate.
Maria flopped back onto the sand with a bottle of rum in hand and beckoned the other women.
Hester sat next to her, then Cecily. Fay gently lowered herself to the sand, her spine straight.
A small pendant sat at the base of her throat on a thin gold chain—a beautiful little turtle with tiny emeralds set in its shell.
The gems caught the light, sparkling darkly against her pale skin.
“Tell us about you and Jack,” Fay said to Cecily, tilting her head as she watched the waves roll against the shore. “Why’s he so…”
“Damn bitchy, damn,” Maria said, using the rum bottle to shadow her eyes against the sun. “He looked about ready to—”
“He can be lovely,” Fay interrupted gently.
Cecily knew that too well. “Sure, but I’ve convinced him to hate me.”
Perhaps hate was too strong a word. He’d had an opportunity to tell her he hated her, but he hadn’t. So perhaps it wasn’t hate, but the same distaste he’d harbored for her from the beginning.
Fay cocked her head. “He hates you?” She peered across the shore at Jack. “Hmm.”
Cecily began to add, “Perhaps it’s more dislike, but—”
Fay cut in to say, “He’s not angry about the knife.”
She paused, taken aback. “What?”
“The knife,” Fay repeated, pulling her from attention Jack to look at Cecily. “That’s not what he’s upset about.”
“How do you know about the knife?” Cecily asked.
Maria rolled onto her elbow. “Fay is the resident mind reader and seer of all things holy and…unholy, I suppose.” She shrugged one shoulder. “She knows things—”
“Not everything,” Fay interjected lightly. “Unless I know where to look.”
“And we don’t know what the hell that means,” Maria said with dry amusement. “We stopped asking questions years ago. You get used to it.”
Knowing things seemed like the most natural answer to Fay’s mysterious air—and it made Cecily curious.
“Why is he angry?” she asked. Even if it wasn’t the knife, she could count several other reasons for him to be livid with her.
Fay stared over the water into the distance. “I don’t know,” she said, the words too light to be anything but a lie.
Cecily chewed her lip, unsure what to make of that.
In the absence of an answer—she guessed she wouldn’t get one—Frederick’s words from outside the tavern began to niggle at the back of her mind.
She nervously asked, “What did Frederick mean when…when he asked Jack about me being the flavor of the week?”
Surely this question would have an answer.
Maria’s eyes widened as understanding dawned. “Oh, he meant no offense towards you. He was mocking Jack because he’s never brought a girl around us. You know how men are.”
Cecily shook her head. She knew very little about men other than prison guards, pirates, and her father—and he’d been lovely, never cutting or crass.
Maria smirked. “Most of the women on this island would sell their souls for a few minutes alone with Jack, and he knows it. He used to humor them, but he stopped warming beds a while ago. Now he just tortures them all with his presence.” She lifted her bottle and drank.
“I’d bet he was just trying to be more noble,” Fay said.
Maria scrubbed her hand over her mouth. “That’s boring.
I think Jack gets off on making women want him.
” She flung a hand toward the men down the beach, their joyful volume raised by the booze in their bottles.
“It’ll be worse now, thanks to that infernal scar on his face.
Now he’s handsome and dangerous and everyone will only love him more. God help us all.”
“I was in love with Jack once,” Fay said wistfully.
“So was I,” Maria said blandly. “And everyone else who’s ever seen him.” Her dark eyes trailed over Cecily, assessing. A silent question lingered in her eyes.
Are you in love with him?
These were Jack’s friends—they knew and loved him, and Cecily wondered if that made them predisposed to dislike her simply because Jack did. Minding the gnawing ache growing in her middle, Cecily glared at the sea.
Maria could assume what she wished, but Cecily wasn’t in anything but pain.
“How do you do it?” Hester asked, studying Fay. “Knowing things that aren’t said, and such.”
“I was murdered,” Fay said airily. “But Killian found my body and put me in a pool during a full moon on the summer solstice. When I woke, I was blonde and I knew things.”
“I swear on our lives it’s true,” Maria said before Cecily or Hester could doubt it.
Her tone turned bitter. “She was an apothecary, but some new soldiers in town didn’t like her business or her so-called premonitions, so they murdered her.
Knife to the gut, and they threw her in a trash heap.
She won’t tell you that, though, because she doesn’t like being pitied so…
” her lips twisted, “don’t pity her. Killian gets huffy if she does, and he’s already murderous enough. ”
Hester shook her head emphatically. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“My hair used to be like yours,” Fay said to Cecily.
“Dark as raven feathers. The others thought I was a stranger until Killian told them otherwise.” She glanced at Killian down the beach and sighed wistfully.
“The first thing I knew when I came back was that he loved me. I knew it like he’d confessed it a thousand times, even though he’d never said a thing about it.
He’d been content to pine in silence for years, but he couldn’t after what he did. ”
Maria gagged.
“He gave half his soul to bring me back,” Fay said. “Now he’s part of me, and I’m part of him, and even though he’s not entirely whole, he’s enough.” She waved down the beach. Killian smiled back at her—a full grin, like Fay was indeed the other half of his soul.
It made Cecily want to die a little.
As the afternoon passed, the ladies traded stories and rum. Cecily didn’t drink, as she had never had liquor and was too nervous to start now as the others lost their inhibitions and grew far more honest and hilarious as they spoke mostly of their relationships in excruciating detail.
She didn’t know what she might say or do if she were so carefree, but she struggled to match their enthusiasm by staying sober.
Down the beach, Jack was happy and at ease with his friends, drinking just as much. She wondered if he did it to escape the fact that he was still stuck with her.
This was to be their life—stuck with so many people in love while hating each other. But it was all for Hester. For Hester, Cecily told herself she could endure it.
As night fell, the couples paired off and sauntered into the trees—first Killian and Fay, then Frederick and Maria a short time later. Hester was the last to go, rising from her spot beside Cecily when Greyson and Jack walked over.
“I’ll see you in the morning?” Hester asked, her face so full of cheer that Cecily made herself return the smile.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she replied.
Hester took Greyson’s hand, and they disappeared into the forest, leaving Jack and Cecily alone on the beach.
She didn’t look at him, didn’t want to see his eyes as her heart sank with misery from his mere presence, so she stared at the bottle hanging loosely from his fingers.
In the rising moonlight, there was still a good amount of liquor left inside.
“We’re going to the inn,” Jack said flatly, and headed for the forest.
She considered staying on the beach to spite him, but he would certainly find some way to get her to go with him, whether through threats or outright violence.
Anticipating the inevitable, Cecily shouldered her pack and trailed behind him through the woods.
She hardly dared to raise her voice when she asked, “We’re not going back to the Fortuna? ”
Jack turned his face to the dark canopy above. “I’m well on my way to being rather drunk. Thankfully. Finally. I’m not going all the way back to the ship. I’ve been on it for months, and I want a bed in a room that isn’t floating.”
Trees creaked in the dark, their leaves rustling, and she wavered between walking close to Jack or taking her chances with whatever haunted the forest. Such were her fears that she didn’t realize he had stopped walking until she collided with him.
She squeaked in surprise. Her eyes darted to the forest, frantically searching for the reason they’d halted. But nothing seemed amiss as bugs sang and chirped, and the breeze played through the trees.
Jack’s voice was grave. “Did they tell you these woods are haunted?”
Heat rose to her cheeks, and she wondered how drunk he was. “Yes.”
He watched her with one tired blue eye. “Are you afraid?”