33. Haunted
HAUNTED
A small, niggling sense of wrongness roused Cecily from sleep.
Early morning light streamed through the porthole, casting the room in blues and grays. Their belongings were still strewn over the floor, remnants from the night before and proof that it hadn’t been some terrible dream.
Her stomach turned at the sight, another pain to compound on top of her aching muscles and raw throat—but all of that paled against the press of guilt as she saw the specks of dried blood dotting the floorboards.
Jack.
He was gone, having left their room at some ungodly hour. Perhaps he hadn’t slept at all. When she reached for his side of the bed, the sheets were cold.
Wherever he’d gone, she needed to find him and have it out about what had occurred night before. She needed answers, details about what she’d said and what he’d said to her. There was no forgetting the way he’d flinched or the blood on his arms, and she had to make it right.
Rising, she shoved her feet into her boots, dodged the broken glass on the floor, and hurried from the room.
The main deck was empty, but a quiet song drifted from the starboard, lilting and ethereal.
She paused to listen, feeling beckoned despite her will to find Jack.
She hesitated for only a second before she crept to the edge of the ship, going slowly for fear that her body might usurp her mind and throw her overboard.
Among the dark waves was the pale-faced merman. He stopped singing when he saw her, his black eyes sparkling.
“You are well?” he asked, his voice hauntingly beautiful. Long fangs flashed as he spoke.
“I’m alive,” she replied with a note of irony. She remained rooted to the spot, everything in her waking mind warning her to avoid the cause of the sickness that had plagued her the night before.
He rose higher in the water. “I must apologize, my lady. I did not intend to subject you to my kiss.”
Cecily frowned. “You have nothing to gain from me. Why bother saving me?”
“I was indebted to another.”
“Who?”
“A witch called Fay. She said danger would befall you, and she asked me to help in exchange for my life back and freeing me from this curse I was tricked into long ago. I have trailed your ship for weeks, watching for what she meant. She said I would know you by the turtle you carry.”
Cecily blinked, her hand flying to her necklace. Fay.
“I was told I must see you alive and well before I return,” the creature said. “Now that I have, I will take my leave—but I also wished to return this.” His hand rose from the black sea, holding the sword she’d lost.
She rushed to the rail and braced herself against it, no longer concerned about her nearness to the creature or the sea.
“It must be important,” he said, “if you were willing to drown for it.”
“You…you retrieved it for me?” The monster had fallen to such lightless, fathomless depths. She couldn’t imagine why he would do such a thing so far beyond his agreement with Fay.
“I do not particularly care for the wants and needs of mortals, but if I am to be one again, I thought to practice some…humanity.” The word sounded foreign on his tongue, like he hadn’t said it in a very long time.
“One moment.” She left the rail and returned with a rope, which she slung over the side of the ship. The end splashed into the water, and the creature swam close to tie it around the hilt. She pulled it up, nearly laughing with relief when the sword was finally in her hands.
The mother-of-pearl inlay shone in the weak light, and the cold, clean metal gleamed as though to tell her it was ready to be used again. There wasn’t a dent, scratch, or flaw to be seen after all she’d put it through.
“The rest of your journey will not be without strife,” the creature said. “Your ship has been marked. Not by me, but by someone else.”
“Jonah Lovibond.” Jack’s flat voice came from a step behind her.
Cecily spun. She had been so concerned with the sword that she’d missed his approach. Jack only stared down at the creature, his expression drawn.
“The waters grow restless with his fury,” the creature said, holding the first mate’s gaze while drifting away from the ship. “Appease him, if it is possible. And do it quickly.” Then with a flash of black fins, he dove and was gone.
Quiet settled, broken only by a passing breeze.
Jack stared at the water while she waited for his expression to crack into something other than cold aloofness. Last night hung over them like a gavel, and her gaze trailed to where his coat sleeves hid his bandaged arms.
Uncomfortable in the lingering silence, she knelt and reached for the sword to untie it—then paused.
Dried blood stained her fingers, turning her skin reddish-brown as though it had been there for hours.
She studied the back of her unbandaged hand, then her palm, remembering how Jack had cleaned away the blood last night.
But it had been late and dark, and perhaps both of them had simply failed to notice she still wore his blood.
She grabbed the sword, hoping the wet rope would scrub away the remnants of what she’d done to him as she pulled the weapon free and laid it over her lap. The sun had risen a little more and, like the day before, its light was too dim for summer.
“How long have you known?” Jack asked quietly.
“About what?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the sword.
He drew in a quiet breath, steeling himself. He lowered himself before her and met her gaze for only a second before looking elsewhere—her cheek, her chin, her ear.
“Was it the night we met?” he asked. “When you said I spoke like a gentleman and asked if it was because I was in hiding or because I didn’t want a more…decent life?” With his head slightly bowed, his eyes flicked back to hers. “Was I so obvious?”
She held his gaze, remembering what he’d told her about her own words the night before, the awful things she’d said. If anything, she thought he might be upset over her cruel accusations—not this.
She said softly, “You mean to ask how long I’ve known you’re both a pirate and a gentleman.” It was so vague a word, but they both knew what it meant. What Jack was reached beyond manners and diction—he was a man of privilege.
Slowly, he nodded.
“You weren’t obvious,” she assured him. “It was the night we married, after you asked me so many questions in the governor’s house. Then on the beach, when we drank and you made promises—I knew then.”
His eyes tightened. “Yet you said nothing. You asked no further questions and simply kept my secret as your own?”
“I had assumed…” Her words trailed off. She mulled them over, trying to determine how best to say them.
She settled on the bald truth. “All you told me made so much sense that I didn’t think it was such an important matter.
It was a secret, yes, but one I’d eventually see for myself. You implied as much.”
His brows pulled upward. “You say it’s not important?” A shocked laugh. “It seemed pretty damn important to you last night.”
The blood drained from her face, leaving her skin uncomfortably cold and clammy.
Here it was, the real pain she’d caused.
It wasn’t that she merely knew he was a gentleman—after all, Jack wasn’t an idiot, and he’d certainly considered how much to tell her with full understanding that she might guess it.
Rather, his issue laid in what she’d said about it.
And from what she’d wanted to say before she succumbed to her sickness, he had good reason to look so scared.
“Tell me what happened,” she bade him. “Everything, Jack.”
His lips rolled between his teeth, his eyes sharpening.
After a breath, he told her quietly, “First I must tell you I am bound to silence about certain…aspects of my life. My father has laws beyond the articles that forbid we speak about it. I have always honored those laws, though in loving you I have bent them. I was eager to bring you home to England where I could finally tell you all my secrets. I happily anticipated it, as I knew it would please you to see I could provide the charmed, beautiful life you dream of. The one you should have had. We married sooner than I intended, but even then, I was sure of you and knew you would not mind the truth.”
Was. Her grip tightened on the sword in her lap. “Are you no longer so sure of me?” After all she’d put him through, she braced herself to hear it, telling herself that they could overcome this, just as they’d overcome so much already.
His gaze was intent, searching but still apprehensive. “Last night, you threw this truth at me as though you knew everything about it. You made me into a villain solely for the fact that I am a gentleman with wealth that gives me power.”
He’d said as much last night, but there was more. She drew in a deep breath, steeling herself to hear it.
“The screaming I could handle,” he told her, “when you shouted about how much you despised me. But for the worst of what you said to me, you whispered. Those were the moments when you sounded like yourself, when I thought that maybe you had come back. Then you’d tell me what I was, what you’d deduced, and you swore you could never love me.
You couldn’t even like me. You said I’d ruined you, and that I’d lied and coerced you. ”
He swallowed hard, his voice thickening.
“And sick as you were, I understood your reasoning. So I told you everything. Every dangerous truth about myself that I should have told you before we married, before I took you to bed and tied you to myself so thoroughly. I had thought we had time and that you would be pleased, but I see…I see how I might have misjudged.”