20. Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Marguerite tried not to tiptoe as she stepped onto the quarterdeck.
She didn’t need to be ashamed for wanting to know the place where Tristan commanded the ship.
Curiosity had played its part, of course, but curiosity had become a convenient name for several less orderly feelings.
Anxiety. Restlessness. A certain intolerable ache beneath the ribs whenever she thought of Naples drawing closer with every league of water they left behind. What if Elsie were right?
The sea was brighter than it had any right to be, the sky washed clear by wind, the frigate leaning into her course with a purposeful grace Marguerite resented.
Everything aboard the ship knew what it was doing.
The sails swelled and softened. The ropes held.
The men moved. Orders passed from mouth to mouth with brisk efficiency.
Even the gulls wheeled overhead as if they had received instructions in advance.
And Tristan stood at the helm, one hand resting near the wheel, coat dark against the light, boots braced easily against the pitch of the deck, his face turned toward the sails with that severe concentration she had come to recognize as command.
Only Lorenzo was with him, lounging with his guitar, plucking at the strings as if the quarterdeck were an Italian terrace and not the nerve center of a warship.
Tristan turned his head to her.
Would she be welcome here? She had never approached him in this place where he was more captain and less hers. If he dismissed her, she would have to retreat with dignity while her heart gathered its skirts and bled quietly behind her ribs.
His gaze moved once around the quarterdeck, no doubt measuring officers, sailors, distance . . . Then he held out his hand.
Pulse speeding, trying not to show all her teeth in a besotted smile, Marguerite went to him.
“This is where you command?” she asked, resting her gloved fingertips on one spoke of the wheel.
The ship shifted around them, and the wheel tugged faintly, alive with the sea.
“This is where he broods and shouts at his poor officers and sailors, carissima,” Lorenzo said, plucking a mournful chord.
“Don’t be mean, Lorenzo. Your brother never broods.” Marguerite gave Tristan a tiny smile because her heart had apparently abandoned subtlety altogether. “Brooding belongs to men who have leisure to admire their own gloom.”
Please do not brood at me now. I would not resist.
Lorenzo grinned. “Lucky you, cara. Go along, Tristan. Show off your commanding skills to our lovely passenger. Pretend I am not here. In fact, I shall be perfectly still and provide just the right melody for the lovebirds.”
“You are never perfectly still,” Tristan said.
“The secret of a great diplomatist is to concede nothing while appearing generous. What is the secret of a great captain?”
Tristan looked stoic, which was not the same thing at all. Stoicism, she was discovering, was a form of cruelty when practiced by a man whose mouth had recently made vows against her skin.
He stepped closer behind her, and his warmth touched her back. Every part of her body that had spent nights learning him grew attentive with humiliating speed. Making a low sound in his chest, Tristan placed his arm around her, closing his hand over the wheel near hers.
“Simple,” he said. “When facing either an enemy or a storm, the captain who cuts weight first lives.”
Lorenzo scoffed so hard the guitar gave a twang.
“No, no. Do not listen to him, carissima. He is being humble, and I cannot allow it. The brooding I endure because I am generous. But humility?” He pressed a hand to his chest. “Humility on Tristan sat as well as lace on a cannon.”
Tristan kept his eyes on the sails. “You said you would keep quiet.”
Lorenzo leaned toward Marguerite. “This man says command is simple. Cut weight, live. Very plain. Very grim. Very English. He does not mention that when other captains cut weight, they throw barrels overboard. When Tristan cuts weight, he throws his enemies into the sea.”
The wheel moved slightly, resisting the wind. Tristan corrected it with a small pressure. The ship obeyed.
“Once,” Lorenzo continued, “he commanded a vessel so small she should have been kept in a bottle on a mantelpiece. A sloop, he will say, because he is tedious about names. I say a floating cupboard. She carried little guns. Four-pounders. Guns for frightening chickens.”
“They were adequate,” Tristan said.
“They were adorable.” Lorenzo plucked a bright, wicked chord. “And with this adorable cupboard, he went hunting. In thirteen months, carissima, with that little scrap of a vessel, he took more than fifty ships. One hundred and twenty-two guns. Five hundred and thirty-four prisoners.”
Marguerite turned her head against Tristan’s shoulder.
Lorenzo smiled. “But command is simple, you understand. He merely keeps the ship tidy and throws things into the sea.”
Marguerite pretended to laugh, though the words had opened a hole in her chest.
Cut weight first and live.
There it was, plain as the hard boards beneath her feet.
Tristan did not carry weight. He survived by cutting it away before it dragged him under.
He had cut softness, comfort, family, perhaps even hope, and turned himself into the sort of man who could command a ship through storm and battle because no unnecessary thing remained to pull him down.
And she had never felt heavier. The tears that had been clouding her eyes since she had woken threatened to fall again. Had he already marked the place where she would be cut? Would he do it cleanly? Would he call it necessary?
Her fingers tightened on the wheel.
“Marguerite?” he asked, caressing her arm.
She startled. Perhaps . . . he could still be hers. If she offered the perfect clause.
“Come below with me,” she whispered.
Wind moved between them, snapping a loose strand of hair against her cheek.
“I am on duty,” Tristan said.
Yes. Duty. Of course he was. He was always on duty. To the ship. To the Admiralty. To Naples. To the estate. To survival. To every command that required weight to be cut and never, ever carried.
Marguerite smiled because smiling was sometimes the last tool left before begging, and she would not beg.
“I want to dance for you.”
Tristan went utterly still.
The sails drew and shivered. The wheel tugged beneath Tristan’s hand. Somewhere below, a sailor called to another, and the sound arrived from a country very far away.
Marguerite wrapped her arms around herself so as not to reach for him. She had not danced for him. Not once. He had asked before, and she had refused because dancing was not the same as yielding her body. Dancing was art, discipline, self, the one part of her above negotiation.
How foolish of her. What did she believe, really? That once he was alone with her, perhaps he would forget that she was no more than dead weight? She was hopeless. Elsie had been right. Her pirate duke would refuse her, and now she had gone and loved him and would become a wretched creature.
“Lorenzo,” he said, without looking away from her, “take the helm.”