23. Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
Marguerite waited in her cabin long after the ship had stopped sounding like a creature pursued by sharks.
At first, there had been noise everywhere.
Feet thundered overhead. Orders cracked through the planks.
The hull groaned, and the very air had seemed to tighten.
Elsie had been pale but determined, dragging cushions back into place after the first violent lurch had sent them sliding across the floor, while Marguerite righted the little table, rescued the porcelain cups, and tried very hard not to imagine Tristan standing too near a gun, Tristan shouting orders beneath falling rigging, Tristan on a deck washed clean by the sea.
Then the world had shifted.
The chase had ended not with the terrible ripping sound her mind had invented and used to punish her for an hour, but with distant cheers. A cabin boy had knocked, flushed and breathless, to tell them the Sea Wolf had outwitted the corsair and all was well.
All was well.
That was what he had said.
Marguerite had thanked him. Then she had closed the door and stood with her hand still on the latch, listening for the one sound that would make the words true. Tristan’s step.
It did not come.
Elsie watched her from the bed, where she was folding and refolding the same blanket. “He’ll be busy, miss. Captains are busy after nearly bein’ killed.”
“He was not nearly killed,” Marguerite said too quickly.
She crossed to the table, moved the candlestick one inch to the left, then moved it back. Her hands would not keep still. They seemed to have survived the chase by losing faith in idleness.
If Tristan had been hurt, someone would have come. Lorenzo would have come. The surgeon. An officer. Something else had to be keeping him away.
Marguerite took her shawl from the chair and wrapped it around her shoulders. The air in the cabin had gone close and warm, but beneath her skin she felt cold. She unlocked the door, and the small turn of the key sounded too loud.
The passage outside was dim. The ship at night after action was stranger than the ship during battle.
During the chase, fear had filled every space until there was no room for thought.
Now silence had returned, but not the old silence.
This one wore bruises. Lamps swung low along the passages.
Somewhere above, men laughed in exhausted bursts, the sound rising and falling from the officers’ mess or the wardroom, where victory had evidently acquired bottles and appetite.
Marguerite moved carefully, one hand trailing along the wall. She had learned the angles of the passage, the step that dipped near the turn, the latch that caught at her sleeve. She crossed toward the cabins aft.
Lorenzo sat on a coil of rope with his guitar across his lap. His fingers rested upon the strings, but no sound came from them. Moonlight silvered his face, softening the usual mischief into something younger and infinitely more troubling.
His sadness moved strangely through her stomach, as if sorrow had passed from him into the air and her body, foolishly porous after fear, had absorbed it.
“Why are you not celebrating?” she asked.
Lorenzo looked up. “Some victories, carissima, only make us realize what we have to lose.”
Marguerite tried to smile. Her mouth managed the shape, but not the conviction.
“I hope your brother is less morose than you.” She stepped forward, meaning to cross to the cabin that Tristan shared with Lorenzo.
He stood then, placing himself between her and the cabin door. Marguerite’s heart gave a panicked knock against her ribs.
“Not now, Maggie,” he said gently. “I will escort you back.”
She had no ready answer for his gentleness.
“What is wrong?” she asked. “Is he hurt?”
“Not on the outside.”
The breath she released came with difficulty, as if her corset had been tightened by unseen hands. “I don’t understand.”
Lorenzo glanced toward the closed door behind him. His face held tenderness, yes, but something else beneath it, something she recognized with a shock so clean it nearly stole her balance. Pity.
“Do you remember when I told you my brother survives by cutting what is superfluous?”
Her fingers curled in the edge of her shawl.
“Today he discovered he is carrying more than he can hold.”
The night seemed to tilt. Marguerite turned her face toward the sea because the passage had become too small, Lorenzo too near, the door behind him too closed.
“Well, then,” she said, and her voice came out brittle enough to cut her tongue, “I hope he is not violating any trade treaties.”
Lorenzo did not laugh. He came closer and rested one hand on her shoulder.
The touch was careful, brotherly, utterly harmless, and that somehow made it unbearable.
She did not want harmless comfort. She wanted the dangerous one.
The one behind the door. The one who could make her body believe in safety with one hand at her waist and break her heart with the absence of it.
“Maggie,” Lorenzo said softly.
The tenderness entered her like warmth. She could not help it. She had always been susceptible to gentleness, no matter how many elegant barricades she built around herself.
“Do not give me your pity, Lorenzo, because at present, I would not be able to repay you, and I already have too many debts.”
His fingers tightened once on her shoulder, then loosened.
“You are very special, carissima.”
Her stomach turned slowly, sickly, as if the sea was moving inside her.
Special. Yes. She was very special. Special in the way things were special when they were meant to be appreciated for a time, desired for their refinement, their discretion, their unusual qualities. Then, when they became inconvenient, they were set aside.
Her hand found the rail and closed hard around it. The damp wood bit into her palm, and she welcomed the sting because it was simple. Honest. A pain with edges. Not this spreading ache under her breastbone, not this humiliating emptiness opening where hope had been sitting only moments before.
Yes, she was indeed special. Unwanted baggage.
Too much weight.
Waiting for the captain to cut her away.