Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
My stay on the Prince Henry is both short and never-ending.
The days drag on, while the nights haunt me with visions of Jeffrey Reuter’s dead eyes, Tristan falling to his death, and Captain Sharpe hanging for piracy.
I barely eat; I can’t stomach food at all in the mornings as I struggle to wake from my nightmares, and in the evenings I only pick at the plate they leave me.
No one says a word to me that isn’t absolutely necessary.
Lieutenant Elmsworth serves my meals, though most mornings I don’t rise from the bed until I hear him lock the door behind him once more.
I miss waking up in Captain Sharpe’s arms. I miss his weight on me, and the way he always looked at me in earnest before we kissed, as if he needed express permission from me every single time.
I miss Tristan stealing my food and Trevor reminding me how daft I am. I miss Billy and his warmth and the way he laughed so freely. I even miss the grimaces of irritation and disgust Mr. Tydes would throw my way whenever I did something annoying enough to warrant a reaction.
What I don’t miss is my old bedroom in Falmouth nor my father’s dining table. I don’t miss the gardens behind the house, nor dinners with Victoria throwing food at me while Elizabeth pretends it isn’t happening.
I don’t miss the disdain in my father’s eyes every time he looks at me.
I am familiar by now with the sounds of reaching port, so I’m not surprised when my stateroom door opens and Captain Hale steps inside.
I am ready for him, my hair combed carefully back into a tidy queue, my clothes as perfect as I can manage without a proper valet.
Eight months ago I might have tried to hide or talk my way out of this, but I understand now that I cannot keep running.
I stand and make my way across the room with my head held high.
I won’t let him see how terrified I am. I won’t let him see that I want to curl up and cry and drink myself into oblivion.
The sailors he brought down expected me to resist; I can tell by the way they exchange glances between themselves, then decide not to risk touching me and allow me to pass them.
None of them dare to grab me by the arm as I climb the stairs and cross the deck.
The air is cold and sharp, leaving the taste of frost on the tip of my tongue.
One man offers me a hand as I step onto the gangplank.
I take it, not wanting to falter now and seem ridiculous.
He guides me down the gangplank without a word, releasing my elbow as I step onto the dock, where two armed guards in the royal livery wait.
My stomach drops. “What’s this?” I ask.
“You are to go with them,” Captain Hale says from behind me. He motions to a carriage waiting at the end of the dock. “They will take you to see your father.”
My father’s influence over King Henry when he was still a prince must have been far greater than I realized. A new fear seeps into my bones at the thought of what he might do to me if he has truly risen so high in the months since my disappearance.
I swallow hard, but there is nothing for me to do but follow the royal guard to the waiting carriage.
Just before I climb into it, I turn to gaze at the Prince Henry and wonder what happened to Renard.
I haven’t laid eyes on him since we stood across from each other in the freezing rain, he waiting for his reward and I mourning the death of Mr. Kit.
Of me.
I want to ask about the envelope. I want to ask about Renard.
I want to ask about my crew. I want to look Renard in the eye and promise to watch him hang for what he’s done.
I turn to Captain Hale and catch a glimpse of the envelope he’s holding, my name scrawled clearly across the worn paper.
He hands it to another man in royal livery, and then I am ushered into the carriage before I can see where it ends up.
The London docks are as noisy and fishy as I remember from the last time I visited. I watch the crowd through the carriage window. I never noticed before how colorless London is. The people are grey. The food is grey. Even the sky is colorless, cast in an ever-lingering shadow of grey mist.
All at once I am homesick for the market at Nassau, which is ridiculous.
I spent less than two days there, but it felt like home in a way nowhere but the Deliverance ever has.
My breath hitches in my throat when I recall the taste of smoked honey on my tongue as the silk vendor called me the son of his sister.
The riot of color and the taste of spices linger in my memories as both a cruel promise of what could have been and a whispered reminder of something I know I shall never forget.
I don’t pay attention to how long the carriage ride through London takes.
Though I’m staring out the window for the entirety of it, it’s not London I am seeing.
It’s the streets of Jamaica and Nassau. It’s the deck of the Deliverance, while the men throw buckets of water on one another to stay cool in the doldrums. It’s the hallway belowdecks as the men celebrate another successful raid with ale and pipes.
And then we arrive. The carriage door opens, and a footman reaches in to offer me a hand. I take it and step out into the gloomy day to stare up at the mist-soaked brick of Kensington Palace.
Though I expect to be brought before my father immediately for a very public tongue-lashing, I am instead ushered inside and upstairs by way of the Denmark Staircase.
I have been here before, for parties and private audiences with the prince and his wife in the Cupola Room.
I have played with the children of the peerage in these galleries.
It is not the Cupola Room I am taken to now—nor the Presence Chamber, where I might have expected my humiliating dressing-down before the court.
Instead I am taken through the Princess’s Court, where I have never been.
Eventually I am let into a set of apartments, and the footman who has silently guided me leaves without a word, locking the doors behind him.
The furnishings in these apartments are the finest I have ever seen, though I haven’t time to admire them or wonder where my father may be lurking before I am ushered in for a bath.
This, at least, I don’t wish to refuse. I sink into the warm water and feel as though I may start to cry, but servants come and go behind the screen that has been set up for my privacy, so I make quick work of the grime on my hair and skin instead.
After, once I am out of the bath and in a new silk dressing gown, I find a comb and a black ribbon in the vanity.
I smooth my hair back into a queue and wrap the ribbon around it a few times before tying it.
I take in the sight in the mirror and frown at the man I see staring back at me.
He looks like he could once have been me. But now I don’t recognize him.
No, that’s not right. It’s Mr. Kit I see staring back at me, looking out from the shadow of Christopher-Henry.
My skin has taken on a more golden shade of bronze, and something about my face seems…
more. I can’t explain it, but it’s as if the childhood I clung to when I ran away from home just eight months ago has melted away, and now staring back at me is a young man.
I reach up to brush my fingers along my hairline, pulling free the shorter hairs Captain Sharpe always combed down to frame my face and watching them curl around my cheekbones. For a moment I wonder if I ought to try growing a beard. Wouldn’t that be a scandal?
“You look different,” a voice says from behind me.
I whirl with a gasp, and there she stands, looking soft and pretty and very much the same as I left her—almost. I can’t help that my eyes drop immediately to the one thing that is notably different as she gingerly cradles her swelling belly in one white-gloved hand.
“Katherine,” I croak, standing before her in someone else’s dressing gown, still dripping from my bath, in what is quite possibly the most humiliating reintroduction in history.
She smiles. “Forgive me. I should have realized you’d be… indisposed. I just had to come see for myself. You really are here.”
“Ah… yes. And you’re… you…”
She follows my gaze to her belly. “They say I’m due in March,” she says.
I grimace at the timing. March, the anniversary of when we were meant to be wed.
“Congratulations,” is all I can manage.
“You’ve grown taller,” she says, ignoring my offer of good tiding. Fair enough; I deserve that.
“Have I?”
She steps into the room, and I am all too aware of the impropriety of us being alone like this. It shouldn’t bother me; it wouldn’t have bothered me eight months ago. I would have reveled in it—but now, something has changed.
I have changed.
I take a step back. “I’m not dressed, Katherine—if someone—”
“Kitty.”
“What?”
“I’ve told you to call me Kitty, remember?”
Oh God. “Ah. Yes. Kitty.”
“It’s all right. No one will be in here for some time; they’re letting you rest.” She walks over to the armoire at the far end of the room and opens both doors.
“There should be clothing in here that will fit you, if you’d like to dress.
” She turns to me with a coy smile—an expression I have never seen on her once-innocent features.
I rather like this new Kitty.
“Is my father here?” I ask as I approach the armoire, careful to leave an appropriate distance between us.
She bites her lip as she considers my question, though I’m not sure what’s so complicated about a simple yes or no. “Yes.”
“Is he with the king?”
Another hesitation. “Yes.”
I frown at her, but she turns away from me to sift through the silks inside the armoire.