Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Finch came for me at dawn.
If he noticed me trying to wrench my way out of the shackles on my wrists, he didn’t say anything. Probably because, without my hairpin, I made zero headway. The chafed skin on my wrists was too sore to keep pulling.
"Cap'n's ready for you," he said gruffly, without looking me in the eye.
"How generous of him." I stood, ignoring the way my legs protested after three days on a hard bench. My shoulder had settled into a dull, grinding ache that flared when I moved wrong, and I’d developed a cough that grew worse with every day I couldn’t see the sun.
"I was beginning to think he’d see me dead before alive. "
Finch didn’t reply, just waited for me to walk through the gate. I thought he would hold my arm to make sure I didn’t run. But then again, where would I go? Overboard?
Walking up the steps was a challenge. I couldn’t hold on to the rail without my shoulder screaming and, between the sway of the ship and the unease in my legs, Finch had to catch me a few times.
I kept my gaze forward. The crew made a valiant effort to ignore us as we passed, but I could see their flickers of attention out of the corner of my eye.
Some looked with curiosity, others with something that looked uncomfortably like pity.
A few crossed themselves and I made a note of that, recalling stories about how superstitious sailors were, pirates and navy alike.
Especially where women on ships were concerned.
The ship was eerie, a wrongness seeping from its boards that I’d been trying to discern since I’d been thrown into her belly.
The wind echoed through every slot in the boards like a phantom cry, and the light glowed with an unusual, off-putting green tint in the moonlight, casting uncanny reflections against the water.
I wished I had something to document these observations with. The scholar in me took comfort in finding the science behind the mystery. If I were going to be trapped on a ghost ship, I wanted to be the most thorough prisoner in maritime history.
When we approached the door below the helm, I knew it could be nothing other than the captain’s quarters. Gold framed the threshold, the ornate markings swirling in an elegant design from top to bottom. Once it had been a grand design, but was now tarnished with neglect.
Just like the ship and her captain.
Finch stopped and knocked once, the gesture quick and efficient.
"Since when do pirates have manners?" I grumbled under my breath, irritation rekindling in my belly. How dare he keep me waiting, ill and in pain in the brig below, while he sleeps behind gold.
I didn’t wait for Finch to open the door. Instead, I stormed through it on my own.
Silas stood at the window with his back to me, hands clasped, morning light cutting hard lines across the cabin. A quick look around showed his desk covered in charts, my satchel sitting on its edge, and my journal nowhere in sight.
Maybe it was still in the bag, left untouched despite Finch’s accusations?
"Sit," Silas said, without turning.
"Where's my journal?" Those weren’t the words I expected to speak. I had a line or two prepared about his absolute neglect of a lady and about the atrocious living conditions. However, the journal was more important.
"Sit down, Miss Godwin."
"It’s mine," I retorted, ignoring his demands until mine were met.
"You'll get it back when you've earned it."
"Earned it," I scoffed, disbelief rattling my bones. "You kidnapped me, locked me in a brig for three days, took my belongings, and now I have to earn—"
"I have a map that needs decoding. Do it and you get the journal, your freedom, and safe passage to whatever port you choose." He turned, crossed to the desk and braced his hands on the side, gaze pointed intently to my own. "Those are my terms."
Had I not been bound and in utter shock, I might have picked up the nearest gold bauble and clocked him on the head.
"Are you mad?" I asked. "Honestly, have you lost your mind? Why would I help you? Because if you think I won’t die out of pure spite, then you’ve no idea what I’m capable of, captain."
Perhaps that was a touch dramatic. I did not, in fact, want to die. I did, however, want him to know exactly where to shove his demands after the way he treated me.
He stared at me for a long moment. "Finch. Leave us," he commanded, without looking away. His tone left no room for argument, and Finch obeyed as such.
What hold did he have over these men that generated such inexplicable loyalty?
Once we were alone, he circled the desk without haste and stood in front of me. Was I intimidated?
Maybe.
I swallowed heavily, but made sure every ounce of defiance I felt was worn plainly on my face. However, it slipped when his fingers found the first button of his white shirt.
I watched, unwillingly, as they worked the next one free.
Tan skin appeared in a slow, widening V as the fabric parted over the hard planes of his chest. My eyes tracked lower as he went, following the path of those scarred and capable hands as he revealed more of himself to me.
The defined ridges of his abdomen, the trail of dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers…
My mouth watered as the last button gave and the shape of his Adonis Belt came into clear view.
He was perfectly sculpted. My hands shook with the effort to keep them in my lap.
I had seen men without their shirts before, but none of them had looked like one of the carved statues inside museums. Not a single one had made the air in the room feel too thin to breathe.
He peeled the fabric off his shoulders and threw it aside. It landed on an enormous bed I’d only just noticed and pulled me out of whatever spell he’d cast.
"Uhm," I cleared my throat and took a step back. "What are you doing?"
The bloody scene from before came crashing back, along with my fear of what his intentions with me were.
Okay Corynne, focus. Gouge the eyes, break the nose, knee to the nethers.
"I must warn you," I said with as much steel as I could muster. "Men have tried and failed to bed me against my will. I am not too scared to strike you and jump over the railing."
He quirked an eyebrow. "You think I am trying to bed you, Miss Godwin?"
"Well," I answered, a touch too shaky for my liking. "I’ve no other ideas as to why you’re disrobing in my company."
A smile lifted the corners of his lips, followed by a deep, rumbling laugh that did funny things to my body.
Get a hold of yourself, Corynne, I scolded. Just because he’s tan, with admittedly fantastic musculature, does not mean he is fuckable.
"Relax, Miss Godwin. Your virtue is safe. I'm not interested in unwilling participants."
"Then what—"
The words died in my throat when he turned around.
Scars. Hundreds of them covering every inch of his back from shoulders to waist in intricate whorls. I wanted to look away, should have looked away. I found myself stepping closer instead.
"Holy gods," I whispered.
"That's not the typical reaction." His voice was dry and controlled, like we were discussing the weather and not the ruin of his body. But it wasn't his voice that stopped my breath. It was the patterns.
The markings weren’t random. They weren't the chaotic result of battle or torture or shipwreck. There was a structure to them that I couldn’t look away from. Lines intersected at precise angles. Marks were spaced with mathematical precision.
My hands flexed at my sides, fingers aching for my pencil to document what I was seeing. But my satchel was still on his desk and I was trapped with no tools on hand but my eyes and a memory that, while fantastic, would never be able to recall the intricacies on his back.
Focus, Corynne.
I tracked the marks near his left shoulder blade: three in a diagonal, each spaced from the next by about two inches, raised and pale against the surrounding skin.
The middle one was slightly deeper than its neighbors, as if whatever made them had pressed harder there.
Or lingered. The shape they formed tugged at something in the back of my mind like a word on the tip of my tongue.
I'd seen this before.
I moved close enough that the individual ridges of each scar resolved into clarity, their pale and ropey texture similar to that of bubbled sun blisters. Heat rose from his skin in waves that warmed the chill coating my fingers.
My hand rose a fraction higher, index finger tracing the air a half-inch above his skin, following a line I had not consciously identified yet. Suddenly, the pattern crystallized in my mind.
"Orion's Belt," I whispered, the revelation stealing my breath. "Three stars in perfect alignment." My gaze traced the elegant curve descending his spine with mathematical perfection. "And there, the ecliptic line. The sun's annual journey through the heavens."
My mind was racing now, cataloging faster than I could process.
Orion here, which meant Taurus should be—yes, there, near his right shoulder. And if the ecliptic was following standard progression, then—
"You have a star chart carved into your back," I said out loud. The absurdity of the statement didn't make it less true.
"Can you read it?" he asked.
Could I read it?
I'd spent a decade mapping these exact patterns. I knew Orion's placement in the autumn sky better than priests knew their prayers, could identify zodiacal progressions by instinct alone and he dared ask if I could read it?
This trick, however, was that this wasn’t the night sky through a telescope. It was skin.