25. In which there is a very deep, mutual hatred and some things are too good to be true
IN WHICH THERE IS A VERY DEEP, MUTUAL HATRED AND SOME THINGS ARE TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
The leaks always happened while she was asleep.
Hester stifled a yawn, crouched in the starboard bilge with Winston. It was dark, she was wet and freezing cold and the rotten egg smell of the bilge water had her pinching her nose. All she wanted was to curl up in her sleeping bag. Not that the reindeer pelt smelt much better.
“There, that’s got that hole filled.” Winston slammed the hammer down one last time and stood back to admire his work.
Hester sniggered. “Wish you’d fill my—”
Winston gave her a mockingly stern look. “Very funny.” He grinned and then yawned, stretching in the cramped space.
“To bed with you. Thank you, Winston,” Hester said, wrapping her arms around his middle and squeezing tight. She really didn’t know what she’d do without him.
He hugged her back. “You’re welcome.”
Hester climbed from the bilge and grimaced as the ship groaned and quivered around her. A pistol shot fired, so loud that she crouched to the floor and covered her ears. Her blood ran cold. But it was only the beams of the ship cracking overhead.
“Good God,” she muttered. The floe was pressing in on the ship in dangerous ways, and over the last two days so many leaks had sprung that there was a constant watch for incoming water.
The fires had burned continuously to power the bilge pumps, and the coal was running low.
Luckily, Winston had invented a stove fuelled by blubber for them to cook on.
Hester made her way to the chart room and stood at the large table. She picked up a pencil and tapped it against her mouth, scowling at the charts. She was starting to grapple with the thing she had dreaded.
That the Valour might not make it out of this adventure alive. That her friends might not either.
She braced her hands on the table and let out a long breath, calculating how long it would take to unload the rest of the provisions, how far it would be to drag the lifeboats over the ice floes to open water, and where they might try to sail to after that.
The odds on making it over a thousand miles to South Georgia with no ship seemed… low.
The thought of losing the Valour made her want to throw up, but she wasn’t sure how much more the ship would take. Millions of tonnes of ice pressed in from all sides, and as another pistol-crack rang out, it seemed that the ship was in agreement.
She slumped onto the settee and ground her teeth.
The sun had sunk briefly beneath the horizon but would be back up in a couple of hours, the days growing longer and longer as they approached summer.
She sat in the gloom, all alone with thoughts of crushing ice and splintering planks, until Charlotte walked in.
“What are you doing up?” Hester asked, shoulders tensing.
“I just came off watch.” Charlotte rubbed her arms, frost falling from her coat. “You look…pained.”
“I am. I feel her agony in my very bones,” Hester said, wincing at another moan of the wood. “It sounds as though she is dying.”
Charlotte straightened her spine. “It’s not over yet.”
“Not yet.” Hester patted the space next to her on the settee, the place Fliss would usually sit.
A pang shot through her heart. Oh, she missed Fliss.
Things were still awful between them, and a moroseness had gathered over her like a fog she could not clear.
Charlotte sat beside her. At least Septimus seemed to have forgiven her since she’d told him more about her magic.
Had reverted to calling her little witch.
She had been enjoying playing silly tricks on him again these past few days. It was helping. A little.
Hester pulled out the watch rota from her coat pocket and looked down the list of names. “Say, did Septimus just come off watch, too?”
“Yes. He looked like he’d eaten a wasp’s nest, though.”
“Did he indeed?”
Heavy footsteps thudded along the corridor outside. Hester raised a brow, her heart skipping a beat. She had wondered when he’d come. Her lips curved upwards.
Septimus’s muscular bulk stood in the shadow of the doorway, and he pointed a finger at her. “You took my sleeping bag. Give it back.”
Hester feigned a look of innocence. “You have no proof of your claim, my lord. Why, it could have been anyone.”
“But it wasn’t anyone, was it? It was you.” He stalked forwards, and Hester leapt up off the settee and scurried around the back of it.
Oh, yes. He was going to chase her. It was exactly what she needed to take her mind off everything. Just a little more poking should do it. “What would I want with your mangey, rotten, stinky old sleeping bag?”
“God in Heaven only knows.” He darted to the settee, reaching for her, and Hester sprang back and then rushed to the door.
“I might have seen it, but you’ll have to catch me first,” she said, winking and then bolting down the corridor, heavy footsteps behind her. That delicious spark coursed through her veins, coiling in her core, a much-needed distraction from her worries about the ship, about Fliss.
“Hester Orn! Get back here.”
Hester cackled, racing down the steps to the Ritz and hiding behind a stack of crates with her hand clapped over her mouth, panting through her nose.
Septimus’s footsteps thudded on the stairs, and she squealed through her fingers, fully aware that she was giving away her hiding spot. Reeling him in.
“You want me to catch you,” he said, his voice getting closer. “Don’t you? And what do you want then?”
Hester pressed her back into the wall, imagining exactly what she wanted him to do. Namely, pin her against this very wall and—
“There you are, little witch.” He stood before her, face shadowed.
Her breathing hitched. “Hello, my lord,” she purred, tilting her head back, eyes half closed.
Achingly slowly, he took her wrists and pinioned her to the wall, all of his body pressed against all of hers. She stifled a groan, and he sighed in her ear. Shivers ran down her spine.
“As hard as I try to stay away, it never seems to work.” He shifted against her.
Hester closed her eyes, barely able to contain her desire. She wanted his mouth on hers, and she wanted that long, hard length she could feel through his breeches, wanted that deep inside her.
The ship creaked all around them, and still he held her in place, toying with her, and she burned and burned.
He hovered his mouth a hair’s breadth from her neck. “And what to do with you now? There are so many options.”
She could not move, or speak, the moment dangling on a knife edge.
He dropped his voice lower. “You deserve a severe punishment for stealing.” He shifted her wrists into one hand and dragged a finger down her neck, between her breasts, down her stomach.
She shivered in anticipation. Yes, yes, yes. This was exactly how she’d dreamt it. Slow. Torturous. Delicious.
And then there was a thunk.
Septimus sank to his knees.
Then to the floor.
Behind him stood Charlotte, a length of timber in her hands, her eyes wide.
Hester squealed, “Charlotte!”
“Are you alright?!” Charlotte dropped the timber and staggered back from the prone figure of Septimus. “Did he hurt you? Tell me he didn’t, the great beast.”
Hester’s jaw dropped. “What did you do?!”
“I couldn’t let him hurt you.”
“So you—you whacked him?!”
“You told me to go for the temple or behind the ear. Back in Argentina. That’s what you said.”
“Charlotte!” Hester wailed. “He was not attacking me.”
It took a heartbeat for Charlotte’s face to change from anger to understanding to shock, her mouth forming a perfect circle. “You—you—and he…are you sure?”
Hester bent to Septimus, who was coming round, groaning and rubbing the back of his head. “Oh my God. Are you alright?”
“Yes. What the Hell was that?” He pushed himself up, staggering to his feet, and held onto the wall, wincing.
“Charlotte was protecting me,” Hester said, and now the initial shock of it had passed, it was tremendously funny. She stifled a laugh.
Charlotte backed away, her hands held up. “I’m so sorry—I thought you were going to hurt her.”
Septimus threw Charlotte a withering look. “Hurt her? Why would I hurt her?”
“You did that day in Ernest’s office! And you’ve hardly been kind the past few months. What was I supposed to think?”
Hester smirked and folded her arms. “Exactly. What was she supposed to think?”
Septimus shook his head, then grimaced, pressing a hand to a rising lump. “Where is my sleeping bag?”
“I set it to warm by the stove, so it would be all snuggly for you,” Hester said, her lips quirking to the side.
He dragged a hand down his face. “How…kind.” And then he stalked from the Ritz.
Hester clutched her stomach, laughing hard. “I cannot believe you did that. I’d be mad at you, but—I thought I was finally going to…oh, well. It’s too funny to be mad at you.”
Charlotte’s face was a picture, and Hester burst into laughter again. She could hardly believe her ill luck. But then, she did so love the chase. Would it ruin it to go through with the rest?
“Are you two…? Since when did you—I thought you hated him!”
“Nothing has happened. And I do hate him. It’s a very deep, very mutual hatred. And it’s hot as Hell.” Hester sighed and leant back against the wall, closing her eyes. It had been so tantalisingly close.
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “You’re very odd.”
Hester smiled. “Don’t come back to the cabin for fifteen minutes, alright?”
“Captainly tasks?”
She frowned. What was Charlotte talking about? “No, I’m going to make myself—”
Charlotte covered her ears. “I know exactly what you’re going to do. But…why don’t you just go to him?”
“And ruin the anticipation? Oh, no. It’s too delicious.”
And there was another reason. A reason that Hester didn’t want to explore in any more detail. The idea of falling in love.
“I’m sorry, let me get this straight,” Arnold said, his eyes wide. “You knocked Septimus out cold with a plank of wood?”
“Yes,” Charlotte whispered, head in her hands, elbows resting on the galley table.
“Because he had Hester up against the wall and was threatening to punish her?”
Charlotte nodded, cringing. How stupid she’d been not to see it for what it was. A lot of Hester’s behaviour towards the man started to fit into place. Even her moroseness took on a new light. Had she been pining for him?
“I think that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard,” Arnold said with a wide grin. “And how did our illustrious captain take this?”
“She…told me not to go back to the cabin for a while.”
“Is she in there with him?!”
“No, no.”
Arnold passed her a mug of steaming milk. She wrapped her hands around it, letting the warmth soak into her palms. Outside, the dogs had started up their orchestra of howling. Charlotte still couldn’t understand their noisiness.
She sipped at the milk, licking the foam from her upper lip. “She said she didn’t want to ruin the anticipation. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
Arnold shrugged, his gaze dropping to her mouth. “I suppose I can understand it.”
“You can? It seems ludicrous to me.”
“Some things feel fragile, too good to be true, and if you grasp at them, it might well crush them.”
Charlotte stared. “That was very poetic.”
He smiled. “Perhaps I speak from experience in such matters.”
“Clearly. But I don’t understand it, myself. If I were to fall in love, I wouldn’t want to wait.” She glanced at him. She didn’t know why she’d said that. It was a lie.
Arnold cleared his throat, staring into his mug.
How sad he looked, how forlorn. The poor man.
She wished she could do something to help.
He smiled again, though the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
And she realised something crucial in that second.
How could she have been so stupid not to have seen it before?
“Arnold! Oh, I think I have finally worked out who it is you love who doesn’t return your feelings.” She reached across the table for his hands, and his eyes lit.
“You have?”
“Yes. I cannot believe I didn’t realise before.”
The smile that broke over his face was truly breathtaking.
She squeezed his fingers again. “It’s Hester!”
Arnold groaned and slumped forward onto the table, his hands becoming slack in her grip.
“It makes perfect sense now.” Charlotte smiled at her cleverness, how she had finally uncovered the truth behind Arnold’s heartbreak.
But what was that little part of her that felt pain at this discovery?
She bit her lip and pulled her hands from his.
“I think it’s safe to go back now. Thanks for the milk. ” She hurried from the galley.
“Charlotte, wait!”
But she couldn’t stop until she was safe behind the door. Because for some reason, there were tears spilling down her cheeks.
Charlotte burst through the door of her cabin, and Hester sat up in bed. She wiped her cheeks and could barely look at Hester as she slid into her sleeping bag.
“Whatever is the matter? Boss?” Hester’s cheeks were flushed, and there was a brightness in her eyes that had Charlotte burrowing even deeper into the fur.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. What happened?”
“I’m just tired. And worried.” As if to corroborate her feelings, the ship gave a screeching groan. “Is this the end of the Valour?”
Hester scoffed, and then hesitated, whispering, “Maybe.”
Charlotte shivered, dread pooling in her stomach. Maybe. The fact that Hester had admitted that much…well, it wasn’t good.
She lay awake for a long time, listening to the grinding of the ship battling against the onslaught of the floe.