Chapter One #4
“Hallo, Uncle Laney,” she said, without looking up.
She had her father’s brown skin and thick black hair, but retained Peter’s grim expression.
Someone had teased her hair into buns and tied them with ribbons, which had probably taken hours of wheedling.
Orla was in a phase where all she wanted to do was dress and act exactly like her father. “Are sirens real?”
“Ned swore he saw one once,” Delauney said.
“He said that, but I need corroborative evidence.”
“Try tossing an apple over the side of the ship and see if they complain.”
Orla glanced up from her book so she could give Delauney the most aggrieved look known to Iperios. “I know when you’re making fun.” She raised her brows at Wes. “Who are you?”
“Wes.” For a flash, Wes almost looked like he was smiling. “I don’t believe in them either.”
“It isn’t a matter of believing in them, it’s whether they exist,” she said, and turned back to her book.
“Wait out here,” Delauney told Wes, reaching for the door to his bedroom. “I’ll be just a minute.”
“I can put my things with the rest of the crew,” Wes started to say, but Delauney was already oozing past his bedroom door.
Delauney regarded the pile of clothes in the spare bunk.
The desk was full of papers. The window hadn’t been cleaned in months, and the view outside was foggy and indistinct.
His bed was unmade, a pair of trousers hung off a bedpost—and oh, damn, where had he put the spare sheets?
Wes couldn’t sleep without sheets. They were probably somewhere.
They had to be. He hadn’t taken them out of the room, but things had a habit of disappearing in plain sight.
So did time. After what felt like only a few moments, Delauney heard a knock on the door. He whirled around as Wes gently pushed it open.
“It’s been about twenty minutes, sir,” Wes said. “Did you need...” He stared at the room in silence. Delauney nervously pushed a discarded shirt under a larger pile of clothes.
“It isn’t normally like this,” Delauney said.
“Right.” Wes took a step into the room. Paper crinkled underfoot.
“You know how it is.” Delauney kept his voice bright. “When a fellow can’t be bothered to... don’t touch that, please.” He lurched forward as Wes approached a box of papers and bits of metal. “Sharp edges. Don’t want to hurt yourself.”
“Is this why you had me come here?” Wes’ face was impossible to read, but not because it was blank.
While Ferrin could school his face into perfect vagueness, Wes was almost too expressive, his face shifting from one emotion to the next as he regarded the horrifying mess that was Delauney’s room. “You wanted me to clean for you?”
“No! No, I can do that myself.” Except he hadn’t. He couldn’t. Every time he tried, the piles loomed like the dunes of Thalassa, threatening to swallow him. “I didn’t want you wasting away in Mount Hazel.”
Wes cut a look toward Delauney, but Delauney couldn’t tell if there was judgment or disappointment in his furrowed brows and full mouth. “You mean that.”
“I’m not the best liar.”
Wes turned away. Delauney took the chance to toss a handful of papers in the chest at the foot of his bed, but Wes looked over his shoulder in time to see them. “Is there anything else I shouldn’t touch?”
“Perhaps not the toys in the closet,” Delauney said. Wes raised his brows. “I do keep them clean, thank you.”
“Wasn’t asking,” Wes said, but he had to be thinking it.
Delauney hadn’t been so humiliated since he’d returned from his first tour at sea to find his bedroom stripped bare.
His father had bustled up cheerfully, but Delauney had ignored him, searching for the notebooks he’d kept since he’d been a boy.
“We cleaned it all up for you,” his father had said, while Delauney tore open drawers and stared into a spotless closet. “Isn’t that a treat?”
Now, Wes stood in the middle of Delauney’s room, mouth pressed tight in thought.
“Don’t read anything,” Delauney told Wes, jumping ahead of him to grab a paper. “If you’re thinking of cleaning, that is. Don’t throw anything away.”
“That might be part of the problem,” Wes said.
He frowned when he saw Delauney’s face. Delauney wasn’t sure what he saw there, but the disapproval was evident in his voice.
Even coming from a fellow submissive, it was enough to make Delauney want to set a course for Diabolos and spend the next few weeks in a brothel far away from the mess unfolding in his quarters.
“I know how it seems,” he started to say, but Wes interrupted him.
“Wait outside and I’ll see what I can do.”
“You don’t have to.”
Wes gave Delauney a scathing look, and a piece of Delauney’s soul withered into dust. “Isn’t this part of my job?”
“I don’t know if I can say...”
“Out,” Wes said, and even without any natural dominance in his voice, his expression was stern enough that Delauney scuttled away like a chastised schoolboy. Wes closed the door after him, and Delauney turned to where Orla was sitting with her feet propped on the table.
“Sounds like you’re in trouble,” she said.
“You know what, Orla,” Delauney said, slumping into one of the dining chairs. “I rather think I am.”