Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
T hat night, I dream of Weston.
It’s not a pleasant experience, like my usual nocturnal imaginings of him. This dream is raw and painful, brimming with accusation.
We’re at the cotton mill, right back in Calder’s office, only this time, Weston has me caged against the wall. He leans close, his hands planted to either side of my head.
“You kissed him,” he hisses. “A man who kidnapped you. How could you? Don’t I mean anything to you?”
It’s something Weston would never say, and that alone tells me I’m dreaming. Which frees me to unleash the full brunt of my frustration.
“Of course you do,” I snap. “You’re all I ever wanted, you ridiculous ass. Which is exactly why I kissed Jack. Because I’m sick to death of you refusing to touch me, of wondering endlessly what you would feel like. I kissed him because I needed to do anything besides want and want and want you all the time. I kissed him because I needed to forget you.”
Weston’s lip curls. He’s angry. That much, at least, is true to life. “I guess you’re going to tell me that’s why you kissed Theodore, too? Why you gave yourself to someone who isn’t even worthy of hearing you breathe?”
“Of course I am.” My chin rises, and he leans closer, as if magnetized. “I let Theodore take whatever he wanted from me, just so I could feel something. But you know what? I didn’t think about him once. I tried, but all I could think about was someone else.”
Weston’s glare deepens, a lethal amber glint in the shadows. “Who? Who else?”
I glare right back. Fortuna, sometimes I just want to hit him. Most of the time, actually. “You already know.”
His tongue slides over his bottom lip. “Maybe. Maybe I do. But you know I can’t let you waste yourself on me.”
My control frays, and I reach for him. The fact that he thinks of it that way, as a waste instead of a mutual gift, cracks my anger down the middle. But the meager distance proves uncrossable. It swells and swells, my fingers catching at empty air.
I can’t let you waste yourself on me .
His words echo until I’m falling into them, and then I’m spiraling upward, pulled into awareness by the hack and scrape of someone fighting for breath.
My eyes flutter open. I startle at first, unsure of where I am, but then it all rushes back. I sit up. In the other room, someone is coughing themselves into oblivion.
I ease from bed, anchoring my hands to the wall, and pad along until I’m directly opposite the sound. I flatten my body to the stone, lending the poor woman as much of my lucky bubble as I can .
Her coughing dwindles. A few rattling breaths lance into her lungs, and she quiets. Sheets rustle.
I hope she’s able to get comfortable.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say to the wall. “I’m going to make sure you get better.”
If she hears me, she doesn’t say anything. I stand there for what feels like an hour while the chilled rock pulls the warmth from my bones. Last night, I dug a nightgown out of my trunk—a gift from the duke, finely woven and softer than butter—but the silk proves too thin to insulate me.
When I start to shiver, I peel myself away and go to the fireplace.
The ashes should be long cold, considering dawn’s light is peeking through the window and no one has fed the fire since last night.
But a tiny pocket of embers glows at the back. The moment I nudge it with a stick of kindling, flames burst to life.
I blink. Jack must not be nearby.
Within minutes, I have a crackling fire going. I hang a kettle of porridge over the flames and add a splash of the milk I brought in from the coldbox last night.
Then I stand before the merry fire and frown. There were eight bottles out there, and little else. Which, in any other circumstances, I would ascribe to my luck, but Jack shouldn’t be affected by that. It’s almost like he knew.
A thud jars me from my ruminations.
I glance around to find a book splayed on the floor, fallen from the bookcase. When I move closer, I see that it’s my favorite. An adventure tale, about a woman who assumes a man’s identity and joins a pirate crew, only to fall in love with every sailor aboard. She ultimately reveals her true self and sails off into a life of crime and passion, now the treasured darling of twenty gifted lovers.
It’s utterly unrealistic, and I couldn’t adore it more. But I haven’t read it in years.
I pluck the book from the floor. Just my luck that a copy of this would find its way here.
I settle back into bed with my find. Within moments, I’m aboard the Dolphin of the Dawn, the sea breeze crisp in my face, my lashes stiff with salted spray. I’m so engrossed that I forget the porridge, but fortunately, a log cracks in the fireplace at the precise moment the kettle almost bubbles over. I leap to my feet and save my breakfast just in the nick of time.
Once I’ve filled my belly, I return to the book. I even shove the bedframe over a few feet so I can lie directly opposite the mystery woman. She coughs and tosses a few times, but I barely hear it, because now the heroine is mid-rendezvous with Charlie, the pirate captain who’s uncovered her secret before anyone else. He’s locked her in the captain’s quarters, and the crew outside assumes that all that shrieking is because he’s caught her stealing and is now punishing her.
That’s definitely not what’s happening.
The day slips by. I spend it on the high seas, and when I turn the last page, barely enough light slants through the window to see by.
I close the book and set it on the quilt. I can’t believe I just spent an entire day inside. I can’t believe I spent a day in bed . Reading.
Goddess, I love this place.
A chill is falling along with the dusk, and I rise to tend to the dwindling fire. I’d expected to see Jack again by now, but when I think about it, he did say he’d come in the evening.
I wonder why. Maybe he works. Maybe he was far away today, despite saying he’d stick close enough to ensure I didn’t run.
The woman coughs again. I toss together a slapdash dinner—crusty brown bread from the cupboard and a few slices of cheese from the coldbox—and dive back into bed. The moment I do, my charge’s struggle eases.
I lie there and listen to her bedsheets rustle. When everything quiets, my mind roams. Inevitably, my thoughts land on Weston.
That dream. In it, I told him everything I long to say, the same words that forever crowd my throat and never find air. Except what he said back to me—that was real. I can’t let you waste yourself on me .
He spoke those exact words in Calder’s office.
The memory gnaws at me, quiet and relentless. For the first time since he left me in my foyer, I consider that maybe Weston’s hesitation about helping me is because of the threat he poses to my Mark. Well...that and the fact that my brother refused him. But if I wasn’t a Charm anymore, Brendan would no longer have the option of marrying me to the duke. He’d have no choice but to accept another proposal, and Weston would have no reason to keep his distance any longer. We’d be on equal footing, then.
I sit up and cram the last of the sandwich into my mouth, my mind tilting into motion like a boulder tipping downhill.
Weston may have refused to take my luck, but he’s not the only Null I can appeal to. There’s another one, right here in my hands .
A smile itches at my lips. Maybe Fortuna had a plan in mind this whole time.
As if to confirm my suspicions, the door handle turns.
When Jack walks in, he finds me grinning from my place in bed. He wears the same ensemble as yesterday, right down to the black mask. The sun has set, and only a hint of peach light coaxes a sheen from the fabric. Shadows layer the rest of him.
“What?” he says, leery. “Why’re you smiling like that?”
I rein in my expression. I probably look demented, grinning at my captor like I’ve never been so happy to see someone before.
But I am happy, because Jack is the answer. The solution to the thorny puzzle currently looped around my neck.
“No reason,” I say. “Except that I missed you.”
He draws a soft inhale. That might have been too much, but it’s not actually a lie. And it paves the way for me to dare bigger, bolder things.
Because I intend to leave this cabin with more than just a wild story to tell. I’m going to go with a smooth expanse of unmarked skin between my collarbones.
So is Jack.