Chapter 13
“Enter,” Rowan called, as a timid knock sounded at the door of the captain’s quarters aboard the Kraken’s Fury.
Yves finished straightening Rowan’s collar.
The door opened, admitting David Beckett, his wooden box of paints and brushes tucked under one arm, and a canvas and folded easel under the other.
His wide hazel eyes watched them from the threshold for a moment as Yves brushed imaginary dust from the shoulders of Rowan’s jacket.
“Honestly, darling. I wish you would wear something more suitable,” Yves sighed, but he wasn’t really complaining. His gaze was sharp as it roved over his husband, no doubt planning in meticulous detail how he would divest Rowan of every stitch of roguish finery after the painter was gone.
Said painter made a small noise, as if to remind them he was there.
Yet when Rowan looked his way, David’s face was not flush with fear, as it was every other time one of the pirates talked to him.
His expression was shuttered and disapproving, brows pinched together and lips thinned to a line.
It was truly uncanny how much he resembled Robin.
Though Rowan had never seen such a dour look on the good doctor’s face, not even when Henri let Fox get him into mischief that was likely to land him back in the infirmary.
“Shall we begin?” Rowan said. David nodded curtly.
He unfolded the easel and settled the canvas onto it.
It contained the background of a half-finished portrait David had already been working on before capture.
The subject, it seemed, had been hastily and recently scraped away.
But Rowan could still see the faint lines of a woman in a burgundy dress on the canvas.
Rowan found it fascinating how the amorphous layers of color slowly added up to the broad strokes of human form.
The man was talented, despite his seemingly sour nature.
Rowan was sure Yves forcing him to cover all his hard work to paint two pirate captains instead didn’t add to David’s already poor opinion of them.
But Yves had been practically giddy at the prospect of having their portrait painted, so Rowan hadn’t had the heart to ban him from bullying David into it.
Rowan dropped into the waiting chair, and Yves took up a position standing at Rowan’s shoulder after planting a kiss against the short hair on the side of Rowan’s head. David’s expression soured further, and he mumbled something Rowan didn’t catch.
Yves, however, tilted his head inquisitively.
“Care to share that out loud, painter?” he said coolly, annoyance and threat threading his voice.
David flinched, his brush halfway to the canvas with a small blob of black paint on its bristles.
Rowan didn’t know much about art, but he was fairly sure there should’ve been some sketching involved before paint went on the canvas.
Painting directly over another work probably wasn’t the best idea either.
He hoped for Robin’s sake that David would actually do a good job, or Rowan might not be able to save his brother from destruction at Yves’s hands.
David seemed to collect himself after a moment, taking a deep breath as if to shore up his courage. “That’s Master Beckett to you,” he snapped, voice only wavering slightly. “I was trained at the Art Academy of Yrenmoor.”
An amused smile curved Yves’s perfect lips. “I call no man master, least of all a mewling pup like you.”
David scowled.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Rowan said placatingly. “I have better things to do than sit here.”
David remained where he was, brush poised in the air.
“Start painting, Beckett,” Rowan reiterated.
“It’s Master Beckett,” David gritted out.
Yves’s amused smile grew. “He also calls no man master…except for me.”
That startled a laugh from Rowan, but David flinched again, nearly dropping his brush. Red heat rose up his neck, and he quickly averted his eyes, mumbling something that sounded like dirty sodomites.
Ah, so that was his problem. Rowan suddenly remembered the reason Robin was on his ship in the first place. He’d run away from his bigoted family. It seemed that he was the only apple that had fallen far from the tree.
Yves’s hand clenched where it rested on Rowan’s shoulder. The amused smirk fell away. Rowan rested a placating hand atop his to soothe whatever murderous intent was boiling up in his chest.
“Just paint,” he ordered David.
David’s jaw worked as if he wanted to say more, but the paint finally touched the canvas.
Tense silence unfolded as David’s brush moved softly across it, his eyes flicking back and forth from the pirates to his work.
Rowan and Yves remained still, their only movement that of Yves’s thumb rubbing over the back of Rowan’s shoulder.
Rowan began to grow restless, his legs tingling and neck aching from sitting in the same position too long. He rubbed at his eye, dislodging the eyepatch. A telltale shadow flickered in the corner of his vision.
“Yves…” Rowan said warningly. Yves said nothing.
David glanced up at them, then back to his painting.
The first cool touch of shadow caressed the back of Rowan’s neck, his skin breaking out in goosebumps.
The tentacle, still no more substantial than a ghost, spilled over his shoulder into his lap.
The tip of it dipped between his legs, caressing his crotch over the laces of his trousers.
Rowan twitched and cleared his throat, hoping that Yves would take the hint and back off. It wasn’t as if he could swat the tentacle away in front of David. No one but Rowan and Yves could see it.
David frowned. “Stay still, please.”
Rowan nodded and folded his hands in his lap instead of lazily draped over the arm of the chair as they had been, trying to subtly fend off the tentacle’s groping.
David let out a deep, put-upon sigh. “Put your arms back where they were, please.”
“Maybe we should be done for the day,” Rowan suggested.
“If you don’t want the portrait, maybe you should let me go,” David gritted out.
“Let you go?” Rowan raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’d survive long on the Teeth.
” Maybe he should have felt bad for treating Robin’s little brother like this, but the young man was absolutely infuriating.
David’s ears turned bright red, and he set his brush on top of the wooden box with a click.
“Look, I don’t know what you have over my brother, but I want to bargain for his freedom.
” He looked as if he was about to pass out from fear, but he held strong.
Rowan opened his mouth to tell David that his brother was, in fact, a free man and if anyone had condemned him to a criminal life, it had been David and his family.
But Yves’s fingers tightened again on his shoulder.
“Go on,” Yves said lazily. “I hope you’re not going to offer your painting skills or yourself in his place. Neither are worth our best physician.”
David swallowed visibly and took half a step back, as if he thought Yves would leap over the easel and murder him if he said the wrong word.
“I-I know some information. The Ghost Hawk is being hunted.”
“Oh? Do tell,” Yves said. Only Rowan could hear the strain underlying his voice. The tentacle stopped its teasing.
David’s eyes flicked between them.
“Well?” Rowan prompted, sitting forward. It was no secret that he and Yves had the biggest bounties on their heads of all the pirates in the Islands. But if someone in particular was coming after him, it was better to be prepared.
“Give me your word that you’ll free Robin.”
Their word? Who would trust the word of a pirate? David certainly didn’t trust them, so what good would their word do? David seemed to realize this too, and followed up with, “Swear on your ships.”
“It depends on the information,” Yves said.
“It’s worth Robin’s freedom,” David replied firmly.
“Fine. I swear on the Siren Song that he will be free to go,” Rowan said. Robin was already free; it cost Rowan nothing to make this promise. And besides, he’d promised nothing about letting David go. It would be something to hold over him later, if the need arose.
David’s gaze found Yves, expectant.
“He has no say in what happens with your brother,” Rowan said. “I am Robin’s captain.”
David met his eye for a moment, judging his sincerity.
“I was hired to paint a portrait of the new Kefryean governor, and when you’re the hired help, important people tend to think you can’t hear them or that you can’t understand what they’re saying.
” David grimaced, as if he’d been lower class his whole life instead of the youngest son of a wealthy family.
“Is there a point to this story?” Yves drawled.
David sucked in a breath and snatched up his paintbrush again, clutching it to his chest as if it could protect him from Yves’s ire.
“While I was painting, the governor took a meeting with a mercenary, some sort of exiled Kefryean noble and—”
A roaring in Rowan’s ears drowned out whatever David said next. An exiled Kefryean noble, now mercenary? It couldn’t be…
“What was his name?” Rowan interrupted. He didn’t know when he’d gotten to his feet, but he found himself standing. Yves’s hand had fallen away from his shoulder.
“I—What?” David blinked.
“What. Was. His. Name,” Rowan gritted out.
“The new governor? He’s—”
“Not the governor, the mercenary!” Rowan growled, taking a threatening step toward the cowering painter.
“It was…” David paused, wracking his brains to remember. “S-Shaw?”
Fuck.
Rowan’s pounding heart dropped into his stomach, acid eating into its poor callused walls. Warrick Shaw, that motherfucking traitor.
It all came rushing back. Warrick’s easy smile that had always seemed like he knew some amusing secret.
The way he used to be so amenable to whatever Rowan wanted, never giving him any reason to doubt.
He’d been Rowan’s first mate before Logan, when Rowan was eighteen and a newly minted pirate captain and Warrick was just a year older.