Chapter Eleven After #3
Fell’s vessel, the Scorpion, lay at anchor in the bay.
Triple-masted and double-decked, the man-o’-war was a commanding sight with at least sixty guns across her decks.
She was dwarfed only by the Revel beside her.
Cat smirked, remembering Captain Carley from the day before.
He seemed pompous and overwrought. His ship was no different.
Not like the Scorpion, with which Cat was more familiar.
She was smaller but more agile, with a veteran crew handpicked over many years in the Lyrian Sea.
While the Revel looked fresh from the shipyard, the Scorpion had her distinct battle scars from years in the Lyrian Sea.
It gave her a distinguished and fearsome look.
Captain Fell, despite his infuriating manner and social climbing, deserved such a warship.
And he deserves this too, Cat thought, laughing openly upon the docks.
Even from a distance, she could see Fell’s face turn red.
He stood at the rail of a merchant sloop half the size of his Scorpion, the shame of it written all over his body.
“Not a word,” he said as Cat boarded the vessel, still laughing.
“What will the ladies think of you now?” she teased, casting a shrewd eye over Jasper Fell. “Between the boat and the clothing, I barely recognize you.”
Gone was the well-heeled navy officer, replaced by a merchant captain with a linen overshirt, breeches, boots, and a bright red waistcoat.
He still wore a tricorne hat, but it was battered and worn.
Cat ventured he bought it off one of the dockworkers, along with everything else.
He looked mismatched and unkempt, the only evidence of his office in the gleaming pistol still belted at his hip. And the ever-present silver ring.
Fell gave an exaggerated shudder and pulled his hat down lower. His cheeks flamed red as his vest.
“I said, not a word.”
“You don’t have to escort me if you don’t want to,” Cat replied, taking a turn about the deck. “I’m told I can be quite difficult. Be rid of me and end the headache before it can begin.”
Beneath his hat, Fell rolled his eyes. “Oh, the headache of you has lasted a decade. What’s a few weeks more?”
She shot him a look over her shoulder before continuing her examination of the single-masted sloop, the generously named Fledge. As well as its sailors.
“Dr. Bryer, Mr. Whisten,” Cat said, nodding at two passing men.
She recognized them from the Scorpion, both looking just as uncomfortable to be out of uniform. Dr. Bryer, the surgeon, gave her a shallow bob of his head in reply. Whereas Lieutenant Whisten glared, his eyes coal black.
“Mrs. Rose,” Whisten growled with naked disdain. He had the look of a bulldog, jowled and mean.
She was unsurprised by his hatred. Whisten was a church-going man, despising of sinners and nonbelievers. Cat Rose happened to be both. She did not miss the way he thumbed at his bracelet of prayer beads, as if warding off something wicked.
Cat took it as a compliment.
The rest of the sailors aboard were all navy, selected from the men beneath Fell’s command. To her surprise, she only counted ten of them, a skeleton crew if there ever was one.
“I don’t see Horton,” she muttered, feeling Fell at her shoulder.
“I left him to take command of the Scorpion.” He gave a pained sigh. “In my absence.”
In spite of the circumstances, Cat felt a bit lighter, a burst of hope blooming in her chest. Whisten hated her, but he was not terribly bright. First Lieutenant Horton was both intelligent and hateful, a difficult combination to surmount. Without him, the path forwards looked much easier.
She spun on her heel, bags swinging with her.
“And what of your threat?”
Fell tipped his head, chuckling. “Which threat?”
With a thunk, Cat let her bags drop to the deck.
“Am I to be afforded a cabin, or must I brave the bilge?”
* * *
THE CABIN WAS no better than a closet, but far better than sharing quarters with sailors.
And Cat would never turn down a locked door and her own bunk, even if it reeked of tobacco.
Judging by the black smudges above her, the previous captain of the Fledge liked to smoke abed.
At least she did not have to stoop, barely an inch shorter than the ceiling.
Fell was not so lucky, his neck bent to accommodate the small, closed space.
He followed her into the narrow compartment, hauling her bags as he went.
Thankfully the compartment had a window, murky as it was.
The glass glowed pink with the rising dawn.
Overhead, boots stamped across the ceiling, which was the floor of the quarterdeck.
All of it made for a claustrophobic sensation, the walls close enough that Cat might only reach out her arms to touch both sides.
Worse still was Jasper Fell, firmly planted in the doorway, caging Cat into the little cabin that felt more like a coffin. She wrinkled her nose and glared around at the meager room, her face a picture of disgust.
“You’ve certainly seen far worse, Cat.” Fell sighed, letting her bags drop. “Don’t make me regret my kindness.”
“Your kindness?” Cat spun on a booted heel and almost collided with Fell’s body. She snarled up at him, jabbing a finger into his chest. “Your kindness would have sent me to the gallows yesterday.”
Fell didn’t move.
“And yet here you stand,” he cut back, bone-dry. His silver eyes swept over Cat from head to toe, before lingering pointedly at her neck. “Very much alive, and in the governor’s employ. With a pardon in reach. How peculiar.”
She bared her teeth. “Don’t act like you’ve done me some kind of favor—”
“Don’t act like I would be the only Meridian officer to put your name on a list.”
Fell’s voice rose, filling the cabin, and his self-satisfied air fell away. Cat saw frustration instead, as color spotted his cheeks.
“There was talk of another round of arrests; you were among them,” he pushed on, a worried tremor to his words. “This was the best way to intervene.”
You’re lying, Cat wanted to snap, to throw his falsehoods back in his face.
It would certainly make things easier to simply hate Jasper Fell.
But she saw the truth in him anyway, much as she did not want to.
Ten years ago, he had tried to help her on the deck of a doomed ship.
And much as she wished he wouldn’t, Fell did the same now.
Her teeth clenched, chewing on the implication. And what else lay beneath.
“You are not the type to give gifts without expecting something in return,” Cat said, her voice low and hissing.
His lips curled, but not into a smile.