Chapter Fourteen Before #2
“If we are to be laying blame, best give it to your captain. He didn’t store his powder properly, probably moved the magazine above the water line for easier access—and doomed his ship in the process.
” There was a flush high on his bronzed cheeks, slight but clearly visible to Cat’s eye.
“Those shots were meant to disable your ship, not destroy it. It wasn’t my fault. ”
To Cat’s shock, she heard desperation lace his words. Sincerity, even. And logic too, much as she hated to admit. There was no prize to be had in a disaster such as this.
“That’s certainly a good excuse,” she muttered. “Though I don’t know enough about powder or magazines to ascertain the truth of it either way.”
“You’ll learn.” The flush disappeared and he looked out, not to the Venerable, but empty stretches of sea. “We all do.”
The sun rippled off the water, dancing across his face and in his eyes.
It smoothed him out, wiping away long, harsh years of life in the Lyrian.
With a start, she remembered he was not so old as he seemed.
There was no gray in his short beard or gleaming hair.
The lines on his face were worn by smiles and squinting eyes, not age.
And his hands, rough as they looked, were still nimble and deft.
She watched them now, splayed on the desk, the lines of shifting light spraying gold against already golden skin.
Somehow, his hands gave her pause, her eyes tracing his long fingers. One was crooked, perhaps broken long ago. And his knuckles looked raw, red from use. On deck or in a brawl, Cat could not say.
Both sent a current of heat to her core.
She swallowed hard, forcing her gaze back to his face.
“There is no we where you and I are concerned, Captain Kane,” she murmured.
“Is there not?” He looked back to her, an eyebrow raised. “We who crossed the ocean, leaving Meridia behind for another horizon?”
We who crossed the ocean. Cat pursed her lips, turning his words over, puzzling through them. Again she searched his face, mapping his appearance like territory to be examined.
He was not pale like other men of the Meridian, even the sailors. But the rest of him—the blond hair, those tempest eyes torn between blue and green, his accent, rough as it was, but not unfamiliar to the docks or the gutters of Meridian shores.
The twinkle of amusement returned to his eyes, like stars between rolling thunderheads.
“You enjoy confusing me,” she grumbled.
Valerian pushed back his hair, though most of it fell back into the same place, curling past his chin to brush his shoulder. It was strangely endearing.
“I enjoy being unexpected,” he countered. “I was not born to nobility or wealth, but I am not so far from you as you might think, Lady Rose. You’ll learn,” he said again, this time with a deep sigh. “You’ll learn what life is here, if you choose to stay. If you do not return to the Empire.”
Cat chewed the inside of her cheek, her mouth filling with a bitter taste.
“There is no life to return to in Meridia,” she said without thought. “So I suppose this is the lot of it.”
Valerian’s eyebrow rose higher, and Cat cursed inwardly.
“Only that I mean my husband has found such great success here,” she added, too quickly, her voice pitching high.
You fool, at least act like someone who can muster a ransom, she chided herself. Silently, she prayed Valerian would take her at her word, or better yet, ignore them entirely. Men often did.
“I am just a silly woman saying silly things,” Cat said, pressing a hand to her temple in performance. “Think little of them, sir.”
“You do not seem silly to me,” Valerian answered in a voice like granite.
It made Cat shiver in her chair. But for the circumstances, she might have enjoyed it.
“Lord Rose would never return to Meridian shores, I assure you,” she told him. “There is too much wealth to be had amongst these islands.”
Valerian’s brow tightened, his forehead furrowing. His gaze turned hard and his lips parted. She did not miss the red flash of his tongue as it ran over his golden tooth, polishing a fang.
Cat braced for his anger, for the brig. Or worse, the depths of the deep blue sea.
“That’s what I keep hearing from men like your husband,” he said, pushing back from the desk.
She flinched as his chair scraped over the floor and Valerian stood in a single motion, his eyes heavy on her. She felt his gaze on her trembling hands, her parted lips, chest heaving one harried breath after another. His own lips opened again, as if he could taste her fear. And her lies.
Her fingers curled, nails digging into her palm. The sharp bite gave her something to feel besides Valerian Kane’s infernal focus.
Only when he looked away did she release a little, some tension unwinding in her chest. But not entirely. Cat was still prey in a predator’s lair.
His eyes skipped over the many maps across the room, and Cat followed his gaze. Most of them were Meridian made, with severe lines of latitude drawn by skilled cartographers, the lay of the Lyrian islands mapped out in painstaking ink. Stooping, Valerian seized one and held it up to the light.
The sun illuminated a chain of islands, arranged in the shape of a fishing hook.
Cat recognized them—had seen them at the bottom of every map of the Lyrian Sea—but she did not know their names, nor which kingdoms laid claim to their shores.
They were foreign, as so much still was, and she ventured would always be.
“Vultures, all of them, looking at this place like a carcass to be picked clean,” he finally said, tossing the map aside to level his gaze at her again. “It’s what your empire does.”
It sounded like an accusation, though Cat hardly thought she was the one to deserve it.
“You said as much,” she snapped, stung. “But you are of the Empire too.”
“Being born there doesn’t make me part of it,” he retorted hotly, pacing in front of the windows. With a sweep of his hand, he gestured to the carcass of the Venerable, growing smaller by the second. “Especially not when I’ve sunk a Meridian ship.”
He did not say it with pride, or even warning. But Cat was not a foolish woman. Valerian Kane was a pirate captain, no matter how young or fine-looking. No matter his quick smile or deft hands. No matter how he looked her in the eye when he spoke to her, unlike almost every other man she knew.
There was no forgetting the danger of him. Especially not with her only allies in the world shackled in the belly of his ship.
“Vultures.” Cat’s voice trembled.
She stood so quickly, her chair fell backwards. Her free hand sliced through the air, a finger pointing straight at Valerian’s chest.
“Are you not a vulture too, preying on the weak as they make the crossing?” she demanded, as her mind told her to be quiet.
But she could not. Something in her would not allow it. This was not the parlor of a fine country estate or a city townhome, where she had to be demure, her smile fixed, her eyes downcast.
This was a pirate ship, in the middle of a lawless sea.
If my life is to hang in the balance, it will hang by my own measure and no one else’s.
“Exhausted crews and weary travelers make for easy targets, don’t they?” she continued, her eyes narrowed, the words spilling from her.
Part of her expected the captain to strike her across the face.
It certainly would not have been beyond the realms of thought.
Ryman had not hit her before, but there were enough rough shoves and disgusted looks to know he would, if the circumstances allowed.
She did not expect much more from a pirate.
Instead, Valerian crossed his arms across his chest, his tight expression loosening into something thoughtful. And surprised.
In his silence, Cat heaved a breath, willing her heartbeat to slow and her flush to disappear.
Neither obeyed.
“If given the choice between jumping and being thrown,” he finally murmured, and Cat’s head spun.
She spoke the same words to him six months ago, under not-so-different circumstances. The familiarity made her heart pound harder.
“I choose to jump,” Cat finished, echoing herself.
The sea rolled beneath the ship, and for a moment she felt unmoored again. Then she truly was, losing her balance as the deck rocked. She threw out a hand, aiming to catch on to the desk before she could hit the floor.
Cat hit a solid wall of muscle instead, the side of her face pressed against tanned skin and surprisingly soft curls. Another touch burned at her waist, and she glanced down with a yelp, spotting Captain Kane’s arm curled around her middle, holding her upright.
The heat of his embrace burned through her thin shift, just as his bare chest burned against her cheek.
And there was no ignoring the smell of him now, the weight of tobacco and salt and sweat threatening to pull Cat beneath a rushing tide.
She almost let it, frozen for a moment, unmoving in the arms of a pirate.
When she thrust backwards out of his grasp, scarlet from head to toe, the pirate only made things worse. He didn’t move, grinning, laughing at her as she righted her chair and her dignity.
“You are not the sort of lady I expected,” he said, sighing.
One foot crossed the other and he leaned backwards against the desk, his body braced in front of her.
It left little distance between them and did nothing to make him look smaller.
If anything, Valerian seemed to take up more space, his body only a few feet from her own.
He radiated warmth still, but Cat told herself it was just the close air of the cabin, and the sun beating through the glass.
“I doubt you’ve met a lady before,” she said, abandoning her chair. The remaining arm had splintered in her haste, and she refused to sit in it again, lest it collapse beneath her and truly destroy any shred of her dignity still left.