Chapter Fourteen Before #3
“True, I haven’t met a lady before.” He shrugged, and a lock of blond hair fell over his shoulder, long enough to brush the base of his throat. The gold chain around his neck gleamed bright against his skin, trailing out of sight beneath his collar. “Even so, not what I expected.”
“I suppose I enjoy being unexpected too,” Cat countered, surprising them both.
His smile flashed, the golden fang glinted in his mouth.
“Indeed, Lady Rose.” His voice deepened. “So, what do you have to offer?”
Though she was a lady of the Meridian, raised to be ignorant of less-polite society, separated from gutter snipes and jeering drunks, Cat was not so foolish as to miss the layers of implication.
She remembered when Captain Meedy had asked if there was something else she was willing to trade when Captain Morovant waylaid the Credence.
How his gaze had raked her collarbone. Valerian did the same now, his eyes trailing to her exposed shoulder, then her neck, then her clenched fists.
Cat had never felt so exposed, and yet—her breath caught. Her waist still prickled, her cheek still flamed. Every time he touched her, Valerian seemed to leave ripples in his wake. As if she was a pond of still water, his fingers skimming her surface to draw up something deeper and unseen.
Cat did not know what to make of it, the burning echoes and trailing eyes. They unsettled her, confused her, made her head spin and her skin itch.
But it was nothing compared to Ryman or his pale eyes.
The way his gaze turned everything cold and gray.
Even through layers of silk and petticoats and ribbons.
Against bedsheets. On ship decks. In rolling carriages.
On the steps of the country estate, sold out from under her.
In their decaying room on Rosby. By daylight. By darkness.
I hope he dies in the brig, she thought bitterly.
Valerian allowed her silence, only tipping his head, content to watch. Cat felt a little like an animal being coaxed out of a hole. She supposed it was not so far from the truth.
What do you have to offer?
“To run is to die. To pay is to live.” She gestured to her planted feet, bare on the plank floor. “I am not running.”
“You don’t have much choice in the matter,” Valerian said. “But certainly, we will ransom the officer back to his navy. That can be easily arranged, we’ve done it enough.”
It was a small relief. Jasper Fell did not deserve to die here, and Cat cheered to know it would not be his fate. He may not even be ashamed, if the ransoms were so common as Valerian said.
“Of course, he must agree to the trade,” the captain added wistfully. “Though he doesn’t seem like the sort to choose.”
Cat blinked, confused. “The sort to choose what?”
His smirk curled. “To sail under the black flag.”
“You would offer him a position on your ship?” she said incredulously. A strange feeling washed over her, the drifting sensation again. It is only the ship, Cat told herself, the ship and the waves beneath.
She thought of Greer, the servant who asked to join Morovant’s crew, trading a life of service for a life of plunder.
“Where do you think most of my crew comes from?” He laughed, enjoying her bewilderment. “Half the pirates in the Lyrian Sea were navy once. Be it Meridian or Esperese or Itziman or Arcayan. Why do you think we know how to toy with the fleets so well?”
In her chest, her heartbeat skittered and Cat could not help but think of the she-pirate out on deck. The woman with the flowing river of black hair. Ana, Valerian had called her. And she was not the only woman who served aboard the Covenant.
Did Valerian offer them the choice too?
Her mouth went dry.
Would he offer it to me?
Cat dismissed the thought as quickly as it came.
One glimpse at her hand, her soft, white palm, was enough to kill her hope before it could even bloom.
She was a lady of the Meridian, a courtly wife.
Her only skills were at the card table, her only use what little lords and ladies she might bring into the world.
There was no room for her on this ship, or any other.
She was useless in every sense, she knew that. But she would not bear Valerian telling her so.
Her teeth clenched, her mouth remaining resolutely shut.
The captain of the Covenant did not seem to enjoy silence. He shifted against the desk, crossing and recrossing his arms.
“What of you?” he prodded, eyeing her again.
Cat knew what a sight she was. Her eyes were probably red from seawater and tears, her hair frizzing and knotted. Her shift had finally dried, now stiff with salt. She despaired at the thought of her face, freckled after six months in the Lyrian, without rouge or lipstick or powder to look decent.
The captain was still staring, a little line appearing between his brows. As if she was a puzzle he was trying to put together.
A puzzle with missing pieces, Cat mused. Good luck.
“We own Rosby Island and an estate upon it,” she said stiffly, tossing her head. A curl fell across her forehead and she brushed it away as if it were a feather in an ornate headdress. “There are farms, orchards, fresh water. We have made ourselves quite the living here.”
Cat did not enjoy lying, but she was good at it. Lies were easy to spin and far easier to look at than the truth.
The line between Valerian’s eyebrows deepened.
“On Rosby?” he scoffed in disbelief. “I do not recall such things on that rock you call an island.”
“Then you have not seen what Meridian engineers can do,” Cat answered without hesitation, though her mind whirled.
If he knows even a little of Rosby, then he will know I’m lying.
Valerian uncrossed his arms and leaned, bending at the waist to close the distance between them.
It was starting to annoy her, the intensity of his stare, as if she were a horizon, a storm, or another ship.
Something to overcome or conquer. She steeled herself against the swirl of a tempest in his eyes, refusing to be pulled under.
“I do not recall an engineer with you on the crossing.”
“Perhaps your recall is not entirely perfect,” she said imperiously, her voice laced with annoyance.
And desperation. “I do not keep my husband’s accounts, but I am privy to them.
There is a great deal of money for Lord Rose, both on the island and in Archenport.
Not to mention back home in a bank on Bristol Street. ”
At the mention of the glittering financial heart of Brycam City, the seat of the Empire’s wealth and center of her economic power, Valerian’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline.
It felt like a point scored in a game Cat did not know how to play, but she celebrated anyway.
Valerian Kane was a pirate before anything else, and valued money above all things.
It was good to know what made people move, and clearly, Valerian Kane moved for greed.
She smiled at him, triumphant.
“Deliver us to Archenport,” Cat said, “and I will make you a wealthy man, Valerian Kane.”
He grinned at her in return, the corners of his mouth curling in a dangerous way.
“I already am a wealthy man,” he replied, but she saw the hunger in him still.
Not just for greed but glory too.
Cat raised her chin. “Then I will make you known and feared. Tales of you will echo through the fine homes of Archenport and beyond when I am free.”
It felt like waving a strip of meat in front of a predator with too many teeth, who might forgo the meal to swallow her instead.
But Cat would not relent. Her bluff depended on it.