Chapter 52
WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER FLIRT AND CLIMB ROPES AT THE SAME TIME
“. . . and then I threw my harpoon and skewered the sea beast’s tongue against the deck!” Jax imitated the manner in which the sea beast flailed by shaking the rope.
Fifteen feet above the ground, Millie halted her climb up the rope to let the tremors pass.
Her pulse drummed in her ears and sweat dampened her palms. Jax’s stories always set her heart to racing and her spirits soaring with possibility—the perfect imagination combination to pretend she was climbing the rigging of her future ship for whatever reason, whether it was in defense against a rival crew, to tack the runaway edge of a sail, or, in Jax’s case, to hunt a legendary monster.
“You alright up there, miss?” Sir Roger called when she hadn’t resumed her climb.
“A mite windy up here,” she replied. Jax had never wiggled the rope before, and to keep her grip was putting strain on muscles she didn’t know she had. It took some concentrating. At least the rope’s fibers were porous, so they helped absorb the sweat from her palms. To a point.
“Aw, she’s fine. She did twenty feet yesterday. Now get your fanny in gear, missy,” Jax told her. “I was at least thirty feet above deck before I leapt with my dagger to finish the fearsome beastie off!”
From where he slouched against the dungeon bars, Sir Beauregard snorted. “You’re so full of crap, Jax. There’s no way you could kill a sea monster with a dagger.”
“That’s crabscat to you, landlubber,” the deckhand fired back without breaking character. He swirled the rope in time with his rolling hips. “And you haven’t seen the size of my dagger.”
The men chuckled, and Millie smiled. She enjoyed their ridiculous banter.
“Are you swaggering your hips right now, Jax, or are you having a seizure?” Duncan asked.
“I thought you were an educated gnome, Duncan. Clearly I’m performing a perfect samba. Keep watching and you might learn something.”
“Stay up there, Miss Millie,” Sir Roger sighed. “In fact, keep climbing. There’s idiocy afoot down here. Jax’s thrashing around and calling it dance lessons.”
“Don’t listen to him! You could learn a thing or two, missy.
Pirates know all the sultry dances. It’s how they sneak into the marine officers’ masquerade balls and seduce the ladies out of their jewels.
I’m sure you could learn something applicable to seduce a man out of his . . . cufflinks? Coin purse? Clothes?”
Sir Roger thwacked the deckhand in the arm, and Jax chuckled.
“If she wants to seduce someone out of his coins or clothes, she’d better learn the horizontal mambo,” Sir Beauregard suggested.
The other men groaned, except Duncan, who lowered his book curiously. He was a lord’s son, so of course he knew all the popular dances, but this one he’d never heard of.
“I don’t believe I’m familiar with that dance step,” Millie replied with a whoosh of an exhale. She had a bad habit of holding her breath as she climbed, which Jax had assured her was a very effective method for passing out and falling to her death.
“Lucky for you, Miss Millie,” Sir Beauregard said, “I excel in that particular dance.”
“Really? I thought big men like you bungled dances. All power but no finesse, you know? Leads to a very unsatisfactory experience, I’m told.”
Sir Roger guffawed.
“None of my partners have ever complained,” Sir Beauregard assured her.
“None? Were they given the chance, or did you acquit yourself immediately after the coupling?”
Jax snickered.
“Perhaps you’ll just have to find out for yourself,” the knight insisted.
“Perhaps I will. At least then I’ll have something to compare it by when I dance with Jax and Duncan.”
“I don’t know that dance,” Duncan admitted. “But I’m sure Sir Roger does, seasoned gent that he is. He can take my place.”
“Can we get back to the fish story now?” the hedge knight asked loudly.
Jax quickly resumed his tale, and Millie continued her climb. Pinning the rope between her feet, she shoved upward and gained another six inches. Thirty feet—that was today’s goal, and it was marked by a red ribbon she was expected to claim and bring back to Jax.
Nothing but air stretched out on either side of her for a dozen feet in either direction, except above her, where the top of the rope was so far away her vision blurred before she could make out the massive hook Dirk had screwed into the underside of the workroom floor.
Another shove of her feet, another yank of her arms, and she drew level to where the apprentice sat on the steps with a book spread across his lap. His back against the wall, he leaned towards the light of the lantern by his knee to read. Fink snoozed in the hood of his robe, whiskers twitching.
His gaze flicked from the pages to her struggling on the rope. The lanternlight flashed across his spectacles. “If you don’t tuck that butt in, Tula, I’m going to spank it with Sir Roger’s cane.” He turned the page. “That’s why your arms are shaking.”
She fixed her posture, finding immediate relief.
Readjusting her grip, Millie stole a glance at the studious apprentice.
This was the most he’d voluntarily said to her in a week.
It was snarky, sure, but did that mean the old grumpy Bradley was back?
The one she could tease without risk of inconvenient butterflies taking wing in her stomach?
“Like you could reach me from way over there,” she tested.
He flipped another page. “I’d find a way.”
“There’s no way you’re reading that fast.”
“Concentrate on your own work, Tula.” There was no bite to the nickname.
“That would be easier to do,” she grunted, “if I wasn’t sweating like a hog at a sausage festival. It’s hotter than a devil’s bunghole in here.”
Bradley shook his head, his mane of black curls swishing over Fink and rousing the ferret. “Cultured and eloquent, as always.”
She smothered her smile at his judgmental assessment.
Perhaps everything had returned to normal between them after all.
That moment when he’d knelt in front of her, looking up at her with such wonder in his eyes, her fingers tangled in his hair and a breath away from dragging him upright to crush his mouth against hers—just a fluke.
Good. That was good. She could concentrate now.
She wasn’t in danger of becoming sidetracked and muddleheaded and smitten.
Yet her gaze drifted back to him, captured by the sight of his thumb rubbing slowly back and forth across his bottom lip—an unconscious movement when he was hyper-focused on his studies.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered what it would be like to remove his spectacles, tip his chin back, and draw that bottom lip into her mouth.
Crone’s Crooked Tits, it was suddenly extra sweltering in this tower.
“Are you sure another sandstorm isn’t coming?” She inched her way up the rope, glaring at the infernal red ribbon and blaming it for not being the most attractive thing in the vicinity.
“Yep,” he answered, without looking up. “That heat you’re feeling is called exertion. It’s a result of work. As a princess, I wouldn’t expect you to know the term.”
“Retired princess.” Her feet were now level with his head. “And what do you think I’ve been doing for the last month and a half if not ‘work?’”
“Your pathetic approximation of it.”
“Pathetic it might be, but at least I’m not confusing it with lounging.”
Bradley, who had his long legs stretched out along the step he was seated upon, merely crossed them at the ankle. “I’m conserving my energy. As you should be. Stop talking and get climbing. You’re missing the rest of Jax’s story. It’s utter hogwash, but it’s entertaining.”
“As if you’d know?” she goaded, but there was a curve of a smile to her lips. Millie was enjoying this friendly banter. The keyhole of fledgling amicability had opened up between them once more.
“’Course I would,” Bradley snorted. “I grew up on the Cut. Only our sea monsters actively attack ships.”
The princess and the apprentice stilled at the same time. A crimson flush rose up Bradley’s neck like the rush of mercury in a temperature gauge on a boiling summer’s day. The red ribbon fluttered against Millie’s chin, but if she retrieved it now, she would have no excuse to linger.
“You grew up on the Cut?” Millie kept her voice low so the others wouldn’t hear, but there was no way to tame the unbridled excitement. “I’ve read so many stories about it—the storms, fish as big as castles, the—”
“Whales. And they’re not fish.” He snapped his book shut and stood. Fink chittered and fought to keep from sliding out of the apprentice’s hood.
“Whales?” she tried out the word. “Are they truly that large? What about kraken?”
Bradley tucked the book under his arm and snatched up his lantern. “Forget I said anything.”
“But—”
“Enough, Tula.” The apprentice pounded up the stairs.
And just like that, he’d shut her out again. Plugged that keyhole with cotton and sealed it with wax.
“Piss and plagues, Mr. Donmarin,” she snapped. “You’re just like Viscount Saltreave. He likes to run away from things, too.”
The apprentice froze on his stair. Every muscle, every ligament, every bone turned to stone. “What did you just say?”
“Viscount Saltreave, the lord of the Cut? Figures his subjects would be just like him.”
Bradley whirled. “We’re nothing like that coward. He and his armada stay tucked away safe in the harbor while we fishermen defend our homes from pirates and sea monsters and worse with nothing more than harpoons. How dare you equate us.”
“What am I supposed to think?” she fired back.
“Anytime there’s an inkling of cordiality between us, a chance for us to coexist in this place in peace, you scuttle back like one of those hermit crabs into your shell.
Like you prefer to increase that chip on your shoulder instead of heal it and be happy or something. So, yes, you’re just like him.”
“Oye, what’s going on up there?” Jax gave the rope a little shake. “You stuck or something?”