Chapter 77
ONE BED AND PROPRIETY FAINTS
The tempest raged through the night like a spoiled birthday boy who hadn’t received every present on his wish list with howling, temper tantrums, and many, many tears.
Lightning cracked across the black sky, rattling the warped shutters and making the bones of the inn shiver.
The Dreary Pelican moaned and creaked and at one point pitched precariously to the left like a drunkard who’d fallen off his pub stool only to catch his balance shortly thereafter.
In the morning, the storm relaxed into a deluge.
Circadian rhythm woke Millie, rousing her despite the lack of sun, and she found herself curled into the apprentice’s body with the same boneless trust of a kitten.
His arm was warm draped around her, his thumb idly sweeping up and down along a small section of her biceps.
Bradley was awake, eyes faraway as he gazed out the open windows.
The shutters had blown open during the night, but the rain fell flat and refused uninvited entry. The beach town had been diminished to a wall of gray so thick that not even the salt tossed up by the sea could penetrate it.
She must’ve tensed, for Bradley’s gaze swept down towards hers and his thumb stopped stroking. “Hi.” His voice was gravelly with morning.
“Hi,” Millie whispered back. She wet her lips, wondering for how much longer she could stay snuggled against him without propriety giving her an earful. The room was dreadfully chilly outside the confines of the tiny bed, so surely an exception could be made as a matter of survival.
Survival doesn’t need your nethers hugging his hipbone nor your nipples seeking refuge in his ribs! Propriety shrilled.
And you’ve clearly forgotten that one of the warmest external areas of the human body is the groin, Millie replied snootily. If anything, I’m being exceptionally generous sharing my body heat in such a fashion.
And your nipples?
They’re facing the existential crisis of frostbite. Better his ribs than his mouth, wouldn’t you say?
Propriety fainted, and Millie’s thoughts were left in peace.
For only a heartbeat, because the image conjured by her winning argument flooded her with a whole host of emotions she had no right to feel.
She was to be the One in Ten, a lady pirate captain with standards, not a slut who’d lose her dignity to a moment of carnal lust.
And as such, she should kick him out of her bed this very instant. Instead, she found herself asking, “Did you, um, sleep okay?”
Bradley’s gaze wrenched back to the window.
Had he slept okay? The mattress was as thin as a cracker, the springs like corkscrews digging into him.
The princess had tula’d him again, her arm encircling his ribs and her leg thrown high over his thighs .
. . and he fallen into the deepest and most satisfying sleep of his entire life.
Only one part of his anatomy had woken painful and aching this morning. “Better than I expected.”
Her cheek brushed against his chest as she angled her head, making that part of him that he had worked so hard to calm down with thoughts of gutting fish and dirty dishes in the sink rouse once more.
“Mr. Donmarin, the hollows under your eyes, they’re gone!”
“I told you.” He cleared his throat. “Better than I expected.”
The two of them lay in bed, hardly daring to breathe or move.
Now that they were fully awake, they should’ve parted, or at least one of them should’ve readjusted themselves on top of the bedsheets.
Chivalry commanded Bradley be the one to give up the warmth of the blankets, but then there would be no hiding the effect the princess was having on him.
“Should I—?” She shifted to put some space between them.
Bradley’s arm tightened around her immediately. “Don’t go. Your, um, robe is really warm.”
“It’s lambswool.”
He nodded, seizing the excuse. “That would explain it.”
The tension between them eased, and Millie readjusted her head against his chest to watch the rain. How was hard muscle and tan skin far superior in comfort to goose down and silk?
Warm and contented, her gaze turned from the rain to the little luck dragon snoozing in a coil on the nightstand by the window. “Mr. Donmarin?”
“Hmm?” That faraway look had returned to his eyes, and his thumb had resumed its idle stroking. It felt nice.
Her voice was soft against his chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Dirk sooner.”
The apprentice tensed.
“You had every right to know. I was being . . . well, I was being petty. There. And in my desire to wound you, I end up hurting him. I’m so sorry, to both of you.”
Her apology hung in the air like a ripe peach on a low branch, waiting to be plucked. Bradley swallowed. “And I’m sorry I didn’t foster a relationship with you where you felt safe to tell me. I’ve been the selfish one, Millie.”
A rush of sensation spread through her at the sound of her name from that deep voice.
“And”—he hesitated—“it’s easy to forgive you, because you did have a plan to help him. You truly weren’t ignoring his problem. All those days you stayed up late, you were researching in the workroom, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
His other arm came around her then, squeezing her gently. “Thank you.”
She resisted the urge to hug him back. Not until she was fully unburdened.
“And I’m sorry for running off.” She continued quickly, on the verge of rambling, “That was wildly immature of me, but I was overwhelmed. And distraught. I needed some space to figure it out. I mean, I’m perfectly fine on the dune skiff riding the wind.
But the moment I step foot on a boat? Dirk was right.
How can I expect to be a pirate if I can’t get over my seasickness? ”
Millie flung up a hand in frustration, dispelling some of the heat trapped beneath the comforter. She quickly readjusted the bed linens and flattened her hand once again over Bradley’s chest. His heart drummed under her palm.
The apprentice’s voice was quiet, controlled. “Do you still want to be a pirate after what you saw last night?”
The sound of cannons and the snapping of masts under the consuming power of purple magefire echoed in her ears. The screams of men.
“I’ve told you, Mr. Donmarin. I will be a pirate the likes you’ve never seen.”
“I need you to explain that to me.” There was an edge to his voice, a warning in his fingers pressing into her arm. “Please.”
She swiveled a look up at him; he’d never asked that before.
“Amberlian law states that a princess may choose her own husband from a pool of suitors, but those suitors are vetted and gathered by her parents. Amberlian law also states that the king and queen, regardless of consort status, have equal say in the governance of the kingdom.”
“Oh.” Bradley could see where this was going.
“Every suitor I’ve met is only interested in what Amberly can do for his country and fortune, not what he can do to help me and mine.
We are small, but rich in resources, and those men would be cowbird chicks in the Amberly nest—consuming every morsel at the expense of its parent kingdom and that kingdom’s own children, our citizens.
It’s not just the Amberlian servants who’ve rated the highest on Continent Careers’ job satisfaction and mental health polls for the last fifty years, it’s our people, too. ”
“At the risk of sounding argumentative, that seems like a dangerous generalization. How do you know all the men you’ve met only wish to use Amberly as their own piggy bank?”
“Because I spied on them, of course.”
Bradley shook his head. “But of course.”
“My ninth etiquette tutor, Miss Violeta, stressed upon me the importance of arriving fashionable late to any event in order to make an entrance. While I thought that was actually inexcusably rude—”
“And it is.”
Her lips quirked a quick smile. “—I was forced to comply. Well, what to do while I was waiting to arrive? I’d already studied and embroidered enough for the day, and it’s not like I had any friends besides Duchess to entertain me.
So why not learn what people would say behind my back? It was very enlightening.”
“You’re frighteningly pragmatic, you know that?” His tone was accusatory, but his blue eyes twinkled.
Her smile was wider this time, and a smidge smug. “So yes, Mr. Donmarin, I can confidently say that every one of my suitors—with the exception of two—was a leech in man’s clothing.”
“Call me Bradley, Millie. And who were the two?”
It was easy to keep the blush off her face when she thought about the gaggle of idiots who’d attempted to woo her over the years. “Oh, one was a simpleton who I’d have to manage—as if I wouldn’t have enough to worry about already—and the other was clearly in love with someone else.”
“So with such undesirable prospects, obviously you had to turn to piracy.”
“Precisely. Only as a pirate, unfettered by Amberlian law, could I do what my country needed most—be its advocate. Repel those who would weaken it.”
“But Amberly has no seas, nor rivers deep enough for a galleon.”
“Correct. But those wretches who would bleed my country certainly do.” Her expression was a charming mixture of sweetness and savagery.
“So you’d give up the life of a princess to become a vigilante to ensure the safety and prosperity of your people.”
“Exactly. I’m not looking to conquer or take that which is not mine. I wish only to make the lives of those who would hurt my kingdom insufferable.”
“So you wouldn’t be targeting merchant ships or fishermen or innocent villages.”
She laughed, truly amused at the preposterousness of his preconception. “Of course not. I would only engage those entities that pose a direct threat.”
Bradley shifted in the bed then to look her full in the face. “That really would make you a pirate I’ve never seen before. You’re a pirate who would hunt down the pirates looking to plunder your kingdom.”
“Exactly,” she agreed simply.