11. The Long Truce #2
She knew why, but she didn’t want to entertain it. If she did, she might consider staying, if only to keep trading smiles for swords and to feel that touch skimming her waist.
“He probably thinks I’m dead,” she said. “I imagine he’s married some other girl who will make a decent baroness.” The edge of her mouth lifted. “Not as good as I would have been, but Oliver is smart enough to find someone worthy of him.”
He chuckled at her vanity. “Well, I bet he adored you.”
And dammit, she couldn’t tell if he was teasing. Even so, Cecily didn’t take her eyes off his smile, and she wondered how someone could look so cruelly beautiful and not be a devil.
She held out her sword, hilt first. “Till tomorrow.”
“We’ll be in Tortuga tomorrow.” He nodded to the sword. “Hold on to it till evening.”
She lowered it an inch, her heart sparking with joy. “Why?”
He sheathed his sword at his hip. “Because I want you to.”
The wind tugged at her hair again, flinging the loose strand to flutter over her eyes. Jack lifted his hand, pausing an inch from her face as though she might lean away. When she didn’t, his fingers brushed her skin, slipping her hair behind her ear with a feather-light touch.
A shallow breath slipped from between her lips, tingles spreading from where he touched her, all the way down to her toes. He lingered there, his skin warm on her face, his piercing eyes studying her blushing cheeks, her chin, her lips…
Jack pulled his gaze to hers. “Enjoy your afternoon, Cecily,” he murmured, his voice turning the words to silk. Her heart decided to take up residence in her neck as if it wanted to be as close to her ears as possible so that it, too, might hear him say her name in that way.
“Y-you too,” she replied, and immediately blanched for the horror of tripping over her words.
With a parting smirk that threatened to leave her in shambles, he strode away. Seconds later, a new voice muttered, “Well, that was heated.”
Cecily jumped. Hester stood nearby, the points of her teeth peeking from beneath her top lip as she grinned.
After Cecily revealed her crime a week ago, Hester was the only one who didn’t treat her differently.
In their first conversation the day after, Cecily had been the one to bring it up, to which the butcher girl had said, “Oh, dear friend, I have no problem with murderers. I only wish you’d killed your cousin too.
” And she had laughed even though both of them knew it wasn’t a jest.
“What was heated?” Cecily sheathed her sword, turning her back and heading for the rail to give her blush time to fade.
“Ohhh, you know exactly what,” Hester said, keeping pace. “You and Jack. Jack and you. All the little touches and glances and—” she came to stand beside Cecily as she stopped at the edge of the ship, “enjoy your afternoon, Cecily.”
Cecily turned her face to the salty breeze and pretended Hester didn’t exist. What a shame, because her friend so rarely approached her, and Cecily would have liked to enjoy this.
“Greyson and I have a bet,” Hester said. “He thinks you’ll confess to each other on land while we’re in Tortuga. I bet him it’ll be at sea.”
Cecily narrowed her eyes. “Confess what?”
Hester beamed her horrific smile, and it made Cecily wish she hadn’t taunted her. “You know, I heard you laugh—truly laugh—for the first time this week. You’re happier.” She raised her eyebrows as though to say, Jack did that.
Cecily waved away the comment with a casual flip of her hand. “It’s being off that damned prison ship. Jack has nothing to do with it.”
“Mm, I admire your ability to snake around the truth, but it’ll catch up with you eventually. You can’t run from it forever.”
Leave it to Hester to see far more than Cecily wanted to acknowledge. A few days ago, she might have been petulant at such a bold declaration, but now enough of her heart had thawed to delight in the feeling of having a caring—if preoccupied—older sister.
“I don’t have to run,” Cecily said. She slid her arm around Hester’s shoulders and said with a mock hiss, “Snakes can hide too.”
Night descended, and Cecily still hadn’t given the sword back. Most of the crew prepared for bed while others milled around the galley. Jack wasn’t among them, so she went to the private rooms near the stern and knocked on his door.
No answer.
She knocked again, and when still no one came, she grabbed the latch. The door was unlocked, and she peeked inside.
His room was surprisingly large, and she marveled that one man could have all this space to himself.
His bed, bigger than a single person might need, was neatly made, and the desk mounted to the wall was free of clutter.
A table and chairs were bolted to the floor across the room, and an armoire stood in the corner, its doors closed.
On the far wall, a porthole looked out on the moonlight glinting off the water.
“Looking for someone?” a deep voice asked.
Cecily flinched and snapped Jack’s door shut, spinning to face Greyson and Hester standing behind her.
I wasn’t snooping, was the lie that hurled up her throat, but she swallowed it down to ask a much-less-suspicious, “Have you seen Jack?”
Greyson’s eyes lowered. With the three of them cloistered in this tiny hallway, she was struck at how large the bald man was. If he wanted to, he could probably block the entire corridor with his shoulders.
“He was up on deck, last I saw him,” he said. “Might be talkin’ with the cap.”
“Thanks,” Cecily said, and set off toward the main deck.
From behind her, Hester muttered to Greyson, “I’m gonna win.”
Emerging into the tropical night air, Cecily scanned the few milling occupants, mostly couples enjoying the stars before turning in.
When she didn’t find Jack, she wandered to the starboard, gazing at the city set into the coastline like a glittering jewel.
Tomorrow they’d disembark, and her feet would finally be on land again.
And then she would run off. Potentially. Unless she had some reason not to.
The promise of her plan sparkled there over the water, but when she thought of the next steps and how she might follow through, she wavered. After this afternoon with Jack and then Hester, she felt that escaping this pirate life might bring about a particular, if not peculiar, sense of loss.
She wasn’t sure if she was ready to lose anything yet.
“And what of the Shoard girl?”
Her ears perked at the captain’s voice. His door was cracked, spilling a thin line of yellow light to where she stood.
She couldn’t see the captain or whoever was in the room with him, but she stared that way nonetheless, her attention drawn by the sound of her name spoken like a taste he was eager to be rid of.
“All is as well as can be expected,” came Jack’s reply, his tone bored as though he craved his father’s preference for any other topic. “I have no issue with her.”
Copson chuckled. “Clearly. Are you friends now?”
A sigh. “Would you prefer I remain her enemy? Expend my energy guarding myself rather than winning her good graces? She’s no trouble at all when she feels safe.”
“I suppose if it makes her easier to manage.”
Cecily frowned. Easy to manage? Jack wasn’t managing her. He wasn’t because that would mean all he’d done to earn her trust—her friendship—was false. A manipulation.
But she wasn’t stupid. She knew people and would know if Jack had deceived her.
Wouldn’t she?
“I don’t mind being her friend,” Jack said.
“I don’t mind you being friendly,” Copson replied. “But I don’t think that’s what you’re doing.”
“Oh?” She pictured Jack folding his arms like he often did when he used that sardonic tone. “Enlighten me. What am I doing?”
“I told you to give her a sword to train the crew.” A pause. “Of all the swords we have, why’d you choose that one?”
Her gaze dropped to the lovely hilt at her hip as Jack laughed and said, “I knew she’d appreciate it.”
“You wanted to win her smile,” Copson said, the words lilting with mockery.
“Everyone on this damn ship is married,” Jack replied icily. “Will you begrudge me for wanting to make a pretty woman smile?”
“Make them all smile. I don’t care. But I see the lengths you’re going to win her smile.” Copson’s voice hardened. “Have your fun, Jack, but don’t get attached. Girls like her aren’t suitable for men like you.”
She glared at the captain’s door as though she could burn through it.
Girls like her weren’t good enough for a pirate—the lowest in society who deserved worse than what she would have suffered?
While she would have been strung up on the gallows and thrown into an unmarked grave, Jack would get his head sawed off and his body hung along the Thames to be eaten by crows for all he’d done.
But she wasn’t good enough?
Then Jack surprised her as he replied, “You think I don’t know that?”
Her grip tightened around her sword with its ugly inlays and gaudy hand guard. She glared at it, feeling like a fool for ever trusting Jack.
But he made me happy, a small thought whispered. He made me his friend. And maybe we would have grown into—
She banished it. They weren’t friends. They’d had a truce, and now it was over.
“Remember who you are,” Copson said.
Jack’s tone was resigned. “I know.”
That was all she could take. She stalked toward the crew’s quarters—and stopped short at the top of the steps.
Morgyn stood in the shadows, her black eyes seeming to suck the light into their soulless depths. She broke into a feral grin, and Cecily knew she’d heard everything.
“Getting too cozy with the first mate?” Morgyn asked. “Sounds like he isn’t too keen on you after all.”
“Rot in hell,” Cecily grumbled.
With a giggle, Morgyn turned and disappeared into the dark.
Instead of following, Cecily spun on her heel and headed for the bow The rest of the crew had gone to bed by now, so she took up her spot behind the foremast and scowled at the stars.