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“Why? Don’t your men trust the real you?” I leaned forward.
“I’d like to think they would.” Bellamy looked down, tracing the rim of the liquor bottle with his fingertip. “But my father is a much fiercer man than I. He can command his crew with just one look and they cower. But I don’t want to be like him. I want my crew to respect me, not fear me. So, I try to show them I’m one of them.”
I listened to Bellamy’s words intently. This was like meeting him all over again. It was a side of Bellamy I had no idea existed. “Well, they seem loyal enough.” I shrugged. “You must be a good enough captain.”
“I’ll take the compliment, but we’ll see what my father thinks when we make port tomorrow. He was supposed to be making a stop at Nassau for a delivery exchange.” His eyes darkened as he spoke. He shifted his gaze from the rum bottle to the water below, hardening his expression.
“Well, I’m glad to be on your ship,” I said, brushing a strand of loose hair behind my ear. “And if your father has a problem with how you’ve been running things, then he’s the real jackass here.”
I thought I saw Bellamy’s lips widen into a small smile, but it quickly faded. He glanced at me. “He’s not a bad man. He’s just been blinded by the pursuit of wealth.” He drew in a deep sigh as I listened, urging him to go on with a nod. “It’s never enough. We have plenty to return to Spain and make a life now, but he doesn’t see it.”
Not a bad man, I wanted to say. Until he tried to cut my heart out.
“He promised my mother he would return when he’d made his fortune. Her parents didn’t approve of their relationship because my father was just a poor sailor. And when I was born out of wedlock, they were the shame of the village. So, my father swore he’d become rich and powerful and come back for her. But he’s never satisfied.”
“I had to be away from my mother for a long time, too. I’m sorry. I’m sure you want to go home.” I looked up at him longingly through my lashes.
“I don’t want to go home. I want to spend my life at sea. But I want my father to return for my mother. It’s only fair to her.” He paused and shifted, readjusting himself along the hull in a way that put him a few inches closer to me. “She waits for him. I remember how her face lit up when she saw his ship coming in the distance when I was ten.”
“Why didn’t he stay?” I asked.
“He did for a short while, and then he said he needed to be richer than the king himself before he would have what he wanted. He took me with him. And he set back out to find something that could give him that kind of wealth.”
“Has he found it yet?”
“I’m not sure,” Bellamy shrugged.
I thought on his words for a moment. Mermaids. They were his key to power and riches. Milo had said Valdez used them to bargain with the elites and rulers of the world, making him more powerful than them. If Bellamy knew about that, he wasn’t letting on. But of course, why would he expose something like that to some random girl he’d pulled from the ocean?
“Anyway,” Bellamy looked down, his hair falling in a way that made me shift against the hull. The warmth I felt rising in my face was more than enough to fight the chill of the night breeze. Something was welling up in me again, pooling in my core and my head like an unwelcome visitor I was fighting to keep out. “That song, if you must know, was a song my mother used to sing. She’d wait for my father at the shore, hoping one day he’d finally return as promised.”
Bellamy shook his head, as if trying to escape an invisible net. When he composed himself, he looked at me, strangely. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” he said.
Suddenly, I didn’t like that he’d stopped. I wanted to know more. There was more. But not if he wouldn’t tell me.
Make him tell you.
The voice in my head sang loudly, like a chiming bell in a hollow space. I leaned closer to him, and placed my hand on his knee, sliding it up to his thigh. “It’s okay,” I said gently, in almost a whisper. “You can tell me anything.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, leaning toward me. “The strangest thing about it is that I swear I can hear a woman singing it on my father’s ship when he’s in his quarters. And it’s not my mother’s voice.”
Cordelia. There it was.
I studied his face. He was rugged and handsome and the curve of his mouth drew me in like a rushing undertow. “Why don’t you sing that song again, Bellamy?” I couldn’t even recognize my own voice. The seductive way my words came out disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop it. And without hesitation, Bellamy began to voice the words under his breath.
“Lost out at sea
“Do you dream of me?”
He paused for a gentle breath. One that I could feel along my cheek as there was now only a finger’s width of space between us. I opened my mouth to sing the next line, softly as a feather against his nose.
“By the call of the waves
I hear you and seek you
Till again the roaming sea
Brings you back to me.”
