We will not let you down, she’d said, and he’d felt the words crack the air like cannon blasts.
He brushed water out of his eyes and tossed back his hair, crumpled his shirt in a ball, and spun toward the—
He froze in his attempt to make his way down to the beach.
Ruby was in his path. She’d changed out of her pretty ruffled thing and into a different pretty ruffled thing—she always looked so goddamned edible, so unbearably, torturously delicious. Her mouth was very pink and her eyes were very blue, and he could see the handful of bruises he’d left on her neck, for Christ’s sake, marching in a line of ferocious desire from her poppy-orange beribboned bodice all the way up to her perfect, delectable ear.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, and moved to go around her. “I’m—I didn’t—”
Bloody Christ, the woman made him forget how to talk.
“I’m for the cove,” he managed to say. “I mean to look for the remains of the princess’s dinghy, if I can find it. Or anything else that’s somewhere it should not be.”
His casks were hidden. And his silks, and his sculptures, and his illicit goddamned stockings. He wasn’t worried about the princess discovering his smuggled goods—not really.
And still, fear was a weight in his belly—an anxious tension tangled up with his feelings for Ruby, with his guilt, with his painful unchecked desire.
“I’ll come with you.” She fell into step beside him on the path, and her hand twitched toward his, and then fell back.
Uncertain. She was still uncertain of herself, of how she would be received if she made an overture toward him. And why wouldn’t she be? They had made each other no promises. He could not offer her anything beyond this patch of space and time—vivid and fleeting as the sunset.
It was, he supposed, already over.
His chest hurt. He kicked a rock on the path hard enough to send it exploding into a nearby clump of gorse. “There’s no need.”
“No,” she said slowly, “but I thought perhaps we could talk. About—the princess. About—”
“You ought to stay here at the house.” He was still striding along, and she was keeping up with him, a little flouncy confection made of steel and willpower. “It’ll be safer with everyone around.”
“Surely it will be safe on the beach,” she said doubtfully. “It is a beach. We can see someone coming from nearly any direction.”
“There are caves and cliffs and—” He broke off, glowering at her bare fingers. In her haste, she’d forgotten her gloves. “Never mind. Fine. Come then, if you like.”
She walked beside him in silence for a time—he’d scarcely ever known her to keep silent, and certainly not for a whole quarter hour—and her mouth only twitched once, when he launched another pebble off the side of the cliff.
“You said you wanted to talk,” he said finally when they were nearly down to the cove. “And you’re not.”
“Not—what?”
“Not talking. Not—”
He didn’t know what the hell he was saying—of course she wasn’t talking, he was acting like a sulky polecat, she was no doubt terrified—but he didn’t explain himself. She didn’t let him finish.
“What,” she said crisply, “in the world is the matter with you?”
Ah. Not terrified, then. Of course she was not. When had she ever been what he expected?
“Nothing is wrong with me,” he snapped, in a startling display of maturity and good sense.
“I don’t believe you. You are scowling, for heaven’s sake. Brooding. I’ve never seen your face make that expression before. Are you hungry? Do you require some sustenance? Is that the explanation for your mood?”
There was certainlysomethinghe wanted to devour—
He whirled toward her. “This,” he said wildly. “All of this. It’s not going to work. It’s a goddamned natural disaster.”
We will not let you down.
Fucking hell. Of course he would let her down. There was no good outcome here, no chance for success—no way to protect his crew and have Ruby and untangle the plot against the princess. Her father would learn the truth; Archer would lose his position and his crew. He could no longer keep pretending that he could be everything, juggle a dozen balls and never let one drop. He could no longer let his people believe that they were safe, because they weren’t, not anymore.
