“Don’t apologize,” Gerry said. “And don’t lie.” He broke off. Looked to Ruby and then back to Archer. “He thinks you chose Lady Ruby over him. Over us. The same way you chose Penney.”
The words stung—scored at his skin like a rope racing hot through his palm.
He hadn’t. Or else... God. He hadn’t meant to.
He couldn’t find his bearings. Memories seemed to batter him, a brutal cascade of waves.
TheVictoriousplunging toward them, his orders raw in his throat, shouted, pointless. They were going to be hit, there was no time to turn—
Gerry in the sea, eyes dark above the water, and Archer’s weightless terror as he’d leapt from the deck—
The room he’d lived in with his mother, the ice in her cup, her hand atop his—
When he’d been released from prison, he’d rushed straight home, ignoring his own dizzy hunger, heedless of the raw marks the irons had left on his wrists. He’d burst into their room and then hesitated, confused. Disbelieving.
Someone else had been inside. Some other woman. He couldn’t recall what she’d looked like, nor even what she’d said. Somehow, the stranger must have told him that his mother had died, but he couldn’t remember the words. The blue delphiniums his mother had kept at the window had been gone and so had her books, and he kept on having to reach out to find the wall behind him. The world had rearranged itself: beneath and above and around him.
She’d died. And he hadn’t been there.
He couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t keep pretending that safety was almost within his grasp. That he was one fancy step away from having everything under control.
He wasn’t.
He watched Gerry go after Lamentation, following the curve of the hull until he vanished from sight. And then he looked at Ruby. She was standing very still, her fingers locked together, her lips parted as she looked at him.
“Wait,” he said abruptly. He caught her by the shoulders, pulled her close, and pressed his palm to her back. “Wait. Will you wait? I need to—” He gestured at the dinghy, helpless and wordless. “I’ll be right back. I’ll be—”
He couldn’t lie. But neither could he tell her what he meant to do—not until he knew for certain he could bring it into being.
“Wait for me,” he said. “Please.”
She took him in. Her gaze was clear and sharp, and he thought she could see the vicious storm within him, the jagged rocks beneath.
“I’ll wait,” she said very softly, “as long as you need.”
Chapter 26
He did not come right back. Ruby waited all night—waited in the captain’s cabin with Alice at her side, her heart shivering with dread as she tried to imagine where he could be.
He hadn’t run. She could not believe that he had abandoned them all—that he had told her to wait and then meant never to return. He’d stood on the deck with his legs spread and taken Lamentation’s words like a cannon blast to the ribs. He’d looked stricken, his face gone blue-pale in the moonlight, his jaw clenched tight.
He had made no excuses. And he had not told her where he meant to go.
It was well past dawn when someone knocked.
Ruby was across the tiny cabin in an instant. She pulled open the door, her heart in her throat—but it wasn’t Malcolm in the companionway. It was Eugénie.
Ruby’s lips parted in surprise. Eugénie wore an immense oilcloth jacket draped over her slight body, and her slim brown hand on the door was scarcely visible beneath the garment’s heavy sleeve.
“Is he...” The words faltered, and Ruby moistened her lips and tried again. “He’s not back? The captain?”
“He’s not back. He sent a message. He wants me to fetch you. Both of you.”
“He—what? Fetch us where?”
The corner of Eugénie’s mouth curved down, a small anxious crimp. “Come,” she said. “Put your wrappers on. It’s going to be wet.”
They listened. She and Alice scrambled into pelisses, and Eugénie led them up the hatch to the deck and then into the dinghy. Gerry helped lower the little rowboat into the water, and then Eugénie, her face set, pointed them toward the harbor.
