Page 38 of Tempest

Osprin’s red smile returned. Despite the heat, a chill ran down Cat’s spine.

“For your sake, I hope not,” he replied.

Chapter Eight Before

IT WOULD TAKE two weeks to sail to Beacon Island. Two weeks to Archenport, to a proper city, to other people.

To freedom, if Cat could only seize it.

She certainly did her best along the journey, laying whatever groundwork she could. Charming Captain Quine, ingratiating herself to his officers. Observing their card games, clapping with amusement whenever one man or another won a mediocre hand. Cat even made sure to save a biscuit for the cabin boy every night, giving it to him in plain view of the other sailors. If the low men talked of Lady Rose, they would talk of her gentle nature and generosity.

Lieutenant Fell looked on silently, watching her with his silver gaze. But his advice was still a steadying anchor.

A sullen, sad shadow will win no allies.

So Cat lit a candle within herself and let it shine upon any who passed. She tried to make herself the opposite of a sullen shadow indeed—all while Lord Rose sank deeper into his toad-like nature. Of Ryman, the crew said many things, none of them complimentary.

“I am a son of House Rose, a born lord of the Meridian. Quine may not be a gentleman, but he is not foolish. He should cede his cabin to us, at the very least,” he muttered over his breakfast porridge.

Her wretched husband refused to eat in the wardroom with the officers or, gods forbid, in with the greater crew. Instead, he insisted on taking their meals on deck, in full view of the laboring men.

It was no wonder Captain Quine had not invited them to dine in his cabin, let alone give them his quarters.

Ryman’s scowl deepened. “It is unbecoming of a lady such as yourself, sharing a bunk with your maid.”

Across the table, Cat scraped her bowl clean, humming a noncommittal answer around her spoon. Sara is a far better bedfellow than you, my lord.

Ryman huffed, the first steps towards another mortifying tantrum. Most days, Cat did her best to coach her husband into being less of an ass, if only to improve her own lot.

Most days she failed.

“At least I am not so ill as I was on the crossing,” he added, snapping at his bowl, indicating for more. Sara was quick to oblige, clearing the bowl to run back to the cook. “The Lyrian agrees with me now.”

“It does indeed,” Cat replied with an empty smile. She eyed his still-sunburned cheeks, his squinting eyes barely tolerant of the brightness, and his hands blistered from even the slightest hint of physical labor. “It does indeed.”

“Don’t repeat yourself, you sound like a parrot,” Ryman said, gulping at his ale.

Cat smiled even wider, a balm against the burn of his rudeness. “Thank you for pointing it out.”

“I will not let you shame us in front of Governor Baltross. You are to be every inch a Meridian lady, befitting of a lord.” He surveyed her with a roving eye, gaze snagging here and there. On frayed hems, on new freckles. “I know you were not raised well, Catrine, but gods willing, you can rise to this occasion.”

Not raised well.

Cat swallowed hard. He was not wrong. She was low country nobility at best, with a simple education, enough to read and write well, but little else. She did not speak Esperese or Anticlean, and could not play piano or violin, nor sing. Her embroidery was merely passable, her stitches forever crooked and mismatched.

But I am not so stupid as you, she thought, holding her smile. You, Lord Rose, who were given the best of everything and still manage to act like a pig.

“I hope I do,” she answered truthfully.

Sara put another bowl of porridge on the table, along with a rasher of heavily cured bacon. Lord Rose set to it like a wolf.

“Did you know the governor back home?” Cat prodded, gentle and strategic.

“On the Continent? I had little time for government business and politics,” Ryman spat.

As always, Cat saw between the threads her husband so poorly spun. Lord Rose was never appointed to governance, never invited to political gatherings, never consulted by anyone on matters of state or import.

“And what of his wife?” she continued, her tone light.