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“To live with Sloane and the duke at Wolfbridge Castle. She forgave me for what I’d asked of her, for all of the vile things I spewed at her. So I had a new home, far from where the past would suffocate me. And I learned to talk normally again. To eat, to sleep, to ride, to fill my time with all of the things expected of me. I even reached a point where I was so correct in all the motions, that she set me in front of Lord Apton. I managed to smile and laugh and charm enough for him to marry me. I know it’s what Sloane wanted for me. A happy life with him.”
Her hand twisted along the bottle of brandy she still held in her left hand. “But I never felt any of it. It was all motions. What was expected of me.”
He drew in a deep breath, staring at her. At the cracked pieces of her becoming his cracked pieces. She’d just nudged a door slightly open to him, and he still had one question he needed to know the answer to. “I know you wanted retribution—you said that—but there are a thousand ways to make that happen. None that you chose to pursue. So what were you truly doing following me at the docks, Torrie?”
Her eyes flickered off of him. Avoidance.
But then she met his gaze. “The truth?”
“Please.”
Her look fixed on him. One breath. Two. Three. “You have been the only thing—the only visceral emotion—I have felt in the last nine years.”
“Hatred?”
She nodded. “When I’d learned you’d come ashore, back to England, it was the first spark of raw emotion in my chest in forever. It was so foreign, I almost didn’t know what it was. So I followed you onto the docks because you were leaving again and I knew it. And I didn’t want the emotion to go away—even if it was hatred—I didn’t want it to end.”
“Because you felt something.”
She gave one nod. “I actually felt something. And I have been barren of everything for far too long—far, far too long.”
{ Chapter 6 }
Torrie leaned back against the railing of the quarterdeck, setting her elbows atop the worn wood as she watched sailors moving about, shifting the sails.
They’d sailed into calm waters—unusually calm, barely enough to lift the sails—and the looks she’d been getting from the crew were pointed.
She was bad luck, and everyone knew it.
Including the cabin boy approaching her from the left, his arms so full of a jumbled sail he couldn’t see out past the top of it. But he leaned out to the right to watch her with wary eyes, and in his effort to step a wide path around her, he took a step too far to the left. He tripped over a rope with a yelp, and the sail went flying from his arms, unfurling across the deck as he landed hard on his stomach.
Torrie jumped from the railing, picking up the closest corner of sail to her and started to fold it back in toward the boy. “Are you hurt?”
The boy’s eyes wide, he shook his head, his fingers scrambling to get the sail back into a pile in front of him. “No—no, ma’am.”
He refused to look up at her, even as she pulled more edges of the sail to set into his bundle.
“Can I help?”
His look whipped up to her as though Satan had just spoken to him. “No, no, ma’am.” He clambered to his feet and ran past her, half the sail dragging behind him.
Torrie dropped the edge of the sail she held before he had to tug it from her hands. She didn’t want him to fall again.
With a shake of her head and a sigh, she went back to the railing, getting out of the way of the men.
Carrying a heavy coil of thick rope, Des dropped it onto the deck to her left and turned to her. “Good day, my lady. I trust you slept well?”
The one friendly face on the ship. Or so she hoped. She wondered if he’d just witnessed her scaring the devil out of the boy. Nevertheless, an easy breath went into her lungs. “I did, thank you for inquiring.”
“How fares your arm?”
“Tis of no bother—just itchy.” She turned to her side, her left elbow still leaning along the railing. “Tell me, Des, do you think we will reach the next port soon? I would just like to prepare myself for how long I will be on board.”
Des set his back against the railing. He pulled free a dagger from the scabbard at his waist and picked free a chunk of driftwood he’d had stuffed in along his left boot. Carving into the wood, he flicked free tiny shard after shard as he watched the deckhands. “It is hard to guess. We weren’t to be in port for another month, most likely, as we were headed to Spanish seas. But then you came aboard and Cap planned to swing back in at Port de Brest. We would have been there by now, but the winds flipped on us and now that they have died and we’ve drifted, it is hard to guess.”
She nodded, her look slipping out past the deck in front of her to the calm sea. “Shifting, dead winds on account of my bad luck.”
Des laughed. “I’ve been at sea long enough to know that it doesn’t matter who or what is on board. Winds die. Storms collide. Ships sink. The sea is in charge, and if you’re lucky, it gets you where you need to be. But never trust it and never assume you’ll be lucky.” He reached out and patted her hand on the railing with his fingertips lifting away from his blade. “So no, it’s not on your account. It’s actually nice to have a woman aboard—I’m surrounded by the lot of these ugly mugs day after day so you’re a welcome respite from that.”
