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“Sleepin’ it off below,” Vally said. “He stumbled onto the ship just moments ago.”
Roe nodded, then looked to Des and winked at him. “Told you there was nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about?” Des’s forehead folded into long wrinkles as his eyebrows shot up. “You got a woman aboard the ship, Cap. That bad luck alone is enough to worry about.”
“Then it’s a good thing you worry enough for the rest of us.” Roe inclined his head to him. “And thanks for the line, mate.”
Des exhaled an exaggerated sigh, shaking his head as his eyes rolled to the sky. “Any time, Cap.”
{ Chapter 2 }
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
The priest stood by her bedside, his warm brown eyes masterful in their empathy.
Her brother gone. Her mother gone. Her father gone. Her cousin, the man that had raised her more than her own parents…gone.
Four of them. She counted them on the tips of her fingers, her knuckles twitching against the sheet covering her.
Four.
The roof of the cottage had crushed them, burnt their bodies to ashes. Nothing to bury.
She concentrated on his mouth, on his lips moving, telling her. His lips and nothing else.
And then those lips stilled.
Her eyes closed as a new wave of nausea swept her body. This one not from the pain of her scorched legs, but from the agony rolling through her chest.
Her chin collapsed to her collarbone and her eyes opened. Charred skin dangled from her left leg propped high atop the sheets. Black, crusting flesh, from her thigh to her ankle where her leather boots had protected the skin. If she survived—and he said she might not—it was the leg he said would never heal. At best, she would limp upon it for the rest of her life.
The agony of the pain swirled with the nausea already overtaking her and her stomach roiled, heaving.
Her body shot upright in the bed, her belly upending the contents of her stomach.
Torrie swung her hand out to grab the chamber pot she kept at her bedside table for just this purpose. The dreams got her. Far too often. Even after nine years, the dreams could do this to her. Put her back into that moment. Into that pain.
The pot wasn’t there.
Her eyes flew open as bile hit her throat.
Not her room. Not a chamber pot in sight.
Her look frantic, she searched the tight quarters, then lunged across the room, grabbing a boot that was sitting next to a wall five steps away.
She vomited, retching again and again into the boot.
It wasn’t until she was on her last heave that she realized it was a man’s boot. A tall, well-worn black boot that she had just retched into.
Her feet shuffled backward and she sank to the bed, her gaze lifting from the boot after setting it on the rough wooden floorboards. The room was small. Wood plank walls, ceiling and floor. Very little in it. The bed she sat in. A desk on the opposite wall with an hourglass, a quill, ink, a sextant, and paper—and what looked like maps rolled and neatly inserted into several square shelves above it. A door that looked too short.
She craned her neck to look behind her. A row of windows let daylight in, so bright it hurt her eyes.
