Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
It hurt to turn away and straighten my undergarments. But I did it.
I put him behind me, pulled in a deep breath, and shouted for my quartermaster.
“Strip him.” I cleared the nervous jitter from my voice and gave Reynolds my back, leaving him to deal with Priest’s unconscious body. “I want him naked and defenseless when we lock him in the hold.”
Where did I put my favorite shirt? Ah! There. I snatched it from the floor and pulled it on over my linen corset.
“Naked?” Reynolds asked behind me. “You sure, Captain?”
“Yes.”
Was I? Seeing Priest without his breeches wouldn’t exactly help me let go and move on. But I wanted his humility. I needed it.
“Nudity doesn’t affect my brother like normal folks.” He shifted, creaking the boards with the sway of the ship. “If anything, it gives him more confidence. Especially around you.”
“He hid my compass, Reynolds, and you’re going to search every crease and crevice, starting with the ones on his person.”
“He did what?”
As I updated him on Priest’s latest treachery, I exchanged my slip for a pair of trousers and laced on my knee-high boots.
Fully dressed, I turned to find Reynolds bent over the nude, unmoving form on my bed. “Tell me you found it.”
“Not the compass. But Captain… He was hiding something else.”
The caution in his tone drew me closer. When I reached his side, my mouth dried. My eyes grew hot, and I shook my head, unable to make sense of the ravaged body before me.
From hip to ankle, Priest’s flesh rippled and warped like melted leather. Dear God, his entire leg was unnaturally bubbled, hairless, scarred.
Burned.
He’d been burned so horrifically and completely on his left side it made my leg throb in sympathy.
“How?” I clutched my throat, recalling the flawless lines of his physique from two years ago. “When?”
“Not recently.” He rolled Priest onto his unmarred side and leaned down for a better look. “He’s fully healed.”
It was a wonder he’d survived the trauma. The burns all but swallowed his leg. He’d clearly lived through it, but at what cost? Had he endured the agonizing recovery alone?
I should have been there for him, taken care of him, for no rational reason I could name. He didn’t deserve my help or my sympathy.
“Put his breeches back on and tie his hands.” I couldn’t look at his ruined skin. Not because it made him less beautiful. But because his suffering made me feel like a failure, like a worthless, absent wife. “I’ll interrogate him once he’s secured in the bilge.”
Reynolds followed my order, restraining and heaving thirteen stones of listless muscle and menace over his shoulder.
I led him out the door and grabbed the first crew member I spotted—a rangy, malodorous, unwashed cabin boy.
“D’Arcy, assist Reynolds down to the hold.” I gave the stinky boy a shove, hurrying him along. “And call for the surgeon. I want Mr. Farrell’s head wound examined before the last bell of the dog watch.” My next order came with all the bark of my mother’s condescending voice. “Then you will find some clean clothes and a bucket to wash yourself.”
“Yes, Captain!” D’Arcy jumped, eager to please.
Reynolds lumbered after the boy, adjusting Priest’s body high on his shoulder. When they slipped around the corner, I returned to the cabin and leaned against the closed door.
At least, I had my father’s boots back. Now to recover the compass.
The hunt stretched late into the night. Anything not bolted down in my cabin was upended, pulled apart, and turned inside out. Even with Reynold’s help, the search was onerous. Frustration fused with exhaustion, and sometime after the last bell, I stood amid the debris and admitted defeat.
“It’s not here.” I collapsed into the desk chair.
“Shall I help you clean up?” Reynolds rehung a Caribbee chart tapestry on the wall and rubbed his forehead. “Or continue the search topside?”
“It can wait until sunrise. All of it. Get some sleep.”
“Will you?” He opened the door and glanced back at me.
Would I sleep? With my husband shackled just a few levels beneath me?
I gave a wan smile. “I’ll try.”
Sleep, as it turned out, proved as challenging as staying away. Priest was the flame to my moth-addled head. Every thought, every emotion, fluttered toward him, incessant. Restless. Destined to die a disgraceful death.
I waited five eternal hours before I emerged from my cabin.
In the faint light of dawn, I ordered a ship-wide search for the compass. As Jade sailed farther away from Jamaica, the crew scrambled to locate the prize, motivated by the extra ration of food I promised to the man who found it.
Leaving them to it, I descended below, beneath the galley, crew’s quarters, lower deck, and deeper still, through the hatch of the bilge.
At the bottom of the ladder, his voice—deep, self-assured, elongating the vowels of his Welsh accent—greeted me from the shadows. “I’ve been expecting you.”