32: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Cate glanced up at the bright hyacinth-colored blot overhead: Beatrice, posted as a watchdog, sure to sound the alarm at any intrusion. Around Cate’s neck hung the bosun’s whistle Nathan had given her, to be blown at any distress. Still, Cate felt exposed and insecure as she haltingly made her way up the path from her shack toward the beach. It was the furthest she had ventured in nearly a fortnight.

It was one of these unusual times when both Nathan and Thomas were gone, simultaneously called to their duties. With each step, she cocked her head, listening for the first hint of either. She thought to have heard Nathan’s graveled throatiness, but against the din of breeze, surf, wildlife and men, it was too brief to be sure.

Near the end of the path, the barricading bushes thinned enough for her to peek through. From up the beach came the low hum of labor, genial but industrious, punctuated periodically by the Hodder and his Arabic equivalent—a bosun is a bosun, in any language—goading the Lovelies to their duties. All of this was against the backdrop of hammers chipping, sounding much like a bevy of zealous woodpeckers. The tang of burning sulfur and seaweed met her nose, along with the smells generated by a collection of three hundred men, many of which didn’t bear description.

Cate had heard of careening, but had never witnessed it. It was difficult to see something so grand and noble could be reduced to something so piteous. Seeing the Morganse beached, tackles securing her to the trees, looking like a great bloated fish tangled in the fishing lines, was a shock. Additional braces had been propped against the ship for further security for her people. White and wriggling against the black hull, they swarmed, looking like maggots on that same fish.

Near the beach, the smell of tar and woodsmoke was stronger, the glow of the fires rivaling the late afternoon sun. After being so long in the shade, the glare of sun, sand and water was painful, causing Cate to shade her eyes and squint like a mole emerging from its hole, and feeling much like one.

Straining on tiptoe, she looked for Nathan or Thomas.

Nothing.

She spun around at hearing voices behind her, heart in her throat. It was only the water detail coming up from the river, rolling another butt. The firewood details, and foragers returning from the forest and surrounding hills, often passed within shouting distance, but never closer. Still, she scurried back down the path, back to her secure little haven.

The “garden,” as Cate had come to call it, was the space in front of her shack. The idle on-looker might question the title, but to Cate, with its white-stone-lined path, table, stools, bench, a hammock, Beatrice, looking much like a statute overhead, and Hermione, another sculpture reposing in her leafy nest in the arch of a flowering vine, the nomer was fitting. Inside was the “parlor,” as she called it. Nathan and Thomas called it her “boudoir” with a teasing lilt.

Cate was looking at a book, considering whether she should actually read it, when she saw Mr. Kirkland come up the path. He walked with great intent, bearing a stoneware pitcher. A cloth was draped over it, the corners weighted with teardrop-shaped bits of lead, to deter flies and inquisitive insects. He set his burden before her and stood back.

“Cap’n’s compliments and duty, sir.” He stood back, his round face suffused with pleasure. “He represented as you favored it.”

“What is it?” she asked, leaning forward with interest.

“Lemon shrub.”

Cate looked up, both surprised and curious. She had enjoyed that decadent treat, along with sea pie and pineapple tart, at The Crown in Charles Town, but Thomas had been with her; Nathan had been clear across the room and quite otherwise occupied. How he would have known was a wonder?

“Cap’n represented he would wait upon you directly.” Kirkland seemed to suffer the disease of having something more to say but lacked the means to do so. Finally, he knuckled his forehead and darted down the path.

Cate sat staring at the pitcher with the same patience as a child with a present. The desire for anything was a novelty, a sensation which she hadn’t suffered in such a long time she barely recognized it. The raw newness of it struck like an overpowering primal urge.

Her mouth watered in anticipation of the sweet of the sugar, the headiness of the rum and tart of the lemons. The combination made rum worth drinking. The pitcher’s contents had apparently been cooled in the spring, for beads of condensation dotted its surface and pooled on the table. She watched the moisture trickle down the stoneware surface, much the same way it would trickle down her throat.

She patted one foot and then the other. Had she been a cat, staring at a dish of cream, her tail would have been twitching. Unable to sit any longer, she rose and began to lay a table: cloth, napkins, a tin of Naples biscuits and flowers plucked from the surrounding bushes for a centerpiece. Silver cups or crystal goblets? For the first time in many, many years, she had a choice. Silver won.

“I’ll give them until the count of fifty.”

Eyes half-closed, chewing her cud, Hermione looked on in goatish disinterest.

“Very well, another twenty-five,” Cate said, some moments later.

“Oh, well, another fifteen,” she said, sometime after that.

She angled her head, listening as she counted off the final ten. Beyond the sounds of palms, birds and labor, there was no indication of Nathan’s impending arrival.

Making an irritated noise, she flung the cover from the pitcher and poured herself a cup. She clutched the cool metal in both hands. Closing her eyes in anticipation, she raised the cup, bringing her nose nearer to the rim. The liquid hadn’t even touched her lips when the smell shot up her nostrils and filled her head with a roaring buzz. Snorting to clear her nose, she fanned the air, as if she was swarmed by wasps. Her chest constricted, squeezing the air from her lungs. The smell grew stronger, as if something… someone was coming at her. Shrieking, she whirled around, throwing up her arms up in defense. She was surrounded, not by people, but faces: Creswicke, Spears, and men—strange men, closing in.

Rest assured… again and again and again… Creswicke’s voice echoed in her head once more.

Cate hitched her skirts and raced for the cabin, Beatrice squawking in alarm. She ducked through the door and flung a chair to block the opening and then another on top of it. She backed away, shivering from the cold of the stone cell in which she had been imprisoned, the stink of her own filth rising around her.

Lemons… lemons…

She shook her head violently, snorting, trying to be rid of the smell. Pain struck in her gut like she’d been punched; doubled over, she twisted away, trying to dodge the fists coming at her. The smell of the fire pits, roasting game on the beach, became her own flesh burning.

“Get it off! Get it off!”

She burst out through the back door, the faces chasing close behind. At the pool’s edge, she fell to her knees. Snatching up the soap and sponge, she furiously scrubbed. The scent still sharp in her nostrils, she tore at her clothing, wanting to wash her body. She groped for her pocket and the knife that usually was there, meaning to cut her clothes away. Nothing.

Through the riot of noise in her head, she was vaguely aware of someone calling her name. She was grabbed from behind and she screamed, wild to be free. The voice was now louder, shouting her name, shaking her, as if trying to wake her from a nightmare. But it couldn’t be a nightmare. This was real, so very real!

The hands turned her around, and another face appeared before her, bearing a headscarf and dark eyes.

“Nathan, help me! Get it off! Get it off!” Wrenching free of his grasp, she dove for the sponge she had dropped, and began to frantically scrub again. Harder and harder, anything to be rid of it. A knife, if she had to, and cut the offending skin away.

An arm snaked over her shoulder and snatched the sponge away. Cate leapt after it as Nathan held it up out of her reach. All the while, a dull sound thudded in her ears, his mouth moving in sequence with it as he spoke, calling her name. Furious, she scratched and bit, desperate for the sponge.

Growling a curse, Nathan threw his arms around her and dove into the pool.

“Not damaged, but you didn’t do it any favors,” Nathan said sternly, inspecting her injured arm sometime later.

He had carried Cate from the pool, shivering and sobbing, and sat her on a stool in the yard, near the fire. In seaman-like fashion, a line was rigged near the fire, and her clothes hung there dripping. Nathan had afforded himself none of those amenities; his shirt still stuck wetly to his chest, the water dripping from his braids pattering on the ground. Depleted and drained, Cate sat wrapped in the banyan and quilt, dazed and unsure of what had just happened.

As he went through the motions of attending her, cautious curious looks were cast her way, when he thought she wasn’t looking. He was as slow and patient as he had been those first days. He slit open the sodden and torn bandage with the tip of his knife. Cate resolutely kept her head turned away; she still couldn’t look at it.

“You managed to break it open,” he observed, probing gently. He tried, with limited success, to glean the rebuke from his voice. The sweet oil was liberally applied and then a fresh wrapping.

Her arms and legs were near raw from her scrubbing so hard. Nathan opened a jar of jasmine-scented cream, scooped a bit out, and began to rub it on. The skin cream was one among the many other luxuries—clothing, toiletries, ribbons, pins, sewing things—which the hamper in the corner of her cabin contained.

“Are you ever going to tell me how you came by all of… that?” A generalizing lift of her hand indicated the entirety of the hamper’s contents.

Busily massaging her leg, Nathan glanced up and then away, considering. “To do so would be a violation of me sacred oath as a pirate and the Code of the Brethren.”

“’Sacred oath?’” she echoed. There was only one person who would ever qualify for that. “Thomas?”

Surprised by her acuity, the dark eyes flickered up at her and then fixed back on his task. “I never said it.”

“But how…? I mean, where…?” As best she could recall, there had been no such luxuries on the Lovely. None of it looked to have suffered the ship’s hold; the clothing and such were brand new.

One of Nathan’s sodden shoulders moved in a shrug as he kneaded and smoothed the cream into her leg. “’Shopping in Bridgetown’ is all he said.”

“Or at least, all you’re telling,” she added, knowingly.

“I’m sworn to—”

“Yes, I know, the Code of the Brethren,” she sighed. Clearly, Nathan had told her all he intended.

Finished with the cream, Nathan moved his attentions to the splints on her fingers, either loosened or completely torn off in her mania. He experimentally wriggled each one by the tip and watched her wince.

“Splints we shall need,” he sighed and dug into the blood box for what he needed.

“You do think I’m crazed, don’t you?” she observed. It was fitting, for she felt much that way herself. She had thought to be improving each day, but clearly, recovery was an uneven ride.

Nathan’s brow furrowed as he ripped smaller strips from larger ones found. “When we finally found you, you were dead drunk from kill-devil. You stunk with it. It’s a vile rum,” he explained to her puzzled look, “known to give many a man hallucinations, many of those going permanently raving.”

“And you think I’m raving?”

“No,” he said, his motions growing even more determined, “I think you are trying desperately to be anything but.”

Cate sat back. There was no arguing that her grip on reality had loosened considerably of late. More disquieting was the idea of some poison lying in her body, waiting to snatch away her sanity at any moment. And yet, the idea was quite fitting where Creswicke was concerned, a last grand cruelty.

“I don’t think that was it,” she said after a few moments of further introspection.

Finishing the binding of one splint with a flourishing bow, Nathan leaned back and crossed his arms. “Then what happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said for what seemed like the hundredth time. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to think. “Kirkland brought a pitcher of lemon shrub.”

The corners of Nathan’s mouth moved with the need to smile. “Ah, yes, your favorite from Charles Town.”

“How did you know?” she asked, eyeing him from behind her fingers.

His shoulder moved faintly. “I have me sources. And?” he prompted, after an expectant pause.

“And… that’s it,” she said with a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. I took the cover off—” she said, mimicking the motions as best she could with one hand. “I poured some in a cup and went to take a drink—”

An icy chill shot through her, and she began to shake. Her reaction must have been evident, for Nathan hovered closer, drawing the quilt up higher about her shoulders.

When he was sure she wasn’t on the verge of going off into another fit, he went over to where the shattered remnants of the pitcher laid on the ground, knocked there at some point in her panic. He stood over the wet spot, looking down at a curved piece of the pitcher’s bottom where liquid had collected. He bent, dipped his finger and tasted, experimentally smacking his lips.

“Fine batch,” he said, with not a little regret.

He came back to her and lifted his hand, inviting her to taste. The smell hit her first. She recoiled, holding her hand over her nose.

“It’s not the taste, but the smell.” Her heart began to race and she blurted “It’s the lemons.”

Nathan scowled, not in disbelief, but trying to understand. “But why…? What…?”

Shivering, Cate closed her eyes, in hopes of cutting off the rising visions. But they only became stronger, one face flashing before the rest. “Creswicke.”

“He served you lemon shrub?” he gaped.

“No!”

“Lemonade?”

“No!” she exclaimed, irritated at his failure to follow. “He gave me brandy.”

“But you’ve been drinking that.” He looked disdainfully down at the cup at her elbow, one he had poured immediately after taking her from the pool.

“I know! Oh, for heaven’s sake, allow me to think! It smelled like…” She had gone from chills to a sweat, by then. She threw off the quilt and dabbed the moisture from her temples. “I’m trying to remember. So much I can’t remember. There weren’t any lemons anywhere, that I know of, but…?”

She hadn’t noticed them as such, not that specifically, but something…?

Nathan stood over her, hand on his hips, waiting.

“It was lemon verbena! Yes, that’s it. There was a woman,” she said, talking faster as the recollection became clearer. “She was sitting in the corner. She wore lemon verbena… at least, I think it was her; I remember thinking it would have been an odd scent for a man. I could smell it… The whole room—” The memories became so clear, her throat began to close once more. She snatched up the cup and buried her nose into it, letting the brandy’s sharp fumes clear her nostrils and head.

She looked up to find Nathan rigid, Death, or the desire to cause it, contorting his face.

“Who was she? What did she look like? Tell me!” He grabbed her by the arms and shook, until she cried out, more in protest than pain. Releasing her, he stood back, his chest heaving.

“Tell me, dammit!” he barked, raggedly.

“Tell you what? I don’t know!”

His hands came up, wanting to seize her again, but he caught himself and stepped back. Chest heaving, his fists balled at his sides, the knuckles going white. “Tell me… tell me every… damned… fragment.”

Gradually, stopping to repeat and clarify at Nathan’s probing, Cate described her first meeting with Creswicke. In a strained voice, he pressed Cate on every detail: voice, height, hair, build, gait, complexion, accent, dress… everything. All the while, he kept his distance, his eyes fixed on her as sharp and keen as a falcon. His fury scared her at first, but gradually she came to realize that it wasn’t because of her. He cursed at some responses, stalked about, taking long pulls off the brandy bottle at others, ever more agitated at every one. It was a cross-examination befitting of the Inquisition, Cate growing more defensive and inept for having not taken notice of details which weren’t there to be seen. She felt lucky her thumbs were still intact when Nathan finally fell silent. Cate took a drink from her own cup, for she was in bad need, by then.

“You know her…? Who she was?” Cate asked.

Jaw working, Nathan’s eyes darted at her and then away. He nodded grimly. “Aye.” The ensuing silence was protracted and disquieting.

“Dammit, Nathan, tell me. I deserve to know,” she finally said.

“No, I don’t know,” he said, still distant in thought. “Not for absolute, bloody sure.”

“But you are sure enough to be vibrating to go after her, aren’t you?” she observed, coldly.

Reluctantly, he conceded. He made a show of loosening his shoulders and relaxing his hands, all in the effort of assuming a semblance of calm. It was one of his worst performances. Cate clutched her cup harder, willing herself to stop shaking, but only succeeded in making it worse. Finally, Nathan realized there was no away around it. He pulled up a stool before her and sat. Leaning his elbows on his knees, he braced his head in his hands and stared at the ground between his feet. Finally, he sat back and looked up, with a mix of dread and shock.

“It was Hattie.”

Cate coughed and fanned her hand. The sharp ammoniac fumes of burning feather stabbed her membranes like small knives. She cracked her eyes open to find Nathan poised, the smoking culprit in his fist—hyacinth blue—worry crumpling his features and an air of guilt about him.

“What happened?” she asked stupidly.

“You fainted, or fell out or something. You went all funny and….”

The feather poised over her to be wafted under her nose again if necessary, she floundered to rise, discovering she was in the hammock. She tried to sit up again, Nathan both seeking to help and admonishing her at the same time. “No, not like that… You’re doing it wrong…”

“Oh, hell, just bear a hand!”

His mouth quirked at her attempt at sounding like a seaman—the words just didn’t roll off the tongue for her as they did for everyone else—but did as she bid. Finally, with exasperate gasps on both their parts, he scooped her up into his arms and plunked her down onto the nearest seat. She sat weaving, waiting for the world to right itself. Nathan knelt on his haunches before her, peering up worriedly.

When he was confident she wouldn’t tumble off the stool, he fetched the wet sponge from the pool. He swabbed her face and then bid her to hold it at the back of her neck while he picked up the cup from where it had fallen among the dried leaves and refilled it. He knelt once more, watching intently as she drank, alert for the first sign of another fit or fainting.

“Are you sure?” she finally ventured.

Nathan sobered and looked down at his hands, opening and closing them with the effort of keeping himself tightly reined. “Nay, I’m not sure, but it’s too damned much of a coincidence to ignore.”

“But how…?”

He eyed her to see if she looked capable of this conversation. Finally, he exhaled in surrender. “It was her one concession to femininity: she always wore lemon verbena. Took me months to get the smell out o’ me ship. And no, that’s not the same pillow or mattress in me bunk,” he said with a minatory glare. She had pressed him on that point some weeks hence. “I burned those.”

“But why…? I mean, I don’t… I supposed I don’t know that much about the woman,” Cate finally surrendered.

Nathan’s mouth quirked wryly at the word “woman.”

“But what would she be doing with Creswicke?” she finally managed. “Are they lovers, do you think?” She realized the error of her thinking instantly. As Nathan had attested, Creswicke was incapable, in the physical sense, at any rate. As Nathan had also attested, however, there were many ways to put a smile on a woman’s face.

Nathan made a rude noise. “Reptiles are incapable of affection, darling.”

“You mean they are… or rather were working together?”

A louder sarcastic noise came from him. “No reason to doubt it.”

He ran a weary hand down his face. “All makes perfect sense… now. She did it all for him at first and for herself at the last.”

For the most part, Hattie was the whale in the room between them; only on the rarest of occasions was she discussed. Nathan was keenly aware of Cate’s displeasure at any mention, just as she was aware of his aversion to any reference to Brian. It was another example of why the past belonged exactly where it was: in the past. In a moment of self-loathing, Nathan had referred to the woman’s short-comings in bed. The observation had come not in the spirit of allaying Cate’s concerns—a point upon which she had pondered long and often—but out of his own wretchedness, deriding himself for his dire need for a warm body next to him. Now, having some sense of the woman, Cate’s curiosity was even more piqued as to what it was about the woman which had attracted Nathan. “Because she was there” was the obvious. Cate couldn’t rebuke him for such a weakness. The isolation of a cold, empty bed was a powerful force, especially for someone of Nathan’s passions. He was never meant to sleep alone.

“But, she shot you.” With her head reeling, she was reduced to snatching at any thought which happened by.

“Aye,” he sighed, resigned. “’Tis all been a grand scheme on Creswicke’s part. He couldn’t catch me one way, so he contrived to trap me another.”

“But, she shot you.” That not so small point was the stickler. If one’s plan was to turn someone in, shooting them and then casting them adrift didn’t strike her as the most direct path towards achieving it.

Nathan nodded grimly. “Ambition was always the wench’s strength and her short-coming. Captaining the Morganse promised more than His Bumptousness could.”

Nathan rose abruptly. He grabbed the squat bottle from the table by the neck and drank, the long muscles of his throat moving with each gulp.

Too agitated to stand still, he paced before her. The twigs and dry leaves crunched under his bare feet. “Just guessing here, but knowing how that shifting mind o’ hers worked, she was supposed to bring me to him. But that was too much bother, too far out of the way, so she just killed me and took me ship. His High-Arsedness had probably promised me ship to her anyway, so she saved herself a fortnight of sailing back to Bridgetown.”

“And now?”

Nathan snorted as he drew to a halt. “Rats prefer their own company, darling. She’s made amends, tho’ God knows how,” he added with a rueful roll of his eyes, “and wormed her way back into his good graces. Probably killed someone for him,” he grumbled, jerking his shoulders.

It was an awkward, creeping sensation to know someone so infamous—her nemesis—had been just a few feet away, staring, without her knowing. She had the feeling that day of being the mouse a cat toyed with. Now, she knew there had been two cats in the room. A surprising sense of relief washed over her, at her luck for having lived to tell of it, unscathed perhaps not, but survived, nonetheless.

“What was the fascination or attraction of seeing me?” Cate heard herself say.

Nathan stared, thinking she was being rhetorical. Realizing it was an honest question, his mouth twitched.

“Jealousy. Believe me, darling,” he said, over her sputtering protests, “any fleeting fascination with that shrew was just that: fleeting. At the moment, I’d rather bed Millbridge or Towers.”

“You, however, were obviously a fascination,” he said with amused admiration. “The word is out, darling: you’re with me, and a good many will be curious, most especially her. She was always like a child in a play yard: every toy had to be hers. She was probably curious to see if you might deliver what she couldn’t.”

He took another drink from the bottle still in his fist and set to pacing once more, each pass more agitated than the one before. Finally, he drew up before her, shaking with the effort containing his fury.

“Did she…?” He swallowed hard and said with a quaking voice “Tell me she laid a hand on you, and I’ll make her miserable life even more miserable, just before I kill her.”

“No,” she said slowly, probing her memory. “At least, I don’t think so.”

She took a drink, in hopes the brandy might help cut the mental fog. “Come to think on it, she never moved, didn’t even speak, I don’t think. She just sat there. The second time I’m not sure she was even there. I don’t remember,” she finally said with a helpless rise and fall of her hand.

“There’s a grand bit you don’t remember.” There was an unpleasant accusing tone in his voice.

Cate glanced up and then away, shifting uneasily on her seat. “No, I don’t.” The admission didn’t come easily, but there was no denying it.

“There’s nothing to be gained—”

“Why? I don’t remember, because—” Her throat caught, her chest constricting to the point that she couldn’t draw a breath. Faces… men, dark and leering, loomed up before her.

Damn him for loosing it all on her!

“I don’t remember,” she said through her teeth.

He came to stand over her, glaring down. “They used you, darling… hard.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she choked, hot tears stinging her eyes.

The abrasions at her wrists were no more than dull red bands now, the skin taut and smooth with newness. When she had first wakened, they had been raw, torn to the point of bloody by ropes, ropes that she couldn’t remember. There had been no denying the soreness between her legs and the bleeding those first days after her rescue. There had been no denying that everything below her navel felt as if it had been pummeled to the point of mush. The feeling had been all too familiar; she knew what had been done to her. Reliving it all was unthinkable.

“I think you prefer to forget it and pretend it never happened,” he said.

Cate looked up, glaring. “Isn’t that what you did?” Twice in his life, Nathan had been raped, and had effectively, by his own admission, forgotten.

He flinched at that. “Not quite,” he said considerably quieter. “I had me revenge for the one and I shall have it for the other.”

Cate took a drink then tiredly rubbed the ache which had suddenly taken up residence between her brows. “What’s done is done. Why should I remember? What’s to be gained by it?”

“Names and faces, darling—” he said in an ominous rumble.

“Names!” she goggled, dropping her hand. “Jesus to God, Nathan, it’s not as if they introduced themselves, before they—”

“—so I might hunt every one of those gutless buggers down and kill them with me own hands. And I promise it shan’t be murder in their sleep. They shall know every glorious, agonizing moment. That thing Brian did, roasting their balls and feeding them to the pigs, was all well, but other things come to mind for while they live.” He spoke with an anticipatory relish which made her uneasy.

Cate shuddered, going queasy at the thought of the horrific stories of torture and revenge Bailey had told at the table. Nathan had been under that monster’s tutelage for a time, and there was no reason to believe he would prove the poor or dull student. There was more of the pirate lurking in Nathan than she cared to think.

“Hell, I’ll bring them to you, if you wish, and you can do with them as you like. I’ll hold them down, whilst you do it,” that very pirate said with a grand sweep of his hand.

“It won’t change anything,” she said wearily.

“Aye, true enough. It will be naught but a matter of several bastards no longer on the face of this earth, but neither shall you ever have to fear them.” Nathan’s hand curled at his side for the sword which now lay on the table where it had been dropped.

“As for His High-Lordliness,” he went on. “I will kill him out-of-hand. ‘Tis all been one grand game and me the pawn. Well, no more. The Good Lord claims vengeance is his. I’d fancy he’d oblige me on this one; nothing to be gained in the Almighty dirtying his hands on that bit o’ scurrilous flotsam.”

She reached for him, but he ducked away. “Not over me, Nathan, please. Promise me you won’t go after him or anyone.”

Nathan went red-faced and rigid with indignation. “It’s a question of honor—”

“Who’s honor? Mine? Yours?” she demanded, launching to her feet.

“I cannot stand by and allow someone to come aboard my ship and take—” he began, balling his fist.

“’My ship!’” she cried, whirling on him, wisps of drying hair flying in her face. “So, this is about your pride, your honor, your revenge? Don’t you dare use me as your excuse to go get yourself killed!”

He struck the table with his fist, sending the bottle and sword flying. Beatrice let out a startled shriek. “By god and thunder, you must have your revenge.”

“Like hell I do! What good will it do?” she shouted, looking wildly around. “Will it make what they did to me go away? Will it make this brand disappear?”

Glaring, she thrust her arm at him and waited for an answer.

There was none.

“No, nothing is going to change any of that,” she went on coldly. “All that will happen is you’ll go running off, and I’ll be alone, just like I was the last time: Brian gone, off killing, taking his precious revenge which seemed to fascinate him so much, defending his precious honor. And, in the meantime, I was alone.” She wrapped her arms around herself against the chill of the desolation beset her once more. For years, that loneliness had buried its icy claws into her heart, and now it had taken up residence there again.

She drew a long shuddering breath. “I’ll have no peace, if I have to worry about you going off—”

“And I’ll have no peace if those two—hell, any of them,” Nathan said, stabbing a finger at her, “still walk the earth. You’ve known from the first that I intend to kill—”

“I know! And I lay mortified every night that you might.”

Cate ventured near enough to lay a hand on his arm, one hard and unyielding. “Please, Nathan, I need someone to hold on to. I can’t do that if you’re off running about killing people.”

“You make no sense,” he said, hoarse with fury. “You say you hate him—”

“And her, for what she did to you, but not enough to risk losing you. Nothing is worth that.”

Rage had turned the coffee-brown eyes to flint. Now they were narrowed with hurt and betrayal. “You can’t expect me to give up? I’ve waited years…?”

Cate jerked her hand away. Arms stiff at her sides, her skirts were clenched in her fists. “You go after them, and I won’t be here when… if you come back.” She instilled as much determination in her voice, for she meant every word. Her Hell-on-Earth would be if she were to be left waiting, wondering if he would ever return. She’d suffer the hell of loneliness, before she suffered that one.

Nathan blinked and propped his hands on his hips. “And where do you fancy you would go?”

His smugness was like a gauntlet to the cheek, a challenge which only made her all the more determined. “Anywhere, anyhow I can, but I won’t be left wondering. I can’t bear that.”

Nathan stood fuming, but mute.

Finally, Cate’s resolve crumbled. In a panic, she threw her arms around him. “Please, please, don’t. Just please don’t.”

The body against hers was so rigid and foreign it was like embracing a stranger. All of their hard-earned intimacy of these last few weeks were gone, the gap between them now more expansive and forbidding than the first day they had met. Fury coursed through him in waves, his breath ragged in his throat. As she clung to him, however, the racing heartbeat under her cheek slowed, as did the rise and fall of his chest, and the body in her arms softened.

He swore softly under his breath, once and then again. His hand curved up slowly to rest on her back. Moments later, the other came up to settle over the crown of her head. Cate tightened her embrace, giving thanks where words couldn’t serve.

At length, Nathan stood back. He drew her hands from around him and cupped them side-by-side between his. His eyes, now warm and liquid, found hers. “You hold my heart, just there, as you have since the first and always will.” His graveled voice was rendered even rougher by emotion. He placed a kiss on both of her wrists and then folded her hands together.

His throat moved as he swallowed. “You break my heart, but God’s my life, I’m not enough of a man to break yours.”

Then he drew her into his arms, his cheek against her head, and swayed her gently, as she silently sobbed, tears of joy, tears of relief and tears of loving him all cascading down her cheeks together.

At length, the tears ran out, but he continued to hold her. His shirt, initially damp from the pool, was now sodden from her crying. His familiar spiciness and smells of leather and sweat were still there, but the salt and tar had faded, so long from the sea and his ship. Those had been replaced by wet stone and damp earth.

Finally, she felt him smile into her hair. “You’ll not be rid of me that easily, Kittie,” he said in a throaty purr. “Be it life, or be it death what takes me from you, I will be back. Mark me, darling, I will be back.”

Swaying with her, he was quiet for some moments before saying “I can only wish you mightn’t give up on me as you did him.”

“Give up?” She pulled free of his arms and stepped away. She was stunned and wounded that he would think such a thing. “The first three years, I prayed every day that, by some miracle, Brian would escape and somehow find me. I never should have let him go. I should have stayed with him—”

One brow cocked, wryly. “In prison?”

“Every prison has a village of some sort,” she shot back. “I could have followed him wherever he was sent. I shouldn’t have let him get away.”

She drew a long querulous breath and went on determinedly. Dammit, he was going to hear this. “When he didn’t show up, I was angry with him for not being there, and I cried.”

Dashing the wetness from her eyes, she looked off into the night. “And then, on the fourth year, I woke one night screaming with a pain in my heart like I had been stabbed. And then, it stopped as quickly as it had started, and I knew he was gone.” She turned, glaring. “Then, I gave up.”

Nathan quietly came up and slipped his arms once more. She stood stiff, but, damn the man, she wasn’t immune to his charms. His head pressed against hers, he slowly stroked her back and head.

“Be that as it may,” he said softly in her ear. “Be it Heaven or be it Purgatory what takes me, I will be back. Never give up… never.”

Cate flopped over onto her back and stared at the canvas ceiling of her hut. She turned her head on the pillow and watched the flicker of the flames dance on the canvas. Whether she could actually see Nathan’s outline or if it were her imagination was anyone’s guess. Even when she couldn’t see him, she still knew when he was up and about. He was out there then, as he was so many nights of late. Not sleeping, just sitting. Whether his restlessness was out of the old habit of living in four-hour watches or the worry for his ship, beached and helpless, she couldn’t tell. Some nights she could hear the conversation between him and Thomas. Even with hushed voices, they were mariners, accustomed to being heard over wind, wave and canvas, a whisper sufficient to rattle a teacup. Most nights, however, Nathan was alone, a solitary figure by the fire.

As for herself, she had gone from sleeping like the dead those first weeks on land, to not sleeping at all.

Nathan had been brooding and reserved when he sent her off to bed, not seeing her tucked in, as was his custom, but just sent her off, with an announcement and a sweep of his hand. After their argument, he had assumed normalcy, or that was to say, a facade of it. Unlike most of his masks—inscrutable beyond penetration—this one was as transparent as her old shift.

Cate flopped over onto her side, gazing sightlessly at the door.

Guilt of making him promise, denying him his revenge, churned in her gut like curdled milk. She had grievously hurt him, but on this point, she didn’t care. Heartless? Selfish? Cruel? Bitch? Yes, she would own them all, if it meant keeping him alive.

Never should have let him go. Never should have let him out of my sight.

The voices of remorse had gnawed for years. Not this time.

She had been married to a Highlander, lived among them long enough to have gained a great appreciation for the male need for revenge. It was a man’s trait, perhaps never cultured in women, because the men were always so quick to step in. With all these men dashing about, claiming their revenge, by her experience, her plight was still unchanged: still having to face the day-to-day of the aftermath of what had been done to her.

Cate rose and threw on the banyan, passing the sash the several turns necessary to make it secure. She was able to at least do that much for herself now. Stepping into the kid slippers, another of the Nathan’s gifts purchased in Tortuga, she pushed the curtain aside and stepped out into the night.

Nathan sat on a bench next to the fire, looking more solitary than imagined. His back to her, he was no more than a black shape against the flames. Hunched over, arms resting on his thighs, he was intent on something. A slight inclination of his head indicated he heard her. His head turned as she came up behind him, his profile sharp against the flames.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

“Neither could I.” There was a tone in his voice which she couldn’t quite identify, edgy, yet resigned. He slid aside on the bench, nonetheless, an angling of the head and lift of one elbow inviting her to sit. She did so, careful to keep a space between them. Distance seemed advisable just then.

Cate shifted uneasily. It wasn’t a cold night; far from it. The warmth of Nathan’s nearness, however, was a comfort, like finding something missing without really knowing what it was. A chorus of indigenous night creatures was a backdrop to the chorus—though a bit drunken—of the not so indigenous on the beach, their fires glinting through the branches of the surrounding bushes from time to time. Periodically, she caught the mournful cry of an owl from deep in the interior forest: Artemis on the prowl.

The longer she sat there, the more she noticed Nathan weaving slightly, stiff with the determination of one who remaining upright was a challenge. The smell of rum hung in a fog about him; the bottle sitting next to his foot confirmed her suspicions.

“You’re drunk,” she said, half-observation, half-accusation.

Nathan jerked as if a secret had been discovered. Then he slowly straightened, squared his shoulders and twisted around to face her. “I am… moderately,” he said with an equivocating wobble of his hand. He turned back to the fire saying “Me aim, however, is to be stinking directly.” A sweep of his arm indicated a regiment of bottles lined up in waiting on the table.

He leaned to reach for the bottle next to him. “Would you care to join me? Nay, strike that. Of course not, not for one of your delicate sensibilities.”

There was such an unpleasant edge in his last remark, she made to rise and leave, but he grabbed her by the sleeve and urged her back down. “Nay, nay, sit. I promise to be ever the gentleman.”

On that ominous note, Nathan bent back to his work. He was busy at something, knotwork, long and narrow. From her angle, his braids hanging made it difficult to see what. His fingers wove the intricate pattern like many might work knitting needles, flipping and turning the cords too quickly to be followed.

“How can you do that and be drunk at the same time?”

He snorted. “Hell, any able-bodied seaman worth his salt can tie a score o’ knots in the dark and in a full gale to boot. I can do it with me eyes closed.” For several moments, he did so, making his point.

That a mariner could tie a host of knots came as no news. The curiosity was what Nathan was working on was unlike any she had ever seen. Watching a bit longer, she came to recognize the pattern was the same as her anklet. She reflexively touched her right wrist where a similar one used to be. When she had first returned from Bridgetown, it had been there. Later, she woke, and it was gone.

Feeling her gaze, Nathan said off-handedly “The other one got all… singed.” He coughed and went on. “I fancied you might like a new one, is all.”

The familiar oddments—bits of coral, bone, shell and stone like those at her ankle—already attached to the cord ends made a pleasant clattering noise as he worked, one she had come to associate with every step she took.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

Silence was her answer. Translation: she didn’t qualify for that bit of information.

His brooding mood from earlier that night had neither changed nor sweetened.

Cate stiffened and shifted a fraction further away.

With his back more or less to her, the tear at the shoulder of his shirt was in plain view, as was the deep abrasion under it. It was fairly well-healed. The wound at his side must have been healing well, too, for he bore no hitch or other signs of impingement. She had no way of knowing for sure, for he always kept his shirt on around her, another brick in the wall between them. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, but it was a reasonable assumption the rents there hadn’t been mended either. Guilt struck all the harder; she should have been attending him better, instead of this lounging about.

“If you bring me your shirt tomorrow, I think I might mend it,” she offered. The swelling was down enough, dexterity slowly returning to her left hand; she still had only a thumb and forefinger on the right, but that was enough to manage a needle.

Silence was her answer.

“I’m sorry,” she finally surrendered. And she was… to a degree. She wasn’t so seized by remorse as to change her mind, but she wasn’t an insensible wench.

The flames gilding Nathan’s face, one shoulder moved slightly under his shirt. “Nay need for that. Nay need for tears, either,” he added, without looking up. “’Tis just me manhood and me sworn oath what’s been killed. Naught for a lady of your standards to mourn.”

His barb found flesh. Martyrdom was something new, and she didn’t quite know how to deal with it.

“Although, if you meant to unman me, t’would have been far less painful if you would have just taken the knife and have done with it.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Aye, but you did,” he said matter-of-factly. “You deny me my justice, but you don’t scruple to have yours, now do you?” He moved enough to fix a cold eye over his shoulder at her.

“I beg your pardon,” she sputtered.

“No pardon necessary. Suffering is what you wish for me, as you have suffered,” he was quick to qualify. “And ‘tis your right, as the aggrieved.”

Cate stared at the back of his head, waiting for an explanation.

She waited in vain.

“And what, just for the records, is the horrific crime you’ve committed?” she asked.

Nathan sat up, stiff and with a short answer on his lips, thinking she was taunting him. “I let all this happen,” he finally explained as if she were daft.

Now she was the one to stiffen. “No one could have foreseen—”

“Hell, even a myopic, half-wit could have seen what was going to happen. Had I not been so bloody selfish—” He clamped his lip between his teeth. At length, he shook his head. “I should have seen you safe. I should have been man enough to put you ashore, instead of dangling you like a damned worm on a hook.”

“Don’t you dare!” she hissed. Tears stung the backs of her eyes at the mere thought of being put off on some island. “Where do you fancy I should have been?”

Nathan’s mouth moved wordlessly. “Anywhere, but a damned pirate ship,” he finally blurted, with a curt swipe.

“There,” he declared quietly and sat back, holding up the finished product in display. He made an awkward gesture with his elbow. “Put your arm out,” he urged at her staring at this disarming change of subjects. She extended it, without really knowing why.

He secured the ropework about her wrist, weaving the ends together until it was a seamless circlet, the cord ends forming a tassel. Upon consideration, it was reasonable to think her old bracelet had been damaged by the branding iron—

A frisson shot through her, the vision of the glowing metal permanently etched in her memory. Nathan noticed and eyed her sharply. She flashed a tenuous smile.

“And for the other arm,” he announced, picking up an identical one from the bench beside him.

“Both?” One for adornment was one thing, even one for her ankle, as well, but on both arms seemed to border on topping the knob a bit.

“I’ll have one for your other ankle directly,” he said causally.

It was necessary for him to bend closer in order to reach her left arm. As his fingers brushed the delicate skin, she bent her head the fraction necessary to inhale him deeply.

He sat back, glaring. “I suppose I smell, too?”

Grumbling under his breath, he lurched to his feet and stalked around the fire. At one point, he came close enough to snatch up the bottle and took several long pulls.

Finally, he drew up before her. “Walk w’ me.” It was posed more as a command than request.

She darted a nervous look toward the night, suddenly dark and forbidding. Nathan’s step was steady enough… and he had never threatened or harmed her while in drink, quite the opposite, in truth. But still, her heart thudded dully in dread. An inordinately loud burst of laughter came from one of the campfires just then only made matters worse.

“I’m none so in me cups that I can’t see you safe,” he huffed, waving her to her feet.

They walked closely enough together for Cate to feel protected, but still at a careful distance, Nathan’s sleeve never touching hers. When they stepped out from under the cover of the trees, she gasped. The moon hung low in a plump waxen crescent, leaving the sky to the stars. It had been so long since she had seen them in their full glory, blazing so brilliant she almost had to squint. Their reflection off the bay’s glassy surface doubled the impact.

The campfires dotted the shore like tossed jewels, the men bobbing about them in silhouette. The evening’s laughter and merriment was much diminished by the late hour. Snoring could be heard coming from the recumbent forms dotting the beach like scattered leaves.

The night had done little to improve the Morganse’s forlorn appearance. Her black hull, now a gunmetal silver in the moonlight, was still inelegant and unregal. Across the bay, the Lovely laid on her moorings, looking quite superior and a bit smug, as she guarded her beached sister-in-arms.

It was a relief when Nathan steered away from the main camp. Tucking her slippers into his belt, he handed her over the river’s mouth, its sandbar a dam during the ebb. They followed a small peninsula of rock and sand curving out into the bay. Insecurity of being so far from her safe haven brought Cate to slip her arm through his. The gesture made him jerk, but he didn’t pull away. But neither did he do any more than keep his elbow unnaturally extended. She bore a careful eye toward him. Walking with the bottle dangling from two fingers at his side, the starlight carved his profile. Drink rendered many a man maudlin and morose, but Nathan wasn’t one. If anything he was usually quite the opposite. Now, he was inward and brooding. She had undoubtedly hurt his feelings, but this was something far deeper.

As they went further out along the shore, Cate inhaled deeply. The air, lively with the land breeze, was considerably fresher there, void of the dankness of land. The walk was pleasing, but at the same time, she felt herself tiring and needing to lean heavier on his arm. They came to a spot where several palm trees snaked low over the water and then curved skyward. He lifted her onto one of those, her feet swinging over the water lapping shore. He stood next to her at her knee, looking off, drinking.

The queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach and dizziness which had seized her at Nathan’s mention of putting her ashore somewhere hadn’t eased. Morbid dread rarely gave way that readily.

“You indict yourself for giving me what I wish? That’s a strange court of justice you’re running there, Captain Blackthorne. I’m exactly where I wish to be.” It didn’t come off near as confident as she would have wished.

Head bent, his shirt a ghostly glow in the moonlight, it was some moments before Nathan responded. “Ah, but that’s the hell of it, isn’t it? I didn’t have the balls to see you safe then, and I still don’t have them. That selfishness damned near cost me everything, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it.”

Darkness obscured his face, but there was no hiding the self-loathing in his voice.

“I don’t blame you.”

“Aye, but you do,” he shot back, heatedly. He took another drink from the bottle, dashing the back of his hand across his mouth. “’Tis been the cold shoulder and pushing me away ever since.”

“’Pushing you away’?” she echoed, scowling. “You think me so vindictive and scheming?”

The starlight caught the flicker of a smile then, tight and grim. “No, not usually. Fly at me, try to unman me, aye, but straight at me ‘tis your style. But,” he audibly gulped. “After… everything,” he went on, with a helpless wave of his hand.

He fell pensively quiet, tracing the mouth of the bottle with his thumb. “You could be changed. I know I was,” he said quietly. “I barely could recognize meself. But you…” For the first time, he finally looked at her, wide-eyed and clouded with fear. “God knows what he did to you.”

She bent her head, clasping her hands in her lap. “I thought it was a matter of you not wanting me after… everything.” The pain of rejection tightened her voice.

Sputtering, Nathan moved several paces away, fading into the darkness. He stalked back, mouth agape “Why the—? I never once—!”

“I know ‘you never once,’” she said candidly, fondling the silken folds of her robe. “But after… all of those… after they did… everything…”

Nathan snorted loudly. “Darling, with all due respect, and at the risk of insulting that which I don’t intend to insult, what I admired in you from the first was neither your virtues nor your virginity. Believe me, virgins are highly over-rated,” he added, with a rueful roll of his eyes.

His hand rose as if on its own volition to pluck at her robe. Jerking it away, he tucked the offending limb into his belt. “I admired—and still do, by the way—your fire and grit. That first day, you looked fit to gut that bastard Bullock, had I given you a knife. I should have, too,” he added with a considering grin. “Could have saved everyone a good bit o’ trouble straightaway.”

They both smiled at that. Bullock had been a noisome, vile crewman, A “goddamned swivel – tongued, son-of-a-double-eyed Dutch whore,” as Pryce had described him, colorful but accurate. Within her first moments of boarding the Ciara Morganse, he had cornered her, intending rape. His finish had been when he tried a second time. Nathan’s knife had been the blighter’s grand finish.

The breeze stiffened, stirring the fabric about her ankles and fronds overhead. The palm trunk under her bobbed gently.

Cate pensively fingered the binding on her arm. “It wasn’t me,” she said quietly, with the halting of one probing through a veil. “He wasn’t doing any of it to me. It… it was you.” Gulping, she looked up. “All the while, he kept chanting your name, moaning like some—”

“Lost lover,” Nathan finished, dully.

She clamped her lower lip between her teeth and cast a cautious glance at Nathan, worried for how much of this he could bear. She was in morbid fear of crossing the line, telling him too much, driving him to a fury, all his promises to her going by the board. In truth, she didn’t wish to tell him any of it, and yet he continuously looked at her, as if he already knew. He and Creswicke had been enemies for near a decade; nothing she could say would be an addition, not a welcomed one, at any rate. But still, he had been forthcoming with her, as if in offering for her to do the same.

“He said I was just the messenger. Even when those men were—” Her throat caught. Head bent, she glanced toward Nathan again. Head bent, shoulders hunched, he stood like a man hearing what he didn’t wish to hear. Dammit, he had insisted she remember, so he could jolly well suffer it along with her.

Cate’s fingers curled into the nearest thing to a fist as she could in the robe’s folds, determined to see this through. “Even when the others were—” She still couldn’t use the word “rape”; to do so was more than an admission she couldn’t bear, not yet. “He was right there, bent over, cheering them on.”

Once more, she saw the near colorless face, the pale reptilian eyes rolled back in ecstasy. “As soon as one finished, he yanked them away and shoved the next forward,” she said.

The veil lifted, and the ghosts ran rampant. Her wrists burned, her fingers tearing from their joints as she clawed the ropes which bound her. Her throat constricted at the pain of screaming, for she had screamed until she could do so no more. Her breath came short, cut off by their weight on top of her as they grunted and thrust, their sweat dripping in her face, the stink of rancid bodies, sour ale, and their spunk choking her.

Cate gasped and jerked. The myriad of faces in her mind’s eye blurred together and congealed into one before her: Nathan’s, watching her, so very grave and still.

She choked a nervous laugh. “I’d love nothing more than to take a cutlass to every shriveled excuse of a cock, tie it up with a bow and hand it back to them.”

Nathan shifted away, looking wholly dejected. “Yes, I suppose you would.”

“Not you,” she said, patting him on the arm. “I rather fancy yours. And, there is nothing shriveled about it,” she added in all earnestness.

He was only slightly placated.

Words failing, Nathan offered Cate the bottle. She took a well-needed drink. After, she held onto it, in dire need of something solid. “I was nothing to them, now or years ago, just some piece of meat. Why bother with a whore, when they could use me, instead?”

“… again and again…” Creswicke’s threat echoed back once more.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear it. A wave of giddiness struck her and she swayed precariously, nearly toppling off the tree.

“You’re tiring,” Nathan said, catching her.

He lifted her down and offered his arm. “Come, darling, you need your bed.”

They made their way back toward her sheltered haven, Cate’s hand now nestled deep in the crook of Nathan’s arm, his hand protectively over it. Now, most of the camp fires were burned out or in their dying stages. Still a few men stirred about, those on watch moving mechanically up and down the shoreline.

Cate drew a deep breath, for this didn’t come readily. Her dread grew from the danger of opening a floodgate, for which there might be no closing.

“Very well, if I was to indulge in a moment of complete honesty—”

“Praise the gods, at last!” Nathan extolled to the heavens.

“If I were completely honest,” she began again. “I do wish you hadn’t gone to Tortuga.”

Nathan nodded intently; it came as no great revelation. His body braced, however, for what was coming next.

“But as for the rest,” she went on. She squeezed his arm in encouragement. “Yes, of course, I wish it hadn’t happened, for both of us. But, there is a lifetime of things I’d wish away. The worry is, if they were all granted—even one, for that matter—I could well have wound up somewhere very far away from here, and I wouldn’t wish that for the world.”

The moonlight caught his unsteady smile just before they stepped back under the canopy of the trees. None of that was what he had expected to hear, but the hand over hers tightened in relief.

They drew up from whence they had started: the fire in front of her hut, now only coals under a blanket of ash. Nathan turned to Cate, sober and clear-of-eye.

“I’m sorry, darling. It should have been me, not you. I’d give me sorry carcass over in a moment, if I could lift your suffering and take it as me own. I’m far more deserving of it.”

His brow knitting, the coffee-colored eyes searched hers. “I needed to see you safe, and yet I wasn’t man enough to cast you ashore. I needed you with me, and that near cost me everything. And for that, I stand before you guilty. So give me me penance, and I’ll serve it. Just tell me what I need to do, for you to have me again.”

He bunched his fists at his sides, garnering his courage. “Refuse me from your bed, for a month, two months… forever, and I’ll bear the chastity.”

“You… chaste?” Not laughing was painful.

Indignation drew Nathan to his full height. “Madam, I’ll have you know that I, and I alone, am the master of me ship. I sail no course unless I desire it.”

“Very well.” The pains were shooting into her ears by then.

Nathan reached for Cate’s hand, but then retreated. “God help me, I need you with me, Kittie, as a sister or as a lover, it doesn’t matter.”

His shoulders hunched with dread, he gulped and pressed on, like a man commending himself to the gallows. “If you find me crimes altogether unredeemable, then tell me your wishes: a home, an island, hell, a whole damned kingdom, and it shall be yours.”

Humble didn’t suit Nathanael Blackthorne, and yet he was, more than ever witnessed. Tears welling in her eyes caused his image to shimmer. In retrospect, she could see now what she hadn’t been able to see before. His distance, his inwardness and reserve hadn’t been anger or rejection. It had been his self-imposed penitence. He had been flaying his own skin as no one else might; she wasn’t of the heart or mind to inflict anything further.

He had campaigned his entire crew, risked his own body and limb, taken god knew what kind of beatings, risked being captured by a man who had already brutalized him. He then cared for her in a way that would have challenged a troupe of care-givers, bathing, changing, bandaging and feeding. And all the while, there had been none of the long-suffering or playing the martyr, as could well have been expected; not a cross word or rebuke was spoken. He had taken the task on as squarely and unquestioningly as he took command of his ship and the keeping of nearly two hundred souls… plus one: her.

Cate cocked a brow, considering. “You drive a hard bargain, Captain Nathanael Blackthorne.”

The darkness must have hidden her tears, for he started at her quaking voice.

She moved close enough to cup his cheek in her palm, his beard bristling against her palm. “Kiss me,” she said softly.

“Eh?”

“Kiss me,” she said more insistently. “You wished your penance, and you shall have it: you have to suffer kissing me. It hasn’t come easy of late, has it?”

A darting of the brown eyes just inches from hers proved the accuracy of her observation.

“You must kiss and hold me until neither of us can remember why,” she said.

Nathan pursed his lips, posing careful consideration. “Damning me to an eternity on this one, eh? I shan’t ever forget what I’ve done to you.”

The dark orbs searched hers as he made her suffer that bit longer by delaying his decision.

“Very well, your wish is but me command.” He made a gallant leg and kissed her knuckles.

Nathan inched as could be without actually touching. His hands hovered over her from several angles as he tilted his head, trying to decide how to approach her. Cate stood trembling in anticipation of that first connection, the first touch other than out of attending or civility. His eyes held hers, watching for the first sign of rejection or withdrawal. Finally, his hips barely brushing hers, a hand alighted at her waist and crept around, while the other danced at her neck. She twitched at the heat of his hand, so immediate through the banyan’s sheerness. At last, his mouth settled over hers with eloquent care, so very chaste.

“I won’t break,” she said, smiling up at him.

Nathan narrowed a judicious eye. “But you might, however, mightn’t you?”

He settled her deeper into his arms, kissed her again, gently at first, seeking and probing, asking and answering, as no words might. He vibrated with need. His cock rigid against her belly and the heavy musk of his desire stirred in her what she had feared to be long dead, the ache of brutality in her womb replaced by one of desire and the need to be filled.

Growing more urgent, Nathan’s hand slipped up from her waist to cup her breast. Cate gasped and flinched, shying away. He reflexively jerked away, but she grabbed his hand and sought to bring it back.

“No, please…!” She was mortified and confused; she wanted him so badly, and yet her traitorous body thought else.

Nathan resolutely took her by both wrists and folded her arms around behind her.

“Not like this; not now.” His voice was tight with the effort of restraining himself. In spite of what his body said, he pushed her back and held her at arm’s length.

“If not me, then you—” she said, reaching down.

“Nay,” he said, pushing her hand away. “I’ll not take me pleasures at your expense.”

“No expense,” she insisted. “I could—” The hammock was just there. She could recall several versions in the old journal she had found, which were quite doable, regardless of his protests to the contrary.

“Nay,” he said, firmer yet… not the only thing growing firm, in spite of his insistences. “You should be on your knees before no one, man nor woman. When you’re ready, and not a moment before. You will tell me, correct? I shouldn’t wish you to go about wanting.”

“You’ll be the first to know.” A quick kiss sealed her pledge.

Eyes narrowed with regret, Nathan cupped Cate’s face between his palms and traced the lines of her face, brow, nose, cheek and mouth with his thumbs. They held each other then, shaking with mutual pain of relief and denial, he stroking her head, while she followed the smooth curves of his back.

“Come then,” he said, turning her toward the shack. “I’ll lie with you, so that we both might finally have our rest.”