“In truth,” Nicholas said, “I simply cannot abide the hypocrisy of fighting for a man who supposedly embodies the ideals of freedom, while at home, dozens of slaves work his land.”
Not to mention any number of military expeditions that this man had fumbled in his youth, and how he had never been deemed worthy of a commission in the British Army. He admired the man’s tenacity, but the moment he’d learned the colonies would actually win the war, he could have been knocked over by a feather.
“You mean Washington?” Etta asked, startled.
Nicholas nodded. “You should also know, Mr. Wren, that I am a freeman, and that will never change.”
“How diverting!” Heath offered loudly, only to deflate when he saw the faces around him.
Nicholas watched as a cabin boy brought in some sort of pudding for dessert.
“Perhaps it will change,” Wren said as his pudding was placed in front of him, “should the colonies break away, and the landowners in the South seize control of the new government. They will be in the position to create their own Eden. Isn’t it fair to say that slavery has been a boon to Africans? At the very least, it breaks them of their laziness and their barbaric violence—brings them into God’s flock. The work they do is fit for their capacities.”
Ah, yes. Here it was, a hundred years’ worth of justifications for the wrongful enslavement of human beings, gathered into a tidy, single breath of hot air. These sweeping lies about the minds of Africans, the denial of every opportunity to advance themselves by reading and writing and thinking, kept them not only in physical chains, but insidious, invisible ones as well.
It didn’t matter that none of it was true. That Nicholas himself stood as evidence of it. What mattered was that these beliefs had swept through the souls of everyone else like a plague. He couldn’t see the end of it. Even a hundred years in the future, he knew, the roots still had not been fully pulled up from society. Wherever, whenever he went, the color of his skin set the boundaries of what he could achieve, and there was very little—if any—recourse for finding a way around it.
Etta’s palms were pressed flat against the table, and she was breathing hard in an obvious attempt to master her…anger? She was angry? On his behalf?
If Wren had spared her a glance, he might have thought twice before adding, “I suppose you owe your faculties to…your father, perhaps? Forgive me if I’ve made incorrect assumptions about your parentage.”
“You have not, Mr. Wren,” Nicholas said, wondering why he had ever resisted the urge to lodge his fork in the man’s eye. “To your point, though, I suppose we are all born with deficits. In your case, in manners.”
He understood this now for what it really was—punishment, for having made the other man feel like a fool. First with the seizure of the Ardent, and tonight, revealing his lies. This knowledge in itself was enough to settle him somewhat; the pettiness of it stripped some of the pain as these old wounds were sliced open.
Wren swayed in his seat, the full effect of the claret seeming to strike him all at once. His words became slippery at the edges, slurred slightly, as his eyes gleamed, giving his anger a darker edge. “What was it that Voltaire supposedly said? Your race is a species of men, as different from ours as a breed of bulldogs is to terriers?”
“Mr. Wren!” Etta began, scarlet in the face.
“Having actually read the Voltaire in question, I can confirm the quote is, as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds,” Nicholas said coldly. “Interesting, though, that in the end we’re all just dogs.”
“Perhaps,” Wren said, leaning forward in his seat. “But not all of us are mutts without pedigree.”
Etta stood at the same moment as Chase, only she was the one close enough to land a slap on the officer’s face. The crack of flesh on flesh stunned Nicholas, who’d leapt up to restrain his friend from lunging across the table.
“And these are the actions of a lady?” Wren sputtered.
“Aye,” Chase said approvingly. “And a damn fine one at that.”
“Can you actually hear the words coming out of your mouth?” she demanded, pieces of her hair falling out of its braid as she threw an arm out toward the door. “You need to leave the table—right now.”
Wren’s eyes narrowed at her tone. Nicholas didn’t like the way the man was looking her over, as if preparing to strike. Strike her.
Nicholas’s fingers pressed against the knife he’d set on his plate.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” Wren said, “if I’ve caused you any offense.”
“You know I’m not the one you offended!” she said, trembling with anger. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”
Wren folded his hands together and rested them on his chest. “I haven’t eaten my pudding yet.”
“Oh my God, you are despicable!” Etta snarled.
“Careful, madam, blasphemy is still a sin—”
Even if Nicholas had been the gambling sort, he never would have wagered a single coin on her next words being “Then I guess I’ll see you in hell!”
The look of outrage on her face would have sent even Nicholas flying to the other end of the ship; he wondered, not for the first time, when she was from. What era had produced such a fearsome, magnificent temper? But Wren stayed precisely where he was, the smug arse, and it was Etta who left the room in a whirl of skirts.
Chase craned his neck around. “That one, I like.”
Nicholas waited, but didn’t hear the telltale slam of a second door…meaning, she hadn’t gone back into her cabin. “That one is up on the deck. Alone.”
He implicitly trusted his crew, but no lady of this era was allowed to wander in these circumstances unescorted, and there were plenty of ways for her to be injured, never mind tossed overboard in a swell. Moreover, he was a little frightened that she had set out to find another grappling hook.
He stood, turning back to his friend. “See to it that Mr. Wren is returned to the hold. And, sir,” he said, returning his gaze to the weasel, who was contently eating beside a shocked Goode, “you will not be dining with us for the duration of our journey. Call my character into question as you like, but if it reaches my ears that you’ve attempted to besmirch Miss Spencer and her reputation, you will find yourself without a tongue to enjoy your future meals.”
It was a relief to be free from the warm, muggy air inside the cabin; what with the wine, and the upset in his stomach, he’d felt like he was being slowly drawn into an unwilling sleep. The dark autumn air brushed his skin sweetly, a balm to the heat trapped beneath it.
She’d walked only a short distance along the starboard side on the quarterdeck, and was standing at the rail. The wind pressed back against her gown, molding it further to her shape. The full moon cast her in ivory light, stretching its hand out over the water in a trail leading to the horizon. If not for her pose, the arms crossed over her chest as she surveyed the dark sea churning around her, she might have been one of the great masters’ statues, brought to life.
And in a thousand different ways, she was just as entirely out of his reach.
DAMN, DAMN, DAMN…
Etta scrubbed the cold, salty water from her eyes and cheeks with one hand, and clawed at the front of the dress with the other. She couldn’t dislodge the ball of panic that had settled just under her ribs; the stays were squeezing so tightly that her spine ached each time she took a shallow breath. Worse, though, was the throbbing sting in the palm of her right hand. An unwelcome reminder of how badly she’d blown dinner.
If—when—word got back to Sophia that, one, she’d gone to dinner, and two, had made a mess of it, Etta would be lucky if the girl let her go to the head unsupervised to relieve herself. Wandering the ship and winning over the crew? Out of the question entirely.
Everything had been fine—or mostly fine—through the first hour. Mr. Wren—no, just Wren, he didn’t deserve any better—had droned on until his dinner grew cold in front of him, sucking up whate
ver energy she had left. Despite the worldly airs he put on, Etta didn’t think Wren—or Edward, whatever name he’d tried to whisper in her ear—was all that older than herself, or even Nicholas.
She pressed a hand to her mouth. Nicholas.
Every ounce of Etta beat back against the thought, but there was no way around the truth: Sophia had been right. Etta really had no idea what it was like to live during a time where you had no legal or societal protections in place. All she’d learned from that dinner was how very helpless you were to other people’s perceptions.
Nicholas didn’t need her to fight his battles for him. He’d been doing a masterful job of handling Wren, turning each remark back on the other man—proving, without directly stating so, what an absolute idiot he was. He never gave in to the anger that the other man was obviously trying to stir up.
Etta hated the tired resignation she’d seen in his face as Wren had exposed his own ignorance and hatred, the obvious expectation of it. And then Wren had the nerve to look around the table, like he was waiting for the rest of them to agree.
The anger that had flooded her veins was so pure, she thought it must have turned her blood to acid. You could read a hundred books about the attitudes and beliefs of the past, but the impact of witnessing this casual, ignorant cruelty firsthand was like having a bucket of ice upended over your head. It forced Etta to see that the centuries padding this time and hers, along with simple privilege, had protected her from the true ugliness of it. People believed this trash, and they were spreading it around like it was nothing. Like they weren’t even talking about humans.
Etta braced her arms against the rail, looking out over the dark water. The peak of each ruffling wave caught the moonlight, turning them a sparkling silver. A symphony of sounds moved around her. The slap of the water against the ship’s curved sides, the fluttering of the huge sails overhead, the thump of something deep below—a rudder, maybe? She’d found the creaking wood unnerving at first, wondered if there was a chance the ship might just split apart at the seams, but now it reminded her of the way her old prewar apartment settled and resettled into its bones every day.
You messed up.
She couldn’t make mistakes. Not when Alice’s life was at stake.
She laced her fingers together, resting her forehead against them. Was she going to have to apologize for hitting him? Cough up the words from some numb place inside herself, and hope she didn’t throw up in the process? I won’t do it, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t—she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Look at you, a regular Jack Tar.”
She turned at the smoky, deep voice. The sight of Nicholas cutting a path through the dark finally popped the bubble of panic. She counted the steps between them, and he finally stopped to consider her, running a hand over his closely cropped hair. He searched her face as if wondering how to start.
Etta wasn’t the least bit ashamed of studying him back, but she was sure she wouldn’t get much from it. Nicholas seemed to guard his expression so carefully, protecting the privacy of his thoughts.
Etta shifted her eyes away from his face. She’d been right before—it was his only jacket. He wore it now, brushed clean. The fit had swallowed her, but was perfect over his white shirt, emphasizing the broad span of his shoulders. His pants hugged his legs as he crossed that last distance between them. Nicholas was tall, his muscles compact and lean; everything about him seemed efficient, from the way he spoke to the way he moved with steady, easy grace, shifting with the sea.
His presence was larger-than-life, bigger even than his physical body. As he stood beside her, Etta felt as warm as if he’d spread his coat over her again, wrapped her up in it.
“You’ve got steady legs,” he explained finally, turning his eyes up. “You’ll be a seasoned sailor by the time we reach port.”
“I don’t know about that,” Etta said, following his gaze along the large, central mast, to—was that a man, working on the long beam the sail was hung from? Earlier, she’d seen the men climbing up and down the ropes like spiders sharing a web, but none had gone this high—high enough that she couldn’t make out the man’s face. He was a pale blur against a quilt of stars. It was dizzying just to look at him.
“Is he going to be able to get down?” Etta asked, and realized that she was clutching his arm. He went absolutely still at the same moment she did, inhaling softly. The wool was rough against her fingertips, and the sensation lingered even after she let go and stepped back.
“He’ll be fine,” Nicholas said gently. “Most of us have been climbing the rigging since we were boys. The wind’s picking up, so Marsden is reefing the sails—reducing their size to keep the ship stable.”
She nodded, fiddling with the edge of her sleeves, trying to ease some of the tightness there. He’d said it so casually, the way Etta might tell someone she used to climb trees in Central Park.
Nicholas crossed his arms over his chest again, turning his face into the breeze, his eyes shut.
“I really hate that I ruined dinner,” she said quietly. “But I’m never going to be sorry about what I did. He was out of line and wrong.”
His lips twitched. “Alas, that meal was doomed from the moment they laid out the plates. And rest assured, you are among company that deals in considerable physical violence. A good effort is always appreciated.”
“I’ve never slapped anyone before,” she admitted.
“How did you find the experience?”
“It would have been more satisfying if he’d gone flying out of his seat like I imagined,” she said. “I wanted to do it the whole night, but…I’m worried that what I did is going to cause more problems for you.”
Nicholas looked at her in what Etta thought might be utter amazement. Too late, it hit her that this also wasn’t something a young woman in this time would say.
She rushed on, explaining, “He was trying so hard to bait you. I don’t know what the next level of that is, but whatever it is, I’m worried he’ll find another way of taking it out on you.”
“Well, he certainly won’t be taking it out on you,” Nicholas said, his voice harsh. “Not if he values his skin. I’d take entirely too much pleasure from personally stripping it with the cat-o’-nine-tails.”
The violence in the words was a promise.
“Are you sure you can’t just…maroon him on a remote island with a bottle of rum?” Etta asked, only half kidding. “Make him walk the plank straight into a shark’s mouth?”
“Maroon him? Walk the plank?” To her surprise, he actually laughed. It felt like a reward to hear it. “Why, Miss Spencer, I believe there’s a pirate’s heart in you. I wish Captain Hall had stayed, if only so he could have told you some of his stories over dinner.”
“Too bad,” she agreed, relieved that a small bit of the tension had finally eased. “Do you know any good ones?”
“I’m not as good in the telling as he is,” Nicholas said. “Perhaps you’d be interested in hearing the charming tale of pirates who disemboweled and cut out the heart of a British officer, soaked it in spirits, and ate it?”
Her jaw dropped. “Spirits? As in, alcohol? Was that supposed to make it taste better?”
“I’d imagine few things could improve the experience,” he said. “But anything is possible with enough rum and courage, I suppose.”
This exchange was so beyond the stilted, polite dinner conversation that it felt almost like a trap. Etta remembered Sophia’s warnings, but it was such a relief to talk to someone who wasn’t trying to outthink her, or lord information over her. She relaxed her hold on the railing and laughed.
“How do you stand it?” she heard herself ask.
He turned to her, brows raised. “I’m not sure I know what you’re asking.”
“The rules…” She crossed her arms over her chest, letting the rise and fall of the ship anchor her to the moment. A part of her knew this was a dangerous train of thought to bring up with him, but another part of her, the one still a l
ittle clouded from the wine, didn’t seem to care. “There are so many of them, aren’t there? Rules on what we are and aren’t allowed to talk about. Where we can talk. There’s probably even a rule that says we’re not supposed to be talking without someone else here, isn’t there?”
“Believe me, pirate, we’ve already traveled so far past what’s deemed appropriate that I’m not sure we’ll ever manage to find our way back.”
“I don’t have a problem with that if you don’t,” she said hopefully. If this got back to Sophia, what were the chances she’d be locked in her cabin and fed only scraps of salted beef slipped beneath the door?
Nicholas’s interest only seemed to sharpen. “And what would your sister say about that?”
Oh—damn. She scrambled for an explanation, feeling the heat wash up her throat the longer it took. “I wasn’t raised the way Sophia was.…I’m still learning what’s expected of me. And clearly not doing the best job.”
He seemed confused by this. “Not raised the way…you mean to say…”
What could she possibly that would make sense here, worked through an eighteenth-century filter? “This family…I didn’t know that Sophia even existed, that any of them did, until they came and took me. They interrupted my life, and now I have to play by their rules and do whatever they ask, and it doesn’t matter what I want or how I feel. It’s not my choice.”
Nicholas turned again, resting his arms against the railing; he had locked his thoughts away so deeply inside of his mind that Etta couldn’t begin to guess at them. His expression gave nothing away as he said, “So you would rather return to Nassau than continue to New York?”
Nassau! That was the second time it had been mentioned. So not Nassau County in New York, which meant…the Bahamas. “Is that an option? Can you bring me back?”
“No,” he said flatly, extinguishing that tiny flare of hope. “My payment depends on delivering you to New York.”
Of course.
“Unless you’re in fear for your life—”