The Steel Rogue: A Valor of Vinehill Novel

by K. J. Jackson

  He chuckled. “Fair enough.”

  The chuckle echoed in his chest, not able to leave him for he had just heard the most interesting thing of all.

  She’d called him Roe.

  { Chapter 7 }

  Her arm jostled.

  The motion morphed into the dream she was having—dancing, she was dancing and then her arm flew out from her partner. It jostled again.

  Her arm moving was real, not a dream.

  Her eyes flickered open only to be greeted by darkness. Blackness tinged by the slightest bit of moonlight streaming in through the window above the bed.

  Now she was confusing her dreams with reality.

  She craned her neck to look at her arm only to find Roe standing above her, his hand nudging her bare upper arm.

  “Roe? What are you doing? It’s dark out.”

  “I know. But I can see you and you can see me. It’s enough.” He grabbed her hand and tugged her upright on the bed. “I need you to come with me.”

  She scooted forward and dropped her feet off the edge of the bed and bent, reaching for her boots.

  “No, you don’t need them.”

  “What?”

  He reached down and grabbed her hand, tugging her upright from the bed. “Come. Come now.”

  Suspicion spiked her brow. This was where it happened. Where he tossed her overboard in the dead of the night so his crew wouldn’t question him on her disappearance.

  He gave her a moment to get her shirt, jacket and skirt on, then grabbed her hand before she could fully clasp together the row of gold buttons up her middle.

  Her feet slow behind him, she let him drag her onto the main deck. The deck was quiet, not a soul atop. The moon sent dips and shadows of light onto the wood.

  Her finger pointed to the ship’s wheel above on the quarterdeck. “Shouldn’t someone be at the helm?”

  Roe shrugged. “Without the wind, there’s not much to steer so I sent Fredrick to take a nap against the rear rail.”

  He grabbed her hand and he pulled her along the main deck. The half-moon shone just enough light onto the wood planks so she didn’t stumble over the rope that was coiled in intervals along the deck.

  Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, Torrie looked up at the back of his head, at his dark hair curled along the white of his shirt glowing in the moonlight. “What is this? The moon? I’ve seen the moon before, Roe. It’s pretty but not worth waking me up for.”

  “No—no one is awake.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Just us. And maybe Fredrick if he’s not asleep yet.”

  “And?”

  He stopped and turned to her, dropping her fingers as his hand swept outward along the deck. “And this is the most amount of open space on the ship. We have an hour before dawn. So this is your chance to walk—stretch your legs like they need to be stretched.”

  Her head snapped back, her bare toes curling under her skirts. “No. I—I couldn’t.”

  “Yet you can. I’ve seen you do it in the park. I’ve seen it once, I can see it again. It’s not at all an oddity. Not on this ship. But I gathered you wouldn’t do it in front of the men, so this is what I can offer. This hour, this clear deck—it’s yours.”

  Her brow furrowed and her gaze tore away from him to sweep along the deck. There was a circular path cleared along the outer perimeter.

  Her legs were unbearably tight.

  She looked up at the sky. Half-moon. Stars still pinpoints in the darkness.

  There was no telling when she would get another chance like this.

  Without looking at him, she nodded and stepped away from him to the side by the railing. Heat burning the back of her neck, for she knew his eyes were fixed on her, she took her first long step forward with her right foot. She bent down far on her front leg, while stretching the back of her calf on her left leg.

  Pain, then sweet relief as her skin started to loosen. The tendons along her heel stretched along the bone, pulling from her toes. She pushed up, taking her next deep step. Forward, she moved in the circle around the deck, and with each step she dipped deeper as her skin started to become more malleable.

  Three times around the deck and she avoided looking at Roe each time she stepped past him. He had moved to the main mast in the center of the ship, leaning back against it, his arms loosely clasped across his ribcage. Bare feet for him, as usual.

  She noticed him, even if she refused to look in his direction. Doing the awkward movements with her legs spread wide was fine as long as she pretended he wasn’t there. As long as she averted her eyes every time she rounded the starboard side and had to pass him. It felt too good on her legs to stop. The more rounds she did, the longer and deeper she could stretch her legs.

  On her fourth pass, he cleared his throat, standing up straight.

  Her look flickered to him before setting directly ahead.

  “Mind if I join your stroll?”

  Her gaze centered on him as she dipped into a step. “It’s not necessary.”

  “I know. But it will pass the time. I don’t stand in one spot very well.”

  She looked at him as she brought her rear leg up. “You don’t?”

  “No. I’ve always had too much energy I couldn’t control. It’s gotten me into more trouble than any boy rightly should have experienced.” He moved into step beside her.

  She chuckled. “My older cousin—Lachlan—was much the same way. I was always the hesitant one in the group of us, but between Lachlan and Sloane and their mischievousness, and my oldest cousin, Jacob, allowing all of their crazy ideas, I got dragged into one debacle after another with them that I didn’t want to do.”

  “Such as?”

  “There was one game we used to play, Valor of Vinehill.” An impish smile came to her lips. “And it used to terrify me because it would entail climbing up the vines on one side of the castle to see how high and how fast we could go. There were iron footholds mixed in with the vines, but the fear that would strike me when I got past the first floor would freeze me in place sometimes. I hated that game.”

  “Yet you still played it.”

  “I did. I climbed. I had to.” The smile on her face faded. “I did it because being left behind would have been worse than breaking my arm on a fall.”

  “And did you ever fall?”

  “No. Amazingly enough, no.” She wavered slightly as she dipped forward on her left leg, but then she caught her balance. It didn’t escape her notice that his hand had flung out, at the ready to steady her if needed. “But I was painstakingly careful as I climbed. I was always last, but I also always made it into the windows.”

  “Your cousins made you do things you thought not possible.”

  “Exactly, so in that sense it was good for me. But it was never good for my nerves. I learned to swallow a lot of fear just to keep up with them.”

  “But you never felt like you totally belonged?”

  In mid dip, her look jumped to him. “How would you know that?”

  “I’m taking a guess. I know what it is to be an extra.”

  She shrugged. “They have always been my family—more so than my own parents and brother. I was three when I went to live with them at Vinehill. And I belonged as much as I let myself belong. The three of them—Sloane, Lachlan and Jacob always made me feel like I was their sister. I was part of their family. There was no doubt in that. The only doubt was of my own making, not theirs.”

  They rounded the far corner by the ladders to the quarterdeck in silence.

  As they started along the next long stretch of the circle, Roe looked to her. “Your husband, Lord Apton, passed away fourteen months ago, correct?”

  “He did.”

  “He was older?”

  “Yes, he was.” Her eyebrow arched, daring him to say something derogatory about her husband. Her husband had been not just older, but much older and she presumed he already knew that fact.

  “Did you love him?”

  Her head snapped back. She had
n’t expected that question. She expected snide. The smirk that she’d suffered countless times in London when people found out she was Apton’s wife and not his daughter.

  She looked away from Roe, her gaze on the inky depths of the sea. “I did…he was kind and sweet to me. Sloane introduced us a few years after she became the Duchess of Wolfbridge. And he married me when…” Her voice trailed off as she silenced her thought. Lord Apton had married her, limp, scars and all.

  Though he’d never wanted to see her legs, see the mangled flesh.

  Not that she blamed him.

  She respected what he was willing to do and made sure to cover the scars with long stockings whenever they were intimate. Though it didn’t matter, for he’d never looked down when they had sex. He stared at her face, expectantly every time. Expectant for what, she wasn’t sure.

  She blinked, setting a smile on her lips, sad though she knew it was. “He adored me and I adored him, even if it wasn’t the grand love match that I had dreamed of as a child.”

  “What did you dream of as a child?”

  “Excitement.” She glanced at him. “Love that made my heart pound so hard in my chest that I would tempt death every second of every minute.”

  His right cheek lifted in a half smile. “Sounds like a good way to die.”

  “I thought so.” She looked forward as she took her next long dip. “But not anymore. Apton was exactly what I needed in a husband. Kind and patient. He made no demands on me.”

  “But he didn’t make your heart pound.”

  “No.” She looked past him to the east just as the glow of the sun curled into the horizon and tinted the dark sky into a deep blue. “But I didn’t need it to. Not after what happened in the fire. That fire took everything from me—who I was. So I haven’t needed what I did when I was a child for a very long time.”

  He followed her look to the sky. “The men will be rousing soon.” He motioned to the forecastle deck in front of them. “Shall we step up?”

  She nodded, moving in front of him to climb the ladder that led upward to the forecastle. She stepped away from the top of the ladder and Roe popped up next to her.

  They walked to the front of the ship, stopping at the railing, and she set her hands atop. The first true rays of golden sun jumped above the horizon. They watched them in silence until the orange red orb crested beyond the unending vastness of the sea.

  Roe shifted, turning fully toward her as he flicked his head over his shoulder to the main deck and then looked down at her. “It was good?”

  Her legs felt a thousand times lighter and she couldn’t curb the glee of it from her face. “It was glorious.”

  A smile crept up to his dark grey eyes, so genuine, so heartfelt, that it lit the silver flecks shining in the glow of the morning rays. “Then you’ve made me a happy man.” He held his hand out to her. “And it is back to bed for you.”

  Her hand lifted and she set her fingers into the warmth of his palm.

  The jolt of his hand squeezing her fingers made her pause in her steps.

  Without the slightest inkling it was coming, whatever had just happened in that instant shifted the world around her.

  Shifted everything she thought she knew of him.

  Everything she wanted to think of him.

  And she wasn’t sure she liked it.

  ~~~

  “Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”

  Her breath stuck in her throat, Torrie set the tattered book next to her on the bed and her gaze drifted off onto the never-ending horizon of the sea meeting the sky, blue on blue.

  Frankenstein. She’d heard of it, though had never thought to read the novel. Not until she saw Vally finish the last page of the worn copy a day ago, and she inquired on it. His face somewhat ashen, he pressed the book into her hands, telling her she should read it for herself.

  It hadn’t taken but five minutes before she was obsessed, her fingers delicately flipping the pages wrinkled and barely legible from long dried salt water stains on them.

  Her toes flexed on the bed, pulling the muscles of her calves tight. Three days of stretching her legs in the darkness with Roe just before daybreak and she was feeling light again—not weighed down by the unyielding tightness of her scars.

  Just as she was about to pick up the book again, the door to the cabin slammed open and the mess of two men struggling with each other spilled into the room.

  Torrie tossed the book to the side and lunged to the foot of the bed, her fingers grasping at the handles of the swords sticking up out of the open chest on the floor. She grabbed a hold of the gold filigree handle of the Toledo sword just as she realized one of the men was Roe.

  Roe twisted, dragging a man a good head taller than him into the room. Weston—the man’s name was Weston if she’d heard correctly on deck a couple days ago.

  Grunts, feet shuffling, muscle against muscle until Roe found leverage and yanked up on Weston’s wrist, twisting it behind the sailor’s back.

  With a growl, Roe forced Weston into a spin and shoved him face first into the wall by the door, his right hand twisting Weston’s wrist even higher up the man’s back. He sank the length of his forearm across Weston’s neck, brutally locking him against the wall.

  “Let me go you lily-livered bastard.” Weston’s bellow filled the room.

  Roe shoved him harder into the wall. “Not a chance, you ass.”

  “You fucking whore’s teeth offspring.”

  Roe twisted his forearm hard into Weston’s neck, digging his elbow into the man’s back. “That the worst you got today?”

  “Get your bloody hands off me.”

  “Not until you stop twisting like a blasted madman.”

  “I’m not twisting.”

  Weston stilled. Roe eased up slightly on his back.

  In less than a blink, Weston kicked off the wall, trying to escape the hold.

  Roe shoved into him with his whole body, knocking him back flat into the wall. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  His face smashed against the wall, Weston’s words came out slurred. “The bloody bastard tipped the cup—”

  “You don’t pull a damn knife for some spilt whisky.”

  “The whoremonger did it on purpose—he sm—”

  Roe bashed his head into the wall. “I don’t give a damn what he did or didn’t do on purpose. You know what happens on this crew to a mate that pulls a knife.”

  “The fucking drink.” Weston’s words came out deflated, whatever brimstone that had taken over his control now sucked out of him.

  “Yeah, the fucking drink.” Roe eased up on Weston’s back. “I’ve been trying to keep you alive, but it’s beginning to be a losing battle, Wes.”

  Weston twisted his face to the wall, then clunked his forehead onto the wood. “Just fucking do it, then. Toss me over.”

  “You don’t want that, or you’d already have been picked apart by the fish.” Roe dropped his hands and took a step back from Weston. “So don’t make me do it.”

  “Cap—”

  “No. I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses, Wes. If I hadn’t caught your damn hand before that knife went higher than your waist, you’d already have a rock tied about your leg and be sinking into the depths.” Roe leaned in on him. “Control yourself.”

  A seething sigh and Weston nodded.

  “Good.” He flicked his head backward over his shoulder to Torrie. “And apologize to Torrie for me having to bust in here and kick your sorry ass in front of her.”

  A stubborn frown twisted his lips and he leaned out past Roe. “Sorry, my lady.”

  Torrie gave him a weak smile.

  “And for the swearing.”

  “My apologies, my lady.”

  She offered him a nod.

  “Now go find George before you black out and make this right with him before he comes to me and demands your ass gets tossed overboard.”

  Westo
n’s head dropped forward, from either the drunken stupor he was in or more likely the humiliation of having to apologize. A man like that didn’t apologize—not easily, if at all.

  His movements jerking, Weston shuffled out of the room.

  Roe closed the door behind him.

  For a long moment, he stood with his back to her, his hands high on the door, his shoulders heaving in long breaths.

  He looked at her over his shoulder. “Sorry about that mess. This was the closest place to drag him before he went so far off there’d be no choice but to send him to dine with Davy Jones.”

  Without another glance at her, he moved from the door to his desk, bending down beneath it to pull free one of the bottles of brandy that stayed snug in a box attached to the wall under the wood. He grabbed a silver tankard that sat atop the desk and splashed into it a healthy amount of the deep amber liquid.

  He snugged the bottle back into place beneath the desk and took a healthy swallow before turning to sit on the chair. Bending forward, he leaned his forearms on his thighs. His look lifted to her. “You can drop the sword now, Torrie.”

  She jerked, her forehead crinkling as she looked to her right arm. She was still stretched out long atop the bed, her fingers clutching the handle of the sword, her knuckles white. And her jaw still hung agape.

  Her mouth clamped shut as she cracked open the death grip she had on the sword and poked it back into the chest. “I…” Her tongue went quiet, unable to manifest words for a long second.

  “How is your arm—the stitches?”

  “It—it is fine.” She shook her head and sat upright on the bed, tucking her legs under her as she looked at Roe. “What was that?”

  He took another sip of the brandy before his gaze met hers. “That was Weston. An idiot. An idiot mixed with days of no wind.” He heaved a sigh, his fingers lifting to touch the bruised cut along his right cheekbone. He winced. “An idiot I’m trying to keep alive and on this ship. But the idiot has a hard left swing.”

  He continued to prod the throbbing bruise across his cheek, his fingers repeatedly twitching away in shocks of pain.