Coughing, his hand covering his nose, he searched the cabin.
Rumpled bed. Chair. Desk. The chamber pot in the corner tipped onto its side.
The floor. A sheen of putrid wetness covered the entirety of the floor.
He swallowed back a gag.
There in the corner of the floor, curled into a ball and half under the bed, lay a shaking mess of a body. Cass.
Wet from head to toe. Her hair clumped in dark strands haphazard about her head. A sopped chemise the only barrier between her skin and the cool air.
Damn.
Leaning his head back into the skinny walkway, he gasped a deep breath and then held his breath, rushing into the room. His feet sliding on the slick floor, he reached Cass in three steps.
Bending over, he touched her huddled shoulder just as the ship lurched to the left with a wave. He lost his footing, catching himself on her bed. His hand sank into a moist blanket.
Still attempting to hold his breath, he pushed himself off the bed and steadied his feet, then reached down. Digging his hands under her body, he lifted her off the floor with a prayer that the ship wouldn’t heave and make him lose his balance.
Three quick strides to the doorway and Rorrick stepped out into the hall. He moved down the tight walkway with his right elbow high, holding her head in the crook of his arm to keep it from knocking against the wall. The position worked until the ship rocked to the port side and the crown of her head clunked into the wall.
He stopped and set his shoulders against the wall for support, and then searched what he could see of her face through the wet strands of dark hair clinging to her cheeks. She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t react to the blow on her head.
She just shook. Trembles racking her body, one after another without mercy.
Rorrick continued to the end of the hall and he wedged a hand out to open the door to his stateroom. Moving into his cabin, he brought her to his bed, setting her down on the top blanket.
He stood, staring down at the wreck of her body. The soaked chemise hid nothing, working only to hold the chill on her body.
He expelled a breath in a low disconcerted sigh. “What the hell happened to you, Foxfire?”
A spasm rolled along her body, shaking her down to her bare toes. Her limbs pulled inward, wrapping her torso.
First, he had to procure a bath for her. His nose wrinkled. And then one for him.
And then he had to shove some water and food down her throat.
~~~
Her eyes cracked open as tiny vestiges of lucidity leaked into the black terrors in her mind.
It took her a long minute to focus, her eyelids rough, tugging against her parched eyes. The bleariness stubborn, she could only see a fuzzy figure perpendicular to her.
The figure was lying down, she was upright.
No. It was the opposite. She was on her side.
A thin glaze of the fuzziness lifted, just enough to see color and shape.
Rorrick.
Rorrick turned to his right. Moving. The brightness of his white shirt shards of glass slicing into her eyes.
He remained in the fog that refused to ease from her sight, even though she fought it, blinking, trying to wake, trying to crawl into consciousness.
A painful spasm sliced through her torso. Her body started to instinctively curl around the pain, but then weakness overcame and she couldn’t move. Could only suffer the pain straight on.
Another dream. She was just in another dream.
Rorrick moved again, his head turning to her, the white shirt growing bigger, closer to her eyes. Hurting.
She had thought her eyelids had closed with the spasm. Maybe it wasn’t a dream.
She couldn’t fully see his face, but she had to try, had to find out if he was just another hallucination. So many people had appeared and vanished in front of her since setting foot on this ship.
“Am I…” Her words were rough, barely formed past her lips that refused to cooperate. “Am I dying, Rorrick?” Her hand flopped out at him.
To her surprise, her knuckles landed on a solid mass instead of falling through the air. His stomach. Solid. He was solid. She thought to move her fingers, but they stubbornly disobeyed, so her hand stayed propped against him for lack of strength to grip his shirt.
“No.” The low rumble of his voice filled her ears, sending her head to pounding.
“Would you tell…tell me if I…if I was?”
“No.”
Her hand slipped down his shirt, falling off of him. Air. Only air left for her.
Maybe he was another hallucination.
“Your voice…I need to hear it.” She gathered strength and reached out for him but only found emptiness. The effort exhausted her and her hand fell to the bed, her arm draping off the side. “Tell me…tell me what I am going to see.”
Silence.
A hallucination. Not real. He was just another ghost. He said she wasn’t going to die. But he wasn’t real. So he didn’t know.
She shut her eyes to the haze.
“In America?”
His deep voice invaded her head. The pounding wasn’t as extreme. An improvement.
Maybe he was real. Her mouth clamped shut as she tried to moisten her tongue to gather words. “Yes. Special—why so special—why do you smile when you talk of it?”
“Ahh.”
She cracked her eyes open. Through the fog, she could see him sinking down to the floor, his back flat against the boards of the wall by the head of the bed. He reached forward, and she could feel her hand lifting, his warm fingers wrapping around her cold flesh. The heat of his hand seared her nerves, as though she had just stuck her hand into a frozen stream and then set it above flame.
“You are wavering, Cass, aren’t you? Giving up or fighting it?”
His soft words made little sense. Especially when all her senses were centered on her burning hand. It took a long moment before the pain settled into bearable comfort.
She wanted—needed his words, and he wasn’t talking. “Tell me.” Her foggy gaze centered on her hand in his, her line to what she hoped was reality.
He drew his knee up, balancing his arm atop as he squeezed her hand. “There is an expanse of land I own in the mountains, a valley with a trail to the mountaintop. Purgatory Mountain, they call it. But I just think of it as mine. Except for the crumbling pathway, a cliff of sheer rock plummets down a hundred feet in all directions at the crest. When I’m up there at the peak, I can see the sunrise, bright pink in the sky, waking the land as far as the eye can see. And at the end of the day, I can turn around and watch that same day dip into darkness with sunsets of ethereal magic about them. I can see the land rolling, never ending all around me. Maybe that is purgatory—to not see an end. Maybe it’s not.”
His other hand lifted and he clasped her frozen fingers in between his palms. This touch didn’t hurt. It only added to the warmth travelling up her arm. Her eyes slid closed, her breathing not as hard a struggle as it was when she had woken.
“Those moments when I am up there.” His words continued, warm honey sinking over her chest. “Those ribbons in time. Those are everything. I am alone and the land is at peace. Yet every one of those moments is different, always changing. The light, the birds, the wind. It is wonder. And that wonder is only eclipsed by the magnitude of it. The possibility of anything I can imagine surrounds me. So when you see me smile when America is mentioned, that is what is in my mind.”
His words ceased and the silence sank down upon her, the pounding in her head now because of the absence of his voice.
Too weary to open her eyes, her lips parted, her voice escaping in a squeak. “Don’t stop.”
His hands tightened around hers. “I won’t, Foxfire. I won’t.”
~~~
Cass opened her eyes.
Dry, her body was dry. Not wet. Not clammy. Not freezing.
On her back, she turned her head to the side, surprised her muscles did as commanded.
The low light of a lantern hanging over the desk lit the wooden walls of the room. But not her room. The lantern and the desk were on the other side of the bed in her room. Or was she turned upside down in the bed?
She looked downward. No. Definitely not her bed. These sheets and blankets were dark. Hers were light.
She lifted herself up slightly, craning her neck to look around the room. Surprise shot through her again as her muscles did as bade. Her eyes travelled to all corners of the room and then landed on the figure sleeping on the floor.
Rorrick. This was Rorrick’s room.
The fact sunk into her chest.
What should cause her pause—what should shoot her straight out of bed—instead wrapped around her, oddly warming her. Rorrick’s room. Rorrick not but an arm’s length away.
She should be alarmed. Instead she was comforted.
She wasn’t going to die in the foulness of her own vomit. Die in the cold muck of a ship. Everything was going to be well. She was going to be well.
The peace of that fact wrapped around her.
Her eyes slipped closed and sleep overtook her, easy, dreamless sleep that stretched on and on and on.
“Open your eyes, Cass.”
Her eyelashes fluttered, her eyelids not dragging like gravel over her eyes. It still took a long moment for her gaze to adjust to the light in the room. Focused, she found Rorrick standing next to the bed, hovering above her with a bowl clutched in his arm. A dark scruff of a beard lined the lower half of his face—days without shaving. He still wore that white shirt, the shirt that blinded her with far too much light for her ravaged eyes.
His look narrowed at her. “Good. Your eyes are clear. Can you sit up?”
At that moment the smell of the stew in the bowl wafted down to her and her stomach flipped. Her eyes went wide, the gags starting deep in her throat.
She sat up, her head swiveling, searching for a pot to heave into.
No. Not in front of him.
Quicker than she could understand what he was doing, he produced an empty bowl and set it on her lap. He stepped away, standing in the corner by the door and holding the bowl of stew.
Her stomach refused to listen to her mind, and she heaved, over and over, six times with nothing coming up from her stomach before her body admitted defeat. Nothing. Not even bile at this point.
And she had just vomited in front of Rorrick. Her eyes stayed down, her cheeks starting to burn at the humiliation.
“And that is why you need to drink, Cass. To eat something.”
She couldn’t look up at him.
His boots clunking along the floorboards toward her, he stopped by the bedside and reached for a simple metal cup on the desk that doubled as a table. He shoved the cup of water under her chin, holding it for her to take from him.
“Water first, and if you can hold it, you can move to tea. Then we will try the soup.”
The flush in her cheeks spread to her forehead and neck. She couldn’t take the cup. Couldn’t lift her eyes.
He gave a heavy sigh. “There is no longer any margin for modesty or embarrassment, Cass. For how I found you in your cabin, and in the days since then, I have now watched and heard and smelled and cleaned any and every thing your body is ever going to produce.”
She followed his words, the mortification burning her neck spreading to her entire body. He had saved her, yes, but what he had seen…
She pushed her imaginations from her mind, not having the energy to wallow in her humiliation.
Her left forearm tightened around the bowl still on her lap as her right hand slowly lifted, and she took the cup from him. She set it to her lips, taking the slightest sip.
To her amazement, she didn’t instantly retch. She took another sip. It too snaked down her throat without refusal. She sat for a long moment, her head down as she waited for her stomach to churn.
It was then she noticed that she wasn’t in one of her chemises. Hers were white, plain, functional. The shift she now wore had ruffles interwoven with a pink ribbon along her bosom. She remembered going through the three she had brought on the journey in the first day—all soiled beyond saving—so where had this one come from?
And she was clean.
All of her. Hair to toes.
The flush along her skin that had started to abate roared back in a raging blaze.
“You…you have also seen…seen me.”
“Your body?” He shifted on his feet.
She nodded, refusing to lift her head to him.
“Believe me, Cass, looking at your naked body was the last thing on my mind when I dunked you into the captain’s hip bath.”
“What was?”
“What?”
“On your mind?” She dared the tiniest glance up at him.
He chuckled. “Getting you in and out of that cold water as fast as I could and still reasonably clean you, from, well, everything. It took a fair amount of cajoling to get the captain to let me use the bath as it was. Plus, you were already shaking so violently I thought you would crack your head open if it hit the edge of the tub again. You still have the bump on the back of your head from the first time you hit it.”
“I do?” She lifted her hand to her head, her fingers searching through her hair to the rear of her scalp. She found the bump just below the crown of her head, wide and still tender at the touch.
He took the cup from her hand and nestled it within the round indentation carved into the wood of the table. “And then my only concern was warming you after I got you out of the bath.”
Her hand dropped from her head and she looked up at him. “I…I am sorry I caused you so much trouble. Why didn’t you hire someone from below to attend to me?”
“Dysentery ran the ship. All the able women below that weren’t sick themselves were busy taking care of kin. And I sure didn’t trust another man to do it.” He cleared his throat. “This is where a maid would have been helpful, Cass.”
“I know…I am sorry…I am so sorry to impose…” Her eyes dipped, and she looked around. She needed to leave him be. It took her a long moment to work past the blankness in her mind and figure out how to exit. Bowl. Blankets.
Twisting and stretching, she reached to set the empty bowl on the table, and then started to push the blankets off her lap.
“Whoa.” His grip caught her hand on the blankets, stilling her motion. “What are you doing?”
“I am leaving to my stateroom. I am sorry I caused you so much trouble.”
“That is one thing you’re not doing, Cass.” Without removing his grip on her, he reached to the table and set the bowl of stew down on it. “I’ll not have you stumbling and falling about again.”
“I fell?”
“Last night. You tried to get out of bed and your legs would not hold you. Then you tripped over me.”
“I did?”
“Yes.” His fingers tightened on her hand. “So you’re not going anywhere, Cass.”
Her shoulders slumped. “But I am a dreadful amount of trouble.”
“Trouble, I can handle, Foxfire.” He peeled her fingers away from the blanket and then resettled the wool across her lap. “There wasn’t anyone else on board I trusted to help you properly, so the task set on me. That was my own choice. I didn’t mind it.”
She looked up at him, her eyebrows arched high. “You didn’t mind it? I was a mess.”
“I could have done without the smell.” He smiled, a half-cocked grin. “I do gag quite easily. So that was the worst of the trouble.”
Breaking through her unending mortification, a smile breached her lips, her cheeks stretching for the first time in days.
“What? You take pleasure in watching a man gag?”
Her fingers lifted from the blanket and waggled in the air. “It is nothing, truly, but when I initially met you, that was the first word that popped into my head. Trouble. And so it turns, I am the one who is trouble.”
He chuckled, his arms crossing against
his chest. “Well, trouble or not, you are staying in here until you have your strength back about you. Until you stop heaving up everything I am shoving down your throat.”
He picked up the bowl of soup from the table. “Do you think you can feed yourself? If so, I will leave you to it so I can go scrounge up tea.”
She extended her hands, taking the bowl from him. “I think I can try, at the very least. Just as long as that empty bowl is within reach in case it does not go well.”
He waited until she tipped the wooden bowl, sipping the lukewarm broth. This time, the smell held only mild offense to her senses and she managed to force a long swallow down her throat.
When she didn’t immediately heave, Rorrick smiled with a nod, the furrow in his brow easing as he watched her. He turned to the door.
“Rorrick?”
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and turned back to her. “Yes?”
“What was the first word you thought of upon meeting me?”
His calculating blue eyes landed on her, and he stared at her intently for a long moment. So long, she wasn’t sure if he was searching for a lie or a way to speak the truth.
His right cheek lifted slightly as the side of his lips curved upward. “Complication.”
Her head angled to the side at the word.
He turned away and her gaze stayed solidly on the expanse of his back under his white linen shirt. He moved out to the hall, his wide shoulders brushing the frame of the undersized doorway.
The door clicked closed, and her look didn’t veer from the spot he vacated.
Complication.
Whatever did that mean?
{ Chapter 6 }
He stared at Cass.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her back erect, her long fingers tearing apart chunks of bread and setting them on the metal plate on her lap. The gold braided trimmings of her soft teal riding habit brought out the honey tones in her eyes.
Her other dresses and her pelisse had not escaped her initial sickness, and even after several scrubbings, they had been so vile they were deemed a loss. She was down to this one riding habit and a heavy wool cloak. Regardless, she had her gentility back about her, all of her movements once again holding the inherent grace he had seen in her back in London.
Of Risk & Redemption: A Revelry’s Tempest Novel Page 5
