by Pam Godwin
Gladly, he said without voice and laid his lips against mine.
Dear lord, again with that mouth. More than a kiss, it was a promise. A flutter of hope.
Leaning back, he stretched toward the table at the bedside. My compass was there, along with the tiny scroll and jade stone. He reached over those and grabbed a piece of parchment. A letter.
He held it out for me to read, and I instantly recognized Priest’s bold, slanted handwriting.
This is Ashley’s private manor on the southwest coast of England.
Yesterday marked five weeks since we found you near the island of birds.
The commodore is in London, settling matters with his crew and ship.
He shall join us here when he’s finished.
When you’re well enough, I will convey you to the windows.
There, you will see Jade anchored in the private harbor below, sheltered by cliffs.
Your crew is enjoying the township, stirring up trouble at the tavern and debauching the local maidens.
The servants and tenants on the property are discreet and loyal.
We are safe here.
Your men are safe and merry.
The only priority is your return to health.
I read it twice, nodding my approval. It didn’t answer every question, but the immediate ones had been addressed.
So this was Ashley’s manor. I looked around the bedchamber with new eyes, assuming it was the estate on the cliff that he’d said he favored. Strange that he’d allowed us to stay here—his lover and her husband—in his absence.
I didn’t know how I felt about that. “When did we arrive?”
Yesterday. His voice stopped at my ears.
Priest and Ashley had spent a week together when I was on Blitz. And another five weeks while I convalesced. They should know each other quite well by now. But they’d been already well acquainted, hadn’t they?
“How do you and Ashley know each other?” I pitched him my stormiest glare.
He looked away, staring at nothing. When he met my gaze again, his mouth gave life to a string of noiseless statements. With each rapid word, he grew angrier and more agitated. Since he wasn’t trying to slow down and help me understand, I suspected he was venting rather than giving me any real answers.
I could tell him to write it all down. But I was too impatient to wait when I had questions he could answer with a single syllable.
“Over the past weeks, did you talk to Ashley about us?” I stiffened, uncertain how to proceed in foreign waters. “Did you discuss…everything? Our marriage? Our separation? Did he tell you how I tried to use him to escape?”
He nodded through every inquiry, his expression hard and unflinching.
“He didn’t know you were in Jade’s hold when he captured me.” My mind raced to make all the connections. “Did you tell him? Does he know that’s why you hunted HMS Blitz?”
Another nod.
“I didn’t fall easily into his bed. I swear it.” A swallow stuck in my throat. “I was angry with you, and I needed a backup escape plan. And…I was attracted to him. Am. Still. I love him, Priest. But when my relationship began with him, it was fraught with pain and distrust. Until he saved me from the admiral. Did he tell you about that? About my imprisonment on the flagship and the violation that happened to me?”
Aye. His teeth clenched in what I assumed was a hot hiss of sound.
He stood and turned away, hiding his expression as his fingers stabbed through his hair, flexing and releasing.
“Priest…” I didn’t wish to hurt him. Not anymore. I didn’t know how to fix this.
He made another turn, hands on his hips, head bent, pacing forward, walking aft, pivoting forward, eying me. Then he looked at the table beside me.
I followed his gaze to the tiny scroll. “Did you read it?”
He stopped pacing. Nodded.
I crossed my arms, finding the pain from the motion bearable. “Tell me it’s a map.”
A grin startled at the corner of his mouth, struggling to pull free. I stared at those lips, my own twisting into a smile as he said, Aye.
“Tell me something.” I narrowed my eyes. “Where did you hide the compass on my ship?”
Now he grinned with abandon, damn near laughing out his response. Jobah.
“Jobah?” I couldn’t have read that right. “That goddamned traitor had it the entire time? I’m going to kill him.”
You won’t. He shook his head, trying to rein in his smile.
He was right, of course. I had a terrible weakness where my helmsman was concerned. I let him get away with all manner of insolence, only because he had the purest heart of any man on my crew. But I would still give him my mind on the matter.
Priest returned to my side and twined his fingers around mine. As I stared at our hands, dizziness threatened, my energy already draining.
“Put the map in a safe place,” I said. “Don’t let me see it or know its secret until I’m out of this bed, walking without assistance, feeding and bathing myself.”
I didn’t need the motivation, but I liked goals with scintillating rewards. I was a pirate, after all. I seized and savored the riches.
I love bathing you, he mouthed.
“I can’t imagine why. I’m repulsive.” I sagged against the pillows, struggling to hold my head up. “I think I need a short sleep now.”
He scowled threateningly and yanked off the sheet that covered me. I jerked my head away, but he grasped my jaw and forced my eyes downward, showing me my body.
As expected, the bruises were long gone. But my muscles had wasted away, leaving a gaunt, rawboned ghost of the strong, battle-honed woman I’d once been. Even so, it wasn’t as wretched as I’d imagined. Priest and Ashley had kept me nourished. I remembered the forced feedings, the constant flavor of broth on my tongue. They’d kept me alive.
Priest skidded his hand down my throat to my breasts. I’d lost weight there, too, but he didn’t seem to mind. His fingers lingered, molding around the nipples, and his breaths increased the lift and fall of his chest.
He licked his lips and continued lower, resting his palm on my ribs. I tensed, bracing for the agony that I’d lived with for weeks. The pain had anchored itself there, but the weight of his touch didn’t make me flinch. The ache seemed to only flare with muscle movement.
“All right.” I sighed. “You made your point.”
But he kept going. Prodding here, caressing there, he slowly, masterfully, turned me into a languid mixture of drowsy content. After five weeks of taking care of me, he was more acquainted with my body than I was, and he proved it with every touch.
He saved the juncture of my legs until the end. His fingers skimmed the tuft of curls and traced the slit beneath, cupping me possessively.
You. Are. Stunning.
I read his lips clearly as he lifted his gaze to mine, his thick dark lashes drifting upward. Perhaps there was lust in those silver eyes, but it wasn’t the chief emotion. His intimacy with my body ran deeper, his hand between my legs more profound than carnal intent.
It was an act of love. Of acknowledgment and acceptance.
Ashley had pleasured me there. The admiral had abused me there. Priest knew this.
He knew that not all my wounds were visible.
“We need to talk about Ashley,” I said.
Not today. A firm response as he rose from the bed and covered me with the sheet. Sleep.
“How did you get your burn scars?”
Later.
I hated those soundless words. “I want my hearing back. I miss your voice.”
He kissed my brow then my lips. Soft, warm, whispering kisses that gradually lulled me into the sweet surrender of slumber.
The next few days passed in a flurry of activity—meals, medicine, exercise, and a parade of liveried servants. Ashley’s manor was fully staffed, and every seamstress, housekeeper, cook, and maid seemed to know my husband on a smiling, tittering, intimate level.
He’d proved his loyalty to me so many times over the past few months, I knew in my heart he wouldn’t betray me again.
My rigorous exercise began in bed with his hands supporting my limbs as I repeatedly sat up, lifted small objects, flexed joints, and stretched muscles. I put myself on a strict tiresome routine that lasted hours several times a day. When I wasn’t sleeping and eating, I was sweating, shaking, grunting, and oftentimes screaming at the rafters in agony and frustration. But I was growing stronger.
Servants came and went. Meals were delivered. Fabrics were hauled in, cut, and sewn to fit my measurements. The ship’s surgeon, Lieutenant Flemming, had returned to London with Ashley. But Ipswich was here. Lucky me.
I sat on the edge of the bed as he waddled around me, probing tools in my ears, thumping at the bones in my arm, poking, prodding, and running his mouth with a sour look on his wrinkled face.
“I might be as deaf as an adder.” I stared into his cloudy eyes. “But I can hear you insulting me, you senile old curmudgeon.”
He grinned without teeth.
Perhaps I should have punched his impudent mug. But I owed him my life. After everything thing he’d done for me, I could only shake my head and laugh.
By the end of the week, I walked on my own. The steps were few but strong. I paced the bedchamber, lifting brass candlesticks, one in each hand. Back and forth, I went. Panting, trembling, and soaked with sweat, I worked my muscles until they limped. Then I plucked one of the swords from the stand in the corner and used it as a crutch to power through.
Sometimes I stepped out on the balcony and gazed upon my majestic galleon far below, where she moored in Ashley’s private bay of cliffs. I missed her and my crew.
More than that, I missed my pirate hunter.
Was he visiting his betrothed during his time in London? Courting her while he kept his dirty secret hidden away in his coastal estate? Those thoughts chased me relentlessly. The only way I found I could outrun them was through endless, rigorous exercise.
Priest trailed me through the corridors of the manor for two weeks, huffing and seething and scolding me for pushing too hard. Perhaps that was an advantage of being deaf. I didn’t have to listen to his ribald speech.
My body was healing, slowly coming back to life. I sensed it when Priest kissed me, when the heat of his rock-hard physique pressed against me, making me ache for him.
Every night, I slept in the security of his arms, his chest against my back, the nude length of him steeling along the nude length of me. Skin to skin, hips together, with his swollen hardness trapped between us, it was heaven and torture.
I wanted him deeply and basked in his affectionate kisses. But, for the first time since we met, I had the strength of will to refuse him when he pressed for more. I wouldn’t betray Ashley, and Priest wouldn’t discuss their history. He was hiding something.
Until I understood their past and our future, I put the present on hold.
It wasn’t difficult. By the time I collapsed into bed each night, I’d exerted every ounce of strength I had into rebuilding my body. I had nothing left to give a passionate coupling.
One night, three weeks after my arrival in England, I stumbled into bed beneath the weight of such heavy exhaustion my muscles throbbed. My head pounded, and my ears buzzed with the need for sleep.
No, my ears were ringing.
The noise threaded through the thumping pressure in my skull. As I drifted to sleep in Priest’s arms, I decided the sensation was just the overworked pulsations of my heart.
Until I woke to the sound of voices.
“Rot in hell, you pompous cunt!” Priest roared so loudly I felt it rattle the rafters.
Not only that, I heard it.
In my ears.
His Welsh accent penetrated with clarity, volume, and unbridled rage.
Stunned, I lay motionless on the bed, unable to believe the sounds coming at me. The beat of my heart, the rush of my breaths, the tread of pacing footsteps…
And the elegance of Ashley’s aristocratic voice. “Your anger with me is misplaced.”
Blanketed in shadows, I pushed up on my elbows and waited to see if they noticed me stirring.
Across the room, Ashley leaned a shoulder against the fireplace mantle, hands clasped behind him, head lowered, and blue eyes fixed on Priest. He’d traded his seafaring frock for a somber black coat. Lace at the cuffs and collar matched the white waistcoat and breeches.
Droplets of dew gleamed on the toes of his black boots. A three-cornered hat lay upside down on the table beside him, his inky hair tousled and windblown. He must have just arrived.
Like Priest, his muscular frame appeared leaner, his shoulders twitching with harnessed energy, hinting at the careful calculation of his every action. Such a gorgeous man at once confident in his body and stifled by his nobility.
“Misplaced? I’ve spent the last few months fighting the impulse to carve out your liver.” Priest wore a path across the wool rug, shirtless and seething, his hands clenching at his sides. “I can think of at least ten reasons why I should do it now. First and foremost, let’s not forget that you intended to hang my wife.”
“Ah, but she’s the one reason you will leave my liver precisely where it is.”
With a quickening pulse, I slid my legs off the side of the bed and leaned forward, deciding to listen to the conversation rather than interrupt.
By God, I could hear!
“If you hadn’t captured her…” Priest spun and charged toward Ashley, bellowing, “She wouldn’t have suffered so!”
“Don’t put that on me.” Ashley went deadly still, his voice terrifyingly calm. “Don’t you dare. Damn you, I would give my life for that woman.”
His declaration filled me with warmth, but Priest wouldn’t appreciate it. This wasn’t going to end well.
I grabbed a nightgown from the floor and yanked it on.
“She almost died because of you!” Priest shouted inches from Ashley’s face.
Calm as a windless sea, Ashley slammed a fist into Priest’s jaw. I hurried toward them as Priest countered with a brutal punch to Ashley’s mouth, bloodying his lip.
Confound it! I circled back to the bed and snatched a full bucket of water.
“One, you never told me you were married.” Ashley tackled Priest to the floor, face-down. “Two, I was hunting you so that I could put her in your protection.”
“You captured her to take her to London and secure your bloody promotion!” Priest exploded with fury, knocking Ashley off with an elbow to the head. “Then you fucked her!”
Fists flew. Grunts echoed off the walls. Extravagant baubles crashed to the floor as they rolled through the bedchamber, grappling, cursing, and taking out more furniture. I stormed toward the chaos, intent on dumping the contents of the bucket on top of their foolish heads.
Partway there, I slowed, stumbling to a halt. The room went silent, the air taut and still. They weren’t moving.
Ashley lay atop Priest’s supine body with a hand around Priest’s throat. They didn’t look at me, didn’t even notice me standing off to the side behind the armchair.
Their tense, rigidly hard frames heaved from exertion, chest to chest, hip to hip, as they stared at each other, locked in some sort of emotionally charged eye contact. Priest lay on his back, restraining Ashley by the hair, wrenching his head back, and holding their mouths a hairsbreadth apart. They were so close they would’ve tasted the mingling of their labored breaths.
Ashley glared down his nose at Priest, maintaining his imperious demeanor, despite the awkward angle of his neck.
The nonverbal battle lasted longer than was comfortable. I couldn’t breathe. I was afraid to make a sound.
Gradually, Ashley released the vise of his hand fro
m Priest’s throat. But he didn’t push away. Neither did Priest. All at once, they both seemed to relax.
Then, before my very eyes, Ashley sagged, letting the full weight and length of his body sink onto Priest in a confusingly beautiful gesture of trust and familiarity.
My jaw hung open, my thoughts fraying. What the devil were they doing?
The fist Priest held in Ashley’s hair loosened, sliding to the back of Ashley’s head to draw their foreheads together.
“I love her.” Ashley closed his eyes, his jaw tight. “It can’t be helped.”
“I know.” He sighed against Ashley’s mouth. Not a kiss. But it wanted to be…something…
I was so enthralled, the bucket slipped from my fingers, splashing water over my feet as it hit the floor.
Their heads turned in my direction, the spell broken.
Ashley stood and removed his cravat, using it to wipe the blood away from his lip. Then he straightened his garments and met my eyes, his expression empty. Chillingly composed. “Good evening, Bennett.”
Since he believed I was still deaf, he pronounced his fine-mannered greeting carefully and slowly. As if I cared a whit about formalities.
Had I remained in the bed, the angle would’ve prevented me from witnessing…whatever that was. They’d assumed I’d slept through it since I couldn’t hear. Or perhaps they hadn’t assumed anything because they’d been so caught up in each other.
“What were you doing?” I motioned at Priest on the floor. “Just now. What was that?”
Priest’s gaze shot to mine, his eyes narrowing, searching, then glimmering with realization. Ah. So my voice sounded normal now that I could hear it?
I arched my brow at him, smirking. Yes, I can hear again.
His face broke out in a wide, joyful grin. “She asked a question, Lord Cutler.” He rose to his feet, all grace and confidence, his accent taunting. “What were we doing just now?”
“It’s late. We’re not doing this tonight.” Ashley looked at Priest behind him, hiding the movement of his lips. “She doesn’t need this right now. I’ll tell her when she’s recovered and—”
“I can hear you, Ashley, and I’m well on my way to full health.” I anchored my hands on my hips. “Tell me now.”
