Hold Your Breath 03 - My Captain, My Earl

by K. J. Jackson

  His blade dropped, and Katalin pulled a short knife from her calf, digging it into his foot until it hit wood. The scream was palpable, and Katalin rolled away from his grasp, away from his anger, leaving him to try and pull the blade from his foot.

  Feet in motion all around her, Katalin checked her shoulder—bloody, but she lost no movement in her arm, so that was good. She scanned the cloudy combat around her, suddenly realizing there were a lot of her men down on the deck around her. Some still. Some writhing in pain. Locke. Jeb. Claw. Poe.

  Too damn many of her crew.

  Her heart thudded. They were losing this battle. Losing it quickly.

  She took a deep breath, steeling herself. She had to go back. Go back to the place where she could maim—kill if necessary. A place where she was cold and did not care. No mercy. She had to be Captain Kat again, through and through.

  She spotted her next fight. Zed was just barely holding off two attackers steps from her. Gaining her feet, pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other, she made it two feet to Zed before the ship jerked wildly, pitching severely toward the Windrunner.

  She fell onto her backside, sliding on the deck. Damn. She hoped Fin hadn’t left the wheel of the Windrunner.

  But then she looked across the far deck and realized the cause of the Wake Ripper’s violent lunge.

  Holy hell. Another ship.

  Another ship that had just sidled along the Wake Ripper, sandwiching it.

  Where the blast had that ship come from?

  But before she could see through the battle to figure out the bizarreness of the new ship, she noticed Frog on his back, two attackers bearing down on him with steel tips.

  Katalin scampered to her feet, firing her one shot as she moved forward, cutlass high above her shoulder. One fell, and the other brute turned, stopping her swing with his own cutlass. In quick succession, he showered down blows at her, pushing her to the wall below the Wake Ripper’s quarterdeck.

  Solid wood hitting her back, she spun away from his next blow, but his sword still caught her side, and hot agony sliced through her skin on the side of her belly.

  She crumbled in half, cutlass still up to block his next blow, but ended stuck in a corner between the wall and the staircase leading to the quarterdeck.

  The brute moved in, easily blocking any escape path Katalin had. He grabbed her raised wrist, slamming it against the wood wall, and her fingers lost her cutlass, the blade clattering to the deck past his feet.

  He didn’t send his sword through her immediately, like she thought he would, instead, he reached out and ripped off the scarf that covered her head.

  He chuckled. A mean, from the depths of hell chuckle. “Well, ain’t that be a kick. Ye be look’n too purty fer a boy. We be hav’n new booty.” His hand let her wrist go and he grabbed a mass of her braids, yanking her up off her feet.

  It was the last thing he did.

  A hair from Katalin’s cheek, the tip of a blade stopped, and the man froze. It took Katalin a split-second to realize the rest of the blade disappeared into his chest, having run him through.

  She strained to see around him, but could only see the brute’s chest, blood seeping onto his dirty shirt around the blade.

  The silver disappeared back through his body, and he dropped to the deck, his thick paw still tangled in her hair, and Katalin went down with him. She landed half under him on her stomach, his weight crushing her open wound.

  Agony pierced her body, and she screamed through gritted teeth, shoving, trying to roll him off of her.

  But then hands went under her arms, pulling her out from under the dead weight. Set onto her feet, the hands propped her up in the corner.

  She looked up.

  Jason.

  Hell.

  Jason. Here. On the Wake Ripper. About to die with her. About to make Josalyn an orphan.

  Double hell.

  She hit him hard, squeezing past him as she went after her cutlass still on the deck. “What the blast are you doing here, Jase? Get off this damned ship.”

  She started to dart forward into the battle, but Jason grabbed her around the waist, his fingers digging into her wound. She cringed in pain as he shoved her back into the corner, wrapping his hand over hers on the hilt of the cutlass.

  “You’re not getting past me, Kat.”

  “Dammit, Jase. Get the hell off this ship.” She tried to push past him, but he threw a leg up, trapping her to the corner. She shoved at him again, but he was an immovable wall. “I bloody have to fight, Jase.”

  She tried to claw up him with her free hand, her eyes wild as she watched more of her crew drop behind Jason. Heard their screams. Smelled their blood.

  “No, Kat. Stop. You don’t.” He grabbed her other hand and pinned it to the wall.

  She forced her eyes from the battle to his face. “They are falling, Jase. Falling. They are dying and it’s my fault. So let me the hell out there.”

  He dropped her hands, gripping her shoulders and shaking her. “This is not your fault, Kat.”

  “I have to do this, Jase—I have to or we will not get Josie back.”

  His hands stopped shaking her, but his fingers dug deeper into her skin. “Kat, you have to trust me—Josalyn is safe.”

  “No, I have to do this, she is not safe until—”

  “Stop. Kat. Just stop. Look at me.” He shook her again. “You need to stop. You need to trust me. Trust me, Kat. Trust me. I would not put our daughter in danger.”

  Her eyes found focus on Jason’s face again, and she searched his blood-shot eyes. “What? How?”

  “You need to stop. Josalyn is safe. She is with Devin and Aggie.”

  “What? She is?”

  “The duke has her locked away from any threat.”

  “But Daunte—”

  “We all know who he is, Kat. Devin, Southfork, myself. He has been trying to monopolize these shipping lanes for too long, and now we have proof.”

  Katalin shook her head. “But he will know if I don’t do this. He will know and he will take her again.”

  “He will not. There is no way he can without sacrificing himself. There is no way he can without me killing him. Or the duke killing him. Or Southfork killing him. Or your father killing him. Josalyn is safe, Kat. Safe.”

  “Safe?”

  He nodded. “Safe. I swear it.”

  “Ain’t this be sweet, now.”

  Katalin heard the bellow before she saw him. In horror, she watched as the heavy air, thick with exploded gunpowder, parted, and a pirate in full blood-red regalia appeared, two flintlock pistols aimed at them.

  One at Jason’s head. One at hers.

  Jason spun around, crushing Katalin into the corner as his arms and body went wide in front of her. “Captain Gallif, I presume?” he asked coolly, not giving the slightest concession to their precarious position.

  “Aye. I hear there be the captain of the Windrunner back here. I be waiting to meet the lass fer years. And then the lass attacks me ship. Ballsy beaute, she be. Also, a dead beaute.”

  Katalin went to her toes to peek over Jason’s shoulder. It stretched her bloody side, but she swallowed the pain. “Aye. I be—”

  Jason shoved backward, squashing her and cutting the air from her lungs.

  “You will not have her, Captain Gallif. I understand the undue attack on your ship has put you into an irked state, but you will not come near Captain Kat.”

  The captain’s bushy black eyebrows collapsed, sending his eyes into pure viciousness. “Ye be think’n ye be in a position to barter with me, ye scallywag?”

  “No. He is not. But I am.”

  The barrel end of a silver pistol pushed into Captain Gallif’s right temple. Katalin’s eyes followed the arm attached to the pistol.

  “Lord Southfork? What the devil…” she croaked out.

  Captain Gallif’s eyes veered to his right, his forehead creasing in confusion. “Southfork?”

  “Yes, Southfork, Captain Gallif,�
�� Killian said, his arm not moving. “I trust you are well.”

  “I’d be a bloody bright better without yer gun to me head.”

  Katalin blinked hard, not trusting her own sight. “Lord Southfork, what in the bloody heavens…”

  “We are family, Captain Kat. And I do not leave family to die alone on an ocean.” Killian answered her above the general din of weapons being lowered throughout the deck. Both crews were starting to realize that all the captains were in one spot, and whatever happened in that spot, happened to all of them.

  Killian’s eyes did not leave Captain Gallif’s head. “Plus, it would seem as though our terms with the captain of the Wake Ripper need to be renegotiated.”

  “We were attacked, matey. Defense,” Captain Gallif said.

  “Be that as it may, I think you can lower your pistols, Captain Gallif. I am positive that you will be rewarded handsomely for the inconvenience of this skirmish.”

  “Ye be calling this a skirmish, matey?”

  Killian visibly pressed the barrel into Captain Gallif’s skull. “That is all this was, Captain Gallif—a skirmish—no?”

  A long, tense moment thickened the heavy silence on the deck.

  “Aye. This be a skirmish.” Captain Gallif lowered his pistols, shoving them into the belt at his waist. The captain’s voice went into a bellow. “Arms down, mateys. Arms down. We be cuttin’ the ropes and movin’ onward.”

  The silence was deafening until several began to move, grumbling, and a few sheathed their weapons.

  “Onward,” the captain yelled, leaving no room for disobedience from his crew.

  Katalin let her breath escape in relief, and slumped back into the corner, sliding to the deck.

  Blackness overtook her.

  { Chapter 24 }

  Katalin opened her eyes to a dark wood wall. Lying on her side, she took a moment to identify the areas of insistent, throbbing pain in her body. Her side. Her shoulder. That she was lying on her wounded shoulder didn’t help that particular pain.

  She slowly rolled to her back. Naked from the waist up. Dark wood above her.

  She could tell by the familiar sway that she was still on a ship, but she was in a cabin she didn’t recognize. Letting her head flop to the side, she saw Jason, turned away from her, crouched close to the light of a lantern on a small desk. After a moment, he turned to her, the needle he just threaded in hand.

  “You are awake.”

  She nodded.

  “I had hoped you would stay passed out for another few minutes.” His voice was low, measured, and Katalin couldn’t tell if was tired or angry.

  “What happened?”

  “Not now. I still need to sew your shoulder.”

  Angry. His biting words left no doubt.

  She raised her right hand to the ache on her shoulder. “What?”

  “Your shoulder.” He pulled a wooden chair close to the bed, sitting. “I did your side first because it was worse, but now I need to do your shoulder.”

  Her hand went down to the side of her belly, fingertips running over what felt like even stitches along her side. “You stitched these?”

  “I spent years on the ships, Kat, so yes, I learned a thing or two about stitching after all the sails I have sewed.”

  Still angry. Even more so.

  “The Windrunner?”

  “Dammit, Kat. I do not want to talk about that damn ship of yours. Not now.”

  “No. I meant the crew—who…”

  “Zed and Jay were not saved. The rest will survive.”

  Katalin closed her eyes. Jay and Zed. Both so loyal. And now their deaths were on her soul. She said a silent prayer for their afterlife and opened her eyes. “Where are we?”

  “Safe. Far away from the Wake Ripper. On the Rosewater. Actually, Roland renamed her. It is the Sweetbriar now.”

  “Pretty.” She stared at Jason, his jaw twitching, face set hard.

  He reached down to the floor and pulled up a flask. “Roll onto your side so I can reach your shoulder.”

  Katalin eased onto her side, wedging her right arm under her so the stitched wound on her belly would stay above the bed. Jason waited until she settled and then doused her shoulder wound with rum.

  The sting sent her cringing, knees flying up and body curling in a single convulsion, before she clamped down on the pain.

  His eyes went to her face. “Do you want some?” He held the flask to her.

  She nodded, holding up her head as Jason held the lip of the flask to her lips and tilted it.

  He set the flask on the floor. “I would wait, but your shoulder is still bleeding. Can you be still? Can you handle this?”

  “I do not think at the moment you care if I can handle this or not.”

  He paused, angry eyes pinning her. “I care if you are in pain, Kat. But you are right. You did this to yourself, and I am having a devil of a time trying to stay delicate with you right now.”

  Her eyes snapped shut, stung. “Go ahead. I am fine,” she whispered.

  He wasted no time, and Katalin flinched as the needle cut through her skin, wishing she was still asleep.

  Two stitches in, Katalin couldn’t help a grimace from overtaking her face. The needle stopped.

  “Can you handle this, Kat?” His words were still hard.

  Katalin didn’t open her eyes. “I do not have a choice, Jason.”

  The needle slid through her skin again.

  Four more stiches, each one agonizing, and Jason tied off the end of the thread.

  “That should hold it.” He grabbed a wet cloth and dabbed the skin around the wound. Even with his anger, his touch was soft. “The blood looks to be stopping.”

  He stood up, going to the bucket in the corner and bent over, silently scrubbing the blood from his hands. He straightened, wiping his hands on his trousers and walked to the door.

  “Jase. Stop. Where are you going?”

  “I am leaving.”

  “What? Leaving for where?”

  “Dammit, I do not know where, Kat. Just not in here.” His hand ran through his brown hair. “All I wanted for five weeks was to see your face, Kat. Your face. And now—right now I cannot even look at you. I would not be in here right now were it not for your wounds. I was not about to let another tend to them.”

  He spun to the door, hand on the black iron handle.

  “Please, Jase.” Her voice cracked, pleading. “Please don’t leave me. Not now.”

  He stopped. But he did not turn back to her.

  “Please, Jase, I—I do not know what to say.” Katalin sat up in the bed, gritting against the pain, her legs swinging over the side. “What do you need from me, Jason? You must have gotten my letter. You know I would never have left you were it not for Josalyn.”

  He whipped back to her. “But you did leave me, Kat. You did not, for one second, think to trust me—your husband—with the problem.”

  “I could not think, Jason. He took our daughter—I could not think past the very thing that would get her back.”

  “No. That is unacceptable, Katalin. I am your damn husband. After everything—how could you leave me? How could you not let me take care of you? Take care of our daughter?”

  She shook her head, searching for an answer. “I…I…I have just been taking care of Josalyn, of my father, for so long. I have been alone. Alone. I birthed her alone and I have been alone ever since. I do not know another way, Jason. I have had to do this—life—for years by myself, and I could not think when Daunte took her. I could only react. React like I always had—whatever needed to be done to take care of my baby.” Hand supporting herself on the wooden rail of the bed, Katalin stood, taking a shaky step toward him. “The action had to be mine—it was all I could think to do.”

  “Sit down, Kat.”

  Her mind did not win over her beaten body, and she sank onto the bed.

  He stepped in front of her, arms crossed over his chest. “Why did it not enter your mind to trust me? Do you not
think I am a man that can take care of you—take care of our child? Then why in the blasted hell did you marry me?”

  “No. God, no, Jase.” Katalin reached up and grabbed his forearm, her fingers digging into muscle. The action tore at the stitches in her side. “I know. I know in my soul the man I married. I know you are the only one who can take care of me. Take care of Josalyn. I would not have married you if I did not think that was true.”

  Her arm went weak, and her hand slipped from his skin as her head bowed, voice cracking. “It is me. I am the failure. I just do not know how to let you. I want to—I need to—but I just do not know how.”

  Jason knelt, balancing on his heels, eyes at her level. He grasped her chin, tilting her head up. Katalin had no choice but to look at him.

  “You are not a failure, Kat.” His voice had gone incredibly soft. “You are strong. Too strong, sometimes, and it makes it very difficult for me to take care of you. Especially when you decide to sail an ocean away from me. And that is all I want to do, Kat. Take care of you. Love you.”

  She looked hard into his green eyes. That was exactly what Jason had been doing to her since they met. Take care of her.

  It was time she let him.

  Her right hand slipped onto his cheek, rubbing along the rough dark stubble. “I want that, Jase. I need you. I love you. But I need to hear it again—is Josalyn safe? Am I safe? This does not feel over, Jason.”

  “Dammit, Kat.” He shook his head. “Hell yes, you are safe. Josalyn is safe. What can I do to make you believe it? To trust what I am telling you?”

  “I do not know. I am trying, Jase, I truly am.”

  He stood, looking down at her. “Then I will hold you. Tell you it is over. Tell you to trust me. Over and over. Do that until you believe me. Until you trust.”

  He stripped off his white linen shirt, half of it fully stained with her blood. He looked down at her. “Trust me, Kat.”

  Moving to sit on the bed next to her, he wrapped her in his arms, pulling her tight onto his chest. Katalin took a deep breath and nestled her forehead onto his chest.

  “It is over, Kat. Josie is safe. You are safe.” He kissed the top of her head. “You are not alone, Kat. You never will be again. Never again. You need to let me take care of you. It is what I always wanted to do. What I was meant to do. You need to give your worries to me.”