Madeline was famished. Lamp in hand, she searched the store room for a bit of smoked meat and cheese. She had stormed from the captain’s cabin, indignant, confused—and hungry.
As she inspected the barrels, she wondered what the deuces had happened to the man. Had she insulted him? Wounded him? Impossible. If anything, their conversation had been refreshingly honest.
She hooked the lamp to a post and sighed. He seemed a solitary figure, remote, austere. For a moment during supper, he’d revealed a sociable nature, making her laugh. She hadn’t laughed since the death of her grandfather. Why had everything gone so awry?
“The boorish, confounding son-of-a—”
Madeline stiffened, her clammy palms curling into fists. As the lamp lilted with the gentle current, shadows played across the room, illuminating, then darkening the supplies. A weighty dampness slithered over her feet, and her heart throbbed as she stared at the wall. Don’t look down! Of course, her gaze immediately dropped to the ground.
Her eyes widened. Her scream trapped in her throat. She trembled as a giant snake glided across the floor, rolling over her toes. A silent prayer shot up to heaven. She waited. And waited. How long is this bloody vermin? She didn’t even care to know what it was doing in the belly of the ship. She just wanted it off her feet.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.”
Her voice squeaked like a mouse. At last, the serpent moved off without biting or coiling around her ankles. And the second its slimy tail slinked off her boots, she bolted from the store room, pounding the stairs.
She bounded straight for the captain’s cabin. Bam! went the door. Screech! went the bolt. Safe. She heaved, desperate for breath.
“S-snake!” she finally cried, and with each lungful of air, her heart steadied.
Where was William?
The room was dark. It took her several moments to locate a figure sitting on the bed. In the moonlight, she saw it was the captain, elbows on his knees, head between his hands. His muscular chest gleamed with sweat in the pale light. The bed sheets were tousled around his waist, as if he’d just awakened from a night terror. His feet, bare, were planted a good distance apart, supporting his hunched weight. He was dressed in only his trousers.
She should have knocked. She had startled him, she thought. She could hear his labored breathing from across the cabin. She was about to apologize when a weary voice assured her:
“Don’t mind the snake. She looks after the rats.”
It wasn’t the humdrum way he talked about a monstrous serpent, or the familiar way he referred to it as “she” that troubled Madeline, but the faintness of his voice. He wasn’t a tired man just roused from a deep slumber. He was ill.
Slowly she approached him, whispering, “William?”
He remained unmoving, taking in great swells of air, then releasing the breaths like gusts of wind.
She kneeled at his legs and reached for his brow. “You have a fever. I’ll fetch a cold compress.”
He cinched her wrist, his strength unbreakable, and while his hold wasn’t hurtful, it was determined.
“It’s not a fever,” he returned in an unsettlingly calm voice.
His fingertips then slipped over the inner tendons of her wrist, the tenderness of his touch making her shudder.
Though his tone remained impassive, there was a plaintiveness in his movements. And she sensed something dreadful was amiss.
Madeline remembered their talk over supper, the moment he’d turned cold, brusque . . . when she’d asked him if he was unwell.
The pattering of her heart turned rampant. She searched his arms, his chest for wounds and sighted the scar on his ribcage, just below his heart. “You’ve been shot!”
“A year ago,” he confirmed. “The bullet’s still inside me.”
“Who shot you?”
“A slaver.”
“Is the bullet troubling you?”
“No, it’s not the bullet.”
“Then what is the matter, William?”
His gaze lifted—his angry, frightful gaze. “Leave.”
“But—”
“Leave, Maddie.”
Her knees remained secured to the floor. “I’m not leaving,” she said, defiant. “You need care. And I won’t tell the crew, I promise. I know how important it is for a captain to maintain invincibility in the eyes of his tars. My grandfather—”
He cinched her wrist again—and this time it hurt.
“You don’t know a damn thing.” And he sent her tumbling onto her rump. “Get. Out.”
She clenched her trembling jaw, a welter of feeling in her breast—a violent welter of feeling, for when she regained her footing, she slapped him.
For some insufferable reason, tears filled her eyes as she hastened toward the door. She reached for the lock and unarmed the barrier, just as a distant voice murmured:
“I’m not angry with you, Maddie.”
She then left the cabin and shut the door.
For a moment, she leaned against the wall, wiping the stinging tears from her eyes. She had heard the truth in his words—that he wasn’t furious with her—and for some other intolerable reason, the knowledge comforted her. Yes, she wanted the captain’s help to rescue her grandfather. But it was more than the potential loss of his support that had pained her: it was the potential loss of his fellowship.
With a fortifying breath, Madeline regained her composure. If the captain wasn’t livid with her, then with whom? Or with what? And the malady that haunted him?
She intended to find out the answers.