A Swift and Savage Tide (A Captain Kit Brightling Novel Book 2)

They slept together in the cove, her body tucked behind his, curled against him for warmth.

The next morning dawned clear, and with streaks of red at the horizon that bode poorly for sailing weather later in the day, but made a beautiful canvas of morning.

She was alone in the shelter; the fire was already crackling outside above the rhythmic tossing of the waves. She turned onto her side, could see his silhouette against the fire. Was it going to be awkward between them? Would they be self-conscious?

And then she sat straight up. Because something smelled good.

She crawled out, promising herself they’d arrange a better shelter for the night to come—a driftwood platform, perhaps—and stretched out the aches. Smoke was drifting up from the fire in a very pretty column. Kit walked toward the fire, found Grant on his knees beside it, staring at a pile of wet gray atop seaweed, both balanced over the flame on a wide, flat rock.

“Dare I ask?” she said.

“I’ve obtained breakfast.” His grin was wide and boyish, and there was nothing self-conscious in it. She imagined him a child at Grant Hall, thrilled at catching his first clutch of trout.

Her own fears vanished. She sat on a rock, rubbed her hands in front of the fire. “And what is it?” It looked a bit . . . gelatinous.

“A fish . . . of some variety. There are tidepools near the rise. I was picking up driftwood and found this among them. I’ve cleaned a fish or two in my youth, so I’ve made a filet.”

“How old are you?”

“It’s very indecent of you to ask. But I’m eight-and-twenty.”

“Ah, yes. You’ve clearly passed your youth now.” She peered at his mane of brown hair. “I see a bit of silvering.”

“Liar,” he said with a smile, then used a stick to push the fish around.

It seemed to become slightly less gray as it cooked through, which was no small feat. “And the seaweed?”

“A trick Dunwood taught me on the peninsula. The seaweed imparts salt, flavor, and steam, which allows the fish to cook more evenly.”

“Very clever.”

He slid his gaze her way. “How does a sailor not know that?”

“We travel with kitchens and fire,” she said. “And I’m not sure Cook would approve of seaweed-roasted fish.” Gods knew Mrs. Eaves wouldn’t.

“It won’t be much,” he said. “But it will be warm, perhaps give us enough fuel to find more. What else shall we do today in our island paradise?”

“Is that what this is?”

He turned his head to face her fully, and looked at her with joy and delight and more than a bit of arousal, Kit thought. He leaned forward, brushing his lips against hers. “Yes,” he said, then flicked his tongue against her lips, kissed her long and lavishly.

“We are alone and together, without war or the queen or the Beau Monde. Our only obligation is to survive, and I imagine we are both skilled enough to manage that until we sight a ship. Until then, we have total privacy.” His hand found her breast, cupped, and she found herself arching toward him—until her stomach grumbled angrily.

Grant swore. “You need food. Especially if we’re to maintain our regimen of . . . exercise.”

“Fortunately, we’ve the fish you found in a tide pool.”

“It was a challenging expedition.”

They ate the fish, or what there was of it. Grant was unimpressed by its lack of flavor, but Kit found it oddly comforting, and reminiscent of home. Maybe Mrs. Eaves had spent some time on a deserted island.

“We need a signal fire. Up there,” she said, pointing to the cliff, “so it can be seen as far away as possible.”

Grant sighed.

“What?” Kit asked. “It’s our best opportunity to get off this island. Unless our driftwood inventory increases significantly in the next few hours and I suddenly learn how to build a boat. Both of which seem unlikely.”

“Unlikely,” he agreed, but drew her close, pressed a kiss to her palm. “I rather enjoy having you to myself.”

“I’ve enjoyed being enjoyed,” she said with a smile. “But we’ve war on the horizon and friends in danger.”

He grumbled, but nodded. “You’re right. And what will you be doing?”

“Second breakfast,” she said with a grin. “I’m going swimming.”

Grant had seen her naked, or as much as moonlight would allow. And as a sailor, she’d been bare to the ocean more than a few times. But the thought of swimming naked here made her feel oddly vulnerable. So she pulled off pantaloons and linen shift, but remained in half stays and petticoat. She tied the arms of her shift to make a kind of pouch that would fit around her shoulders. And then she did what she often threatened everyone else with doing.

She walked into the sea.

The water was cool, but warmer than the sand she’d been standing on. She walked until the waves hit her waist, just at the edge of the sand shelf that she could feel with her toes, and dove underwater.

And felt immediately at home. The water was clear here, too cold for exotic corals or the reefs she’d seen in the far Western Sea, but small silver fish darted here and there, and pale crabs scuttled beneath. She could feel the current here; it was close to the surface, pulsing like a heartbeat in a steady, healthy rhythm that made her feel better about magic. She spotted the black, spiny bodies of sea stars, carefully pulled one up by one of it’s prickly arms, and placed it into the pouch. She managed two more, and snuck up on a crab that was very unsuccessfully hiding beneath a rock much too small for its size.

She emerged from the water to find the signal fire blazing, sending a column of black smoke into the air, and Grant standing on the beach, hands on his hips and eyes wide as he watched her. There wasn’t much to her ensemble when it was dry; she didn’t need to look to know it provided little cover when she walked out of the sea.

“You went swimming,” he confirmed, and glanced at the bundle. “And came back with something.”

“I used my shift as a basket,” Kit said. She walked past the waterline, could feel his eyes on her, then tossed the bundle into the sand, untied it.

“Well,” Grant said. “My breakfast feels a bit . . . inadequate . . . by comparison.”

“Cox’s Seamanship is an excellent resource,” she said with a grin, and pushed wet hair behind her ears. “Let’s cook.”

They ate their fill of reasonably well-cooked seafood and huddled near the fire again. It was cloudy today, the island cooler without the warming sunlight, and with a chilly breeze that Kit hoped was sending the Diana to safety—or to safely find Doucette.

“There are other places we are needed,” Kit said, legs stretched in the sand. “But there are worse places to be than here.”

She looked up at him and smiled, and his smile was just as grand.

“Marry me,” he said.

Kit snorted. “We just ate the only thing that could stand in as vicar.”

“I’m quite earnest, Kit. I want you to marry me.”

It was the softness in his voice, the gravity of it, that had her looking up. “What?”

His eyes glowed with purpose, and that was enough to trigger her defenses. She didn’t want marriage. To be tied down with lace and expectations. “Marry me,” he said again, and took her hand, pressed it against his chest. “This isn’t some island romance, a bit of tawdry in the midst of war, and I think you know it, too.”

What did she know? That she was drunk on him and his laughter, on his strong hands and the magic he could work with them. But marriage? Marriage was not for her.

“A great battle of the heart,” the fortune-teller in Auevilla had said. Maybe it hadn’t all been nonsense.

Grant gave her a half smile. “Am I to have an answer?”

“No,” she finally managed, and gently pulled her hand away.

He flinched like she’d slapped him. “I’m sorry?”

“You need a viscountess,” she said, bafflement in her voice. How did he not see that fundamental problem? He was a viscount, with land and responsibilities; she had her own, and they were different. Demanding. He needed a viscountess with a pedigree, the ability to run a home, and a proficiency at all manner of domestic activities. Not a sailor with scars and a longing for the sea, who didn’t want to live on a country estate, bound to the land. Trapped by the land.

“You’d become a viscountess after the wedding,” he said dryly. “That’s rather the point.”

“Not even the current itself could transform a sea captain into a viscountess, Grant. I know about hardtack and scurvy and sailing points. I’m not going to transform into someone who fancies balls and hiring governesses.”

“A rather fascinating collection of activities.”

“Not to me.” She looked at him for a moment and felt something clench at her heart. “We both know that’s not how the Beau Monde operates. How do you think your acquaintances at the Seven Keys would react to your giving your title over to a sailor?”

Grant focused his brilliantly blue eyes on hers, staring so deeply into her, she thought she might be transparent. “I don’t think that’s the truth. Or not all of it.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

He just lifted his brows.

When anger burned away her sadness, Kit was glad he hadn’t been consoling. “Watch yourself, Grant. I’ve called soldiers out for less.”

“You’d call me out after last night? After we were together? After I was inside you?” There was nothing of desire in his eyes or his tone now. Just anger and insult.

Kit made a sound of frustration. “You’re making too much of this. There’s risk to my reputation here,” she said, waving a hand around them, “even if I gave a damn for such things, which you know I don’t. We have obligations, Grant, that take us far from the Isles. We’ll have those obligations as long as the war lasts, and maybe beyond. And there’s much of the world that I haven’t seen.”

Wouldn’t see, if she had to give up her commission, her ship, for a life in a home on a windswept hill. For taffeta and silk and gardens and nurseries. She felt a clutch of panic. And when she looked at his face, and saw the hardness return to his eyes, for a moment he was the same viscount she’d met in the throne room in New London—haughty and arrogant, with little patience for a woman he believed ran errands for the queen along the Islish coast.

“I’m made to be a sea captain. I don’t want that to change.” Not now. And maybe not ever.

He breathed deeply and stood up, putting space between them. Then he looked down at her, and his eyes were hard as flint. “I’ve asked you for marriage, and you’ve declined. I’ll not beg a woman for her hand.”

She could find no words to comfort either one of them.

“I’m sorry” was all she could think to say.

And that made it somehow worse.

Their interlude was apparently over, as he hardly spoke to her for the rest of the day, and the signal fire brought no salvation.

She felt empty, unspeakably lonely, and her chest ached with something she refused to call longing. That only infuriated her more. She’d been telling the truth. She didn’t want to give up the Diana or her crew. She didn’t want to trade the sea for Grant Hall, even if it was beautiful and its caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Spivey, were charming and helpful.

But Grant had been right, at least a bit. She was afraid. If she kept moving, if she kept sailing and seeing and exploring, she might discover who she was. Who was she to give herself to a viscount? A stranger with no history, no connections.

There were still coppers in her pocket, so she pulled one out, kissed it, then tossed it into the sea.

“We need off this godsforsaken island,” she murmured. “If I’ve any luck left—and I can calculate my debts as well as anyone—we could use it now.”

They slept in the cove again, but with distance between them now.

It was dark out, the fire faded to embers, when she felt the jerk of movement before his groan of grief and pain, and was afraid he’d been shot or bitten or succumbed to dyspepsia from the damned spiny stars. It was just dawn, the light milky, and Grant lay between her and the outcropping’s edge, his face turned away. And his body shuddered.

She put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed. “Grant. Wake up.”

He shuddered again.

His eyes were wide and staring, as if tracking some enemy that she couldn’t see.

A nightmare, she realized, and rued that she hadn’t thought of it sooner. He’d seen horrors during the war, and she’d seen the wide-eyed look on his face at Finistère after she’d lobbed a small bomb into the courtyard of a pirate fortress. Even beyond physical injuries, war left long shadows on the mind and soul.

“It’s all right,” she said softly, calmly. “It’s just me and you, and we’re safe. There’s no fight here.”

His breath shuddered in, out, and the pained sound made her own chest ache. She wanted to touch him, but he’d drawn a line between them yesterday; while she didn’t understand it, she respected him enough not to cross it.

Another shudder, and she’d reached her own limit. He needed someone, and she was the only person available at present. If he was angry at the violation, so be it. They’d deal with that, too.

She put her hand on his, and his fingers linked, squeezed.

“You’re safe,” she said again, and brushed damp hair from his forehead. “There’s no battle here.”

He curled against her, so she stroked his back until his breathing slowed, softened, and he fell asleep again.

He was gone when dawn broke. She was cold and damp and hungry—and now anger was an added insult. She found him by the fire, sat down a few feet away.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” His tone was clipped but perfectly pleasant.

“You had a nightmare.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did. It was, I think, war related.”

He looked away, brow furrowed as he blinked, as if trying to recall the darker hours. “Is that why I . . .” He trailed off, apparently discomfited by the admission he’d needed the nearness of her.

“Slept heavily,” she said. “I thought you might be tired when you woke.”

He looked at her for a moment. “I’m fine. And I’ve lit the signal fire. So we’ll wait.”

Since he was apparently in no mood to talk, she let him have the quiet. So they waited in horrible, awkward silence, all the worse compared to the joy they’d taken in each other the day before.

Fortunately, Kit’s coppers did the work. It took less than three hours, after two days of waiting, for a barquentine to appear on the horizon. It was long and sleek, with a bowsprit that stuck out like a narwal’s tusk. Easily a third longer than the Diana, with two square-rigged masts. This boat was built for speed and bore no colors showing its allegiance.

“Do you recognize it?”

They were the first words Grant had spoken to her in hours. Gone was the lightheartedness that had buoyed her mood around the fire. He’d closed whatever door had been opened there, and his guard was up again. His voice was hard, cold.

“No,” Kit said, ignoring that because they had to. “A privateer, most likely. I was hoping for an Isles vessel, or the Diana if our luck was superior. But I suppose even an enemy ship is better than starvation.”

Another hour of waiting—while the ship moved closer and, Kit imagined, its crew debated whether Kit and Grant might be worth the trouble of a rescue—and then a boat was lowered, rowed out, maneuvered deftly through the waves, until Kit could see the rather grubby appearance of the crew. Four in all: two appearing male, and two female. And given their slightly grimy appearance—

“Pirates,” Grant concluded. “Excellent. We could fight them.”

“We could,” Kit said. “Presuming rocks and sticks are a match against swords and muskets. But even if we managed to best them, to what result? Either the ship attacks us, or it continues on its way. In either case, we end up here.” Not to mention the possibility of chasing pirates in circles around the island was more a comedic farce than a viable escape plan.

For a moment, Grant didn’t answer. Kit wasn’t sure if that was because he wasn’t convinced or was simply still angry.

“We survive,” Kit said. “One bit at a time. We make it off the island, we figure out how to get back to the Diana, one way or the other.” That hadn’t been one of Hetta’s official Self-Sufficiency Principles, but it was a theme of her advice.

The women jumped from the boat when they reached knee-level water, used thick ropes to pull it toward the shore. The men stayed in the boat, pulled pistols from their belts, and looked appropriately menacing for pirates.

“I’m Rian Grant,” he said. “Viscount Queenscliffe. We’re in need of assistance.”

“We know who you are,” the smallest woman said, pulling a cutlass from the burgundy scarf tied at her hips. “We were at Finistère.”

Given Kit had lobbed several bombs on Finistère, that would probably not help them overmuch.

“My apologies for not recognizing you,” Grant said, and would have attempted a bow, had the tip of the cutlass not dropped menacingly. “Or not,” he said, and gave Kit a look nearly as pointed as the sword.

“Wrists,” the other woman said.

Kit sighed but held them out. “We’re hardly going to commandeer the boat,” she muttered, as one of the others pulled rough hemp around her hands. “Where else would we go?”

By way of response, the hemp was pulled tighter, burning across her skin.

“Not especially talkative, I see.” She was shoved to her knees with a sharp elbow in her back, barely missed knocking her head against the plank that crossed the boat, serving as a seat.

She growled but managed to turn, shift to sit against the curved hull. As much instinct as practice, she reached down to the current, was relieved by the strong pulse of magic, powerful as a heartbeat.

Grant, wrists tied, was pushed down into the opposite end of the boat. Little enough chance of collusion now, she thought, regardless of tied hands. He didn’t so much as glance her way from his spot near the stern, with the pirates between them. Still hurt, given the hard set of his eyes and the miserable set of his shoulders.

They’d survive. But at what cost?

The crew was silent as they rowed back to the ship, the jolly boat rising and falling ominously as they now pushed against the waves that had carried them ashore.

Kit took the opportunity to look over the sailors, with their sunbaked skin and clothes that needed a good and hearty wash. Mrs. Eaves would have enjoyed correcting their “deficiencies.” And why, Kit wondered, were pirates always depicted as so dashing and, well, clean in penny novels? Had the authors never actually met a damned pirate?

“A damned fiction,” she cursed, and earned an arch look from the woman closest to her. Kit managed a wan smile. “Just thinking about literature.”

The woman snorted. “You think we don’t read because we’re pirates? We enjoy a good story just like anyone else, aye?”

“I like a good bit of socioeconomic satire myself,” the man at the stern oar said, then spat exuberantly over the side of the boat.

Kit, standing very corrected, closed her mouth.

Since their hands were still tied, they were hauled bodily aboard, Kit’s shoulders yanked so hard, she thought they might wobble in their sockets. The ship was in better shape than Kit would have expected. The wood sanded and oil-rubbed, the masts and rigging tarred, the brass gleaming. The figurehead, she’d seen during the trip aboard, was a great golden bird, wings spread as if holding up the bowsprit. The ship had a deep waist, with short curving stairs leading from the quarterdeck to the fore and poop decks.

They were pushed down a set of stairs into a large room. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and then she found dark wood, candle smoke, and heavy velvets. It smelled of herbs and musky oils, not entirely unpleasantly.

A man sat at a long table, worn black boots crossed on the scarred tabletop. He glanced back at them, dark eyes gleaming.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t the woman who lobbed a bomb at me.”

Bloody hell, Kit thought. It wasn’t just a ship of pirates. They’d been rescued by a damned pirate king.