Page 15 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)
Eight
T he seas settled once the Fortune was clear of the continent of Africa, but the mood aboard the ship was anything but settled.
Every one of the captive passengers and the crew that had tried to remain loyal to Captain Woodward and their duty felt as though they were on the verge of being executed with every step they took.
Instead of the sounds of music, laughter, and conversation that had taken them down the west coast of Africa, now that they were on the east side, there was nothing but the flapping of sails above and the creaking of rope and timber to break the silence.
“You’re certain you know where you’re going?” Tumbrill muttered just behind Caspian’s shoulder as he stood at the ship’s wheel, frowning up at the sky and then at the water around them.
“I do,” Caspian answered simply.
Tumbrill grunted and shifted to stand on his other side. “Because to me, it looks like you’ve sailing us into the middle of the deep for the past two weeks.”
Caspian risked a peek at Tumbrill. The man had become slovenly and grizzled since the mutiny a fortnight before. Without Captain Woodward’s rule to keep the men in line, they’d become lazy and careless with their appearance and the cleanliness of their clothes.
“If it seems as though I am sailing the Fortune into nowhere, it is because I am,” Caspian said honestly. “You gave me orders to take the ship to Hindustan. There is very little between here and that land, only scatterings of uninhabited islands here and there.”
Tumbrill grunted again, then sniffed and backed away from Caspian. “If I find out you’re being false with me, I’ll string you up from the yardarm. You and your sodomite sweetheart.”
Tumbrill glanced forward across the main deck to where Elias was treating one of the freed convicts for sunburn.
After spending months below deck, several of the convicts, particularly the ones who had not been a part of Tumbrill and Dick’s coup, had been driven so hard in their work up on the main deck that the sun had made them sick.
There was little Elias could do besides give them as much fresh water as possible and urge them to keep their skin covered, but at least Elias was trying.
“Useless bunch of sods,” Dick grumbled as he approached Caspian and Tumbrill. “If I’d’ve known they would be this pathetic on a ship, I would have recruited others for our heist.”
Caspian kept his expression as neutral as he could as Dick and Tumbrill chuckled over their jest. It had come to light during the past two weeks that the plot to steal Mr. Ferrars’s fortune had been conceived of months before, while Dick was still in Newgate Prison.
Dick and Tumbrill had been friends since childhood and had corresponded about various jobs Dick was involved in for years.
A third friend had worked for Mr. Ferrars and knew of his plans to voyage to Australia, and still another friend worked as a guard at Newgate and had helped the four of them coordinate the plan.
Tumbrill and Woodward had despised each other for years, though Woodward respected Tumbrill’s sailing skills enough to keep him on as second mate.
The supposed favor Woodward had been doing for the Crown in transporting Dick and the others was not a legitimate favor at all, but rather the penultimate step in capturing the Fortune and Mr. Ferrars’s treasure with it.
The entire thing had been orchestrated to dupe Woodward into letting the gang aboard his ship.
Caspian might have been impressed with the elaborate plot, and the fact that the men had actually carried it off, if it hadn’t killed so many already and put the rest of them in danger.
“You have poor taste in friends,” Tumbrill told Dick bluntly, narrowing his eyes at the man.
Dick immediately took offense. “I’m beginning to think I do,” he replied in a harsh clip. “You’re one of them, after all.”
Tumbrill merely grunted and stared forward, following the line of Caspian’s sight as much as he could.
Since learning of Tumbrill and Dick’s friendship and their plot, Caspian was no longer surprised that Tumbrill wasn’t as adept at navigating as he claimed he was.
What he lacked in his knowledge of guidance, he made up for in his expertise with sails.
“Trim the main sails and spinnaker, and turn the ship ten degrees to starboard,” he ordered. “We can catch this wind and pick up speed.”
“We’d better,” Dick said, crossing his arms and frowning at Tumbrill instead of Caspian. “I want to reach Hindustan before I’m too old to enjoy my loot.”
Tumbrill shook his head and marched off. Dick stayed where he was for a while longer, as if he could somehow bully Caspian into making the wind more favorable. When Caspian barely reacted and gave him nothing to work off of, he, too, walked away.
Days continued in the same manner. The passengers were quiet and wary, Tumbrill and Dick bickered as much as they crowed over their coup, Elias went to heroic lengths to help the sick and injured aboard the ship and to maintain morale, and Caspian felt wearier and heavier with each day that passed.
“Caspian, you’re not well,” Elias said after another week had passed. “Is it a fever? Have you been out in the sun too much?” He placed a hand on Caspian’s forehead.
Caspian smiled, despite how ill he felt. He had moved back to sit against one of the blocks that some of the rigging ropes were tied to while an able-bodied seaman took the wheel. “I am well enough,” he said, though he wasn’t certain how true that was.
Elias made a tsking sound, which had Caspian smiling even more. “You do not have a fever,” Elias said, shifting to hold Caspian’s face in both hands and to tilt it up so he could look into Caspian’s eyes with the assessing gaze of a physician. “You’re clearly overwrought in some way, though.”
“I feel much better with your hands on me,” Caspian replied in a low voice.
The seaman at the wheel tensed, but he kept his back to the two of them.
Elias glanced over his shoulder at the man, then tugged Caspian’s sleeve, urging him to stand and walk to the side of the ship with him.
There were far fewer people in that little corner, and the constant rush of the waves against the ship’s hull as they cut through the water hid what they said well.
“Tell me,” Elias said, leaning as close as a lover might. He touched Caspian’s face again, pretending it was medically necessary. “How do you truly feel. You’ve been growing paler and paler these last few days. I know something is wrong and I…I could not bear it if anything happened to you.”
Caspian’s insides fluttered. Elias cared for him. They were in the middle of horrific danger, their lives might end at any moment, but Elias cared for him, and that was all that mattered.
“I swear to you, I am well,” he said, lifting his hand on the ocean side of where they spoke to touch Elias’s face in mirror of him. The way they stood, the people scattered around the deck might not notice.
Elias huffed through his nose and fixed Caspian with a stern look. “You are not well,” he said.
Caspian lowered his head. His shoulders stooped with the gesture, which was proof that Elias was partially correct. Caspian wasn’t as fit as he’d been letting on for the past week or so. He knew precisely what the problem was, however.
Since the mutiny, he hadn’t been able to take his daily swim.
There were too many people watching his every move, for one, and for another, his physical presence on the ship was necessary to keep the veil that prevented Dick and the others from recognizing Ruby, Lady Adelaide, and the others as women in place.
That sort of separation from the sea was not natural for him, however, and he was beginning to feel the effects.
“Tell me,” Elias said, arching one eyebrow, like he knew Caspian was holding back.
There was so much Caspian was holding back, but there was no way to explain everything as well.
“I am merely overheated,” he said, standing a bit taller as an idea came to him. “Standing in the sun all day has been a trial.”
“Yes,” Elias agreed, still staring at him suspiciously. “And yet, you’ve managed to keep your skin as porcelain as ever.”
A shiver of caution slipped through Caspian. Elias had noticed. “I’ve taken great pains to keep most of my skin out of direct sunlight,” he lied. “And it is cloudy today.”
“Very cloudy,” Elias said, glancing up and around at the thickening clouds. “I pray we are not in for another storm.”
Caspian half prayed that they were. That way, he might be able to swim for a while and reinvigorate himself. Although doing so would still put the women at risk.
“I think I might feel better if I could sit in a bath of sea water for a while,” he said, raising his eyebrows slightly in the hope that Elias would find his expression adorable and irresistible.
Whether he did or not, Elias laughed. “You wish to take a bath in sea water?”
“I think it would do me an ocean of good,” Caspian replied with a grin.
He wasn’t certain it would actually be enough.
The trouble wasn’t so much his absence from the water as his inability to really swim.
He couldn’t imagine how he would explain that necessity to Elias, though, particularly as the man was a doctor.
Everything Caspian was doing now and had been doing for the past three weeks was foreign to him.
It was the same as if he was fluent in a second language and spoke that language frequently.
He could do it easily, but it was not his mother tongue.
“If a bath of sea water is what you want, I will see about finding?—”
Elias’s sweet words were interrupted by Dick’s growl of “What have we here?” from halfway down the main deck.