Page 23 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

“Joy,” he blurted. When she frowned at him, he explained, “Sailing a ship. It gives you joy.”

Her expression shuttered. Wariness rose up like a wall of redbrick.

“I don’t suppose you’d give me a razor?” he asked to break the strained silence. He tried running a hand down his face, cautiously

avoiding the chain between his manacles. Stubble abraded his fingers. His beard always came in at an alarming rate.

“Not even a comb to neaten your mane.”

He exhaled. “I probably resemble a man who’s been marooned.”

“The village sot whose spent the night sleeping under a hedge.”

“I shudder at the dressing down I’d get from my superior officers.” He shook his head.

A corner of her mouth lifted. “What’ve you learned this morning?”

He glanced toward the quartermaster, who scowled at him as she cleaned her fingernails with a wicked-looking knife. He had

learned from this morning’s interviews that her name was Stasia Angelidis, but she’d had no information about his father’s

murder. The magpie on her shoulder fixed Ben with a dark and calculating eye.

“For your ears alone, Captain,” he answered.

Stasia jutted her jaw forward, but at Alys’s look, she pushed from the rail and went down the companionway to join the rest

of the crew. As she walked away, the magpie looked back at him.

“That bird is scowling at me,” he murmured.

“Eris has no liking for men.”

“Like many of the people who crew this ship.” Cold glares from the company continued to singe his back with frost.

“Go ahead and explain to them why men don’t deserve suspicion.”

“That is a challenge I believe I shall decline.”

“You can’t win it.” She adjusted the wheel and the ship moved effortlessly beneath her guidance. “Other than their well-earned dislike of men, you’ve got something from speaking with my crew?”

After making certain he and Alys had a relative amount of privacy, Ben finally allowed himself to exhale. Only years of naval

discipline kept his shoulders from slumping.

“I’ve learned exactly nothing,” he said grimly. “None of your crew knows anything about my father’s murder, not even scraps

of anecdotes or tales told thirdhand. Nothing of Best, Dupont, or Sanchez. I’m no closer to knowing who’s responsible than

I was the day it happened.”

“Ah, damn.” She shook her head. “I’d hoped...”

Her words trailed away, and in that silence, he heard something he hadn’t anticipated: genuine regret.

“My thanks.” His words came out gruff.

She lifted one shoulder. “I only gave you more sources of frustration.”

“It was helpful. In a way,” he added when she snorted in disbelief. “It’s as much about learning the dead ends as it is discovering

the right way forward.”

A skeptical look crossed her face.

“Before,” he explained, “I had everyone in the whole of the Caribbean to question. In thanks to you and your company, my search

has slightly narrowed. And slightly is better than nothing at all.”

“Sometimes,” she said lowly, “all we have is nothing.”

The weight of her grief pressed down, crushing the breath from him.

“There’s something I can do, though,” he said, “to show my gratitude for your assistance.”

She held his gaze and, in that moment when she looked into his eyes, something hot and living uncoiled low in his belly.

His heart beat thickly, and then she turned her attention back to the horizon.

“I’m curious what your gratitude looks like, Sailing Master.”

He drew himself up as tension continued to snap between them. “You’ve never been to the island where we’ll find the Weeping Princess.”

“But you have?”

“There’s only one safe anchorage where we can put in,” he stated, “and finding and negotiating it is difficult—for those who’ve

never done so.”

“A sailing master, truly, to steer the ship that holds you captive.”

He followed the contours of her profile. There was the smallest dip beneath her lower lip, unexpectedly delicate. Where else

might she be delicate?

The mystery of her... He couldn’t loosen its bond around him. Trying to extricate himself from it only made the strands

wrap tighter around them.

“When we reach the island tomorrow morn,” he went on, “I can take the helm to navigate the anchorage.”

“Or you tell my helmswoman how to pilot us through.”

“The safest option is for me to take the wheel.”

“How, exactly, does this show your gratitude?”

“Keeping us alive and your ship intact seems a fair means of expressing appreciation.”

After a moment, she gave a clipped nod. “Your place will be at the helm. Just for navigating the anchorage. Don’t expect or

suggest more control over my ship. Until my company and only my company decides otherwise, the Sea Witch is mine to command.”

Her tone assured him that there would be no further discussion on this matter. “I know when to yield.”

“If you did, you wouldn’t be captive on my ship.”

He shifted enough to make his chains rattle, evidence that she was entirely correct. “Persistent Priestley. That’s what they

call me behind my back.”

“Not Pigheaded Priestley?”

“That has less of a poetic ring to it.”

“Fortunate that I’m not earning my bread and rum as a poet.”

Damn it, now he knew she had dimples.

“Hold fast to your dreams,” he said. “If you aspire to iambic pentameter, it can be yours.”

“I don’t know what the fuck iambic pentameter is. Before this, I was a fisherman’s wife, and there aren’t many uses for poetry

when you’re gutting striped bass.”

He hadn’t known she had been married. Was the man back home, waiting for his wayward wife to return? Did that faceless husband

understand her better than Ben did? Hard to imagine so, since Alys Tanner was here, sailing a pirate ship in the Caribbean,

and not standing on some colonial dock as her husband’s fishing boat returned with the day’s catch.

“I can think of a few words that rhyme with bass ,” Ben said.

“Is that so?” She glanced at him, an alert heat in her eyes, her tongue darting out to wet her bottom lip.

You couldn’t lie down to sleep beside a fox and then rise in the morning to hunt it. And who was the fox? Who was the hunter?

His silence lasted too long, and he couldn’t suppress the wavering contradictions. Contradictions she surely felt.

“Below deck for you, Sailing Master.” Her voice was wintry. “When we’ve need of you tomorrow, you’ll be made useful.”

She snapped her fingers, and Thérèse must have been standing ready, because she appeared instantly on the quarterdeck.

“Hold a moment.” Ben stretched out his hand. “I could be useful now. Give me something to do. Anything.”

Alys regarded him warily, with good reason. Surely, she felt his mercurial moods. They confused him as much as they did her.

Long ago, as a lad, he’d gained his sea legs, but now on this ship, with this woman, his balance was gone and he didn’t know

how to regain it.

The pirate captain’s long red hair streamed behind her like a streak of sunset pulled from the sky. Beneath his feet, the deck tilted even more, and the poles reversed, taking with them his sense of direction.

Yet if he was shoved into her quarters once again, he might do something truly foolish, like lie in her berth and imagine

her in it with him, and try to convince himself she was different from other pirates, and he wasn’t betraying himself or his

blood to wish it so.

“Madame Capitaine?” Thérèse asked.

After a long moment, Alys said, “Some sails need mending.”

“I can do that.” He didn’t like the eagerness in his voice.

“Take him to Fresia,” the captain said to Thérèse. “They’ll set him to his task. Mind they keep watchful over the needle in

his hand.”

“Oui, Madame Capitaine.”

Alys didn’t look in his direction as Thérèse led him down the companionway and across the deck to a member of the company.

“I’m Fresia, the sailmaker.” They studied him from beneath a close-cropped mop of salt-and-pepper tresses, their deeply tanned

face creased from life on the sea. “You know how to repair sails?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Just Fresia will do, Sailing Master.” They cautiously handed him a thick needle, though their hand never strayed far from

the dagger in their belt.

Ben sat and began the slow process of repairing rends in the heavy canvas. The regard of all the women staring at him prickled.

And all the while, Alys’s heat continued to blaze over his skin and within him.