Paid to the Pirate by Una Rohr
Chapter 30
Colt
In the morning we looked out across the bay to the walls of Charles Town. Even in daylight I could spy smoke pluming into the sky from the many hearths cooking breakfast, or from smithies getting an early start to work, forging steel in the flames.
Steel meant to fight pirates like us, I thought, grinning.
We’d struck the colors and sailed under the flag of a safe and forgettable merchant ship out the Port of London. I dressed Charlotte in the finest attire we had and her skirted presence above deck helped squash the suspicions of soldiers who’d sailed out to take our information, asking a bit too many questions.
“Though we live so nearby, I’ve never been to Charles Town,” Charlotte remarked, gazing at the sprawling city. “Have you?”
Charlie had been to Charles Town a few times, but I supposed the invented Lady Charlotte had not. I guessed we were back to playing her game this morning and, truth be told, I found it beyond frustrating.
After everything we’d shared the night before, how could she still insist upon the ruse we all knew to be false? What was the point?
Ire rose within me.
“Though you may not have known my purpose at the time,” I declared, “I spent days here searching for the truth about your mother.”
I threw out the statement abruptly, maybe a little coldly, hoping to jolt her out of her act.
Charlotte blinked up at me, expression blank.
You confessed love, yet you still lie. What kind of love is that?
A wicked seed planted inside me and the tendrils of something evil unfurled, making me want to push Charlotte, to jar her into confession or at least to break this shield she’d reassembled around herself.
“I thought something horrendous might have happened to her,” I said, flippantly. “That she’d died horrifically, painfully. But I suppose the truth of her disgrace, for someone godly like you, is even worse.”
It was a low blow, meant to wound, and still Charlotte’s mask didn’t crack. Her brow furrowed and the corners of her mouth turned down, but she remained composed. She neither wept nor attacked me.
Since we’d already discussed her father the night before, I thought mention of her mother might have some effect. It should have.
I didn’t realize I’d clutched Charlotte’s arms until my hands tightened on her biceps. Charlotte barely met my eyes. Her gaze would flick to mine, then dart downward or to the sea. I froze. My gut tightened with dread and déjà vu. It was like before. Just when I thought we’d made progress, when I thought something real happened between us… the world was going to show me that men like me were not permitted happiness.
I should have never let down my guard. Charlotte was going to do something to make fools of us all for a third time. Three bloody times she would play us.
Finally, Charlotte met my gaze with something like pleading.
Why did she look up at me with such adoration in her eyes? What was the point of her lady act anyway? What could she possibly hope to gain? I clenched my jaw. Unless something else entirely was going on.
But what?
Who was this creature before me, who could hear mention of her mother and not bat an eye?
Impossible, wild ideas ran though my head -- too nonsensical to even fully conceive, yet they nagged at me.
I was ashamed to even voice them aloud to anyone.
Insanity.
And yet…
When I told Charlotte to remain aboard while I attended to some business in town, I said nothing of my true intentions to anyone.
Nonsense.
When Conks asked me what I sought, I shrugged him off.
What foolishness.
Striding through various taverns with a clear purpose and coin in hand, I found what I was looking for in the third establishment. I bought the man a drink and we sat down to chat. I paid him more than he’d hope to see in a week and promised the second half once the task was complete.
I returned to The Dread Night with a young man bearing a passing resemblance to Charlotte and led him to my cabin.
Perhaps I’d lost my mind. But whatever happened, I vowed not to leave my quarters until I had the full truth from Charlotte.