Page 128 of Rears & Vices

Vitya—absorbing into himself the guilt he felt about Everard’s having to wake him in extremis nearly every morning—had most recently decided to abdicate the big cot and sleep in the trundle once more.

Fine, Everard thought. The man wanted his sleep uninterrupted, fine. Never you mind it was of entirely his own doing, and that he still woke rutting his mattress regardless of Everard’s lack of presence.

If his plan to enlist D’Arcy’s help proved unsuccessful, Everard thought he would go quite insane.

Two days.

D’Arcy hadn’t gone strictly by choice. By choice, his letter said, he would rather be beside him in his convalescence—leaving quite a lot unsaid between the lines—but needs must.

Everard’s rescue in Galveztown had been flown under Vitya’s own American stars and stripes. The American brigs outside the bay had been perturbed by the San Telmo coming in flying their own—to say nothing of the Sévère—but left her alone at a message from Vitaliy.

Everard, not for the first time, began to see why three Crowns wanted Vitaliy—and not just the pirate Varfolomey—dead. A word from him, and two American brigs-of-war held their fire on a pirate fleet?

He also suspected D’Arcy and Vitya both had been understating their title of simple spy.

But that was a matter for another time.

With the Americans turning the other cheek, Vitaliy had, using the San Telmo’s massive guns and the Enemistad’s speed, brought Lafitte’s privateers to their knees. He’d demanded Lafitte trade Everard for information on American interest in Florida—information that was vastly outdated and useless, he assured Everard later.

It had worked.

The Anemone had been the price of the pirates of the Sévère for taking the trouble of sailing into Lafitte’s territory for the sake of one man. Alarie had left the Anemone behind, left her neglected, so she clearly wouldn’t be missed, they reasoned.

Vitaliy had agreed. Everard wondered now to what else he would’ve agreed to get them to back him. He wondered if he would’ve agreed to nearly anything.

The other price had been that D’Arcy was obliged to then take the San Telmo and her prize north to sell in Boston—something about smoothing feathers for having defected from the Royal Navy before he’d had leave to from his espionage overlords.

Everard was selfishly glad he’d still been half-delirious when D’Arcy had initially gone, selfishly glad he’d been too sick to worry properly that D’Arcy would be caught and taken in as traitor. He’d worried enough as it was, until they’d had word.

But no; D’Arcy had been successful. It was only now that D’Arcy was returning on the Enemistad.

Now Everard paced the Sévère’s weather deck from sunup like a crazed man, amusing Vitya and every other crewman there was to witness. He only stopped pacing as the Enemistad’s gig finally, finally pulled up to the hull.

“Everard!” a familiar, dear voice called from beneath the rail.

“About time, Preston,” Everard called back.

D’Arcy appeared, grinning, clean-shaven. He had a new contusion just above his left temple. His curls were ridiculously long and pirate-like. He looked wonderful and hale and⁠—

He was helping a woman aboard.

Absurd. Women didn’t climb the ladder—they were hauled in on chairs—but of course neither René nor her crewwomen abided chairs⁠—

This woman was wearing shirtsleeves—with corset over—and trousers. She pushed away D’Arcy’s hand like she resented it and shook out her half-queued, curly hair. She had instant sea legs, the steady and adaptive stance of a natural, and when she narrowed hazel eyes in apparent contemptuous survey of the Sévère, she resembled nobody so much as⁠—

“Ever,” D’Arcy said amusedly, suddenly before him, “you’ve looked less stunned when I pulled you out from bricks and harbour mud.” He leaned in, peered close, and smiled. “But you look well enough for a kiss.”

“Er—mmph.”

D’Arcy pulled him in, arm around his waist, and did just that.

“There,” D’Arcy said, with a sigh. “That done”—he steadied Everard on his own suddenly unreliable sea legs, and stepped back—“please be obliged to acquaint yourself with my youngest sister, Princey.”

Said sister was glaring up at slightly frowning Vitya. He shot them an alarmed flash of a glance: the split-second panic of a man encountering someone else’s responsibility and having no idea what to do about it.

Everard cleared his throat. “Miss Princey.”

She spun to face him. “Lady Princey,” the young woman declared archly. “At least to two-timing, polygamist bastards like yourself.”