Page 19 of Rears & Vices

D’Arcy waved this off, still not meeting his eyes.

The problem was D’Arcy tended to say things he didn’t mean, and sometimes those things were hard to distinguish. Three years out of touch—rhetorically and literally—and Everard’s directional instincts regarding the man were no longer as unerring as they used to be.

Everard stood, straight and awkward, dripping blue-green Lake Ontario onto the rug.

D’Arcy pulled down the shutter of the lamplit window, latched it. He turned down the lamp, blew it out, and brushed off his palms. He turned round, a strange expression on his face, his glance somewhere around Everard’s wet knees.

“You’re never nervy about this?” Everard said, bewildered. “Or is it the damned hand?”

“What?” D’Arcy’s glance flew up, finally, and he laugh-groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. “No. I’m sorry. I’m trying not to…” He groaned again, and spun and bent, reaching for something laid over the chair. “Put this on, for God’s sake,” he demanded, thrusting forth the blue wool—his old lieutenant’s coat? “Before I disgrace myself utterly.”

Oh. “Really?” Everard bit his lip and took the coat in his arm. “You should be used to seeing men of all sorts, shirtless and in wet breeches,” he admonished. “Or no?”

D’Arcy muttered something and threw him a towel.

“Would you mind—a shirt?” Everard said innocently, toweling his hair.

Linen came flying, sheetlike and billowing. Everard caught it and tugged it over his head.

“This’ll drown me,” he remarked of the coat as he shrugged it on. “Y mira. I was right.” He flapped his arms, demonstrating the slumping epaulettes. “Why haven’t you sold the thing?”

He knew why. Independently wealthy, D’Arcy didn’t have a need to sell his expensive uniforms to pay for the next iteration.

“Reasons of sentiment.”

“Hmm. No hat, I suppose.”

“No, sir. You’ll have to make do.”

There came a small groan from the berth—which, Everard belatedly realised, had its curtains tied firmly shut.

“What the devil?”

D’Arcy shrugged reluctantly, grimacing. “Johnson. Told you he had my cabin, didn’t I?”

“Oh, dear God. The port admiral? Have you lost your mind?” Everard pulled the curtain tie, yanked them open; there was Admiral Johnson, hog-tied in rope and irons and gagged with a wooden bit. He looked to be semiconscious.

Everard put a hand to his stomach; all the air had gone out of his lungs. To think that he’d thought— Well.

“Were your senses actually bashed out of you? You’re the son of an earl! You could have got out of this”—this being losing a prisoner under his watch—“with a shrug and a by-your-leave!”

“If I wanted, maybe. That, and a fair amount of coin,” D’Arcy agreed. His expression darkened. “He called you Blackhand.”

Everard shut the curtains, ignoring the squeezing in his chest.

“Sant Jesús. Let’s go.”

At the door to the pine-bound sickbay—temporarily doubling as a prison hold—there were two admiralty-supplied marines posted watch. Everard gave D’Arcy (and his pistol, and garrote, and God knew what other weapons he had on his person) an uneasy glance. The plan was to talk themselves out of this particular problem, not knock heads; Everard’s borrowed uniform was to that end. But would D’Arcy follow it?

Three in the morning, a ridiculous request, and nothing more than their rank to carry them through it. But D’Arcy had already overtaken and held hostage an admiral—and murdered a man, a voice whispered—so what were two lowly marines?

“Hullo, privates,” D’Arcy greeted. “How is the pirate this fair morning?”

The leftmost marine blinked in surprise as both saluted. He was the same sunburnt young man who had been gentle with Vitaliy’s gag yesterday. Everard wondered if he had been posted to Vitaliy’s guard for the duration, and if Vitaliy had somehow, in that short time, turned the man sympathetic.

If he had, Everard doubted it’d been intentional.

“Quiet tonight, sirs,” the marine replied. He was exceptionally soft-spoken, like a kind priest. “’Tisn’t morning already?” he asked, and eyed the moonlight shining into the hold around the mainmast.