Page 27 of Rears & Vices

“Some years,” Vitaliy replied neutrally. “It depends whom you ask.”

“Or which government?” Everard pulled his hands away and began to pace from the connecting door to the exterior one. His own Atlantic service had ended abruptly in 1812 with the destruction of the Wanderer, and he’d surely seen the wanted notice repeated in the Gazette before.

“But if you are so famous, why would they hang you as Navy, under an assumed name? The Crown doesn’t need to court-martial a mere pirate!”

It was one question too many, or maybe mere had been the wrong choice to apply to a man with control over an entire flotilla. Vitaliy drew back, raising his chin. His lips set into smooth marble, the corners flat as his dark eyes.

But it was a reaction, and Everard relished it, stood still in the wake of it.

The man does feel his pride, after all.

“I owe you my life,” Vitaliy said. “And some kind of recompense for the implosion of your own. But though having fucked me seems to have motivated you to speak up for me, a mere pirate, it doesn’t entitle you to judge me.”

Vitaliy spoke like a king, a tired one who was unexpectedly virtuous and used to constant assumptions to the contrary. A high-handed one, too. Everard felt his color rising. Recompense.

Did Vitaliy think he wanted… money? He’d disdain saving his life for having shared his bed but would offer him money?

“Answers are all I want from you. Fucking’s got absolutely nothing doing. Is that all it was to you? Truly?” He pointed to D’Arcy, pale in his chair. “All that Preston’s done?”

“Oh, no,” D’Arcy said at this. He stood. “Don’t you involve me in this mutual-guilt crusade. Bell, another breakfast is in order, d’you think?” He gestured to Thom. “You too. Out, out.”

Thom protested, “But—” even as St. Clare dragged him across the doorway.

D’Arcy muttered in Everard’s ear as he left. “Don’t kill each other.”

Everard barely heard this, or the door’s latch snicking shut behind him.

Vitaliy opened his mouth, but Everard wasn’t done.

“I’m sorry it offends you I wasn’t able to leave you to hang. And furthermore, did it for less motivation than you apparently deem sufficient. I suppose a pirate such as V. Varfolomey has a wealth of avenues for escape; you didn’t need a once-upon, forgotten lover to hoist himself upon a pike for you. But it is what it is. It’s done.”

Vitaliy shut his mouth.

“Or d’you think I should have done it for somewhat else? For Varfolomey’s greatness?” Everard mused aloud. “Perhaps for the money I imagined you would offer me in recompense? Is that what should have motivated me instead?”

Vitaliy stared. He looked as though someone had slapped him with a satin glove and demanded answer, and no one had ever dared before.

“Is it what you want?” he whispered.

Everard believed it that no one had.

“God. No. Sant Jesús. Look, at risk of confirming everything terrible that you seem to assume of me: I truly don’t care that you’re a pirate—that you’re… him. Varfolomey. It has no bearing.”

No bearing, except that three years earlier, Vitaliy hadn’t said he was Varfolomey, hadn’t told him the whole truth. Absolutely no bearing.

He laughed. “Obviously it didn’t, because I hadn’t realised. But you could have been any Jack Tar, the guiltiest man on deck, and I’d still have said what I did because it was you, Vitya. I don’t understand in the least why you think sharing what we shared shouldn’t have influenced me in that way. It did. It has. It will forever.”

Vitaliy’s eyes were very, very wide.

“So, no. I don’t want money. Nor recompense. Nothing at all, except to know you’re not dead. But…” He sighed. “I do believe I am entitled to a few questions? Answers? Perhaps?”

“You—answers. The truth.”

“Yes.”

“That is it? All you want?”

“Yes.”