Page 53 of Rears & Vices

“Well, wasn’t it?” Everard demanded. “Why else accept the posting?”

D’Arcy spread his hands. “Admiralty demand? Money? Paternal order? Yes, why else accept a dead-end posting in the great wilderness of peacetimes Canada, I wonder.”

“Oh, now, really.”

“Probably I knew you’d wished I were your equal.” D’Arcy raised his chin. “And then I was, and you still wanted nothing doing. What d’you think of that?”

Everard didn’t have an idea what to think. “Don’t tell me that is why,” he rasped.

“Then I shan’t tell you.”

“I… One doesn’t just uproot their whole life for another! Not for nothing!”

D’Arcy reared back.

“No. Not for nothing,” he said coldly. He sidestepped around Everard with quick, stiff movements, wrenched open the door. “Only you are allowed that, matelot.”

Fourteen

“Lovebirds, hello!” came a loud call from below the rail: Romilly René.

She quick-stepped up the ladder and over, skirts and lace flaring.

Romilly René was a tall Frenchwoman of about Everard’s age, with thick brown curls wrung into corkscrews, and from the look of it, a fondness for powder and rouge, shaped beauty marks, and quantities of lace. Like Vitaliy, she was slightly out of current mode; also like Vitaliy, the old fashion suited her well. Everard imagined she’d been born a half-century too late, and the world had simply refused to conform to her, instead of the other way round.

She strode onto the quarterdeck, imperial as a queen, and Everard tipped his hat. He didn’t bother asking himself how a staggeringly beautiful woman in a bow-strewn waistcoat, sword belt, and panniers came to be elected pirate quartermaster of a seven-ship fleet, captain of an all-women rowing crew; his world-views had been turned quite upside down since a small village’s worth of people had cheered at seeing him kiss another man. It merely was; the rest seemed irrelevant.

How she climbed the ratlines in Rocaille panniers, however…

Perhaps they were detachable, like a cape. He had less than zero knowledge of women’s clothing beyond the visible superficie.

And in any case, she wore a proper hat, a functional-looking straw broad brim with ribbons and a feather.

“Fleet master René,” he greeted.

“Matelot Everard! Good to see you once again,” she said sincerely, in English.

She turned aside, and greeted Vitaliy with busses on each sharp cheek. She was tall enough that Vitaliy didn’t have to bend much for her to reach him; a good thing, because Vitaliy had put on a pair of tight breeches and equally restrictive cornflower-blue waistcoat, neither of which Everard had seen upon his person before. His hair was neatly braided, tied with matching blue ribbon; Everard hadn’t seen that before, either.

“I am sorry, mon cher,” René murmured to Vitaliy, low and close. “I have brought one thing you wanted and one you did not.” Vitaliy looked startled, exhausted blues darting quickly over to Alarie—who had just come upon the gangway presently—before his face settled into flat neutrality, and he nodded.

Of course, then Everard wanted to know what she meant and, furthermore, which was which; wanted and not—but he was distracted soon enough by Louis-Michel Alarie himself standing before him.

And good lord, as judgments—descriptors—went, handsome wasn’t up to snuff. Not even very. Dandy was still accurate. But handsome had been Alarie’s bearing… at a distance.

Up close, the man was downright head-turning. He had honest, liquid-brown eyes, as darkly lashed as D’Arcy’s, but more perfectly spaced and set; also the straight nose and dusty-pale complexion of a Grecian bust. His lips were plush, pink and curving; his smoothly shaved jaw hadn’t yet lost a bit of definition, because he couldn’t have been more than five-and-twenty.

Everard’s stomach did a hop-skip, jealousy and wariness and appreciation all in one. He saw now precisely why Vitaliy had put in the effort he had towards his appearance. Might he have a history with him, too? he wondered.

Although, he thought, their own history hadn’t warranted any such effort.

Alarie came close and greeted Everard in the Continental way, the same as Romilly René had done, cheek to cheek. Everard didn’t smell a whiff of hair grease, powder, or scent as he endured, just French soap and warm skin.

“You, then, are the infamous English matelot,” Alarie said, in French.

For the umpteenth time, Everard was not English, he really wasn’t— “Yes. Everard Anderson de Anglada, and pleased to make your acquaintance, Governor.”

“De Anglada,” Alarie murmured as he looked him over, up and down, distant and cool.