Thirty-Seven

THIRTY-SEVEN

The color Holland chose was the deepest shade of emerald, the strands of silk moving in the light like threads of green glass. It ignited a memory, like breath on embers, but I couldn’t place it.

The seamstress carefully ran her fingers over the edge of the hem, pinning it into place at my waist so the fabric draped over my legs like a sweep of wind.

My eyes kept drifting to the closed door, watching for a shadow. Holland’s seamstress was already waiting when we got back to the ship, as promised, and West had gone straight up to the quarterdeck to help Willa fit the new anchor. The crew had looked between us and Tru in question, the icy silence deafening.

I’d left the boy in the care of Hamish, who I figured was the least likely to throw him overboard.

“Almost finished,” the seamstress sang, pulling a needle from the cushion at her wrist and threading it with her teeth. She fixed the corner with three stitches and trimmed a few threads before she stood up, standing back. “Turn.” I reluctantly obeyed as her eyes scrutinized every inch of me. “All right.” She seemed satisfied, picking up the bolt of cloth and setting it onto her hip before she lugged it through the door.

I turned back to the mirror Holland’s men had hauled up onto the Marigold, running my hands over the skirt nervously. It had the look of melting butter, soft and smooth in the candlelight. But that wasn’t what made me uneasy.

I swallowed, remembering. This was the dress my mother wore in the portrait in Holland’s study. I looked just like her. I looked just like Holland. As if I belonged at a fancy gala or in the private booth at the tea house.

But the Marigold was the only place I wanted to belong.

A knock sounded on the door before the handle turned. When it opened, West stood in the breezeway. “Can I come in?”

I wrapped my arms around me self-consciously, covering the waist of the frock. “It’s your cabin.”

He stepped inside and let the jacket fall from his shoulders. He didn’t say anything as he hung it on the hook, his gaze moving over me. I didn’t like the look in his eye. I didn’t like the feeling of the space between us. But West was shut up tight. Closed off from me.

I watched him step out of his worn boots one at a time. The wind pouring into the cabin turned cold, making me shiver.

“You’re a stubborn bastard,” I said softly.

The shadow of a smirk lit on his face. “So are you.”

“You should have told me you were signing the contract.”

He swallowed. “I know.”

I picked up the skirt and stepped toward him, but he kept his eyes on the floor. He was still pulling away. “I’m not one more person you have to take care of. You have to stop doing that.”

“I don’t know how to,” he admitted.

“I know.” I crossed my arms. “But you’re going to have to figure it out. I have to be able to trust you. I have to know that even if we don’t agree, we’re doing this together.”

“We are doing it together.”

“No, we’re not. You’re trying to make decisions for me, just like Saint.”

He bristled at the words.

“When I made that deal with Holland, I did it on my own. You were never supposed to be a part of this.”

“Fable, I love you,” he breathed, still staring at my feet. “I don’t want to do any of this without you.”

The anger I’d felt was suddenly washed out by sadness. West was doing the only thing he knew how to do. “Will you look at me?”

He finally lifted his gaze.

“Would you have hurt that kid? Really?”

He bit the inside of his cheek. “I don’t think so.”

It was an honest answer, but I didn’t like it. “We said we weren’t going to do this by the rules. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“You’re not Saint. Neither am I.”

His eyes trailed over me, tightening.

“What’s wrong?”

He let out a frustrated breath. “This.” He motioned to the air between us and then to the frock. “All of it.”

I looked down at my skirts, trying not to laugh. I cocked my head to the side, narrowing my eyes playfully. “Are you trying to say you don’t like my frock?”

But he wasn’t taking the bait. “I don’t like it,” he said flatly.

“Why not?”

He raked a hand into his hair, holding it back from his face as he scrutinized the shimmering silk. His gaze was cold. “You don’t look like you. You don’t smell like you.”

I couldn’t help but smile even though I could see it annoyed him. But I loved the way he looked standing there barefoot by the window, half of his shirt untucked. It was the side of West I only got glimpses of.

I took another step toward him, the length of the skirts dragging on the floor behind me.

“I would be happy if I never saw you in one of those stupid things again,” he said, finally grinning.

“Fine.” I reached up and unhooked the buttons one at a time until it was loose enough to slide over my shoulders, and West watched as it dropped to the floor in a puddle of green. The underdress was almost as absurd as the frock, tied in tiny white satin ribbons that met in bows at each of my hips. “Better?”

“Better,” he conceded.

For a moment, it was as if we weren’t in Sagsay Holm. As if we’d never come to the Unnamed Sea or met Holland. But his smile fell again, like he was thinking the same thing.

I wondered if he was wishing he’d made a different decision that night at the barrier islands. I’d freed him from Saint, but I’d dragged him into the Unnamed Sea and put him at the mercy of Holland. I’d nearly lost the Marigold, and I could see what it did to him, not having any control over what was going to happen.

The shadows caught the cut of his cheeks, and for a moment he looked like a spirit. I clenched my teeth, a stone sinking in my stomach. Underneath the anger, fear was writhing. I was scared that this was just who he was. That he’d signed the contract because he wanted to be that person Saint made him.

I could love this West. The one with a dark past. But I couldn’t tie myself to him if he was walking back into it.

“I need to ask you something.”

He crossed his arms over his broad chest, as if he was bracing himself. “Okay.”

“Why did you sign the contract? Really.” I wasn’t sure how to ask it.

“Because I was afraid,” he answered instantly.

“Of what?”

“You really want to know?”

“I do.”

He blinked, quiet, and I found myself dreading what he might say. “I’m afraid that you’re going to want what she can give you. What I’ll never be able to give you.” The look of vulnerability that flashed in his eyes made me swallow hard. “I don’t want you to work for Holland because I’m afraid you won’t come back to the Narrows. To me.”

Emotion curled thick in my throat. “I don’t want what Holland has. I want you,” I said, unsteady. “She can never give me what you can give me.”

His cheeks flushed. It had cost him something to be so honest.

“I don’t want you to work for Holland, either,” I said. “I don’t want you to be that person anymore.”

“I won’t have to if tomorrow goes as planned.”

“Even if it doesn’t go as planned. I don’t want you to work for her.” I took a step toward him.

“I already signed the contract, Fable.”

“I don’t care. Promise me. Even if it means leaving the Marigold. Even if we have to start over.”

The muscle in his jaw ticked as his eyes met mine. “All right.”

“Swear it,” I said.

“I swear it.”

I let out a relieved breath, the tension coiled around me finally loosening. But West looked miserable. He rubbed his face with both hands, shifting on his feet anxiously.

I knew what that look was. It was the feeling of being trapped. Of having no way out. I knew because I felt it too. “My father said that the worst mistake he ever made was letting Isolde step foot on his ship,” I said lowly.

West looked up then, like he knew what I was about to say.

“I think maybe he hated that he loved her,” I whispered.

The room fell silent, the sounds of the sea and the village disappearing.

“Are you asking me if I feel that way?”

I nodded, instantly regretting it.

He looked as if he was measuring me. Trying to decide if he was going to answer. If he could trust me with it. “Sometimes,” he admitted.

But it wasn’t followed by the terror I had been sure would come, because West didn’t look away from me as he said the words.

“But this didn’t start that night on Jeval when you asked me for passage to Ceros. It started a long time before that. For me.”

Tears welled in my eyes as I looked up at him. “But what if—”

“Fable.” He closed the space between us, and his hands lifted to my face, his fingertips sliding into my hair. The sensation woke the heat on my skin, and I sniffed, so happy that he’d finally touched me. His mouth hovered an inch above mine. “The answer to that question is always going to be the same. It doesn’t matter what happens.” His hands tightened on me. “You and me.”

The words sounded like vows. But there was a grief that bloomed in my chest as he spoke them, like an incantation that gave flesh to bones.

My voice deepened, waiting for his mouth to touch mine. “How long can you live like that?”

His lips parted and the kiss was deep, drawing the air from the room, and the word was broken in his throat. “Forever.”

My fingers twisted in his shirt as I pulled him toward me, and in an instant the space that had stretched between us minutes ago was gone. It vanished the moment his skin touched mine. He could feel it, too. It was in the way his kiss turned hungry. The way his fingers pulled at the laces of my underdress until it was sliding over my hips.

I smiled against his mouth, my bare feet stepping over the pile of silk on the floor as he walked us to the cot. I laid back onto the quilts, pulling him with me so I could melt into the heat of him. I hooked my legs around his hips as I tugged at his shirt, finding his skin with my fingertips, and his breath shook on an exhale as he leaned all his weight into me.

West’s lips trailed down my throat until the warmth of his mouth pressed to the soft hollow below my collar bone, then to my breast. A pitiful sound crept up my throat as I arched my back, trying to get closer. When he realized what I wanted, his hands trailed up my thighs so he could take hold of my hips, and he fit me against him, groaning.

Like the flick of wind over water, it all disappeared. Holland, Saint, the Trade Council meeting, midnight, the Roths. It could be our last night on the Marigold, our last night on this crew, but whatever happened tomorrow, we were sailing into it together.

You and me.

And for the first time, I believed him.