He waited, suspended in a heartbeat of silence. Then, his blood surged in response.
He wasn’t nothing. He was Penelope’s husband. He was Thaddeus’s father.
He was—for all his ambivalence—His Grace’s son and his heir.
And, he was Cheverley, no longer captain of theDefiance,but still captain of his fate.
Whatever restraints remained, they existed only in his mind.
He shrugged off his coat—the coat Penelope had made for him. She’d poured care into every stich. Sewing him into his future, leaving him nowhere to hide.
He yanked his shirt over his head and cast it to the side.
He caught his reflection in the mirror—gaunt, lop-sided, mottled by the glass. The external dirt would wash away; the internal, he alone could dissolve.
Had he not earned every sinew, every scar? Did he not deserve the comfort of a god-damned tub?
Fuck the pirate.
Mrs. Renton had heated the water. Penelope had helped carry the buckets brought up from the kitchens into the chamber that connected the duke and duchess’s rooms to the landing of the second floor. He refused to allow any ghosts to exist between himself and this gift.
How many times had he bathed like this as a boy? Unheeding of the effort someone had taken to heat the water, to carry it up the stairs, to fill and prepare the bath. Now, he was aware. Fully aware. Aware of the sacrifice of others, aware of the privileges he possessed.
And, he was aware of the responsibilities connected to those privileges.
He stripped out of his breeches leg by leg, fully naked for the first time since the cave.
Water swished as he stepped into the tub. He braced himself with his left arm and eased into the water. Warmth enveloped him, heat curled the hair at his temples.
Holding his breath, he submerged.
His heavy hair swished as he turned his head from side to side. Sound muffled beneath the water. He stilled in the warmth, as if suspended between everything that had been, and everything he alone could set in motion.
He emerged with a chest-expanding inhale, blinking into the sunlit room as if seeing it for the first time.
Gold. On wall paper.
Everything heavy and dark and expensive.
How could a soul stay strong against such a claiming of wealth and power? Among tokens of authority, how could a man remember he was but a man—flawed, as much prone to injustice as justice, subject to unpredictable elements without and within?
All men were creatures on the deck of a ship, sorting a hundred choices—significant and not—that could mean destruction or survival.
Against such overwhelming mystery, the best armor was humility.
What was a hero?
He didn’t know.
But one day, he would be duke. If he seized his place. One day soon, if his father’s condition did not improve.
He’d possess unimaginable power, power he could employ entirely differently than his ancestors.
He could lift others up. Make a haven of Ithwick as Pen had made a haven of Pensteague.
Were those the qualities that made a hero?
Stewardship? Care?
