London had reeled.
Ballrooms gossiped.
Newspapers speculated.
Lady Pettigrew fainted at the idea of pirates strolling through Kensington Gardens “beside respectable persons.”
As forrespectable persons… Bash and I had never once been mistaken for such.
We were rarely in London long enough for anyone to remember our latest scandal anyway.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Bash murmured, pressing a kiss into my hair.
“I’m not thinking,” I lied.
“You are. You’ve got that face.”
“What face?”
“The worried face. The one that usually precedes you telling me you want to chase a sea monster, or adopt another stray child.”
“That was one time,” I said defensively.
“Rose, when you saw Kit, you said—and I quote—‘He looks small, we should keep him.’”
Kit glanced over his shoulder. “Iwassmall.”
“You still are,” Bash said.
“Not for long,” Kit grinned.
He was probably right. He’d begun eating like two sailors and a kraken combined.
“Then there’s also Sebastian Jr.” Dilly offered unhelpfully.
“Well, I ruined his home, so I thought best to keep him after that,” I said, eyeing our cabin where the custacean was probably sleeping.
It took many months for him to find a shell that was deemed acceptable for him, but living in my hair was not an option forever. Now he mostly lived in Bash, and his cabin was sleeping all day and all night. He was undoubtedly a lazy creature.
Oscar stepped beside us, eyes on the horizon. “Currents are shifting,” he said quietly. “She says we’ll have good weather.”
I didn’t ask whoshewas. Oscar still felt Inu like a ghost sewn into his ribs. Not painfully… not anymore. More like a presence. A promise. Sometimes he dreamed of her voice guiding him through storms. Sometimes he simply looked at the waves as though listening.
Healing wasn’t linear. Or quick. Or tidy.
But he was healing.
And we loved him through it.
“What’s our heading?” he asked.
“Southwest,” I said.
“By how much?” Bash asked.
“Enough to annoy you.”
“Then southwest it is.”
