His hands paused, and he cracked his eyes open.“Would you marry me, if I asked?We have had over a year in one another’s company.We have seen one another at our worst and our best, and my affection for you has only grown, even against my own will.”
I sat back, scowling.“Repeat that, slowly.”
He grimaced.“What I mean is… what I feel for you is not something I can turn away from, even if I wanted to, which I wholeheartedly do not.Many marriages are built upon much less.I would give you security, and our relationship—as Captain and Stormsinger—legitimacy.”
His hands slipped and settled higher, nails grazing my backside.
I suppressed a shiver.“Must we discuss this now?Or can I simply lock the cabin door and make love to you?”
He visibly fought himself, and gravity gradually replaced the want in his eyes.His hands moved again, gentling, and he rested them on the outside of my knees.I took a deep breath, waiting for the bough to break.
“There is nothing on these seas I would not do for you, Mary Firth,” he said at length.“And so I will not risk you.Aside from our stations—”
“Our stations should not matter.”
“Asidefrom them,” he emphasized, “I will not risk taking more of you, getting a child on you, when I have given you no assurances.When Icangive you no assurances—neither of myself, of my sanity and wholeness, nor of our future.”
He faltered as I ran my thumbs over his bottom lip.“I would happily risk that,” I murmured, not carelessly, not laughingly, but as solemnly as he looked at me now.“But I also will not ask you for more than you are willing to give.”
Silently, he rested his head on my chest, and I my chin atop his head, and we simply… breathed.After an indefinable length of time I lifted his head away and sat back, dropping my hands to his chest to feel his heart, now slowed.
“Give me a little more time,” he murmured into my hair, and kissed my head softly.
“All right.Just a little.”
Tane slipped a warning through our connection just before a knock sounded at the door.Reluctantly I got up and rearranged my skirts as Samuel raked back his hair and, standing, reached for his shirt.
“Yes?”he called as he stuffed the shirt into his breeches.
“We need to speak.”Olsa’s voice came through the wood.“If you two are finished.”
“Sooths,” I muttered, brushing at my swollen lips, and opened the door.
Olsa entered with a coffee service, arranged with Willoughby’s usual care, and placed it on the table.She poured us each a cup and ensured we had taken them and sat before she spoke again.
Tane wandered back into the cabin and rejoined with me.
“The papers Jessin Faucher gave us were seized whenHartwas captured,” she said without preamble.I had forgotten this in the wake of our escape, and I sipped my coffee slowly as I waited for Samuel to react.
Samuel loosely held his own cup on the table before him, the liquid gently sloshing with the movement of the ship.“You are sure?”
Olsa nodded.“I believe the Ess Noti were seeking them in particular.It was not our presence in Mere that resulted inHart’s capture, nor the prison break—they occurred simultaneously, and.at first, our captors believed Illya to be captain and I his Sooth.They believedHartto be its false name,Macholka, until they realized Illya and I areghiseauand Benedict’s escape came to light.”
“The Ess Noti must have learned that Captain Faucher gave the documents to us,” Samuel concluded.“And came to reclaim them.”
“Jessin Faucher is the son of Adamus Faucher, head of the Ess Noti, and his father has been trying to protect his son from himself,” I put in.“I doubt Jessin is unwatched.Spies among his crew?”
They both looked at me, Samuel clearly intrigued by this information and Olsa deep in thought.
“Mr.Maren may know more,” I suggested.
“Enisca certainly would,” Olsa added.“However, she has hardly left her cabin and will not speak to me.I doubt we will find any answers with her.”
“But,” I cut in quickly, “given the tide, the invasion, what we’ve learned about Mereish magecraft… Does any of it truly matter to us?”
“It matters if we are serving a nation that covertly perpetuates war on the Winter Sea,” Samuel said.All remnants of our earlier encounter had faded from his expression and posture, and he was wholly captain now, Samuel Rosser, honor-bound and detached.“The same war that stole your mother from you and that is currently driving the Mereish Fleet to our shores.I will not be party to that.”
Conviction and embarrassment collided inside me.“My mother is no longer involved, and neither must we be.The papers are gone.Whatever Jessin tried to pull us into is no longer our problem.”
