Over the following days the plundered contents of the Spanish ship were fully unloaded into the Guthrie storehouses, and the Ranger was once again on its way out of port. Eleanor had known they were leaving, but when Vane made no effort to see or speak to her in the interim, she refused to seek him out; her pride was strong too. Probably his lack of contact meant nothing in particular as far as he was concerned, so she was determined it would not mean anything for her either.
There was always work to keep busy with, not only the broad scope of organizing the business but right down to helping out in the kitchen, and Eleanor, now as in the past, was prepared to do any of it. Far easier and more productive to roll up one's sleeves and immerse arms in a bucket of dishwater than to mope about aimlessly reflecting on the possibilities of a fragile social or sexual connection, and ultimately more profitable, too.
She kept a tight rein on her thoughts and emotions during the day, though at night, in the solitude of her bed, her mind returned to the physical interactions she'd shared with the captain, and the consequences of their most recent congress.
A fortnight passed. On one heat-soaked afternoon, Eleanor was busy overseeing a maid washing down the railing. Someone had vomited over the rail the night before, and the girl had previously made a less-than-thorough effort at cleaning it, but now, under Eleanor's critical eye, she obediently slopped the rag around the carved wood a second time, sending streams of the acrid lye soap mixture spilling down the steps.
Anne Bonny sidled up the staircase, hat uncharacteristically in hand. She lifted a boot away from the dirty liquid, drawing up her lip in a vulpine manner.
Eleanor ignored her presence for a few moments. She hadn't forgotten seeing her face in the shadows the night that Vane had accosted her in the alley. Of course the Ranger's first mate had only been doing as she had been instructed, but it still rankled, particularly since Anne had never sought tacit forgiveness for her part in the interaction, not even a facial expression along the lines of I'm-sorry-I-was-only-following-orders the next time they'd encountered one another.
"Mistress Bonny," Eleanor said now, coolly, when she was forced to acknowledge Anne's presence or else obviously give offence. "Can I help you with something?"
Anne's eyebrows indicated the the maidservant, whose slack features brightened upon seeing an opportunity to escape. Hastily the girl gave the surface a final slap with her rag and tossed it back into the bucket, then hauled herself down the stairs, thumping the wooden container with each step.
Anne waited until she was out of earshot. Eleanor picked up the keys at her belt, pretending to look for one in order to have something to do. At last she gazed down at Anne from her position at the top of the staircase.
"Captain requests your presence," Anne said, the words falling sarcastically off her tongue. But everything she said sounded sarcastic, so it was hard to be sure.
Eleanor did, selfishly, take a bit of satisfaction in the extent to which the hired sword clearly loathed having to deliver such messages. "Requests or demands?"
"Same innit it?" Anne could enunciate when she wanted, but when irritated, her husky tone slipped quickly into the pirate argot. She swept a hand along her hairline, dark auburn with sweat.
Seeing the motion, Eleanor became conscious of the damp clinging to her own back, and the lingering smell of vomit mingled with lye sitting heavy in the air.
"Only if you are one of his crew," she answered.
Anne stared at her with scarcely disguised resentment. "He wants you to meet him at the bay you practiced at. This afternoon."
Eleanor deliberated for the space of a few heartbeats, putting the back of her hand to her nose. "You can tell him I will come, if I can find the time."
It was not entirely a prevarication; the stair cleaning had reminded her of the need to give a lecture to the kitchen girls on keeping up with their extra tasks, which she had been going to do had Anne not appeared just then. Though she could easily still deal with that first and then go.
When Anne didn't immediately move from the step, Eleanor tilted her head. "Was there anything else?"
"There's a good deal else," Anne said, "but that'll have to wait, won't it?"
With which equivocation she went back down the steps, holding her hand in the space above the railing, as though either measuring the distance, or proclaiming it too dirty to touch.
Eleanor released a sigh and waited until she was gone before heading down herself to the kitchen to deliver the intended talk.
After that, she dealt with several other less pressing errands. Vane had been gone for days. He couldn't expect her to leave everything and come the instant he beckoned, even if it was sweltering indoors, even if the walk alone in the open air would be welcome, even if she wanted to.
Even if she had missed him.
Later, the weight of the sword at her side swinging against one hip, Eleanor set out for the beach. Their beach, as she thought of it now. The sun was relentless overhead, but she moved briskly through the grasses, shading her eyes when the light became too piercing. Sweat gathered at the back of her neck. Vane be damned, she was going to swim in the bay whether he was there or not.
She found the path that wound among scrubby trees borne down by capricious ocean winds, and followed it to the rise that overlooked the water, where she paused to catch her breath.
"You're late," he said.
She swung around.
He was sitting on a rock with his back against the lee side of one of the twisted trees.
"There were things keeping me," she said, purposely vague.
He stood, in his economical way of movement, and came over to her, reaching for the sword at her waist. "What's this?"
"A measure of defense."
"You came to practice?" he said with a tinge of amusement.
"Perhaps later," she said. "I wish to bathe first. You might join me in that. You reek of tar."
He accorded her this with an eyebrow. He slid his hand solidly around hers, pressing his fingers into her palm in the way that he did that always produced a momentary weightlessness in her stomach.
I missed you. She cast her eyes sideways at him but couldn't say something so personal, so vulnerable. She'd sooner peel off her clothes under the open sky than expose that naked thought.
They walked down to the water. Eleanor sat down on a piece of driftwood and stripped away boots and stockings, luxuriating in the sensation of freed toes against the gritty sun-burning sand. She unbuckled her sword, placing it to the side, and he picked it up, examining the workmanship with a discriminating eye.
Eleanor couldn't endure the corset trapping her blouse to her skin any longer and began to unfasten it. She rather wanted to keep the skirt on so as not to be so obviously provocative but the thought of walking back to the tavern in a water-logged, ankle-length dress urged her to strip it off, too.
"Should be a bit heavier," he said, speaking critically to the sword. She loved, in that instant, that he was giving more attention to the weapon than to her bare legs.
Scrambling to her feet, she tossed, "Are you coming?" over her shoulder and ran, fleet-footed, into the waves.
He set aside the sword and paced like a wary cat at the edge of the water.
"I think it odd," she said, from the safety of the hip-deep waves, "that so many seafarers live their lives on the water and yet are so fearful of it."
Vane took off his boots and pulled his shirt over his head without speed, as if the prospect was indeed not pleasant, but he did wade in. Eleanor tipped her head back, feeling the waves work against the tension in her neck and shoulders. She saw him coming towards her and used her hand to send the ages-old message of playful invitation—a shower of water droplets—in his direction.
In return he merely looked at her, neither annoyed nor amused. To take part in such an activity would have required rather more of a carefree spirit than he had, but she knew that already.
"You have no sense of whimsy, sir," she said lightly.
"Whimsy," he repeated as if he didn't know what the word meant.
"I say you are no fun."
"Come here," he said. He was so accustomed to telling his crew what to do, she thought, that he did not even realize he was giving orders. Moreover, he didn't sound demanding; just as if he expected to be listened to.
She couldn't decide if that was endearing or terribly irritating. Possibly a little of both. But she stood up, anyway, and waded through the water.
His gaze took her in—soaked blouse, streaming hair and all. He put hands at her waist where the waves were lapping and pulled her against him and kissed her, slowly. It was a greeting, saying the words that neither of them had spoken. His sun-dark face was warm, his jaw stubbly. She put her arms around him in a moment of sudden feeble helplessness; not in body, which was strong as ever, but emotions. She wasn't supposed to want this so much. Nothing good could come of it; they had nothing in common except stubbornness, perhaps, and a mutual will to succeed. She looked up at him, trying to read in his eyes what she felt in her heart, but as usual seeing only calm intent.
He walked back out of the water, bringing her with him, and they went to sit where the grasses met the sand near a scrub of casuarina trees that yielded some shade. Eleanor retrieved her discarded clothing, because being nearly naked under cover of the rolling waves was different than sitting on the beach beside him in her limp shirt that outlined curve of breast and hip and was quite transparent. She put her skirt over her shoulders like a cloak and wrung wet hair away from the material—self-conscious because he was watching her, forearms on drawn-up knees, a strand of beach grass in his mouth as if it replaced a cigar.
They sat in silence for a few moments, and she watched the light wind disturbing the fuzz on the skin of her legs, drying the water droplets. He turned to her on one elbow. She carefully plucked the reed from his lips—it was knife-edge sharp—and, lying on her side, reached up for a kiss. He obliged. His warm hand found her hip, covered by damp fabric. He pulled it up to her waist, ignoring her murmured squeak of argument, though they were so low in the long grass that it was unlikely anyone above would be able to see, and twisted around to kiss her there, on her hip, on her stomach. Eleanor squirmed in mingled disquiet and enjoyment as he went lower. She tangled her fingers in his hair, urging him back up to her mouth. They kissed as the grasses brushed and danced around their bodies, creating a cocoon of susurrating seclusion, body heat warming the wet remnants of clothing still between them.
Congress was slower and lengthier this time, conducted with less urgency and more exploration, and Eleanor came to a convulsive fulfillment that might have embarrassed her had she not been in so much need of release. She trembled afterwards to the extent that he must have thought she was about to catch the ague, for he wrapped his arms around her and held her against his chest so closely she could feel her ribs contracting. But it was good, it was more than good; every muscle in her body felt extenuated, flooded with bliss. She wriggled, and he loosened his hold on her. His hand began to trace idle circles on her lower back. Eyes closed, she luxuriated into the touch, snuggling into the hollow of his neck and shoulder, feeling the still-fast beat of blood under his skin.
They lay until the sun was westward and its intensity faded, though the heat of the day lingered in the air. Eleanor's blouse was now dry but stiff with salt water. Vane pulled her over to his other side, shifting her into the hollow his body had created, looking down at her and twitching sand debris out of her hair with a flick of his fingers. Though his face was expressionless—or so it would have appeared to others—she saw something in it that made her want to lie there indefinitely. A kind of cherishing, perhaps. That at this moment, there was nowhere else he wanted to be, either.
But her stomach twisted with the realization that such interludes were not possible with any kind of regularity, that he would sail again with no promises of returning safely, for weeks at a time. It was not reasonable to expect anything else, and she didn't, and yet—
"You're thinking too hard," he said, lowering his mouth to taste along her neck. "I can hear it."
She tried to smile. "If my thoughts are so loud, what is their subject," she murmured.
"Me," he said with calm assurance.
"You sound very certain."
"If not me, then you're thinking about tomorrow," he said, running his palm over the slight concavity of her stomach.
She avoided his eyes, fixing her gaze on his shoulder.
"One of us needs to think about tomorrow," she said at last.
"It'll come whether we think about it or not."
"I don't know how to live that way." Frustrated, she plucked at a handful of grass under her palm, her arm having been extended sideways, and immediately let out a quick exclamation of pain as the reeds scored across her fingers.
He took her hand with a slight frown and put his mouth to the cut, stanching the trickle of blood. Her insides knotted again at the way a purely practical gesture of his could strike her as tender.
"Learn," he said, closing her fingers into a fist.
The sun passed behind a section of silvery clouds, temporarily obscured. She shivered, though it was not cold.
"Want to go back?"
"Not terribly."
"What were you doing in Port Royal?"
She let the question sit for a moment while she tried to adjust to its abruptness, though he'd asked it mildly enough.
"I—you know that. My father sent me."
"You mentioned your own business."
"It really was not..."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Significant," she mumbled.
He waited.
"My father wished me to give some thought to..." It sounded so ridiculous, put into words. "Finding a potential mate."
"Mate," he repeated. "Someone to fuck?"
She met his eyes now with exasperation. "You know that's not what he had in mind."
"I don't see why you're in need of a husband."
"Neither do I, except for—" She wrinkled her nose without meaning to. "Offspring."
"Hm," he said. "That would be important to your father. I'm guessing it's not to you."
Eleanor shook her head. "What use could I be to the business if I were breeding? And as for a husband...The only other reason he wants me to find one is because he thinks it would help to control me."
"Did you find one?"
She sighed. Her fist was still clenched against the whisper-thin cut which was stinging. "There was no one I didn't fear I would smother with a cushion if I were forced to endure a single night of married life at his side."
He made a noncommittal sound.
"Besides, I was hardly at my best that week, with getting ill aboard ship and you making inappropriate propositions in the alehouse—"
"That was you and your damn insistence on settling debts," he said. "And the dress didn't help."
She angled her back stiffly, pushing away from him. "I was wearing such a thing because I was supposed to be attending the dinner of my hosts, but if I am to be blamed for my honesty in accounting, or the luxury of my costume—"
"Stop," he said, kissing her obdurate mouth. "I didn't give a fuck about the money, I just wanted to do this with you. And this."
Her breath caught in her throat, her body rising up despite her desire to remain irritated. He was doing something that could not be ignored. Shortly later they were entangled again; he was pulling her on top of him, settling her hips over his, then grabbing her hands. The sting of the cut forgotten, Eleanor melded her palms and thighs with his, abandoning grievances and frustrations for the moment—or perhaps burying them in their mingled flesh—too aware of tomorrow robbing all of this from them.
They didn't leave the cove until the sun was flinging its colors all over the horizon like so many scattered scarves; cream-yellow, pink and crimson and finally purple-black. Half a moon gave them enough light to find the path back in the darkness, traversing the scattered rocks and sandy bluffs hand in hand. With town's golden blurs of torches and lanterns beyond, Eleanor kissed him good night reluctantly, salty and aching with use but largely sore of heart; while they had only just begun, it already felt like another ending.