Chapter Text
Green is the Color of Adventure
Cordelia’s hand trembled; she could hardly tear her eyes off the treasure map in her hand. But once she looked up at Vane’s chiseled features, and the coy smile tugging at the corner of his lips, she could not remove her eyes from him.
She felt like one of Keat’s moths….drawn to her own destruction.
Vane was wonderful….and terrifying….unnerving….and oddly reassuring….......
She owed her life to this man, and she didn’t like feeling indebted.
The characters scrawled artistically across the map were not ones she recognized. “Is it Chinese or Indian?”
She asked, desperately trying to avert her eyes and stall her heart.
Captain Vane might wish to continue his ruse of a press gang that he began the night of their party after finding the Magpie, but she was eager to make her next play in their vie for captainship supremacy… and now her stomach somersaulted and flipped like a fish torn from the ocean and thrown onto deck….she writhed breathlessly, almost uncomfortable in her own skin, as he stepped close enough to enclose his rough hand over hers.
“Chinese.” He affirmed. “And now it’s our map……” His mouth was dangerously close to hers.
“Don’t pretend you can read Chinese?” She tried to be coy and insulting but it was useless. “The crews are practically watching…….” She mouthed the words softly, but her meagre resistance folded as he swept her into a kiss and like a tidal wave lurching to meet the shore, she practically leapt up to meet him.
“Happy anniversary, Captain Sweetheart. I hope my cabin can survive this encounter……” Vane pulled her into his arms, and Cordelia almost laughed. She really had still wondered if Vane had pranked the drawer with an explosive before she opened it and found the map, and now she felt safe once again in his arms. Vane would never hurt someone he loved. She had told him once before, and the day that he confronted his father; she knew that he would not take revenge even on those he hated. There was a method to his madness, but no treasure map to the mechanism of his heart and mind, and she desperately wanted to uncover how they worked.
“I have an incurable affliction……a deadly attraction to ruthless, ambitious, pirate captains…..” She held the map above her head and he, without looking placed one hand behind her head, lacing his fingers in her hair, kissing her while his other hand retrieved the map.
She feigned protest as he held the map piece aloft and then let it fall gracefully as a leaf to the deck boards below them.
His eyes were green:
sea green,
rainforest green,
jade green.
Green was the color of adventure.
She forgot time, she forgot the crew outside the cabin, she even momentarily forgot the new treasure map.
There was only her and Vane, and the energy that surged between them; she felt propelled as a little rowboat is buoyed along by the wind of a storm.
“Your illness sounds serious, Poor Captain Cannonball…..” Vane laughed and gave her a light toss as he hoisted her in the air and carried her toward his bed.
Oh no…..I’ve already spent enough time sick there……She thought about her near brush with death after the hurricane. And here she was caught in another relentless wind, one she wasn’t sure she could survive with or without…..but she no longer cared to resist…..because what was living if she couldn’t be with him.
The map was from the Ming dynasty. At that time, an extraordinarily successful pirate named Wu Ping hid his treasure near Nan’ao Island, as two rival pirates launched a raid against his faction. While his rivals Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou defeated Wu Ping’s fleet, they failed to ever uncover his treasure.
Vane actually had learned a little Chinese, but Cordelia thought perhaps Keats and the Red Lancet could help them translate the rest.
“Are we going to China then?” Too bad I just got back from the South Pacific…..couldn’t Vane have told me before……..How infuriating……
She mentioned this to him and he laughed….
”As if you would ever postpone your abyssal lantern quest! How is it to hold all the power of the ocean in the palm of your hand…..” He laughed and busied himself looking smug, and she wondered if he knew all along what the outcome of their quest would be.
Were he and Hamilton….in league from the beginning?…….
.Had she thought this aloud? She realized with horror she was muttering to herself and Vane could hear.
“You would never believe the Lantern was really a giant angler fish!” She asserted as though she hadn’t been incoherently voicing her disconcerted musings.
Vane guffawed and laughed heartily, letting down his cold façade in the moments of rarity she had grown to treasure from his usually shrewd demeanor.
“You don’t need to amaze me with stories! I’m not Keats’ Royal society of London…..” He motioned at the corners of his mouth as if to wipe off his smug grin.
“It’s not necessary to demean him……He could probably translate this for you….” She waved the fragment under his nose, dodging when he batted to seize it….”Unless…..No, you couldn’t possibly…..Feel threatened by Mr. Keats?”
“You should let him off…..let him back to his business of amazing the academic world….. You don’t know what he did when they took you…….Why he tried to have you pardoned as a Privateer!”
Cordelia gulped and looked down somewhat ashamed. Keats was always trying to make her a little respectable, whether to protect her or to gain acceptance for himself and his association with her, she could not be sure. Vane had nailed it. There was nothing she detested more than vying for someone else’s approval or acceptance. She had fled De Vere and a lifetime trapped in London for this reason, and now, Keats, whom she had trusted would do this? To save her life or to save his career? She still wondered if their principles were destined to always be at odds.
“Would you even want that?” Vane edged closer to her, unfurling the Wanted Poster she had once been so proud of: the one that the silk merchant made with his description, the one that nearly led to her hanging…… “I just can’t picture you all respectable…..a government sanctioned pirate….a blessed pirate is not a free pirate……” He started to crumple the wanted poster.
“NO!” She snatched it from his hand. “There aren’t many of those left…..”
“I thought you might be sentimental……But really, if you want to accuse me of being in League with Hamilton, you must surely know this whole privateer pardon thing is something he and Hamilton cooked up…..and we sure haven’t heard the last of it.”
He stepped out of his cabin and she reached for her captain’s coat, and let her hand rest on his…..
He forgot his coat? Or left it for her…..She took the bait.
She emerged from the Captain’s cabin wearing his coat and both crews uproarious boisterous laughter and cheers greeted her. She was hoisted by the cheering crew back to her own ship.
Read smirked at her, lowering her tricorne hat to conceal her blush. “What are we now, Arc Rivals or Allies?”
“Collaborators….Partners…..We’re off to find the next treasure….” Cordelia carried herself like the captain she was, and Vane signaled with his hands, as both ships untethered and weighed anchor for their next adventure.