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Abigail dabbed a smattering of sweat from her brow with a faded kerchief and stood up straight to get a better view of her hard work. She grasped for a feeling of pride or success or hope, or anything that wasn’t tainted with bittersweet sadness. All she had accomplished in the past six months had come at one steep price after another.
The first had been her kidnapping at the hands of that awful, sadist monster. Then had come the murder of her friend Lady Hamilton, a horrific sight that still haunted her dreams. That was followed the murder of her father, something that warred in her heart between wrenching grief and a cold sense that he had brought it upon himself.
The next penance had been paid to the Sommers family after the attack on Savannah. Between her fallen reputation and thoroughly gossiped pirate sympathies, Mr. and Mrs. Sommers could no longer tolerate her presence in their home. Maggie had railed against them, ever the fighter, but they were not to be moved. Abigail and Maggie shared a good cry until Abigail surprised herself by wiping away her tears and insisting this was a good thing and Maggie mustn’t be sad for her. She and Margaret still wrote to each other regularly, letters Abby looked forward nearly as much as she’d once awaited letters from Billy.
Billy , her other penance. He was the price she had least expected. Though in retrospect, it had all been a childish, girlish dream, hadn’t it? It had been nothing more than a few shared looks on the Walrus , some personal letters and a stolen kiss in the heat of battle, a battle his own crew had wrought in the name of a war his captain started.
New Providence Island was just about the only place left for Abigail to go. As a young, unmarried woman of means with a tarnished reputation, no civilized colony would ever allow her to exist in peace. A return to London was right out. She certainly wasn’t going to get any decent marriage offers to correct that issue.
The preacher and his wife wouldn’t be inviting her for tea any time soon, but at least in Nassau she was downright respectable in the eyes of the locals, the new English colonists and officials alike. Her family’s money bought her a moderate plot of land on the interior of the island, as well as a small house, furnishings and a well-paid staff. Her family’s business manager had been aghast at her instructions, and nearly sickened when she insisted she would not be using slave labor on her land. He argued that her profit margins would be negligible for the first year, possibly years depending on the state of trade in the Caribbean, and she replied that despite wagging tongues, her values would not be negligible.
“You cannot own a human being, Mr. Munson,” she’d chided with a cool sip of tea. Billy had said those words in a letter. It was something she’d always believed, but never been able to verbalize before. Her family had always owned slaves and treated it as commonplace as owning a couch.
Now she stood in the hot sun, tallying great bundles of sugarcane stalks before her men loaded them into a cart for delivery to the miller. Even this far inland, she could smell the salt of the ocean. On quiet evenings alone, she swore she could hear the waves breaking over the reefs.
They’d ride together and meet the overseer of the mill she sold exclusively to - anyone Max approved of got Abigail’s business - and say goodbye to months of hard work, only to turn around and prepare to harvest the next plot of mature stalks. This was her life now.
She wondered what Billy would think of all think this, to see her running a household and a plantation on her own. She was one of the smallest operations on the island, of course, but it was all hers. Abigail’s gift with sums, something many a governess and teacher had frowned upon as deeply unladylike, made the business side of farming rather natural to her. She breezed through accounts and could turn a mess of costs and numbers into the exact amount of setts to buy and which sellers were overcharging. They even had the beginnings of total self-sufficiency on their little plot. The right plants set to ground at the right time with just the right mix of animals and she found herself looking over the household accounts and needing less and less from town.
Yes , she thought with a sharp pang in her heart, Billy would be impressed by all this .
“Ma’am?” Mr. Kruse was looking at her expectantly, holding out a steady, calloused hand. Abigail blinked and stirred herself from her wandering thoughts, letting him help her onto the cart.
Mr. Kruse had precious little to say, and that was just as well to Abigail. It was nice to be in the company of someone who didn’t require endless chatter about nothing to fill silence. The sun was low in the sky but not yet setting. They had enough time to get to the mill, make the exchange, stop by the docks for more chicken feed and return before dark. It would be a late supper for them, but they were accustomed to this on delivery days.
Mr. Kruse was a godsend. He had come with the recommendation of Max, the reigning queen of all business in Nassau town, and even Governor Rogers by way of Miss Guthrie. He used to manage the plantation of a slave owner who quit the island upon the arrival of Woodes Rogers, most likely because he preferred his goods leaving port without proper inspection and fee payments. Jackson Kruse never said anything, but Abigail sensed that her employ was something of a relief to him.
When Captain Hornigold returned to the island with the news that the Walrus had sunk in a storm, all of Abigail’s forward progress ground to a halt. She had been inconsolable for days, not leaving her room to eat or even attempt any measure of care for herself or her new property. Without a public connection to any man on that boat to warrant such grief, there wasn’t anyone she could turn to. With the exception of her young maid, who spoke a mixture of French and her native tongue that Abigail had initially struggled with, and Mr. Kruse, no one saw her for weeks.
Kaya had diligently cooked uneaten meals and maintained the house while Mr. Kruse seamlessly took over the running of the plantation and the small sustenance farm. When Abigail finally emerged from her grief-induced haze, she found everything exactly as she left it. Her life had taken such a sharp turn from the spoilt existence she’d grown up with. She genuinely forgot what it was like to wake up in the morning and not have to fear for a catastrophe.
Everything was as it should be, all thanks to these wonderful people she’d met since coming to Nassau. Everything that is, except she could no longer hold onto the dream of imagining Billy’s face when she first greeted him at the docks, or receiving his letters, or feeling his arms around her again.
They conducted their business quickly and quietly. As Abigail did not deal in vast quantities of anything, and certainly nothing illegal, her business represented the simpler transactions that occurred in Nassau. They moved on to the port side of town, where it would be easy to find a merchant selling the grain Mr. Kruse preferred for the animals. As he haggled with a vendor, she caught snippets of conversation from passing sailors. Abigail generally ignored everything she heard on the docks as it was usually some combination of profane, filthy and slanderous gossip, but the bits she heard this afternoon caught her ears.
Specifically, it was names Silver and Flint and one sailor even swearing on his dead mother he had seen Captain Flint and his best men on the beach that very morning with Woodes Rogers himself. The more she attuned her ears and attempted to grasp each flitting word and phrase from passing sailors, the more she felt like she was lost at sea. Everyone was talking about Captain Flint and John Silver and the Walrus returning to Nassau, a thing that simply could not be.
A hand cupped her elbow and Mr. Kruse was whispering in her ear, soft but firm, “Miss Ashe, they are just sailors telling ghost stories. Do not trouble yourself.”
His chestnut brown eyes were warm and insistent, and his hand on her elbow was ever so gently guiding her back to their cart. She nodded mutely and acquiesced. The cart ride home was silent and blessedly swift. It had been months since she’d been so bothered over the death of William Manderly and the gossip throughout Nassau about the state of their ship and crew. Flint and the Walrus had apparently long been beacons of piracy for the people of Nassau, but in death they became wraiths and demons, lurking in shadows and darkness to punish the men who’d turned their back on their cause and gone crawling back to England. It had taken a long time, and a lot of false hope, before the rumors died and people lost interest in talking about a ship and crew that was clearly lost.
Hours later, she picked at her uneaten dinner, left by Kaya, staring out the window. Mr. Kruse had retired for the evening with his family in the overseer’s house on the other side of the property and Kaya would be happily getting along with the other unattached maidservants with whom she shared a small cottage not far down the road. At first the isolation had frightened her; she’d never been in a home that wasn’t bustling with family, guests and servants.
It no longer frightened her, but on nights like this, with the fire dwindling and a single candle flickering on the table, she was certainly lonely. Before news of the Walrus had landed, she’d imagined over and over looking out the window to see Billy’s tall figure striding down the dirt road to her fence. She’d worked hard to stop those daydreams.
Determined to not spend the evening dwelling on something miserable that she couldn’t fix, she set to patching the worn spot in one of her linen skirts. The tougher fabrics and simple skirts and shirts and waistcoats were a far cry from the beautiful gowns she’d been dressed in since birth, but dear God they held up to working outdoors more than any of the ridiculous garments she’d brought from Savannah. It had only taken her about a fortnight to forgo corset stays for the simple waistcoats worn over shirts, or even just heavy shirts and chemises, like many of the other country women here wore. Kaya had been visibly relieved to no longer have to arrive early enough to help Abigail dress in the morning.
As she worked her needle through the fabric, the steady clomp-clomp-clomp of a horse grew louder and louder, until she was sure she wasn’t imagining the noise. Her house was off the main road and it was far too late for a visitor. The noise became more distinct; it was a horse approaching at a fast canter, maybe even a gallop.
Abigail set the needlework to the side and cautiously approached the window with her candle, then cursed herself a fool and snuffed it out. She turned toward the hearth and considered smothering the fire, but remembered the smoke. She moved the screen and a chair in front of it, hoping to block the light from the burning embers. Her heart was thumping far too loud and fast. She’d been warned by everyone that a woman living alone on a pirate-infested island was simply asking for trouble, but in six months she’d grown to feel so safe here.
She peaked out the window again, but could only see darkness still. She bit her lip and recalled the conversation in which Mr. Kruse had suggested, no, begged her to keep a loaded blunderbuss by the door and she had only laughed and told him she was more likely to blow herself up than defend herself with such a weapon. And then he’d given her an old boatswain’s pipe to blow if she ever felt unsafe. “This blasted thing can be heard over 32-pounders blowing on other ships leagues away, I’ll hear you,” he’d assured her.
Abigail snatched the whistle off the hook where it had hung ever since by the door and ventured one more look out the front window before racing toward the back of the house. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness inside the house which gave her a clearer view outside and what she saw froze her.
There was only one rider, which matched the hoof beats she’d heard, and he was too tall to look that easy on horseback. Abigail’s fingers touched the window, as if her fingers might brush away the phantom conjured by her mind. She swayed on her feet, hit with a wave of dizziness. It was him, she would know him anywhere. As he got closer, she could even see his bare shirt sleeves in the moonlight, if not make out his face.
Her feet were moving of their own accord, out the door to her wooden porch. She stayed there, swaying, still struggling to breathe even has he reached her fence and leapt from the horse, then leapt over the small gate and stormed up her walk.
It was him. It was Billy, her Billy. He was alive and coming up her small walkway looking positively thunderous.
The pipe fell from her fingers and she was off the porch and running to meet his long strides, oblivious to his knitted brows and clenched fists. When they reached each other, he gripped her by her shoulders, almost painfully, stopping her before she could throw her arms around him. His eyes lit like blue fire on her. His hands betrayed the faintest tremor. A sheen of sweat glinted off his arms and chest, his shirt sticking to his skin at places from his apparently hard ride from town.
“What are you doing here?” “You’re alive!” They both finally spoke, at the same moment.
His large fingers relaxed on Abigail’s arms and the flames left his countenance. Billy shook his head before speaking again. “I told you I would come back for you, in Savannah, when it was over .”
“They said your ship sank.” Abigail was leaning her face up into him, blinking those blasted doe eyes at him, as if he hadn’t stormed up to her like an angry bull just moments ago. Since getting word that Max had a message for him, he had gone from his kneejerk happiness at knowing she was here, to frustration that she was here , then to disbelief that she could be so naive and finally to outright anger and a solid determination to send her right back where she came from, whether she liked it or not. There had been a moment when he first put his hands on her when he genuinely considered throwing her over his shoulder, carrying her back to the first boat he could find and sailing her back to the colonies himself.
He deflated. “No,” a smile tugged at Billy’s lips and he relented further, brushing a strand of dark hair off her face, “it was close, though.”
Her lips pressed together in a pout and she pushed forward, wrapping her arms around him. He relaxed into it, unable to hide his smile. He held her right back, still stroking her soft hair. He’d missed this, even if he’d only ever gotten it once before. When he felt a little wetness leaking from her eyes onto his shirt, he pulled back and tipped her chin up to him. There were no dramatics, just silent tears and a quivering lip. “I heard them talking today, saying that your ship had returned, but I couldn’t…” she broke off, afraid to admit to him the full extent of her grief.
He studied her, unsure of himself. Their last meeting had been fairly clear about their feelings, and the few letters they’d been able to exchange before everything had all gone to hell had been personal and hopeful, but to think that she was sitting around pining for him, even grieving him, was incomprehensible. It still boggled his mind that she entertained him at all. In six months in Nassau, could she have possibly gone so unnoticed by the sailors and soldiers and farmers? What did she still want him around for?
He brushed a tear away with a calloused thumb. When she closed her eyes and leaned her face into his hand, it was all he could do to whisper, “It’s fine now.”
Abigail opened her eyes, took a deep breath and nodded resolutely. She was a tough country woman now and would not have him see her falling apart. “Perhaps we should continue this inside over tea?” She started to walk back toward the house, but stopped when his hand fell from hers and he didn’t follow.
At her confused look, he chuckled under his breath, hands on his hips, awkwardly casting his gaze around at the darkness. “I, um, you know,” he gestured vaguely at her, “you’re a young lady and I’m a wanted criminal. I really shouldn’t be in your house alone with you at night.”
She hadn’t noticed until he set his hands on his hips that he was armed from head to toe. Communicating only by post, his intelligence and eloquence made it entirely too easy to forget that he was, in fact, a pirate. But standing before her in salt and sun-beaten clothes, a cutlass at his hip, a pistol in his belt, at least one blade she could see in his boot, not to mention the decidedly un-gentlemanly leather wraps at his wrists and corded necklaces at his open collar, his form carved with dense muscle head-to-toe shaped by a lifetime spent fighting a ship, other men, even the ocean itself, he was unmistakably and unapologetically not of polite society.
She wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Her reputation was so ruined she’d been chased off one continent, told in no uncertain terms she was unwelcome on another, and now she’d settled into a place with almost no rule of law and still managed to find someone to associate herself with even this society deemed dangerous.
Billy still kept his eyes averted anywhere but directly on Abigail and the darkness of her house. In his discomfort he finally saw, squinting through the night, the extent of the property. The brief exchange with Max came back to him, most of which he hadn’t fully processed because he stopped listening when she said that Miss Ashe was in Nassau. “This is all yours?”
Abigail sighed. This was not the grand reveal she had imagined. “Yes, it’s not much, but it’s mine.” She let him observe the grounds in silence for a few moments. Settling into the idea that he was here and alive and standing before her, she was finally calming down enough to notice the cool breeze moving through her skirts. “I appreciate your respect for propriety and my reputation, Mr. Manderly, but really, I don’t think anyone seeing us standing here talking alone in the dark will think any better of me than if I invite you in for tea.”
With a curse under his breath, he followed her inside. He pulled his baldric over his head, his knuckles just scraping the ceiling, and propped his sword next to the door with a grimace. Walking around a lady’s house was bad enough, and leaving weapons all over the place served as a stark reminder for him just how wrong he was here.
As she set to lighting the candles, he lit the stove and filled the kettle with fresh water as if he’d been in her home countless times before. After she had the last candle lit, she watched him silence. The way the muscles in his back bunched and moved under his shirt in the candlelight had a strangely hypnotic quality. He dwarfed her stove, which she had never before considered especially small. Her entire house suddenly seemed small and tight, where before she had considered it breezy at best, but often desolate and empty. Now it was quite full, with someone she’d given up for dead.
She realized with a start that he had turned to look at her and caught her staring. She colored immediately, but this time he didn’t bashfully look away. His gaze stayed on her, unreadable and still. Then he twinkled with humor and raised himself to his full height. “Why are you dressed like Miss Guthrie?”
The question threw her. She looked down at her clothes and pondered over the times she had seen Eleanor Guthrie of late, and the woman had most certainly not been dressed like this. She was always the picture of demure English modesty. Slowly she remembered, looking at her hands with slightly dirty fingernails on her well-worn waistcoat. The memories of her time from Captains Lowe and Vane vacillated between sharp, heart-stopping reality and a hazy, blurred dream-like quality. The first time she ever met Miss Guthrie, Eleanor had been dressed in a similar fashion and Abby had been nearly delirious from her time spent in one dark prison cell after another. She had never seen the woman before, and didn’t see her after until she returned to Nassau. Eleanor’s fashion change had never occurred to her before.
“Well, it’s…functional.” Abigail tugged and shifted at her clothing under his amused scrutiny.
He reached a hand out to stop her fidgeting, but thought better of it and pulled away. “It’s fine, I shouldn’t have -“ The tea kettle chose that moment to whistle. Billy turned to attend to it, but so did Abigail. In the small space they bumped and tangled together, apologizing over each other and each insisting the other sit.
Finally, Abigail rested a hand over Billy’s and said with a firm look, “ Please , sit.” If he sat at her table and she served tea like a proper hostess, maybe, just maybe, she could shake off this thunderstruck shock that kept rocking through her in unpredictable waves. Just when she felt her heart settle and her breathing ease into something natural, he reminded her that he was alive when just hours ago he had been dead.
Maybe it was the softness of her hand on his, or the way his body had instantly reacted when she’d bumped into his back then brushed along his side, or even the easy domesticity of something as simple as making tea in a clean house with a proper lady, but he couldn’t summon further argument against letting her serve tea. It was a silly thing, but he ran so much in his life on the Walrus , where everything was done as a team, it felt strange to fold himself into a small kitchen table chair and simply let her work. Watching this tiny woman stretch on her tiptoes to reach her tea cups and flutter about for milk and sugar and tea spoons, clearly harried and unaccustomed to serving company in this kitchen, galled at him to not jump up at help her. He had to admit though, that watching her struggle to reach things on higher shelves was adorable.
After pouring his cup and then her own, Abigail finally settled herself across from Billy. Without adding anything to it, he raised his cup to her before taking a sip. Abigail had to hide her smile behind her own cup. In his massive hands, her tea set was positively ridiculous.
Billy set the cup down, painfully aware of its fragility, and cut to the chase. “Abigail, and please don’t think I’m not happy to see you, because I am, but what are you doing here?”
Her fingers tightened on her tiny porcelain cup. Wasn’t it obvious? Hadn’t she told him over and over in her letters, and even in person, how little she was welcomed by her own people? How did he think the people of Savannah, especially her hosts, would treat her after Flint’s attack?
She watched his face before choosing her reply. He was staring at her with that same mixture of apprehension, maybe even fear, and bewilderment as he had the first time he’d sat across from her at Flint’s table. “After Savannah, I lived in a hotel for a short while, until the owner could no longer bear the scandal of keeping me under his roof.” The hard lines in Billy’s jaw clenched at that. Perhaps he truly didn’t know the extent of her ostracization. “I met with my family’s estate manager who advised me to invest my new wealth in something quiet and safe, and retire to a country house where I would no longer be a burden on anyone.”
Billy didn’t know this man, but he wanted to hit him.
“The Sommers family ran a rather large plantation and while I was there, I learned a great deal about it. When Mr. Munson advised me to invest, I sent out letters of inquiry to a number of places far from the large cities.” Billy’s tea was growing cold, forgotten before him. “I heard back from a few people, but it was Max’s letter that caught my eye, especially since she had handled our correspondence so discreetly before. She told me life here would be no more pleasant than I found it the first time around,” she laughed. Billy didn’t. “But there was a plot of land left behind by a farmer who’d moved on, desperately overgrown and in need of someone willing to invest, and if I came here I could live free . She said even with the return of English law, Nassau would always be a wild place and I would never face judgment because some deeply insane pirate stole me off a boat years ago.”
Billy leaned back in his chair, ran his hands through his cropped hair, then came back forward, resting his elbows on the table. The wood of the table creaked in protest at his weight. “Please tell me that you had more reason to come here than gossip and the word of the town brothel owner?”
Abigail flinched, stung. She pushed her tea cup and saucer away from herself and stiffened her spine. “Mr. Manderly, I assure you the situation was far more serious than idle gossip. I can also assure you that I am not such a flighty child as to make significant financial and personal decisions without conducting all the requisite research first. I consulted with the woman who owns, manages, has a share in or otherwise oversees every business on this island that yes, happens to include a brothel .” Billy opened his mouth to interject, but Abigail wasn’t done. “In the past six months, I have turned this property from a decrepit piece of junk land into a producing sugar cane plantation without the use of slave labor. We actually saved more than half of the crop already growing wild on the land and turned a profit on it. I have the smallest plot on the island and my employees take home more money from each cut than any of their peers. I don’t know exactly what life you think I ought to be living, but this is a far cry better going from house to house begging for approval from English snobs.” She raised her chin and pulled a deep breath through her nose. She refused to turn her eyes away from his openly surprised expression. She would not be shamed in her own house.
Billy’s open-mouth stare turned into a sly smile. “You pay them in shares of the profit?” Abigail nodded. “Like a pirate ship?” Her eyes widened and her cheeks colored, so she quickly took up her lukewarm teacup again.
“It’s a good business model.” She set her cup down and smoothed her skirts. “People who want to work are…”
“More productive?”
“Exactly.” She refreshed her cup but Billy shook his head for more tea. His cup was still mostly full anyway.
“Abigail, it’s not…what you’ve done here is amazing, truly.” Billy fought the urge to reach out and take her hand. She was warming up again after he’d offended her, now sitting up a little straighter with pride instead of rebuke. “But what Flint is going to do, what we’re going to do ... Nassau is about to be a war zone. It’s going to be dangerous. I wanted you as far away from all this as possible.”
Abigail sighed, a quick puff of air through clenched teeth. She’d been doing that a lot lately. “Well, I’m here now and I’ve got nowhere else to go. I’ve got too much invested in the plantation and frankly, I don’t want to leave.”
She was looking out the window, although they both knew there was nothing to see in the darkness. “I heard men saying your ship arrived yesterday, or maybe the day before?”
He winced and looked down at his hands. “We did, but I had,” he paused, searching for the right euphemism, “ work to do and I didn’t know you were here. As soon as Max told me, I -“
“I know, Billy,” her tone softened and he felt a weight sink harder onto his chest.
“Listen, what I have to do, you might hear things. Not all of it’s gonna be true, but some of it will be. If you find you don’t want to associate with me anymore, I’ll understand.”
If he hadn’t looked so bloody earnest she would have thrown her tea cup, or perhaps the whole kettle at him. As it was she pushed herself up and away from the table, so hard her chair almost toppled over. He blinked up at her, confounded. “Why are you always in such a hurry to get rid of me?” The shrill tone of her voice betrayed her.
“Wha?” His country accent only grew thicker when he was particularly flummoxed or frustrated, which infuriated Abigail because damned if she didn’t think the dropped t’s were charming. “What’d’you mean ‘get rid of you’? Are you mad?”
“In Savannah you went on about how wrong it was for us to write and how you never should have entertained it, and now you’re here, alive , telling me I shouldn’t be here.” She sucked in air before her voice broke. “I feel like such a fool.” She came back stronger, “But whether you want to see me or not, I am not leaving this island.”
He pushed up from his chair, scraping the legs slowly across the tile floor and instantly reminding her that he was far too large for her little house. Something dark and hot pulsed from his chest to his eyes. The look sent strange flutters through her core and some part of her brain told her she should be afraid, but she wasn’t. He leaned over the table, pressing his hands against it. The candlelight reflected off his tanned, strong arms, casting shadows and lights that made him look impossibly larger. “I seem to recall,” he began quietly, “that you yelled at me, much like you did just now, I told you that you were mistaken, and then I kissed you fucking senseless. A couple-a times, before promising to come back as long as you still would have me. Am I mistaken?”
Oh no, he was not mistaken. He apparently remembered that night as well, and perhaps as often, as she did. She found herself biting the insides of her cheeks in an attempt to keep a cool expression, knowing full well she wasn’t fooling him. “I wasn’t senseless,” she breathed.
“Well, I fucking was.” He straightened and stepped around the table, his long legs making short work of the distance to her. Abigail’s breath caught in her throat as in the blink of an eye he was towering over her, her back against the wall, with one hand pressed flat next to her head. “I couldn’t get rid of you if I tried. You’re like a bloody siren. I stole that horse and ran her the whole way here as soon as I heard. I think I’d jump off the ship and start swimming if I thought I heard your voice at sea. I want you to know you can walk away from this because God knows I can’t.”
As he spoke, she watched his Adam’s apple moving against his throat. She noticed the golden beard growth along his jaw that matched the last time she saw him. She wondered if he made it a habit to shave only once a week or so. She noticed when his eyes, especially dark this evening, flickered to her lips when she wet them with her tongue. He had a strange way of making her mouth go dry, especially when he was far too close to her like this. When she realized he’d stolen the horse, she couldn’t stop the giggle.
He furrowed in confusion, wondering what he’d said that could possibly be funny. She beamed up at him, far too at ease with their proximity. “You stole Maggie’s horse, too.”
Billy snorted. “Apparently you have that effect on me.”
Abigail raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you really going to blame me for your proclivity toward stealing?”
The corner of his mouth ticked up a fraction. “Horses? Yes, that’s a rather unique one, even for me.” He didn’t move to give her more space. Neither of them moved. The air between them grew heavy and thick.
“Are you planning on stealing anything else this evening, Mr. Manderly?” Abigail’s voice barely rose above a whisper.
God damnit . He let his other hand reach out to brush her cheek. It took far too much self control to stop it from drifting to her waist. Feeling her under his hands without a stiff barrier of stays would be his undoing. “No, Miss Ashe,” he spoke in a hoarse voice. “I wouldn’t steal from you.”
Her lips were parted, eyes darkened nearly black; he knew she was waiting for him to close the distance. All he had to do was lean down a little, pull her face to his. She doesn’t know about the inn , the thought rushed unbidden to the forefront of his mind. She hadn’t said a word about the story spreading like a fire, licking at the heels of the rumored return of Flint and the Walrus . She hadn’t heard about the man beaten to death in the name of rejecting English pardons.
Billy’s hand dropped from her cheek and he straightened with a sharp jerk and small step back from her. The space he had just vacated burned and left Abigail marveling at his ability to continuously pull away like this. His face had gone white, then he took on the hard and serious manner he had when they first met aboard the Walrus .
“I meant what I said.” The corners of his mouth were pulled down and something like regret glinted in his eyes. “You’re going to hear things about us and the work we’re doing.”
“And what work is that?” Emboldened, she pushed herself away from the wall and stepped toward him.
He had to fight the smile. He had the sneaking suspicion he could tell her everything and she would be shocked, collect herself and then ask him what was next and how she could help. It was tempting, like the impulse to scoop her up in his arms and carry her down the darkened hallway to the bedroom he hadn’t seen yet.
She could weather anything, he knew that much. She could be here, like the Barlow woman had been for Flint. And how wonderfully that turned out , the thought twisted in his gut. “I should go.” He turned back to the door to slip his baldric back over his shoulder and miss the way Abigail closed her eyes and clamped her mouth shut.
When the little house remained silent, save the gentle crackling from the hearth and dying stove, he slowly turned back to face her. She hadn’t moved, but her head was high, looking blindly down the hall.
“These people,” his throaty and warm voice brought Abigail’s eyes to his, “they tortured me, for days. They murdered Mrs. Barlow and put her body out for show. They snatch little boys off the street and chain them up on ships to work for almost no food or water, and get beat when they can’t work anymore. And they expect us to apologize and beg forgiveness from them.” At some point, they had drifted back together. “I can’t let that happen, Abigail.”
Abigail brought one hand to his chest and the other to his face. It was hard to imagine someone so large and strong and vital victimized at the hands of anyone. She could weep for him, but he didn’t want pity and she had grown tougher than she thought possible in the past year. “Alright,” she nodded. It was all she could say. She understood what it was to know your life was in the hands of someone who valued it no more than garbage in the street.
This time they met halfway. Their lips crushed together and hands snaked around each other, grasping for a closeness time and distance denied them. Abigail breathed him in, reveling in the hard planes of his body against hers, the harsh burn of his beard against her cheek, the strength of his hands at her back and waist, the warmth of his mouth, insistent and demanding. The emptiness that had haunted her since coming to Nassau vanished against his lips.
Kissing her was like time stopped. Nothing else mattered, not Silver or Flint or Defrense or even England. When she parted her lips for him, he groaned and sank his tongue into her mouth. She met him with her own, still tentative and unsure in this, with none of the practiced artistry of a tavern girl but a muffled mew and warm, wet softness that made his blood sing through his veins.
He lifted her off her feet with no discernible effort and sat her on the table, lips still locked together. Later, Abigail would be impressed by his ability to navigate her home so easily with his eyes closed. Right now though, leaning up into his mouth, pressing herself ever closer against his body and she felt herself dissolving.
When Billy brought his hand to her knee, his body screaming to push her skirt up, he broke off the kiss. Their foreheads rested together, panting in each other’s air. He blinked his eyes open and saw her wide, lust-darkened eyes and pretty, kiss-swollen lips and knew if he asked she would give into him. He pressed his lips to her temple. “I have to go.”
“Why?” Her voice was so pained he didn’t know whether to laugh or relent. His head was still swimming and every piece of him wanted to reach out and touch her again.
His eyes flickered down the hallway before he whispered, “You know why.” He took her hands and helped her off the table, then kissed the knuckles of her right hand. “Goodnight, Abigail.”
“Wait,” she rushed forward as he turned back toward the door. His expression was so blatantly hopeful, her breath caught in her throat. “When will I see you again?”
He bit back the laugh that threatened to rumble out of his throat. “This is Nassau, we don’t really call on people here, at least I don’t think the pirates do.” Her shoulders sank and she started chewing on her bottom lip. “I can stop by again, for...tea, if you’d like me to.”
“I would,” she nodded resolutely.
“Alright then,” he couldn’t quell the little bubble of hope that sprang up. “When I can, if you’ll have me, I’ll come by during the day, when your maid is here.”
“Goodnight, Billy,” Abigail smiled and gave him a tiny curtsy that sent blush rushing up the back of his neck.
When he was out the door and through her gate and on his horse, Abigail immediately set pen to paper for a letter to Maggie. If she didn’t tell someone about this evening, she feared she might burst. Her hands shook with unspent energy and she realized she was far past time to have made a female friend and confidante on Nassau. That was something she would set to work on first thing tomorrow. But tonight, she would use pen and ink to relive every moment of her brief reunion with Billy.
The slow, dolorous ride back to the Barlow home was fraught with his own debate over just how much war she’d be able to stand before cutting him out completely.
The realization hit him like a loose boom arm in a storm. If she didn’t put him off herself, he’d have to stop seeing her.
Or he’d have to marry her.