Page 68 of A Pirate's Pleasure

“He did it for me, because he knew I was innocent.” Fear had burrowed itself deep in my chest. “You can’t penalize him for trying to ensure that justice is done in the right way.”

“Maybe not.”

“So you’ll let him go?” Perhaps this was just a way of making me suffer. Revenge for Zephyr having spirited me out from under their noses in Glimmerfield. If so, I’d take it on the chin and let the man have his fun. No doubt finding out that he’d been wrong about my involvement in Erolith’s murder grated on him.

Reeve laughed. It was a disdainful laugh that said he was relishing this interaction, and it made me itch to reach for my dagger. With three against one, it would be suicide, though. It would also no doubt be the quickest anyone had committed an actual crime after having their name cleared.

“If it was just a case of his recent actions involving you,” Reeve said, “we could probably see our way to looking past it.” He paused for dramatic effect. “But the man’s a renowned pirate with a list of maritime crimes as long as my arm. That, we can’t ignore. Therefore, he will be tried for piracy, as well as obstruction of the law.”

He was barely halfway through his sanctimonious little speech before I was already shaking my head. “The authorities turn a blind eye to what goes on in Glimmerfield. Everyone knows that.”

Reeve’s smile this time was one of smug satisfaction. “And no doubt we will continue to do so when there are more important matters commanding our attention. However, we’re not in Glimmerfield. We’re in Elderborough, where both common sense and the laws of the land thankfully prevail. Be glad he gets a trial.”

“A trial!” I spat the words out. “You know as well as I do that a trial is nothing more than a façade of respectability. That’s why I ran.”

Reeve shrugged. “Then I guess Zephyr Chase will hang. And there will be one less pirate to worry about.” He paused for a moment to let the words sink in. “I would leave now, Lord Cooper, if I were you, before we question how you spent your weeks on board the pirate ship. Perhaps you too are guilty of piracy. We have a free cell if you’d like to view it.”

I backed away. I couldn’t help Zephyr from an adjoining cell. Chances were, I couldn’t help him at all, but I wasn’t ready to face that eventuality yet. At least if I was free, there was still a chance of a miracle, however slim it might be. I stumbled out of the door to the sound of laughter, the soldiers apparently finding the manner of my exit hilarious. For a moment, I just stood there, all the elation at getting my life back eradicated in one fell swoop. What was the point if Zeph lost his as a result?

I couldn’t even be grateful that the horses were still tied up where we’d left them. Not with a million jagged thoughts embedding themselves in my brain. How had they subdued him? Zephyr would have fought. I should have heard all hell breaking loose outside the room where they’d kept me, so why hadn’t I? Had they knocked him unconscious? Or had they done something even worse to him? For all I knew, he was lying in a cell, bleeding and in need of a healer. How did my life keep going so wrong?

It was time to admit that my mother had been right, and I should have stayed as far away as I could from Silkdrift. Unfortunately, that revelation was eight years too late in coming.

Chapter Twenty-six

Zephyr

Three guards worked in shifts to watch my cell. While one of them was almost likeable, the man possessing enough human decency to treat the men he guarded with common courtesy, the other two had no such qualms and were quick to anger. I figured they spat in my food, anyway, so annoying them had become an amusing way to pass the time.

I pressed myself against the bars, the worst of the three guards the one currently tasked with making sure I didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke. “Is there a Mrs. Dark and Surly?” I asked.

“Shut your mouth, pirate.”

“Call me Zephyr,” I drawled. “We spend far too much time together to stand on ceremony.”

“If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll shut it for you.”

“You should,” I said with a smile guaranteed to irritate him all the more. “You should come in here and show me what for. I like it rough.” He muttered something under his breath and I frowned. “What was that?”

The guard came to stand in front of me, bristling with animosity. “I said, I wonder if you’ll be so cocky tomorrow when you’re dangling at the end of a rope.”

As comebacks went, it was a good one. Nothing sobered you more quickly than a reminder that the last twenty-four hours of your life had already begun. My trial of three days ago had been nothing but a formality. An opportunity for the justice of the peace to detail all my crimes—some of them real, some of them imagined—so that the villagers who’d turned up to watch the proceedings could recoil in horror and stare at me. I didn’t have the chance to defend myself in any way other than to make the occasional pithy comment, which they predictably ignored, and they concluded the entire process in less than an hour.

Many villagers were present to witness my sentencing to death, but Lief hadn’t been among them. And I’d spent every night since then trying to work out what that meant, whether it meant they’d lied to me and he wasn’t a free man, or he’d simply chosen to stay away.

“Have there been any visitors?” I asked. “You know that I’m allowed them today.”

“Who’d want to visit you?” the guard asked with a practiced sneer.

Just one man. Or at least I hoped so. Well, there were a few others, but Lief and I had left them behind at Dimhallow, and they weren’t stupid enough to come here and risk having the same fate befall them. I just hoped Whitby would take good care of The Navarino once I was gone. “You have to let visitors in,” I said. “As a condemned man, I’m entitled to them on my last day.”

The guard—whose name I’d never bothered to learn—leaned closer to the bars, treating me to a burst of fetid breath. “You telling me the rules, are you?”

“Not telling. Reminding. There’s a difference.”

“And what’re you gonna do if I break them, considering you’ll be dead? Gonna haunt me from beyond the grave, are you?”

It was a valid point. What if Lief had tried and they’d turned him away? I wanted to see him. I needed to see him. I had things to say. Things that if I didn’t say today, I’d never get the opportunity to. I’d even practiced some of them in my head. It wasn’t like there was a lot else to do except contemplate how prolonged my death would be, whether I’d be lucky and the snap of the rope would break my neck immediately, or it would be gradual suffocation for me. I suspected that if they could engineer such a thing, Reeve would see that it was the latter. The man could bear a grudge for a bit of a hail and lightening like no other, his brief visits to my cell carried out for no other purpose than to gloat.

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