Page 53 of Freeing Hook

“Am I intended to take ‘it’s made of velvet’ as a sufficient explanation?”

I divert my attention toward a crab scuttling near my feet. “The armchair in my father’s smoking parlor was lined in velvet.”

When I peer up at the captain, anger has suffused his harsh features, his heightened pulse ticking against his set jaw. “You should have told me.”

I actually manage a laugh, which makes me feel a tad dizzy. “Why? So you could kill an innocent woman for her gown in order to replace this one?”

Annoyance ripples between the captain’s furrowed brows, but his lips quirk ever so slightly. “No. I’d have lifted it from a shop like a proper gentleman.”

It shouldn’t work, but his subtle joke loosens a bit of the tightness in my chest.

“I’m fine, I assure you,” I say, even though that’s a blatant lie. Anytime my fingers graze the velvet, I feel like crawling out of my skin. “Before I entered society, my brother John and I used to draw pictures in the velvet wallpaper lining the ballroom,” I say, though when I look at the captain, I add, “though I guess you’ve seen it.”

He swallows awkwardly, and for a moment, it’s almost as if he’s going to look away. He doesn’t, of course. The captain doesn’t apologize, doesn’t back down.

“For a while, he kept asking me why I’d stopped,” I say. “I could never bring myself to tell him. He always took such responsibility over my well-being when we were children. I imagine if he’d known, he would have blamed himself.”

“He would have,” says the captain, examining me with those sharp green eyes. “And he’d never forgive himself either.”

“You know,” I say, biting my lip, “it wasn’t his fault. There’s nothing he could have done to keep it from happening.”

The captain blinks. He opens his mouth, like he’s about to say something, but then thinks better of it. After a moment of deliberation, he says, “We’re early, you know. For the carriage.” When I shoot him a questioning look, he straightens his shoulders and jerks his head toward town. “No need to stand around twiddling our thumbs.”

By the timethe carriage comes rattling around the bend of the mountain pass, there’s another layer of fabric between my hand and the captain’s arm—a pair of black satin gloves he purchased for me from the nearest tailor.

The carriage driver is a short, bulbous man with wiry gray hair and weathered skin that hangs in loose jowls around his neck. His name is Druisk, and he’s got the type of humor you laugh at out of pity, but find endearing anyway.

“I hear the two of ya are newlyweds,” he says as he opens the carriage door, which is the color of a robin’s egg. “No luggage?”

“We won’t be staying the night,” explains Captain Astor.

The elderly man chuckles. “Can’t blame me for asking. I never know if that’s the case or if the newlyweds just prefer to sleep in the nude.”

I hurry myself into the cab, avoiding Druisk’s outstretched hand offering assistance as I scamper in, cheeks heated.

The captain swoops in after me, scooping his arm around my waist and pulling me into his chest playfully as he turns over his shoulder and says to the driver, “That wasn’t the plan, but I’ll have to purposefully forget our luggage the next time we stay overnight somewhere.”

My belly instantly hollows out.

The elderly man’s face lights up as he chuckles and says, “Me and me wife are the same way.”

The moment Druisk slams the door shut, the captain extricates himself from my side and sidles as close as is physically possible to the door, leaving what might as well be a chasm between us.

I pretend not to notice.

CHAPTER 21

WENDY

Pretending not to notice the way the air had thickened between me and the captain is a simpler task, given the view out my window. The mountain pass looks out over the glassy, shimmering sea to the east, then a snowcapped mountain range to the west. As we wind around the mountain, the view oscillates between the two, making the ride altogether pleasant.

Except for the captain’s looming presence, of course. The man exudes the energy of the sea on an uncharacteristically warm day following a cold front—the sky might as well be red, the wind treacherous and heady with the weight of a stirring storm.

“Charlie says I should have asked you before I forced you to train with me,” he says out of nowhere.

I blink, schooling my neck not to turn to face him. I’d rather not look at the captain at the moment. He’s traded his usual captain’s attire for a black suit and tailcoat, and he looks too much like the man I once danced with. The man who slaughtered my parents in front of me. Slick and handsome and sharp enough to cut me into pieces.

Because I’m hoping to end the conversation, I say, “Charlie also says I shouldn’t have expected to assist the crew without learning to defend myself.”

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