Page 24 of Shiver Me Satyr

13

Betts

The crew feasts on roasted birds while playing with the biggest fowl on deck. The band plays their flutes, whistles, and drums. Chub leads a small group in a merry jig around the wheels on the sterncastle deck. Everyone is in high spirits with a belly full of spiced meat and the entertainment of new pets. Their first order of business was naming the Elephant Bird, Elle, and giving her a nest on deck. How the merchant planned on mating this female bird with his female bird—her name was Begonia, right?—to fertilize eggs is beyond me. However, his loss is our gain. We acquired three new sailors and Elle as our newest mateys.

Then someone mixed our grog with the merchants’ mead stores, and the fun began.

But my head is too full of questions to celebrate. The most important one is what to do with Hybris, AKA Flint. He’s using his charms on me, and half of me is dangerously close to liking it. The heat, scent, and strength of his body wrapping me in safety awakened a need in me that I forgot I possessed. I’m shaken to my core. This is the magic spell he casts over women…or is it? The married tart in the brothel wasn’t looking for security—not when she had the guts to hike her skirts to her waist in public. While I can console myself with lies likeHybris could be any manorI’m just in need of a good goat’s jig with an extra-largesugarstick, the truth is I want him…like every other woman who crosses his path.

Why the change of heart? Doesn’t take an old salt to figure that one out, Betts. I’m tired of being resilient. When was the last time someone stood up for me? I always pulled Sabs from scraps—never the other way around—whether she was being mauled by a drunken sailor or a toothy shark. Richard couldn’t be seen as improper with me in public. While I assumed a man of the cloth couldn’t show favor to an unmarried woman, it was his status as a married man that kept him from showing me attention.

On the boat, we work together, but I’m expected to hold my place with displays of strength. Chub can only do so much from the shadows. That’s why I needed space to sort my feelings about Hybris…who my crew nicknamed Flint because they’ve accepted him…

“Got room for one more?”

Speak of the devil.

I thought sitting on the bowsprit with my legs wrapped around the mast jutting from the front of the boat would keep the company away. Not many of me hearties have the nutmegs to dangle beyond where the boat’s deck reaches. From the white fright coloring Hybris’s face, he doesn’t want to be out here either. Overcoming his fears makes him worthy of invading my hiding place.

“Sure, but let me take those mugs and plates, so you can keep your feet under you,” I reply, rising to stand.

“No, no,” he all but screeches as the bowsprit wiggles with the momentum. “Stay still—I mean. There’s no reason for you to get up. I’m coming to you anyway.”

“Oh, buss my cheeks!” The man is adorably flustered and shaking like a loose sail. I swivel on my toes and reach for his bounty. His fingers tremble as I take the pair of plates. One plate is piled high with roasted meat and globs of gravy over hardtack. The other has bite-sized morsels of bird nestled beside smaller dollops of sauces as if paired for perfect tasting.

“I know your diet is strict, but you earned this feast as much as we did. You deserve to taste the birds.”

“I’ll share the meat, but I draw the line at riding Elle. There’s no way she’s throwing my arse onto the deck.”

“Gotcha, tell Chub to put the caged birds into the captain’s quarters. Aye, aye, Captain!” He’s changed his shirt and smells clean and fresh. Thank goodness he ditched the flouncy jacket like a proper pirate. Damn thing gets tangled in the ropes…like how his damp hair dangles around his horns.

“Don’t you dare! I was coming to the party. It’s my responsibility to make sure the other ship sails off without a parlay with a third boat. I can’t have the navy attack us with most of me hearties dozing off the drink. We’d be slaughtered—”

“And roasted?” He settles next to me on the bowstrip and mimics the way I hug the beam with my thighs to stay aloft. I laugh at his joke while he trades me a mug of spirits for his heavy plate.

“Of all the legends floating around the Caribbean, there aren’t cannibal pirates. Cannibal islands—yes. Mermaids, sirens, and krakens waiting to eat pirates—yes. But not man-eating pirates.”

“I guess some things are too wild to be believed,” he murmurs, sipping his grog.

“Oh no,thosecreatures are on this boat!”

His eyes sparkle as he belly laughs. “Maybe that’s why it feels like home.”

“No, it needs more dusty British furniture to resemble your parents’ home. Seriously, with all those servants, how was their house coated with dust?”

“Because half the servants earn their pay in the bed chambers—”

“Yeah, your father’s an easy mark. I hate to say it, but he’s not as tightly laced as his reputation.”

“Between you, me, and the bowstrip,” he says, leaning toward me until his balance makes him reconsider, “Mother has more bedmates on staff than Father. They’ve hated each other since my sister’s birth—maybe before that. Birthing a satyr and a girl took Mother to the top of Father’s shit list.”

“That’s terrible,” I say, sipping the grog and pulling a face. “It’s not her fault what pops out of her marriage box—”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. My sister has the prettiest green eyes…just like the gardener’s.”

“No!” I lift my cup to cover my mouth.

“But father’s second cousin, twice removed, who lives in Sweden, has the same green eyes…because that color is common,” he says sarcastically, balancing his plate on his mug to eat a pinch of the darkest meat.

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