Burning Bright (47 page)

Then he dropped her.

The only thing that saved her was her death grip around his neck. He plummeted, his arm around her waist going loose and his muscles all relaxing at once. She screamed again, louder and longer this time, and he jerked and his flight leveled out. His arm went around her waist and crushed her against his body so she could feel his heart pounding as hard as hers was.

“I beg,” he said in her ear, his voice raspy and far away, “beg pardon, I can’t…just a little farther, Miles…don’t let go, don’t let go…”

That last did seem directed at her, so she buried her face in his shoulder and prayed they would both survive this flight. Tears of pain streaked her face, and she tried not to cry out loud for fear of distracting him.

Ramsay muttered again, unintelligibly, and he made a wide, curving turn to the left which dragged at her body and tried to pull her away from him. She kicked with her legs, trying to regain her balance, and Ramsay wobbled as if he might drop her again, but then he hit something hard, and Elinor fell away from him and landed on the bright security of
Athena
’s deck.

She rolled onto her side, her hands pressing flat against the planks, forcing her body to straighten against the pain, then made it onto her hands and knees. Other hands helped her stand, held her up when her legs would not support her. She closed her eyes, fighting the pain radiating from her spine throughout her body. Ramsay’s jacket hung to the middle of her thighs, it was open a little over her breasts, but she could not find it in herself to care about her modesty.

“Take her below,” Ramsay said, again in that unfamiliar, rasping voice. “Set a course to rendezv—”

There was a moment’s silence, then the hard thump of something hitting the deck, and she heard dozens of men surging forward, exclaiming. She opened her eyes and saw that Ramsay had collapsed, and she pushed through the crowd of men surrounding him, and screamed.

The entire right side of his body was blackened and blistered, huge reddish bubbles of flesh and blood. The burns streaked his neck and across his chin and the side of his face; most of his hair on that side was gone, and his ear was burned past recognition. His waistcoat and shirt had melted into the burns and his trousers had a gaping, char-edged hole extending from his waist almost to his knee, revealing more burned flesh below. His arm, and his hand…she could not bear to look, could not stop looking. His eyes were partly open, unseeing. He was not breathing.

She screamed again, and again, and could not stop herself screaming. Someone tried to pull her away, and she fought him, mindlessly, clawing and panting in her desperate attempt to reach Ramsay’s body, thinking in her madness that if she could reach him, she could undo the damage she had done.
We left Stratford behind
flashed through her mind, and then she was nothing but a mad thing, a weapon that had killed everyone she had ever loved. Someone put a cool hand on her wrist, and everything went black.

In which Elinor decides to live

he woke in darkness, feeling soft fabric against her legs and buttocks and warm, rough cloth around her arms and chest. A deep breath told her she was in her bedchamber on
Athena
, the lamp unlit, its warm, stuffy confines like a recently used tomb. The jacket she wore, and it was all she wore, smelled of ash and cook fires and roasted meat—she fell out of her bed and vomited onto the floor, uncontrollably expelling bitterness and thick saliva until she was wrung out and empty.

She crawled back onto her bed, then sat up and tore Ramsay’s jacket off her body and threw it hard against the far wall, heard it strike with a soft thud and then hit the floor with a softer one. She curled naked on her bed and stared into the blackness, the image of Stratford’s lifeless body, eyes open and blank, alternating with Ramsay’s blackened form like the most detailed paintings Dewdney might have produced if his mad, evil genius had run to art rather than fire. She felt as if the tears had all been burned out of her; she wondered if, having poured so much fire into her attack, she could ever spark another fire again.

She wondered if she would even dare to.

Finally, feeling as if she were performing an act of penance, she reached out to light the lamp. A throbbing pain traveled down her back, but the tiny fire kindled and the lamp filled the room with its orangeish glow. She watched it for a while, until its black inverse blinded her when she closed her eyes, then extinguished it and went back to lying curled up on her bed. His bed, that he’d given up to her because he was a gentleman. His bed, his cabin, his ship. He’d given her so much and she had given him death.

Lying there in the oppressive darkness, she remembered their last conversation and felt like a fool.
I feel as if there is something I would want if only I knew what it was,
she had said, and the whole time he was standing right next to her and all she had needed to do was reach out and say,
You. I want you.
Those few words might have changed everything.

She began shuddering uncontrollably and pulled the blanket over herself, though she did not feel cold. Or it might have changed nothing. It would not have stopped the pirates taking them by surprise and it would not have obviated the need for her to move in closer to burn the enemy ships. Likely everything would have happened just as it did, except that Ramsay would have known she loved him, and he might have…what? Embraced her, rejected her, turned away in embarrassment? Perhaps it was better this way, after all.

The smell of vomit crept into her nostrils and fought with the smell of muggy wood and the fainter smell of smoke. Elinor lit the lamp again, stood on wobbly legs, and went to the cupboard. Her evening gown hung there, its pink silk and white gauze out of place on this rough ship so distant from the drawing rooms of London. She could not bear the thought of wearing it, but she had foolishly got rid of the ugly brown cotton, and now it was the only clothing she had. She destroyed everything she touched, didn’t she?

She had burned the last of her undergarments, so she wormed her way into her gown and hoped it was sufficiently opaque. The waistband was tight around her ribs, but not uncomfortably so. She straightened her gown, ran her fingers through her hair in lieu of a comb, also missing, and with a deep breath went barefoot into the great cabin.

It was empty, silent, and dark. Moonlight streamed through the windows; the threatening storm had passed, leaving the sky clear and bright as if it had only been waiting for the battle to be over to appear. Tortuga lay off the starboard side, just a sliver of it, and there were no ships except a black hump in the distance too regular to be stone. She touched the glass as if she could reach out and push the pirate ship beneath the waves. Or it might be one of the Navy’s, might be poor, doomed
Chariot
.

She knew nothing of how the battle had passed after she—hadn’t one of the pirate ships boarded one of theirs? If only Admiral Durrant had taken her into his planning, if she had been allowed to burn the ships without resorting to— She made herself stop. It was wrong, it was evil, for her to try to make this disaster the fault of anyone but herself.

She left the great cabin and went up on deck, too weary to care if the sailors hated or feared her now. She could hear them moving about the deck, quietly, as if they still hoped to hear their dead captain’s voice calling out commands over their murmured conversations. She passed Wynn, the helmsman; he didn’t even look at her, not that she blamed him.

She trailed her fingers along the mizzenmast and went to the strangely empty stern, stood at the taffrail and looked out. Navy ships stood at rest on both sides of
Athena
, their lights burning brightly. Even with the light from the waxing gibbous moon, it was too dark to see the damage that had been done to them.
Syren’s
stern lamps glowed over her name, easily read because she was within shouting distance of
Athena
, and to starboard she saw
Exordia
and
Breton
. What would the admiral say to her? Would he realize how she had lost control, send her back to England for execution? She almost certainly deserved it. She was dangerous to everyone around her.

She looked down, far down to where
Athena’
s hull disappeared into the dark water. Perhaps she should save them the trouble, and herself the pain, of a public execution. The humiliation, she could bear, just one more part of her penance. Not that she would be around to endure it, not for long, anyway. She remembered struggling to reach her raft, the sharp bite of salty brine in her nose and sinuses and the bitter taste of it in her mouth, and shuddered. She might deserve death, but she would not seek it out.

“Going to a party, Miss Pembroke?” Lieutenant Beaumont said, coming to join her at the taffrail.

“I have no other gown, Lieutenant. I apologize for my appearance of frivolity.”

“You seem hard on your clothing. Drowning, fire.”

“I suppose so.” His words were light, even playful, but his voice was tight and angry.
His best friend is dead. He ought to hate me. I deserve it
.

“That was quite the show you put on. No one knew you were that…powerful.”

“I did not know either, Lieutenant. I assure you…” What? What could she tell him? That she regretted her rash behavior? That she would never do it again? What difference would it make?

“Admiral Durrant is pleased with you. Said you controlled the fire so
Breton
wasn’t singed despite the pirate ship being latched on for a boarding party. Very impressed.”

“I am sure I am grateful for his consideration.” Of course Beaumont had spoken to the admiral; he was in command of
Athena
now. She was surprised Durrant could still be impressed with her, knowing Beaumont’s account of what she had done to her commanding officer. But Durrant had never cared for Ramsay, so perhaps he counted his life as small loss. Elinor’s eyes burned from having stared unblinking into the darkness for so long. She wished Beaumont would leave her alone to her grief, not that he would feel she was entitled to mourn for the man she’d killed.

“What you did to him,” Beaumont began, then gripped the taffrail with both hands and bowed his head. “He never believed you were dangerous, no matter what I said. He should have listened to me.”

Elinor nodded, unwilling to trust her voice—but then, what could she possibly say to that?

“But I suppose it doesn’t matter now, does it? And I think—if I’m correct, I think you hate yourself right now more than I ever could. If your feelings are engaged as I suspect.”

Elinor prayed he could not see her blush in this dim light. So he’d seen it before she had. Perhaps Ramsay had, too, and had kept silent so as not to embarrass her. Always the gentleman. She turned her head to look at Beaumont. “I assume I will be going back to London soon. If the admiral decides the pirate threat has been mostly eliminated.”

Beaumont met her eyes. He looked surprised, though she could not see what about her words was surprising. “I imagine you could stay, if you wanted to.”

“There’s nothing left for me here, Mr. Beaumont.”