Page 12 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
CHAPTER5
For the first time since winter, Mathias awoke slowly and with a quiet mind. He took great pleasure in it, slowly allowing the senses to come alive while his body remained in comfortable repose. He could smell the beeswax on the neatly stacked coils of rope above, fresh and gleaming and ready for use. He could hear the slosh of the water beyond the hull. It sounded like a calm day.
He had always liked the hammocks. The gentle rock of the waves and the snug cradle of the twined yarn made him think it was the closest a man could get to returning to the cradle and truly sleeping like a babe. He didn't even mind the snores of his fellow crewmen, harmonizing in some truly dreadful tones throughout the night.
Perhaps those, too, had warded off the nightmares.
Mathias reckoned most things would find the sounds and smells of several sleeping seamen in close quarters ample enough motivation to be elsewhere, so why should the ethereal powers that be act any differently? Certainly neither the nocturnal shades of a Portuguese prison cell nor the echo of a pack of hounds had triumphed over the scratching and belching and restless grumbling throughout the night.
He didn’t think he had dreamed at all. One finds peace in the strangest of places.
He allowed himself to lie still for a time, his body held gently in the cupping grip of the hammock, and his gaze soft and unfocused at the slatted ceiling above. There was a sweet ache in his arms and shoulders, the final gift of a rigging gone haywire last night that had cost him the chance to dine with Isabelle and Jade. It was always something on the first night—a cracked mast, stitching on a sail come undone, the sudden panic of having realized they'd left an essential crewman behind by mistake. It was as routine as it was chaotic, and in a way, he supposed he had anticipated it...or anticipatedsomething, at the very least.
Still, he would have very much enjoyed the opportunity to show Miss Ferris the stars from the open water. Perhaps it would take her mind off his blundering through her things and discovering that remarkable little list. He found himself chuckling again at the contents. There was an amusing and mischievous imp hiding behind that cautious waif's façade, one he imagined very few had ever had the pleasure to meet.
He only began to rouse himself when he noticed that the others were doing so. Each man creaked and groaned and shuffled about, preoccupied with his own thoughts of night and morning. Boots were dragged onto feet, complaints were uttered in half-hearted grumbles, and cold water was splashed on faces and floor planks. The sun would still be rising, he knew, and judging from the empty hammock in the far corner of the berth, his ship's cook was already about his business, and hopefully had coffee in the works.
He pulled on a clean shirt and followed suit with the splashing of cold water. He was, however, the only man in the room who then went in search of a comb and a looking glass.
He was the captain, after all.
* * *
He foundIsabelle seated near the railing just outside of the galley, a cup of steaming hot coffee in her hands. She had clearly not gotten to sipping it fast enough, for she had nodded off, her head lolling to the side and a vague look of wistfulness on her face. She had never much been one for rising early, but the excitement of the first day out must have awakened her. Perhaps Miss Ferris was already up and about as well.
He carefully took the hot mug from her hands, which went slack in her lap, her fingers pleating together. She mumbled something and adjusted farther onto her side, none the wiser. He congratulated himself for saving the damsel from her own folly, for seeing to his people as a good captain ought. Isabelle might have burned herself, after all, and wasted perfectly good coffee.
He took a hearty sip from her mug as he made his way through the galley door.
"I don't get no consideration at all," he heard his cook say, his gruff voice clearly aggrieved.
Mathias froze, risking another sip of the coffee but making no sound otherwise. Trouble already?
"I understand entirely," he heard a female voice reply—a sympathetic and sweet Miss Ferris! "This way, the onus will fall upon the passengers and crew to remember their manners if they wish to eat, hm? And you will be able to make use of that fine pocket watch."
"Right," replied the cook. "Theythinkthey own us."
Mathias cleared his throat, stepping through the little archway with dining tables and into the kitchen proper. Miss Ferris was seated at the well-worn chopping table, scribbling on one of her schedule sheets, apparently so concerned with her task that she did not even break pen stroke to look up and greet him.
He had already opened his mouth to protest to whatever the mutinous hell was going on in here, but he found himself rendered momentarily speechless by the waterfall of hair that was currently enshrouding the lady, spilling over her shoulders and tumbling down her back nearly to her waist, a cacophony of waves, curls, and wayward silky strands of a lovely sable brown. When she did look up, those big doll's eyes of hers only served to emphasize the overall effect of this presentation, and she blinked at him in expectation for a moment, her dark-green gaze patient and curious.
"Good morning?" she said, venturing to presume the greeting opposite his own silence. "I trust you slept well, Captain."
"Miss Ferris," he said patiently. "I believe you told me that your hopes of sabotaging my ship had run their course."
She stared at him for a moment, and then to his shock, she snorted, returning to her scribbling as though he had come in here complaining of ghosts and goblins.
"Miss Ferris!" he said again, exasperated.
"She's organizing the pantry," his cook told him, stepping between the table where Jade sat and Mathias, as though this knobby old salt of a man was ready to defend her honor at any cost.
"I may not know how to tie a sailor's knot, sir," she said evenly, "but I am well acquainted with organizing a kitchen. I realized how much stress poor Mr. Tennyson must be under last night, when it became clear that there are no set mealtimes aboard theHarpy."
"MisterTennyson," Mathias repeated incredulously, taking in a particularly smug, gap-toothed grin from his long-serving, often silent ship's cook.
"People traipsin' in and out at all hours," Tennyson confirmed. "Hungry enough to eat ingredients I've already prepared for a stew or some such. It aggrieves me, Captain."
"It does?!" Mathias replied, briefly wondering if perhaps he was still in his hammock and was having nightmares after all.
