Page 30 of The Sea Witch
“It wasn’t intentional,” she fired back. “And dreams are... the past, the present, history, and omens of things that may or may not come to pass.”
“The beach. That thing on the beach.”
A shudder coursed through her. “Meaningless images. But there was more, and still, that didn’t give me... everything.”
“Good.”
“There’s something between us now. A... bond.”
He reared back as if she’d elbowed him in the face. “No.”
“Neither of us have a choice, Sailing Master.”
He tossed her wrist away from him, burned by her skin against his. Yet that did nothing to ease the sensation of her, fierce and alive and determined, inside of him.
“It’s Sailing Master Priestley, or Mr. Priestley,” he answered. “If you’re going to thrust yourself into my mind, my dreams, have the courtesy to call me by my name.”
“Ben.”
“Only my family and those I call friend may call me that.”
She paced away from him, her feet making soft padding noises upon the wooden planks of the floor. Her legs were still bare, the high firm shape of her buttocks evident beneath the long hem of her linen shirt. He refused to make himself look away.
She took a long drink straight from a bottle pulled from a cabinet. Then another. The column of her throat worked as she swallowed, and a single bead of liquid traced from her lower lip to settle in the hollow between her collarbones.
When she held the bottle out to him, he hesitated. Then strode to her to snatch it from her hands. He paused a moment before putting his lips where her lips had been. Niceties were long gone, drowned in an undersea cavern.
“French brandy,” he said after taking a sizeable drink. “Stolen, doubtless.”
“I’d never pay the doubloons such fine swill demands. The best we could hope for in Norham was cider from Uriah Nash’s apples, or small beer.”
“That’s your accent. I’d figured you for a colonial. No deference for authority.”
Her lips twisted. “Deference was the coin of the realm back home. A woman couldn’t exist without the proper amount of fawning over the men of that fucking place.”
“Unsurprising that you live there no longer.”
He shook his head. It didn’t matter where she came from. All that signified was what she’d done.
At the least, the brandy had pushed back memories of her in his dreams. Dreams of people and places he’d no desire to share with her—or anyone. Ever.
Yet he’d been in her dreams, felt her love for the young woman. And terror at what lay ahead.
She took another swallow of brandy, then handed it back to him. He drank. It was excellent quality, tasting of apples and vanilla and wood, far better than a warrant officer could afford for himself.
Bound to her. She would find her way into his mind, whether or not either of them desired it. His secrets were not his own. Not any longer.
“You won’t find the Weeping Princess on a white man’s map,” he said after a moment. He gestured with his free hand toward the table covered with charts, the manacles clinking heavily. “Scarce people are alive who remember it, and they hold tight to the knowledge.”
“They’re few in number?” she asked.
“Disease has reduced their ranks to next to nothing,” he said, grim. “A legacy of the Spanish.”
“The English, too, I’d wager.”
He fell silent, unable to refute this.
“The rest of it,” she continued. “If you please.”
