Nathan probed his neck, grimacing slightly, but it was unclear if it was from physical discomfort or the recollection of it all.

"Eating doesn't come so easy," Nathan finally admitted. "Something hot to drink, or rum helps ease the ache of a night."

As often as Cate had seen him in drink, never had she considered the physical comforts it might be affording him from the residual aches and pains of so many years at sea.

"The Cap'n knew. Those sorts can't help but brag, and there are no secrets on a ship," he said with a wry twist. "Pope wasn't one to often let the cat out of the bag, but he did so then: fifty lashes, and I the first stripe, had I wished."

"Did you...wish?"

He made a caustic noise. "To what point and purpose? Flaying their skins wouldn't heal mine."

She couldn't argue that. Nothing reversed time or undid what had been done.

What color is hope when it fades?

When the innocence of youth is dissolved by the reality of life, it is rarely gentle. The question might be whether or not it was compulsory for such lessons to be particularly brutish, or otherwise go unlearned. Earlier in his boyhood, Nathan had seen his mother beaten. Had he learned the lesson of the treachery of men then, could he have been saved from the classroom of this harsher lesson? Hindsight. Regret. Remorse. One could starve if they sought sustenance on those.

Cate touched her lips to the twisted skin in benediction for all that had happened, at the same time giving thanks that he had survived to be there now. Nathan's arm tightened around her in acknowledgement.

"S'all right, luv," he said into her hair. His fingers brushed the back of her shoulder and the thick scar there. "Only bloody fools brag in Hell, and St. Peter shan't pass fools through his gates."

Coming from many, it could have come across as quite cavalier, but he bore the marks of experience to give it wisdom.

She urged him to sit up and moved around in order to see his back. Pushing his hair out of the way, she gasped.

"You've been flogged!"

It had once been a beautiful back, wide-shouldered and carved with muscle, tapering down to a narrow waist. The deep curving groove of his spine ran between the sculptured shoulders, the hard curve of his buttocks half-buried in the folds of the quilt. The once-smooth skin was marked with claw-like grooves of silvery-white against the antique ivory.

Nathan grimly nodded, a dark eye over his shoulder looking mildly surprised. "You recognize the marks. When I was a cabin boy; it was me first and second voyage. The handiwork of that blighter, Beecher."

He had told her of it one day by a hot spring, and she had been shocked then. Still, knowing that he had been whipped and seeing the marks was two entirely different things.

"They flogged a cabin boy?" Cate asked in disbelief.

He looked off, squinting in calculation. "Three, no four times, all told. First was only two strokes, and then five, the second," he rationalized then shrugged, mirth lurking around his mouth. "I was mouthy and brash."

"The mind strains to imagine," she mused.

"The others were..." Nathan looked off, his mouth working for a word, "indiscretions" being the one he finally landed upon.

What Nathan didn't say Cate could see. He had been whipped as a lad, but there was a vast difference in the age of the marks. Some, the faintest and oldest, had been applied with care, light and even, meant to punish and no more. A vast number more were vivid with relative newness. Their thickness revealed the savagery with which they had been applied, their criss-crossing meant to maim and destroy, breaking the spirit if not the body. Creswicke's hand, again.

Amid all that ruin, just below Nathan's shoulder blade, laid the divot of another musket ball. The margins blackened like the one on his chest, this one was from a smaller caliber weapon, the sort a woman might carry.

How does one go about asking if a man's love-his precious Hattie-had been the one to shoot him in the back?

Overwhelmed by the horror of it all, she pressed her lips to the slope of his shoulder. His hand came to rest on hers, and squeezed in silent acknowledgement.

Nathan lounged against the bulkhead once again. He looked down to scrutinize himself with an odd look. "Seems to be the map of me life," he murmured, with a mystified smile. He looked blandly at the brand and sobered. "Only a few I really mind."

She pressed her hand over the "S," as if somehow that simple action might erase it. "I wish I had been there for you."

His hand closed around hers and squeezed lightly. "Nay, lass. You couldn't have stopped it, and there was bloody little to be done after."

"I could have helped you heal. I could have helped you...with all of those."

Nathan clasped both of her hands between his. Holding her eyes with his, he stroked the backs with his thumbs.

"No regrets, darling. Those can cut worst than any blade. If you can't control it, you can't help it, and if you can't help it, then there's nothing to be regretting."

Nathan angled his head toward Cate's stomach, and then her shoulder. "Wear your marks proudly. If they are to be seen, it's because you have survived. There's no shame in living. And if it's to be laying on of the hands, I'd rather it be here in me bunk than on some wretched deck, with some cod-handed cove stitching me up."

He kissed her lightly to emphasize his point. He then ran a pensive finger along her jaw, setting off trails of goose flesh up her face and down her neck. "Come to mind, I may just have something those hands could do well by, if they were so inclined."

A warm rush flooded her cheeks and several other places. "Well, I do like to keep my hands busy."

"Ah, a woman after me own heart," he said with a gold-glinted grin, pulling her with him down onto the mattress.

"Why, Captain Blackthorne, I didn't think it was your heart we were speaking of."

He ducked his head lower, and began doing things that made her shiver. The clanging of the watch bell shattered the quiet.

"Suffering Jesus on the cross! Goddamned-!" Nathan checked himself, and shifted into another language, still swearing, for the spirit of it was still to be heard.

He braced his forehead against hers. He heaved an exasperated sigh, and then watched as she struggled to interpret the seven rings.

"'Tis nigh the end of the forenoon watch," he said at last, putting an end to her suffering. "I've courses to lay and a glass to check, before I report at eight bells. They do say duty..."

"Is a heartless master," she finished. "You'd best go. We don't want anyone thinking we've been up to something."

Nathan sat on the bunk's edge, angling his head to admire the view as she bent to search through the pile of discarded clothing on the floor.

"They already know what we've been up to, darling." Sighing, he rose and began his own search.

"I'll never get used to that." Handing him a sock, she pulled on her shift.

Scrutinizing the sock for a moment, he pitched it over his shoulder. He rummaged further, making a little sound of discovery at locating his breeches.

"Used to what?" he asked as he pulled them on.

"Everyone knowing everything; eyes always on you, seeing everything."

"You get used to it," he said through the folds of his shirt. Settling the linen on his shoulders, he worked to free his braids and scarf tails from the collar.

"I don't think I'll ever get used to it," she said.

Sitting on the bunk again, his grin was a bright flash of ivory as he pulled on a stocking. "You learn to keep up a front; never let them really see."

She sat next to him and studied him intently. "That's what you've done, isn't it? A front, a mask?"

He sobered, his eyes searching hers.

"Aye," he answered softly, touching her cheek. "And you, and those cursed eyes of yours, have seen through it. You're the only one who ever really has."

"Does that bother you?"

Nathan thoughtfully examined her face further, taking in every detail. "No," he said softly. "No, I'm safe with you."

She pulled her stays free of another of Nathan's stockings and tossed it his way. He adroitly caught it one-handed.

"What do you suppose they'll say?" she asked, struggling into her stays.

"Who?"

"The crew. You said they know what we're doing."

He considered while he stuffed his shirt into his waistband. "I should imagine they'll say ''''Tis about time,' and settle their bets."

"Bets!" she gaped. Her arms dropped to her sides. "Bets? They've been betting on when we...I mean, if we-?"

"From the day you were brought aboard, I should imagine."

Nathan chuckled at her startled look as he pulled on a boot. "Darling, these are men who bet on whose spit kills the spider first, or which way a goat turd will roll. Betting on when I bedded you is a minor thing."

"Well, it wasn't minor to me! Didn't I have any say in it?"

Stomping his foot into his boot, Nathan grinned. He came around to cup her cheek in his palm.

"Darling, you had all the say. I wouldn't take you, until you'd have me. It was never going to be any other way, ever."

"Why, Nathan? Why did it take so long...? I mean, before you...? Why didn't you say...?"

He reddened and smiled, grim but tolerant. "Because you're his, darling."

"His?" Cate echoed stupidly. She had expected any number of excuses but that.

"You're married," Nathan said with the eloquent patience of one dealing with a child.

"He's dead." It wasn't to be ghoulish or cold. It was but to state a simple fact.

"As you keep saying. You don't know that."

Cate brought his face around by the point of his beard in order to look into the coffee-colored orbs. "Yes, I do." The thought of Brian returning was ludicrous. She bit back a rising smile, lest she wound Nathan's already delicate pride.

"Darling, I've a lifetime of men declared dead-gunshot, lost at sea, fever, or sea monsters, or whatever you desire to name-and the next thing I know, they are buying me a drink. Hell, I was given up for dead meself, and yet here I am in all me charming glory." He spread his arms in display.

To argue to the contrary would have been disingenuous, for she too knew people who mysteriously died and mysteriously reappeared. And yet, on Brian's death she was firm: she had woken screaming the night it had came to pass, had felt the stab in her heart and had awakened the next morning with a part of her gone. For Nathan's part, she couldn't argue either. She had heard many and widely-varied versions of him being cursed, blessed, resurrected by the hand of some sea goddess, even allusions to immortality.

"I thought it was because I reminded you of...her." She said, looking away. It was her strong belief that there should be only two in a bed-or bedchamber, as it were-at a time. But so long as it had been opened to three, it might as well be four.

"Her?" Now he was the one to sound stupid.

She willed herself to meet his gaze, but failed. "Yes, her. Pryce claims you said I reminded you of...of...Hattie," she finally squeezed out through a constricted throat.

"Did I now?" Nathan mused, a bit too innocently for her money. "Bloody awkward, that.

"God help me, I was a spineless coward," he said on a sudden surge of self-loathing. "I was scared, mortified you'd confound and burn me for the accursed, driveling, maudlin milksop I was. And when those cursed eyes of yours failed to see, well...I knew it had to be because they didn't desire to."

"You always looked like it was torture to be in the same room-"

"And it was," he said with hearty conviction. "To have you right there..." Nathan's hand raised to her shoulder and hovered. "To have you so near, to hear your voice and smell you, and not be able to..." His clamped his lower lip between his teeth, eyes clouding and filling with anguish.

"And then, there was the fear if I was to say something, you'd jump. You damned near did, twice, nay...three times," he added to her dubious look.

Nathan had made mention of that same worry before, although for the life of her, she couldn't fathom what or when he was referring. Still, whatever the fabrications, they were real to him.

The poor man and the tortures he had suffered, so much like her own.

"Misery enjoys company, it would seem," she said.

"And 'tis no finer company in which one could wish to suffer."

Nathan's eyes softened to the color of warm molasses. He touched his lips lightly to Cate's forehead as a parting and swaggered to the door.

"By the by," he said, pausing there. "Shall you be desiring to know who won?"

A hurtled shoe, harmlessly hitting him in the shoulder, was his only answer.

Chapter 21: Storm Tossed.

Once dressed, Cate balked at the curtain as Nathan's words rang in her head.

...settling their bets...

Mortification knotted her gut. Everyone aboard knew...

Every man, jack, tar, and mate knew what they had been doing, not only just then, but the night before, too. She tried to think back, wondering if she had cried out at any point. She wasn't usually given to doing so at those crucial moments of passion, but it had been a very long time.

Everybody knew...which meant she was going to have to face everyone, knowing they knew. From the forecastlemen, to the foretopsmen, to the afterguard, to anyone slaving in the hold moving water butts...everybody knew.