21. Course of action

Jack and Cat looked at each other, suspended in time. The ship rolled gently beneath them, and an invisible hand seemed to bring them closer together. And closer, and closer still.

It was impossible to tell who started the inevitable kiss that followed; it simply seemed the only course of action for their lips to meet, and linger, and explore until they were both lightheaded and panting. For some inexplicable reason they had ended up against the bulkhead, Jack leaning into Cat heavily but deliciously, her hands in his hair then pushing his clammy shirt over his shoulder to touch his skin, and his hands roaming her delicate curves with a mixture of wonder and hunger. They sighed, and moaned, and sighed again, until Jack, his face flushed, grated in her ear, ‘Cat, for all love, if we do not stop now I will not be able to... Good Lord how I want you...’ and he tucked his nose under her earlobe, inhaling her bewildering scent eagerly.

Cat stiffened only a little at his words, but it was quite enough for Jack to sober him up entirely. Slowly and very reluctantly, he let her slip from his arms and he looked at her flushed face, her lips bruised from kissing, her eyes cast down shyly.

‘Jack...’ she whispered, relieved that he had responded to her doubts so immediately, happy that he could perhaps prove worthy of her trust after all, and most of all confused because in her heart she really, really did not want him to stop at all. Because was this not what her dreams had whispered to her, was this not why she had felt his presence throughout the ship, even when he did his best to respect her privacy?

For just an instant, she balanced on an invisible precipice. Should she pull him closer again, knowing that he would not be able to hold back a second time? Or should she...

The decision was made for her when there was a knock on the cabin door, followed by a modest ‘...Sir?’

Jack frowned darkly. It was Barrett Bonden by the sound of it, and was that badly concealed glee in his voice? ‘Wait,’ Jack growled softly, detaching himself from Cat and with a few great strides loping back to his locker. He opened it soundlessly, lifted out a clean pair of ducks, and equally soundlessly closed the lid and climbed into his trousers.

Cat stared at him, amazed that such a big man could move around so nimbly and quietly when the need arose, and she could not help but smile when she noticed the guilty blush spreading over his face as he tied the drawstring on his trousers.

Not more than thirty seconds could have passed and Jack uttered a ‘Come in, Mr. Bonden,’ booming just a little too loudly and merrily.

Bonden entered. He appeared disappointed to find his Captain fully dressed and as far away from the Duchess as the cabin would allow, and he smiled a little apprehensively. ‘Your Grace, Sir, I waited as long as I could, but the Victoire... the tide... the sloop... If we wait much longer the men will have a devil of a time gettin’ themselves back to the Surprise, begging your pardon, Your Grace...’

‘Yes, of course, Mr. Bonden,’ Cat’s soft, cultured voice said, ‘it was most kind of you to allow the Captain and myself some time to say our farewells.’

Jack cleared his throat. ‘Indeed,’ he added, still beet red.

‘Please, lead the way,’ Cat continued, favouring Bonden with a smile that to Jack seemed a little strained.

He followed Bonden and Cat to the railing, and numbly watched her climb down into his boat (she blatantly refused the bosun’s chair, which earned her much more respect among the men than she could have known). His head was still reeling from their kiss, and the notion that she had seen him. Naked. And apparently it had made her follow him into his cabin, and... The unsaid implications, the idea that she might after all want him as much as he wanted her, needed her, even loved her, were so enormous that he gripped the railing with all his force, just to stop him from jumping down into the boat, hoisting her onto his shoulder and dragging her back into the cabin with him and damn the consequences.

He was still considering the consequences when his boat was no more than a dot, slowly moving towards a bigger dot in the distance. And it was then that he noticed the band of ink black clouds that had formed far away. A gust of wind hit him: it was cool and coppery and hinted at rain and thunderstorms. The sails flapped and backed a little. Jack narrowed his eyes and saw the Victoire stagger in the gust, and his mind performed one of those lightning-quick calculations.  The size of the Victoire, the complement sailing her, the amount of Frogs locked up in the hold, the state of her rigging, and the fact that he had no clear image of any damage he might have inflicted to her hull. He had left Mr. Woodring with Tom Pullings, just in case, but still he was uneasy.

‘Mr. Bonden. Let us come about and luff up slowly so that the Victoire has the chance to come up with us. We will sail in close company, at least for the duration of this storm.’

Bonden followed Jack’s orders to the letter, and for a short while the Surprise sailed directly towards the storm, which seemed to approach with alarming speed. Jack could see flashes of lightning underneath the smothering dark blanket of clouds and the sea had become irregular and choppy, tossing the Surprise about like a toy ship.

Something in his heart rejoiced at the sight of all that weather coming his way, as always, but right now what was at the forefront of his mind was that the most beautiful... precious... the bloody Duchess of Marlborough, was on the Victoire and he was sworn to protect her with his life.

The wind grew stronger, and the seas grew wilder. Stephen climbed up on deck, or more accurately, was handed up on deck by several considerate shipmates who did not wish to see their sawbones trip and fall in the sea, and especially not in this weather, and Jack spared him a measured smile as he clambered up to the quarterdeck to stand beside his friend.

‘Jack. Are you well? Dear Lord what monstrous weather is upon us.’

‘It’s coming on to blow. Perhaps you should stay below, Stephen,’ Jack growled, his stare fixed on the Victoire as the Surprise started to luff up to close the gap between the two ships.

Within no time at all, Jack’s words became reality, with sheets of driving rain, gusts of wind that lay the Surprise over almost completely, and waves that washed right over the deck.

“Rig man ropes,” Jack ordered in his loudest commanding voice, but the men were already busy, having anticipated his order. He strained his eyes in the gloom brought on by the weather: was the Victoire lower in the water than before? He could not be sure, but he did notice how she swam more sluggishly than before. She had to have quite a lot of water in the well, and all of a sudden Jack was convinced that she was breached below the waterline. He trusted Mr. Woodring’s skills implicitly, but mending the hull in the weather they were facing right now was an outright challenge in the face of Fortune. There was a very real chance that the Victoire would founder, and Cat was aboard her. Cat was aboard her!

Oh how he regretted not following his intuition when he had stood at the railing, watching her go down into the boat, his heart clenching in his chest as forcefully as his hands were clutching the wood of the railing. She should be here, with him, where he could keep her safe, and even if he would prove to be unable to keep her safe, they would be together. They would go down together. A situation much preferable to doing so on one’s own.

A jolt went through Jack as he realised where his thoughts had led him. He wanted to die for Cat, and if that would not do the trick, he would gladly die with her, knowing that they would reunite on the other side. He frowned as the wind whipped wet strands of yellow hair around his face. He was not at all certain that what would wait for him on the other side of death was heaven, but he knew that whatever weather he would face in the afterlife, he would face it happily with Cat at his side. If she could not be with him in life, than perhaps in death...

Suddenly, he was snapped out of his brooding by a loud splintery groan. The Victoire’s mainmast. No doubt it had been hit by shot from the Surprise, weakened, and now in this gale it could not take the strain. It seemed to hesitate for a moment and then began a slow but inevitable descent towards the Surprise, sails and rigging and all.

Jack’s practised eye calculated the arc of descent with staggering speed and he threw his weight against the wheel, desperate to create enough distance between the two ships. If the mast would hit the Surprise’s deck, or worse, tangle in the rigging, they could all go down in seconds, even if the seas were calm and the weather balmy.

It seemed to take forever, but then he felt a shift in course shiver up through the deck, and the Surprise moved away just as the Victoire’s mast came crashing down over the side. It missed them by mere inches, and immediately Jack handed over the wheel, shouted commandos and ran to the side to see if there were any men overboard.

A young mid clung to the yardarm in desperation, the sea washing over him with every wave, and before he could think, Jack had tied a rope around his waist and had jumped into the sea, knowing with unwavering certainty that one of his men would hold onto the other end of his life-line. The sea was wild and freezing, and the mid had somehow gotten all tangled up in the mast’s rigging. One of the men on the Surprise shouted, “Sir!” and when Jack looked up, a knife landed next to his head on the Victoire’s tops’l, that bobbed on the sea like a wounded gull.

He quickly sawed through several lines, freeing the otherwise miraculously unharmed midshipman. The boy, who was thoroughly rattled, and who could not swim, needed a quick hand but then he swarmed up the side of the Surprise towards the hands of his shipmates.

Jack then glanced at the men on board the Victoire, who were hacking away at the remaining rigging to free the mast altogether. For a moment he thought he saw the dark red hair of Cat flashing like a flame through the driving rain, and then all of a sudden something deeply instinctual took over. Reason flew out the window. He grabbed his life-line, cut through it with the knife with one powerful slash, then clenched the knife between his teeth in true piratical fashion as he climbed on the mast and clambered up the remainder of the rigging with a speed and agility that completely belied his big, powerful frame.

TBC

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