Blessed Isle by Alex Beecroft

Author:Alex Beecroft
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2012-12-29T05:00:00+00:00

I was angry with him, you see. And with myself also. His impulsiveness had cost me my ship; had cost Mortimer and Gregory and Chapman and Kent, all the surviving marines and tars, even the convicts, their lives. So I thought at the time. I hadn’t realized that Carter had been the one to start it. That makes a difference. I wish you had told me before! I should not have been so resentful over the years. It is . . . It shall not be the least of my regrets that I misjudged you so. I am always doing it. You make play of being charmingly reckless, a rake without responsibility, but I should have known you better than that. I am not worthy of you. Not now, and not then.

But I digress. I was at the time furious, and hurt, and deeply, burningly ashamed. I wished I had gone down with my ship—my first command!—and died. I blamed him for saving my useless life, and myself for letting him do so. I loathed the fact that I wanted to let him carry on petting me while I fell asleep with my head in his lap. We neither of us deserved that.

“Can you watch?” I asked at length, reluctantly. “How do you feel?”

“I feel splendid.” He grinned at me, white teeth in a face speckled with red gore. “Better than fine. I feel . . . exultant.”

I couldn’t answer that. I lay down by the mast, thoroughly repelled, and fell asleep in an instant.

When I woke, my head seemed full of oakum, and my body an iron structure, partially rusted together. Before I opened my eyes, I thought from the sound of the wind that the storm had abated a little. Though I lay in a pool of rainwater, its rate of descent had slowed. A rhythmic scrape and shush lulled me back to oblivion, and when I woke again it was distinctly drier beneath me.

I looked up. Garnet sat in the stern, his black hair blown forward over his face, the tiller under his arm and the ropes of the sail in one hand as he bailed with the other. He lacks at least ten of my years, and at that point he looked, against the breaking dawn, young and weary and beautiful.

He turned his head to look at me. It seemed an enormous effort. His face was white as paper and those brown eyes of his looked black to the rim. “Harry. I’m tired.”

My heart twisted within me and my anger fled. Even with my guilt and desolation, it seemed I had space for a fresh pain. I should have known the battle vigour would wear off and leave him watching over me, injured, alone, and rebuked, with both our lives in his hands and no word of thanks. I was an utter villain.

Creakily, my bones protesting the movement, I found water and hard tack, passed them to him. Then I got him by the shoulders, and as he had done for me earlier, I eased him away from the tiller.

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