The Devil's Hand

--Chapter Ten--



    To save her embarrassment in returning to her quarters in the morning, Jack showed her a hidden door and a narrow spiral staircase that descended below-deck, emerging into the corridor through another hidden panel right beside her cabin.

    "I've never seen this before," she marvelled.

    "Had it installed when she was the Wicked Wench," he said. "Makes it easier to check on cargo in inclement weather."

    "Hmm. Or to have illicit assignations."

    One corner of his mouth curved up, a gold tooth flashing. "That, too."

    She flattened her hand on his chest. "Thank you . . . for last night. Though, I'm embarrassed that I threw myself at-"

    He cut her off with a kiss, interrupting her apology. He didn't need it, didn't want to hear it.

    When he stepped back, they were both flushed. "Tonight," he said. "Use the stairs."

    She smiled and ducked back into her cabin.

    Jack exited to the main deck through his own cabin, found Gibbs at the wheel. "Morning, Mr. Gibbs."

    "Mornin', Cap'n Sparrow." The older pirate eyed him. "You seem right chipper. No worse for wear after our adventure?"

    His answering grin was slow and lazy. "Indeed."

    "And Miss Nicola?"

    "Fit as a fiddle." His grin only widened.

    "Young Mr. Turner is going to have your hide," Gibbs observed.

    The first mate clammed up when the captain's dark gaze settled on him. "Right," he stammered. "I'll just . . . see to . . . things."

    "You do that."

 

-----

 

    Nicola dressed in an ivory blouse and a dusty-blue skirt, with a matching jacket over it. She was pleasantly sore, aside from her injured forehead, and hummed a jaunty tune as she emerged to the main deck. Several of the men greeted her cheerily when they saw her, and Mr. Cotton's parrot squawked, "Steady as she goes!" as she passed by.

    Jack was at the wheel, eyes to the horizon, when she joined him.

    "Good morning, Captain."

    "Miss Holyfield," he replied. He glanced at her and she flushed.

    "It occurs to me that I never properly thanked you for saving my life."

    The pirate smirked. "You thanked me right proper, Nicky."

    She cleared her throat. "That wasn't proper."

    The smirk turned into an outright grin.

    "So where are we, and how far away is Tortuga?"

    "We've left Trinidad," he told her, and gestured to the island fading behind them. "We're three days from Tortuga, if the wind holds. There's a storm coming, so it's likely we might get there sooner. As long as it isn't a hurricane," he amended.

    Nicola leaned her back against the rail separating the sterncastle, where they stood, from the main deck. "Really, though, Jack, I can't thank you enough for coming after me. I was so terrified."

    "I wasn't going to leave you with him," he said after a long moment. "I'm a pirate, aye, but-"

    Jack had more of a respect for people than most he knew, especially women. He may have counted as a womanizer, but he still thought, secretly, that women were to be protected. That wasn't a view that went over very well with other pirates, so he tended to keep it hidden.

    "You're not chattel," he said.

    "And I'm sure Will was very annoying and insistent that you get me back."

    Jack laughed. "The pup was very loud about it. He tends to get that way, though. When his Lizzie was taken by a pirate named Barbossa, he was obnoxious in his eagerness."

    "Will is . . . very earnest. He always has been, even when we were small."

    "I don't doubt it."

    A curse from one of the men drew their attention. The crew was still attending to smaller repairs from the attack by the Blood Storm.

    "Cap'n!" Gibbs pounded up the stairs. "Charlie's split his hand open, whittling. It's fairly bad."

    "I'll tend it," Nicola said immediately.

    "You? But the blood-" Gibbs blurted, then looked chagrined.

    "I'm an adult woman of childbearing age, Mr. Gibbs," she said archly. "I dare say I have seen more blood than you ever will."

    She swept past him and down the steps, ordering the men to clear off the table that sat on deck. "You," she said to Cotton, "get some hot water from Cook. I need clean rags, too, if there are any. Try in the cargo from the Blood Storm. I'll get my sewing kit."

    She ran down the stairs, to her cabin, and dug through her bag for the little sewing kit she took with her everywhere. One never knew, after all, when they'd need to mend a torn hem.

    Jack thumped a bottle of alcohol on the table. "Numb up," he said to Charlie.

    "Aye, Captain."

    The sailor downed several mouthfuls of whatever it was in the bottle, while Nicola set to bathing the nasty gash across the man's palm. It was full of splinters and wood shavings, and she had to pick them out carefully with her needle.

    Then she set to drawing the edges closed with small, careful stitches. It wasn't the first time she'd had to sew a man's wounds shut, and likely wouldn't be the last. The men gathered and watched in silence as she worked.

    Cotton had found a whole chest of medical supplies in the things looted from the Blood Storm, and Nicola used a roll of linen bandaging to bind Charlie's hand, then fashion a sling.

    "Don't use it for at least three days," she cautioned. "And keep it dry so that it doesn't fester. And for heaven's sake, sharpen that knife so it doesn't catch and you don't lose control of it again."

    The sailor was sent down to the crew hammocks below-deck. Nicola gathered the things she'd used and cleaned the mess.

    "You'd make a good nurse, lass," Jack told her.

    "I've had to be one, sometimes," she said. "With so many siblings, and a mother that faints at the sight of blood, it largely fell to me to tend the hurts of my brothers and sisters."

    "Hmm."

    He couldn't ask her to stay, be on the crew. He wanted to. Not only did he want to keep her, make her his, but she would have been such an asset. He'd never seen such careful, deliberate stitching, nor done so quickly and skillfully. Calypso knew, none of his crew were that capable.

    Jack frowned, annoyed at himself, and strode back to the wheel. Nicola watched him go, wondering what it was she'd said that had bothered him so.

 

-----

 

    A storm hit that afternoon, raging for two hours before dying off. Nicola spent the evening in her cabin, repairing a hole in the side of her red gown's bodice. After lights-out for the crew, she made her way up the spiral staircase and into Jack's cabin. He was sitting on the floor, with a trunk of things taken from Roccelli's ship, picking through it.

    "What's this?"

    "Treasure!" he said. Jack held up a beautiful silver and ruby bracelet, and when she sat beside him, he clasped it around her wrist.

    When she protested, he said, "It suits you, darling. And it would never fit me."

    Nicola laughed, touched by the gesture behind his facetious comment. "It's pretty," she said.

    He dug in the chest and came up with some gaudy emerald earrings. Holding them up to his own ears, he asked, "Shall I wear these to the duke's ball?"

    She snorted and clapped a hand over her mouth. With a giggle, she said, "Those aren't you at all, Jack. Try these."

    Nicola plucked out a pair of small gold hoops and handed them to him. He studied them, and slipped one into his left ear, but not the right.

    "Very piratical." She nodded.

    He pulled a long string of pearls, interspaced with gold beads, out of the trunk and looped it over her head.

    "Jack," she breathed, "I don't need these things."

    Instead of answering, he tugged her closer with the necklace, then rolled her beneath him, pinning her to the wooden floor.

    "I want to see you wearing only these," he told her.

    She sucked in a breath, and said, "All right."