The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(27)
He starts toward me, and I’m ready to run, but then our sailor, clearly afraid of Sim’s wrath should he fail, throws himself at Monty and tackles him. The sailor is a fair bit bigger than my brother, and the force of the hit knocks him more sideways than I imagine was intended, because both Monty and the sailor plummet over the edge of the pier and into the rancid, freezing Thames.
“That works,” Sim says, and I feel her hand on my back, pushing me forward. “Go now.”
I almost don’t. Partly because there is a chance real harm has been done to my brother—exactly the thing I had hoped to avoid with drink-pouring rather than face-punching as a distraction. And more than partly because of Sim’s bright icicle of a knife and the fear in the man’s eyes when he recognized her.
If you’re going to run, this is the time. Do it before you leave London, before you’re far enough from home that you’d never get back on your own.
I glance down the dock, to where a few kind souls are fishing my brother and our sailor out of the river. They both look unharmed. No visible blood or limbs pointing the wrong direction. They’re sopping wet and shivering, but Monty will be a bloodhound after my scent as soon as his feet are on dry land again.
Last chance, I think, staring forward up the gangplank. Last chance to run. To change your mind. To find another fight, or surrender altogether and trade in whatever danger undoubtedly lies ahead for a cozy bakeshop and a kind baker back in Edinburgh.
But I’m not giving up on a spot with Alexander Platt. If I’m going to place a bet, it’s going to be on me and my ability to outfox and outrun Sim, should the need arise.
You are Felicity Montague, I tell myself. And you are not afraid of anything.
And when Sim sprints down the dock and up the gangplank of the packet, I follow her.
It’s a day on the water to Calais. If the sky stays clear and the channel cooperative, we’ll be in France by sunset. We don’t take a cabin, and below deck is frigid and wet and smells foul, so we sit upon the benches lined against the rails, where the air is cold but fresh. The hood of my cloak refuses to stay up, and the wind has its way with my hair, twisting and whirling it out of its pins and into thick clumps that I try to untangle with my fingers, even though I know it’s pointless.
At my side, Sim watches me struggle with a snarl at the back of my head, her own hands clamped over her headscarf to keep it in place. “Do you want help?” she asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, then give a hard pull that pricks all the way to my eyes. The knot remains maddeningly knotted.
“You’re going to rip your hair out of your scalp.”
“I think I almost have it.”
“You don’t. Here, stop.” She stands up, brushing her hands off on her skirt before climbing over the bench so she’s behind me. “Let me.”
I don’t like this. I don’t like turning my back to her, letting her put her hands in my hair, her wrist brushing my neck. I’m thinking of that knife against the sailor’s throat and how easily it could be against mine at any moment but especially this moment, with my eyes forward and my skin exposed.
She’s gentler than I expected. As soon as I think it, I feel guilty for imagining her to be rough and tug at my scalp. I can feel her hands combing through my ends, working with careful precision like it’s surgical thread she’s untangling. “I think I’ll have to cut it out.”
“What?” I spring to my feet and whip around to face her. Her hands are still in my hair, and I feel the sharp pull of leaping without warning, my nerves searing.
“It’s just a bit of hair,” she says. “You won’t even notice.”
I reach back and touch the knot to make certain she isn’t bluffing. I can feel the impossible snarl. “With your knife?” I blurt before I can stop myself.
“My . . . oh.” She reaches down into her boot, slowly and with her eyes on me, like she wants to be certain I don’t spook. “It’s not a knife. It’s a marlinespike.” She holds it up for my inspection, and it is, indeed, not a knife in the most traditional sense. It’s a long, tapering spike with a chiseled end, made from black iron and rough along its edges. “It’s a sailor’s tool,” she explains. “For sailing ropes.”
It hardly matters what it was called—confidence is half of any bluff, and she had wielded it with the sureness and threat of a blade. “You still could have killed that man in the harbor with it,” I say.
She looks sideways at me. I lift my chin. I want her to know that I know she’s dangerous and I’m here anyway. I want her to think me braver than I am, and just as dangerous as her.
“Could I?” she says.
I’m not sure if she’s asking sincerely or if she’s testing me. I’m also not sure I should tell her. “Had you pressed it down and hooked it below the clavicle bone, just here”—I tap my own over my cloak—“it would have gone into his lungs. Perhaps his heart, if you had the angle right. A punctured lung might not have killed him straightaway, but he didn’t seem like the sort who’d go running for a doctor. So it would have likely been a long, drawn-out death with a lot of wheezing and shortness of breath. And then there would still be the blood, and he could easily lose enough to prove fatal. Why are you looking at me like that?”