Page 32 of Tempest

“I am hardly fit to meet with Osprin,” she said, indicating her disheveled appearance.

Fell did not react, responding in the same prim manner. “You will call him Lord Governor or His Lordship.”

Cat’s cheeks burned. She had not set foot in Meridian high society since it abandoned the Lyrian Sea nearly nine years ago, but she was still a far cry above Jasper Fell. Cat had not forgotten how unmoored he once seemed at a grand party years ago. Even now, he would not know his way across a Meridian ballroom with a map and compass.

“I am hardly fit to meet with His Lordship,” she offered through clenched teeth. Now her fingers worked furiously, trying to untangle and braid her hair at the same time. “At least take me home, just for a moment. Derry will have me put to rights in—”

She almost fell over again as the carriage stopped short, the horses whinnying. Outside, the coachmen set to their work, jumping down to attend to their passengers.

Fell shrugged.

“Ah, my apologies,” he said. But his eyes told a different story. Steel gray, they flashed with his usual annoying amusement. “It seems we have already arrived.”

Through the window, Cat glimpsed the brick walls of the governor’s mansion. Worse still was the new seal on the wrought iron gates, the Meridian lion gleaming in gold leaf, its jaws wide. The beast split as the gates opened, allowing the carriage onto the grounds. Beyond lay a great house with shuttered windows, surrounded by lush, tropical landscape.

She swore furiously, pulling her hair back into the best braid she could manage. She wished for a basin and a cloth to wash her face, which felt grimy and dull. And there was nothing to do about her wrinkled black dress at all. If given the time, she would muster up whatever splendor she had left. Gold jewelry, fine lace, rouge, powder. A bucket of perfume to disguise the smell of sweat and desperation. Enough to charm Governor Osprin, or at least convince him that Catrine Rose, a noble lady of the Meridian, could not possibly have a thing to do with pirates.

“You could have given me some warning,” she bit out, pinching her cheeks for color.

“Nonsense, you look fine. You look yourself,” Fell answered with a serpentine arch of a black brow.

“And by that you mean what?” Cat snapped, scowling. “A tavern wench at best, a pirate whore at worst?”

He chuckled loudly as the carriage door swung open. “You said it, not me.”

“Have I told you how infinitely stupid it is to travel by carriage in a city smaller than a country estate?” Cat said, declining the help of the coachman. He too wore a navy uniform, his bluecoat faded with road dust.

Fell followed with another chuckle, his hat tucked under his arm. Though he attempted to give off the picture of calm, Cat didn’t miss the way he fussed with his hair, tucking the black strands behind his ears. Captain though he was, Jasper Fell was not so secure in his station as he liked to seem.

“Once or twice,” he answered, offering his free arm. Cat ignored it. “Come now, we walk from here, lest our legs atrophy.”

“How I wish they would,” Cat hissed.

She longed to release a torrent of gutter-learned curses on Fell’s head, but the parchment in his coat stayed her tongue. Paper and ink were the only difference between the governor’s mansion and a cell. Between freedom and death.

My head or theirs, Cat thought once more.

This time it did not sound like a lament but a battle cry.

* * *

THE GOVERNOR’S MANSION was only a few decades old, constructed when the King sent a lord to oversee His Majesty’s Colonies of the Lyrian Sea. By then, most of the islands had been claimed or conquered, torn between distant crowns. The Meridian took islands of the Stills, and a few in the Furies. Great Edrin, Goldcoast. Rosby.

The thought of her own island—her husband’s island—gave Cat pause as she mounted the mansion steps. Rosby was only a little place, barely more than a green hill amongst rough seas. Claimed by a crown and then abandoned. My empire, her husband used to call it. How wrong Lord Rose turned out to be, an emperor with no empire at all.

“Come,” Fell said, his hand on her back.

Cat recoiled at his touch but did as commanded. While she was free to bicker with Fell all she wanted in the privacy of a carriage or her own dining room, it would not do here, in the governor’s household, beneath the stern, slaughtering eye of His Lordship, Jon Osprin.

She gathered herself as best she could. She was a lady once and could be again, even in a stained dress. Her spine straightened and she raised her chin, shoulders squared to the task in front of her.

Survival.

Two uniformed manservants waited on the front landing of the mansion, along with two guards. They stood like statues, near to stone. The navy ranks had swollen in recent months, with so many ships arriving from the Continent. Sailors like Fell, who saw the Lyrian colonies rise and fall and rise again, had grown scarce. Some had gone home to Meridia or the wealthier colonies in New Merid with what fortunes they made. Some gave up their commissions when the war ended to live quiet lives in quieter lands.

And some—many—were dead.

Captain Fell landed somewhere between all three. Once, Cat thought he simply wanted his own ship and a captain’s command. Now, with both in his possession, she could not say what else he aimed for, what greater prize he sought.