Chapter 39
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 38
While Gregory is gone, the wedding preparation heat up only more. Darcy is frantically after every bit of paperwork she can hunt down. Yes, there is a lot at stake, but also, the longer Gregory is away, the more she feels her blood boiling. Where is he? What is he doing? Does anybody have their filthy eyes on him? He’s hers, nobody shall have him!
So when he finally reappears, she immediately drags him in through the window. He might’ve thought it would be amusing to knock on her window, she’s long past caring. Her fingers dig deep into his clothes as she pulls him close, her nose twitching to find any smell from another person on him and her fangs in his neck before his feet have even hit the floor of her bedroom. Yes, hers, he’s back, all hers again. And it’s not like he’s complaining either. In fact, he says, if that’s the mood she’s in, maybe they could do more than biting? With just a little bit of prodding, she relents and yes, he can have more, she’ll have to eventually overcome that weird sense of embarrassment and discomfort, doesn’t she?
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When Jack attempts to bring his rose petal a cup of chamomile tea for her nerves the next day- a rather sensible suggestion of Arthur’s- he finds himself accosted by Mr Cobb in the doorway of her study. Mr Cobb claims that he learned that Darcy doesn’t like having her behaviour changed with drugs. While Jack approves of the… young man learning something, it is said with a jut of chin that is less than mature and an intonation as if this was a great revelation. Jack raises a sceptical eyebrow, he has the worst feeling there is something here he should know about, but for now he leaves it at that that much should be obvious. He is, he points out, her doctor, however, and her nerves are frayed. His rose petal speaks up from behind her fiance: It’s alright, it’s Papa, he knows what he’s doing. This leaves Mr Cobb visibly flabbergasted and stuttering out a “But… but, you said…” before he finally steps aside with a dejected slump of shoulders.
Not hiding his anything but approving look, Jack closes the distance. Why? Just why did his rose petal have to choose such an uneducated man with little understanding of science? This really is Morris all over. No matter, he wants her happy, and for right now that means handing her the cup of tea, and asking her if she would like a dose of laudanum with it to further calm her nerves. At her nod of agreement, he tells her that he is going to sit next to her while he administers it, because he isn’t sure about the correct dosage on a dhampir, her normal dose might not do anything. That has her giggle and smile warmly at him, tell him that she knows he is curious to see the effects. Her papa is always so curious, always out for more data!
Of course he is, and her enthusiasm about it makes him smile, as it has so many times before.
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Arthur really would have preferred if he could have just focused on researching how people write marriage vows and what they put in there and how to go about the whole thing, rather than having a new crisis knock on their door.
Especially if that crisis comes in form of a police constable from Whitby demanding to see the baroness. But, of course, Arthur lets him in the front door, and leads him to Darcy’s study.
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Darcy is anything but inclined to help the man after he treated Arthur like a butler and her papa like her secretary, but has to relent when the man produces a letter from the duchess herself. It’s an assignment, as her knight (postulant) is the closest to the situation. That situation is a post ship out of Whitby, bound for London, having run aground down the coast, and all attempts at salvage have failed due to an unknown power making anybody coming close panic.
With an annoyed announcement that she better be back from this in time for her own wedding, Darcy heads to the stables to deal with this.
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With how Darcy is marching down the path, Arthur decides he pities the person who picked the wrong date to make a nuisance of themselves. But… a ship! He’s never been on one, but he and Gregory have spent many days lurking around the docks, watching the ships come and go.
Of course, the big ships don’t come up the river all the way into the city- otherwise Arthur might’ve actually been tempted to do what boys do in his adventure books and get himself hired on by one.
Well. He’s certainly thought about it, dreamed of it- but he knows well enough that the kind of adventures that happen in books, where everything works out for the best in the end, isn’t how the real world works.
So maybe he wouldn’t have dared to join a crew of rough sailors to travel around the world, and risk being beaten or killed, storms and real pirates. No matter how often he’s read Treasure Island to Gregory, no matter how much they’ve played it out and imagined themselves as Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver (not that Arthur ever got to be John Silver)- fictional pirates are bad enough, Arthur’s pretty sure real ones would be even worse.
But all of that doesn’t mean he isn’t excited to get to go onto an actual boat. A post boat isn’t a proper ship, and the English coast isn’t an exotic, tropical ocean, but it will do.
Well, and of course there’s the matter of whatever’s going on with the boat. He definitely hopes it isn’t something that’ll involve them having to kill people again.
Or the Shiver, somehow.
That thought dampens his mood, but there hasn’t been any news since the attack on the wards, neither hide nor hair have been seen of his father and his accomplices that Arthur’s aware of, so… so he hopes that today isn’t the day that that changes.
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Darcy, on the other hand, needs Gregory to hold her hand to manage to step foot on the vessel that’s supposed to take them out to the stranded post boat. She goes even paler than she always is, and finds the closest spot to the mast she can, holding on with nothing but stubborn willpower to not let the baroness mask slide. The thought of falling overboard terrifies her. When she learns that Arthur can’t swim, either, she calms down marginally by distracting herself from her fear by focusing on every one of his movements, trying to make sure to keep him safe.
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The post boat has run aground at the edge of a small, uninhabited island a little ways off the coast- not even an acre of gravel, rocks and rough grass. The captain of the police boat they’re on says it’s impossible to tell what the problem is from a distance. It isn’t sinking, at least, and they haven’t been able to see any damage to it. But also no movement on it. And despite the gravity of the situation, Arthur is a little gleeful about getting to use an actual telescope to have a look for himself. But no, he can’t see anyone moving around on the deck of the boat, either.
That is a bit spooky, but it’s still early afternoon, and it’s sunny, and they’re in sight of the coast, so it’s not like it’s very much like a ghost ship.
But anyone who came within a certain distance of it so far has passed out, the captain explains. They had to wait until the currents carried them and their dinghy out of the area before they could recover them, and the men came to in a panic.
Since they really don’t want to chance a panicked Gregory turning into his demon form in the middle of the sea, Arthur agrees to be the one to go investigate. Also, he’s the one with at least a bit of magical knowledge, and to him, people passing out like that sounds pretty magical. Not that he says any of that out loud where the people on the boat with them can hear it.
Since he doesn’t want to be drifting around the sea unconscious, they tie his dinghy to the ship with a long rope so they can haul him back in. And he doesn’t say no to the offered life vest, either, seeing as his experience with swimming is limited to splashing and paddling around the edges of the Thames on the couple of days that it’s hot enough to do that in summer.
So equipped, he sets out- and finds out that rowing a boat isn’t as easy as it looks, either. But after a few moments of trial and error, he does manage to point the nose of it the right way and get it going.
Despite his recent magic studies, he’s not sure what he’s looking for- he can’t feel anything. The wind is cool and sharp out here on the water, his lips taste like salt, and the row boat lifts and lurches with the waves that looked a lot smaller from up on the police boat. The stranded post boat comes closer very slowly, while Arthur’s arms and chest and back start to burn with the effort of pulling the oars through the water, his breath is coming fast.
He never notices when he crosses that invisible boundary.
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Darcy sees Arthur slump in the boat, and despite their best efforts, they can’t wake him up even after they’ve reeled him back in. The captain assures her that that’s never happened before- everyone else woke up when they were outside the area of influence of whatever it is.
Darcy feels her drac growling deep inside herself- nobody hurts Arthur! He’s part of her… household! Whoever did this better prepare for her… for her anger!
Determined to get to the bottom of this, Darcy insists on getting over there herself. Yes, it takes Gregory carrying her into the boat, she just can’t bring herself to climb overboard, but that doesn’t stop her from getting close… only to step, instead of onto the island from which she wanted to climb onto the grounded post boat (blasted sun that doesn’t let her stick to things!), onto the deck of the Intrepid, where Long John Silver hands her a plate of tea and biscuit, and a happy Jim Arthur Hawkins is learning to row.
This is wrong, there is no girl in Treasure Island, and definitely none with a cat, but here she is, holding Pretty in her arms, and fluttering her eyelashes at Long John Silver without thinking. Yes, she’s spent many a night reading the book, playing it out in her room, and dreaming it was her he snuck off home to in the end. Did she build this illusion somehow? It must be an illusion, right, but… she likes it, is it so bad if it’s an illusion and she goes along with it for a little bit?
Gregory is more interested in this being a pirate story, where are the pirates? As if on cue, the call goes up that a Jolly Roger has been spotted. Arthur is back on board and tasked with taking the precious woman beneath deck where she’ll be safe. He backs her up on it being a good idea to be a bit cautious, they don’t know if they can be hurt here, so she ignores Pretty’s hissing to be let down, he wants to fight the pirates, and just carries him along. That ends up with him scratching her and to her surprise, she flinches from the sensation, the scratch doesn’t heal at all… She’s… human?!