Always, as in, the last ten minutes.
Still Jack hesitated, brow creased, as if he were puzzling out the propriety of it all. Etta brushed aside the guilt and gave the boy the most manipulative smile of her life, adding, “I’m only asking because I trust your opinion above everyone else’s.”
Jack seemed to enjoy this.
“All right. Suppose we’d best start with Mr. Carter,” Jack said, finally.
Yes, Etta thought, let’s.
“He’s a right fine seaman, and I like him fine. Kind. Teaches me letters when he isn’t barking at the other men, which he don’t have to do, understand? Reads to me sometimes when I brings him in his breakfast. Reads so much, I don’t see how he don’t get bored with all them words.” Jack made a face. “He’s the prize master. He’ll bring the ship into the prize courts and get our earnings. I know he don’t like turtle soup much. Always makes a face when I serve it to him. He’s from…well, I don’t rightly know. Captain Hall raised him, though. Is that what you meant, miss?”
Etta nodded. “Exactly what I meant.”
Jack went through the roster of the prize crew, noting how much he liked each man, which ones burped most often after he served them, which ones snored, the ones who had perished in horrifically brutal ways during the boarding. It shifted naturally into chatting about the work above, his excitement during the boarding, how some of the boys from this ship, the Ardent, had agreed to work for Mr. Carter but they didn’t much like Jack yet. She was so distracted by his torrent of words, she missed the fact that he was guiding the brush through her hair easily now, top to bottom, top to bottom, until it felt silky and only a bit damp to the touch.
“How d’ye like it fashioned?” he asked her, gesturing to her hair.
“I’ll just braid it,” Etta began. “Thank you for your help—”
“I can do that, miss,” Jack said.
“You can?”
“A sailor who can’t braid s’no sailor t’all,” he proclaimed. “Learnt to marry and braid the lines and ropes first thing.”
“Marry them?” Etta asked, glancing up at him under a curtain of her hair. He’d been appalled by her sitting on the floor, but it was the only way for him to stand over her to do his work.
“Aye, splice and bind the ends of two ropes together so that they’re one. Join ’em together, like.”
She wondered if that’s where the word had come from, why you married someone when you joined your life to theirs. How strange; casting something she thought she knew in a different light, tracing its unexpected origins back. Here was one small, unexpected benefit to time travel: at least she was learning something. Something she would only be able to use in trivia games, but still.
“—the devil are you, Jack Winstead?” a voice called.
Jack shot over to the door and pulled it open.
“Christ, lad! Were you hiding in there? The new cook’s a beast, but he won’t eat you—”
Etta pushed herself to her feet. The man at the door was younger than she’d expected, given the deep baritone of his voice—she recognized it, though, as the one that had been booming out over the others, issuing commands, even singing. His dirty-blond hair was tied back at the nape of his neck, giving her a nice view of his round, open face and a stitched-up cut running along one cheek. He had the wide shoulders and rounded chest of a pigeon, but moved to snatch Jack’s collar like a hawk.
“I’m so sorry, it’s my fault for keeping him,” Etta said, feeling almost frantic. He wouldn’t hurt the boy, would he?
The other man looked up, releasing Jack. “Oh, beg your pardon, Miss Spencer. If he was assisting you, it’s all right.”
Jack turned back to her, eyes wide.
“He was,” Etta confirmed.
The man looked down at him. “Cook’s been calling your name for the past quarter hour. Go on, look lively, lad.”
He tore out of the room, only to have the man catch him by the collar and drag him back. Jack did his quick version of a bow. “Pleasant evenin’ to ye, miss!”
“We’ll teach that one manners yet,” the man said with a faint trace of exasperation, “though I seem to be lacking them myself. I’m Davy Chase, first mate of the prize crew.”
Etta wasn’t sure what to do with herself as he drew his heels together and gave her yet another bow—curtsy? Nod? She ran through what Jack had given her about him. Likes: music, ale, dock wenches. Dislikes: cabin boys who don’t follow orders, winters in New England, tea. Most interesting, however, was the fact that he’d been raised—fostered, really—by Captain Hall and his late wife, alongside Nicholas.
“Are you well? You gave us quite the fright,” he continued.