Read Online A Heart's Treasure by Teresa DesJardien - Free Book Online

“Then you’ll have heard it said the giant ones—like this vile monster—can reach right up out of the merciless sea to the deck of a great ship. It can snatch a man down to his watery death, in a moment, as it wraps its mighty tentacles about the man, squeezing the life from him, making him gasp for breath even as its awful jaws come down and tear his head from right off his body.”
    “Is that right, Harve? Them occupuses got great, big jaws, do they?” Harve’s neighbor asked anxiously.
    Harve looked uncertain, but then he nodded. “Right then, that’s what Oi’ve heard.”
    “So an octopus attempted to tear off your head?” Michael, gamely repressing a smile, supplied the question for Xavier, who acknowledged the favor with an inclination of his head.
    “Oh no, not I. ‘Twas the captain who had his head torn off. But before, as he was being dragged across the deck, screaming and thrashing as a man would, that’s when his hook raked across my face,” he cried with a gesture to accent the story, then pointed to his patch. “The captain took my eye to the briny depths and left me with this appalling reminder of that poor soul’s final moments.”
    At last Haddy responded, with a tiny shake of his head and an even tinier smile.
    A silence filled the room for a moment, broken only by the ticking of a clock above the room’s empty grate.
    “Go on wit’ yer!” a voice suddenly called from the back of the crowd.
    Someone tittered, and then there was a general, appreciative laugh.
    Xavier smiled broadly. “But ’tis true. Every word.” He tilted his head to one side in a quick bob. “Or, well, some of them could be true.”
    “Such as ‘the’ and ‘heard it said’,” Haddy put in.
    Harve looked about, realizing the truth a little too far behind his mates. The severely drunken man who’d first asked the question of Xavier turned to Harve and bawled, “You booby!”
    “Booby, am I? Yer the drunken sot—”
    “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Xavier spoke. “My tale is told, and the hour is late. May I suggest you assist one another in returning home?” His lips remained upturned, but something steely had crept into the gray of his good eye.
    Harve and the drunken man fell still, until someone thumped them both in the back and  the group around him laughed anew. Joshed and harried to his feet, Harve belatedly mumbled a sheepish “Right-o, m’lord” to Xavier, and his mates good-naturedly ushered him and themselves out into the night.
    * * *
    Kenneth took advantage during the commotion to lean toward Michael. He whispered, “How did he lose that eye? I’ve never known.”
    Michael spread his hands. “Nor I. For my cheek in asking once, he gave me a punch that gave me a week-long bruise on my arm. I never asked again.”
    Kenneth nodded in empathy. “Me, too.” He considered a moment. “Haddy knows, I think.”
    “He denied it to me once.” Michael rubbed his chin. “But I didn’t quite believe him. I think he knows at least something about it.”
    Kenneth nodded again.
    “I tell you this, I think Haddy’s determined to keep Xavier’s secret.” Kenneth’s nod came a third time. “What might it be?” Michael pressed. “Surely nothing that requires such perpetual concealment?”
    “Unless his father…?”
    Both men strained to imagine Lord Fenworth somehow causing the injury and Xavier forever after hiding his parent’s blame through silence—but in the end they both shook their heads. “Fenworth and Warfield get on. There’s no…,” Michael searched for the word, “no strangeness between them.” He pointed his finger at Kenneth and twisted his hand in a gesture that said he had another point to make. “And accident or no, Fenworth would accept the responsibility. We’d surely have heard the tale by now it he’d caused the injury, don’t you think?”
    “Yes. Even if a punishment had somehow gone awry…or…”
    Both men reconsidered, but finally Kenneth shrugged.