Jennifer Horseman

by GnomeWonderland

  ftp- She saw she had no choice. If she had a choice, a ™ choice about anything, she would not only refuse to touch these clothes but she'd be a million miles away. If wishes came true, Garrett and his ship would vanish from the face of the earth, banished in one sweep. Banished too would be the very memory of a night she would otherwise never live long enough to forget.

  The day warmed by small degrees as the ship sailed ever closer to Gibraltar. Garrett spent the day in labor with the crew, shifting the weight of the cargo. A heavy load it was, too: bales and bales of tea and tobacco. Like a stage prop, the cargo presented the necessary evidence of pillaging and pirating. The hard labor drenched him in perspiration as he finally emerged on deck an hour from the supper bell. Without warning, he climbed the rail and dove into the sea.

  Gayle rushed to the rail to watch. Garrett swam away from the ship, effortlessly gliding over gentle swells, swells that fragmented the light of the setting sun. Gar-rett's eccentricities were numerous, and one of these was an adamant belief in the healing power of saltwater baths. "Two saltwater baths a day not only prevents all ailments and disease it also cleanses and reinvigorates the skin." To which Pots replied, "So would shooting myself, but does that mean I do it?"

  The queer bathing habit started during the three years Garrett spent in the Japans as a young man. Not only did he learn of the strange religion of these people, he also adopted many of their habits, regular bathing being one of these. Interested in any healing tool or program, Gayle wanted to believe regular bathing helped ward off diseases. True, he had never known Garrett to be ill: he never once succumbed to the common head colds that swept through the ship, or to any fever. On the other hand, Garrett had trained him too well in the sciences to admit what could very well be a spurious connection between these events. No doubt, a large part of Garrett's enviable health was due to an ironclad constitution rather than to vegetarianism and saltwater baths, as Garrett himself believed. Besides, Gayle smiled, like his father, Pots, and all of the crew, he'd prefer an occasional head cold to a daily routine of ice-cold saltwater swims.

  Gayle waited with a towel and one of Garrett's journals as Garrett climbed back up on deck. He spent several minutes shouting orders to the new watch before carefully recording in his book the wind, weather, longitude, latitude, position of the sails, and the changed position of the ship's cargo. This too was one of Garrett's experiments, an effort to determine the most advantageous position of cargo in a ship's hold for speed.

  Gayle leaned against the ship's rail, arms folded across his chest, waiting. Garrett carefully entered the new numbers. "What's bothering you, Gayle?"

  Gayle knew Garrett too well to be surprised by the wealth of his perceptions. "What's wrong? Her agony as she tries to write that letter to her young man. Curse him to hell, but I'd love to do it for her: 'Dear Sir: We have your young lady aboard our ship. We happen to notice scars on her back and a mangled, scarred hand. Did you notice this? By chance did you notice how terrified she is, the sadness surrounding her? By any chance—" '

  "Enough, Gayle," Garrett interrupted with some small irritation, stopping to shout an order across the deck. "The last thing I need reminding of is that ... ah, young man, as you say. What else?"

  A warm breeze gave life to Gayle's hair, which he settled back with his hands. "She's not eating."

  Garrett closed the book with a snap. "Gayle, if there's any axiom about human beings, it's that if they breathe they also eat."

  "Or get sick. Make her, Garrett," he took the book, "that is, if you can draw more than one easy breath upon seeing her changed looks in those clothes you handed her. Though I suppose potato sacks would scarcely fail to hide how pretty she is. As pretty as—"

  "Elsbeth?" Garrett supplied, knowing his youngest sister owned Gayle's heart.

  "Anyway," Gayle grinned, "the crew has bets on how long before something or someone in the captain's quarters gives."

  "The only thing that's going to give is my patience with my crew. Jesus, I know I've been at sea too long when my crew begins to find amusement by placing wagers on what is or is not happening in my bed. God, Gayle," he sighed, kneeling down to pet Brute, who in his typical manner cowered until he felt Garrett's gentle hand, "how I loathe this endless blue desert of the sea. I want to go home. I want to look at green fields and trees and earth—"

  "Soon enough, Garrett," Leif joined in, hearing this last. "Another few months, a year on the outside, and the war will be over—"

  "Aye, and another started ..."

  My dearest Tomas, Where do I begin?

  Just that quickly she stopped, unable to answer the question, even after trying all day. She kept starting the sentences, first running them through her mind, only to discard them inevitably. No explanation said enough; any explanation said too much. The whole effort forced her to confront what she wanted most to forget, giving rise to a million questions she needed answers to. The most desperate question only Garrett could answer, and how terribly hard it would be to ask him.

  She wanted to cry; she wished she could.

  The door opened and Garrett stepped inside. Gayle's comment could not prepare him for the sight of her sitting at his desk. The agony of her task marked her face but did nothing to detract from the dual effect of blue silk near those eyes and the long braided hair. The clothes hung loosely on her slender frame, drawing and holding his gaze with an exotic lure, leaving it maddeningly unfulfilled.

  Juliet looked up once, taking in his unnaturally tall, bare-muscled frame, his long wet hair, the intensity of his gaze. The dagger cut had faded to the faintest of lines, though the mark above that seemed to have darkened ... as if to mock her. There was something dangerous about him too; she felt it despite his benign greeting. She looked away wordlessly as he crossed the space of the room, disappearing into the dressing room.

  He emerged minutes later, clad in plain beige breeches, a loose fitting shirt, and black boots. Sitting at the table, he poured some water and reached for an apple from the fruit bowl, an act that reminded her of the first time she lifted her eyes to him there, of the terror she had felt then and still felt now. She remembered the apple and the knife, how he had tossed it at her and made her undress and —

  She couldn't breathe suddenly. The loud thud of her heart washed her in a hot wave of panic. Fearing his attention, she tried to control it and calm down, but this was not possible. It became even less possible as he rose and came to the desk. He leaned over, watching her carefully. She became aware of the silence in the room; even Polly said nothing as he flew to Garrett's shoulder.

  "You look faint, Juliet. I want to know if it's from not eating today or from the memory we're both struggling to escape?"

  Startled eyes lifted to his but lowered quickly. After this morning she knew not to provoke him, but as with her uncle, she did not have any sense of what did or did not provoke him. Hence her silence. Then she felt his hand on her face, lifting her eyes to him. His touch felt warm and gentle, contrasting with his words: "Answer me, love. Silence will not work with me."

  "I'm not hungry."

  The clever answer earned his amusement. He looked down at her neat white page, reading the address and the question that followed. "Gayle tells me you're having trouble writing this ... ah, letter?"

  She paused, hesitating. She had to ask and he was the only one who could answer. "Garrett ... I, I—" She struggled to say it but couldn't, the heat of his stare adding to the pounding of her heart and the color burning on her cheeks. In a whisper she only touched upon the trouble, avoiding the real question until she measured his response. "I dont know what to tell him."

  "I believe that, love. In truth, he should know everything by my name, so feel free to lie by omission. Otherwise tell the truth: that you are safe and I will keep you that way, succeeding where he has failed so miserably."

  She just stared for a long moment, and his consciousness focused on her rapid shallow breaths, the pain appearing as a mist in the encha
nting eyes as she struggled to control her response. For all of it, he was nonetheless glad; pain should be associated with that boy's name, and if she did not make the connection herself, he would make it for her.

  Then he saw the color drain from her face. A strange glaze came over her eyes and he abruptly realized the magnitude of the strain she was under, a strain not helped by fasting. He quickly came to her side. "Easy, love. No, don't look at me like that. Believe me when I say I'm not about to molest a young lady faint from hunger. Put your arms around my neck. No? Then walk over to the table there," he said as his hand came to her elbow to aid her movement.

  She rose unsteadily, not understanding the dizziness, unless it came as a warning of his nearness. She felt better once she sat at the table and drank the water he pressed into her hand. He was watching her closely now, even when Leif, Gayle, and two other men, Garrett's first officers, Kyle Grayson and Cosmo Hunter, came in with a number of others serving dinner.

  She clutched the robe tight about her person. The number of men in the room both alarmed and relieved her. For a long time she could not say which she felt most. Everyone acted solicitous and polite in the extreme, though, especially Garrett at the head of the long table and Leif at her side. While she occasionally felt someone's interested appraisal, she was for the most part ignored.

  The talk was heated and passionate, centering on Napoleon and Nelson, a French naval force and a certain Vice Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve, whom she had read about before. Maps were produced, passed around, and discussed; apparently they were theorizing and debating possible French naval plans. Why, she had to wonder, listening with obvious interest as she tried to make sense of their motivations.

  "Wine, love?" Garrett interrupted to ask casually. He watched her reaction with interest—a surprised look, a nod, a very curious stare as he poured the dark red burgundy in her glass —and he realized, dear God, this was the first time anyone had ever offered her a glass of wine.

  Actually, Juliet had had wine on holidays with her mother. In the French tradition, her mother would mix wine with water for her on special occasions. She remembered these happy times as she took a sip. Garrett watched her, the conscious effort she put to giving the first taste a worldly look. He did not at first realize how he smiled, that everyone fell silent as their interest followed his until in this silence he heard: "Shall I show you, love? Bawk, bawk, shall I?"

  Juliet's eyes flew to Garrett in alarm, as if she had thought he said it, which made Garrett laugh. Polly ruffled his feathers and, pleased with the response, added in a queer feminine voice that had nothing to do now with Juliet's experience, "Faster, Garrett, faster, bawk, bawk, oh yes—"

  The men laughed but Garrett clamped his fingers over Polly's beak. "That's enough, boy."

  "Boy?" Kyle questioned, "Sounded like a woman to me-"

  "Flat as a boy, bawk! Could hardly get it up—"

  "Jesus," Garrett laughed with the others. "I've a mind to wire your beak shut."

  "Damn," Leif shook his head, "if that bird cannot make grown men blush."

  The men laughed good naturedly and Polly seemed to settle down, but seeing Garrett's changed face as he looked to Juliet, the bird nudged his cheek to atone for his mischief. "Kiss me, love, kiss—"

  "Jesus, now you would turn queer on me!" Garrett said in exasperation as he banished the bird from his shoulder. Polly flew around the room, finally settling on his perch. Just that quickly the men resumed talking, please tell him I'm safe. . . .

  Her most pressing question: if she never told Tbmas what happened, would he know when he married her? Garrett knew he had been her first but would Tomas know he wasn't? How strange . . . she remembered Madame Gaston saying to one of her woman friends: "A virgin? Besides the holy Joseph, no man has ever known for sure. . . ." If only she could keep it a secret, bury it in the darkest place of her heart and spare Tomas her own agony. ...

  Tomas, I love you . . . I love you. She closed her eyes, conjuring his image in perfect detail and imagining his love reaching across the distance to offer the reassurance that it didn't matter, that nothing mattered but getting back to him. Either Garrett could be made to understand or she would escape. Without means or money, somehow she would escape to return to him. And should she put that in the letter or would Garrett be mean enough to read it before he posted it? If only she knew . . .

  Juliet looked over to the table where two men worked quietly at the maps. Gayle peered down Garrett's scope, one of dozens of strange things that excited her curiosity. When Garrett wasn't involved in sailing the ship he either wrote, worked complicated figures at his desk, or peered through the scope, an interest he apparently shared with Gayle. Gayle always came in to arrange the scope for Garrett, bringing in dozens of those glass jars filled with unidentifiable horrors inside. Bits and pieces of these would be carefully set upon small squares made of glass, then peered at through the contraption. Garrett would make marks in a book as he looked. Sometimes what he saw excited him, and if Gayle wasn't with him, he'd call him in to look too. "I'll gladly explain what I'm doing love. Are you interested? No? Odd, you look like you might fall over with your curiosity. If you change your mind . . ."

  She pretended not to be interested in anything he did, which was very hard when so many things about him seemed so strange to her, tickling her curiosity mercilessly. Not just things like the scope or his perpetual motion machine or his fish collection but the wealth of his strange history: Where was he born and raised? How did he become such a terrible man? How was it, dear Lord, that he had an interest in philosophy and religion—most of his books were on elevated, scholarly subjects! "Garrett," she'd very much like to ask "how is it you read Saint Francis of Assisi but then turn around and blast a ship to pieces, murder innocent sailors, and steal their cargo? What is all this talk about your quest to find the place where science and mysticism meet?" As if all that weren't strange enough—and if she could believe her ears—apparently Garrett had spent three years studying with an oriental monk named Chein Lee! And what about Leif, a great gentle giant, a man who loved his family and who spoke of such high moral principles—against tyranny and for liberty—including even the slave trade in the sweep of his moral indignation? What was he doing here, and, dear Lord, with his son?

  "Iwas so hard to believe; it didn't make sense. . . .

  Contradictions abounded, piling higher and higher. Garrett not only cared for his creatures but treated them with an astonishing and admittedly touching gentleness — like this silly turtle. He treated his men with a fair and egalitarian hand, and as far as she could tell, he earned not just their respect and admiration but a reverence that bordered on love, a love that became most apparent in Gayle and Leif.

  Yet he was, they all were, the most feared criminals in the world. Garrett's hand brought destruction and cruelty across the seas, a destruction she had felt firsthand: he had abducted and raped her, killed her uncle, and made her a prisoner against her will, only to then have the unprecedented gall to pass a moral indictment against Tomas! Which was so ... so maddening! Not just that the judgment was unkind and slanderously unfair, that Garrett didn't even know Tomas, his extremely kind and good nature, but that Garrett, little better than a barbarian really, would pass it.

  She jumped to her feet, feeling that strange panic again as she confronted the tangled emotions Garrett caused in her. She couldn't think about it, him, Garrett, without her heart pounding, her blood rushing, without feelings of helplessness, shame, shock, the desire to scream, run, tear her hair out.

  Garrett's treatment of her brought even more confusion. He had hurt her badly, threatening her in the worst way, terrorizing her with more than a beating, and now he kept her against her will. There were smaller tyrannies too: he refused to let her read his books. . . . "Don't ask me the favor again," he had said the first and only time she asked.

  On the other hand, she had threatened to murder him and he responded with little more than amusement. At times he wa
s . . . kind and even polite, ignoring her silences, letting her sleep in a hammock, providing her with baths and even scented water. Yesterday he announced that he had dreamt that she had a fondness for strawberry tarts; that very day he made the ship's cook, Pots, make some for her. She had been too shocked to inquire how he really knew that, much less where Pots had gotten the strawberries. Garrett kept orange and apple trees—two each—in great large pots topside, but strawberries?

  Then with no warning, she'd feel that strange tension between them, like lightning waiting to crack, an unspoken threat for no reason she knew; she'd just be brushing her hair or petting little Vespa or trying to write her letter when she'd look up to see him staring at her and—

  The door opened, Juliet braced instinctively but it was only the man Heart. He looked to the table where two men were examining the maps. "Got a Gainsport wind out there, the devil's own. All hands to haul in the miz-zen."

  Polly flew about the room, echoing inanities as the men quickly cleared the room. "Nay, not you, Gayle. We can get on with one less."

  "Aye, aye." Gayle sat back down, returning to the scope.

  Rather absently she asked: "What is a Gainsport wind?"

  Gayle looked up, surprised. This was the first time she had ever initiated a conversation, bent as she was on punishing them for her young man's despicable cowardice. He rewarded the change with a pleased smile, his full attention. "An erratic wind, 'tis all."