by Liz Tyner
When he spoke she moved and closed the distance between them.
He traced her mouth with his fingertip. Her lips parted. Grasping her shoulders, he pulled her to him. The kiss was more than he could ever have imagined.
He reached to her bottom, picking her up and sitting her on the table, sliding his hands down her hips as she sat, and he stood between her legs, letting their kiss blot out everything from their minds.
When he ran his hands back up her thighs, she wore no skirt to flutter up, and, instead of silks or even the soft feel of a chemise, he felt rough wool.
He’d rarely undressed a woman. The ones he’d touched were able to give a twist and lose their shyness, stockings and corsets in less time than it took him to undo his fall. He’d always been impressed.
But the difference in clothing reminded him this wasn’t just any woman. This was Thessa.
He reached under her shirt, stopping at the gentle slope of her waist, and ended the kiss.
He took a half step back, ready to remove their clothing, but she gave a tug and pulled him against her. Her hand found the side of his head and pulled him back into another kiss.
He went forward, one hand bracing, palm flat on the table, the other almost pulling her up his body.
He tried to lever himself back enough to work her shirt buttons and she relaxed her grasp. He wanted to feel her breasts pressed against him and her skin sliding against his.
‘I’ll take care.’ He spoke the words against her lips.
Her hands danced over his back. ‘I knew I waited for you.’
He fell into her kiss again, but then he the words she said began to turn into a sentence. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, savouring. ‘Waited?’
‘Yes.’
‘Waited?’
‘Yes.’
He struggled for air. ‘As in, not done before?’
‘No.’
His mind slowly chugged into a semblance of thinking and he did not move, except to speak. ‘One does not take a virgin on a table.’
She just looked at him, her eyes unfocused.
He shook his head several times.
He moved back, still holding her. He mentally talked himself step by step through what he must do. He kept his voice calm. ‘One does not take a virgin on a table.’
Her voice barely reached his ears. ‘You have a bed.’
‘No. A bunk...’
And I am going to hate myself in the morning either way.
‘I need to leave.’ He grasped the door. He had to leave. He remembered his shirt and swooped his hand to pick it up. Then he touched the door latch and kept his back to her. ‘Thessa, your first time—it should be in a soft bed and one you do not have to leave in the night. It should be with a man who doesn’t have to pull himself from you, but can hold you close as he finishes and can make you feel the same pleasure he feels. You should spend the night skin to skin, heart to heart, knowing when you wake, he’ll be there.’ He turned back. ‘Please promise me you will not settle for less.’
‘I offer myself to you and you say no.’ Her voice rose. ‘Stephanos had to threaten the men on Melos to keep them away. And the French seamen asked for me many times.’
‘Thessa, you know it is for the best.’
‘If we only did what is for the best, would you be on this ship?’
‘Yes.’
‘You lie to yourself. You tell yourself that, but it is not the truth.’
The dowry. He still hadn’t told her about the dowry. But that would not be a problem. He would let the earl handle it. Thessa need never know the funds were on his ship. One thing he knew for certain, now was not the time to tell her.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘that my brother will find a man for you in London.’
She crossed her arms and looked at him. Stephanos had received a gentler stare.
He stepped out the door, moving to the side of the ship distant from the cabin door, and into an area where he could not be viewed from the cabin.
Damn. He went to the railing and, for the first time in his memory, a wave of seasickness rushed over his body. He’d done the most foolish thing of his life, turning away from the one woman in the world who could surpass any mermaid in his mind.
Gidley whistled low when he stepped beside Benjamin. ‘Yer sure pulled yerself back together quick,’ he whispered. ‘Me, I takes my time so they don’t be slammin’ a door.’
Benjamin kept his voice low, calling Gid words the older man had taught him.
‘Ah, my wife called me worse than that afore she woke good in the morning. And I can tell yer not quite happy. Damn near rolled the ship to its side when she slammed the door. Don’t think any of the crew realised she was in yer cabin, though—I been singin’ out orders right and left to keep ’em hoppin’. When I seen her goin’ in, I was expectin’ yer to stay a little longer.’
‘I did the right thing.’
‘Yer sure?’
‘No. I did the wrong thing. I just don’t want to think about it.’ He used his shirt to wipe his forehead and then pulled it over his head.
‘Many’s the time I told yer, lad, don’t ever admit to wrongness. Doesn’t look right fer a capt’n.’
‘I just thought...’ He shook his head. ‘Once I get to England and we get on a real voyage, not this waste of time, then I’ll be thinking straight again. First port we stop at out of England, we’ll take an extra day and I’ll make sure I never think of her again.’
‘Yer has yer plan. Now all yer has to do is follow it,’ he said, nodding. ‘I see that workin’ out real well.’
Chapter Fourteen
Benjamin had not gnawed his fingers off or any other parts of his body to keep himself from going to Thessa and he had not spoken to her or asked of her.
He’d had no need.
The air on the ship carried words of Thessa and he only had to breathe to feel her presence. Whispered voices carried through his open window. Montgomery told Wilson that when Stubby took her breakfast plate, she’d thanked him ‘like she was a real lady.’
And then they’d entered on to a discourse of their first time under a woman’s skirts.
And Gidley snapped at one of the other seaman about bringing more bad luck on to the ship with such coarse talk of women. ‘What if them women in the cabin could hear through the walls?’ Gid had asked.
And then a man had remembered a woman who had ears so big she could have heard through the walls and that wasn’t the only thing of note about her. Then the men had discussed the best pleasuring they’d ever had and Benjamin had left the cabin and shouted out more orders than two ships of men could handle—obviously no one would draw conclusions from that. They’d all been given enough direct commands to keep them angry enough at him they’d be hating him instead of thinking of Thessa.
He’d returned to his cabin, resting his forehead against the wood. He breathed out, and in, and squeezed his eyes shut so hard they hurt.
And if he spent one second alone in her company, he would be not be able to do the right thing. He could not abandon Gid, Stubby and the rest of the crew. He’d turned his back on his father and brothers and their world had continued without him. He didn’t know that the men’s world would go on if he wasn’t there to guide them.
He only had to live out the rest of the voyage and then she would be in his brother’s care and he would not be visiting his brother who had started all this by listening to Thessa’s sister and having the misfortune to get besotted by some woman who if not for bad luck they’d have never seen or heard of or known of the rest of their lives.
If his brother hadn’t been on some foolish diplomatic mission to try to keep the Turks and Greeks from dissolving into bloodshed because a Turkish leader had it into his head that the English would side with the Greeks, then Benjamin wouldn’t have been having the dreams he was having and the feeling that his skin boiled on his body because it was so feverish with need.
He could not hide in his cabin
and he could not continue to snarl at the men every time he heard mention of Thessa. They seemed to have forgotten completely about their superstitions and now he wished their fear of the women to return.
Thessa, with her dark-velvet eyes, and her sea legs, had lodged into the men’s thoughts as well as she had his. Again the image of her stepping from her water in daylight, her chemise hugging her body, slipped into his mind.
He could only be thankful his men hadn’t seen that.
*
‘I can see land.’ Bellona closed the door and stood just inside the cabin. Her eyes sparkled. ‘We are almost there.’
Thessa nodded and put her hand at her stomach. She would be leaving the captain. Even if she had not seen him in days, she’d listened for his voice every waking moment.
‘Perhaps now you will recover from this illness which has kept you from leaving the room,’ Bellona said.
‘I feel so much better.’ And she did. She truly did. The captain had done the right thing. They’d both done the right thing. She knew, because it did not feel good at all.
‘I cannot wait to see the captain’s home.’
‘What?’ Thessa asked, trying to make certain she’d heard what she thought.
‘Gidley says that is where we must wait for our sister to collect us. He said her husband will be certain to have suitable clothing.’
‘But? Can we not wait for them here?’
Bellona shook her head. ‘Why would we want to do that? We have had to take turns making pallets on the floor to sleep and the bed is no softer than the wood. Besides, they have to get the ship ready to sail and Gidley says the docks are no place for us.’ She raised her brows. ‘He claims the sailors all have to go see their mothers the first night the ship is in port.’
‘The captain, too?’
‘His mother has passed and his father, too, because after Gidley told me we would be staying at the captain’s house, I asked him if his family would be there. He said, no, but because we are dressed as his crew, no one will notice us. We’ll only be there a short while because he will send word to his brother that we’ve arrived.’
‘I meant will the captain be at his home?’
‘I asked the captain to take us there. He said he had a lot of duties to attend to once we’d reached shore.’ She shrugged, smiling. ‘But he did not say no.’
*
Seeing the other boats in port didn’t give Benjamin the feeling of comfort he’d expected. The last of the voyage had been calm. The only rough sailing had been inside his own skin and the waves in his mind were just as choppy as they’d been on the night he didn’t bed Thessa.
He stared at the familiar sights of the dockyards and smelled a cargo of cinnamon or some spices, a short while later tobacco, and then perhaps odours from animal hides and horns.
Plain lodgings housed dock workers, and provision agents were everywhere. This world touched a part of his soul no Almack’s assembly could find. No part of London felt as alive to him as the docks. This world was flavoured by the waters.
But now, seeing the port gave him the sense of death. The memories of working at the warehouse and feeling the aloneness twisted inside him with the knowledge that he was sending Thessa to her new world, whilst he was staying in his old one. Air kept wanting to clog inside him. He had to keep telling himself to breathe and to move and to think—that she was going to be with her sister—in a world of finery where she belonged.
He would be with his ship and taking care of the men and making sure they stayed alive—where he belonged and where he was necessary to keep the people around him safe.
Stubby stepped beside him. ‘Capt’n, you takin’ Thessa home with you?’
The words put a sensual image into Benjamin’s mind. Thessa in his home. Examining the mementos he’d collected from the sea. Curled among his bedcovers, enticing views of skin for only him. ‘I’ll get her settled. At the family town house.’
If he put a cap on her, since she was already dressed as a male, no one would notice him bringing a seafaring man to the town house. And the man and woman who tended his home were not of the ton. They’d seen so many different people with unfamiliar manners of life, they accepted more than Benjamin did.
Ben gripped the rails and looked down at Stubby. The boy would need clothing before they left the dock. He couldn’t count on Gid to think of it on his own. He’d have to mention it and make sure Stubby had something better than rags to wear. The lad should start dressing better. Some day he would be using himself as a compass to guide his crew. Ben knew he could give the boy all he needed to grow into a captain, just as Gid had done for him.
‘Stub, make sure my gear is ready,’ he commanded, ‘and see to Gid’s and your own. You’re to stay with Gidley and make sure to keep him from trouble.
The boy skipped away and Benjamin saw him catch up to Gidley. Gid reached out and tugged Stubby’s hair, as a grandfather might, and Stubby’s laughter rang in the air.
At that moment, the door of the physician’s cabin opened and the women stepped out. Thessa’s eyes stopped on him and his stomach tumbled. He had to force a pleasant look to his face when he walked to her. The thought of leaving her churned his insides.
She turned her eyes to him. Neither looked away while he spoke. ‘I’ve made plans for you to stay at the town house. Even though my brothers and I share it, we’re hardly ever there at the same time and it’s a simple place. I’ll get you caps to hide your hair. We’ll arrive at dusk or after. No one will even notice.’
He put a hand to the ropes to steady himself. ‘The country estate my brother has is very different, though. That’s where your sister lives. With all the servants there and it truly being an earl’s household,’ he continued, ‘you shouldn’t arrive at an earl’s house wearing trousers, but as ladies. We don’t want to cause any talk which might reflect badly on Melina, or her future children. I have to present myself there much better than wearing a seaman’s rough sailing wear.
‘Will you be there?’ Thessa asked.
He held out his arm to her. ‘I will leave Gidley in charge of Ascalon.’
Chapter Fifteen
Thessa sat in the hired coach, gripping the bundled chemise in her lap. She glanced at the clothing, while she picked at the threads coming unsewn on the garment’s shoulder seam.
Her stomach flip-flopped. The captain was taking them to his home. On the Ascalon every time she’d heard his voice though the wall, mostly shouts, she’d stilled to listen.
Now Thessa rode in a carriage, something she’d never expected, and looked at a world her father had mentioned many times, yet she hadn’t been prepared for.
So many carriages. People. And houses. Houses and people. If she had thought of how a goddess lived, she would not have imagined such lodgings even for the highest spirit.
When the hackney stopped, she and Bellona stepped out. They waited for the second carriage to deposit the captain and his chest. The captain promptly paid the coachman and the driver helped him with the trunk. None of this was new to anyone else around them and the others accepted the grandeur as commonplace.
Benjamin whistled as he walked up the steps to the entrance and a manservant opened the door—a mountain disguised as a man. She wondered if the giant had to bend his knees and turn sideways to go through doorways. His appearance would have been overpowering, if not for the happiness bursting in his eyes.
The barest hint of something baked touched her nose, something she’d never smelled before. And the other foreign scents must have had something to do with the cleanliness of the house. How did people sleep in such a cavernous place?
‘Captain. Was almost worried about you.’ The servant bowed to Benjamin, her and Bellona, an elaborate movement.
‘Never concern yourself about me, Broomer.’ Benjamin’s face lightened.
‘Was almost—almost worried. Not quite,’ Broomer repeated, his voice sounding like a chuckle rippled beneath it.
The servant led the
m up the stairs, near walking backwards so he could hold the lamp, shining the way for them. She held tightly to the railing and then she realised it held fast, without swaying.
She saw nothing rotted or worn. Broomer took them to a room without a bed in it. It lacked a table for eating. Just sitting furniture filled it. Even the walls had a well-cared-for look, with feathery-wispy shapes painted just below the edge of the ceiling and running around the whole of the room. A weapon leaned against one corner of the wall—a harpoon. She smelled mixed pigments and looked to the painting over the fireplace.
It hadn’t been finished long. Ascalon.
Broomer spoke to Benjamin, ‘Dolly said you’d be home any day now. Tried to catch me in a wager but I’ve learned better than any games of chance with her. Sometimes I think she is part gypsy. She has some treats made so you’d have a bite of her fine apricot tarts soon as you get settled.’ He swept an arm to the rendition of the ship. ‘And your painting arrived. The earl took the one of the three children by the sea to his home.’
Benjamin’s lips turned up, but sadness took over his face and he took a step towards it. ‘The painting is exactly as I’d hoped.’
‘Delivered just yesterday.’
‘He captured her beautifully.’ He stared at the ship again, unmoving.
Thessa saw nothing about the painting to bring such a look in the captain’s eyes. But again, the ship was painted like some majestic vessel. The artist had lied.
When he turned back to them he gave a half smile.
‘Tell Dolly to prepare meals fit for goddesses.’ He paused. ‘Is Dane about?’
‘No. He’s been at the earl’s house, making sure the gardener knows his duties, though I expect him back when he gets tired of digging around the dirt. So, I’m not planning on seeing him soon...’
‘Then Bellona will have the room with the garden-like fripperies and Thessa can take the red-and-golden chamber. Tell Dolly to help you. I want the ladies to be comfortable.’
‘Ladies?’ Broomer asked and then turned to Thessa. His eyes widened and he took a step back. His arm knocked a vase askew and, without fully taking his eyes from Thessa, he caught the porcelain. ‘Didn’t realise you weren’t the captain’s crew mates.’
