The Windflower

by Laura London

  “If you want her, she’s yours,” said Morgan in a quiet, bored voice.

  Once, long ago, there had been a man inside Devon that would have been shocked by the suggestion, though even then he would have had the poise to hide it. The sophisticated corruptions of his young manhood in the years before he met Morgan had been many and varied, but raping women in an advanced state of pregnancy had not been among them. Perhaps it was the rum, but he wondered what other things he had destroyed inside himself as he had slowly exorcised the part of his soul that would have flinched from Morgan’s words.

  Underneath the peerless face of an angel Devon’s ice-encrusted spirit disdained the female sex. Every woman he had ever desired had been his for the asking, and the result on the inner workings of his mind had been unsavory in the extreme. Morgan could have told anyone interested that on the digits of a one-handed gypsy you could count Devon’s positive relationships with women.

  “I don’t think so,” said the man Devon had become. “Thank you all the same. Tonight I don’t find myself feeling sufficiently creative.”

  “Why the devil not, Carl?” Jason was saying in an urgent whisper. Each passing minute had made him look, to Merry, increasingly high-strung. He had certainly become increasingly profane. “We’ll have to take the risk, to get the girls out of here. Even a damned-to-hell pirate knows that a woman in Merry’s condition… Monk’s buttocks, it doesn’t make a spit of difference whether it’s real or supposed, as long as they believe it’s real! What can they think but that Sally’s taking Merry out to use the convenience? The girls don’t look, do they, as if they’re able to up and ride off for the Army?”

  Carl leaned forward on his elbows, lifting the fist that he had been lightly and nervously rapping against the table. “Maybe. Maybe. But what if it misfires, eh? And it ends up drawing more attention to them?”

  “More attention? What in the devil does that mean?” Jason hissed back. “You’ve seen the way that gorgeous blond son of a bitch has been looking at Merry.”

  “The odds are, though,” said Sally calmly, “that given Merry’s state he won’t do more than look.”

  It was through clenched teeth that Jason said, “I’ll bet with the odds every time, Sal, but not, damn it, when the stake is Merry’s rosy pink—Here, what’s this? Carl, take a gander over there.”

  The rough fellow who had been sitting at the table with the man Merry had come to draw had gotten up and was walking toward Morgan’s table with an agonizingly set grin on his bulldog face and a reluctant shuffle, as though he had little faith in the steadiness of his knees. He nodded eagerly to Morgan and boomed a few words of greeting. Morgan stared silently back, his eyes glittering in a strange way. With great casualness he pulled a knife from his belt and held it in front of him, examining it as one would a curiosity. And it was a curiosity—the blade was a long brass crescent, with small hungry slashes running backward on the edge like shark’s teeth.

  Shaking like spooned jelly, the ruffian spread his arms in an expansive, conciliatory gesture and began to say something in a rapid voice that collapsed into spasmodic coughing. The crowd watched in horrified fascination as Rand Morgan slipped his wicked blade into the lamp chimney on the table. Blue flame licked at the serrated edge, making it glow red.

  “Carl, what’s he doing?” Merry was unable to keep the apprehension from her voice. “What are they going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Carl, suddenly won over to Jason’s point of view, “but whatever it is, I don’t want you in here to watch.” He glanced at his cousin. “We’ll do it your way, Jason. Sally, you and Merry slip out the back door—it’ll be less obtrusive. If there’s any talking to be done, you take care of it.”

  Sally whispered to Merry, “Lean against me and do your best to look faint. Can you do that?”

  Merry mustered the beginnings of a smile. “With dazzling authenticity—I am about to faint! Carl, are you sure you and Jason can’t come with us?”

  “They’re likely to kill us just for trying,” answered Jason. “Now go, and quickly.”

  Merry felt Sally’s arm slide around her waist. She let her head droop to her cousin’s shoulder, and they walked toward the door. Many in the tavern watched them go, with eyes frightened and curious, but no one in the tableau around the heating blade seemed to take notice of them. The pirate who was guarding their intended exit drew up and stepped in their path.

  “Go on back to yer chairs and sit down,” he growled, jerking his head.

  “Please—my sister is feeling unwell,” answered Sally. “I want to take her outside to lie in the wagon.”

  “Later.” The word was a soft growl.

  “Please let us go. She is not many weeks from her time and needs rest. A shock could make the baby come early.” Sally gazed at him wide-eyed, and in a voice that carried she added, “I beg of you. I’m sure you had a mother once yourself.”

  The pirate’s hard, impassive face seemed to flicker, betraying an unfathomable emotion. He lifted the sword blade a bit, signaling to Morgan’s long-haired companion, who looked hard at them across the room before nodding dismissively. Without another word the pirate moved aside and let them pass, his face an unreadable slab once more. The door closed softly behind them, a sound which occasioned tremendous relief for them, and they stood and inhaled the cool salty air. The moon, too bright almost to look at, was laying a burning silver trail on the surf crashing on the coast; they could see it far off over the black tree line. Sally and Merry glanced at each other and fled down the steps with such dispatch that Merry tumbled over the last two and landed hard on her knees, catching her petticoats in a tight bunch beneath her. The dozen dainty brass pins that held on her pillow were thrust hard into the soft flesh of her stomach, and giving a sharp cry of pain, she jumped to her feet, yanking her skirt away from her. Promptly she was answered by a series of tiny metallic pings that sounded like an honor guard of Lilliputian infantry firing a twenty-one-gun salute. With an audible flump the bundle of straw and feathers collapsed out of her dress, littering the damp, pebbled sand like dirty snow.

  In startled dismay Merry cried, “Sally! My pins have popped off their heads!”

  “Damn, damn, damn! If men can invent a steam engine that goes five miles an hour, why can’t they think of a way to make pins in one piece so they can’t snap apart!” Sally glared at the bundle at Merry’s feet. “Stupid things! Thank the Lord it didn’t happen indoors! Merry, you stay here, gather your stuffings as best you can, and I’ll race to the wagon for more pinheads.”

  “Sally, please! I want to come with you. It won’t matter, will it?”

  “Yes, it matters. They may well have someone watching the wagons, and if they see you’re not pregnant, we’ve lost our excuse for being outside the tavern. If they think we’ve come out to fetch the militia, we’re as good as dead.”

  “But, Sally—”

  “You’ll be fine. Just stay here, and don’t be afraid if it takes me a little while. I’ve got to move cautiously. The yard may be alive with Morgan’s men, and I want to avoid as many of them as possible.”

  “What if somebody comes?” whispered Merry.

  “Hide under the stairs.” Sally’s whisper was as hushed as the darkness into which she disappeared, and Merry was alone in the tavern’s black shadow. Before her lay the night beach, echoing with the boom of the midnight surf, stinking with the tidal litter of dying seaweed and dead crabs. Massive boulders humped the shoreline, like the backs of enormous turtles. Had one of them moved? No, no, of course not. With a shiver that had nothing to do with the night breeze, Merry knelt on the gritty sand and began energetically to gather her shedded pile into her cotton bag. Her breath came tight and quick. Not a nuance of either the absurdity or the danger of the situation was lost on her.

  As abrupt as a thunderclap on a still morning came the squeal of corroded hinges as the tavern door behind her opened, catching her in the middle of its lengthening rhomboid of light. Merry�
��s spine injected a paralyzing terror serum through her body that turned her muscles to damp paper. The cotton bundle slid from her fingers and opened as it hit the ground, showering her with a geyser of feathers and dust.

  The door slammed shut, and there were footsteps on the porch and steps. Merry raised her eyes, helpless, humiliated, frantic, and saw standing in the starlight before her Morgan’s companions, the blond archangel of a man and the long-haired boy. Her galloping heart sped blood through her fragile veins until she was nearly deafened by its pounding rush, and with fear-dulled senses she saw dimly that the blond man was laughing.

  In one flashing second the boy sank an iron grip into the curve of her shoulders and hauled her to her feet. He gave the fallen bundle a nudge with his moccasined foot.

  “Congratulations, little mother,” he said in a dangerous tone. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  Three lives besides Merry’s own hung suspended in the balance. She croaked, “Don’t kill us! Please! We weren’t going to bring the militia.”

  “The devil you weren’t,” snarled the boy, his fingers pressing tighter into her aching shoulders.

  Behind him she heard the blond man say, “Softly, Cat.” Then with a laugh, “You had a mother once yourself.”

  “No, Devon,” snapped the boy. “I was spawned.” He took a handful of her bodice and shook her back and forth slowly, as easily as he might have a cloth doll. “Stupid, lying bitch. I ought to feed you to the sharks. Where’s your friend?”

  She would have died rather than expose Sally. “I don’t know.”

  This time the shake was painful. “That isn’t what I wanted to hear. Do you want to learn the hard way how little patience I’ve got?”

  He put back his hand to strike her, but even as she recoiled shudderingly from him the man called Devon stopped the boy with a gesture. “Cat, no,” he said. “I know it doesn’t seem worth the trouble to you, but there really are better ways to do these things.”

  To her surprise the boy released her. She staggered on legs that had little strength to hold her, and Devon encircled her shoulders with a light protective arm. It had been a night of one shock after the next, and Merry’s unaccustomed senses blazed as he caressed the tumbled curls from her taut cheeks.

  “If you like, don’t tell us where your friend is,” he said. “Just tell me why she left you.”

  Merry’s voice trembled. “She had to bring more pins, so that no one would see that I was really not—that I was not…”

  The boy swore and said, “If we get militia, yours will be the first throat I’m going to cut.”

  Devon brought the back of his hand softly down the side of her face. “You think she’s lying, Cat?”

  “Oh, I suppose not,” the boy said irritably. “It’s ludicrous enough to be true. Look, if you don’t want the wench mauled, then you’d better stay here and keep her out of sight when the crew comes. I’ll go signal. And who knows?” He swept up a hunk of the filling from Merry’s cotton sack and tossed it casually into the breeze. “Maybe this time you’ll be the one who gets to stuff her.”

  He left them, running lightly down the silver beach, his white-blond hair catching the moonbeams, gleaming like a passing banshee.

  Caught still under the drape of Devon’s arm, her body stiff, Merry raised a hand despairingly to her forehead.

  “Do you know,” he asked her in an amiable way, “that you’re white as a sail?”

  Her palm fell to her cheek; the skin was clammy under her shivering fingers. She was ashamed of her cowardice, her crying, the whimper in her voice. There were probably a hundred spunky things that a woman of spirit would have thought of to say, and all she had managed to do was plead pitifully for her life. In a bitter epiphany she saw herself as she was, an inexperienced, awkward teenager, endowed with more imagination than poise.

  Knowing she must confront this man, she turned to face him, but since the top of her head came no higher than his shoulder, she found herself looking straight at his chest and made the unsettling discovery that he had no shirt on under his jacket. Hastily she looked up at the gemstone eyes, which were tucked at the corners with a smile.

  In all her upbringing there had been nothing that taught her how she ought to behave now, and the only thing she could think of was a line from a penny dreadful that one of the maidservants had once let her read. Somehow, though, looking at the clever face above her, she doubted that a proclamation of “Unhand me, sirrah” would achieve much more than a laugh. Reworking it into the vernacular, she said, “Let me go.” It was the best voice she could produce, but it was a forceless one for all that, and it cracked embarrassingly on the last word, so she was hardly surprised when it produced no immediate results. “Please,” she added.

  He slid his hand under hers, where it lay cupped on her chest. His hand seemed warmer than her own, and drier, and the shock of the unfamiliar intimacy made her stumble backward into the rickety porch railing behind her. She spun and clutched at it to save herself from falling. The railing gave under the pressure of her hand, sending a stream of splinters flying to the ground. The self-reproach came, instantly and automatically.

  “Oh,” she said numbly. “I’ve broken it.”

  She heard his soft laughter behind her and wheeled in fear, the broken railing held tight across her bosom.

  “Be careful, there might be nails,” he said, and in a gentle imperative added, “Hand it to me. I’ll fix it for you.”

  She put it in his hand and then thought, too late, Merry Patricia Wilding, if you had half an ounce of courage, you’d have whacked him over the head with it.

  “You’re very amusing, you know,” he said conversationally as he was sliding the railing back into place, matching the holes with the nails.

  For the first time since she’d left the tavern, she felt an emotion stirring within her that was not terror.

  “I wasn’t aware that I was being amusing,” she said, a terse edge to her voice.

  He finished the task and turned to look at her. “I never supposed you were aware of it. But don’t you think you were being a little overly conscientious? Under the circumstances.”

  It was much the kind of thing that Carl might have said, and it hit uncomfortably close to the truth. Before she could stop herself, Merry bit out, “I suppose you think nothing of knocking whole villages to the ground.”

  “Nothing at all,” he said cheerfully.

  “And terrorizing innocent women!” she said, a tremble in her voice.

  “Yes. Innocent ones,” he said, running his palm along her flat stomach where the stuffing had lately been, “and not so innocent ones.”

  She nearly fainted under his touch. “Don’t do that,” she said, her voice cracking in good earnest.

  “Very well,” he said, removing his hand. He went back to lean against the porch, resting on the heels of his hands, his long finely muscled legs stretched before him, and gave her an easy smile. “Don’t run away from me, little one. For the moment you’re much safer here.”

  Something in her face made him laugh again. “I can see you don’t believe it,” he continued. “But stay with me nevertheless. If you run off, I’ll have to chase you, and I don’t think we want to scamper across the beach like a pair of puppies.”

  She wondered if that meant he wouldn’t invest much energy in trying to catch her if she did try to run and if it might not be worth the risk.

  Reading her thoughts with alarming precision, he asked good-humoredly, “Do you think you could outrun me?”

  It was hardly likely. A man used to safely negotiating the rigging during a high wind would be quick enough to catch her before she could even think of moving, and strong enough to make her very sorry. Involuntarily her gaze dropped to his hard legs, with their smooth, rhythmical blend of healthy muscle.

  “Like what you see?” he asked her.

  Merry’s gaze flew to his, and she blushed and swallowed painfully. In a ludicrously apologetic voice she managed, “I
beg your pardon.”

  “That’s quite all right.” He reached out his hand and stroked beneath her chin. “Much too conscientious. Would it surprise you to know, my little friend, that having you stare at my legs is the most uplifting thing that’s happened to me all day?”

  It was not the kind of remark she had remotely conceived a man might make to a woman, but there was something in his matter-of-fact delivery that made her suspect that he had participated in a great many conversations in precisely this style. Wishing she could match the ease of his tone, she said, “It’s a pity your days are so dull.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said with a glimmer of amusement, “in between knocking down villages and making people walk the plank, pirates really have very little to do.”

  Merry wondered briefly how she could ever have been so foolish as to have actually wished for an adventure.

  “I don’t know how you can talk about it like that,” she said weakly.

  He smiled. “I take it you don’t usually flirt with villains.”

  “I don’t flirt with anyone,” Merry said, getting angry.

  “I believe you don’t, darling.”

  For a second his kind, enticing gaze studied her face, and then he looked away to the south, where a tiny flicker began to weave through the rocks. Another star of light appeared, and another, dragon’s breath in the night.

  “My cohorts,” he observed. Offering her a hand, Devon inclined his head toward the dark-blue shadows that crept along the tavern’s north side. “Come with me. Cat is so often right about these things, and I’m sure you don’t want them to see you.”

  “More pirates?” said Merry hoarsely, watching the lights.

  “Six more. Seven, if Reade is sober.”

  She hesitated, not daring to trust him, her face turned to him with the unconscious appeal of a lost child.

  “Come with me,” he repeated patiently. “Look at it this way. Better one dreadful pirate than seven. Whatever you’re afraid I’ll do to you, I can only do it once. They can do it seven times. Besides, I’m unarmed. You can frisk me if you want.” His arm came around her back, drawing her away from the tavern. Grinning down at her, he said, “As a matter of fact, I wish you would frisk me.”