by Laura London
She snuggled down into the lawn shirt she had been given. It smelled good, as though it had been rinsed in something pleasing, and she whistled to see if her dry lips could work that way. They could not.
Devon’s room. Devon. If this was indeed his room, there was no stamp of his personality upon it. Or perhaps there was; precision, lack of clutter; evidence of an orderly mind, the ability to minimize distractions. She had never thought to see him again, and now it seemed as though she might. It was the last extraordinary, excruciating jolt to four extraordinary, excruciating days. What, in an upbringing of painting root vegetables in watercolors and tapping sugar maples, was there to prepare her for men with hookahs and hoop earrings? Again she giggled and helplessly began to think of Devon.
She remembered his arms, gathering her for the kiss, the kiss she had not wanted and had been so unprepared for, the kiss she had forced herself to forget.… If her father could see her now, he’d have a fit.
Suddenly she stopped giggling and began rather desperately to fight the opium-induced stupor. She didn’t know the right thing to do; but then a wandering thread of her mind recalled something told to her by Betty, her aunt’s maid, who liked to take brandy in the mornings. If you took too much, she said, it helped to think of something dreadful, really awful, to bring your mind into a more stable orbit. So Merry lay in the pirate’s bed and thought of her mother’s funeral.
The funeral had been at night, and they had arranged Merry’s hair with huge black bows that reminded her of bat’s wings. She vividly remembered the harsh feel of the stiff black dress she had worn, made by the hastily summoned dressmaker. And on her feet the tiny white kid slippers she had been so proud of, ruined with blacking. They had draped mirrors and pictures with black, even the one in her bedroom of the laughing-ladybird picnic; and placed scutcheons in every room, hung the front of the house with a hatchment, and tied the window shutters closed with dull black silk and left them that way all winter. Her father had given away mourning rings, mourning the price, and hers had been too big for her small finger and had flopped back and forth. She had pressed it tightly into her palm so she wouldn’t lose it and displease her father. Carl had taught her painstakingly to read the ring’s motto: Prepared be, to follow me. But the worst had come that night after the funeral—that tedious and confusing church service when they had tried to make her get into her bed, made neat as a thread box with black sheets.
Merry sat up suddenly, sweating and shaking, and the ship’s room came into focus. She experienced a flash of eager relief, like someone waking from a nightmare. They were right when they said that funerals were to help the living.
Setting her feet carefully on the floor, she stood up, experimentally testing the strength of her numb-feeling knees—knees that collapsed as soon as they bore her full weight, sending her to the floor, flat on her face. One did not so easily snap one’s fingers at opium intoxification, it seemed. She tried again to stand, this time quickly, clinging hard to the brass handles of a long desk set into the wall. She was up and swaying victoriously, slowly regaining her equilibrium.
The door, as she found when she reached it, was locked. And what good would it have done anyway to go out there? They would only easily reimprison her. And then there would be more ropes.
Still, it would be better to do something desperate than to do nothing at all. But she couldn’t even think of something desperate to do, until she realized that the thing on the wall she was staring at, an ancient t-shaped instrument made of worn wood and twisted leather, was a weapon. It took a very long time for her to get it down, and a longer time yet to figure out what she would have to do to fire it so that the arrow didn’t shoot backward, or flop out sideways onto the floor. The barbed point of the arrow was huge; it couldn’t have been covered with a large orange, and really, the whole thing was ridiculous, but what other choice had she? It shamed her to think how she had cried, “No, no, please,” to Morgan, like a child having a tooth drawn. The next man who walked through the door and tried to lay hands on her was going to wear her arrow in his breastbone.
Fortune, they say, loves a challenge. The lock turned in the door, and Devon stepped inside carrying a lamp.
“This is wonderful,” he said, his gaze resting lightly on the weapon aiming straight for his heart. “You must be feeling much better.”
With interest he watched her fragile hands tighten on the crossbow. His eyes picked out details—the fall of red-gold hair in a thick tumble over her shoulder, the full breasts only partially hidden by the overlarge shirt, the shapely leg she had braced before her, the beautiful flush spreading in her cheeks, the finely arched auburn brows, and the murder in the lovely deep-blue eyes. Morgan evidently had pushed her too far. For a minute Devon speculated on the pirate captain’s motives while he sent his trained gaze over the girl a second time to find those things that only intuition could see: the complex emotions that trembled like tiny stars under the shadowed surface of her face.
By far she was not the first woman who had waited for him in a bedchamber, or even—fair though she was—the most beautiful, but she surely was the only one to distinguish herself by facing him with an antique weapon, obsolete by three centuries. Someone long before him had, for a prank, bolted the thing in this small cabin. The men who sailed the Black Joke had grown, with time, so indifferent to its presence that no one had bothered to rip it down and burn it. Common sense could never have predicted that this weakly, flushing girl could have pried it from the wall and made it ready. Good Lord, it was designed to be bent and cocked by a chain-mailed soldier standing on the bow with feet on the stock and drawing up the cord with both arms and the back. Here clearly was a woman who bypassed common sense.
There were a hundred ways, possibly more, that he could have quickly taken the bow from her, but none that would not involve her in some way with either pain or violence, however transient. Morgan, he knew, would think he was crazy not to disarm her immediately. After all, a bolt from that bow could penetrate the bulwark of a warship.…
“Will it make you nervous if I set the lamp on the desk,” he said, “or do you want me to stand here like Diogenes? I’ll do it very slowly, and don’t worry, I never throw lamps at young ladies holding crossbows. Not in cabins that lie over a powder magazine.” He carefully put the lamp down and smiled at her reassuringly. “Before you tack me to the wall, do I get a last meal and twenty minutes with my confessor?”
“I’ll have to think about it. That’s more than I was offered.” She hadn’t forgotten his particular brand of extreme good looks, but only vaguely had she retained a memory of its effect on her. Every organ from her throat to her kneecaps started to buzz like a cricket.
“From what I’ve heard,” he said, “it’s been nasty. Why don’t you surrender the military hardware and let me see what I can do to make amends?”
Who could have told him that it had been nasty? Rand Morgan? Cat? It was difficult, somehow, to imagine a conversation between them about her. Why had it taken him so long to come to her? Not that he had reason to be eager. Had he been on shore? Perhaps. He was not dressed in a sailor’s garb. The pirate’s clothing was American and discreetly prosperous. The bone-colored coat, the white shirt with front frill and cravat, the natural leather trousers—it was a costume that her brother might have worn, though no other man could have given it what Devon did—which was Devon’s body. How amazing he was. The marvelous perfection of his features had not robbed them of intellect or made them less subtly expressive.
She hadn’t been close to him before in good light. For the first time she saw that his eyes were hazel, a rare mosaic of shining sparks that appeared almost golden. They were delivering a message of sympathy tidily packed in sensual glamour. If he’s to be trusted, she thought, I’ll eat Aunt April’s swansdown muff. Merry destroyed the tiny voice in her brain that dissented with a savage mental kick.
“If you take one step closer,” she told him, “I’m going to kill you.”
The golden eyes studied her kindly. “You look tired. You sit down; I’ll sit down; and we’ll talk about it.”
After some suspicious thought she decided that it might be a good idea to have him sitting. She wouldn’t dare do so herself because the chances favored her not being able to get up afterward. Details, Merry Patricia, apply your mind to the details.
“Where’s the key to the door?” asked Merry Patricia, trying to straighten her shoulders.
“Do you want to lock us in here together? I’m game, if a little shocked.”
The man was enjoying himself too much. She was forced to repeat, this time more crisply, “Where’s the key?”
“Outside. I’ll be happy to get it if you—”
“No! Wedge that chair under the door handle. And then sit on the desk. Slowly.”
Looking amused, he obeyed her. “For the charming lady with the harpoon, anything.” He poised himself, as ordered, on the edge of the desk. “Here I sit, ready on the second to be skewered like a bottle-fly on a hatpin. When you think of it, I’ll be a pretty unappealing corpse.” Easing his elbows onto the shelf behind him, Devon grinned. “Now that I’m your prisoner, what do you intend to do with me? Or, if you haven’t figured that out yet, would you be open to suggestions?”
She had figured it out in the long, feverish wait when she had achingly mated bolt and crossbow. “I wish to leave alone and unmolested in the small boat that I was brought here in.”
“Can you sail it?”
“Yes,” she lied—not that it was any of his concern. She knew it wouldn’t be easy just because Cat had made it look that way, but then, it hadn’t been easy to prime the bow either. It was all academic, anyway, because she had no other choice. Her gaze dropped and accidentally fixed on his elegant hand resting loose in the small flower of lamplight, and as she watched, it seemed to recede from her and return; the opium reminding her that it was still active in her system.
“We’ve been bearing east under full sail for three hours,” he said. “How are you at navigation in the open sea?”
The hostage hours had blurred into one another, anonymous as a line of smashed pumpkins. Reorienting her scrambled senses, Merry decided that yes, the ship could be moving; but was the beautiful man before her lying through his straight white teeth about the ship’s direction and how long she’d been on course? Some time ago she’d had an impression of nightfall. If it was night, then one could use the stars for direction, couldn’t one? Unless there was fog. And today, at least, there had been fog. And if the night was clear, what could she do? Distinguish, if she could, the North Star, turn left, and pray that she’d eventually run into the Atlantic seaboard. She began to think of sharks and giant squid and whales and sea serpents and giant whirlpools. You couldn’t believe everything you heard; much of it was probably tall tales, though, of course, there really were sharks. And squid. And whales. And other pirates.
Through fading hope and clouding vision she said, “Then they’ll have to turn this ship around and bring it back toward shore.”
His amusement was a thing felt, not seen. “My dear child, if you want to ask Morgan to turn the ship around, then I’ll happily hold open the door for you. But if you think he’s going to do it, you’re dreaming. I don’t blame you for trying; I’d do the same myself. The effort was fine. It’s just not going to work.”
“The more I think about it,” she said with flaming blue eyes, “the more convinced I am that I ought to shoot you.”
“Aim carefully then. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the only crossbow arrow between here and Europe.”
Her arms were beginning to shiver from the bow’s tearing weight. The point sagged toward the floor and was swiftly righted. It was only a matter of time before her brawnless muscles failed altogether. She estimated that she had less than five minutes to convince him that she really would do it. “By the time anyone on board discovered your death, they might have missed me on the Guinevere. They might be following us right now, to rescue me!”
“Probably you aren’t familiar with the Mactervish Book About the Sea for Boys. Lesson Roman numeral one: Ship at sail leaves no trail.” He lifted his hands and resettled them, heels down and fingers bent, on the desk’s oak edge. Whatever he was planning to do to her was hidden from Merry behind the sugared surface of his gaze and the little smile, so warm and subtle that you could have made comfits from it and fed every widow in St. Anne’s parish.
“Mary—that is your name, isn’t it? Mary, put it down. I don’t want to hurt you.”
It was clearly a threat, however courteously posed. The best she could do with it was to respond as though she hadn’t understood and smother her surprise that he had captured her name and retained it through the months.
“You don’t want to—? I don’t believe it!” she said. “If it suited you, you’d crush me in a minute. I might be a—a codfish, for all you care.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. A nautical metaphor! By next week Tuesday you’ll probably have learned how to stay on your feet during a ground swell. There’s one coming, my dear. One learns to feel these things.”
For a moment she thought it was a trick to throw her off guard. There was a long creaking pause, the sense of being suspended, and then the floor dove suddenly to the right as the ship plunged, nimble and swooping, down the side of the wave into the trough.
The bow slipped from her hands and discharged the bolt, sending it humming across the room like a flushed pigeon, to end with a cracking explosion as it ripped through a five-inch beam of solid hardwood, the shaft whipping noisily to and fro before its motion died in a dull vibration.
No doubt the noise was heard from poop to fo’c’sle. Ears tuned to the murmurings of the ship would trace the sound to its source, and Devon had to grin a little thinking of the ribald speculation it would probably cause in the crew’s quarters. It was the kindest way it could have happened, but he could hardly expect the girl to realize that. She was staring at him, infuriated and frightened. Without moving Devon said calmly, “It’s just as well. If you had killed me, I’m afraid Morgan would have tossed you on deck for the crew, and after they were done with you, there wouldn’t have been enough left to feed the fish.”
Below her lacerated wrists, Merry’s hands tightened into fists. “I don’t care what you say! I have the right to defend my virtue.”
“I don’t think Morgan would think that was a very good excuse. An unaccountable difference in attitude. You may have noticed,” he said dryly, “that Morgan isn’t particularly enamored with virtue. But I’m curious. Did you learn all these high-minded sentiments in Granville’s arms?”
After everything, she had to repeat the name before she remembered. “Granville?” Things were coming too thick and fast for her half-sleeping brain.
“I hear you made an unwise choice in your sleeping arrangements last night,” said Devon, letting himself slowly off the desk. “I’m sure Michael is crisp and cozy in bed, but who was looking after the puppets?”
Merry’s white cheeks turned scarlet. “I wasn’t in bed with Sir Michael. I was in Sir Michael’s bed.”
“I believe we could make a nursery rhyme out of that. It has a certain cadence.… I didn’t mean to start a quibble.”
A tremor of exhaustion shook her, and a lock of red-gold hair fell forward, gleaming across her cheek. “I’ve been beaten, drugged, thrown in the ocean, stripped at knife point, and trussed like a Thanksgiving goose. You had better think again if you think I’m going to stand here and listen to your litany of insults!”
“Poor child,” he said. “Let’s end it then. Go back to bed, and I’ll get you something to eat. The rest can wait until tomorrow morning.” It was unfortunate that she was too distraught to realize that the flash of compassion in his eyes was genuine.
“I haven’t an arrow anymore,” she said, “but if you touch me, I swear I’ll scratch your eyes out.”
He stood very still, gazing at her through th
e gemmed eyes. “What do you expect me to do, let you jump over the side? Not yet. I’m not finished with you.”
“I’ll die first!”
“You,” said Devon, “must have execrable taste in literature. So we’re back to your holy virtue, are we? I see. You think my hot blood can’t support ten minutes alone with you. You’re passing fair, my conceited love, but what makes you so certain I have the ambition to lie with every pretty wench I kiss when I’m drunk?” From one of Michael Granville’s creatures it was what he would expect, the obligatory show of reluctance that would vanish later as she gave herself to him like a supplicant with all those hideously pretty body tricks that Michael’s ladies were expert in. Michael Granville, with Satan sleeping behind the thoughtful green-gray eyes; Michael had sent him women before.
This one was different because she had been taken, not offered. There was something so touchingly real about the girl’s resistance that it made him wonder if she was in love with Granville. If that was true, it would be vengeance in gilt to send her back raped. Even as he framed the thought his gaze fell on her, and as much as he hated the master, he wondered how much harm he would be willing to do through this poor frail vassal with the lily skin and hair richer than a sable pelt. Incredibly it seemed as though his last words had confused her more than they angered her, almost as though she hadn’t understood his meaning. But then, she was young, and her resources had nearly reached their limit. Coming to her with a noiseless stride he was just in time to catch her in his arms as her knees buckled under a powerful wash of dizziness.
He caught her up, supporting her, and she leaned against him, her will suspended. She wasn’t heavy for him, but she was solid, and as she leaned into him he was very much aware of her physicality; the feel of her shoulders and back, the heavy softness of her breasts against his chest, her thighs against his, the gently rounded belly against him, and the cloud of golden hair, which, as he held her, seemed to rise in his vision like a fragrant amber mist. He delicately took a handful of it and touched it to his lips.
