The Windflower

by Laura London

  “Well,” he said slowly. “Heaven help us. The girl’s tried to make herself into dessert.”

  Descending belowdecks, the brightness and human clatter of the afternoon muffled behind him, Devon paused, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer light. The hallway air was thick with warm wood musk. Ship’s smells. They delighted him, like the scents of rich coffee and forest humus at dawn after a thunderstorm. It was one of the amazing quirks of Morgan’s character that the man could give to his pirate vessel the atmosphere of a home.

  Last week Devon had learned of Napoleon’s victories at Craonne and Reims. Again he felt anger at the well-meaning interference that had banned him from Europe, where he wanted to be, and driven him across an ocean to report on a war he opposed to high-placed men in England who had good reason to ignore his recommendations. Britain’s war with the United States was a fiasco. The majority of Britain’s great resources were being poured into the death struggle with Napoleon; this stupid secondary conflict with her former colonies wasted men and money.

  As for the United States, it had been a piece of bloody-minded arrogance for the war hawks of President Madison’s administration to declare a war when they didn’t have the money to pay for it and, what’s more, had indebtment outstanding from the Revolutionary War. With customs revenues down due to the tightening blockade the national income last year had been less than ten million dollars; and yet, he wouldn’t be surprised if the United States had run up a debt of more than a hundred million dollars before the war was over. Yankee politicians were more likely to plunge their country into beggary than they were to raise taxes, accountable as they were at the next polling to a frugal electorate. It was one of the hazards of democracy. America was borrowing like a bride’s little brother, and it would be interesting to find out who was going to have the verve to pull them from the brink of bankruptcy. Devon doubted that it would be the Madisonian war hawks.

  The conflict between Devon’s country and the fledgling United States was a string of petty incompetencies, and he was not a man who found it easy to tolerate incompetence, particularly in a war. It was the thing that had first drawn him to Morgan. Rand Morgan did things well and with flair.

  There were reasons for Devon to be here, doing a job that was beneath his talents and not to his taste. It gave him a chance to spend time with Morgan and Cat, a boy well worth being made into somebody’s project, especially considering who he was. Not, thought Devon with a grin, that Cat was any more amenable to being made into somebody’s project than Devon ever had been. If you show promise too young, there are too many well-wishers eager to force you to realize it. Little though Cat’s well-wishers might know it, the boy couldn’t be in better hands than Rand Morgan’s. Morgan never forced potential to perform; he just gave it the opportunity to grow.

  What else had brought Devon here? There was an autocratic old woman who would be pleased to have him in England; and Devon had no desire to please her. And finally, it gave him the chance to pursue his private war against Michael Granville. In the same theft that had netted Merry, Cat had brought back a set of letters that linked Granville to felony insurance fraud. In his heart Devon briefly felt the tug of a faint and familiar agony. One day Michael Granville would pay with utter ruin for the murder he had committed. The penalty for fraud wasn’t even close to adequate punishment for a man-monster, but it was more than Devon had dared hope for. Cleverly handled, it might be enough to bring him down. But it would be months before he could return to London and begin to use the incriminating papers, so he deferred his interest in the matter as neatly and purposefully as he had filed the papers in the locked cabin desk.

  What he had not discovered on the mainland was the identity of the lamblike creature who had chastely shared his bedroom last night. Merry, sweet Merry with the haunting blue eyes; Merry, with the patrician features and the self-assurance of a birch leaf in a wind storm, who, Cat swore up, down, and sideways, was an untried girl. The Windflower, he called her. This morning Devon had left her in the blue light of dawn. Helplessly asleep, she must have thrown off her blankets; they had lain in a warm hill at the bed foot. She had been on her side, the nightshirt twisted tautly over the slope of her hip and riding high enough to expose her slim legs and soft arched feet, the toes small buds, back-curled toward the sole. He had laid the back of his hand against her palm. The skin was slightly cool, so he had drawn the blankets over her gently, without touching her again, and left.

  Now, returning to the cabin in midafternoon, it was with the picture of the sleeping girl in his mind that Devon pushed open the door. He had assumed, without really having any reason to do so, that the room would be vacant.

  Instead, he found Merry standing by the water can in leggings and knee breeches and naked to the waist. Her black shoes stood together by the bed, her shirt was rolled and thrown in a corner. Tiny angled chips—salt? sugar?—glittered on the flesh of her throat, and below her throat, where her loose hair curved inward, sicklelike over her ribs. Garlanded demurely by curls, dusted with crystals, her high lovely breasts were made of the most magical shades of pink. He could see that Merry was frowning down at herself in a critical way that her beauty little deserved. She held a rectangle of damp cotton that she had just used to wipe across her midriff. Her nose had a soot smear on the tip. Merry at Bath. Titian wouldn’t have painted it, but, oh, my, he should have.

  Merry looked up quickly, saw Devon, and started, dropping the cloth.

  “Merry, dear,” he said, picking up the cloth. “Do you need help?” His initial rush of feeling had been that rare unwanted warmth he felt sometimes with her. Desire came immediately after, so powerfully that he added, “Or—wait. I think I’m the one who’ll need help.”

  Openmouthed with dismay, she crossed her arms over her chest. When she was able to tear her pained gaze away from him, she looked down at the placement of her slender forearms; as if angered by the inadequate coverage, she rearranged them, and when that exposed even more, she tried, in a frenzy of enflamed modesty, to hide her breasts with her cupped palms. Her motives were the highest; glancing back to Devon’s face, she was disconcerted to find that her movements had achieved the opposite of her intended effect. Devon propped his left shoulder against the doorframe, as though he needed the support, and he was only half joking.

  “Merry…” he said. “Merry. My poor girl. Don’t tell me—were you trying to dampen my ardor? It’s at your most lunatic moments that I can resist you least.”

  She could listen to his words, but his voice she felt. Its bright tenor entered through her skin, passed like a caress through flesh and nerves, and penetrated her spine, as luscious as a milk bath. She knew the voice. Even better, she knew the effect it had on her will.

  “Go. Please,” she said, trying so hard to put conviction into the words that they were spoken with the faulty tone of an overpumped pipe organ. “Please.”

  He shut the door with one hand. Softly: “Not on your sweet life.”

  She made a dash for her shirt in the corner and held it in front of her just before she was caught and gently encircled in his arms. Her fists and the shirt they clutched were trapped between her body and his. Under her rounded palms Merry could feel the fresh skin and tightly curving muscle of his chest and the steady heart rhythm mated with his languorous breathing. Inside herself Merry’s less discreet organs were slowly escalating their tempo. Little staccato gasps marred the action of her lungs, and blood slapped in hot gushes through her heart, even as his hand molded her to his long body.

  One of his hands burned over her back before it moved lower, tracing a hard, flat-palmed arc over her buttocks, and then, sloping under, drew her gently up on her toes. Their hips met, the hardness and detail of him caressing her belly, and she began to ache with unexplored need. Everywhere that a part of him touched her was stirred and soothed, as though by deep sunlight in spring.

  His blond head bent, and she could feel his lips seeking her face, his breath warm on her mouth and ch
in.

  “Truce,” she whispered. “Truce.”

  “No, darling. Peace talks. A parley. Exploratory diplomacy.” His lips moved with hushed lightness over her cheek. His eyes closed, and when his mouth halted its slow search of her trembling lips, his open kiss was spare and subtle. He lowered his head a little, and his kiss moved to her throat before it traveled hotly along her jaw, to her ear, to her forehead, and came back to her lips. The pressure on her mouth deepened as he delicately teased her into parting her lips and entered her, dragging her into his kiss. His hands still pressing her to him, his lips on hers, he murmured, “Peace talks. And I surrender. Complete conquest. You win. Why are you always so shy with your tongue?”

  Merry’s arms might have been made from putty for all the strength there was in them as she tried to push away from him. The best she could do was turn her face. “No—this is terrible—My tongue? I never know what you’re talking about. What do you mean about my tongue?”

  His fingers, firmly placed on her chin, forced her resisting lips back. Before his mouth took her again, he said in a low tone, “Let me show you.” After a moment he whispered, “Do you like that, Merry?”

  If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have dropped to the floor. She answered him thickly, her head swimming. “I think you’re… There’s something wrong with you! Aren’t you embarrassed at all?”

  “We can’t be embarrassed yet,” he told her in a voice made tender with sympathetic amusement. Lowering her feet to the floor without haste, his hand moved in a caressing circle that followed the contour of the soft flesh of her buttocks. “How could we be embarrassed already? We have to save something for the rest of it. What do you do further on? Go purple in your skin like ripe fruit?”

  Merry, having never been further on, decided that it was probable. “More than likely,” she sighed. His fingers quit her chin, and as they began to play erotic patterns on her naked shoulders, her cheek came to rest weakly against the warm skin of his throat, exposed by his open collar. “I’m beginning to feel like a ripe fruit.”

  His thumb stroked her ear, found the inner folds, and in another moment his mouth and his tongue explored there also. “Which?” he asked.

  “Which what?”

  “Which fruit? An apple? A cherry? Something tropical and exotic?”

  “Something juicy.” Her tone was so lugubrious that it made him laugh.

  “Merry… sweet child… Merry sweet. Is this so bad, then? Is it?” He continued the rich movements of his hands, and his lower lip made a sensuous path down the rim of her ear. With great gentleness he let out a breath that fluttered the short silk-curls at her cheekbones. Touching her skin through golden wisps of her hair, his mouth wandered back to hers and began to slowly drink her heat-flavored kisses.

  “We barbarians call it desire.” He said it huskily, coaxing her body to a response. “We call it… Oh, yes… darling, yes. That’s right. Did I say right? Such a forceless word.” The kiss was long, hard, and rapturous, and at sometime during the length of it he whispered against her lips, “Here. Move with me, love. No. Don’t be afraid. I’m not taking you to bed. Just the chair. All right?”

  But she hadn’t been able to answer him because she was falling, sinking through fathoms of thick blue water, warm with exotic fish and trailing, clinging seaweed. Scented fluids were moving into and out from her lungs and rainbow colors filled her eyes. When next she was aware of herself, she was on his lap, nestled against his chest, her body pressing sinuously into him. Her head was thrown back, dependent on the support of his arm, firmly placed behind her neck over the heavy cushion of her hair. With hot cheeks, through moist and swollen lips, she whispered, “Devon?”

  His face nuzzled the bend of her cheek and then lifted, until his eyes, heavy with pleasure, could study her features.

  “What am I doing?” she said. “How do you do this to me?”

  “Ah. This?” One accurate finger was softly following her hairline. “This is magic. It’s done with mirrors. Secret pockets. Sleight of hand. The coin disappears from one palm and reappears in the other. Everything depends on a willing and distracted subject.”

  “I’m not willing. I’m not. I’m just…”

  “Distracted?” he suggested gently, running his thumb over the sensitized rise of her lips, and feeling her tongue touching in shy curiosity against his skin, he rewarded her quickly with an exquisitely probing kiss.

  Opening her eyes afterward with the side of her face comfortably nestled in the hollow of his shoulder, Merry said helplessly, “I thought you told me—Do you remember that first night before I was sick? You were going to teach me the best place to kick a man. I wish you had. I don’t know how to make this stop.”

  The innocence of the blunt confession was not lost on Devon, though nothing of that showed in the love-hazed smile that she saw form on his lips.

  “Devon, what do you mean to do?”

  Cradling her in his arms, his mouth on the hollow below her ear, he said, “Fill you with honey, love.”

  His hair brushed her parted lips, cool and smooth as satin, as he pulled away slightly. Holding her that way, finding her mouth again, he whispered, “Merry, lift your arms. Put your hands on my shoulders. We don’t need this shirt, do we? Let me take it… Better… and better.”

  In the warm space that separated their bodies, her unrestrained breasts made scant contact with the fabric of his shirt. The slightest of her movements made her skin rub against him, the soft press of fiber washing her with emotions so tantalizing that a shudder passed through her like a current. He felt it; and his mouth at the base of her throat stopped its fluid quest to murmur a reassurance while one of his hands left its courtship of her hip, paused tenderly on the lustrous bare skin on the side of her body, and then gently covered her breast. Moaning and frightened, she tried to pull away, but with strong, gracious fingers he held her in his embrace, feeding pleasure to her shrinking flesh until resistance gave way to bewildered rapture. Devon’s lips moved lower, making a discovery.

  “Sugar…” he said. “Everywhere, you’re incredibly sweet. What were you trying to do, turn into a marzipan?”

  She tried to answer him, but her tongue was thick in her throat. “Dev—Let me go.” It was a very faint whisper.

  “Hush, little flower. Bloom under me. Bloom for me, Merry. How did you ever grow to be so sweet? Would you like me to lick you clean? I know where I’d like to begin.…”

  His words made her arms cling to him as she found herself straining weakly toward his seeking mouth as it found her breast. Fever spread through her, delicious and fruity: sweet cherry juice, apple wine, rosehips, and honey. She could see nothing through her swirling vision, feel nothing but his warm hands and closeness and the clean delight of his touch. He lifted her hair in one hand, letting it fall in a tangled mass over her shoulders, and caressed the back of her neck. Moving his hands down to cup her shoulders, he brought his mouth to hers once again.

  “Some for you,” he whispered, and she tasted the transferred nectar of her own sugar, a sensuous offering from his lips. Somehow her hands had begun to stroke the firm, supple muscles on his back and shoulders; and his pulse beats ran like surf under the unsure motion of her innocent fingers.

  “Magic,” he said, his voice a husky erotic whisper. “Sleight of hand. See how easy it is? You have it, too, little flower… you have it too. No, Merry. Don’t stop. Here. Let me help you. Like this. Yes. Slowly. Merry. Merry. Kiss me.”

  Carried beyond herself, she touched him with her lips, moving whisper soft, uncaring whether it was his mouth she kissed, or his hair, his cheek, the smooth line of his brow. Pressing forward against his hands and body, whimpering distractedly, she whispered, “Please. Go away… I want to go home. I think I’m going to be sick. I feel faint. Let me go.”

  “You have strange love talk, Merry-gold. Marigold, that’s another.”

  “Another what?”

  “Merry name. Merry-go-round, marigold,
God rest ye Merry… How good you taste, love,” he said, his lips to her throat.

  Her hand sloppily found his cheek and lay there, a tremulous supplicant. “Devon, I can’t. What words can I say that will… cause you not to force me?”

  His face came hazily into focus before her, the soft eyes shining. He kissed her once on her lips and then drew back, looking down at her.

  “Do you know…” he said, gazing at the soot marks transferred from her discarded shirt and spread by his fingertips over her flushing skin. “Do you know that we look like coupling leopards? Do you really want me to let you go? I don’t know if I can. Why do you want to stop?”

  She couldn’t answer him, only shook her head as though the blood pounding hard in her brain had driven away all the good reasons for chastity.

  Given her physical response, another man might have laughed at her use of the word force and dismissed her protests as a routine and harmless hypocrisy. Devon knew better. He was an artist at making people do as he wanted, and if ruthless seduction could wring acquiescence from her unwilling body—what of it? He could have taken the girl in screaming resistance, and there was not a soul on the Joke who would have stopped him. Poor blue-eyed creature, she was his for the taking. And it was hardly the bit of whimsy he would have cared to cultivate in his character that now, when he wanted her most, was the moment he least wanted to take her against her will. All her fragility and sweetness were flowing into him, and whatever his more familiar inclinations were demanding, there was kindness there as well. The part of him that desired her was the part that also didn’t want to force her. Whatever she wanted physically, and he was sure he wasn’t mistaken about it, she wasn’t prepared emotionally, and God knew what kind of wreckage there would be in the aftermath. Soot still powdered her foolish little nose, and he wasn’t sure why that should decide him, but somehow it did. Holding her for a moment, stroking her shining hair, he heard with gratitude Cat’s fluent footsteps in the corridor.