by Laura London
“He won’t die. Little Raven was just trying to swallow the sea so Merry could fall safely on a dry ocean bed. You should have been here. I haven’t seen so many people jump off a ship since oyster season.” Rand Morgan glanced around, and his cool gaze fell on his sailing master. “Ah. There you are, Saunders. Wasn’t it your order that put Cat in chains?” The pirate captain’s gaze shifted to Cat in his iron bondage. Morgan smiled slowly. “Not that I disapprove. It has a certain allure. But nevertheless I want him released. See to it, please. He’s needed.”
Kneeling to join his half brother at Raven’s side, Morgan watched Devon lay two fingers on the unconscious boy’s neck to find a pulse and silently count it. When Devon withdrew his hand, Morgan said, “I might as well tell you; we’ve had a surfeit of gallantry. It ran fore to aft, thrashing like a rabid weasel. I’m afraid Raven forgot himself with Thomas Valentine.”
Devon looked up quickly. “What happened?”
“The boy drew steel.”
Devon swore quietly. He looked down at Raven and then returned his gaze to Morgan’s. “Will Tom let me take his punishment?”
“No. Don’t make a fool of yourself by asking.” Morgan paused. And then, “About the girl—”
“Yes,” Devon said. “About the girl.” He stood slowly and walked back to Merry. She sat as he had left her, huddled into the gunwale.
Lowering himself in a smooth movement, he sat close to her in the pouring rain, and with lazy deliberation he cradled her head between his hands. Her hair was sticky and tangled with seaweed and gave up water like a sponge under the pressure of his spread fingers and gushed tearlike rivulets down his wrist and arms. Shock was the only expression he could see in her face. Her eyes were bruised and distended, with jelling salt forming caustic pearls on her eyelashes; her fine-textured skin was icy to his touch; her blue lips were parted and still.
“So help me God,” he murmured, and in his voice Merry heard all the acid violence of a tightly checked temper. “If you try to escape from me again, I’ll strap you to the bow cannon and flay every inch of baby skin from your immature little backbone.”
Working with patient hands, Cat carried Merry below, dried her, fed her, put her to bed, and leaving Dennis the pig with her for company, he locked her cabin door and delivered the key to Devon, where he sat in the fo’c’sle spooning brandied chicken broth into Raven. Cat did what he could for Raven, who was conscious and, typically, had the unmitigated gall to complain about being coddled. Leaving the fo’c’sle, Cat located Thomas Valentine near the bitts giving orders to Sails and watching Saunders arm the lead. It had taken a good quarter hour to talk Valentine into waiting until the next morning for his retribution. All that was left then was to make a curt apology to Will Saunders for the foully discolored black eye that Saunders had got from him as soon as he’d got his hands out of the chains.
Below, coming without knocking into Morgan’s cabin, he found the captain comfortably established in a lambskin chair and reading, of all things, A Woman Killed with Kindness; and reading it with an air of bloody-minded insouciance.
Cat noiselessly did his evening chores and then stood in the lemon candlelight and casually stripped off every piece of wet clothing. Naked, he put on a silk robe, and with rum and a hairbrush he dropped into a chair across from Morgan. He unwound his braid slowly and began to put the brush through his hair with irritated strokes, tugging cruelly in a way he would never have done with Merry. The braid had set waves into his hair like a woman’s, and when he shook it out, its length fell to the floor, a flood of ivory silk, and slid over the boar bristles of the discarded hairbrush.
Morgan, Cat saw, had continued to read. In a pleasant, graceful gesture Cat ran his hand under his hair and wound its shining flow around his wrist.
“I think,” he said, “that I’ll cut it. It’s too much damned trouble to take care of.”
Silence. Morgan looked up from the book, his eyes black and innocent. “As you like.” Then, “It would make someone a pretty wig.” For that he got back a cold blue stare. So he returned to his book and said, without looking up, “How did you expect him to act? He had almost to watch her die.” Morgan read another page and closed the book, facing the unwavering stare. “So? You might as well say it, babe. A Cossack doing the mazurka couldn’t stomp across the room with more drama than your pubescent disapproval.”
Cat opened his hand and let the hair fall. “She didn’t cry.”
“When?”
“When I put her to bed. She didn’t cry. She couldn’t. I think she’s forgetting how.”
“Is that all, for God’s sakes?” Morgan tossed the book on a small table. “Get up and bring her to me. I’ll have her bawling so hard the dolphins will gather at the bowsprit and pelt us with old shoes.”
In a steady voice Cat said, “I know about the boat. I asked Griffith who told him to leave it there. He told me that you did. She could see that boat from her cabin, and you knew it.”
This time the silence was lengthy. The rain was a pretty hiss on the window. The wind purred. Finally Morgan said, “Aha.”
“Which means?”
“Aha is an ejaculation, babe. It doesn’t mean anything. You looked as though you were expecting some kind of an ejaculation, and so I”—that smile—“seem to have ejaculated prematurely. Pardon me.” Another frigid silence from Cat. At last, relenting, Morgan said blandly, “Young people have got to try new things.”
“Yes,” Cat said. “But if one of the new things they try is drowning, it puts an end to any more experiments.”
“The girl has been on the Joke long enough to have inspired someone to pull her out of the water when she falls in. Do you think I wasn’t watching? If Devon hadn’t left the Shepherd when he did, I would have sent a boat. Anyway, I thought you, in particular, would be pleased. You were so concerned about her virtue. Well? That’s likely to stay intact now.”
“You know that Devon’s letters—Granville’s letters—were destroyed?”
“So I hear,” Morgan said. “It’s a pity she didn’t choose to take the maps instead, but one can’t have everything. I rather admired the desk break-in. It showed initiative.”
“Oh? Was that part of it too?” Cat asked, low tones of anger filtering into his voice. “An opportunity for her to display untapped abilities? He’ll never forgive her. For everything else, perhaps. But not for the letters.”
With a disquieting grin Morgan said, “My dear! What a naïve thing to have said! How refreshing of you.” Studying the blond youth, he added in a moment, “Don’t take it all to heart. She’ll do. I promise. One must suffer a little adversity if one wants to be interesting.”
“Hurray”—Cat lifted his glass in a toast—“for adversity. There must be someone we can petition to bring back the Inquisition, the Black Plague, the Roman persecutions. Damn it, Rand. Does she have to be interesting?”
“Why not? I like interesting people.”
Cat had been expecting exactly that response. He tipped back his head and drained the rum. Crow-black and shining, lamb’s wool framed the Nordic purity of his features as he leaned into the chair and closed his eyes. “How far are you going to let this go? When will you put an end to it?”
Delicate surprise augmented the sparkle in Morgan’s black eyes. “Why would I want to, when it’s doing both of them so much good?”
“Absolutely,” Cat said dryly. “Merry and Devon. They’re as happy as a couple of toads croaking in a quagmire. You bastard. I suppose you think this is doing me good too. What if she does try to escape again? Would you let him flog her?”
“But of course. Naturally.” Morgan laughed suddenly. “I’d love to see him lay a single strip on her white back. It would be the most potent lesson either of them ever got. The sheer heat of the self-discovery would burn the topgallant right off the mainmast. Why? Are you worried Devon will kill her in a fit of pique?”
“No. Devon wouldn’t.” Cat’s eyes opened, and he turned them on Mo
rgan and gave him an even look. “Is she your daughter?”
Surprise flashed in Morgan’s eyes and was quickly concealed. There was a short laugh; a lifted eyebrow. “Shrewd. Oh, very shrewd, considering how little you’ve had to go on. My daughter. That would make her—what?—Devon’s niece. My theology is a little scanty, but that would make any relationship between them incestuous, wouldn’t it? Why, in particular, my daughter?”
“Because in the two weeks that Devon was gone, she was sleeping one door away from you, and you didn’t—” Cat used the crudest word he knew for it.
“Interesting,” Morgan said in a civil way. “You think I don’t embrace incest for myself but promote it between my daughter and young legitimate brother? Don’t work so hard, babe. Merry’s not my daughter.” He smiled at the window. “We have no relationship. Except that once, long ago, I loved her mother.” In a long easy movement he stood, crossed to Cat, and removed the empty glass from the boy’s lax fingers. His smile was lazy and potent. “Go to bed. Your new conscience is hotter than a fresh-laid goose yolk. We wouldn’t want to wear it out.”
Chapter 14
The ship’s drying sails breathed scent into the morning air, a sharp fragrance, distinct as geranium. Gull odor, in wet plucked feathers and smeared droppings, was everywhere, and the damp jute stank.
Merry woke to pungent smells and pungent memories. Dennis was gone, and cold biscuits were on the table with a clean, folded towel that had a note in it from Cat. Climbing back into the eternally rocking bunk, Merry read the note aloud to the cabin. It began without preamble: “You’ve slept late because I drugged you last night. Call me Borgia. I did it for your own etc. Interesting young women need long slumbers after a day of initiative and adversity.”
Her hands dropped to the coverlet with the paper in them. Raising a fist covered with angry rust-colored scratches, she rubbed her heavy eyes and wondered if the last sentence was a quote that she was supposed to recognize. The prose style didn’t seem like Cat’s; an obscure literary reference? A common literary reference unknown to her and betokening some embarrassing inadequacy in her education? Probably the latter. Giving it up, she lifted the paper and began again to read.
“Wear your hair up. We’re going to execute you at noon. (I jest.) I can’t come down for a while. They’re putting Raven on trial, and I have to be there. Explanations later. I’ve seen Devon in better moods. Be careful. Yours, Cat. D.T.C.”
Which also was a jest. It meant Destroy This Communication and had become a national joke this year, ever since an enterprising newspaper editor in New England had discovered it imprinted on a pitifully innocuous dispatch from the secretary of war to Andrew Jackson.
Bracing herself, she stood up on the bunk amid a crackle of stiff joints. It hurt to bring up her arm enough to put her hand out the window with the paper in it. Her fingers relaxed, and she watched the paper flutter away in the wind, a bold white streak in the sunlight that rode a slanting air current into the ocean.
Then she washed, took clothing from the sea chest, soaked her hardtack, and worried. She had seen them last night working on Raven, but all Cat would tell her about it was that Raven had tried to swim after her, and that the cold water had made him ill. He would be fine by morning. Why were they putting him on trial? Why? Explanations later.
Taking a bite of hardtack, she pulled up her white pantaloons, their flared hem sliding over her ankles as she held the waist with one hand and nervously tucked in her white shirttail with the other. With shaking hands she pinned up her hair for Cat.
When it was all done, the washing, the dressing, the eating, the straightening of the bunk, then there was nothing left but the worry, which had gnawed itself into something more malevolent. What trial? What trial?
More than an hour passed. At last, unable to bear the tension, convinced that things were so bad already that she couldn’t make them worse, Merry took up the tin biscuit plate and began to bang it against the door. Someone above must have been able to hear her, but she was ignored. She could imagine them listening, saying, “Let the wench bang. It’ll keep her out of trouble. Soon enough she’ll tire of it.”
And that was true, and she had tired soon, but she kept at it, a stubborn staccato rhythm irregularly interrupted while she rested her hands. This time her will would outlast theirs. To be a pest is only tiring, but to be pestered brings the monkey up in anyone. Merry hammered until she heard Sails yell to her through the door.
“Merry! Merry, lass! Will ye stop that now?”
“I will if you’ll open the door!”
“Lass, I canna’. I haven’t the key.” The reproach in the old sailmaker’s voice was a gentle one. “Why are ye wearying yerself with that vexing ratcheting?”
“Where’s Raven? What are they doing with him? Why is there a trial? What kind of a trial?”
“Och, don’t fret on it so. There’s naught ye can be doing. The lad’s got himself into a mite of a fratch, and they’re up above deciding what’s to be done wi’ him, so that he’ll be rememberin’ on the next occasion that he ought to be mindin’ his elders.”
“What kind of a—a fratch? Do you mean that he’s to be punished because last night he tried to help me? No! I won’t have it! Sails, do you hear me? I demand to see Morgan! Tell them to open this door!”
“Lass, no… Ye must be seein’ sense now…”
But she could hardly hear the last words because she had the plate up and was slamming it against the door again and again. She wouldn’t stop, nor would she listen to him as he went on trying in a kindly way to convince her that she must discontinue this foolishness.
When her situation changed, it changed quickly. She had barely time to assimilate the swift footsteps on the stair, the rapped-out order, the key turning in the lock. All she had was the broken part of a second to leap backward to keep from getting the thrust-open door in her face.
“My love, did you summon me?”
Devon stood on the threshold, the smile on him so sweet and barbed that he might have breathed attar of roses and brimstone. Hips down, he was encased in denim trousers that revealed more of his lean musculature than Merry knew was good for her to see. Hips up, he was bare, discounting an open leather vest, which Merry was trying hard not to do. They were pirate’s clothes. He was a British spy in pirate’s clothing, a wolf in wolf’s clothing, and yet somehow his appearance was as neat and decorative as an enameled thimble.
Merry was all in favor of being belligerent toward him, even though she’d known it would be a little difficult to put that brave policy into practice. Face-to-face with him a little difficult was turning into next to impossible. Resisting an impulse to retreat behind the table, Merry said, “Certainly not. I want to talk to Rand Morgan.”
“Do you? I’m sorry to disappoint you—his arrival isn’t imminent. Tell me, did you sleep well last night, dear?”
“No,” she said, paling another shade. “But I’ll bet you’ve been up for hours, sharpening your fangs. What do you want first, an arm or a leg? Or are you going to go right for the throat?”
“Are we a willing victim, then, this morning?”
Her sigh was quick and frightened. “You know I’m not good at waiting, Devon. Do and have done.”
“Bare your throat then, my love,” he said. “I’ve come to invite you to see Raven flogged.”
She had been expecting an attack, but nothing as indirect or as cruel as this. Her first thought was not to believe him, and she said jerkily, “Your sense of humor is a little wanting today.”
“I agree. I suggest you keep that in mind. Last night when Tom Valentine ordered Raven not to jump into the sea after you, Raven pulled a knife on him.”
Belief came slowly to Merry. She shook her head in abstract denial. “Last night he was injured. Surely after that they would not…”
“Yes, they would. Particularly since Raven announced chattily at his trial that he stands behind his actions last night and he’d do the same again if the
need arose. If the child weren’t so popular, he’d be dead. Come on deck with me. You can tell your grandchildren that once you saw a boy whipped on a pirate ship.”
She recoiled from him, pride forgotten, hardly aware of her body’s motion. “Devon, don’t let them do it! Don’t!”
“Merry… Little Windflower—” His voice was soft and textured. “You know so much. You must know that I don’t have a vote here. Why else would you have stolen my letters?”
She would remember in her nightmares his expression in the boat when the letter bundle parted company with her shirt. She had taken those letters without having any idea what they contained. Now she never wanted to know. She heard herself say, “How dare you judge me for that? Or—Of course. You hire gutter trash to do your stealing for you. Everything I’ve learned about vice has been from you.”
Quietly he said, “Merry, I offered you friendship.”
Sick. She was going to be sick. “You offered me captivity.”
“Which I promised to end.”
“If,” she said, “I met your demands.”
“Oh, my dear girl,” he said softly, “and you wouldn’t have met them, would you? You should have told me the truth. Before yesterday afternoon do you think I could have hurt you?” He came to her, his stride fluid and predatory, his gaze holding hers. He lifted his hand and turned it to brush the back of his curved fingers slowly down the tight slope of her cheek. “What would you have done with the letters, Windflower? Sold them to the highest bidder?”
Merry grabbed his unresisting wrist in shaking fingers and held it stiffly, away from her face. She started to speak, to say something that would stop his words, but the chaos of her thoughts couldn’t seem to make speech.
He waited for a reply, and when it did not come, he said, “What happened, Merry? Weren’t the things I offered you enough? What price buys entrance to your pretty body?” And then, “Would Raven’s reprieve be enough?”
She was too anguished to examine his intent. There was strength only to unclutch her fingers from his wrist and to take a backward step that brought her legs up against the writing desk’s sharp wooden edge. His hands encircled her waist, and she could feel the sweet heat from his uncovered chest as he drew her toward him. A pained whimper escaped her as his experienced fingers tilted her chin and his mouth sought her. The kiss was spark-hot and scarring, deeply arousing. When finally he had carried its message to the limit and dragged his lips from her, Merry was so angry at him and so filled with bitter sorrow that her power of speech returned, full colored.
