Face to Face (The Deverell Series Book 2)

by Susan Ward

  The tears burned in fast rivers down her cheeks. Merry tried to stop herself. “I do not wish to be left here.”

  Varian stiffened and rose from the bed. “I cannot take you with me. It is the only thing I can do to protect you, Little One. Let me at least do that.”

  He stared at her with burning black eyes. She stared at him with shimmering blue. It was Varian who broke contact first. Such a thing had never happened before.

  He said, “And the sisters. They could not manage without someone here seeing to their care. They adore you, Merry. Just as I do. I leave them in your care.”

  His somber tone frightened her. “Varian, why are you so serious in this? You make it sound as if you do not expect to survive this next voyage. As if I will never see you again. As if you will never return.”

  Varian’s face changed, and the smile he gave her, ever so small, even in its tempered sharing, took her breath away.

  “I have taken everything I care about and put them in your care.” He was at the door, before he said, “Take well care of that book, Little One. It is your protection and within the cover it holds every part of me.”

  And with that, he left her. Merry spent the night in the chair. She did not sleep. There was something strange moving through her senses, a worry and chide of caution, which warned her not to let Varian leave without her.

  Life was nothing but endless choices.

  She would return to ship with him. Before dawn broke she dressed, packed her things, and bade a servant to fetch them for her. She would follow him back aboard ship. That was a choice and this time she would make her own decision on her fate.

  ~~~

  The next morning, Varian found Merry at the bottom of the stairs obediently waiting to be taken to the ship. She looked so tragically vulnerable—confused and young—sitting on her bags, waiting for him so he would not leave without her.

  It was clear she hadn’t understood the purpose of the gift he had given to her on her birthday. Had the illusion been too vague for her to understand? The gift of the land was obvious in its meaning. It was his compromise to taking her back to Falmouth on her terms, having her here, safe and cared for if she wished it—safely away from him. How could she have not understood it? Or maybe she had. Today he could not read her well.

  It wrung his heart to find her there waiting patiently for him to get her. He debated with himself, whether he should explain it more clearly to her, that the act of returning to ship with him all but sealed her fate.

  Sometimes, God helped Merry not at all.

  He ordered Pitt to collect her bags. Who was he to interfere?

  ~~~

  The Corinthian was back at sea. They were heading south and, once clear of United States waters, they had made the smooth transition from the Windrover back into a pirate vessel.

  On this sunny afternoon a fortnight later, Merry found herself in the company of Shay, having passed a whimsical day with him. She was struggling to watch through the lens of a telescope a school of fish moving alongside the ship. They looked like shiny, bouncing buttons in the blue water, a shifting pattern that somehow managed to keep pace.

  The fish started to pop back and forth under the hull, and she stepped up on a barrel by the rail, wanting to watch their flow.

  Without thinking, laughter making her mindless of that familiar burn against her flesh of black eyes watching her, Merry turned to Shay and said in a demanding, carefree way, “Hold on to me. I am going to fall if you don’t because I am laughing so hard and I want to lean over the rail to watch them disappear.”

  Shay had no choice but to comply. Merry began to lean forward and, balanced awkwardly above the rail, would have fallen if he hadn’t put his hands on the side of her waist.

  Indy had warned him only this morning not to touch her again. That regardless of Morgan’s expression, the Captain was close to the end of his tolerance of Shay’s free hands and behavior with the girl. But the Irishman had forgotten the warning, forgotten it during the amusements of the afternoon and out of the necessity of Merry’s actions.

  “Blast it, lass, be careful. Craven is right. You are a lunatic,” Shay exclaimed. “You would risk your life over a school of bloody fish.”

  Her beautiful face, bright with humor, turned toward him. “I am not a lunatic. This is marvelous. You need to enjoy life more, Shay. Enjoy it how you can.” She slipped his hands so they were all the way around her waist. “Hold me better. I will hate you if you drop me.”

  In mock outrage, Shay exclaimed, “You, an English lass, be tell’n me, an Irishman, to enjoy life more. That’s the craziest notion I have heard in me ears in a long spell.”

  It was ridiculous, of course. Shay had vigor for living that surpassed her own. When she smiled at him, Shay’s answering expression made her laugh so hard she dropped the telescope.

  Watching it fall, she bent completely over the rail, laughing hysterically and unmindful her motion had brought her bottom against the Irishman’s chest.

  Staring at the tiny piece of brass disappearing, Merry thought, I wonder if having his telescope on the bottom of the sea will irritate that insufferable man.

  That made the laughter stop. Varian kept himself at an expertly maintained distance from her now. Distant. That was an understatement. She might have not existed for all the notice he gave her. Sighing, she knew it was for the best, but she missed him. Perhaps that was why her frolics with Shay were always so frenzied of late. A feeble attempt to escape her growing heartache by hiding in laughter.

  Merry was about to straighten up, to step back to the deck, when she was suddenly grabbed and dragged off the barrel with terrifying quickness. Everything happened with such rapid motion it was a barely comprehendible flurry.

  The first thing she realized was she was not being held by Shay because he was across the deck, and had flown there in front of her gaze like a leaf carried on a wind storm. The second thing she realized was that she had finally succeeded, without even an effort, to irritate that insufferable man, for clearly she had irritated Varian. For the life of her, Merry couldn’t imagine how she had done it or why she had ever thought irritating him would be safe.

  Merry had not seen Varian furious since the morning he had found her in his sea chest. But there it was, fury blended with other things she couldn’t discern, and his large hands, always gentle, were now possessed by cruel fingers that held her painfully trapped against him.

  “Let me go,” Merry screamed, wanting to assure herself Shay wasn’t injured. The Irishman had hit the deck hard. “Why did you do that? Why did you hurt Shay?”

  Morgan’s voice was icy and clipped, a straining reminder somehow she had pushed this man too far. “I am at the end of my tolerance of you.”

  Having become accustomed to his indulgence of her in all things, Merry flung without thought, “I will do as I please, you odious insufferable man. I am at the end of my tolerance of you hurting my friends. Let me go.”

  Disoriented by her anger, when his fingers bit more firmly into her arms, she raised a hand to slap him. He caught it brutally in mid-air.

  Morgan dragged her to the cabin in a haphazard descent with her screaming and struggling with each step. She was fighting him, but she was terrified, because whatever this change in him, she didn’t like. It frightened her.

  In the darkened passageway, she screamed, “You are insane. I have done nothing to make you angry. Let me go. You are hurting me. Take your hands from me.”

  When the cabin door closed, Merry found herself flattened against it, and then his mouth upon hers, forcing her lips apart as he ruthlessly deepened the kiss. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced with Varian, powerful and without restraint. Merry froze, unable to struggle or answer his assault. The need in his flesh matched her own, and she wanted it to stop, because it was burning. Even as angry as she was with him, it moved through her veins, excited and urging. His hands were not gentle as they moved over the slopes of her body, and she found h
erself growing weak from long denied desire. He was kissing her in absolutely passionate fury.

  The tears burned as they rolled down her cheeks. There was a long pause in which nothing changed, not his hands or his kiss. Then Merry felt his body tighten. He stopped the furious outpouring of his passion and set her away from him.

  Varian stepped back from her and his black eyes were glittering in a soullessly unreadable face. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, Merry. However, there is a limit to what I will tolerate of you. You may refuse me as long as you wish, Little One, but do not dance beneath my nose and play games with me.”

  “I will do as I please, you odious insufferable man. You’re a fine one to talk about playing games. You have done nothing but play games with my heart and flesh since my first night aboard this ship. If you touch me again, I will kill you. I was wrong about you. It is Varian who is the fiction. It is Morgan who is real. And Morgan I despise.”

  It didn’t seem possible to Merry, but both his face and his eyes hardened even more chillingly. Varian said, “If that were true, Little One, you would have been in my bed the first night. Do you know how desperately I want you? Enough to wish Morgan were real, and because he is not, to be trapped in the torment of living with you.”

  “If I am a torment, return me to Falmouth.” Her voice had degenerated into a feeble whisper, heavy with her misery and anxiety. A tear-choked sob interrupted her words, and it took her a moment to continue. “Take me home. Please. You are like a spider, spinning a web around me and I am caught in the web. I know you are going to devour me. I know it because I want you to, but I can never let you. I don’t belong with you. I don’t belong here. Take me home to Falmouth while I am still able to leave you.”

  In excruciating frustration, Varian ground out, “You are more bother. More pain. More irritation. And more pleasure than any woman I have ever known. You are every element of the universe, brilliant and extreme. When you are angry you are a hurricane at sea. When you laugh it is with the wild resonance of a raging windstorm. When you are sweet you are like marzipan. When you are calm, you are an English autumn before a fire. You have the beauty of a perfectly molded china doll. The lushly sloping curves of a Venus statue. The delicacy of crystal. The will and stubbornness of iron. I can’t imagine what the passion will be when we finally share it. Even the torment I savor when it’s given by you because it is you and you make me want it.”

  Frightened of him, but more frightened of herself, Merry whispered, “I will run from you the moment there is some place for me to run, Varian. I only returned to ship with you in hopes you would take me home to Falmouth. I can’t remain with you. You must know that.”

  The touch of his hand on her cheek startled her. It was quiet and tender and wistful. “You won’t run, Merry. We are one. One, but both of us incomplete, because you are young and stubborn and think there is a choice in this. You think you can get all you want, as you want it, instead of how it is. You fight the wind head on, instead of letting it carry you where you want to go. I gave up fighting you on Isla del Viento. You, it seems, require longer. Don’t make it too much longer. You are squandering the happiness of our lives.”

  Stunned, Merry watched as Varian’s unhurried stride took him from the cabin, leaving her there trembling, furious, and frightened. Her body hungrily yearned for his kisses and his touch. Her heart ached for his return. She should have been relieved that he left, but now that he was gone, all she wanted was him back.

  Angry and frustrated, with an anxious sweep of her arm Merry sent the crystal on the table to crash against the floor.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Varian stepped into his cabin and froze. It took a moment to distinguish what he was seeing. It was not what he expected after hearing the sounds of crashing glass from his cabin.

  Merry was in his bed. He had conjured this picture often. Wishful thoughts hadn’t touched reality. His blankets were held to shield her naked breasts, and only her dark curls and the dim light of a single candle touched the silken flesh of her shoulders. She met his eyes in an even study. Her face was claimed by a sweet smile, and something about her calm posture told him she’d been waiting for him for some time. She broke the silence first.

  “You are an insufferable man,” Merry said. “I suspect I will always find you to be insufferable. I may understand you a trifle better after tonight. I doubt I will ever understand you completely. It would help matters for me if you would be more direct from time to time.”

  He took in a deep breath and let it ease out of him slowly, steadying. Varian felt the blood rise in his cheeks and the quickening of his heart. “I will remember. If I don’t, remind me. What has happened to change this tonight?” he asked.

  This: he brought it between them and she didn’t retreat. The memory of his fury unleashed on her today stabbed him. Was that why she was in his bed, out of a fear it would happen perhaps in fury instead of love?

  Merry’s incaution worried him since he didn’t understand how it had come about, so he pressed, “I apologize for my behavior earlier. This is not a gesture you need make if you are worried that I can’t give you your way any longer. I don’t understand why I should find you in my bed after how I treated you.”

  He looked at her reflection back at him. That he didn’t understand seemed to please Merry. Her smile was broader and her eyes brighter. She slipped her hands down her legs, the movements unintentionally seductive. She fixed her fingers around her toes. The youthful gesture touched his heart.

  “You may sit on the bed while I explain. I am not going to hit you if that’s why you are hovering by the door, Varian. I have never once been afraid of you. I would not be in your bed in fear of your fury.”

  He watched as her sapphire gaze raised to squarely meet his and then took on a faint wash of amusement. The tautness of his body held him at the door for moment, before he moved to sink on the bed beside her, close but careful not to touch her. He must do this right, in slow tenderness.

  When she didn’t speak, he said, “Are you going to explain? I am too uncertain to be hopeful yet.”

  Merry laughed, as she broke their separateness by touching his hand with a finger. Every nerve in his body felt as though it were beginning to blister. His heart filled with both his joy and his regret.

  He didn’t want her this way, not in a manner so much less than she deserved, and he knew there was no change of course in this for either of them. Merry had chosen the wrong path, to be his mistress rather than his wife. Still, he wanted to do this in the manner she deserved.

  “It is not often I unravel you enough to understand you, so let me take my time in this,” she said.

  “You have been unraveling me since your first night on my ship,” he told her softly.

  “Good, then we are even in yet another way.” After a pause. “You are a complicated man. You are villainous in reputation. However, you don’t ever behave in a villainous manner. The current fashion in London is all things Greek. You are elegant and fashionable in all things. But, you did not name this ship out of mockery of the current fashion. You, you insufferable man, named it from the bible. I would venture more precisely, 1 Corinthian’s Chapter 13. Even more precisely, these passages: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interest, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.’”

  He couldn’t speak. It was not possible to give voice into the beauty of her at this moment.

  Merry laughed softly. “Do you know how much you flatter me with your silence? Would you like to know how I figured this out? It is why I am in your bed.”

  Holding onto her with his gaze, cautioning himself to move slowly in this, his hands covered hers. He brought her fingers to his lips. After a light kiss, he took a breath and said, “
I want it all.”

  The pleasure of his fingers clasping hers was different, so much headier, than at any other time. She was just beginning to understand the startling strength of what he felt for her. The kiss, even in her fear and nervousness of what she would later do with him, had a calming affect that returned to her composure to finish.

  Merry’s voice was one of airy sureness. “It might have made me less furious with you in Virginia if I had realized the words you spoke were not poetic verse, but a passage from the bible. ‘When the perfect comes the partial will pass away.’ I am not as obedient to my faith as you are, Varian. It took me awhile to recognize it. It put many things into less troubling perspective. I was wrong in my suspicions of you at Winderly. You were sincere in your heart in every word and with what you offered me. Your proposal was not a meaningless gesture to trick me into your bed. Just as the name of this ship is not meaningless to you. All the things you do hold the air of significance because they all have meaning. This ship and Morgan, so unlike the man you are, are tied to Rensdale and the death of your wife.”

  “I adore you, Merry. You are my heart.” One of his hands cradled her cheek, running his thumb along its slope in a loving stroke of whispering tenderness.

  Lifting her eyes, she saw his face in a new way. All controls stripped, features and eyes transformed by the well of his heart, and the uncontrolled emotion softened his face into something more perfect to her than he had ever looked before. He was a beautiful man when the wealth of who he was rose un-tempered to his flesh.

  She touched him and her hands did a gentle and intimate glide on his clothing. “I am at the end of the part of this, I know how to manage.”

  He laughed. “Ah, and it was going so wonderfully. Perfection. I could not have done so well. I will never be able to manage a hint of that.”