Face to Face (The Deverell Series Book 2)

by Susan Ward

  “Fuck off,” Indy sneered, twisting away from Tom. “You put a hand on me again, I will take my knife to you and cut you to bits, here and now.”

  Morgan’s dark flowing glance moved between the two of them. What the hell was wrong with the lad? It was one thing for Indy to have his outbursts when they were alone in the cabin, it was quite another to speak in this manner in front of the crew. It would destroy Tom’s authority with the men if he allowed it. The boy knew that.

  Morgan arched a brow. “Whatever is bothering you, lad, this is not the place to explore it. It isn’t worth a flogging. I won’t have any choice but to allow Tom punishment if you keep this up.”

  “You bloody, unfeeling bastard,” Indy sneered scathingly. “Do you think I could even feel the whip? Go ahead and whip me, you son of bitch. Have your grim amusements, flog me and be done with it at last.”

  Nothing, not even annoyance, flickered through the occult blackness of Morgan’s eyes. “That’s enough, lad. You’ve pushed this as far as you can. Let it go.”

  Indy did not let it go. He was beneath Morgan, snarling and out of control. “I have been with Merry, all day in your cabin, with her weeping in my arms. How did you imagine this little game you played with her would end? Did you imagine her happy in being made your whore? What the hell did you do to her?”

  Morgan fought to contain his reaction. The boy knew better than do this in front of the men. What had happened to his wits? He couldn’t protect either of them, not Indy or Merry, not if he stepped back from this, not now.

  Forgive me....

  On a mocking voice, flexible enough to carry across the decks without effort to any who had heard Indy’s outburst, Morgan said, “I fucked her. I fucked her a lot. You can do a lot of fucking in two days, lad, if you have the stamina and sufficient motivation. You’ve seen her nude. You’ve seen the motivation. Maybe the girl is crying because she is sore from fucking.”

  Tom Craven, for all his years, had the agility and quickness of a tiger. He seized Indy’s arms and held him back. Morgan was grateful that his quartermaster had acted quickly and anticipated what the boy’s reaction would be. If the boy had swung, being on deck in front of the men would not have allowed it to end without the boy facing the lash. The rules of the ship were well known, and Indy had to live by them if he expected the crew to as well. The boy should have never started this here.

  Indy’s hiss was one of pure rage. “I will kill you if you ever touch her again.”

  This was among the grimmest moments Varian had spent during his life on this ship. The boy, irrational, had taken it one step further. Necessity wouldn’t let it be over. He gave the order without pause, “Chain him in the hold.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was midnight before Varian went to the hold to unlock Indy. He would have preferred to spare himself the vision of Indy in chains beneath the sinister cast of a glowing lantern. His internal control would never be able to seal off his reaction to this. It was as powerful as it had been five years ago, the scene a vile reminder of what had brought them both to where they were now.

  Boy unlatched, Varian settled in the chair only recently vacated by Shay, who had stayed with the boy through this, at his order. It had been a horrifying ordeal from what the Irishman had told him.

  It had been a day of unpleasant ordeals.

  When Varian had gone to Shay to send him to Indy, the Irishman had had a confrontation of his own with the Captain about the vile comments he’d spoken on deck about Merry. Slovenly bastard. The boy’s affection for Merry ran deep if he had been brave enough to call him that to his face. In some part, inconvenient at the time, Varian had respected the Irishman for calling him that. It had taken an hour to calm Shay down, but at least Shay had the sense to explode in private and was willing to listen to reason as Varian explained why he had said what he had said.

  The order not to repeat the events on the quarterdeck to Merry, thankfully Shay had understood. Those callous words would have cut her to ribbons in her current state. Emotion was running on his ship rampant, like a rabid beast, dangerous for them all. It was time to contain it.

  Betraying to the boy none of his inner turmoil or fury, Varian stated into the shocking quiet between them, “Regardless of what you imagine, I am not unfeeling. I am only wise enough not to parade my emotions like a fool in front of the crew where they could get you killed.”

  A long, strained silence. Indy murmured, “I am sorry. Honestly, I am not sure how much of it I meant. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It won’t happen again.”

  “The same thing is wrong with both of us, lad,” Varian said. “Bluebell eyes and black hair. You would have to be dead not to feel something for Merry. Don’t judge yourself so harshly because of it. Would you like to tell me why you are furious with me?”

  Indy stared at him, dumfounded by Morgan’s calm. The hours alone in the hold had put things in rational perspective. That in wanting to protect Merry he had endangered her, then endangered himself, and Morgan had fixed it the only way possible.

  Indy knew his actions had been inexcusable. He didn’t deserve this generosity from the Captain. Not Morgan’s composure, or his calm, or the man’s unfailing patience. He didn’t deserve it and it only made all the unfulfilled expectations more painful inside of Indy.

  It was the first time Indy realized how unselfish Morgan was. The force of the Captain’s personality somehow diminished awareness of that. Through the past five years, through everything, the man had never asked anything for himself. Not kindness. Not sympathy. Not tact and not affection returned. It made it harder, all so much harder for Indy at times. Even as difficult as it was, in spite of the stupidity of where he’d started this, Indy couldn’t turn back from it.

  “I want you to let Merry go,” the boy said.

  “Ah.” Varian stared at the lantern, no reaction in his eyes or on the smooth lines of his face. “Why don’t you tell me who Merry is, Indy? Why she matters to you. Then I will tell you if I can do it.”

  Indy studied Morgan’s face. He couldn’t tell Morgan who Merry was now. Morgan would be compelled to keep her, and regardless of how this had started, for reasons unexpected, it was the last thing Indy wanted. Indy didn’t want Merry with Morgan, for selfish reasons, for foolish reasons, for reasons of broken adolescent logic. But as much as he wanted to be unburdened by them all, they were there. He’d trapped himself in this. It was a punishment he deserved for the unpardonable act of bringing Merry here.

  Losing the last of his inhibitions about appearing pathetic, Indy said, “Does she have to be anything to me, for you to do this for me? I would have thought an act of charity for me would do your soul good. I want you to get her away from here before it is too late. Before she is saddled with your bastard and the ruin of herself complete. Send her home.”

  Morgan’s smile was enigmatic. It occurred to Indy he had never seen Morgan look so tired. Morgan never looked tired. Never looked in need of anything. It was part of what was such a suffering to endure about the man. His total lack of need, mirroring Indy’s total entrapment by need.

  Amusement simmered in the Captain’s great black eyes. “Failure. Always failure, lad. You can’t grasp that is always what you ask from me. Your own never ending grim test. I think it’s time for you to explore why it is you will only accept failure from me.”

  “You know you don’t have to keep her. You know she can’t tell anyone about you, about what she heard, without harming herself. She knows that well and is young enough to still think she can somehow reason a course from all this, if she stays silent about you. She will never tell anyone she was with you. She can’t bear the thought you’ve touched her. I am not asking for you to fail me. I am asking for you to save Merry.”

  “Failure.” Varian said the word simply, as he rose from the chair. “Regardless of what you believe, boy, I do need. I need like all men need. I just don’t show it, because there hasn’t been much point to that. Just like I needed
you not to say what was brutal and obvious. Showing you I needed you not to say it wouldn’t have stopped you. You would have said it anyway. Because we are all creatures of our own need. Trapped, one and all, alike in the needs of being human and alive.”

  Varian began walking toward the passage way. He didn’t wait to see if the boy followed him. He knew people well, and knew Indy was following behind.

  Without looking over his shoulder, Varian said, “Merry regrets it today. She is in shock, over many things. It is an understandable state in a young woman at this crossroad in her life. To regret the change in herself, to be afraid of what it is means to her in the future. It will pass. She didn’t regret it when it happened. She won’t regret in the future.” Then, with eyes fixed unwaveringly on the boy, he added, “As unflattering as your opinions are of me, it is worth noting at this juncture my conduct with Merry has never been motivated in any manner outside of those from my heart. If you can’t come to terms with that, you had best learn to contain it. I will not be tolerant a second time.”

  They continued in silence until they reached Varian’s cabin. “Go to bed, lad. Don’t let your conscience be troubled by your secrets. I wouldn’t have released her, regardless if you had been willing to part with the truth. I never had any intention of letting her go, soul mending act of charity or not. Because I do need. Like all men. Merry is what I need.”

  Varian didn’t wait for a response. He stepped into his cabin and closed the door.

  ~~~

  The sound of Varian’s return came in the deep of the night. Merry laid still on the edge of the bed as he moved quietly about the cabin, disrobing.

  Struggling to maintain her pretense of sleep, she heard each boot removed and dropped against the lacquer chest. Next, he would discard breeches, and then he would join her in the bed.

  Expecting to feel the mattress dip beside her, instead Merry heard the crystal stopper removed from the decanter, a splash in a wine glass and then a squeak from Varian’s chair as it received his weight.

  So, the strange sense of unease on the ship was not just her imagination, the product of her own internal turmoil. Something had happened outside the cabin today. She could feel it in the heaviness of Varian’s mood.

  He had been gone from the cabin all day and even Indy had been absent in the evening hours. Horribly, it had been Tom Craven who had brought her dinner. She had been asleep when the sound of the knob turning had roused her and, sitting up quickly in the center of Morgan’s bed, she had been humiliated to her marrow to find Tom Craven staring at her from the doorway.

  His dull, deep set eyes had run her form in a sharp way with an odd mix of emotion on his face. Half-irritated and half-damning, before he had dismissed her with the shift of his gaze as he crossed the room to place her tray on the table.

  He didn’t say a word, but she had never felt his dislike over her more strongly. Then there had been a change in him, a sudden caution in manner, as though something had reminded him not to be harsh with her. He had been, for the first time ever, courteous to her. He had apologized for his words on deck and asked if she were all right. Mr. Craven had looked genuinely concerned for her.

  The sound of glass connecting with glass and another splash of wine pulled Merry from her thoughts and back to the man in the chair across the cabin from her. The room was very still. There was only the sound of Varian’s breathing, then the swirl of wine in glass, forewarning her of the feel of black eyes touching her flesh. Whatever matters lay on his mind, they did not pleasantly claim him.

  She realized she had come to sense and understand Varian’s moods better since sharing his bed. A month ago she would have never understood his mood tonight. Pensive and troubled.

  Her flesh begun to sting from the presence of his eyes on her. Then the burn lifted and she could hear him move in the cabin, feel his presence move farther away from her. She knew he’d gone to the stern windows and was staring out into the darkness in a familiar stance.

  She tilted her head to look at him. The force of what she saw on his face ran hot to her soul and made it impossible to withdraw her gaze. His expression was fully unbound and what was within him tonight was sadder, more complex than anything she had come to expect on his handsome face. Twisted bands of disenchantment, wistfulness, guilt and regret. His emotions churned in a way she’d never seen before.

  She was about to roll away, but his face turned, his eyes shifting, and before he could reclaim his emotions, she saw it briefly, but long enough to read it well.

  He knows he hurt me and he is blaming himself. Torn from her own misery, for a moment she was suspended in the hold of his pain, over her and so many others things she didn’t know. Her love for him pulled fiercely at her heart.

  As horrified as she was by the images of the battle and as desperately as she wanted free from this ship, she couldn’t shut down that part of her that had come awake in Varian’s arms. He moved in her flesh and senses. She felt a starving need to know his warmth beside her, to offer herself to him as a balm for whatever tore at him this night, to feel his mood ease with her comfort and her own heaviness of heart ease with it.

  Fighting the impulse to slide from the sheets and go to him, Merry heard the arrival of rain, a heavy, pouring rain that drove sideways hitting the glass of the windows with harsh, rapid slaps. It was a drenching rain, the type he hated, the type that would keep him below in the cabin with her all day. It was the season for rain and sometimes it went on for days without end. Days alone in the cabin with Varian. What was she going to do?

  ~~~

  As she opened her eyes the next morning, Merry took note of the rain and Varian’s warmth beside her. She had gone to sleep on the edge of the bed facing away from him. Opening her eyes, she realized she had turned towards him. His body was fully exposed to her as he pushed away the sheets and sat up. Hot color flooded her cheeks, and she knew it was worthless to close her eyes, to feign sleep and pretend she hadn’t shamelessly let herself stare at him. The blush on her face betrayed her.

  So Merry lay still, eyes wide, and struggled not to stare at him. It wasn’t an easy effort. The sight of Varian made her heart instantly quicken in tempo.

  Rolling over in bed, she sat up against the pillows. She followed him with her eyes. He shrugged into a robe and crossed to his desk.

  “There is no need for you to get up now, Little One,” he informed her, settling in a chair. “Cook has been given orders to finish with the men before he leaves the galley to deliver our meal. I only rose early to work. It will be an hour before we eat. You should try to sleep, Merry. You tossed and turned most of the night. You can’t be well rested.”

  Merry studied his face, trying to make reason of his mood and words. He was carefully remote today.

  Why was Cook bringing the meal? Where was Indy? Had something happened to the boy? Whatever the relationship between Varian and the boy, they were strongly connected by it.

  “Has something happened to Indy?” Merry asked anxiously, unable to keep the worry from her voice. “Is something wrong with him? Is that why Mr. Craven brought my meal last night? Is that why you spent most of your night in the chair drinking, instead of coming to bed?”

  Merry hadn’t meant that last question to sound as it did, and regretted it instantly. His black eyes sparkled and the tumult in her body grew worse. “There is no need for your worry about Indy. The boy is fine. If you are distressed I did not join you in bed last night, I am more than willing to correct that error now. I was unsure you would welcome me beside you as troubled as you were even in slumber. You are a vision when you wake, Little One. I love to watch you wake.”

  Merry shifted her gaze, studying her toes as they made puffs beneath blankets. “The only error I would like to correct is being here with you.”

  When Varian’s voice came to her, it was with whispering gentleness from that place deep inside of him that was like a caress. “Is it really so terrible loving me and spending your nights in my arms?
What a vexing creature you are at times. Would you rather deny yourself the rare pleasure we’ve found, toss it all away, because I am in part things you don’t wish me to be? Do you think returning you to England will free you of your love for me? Do you think it will remove my feelings for you?”

  “I don’t want to stay here with you.”

  He rose from the chair and crossed the room until he stood above her, his arms on either side of her. He started to ease forward to kiss her, and his movements made her jerk backwards suddenly, until she was flush against wood.

  On Varian’s face flashed surprise she’d recoiled from him. He had never once harmed her, would never lift a hand against her, she knew that and, in spite of her current dismal circumstance, it would serve nothing to behave senselessly.

  Merry let out a ragged breath, wondering why she was behaving like such a fool, and eased over on the bed, leaving a spot beside her if he wanted to sit. There was a long pause and then he sat down beside her.

  With a quiet lift of his hand, he threaded her dark curls through his fingers as he eased slowly forward to claim her lips in the gentlest of kisses. “I am not quite as impatient as you. I prefer to give things time rather than toss them away at first storm cloud. I believe you may in time find you can be happy with me. I would rather keep you, thorns and all, than to pass my remaining days knowing I was foolish enough to let you go.”

  Hating her heart’s reaction to that—a heart stupidly vain enough to take pleasure in having him say that—she pulled free her curls from his fingers and exclaimed in frustration, “Do you ever hear a word I say, you insufferable man? I don’t want to stay here with you. I want only my freedom and to be returned to Falmouth. If you care for me at all, take me back to Falmouth.”

  Varian’s thumb ran the slope of her cheek, and everywhere he traced quivered in answer. Softly, he said, “I hear every word you say, Little One. However, it is your eyes I listen to and not your mouth. They are what is always truthful. I plan to be with you forever, thorns and all.”