by Susan Ward
Varian was already eating when Merry crossed the breakfast room. At the sight of him, her heart began to beat in bass. His image was so elegantly proper and handsome, it was little wonder no one suspected the lie to be untrue. He was a man who could have ascended to any height in life. She loved him as he was.
He rose to greet her, and a flush appeared on her cheeks as he seemed to examine her face, the skillful allurements of her gown, and the flattering arrangement of her hair. She thought of their past night and her breath caught as she slipped into the chair he held for her.
Merry thought of how it felt to have him kissing her body, how it felt to have him inside of her, about how she’d wrapped her legs and arms around him, whispering her love and urging him onward. He had whispered and done shameful things to her, and she had been as wanton as he had been demanding.
She shivered as he took her hand, watching as he lifted it open palm to his mouth to kiss it.
“I don’t know why I tolerate you,” she said aloud, though her thoughts were very different.
His gaze was glowing as it fixed on her face. “I don’t know why you tolerate me either. Why do you?”
Because I love you. “Because I don’t seem to have much of a choice in the matter.”
The serving girl came with Merry’s breakfast plate.
Varian waited for the maid to depart. Then, he asked, “Is that what yesterday was about? Having a choice? Is that why you would dare something so dangerous and foolish?”
His voice was intense. His eyes were not. They were patient and probing. Merry tensed. Last night he may have been content with their lovemaking, but today he was not, no matter what prosaic wash he put on his inquiries. How could she explain her ordeal without telling him about Rensdale? She decided there was no way and instead focused on her food.
He watched her in silence and to her surprise did not press further with his questions. After a long while, he voice came to her, a husky breath. “If I hurt you…”
He didn’t finish. The serving girl had returned. Merry stared into her tea cup. She felt the burn of his eyes upon her. Once they were alone again, she looked up, her face half sideways, and her eyes unknowingly seductive. "No, you were right to be angry…” she began slowly.
Merry could see somehow she had amused him. He cut her off quickly, his black eyes shimmering. “No, my dear. Did I hurt you with my passion?”
She looked at him then. The expression in his eyes made her heart turn over inside of her. She felt the flush run down her cheeks across her neck. Her laughter came, gentle, airy and pleasant. She could not stop it, any more than she could stop her love for this man or the blush she felt rising hotter on her cheeks. On a mirth-filled whisper she said, “I am not made of glass, you insufferable man.”
She felt the smile in Varian before the barest glimmer of it softened his face. He took her fingers in the lightest of holds and touched their tips to his lips. She felt his touch run through her as strongly as it had last night during their coupling, that passion that had been so unlike himself. The gentle clasp of his fingers was feather light, but the feel of him was racing through her like a raging fire.
“Don’t run away from me again.” Something in his tone sobered her. Tolerant and affectionate he may be on the surface; tolerant and affectionate he was not. “I could not bear if harm came to you.”
Merry’s throat tightened. She could feel something powerful struggling just under the composure he maintained. “I wasn’t running from you. Haven’t I already committed to staying with you?”
“Have you?” he asked gently.
Varian rose and she could hear the stretch of well-knit muscles against fabric. She stared up at him, confused. He settled the bill, and without looking back at her left the tavern. Flabbergasted, Merry sat at the table and stared at his vacant chair. Around her, the sound of silverware and rattling plates hummed through her questioning thoughts.
She felt the rise of her temper and didn’t know why. Why had he left her without a word? Would she ever understand this man?
She felt the soreness of his possession, the sweet memory of him in her flesh. And then she knew why he had done such a baffling thing. She smiled. Symbolic gesture. She was angry, but just a little, only enough she stayed to finish her breakfast.
Merry found Varian on the street in front of the Rose and Crown. She came up behind him, laying her cheek against his back, loving the feel of his firm angles beneath the softness of her face. People swarmed around them, passing by, staring. She did not care. She loved this man.
“You know, your symbolic gestures are infuriating,” she told him. “What would you have done, if I hadn’t realized I was to follow?”
“I would have preferred you followed willingly on your own, but I would have gone back, picked you up and carried you out.”
Merry stepped around until she faced him. “You make it difficult at times to love you, Varian.”
Those black eyes were strained as they met hers. “Be patient with me, Merry. It will not be like this always, I promise you. I promised this will not last forever. It would be unforgivable if I could not give you more than this.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what he was telling her. The naked urgency in his voice shocked her. It was the last thing she had expected from Varian; quiet desperation and an almost shaken plea. Those strange currents that had run wildly through his flesh last night were still rioting through him today. Her blood flamed in answer.
Suddenly, she could not catch her breath. She wanted to kiss Varian, in front of all these people, and take him back to their room in the inn where he would only be hers. Just a little while longer. All she wanted was him. She wanted to laugh, to hold him and let her feelings run wild however they would. She could do none of that and that made her feel hollow inside.
Love at times was not a pleasant emotion. It was not fair he could love her with such restraint. She felt vulnerable, dazed, no longer herself.
The arrival of the carriage brought sudden meaning to his plea. The return to ship, all that meant and all the things Merry didn’t want there to be. He helped her into the carriage and she sat quietly beside him as they made their way slowly back to the docks.
She stared out the window glumly and did not care that Varian watched her and understood her mood. He lifted her from the seat with gentle care and before she knew it they were back on ship.
Too quickly, his form began to recede from her. She could feel him slipping farther and farther away from her. Soon he would be gone, be Morgan again, and Varian would only emerge in brief flashes in the cabin. She wasn’t ready to let him go.
Merry turned into his chest, burying her face into the pleasant scent of shirt and flesh.
“Lay with me now,” she whispered raggedly. “The way you did last night.”
There was a desperate quality to her voice. So she’d understood the difference in him and what they had shared. A weapon in Merry’s hand was always a well-used tool. Varian looked at the creamy flesh of her neck and saw the pulse of her heart there.
“Go below, Merry. I’ll be there soon,” he told her gently.
Merry looked up at him. “Come with me now.”
Varian pulled away. He saw the flash of pain in her eyes. Her plea for him to join her in the cabin was one of Merry’s little wars with him. It was a test and he was failing her.
The last thing he wanted to do was fail her, but he wouldn’t compromise her safety, not even with the pressure of her magnificent blue eyes, round with love, begging him to do so.
He had never hated his life on ship more than he did at this moment. He would hurt her in a hundred little ways and gradually she would come to love him less. Even a heart as rich as Merry’s could be whittled down over time from the necessity of his aloof manner in the presence of the crew. He hated the thought of her loving him less.
“Don’t ask me to hurt you,” he said.
She stared at him, her eyes naked with emotion that served n
either of them well. “I’m asking you to love me.”
Varian brushed the curls from her face and felt the tension in her flesh beneath his fingertips. “I thought we’d settled all this. I thought you understood.”
Merry did understand. It didn’t mean she liked it. “I want you with me now.”
Morgan took her hand. He was thinking he couldn’t believe that he was going to behave so recklessly to please her. It would serve neither of them well if the crew knew how much she meant to him.
He gave the necessary orders to Tom to set sail. He closed the cabin door. Loving her was making him weak and foolish. But he did not want her to love him less.
~~~
For the second time in as many weeks, Merry heard the order to load guns and then the canons thundering release. A fortnight ago, in a bewildering departure of what she came to expect as routine, the Corinthian had closed on a fast moving clipper flying no flag, and entered into battle with the sole intent of sinking her. Varian allowed the clipper’s crew no quarter, even after a battered white flag of surrender had been raised above the smoky ruins of her decks. The Corinthian had sent their tattered prey to the bottom of the sea.
Then, today she had come awake to the cry of ‘sail ho’, had run topside to find the ship shadowing the course of a slow moving British merchant vessel. For half a day they had kept pace with the ship, then shortly after her noon meal, Merry had been tossed onto the deck by a warning volley from the Corinthian’s canons.
The ensuing scene had sent her into outrage. Boarding nets were quickly strung in the rigging, and the chaos unfolding on the debris cluttered deck of their prey was madness. The boarding party was a deadly swarm of panting men and clashing steel, herding the Hampstead crew into a huddle at the stern. More crew members were ransacking below decks in what became a screaming stream of passengers hoping to seek safety topside. Two weeks ago they had destroyed a vessel without cause. Now this. Whatever this was, she wanted it to stop and couldn’t imagine why Varian permitted it.
In desperation she went to Tom Craven, her voice raised louder than it should have been. He listened to her with tight lipped annoyance, all the while barking orders through her rapidly streaming tirade, and then quite clearly fed up with her said, “Morgan or not, if you don’t leave my deck, I will put you in chains myself.”
She didn’t doubt him. As it was, she didn’t have to leave. Mr. Craven boarded the Hampstead. Order did not accompany his arrival. From there it only got worse.
Unable to watch the senselessness any longer, at a run Merry went below decks. She found Varian in the cabin, reclined on his bed, picking at bowl of allspice berries and reading of all things Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lord Byron’s poetic work celebrating a debauched nobleman’s adventures of riotous living and flagrant love affairs; reading it with such an air of bloody insouciance it took every ounce of restraint for her not to hit him.
“Do you know what they are doing out there? Do you even give a damn?” she raged, only pausing in her words for a split second as she tried to quickly assess those black eyes slowly lifting to her face. “There are women and children, dragged on the decks like dogs, for the sport of your men and their grim pleasure. Why do you sit here in this cabin and allow it to continue? It is undisciplined madness. They are dumping the cargo into the sea, ransacking the supplies, letting those hopeless people know only the despair you are leaving them in, coupled with the senselessness of their deaths. Mr. Craven has put an officer of his majesty’s navy on a pig, no less, and is using his hat for target practice. You might very be amused by this, sir, but I assure you I am not. Damn you, Varian, are you going to simply sit there and eat berries?”
Varian listened to it all in silence, and when she finished, he studied her for a moment, showing no expression, finished a page and calmly closed the book. “There is precious little to break up the boredom and monotony on ship, Little One. If the men need to release a little steam, a wise Captain lets them from time to time. They’re not going to kill anyone. Don’t worry. This temper is quite needless and a trifle unappealing today. And yes, I am going to finish eating.”
Merry had a strong urge to throttle him. She hated it when Varian wouldn’t fight with her, hated when he sometimes still slipped partially into the artful manipulations of Morgan when they were alone. It was most probably reflex, but it was infuriating to her. What the devil was the matter with the man?
“Are you so greedy about feeding your legend, you are amused by brutalizing the innocent for your self-flattery?”
Varian’s gaze, shrewd and glittering, swept her face in a single glance. “Are we discussing the Hampstead, Little One, or are we really discussing yourself?”
Blushing, baffled by his current demeanor, Merry countered in a voice potent without effort, an art she had learned by listening to Varian, and said, “If you let this continue, I will not let you touch me ever again. I will sleep on that bench and if you so much as brush a hair on my head I will move into the first cabin that will have me, even if it’s Mr. Craven’s.”
Merry succeeded in only making his black eyes sparkle. “Oh, my, we are dragging out the canons, aren’t we love, and trying a broadside with them no less.” Varian had never deserved more to be hit, if for no other reason than the amusement he allowed to soften his lips. Setting aside the bowl, he made a slow rise to his feet. “You have learned a thing or two about me haven’t you, Little One? But still not quite as much as I wanted you to, not in the least the needlessness of threatening me or the benefit of trusting me.”
It was a quick, brushing kiss that he gave Merry no time to step away from, but it packed enough to flatten her. Dismissing and displeased, was her impression of Varian in that most meager contact of lips.
Pressing her fingertips into her eyes, she had to forcibly keep herself from screaming. She loathed when Varian behaved like this, moved their conversations in circles, when she was never quite sure of where they were going or their meaning; when he was angry and wouldn’t show it directly. Hid his true emotions from her under a light canvas of drama, and caused her emotional responses to become not at all what she wanted them to be.
She whirled on him, her eyes sparkly and probing. “Why is it I have never seen you battle a British ship when there is a litany of crimes that accuse you of it, Varian? You have moved past every English ship since I have sailed with you. You have not battled one. Only the warship and that was because Tom Craven couldn’t avoid it. Why shift course, take this ship, allow your men to terrorize it, lull about below deck, and not set foot on her decks yourself?”
Why that speculation entered her mind at this moment and seemed important had no logic to it at all. It would have appeared completely foolish if it hadn’t suddenly stopped Varian from his sure return to berries, bed, and book.
Surprise flashed in Varian’s eyes before he concealed it by shadows.
“Oh, Little One, you do have an oar in the water now, don’t you,” he said, lightly cupping her chin. “You are quick. You are clever. I love to watch your mind turn the puzzle.”
There was no time to speculate on the meaning of that. The man spoke in sentences at times that needed to be painstakingly dissected like leaf sections on a naturalist dish before she could find full meaning.
Varian grabbed her hand in a gentle yet unyielding grip, pulling Merry behind him as he made his way to the deck. He went no farther than the top step, paused, and gently forced her up in front of his towering form. He clutched her chin, easing her face around, until she had no choice but to stare at the chaos unfolding in front of her.
“Little One, have you really shared my life for nearly a year and never realized everything I do has purpose to it?” Varian asked her in mild irritation. “In the months you’ve been aboard my ship, have I ever done anything deliberately cruel? Do you think I am capable of brutality? Have you come to know me so little you could believe that I am...what was it you said...? 'Capable of brutalizing the innocent for self-flat
tery?' If that is how you see me, Merry, I can’t imagine why you would love me.”
Merry refused the embrace he offered her. Now on top of everything, she was plagued by a hazy regret only surpassed by her frustration in trying to understand him. She was angry, she was right to be angry, and yet somehow, Varian made her feel as though her judgments were askew. He accomplished that with the same simplicity of effort his kiss reminded her that she went to his bed on her own accord, if she left it he would let her, and she would hurt them both in the process of trying to hurt him.
Staring up at him, Merry's eyes searched his face with youthful impatience. “What is it you’ve brought me here to see? What is it you think I have missed? You have the gall to get angry when I don’t understand what it is happening. Worse, you did not even get angry at me today without burying it within an infuriating dose of self-composed drama. I hate the Morgan drama. You know that. I tolerate it when the others are around, but I won’t tolerate it when we are alone. I wish you’d just be furious with me. I like temper, especially when I am in the mood to fight.”
He laughed softly.
Searching Varian’s face, she added, “What is it I have missed, you insufferable man?”
Varian was standing quite still, and his eyes were as severely bright as fire embers. “I am sorry about the drama, but you deserved it, Merry. Your opinion of me when you stormed the cabin was not flattering. I thought we were beyond that. As for threatening me with your body, it is an insult to me and an insult to you. You degrade us both when you turn my affection for you into an unnecessary threat. You’ve finally succeeded at irritating me, my dear, and you did it well. I don’t want to fight with you today. I have waited a long time for this particular moment. I would prefer to savor and enjoy it.”
Varian raised his arm, and with a sigh Merry stepped into the embrace allowing him to drape his arm around her shoulders. She watched the slow swirl of smoke rise from the decks, blurring more intensely what seemed beyond comprehension. “It would make it easier for me to move past the last of my temper if you would explain what is going on.”
