The Maid and The Cook

by Eris Adderly

  A soft, feminine form stood crushed up against him. A healthy, freckled bosom rose and fell above tight stays as the maid caught her breath. Green eyes rolled up over his chest and neck, wide now as they met his own. She, too, saw the way her fall had pressed them together.

  Some warm, sleeping thing turned over low in his gut then.

  God, but it’s been a long time, hasn’t it John?

  He cleared his throat.

  “Are ye … alright? Mrs O’Creagh?”

  The maid stared up at him, and he swore he could see her pulse at her throat.

  “Brigit?” He corrected himself. It was what she’d asked to be called, wasn’t it?

  She wet her lips with an absent slip of pink tongue, and shifted her feet to better support herself, not once tearing her eyes from his.

  “I think I’m … alright ... Mr Bone.” The young woman tugged backwards in his arms, appearing to test whether he would release her.

  He loosed his arms, as if in a trance, and let her step back.

  What just happened here?

  Shaking his mind back to attention, he turned into the dim interior of the room and pushed off into the instruction he’d planned as he’d first led her across the deck.

  “Right. Well. This is the galley then.” He began to move about the space, his unexpected new charge following. “This is the oven, and here is where we keep the pots …”

  John Bone busied himself showing Brigit around, but all the while his thoughts danced and played elsewhere, the way he might have before he lost the leg. Glances at the younger woman—his best estimations gave him some twenty years over her—told him beneath the scars dusting her face there was a saucy grin, the likes of which made a man act the fool. He already found himself tempted to do so.

  Ye know I like a calm sea, Blackburn. What storm have ye dropped on me here?

  A man his age should know better.

  * * * *

  Brigit tried to pay attention to what the cook was saying—something about pease, just now—but her mind kept fluttering back to her fall down the stairs. And into this pirate’s arms.

  She didn’t suspect any devious intention from the man. The surprised grunt out of him when he caught her up told her he’d only meant to save her from a spill. It was when she recognised the way their bodies were crushed together, his massive arms circling her. That sudden flash of awareness in his blue eyes when she’d met them.

  That was the look shared between two people when some external force reminds them one of them is a man and the other a woman, in the most basic, animal sense of the words. A male and female. Two bodies, pressed close and secluded. The maid from Cork flushed at the thought.

  The man’s nearly twice your age, girl!

  He was, though, wasn’t he? She noted the white beginning to thread into his beard at the edges, and the way the corners of his eyes crinkled as he explained the routines of the galley with a sprinkling of salty humour. Not a gawky youth at all like the few she’d let cover her in the odd barn or midnight hillside.

  She was no innocent at twenty-three, but someone with a face like hers hadn’t the luxury of the pick of the litter, as far as men were concerned. She’d taken what attention she could get, though it had most often been as no more than a convenient warm place, and not as the sort of beauty who inspired songs and poems.

  Smallpox taking her as a girl had done no favours for her appearance. But for a moment, she’d almost imagined he’d looked at her as though the awful reminders of her long-ago illness weren’t riddled across her features. As though she were some comely lass at a country dance he wished to bounce on his knee.

  “Well?” he said.

  Brigit scattered her silly thoughts aside. He was gesturing at her with a potato in one hand and a small paring knife in the other. She blinked at him.

  You haven’t been paying attention at all! Try not to annoy a man the size of this one, will you?

  “We’d best be on about it then,” he said, and she thought he might be repeating something she’d missed, lost in thought as she’d been. “Takes a fair amount of time to prepare evening meal for a crew this size. Can ye handle the potatoes?”

  She didn’t know the proper way to respond, and so instead stepped forward and took the knife and potato from him. This was her place now, wasn’t it? To work for this cook?

  A glance back to the tall cutting block behind her showed the promise of a healthy share of work: a bulky sack holding the rest of the unpeeled potatoes leaned against its side. With a final considering eye for the imposing Mr Bone, she turned to her task.

  From lady’s maid to cook’s mate in the span of hours, she mused. Where the widow was in all this, she had no idea and was, in all honesty, afraid to ask. She wondered which of the two of them had got the worst in this bargain. The widow, unlike Brigit, was something to look at. And this was a ship full of men who’d been at sea long enough to take what they wanted without asking.

  Perhaps men like this cook?

  Brigit blushed again when she thought she spied him casting an eye her way. Forcing her attention down to the knife in her hands, she set to work.

  * * * *

  He’d only given her the peeling to do because it was a near endless task, and he preferred her to be standing in one place, and out of his way, for the time being. Potatoes were one of the foodstuffs, like water, that didn’t keep long on a ship, and it was best to make use of them right away, before they spoiled.

  That and he was already so accustomed to working alone. At least he was since they’d lost his last mate just over a year ago while relieving a packet of its cargo off the coast of Florida. A lead ball in the chest does much to impede the business of living.

  He wasn’t yet sure how to weave another set of hands into his routines again. There was an entire process to readying the galley for the evening meal, and he’d perfected his dance for one. Two in the kitchen would require time to sort out who was best suited to what all over again.

  It would also require him to stop staring at the circle of this maid’s waist, and the way her hips shifted as she moved her weight from one foot to the other, trying to spare her knees from a task that required her to stand in the same place for a length of time. Images of her bent at the middle over the edge of the cutting block, skirts up over her round bottom, did nothing to preserve the usual comfortable lull of his chores, either.

  The last of the salt pork tumbled into the simmering stew pot and he wiped the grease from his hands with a rag. Turning back to his new responsibility, he folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the pantry doorframe, watching her work. The pile of peelings was growing off to one side of the block’s surface under deft movements of her knife. Her head was bent to her task, exposing the line of her neck to the frank appraisal he felt waking up somewhere beneath his ribs.

  John Bone hadn’t felt this ready to jump out of his skin over a woman in years. He didn’t lighten his purse with whoring nearly as often as most of the other, younger crew members did during shore leave. At their age, the entire wide world was a place to put their cocks, and they were all stallions looking for a mare. Experience showed him now, though, that a poxy wench most often wasn’t worth the coin for the few minutes’ rut. He was already missing part of one limb: the rest he’d like to keep intact, if it pleased the Lord.

  The long braids of his beard slid under his fingers as he smoothed at them in the usual way he did when he thought. He fiddled with the tin charms he’d woven into the ends of the plaits, a bull on one and a rose on the other. His hands, he realised as he took in the sloping shoulders of the maid, wished to be busy elsewhere.

  Even in his youth, he’d never been aggressive when it came to women: he preferred to suss out their interest and watch matters spring up in due course. This Brigit O’Creagh, however … Her name even tasted good rolling around in his mouth. Perhaps it was the husky giggles that bubbled up out of her at his rude attempts at humour. Or possibly the way her ch
eeks dimpled beneath the scars. That accent of hers wasn’t hurting either. Cork, she’d told him, when he’d asked where her family was from.

  Whatever it was about her, he’d felt it sinking into him while he’d been showing her about the galley, and the level of his boldness was rising to meet it. The near endless patience he was known for among the crew became a thing of unfamiliar frustration now. Perhaps, he thought, today he might press his advantage instead of waiting. He had size and years over her, and the galley was his personal fiefdom, after all, and not hers.

  He wouldn’t force anything, but maybe …

  Maybe today, and with this young woman, he could find it in himself to be … persuasive.

  * * * *

  “So how did ye end up in the service of this … Mrs Collingwood, is it?

  Brigit turned to look over her shoulder at the first words she’d heard from the cook in a while, and saw him leaning near the door to the pantry he’d shown her. His weight was on his good leg, as she was coming to note it often was, and he had those massive arms folded across the front of him.

  “My da’ heard from one of his friends there was some gentleman in need of a maid for his daughter’s travels,” she said. Something about the cook’s presence, some warmth perhaps, put her at ease, and she expanded: “He had me volunteered and signed on before sunset without even asking me. Said the family needed more coin and less mouths to feed.”

  “Ye mean ye’ll see no purse at all for yer work?” He sounded incredulous, though his voice was still sedate. She laughed without turning back to look at him.

  “Oh no, Mr Bone. My da’ had that coin in hand before the ink was dry on the paper.” She gave a rueful chuckle at the memory of the glimmer in her father’s eye when the silver had been displayed that evening at the family’s table. “Not that it matters now, I suppose. This captain of yours seems to have relieved me of my duties, at least to the widow.”

  “She’s a widow, is she?”

  The knife gleamed before disappearing under the surface of the next potato.

  “So it seems, Mr Bone,” she answered him, “but I think it’s been for some time now. She doesn’t wear weeds, and she never speaks of Mr Collingwood.” Brigit was relaxing in the company of this man. She could almost forget what he was.

  Pirate.

  “Oh dear Lord,” he said with a groan.

  “What’s that then? Is it a problem?” She turned her head again to see if she could read the meaning on his face, and saw that he’d levered himself away from the doorframe.

  “Not for you, it won’t be, lass.” He made a low noise she thought might have been a laugh, and his eyes were elsewhere, mind on matters out of sight.

  “For who then? The widow?” She went back to her peeling, adding another finished potato to the stack.

  “Let us just say”—the thump of his wooden leg told her he was moving about the galley now as he collected his thoughts—“a man like Captain Blackburn finds a woman like that in his care? Well … It may be best if ye didn’t know.”

  Brigit smirked as the knife made its next chalky bite. She imagined she likely did know. That poor woman. The widow looked as though she wouldn’t know what to do with a man if he walked straight up to her and—

  The cook was behind her.

  Directly behind her.

  Chest to her shoulders, belt to her waist, pressed against her all the way down. Her paring knife fell to the block with a dull clatter and she took a brisk breath in through her nose.

  Closer he crowded her, until her belly came against the side of the block and she was trapped between him and it. Her heart thudded at a wild pace and her palms were flat on the cutting surface, her limbs too stunned to make a move.

  The immense, warm upper body of a man curved in around her, and she saw heavy hands come to rest at the edge of the block on either side. Her arms, which on any normal day she considered plump, looked almost delicate alongside his. She swallowed and stared straight ahead at the galley’s staircase.

  You may have become too familiar with this man, Brigit.

  “Did anyone tell ye to stop peeling, Mrs O’Creagh?” His voice was a deep, tumbling purr, just above her right ear. She’d asked him to use her first name instead, but the way he’d addressed her just now stirred up a hum of awareness between her thighs. Her knees wanted to buckle, but she managed to keep them locked.

  At an utter loss for words, she flicked her gaze back down at the block and took up the knife once more, along with the half-skinned potato she’d dropped, and tried to focus again on her task. Bone didn’t move.

  How long will he stand here like this?

  “So what will yer father do with this coin, now that he’s hired ye out as a maid?” He spoke to her in quiet tones, but in a casual way that belied the heat of his body, the rustle of his shirt and breeches against her back.

  “Well”—she cleared her throat, the knife moving its slowest yet—“I suppose the family will eat now.”

  “Mmm? Weren’t they eating before?” His left hand came away from the block with his distracted question, and she felt a set of knuckles drag in a whisper down the back of her upper arm.

  How could he expect her to keep working while he did this?

  “Not as much as they’d like, I’m sure, Mr Bone.” All of her willpower went into keeping her voice steady. Why it seemed so important to play along, to act as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, was beyond her.

  “And why is that?” His voice was so very low and dark with temptation now. The hand moved to her waist and settled there.

  Yes, there was clearly a game afoot. And one she was certain this man would win in the end, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be sporting. Brigit took a deep, slow breath and picked up a new potato.

  “I’m the oldest of six by ten years, Mr Bone.” She made her reply, trying her best to ignore him while she worked again with the knife. “Four brothers and one sister. My da’ could hardly keep food in the cupboard as it was, and my mum had her hands full with the little ones. I doubt I’ll be missed.” Brigit found she didn’t care for those particular words when she heard them coming out of her own mouth.

  “Hmm,” Bone murmured, considering. The braids of his beard tickled along the skin above her collar, and she felt him bend his head at his next words, a set of warm lips speaking against the side of her throat. “Perhaps ye were needed … elsewhere.”

  Now what does he mean by … ?

  A kiss, and then a second, whispered at her neck. Something immaterial in her belly flipped and twisted. She set the knife back down. Brigit was no stranger to handling a blade, but just now it seemed to be an incredibly distracting time to be waving one around.

  A huge, callused palm slid down her forearm and covered her right hand where it now lay atop the block. His thumb grazed across the side of her forefinger. Blood rushed in her ears. This game was at an end.

  Before, it was a simple matter of him standing far too close. Now this man, this pirate with a great many more years’ experience than Brigit, was pinning her against the tall cutting block with his body, the hand at her waist splayed and pulling her close rather than merely lingering at her hip.

  “Mr Bone?” It was all she could do to rasp out the words.

  He laced the fingers of his right hand together with hers in a move that spoke of both possession and reassurance. His mouth was moving down to her shoulder and she could feel him now, unavoidably hard against her backside.

  Brigit was not accustomed to being touched this way by a man. Caressed. Savoured. Gooseflesh broke out over her arms, the tops of her breasts.

  “Mr Bone.” Her eyes were closed now under his touch. He brought her right hand up, the one he held in his, and placed it behind his shaven head. She allowed it to stay when he loosed his grip, and her fingertips trailed cool lines over the back of his neck.

  Wasn’t she supposed to be peeling potatoes? How had they managed to—

  The feel of his
fingertips on the far side of her jaw scattered her thoughts aside and a gentle nudge turned her face just a hair further in his direction. Unexpectedly soft lips and a brush of beard were at her ear, her cheek.

  Heaven help you Brigit, what will you do if he …

  He melted his lips against the very corner of her mouth. Not a full kiss, but a hint of one, and he lingered there, allowing her to take in the way her hand was still on the back of his neck and the way the cutting block forced her bottom back against his arousal. She felt his chest expanding at her back with his breath, which seemed to be coming just as erratic as her own, now.

  “It’s about time, Mrs O’Creagh,” he said, with a renewed squeeze at her waist. She could barely summon words.

  “Time?” The question sounded tiny and fearful. “Time for what?”

  “Time to feed a ship full of hungry men,” he said, and her racing thoughts cleared as she heard the wry grin in his words.

  He gave her a final squeeze and stepped back. Brigit wanted to collapse to the floor.

  An entire ship full? It was taking all her efforts to contend with the one hungry man she’d already found. Brigit shifted her weight and felt a wet sliding between her legs. There would be nothing left of her by the next port, if this man devoured her the way his kisses at her throat said he intended.

  She let out a long, shuddering sigh.

  The rest of these potatoes would have to wait.

  * * * *

  The curious texture of ship’s biscuit ground between her teeth, softened as it was by a prolonged dip in the stew Bone had prepared. Brigit worked through the remains of her meal, leaning against the now ubiquitous cutting block once again. She thought if she sat, she might never want to rise again.

  A crew of just over eighty sailors, most of them awake for the evening meal, had filed into the galley to receive their ration before moving off to the mess. If it can properly be called such, the cook had explained to her. Apparently the ‘mess’ consisted of a number of tables which folded down at the crew’s convenience on the upper gun deck.