Tessa Dare

by Surrender of a Siren

  Mr. Grayson, as she’d learned from the first, was not a quiet man. He spoke often. He spoke loudly. And when he spoke, people listened. Including her.

  The coarse shouts of the sailors, their muttered curses… the periodic clanging of the ship’s bell, the scrape of chains across the deck, the creaking of the ship’s wooden joints … All these sounds had blended into a flotsam of sound that now floated beneath Sophia’s consciousness. But never his voice. Mr. Grayson’s baritone rang out over all, assailing her at the most awkward moments.

  She would be dressing in her chamber, bared to the waist, lacing her stays with a newly gained efficiency, and Mr. Grayson would choose that particular moment to linger above the cabin and scandalize young Davy Linnet with a ribald joke. It irritated Sophia beyond reason, that he could bring her nipples to tight peaks without even occupying the same room. Without even knowing he did so.

  At least, she prayed he did not know he did so. Sometimes she wondered.

  She might have been the sole person Mr. Grayson aroused with a simple laugh or phrase, but she certainly wasn’t the only one he affected. When the crew fell idle on a calm afternoon and the sluggish silence grew thick, those were the times Mr. Grayson chose to sing. As though he’d been waiting for Nature herself to grow still in anticipation of his performance.

  He’d burst out with a song—some bawdy, coarse sailor’s shanty, sung with all the reverence of a hymn—and by the time he’d reached the end of the first verse, the entire crew would have joined him. The chorus would ring from every mast, and down in the cabin, Sophia would smile despite her best efforts not to.

  At other times, he’d smooth over a brewing argument with a jest, delivered in a smooth, disarming tone. Or his casual comment about the wind would be followed by swift adjustments in the rigging. With that clear, pleasing baritone, Mr. Grayson directed the crew just as surely as the rudder steered the ship.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Gray.” O’Shea’s brogue lilted down through the skylight one warm morning, while Sophia was hard at work.

  Mr. Grayson responded, a raw longing in his voice. “Aye. It would be so easy to take her.”

  Sophia nearly dropped her quill.

  “We’ve the advantage of the wind,” O’Shea said.

  “And a faster ship,” Gray replied. “We’d be on her stern in no time.”

  Ships. Sophia breathed again. They were speaking of ships.

  “Those were the days.” O’Shea gave a low whistle. “One cannonball to the rudder …”

  “Wouldn’t even need that. She’d accept our terms with little more than a signal shot and a smile.”

  She could hear that smile in his voice.

  He continued, “Cannons are for amateurs. Seizing a ship intact … it’s all in the approach. From the moment that sail appears on the horizon, you act as though it’s already yours. All that remains is to inform the other captain.”

  Now Sophia smiled with him. She knew exactly what he meant. It was the same attitude she’d carried with her into the bank that day. A half-hour later, she’d walked out with six hundred pounds. She wished she could tell Mr. Grayson that story. He would find it amusing, no doubt. She could almost hear the ringing laugh he’d give when she described the red-faced clerk and the way she’d …

  How curious.

  She’d barely spoken with Mr. Grayson in over a week. How could she have done, after that horrid night? But somehow, through these overheard conversations and stray remarks, she’d come to know him quite well. She’d come to like him.

  She’d come to think of him as a friend. He’d saved more than her life that day.

  There was no denying it now, after the conversation she’d just overheard. She had to face up to the truth she’d been avoiding.

  He could have had her that night, so easily. Conquest was his specialty, as he’d just said. Ships, women … what ever Mr. Grayson wanted, he took. And he had wanted her, at least in the carnal sense, despite all his protests to the contrary. When she’d pressed up against him so shamelessly, she’d felt his unmistakable arousal. She’d made herself his for the taking, and he had walked away.

  Of course, he wasn’t the first person to guard her virtue. Her family, her schoolmistresses, her companions—even her own betrothed—all her life, she’d been surrounded by a fortress of people, all devoted to keeping her untouched. Because her virtue was currency, a token to be bartered for social connections. Would any of those same people give two straws about her virginity, had Sophia been a lowborn, penniless orphan? She doubted it.

  But Mr. Grayson did. He thought her a poor, friendless governess, with no connections worth mentioning and no one to care. And still, he’d guarded her virtue when, in a moment of drunken foolishness, she would have thrown it away.

  In running away from home, Sophia had seized control of her fortune. But she’d also seized control of her body. Her nouveau-riche parents had been desperate for one of their daughters to marry a title. When her older sister, Kitty, had failed to do so, their hopes had transferred to Sophia. But to marry without passion or love, simply for money and connections—it would have made her the worst sort of whore. Sophia didn’t want to lose her virginity as a means of completing a transaction. She dreamed of a different experience, one of passion and emotion and breathtaking romance.

  And she’d have lost that dream, if not for him.

  Maybe he’d been right. Maybe she ought to thank Almighty God in Heaven that he didn’t want her.

  What did it mean then, that she couldn’t?

  Rising to her feet, she packed away her quill and ink. Maybe she couldn’t tell Mr. Grayson the story of her own conquest. Maybe he wouldn’t speak to her at all. But the day was fine, and there was a sail on the horizon, and she simply couldn’t stay put in the cabin a moment longer. She wanted to be in the center of the activity, enjoying the warm rays of the sun.

  Oh, who was she fooling?

  She wanted to be near him.

  Gray froze as Miss Turner emerged from the hold. For weeks, she’d plagued him—by day, he suffered glimpses of her beauty; by night, he was haunted by memories of her touch. And just when he thought he’d finally wrangled his desire into submission, today she’d ruined everything.

  She’d gone and changed her dress.

  Gone was that serge shroud, that forbidding thundercloud of a garment that had loomed in his peripheral vision for weeks. Today, she wore a cap-sleeved frock of sprigged muslin.

  She stepped onto the deck, smiling face tilted to the wind. A flower opening to greet the sun. She bobbed on her toes, as though resisting the urge to make a girlish twirl. The pale, sheer fabric of her dress billowed and swelled in the breeze, pulling the undulating contour of calf, thigh, hip into relief.

  Gray thought she just might be the loveliest creature he’d ever seen.

  Therefore, he knew he ought to look away.

  He did, for a moment. He made an honest attempt to scan the horizon for clouds. He checked the hour on his pocket watch, wound the small knob one, two, three, four times. He wiped a bit of salt spray from its glass face. He thought of England. And France, and Cuba, and Spain. He remembered his brother, his sister, and his singularly ugly Aunt Rosamond, on whom he hadn’t clapped eyes in de cades. And all this Herculean effort resulted in nothing but a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and precisely thirty seconds’ delay in the inevitable.

  He looked at her again.

  Desire swept through his body with startling intensity. And beneath that hot surge of lust, a deeper emotion swelled. It wasn’t something Gray wished to examine. He preferred to let it sink back into the murky depths of his being. An unnamed creature of the deep, left for a more intrepid adventurer to catalog.

  Instead, he examined Miss Turner’s new frock. The fabric was of fine quality, the sprig pattern evenly stamped, without variations in shape or hue. The dressmaker had taken great pains to match the pattern at the seams. The sleeves of the frock fit perfectly square with her
shoulders; in a moment of calm, the skirt’s single flounce lapped the laces of her boots. Unlike that gray serge abomination, this dress was expensive, and it had been fashioned for her alone.

  But it no longer fit. As she turned, Gray noted how the neckline gaped slightly, and the column of skirt that ought to have skimmed the swell of her hip instead caught on nothing but air.

  He frowned. And in that instant, she turned to face him. Their gazes caught and held. Her own smile faded to a quizzical expression. And because Gray didn’t know how to answer the unspoken question in her eyes, and because he hated the fact that he’d banished the giddy delight from her face, he gave her a curt nod and a churlish “Good morning.”

  And then he walked away.

  Gray burst into the galley. “Miss Turner is not eating.”

  The cramped, boxed-in nature of the space, the oppressive heat—it seemed an appropriate place to take this irrational surge of resentment. If only his emotion could dissipate through the ventilation slats as quickly as steam.

  “And good morning to you, too.” Gabriel wiped his hands on his apron without glancing up.

  “She’s not eating,” Gray repeated evenly. “She’s wasting away.” He didn’t even realize his hand had balled into a fist until his knuckles cracked. He flexed his fingers impatiently.

  “Wasting away?” Gabriel’s face split in a grin as he picked up a mallet and attacked a hunk of salted pork. “Now what makes you say that?”

  “Her dress no longer fits properly. The neckline of her bodice is too loose.”

  Gabriel stopped pounding and looked up, meeting Gray’s eyes for the first time since he’d entered the galley. The mocking arch of the old man’s eyebrows had Gray clenching his teeth. They stared at each other for a second. Then Gray blew out his breath and looked away, and Gabriel broke into peals of laughter.

  “Never thought I’d live to see the day,” the old cook finally said, “when you would complain that a beautiful lady’s bodice was too loose.”

  “It’s not that she’s a beautiful lady—”

  Gabriel looked up sharply.

  “It’s not merely that she’s a beautiful lady,” Gray amended. “She’s a passenger, and I have a duty to look out for her welfare.”

  “Wouldn’t that be the captain’s duty?”

  Gray narrowed his eyes.

  “And I know my duty well enough,” Gabriel continued. “It’s not as though I’m denying her food, now is it? I’m thinking Miss Turner just isn’t accustomed to the rough living aboard a ship. Used to finer fare, that one.”

  Gray scowled at the hunk of cured pork under Gabriel’s mallet and the shriveled, sprouted potatoes rolling back and forth with each tilt of the ship. “Is this the noon meal?”

  “This, and biscuit.”

  “I’ll order the men to trawl for a fish.”

  “Wouldn’t that be the captain’s duty?” Gabriel’s tone was sly.

  Gray wasn’t sure whether the plume of steam swirling through the galley originated from the stove or his ears. He didn’t care for Gabriel’s flippant tone. Neither did he care for the possibility of Miss Turner’s lush curves disappearing when he’d never had any chance to appreciate them.

  Frustrated beyond all reason, Gray turned to leave, wrenching open the galley door with such force, the hinges creaked in protest. He took a deep breath to compose himself, resolving not to slam the door shut behind him.

  Gabriel stopped pounding. “Sit down, Gray. Rest your bones.”

  With another rough sigh, Gray complied. He backed up two paces, slung himself onto a stool, and watched as the cook grabbed a tin cup from a hook on the wall and filled it, drawing a dipper of liquid from a small leather bucket. Then Gabriel set the cup on the table before him.

  Milk.

  Gray stared at it. “For God’s sake, Gabriel. I’m not six years old anymore.”

  The old man raised his eyebrows. “Well, seeing as how you haven’t outgrown a visit to the kitchen when you’re in a sulk, I thought maybe you’d have a taste for milk yet, too. You did buy the goats.”

  Gray shook his head. He lifted the cup to his lips and sipped cautiously at first, paused, then drained the cup quickly, as if it held rum rather than goat’s milk. It coated his tongue, tasting bland and creamy and smooth. Innocent. Gray looked down at the empty cup ruefully. He wished he’d made it last a bit longer.

  Gabriel took up his mallet and started pounding again, and Gray looked up sharply, about to ask the old man to leave off and find some quieter occupation. A task more conducive to … to Gray’s pondering, or yearning, or regretting, or what ever damn fool thing he’d sat down to do. But a glimpse of something fluttering behind the cook’s shoulder stole the complaint from his lips.

  Another sketch—this one of Gabriel—hung on the wall above the water cask. It swiveled gently on a single tack; or rather, the paper hung plumb with gravity while the whole ship swiveled around it. She’d captured Gabriel’s toothy, inoffensive grin and the devilish gleam in his eye, and the effect of the paper’s constant, subtle rocking was to make the image come alive. Softly, strangely—the portrait of Gabriel was laughing.

  Gray shook himself. Laughing at him, most likely.

  “She comes here?” he asked.

  “Aye. That she does. Every morning.” Gabriel straightened his hunched spine and adopted a cultured tone. “We take tea.”

  Gray frowned. One more place he’d have to avoid—the galley at morning teatime. “See to it that she eats something. Slip more milk in her tea. Make her treacle duff every day, if she cares for it. Are you giving her a daily ration of lime juice?”

  Gabriel smiled down at the salt pork. “Yes, sir.”

  “Double it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gabriel’s grin widened.

  “And stop grinning, damn it.”

  “Yes, sir.” The old man practically sang the words as he pounded away at the meat. “Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  It was Christmas Eve morning, and Sophia’s mood could only be described as morose. She sat in the cabin, which felt incongruously warm considering the holiday. Paper, inkwell, and quill sat before her on the table. By now, she’d adapted her artistic technique to the ocean’s ceaseless rolling. Her inkwell she affixed to the tabletop with a large dab of melted wax, so it could not easily be dislodged into her lap. The paper she braced under straps of leather she’d removed from her trunk and stretched over the tabletop. And as she laid quill to paper, she kept the joints of her arm and wrist loose to buffer any sudden lurch of the ship.

  She’d illustrated three-quarters now of The Book, meticulously documenting the wanton dairymaid and her lover in each of their amorous attitudes. This morning, however, lewdness did not excite her. She flipped to the epilogue, wherein the gentleman proposed marriage to his lover and together they embarked on a long and fruitful union. Without any excess of concentration, Sophia began sketching a scene of the couple picnicking together beneath the shade of a willow tree. The dairymaid, now dressed in a lady’s finery, sat on a blanket, legs extended before her, ankles crossed, her gaze searching the horizon. The gentleman lay with his head in her lap, looking up at the sky. They did not regard each other, but the easy intimacy of their postures gave them the air of a couple very much in love.

  “Ahoy! Ship ahoy! Larboard bow! All hands!”

  The ship bustled into activity, and Sophia recognized the familiar sounds of the off-watch sailors thundering up from the forecastle, the mainsail being backed against the mast. The boat slowed and swung around.

  She recapped her inkwell and wiped her hands on her apron hurriedly. “Speaking” with another ship could take minutes or hours, depending on the circumstance. Sometimes the captains merely exchanged names and destinations in a friendly “how-do” fashion, like two ladies crossing paths in the park. In other instances, long conversations and trade might take place. The other day, Mr. Grayson had boarded a Portuguese
trader and returned with a crate of bartered goods.

  But whether the encounter lasted minutes or hours, Sophia—like everyone else aboard—did not want to miss it. Nothing rivaled the sight of a sail approaching. It served as a comforting reminder that the Aphrodite was not simply drifting the globe alone. A promise that civilization and society awaited them at the end of this journey, somewhere.

  She hastened abovedecks, shielded her eyes with her hand, and performed a slow circle. There was no ship to be seen, not even a single puffed sail hugging the horizon. Yet the men were all assembled on deck, buzzing with anticipation. All the sailors, at least. Mr. Grayson was notably absent, as were the captain, his officers, and Stubb.

  Confused, Sophia approached Quinn. “I thought we were to speak with another ship.”

  A wide grin split Quinn’s weathered face. “That we are, miss.”

  “But …” Sophia scanned the distance again, and her voice trailed out to sea.

  “Oh, ’tisn’t a ship coming across the sea,” Quinn said. “Nay, we’re expecting a visitor come up from the sea. We’ve crossed the Tropic of Cancer. And that means we’ve got to appease old Triton before we go any further.”

  Sophia looked around at the milling crewmen. “Triton? Up from the sea? I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a sailors’ tradition, miss.” O’Shea approached, his thick brogue cutting through Sophia’s confusion. “The Sea King himself comes aboard to have a bit of sport with those crossing the Tropic for the first time, like the new boy there.” He nodded toward Davy, who stood to the side, looking every bit as confused as Sophia but unwilling to own to it.

  Quinn crossed his massive forearms over his chest, stacking them like logs. “And Triton always collects his tax, of course.”

  “His tax?” Sophia asked.

  O’Shea gave her a sly look. “Best be ready with a coin or two, Miss Turner. If you can’t pay his tax, old Triton just might sweep ye down to the depths with him and keep ye there forever.”

  Quinn chuckled, shooting the Irishman a knowing look. “Knowing old Triton, it wouldn’t be surprising if he did just that.”