Tessa Dare

by Surrender of a Siren

  Not that any of her sketches or paintings were for him.

  He turned to Stubb. “Did she give you a present, too?”

  The man smiled through his grizzled beard. “Aye. It’s in steerage. Lovely little painting of a mermaid.”

  “Good Lord.” Gray sanded his palm on his bearded jaw.

  The steward picked up a wooden spoon and prodded Gray in the side. “They’re waiting for you, you know. Get in there, so we can serve.”

  Gray hurried through the passage before Stubb could prod him again. He traversed the small corridor of the officers’ berths and entered the captain’s cabin. The men rose as he entered, Joss at the head of the narrow table, flanked by the other officers.

  “Merry Christmas,” he mumbled, suddenly self-conscious. He nodded to the men, then turned and made a bow to Miss Turner before sliding into the chair opposite.

  Stripes.

  Out of habit, Gray immediately noted the answer to his question. The persistent, ever-present question that plagued his days, popped into his mind whenever he saw her or anticipated seeing her. Which was nearly all of the time.

  Which frock would she be wearing? Sprigs or stripes?

  Gray harbored a slight preference for the stripes. Not only did the darker color suit her complexion, but the neckline plunged in an enticing manner, displaying a wedge of sheer chemise. The sprigged gown had a higher, square neckline, and only one flounce to this frock’s two.

  But then … The sprigged gown had tiny buttons down the side—fourteen buttons, to be exact, and though just mentally undoing them was enough to drive Gray mad with frustration, that mile-long stretch of minuscule pearl dots was some comfort. The fastenings of this striped gown, by contrast, were completely invisible. Were there little hooks, he wondered, under the sleeves? Hidden in the seams somewhere?

  Miss Turner coughed and shifted in her seat.

  Dear God. Gray shook himself, realizing he’d just spent the better part of a minute openly staring in the direction of her breasts. At a distance of no more than two feet. Worse—he’d wasted that blasted minute obsessing about hooks and buttons, when he could have been scanning for the shadow of an areola, or the crest of a nipple.

  Damn.

  And now he had no choice but to drop his gaze and study the china.

  It did look well, the porcelain. The acanthus pattern complemented the scrollwork on the silver quite nicely. Odd, to be drinking Madeira from teacups, but at least they were better than tin. The white drape beneath it all was nothing of quality, but the lighting was dim, and it would do.

  Gray put out a hand to straighten his fork.

  “The table looks lovely,” she said, to no one in particular.

  Dear God. Once again, she jolted him back into reality, and Gray realized he’d spent the better part of two minutes now fussing over china and table linens. First dressmaking, now table-setting … If it wasn’t for the fact that her voice called straight to his swelling groin, Gray might have begun to question his masculinity.

  What the hell was happening to him?

  He wanted her. He wanted her body, quite obviously. More disturbing by far, he could no longer deny that he wanted her approval. And he wanted both with a near-paralyzing intensity, though he knew he could never have one without sacrificing the other.

  Then she extended her slender wrist to reach for the teacup, and Gray remembered the reason for this entire display.

  He wanted to see her eat.

  “Where’s Stubb?” he growled, tetchy with hunger. All sorts of hunger.

  “Right behind you, sirs and madam.” Stubb shuffled in, bearing a steaming tureen. “First course, soup.” He moved around the table, beginning with Miss Turner, ladling generous helpings of creamy chowder into their bowls.

  Silence reigned, save for the light clink of silver on china. Gray ate his soup quickly, scarcely tasting it, scalding the roof of his mouth in the process. Then he sat back and sipped Madeira from his teacup, trying not to stare at her as she daintily spooned chowder to her lips.

  Perhaps he was going mad.

  Next to him, Wiggins cleared his throat. “You must forgive us, Miss Turner. We seamen are poor dinner companions, I fear. We are accustomed to eating quickly, efficiently, with little conversation. And we are certainly unused to the company of a beautiful lady.”

  Gray coughed, setting his teacup down on its saucer with a crack.

  Miss Turner swallowed slowly and laid down her spoon. “I am most grateful for company this evening, even of the quiet variety. I am no great conversationalist, myself.”

  Gray snorted. Not a conversationalist. The girl had coaxed the life story out of every sailor on this ship.

  She had just picked up her spoon again when Joss spoke.

  “You do not find the voyage too tedious, Miss Turner?” Joss asked. “I regret that you are left to entertain yourself, being the sole passenger.”

  She laid down her spoon. “Thank you, Captain, but I find sufficient activity to occupy my hands and my mind. Reading, sketching, walking the deck for fresh air and healthful exertion. I’m surprisingly content, living at sea.”

  Gray’s heart gave an odd kick.

  “But it’s Christmas, Miss Turner. You are away from your home.” Brackett’s voice was cool. “Surely you must miss your family?”

  “Yes, of course. I do.” She folded her hands behind her half-full bowl of chowder. “I miss … Oddly enough, I miss oranges. We always had oranges at Christmas, when I was a child.”

  “Yes,” said Joss, his lips curving in the rare hint of a smile. “Yes, so did we. Didn’t we, Gray?”

  Oranges. They wanted oranges. As if it could be so simple, to go back to the time when happiness came in a knobby round package and fit in the palm of one’s hand. And yet, were there oranges to be had at that moment, Gray would have traded the ship for a crate of them. He watched as Miss Turner lifted a spoonful of soup to her lips with agonizing slowness. He stared, fascinated, as her lips parted, revealing the tip of her tongue …

  “I say, Miss Turner—” Wiggins again.

  Her spoon paused in mid-air.

  Gray crashed his fist on the table. “Christ, man! Can’t you see the lady is trying to eat?” Crossing his arms, he slumped back in his chair. Its wooden joints creaked in protest.

  And now everyone put down their spoons.

  Gray felt their eyes on him. He kicked the table leg, frustrated with himself, with her, with his goddamned boots. They still pinched his feet.

  Stubb shuffled in, accompanied by Gabriel this time. “Main course,” the old steward called.

  “There’s meat-and-kidney pie,” Gabriel announced proudly, setting the dish in the center of the table. “Made the crust from biscuit meal. Thought my arm would fall off from pounding.”

  “And here’s the roast!” Stubb lowered his offering to the table, a well-browned haunch that smelled of grease and savory. Olives and small, white rounds of goat’s-milk cheese ringed the meat.

  “Thank you, gentlemen.” Joss wrenched the carving knife from the roast, and a trickle of rich juices flowed forth.

  Conversation was adjourned, by unanimous decree.

  Generous helpings of meat and pie, along with second and third cups of Madeira, did much to improve the general mood. Seemingly gripped by holiday nostalgia, Wiggins prattled on and on about his children. During a particularly inane monologue on little Master Wiggins’s affinity for his schoolmaster, Brackett pushed back from the table and excused himself to resume his watch on deck. Gray helped himself to more roast, taking the opportunity to slide an extra slice onto Miss Turner’s plate.

  She glanced up at him, her expression a mixture of shock and reproach.

  And this was his reward for generosity.

  He gave a tense shrug by way of excuse, then replaced the knife and fork and busied himself with his own food. He felt her staring at him.

  That was it. If she was entitled to stare at him, he was damned well going to sta
re back. And if this governess was going to reprimand him like an incorrigible charge … well, then Gray was going to misbehave.

  Letting his silver clatter to the china, he balled his hands into fists and plunked them down on either side of his plate. “You say you miss your family, Miss Turner? I wonder at it.”

  Her glare was cold. “You do?”

  “You told me in Gravesend you’d nowhere to turn.”

  “I spoke the truth.” Her chin lifted. “I’ve been missing my family since long before I left England.”

  “So they’re dead?”

  She fidgeted with her fork. “Some.”

  “But not all?”

  He leaned toward her and spoke in a low voice, though anyone who cared to listen might hear. “What sort of relations allow a young woman to cross an ocean unaccompanied, to labor as a plantation governess? I should think you’d be glad to be free of them.”

  She blinked.

  He picked up his fork and jabbed at a hunk of meat. His voice a low murmur, he directed the next question at his plate. “Or perhaps they’re glad to be free of you?”

  Something crushed his foot under the table. A pointy-heeled boot. Then, just as quickly, the pressure eased. But her foot remained atop his. The gesture was infuriating, and somehow wildly erotic.

  He met her gaze, and this time found no coldness, no reproach. Instead, her eyes were wide, beseeching. They called to something deep inside him he hadn’t known was there.

  Please, she mouthed. Don’t.

  She bit her lip, and he felt it as a visceral tug. That unused part of him stretched and ached. And at that instant, Gray would have sworn they were the only two souls in the room. In the world.

  Until Wiggins spoke again, confound the man.

  “How strange you must find it, Miss Turner,” the second mate said, “celebrating the holiday in this tropical climate. Not a typical English Christmas, is it?”

  Sophia cleared her throat. “No indeed.” God bless Mr. Wiggins. She extricated herself from Mr. Grayson’s enigmatic gaze and reached for her Madeira. Loath to field further questions of any variety, she passed the burden of conversation like a hot serving dish. “Would you agree, Captain Grayson?”

  Beneath the table, she allowed her foot to slide back down to the floor. That was a mistake. In the next heartbeat, his boot clamped over hers like a trap.

  Sophia kept her gaze trained on the captain. His thin black eyebrows rose. “I’m afraid I couldn’t say, Miss Turner. All of my Christmases have been spent at sea, or on Tortola.”

  Sophia wriggled her foot madly, but it was no use. Mr. Grayson’s Hessian pinned her nankeen half boot to the cabin floor. She shot him an angry glare, but he had taken a sudden interest in searching the depths of his Madeira.

  “Yes, of course,” Sophia replied to the captain. “Mr. Grayson,” she said pointedly, hoping to draw the scoundrel’s attention, “mentioned to me that your father owns a plantation there. What crop did you tell me your father raises, Mr. Grayson?”

  He refused to look up. Shrugging, he set down his cup and began worrying his thumbnail. “I didn’t tell you.”

  “Sugar,” the captain answered. “It was a sugar plantation, Miss Turner, but our father died several years ago.”

  “Oh.” Sophia forced herself to turn to the captain, though her gaze wanted to linger on Mr. Grayson’s face, study the shadows that flickered there. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Are you?” The words were a low, casual murmur. So faint, Sophia wondered if she’d imagined them. She looked around the table. If anyone else had heard the remark, they gave no sign.

  Her foot stopped struggling beneath the weight of his boot, and the pressure eased. The contact remained.

  “Who manages the property now?” She pushed an olive around her plate. “Have you an older brother, or a land agent?”

  The two brothers exchanged a strange look.

  “The land is no longer in the family,” Captain Grayson said tersely. “It was sold.”

  “Oh. That must have been a difficult decision, to sell your boyhood home.”

  Captain Grayson rested one elbow on the table. “Once again, Miss Turner, I couldn’t say. Was it, Gray?”

  “Was it what?” Mr. Grayson clearly wished to evade the question. Sophia knew he’d been heeding the conversation, and she winced with discomfort as his leg tensed, crushing her toes once more.

  “Pudding!” With his usual flourish, Stubb swept through the cabin door and added the dish to the table. As he uncovered the dome-shaped pudding, the aromas of figs and spices and brandy mingled with the familiar comfort of treacle-scented steam. A Christmas miracle, indeed. Sophia’s mouth watered.

  “The lady asked a question, Gray.” The captain leaned forward, ignoring both Stubb and pudding. His voice took on a steely edge. “Was it a difficult decision, to sell our boyhood home? I’ve told her I couldn’t say, seeing as how I wasn’t involved in that decision. So the question falls to you. Was it difficult?”

  Mr. Grayson clenched his jaw. His eyes narrowed as he regarded his brother. “No. It wasn’t difficult in the least. It was the only profitable course.”

  The captain’s mouth quirked in a humorless smile, and he sat back. “There’s your answer, Miss Turner. Decisions never give my brother pause, so long as the profitable course is clear. He keeps his conscience in his bank account.”

  Sophia’s gaze darted back and forth from brother to brother. The men warred silently, a battle of stony glares and firmed jaws and tight grips on silver. Then Mr. Grayson’s posture suddenly relaxed, and, as Sophia had seen him do on so many occasions, he took the advantage with a roguish smile. Charm was always his weapon of choice.

  “So that’s why Gray’s never married.” Mr. Wiggins gave an easy chuckle. He leaned over the table to slice into the pudding, dispelling the tension between the brothers. “A rich man may keep his conscience in a vault, but we poor men have to marry ours.”

  Mr. Grayson made a show of smiling at the jest. But his grin faded, and for a moment Sophia saw what she had never before noticed, in those dozen occasions. It cost him something, that roguish smile. Behind it, he looked … weary. Empathy gripped her before she could push it away. She’d spent many evenings in many ballrooms, struggling under the weight of feigned levity. Fooling everyone but herself.

  He looked up suddenly and caught her staring. Sophia blushed, feeling as though she’d walked in on him in his bath.

  And that thought made her blush deeper still.

  Mr. Wiggins rescued her again. “Without my wife, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. I can’t even decide what color waistcoat to order at the tailor’s.” He gave Sophia a playful glance, his eyes merry with wine. “Do tell, Miss Turner, how is it such decisions come naturally to the fairer sex?”

  Sophia smiled. “For you, Mr. Wiggins, the choice is clear. With your dark coloring, an ivory waistcoat would definitely suit you best.”

  The man beamed, tucking into his pudding. A trickle of brandy sauce dribbled down his lapel. Cursing, he dabbed it with his sleeve.

  “But then, ivory does show stains most dreadfully.” She looked down at her plate, testing the pudding’s texture with her fork. “You see, sir, there are some of us for whom decisions are no trial. Living with those choices … now that is our burden.” She gave Mr. Grayson a cautious glance.

  His boot released hers, and Sophia felt oddly bereft. She wiggled her toes inside her stocking. After all that time, she worried they might never regain sensation.

  She need not have been concerned. For Mr. Grayson did not retract his foot. He merely moved it to the floor, to rest alongside hers. And then he stretched his leg and slid that foot forward, so that the edge of his boot caressed her from toe to heel.

  Oh, yes. Her sensation was intact. And not only in her toes. A hot tingling spread like flames throughout her body, and her heart began to bounce in her chest. Sophia froze, her fork poised in mid-air. She stared down at her plat
e, afraid he’d see the crimson staining her cheeks.

  Then his ankle brushed hers. Her heart leapt into her throat. And before she knew what was happening, the warm weight of his calf was crooked around her own, his leg twining with hers in an intimate embrace. The posture instantly recalled their tussle with the shark—boots lashed together, bodies entangled, chests heaving with the exhilaration of escape.

  Oh, and now Sophia blushed everywhere. Her lips, her nipples, the cleft between her legs—she felt every pink part of her body swelling and turning deep red.

  “Is there something wrong with your pudding, Miss Turner?”

  Curse the arrogant charm in his voice. Curse her body’s response to it. She closed her eyes, then opened them. “No.”

  Teasing, teasing man. He’d rejected her once before; she’d be a fool to throw herself at him again. She ought to pull her leg away, Sophia told herself. Kick him in the shin; stab his thigh with her fork as though it were a slab of roast goat. But she didn’t want to do any of those things. She wanted to sit like this for hours, letting his strong leg support her own. Feeling alive and exhilarated and desired … and not the slightest bit alone.

  And beyond this dinner, this night, this secret embrace—Sophia wanted more. She wanted to be as close to him as she possibly, humanly could. She wanted him. This night was her chance, and this time she wasn’t scared or uncertain or drunk on rum. This time, she wouldn’t let him get away.

  The decision was easy to make. Living with it would be another matter.

  “No,” she repeated boldly, looking up. No longer caring if he saw her wanton blush or noted her shallow breath or heard her wildly thumping pulse. His eyes issued a challenge, and she met it without blinking, trading him smile for smile. “Everything is quite to my liking.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  “What the hell was that?” Joss turned on him the moment Gabriel cleared the last of the china.

  “What the hell was what?” Gray pulled a flask from his breast pocket and offered it to his brother.

  Joss waved it away. “You know damn well what I mean. Something’s going on between you and Miss Turner, I know it.”