“What is it?”
“Chopped up fairy wings, the heart of a narwhal taken during a lunar eclipse, spit from a consumptive.… Christ. Just drink it, will you? It’s lime juice, with honey. Great for scurvy, but it won’t do a damn thing for your head. Drink it.”
She was so thirsty that she did, and probably would have even if ithadbeen made of fairy wings and narwhal heart. It tasted incredibly good on her parched tongue. When it was done, she faced squarely into Cat’s ice-blue stare and began, “I don’t know how you can expect me to have any confidence in the safety of anything you give me to drink. You drugged me—”
“That was Morgan’s idea.”
“And left me here to be ravished,” she finished.
Cat looked her up and down and absorbed with some intelligence everything from the torn shirt, which partially revealed her heaving breasts, to the feet, which were dirty and bare, to the disheveled red-gold hair.
“Were you?” he asked politely.
“No!”
Mildly he said, “Well, then, what’s your complaint?”
“No thanks to you!” she snapped, as though he hadn’t spoken.
“Did you hear me asking for thanks?” In a movement without a single break Cat took back the glass, uncurled his knees, and stood up near the table. “I haven’t seen Devon yetthis morning. They say you shot the crossbow at him. Honestly. What a circus. You shouldn’t have been playing with that thing—you might have broken your arm.”
“You, of course,” she said sarcastically, “would have been desolated to hear of it.”
“You’re yipping up the wrong tree if you have the idea that whatIthink matters,” said the boy, smoothly emphatic. “I don’t suppose that it’ll do any good to tell you this, because you don’t seem to have the faintest sense of self-preservation, but what you ought to be worrying about is how to sweet-talk Devon. Now, do you want to get dressed, or would you rather sit there all day with your shirt open?”
Even by his scale of things it seemed a little unfair. Merry said, “I don’t have anything to wear because yesterday—in case you’ve forgotten—you cut off my clothes. With dispatch.”
“You’d have preferred to be stripped lingeringly? I’ll remember that for next time.”
“I’d have preferred not to be stripped at all! Do you know what? I wouldn’t apply a letter opener to an envelope the way you put your knife to me. Pardon me for my state of undress. Jack and Biddles forgot to let me pack a night bag.”
“What do you expect from the scum of the streets? I hired them as burglars, not ladies’ maids.” He lifted the green film of fabric from his arm and sent it floating down on the bed. “Here you are. Fresh from Paris. Count your blessings; Morgan was toying with the idea of dressing you like a boy. He said it might be interesting. I’ll be back in a few minutes, so don’t waste your time.”
A somewhat nervous evaluation of the object on the bed revealed it to be a high-waisted satin day dress done in a shifting spectrum of mint. In the same material was the twisted belt that pressed up under the breasts and the row of chevron puffs that decorated the hem. The sleeves were designed tofit tight, and nothing at all had been done about filling in the space between collarbone and bust.
If necessity was the mother of invention, the prospect of nakedness was its midwife. One could only flinch briefly at the prospect of wearing stolen clothing and then slip it on. What good would it do to dwell on its probable capture, during some mad rummage of a wealthy woman’s trunk (pray God that it hadn’t been ripped from her body—no, it couldn’t have been without damage) while steel clanged against steel and the air was filled with black powder smoke and the cries of the dying.In three days, Merry Patricia, you’ve sunk pretty low.
The dress had been made for a young, stylish, and highly sophisticated lady; in fact, it had once belonged to the twenty-year-old mistress of a sixty-year-old Barbados banker. It fit Merry every place except one. When Cat came back to the cabin, he found Merry sitting rigidly postured on one of the chairs, wearing the green dress and clutching Morgan’s wrinkled shirt high under her neck.
“Nowwhat’s the matter?” said Cat.
There was a modest silence. Then, “It’s too small.”
Walking around to her back, he found she’d made a success of all the hooks and eyes but two, and after he had fastened them, he looked down at her and said, “It didn’t look too small to me. It’s obvious that it—I forgot. You’re endowed.”
Nakedness had been the fact of life where Cat grew up, and in spite of himself he still felt that small prick of shock when he encountered shame.
“Christsake. Most women would jump for joy if they were made like that,” he said, looking at the pink smears on her white cheeks. “You can’t hide behind that shirt all day; for one thing, Morgan’s likely to want it back. Do you want a modesty bit? Come, I’ll get you a scarf.”
Cat opened the door and stepped back, bidding her toprecede him with an exaggerated flowing wave of his hand. In the bare corridor she could see sky and white canvas through the open hatch that topped a steep stair to her left, and on the right was the paneled door to Morgan’s cabin. She stood quietly for a moment while Cat closed the door behind them and, passing her, pressed open Morgan’s door and gestured her inside.
Daylight can be a prosaic fellow. What had seemed exotically evil by fog and candle seemed only exotically lovely this morning. Sunshine slanted gaily into the room through the sloping stern windows, and beyond the smoky glass a turquoise horizon rose and fell in a hundred broken segments. The opium pipe was gone, the brocade pillows on the window benches lay in friendly order, the priceless icons on the rosewood-paneled walls were sweeter, flatter, and less hauntingly foreign. And the gimbaled candlesticks had globes of clear glass. Had they been orange yesterday, or had her concussioned brain lied about the color?
Yesterday reflected light had disguised a long glazed bookcase as a window. Her acquaintance with Rand Morgan might be brief, but it neither surprised nor reassured her to learn that the legendary pirate was literate. There was an open log book on the desk, along with an unrolled sea chart and a jumble of navigational tools: a brass cartographer’s square, a reflecting circle made of silver and blackened copper, a delicately crafted Lanflois graphometer, a dry compass with copper engraving, a Spanish sextant and artificial horizon. She knew their names but not their functions. Carl, as a boy, had owned a tin play set of them. Before her was what appeared by the light of day to be a den of reflection, not a den of iniquity.
Cat found a gold scarf of shot silk in a lacquered chest and tossed it to her. She reached out her arm as the fragile fabric skimmed lazily down to drape there. Facing toward the sea,Merry changed the scarf for Morgan’s shirt quickly and had just realized that there was no way to make the scarf remain in its carefully concealing arrangement when Cat joined her, discreetly viewing her difficulties, and handed her a pin brooch.
Swallowing a sigh, Merry fastened the scarf with the pin, which would have bought her entire hometown of Fairfield.
