Before Devon could deliver an annihilating rebuff, Cat rescued his hapless protégée from the fruit of her naïve words.
“Devon, try to look hurt,” said the boy. “She don’t have faith in your intentions.” Then seeing the moment could stand to cool longer, he added glumly, “I’m sorry about the crossbow—I never thought about it. She was higher than a jackdaw. Who would have thought she’d get into mischief?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Devon and smiled at Merry. He drew a slow finger down the line of her cheek. “There’s something relentlessly disarming about a woman who pukes in your washbowl. Do you know, my sea nymph—and there are honestly not many women I’d say this about—that you’re more amusing defending your virtue than I wager you’d be surrendering it?”
Across the room Morgan had turned, the dark, unkindly surface of his gaze moving like a nightwalker among the three startling blond heads. Jesus. Entertainment. Against odds to the contrary the puny, dove-eyed chit possessed a soul.So you made yourself sick, did you, on Devon?Morgan thought.That was well done of you, my babe. I didn’t pump you too fast, too full of opium for nothing. Grinning a little, he collected Devon’s cool glance and said, “Can we blame her for being ill? With you such an ill-favored fellow?”
“His smile,” observed Cat, “has been known to raise blisters at fifty feet. Even when he’s slept in his shirt. What did you say her name was?”
“Mary,” said Devon. “As in the Virgin.”
“No!” Merry said, delighted to be able to correct him, though she did it through clenched teeth. “With aneand twor’s. As in merry-go-round.”
Equally delighted, Devon gave her one of those blistering smiles and said, “Or as in making Merry?”
The only thing left for her was a feeble sort of gulp. “I didn’t give you permission to use my name,” she said, and it sounded inappropriately grandiose even to her own ears.
Devon said, “I’d be happy to call you Miss something, or Mrs. something, for that matter. What’s your surname?”
She ought to have been anticipating it. If only her brain hadn’t been as furred this morning as her tongue. Not understanding what he wanted with her, she couldn’t take the risk of telling him her last name. Merry Patricia Wilding was not a famous name, but her brother was a widely known and romanticized figure, and anyone who read the newspapers would have heard of her father. You were never anonymous when your name was Wilding. Looking into Devon’s eyes, with their brilliant centers of filigreed gold, she would have been surprised had he heard her last name and not suspected a connection at once.
He repeated his question, and since she didn’t have a ready alias, she was left harboring a pause as revealing as last season’s bear grease in a porch bucket.
“A woman of mystery,” said Morgan, at the side table, pouring himself wine. “Cat, fetch the thumbscrew.”
Cat snapped his fingers with apparent regret. “I can’t remember where I put it. It’s been a while since I’ve screwed any thumbs. Captain, sir, it’s the iron maiden or nothing.”
“If you say so, child.” Morgan rested his long body on a chair arm. “Personally, I can see her lashed to the yardarm, bared to the waist. I’m all in favor of something really vile and modern. Shall we bring it to the crew for a vote?”
“They,” said Devon pleasantly to Merry, “are teasing.Until I decide otherwise.” He gently loosened the cereal spoon that had been still fastened, unheeded, in the claw-like grip of her fingers. Bowl and spoon he delivered to Cat and then hooked a chair and straddling it backward, faced her over the rail. “Never fear, darling. For the moment all I want is the right to grub around in your pia mater. Hullo! You’re nervous this morning! I only meant your brain.”
Merry gathered every scrap and particle of the coldness that was making itself at home in the linings of her digestive tract and wove that coldness into her voice as she said, “Browbeat me, then, if it suits your mood. I prefer that to your—”
“What? My passion? Ah, love, what makes you so sure we’re done with that?”
She had a second’s warning before his right hand found her and slid gently under her hair to the thin, neat flesh that spread, soft as a gosling, on the side of her neck. She hadn’t learned yet the trick of mastering her respiration; as he touched her Devon heard the sharp intake of her breath. His thumb braced, without pressure, on her rapidly pulsing artery, and the tactile surfaces of his curved fingers were slow on her skin.
Wishing heartily that she hadn’t been so stupid as to have antagonized him on this, of all subjects, Merry said, in a voice that was embarrassingly hoarse, “Is it too late to retract any part of my remark that caused you offense?”
“No, but that time is fast approaching.” The pirate’s clever fingers were discovering her nape.
His touch was scattering her thoughts like leaves in a wind eddy. Trying what was quite possibly the most serious risk she had knowingly taken in her life, Miss Merry Patricia Wilding ventured, “Are you sure—” His fingers smoothed over the tumble of her lower lip, so she had to swallow hard and begin a second time with closed eyes. “Are you sure thisis what you want? How do you know I won’t bore you, next time, with a surrender?”
It was the closest she had ever come to the sort of wordplay at which he was so skilled. It was a joke, only a joke, and if he misunderstood: disaster. Like the gazelle, sick faced, who offered leftover salad to the hunting lion, Merry meant to placate and to make him laugh. Astonishingly she succeeded in both.
“What do you want to know?” she asked resignedly into the soft folds of his laughter.
The long firm-boned hand gave her cheek an approving pat and withdrew. “You don’t have to abandon hope, my dear,” he said. “Despite appearances, you’re really quite safe, if you cooperate. Now. When did you meet Michael Granville?”
Sooner or later, Merry had known, it would come back to this. From the myriad tidbits of information she had culled since being brought on theJoke,she gathered that Devon had paid to have Granville’s room searched and certain papers—what papers?—stolen, which meant the pirate and the English gentleman had a connection, probably unfriendly, but what went into it exactly was anybody’s guess.
Merry stepped gingerly into the thought that perhaps Sir Michael was an agent for the British government. At the very least he would bring to London a full report of his American visit, though one assumed, naturally, that he had been closely watched during his stay in her country. Strange, that he had had such freedom to wander the streets, but then, what did she know about things like that? If Sir Michael was a spy, what would that make Devon? Surely Washington did not hire pirates to gather information for them! Things were not always as they seemed, she was fast coming to learn. If Devon was an American, please God, her trouble would be over.
Merry matched his clear golden gaze. “Are you in the employ of President Madison?”
Morgan choked on his wine and then laughed himself into a stupor. And when theha-ha’shad died toho-ho’sand then to faint sobs, Devon turned to him and said, “I wish that you hadn’t. I would have loved to bite ‘Yes’ on that one and see where it led to.” He glanced back to Merry’s drawn face. “As you see, I’m not. You will answer my question, please.”
Could he trace her through Michael Granville? It didn’t matter, because it was becoming rapidly obvious that any association with Granville was a hazard to her future well-being.
