Without lifting his hard gaze from Merry’s, Devon unhooked himself slowly from the chair and, with his hands just above her elbows, pulled her up and against his chest. Fright had distended her pupils until the radiant blue irises were only a narrow halo; they were so close that he could feel each breath she drew, each stammering flex of her heart, each tightening fiber of her muscle as she strained from contact with his body.
“Tell me, my small quaking friend,” he said in a voice that was light and final, “if you have no connection with Granville, what were you doing in the man’s bed? And if you don’t intend to be candid, I’d advise you to confine your invention to something I can believe.”
“Would you believe it,” she said faintly, “if I told you that it was because there were ants in my cabin?”
“Not,” said Devon, “unless you are an entomologist.”
Meekly she said, “Nevertheless—”
“Nevertheless nothing. If you had traded cabins, why was there no woman’s clothing in the room where you were sleeping? Or had you left it for the ants to eat?”
“That’s just it,” Merry said. “The ants weren’t only in my room, they were in my luggage, and theGuinevere’sthird mate put such a strong powder in to kill them that—”
Devon cut her off. “Is it your habit to travel with ants in your luggage?”
“A servant put them in,” she said in an increasingly strained voice, “because he thought the trunk belonged to my—er, m-my aunt.”
“For that,” said Devon grimly, “you are going to win the cash prize, two silver buckles,anda side of beef. You’ve done enough spinning, Merry-go-round. Cat? Take her to mycabin. Lock her in. And give the key into the keeping of the most dissipated wretch you can find.”
“As Your Grace pleases,” snapped the boy. “In five minutes I’ll have the key back—in your pocket.”
As Cat led her toward the threshold, Merry stopped, hesitated, then said falteringly, “It really is true—about the ants, I mean. But there’s no way to explain it. You have to know Henry Cork.”
Devon didn’t, so to him it was one more piece of whimsical idiocy from a young girl who was both the most whimsical and the most idiotic who had ventured into his orbit. When the door closed behind the girl and Cat, Devon turned with an impatient shrug toward the window and stared at the bright broken pattern of the sea. He never saw Morgan’s arrested gaze find and softly hold the vacant air where Merry had been.…
For Rand Morgan, man of myth and nightmare, knew who Henry Cork was. Morgan could have spoken the next English ship and bundled her off; but he was not a man who conducted his charities with sentiment. As it was, he spared a brief regret about the opium, paused to be glad he hadn’t indulged his fleeting desire to take Merry into his own bed, and passed, prayerlike, an apology to a near and concerned spirit.
The black eyes, with their discreetly veiled benevolences, considered the golden sun-spangled head that hadn’t moved since facing the window. Every impulse of humanity called for meticulous sleight-of-hand manipulation; common sense called for iron restraint. Common sense won without a struggle.
When finally he spoke, Morgan’s voice was friendly and spruce. “The old there-were-ants-in-my-bed dodge. Good thing you’re too swift to fall for that worn-out hat trick. But what in the world will she do with a side of beef?”
Devon had learned a long time ago that it merited a mannothing to snap like a trout at each careless sally of Morgan’s. Ignoring it, watching the ivory swooping arrow of a gull, he said, “Cat seems to be entertaining some fears that I’m going to ask him to beat it out of her. Tell him for me that I won’t delegate my atrocities.”
“Ah” was all that Morgan said.
Devon swung around and faced his half brother with hard, glowing eyes. “What the devil is that supposed to mean? What’s the virtue in muttering ‘Ah’ at me from between your gritted teeth and staring at me like a bloody sarcophagus? Do you want me to give her to the sea?”
Innocently, honestly, Morgan said, “No.”
“Or put her ashore?”
“God, no.” That was honest too. Morgan smiled. “Why do you ask? You’ll do as you please anyway. Will you still go with theTerriblethis evening?”
“I have to. They’ve committed me to meet a man next Tuesday.” Devon walked to the center of the room and settled the chair Merry had occupied back under the table. “I’ll leave her to Cat. That should please him. What is it about her, do you think, that makes it matter to him?”
Morgan’s head rested against the lamb’s wool. His eyes were closed. “The boy’s a born manager. She appeals to his maternal instincts. Give him a week, and he’ll be premasticating her dinners.” The blind smile became nasty. “You needn’t worry. Whatever maudlin thoughts he might entertain in that direction, his appetites are otherwise.”
As Devon well knew, Cat’s appetites and what should be done about them were not a subject on which he and Morgan were ever likely to agree. “Since we’re being worldly,” Devon said, “what do you think the chances are that she was coerced by Granville?”
“Nonexistent,” said Morgan and drained his cup with the serene look of a man without a single scar on his conscience.
Chapter 10
They say it’s bad manners for a sailor to lock his sea chest and one that did was likely to find it nailed shut when he came off his watch. Devon, it appeared, was immune to etiquette. One by one Merry tried each lock in the cabin: the cabinets, the trunks, the windows, the door. Everything but the chamber pot was closed off tighter than a vain man’s corset, and neat as a Dutch cupboard.
Cat, wanting no more trouble, had left her not so much as a candle, but there was daylight filtering gray-blue through three high windows, each one big enough to have admitted a pair of clinched hedgehogs. Moving like a stubborn wraith through the slow filmy light, Merry continued her search for more than half an hour after even her singing persistence admitted it was useless. She flopped dry-eyed on the bunk bed and decided with a quickly fading flash of humor that it was outside of enough for Devon, who was a tanned and tarred villain of a pirate, to have theaudacityto thinkshewas deficient in the department of morals. As for Henry Cork, Merry remembered distinctly telling him last March, when he’d left a water bucket on the doorjamb and soaked the delivery boy, that someday those practical jokes were going to do someone a serious mischief. Ne’er, at the time, had she suspected that that someone would be herself. If she werereallymoral, she supposed, she would have found some way to hang herself with the bedsheets. But as anyone will tell you who’s tried to hang themselves with bedsheets, it takes a good deal more ingenuity than it might appear to at first. She indulged in a brief, futile fantasy that Carl might somehowfind she was here and come and shoot Devon. The fantasy expired on the thought that if Carl did come, it was far more likely that Devon would shoothim.
Poor, poor Aunt April. She must be sick with distress.
