“If only,” Merry said tartly, “we were all so privileged as to be maleandgifted.”
Her tone penetrated even the haze of Raven’s hangover.
“Milady, with the wind in the right direction you can hear the pleasure-moans of Devon’s ladies over two counties,” he said, twisting around to look at Merry. His dark, dark eyes were troubled. “I’ve never met anyone before who didn’t want to own a piece of him. How is it you’re exempt?”
“Oh, I’d like to own pieces of him. As long as each was disconnected from the other,” she said stiffly. “You can play on the ace of hearts. Sails, you remember, don’t you, that you were going to tell me about the time you saw the mermaid.”
“Oh? Oh, aye! The wee mermaid. ’Twas near the Rammerees, off the Horn, ye see,” began Sails, always ready to rig his yarn tackle. And as he spoke Merry shut her eyes and missed, because of that, the hand Raven stretched comfortingly toward her, and Saunders, moving silently on the softly rocking deck, who caught Raven’s wrist in angry fingers and shoved it away from Merry with a warning shake of his head. It was all very well to have the girl for a playmate, but her heartaches would have to belong only to herself. Raven had to learn. It would be cruel to them both to let them develop the illusion that Raven could help her. And Sails, in pity, put his best into the mermaid.
More than a quarter hour later Merry still hadn’t opened her eyes.
“And so,” he said, “before she slipped off into the water, she gave me this very pearl to keep.”
Merry had to open her eyes to look at the pearl, and Sailsdropped it, white and precious, into her palm, where it sat like a cloudy tear. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen one before. Please, tell me more about what the mermaid looked like,” said Merry, who had trouble believing that any story told so seriously was a simple piece of fiction.
“As to that,” said Sails, “she was scales from the navel down, like a mackerel, and hair blacker’n Cap’n Morgan’s eyes, wi’ wee points in it like stars. Seaweed was draped o’er her graceful-like, and there was a fine net o’ gold ’cross her chest.”
Raven looked up. “So? Last time, as I recall, her breasts were bare and pale, and there was a diamond in her navel and a ruby in her—”
Saunders grinned. “Shush, child. Don’t you know we have a separate version for the lassies?”
Joining them quietly and with shattering suddenness, Devon said, “And a ruby in her hair. Her nose,” he went on, imitating Sails’s brogue, “was petite, mind ye, and pointed like a wee puir fishie. Valentine tells me he knows some lazy sons of bitches who are going to be picking oakum tomorrow.”
Within a minute Merry was alone with Devon.
Tall and flat-hipped, he stood with his back to the gunwale, the sun a crimson globe behind him, catching delicate bronze tones in his hair. The fine-boned elegance of his features needed no blazing pastel sundown to flatter them; it was difficult to ignore the constant sensual promise of that experienced mouth and subtly arousing gaze. For once his expression was not hard for Merry to interpret. He was looking at her like a gardener mulling over what to do about the mole problem. It would have been nice to be able to match his stare with a cool one of her own; nice, but impossible. The blood rose steam-heated to her cheeks. Nausea sat in her stomach.
Aft, on the port side, men were lowering one of the boatsto leave for shore, and their voices mingled in the glowing air with water lap and the whirr of wind striking feathers as a plover flew over the ship in a swift black arrow. From the galley came food smells and the sounds of Cook shouting at his help; the friendly sounds of shipboard domesticity that somehow tonight had lost their power to reassure. And when the hovering tension became unbearable, Merry got awkwardly to her feet and started to leave.
“Running again?” he inquired softly, with amusement.
She had forgotten, over the interval of their separation, how cleverly he could control her. How irritating it was to have one’s most private drives analyzed, reduced to simple logic, and hung like a kissing bough over one’s head. If her emotions hadn’t been in such turmoil, she would have lost her temper. As it was, she turned with a snap and walked back to him.
“Or,” he said, “were you going to fetch more ordnance?”
“If you are referring to the cannonball,” Merry said, “that was an accident.”
“Really? With the floor toward me sloping uphill? Do you know, I’m beginning to envy men whose debauchees content themselves with a slapped cheek. No one could criticize your attacks for lack of originality.”
The tone was, overall, more friendly than she had expected. She said lamely, “Cat hadn’t told me you were back. I was startled.”
“Startled. Were you? There was a lot of that going around. I left you very properly cowering on your bed and return to find you very improperly capering around a cannon. And here I thought all you could do was be pathetic.”
That stung, but she was not about to let him know how much. “Pardon me. A full fortnight with nary a soul threatening to torture me and here I am, forgetting my place. Good job you’re back to put me into it again.”
“Good Lord! And a swagger too.” A smile traced on the erotic mouth. “From Merry with aneand twor’s to Anne Bonney, scourge of the Indies.”
Anne Bonney was a celebrated female pirate of the last century who ended her cutthroat career not, as one might think, on the business end of a gibbet, but in unsanctioned pregnancy. If there was a lesson in that for Merry, she had no wish to figure out what it was.
“Piracy is a hateful trade,” she said, with a belligerence she would rapidly come to regret, “and if you think that wearing britches makes me into one, then I’ll take them off right now.”
As blunders went, it ranked among her worst. Catching the inference on the last word, Merry tried to choke it back in; naturally it was too late. She turned hastily to spare herself the shame of having to watch him laugh.
Before long she felt his hands, warm on her shoulders. She was pulled backward and settled kindly against the firm support of his body, the contact neither forced nor cruelly suggestive. Instead, it had almost a matter-of-fact quality to it and a reluctant affection. His fingers searching comfortably in her hair, found and exposed her ear, and she could feel his breath there.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “We don’t punish maladroit ladies here by making them unbritch publicly.” His lips brushed her delicately, barely touching her skin. “You and I probably aren’t ready for anything as audacious as polite communication, but should we see if we can manage a crude facsimile?”
Light-headed from his touch and from the effort not to show it, Merry nodded. He turned her in his hands to face him and then stepped back and released her.
