The arm that came from nowhere to drag Merry towardthe surface was obviously that of a giant squid, and she clawed at it, screaming seawater into her lungs until she was turned and could see as in a crazed time jump in a dream that it was Devon who held her. With chilled arms and quivering flesh she shot into his arms, clinging to him like a baby spider monkey.
Above wind and sea and rain she heard him say, “Well. You’re all affectionate now. This is a dandy time for that.”
His hand tangled into her hair, and when the grip was good enough, he took a second hold on the seat of her trousers and heaved her up and into the longboat.
Once before Merry had found herself drenched and frightened on the deck of a longboat, but this time there was no Cat here to wrap her in a greatcoat, blow her nose, and wring the sea from her hair. Now the raindrops were stinging arrows on her back as she sat doubled on her knees, shaking, coughing, and spitting up seawater into her cupped hands. Aside from Reade, who was cruel enough to laugh at her, pirate faces watched her impassively. Merry squeezed her eyelids shut.
She opened them again on Devon as he came into the boat beside her, wet hair in his face, the bright gold made dark and streaming. His eyes were amber jewels, dappled and self-luminous. He reached for her, and she was too tired to fight him; her limbs too much like brittle sticks as he sank his fingers into her upper arms and shook her hard. There was no strength in her jaw, and her small chattering teeth bit into her tongue. Blood mixed on her chin with dribbled seawater, and suddenly, below her chest, Merry felt the sudden movement of a forgotten bundle. Her shirt slid from its tuck in her trousers, and the stolen letters slipped out and landed in a sodden clump at Devon’s feet.
Back aboard theBlack JokeCat had been the first to understand why there was a simulated fire in Merry’s cabinand had spied through a telescope the distant frenzied figure in the waves. But Saunders across the deck had come to the same conclusion two seconds later and caught Cat going over the side. As gently as he could, Saunders put Cat to sleep with a belaying pin. Lowering the narrow body carefully to the deck, Saunders shouted over his shoulder to one of the hands nearby, “Get a pair of chains up here and keep ’em on Cat until that girl’s either rescued or dead. And don’t give me that look. She’s too far from us. Just too damned far.”
Saunders picked up the telescope Cat had let go and watched Merry’s flounderings with guilt and anxiety and tried to estimate whether the longboat moving out from theShepherdwould reach her in time. The visibility was poor, and he couldn’t tell who was in the longboat, but Devon must be there, and Devon, with his superior competence, would do everything that could be done to save her.
If Saunders’s heart was an apple, no woman had ever had a bite of it. Habit worked to erase the emotions Merry’s struggles had raised in him. She was nothing to him; a random female victim, oddly adopted by the ship’s crew from boredom just as the pig had been, although Cat had implied once that the captain might have played a role in that. Impossible. Morgan would never interest himself in a casual ride-under of Devon’s, and an unreliable one at that, judging from the frequent nights Devon slept away from his bed.
Saunders raised the glass again, fighting the picture of a slender girl in boy’s clothes and a huge preposterous hat, awkwardly clutching a cannonball, her eyes as colorful as bluebells, laughing at some silly joke of Raven’s. Raven. The name entered his mind like a scream. Will Saunders twisted quickly and raced with a jumping heartbeat across the heaving, rain-soaked deck, over barrels, around rope coils. He reached the after deck in the midst of shouting and saw Tom Valentine try to grab Raven, to be brought up short by aglittering blade in Raven’s brown fist. In the flash of a second Raven had dived over the side.
Calm-handed and cursing, Saunders ordered the third ship’s boat put in the water and went after Raven with Shay, Cook, and two others. Raven was such a strong swimmer that they had trouble catching up to him. They yelled to him that Merry was safe, that Devon had gotten to her, but either the boy couldn’t hear them over the roaring sea, or worry had sapped his reason. In the end they had to haul him into the boat by force and beat him senseless to keep him from going back into the ocean.
When Devon carried Merry aboard theJokeand tossed her, dripping, on the deck, they were still trying to revive Raven. With a light stride Devon crossed to where Raven lay in a cocoon of wet canvas and blankets. The teenager’s long lashes were curling dark fibers that dipped childishly against young cheeks grayed by the sea’s cold touch. Behind him Devon heard Morgan answer the question in his mind.
“He won’t die. Little Raven was just trying to swallow the sea so Merry could fall safely on a dry ocean bed. You should have been here. I haven’t seen so many people jump off a ship since oyster season.” Rand Morgan glanced around, and his cool gaze fell on his sailing master. “Ah. There you are, Saunders. Wasn’t it your order that put Cat in chains?” The pirate captain’s gaze shifted to Cat in his iron bondage. Morgan smiled slowly. “Not that I disapprove. It has a certain allure. But nevertheless I want him released. See to it, please. He’s needed.”
Kneeling to join his half brother at Raven’s side, Morgan watched Devon lay two fingers on the unconscious boy’s neck to find a pulse and silently count it. When Devon withdrew his hand, Morgan said, “I might as well tell you; we’ve had a surfeit of gallantry. It ran fore to aft, thrashing like a rabid weasel. I’m afraid Raven forgot himself with Thomas Valentine.”
Devon looked up quickly. “What happened?”
“The boy drew steel.”
Devon swore quietly. He looked down at Raven and then returned his gaze to Morgan’s. “Will Tom let me take his punishment?”
“No. Don’t make a fool of yourself by asking.” Morgan paused. And then, “About the girl—”
“Yes,” Devon said. “About the girl.” He stood slowly and walked back to Merry. She sat as he had left her, huddled into the gunwale.
Lowering himself in a smooth movement, he sat close to her in the pouring rain, and with lazy deliberation he cradled her head between his hands. Her hair was sticky and tangled with seaweed and gave up water like a sponge under the pressure of his spread fingers and gushed tearlike rivulets down his wrist and arms. Shock was the only expression he could see in her face. Her eyes were bruised and distended, with jelling salt forming caustic pearls on her eyelashes; her fine-textured skin was icy to his touch; her blue lips were parted and still.
“So help me God,” he murmured, and in his voice Merry heard all the acid violence of a tightly checked temper. “If you try to escape from me again, I’ll strap you to the bow cannon and flay every inch of baby skin from your immature little backbone.”
Working with patient hands, Cat carried Merry below, dried her, fed her, put her to bed, and leaving Dennis the pig with her for company, he locked her cabin door and delivered the key to Devon, where he sat in the fo’c’sle spooning brandied chicken broth into Raven. Cat did what he could for Raven, who was conscious and, typically, had the unmitigated gall to complain about being coddled. Leaving the fo’c’sle, Cat located Thomas Valentine near the bitts giving orders to Sails and watching Saunders arm the lead. It hadtaken a good quarter hour to talk Valentine into waiting until the next morning for his retribution. All that was left then was to make a curt apology to Will Saunders for the foully discolored black eye that Saunders had got from him as soon as he’d got his hands out of the chains.
Below, coming without knocking into Morgan’s cabin, he found the captain comfortably established in a lambskin chair and reading, of all things,A Woman Killed with Kindness; and reading it with an air of bloody-minded insouciance.
Cat noiselessly did his evening chores and then stood in the lemon candlelight and casually stripped off every piece of wet clothing. Naked, he put on a silk robe, and with rum and a hairbrush he dropped into a chair across from Morgan. He unwound his braid slowly and began to put the brush through his hair with irritated strokes, tugging cruelly in a way he would never have done with Merry. The braid had set waves into his hair like a woman’s, and when he shook it out, its length fell to the floor, a flood of ivory silk, and slid over the boar bristles of the discarded hairbrush.
Morgan, Cat saw, had continued to read. In a pleasant, graceful gesture Cat ran his hand under his hair and wound its shining flow around his wrist.
“I think,” he said, “that I’ll cut it. It’s too much damned trouble to take care of.”
Silence. Morgan looked up from the book, his eyes black and innocent. “As you like.” Then, “It would make someone a pretty wig.” For that he got back a cold blue stare. So he returned to his book and said, without looking up, “How did you expect him to act? He had almost to watch her die.” Morgan read another page and closed the book, facing the unwavering stare. “So? You might as well say it, babe. A Cossack doing the mazurka couldn’t stomp across the room with more drama than your pubescent disapproval.”
Cat opened his hand and let the hair fall. “She didn’t cry.”
“When?”
“When I put her to bed. She didn’t cry. She couldn’t. I think she’s forgetting how.”
“Is that all, for God’s sakes?” Morgan tossed the book on a small table. “Get up and bring her to me. I’ll have her bawling so hard the dolphins will gather at the bowsprit and pelt us with old shoes.”
