“Oh, my dear girl,” he said softly, “and you wouldn’t have met them, would you? You should have told me the truth. Before yesterday afternoon do you think I could have hurt you?” He came to her, his stride fluid and predatory, his gaze holding hers. He lifted his hand and turned it to brush the back of his curved fingers slowly down the tight slope of her cheek. “What would you have done with the letters, Windflower? Sold them to the highest bidder?”
Merry grabbed his unresisting wrist in shaking fingers and held it stiffly, away from her face. She started to speak, to say something that would stop his words, but the chaos of her thoughts couldn’t seem to make speech.
He waited for a reply, and when it did not come, he said, “What happened, Merry? Weren’t the things I offered you enough? What price buys entrance to your pretty body?” And then, “Would Raven’s reprieve be enough?”
She was too anguished to examine his intent. There was strength only to unclutch her fingers from his wrist and to take a backward step that brought her legs up against the writing desk’s sharp wooden edge. His hands encircled her waist, and she could feel the sweet heat from his uncovered chest as he drew her toward him. A pained whimper escaped her as his experienced fingers tilted her chin and his mouth sought her. The kiss was spark-hot and scarring, deeply arousing. When finally he had carried its message to the limitand dragged his lips from her, Merry was so angry at him and so filled with bitter sorrow that her power of speech returned, full colored.
“Very well!” she flashed out. “If you need payment in blood for a small act of charity.”
He released her completely, and with a deadly smile he said, “Well, well. I believe you actually would. How noble you are. But I don’t think I could stomach a sacrificial lamb, and besides, my pretty one, even though your charms have their moments, my interest in them is low just now. And none of it matters in the end because there’s nothing I can do to help Raven. By all means though,” he said, going back to the door and holding it invitingly open, “go out. Look around. If you make the same suggestion to enough men, in time you might be able to find someone who wants to play.”
That last insulting reference made it especially difficult, but in spite of it she brushed past him and left the room.
Merry found Morgan in his cabin stretched out on his goliath bed eating allspice berries. He heard her out in silence, the pleas, the frayed threads of logic she wove to show why it wasshe,if anyone, that ought to be punished, and not Raven. When she was finished, he studied her for a minute, showing no expression, and answered calmly, without a trace of sympathy, “I can’t have my men flashing steel every time they get excited about something. He’ll be wiser in the future if we blood him a little now. Don’t worry. We won’t kill him.”
In desperation she went to Valentine, her voice raised more than it should have been. He listened to her with wary annoyance and then said, “Cat! Where the blazes is he? Cat! Get over here and take her below.”
She fought Cat furiously as he strong-armed her to her cabin, and even there she lashed out wildly and struck at him with her fists. The young pirate knew many ways to silence a hysterical victim. None was a method he cared to use onMerry, but when she would not let him quiet her, he pushed her to the floor and stilled her frantic struggles with his body.
“Merry, listen to me. Listen to me!” In one hand he caught her flailing wrists, the other covered her mouth. The deeply blue eyes glaring up at him were nearly delirious with anger, but to his relief they held no fear. “Damnation, Merry. Listen. You’ve stretched this as far as you can. Tempers are short. One more scream and you’re likely to end the morning with your back bared by Raven’s side.”
“I don’t care!” she said, the words muffled under his strong fingers.
“So what?” he snapped. “I do. If you won’t clap a stopper on your tongue, I’ll do it for you. Open your mouth again, and I’ll drug it shut. I mean it. I’d rather humiliate you than hurt you. My choice.”
Through his fingers she said, “Whyyours?”
She was breathing in short gasps, but her eyes were calmer. He loosened his hold on her mouth.
“Because,” he said, “haven’t you noticed? I’m the one on top.”
She was imprisoned in her cabin, and it was two days before she saw Raven. Cat unlocked the door the second evening and allowed Raven to enter before him. Standing quickly, coming toward him, she saw with unclad anxiety that the cloudless friendliness in his eyes was as bright as ever, although the firm facial skin was still gray from suffering. His easy sailor’s grace had become stiff and awkward, and when she saw it, she ran into his arms with a cry.
“Merry! Here now, none of that,” Raven said softly, flattered and a little embarrassed. “Don’t take on so. I’m the same—sound of body, soft of brain. Ouch! Here, dear, don’t hug me, please.”
“I’m sorry!” she said, carefully and quickly redirecting her hands. “Raven, if I had known—”
“M’lady, it had nothing to do with you. I don’t mind a thrashing now ’n’ again, if it’s in a good cause. I’d be right as a red currant by now if it hadn’t been for Sails. Mind you, his intentions were the best, but to keep me company on the first night after, he took to reading from a sermon book. Forty pages, he read, and the print on them smaller than flea tracks, and titled ‘The Divinity of Christ, by One Who Had Been for Thirty Years an Atheist.’ Lord, by the time it was over, you pretty well felt like putting your fist in the nose of the man who converted him.”
Raven’s lips, smiling at her with kindness, were dry and set with pain twists. She stood tensely before him, her hand resting against the loose weave of his cider-colored shirt. She said, “Will Saunders calls himself your best friend. I can’t understand how he could stand by and watch them beat you.”
“If you want the truth,” said Raven with amusement, “it didn’t exactly break his heart to see them lay stripes on my back. Madder than an empty duck with his quacker stuck shut, Will was. You should hear him quoting Pere Ardier on the subject of Caribbean males.”
“I heard,” Cat said and quoted, “ ‘While they are generally intelligent and well made—’ ”
“Thank you,” Raven said.
“ ‘—they are also unreliable, lazy, capricious, and ready at any time to commit suicide,’ ” Cat finished.
Grinning at Cat, Raven retorted, “And have you heard, mayhap, what the good father said about Swedes? ‘Quarrelsome, insolent, arrogant, and prone to wantonness.’ ”
“That,” said Cat dryly, “was quick. Why don’t you sit down and quit trying to be jolly? Look at her face. She knows you’re acting.”
It was agonizing for Merry to watch Raven lower himself clumsily into the chair that Cat had turned backward for him. Again she said, “I can’t understand how they could do that to you.”
“Merry, it was a light sentence—” Raven began.
“Light!”
