“I wish you’d stop doing crazy things,” he said.
Pressing her head backward into the pillow, she gave him what tried to be a placating smile. No effect. So she made a copy of one of Raven’s rude hand signs.
“That,” he said dryly, “wasn’t even the right finger.”
She could feel her placating smile becoming a little sheepish. “Aren’t you even going to say how glad you are to see me?”
“No.” An incidental movement of his head sent his hair over her like a caress. “I was hoping that you had made it to New Orleans. With Michael Meadows, of course, that wasn’t likely. Did Devon tell you how we were able to locate you?” After she shook her head from side to side in a negative, he continued. “A couple of months ago Meadows happened to show Will Saunders that miserable scrap of paper Meadows had the audacity to call a map. Thank God Saunders is bright. He only saw the map for a few seconds, but he was able to draw it from memory. The reason it took us so long to get to you was that we spent days searching the Devil’s Kettle and terrorizing the occupants before Rand thought to turn the map upside down. And that led us straight to you. Incidentally, Raven and Saunders have been trying to circulate the story that Meadows broke into your room and forced you to go with him.”
Her eyes widened involuntarily. “Does Devon pretend to believe it?”
“Michael Meadows was the last man on the ship with the gumption to carry off any woman of Devon’s. Besides, there’s a small matter of a squid that everyone knew Raven left in with you and which vanished when you did. Meadows might have kidnapped you—but he was hardly likely to make off with your damned mollusk.”
Hope died. There was no way to sit up without knocking flat into Cat’s body. Merry wriggled upright against the wall, and his tumbling hair brushed over her lower body and then lay, tickling, on her knees and bare ankles. “What’s the crew thinking?”
In a facile movement the boy pirate swung his head back slightly. The gesture pulled his hair from her legs and settled it behind him.
“We’ve spent almost two weeks looking for you,” he said. “That was two weeks without a prize—without even lookingfor one. The decision to search for you was fairly popular, given that you didn’t leave in the steadiest company—but no one likes to have commerce interrupted. And there are some missing gold pieces, which one assumes Meadows took; but can you prove it was him and not you?”
“Well.” She smiled too brightly. Every nerve was alive and jumping. “I guess it’s the bow cannon and a cat-o’-nine-tails for me!”
“Is it?” he said dryly. “From what Raven told me in confidence, last night you put up a little insurance against that with Devon.”
From brightly smiling to brightly angry. “If Raven told you that was why—”
He interrupted. “Raven didn’t tell me anything of the sort because, innocent that he is, it’s never occurred to him that you and Devon don’t ride together. It’s part of your protection that the men think you belong in every way to Devon, and no one other than Morgan and I and possibly Sails knows any different.” Moving away from her, he lifted the empty glass of herbal tea he had given her and held it in a loose clasp. “Last night, if it wasn’t insurance with Devon, what was it?” Then, absorbing the look she was giving him, he snapped, “Listen, I don’t want to discuss this either. But there’s no one else to tell you, so I’d better. I turn, take a breath, and whenever I look back in your direction, you’re in deeper. About last night?”
“If a dog had arrived last night and pulled me off that island by the trousers seat, I would have kissed the dog,” she said defiantly. Why, of all people, had Raven chosen to confide how he had found her with Devon toCat? Cat, who had several times pointed out that for a woman who professed to hate Devon, she was to be found in his arms with unaccountable frequency. Cat saw things too clearly. Eventually desperation might force her to confide to Cat the humiliatingand overwhelming things she felt for Devon. Today she still needed to feign indifference, even though the young blond pirate was probably seeing right through it. She slid out of bed and stood up in her bare feet, facing him. “Go on. Tell me. How has kissing Devon made this disaster worse?”
Cat set the glass down on a tin tray without breaking his contact with her eyes. “Sweetheart, first I have to teach you the word for ladies who seem like they will when they won’t.”
“Whatever the word is, I’ll bet it was invented by a man,” she snapped. “There’s a bad name for you if you will and a bad name for you if you won’t.”
“Did I say it was fair? I only wish you’d pick something out and stick to it. For your sake.”
He had opened the door and almost closed it behind him when she said quietly, “Cat, did you grow up on Ile de la Tortue?”
He returned silently. After examining her face he said, “Someone’s given you an earful about me? Was it Meadows?”
She had the urge to drop her eyes but refrained, with effort, and nodded.
With an expression that coldly disguised any trace of feeling, he asked, “Curious?”
“No. I just wanted to tell you that if it’s true—”
“What?”
She took a breath. “If it’s true, I’m sorry.”
The relaxation of his facial muscles was so gradual and subtle that she couldn’t perceive it until he came a step closer to her and stroked his hand once through her sleep-ruffled curls, very gently. “You poor, extraordinary girl,” he said. “Merry, you don’t have to be sorry.…”
By eight bells, when she heard the watch change, yesterday’s headache had come back in force. By three bells that afternoonit had become so painful she could barely think. Room light hurt, and the incessant scrape of men walking and working above hurt. The steadily rolling dip of the vessel became agonizing. Earlier she had been sure that it must be her unexamined fear about what Devon was going to do to her that had created the demon throbbing under her scalp, but as the pain went on and grew worse she began to think perhaps it was the heat, which was as bitter here as the North American winter was cold. The air around her steamed, and she had begun to sweat like a mare, and the prickle of perspiration on her temples hurt too. She wet a towel in the water can, and without thinking to wring it out she sat at the table, burying her face in wet fabric as it splattered on the table and dripped over her forearms.
The room seemed like a furnace, and the pain in her head was like a swelling sun before she began to call weakly for Cat. Making her way to the door, whispering his name, she put her hand on the latch for balance, and surprisingly it gave. Why hadn’t they locked her in? She found the stairway and wobbled on deck, where a hurricane hit her of bouncing sunlight, and noise, and familiar faces she could hardly identify.
On the bow with Tom Valentine and Sails, Merry saw Devon, standing like a young Apollo with the shameless breezes molding and displacing the clothing around his body. His golden eyes discovered her quickly, and he broke off his conversation to come toward her with his fluid, springing step, holding out a hand to her.
“Merry!”
