Sunbeams backlit him in a dazzling aura. To her tumultuous senses his approach and his gesture were a threat. She recoiled against a mast as she said, “Don’t touch me.”
He stopped a few feet away, his expression becoming wary. “Is there something wrong, Windflower?”
That unthinking use of his pet name for her was unsettling. God in heaven, he had his nerve asking her in thatartless fashion if something was the matter. Why didn’t he look as warm as she was? Leaning her blood-hot head against the mast, she said, “I want you to let me go.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then he said, “No.”
“Yes!” she came back, almost screaming the word.
The brilliant eyes hardened. “You’ve been damned troublesome, do you know that? Give me one reason why I should accommodate you.”
“Common decency.” Merry bit off the words sharply.
“It’s rather late, isn’t it, to bring the virtues into this? Unless you think we’ll be able to make up for lost time.”
The swelling mound of the great canvas sail above her head slapped in the wind, attracting her unsteady fancy. When she looked back at Devon, her mind had frighteningly destroyed every memory of what they had been talking about, except that it had been hostile. For some reason it seemed fiercely important to disguise the lapse from him.
“Could that be a reference to what happened between us yesterday?” she said, because some nearly defunct sense was telling her that the remark was somehow relevant.
“No,” he said, cold-eyed. “However, don’t let that stop you if you think it’s something we ought to be fighting about.”
Cat had warned her about this, but his advice had been so obliquely delivered that she couldn’t remember what it was. Something about being consistent, she thought. Cat. She needed Cat. And here was Devon, waiting for an answer.
“I’m not going to stay here to become your mistress,” she said desperately.
His response came quick as a slap. “That tune is getting monotonous. Do you think you could learn some new notes?”
“Perhaps. If you’d first master the prelude.” Her head and body burned until she could taste ashes. “Am I a mechanical music toy to be wound up and run down at your pleasure?”
“Damn. I wish just once that you’d stay wound up.” Therewas a fine-drawn temper in his voice; his hedonist’s mouth smiled without humor. “God forbid that you and I should do anything the simple way, Merry mine, but it would probably save time and help us right to dead center of the argument if you’d tell me what’s igniting it.”
A pause followed. They stared at each other, she angrily, he coolly, until a tongue of wind fumbled through her shirt buttons and lapped at the moisture on her burning skin. Violent tremors seized her, rattling her muscles. Hot waves crawled over her flesh like the breath of an open oven. It must have lasted only seconds, though to Merry it seemed to go on and on. During the course of it she saw Devon come toward her in a colorful blur of movement.
“Merry?” The tone he used this time was new to her. She felt his hands find and hold her shoulders, trapping her before him. Panicked by the contact, she dragged herself out of his grip and wobbled back, her dry, fevered hands fluttering defensively in front of her.
“I’m not a pet. I don’t want to be handled,” she said.
He made no further move toward her, though anyone watching him except Merry could have seen the discipline of that was not easy for him. His eyes held a deep frown. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and deliberate.
“Love, I know you’re not a pet. No one will touch you if you don’t want them to, but you must go below and—”
“And what? Go below and wait to be assaulted?” Shivers coursed through her voice. “Or go below until you’re ready to whip me?Orare you going to find some way to combine the two? Oh, how well I know how ingenious you can be.”
Through a sight field that was filling up with shimmering red stars, Merry saw a black-haired boy approach her from the direction of the mizzenmast. He was running, with compassion and worry etched well into his comely teenage features. For less than a second she knew it was Raven, and thenthat name was lost. He looked at Devon and then at her and came toward her. Between the heat and the pain the idea came to her that Devon had sent him to whip her, and she cowered from him, moving backward blindly on the sliding deck, her flowing hair snarling in the rough lines of the rigging. Devon held the boy back from her with a sharp command.
“Please, mon, let me help her,” the boy said. “You can see she’s—”
“I know. But she might hurt herself if she’s forced. Get Cat.”
A gull screeched, and Merry retreated once more, her fists cupped over her ears. The cool caress of the wind grew stronger as she neared the gunwale, and she stood, swaying, with ocean water spotting her clothes at the ship’s edge. Strong arms caught and pulled her back to safety, but as she opened her eyes the firm grip on her waist was too tight and terrifying. Twisting a neck that had no flexibility left in it, she saw that Devon held her and tore out of his hands. Her ill-functioning mind willfully misinterpreted his action, and she clung to the heavy lines strung to the foremast, weaving precariously over the edge as the tall ship rolled. Over rushing water and timbers that creaked, she heard her own voice babbling about torture and pain. With difficulty she realized that she was saying, “You don’t have to drag me. What else do you think I expect from you but mindless barbarities? Flog me, then.… Where do you want me to go? The bow cannon, didn’t you say? Where is it? I want to be everyone’s ideal of a brave woman.”
An older man with sharp gray eyes and the tools of a sailmaker hanging from his belt was talking to Devon, and when he finished, she heard Devon say to the man, “You’re right. But I can’t do it.”
The sailmaker answered, “Aye, laddie. Better ’tis another in any case.” Then, “Willy, be a good boy. See what ye can do. Easy does it.”
Insulated by the scorpion pain inside her skull, Merry couldn’t see the tanned young man approach her, and she hardly heard one word in three that he spoke to her. She leaned back tiredly against the lines, feeling the vibrant blast of the gray sea under her neck. The young man’s slowly enunciated words began to come to her.
“Merry. Listen to me, sweeting. It’s Will Saunders. You remember—big brother Will. You want to walk to the bow cannon, don’t you? If you take my hand. No. All right. But come with me, won’t you? You don’t want us to… to have to be rough with you.”
