Eventually she felt herself begin to respond to the patient commands, and when she reached the nine-pounder in the bow and fell against it, she gasped, “How do you like your victims? Should I drape myself across it, like laundry spread to dry?”
“No, Merry.” This time the voice belonged to Devon. “Sit by it, rest your head on the chase, and wait.”
Merry dropped to her knees, looping her arms over the cannon, hugging it like a flood victim in rampaging waters, dropping her face against the sweating metal. Sobs began to hiccup from her aching throat. Superheated tears traced quick rivulets over her skin. After a while she remembered to look up, but her field of vision had become a mosaic of pretty, abstract shapes and colors, like a pattern on cloth, their meanings only loosely symbolic. The colors faded into a soft gray, and then she realized Cat had come and that he was talking to Devon.
As Cat came down beside her the sleek rope of his braid slid over Merry’s hand, and she caught it and carried it foolishly to her burning cheek and saturated the pale hair with her tears. His hands were sweetly cool where they touched her with a calm and sexless assessment. Even so she whimpered, “Don’t hurt me.”
“Never, sweetheart,” he said. “Let your head fall back against my arm. That’s it.… Merry, tell me where you’re having pain.”
She had tried to listen to him, but each word slipped away separately from her as soon as she heard it. Sounds around her were hauntingly muted. She stared distractedly at the rolling tears that were landing in fat oily bubbles on her hand. A cold cloth, laid against her neck, her ears, her cheeks, brought her gently back.
“Merry, where’s the pain?”
Trying sluggishly to concentrate, she evaluated her unfriendly body. The headache was gone. It took her a long time, following false and benumbed nerve routes, to learn that the pain had spread downward.
“C-Cat—I’ve been whipped.… I th-think I’ve been whipped.”
Devon said something, a sharp exclamation, and over her head Merry heard Cat say, “Don’t start that, for God’s sakes. It’s the fever talking.” His voice had grown less calm than his hands. “Raven?”
“On the other island, the one Will and I searched”—the soft Caribbean vowels were slurring heavily—“they had buried two men. They had a fever—”
Cat said urgently, “Did it begin with back pain?”
“No. A rash.”
Merry was lowered to the deck with dizzying speed, and Cat tore open her shirt. Groggily angered by the indignity, momentarily recalled to sanity by the uncomfortable hard surface striking her shoulder blades, she said in a cranky voice, “Don’t treat me like a blighted corn ear. I can hear you talking about me. And I don’t want fifty people looking at my rash.”
“You don’t have a rash, Merry, peach. That’s one possibility eliminated.” Devon’s voice came from close to her. “Canyou slide your arms around my neck? Including every and all circumstances, there hasn’t been a time when I’ve wanted more to take you to bed.…”
She returned to awareness in Morgan’s cabin. Wet cloths covered her aching limbs, and the diamond cut windows dropped light on her eyelids. The sun, which had been bright when she opened her eyes, smeared to dun, and when she looked again, the room was dark and the windowpanes were thick with stars. A quiet voice—Devon’s?—was saying, “She’s much cooler now.”
“I knew it.” Cat’s voice. “Damn. That’s what we were afraid of.”
Why was it bad that she was cooler? Vaguely disturbed, she slipped into sleep.
Morning’s silver light gave a misty patina to the cabin when she awoke. Devon, who needed a shave, sat on the bed close to her. He slipped an arm under her shoulders and lifted her to a sitting position. Slowly he fed her a cup of vegetable broth that was rich, flavorful, and full of shredded cabbage—where had that come from? After she had taken all of it, he set the cup down and then turned the pillow with his hand and plumped it before he laid her back down.
“Some people,” he said calmly, “will do anything to attract attention.”
A return to the temporary benevolence.That’s fine with me,she thought,since I’m weaker than a tin candy kettle. She retained a hazy memory of making a spectacle of herself the day before on deck. She grinned weakly and said, “Hullo.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself?” he said with feeling.
So she sheepishly added, “Good soup.”
He laughed, pressing the side of her neck with long, graceful fingers. It seemed to her that he was searching forfever, but he showed neither surprise nor relief when he found no evidence of it.
“How do you feel?” he said.
“Good. But like a stewed grouse.” With a knit brow, “Am I not cured?”
“We’ll see.” His smile was carefully arranged to cheer and to instill confidence. It was so well done that it didn’t occur to her to look under the surface. And there was another, more urgent issue that needed to be settled. Merry gathered her nerve.
“I don’t doubt you’re disappointed that I was too ill for a whipping.”
“Heartsick. I’ve been up all night wringing my hands over it.”
One thing was certainly true. Hehadbeen up all night. Sleeplessness, like every other state, loved his face. Nevertheless, she could see its fine bite.
