Allowing him to support her in his arms, she gratefully took the water he offered. He hadn’t held her since the night of her escape from the island. It felt so good she didn’t want him to let her go; and when he moved to lay her down, she clutched at his shirt.
“Don’t you want to sleep?” he said.
“No,” she whispered. And so, without speaking, he pulled the bedding away and wrapped her in a flannel quilt and carried her to a chair by the stern window, where he sat down, holding her against him. A row of diamond panes frosted in starlight were open, and the great after-castle window showed a rippling moon dancing in the wake. He tucked the quilt around her feet with care because, though the night was warm, the effects of an external chill in her weakened condition could be disastrous.
“If you’re hungry—” he offered.
“No.” The smooth, soft fragrance of his skin reached her through his unbuttoned shirt, and she dragged at the shirt fabric that separated her cheek from his bare chest. When he saw what she was trying to do, he helped her and brushed his mouth lightly over her forehead once she was settled.
“I wonder what whales talk about,” she said.
His arm tightened comfortably about her. “Hmm? The whales? I’m afraid my Whale isn’t as fluent as it should be.”Tonight both whale voices were genial and rich with haunting sensuality, and he could almost feel the tenderness in their love play, the underwater ballet of graceful massive bodies wreathed in moist oxygen. A sentimental thought for a man whose softer emotions were seldom about things like love and pairing. Devon became aware suddenly that he was tired. Contact with her body must have relaxed him, and it made him curious about what it would be like to sleep beside her, to weave in and out of dreams with her kitten’s breath on his shoulder. Andthatwas an entirely new thought for him, because though he liked to laugh and touch for a long time with his lovers, the idea of going to sleep beside them had always been vaguely unappealing. Morgan, naturally, had a number of theories about that, none of them flattering.
The girl was looking at him. “The whales,” he extemporized. “They’ve heard that you’re sick, down there, under the sea.” A high moan. “Did you hear that? They’re very sorry, so they’ve sent the patriarch of the humpback clan to the Arctic, where the north wind lives in an ice cave, to ask for cool breezes to make you comfortable while you’re getting well. And when you’ve recovered, they’ll take you riding whale-back.”
She gave him half of a smile, and the skeptical glance of a child cynic whose faith in fantasy games had been lately shaken. He could feel the slight tug on his shirt fabric as she played with his buttons.
“Devon?”
“Yes?”
“This afternoon when I woke from my nap, I heard you talking and—Were you having an argument about me with Morgan? I know Cat thinks this room is better for me because the air circulates more freely, but if Morgan is annoyed about being put out of his cabin, I think—”
“Don’t be so energetic. Just for a few days will you leave thethinking to us? It’s by Morgan’s order that you’re in this cabin, and if there’s a motive beyond simple charity in it, neither of us will be able to figure it out until he wants us to. And there’s more to your being here than ventilation. Since Morgan’s bed is mounted on gimbals, you’ll feel the sea rolling less than in your bunk, which means you’ll rest a little better. I don’t know what you heard that sounded like an argument. Did Morgan sound angry?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Too pleasant, in that way he has. I heard my name mentioned, and he said something about—grapeshot?”
“Ah. That.” Her hand arrived at his cheek, nervously questioning, a sign of some inner disquiet, and it made him wonder if it had become a torture for her to be as dependent as she was on men whose caprices had not always led them to treat her kindly. This time honesty was best. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and Morgan equates insomnia with melodrama. He said that I was sinking like grapeshot in liquid guilt.”
Her head moved, and her disturbed hair made feather movements over his chest and belly that sent new blood tingling in surprise through his veins. As she spoke he was irritably cudgeling it back into its cool discipline.
“Do you mean,” she said, “about me?”
“It would be nicer, right now, not to have to remember I was the one who frightened you so badly that you ran away.” Turning his head lightly, he stroked her fingertips with his parted lips. Instead of the shy withdrawal he had expected, her fingers pressed his mouth, lightly exploring, as he brushed her softness with his tongue.
“I didn’t know when I stole your letters that they belonged to Michael Granville,” she whispered.
Against her fingers he said, “When did you know?”
“After. I began to guess in the boat when I saw your face.”Then, desperately, she added, “Can’t you believe me?” But before he was able to answer her, she moaned softly at a new stab of pain. The effort to consider the weighty yet delicate issue of Michael Granville had revived the submerged malaria headache, and it pounded raggedly in her skull, screaming for attention like a tattered beggar.
“Where does it hurt? Show me, dear” came Devon’s voice, and she carried his proffered hand to her head, letting his clever fingers discover and soothe the shivery pain within her.
“Merry… I wouldn’t care right now if you took every letter I own and boiled them for three weeks in a mustard foot bath.” Holding her very close to him, he said quietly, “Love, I know there’s no reason for you to think you can trust me, but this once, will you? I need to know who you are. It’s going to take a long time for you to recover, and you could use someone of your own with you. You told me you had a family, and at the tavern there was a girl with you—Sally. Let me send for someone.”
She couldn’t bear to have it all brought out again, and the temptation to have Sally with her might, with his nimble prodding, become too great for her to resist. Using every dram of her depleted strength, she put her arms around his neck, lifted her aching head, and laid her lips gently on his. Merry felt the light shock of his breath quickly indrawn, and the side of her breast, comfortably unbound inside her nightshirt, made tight contact with his tensed chest.
For a long time they held each other in that same floating touch. Without breaking the light bond of their lips he carried her to her bed and drew the bedclothes to her chin. When he finally did raise his head from her, it was to gather her flushing cheeks between his palms and stroke her there, staring down at her with a smile until he had watched her drift away from him, drowning like cherry blossoms in a pool into the depths of a peaceful sleep.
Chapter 18
The malaria paroxysm that came the next afternoon left Merry so severely weakened that she was alert for only a few minutes of the following twenty-four hours. Without consulting anyone Morgan changed course for St. Elise, the small island where he owned a modest indigo plantation. Even after she heard they had plotted a new heading, it didn’t occur to her that she wasn’t expected to recover. They had been too careful never to shake her confidence in that by placing steeled controls on their every nuance of inflection and expression.
Cat knew as much about the disease and how to treat it as anyone; no one could have done better, and there were many who would not have been able to keep her alive beyond the first days. The most dangerous form of the lethal malaria fever had entered the dearest of his patients.
He was grateful there was no need to tell Devon, whose clever golden eyes had correctly read the signs—her constant need to sleep, her failing appetite, her progressive apathy. Cat knew very well that when Devon had asked her again how he might find her family, it had not been to have them ease her recuperation, but because it was too cruel that she would have to die so far away from home and among strangers. But now, even if she had told him, it was no longer possible for any of her people to reach her in time.
Morgan had been in to see her, gazing at her while she slept. Cat didn’t know which mask he had begun to dread more, Morgan’s impassivity or Devon’s cheerful efficiency. Uncapped emotion was worse. He found it unbearable to be in the same room with Raven.
