Raven and Cook were studying, a routine that Morgan had instigated in their earliest days on theJoke,although no one was quite sure if the lessons were intended to promote their education or to test the patience of Will Saunders, who was supposed to be their teacher. Both Cook and Raven were quick learners, but that made them no easier to instruct. Raven’s attention span for passive activity was notably abbreviated, and Cook had a tendency to dispute everything. If he was told thatefollowedi,save afterc,it was woe betide Will Saunders if Cook found an exception later that Saunders had forgotten. Just now Cook was saying,“What kind of a problem is this, Saunders?” Glaring at the book, he read aloud: ‘The stagecoach is drawn by four pairs of horses. How many horses are two horses and two horses and two horses and two horses? How many horses are four times two horses?’ He tossed down the book, spine upward on the grass. Then he said, “How in the name of Jesus shouldIknow? I don’t know a damn thing about horses.”
Saunders was lying on the grass with his heels crossed and a wide-brimmed hat covering his face. From under the hat, “The question doesn’t have a damn thing to do with horses, matey, and you know it.”
“Well, Jeez.” Cook began to warm to the subject. “Bloody thing’s so easy that there must be a trick to it.”
“What’s the answer?” Saunders showed no disposition to emerge from under the hat.
“I refuse,” Cook said, brightening at the incipient argument. “Damn, it’s too easy. I’ll be blast if it ain’t an insult to my intelligence.”
Moving with reluctance, Saunders pushed off the hat and sat up. “You’ve got tongue enough for two sets of teeth,” he said irritably. Glancing at the book on the grass by Cook’s knees, he said, “Well, for the love of Jesus, you’ve brought out the wrong book. Is that what you’ve been looking at for the last hour? You went through that book in three days nine months ago, as you are more than well aware.”
To Merry, who had halted in her drawing of Cat and begun to giggle, Saunders delivered a reproachful glance, said, “Don’t encourage him,” and vanished again under the hat.
The shaddocks were hung with cannonballs of golden fruit, and ducking through them, Devon glimpsed Merry in an innocent moment, the residue of that earlier laughter still bright, her exquisite cheeks dappled with skipping sunlight that wove through the sheltering leaves. Her soft brushed curls haloed her smile and licked in airy tendrils against the fine-boned hollowsunder her ears and near the base of her jawline. Dainty, drifting shadows beaded the shell-pink fibers of her gown. Annie had made the dress for her from a simple pattern carefully cut of Flanders muslin that cupped Merry’s sweetly rounded breasts and showed, in faint depressions, the honey-soft line of the hips and the curved surfaces between her tucked legs. Desire came to Devon in a light sting that brought with it the lucent memory of her flesh pliant against his fingers and the breathtaking arch of her breasts under his palm.
Cat was seated on a low stone wall stringing his mandolin and posing with not very good grace for Merry’s dexterously wielded pencil. Spanish jasmine, growing to one side, suffused the air with its fragrance, and an inch from the toe of his high boots was a tiny hummingbird moving beelike in a vibration of gold and green feathers as its beak plunged repeatedly into the corolla of a nodding honeysuckle. There were, Devon noted, a lot of things to distract Cat, but the long-haired boy’s fierce early years had given him an unerring sensitivity to human realities. From Cat’s expression, focused with candid clarity on Devon’s eyes, Devon knew that Cat had seen him looking at Merry, and Devon wondered idly what his own face had shown. Probably the inbreaths of hydrogen.
Devon stepped forward as Merry glanced skyward toward the wild golden-toned twitter of a bird which darted across the stretching band of a sunbeam. Pointing, asking what kind of bird it was, she upset her ivory pencil box, which had been unwisely balanced on the pig’s rump. Trotters flailing, the pig scrambled to its feet, dunking Raven’s head on the blanket to receive a haphazard shower of rolling pencils.
Merry was on her knees immediately, laughing in dismayed apology, pulling pencils out of Raven’s loose waving curls, dusting graphite powder and cedar shavings from his bare skin. Retrieving an erasing rubber from under hisear, she said, “I’m dreadfully sorry. What a stupid thing!” Seeing that the pig had retreated in umbrage to Cat: “And poor Dennis. But does anyone happen to know what kind of a—” Suddenly Merry fell silent. Poised as she was, half leaning over Raven with her chest a handspan from his, the boy under her could not move unless he wanted to contact that wonderful feminine body, which was not a good idea with circumstances as they were. Tilting his neck to look up and backward, he was able to see, as he had guessed, that Devon had come, and that Merry was staring at him. It was amazing to Raven, as it was to the others, that Devon had begun to avoid Merry, especially when one thought of the risk he had taken with his own life to save her. For an unknown reason Devon had forbidden them to tell Merry about it. Was it that same enigmatic motive that had made the man behave toward her like a remote if friendly acquaintance since she had reawakened from the coma? The only certain thing about any of it was the hurt it was causing Merry.Damn. Why couldn’t anyone seem to solve it? Raven glanced up once at Merry and then tipped back to smile lazily into Devon’s receptive gaze.
“See the fun you miss by spending half the morning closeted with Morgan in the study?” Raven said, stomping with unabashed verbiage through the embarrassing intimacy of the moment. “It’s taking Merry forever to draw Cat’s picture because all she wants to do is look at birds. Now she’s overset her pencils over some weightless bit of feather and bone, and God knows what it is, mon. We keep telling her we’re only good with pigs.”
Merry had gratefully used the time Raven made to recover. Straight-shouldered, she settled sensibly on her heels, her smudged fingers laid flat on her lap, and strove for a natural expression of welcome.
“It was a swallow,” Devon said, smiling at her. “Latin name:Hirundo poeciloma.”
Eyeing Devon with disfavor, Cook said, “God’s sake. Even the Latin. You’d think this was a bloody university.”
“Don’t worry,” Cat said, tuning his E string. “He’s a fake. He only learns the common ones. If it had been a puffin, you’d have seen him humbled.”
“But you ought to hear me with vegetation,” Devon said, grinning. “I can go on and on.” He began to laugh at Cook’s expression of alarm as he dropped easily to the blanket beside Merry. “But I won’t.” To Merry: “Will you show me your drawing, Merry mine?”
Merry was disappointed to find that his use of her name as a casual endearment had thrown her again into vivid disarray. She had a certain fear, irrational she hoped, that she might drop her gaze to his lips or to some other unsuitable portion of his anatomy. There must be a better way to manage. These waves of feeling were becoming more like a cruel prison every day. She handed him her sketchbook.
Devon studied her drawing of Cat, gave her an apt compliment on its quality which she took more pleasure from than she wanted to, and then he asked her in an amiable tone if she had ever done this for a living.
The question surprised a laugh out of her. “Certainly not,” she said. “Do people buy pencil sketches?”
“That might depend on the subject,” Devon said. It was a casual remark, made without thought or any intention other than idle discussion, but it went so neatly to the heart of Merry’s one real offense against him that her laughter flattened into alarm. Devon was fishing out a pencil that had rolled under Annie’s hem, and though no one would suspect the fate of a relationship could rest on the retrieval of an errant pencil, the act prevented Devon from seeing the apprehension in Merry’s face and beginning from that to make the right sort of guesses. Like lost lovers that pass separately within minutes through the same door, Devon and Merry came as closeas a glance to learning a crucial thing about each other. Of course, Rand Morgan would have probably made the point that a simple solution isn’t always best when one deals with a complicated problem.
Raven, whohadbeen looking at Merry, saw her apprehension, and although he had no way of knowing what it meant, it was logical for him to act protectively. When Devon looked up then, it was not toward Merry but toward Raven, who was demanding in an exuberant way to see the picture too. And so a moment that could have bred so much drama passed without solving or creating any new problems, as Raven began cheerfully to solicit critiques of the drawing on Merry’s behalf.
From Will Saunders, supporting himself on an elbow: “Beautiful. But as it’s Cat, Merry love, do you think you’ve developed enough of the sneer?”
Getting out of his studies had put Cook in a good mood. He said, “Sneer? By crow spit and wildfire, if that ain’t an injustice to poor Cat. Hey, with all of us knowin’ under that witchy tongue beats a heart warm as the tail fins on a dead sturgeon.” Wiping a brown stringy curl out of his eyes, grinning at Cat, he said, “What we really need to do, see, is to take off your clothes and drape a sheet over your lap. And we’ll give the picture to Morgan on St. Valentine’s Day.”
Raven was making a point of clearing his throat, and Cook caught the warning in it and turned to see that Morgan had joined them and was standing, with a bland smile on his face, by a flowering shrub. “Oh, bloody hell,” Cook said and turned red.
“What a delight it is to discover my name on your lips,” Morgan said in a tone that managed to convey the opposite without any visible energy. “Don’t squirm, my lad, or you’ll drop Annie’s head off your knee. She’s asleep, have you noticed?”
Heavily relieved by the turn of subject, Cook drew aside a mound of shiny jet hair to study Annie’s face, the clear brown skin lax and glowing in sleep. “So she is! Bless her little soul. Well, Jeez. Did the same thing yesterday. Dropped right off to sleep in the middle of the day. I suppose I wake her up too many times at night,” he said with self-reproach.
That drew sputters of outright laughter from his listeners.
“On one occasion in particular,” Morgan said rather obscurely. The black gaze dipped cordially to Merry and then sprang to Devon. “Aren’t you going fishing, my dear?”
“Yes,” Devon said, starting to get up. He smiled fully at Merry. “Something distracted me. But I’m going now. Precious and fading are my idle days.”
