Ignoring the taunt, Cat had walked to the desk and picked up the sheet of figures. “Have you figured out yet how much of a bribe we’ll have to give Customs?”
“Yes. That being done, I’m going to shore, where I want two things: to have a meal and to have a woman, and that means if you’re going to be emotional at me about Merry, do it while I pull on my boots, or you’ll have to scold my empty nightcap.”
Cat set down the page. “I wish we could come to some kind of uniform agreement on whether I’m supposed to have emotions, or not have them.”
“Very well,” Morgan said agreeably, picking up a boot. “You can have emotions. Abracadabra. Wasn’t that easy? Now, look around inside your skull for your common sense. You see? It remains in residence. No one makes you surrender your logic in order to feel. Hand me my other boot.”
With temper chills biting like teeth in the lining of his stomach, Cat wrenched up the boot, strode with it to the window, pushed open the casing, and flung Morgan’s boot into the harbor, where it drowned in a crown-shaped splash. Its halo of disturbed water had expanded and vanished before Morgan spoke.
“That might have caught my attention, but think of the poor fisherman who pulls it up on a line instead of a sea bass.… I don’t know what you’re worried about. The chit can handle Devon.”
“Rand, she doesn’t know that. She’s frightened. And she has good reason to be too.”
“She hasnoreason to be. Why do you think I let him drag her off on St. Elise? They’ve both had a chance to see thatyou can pour anger into him until it steams from his ears like hot sulfur, and even then he can’t harm her. What else would you like to know?”
Cat took a long silent breath of the moist air that cascaded through the open window. “About her mother.”
Behind him Cat heard silence. A low laugh. A voice. “Here.”
Turning, he caught Morgan’s other boot, lightly tossed.
“Why do things by halves? Send down a pair.”
So Cat threw the second boot after the first and sat down on the window bench, watching Morgan stretch out in a chair, cross his stockings at the ankle, and rest his hands on the naked flesh of his abdomen. For a long time Morgan stared at but not into Cat’s eyes. Elbows braced on the chair arms, the pirate raised his hands, knotted absently in prayer fashion, touching his own lips with the steeple of his fingers.
“When I was thirteen,” he said suddenly, softly, “I went to England to see my father. Literally to see. As oneseesthe pyramids. It was five years before the war of 1793, and I’d been smuggling with a crew of Corsicans all winter. When spring came, I landed in Margate with a pocket full of coins and made my way to Teasel Hill. On Sunday morning I sat on the churchyard wall and saw them all—my father’s exquisite child-bride, and Devon, squalling his bloody head off under a hundred ells of lace, and Jasper himself, beaming down at them as though they were all the angels in heaven. They disappeared into the church without looking around.”
The gnawing in Cat’s stomach had grown more intense. “That was all?”
“That was all.”
“Did you want more?”
Morgan grinned. “From my father, no. But I wanted to unwrap his smothering infant and swive his wife. Neither thing being possible, I thought,Well, I’ve seen themandset out across the meadows with my thumbs tucked in the waist of my ragged knee breeches.” The hands relaxed, conjoined still, against his chest. “That afternoon I saw her. Her. The girl who became Merry’s mother. She was my age, but in most ways a child, and I first saw her walking in a dry ditch with strawberry clover all in flower. Her silk skirts were spread out all around her like willow boughs, and her ringlets were filled with wild apple blossoms and falling down on one side; and she had put her bonnet on a lamb that she was trying to lead on a red ribbon, as though it were a puppy, but the lamb kept balking and chewing the ribbon. Her eyes were light blue, the color of robin’s eggs, and they opened round when she saw me standing in the lane above her. Then she grabbed my hand and drew me into the ditch beside her, putting two fingers on my lips and saying ‘Ssh!’ when I would have spoken. She whispered to me that I had to be very quiet because Indians were coming. And when I told her that I didn’t know there were Indians in England, she touched my lips and said ‘Ssh!’ again. England was full of Indians, she said, only they had to stay mostly out of sight because people made such a fuss when they saw them. Sometimes, she said, she let the Indians scalp her, and sometimes she hid. And the next time she opened pink-bud lips to speak, I put my fingers on her mouth and said ‘Ssh.…’ ”
The dark gaze was blind, the smooth jet irises catching quills of light like the seed globe of a thistle. “I stayed until late May, working for a chandler in Leatherhead, seeing her when she could slip away. On the last day it rained, and we met under a beech tree, with celandine growing in a mat beneath, the flowers closed in the poor light, and she said it seemed as though the sun had drawn closed its shutters.” A long pause. Morgan’s eyes returned to Cat’s. Mildly the pirate said, “I had to leave her, you know. Her family would never have allowed me to court her openly. Too gently reared forfriendship; too wellborn to marry; too young to bed. The temptations were too great, which was why I tried not to learn what became of her, but I imagined her cherished, and happy, and in time… married. Years later I discovered by chance that her family had left England in a state of poverty. I had theJokeand money, and I searched for her, but by then she had died. There were two children, Merry and an older brother; and a widowed husband—James Wilding.”
Cat released an aging breath from his lungs. “Wilding. The famous ones?”
“The famous ones. The fanatical ones. James and Carl Wilding…” A terse smile touched Morgan’s firm lips. “He was probably better to her than I would have been. My only consolation. I left someone with the children—”
“I know. Merry’s Henry Cork.”
Morgan’s brow skipped upward in mocking admiration. “How long have you known?”
“When she was ill,” Cat said, “she told me all about Henry Cork, and the man bore a certain resemblance to old Hezekiah, the gunner’s mate that Sails used to tell stories about. Big practical joker. I found his name on a copy of your old manifest on St. Elise. Hezekiah Cork.”
“My, my. You have been rowing with both oars, haven’t you? Hezekiah Cork. He wasn’t much, but at least I knew I could trust him not to seduce the girl the day she reached puberty. What I haven’t quite figured out yet is what she was doing on a ship bound for Britain in Michael Granville’s company, and why he would go to so much trouble to besmirch her reputation. Although I suspect Letitia’s fingers in this somewhere.”
“Devon’s grandmother?”
“Yes.” Morgan uncrossed his ankles. “She reposes immense confidence in Granville’s integrity. And you see, I’d been toying with the idea of bringing Merry to England if the politicalsituation in America continued to deteriorate. I had Letitia maintain a correspondence with Merry’s aunt so that if I had to move her, it could be done through an intermediary. At that point there seemed to be nothing to be gained by terrifying the girl with the knowledge that I had an interest in her. In the end I decided she’d be safer where she was.” He studied his toes, flexing them. “It turns out, of course, that I was wrong. It was fortunate you brought her to me.”
“ ‘All the while he by his side her bore. She was as safe as in a Sanctuary,’ ” Cat quoted sarcastically. “And you decided she’d do for Devon. Please, if you happen to pick someone out you want me to marry, just say ‘Marry her!’ and I will. Don’t drag me through all the cellars in hell by the seat of my inexpressibles first.”
“Nonsense.” Morgan’s smile was disquieting. “I only provided proximity. They did the rest. I wouldn’t have encouraged it if I hadn’t seen in the beginning that they were in love. You’re worried about Merry; then go after her.”
Morgan’s words had taken Cat off guard. He said quickly, “Do you mean it?”
