Mariah's Prize (20 page)

She swallowed hard, her mouth dry.

“Then what next?”

“You might begin, Mariah,” he said, struggling to stay calm, “by telling me what you were doing in that filthy place.”

She shook her head. She was certain the Lady Anne’s keep had known the man she sought, and somehow, she still intended to find him.

“I

can’t. “

“Can’t, or won’t?” Where her sleeve had been torn away from her bodice was a small, ragged triangle that framed the shadowed curve of the side of her breast and it front door, past two black housemaids in the hallway wh< watched them with interest but not with much surprise, am into the drawing room. He released her then, so he couL close the double mahogany doors against the servants, ani Marian darted across the room. Although the tall windows that lined the walls were thrown open to catch whatevel breeze came from the water, the air in the room was nearlyl as hot as it was outside—nearly as hot as Mariah’s tempera as she rubbed her arm where he’d held her too tightly. } He’d had no right to do that. As much as she loved him,:

he’d no right to do any of this. Her heart pounding, shej threw Gabriel’s coat onto a chair and shoved back her hair, prepared to face him, whatever came next.

And please God, please, please don’t let it end like this.

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Oo what shall it be, Gabriel? ” asked Mariah, her voice shaking.

“Will you tie me to a chair to keep me here, or perhaps your father has chains to manacle me to the cellar wall like a slave?”

“My father doesn’t own slaves, Mariah, any more than he owns chains.”

He had never seen a woman who could look so bedraggled and forlorn and yet be so infuriating at the same time, and he was torn between wanting to punish her and wishing to tell her how much he’d feared for her, to kiss her and reassure her, and himself too, that she was all right.

She swallowed hard, her mouth dry. “Then what next?”

“You might begin, Mariah,” he said, struggling to stay calm, “by telling me what you were doing in that filthy place.”

She shook her head. She was certain the Lady Anne’s keep had known the man she sought, and somehow, she still intended to find him.

“I

can’t. “

“Can’t, or won’t?” Where her sleeve had been torn away from her bodice was a small, ragged triangle that framed the shadowed curve of the side of her breast and it caught his eye, a little patch of secret skin that he heartily wished he could ignore.

“I had business there. My father’s business. You need know no more than that.”

“The hell I don’t! Mariah, if Ethan hadn’t sent one of the men from the boat to come find me, you could already be locked up in the garret of some brothel, waiting to become the evening’s prime entertainment!”

She frowned, feeling betrayed by Ethan though she knew she should be grateful.

“I don’t believe it would have come to that.” “Five minutes later and I would have found you on your back with your skirts rucked up, and that bastard between your thighs!”

“I was there for your sake, Gabriel!”

“For my sake! My God, Mariah, what could you have possibly been doing there that would have been for my sake?”

“Because I wanted to help you!” She hadn’t intended to say even that much, but now that she’d begun, she couldn’t stop.

“There’s a man who owed my father money and I thought if I could get it from him and then pay you back, you’d agree to go back to Crescent Hill.”

He stared at her, incredulous. He remembered the magpie’s nest of papers her father had left behind. How could she trust anything that came from that?

“Mariah, listen to me. I wouldn’t take that money from you even if by some divine miracle you’d found it. I’m here to help fight a war, not just settle your accounts. I can’t go back until this cruise is done, even if I wanted to.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” she said, repeating his words. Why couldn’t he understand that the money didn’t count anymore?

“You’re the one who makes all the decisions, aren’t you? You think I’m your poppet, your pet, your little doll, who can’t be trusted enough to choose the proper color for her stockings!”

“It’s your life that concerns me, Mariah, not your damned stockings!”

Wild-eyed, she paused, her breath coming in short gasps that were dangerously close to sobs.

“If you’re so blessed concerned for me, then why have you dragged me clear up here? Why didn’t you let me go back to the Revenge where I belong?”

She was rubbing her wrist again, and for the first time he noticed the angry red blotches on her pale skin. God, had he done that to her?

He’d never meant to hurt her. Appalled, he remembered how he’d almost killed the man at the Lady Anne. How had he let that same violence—that cold, detached, easy violence that made him so good at privateering—spill over onto the one person he cared for the most?

And he did love her. He realized that now, suddenly, just as he was so close to losing her. Maybe he already had. He’d never before seen the haunted, weary look that was in her eyes now, nor heard in her voice the bittersweet acceptance of things she believed would not change. He longed to reach out and take her in his arms, to hold her and tell her how he felt, but he was afraid it was too late.

“All I’ve wanted, Mariah,” he said hoarsely, “is to keep you safe.” “How, Gabriel? Locked away in an ironbound strongbox while you’re free to do whatever you please?”

She lifted her hands in unspoken supplication, the fingers spread, then with a sigh brought them together in a tight, clenched knot at her waist.

“You can’t change the world by wishing. I know, because I’ve tried. I’ve wished for a world where we weren’t at war with France and Spain and everyone else who’s so eager for a chance to kill you. I’ve wished that my father hadn’t died and my mother didn’t need Geneva and limewater before her tea at breakfast. I’ve wished that Daniel still lived and I was his wife, with his baby dawdling on my knee while I waited for him to come home for supper. And most of all, Gabriel Sparhawk, I wish to God I’d never let myself fall in love with you.”

Swiftly she turned toward the windows, away from him. She didn’t want to see the contempt, or worse, the pity, she knew would be all over his handsome face, any more than she wished him to see the tears that filled her eyes. Surely she wasn’t the first woman to tell him she loved him. He’d never denied his experiences. Just as he’d known how to make her body sing with pleasure beneath his touch, she thought bitterly, he would know exactly which words would lessen the pain of caring too much.

“Mariah, no.” She stiffened as he lay his hands on her shoulders, but she couldn’t make herself pull away.

“No.”

No was not what she expected. No could never be a word of practiced comfort, even whispered so close to her ear. His hands eased down her arms, pulling her against him. Why did they have to fit together this well?

“Don’t wish me from your life, Mariah.” His hands were so large, so sure as they traveled down her body, his fingers tightening on the softness of her hips.

“Because, God help me, I can’t ever wish you from mine.”

“No,” she said softly, her eyes squeezed shut as if that alone could shut out the now-familiar sensations only he could bring.

“No, Gabriel, please.” She shook her head in denial, of him, of herself, and gently he caught her face and turned her around and into his arms.

His mouth was hot on hers, her legs melting beneath her, beneath the heat that centered low in her belly, low where she felt it most, where Gabriel belonged.

“No,” she whispered, a syllable sighed against his lips as they sank together, her upturned skirts an island of crumpled white linen around them against the dark, polished floor.

“No,” she moaned feverishly as he slid his arms beneath her knees and thrust deep within her, the heat between them white-hot, pulsing, so close to release and redemption as she roiled beneath him, meeting him, loving him as if this was the final time.

“Yes, ” he gasped, his head arched, the word forced from him as he thrust into her for the last time, her shuddering cry an echo of his own. His heart still pounding, his senses drugged with the lush sweetness of her still holding him, he raised himself up on his arms to kiss her, and instead found himself staring through the half-open door into the stunned blue eyes of his mother.

“Thee must call me Damaris, child, not Mistress Sparhawk,” chided Gabriel’s mother gently for the third time.

“Such titles are creaturely, and I have no place to set myself above thee through such empty words. Now turn, so I may see how my Sarah’s old gown does for thee.”

Bewildered, Mariah turned as she was told. Gabriel’s mother had brought her upstairs to her bedchamber, had herself helped Mariah from her torn and soiled clothing and washed her and braided her hair and let her weep, and not once had she mentioned either her son or the shameful circumstances in which” they’d been caught.

Although Mariah had known Gabriel’s mother was a Friend, this tall, soft-spoken woman wasn’t at all what she’d expected. The severity of her slate blue dress and green apron suited her, and Mariah was certain that she’d been considered a beauty once, with her clear blue eyes and fair hair beneath her white cap. From her had come

Gabriel’s gift for listening to what another said, and the kindness he often tried so hard to hide. Wistfully Mariah wondered how different life would have been with a mother like this, one who would offer comfort instead of demand it.

“There, Mariah, that shall do quite well until thy own clothing is fetched,” said Damaris, giving Mariah’s borrowed skirt a little twitch of approval.

“Tis not the fashion thee is accustomed to, being a good ten years old, I know, but at least thee is decent.”

“Why haven’t you said anything?” blurted Mariah.

“You’ve been so good to me, when I know you’re thinking I’m a wicked little trollop that should be swept from your doorstep and out of your son’s life!”

“Oh, no, Mariah, thee is quite wrong.” With a sigh, Damaris leaned back against the red cushions in the walnut armchair and studied Mariah.

“I’ve no wish to see thee gone. Thee can’t leave, for thee must wed Gabriel.”

“No!” cried Mariah, shocked.

“Marry Gabriel—no, no, I can’t!”

“But thee loves him. The way thee looks at him speaks that more clearly than words,” said Damaris gently.

“Has thee not considered that thee might already be carrying Gabriel’s child?”

“But I can’t marry Gabriel.” Mariah’s voice broke beneath her anguish.

She couldn’t marry Gabriel, and she knew he wouldn’t marry her.

“I

swore to someone else who—who was lost at sea that I’d never marry another. “

Damaris smiled wryly. “Thee honors his memory by lying with my son?”

“I knew you thought I was wicked!” wailed Mariah.

“Not wicked, lass, just young. Come, thee must not cry.” She held her hand out to Mariah, and slowly Mariah went to her, slipping to her knees before the older woman’s chair as she buried her sobs in Damans’s apron.

Gently Damans stroked her hair. “None of it is thy fault, Marian.

Gabriel is an easy man to love, and always has been. Mothers aren’t supposed to have favorites among their children, but Gabriel was my last, my baby. Though now thee would never believe it, he was a tiny little mite when he was born, nigh a month before his time. I was on board the old Leopard with Jonathan then, and he was forced to be my midwife, and, oh, how he despaired of us both! Because of how close I came to losing him as a babe, I’ve always been more forgiving with my Gabriel, while for the same reason Jonathan has been harder on him than all the others combined. It is strange, isn’t it, how men will always try to huff and bluster when they fear they’ll lose what they care for most? “

With a loud snuffle Mariah raised her head.

“Not Gabriel,” she said vehemently.

“Gabriel cares for nothing beyond himself and his own pleasure.”

“Brave words, lass, but thee doesn’t believe them any more than I do.”

She fished in her pocket for her handkerchief and handed it to Mariah.

“He hasn’t been home, here to us at West gate, in more than four years, but still I cannot fault him for it—though I will credit thee for bringing him back.”

Mariah wiped the handkerchief across her eyes.

“Credit the French, not me. Once the word had come from London, he insisted on being (he first privateer out of Newport.”

Damans’s smile grew tight.

“So Gabriel has turned to the bloodshed again, as Jonathan said he must. I wanted so for it to be otherwise!

It grieves me sadly, but Gabriel has more demons than most men, and I can do no more than pray for him to find his way. ” She sighed deeply, and touched Mariah’s tear-streaked cheek.

“Has he ever told thee how much thee favors another girl he knew long ago?”

Mariah shook her head and blew her nose.

“He’s known so many women he’s likely forgotten her.” “He has not forgotten Catherine, any more than thee has forgotten thy love lost at sea,” said Damaris sadly.

“Catherine was special. She was from this island, from a plantation in St. Bartholomew’s Parish, and as pretty as thee is. Gabriel would have done anything for her.

Though Catherine hadn’t joined my meeting, her mother had, and I’d hoped that if she’d wed Gabriel they would together have come into the meeting. She would, I think, have made him happy, and spared him from much of the suffering he has brought to himself. “

She smoothed Mariah’s hair from her forehead.

“Catherine couldn’t do that for him, but perhaps thee can. Thee loves him already with thy heart and thy body. Thy head will follow soon enough.”

Sarah had warned him that their father was growing frail, but to Gabriel the old man hadn’t changed at all. His tall, broad-shouldered frame bent only slightly with age, the long white hair he still wore untied in the old fashion, the thick black brows that somehow hadn’t grayed pulled down low over green eyes that missed nothing—with eerie certainty Gabriel could study his father and know how he’d look himself in forty years. Perhaps Captain Jonathan Sparhawk leaned more heavily on his walking stick than before, for even in Barbados’s warmth the old wounds to his leg plagued him, but that, decided Gabriel, must be the only difference.