Merline Lovelace (13 page)

It was all so polite. So civilized.

Normally.

On this particular afternoon, only Sarah and Abigail convened at the polished mahogany mess table. The captain was busy and Mr. Burke was sleeping, having had the watch all through the night and early morning.

“Where’s Charlie?” Sarah asked, pouring boiling water over the delicate green leaves nestled in a blueand-white porcelain teapot. A cloud of fragrant steam rose to tease and tempt her.

“He’s with John Hardesty in the crew’s quarters,” Abby replied, sniffing appreciatively. “He promised to be here—”

Abby broke off at the sound of the hatch sliding back. The clatter of feet coming down the companionway
announced the latecomer’s arrival. A moment later, Charlie burst into the saloon with his usual energy.

“I say, I’m sorry I’m late! I was with John Hardesty, only he had to go fire up the galley stove and then Master Ropes showed me where the extra canvas is stowed and we found a dead rat the size of a dog. You should see it, Sarah! It’s quite the largest rat I’ve ever come across. Master Ropes smashed it with a belaying pin, but I daresay he would let you have a peek at it if he hasn’t thrown it over the side.”

“Yes, I’m sure he would if I wished to, which I most assuredly don’t. Go wash your hands and face, Charlie. And comb your hair. Tea is almost ready.”

The boy spun on his heel and started out, only to whirl back again. “You’ll never guess what else I found in the sail locker.”

“I don’t think I wish to,” Abigail replied with a small shudder.

Eagerly, Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out a collection of dog-eared papers. “It’s a book of sorts. I was going to show it to Master Ropes, but then the bells rang and I had to come here. Perhaps we can read it instead of King Arthur?”

“Perhaps,” Sarah replied indulgently. “After you wash.”

He tossed the loosely bound book onto the mess table and dashed to the cabin he shared with his two sisters. While Sarah checked to see if the tea had steeped sufficiently, Abigail idly reached for the thin volume and flicked it open. A small frown marred her brow as she read the handwritten lines. She read further, then gasped.

“Sarah!”

Startled, her sister glanced across the table. “What, love?”

“Look…at…this…book!”

Alarmed by the shock on Abby’s face, Sarah rose and hurried around the table. Snatching up the tattered volume, she picked a paragraph at random.

“Wild Horse Gamboling,” she read, puzzled, “in which position the man stations himself to the rear and the woman, in preparation for receiving the heavenly gift of his life force, kneels and places both hands…Oh! Oh, my goodness!”

Stunned, she skimmed the rest of the page.

“Monkey Resting in the Crevice of the Cinnabar Tree,” she read faintly. “Two Donkeys in the Third Moon of Spring.”

Sarah stared at the neat script, aghast. Unless she was mistaken, Charlie had just unearthed the crew’s hand-scribed translation of the manual for the bedchamber that John Hardesty had once told her about.

“Reversed Ducks…” Her eyes went wide and round. Her lower jaw sagged. “Oh, my goodness!”

“Do stop!” Abby cried, her face as white as Sarah’s was now red. Tears spilled unchecked down her cheeks. “How disgusting! How…how vile!”

Jerked from her stunned perusal of the hand-scribed lines by her sister’s distress, Sarah thrust the booklet into her pocket.

“Abby, darling! Don’t cry.” She dropped into the chair beside Abigail’s and took her hand. “Hush, pet, hush. It’s only a…a book. A translation from the Chinese, I think.”

“A book! It’s a compilation of evil! No man would…would…No woman would allow…”

The utter revulsion on the younger girl’s face took
Sarah aback. Through the years, she’d protected the tender, overly sensitive Abby as best she could from the cruder aspects of life. Now she wondered if perhaps she’d done her sister a disservice. The elder Miss Abernathy’s knowledge of marital matters might be sketchy at best. The younger’s, it appeared, was even vaguer.

Yet Abby would soon marry, Sarah thought with a catch in her throat. Her sister shouldn’t go to her marriage bed totally ignorant, even if the man she joined there was most knowledgeable and skilled in the arts of love. Like…like Jamie. Swallowing the little ache that thought gave her, Sarah tried to rectify that situation.

“Abigail,” she began hesitantly. “Perhaps some of what’s in this book is a bit, well, a bit extreme. But I understand that husbands and wives do join together in, uh, different ways.”

Abby’s head jerked up. “In such horrid, undignified ways? You cannot mean it! You cannot think that I would…! That any decent woman would…!”

“She would, pet. If she loved her husband, she would submit to him in all things.” Sarah drew in a shaky breath. “And take joy in it.”

“Take joy in something so base?” Abby echoed in disbelief. “Something so disgusting?”

Calm, competent Sarah floundered. How could she, an acknowledged spinster, explain the searing passion a man’s touch could evoke?

No, not any man’s. One man’s. The man her sister grew closer to with each passing day. Her heart contracting painfully, she continued.

“But think, Abby. If someone you held in tender regard took you in his arms and kissed you…”

A sudden rush of color replaced the pallor in her sister’s face. Sarah eyed it with some surprise.

“
Has
someone kissed you?”

Fresh tears sparkled in Abby’s eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “But only on the cheek, and then but once, when I tripped over a coaming and fell against him.”

“I…see.”

A lump formed in the exact center of Sarah’s chest. That sounded just like Straithe, she thought. The rogue wouldn’t hesitate to steal a kiss when an opportunity like that presented itself.

“Well, then,” she said with a calm that sounded strained even to her own ears. “You understand how it is. With one such as Straithe, who knows well how to pleasure a woman, you’ll soon forget your fears of the marriage bed and find the joy we speak of.”

“Sarah!” Shocked out of her tears, Abby jumped up. “How could you think that I want Lord Straithe to…to pleasure me? Straithe, for goodness’ sake!”

Totally bewildered by this about-face, Sarah gaped at her sister. “But I thought…You said…” She shook her head in confusion. “You said he kissed you.”

Abby’s color rose even more. “The captain? No, indeed, he did not. He’s been kind enough, I grant you, but I wouldn’t allow him to kiss me. I wouldn’t allow any man to kiss me. It…it just happened.”

“But who…?”

Abby pressed both hands to her cheeks. Stricken to her gentle soul, she implored her sister, “
Must
we speak more of this?”

“No,” Sarah said slowly. “Not if it distresses you.”

“It does. It truly does.” With a flutter of her gray
skirts, Abby rose. “If you’ll excuse me, Sarah, I must…I must get some air.”

“Yes, of course.”

Her mind awhirl, Sarah watched her sister depart. Obviously, she’d failed dismally in her awkward attempt to enlighten Abby about the more intimate aspects of marriage. Just as obviously, she’d misjudged the strength of her sister’s budding attraction to the captain.

Who had kissed her, if not Straithe?

And why had she blushed so?

Sarah was still puzzling over that when the ship’s bells rang a moment later, signaling the changing of the watch. Charlie flew in, his face scrubbed but his hair still uncombed.

“I promised to stand watch with Henry Fulks,” he exclaimed, grabbing a fistful of biscuits. “May I go, Sarah? May I?”

“What? Oh, yes. But do keep out of the way. And don’t sling pellets at the gulls again. Abigail will faint if another dead bird drops at her feet.”

“I won’t,” he promised, then raced out again.

Slowly Sarah reached out and poured herself a cup of the now tepid tea. She felt so confused and disoriented. As though the world had suddenly tilted under her feet.

She’d endured the most agonizing week of watching her sister and the captain slowly come to know each other. Of keeping silent while he teased smiles from the shy girl. Of sending him the coolest, most distant looks whenever he glanced her way, and retiring below decks to allow him and Abby time alone together. An entire, hellish week! Were all her efforts for naught?

How could Abby not cherish any tender feelings for Straithe? Didn’t she feel the gentleness with which he’d held her hand? Didn’t she ache for him to do more than hold her hand? Didn’t she wish, deep, deep down in her most secret heart, to attempt with the captain at least one of the passages described in the crew’s precious volume?

As Sarah did, God help her. As Sarah did.

Her heart thumping painfully, she groped in her pocket. Her trembling fingers extracted the slim, roughly bound book. When she laid it on the table, the leaves fell open to a much used page.

White Tiger Jumping.

Groaning, Sarah closed her eyes. She didn’t need to read the details beneath the title. Her mind conjured up its own searing images. White tiger. Green dragon. Earth and sky. Darkness and light. Jamie’s dark head bent to her white breast.

“Why, Miss Abernathy, I’m surprised at you.”

Her eyes flew open. Mortified, Sarah saw the object of her improper thoughts standing in the doorway to the mess. Unholy amusement shone in his blue eyes as he glanced from her to the open book and back again.

S
arah stared at Straithe, appalled to be found with such scurrilous literature in her possession.

Grinning, he crossed his arms over his chest and propped a shoulder against the door frame. His windblown hair glistened with the salt spray and shone as dark and as iridescent as a moonlit night. In his snowy white shirt, tight, fawn-colored knit pants, and high-topped boots, he looked every inch the rogue he let the world believe he was.

“I came to warn you that there’s a squall approaching,” he told her. “But I see that you have something to occupy your mind besides wind and rain.”

Embarrassment such as she’d never experienced fired Sarah’s cheeks. She knew her only hope of escaping this situation with a shred of dignity was to meet his mocking delight head-on. Picking up the detestable volume, she crossed the saloon.

“I believe this belongs to your crew. My brother found it.”

Straithe’s arms dropped. “The hell he did!”

“He did.”

Consigning each and every one of his men to the
deep, he took the tattered volume and shoved it into his belt. “Did the boy read it?”

“No, but I must ask that you ensure your crew keeps such prurience more closely hidden in the future.”

Perhaps it was the way she pursed her lips so disapprovingly that roused the devil in Jamie. Or the chill frosting her brown eyes. Damned if she wasn’t trying to put him at arm’s length again, as she had for the past week! He wasn’t letting her get away with it, not this time. After all, he’d just caught her red-handed with a copy of the crew’s precious
Ars Amatoria.

“Did
you
read the book, Miss Sarah?”

“Don’t be absurd!”

“You’re evading the question.”

“I merely perused a page or two,” she said repressively. “Before I understood what it contained.”

He raised a brow. “You understood what you read, did you? All of it?”

Her cheeks grew pinker. “No, of course I didn’t understand all of it, and I refuse to discuss the matter further. Now, what are these dangerous waters you speak of?”

With wicked delight, Jamie ignored her question and returned to his. “Which passage didn’t you understand? The Rukh Bird Soaring Over the Sea? Or perhaps Two Donkeys In The Third Moon of Spring?”

She flashed him a look that sent a shaft of pure sensation straight to his belly. With that glance, prim, prissy Miss Abernathy disappeared. In her place stood the woman who’d boldly confronted Jamie in the House of the Dancing Blossoms. The same creature who’d fallen breathlessly into his arms after the free-for-all
with the Chinese smugglers. The woman Jamie wanted with an ache that grew more irritatingly persistent every day.

“Perhaps I can explain the passages that confuse you,” he offered, his eyes glinting. “All except Reversed Ducks Flying. That one defies explanation.”

Sarah waged a short, fierce battle with herself. Every sense of decency, every dictate of propriety, urged her to give the scoundrel an icy set-down for even mentioning the contents of the atrocious book. But the irrepressible sense of the ridiculous that lurked just below her so-proper exterior won out. That, and Straithe’s teasing, taunting grin.

“What a shame,” she replied with a lift of one shoulder. “That particular passage out of all the others caught my interest. Well, I suppose I shall just have to wonder.”

“Oh, no, Sarah,” he countered in a voice that sent shivers down her spine. “You won’t have to wonder. I’ll be most happy to attempt a demonstration.”

Before Sarah could protest, his hands circled her waist. Astonished and delighted and dismayed, she was lifted onto the mahogany table. She landed with a soft plop, her black skirts hiking up as he stepped between her knees. With a deftness that could only come from long practice, he reached behind her and plucked the wooden pins from her hair.

“I’ve been wanting to that do all week,” he said with fierce satisfaction.

A thousand protests formed in her mind. A hundred objections rose to her lips. She couldn’t help him. She couldn’t save him. She could only, God help her, stare hungrily up into his eyes until the last pin clattered to
the floor and his hands forged a path through the tumbled hair to wrap around her neck.

“I’ve been wanting to do this even longer.”

His firm hold anchored her head for his kiss. Sarah couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, which she didn’t. His mouth brushed hers, once, twice, then settled on her lips.

This is what Abigail should feel, she thought desperately. This wild soaring of the senses. This sudden shattering of restraint that made Sarah want to lift her arms and wrap them about his neck and press every inch of her body to his.

As though he’d read her very thoughts, Straithe’s hands slid down her back. Smoothed over the flare of her hips. Settled on her bottom. Pulled her up against him.

A wild heat started at the juncture of her thighs, pressed so intimately against his hardness. Within seconds, the heat spread to her belly, her chest, her every limb. The fiery maelstrom gathered force, until it all but choked her. Gasping, Sarah stammered out a protest.

“You cannot…We cannot…not here. The crew—”

“The devil take the crew,” Jamie muttered, nuzzling her hair. His breath was a blade of heat in her ear. She tried to wiggle away. He held her in place with fingers spread across her bottom. Her movements caused a leaping response in his lower body that even Sarah, spinster that she was, could not mistake.

Dear heaven above!

Her pulses hammering, she bent her elbows and wedged enough space to lean back. The muscles of his chest were smooth, warm marble under her palms
as she studied his face. What she saw there made her heart skip several beats.

He wanted her. Her, not Abby. As much as she, God help her, wanted him. For a heartbeat or two, a glorious, selfish joy suffused Sarah.

All too quickly, her joy subsided. Never in her life had she put herself before others. She couldn’t do so now. Not with so much at stake.

Of the two Abernathy sisters, only Abby could give this man back the life he once had. The life he could have once again. Abby was accepted everywhere. Her shy charm and ethereal beauty won her entreé denied to other women, Sarah included. As Jaime’s wife, she could help him regain the place in society he’d lost so long ago. And if any man could overcome Abby’s maidenly fears of marriage, Jamie Kerrick could. For her sister’s sake, for his sake, Sarah had to set aside her own wild desires.

Catching his face in both hands, she pleaded with him to understand. “Jamie, we cannot…We must not…”

He smiled down at her in a way that made her want to cry. “We should not, perhaps, but we most definitely can.”

Sarah groaned. “Don’t you understand? Abigail is the one you should turn your smiles on. She’s innocent of men’s ways, to be sure, and needs a gentle hand. But she’s so kind, so genuine of nature, you cannot but love her.”

“She’s a rare, sweet prize,” he agreed, “and I could easily love her if she were not…”

“Not what?”

His smile slipped into another grin. “A bit too
sweet for a sailor like me. I’m afraid I’ve acquired a taste for a touch of tartness.”

As if to prove his point, he turned his head and pressed his lips to her cupped hand. The moist tip of his tongue against her palm sent ripples of sensation all the way up Sarah’s arm. Torn between delight and duty, she made a last, urgent plea.

“As your wife, Abigail would bring out all that is fine in you. She could help restore you to your rightful place in society. She could…” Sarah’s throat ached. “She could save you.”

He lifted his head. Exasperation wiped away his easy smile. “For the last time, I don’t want to be saved!”

“So you say,” she said desperately. “But you cannot roam the seas forever. Someday you must go home, and when that time comes, you’ll—”

Sarah never finished her impassioned plea for him to think beyond the moment and consider his future, for at that moment a terrified scream sounded above decks.

“What in thunderation!”

Releasing her with a suddenness that rocked her backwards, Straithe turned and raced for the companionway. Sarah wiggled off the table and ran after him. Encumbered by her skirts, she reached the upper deck a few seconds behind the captain. Immediately, the wind caught her unbound hair and whipped it across her face. The squall that Straithe had come below to warn her about must be almost upon them.

“Hang on, Charlie! Please, please hang on!”

Shoving her hair out of her eyes, Sarah spun in the direction of her sister’s frantic cries. When she spotted Abigail, the air left her lungs, as if squeezed out by a
vise. Sarah would see every detail of the sight that greeted her horrified gaze in her dreams for as long as she lived.

Abigail gripped the starboard rail, her face a mask of terror as she called to the small figure dangling far out over the waves. Charlie hung upside down at the end of the massive boom. One foot was tangled in a line, the other waved wildly in the air. With every dip of the
Phoenix,
the boy’s head almost touched the rushing green water. With every rise, he swung and spun like a top at the end of his tether.

The horrifying tableau had hardly imprinted itself on Sarah’s brain before another figure exploded onto the scene. With a single bound, Jamie leaped onto the tree-trunk-size boom.

“Keep her hard to the wind!” he shouted to the helmsman. “Don’t let the sail swing back, or the boy will smash against the hull.”

His words lanced through Sarah’s frozen shock. Praying harder than she’d ever prayed in her life, she rushed to the rail.

“Sarah! Oh, Sarah!”

Sobbing in fear, Abigail tried to cling to her sister. Sarah pushed her aside. She couldn’t worry about Abby’s delicate sensibilities now. Shouts rang out behind her. Bare feet pounded the deck. Sarah paid them no heed. She concentrated all her attention on her small, helpless brother.

The ship lifted on a rising swell. The boy lifted high in the air. Twisting and bucking and bending, he tried to reach the rope around his ankle.

“Charlie! Don’t jerk like that!”

At the sound of Sarah’s voice, her brother flopped like a fish on the end of a line.

“Sarah! Help me!”

The pitiful cry tore at her soul. Before she could answer, Jamie’s deep, steady voice cut through the terror clogging her throat.

“Stay still, lad. I’m coming.”

Sarah tore her eyes from her brother. Digging her nails into the teak rail, she watched the captain make his surefooted way along the boom. Using the halyards for handholds, he sidestepped over the rigging and moved swiftly along the slick, slippery spar.

For a moment, Sarah thought the fates would be kind. Straithe was but a few feet away from the line that held Charlie. A minute. Two. That was all he needed to haul him up.

Then the stiff, capricious wind shifted. Without warning, the bellying sails went slack. The
Phoenix
rose on a swell, tilted to port. The boom started to swing inward.

“No!” Sarah gasped. “Oh, no!”

With a savage oath, Straithe threw himself forward. Anchoring himself to the massive pole with an arm and a leg, he grabbed for the rope that held Charlie.

The boom gathered speed. Came sweeping toward the rail. Men crowded beside Sarah. Brawny arms reached out. Despite Straithe’s frantic, hand-over-hand retrieval, the boy still hung too low. Without a buffer to shield him, Charlie would crash into the ship’s side and shatter every bone in his body.

Sarah didn’t stop to think. In a flash, she climbed onto the rail. Startled shouts rose around her as she threw herself at the oncoming rope. She caught it a yard or two above Charlie’s entangled foot. Her palms burst into fire as she slid down the line and protected her brother’s body with her own.

An instant before they hit, Sarah twisted frantically. The fleshy part of her hip and shoulder took the brunt of the blow. Still, the force of the impact bounced her and Charlie off the hull and sent them ricocheting over the waves once more. Dazed from the blow, Sarah felt her burning palms lose their grip. With a small, helpless moan, she dropped into the sea.

Jamie had known fear before. No man sailed into battle without some measure of dread twisting insidiously through his bowels. But he’d never known a terror as savage as the one that ripped into his gut when he saw Sarah disappear beneath the rushing green waters.

With an explosive burst of strength, he hauled the line in his hands upward. Liam leaned far over the rail and snagged the boy’s leg.

“I’ve got him!”

Without waiting to see Charlie pulled aboard, Jamie released his grip on the boom and dropped into the sea. He sank like an anchor, legs straight, arms tight to his side to avoid slicing them to ribbons on the barnacle-encrusted keel.

The
Phoenix
swept past overhead.

The ship had barely cleared before he shot to the surface. Through the hiss of the foaming wake, Jamie could hear shouts behind him and, short moments later, a splash he immediately identified as one of the ship’s boats hitting the sea. Liam had wasted no time dropping the boat, thank God. In this stiffening wind, the
Phoenix
would cover some miles before she could be brought about…if she could be brought about at all in the swift, contrary currents that bedeviled the Malay Archipelago.

He couldn’t worry about the currents now. His only
thought was to find Sarah. With sure, strong strokes, he cut through the roiling wake. Salt burned his eyes. The sea pulled at his boots. Jamie wasn’t a praying man, but he gave swift, ardent thanks when he spotted her floating face down some distance away.

“Sarah!

The swell peaked, then fell away, taking her with it. Cursing, Jamie laid on a burst of speed. He reached her in a half dozen slicing kicks. Fisting his hand in her hair, he pulled her face out of the water.

It was all he could do to keep them both afloat in the stiffening swells and swift, sucking current. By the time he’d dragged her to the boat, his breath sliced through his lungs like a cutlass. Grunting, Jamie used his weight to bring down the side of the boat and rolled her over the edge. He swung aboard a moment later.