Merline Lovelace (8 page)

After a pause that seemed to go on forever, she heard his deep voice request that the tea chests be opened for inspection. The merchant protested vehemently. His compatriots added their voices to his. An excited exchange in Pidgin rose in volume to angry shouts, then cut off abruptly at the sound of an ax cracking into wood.

Sarah peeped around the corner of the bulkhead again to see Straithe standing astride a splintered tea chest, ax in hand. When the crew of the
Phoenix
spotted the green leaves under a thin layer of silvery gray, they started to mutter.

Suddenly and without the least warning, pandemonium broke out. Aghast, Sarah saw the shouting crew lay into the Chinese with fists and belaying pins. The Chinese gave as good as they got. Using dizzying kicks and jabs passed down from long-ago masters of the martial arts, they defended, then attacked. The melee quickly spread over the deck and swept up every man, even the eleven-year-old Henry.

Appalled at the havoc she’d wrought, Sarah recalled another of the captain’s orders. At the first sign of trouble, she was to get below and stay there.

She got below and stayed there.

T
he shouts and thumps above decks gradually died away. Sarah still couldn’t quite believe the riot that had erupted. She waited in mounting apprehension for the captain or one of the crew to come and tell her the outcome of the melee.

After an agonizing period, the sounds of footsteps in the companionway brought her to her feet. A moment later, Straithe flung open the door to the cabin and strode inside. Blood from a cut on his left cheek smeared his neck and stained his once pristine white stock. His green coat had torn apart at the shoulder seams, and his black hair stood in spikes.

Sarah’s stomach plummeted at this evidence of the mayhem she’d caused, but the dancing light in his blue eyes stopped her fervent apologies before they reached her lips. He’d enjoyed himself, she realized incredulously! While she had stewed and sweated in a
most
unladylike fashion about the brouhaha taking place above decks, he’d enjoyed himself!

“I came to give you the thanks of the crew,” he announced. “Because of your sharp eye, we got twice the tea in trade that we expected.”

“You traded with those men?” Sarah exclaimed. “After they tried to cheat you in such an underhanded way?”

“We did.”

“Well! I must say I’m surprised.”

Laughter rumbled up from his chest. “Not as surprised as those pirates will be when they unbale their furs. They’ll find more skunk and squirrel under the top layer than beaver and otter.”

Sarah stared at him, torn between a moralist’s stern disapproval of such scoundrelly behavior and an irrepressible urge to add her laughter to his. Before she could do either, he strode across the room and curled a knuckle under her chin. Tipping her head back, he grinned down at her in the roguish way that was his alone.

“As I’ve said before, you’re a most unusual missionary’s daughter, Miss Abernathy.”

The breathlessness that seemed to affect her whenever her flesh came into contact with his returned. For the life of her, she couldn’t come up with a reply.

“The crew has cut you in for a share of the profits, Sarah.”

She gasped. “I cannot take it!”

“Take it or not, it’s their gift to you.” His thumb drew a line across her lower lip. “This, however, is from me alone.”

Jamie knew before he bent his head that he was making a mistake. That the roisterous free-for-all and the satisfaction of a sharp deal afterward had raised his blood to a fever pitch. But he could no more resist the impulse to kiss her full, ripe mouth than he could hold back the tide.

He intended only a taste. A mere brush of his mouth
over Sarah Abernathy’s lips. And that’s all he might have taken…if he hadn’t spent these past nights thinking about her lush feminine form in his bed. If he hadn’t seen the sea breeze catch her auburn hair and toss it about her head, or heard her chuckle at some improbable yarn that John Hardesty spun for her, or remembered the feel of her warm, silken skin when he’d held her so briefly in the House of the Dancing Blossoms.

The moment his mouth touched hers, Jamie’s good intentions, such as they were, vanished. His heated blood sang in his ears, and the hand he’d curled under her chin slid around her neck to tangle in her hair. Her skin was as warm and as soft as he remembered. Her shape, when he snared her waist and brought her full against him, even more sensuously curved.

With unerring skill, he swiftly overcame her initial, startled resistance. The slant of his mouth on hers stilled her breathless protest. The angle of his body against hers put her off balance. She dug her fingers into his arms to push him away, then, slowly, so slowly, to hold him. Jamie felt her lips mold his in a hesitant response, and the need to plumb that response harpooned through him. Widening his stance, he took a swift, spiraling pleasure of the woman in his arms.

When he raised his head, his chest heaved and his muscles strained with the need to finish what he’d started. Her breath came as hard and fast as his. Her pulse fluttered like a trapped butterfly in the small vein at the side of her throat.

He could have her. He saw it in her flushed cheeks and wide, dazed eyes. Jamie had gained enough experience of women over the years to recognize the need she didn’t know how to disguise. He could lay
her down on the bunk, cover her mouth and body with his, and have her. Fiery need surged into his groin at the thought of losing himself in this seductive female. Hard and aching, he swept her into his arms.

As Straithe carried Sarah across the cabin, a lifetime of her father’s sermons thundered through her mind. This was wrong. Sinful. Evil. If she allowed Straithe to kiss her again, and touch her where no man had ever touched her before, as she so very desperately wanted him to, the righteous would cast her out. She’d stand a sinner in God’s eyes and her own.

Yet the woman in Sarah shouted another, altogether different message. How could these kisses be sin? How could this soaring of the senses be evil? For the first time in her life, she felt the passions of the woman God created within her. She was yin to this man’s yang. Green dragon, matching her fire and life force to that of the white tiger in him.

Always,
always
after, Sarah would wonder what might have happened if her thoughts had not turned so philosophical at the precise moment Straithe laid her on the bunk and reached for the buttons on her vest. If her whirling mind had not leaped from life forces, to tigers, to the commodity in the small chest, to its purported use.

At the thought of that ubiquitous product, her gaze dropped to the bulge in the captain’s trousers. Sarah might have passed from girlhood to spinsterhood without experiencing the intimacy of the marriage bed, but she’d raised three brothers. She couldn’t help but see that Straithe had no need of the stimulant he trafficked in. He was rampant. Quite astonishingly so.

At that moment, Sarah realized that the captain desired more than kisses. More than touching.

So did she.

The knowledge cut through her like a sword. She would not, could not, hold herself in so little worth that she would yield to such base desires. She made a small, strangled sound.

The captain’s hands stilled.

Sarah’s gaze flew to his face. When she saw that he’d noted the previous focus of her attention, heat rushed into her cheeks.

“Did you find something to amuse you?” he inquired with a lift of one black brow.

He thought she’d laughed? Given her lamentable propensity to do so at the oddest moments, Sarah couldn’t blame him.

“No, no!” she assured him hastily. “I merely…That is, I thought only…”

“You thought what?”

“Only that you had no need of…”

“Of what?” he demanded.

The heat in her cheeks flamed hotter. “Of tiger’s, ah, privates.”

He stared down at her blankly. Sarah felt the fire in her face spread to every part of her body. Embarrassment washed away all trace of the passion she’d experienced just moments ago.

“I’m sorry,” she got out in a choked voice, all too conscious of the hands that rested lightly on her breasts. “I don’t know what I was about to speak of such matters, but John Hardesty told me about the chest, you see, and what it carries, and its effect on…”

“The devil!” He straightened, scowling. “Hardesty told you about that chest?”

Sarah scrambled to her knees. “Yes, well, he didn’t wish to, but I badgered and pressed him until explained
about its contents, and about the book that the Jesuit translated.”

Straithe rocked back on his heels. “Do you mean to say the fool flapped his jaw about that, too?”

Thoroughly mortified and worried now that she’d brought the captain’s wrath down on the friendly, one-eyed Hardesty, Sarah babbled on. “I can’t like the idea that you trade in such…such items, but I understand that some men might need…not you!…but some…”

Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t, she simply couldn’t finish this absurd explanation. Not when her mouth still throbbed from Straithe’s kiss and her skin tingled everywhere he’d touched it. If that weren’t bad enough, twin whips of desire and guilt flayed her. And the perpetrator of these violent emotions stood but a foot away, his eyes glinting in the most disconcerting way.

Her ready sense of the ridiculous asserted itself. Grimacing, she sank back on her heels.

“This is altogether too embarrassing. I cannot continue this conversation.”

The gleam in the captain’s eyes deepened. “Conversation is not what I intended, Sarah.”

She plucked at the green coverlet beneath her. “I know.”

Nothing in her limited experience with the opposite sex had prepared her for a situation quite like this. How did one admit that one’s brief, searing moment of passion had burnt itself out, leaving only relief and regret in its ashes? Sighing, Sarah lifted her head and met his gaze.

“I cannot continue that, either.”

“Can you not?” He regarded her for long moments. “I could convince you otherwise, I think.”

He could! God help her, he could!

“I wish you would not,” she said, drawing her dignity around her. “I have little expectation of marrying, but if I do, I should like to give my husband the gift of my honor.”

Jamie was tempted. God help him, he was tempted! She knelt in the bunk, her hair all atumble, her shoulders back to display, all unconsciously, the lift of her breasts. She was magnificent. As proud as any figurehead that graced a ship’s prow.

He fought a swift battle with his baser self and, to his profound disgust, won.

“I accede to your wishes,” he said with a small, not very gracious smile. “This time.”

Bending, he planted a swift, hard kiss on her mouth, then left the cabin. Still tight and hard, he went above decks.

He stood for a moment in the shadow of the raised poop. Damned if he didn’t feel as though he’d spent an hour or more below, yet he knew just minutes had elapsed. The crew still worked industriously under Liam Burke’s watchful eye to store the new cargo they’d taken on. Sampans with the promised replenishment stores still clustered at the ship’s waist. Under the direction of the short, stocky Second Harvest, the boat people passed water skins and baskets of fresh fruit and vegetables aboard.

Jamie observed the activity with a keen eye, but his concentration stayed fixed on the woman he’d just left. He wanted her. He admitted it. He wanted the missionary’s daughter as fiercely as he’d ever wanted any woman. But he wanted her soft and willing and free of guilt.

If he took her now, any pleasure she experienced
would all too soon take on the taint of sin. She was, unfortunately, her father’s daughter. The only way Miss Sarah Abernathy would enjoy uninhibited congress with a man was if she wore his ring.

Instantly, Jamie rejected the thought that came unbidden into his mind. He couldn’t offer Sarah marriage even if he’d wanted to, which he most assuredly did not. The plain fact was that he couldn’t offer any woman marriage. His name raised brows whenever it was spoken in polite society. His worldly possessions consisted of a sharp-hulled schooner, the captain’s share of its cargo, and a crumbling keep on a bluff overlooking the English channel.

For the first time since he’d left the Navy, Jamie felt the full weight of his reckless past. He blamed no one but himself for his youthful mistakes, and had never regretted the life he’d chosen after he’d left the Navy. Nor could he regret it now. Yet as he stared out at the sea beyond Namoa Island, he couldn’t put out the fire in his blood or erase the feel of Sarah’s body in his hands.

Time and the tide, he decided, would take their course.

They did.

The
Phoenix
dropped anchor in one coastal port after another. Twice, it encountered pirates. Once, it skipped nimbly away, and once it was forced to return fire.

On the afternoon of her fifth day aboard ship, Sarah rested both palms behind her on a hatch cover, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the sun. Her skin itched from a light coating of salt spray and the tip of her nose had burned to a bright pink. Despite these minor inconveniences, the constant threat of pirates, and the
urgency that drove her in search of her father, she felt wonderfully, gloriously alive.

The
Phoenix
seemed to echo her sentiments. The graceful ship dipped and danced through the waves like a playful dolphin, inviting all aboard to share in her enjoyment of the afternoon. Sarah certainly did. She couldn’t remember a time when she could sit, just sit, in the sun. Usually, she had no idle moments in her busy life. There was always a tear in Charlie’s trousers to be mended or a bonnet of Abigail’s that needed new ribbons or a sermon to copy out for her father.

No wonder men took to the sea, she mused dreamily. They left behind all cares and worries. Put aside the constant demands of family and friends, no matter how loving and precious that burden. For weeks or months or years they sailed to distant ports. They fought storms and pirates and one another. In moments such as this, though, they could be one with the sky and the wind. Never had Sarah felt so free.

Suddenly, the warm sunshine on her face cooled. Sarah opened one eye to find a brawny figure blocking the rays. Liam Burke smiled down at her. The scar on the first mate’s temple still showed red, but it was healing nicely.

“I need to be riggin’ some shade for you, Miss Sarah, or you’ll burn as brown as the cloves we hauled back to England on our last voyage.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she replied with an answering smile.

In truth, she wouldn’t Such mundane matters as the need to preserve her complexion seemed to have slipped away these past days.

“Aye, and so you might not,” the first mate retorted.
“But neither should you be wishin’ to take too much sun and get sick…again.”

Sarah made a face. “That was a temporary indisposition, and you know it, Mr. Burke. My stomach simply didn’t have the fortitude for boiled sharks’ eyes.”

“But you tried them.”

“Yes, I tried them,” she replied with a wry smile. “I couldn’t lose face before the crew, every one of whom seemed to be watching me.”

Laughing, the flame-haired Irishman attached a reef line to the mast, then twisted it around a scrap of sail. “It was a good thing your stomach righted itself when it did. The captain swore he’d toss you overboard if you brought up your dinner in the scuppers one more time.”