Scalpdancers (9 page)

Morgan sighed and leaned against the headboard and wriggled his toes while Julia paced back and forth at the foot of the bed.

“My father, the saint,” Julia sneered and raised her glass in salute to an invisible guest, her own father. “But what kind of saint lacks the courage of his convictions, gives up everything he has ever worked for, everything he has built, and runs from the likes of Chiang Lu?”

Morgan shrugged, uneasy at her description. “No saint. Just a man. And a man grows weary, a man knows fear, a man can crumble under the burden of having to be a saint.”

Julia gave him a sharp glance, swallowed her drink, and set the drained glass on the end table near a stick of incense, its tip aglow.

“A reverend's daughter has to be prim and proper. As saintly as the one she calls father,” the young woman observed. Her voice was low and thick, and she had to concentrate on each word. The room was so terribly warm. What was she trying to say? Oh yes. “And if the father is but an ordinary man, then isn't she just an ordinary woman?”

“I wouldn't call you ordinary,” Morgan said as her fingers fumbled with the buttons at her neck. She ran her hands down across her chest and cupped her breasts, then returned to her throat and unfastened another two black glass buttons.

“What would you call me?” Julia said, rounding the bedpost at the foot of the bed. Her hands closed around the teakwood post and caressed its lacquered length, enjoying the sensation of its delicately carved surface as her fingers stroked from tip to mattress.

“I don't think I'd call you. I couldn't wait that long.” Morgan gulped. The suggestive manner in which she handled the bedpost had aroused him. “I'd find you and carry you away.” He sat upright and reached for her.

“If my father can sin, so can I,” Julia said, pursing her lips.

“My sentiments exactly.” Morgan pulled her onto the mattress.

“And when it comes to sin, who better to deal with than a devil like yourself,” she added.

“Well, I wouldn't go that far,” Morgan stammered. A rogue perhaps, but he reserved “devil” status for the likes of Demetrius Vlad.

“Surely you are too modest,” Julia said and kissed him.

Her mouth bruised him as her tongue sought his and her arms clung savagely to him. Morgan closed his eyes and lowered the woman onto her back and matched her passion. A trail of jasmine incense drifted like some diaphanous serpent upon the ether and mingled with the rosewater-and-lilac scent of Julia's cream-colored flesh. She tasted of wine. And the fiery warmth of her body emanated from her clothes.

She released her embrace and her arms fell open as if to give herself completely to him. Morgan rose up, kneeling, to tug his shirt off over his head. He'd never wanted a woman so badly, never sensed so much restrained desire just waiting to be unleashed.

Julia was warm.

Julia was ripe and willing.

Julia was…
snoring?

Morgan froze and peeked through the neck opening of his shirt. She inhaled, then snored softly as she exhaled. Her eyelids fluttered a moment, then there was nothing but the rising swell and fall of her ripe breasts as she drifted on the tides of sleep.

Morgan Penmerry glared at the nearly half empty bottle of rice wine. He leaned across the unconscious woman and snatched the bottle and raised it high overhead as if to crash it against the wall. He paused, then lowered the bottle.

“
Salude
,” he said to Julia Emerson and with a sigh of good-natured resignation drank a toast to the somnolent object of his desire.

She was drowning in a dream, flashing hot and cold, first ice, then ignited gunpowder, and all the while submerged, caught in an invisible undertow of memory.

Julia heard her name called and saw her mother's smiling face and reached for and through the image. It disappeared and gave way to a row of sweet little children, neatly arranged and seated on a wooden bench while Julia taught them numbers and read to them and played with them. How they laughed at her antics.
My, the Christian Miss Emerson can be very silly. But she feeds us when we are hungry. She clothes us when we are naked
.

The children faded into the blackness and another image formed, a rough-hewn man, certainly no Christian from the look of him. He stood in the center of an arena, surrounded by men clamoring for blood. His name was Morgan Penmerry; his reputation was checkered at best. He was called a rake and a brawler, a dangerous man—yet she saw dignity in him. She felt drawn to him in a way that left her guilt-ridden and confused.

Like some reflection upon the surface of a pond, Morgan Penmerry shimmered and dissolved and re-formed as a dragon mask, whirling and dipping while firecrackers exploded in the street and pinpricks of fire filled her mind's eye as she surfaced from sleep. But she had not completely freed herself, for one last memory blossomed into fruition: a goat rising up to plunge its phallus between the open, yielding thighs of a brass maiden. She was not quite human nor was her partner totally animal. The figurines, at the slightest touch of the brass base, joined and parted, joined and parted, mimicking the union of a man and woman, mirroring the desires Julia Ruth Emerson had once struggled to suppress.

Julia awoke, opened her eyes, and perused her surroundings, momentarily disoriented; there was a pressure on her chest. She glanced down. A man's arm! She turned her head and wound up nose to nose with Morgan Penmerry. His arm was draped across her bosom. He was asleep alongside her in bed. In bed!

“Oh!” She bolted upright in the night-darkened room and tumbled off the bed to land in a tousled heap with her skirt and underclothes over her head. A bottle crashed to the floor. Morgan awoke with a start, bolted out of bed, and promptly entangled himself in Julia's legs and fell to the floor on top of the startled girl.

“Unhand me, sir. How dare you!” Julia frantically crawled out from under the captain of the
Hotspur
.

“What the hell?” Morgan sputtered and pawed his way past underclothes and legs.

He managed to stand as Julia pulled herself back onto the bed. Realizing she was back where she started, the reverend's daughter leapt from the bed as if from a hot plate. She reacted too quickly and the blood rushed to her head as the aftereffects of the rice wine took hold. She toppled forward. Morgan caught her by the shoulders and helped her to sit on the edge of the mattress. She stiffened in his grasp.

Morgan sensed her reserve. “Don't worry. I'll light the lamp by the window.” He started around the bed. “Ouch. Christ in heaven.” He'd found the remains of the broken bottle. The captain yelped and gingerly limped to the cane-backed chair near the window. A single candle cast its feeble glow, scarcely illuminating the room. Morgan used it to light an oil lamp on a table close at hand. He turned the wick up until black smoke coiled out the flue, then lowered the flame to a comfortable glow.

He checked his foot, removed a glass splinter from his big toe, and then retrieved his boots and stockings, taking care to avoid the shattered bottle. Julia's fearful gaze followed his every movement. Her head throbbed and her stomach turned flip-flops. Reality flooded in. She knew where she was now.

“What have you done to me?” she gasped.

Morgan looked at her, astonished. He chuckled and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “I'll tell you,” he muttered. Well, Temp had warned him. He contorted his features into a bestial caricature. “Everything!” he growled. “First I kidnaped you; then I dragged you upstairs to this room. You fought, oh how you fought, but I slapped you to the floor and poured rice wine down your throat, and when you were no longer able to defend yourself, I ravaged you. Captain Morgan Penmerry had his way with the missionary's daughter. And why not? He's the devil, ain't it so?”

Morgan ended his fabrication by looming above the girl, his eyes wide and his lips drawn back. He bristled with menace. Then he shrugged.

“After that we fell asleep and dreamed of sugarplums,” he concluded.

“I dreamed of my mother,” the woman replied.

In the beginning Julia had been cowed by his performance. As he ranted on, the truth of the evening rushed back to her; it was like opening a book to a previously read page. She had to admit it was rather a sordid little chapter, one she already regretted—not that she harbored any less grief or felt any less betrayed.

She watched Morgan retrace his steps to the window and peer out at the night. He hadn't planned on consuming a whole afternoon with this dalliance. No doubt Temp was fit to be tied by now.

The Jade Willow Tavern had been built on a low hill six blocks from the waterfront, close enough to attract seamen with money but far enough from the docks to avoid the riffraff. The moon was a baleful smear behind the clouds, yet even in its feeble glare Morgan could make out the masts and crosstrees of the
Hotspur
, arranged like crucifixes afloat by the pier.

Julia buttoned her bodice and managed to stand. She brought a hand to her forehead and groaned. “Ohhh …” she moaned.

Downstairs Madame De Builliard, playing a harp, began to serenade the few remaining patrons of the tavern, who took their rum, smoked their clay pipes, and dreamed of home. The Frenchwoman's voice was throaty and a touch flat. Yet the sincerity in her voice carried the song and it drifted up from below, wistful, nostalgic.

“She sings of better days and truer loves,” Morgan interpreted.

“You speak French?” Julia asked, surprised.

“No, but I know Madame De Builliard.” He gestured toward the door.

“Come, little sinner, I will take you home to your father's ship. Your virtue unblemished.”

Julia blushed and lowered her gaze and followed him to the door. She paused, looked up at him. He was strong and ruthlessly single-minded. For all her bravado, Julia knew she had been at his mercy. And he desired her; he'd made that abundantly clear.

“Why?” She wanted to understand. “Just why is my virtue unblemished? Am I not as comely as the others you've bedded—beneath this same roof no doubt?”

Morgan, exasperated, raised his eyes to heaven, grabbed his gunbelt and cutlass from a chest by the door and vanished into the hall.

“Wait!” Julia called and hurried after him.

They moved quietly along the musty narrow hallway, quickening their pace as they neared the top of the stairs and the sepia-colored glare radiating from the tavern below. A door close by creaked open and a young Chinese woman peered at Julia. The Chinese woman stood naked in the doorway, her hair tousled from lovemaking. Perspiration traced a glistening trail between her small brown-tipped breasts. She appeared to recognize Julia Emerson and commented on her discovery to another person in the bedroom. A man's laughter carried from within.

“Missy Julia,” the young woman said, struggling with her English. “You look for Christian God here?” The Chinese woman licked a finger, then drew a circle around each breast. “You find him, tell him to see me. I.make him very happy.”

Julia stopped in her tracks and stared. “I remember you,” Julia said. The young woman's name was Mai Ling. “You came to the mission school. I taught you to read and write.” But Mai Ling had left after a year.

Mai Ling shifted her gaze to the floor. “Life teach me more than you,” she replied and closed the door.

Julia's eyes grew moist and the color drained from her face. Morgan touched the young woman's arm.

“That one made her choice. You can't take the blame for it,” Morgan said.

“What do you know? You're as much a heathen as any of them,” Julia snapped at him out of her own anger.
Or as much as I
, she added within, for she wasn't certain of anything anymore.

“On the contrary,” Morgan said. “No man who has ridden a quarterdeck beneath a full moon round as a sovereign above the waves and turning the black sea to molten gold … no man could help but believe in God. I never yet met a seafarer who hasn't called on God when the sky darkens and the wind sets to blow and the air boils green as witches' bile.” Morgan shook his head. His craggy features split with a smile. He brushed his dark hair back from his brow, winked, and added, “A heathen? Not hardly. I believe in God, lass. I just don't take Him as seriously as you.”

5

Downstairs Madame De Builliard stopped in the middle of her song, something she usually never did, for melancholy French ballads were her personal favorite and the source, Morgan suspected, of her vitality. Madame had spied her favorite fur trader on the stairway, and the proprietress of the Jade Willow was loath to let him escape without speaking to him. She had news that might save his life. The streets of Macao weren't safe this night.

The lower floor of the Jade Willow Tavern had little in common with the rum houses nestled cheek to jowl along the waterfront. Madame De Builliard's establishment resembled a French château with handsomely appointed sitting rooms insuring privacy and a minimum of commotion for the discreet visitor. The main parlor fronted the house and was furnished with lushly cushioned divans and chairs spacious enough for royalty, covered in stitchery depicting herons and butterflies and flowers of every conceivable hue.

Nubile young maidens in silk dressing gowns moved among the few remaining guests, bringing them glasses of mulled wine, thick clay mugs of hot tea laced with rum, and platters of roast lamb and fresh bread. Madame De Builliard settled her harp on its rest and left the comforting glow of the fireplace for the drafty shadows of the foyer, excusing herself to her patrons, three of whom were Chinese and the others traders from Barcelona.

Julia unbolted the front door and tried to hurry outside, fearing some new insult or innuendo from the Frenchwoman. Morgan restrained her. The captain sensed something amiss. He glanced toward the Seth Thomas clock on the mantel and saw the hour was a quarter past midnight. The parlor of the Jade Willow should have been crowded by now, for Madame De Builliard was popular with all the wealthier elements of Macao, from landholders to merchants, from Portuguese military officers to Chinese warlords.