Sea Change (27 page)

"You cannot understand because no matter how you clothe yourself, when it is stripped away you are a woman, Charlotte Alcott. Your nature is to heal, and nurture, and soothe. I am a man. It is our nature to fight." He put his hand on her throat and when she raised her hand to him he grabbed it and pinned it to the bed, holding her beneath him.

"The men know I will order them into harm's way, and yet they follow my orders. Why? Because they trust me. Because they want to be richer than when they left Baltimore. Because they want to show the British that they cannot subjugate us. Because they like to fight, and they like to win. Because they are men, Charley. My men."

Her eyes were narrowed slits and her lips compressed into a thin line, but he knew her now. His Charley was aware of him, of his body so close to hers, only a thin layer of linen separating them. He felt his own pulse pounding, his blood rushing through his veins. He was very much alive, and so was she, and that was enough for the moment.

Almost enough. He smiled down at her and he saw in her eyes and by the hitch in her breathing that she knew showing his teeth had nothing to do with laughter.

"After battle, a man wants to prove himself alive in the midst of death. You feel it, too," he said, rubbing his thumb across her neck. "I know you do. Do not deny it. I do not have to be a physician to know why your pulse is racing, why your breath is faster, why your eyes look like black storm clouds."

"You think you know me, but you do not, Captain Fletcher. You are no gentleman, you are a Yankee pirate dressed in patriot's clothing, looking for an excuse to rob and kill!"

She glared at him, tugging at his arm. He removed his hand from her throat and took her wrist, effortlessly immobilizing her. Would his men come running if she screamed for rescue from him? He did not know, nor did he care. Charley Alcott belonged to him, and he would prove it to her.

"You like to make free with that word 'pirate,' don't you?" He lowered his body onto hers and she jerked at the contact when he settled himself atop the covers, pushing her knees apart beneath him as his towel slipped down to the deck. Even through the bedding he knew she could feel his arousal.

"Get off of me," she hissed between her teeth, but she made no move to push him off, and his lips curled humorlessly.

"You are correct, Charley. I'm not a gentleman at all. I must be a pirate because right now there is nothing I want more than to pound myself into your body until you scream." He leaned down and put his mouth very close to her ear. "And you want that, too."

He ignored her noise of protest against his words, taking her mouth with his, his hands and body holding her down as he ravaged her senses, stoking the anger and the passion he knew she was feeling. He needed to show her that while they'd all be worm food someday, right now, right here, they were alive and had each other.

Charley squirmed beneath him, but when he released her she glared up at him, then cursing, kissed him back ferociously, biting his lip, clawing at him like a tigress in his arms when he yanked the covers away.

He held her, captive to his kisses as he devoured her with his mouth. He consumed her, pinning her beneath him as he took his fill of her anger, her passionate need to show that she, too, was still breathing, still feeling, whether she acknowledged it or not.

He inhaled her clean scent, storing it in his memories. Her body gleamed white in the lamplight, slender and muscled, her long fingered hands reaching for him when he released her. As he moved down her body, each kiss, each caress, each touch was a celebration of being alive and having someone to cling to, to share a connection with that even fraught with anger was genuine and real.

When did he realize Charley was necessary to his existence, was as beautiful as the dawn across an open sea? It snuck up on him like a pirate ship in the fog, hitting him with a broadside he never saw coming. The symmetry of her features, the liveliness of her eyes, her smile with its mix of innocence and wisdom, it all combined just so to make hers the face he wanted to see every morning. No other woman had ever made him feel this way. And he would ensure that no matter what the future brought, he would brand himself on Charley's memory as well.

David kissed her flat belly, the hipbones that jutted out beneath silken skin, and when she protested his kisses that moved into a new level of intimacy, he ignored her, putting his mouth on her and using his tongue, and his fingers to wrest every response from her body, to lick and stroke and ramp up her sensations. She tasted of the sea and of woman, and she tasted like life itself, her body responding to his mouth and to his hands. He wanted her to be mindless with passion and desire, to be at a point where she would think of nothing but them together.

When she cried out his name, when she begged him to enter her, using the rough language of the sailors she lived with, he moved up her body and flipped her over onto her knees, before sliding into her as easily as a fish gliding through the waters, her muscles clamping around him, holding him within her sheltering embrace.

She couldn't move beneath him, and he liked it like that, liked having her at his mercy as he took her. The sound of their heated flesh coming together was loud in the cabin, their harsh breathing shutting out the ship's noise.

"Come for me, Charley," he growled into her ear as he pumped himself into her. "Show me how alive you are."

"Damn you!" she gasped.

"That's right, Charley, I'm a damned pirate, but I'm the pirate who's fucking you, and you will never, ever forget me," he said, punctuating his words with thrusts that made her moan and claw at the bedding as she begged him for more.

He put his hand down where they were joined, the bud at the front of her sex so swollen with lust that it only took the smallest pressure of his fingers to bring it up against his pistoning shaft so she could feel him even more deeply. She whimpered and strained against him as he pushed himself deeper into her, stoking the flames that consumed them both.

She cried out when she climaxed, a cry of desperation as much as of satisfaction. It hurt him, but he could not stop, he would not stop, not when he needed so much to release himself into her body that was so alive and strong and beautiful in the midst of the day's carnage.

They lay there, afterward, panting in the close cabin that still smelled of smoke and powder and blood, each trapped in painful thought.

"There is no future for us, David."

David turned his head to look at Charley on the pillow next to him. She was staring up at the deck overhead, but turned to look at him, her eyes wide and ash-gray and filled with sorrow.

"Do not talk like that."

"I have to leave. You are a fever in my blood, David Fletcher. A fever I cannot bleed out. For the sake of my own health, and my own sanity, I must leave. There is too much falseness in my life. Too many lies. I can lie about who Charlotte Alcott is. I cannot lie to myself about us." She sat up and looked at the water in the tub, still tinged with blood, then back at him, her face bleak and drawn.

"I love you, David. But it is not enough. You said it yourself. You are a violent man and I am a healer. I cannot lie to myself about how I feel about the waste of men's lives. I can only live with so many lies at one time, and that is one more than I can deal with. I do not belong here. Take me to Jamaica, or to St. Martin, or somewhere else. Anywhere else."

She loved him? How could she leave if she loved him? His mind raced frantically to say the right thing to make her stop this talk.

He sat up and grasped her bare shoulder. "What about your duty to these men, Doctor?"

"Do not call me 'Doctor.'" She tried to shake him off, but he held on. "The men need a real surgeon, not someone pretending to be a surgeon."

"It was a real surgeon who removed my brother's hand and saved his life! And try as you might, Charley, you cannot save them all. I am not a surgeon, but I know that much. Men die. They die before their time, and they die in unpleasant ways. And too often, there is nothing you can do about it."

He moved his hand to her chin to hold her gaze. "Do not look away. You are needed here, Dr. Alcott. The men need you."
I need you.
"You will stay here and treat this crew until I say otherwise."

"Is that an order, Captain Fletcher?"

"Yes, dammit!"

"Where are my clothes?"

He pointed to the bundle he'd fetched from her cabin and she climbed out of the bunk and dressed herself.

"You won't stay the night?"

"Is that an order?"

"Do not be like that, Charley."

She sighed and looked down at her hands, clean now, but he knew she was seeing them as they'd been before, when he found her sitting on the deck.

"No. I will not stay the night. I have my duty, Captain, and I will do it..." She looked away, and when she looked back there was a sheen of liquid in her shadowed eyes.

"I have to return to sick bay. The men need me."

"I need you," he said, speaking aloud the words he'd kept to himself.

"Not enough," she whispered, and left.

Charley numbly walked into her sick bay and stopped. The room was scrubbed clean, still damp and smelling of vinegar. She looked up. They'd missed the spot overhead where Purcell's blood splattered against the wood before dripping back down onto her.

No matter. She would leave it there, a reminder of her hubris in thinking she could save them all.

The men had returned to their hammocks, even the injured ones, and she sat with her journals, making notes, going through the motions of being the ship's surgeon because much as she hated to admit David Fletcher was correct, he was right about this. Whether or not she considered herself qualified to practice medicine, she was all they had aboard the
Fancy.
She owed it to the crew to be as professional as possible, no matter how the rest of the world and the healing fraternity might judge her.

The skies were sullen the next morning, but the men were cheerful, even the ones recovering from their injuries. The health of a patient and that patient's recovery was strongly affected by attitude. Knowing their haul could make them all wealthy did much to improve their outlook.

It didn't hurt that some of the purloined rum had been freely distributed the evening before as the captain's reward to his hard-working crew.

But it was clear to even Charley's eyes that the
Fancy
sustained serious damage in its fight with the Spanish merchantman. After the
San Christoval
was allowed to limp away, cleared of its cargo and money, the
Fancy
was in need of repair.

"The question is," Mr. Bryant asked the captain as they examined the battered rigging, "Do we put into port and take our chances, or risk capture on a run for the United States?"

David Fletcher looked around him. Charley knew he was missing his carpenter, his face bleak with the loss he wouldn't acknowledge the night before.

"We have a hold full of rum, Mr. Bryant, making us a prize for anyone who hears of it. I would rather take my chances on a run to the United States than sit out here like a duck on the water or put in to an unfriendly port."

"We can do some work here in boats to keep the
Fancy
seaworthy, Captain. Or we can take her to Santa Rosa."

"Come with me, Mr. Bryant. You also, Doctor."

Charley followed the men to the captain's cabin. David pulled out some rolled charts and spread them on the table.

"There's an island, here." He gestured at the map. "Last time I was there no one lived there, and there was water."

"Is there game, and fruit?" Charley asked.

"Wild pigs, some fruit and vegetation I would recognize."

"The men who were injured would benefit from fresh food and water, Captain. If we went to Santa Rosa, I might be able to purchase more laudanum as well."

"No. We will not go to Santa Rosa, not with the rum. That is too much temptation to put in front of
Señor
Martinez."

He put his finger on the map.

"Keep the pumps going. If this weather holds, we will be there tomorrow and will patch what we can. After that we head for Baltimore."

His eyes met Charley's as he said this, but she said nothing. It had been a grand interlude, a fine adventure full of excitement and the passion of Black Davy Fletcher, but she knew that would end when she reached the United States.

If she were fortunate she'd find transportation back down to the Indies. If not, she would have to return home to England.

Mr. Bryant left them, and Charley watched David in the silence.

"Leave me here in the islands, Captain. I will make my way to Jamaica."

He looked at her, a bittersweet smile on his lips. "Give up my most valuable prize? I think not. You will come with me to Baltimore, Dr. Alcott. I am not letting you go."

"You cannot keep me like a stolen cat!"

"Can I not?" He advanced on her and took her by the arms. "I caught you, Charley. I took you off that ship to tend my men. And by God, I am going to keep you!"

She shook her head. "Dreams and mist, David. That's all this is. Let us end it now, and hope that we can always be friends."

His grip tightened. "Friends? I don't want to be your damned friend, Charley. Don't you realize you have become as necessary to me as the air I breathe? As welcome as fresh water after a long voyage?"

Air. Water. So mundane and taken for granted, and so necessary to life. You couldn't live without them, but you could survive on short rations.

"What we want and what we have are not the same, David. You must let me go so that we can both get on with our lives!"

He released her and strode back to the table, his face set. "Go see to your duties, Doctor."

Charley dragged herself to her sick bay, schooling her face to hide her churning emotions from the men. She dispensed an encouraging word along with re-bandaging wounds and checking on their general well-being. Ives still had a ringing in his ears from the guns, but she told him it would fade in a day or two. Stern got salve for his burns. The stump of Larkin's leg appeared normal for now, and she gave him some of her dwindling stock of laudanum and reassured him it was healing, even though they both knew if it didn't become septic in the tropics it was as much luck and the grace of God as the doctor's skill.