Surrender of a Siren (6 page)

She climbed abovedecks and struggled into an upright position, planting her feet in a wide stance to buffer the ship’s rolling. Sophia closed her eyes. Either the ship was caught in a whirl pool, or her head was spinning like a top. She looked toward the nearest rail—only five paces away, perhaps six. Beyond it, the English coastline appeared to teeter on a fulcrum. She bowed her head, focused her gaze on the deck beneath her, and took one step. Two.

Then the deck pitched suddenly, and her locked knees buckled. She was falling, spinning, out of control.

She was caught.

“Steady there.” Two large hands gripped her elbows. Her fingers instinctively closed over two strong arms. Sophia barely had time to register the feel of superfine wool and hard muscle beneath her fingertips, a brief instant to catch a glimpse of two gray-green eyes.

And then she vomited all over two slightly scuffed, tassel-topped Hessians.

“I …” She coughed and sputtered. Mr. Grayson’s iron grip on her elbows refused to relax, preventing her from turning away. “Sir … Release me, I beg you.”

“Absolutely not. You’re not steady on your feet. This way, then.” He guided her sideways, nudging her to take small steps and twirl slightly right —the most mortifying waltz Sophia had ever endured. He backed her against a small crate. “Sit down.”

She obeyed, sinking onto the rough wooden slats gratefully. Still holding her fast by the elbows, he crouched before her. She could not bear to meet his eyes.

“Stay here,” he ordered. “I’ll come back presently.”

Oh, please don’t
. Sophia cringed as his soiled boots carried him away. The instant his footsteps faded, she pulled a handkerchief from her cloak and wiped her brow. She willed her head to stop spinning, so she could rise to her feet unaided and make her escape. But he was too fast for her. Within the space of two minutes, he was back, boots rinsed—with seawater, she supposed—and steaming tankard in hand.

“Drink this.” He wrapped her trembling hands around the tankard. Delicious warmth prickled through her chilled fingers.

“What is it?”

“Tea, with treacle and lemon. And a touch of rum.” When she merely stared at the drink, he added, “Drink it. You’ll feel better.”

Sophia raised the mug to her lips and sipped carefully. Fragrant steam warmed her from the inside out. The syrupy sweetness coated her throat, masking the bitter taste of bile. She sipped again. “Thank you,” she finally managed, keeping her eyes trained on the liquid sloshing in the tankard. “I’ m … I’m sorry about your boots.”

He laughed. “You
should
be sorry.” He crouched beside her. Sophia stubbornly stared into her tankard. “I despise these boots,” he continued. “I’ d just been contemplating yanking them off my feet and tossing them overboard. But now it seems I’ll have to keep them.” Surprise tugged her gaze up to his. He grinned. “For sentimental reasons.”

Don’t do it
, she told herself.
Don’t smile back
.

Too late.

“Mr. Grayson …”

“Please.” His elbow nudged her thigh. An accident? He did not apologize. “After that, I believe you can call me Gray.”

His gaze sparked—a hint of silver flashing in murky green—and Sophia became suddenly, painfully aware of the picture she must present. Soiled, wrinkled dress still damp at the hem, flax-colored hair teased loose from its pins. The pale, wan complexion of illness.

And yet …

His eyes did not merely skim her surface. Instead, they focused some distance beneath her stained garments, plumbing the depths of her appearance in a most disconcerting way.

Despite the chill, a light sheen of perspiration bloomed over her thighs.

“Mr. Grayson. I thank you for the tea.” Sophia shifted the tankard to one hand and shook out the handkerchief she’d kept in her palm. A sudden puff of wind wrenched it from her grasp.

His hand darted out, and he caught the fluttering scrap of white effortlessly, as though it were a dove trained to fly to his hand.

Sophia reached for it. “Once again, I thank you.”

He whisked it out of her grasp. “Save your thanks. I haven’t given it back.” He fingered the eyelet trim. “Perhaps I’ll decide to keep it. For sentimental reasons.”

It came to her so easily, the flirtatious response. He had only to look at her, and her caution collapsed in the flick of a fan. “You shouldn’t tease, Mr. Grayson. It isn’t at all charitable.”

“Ah, but I’m a tradesman. I’m interested in profit, not charity. And I asked you to call me Gray.” He leaned closer, and now—at this diminished distance—Sophia would have sworn his eyes were not green at all, but a pale blue.

Piercing blue.

“You have money, don’t you?”

Her mouth went dry.
He knew
. From the handkerchief? It must be too fine, too embellished. Obviously it belonged to a lady of wealth. Curse it. If only Sophia had had more time to plan her escape, she would have managed a better disguise. It had been difficult enough to leave her painstakingly selected trousseau behind and take only her everyday linens.

She hadn’t had time to assemble a coarser wardrobe, nor even any notion of where the poorer classes shopped.

“I beg your pardon?” Her fingers tightened around the rapidly cooling tankard.

“Money. You do have money, don’t you? You never paid your fare yesterday. It’s six pounds, eight. If you haven’t the coin, I’ll have no choice but to hold you for ransom once we reach Tortola.”

Her fare
. Sophia sipped her tea with relief. If Mr. Grayson was this concerned over six pounds, he surely had no idea he was harboring a runaway heiress with nearly one hundred times that amount strapped beneath her stays. She suppressed a nervous laugh. “Yes, of course I can pay my passage. You’ll have your money today, Mr. Grayson.”

“Gray.”

“Mr. Grayson,” she said, her voice and nerves growing thin, “I scarcely think that my moment of … of indisposition gives you leave to make such an intimate request, that I address you by your Christian name. I certainly shall not.”

He clucked softly, wrapping the handkerchief around his fingers. With hypnotic tenderness, he reached out, drawing the fabric across her temple.

“Now, sweetheart—surely my parents can be credited with greater imagination than you imply. Christening me ‘Gray Grayson’?” He chuckled low in his throat. “Everyone aboard this ship calls me Gray. Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s no particular privilege. There’s but one woman on earth permitted to address me by my Christian name.”

“Your mother?”

He grinned again. “No.”

She blinked.

“Oh, now don’t look so disappointed,” he said. “It’s my sister.”

Sophia slanted her gaze to her lap, cursing herself for playing into his charm. If the sight of him drove the wits from her skull, the solution was plain. She mustn’t look.

But then he pressed the handkerchief into her hand, covering her fingers with his own, and Sophia could not retrieve the small, defeated sigh that fell from her lips. His touch devastated her resolve completely. His hand was like the rest of him. Brute strength, neatly groomed. She heartily wished she ’d thought to put on gloves.

He leaned closer, his scent intruding through the pervasive smell of seawater—wholly masculine and faintly spicy, like pomade and rum.

“And sweetheart, if I did make an
intimate request
of you”—his thumb swept boldly over the delicate skin of her wrist—“you’d know it.”

Sophia sucked in her breath.

“So call me Gray.” He released her hand abruptly.

Disappointment—unbidden, imprudent,
unthinkable
emotion—cinched in Sophia’s chest. Distance from this man was precisely what she wished. Well, if not precisely what she wished, it was exactly what she needed. He looked at her as though he’d laid all her secrets bare, and her body as well.

She pushed the tankard back at him, leaving him no choice but to take it from her hands. “I shall continue to address you as propriety demands, Mr. Grayson.” She cast him a sharp look. “And you certainly are
not
at liberty to call me ‘sweetheart.’”

He donned an expression of wide-eyed innocence. “That isn’t what it stands for, then?” Teasing the handkerchief from her clenched fist, he ran his thumb over the embroidered monogram.

S.H
.

“You see?” He traced each letter with the pad of his finger. “Sweet. Heart. I thought surely that must be it. Because I know
your
name is Jane Turner.”

His lips curved in that insolent grin. “Unless … don’t tell me. It was a gift?”

At least this time she made it to the rail.

And there Sophia clung, until she was certain she must be casting up remnants of Michaelmas dinner. Until the heavy footfalls of those soiled boots told her that he’d left.

Back in her berth, she dipped a clean,
unembroidered
handkerchief into a basin of fresh water. Stripped down to her drawers and stockings, she sponged the icy water over her neck and face, then between her breasts and under her arms. After toweling dry, she dusted her body with scented rice powder.

She still felt filthy.

With trembling fingers, she restrapped the heavy bundle around her ribs. She tugged a clean chemise over her head and cinched up her stays.

She still felt exposed.

She brushed out her hair with sharp yanks, as if to punish the feeble mind beneath the tingling scalp. Of all the times and places to go distracted over a man! During her Season, she’d been courted by no fewer than nine of the
ton’s
most eligible bachelors. No dukes or earls among them, to her parents’ dismay, but she had become engaged to the most coveted catch of the
ton
—the supremely charming Sir Toby Aldridge. And never, not once, in all those waltzes and garden strolls and coy conversations, had Sophia’s perfect composure been shaken. She knew how to manage attractive men; or rather, she knew how to manage herself around them.

She knew nothing. She was an idiot, an imbecile, a simpleton, and a ninny. Boarding a ship under an assumed name, then whipping a monogrammed handkerchief from her cloak?

Sophia yanked and twisted her hair into a severe style, then stabbed the coiled knot with several hairpins.

Foolish, foolish girl
. If Mr. Grayson learned about that money, he would know her instantly for a fraud. He could take her purse away, or hold her captive in hopes of extorting more. Worse, he could turn out to be a gentleman after all, and simply return her to her family.

Be calm
, she bade herself, taking a deep breath.

Considering his friendship with the Walthams, Mr. Grayson was bound to discover her deceit eventually. But by the time the ship reached Tortola, she would be just weeks from her twenty-first birthday. Just weeks away from freedom. If Mr. Grayson possessed some shred of gentlemanly honor that might compel him to return a ruined debutante to England—and Sophia doubted he did—it would already be too late. By then, her trust and her future would belong to her alone.

Her anxiety somewhat allayed, Sophia reached for her dress. It pained her to put on the same wrinkled gown, but she had no choice. Her trunk accommodated only four dresses in addition to the one she wore. Two were last summer’s muslin frocks, to wear once they reached the tropics. The third was not a dress at all, but rather a smock for painting, and the fourth … the fourth was pure folly.

Once dressed, she turned her attention to the smaller trunk, which held her dearest treasures. Paints, charcoal, pastels, palette, brushes—and one hundred sheets of heavy paper, divided into two parcels, each wrapped tightly in oilcloth. One hundred sheets to ration over a month, perhaps longer.

Although she might have allowed herself three, Sophia withdrew only two sheets of paper. She gathered up a small drawing board and a stub of charcoal before neatly repacking her artist’s cache. As she replaced the oilcloth packet, her hand brushed against the worn leather cover of a small book. Smiling, she lifted the volume to the top of the trunk.

The Book
.

Given to her by her friend Lucy Waltham, now the Countess of Kendall, this tiny volume had proved an invaluable source of both information and inspiration.
The Memoirs of a Wanton Dairymaid
, the title read. Its contents were, as one might expect, ribald accounts of a dairymaid’s trysts with her gentleman employer. As a whole, Sophia had found The Book shocking, titillating, and woefully lacking in illustrations. This last, she had set out to remedy.

She flipped through the first half of the book, now painstakingly embellished with pen-and-ink sketches of the wanton dairymaid and her gent in various states of undress. She had planned to return it to Lucy when she finished, but now … A pang of loneliness pinched in her chest. Even if she did see Lucy again, her friend would be forced to cut her. A countess didn’t consort with fallen women.

A sudden image sprang to her mind. A frenzy of colors, textures, tastes … Snow-white petticoats bunched at her waist. Straw strewn on a stable floor. The warm gush of an overturned pail of milk. Miles of smooth, bronzed skin. The taste of salt on her tongue and the scrape of rough whiskers against her neck.

She threw the book back in her trunk and shut it quickly. Irrepressible dreamer she might be, but Sophia was
not
a wanton dairymaid. And Mr. Grayson, as he was so fond of reminding her, was no gentleman.