The Book of the Seven Delights (3 page)

"If that's your game, I suggest you turn around and head home on the next boat. You're not particularly fetching as a near-corpse, and you'll get no points for 'delicate languishing' where we're going."

"I am not
languishing
," she declared, despite the pain speaking caused in her throat. "I'm seasick."

"You are that." Her tormentor gave a wicked smile. "A fact that would probably make someone, somewhere extremely happy. Not, however, our overwrought steward. He seems to think he'll be blamed if you kick off in one of his cabins. He's below right now cleaning… scrubbing the varnish off everything in your quarters."

"He's
whaaatt
?" She struggled to sit up and free her legs.

"Stay right where you are." He pushed her firmly back into the chair and reached for something on the deck beside him. A spoon. Heaped with grim-looking paste. "Open up. You have to get something into your stomach." When she tightened her mouth and glared, he wagged the spoon back and forth. "It's this or a snout full of whiskey. Which will it be?"

"I'll be's-sick again," she whispered, unable to hide her fear of that prospect. To her surprise, he sighed and lowered the spoon. That was when she noticed his face had strong, cleanly chiseled features that were sun-bronzed and framed by sun-streaked hair. But her eyes kept going back to that eye patch.

"Look, this is the best, the only
real
cure for seasickness," he declared. "You stay on deck, where you can see the sea move and get fresh air, and you keep something in your belly… not much… just enough to keep things moving the right direction. Oat porridge. Fruit. Light fare. No bloody meat or grease."

At the word "bloody," her stomach rebelled and he watched her fight it.

"Open up."

They hadn't been introduced, but in the next few minutes, Abigail deduced his identity.
The Spawn of
Satan
. In the flesh. Sardonic, determined, and utterly merciless with a spoon. He shoveled dose after dose of that plasterlike porridge into her, barely giving her time to swallow each bite. The lukewarm paste would have glued her mouth together if he hadn't paused periodically to force her to sip that vile liquid, which she now recognized as tea adulterated with foul-smelling herbs.

When he deemed her sufficiently stuffed, he ordered her to watch the horizon, picked up his implements of torture, and disappeared into the cabin area of the ship.

Her gaze was drawn to the horizon; not because he ordered her to keep her eyes on it, but because there wasn't anything else to watch. The waves were lulling and, as the sun rose and the glare lessened, watching became soothing. Her stomach was so occupied with the mass it had ingested that it ignored her, and she was so grateful to be ignored that she relaxed enough to doze.

Shadows were lengthening on her side of the ship by the time her tormentor returned with another cup of that wretched tea and a glass of amber liquid that proved to be a heavily sweetened infusion of mint. She extracted one of her arms from the blankets to hold the cup for herself, but he applied a finger to the bottom of the cup to hasten the process. By the time he handed her the glass of mint tea, she sat up straighter in her cocoon and brushed away his assistance.

He stood for a moment watching her drink, then stooped slightly to peer past the jutting edge of her hat, searching her face.

"Better?" Again that eye patch drew her attention.

"Some." She did a quick inventory and realized she spoke the truth. At the moment she didn't have a serious physical complaint, just hideously sore muscles and a fiendish thirst caused by that syrupy mint concoction.

"Well, you have to feel better than you look," he said.

Jolted, she glanced up at her misshapen hat, over at her lank hair, and then down at the soiled sleeves of her nightdress. The skin of her face and throat felt burn-tender, probably blotchy from her being upended over a chamber pot.

"Who
are
you?" she demanded, tightening her grip on the top of the blanket and wishing he would go away.

"Your neighbor. The cabin next door."

So, the Blackbeard lookalike staring at her was the wretch who had conducted a gaming-hell next door and kept her awake for the first four nights of the voyage. Spawn of Satan. And they said there was no such thing as women's intuition.

"Don't you have something better to do than torture me?"

"Not at the moment." He crossed his arms over his broad chest. She couldn't see his stare, but she felt it.

"You know, you don't sound very English."

"I'm an American. From Boston."

"And your name? All I could get out of Haffe was something about a 'merchant.'"

"That's my name. Merchant. Abigail Merchant."

"Right." He cut a look at her from the side of his good eye. "And what are you doing on a freighter bound for Morocco, Miss Merchant? You can't be a missionary—you're not packing Bibles and prayer books. All you've got is books and maps."

"How do you know—" The question, together with a memory of him saying the steward was scrubbing her cabin, set off an eruption of anxiety in her. "You were in my cabin?" She fought her way out of her cocoon of blankets.

Dizziness hit as she rose, and she staggered. He stepped forward to steady her but she fended off the assistance and bent over to improve the flow of blood to her brain. When she finally regained her balance, she straightened more slowly, pulled her blanket and dignity tighter around her, and headed for her cabin.

"I told you—you have to stay on deck." He followed at a distance, watching her feel her way down the steps and along the passage to her cabin door.

The water on her floor had dried, her bunk was straightened, and on top of the bedclothes lay two piles, one of garments and another of documents. She rushed to the heap of papers and frantically began to evaluate their condition.

There were water spots on some of the pages, but overall the writing had escaped disaster. As her anxiety subsided, it took with it some of the energy it had provided and she wilted onto the bunk.

"What's so important about these papers?" he said, ducking into the cabin and strolling over to reach for one of her maps. "Does that say 'Timbuktu'?"

She snatched it out of his reach and rolled it up to stack it with the others. "These are historical documents. From my family." She had given some thought to what she would say if asked about where she was going. Miraculously, she managed to recall it. "It's imperative that I get them to my family. In Morocco."

"Where in Morocco?"

"Casa"—dark spots were circling the edges of her vision—"blanca."

"And what do they do there? This "family" of yours."

She wanted to confront the disbelief in his tone, but her vision was starting to swim and her throat and stomach were tightening in an all-too-familiar way.

"Trade," she said, her voice sounding oddly far away in her own ears. "Dates… buying and exporting.

Verrry… verrry big… in dates."

She lurched from the bunk, looking for the chamber pot.

A moment later she'd been seized by the waist and was wilting over Spawn of Satan's rock-hard arm.

He half dragged, half carried her back up on deck and propped her unceremoniously against the railing so that her head hung over the side.

"Don't you dare lose that oatmeal," he ordered. "Take deep, slow breaths and think about something else. The burn of good Scotch. Fat, fragrant cigars. Or dancing girls. The ones at Le Maison d'Houri always work for me… especially that one with the long legs and the henna on her belly…"

She had never understood the urge to wreak bloody mayhem until now.

She did, however, manage to keep her oatmeal down.

Several hours later, she awakened on the deck in the dark; covered once again with blankets, her feet now propped in a second chair. There was a bracing hint of chill to the breeze, and a surprising peace in her midsection. For the first time in days she wasn't in some sort of agony. She floated in and out of a comfortable trance, until she spotted in the distance a darkened strip beginning to intrude between the shimmering night sea and the dark velvet sky.

Land. With surprisingly clarity of mind, she recalled Emily Woodbine's description of her voyage from England to Africa in her book,
An Englishwoman on Safari
. This hazy blue streak on the eastern horizon meant they had reached the last third of the voyage, where they hugged the coastline of North Africa. That meant, somewhere to the east was the port of Tangiers, with its spice markets and rugs and dates and oil and hammered brass. And women with "henna" on their bellies. Whatever the devil that meant.

"You're awake. Good." Her one-eyed tormentor appeared—at least the lower two-thirds of him did—and placed a bowl of mush in her lap. "Eat."

As he ducked back down into the dimly lit passage, she felt the warmth of whatever was in the bowl spreading through her blanket and nightdress. It surprised her to realize that she did indeed feel hungry.

She slid her arms free of the blankets and lifted the bowl to her nose. There was a novel sweetness to the aroma. At the first bite she could tell he had done something to make the oats more palatable.

Honey, she thought, chewing on a lump of some kind and praying it was meant to be there. At least it wasn't moving. Then a burst of flavor surprised her; the lumps in the oatmeal appeared to be dried fruit…

dates and apricots.
Exports of Morocco… the 960's… Geography
. She finished the bowl in record time. Now, if she only had something to drink…

As if in response to her thoughts, a hand soon appeared with a cup in it. She followed that arm up to the face that for some reason made her own heat.

"What is your name?" she said, taking the drink and filtering the potent sight of him through her eyelashes. "I mean, you've been"—helping? badgering?—"
seeing
me through this illness and I don't even know your name."

There was a pause, in which he seemed to be manufacturing a response.

"Smith," he said.

Not a very inventive product.

"Just 'Smith'?" When he nodded, she rolled her eyes and then sipped her tea. "English, obviously. What arc
you
doing on a ship bound for Morocco?"

"Tending to family business… regarding… important documents."

She nearly choked on the liquid.

"I merely asked a civil question," she said, straightening.

"And I merely gave you a civil answer." He leaning closer to intercept her averted gaze. "I am returning to Morocco on family business related to some important documents."

In spite of her annoyance, her gaze was drawn to his eye. Hazel. Worldly. Full of urges and experiences she didn't want to know anything about. His hair was wind-ruffled and the collar of his shirt had blown up against his neck. Bronzed… muscular… like his face. His full, neatly curved mouth turned up on one side in a wry grin. Reddening, she shifted on the chair and buried her nose in her cup of tea.

"So does this family of yours live in the dusty old
medina
?" he asked.

"Not exactly." She wasn't sure what he meant, but it sounded unpleasant.

"Oh,
outside
the city walls, then," he said, sounding impressed.

"Yes." She melted slightly. "Just outside."

"And they buy and export dates," he said, propping his hands on his waist.

"Yes."

"They must make a killing, then. Morocco is lousy with date palms. Especially those Smyrna dates. Of course, the locals prefer the Kadota. Not me. I'm strictly an Adriatic man, myself. What about you?"

"One kind of date is the same as another to me," she said, shoving her empty cup into his hands, annoyed that he seemed to be testing her and that she had no idea if she'd passed or not. "Now if you don't mind, I'm fatigued."

What she was—Apollo thought as he carried the empty cup below and found himself ducking into her cabin—was
lying
. Nobody lived outside the
medina
, the walled city… except a few goat herders in shanties and poor, tent-dwelling nomads who came to trade. And Smyrna, Katoda, and Adriatic were varieties of
figs
, not dates.

He, on the other hand, had told the truth.

He stood for a minute surveying the writings piled on her bed. She had been fiercely protective of her things. He pulled an envelope from his shirt and looked between it and the books and papers tucked together on top of the bedclothes. It might be safer to…

He thought of her prickly attitude and penchant for disaster. She could disappear the minute they reached the dock and he might never find her again. More likely, she'd stumble going down the gangplank and drop her bags straight into the damned water.

He stuffed the envelope back into his shirt, exited, and pulled the door shut behind him.

was galling to admit, she realized as the sky brightened the next morning, but her one-eyed nursemaid's prescription for seasickness worked. It meant, however, that she would have to camp on deck for the rest of the voyage; eating, sleeping, washing, and dressing in the open air. The thought of conducting all but the most personal of necessities on deck was intimidating. But, despite the calm seas, there was enough motion to the modest vessel to make her fear a return of illness if she closeted herself in her cabin again.

This would be good practice for the rigors of expedition life, she told herself. Washing with a minimum of water; maintaining modesty while dressing and grooming in the open; and keeping her belongings in useful order under difficult conditions… all were practices she might find useful later. After all, Mabel Crawford, in her book
Through Algeria
, insisted that an Englishwoman traveling alone must be all things at all times—careful, alert, mindful of her coin and possessions—prepared for anything a strange land could put in her path.

What the new day put first into her path was the captain of the
Star
, an amicable Greek fellow named Demetrios, who stopped by to check on her. In charmingly flawed English, he informed her that the deck she now inhabited was officially off-limits to everyone but her and the steward, Haffe, who would resume seeing to her needs now that the weather and her stomach had calmed.