Chapter Eighteen #3
“Logical,” she said. “You use up supplies and off load cargo, so at some point you have to take on more ballast.”
“That process is time consuming. I calculated the amount of ballast we would consistently need to determine how much space and furniture I could use for a captain’s cabin. My quarters essentially became ballast.”
“Clever.”
“Perhaps,” he concurred. “I wasn’t very clever in my dealings with Mawu Anaisa.” He stepped forward.
Grace held him back. “You and she were both young, and clever isn’t the same as wise. Any young man in your situation, at that point in history, would most likely have done the same.”
He lifted his hand to her cheek. “I don’t know if I could be as generous with understanding as you.”
“Perhaps not as a young man. However, you are much wiser now.”
He smiled. “Arguing the point is worthless. Come, I’ve something else to show you. ”
They walked aft toward a door set in a bulkhead that crossed the width of the ship. Opening the door, Luc revealed a room with the far end curtained off. Grace sniffed as she preceded him inside. “What are those scents? Some sort of oil?”
Luc inhaled. “Ah, linseed oil—used to maintain the decking—cinnamon, ginger, and rum.”
“Shouldn’t they have faded after all these years?” She frowned.
Luc smiled. “I may not have a crew, but I have plenty of time to maintain my own quarters. I use the aromas I enjoy most to mask the smell of tar and pitch.”
Oriental rugs covered the floorboards. Iron braziers affixed to raised platforms graced the port and starboard corners near the bulkhead joints.
A smallish desk and matching chair sat against the port bulkhead.
Grace nodded. “From what I’ve seen you maintain your ship and equipment very well.
Everything is shipshape and Bristol fashion, as would have been said when you were actively sailing. ”
Some odd emotion tugged at his chest. “You learned a great deal in your studies of history, but enough about maintenance, I want you to explore the rest of my world.”
To one side of the desk, a set of shelves was attached.
A table sat on the opposite side, with two chairs.
Everything save the chairs was bolted to the floor and had small rails bordering the edges.
“I understand the rails help to keep small items from sliding off the desk and table in rough seas. How do you keep the chairs in place?”
“Since chairs usually aren’t needed in rough seas, and I’m topside, I made it my cabin boy’s job to lay them down and stow them under the table. Same with my desk chair, it went into the knee hole of the desk.”
Grace circled the room as he spoke. “You thought this out carefully.”
He’d pleased and impressed her. Pride rose to the fore. “I tried to.”
“What’s behind the curtain?” She gestured toward the cloth suspended from the ceiling at the far side of the room.
“That’s where I would sleep.”
“May I?” She fingered the velvet hangings.
“Of course.”
The cloth hung from rings on a rod. He pushed one panel aside. “Oh my.” Grace put her fingertips against her lips. The wish to be one of those fingers flashed through his mind.
The ornate bed had carved posts, gauze drapery and was dressed in a crimson comforter.
At the edge of a mound of pillows in various colors were the tops of snowy white sheets folded over the bright red quilt.
Another brazier sat in a far corner and small chests stood on either side at the head of the bed.
“Does the size surprise you?” Luc tried to hide his smile.
She shook her head. “No, I would be willing to wager that the dimensions of that bed were taken into account when you made the calculations for your cabin.”
“Then what prompted your exclamation?”
“I…I…ah…I’ve seen this bed before.” Despite the dimness of the cabin, a faint blush was visible on her pretty face.
“Really?” He lifted a brow. “Where?”
“In my dreams?”
Luc jerked backward, then tucked his chin. “You dreamt about my bed?”
Grace nodded. “About a month ago, and again last night.”
“Just after I tried to prove my curse to you?”
She swallowed visibly and nodded again. “When I first woke, I thought I’d imagined it all.” Her face flushed. “You know, power of suggestion.”
He wanted to ease her embarrassment. “I think I understand.”
“The dream was so vivid, I went back and read the pages that had been blank before….” The flush subsided.
“Before I told you what was written?” he asked.
“Mm hmm.” She swallowed again. “What you described, what you told me, wasn’t the entire story. Was it?”
Luc studied her a long while. “Why do you ask that?”
Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Because in my dream, I wasn’t myself.”
“That makes no sense.” He would have hesitated to say such a thing as well.
“Dreams don’t have to make sense,” Grace insisted.
Fine, he’d humor her. “Who were you?”
“I was a woman named Grainne,”
He took another step back, and it was his turn to swallow a gasp. His heart thundered. “No. You couldn’t. She died, so long ago.”
Grace wasn’t lying though. His body, his heart, his soul told him so.
“I was Grainne. She came to you here on your ship, and we made love on this bed.”
She said we.
He staggered back two more steps, memory knifing his heart. “That was the night Mawu cursed me. She found us together. She had…”
“I remember—from the dream. I… Grainne was there. I know what Mawu did. I saw.”
“Then where did you… Grainne, go? After Mawu died, I looked for Grainne. She was gone.”
“I can’t tell you. I wish I could, but I woke up just as Mawu uttered her curse.”
“Is this dream why you now believe in my curse?”
Grace nodded. “Partly. That, and reading again in those once blank pages—to confirm what I remembered.”
“You remember what was written?” Luc asked.
“Don’t you?” Her brows lifted. “You wrote the words. At least, that’s what you claim.”
“I do recall what I wrote.” He couldn’t forget.
“You named your lover for that night. A woman called Grainne.”
“She wasn’t a lover for a single night,” he spoke through clenched teeth trying to force back the bitterness that lingered over his lost love.
Grace folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against a bed post. “No, she wasn’t. Grainne was the love of your life, as you were hers. She never loved another man.”
“How can you say that? She married someone else.”
“She’s the woman you argued about with your father, right?”
Grace was almost too perceptive. “Yes.”
“So, you couldn’t marry her.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but the words lanced through him.
He sagged against the bulkhead, not two feet from Grace. “I asked her. I defied my father, but she refused.” All the pain of that refusal came back in an instant.
“That must have been difficult for both of you. Do you know why she refused?” She put a hand on his arm.
Luc stared into the past. “Her family were crofters, dependent on the largess of the landowner for whom they labored. They were poor, and the loss of a family member would make them poorer. Grainne had a marriage proposal from a local squire. He was a good enough man, but he didn’t love her, nor she him, as she told me years later. ”
“Why would the man marry her if he didn’t love her?”
“Grainne was uniquely attractive. She was tall, about your height. Her face was longer than that of a classic beauty. She had hair like red flame, eyes the green of Ireland’s misty hills, skin of alabaster, and a smile that could melt stone.”
“No,” Grace whispered, and put her fingers to her lips, again.
He tilted his head.
“My aunt,” she breathed, her small statement shaky.
“Sarah Alden,” Luc said.
“She often told me my smile could melt stone.”
“Your smile is very like Grainne’s. It hurts me sometimes to look at you.” He closed his eyes, and his shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry.”
Her voice was closer. Her hand stroking his cheek forced his eyes open. He stared down into those misty green pools, filled with unshed tears. So much like that moment before he and his love had parted in Ireland. Luc couldn’t resist.
His arms went around her, pulling her to him, and he tilted his head.
Grace must’ve lifted on her toes, because their lips met. Her hands gripped his shoulders. He let himself drown in sweet passion. She fit him perfectly in every way. Her breasts pillowed on his chest. Her hips cradled his. Her woman’s heat matched the growing fire in his loins.
Too soon she pushed on his shoulders and stepped away.
What he saw in those mist green eyes was nothing like the raw lust he felt.
Tears dripped down her cheeks, one by one. Her body shook, but not with desire.
“You’re afraid,” he said. “Of me?”
“Yes, no, partly.” Grace bit her lower lip and twisted her hands. “I don’t know. I do know that I can’t do this. Not with you. Not tonight.”
“Some other time?” A man could hope.
She looked away, staring at the far bulkhead. “Don’t ask me that.”
“As you wish.” Luc leaned back against the near bulkhead and waited. Watching carefully for the smallest clue to her thoughts and feelings. Feelings he should’ve been able to sense.
Questions about why he could not would have to wait. He concentrated on Grace.
Her head moved from side to side, as if she sought some direction or answer, but what was the question?
What was she afraid of?
He shouldn’t—couldn’t—ask.
Could he?
“I…I need to go home.”
“Now?”
“Yes.” Grace sucked in a breath, then another before squaring her shoulders and clearing her expression.
Luc had seen that specific expression before. Always when she was afraid, beyond terror. However, she knew how to hide it. Her show of calm insistence would fool anyone not cursed as he was.
“Thank you for the tour, and…and…everything.” She waved a hand in the air, grabbed the lantern, then parted the curtains, and ran. He sped after her. “Wait.”
Grace glanced over her shoulder, but kept moving. The tears brimmed once more. “No. I can’t.” She set foot on the ladder. If she wanted to leave, she was going the wrong way.
“You must. It’s dark out there, and even with a lantern you’ll lose your way.” He climbed after her. “Let me take you home.”
Nearly halfway across the deck, she stopped and stared into the night.
With a new moon, the land lay deep in shadow.
“You can’t do that. The moon’s waxing gibbous,” she said, continuing to stare. “You’ll vanish the instant you step off the Only Love’s deck.”
“I can take you. I might not be corporeal outside of the Only Love, but I still exist. At this phase of the moon, I am more in the spirit world and have all the powers of most phantoms.”
This time when she looked back at him, Grace’s green eyes were wide. “Now you’re telling me ghosts are real.” A frantic titter escaped her lips.
“Not that the topic is relevant at the moment, but I exist in that world most of the time, so yes, ghosts are real.”
She pivoted to face him. “A curse that condemns a man to live as a spirit and a man at the same time. Real ghosts. A VooDoo priestess praying for my protection. A pair of dogs that obey my every command without any training. A book with blank pages, that fill as a man tells me what is written there. A ship that should never have been able to sail into waters as shallow as these—a nearly invisible, broken ship at that. Until some magic makes it not just appear but exist in one piece with nearly no signs of the century it has been here. Sure, of course that man will be able to take me home, even though he has no physical body. Except that I kissed the man, and his body was almost too physical.” Her hands fisted at her sides, and she stepped toward him.
“Just how many incredible events do you think I can believe at one time?” Grace flung her arms wide.
“Yeah, go ahead. Do your ghostly worst and take me home.”