Chapter 27
He felt the veriest fool as he knocked on his own cabin door that night.
He was a mooncalf. A block. As nervous as a new-married virgin or—hell—a choirboy at a brothel, something he most certainly had never been.
His wife was inside his cabin. His wife.
He’d had mad dreams. Vivid fancies, as he lay in his bed at Pomeroy House and thought of her, as they crept closer to London on the Delphinium.
He would win his way back to the navy. He’d rescue the Princess of Monfalcone.
He would be heaped in glory, and he’d pile all the honors at Ruby’s feet, and she could reach out and take his hand, and never be ashamed to say that she was Malcolm Archer’s wife. Not ever.
But when Lamentation had confronted him on the deck, he’d felt cracked open.
What would have happened to the rest of us if they’d carted you off to jail? Lamentation had demanded. What would have happened to Gerry and me if you left and never came back?
It was no fearful fantasy, no unreal nightmare vision. It had happened before, with his mother. It could happen again. There was never any certainty to his future. No matter how he lied or dissembled, he could never make them all safe enough.
And when he thought of Ruby facing her father at his house, he kept on thinking that he did not want her to be alone. He refused to let her feel dishonored by their intimacy or abandoned by his failure to act. He wanted—
Christ. He felt afraid and guilty and desperately hungry for her. He felt ashamed. He’d meant every word that he’d said to her, there in the ruined church in front of the bishop. He would never leave her, not if he could help it.
But still, when he pictured bringing his wife to her father’s house, he kept thinking: Now, at least, she cannot change her mind.
He’d meant to sail straight for London that very night, with Ruby defiant and ready at his side.
But the winds had been unfavorable. A huge gusty storm had blown up from Dieppe, driving them westward until he’d given in and ordered the sails reefed until the winds calmed.
Everyone was belowdecks except a sodden Alfie Enys and Gerry, who’d wiped water from his eyes with the back of his hand and said, “Go on, Cap. We’ll do fine on our own. ”
It had felt like chastisement and benediction at once.
It had felt, he thought, like a sentence. His wife was belowdecks. Alone. She was in their cabin, waiting for him, and it was—God help him—their wedding night.
And what would happen if he let her down?
At the sound of his knock, Ruby pulled open the door, caught his hand in hers, and dragged him inside.
“Ruby,” he got out, and then she was on her toes, pushing his back to the door and sliding her warm, lush body against his.
He couldn’t help himself. He caught her.
He cupped her buttocks in his hands and groaned into her mouth as she kissed him hard.
He wanted to say—something—but her lips were parted, her tongue touching the corner of his mouth, and his mind slid blessedly clean of thought in the pure euphoric sensation of her breasts, her tongue, her hair tickling his cheek.
He slid his palm up, relishing the plush swell of her hip, the delicate dip of her lower back. He could smell her—cedar and warm amber, fruit in brandy. Beneath the coarse fabric she wore, he could discern each perfect knob of her spine.
He pulled back. Jesus, his head was swimming already, and not for the first time that day, he had the distinct sensation that he was a single heartbeat from pitching face-first onto the floor, because . . . because . . .
Bloody Christ. She was wearing his own third-best shirt, the one that he’d ruined with walnut oil and blue paint.
She must have laundered it somehow, but it still bore faint iridescent-blue splotches in various eye-catching locations, along with patches of damp from where she’d pressed herself up against his wet form.
The hem hung nearly to her knees, but the shirt was open at the neck and stretched indecently across her breasts.
He could see the dark shadowed valley there, and the pale-pink edges of her areolae, and suddenly he could feel his own blood beating in his cock because she was his wife and she was wearing his shirt, and he could have her—just like this, every day, for the rest of his life, he could have her.
The notion felt impossible. He didn’t know how to let himself trust it.
She was gazing at him with an expression of faint concern in her blue-gray eyes. “Malcolm? Are you quite all right?”
“No,” he said honestly, and pulled her by the hand back up against him. He might have worried she’d be cold from all his wet things, except he was fairly certain he was steaming. Pressed up against his body seemed the safest place for her to be. “I think I’ve had an apoplexy.”
“Oh.” She put her lips to his left pectoral muscle, and her mouth moved against wet linen, a sensation that made him shudder. “That sounds dire.”
“I plan to recover.”
“Excellent news.”
“But you’ll have to minister to me in my hour of need.
” He slid his hands from her back down to the hem of his shirt, and then up under it, where—sweet heavenly Mary—she had absolutely nothing between the rough-woven linen and her skin.
“You can start by wearing this shirt every night for the rest of our natural lives.”
“I suspect I can manage it,” she said, “but—”
Hell. This woman and her damned attentiveness. She’d paused, pulling back. She’d felt the way his heart had tripped over itself at the words. She’d read it right there in his pulse.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh hell,” he said, and put his hand to her cheek.
“Pet. It’s not you. It’s only that—for the rest of our lives.
” He tried to make himself laugh, as though the words hadn’t gutted him.
But he couldn’t—it sounded perilously like weeping instead.
“Are you certain you want that? Because I can’t promise you that I’ll fill your life with honor and riches.
I can’t even give you a name you can be proud of. ”
She shook her head—silly, stubborn pirate queen—and held his gaze.
“I am proud,” she said. “I’m already proud.
You don’t have to prove anything to me, Malcolm.
You have already proven yourself. At the inn, with your hammocks, and at the house, with your crew and your dogs and your pots of flowers.
And here on your ship—” Her voice cracked, and suddenly her eyes were full of tears.
“Oh, Malcolm. Tell me you didn’t sell the Delphinium for me? ”
“Only to Oliphant.” His voice was rough. “He let me borrow it for the journey—and for that matter, if we wreck, pet, we’ll be in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“Malcolm,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have.”
Very lightly, he caught her chin in his hand, cradling her face. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Ruby Ballimore. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
There were tears on her cheeks. God—he had not thought to make her weep.
“I want you to stay,” she said. “That’s all I want. Wherever we go, whatever happens next—I want you by my side.”
The ship rose and fell beneath their feet and, carefully, he brushed his thumb across her mouth. Slid his palm down her throat and rested it between her collarbones. “You can still change your mind.”
Her mouth quirked as she regarded him. “I’m not certain that’s true.”
“You can,” he said. “It’s not official yet. We haven’t—” He looked, absurdly, at the hammock behind her, though he certainly wasn’t about to lay his wife for the first time in a tangle of swinging rope.
Her brows arched. “We have, rather.”
He winced. He supposed they had.
“Malcolm,” she said, and she reached up and wrapped her fingers around his. “I don’t want to change my mind.”
“Ah God,” he said, and he couldn’t help himself. He tightened his grip on her hand to pull her closer. “All right. All right, pet. I’m trying to believe you.”
Carefully—almost cautiously, as though she might break in half—he set his mouth to hers. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly. Greedily. And as she pressed herself against him, all luxurious warmth, it struck him that it was not Ruby he believed to be fragile.
It was himself. If he went wrong in this—tonight, the next night—how could he bear it? What would be left of him, if he lost her stouthearted loyalty?
What would he be, if he did not deserve it?
But it was hard to think when she arched up into him. Harder still when the ship’s slow heave pressed her breasts into his chest. He groaned a little against her mouth—Christ, he could slip his thumb right into the gaping neck of that shirt and feel the unbearable hot silk of her skin.
He stroked the edge of her areola, the tight point of her nipple—felt her shaky gasp as he rolled the tip. His blood beat hot at the sound, and he did it again, again, and still he did not take his mouth from hers. He wanted to drown in her.
He kissed her until she was twisting restlessly against him, her hips lifting, her breasts arching into his palms. He kissed her until he thought he’d go mad with it: the slick suction, the brandied taste of her mouth.
The tiny cry she made when he passed his thumbs over her nipples, one at a time and then both together.
It was Ruby who pulled away first. “Malcolm,” she gasped, “I want you.”
He brought his hand to her knee, sliding it up beneath the hem of her shirt until his thumb found the slick arousal on her inner thigh.
He felt dizzy again, and not just from the movement of the Delphinium. He was unmoored by his desire for her—for every part of her body and her heart.
He cupped her sex—oh Jesus she was searingly hot and wet—and brought his mouth back to hers. “Let me take care of you,” he said roughly.
She fisted his wet shirt at the small of his back and drew him closer. Her lashes fluttered as she squirmed against his hand, pressing feverishly down, all need and lust-drunk demand. But—
“No,” she said. “No, I want—I want you. I want everything. I’m not going to change my mind.”