Chapter 3 #2
The pirate’s hard, impassive face seemed to flicker, betraying an unfathomable emotion.
He lifted the sword blade a bit, signaling to Morgan’s long-haired companion, who looked hard at them across the room before nodding dismissively.
Without another word the pirate moved aside and let them pass, his face an unreadable slab once more.
The door closed softly behind them, a sound which occasioned tremendous relief for them, and they stood and inhaled the cool salty air.
The moon, too bright almost to look at, was laying a burning silver trail on the surf crashing on the coast; they could see it far off over the black tree line.
Sally and Merry glanced at each other and fled down the steps with such dispatch that Merry tumbled over the last two and landed hard on her knees, catching her petticoats in a tight bunch beneath her.
The dozen dainty brass pins that held on her pillow were thrust hard into the soft flesh of her stomach, and giving a sharp cry of pain, she jumped to her feet, yanking her skirt away from her.
Promptly she was answered by a series of tiny metallic pings that sounded like an honor guard of Lilliputian infantry firing a twenty-one-gun salute.
With an audible flump the bundle of straw and feathers collapsed out of her dress, littering the damp, pebbled sand like dirty snow.
In startled dismay Merry cried, “Sally! My pins have popped off their heads!”
“Damn, damn, damn! If men can invent a steam engine that goes five miles an hour, why can’t they think of a way to make pins in one piece so they can’t snap apart!
” Sally glared at the bundle at Merry’s feet.
“Stupid things! Thank the Lord it didn’t happen indoors!
Merry, you stay here, gather your stuffings as best you can, and I’ll race to the wagon for more pinheads. ”
“Sally, please! I want to come with you. It won’t matter, will it?”
“Yes, it matters. They may well have someone watching the wagons, and if they see you’re not pregnant, we’ve lost our excuse for being outside the tavern. If they think we’ve come out to fetch the militia, we’re as good as dead.”
“But, Sally—”
“You’ll be fine. Just stay here, and don’t be afraid if it takes me a little while. I’ve got to move cautiously. The yard may be alive with Morgan’s men, and I want to avoid as many of them as possible.”
“What if somebody comes?” whispered Merry.
“Hide under the stairs.” Sally’s whisper was as hushed as the darkness into which she disappeared, and Merry was alone in the tavern’s black shadow.
Before her lay the night beach, echoing with the boom of the midnight surf, stinking with the tidal litter of dying seaweed and dead crabs.
Massive boulders humped the shoreline, like the backs of enormous turtles.
Had one of them moved? No, no, of course not.
With a shiver that had nothing to do with the night breeze, Merry knelt on the gritty sand and began energetically to gather her shedded pile into her cotton bag.
Her breath came tight and quick. Not a nuance of either the absurdity or the danger of the situation was lost on her.
As abrupt as a thunderclap on a still morning came the squeal of corroded hinges as the tavern door behind her opened, catching her in the middle of its lengthening rhomboid of light.
Merry’s spine injected a paralyzing terror serum through her body that turned her muscles to damp paper.
The cotton bundle slid from her fingers and opened as it hit the ground, showering her with a geyser of feathers and dust.
The door slammed shut, and there were footsteps on the porch and steps.
Merry raised her eyes, helpless, humiliated, frantic, and saw standing in the starlight before her Morgan’s companions, the blond archangel of a man and the long-haired boy.
Her galloping heart sped blood through her fragile veins until she was nearly deafened by its pounding rush, and with fear-dulled senses she saw dimly that the blond man was laughing.
In one flashing second the boy sank an iron grip into the curve of her shoulders and hauled her to her feet. He gave the fallen bundle a nudge with his moccasined foot.
“Congratulations, little mother,” he said in a dangerous tone. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
Three lives besides Merry’s own hung suspended in the balance. She croaked, “Don’t kill us! Please! We weren’t going to bring the militia.”
“The devil you weren’t,” snarled the boy, his fingers pressing tighter into her aching shoulders.
Behind him she heard the blond man say, “Softly, Cat.” Then with a laugh, “You had a mother once yourself.”
“No, Devon,” snapped the boy. “I was spawned.” He took a handful of her bodice and shook her back and forth slowly, as easily as he might have a cloth doll. “Stupid, lying bitch. I ought to feed you to the sharks. Where’s your friend?”
She would have died rather than expose Sally. “I don’t know.”
This time the shake was painful. “That isn’t what I wanted to hear. Do you want to learn the hard way how little patience I’ve got?”
He put back his hand to strike her, but even as she recoiled shudderingly from him the man called Devon stopped the boy with a gesture. “Cat, no,” he said. “I know it doesn’t seem worth the trouble to you, but there really are better ways to do these things.”
To her surprise the boy released her. She staggered on legs that had little strength to hold her, and Devon encircled her shoulders with a light protective arm.
It had been a night of one shock after the next, and Merry’s unaccustomed senses blazed as he caressed the tumbled curls from her taut cheeks.
“If you like, don’t tell us where your friend is,” he said. “Just tell me why she left you.”
Merry’s voice trembled. “She had to bring more pins, so that no one would see that I was really not—that I was not…”
The boy swore and said, “If we get militia, yours will be the first throat I’m going to cut.”
Devon brought the back of his hand softly down the side of her face. “You think she’s lying, Cat?”
“Oh, I suppose not,” the boy said irritably.
“It’s ludicrous enough to be true. Look, if you don’t want the wench mauled, then you’d better stay here and keep her out of sight when the crew comes.
I’ll go signal. And who knows?” He swept up a hunk of the filling from Merry’s cotton sack and tossed it casually into the breeze.
“Maybe this time you’ll be the one who gets to stuff her. ”
He left them, running lightly down the silver beach, his white-blond hair catching the moonbeams, gleaming like a passing banshee.
Caught still under the drape of Devon’s arm, her body stiff, Merry raised a hand despairingly to her forehead.
“Do you know,” he asked her in an amiable way, “that you’re white as a sail?”
Her palm fell to her cheek; the skin was clammy under her shivering fingers.
She was ashamed of her cowardice, her crying, the whimper in her voice.
There were probably a hundred spunky things that a woman of spirit would have thought of to say, and all she had managed to do was plead pitifully for her life.
In a bitter epiphany she saw herself as she was, an inexperienced, awkward teenager, endowed with more imagination than poise.
Knowing she must confront this man, she turned to face him, but since the top of her head came no higher than his shoulder, she found herself looking straight at his chest and made the unsettling discovery that he had no shirt on under his jacket.
Hastily she looked up at the gemstone eyes, which were tucked at the corners with a smile.
In all her upbringing there had been nothing that taught her how she ought to behave now, and the only thing she could think of was a line from a penny dreadful that one of the maidservants had once let her read.
Somehow, though, looking at the clever face above her, she doubted that a proclamation of “Unhand me, sirrah” would achieve much more than a laugh.
Reworking it into the vernacular, she said, “Let me go.” It was the best voice she could produce, but it was a forceless one for all that, and it cracked embarrassingly on the last word, so she was hardly surprised when it produced no immediate results. “Please,” she added.
He slid his hand under hers, where it lay cupped on her chest. His hand seemed warmer than her own, and drier, and the shock of the unfamiliar intimacy made her stumble backward into the rickety porch railing behind her.
She spun and clutched at it to save herself from falling.
The railing gave under the pressure of her hand, sending a stream of splinters flying to the ground.
The self-reproach came, instantly and automatically.
“Oh,” she said numbly. “I’ve broken it.”
She heard his soft laughter behind her and wheeled in fear, the broken railing held tight across her bosom.
“Be careful, there might be nails,” he said, and in a gentle imperative added, “Hand it to me. I’ll fix it for you.”
She put it in his hand and then thought, too late, Merry Patricia Wilding, if you had half an ounce of courage, you’d have whacked him over the head with it.
“You’re very amusing, you know,” he said conversationally as he was sliding the railing back into place, matching the holes with the nails.
For the first time since she’d left the tavern, she felt an emotion stirring within her that was not terror.
“I wasn’t aware that I was being amusing,” she said, a terse edge to her voice.
He finished the task and turned to look at her. “I never supposed you were aware of it. But don’t you think you were being a little overly conscientious? Under the circumstances.”
It was much the kind of thing that Carl might have said, and it hit uncomfortably close to the truth. Before she could stop herself, Merry bit out, “I suppose you think nothing of knocking whole villages to the ground.”