Chapter 14
The ship’s drying sails breathed scent into the morning air, a sharp fragrance, distinct as geranium. Gull odor, in wet plucked feathers and smeared droppings, was everywhere, and the damp jute stank.
Merry woke to pungent smells and pungent memories.
Dennis was gone, and cold biscuits were on the table with a clean, folded towel that had a note in it from Cat.
Climbing back into the eternally rocking bunk, Merry read the note aloud to the cabin.
It began without preamble: “You’ve slept late because I drugged you last night.
Call me Borgia. I did it for your own etc.
Interesting young women need long slumbers after a day of initiative and adversity. ”
Her hands dropped to the coverlet with the paper in them.
Raising a fist covered with angry rust-colored scratches, she rubbed her heavy eyes and wondered if the last sentence was a quote that she was supposed to recognize.
The prose style didn’t seem like Cat’s; an obscure literary reference?
A common literary reference unknown to her and betokening some embarrassing inadequacy in her education?
Probably the latter. Giving it up, she lifted the paper and began again to read.
“Wear your hair up. We’re going to execute you at noon. (I jest.) I can’t come down for a while. They’re putting Raven on trial, and I have to be there. Explanations later. I’ve seen Devon in better moods. Be careful. Yours, Cat. D.T.C.”
Which also was a jest. It meant Destroy This Communication and had become a national joke this year, ever since an enterprising newspaper editor in New England had discovered it imprinted on a pitifully innocuous dispatch from the secretary of war to Andrew Jackson.
Bracing herself, she stood up on the bunk amid a crackle of stiff joints.
It hurt to bring up her arm enough to put her hand out the window with the paper in it.
Her fingers relaxed, and she watched the paper flutter away in the wind, a bold white streak in the sunlight that rode a slanting air current into the ocean.
Then she washed, took clothing from the sea chest, soaked her hardtack, and worried.
She had seen them last night working on Raven, but all Cat would tell her about it was that Raven had tried to swim after her, and that the cold water had made him ill.
He would be fine by morning. Why were they putting him on trial? Why? Explanations later.
Taking a bite of hardtack, she pulled up her white pantaloons, their flared hem sliding over her ankles as she held the waist with one hand and nervously tucked in her white shirttail with the other. With shaking hands she pinned up her hair for Cat.
When it was all done, the washing, the dressing, the eating, the straightening of the bunk, then there was nothing left but the worry, which had gnawed itself into something more malevolent. What trial? What trial?
More than an hour passed. At last, unable to bear the tension, convinced that things were so bad already that she couldn’t make them worse, Merry took up the tin biscuit plate and began to bang it against the door.
Someone above must have been able to hear her, but she was ignored.
She could imagine them listening, saying, “Let the wench bang. It’ll keep her out of trouble. Soon enough she’ll tire of it.”
And that was true, and she had tired soon, but she kept at it, a stubborn staccato rhythm irregularly interrupted while she rested her hands.
This time her will would outlast theirs.
To be a pest is only tiring, but to be pestered brings the monkey up in anyone.
Merry hammered until she heard Sails yell to her through the door.
“Merry! Merry, lass! Will ye stop that now?”
“I will if you’ll open the door!”
“Lass, I canna’. I haven’t the key.” The reproach in the old sailmaker’s voice was a gentle one. “Why are ye wearying yerself with that vexing ratcheting?”
“Where’s Raven? What are they doing with him? Why is there a trial? What kind of a trial?”
“Och, don’t fret on it so. There’s naught ye can be doing. The lad’s got himself into a mite of a fratch, and they’re up above deciding what’s to be done wi’ him, so that he’ll be rememberin’ on the next occasion that he ought to be mindin’ his elders.”
“What kind of a—a fratch? Do you mean that he’s to be punished because last night he tried to help me? No! I won’t have it! Sails, do you hear me? I demand to see Morgan! Tell them to open this door!”
“Lass, no… Ye must be seein’ sense now…”
But she could hardly hear the last words because she had the plate up and was slamming it against the door again and again. She wouldn’t stop, nor would she listen to him as he went on trying in a kindly way to convince her that she must discontinue this foolishness.
When her situation changed, it changed quickly. She had barely time to assimilate the swift footsteps on the stair, the rapped-out order, the key turning in the lock. All she had was the broken part of a second to leap backward to keep from getting the thrust-open door in her face.
“My love, did you summon me?”
Devon stood on the threshold, the smile on him so sweet and barbed that he might have breathed attar of roses and brimstone.
Hips down, he was encased in denim trousers that revealed more of his lean musculature than Merry knew was good for her to see.
Hips up, he was bare, discounting an open leather vest, which Merry was trying hard not to do.
They were pirate’s clothes. He was a British spy in pirate’s clothing, a wolf in wolf’s clothing, and yet somehow his appearance was as neat and decorative as an enameled thimble.
Merry was all in favor of being belligerent toward him, even though she’d known it would be a little difficult to put that brave policy into practice.
Face-to-face with him a little difficult was turning into next to impossible.
Resisting an impulse to retreat behind the table, Merry said, “Certainly not. I want to talk to Rand Morgan.”
“Do you? I’m sorry to disappoint you—his arrival isn’t imminent. Tell me, did you sleep well last night, dear?”
“No,” she said, paling another shade. “But I’ll bet you’ve been up for hours, sharpening your fangs. What do you want first, an arm or a leg? Or are you going to go right for the throat?”
“Are we a willing victim, then, this morning?”
Her sigh was quick and frightened. “You know I’m not good at waiting, Devon. Do and have done.”
“Bare your throat then, my love,” he said. “I’ve come to invite you to see Raven flogged.”
She had been expecting an attack, but nothing as indirect or as cruel as this. Her first thought was not to believe him, and she said jerkily, “Your sense of humor is a little wanting today.”
“I agree. I suggest you keep that in mind. Last night when Tom Valentine ordered Raven not to jump into the sea after you, Raven pulled a knife on him.”
Belief came slowly to Merry. She shook her head in abstract denial. “Last night he was injured. Surely after that they would not…”
“Yes, they would. Particularly since Raven announced chattily at his trial that he stands behind his actions last night and he’d do the same again if the need arose.
If the child weren’t so popular, he’d be dead.
Come on deck with me. You can tell your grandchildren that once you saw a boy whipped on a pirate ship. ”
She recoiled from him, pride forgotten, hardly aware of her body’s motion. “Devon, don’t let them do it! Don’t!”
“Merry… Little Windflower—” His voice was soft and textured. “You know so much. You must know that I don’t have a vote here. Why else would you have stolen my letters?”
She would remember in her nightmares his expression in the boat when the letter bundle parted company with her shirt.
She had taken those letters without having any idea what they contained.
Now she never wanted to know. She heard herself say, “How dare you judge me for that? Or—Of course. You hire gutter trash to do your stealing for you. Everything I’ve learned about vice has been from you. ”
Quietly he said, “Merry, I offered you friendship.”
Sick. She was going to be sick. “You offered me captivity.”
“Which I promised to end.”
“If,” she said, “I met your demands.”
“Oh, my dear girl,” he said softly, “and you wouldn’t have met them, would you?
You should have told me the truth. Before yesterday afternoon do you think I could have hurt you?
” He came to her, his stride fluid and predatory, his gaze holding hers.
He lifted his hand and turned it to brush the back of his curved fingers slowly down the tight slope of her cheek.
“What would you have done with the letters, Windflower? Sold them to the highest bidder?”
Merry grabbed his unresisting wrist in shaking fingers and held it stiffly, away from her face. She started to speak, to say something that would stop his words, but the chaos of her thoughts couldn’t seem to make speech.
He waited for a reply, and when it did not come, he said, “What happened, Merry? Weren’t the things I offered you enough? What price buys entrance to your pretty body?” And then, “Would Raven’s reprieve be enough?”
She was too anguished to examine his intent.
There was strength only to unclutch her fingers from his wrist and to take a backward step that brought her legs up against the writing desk’s sharp wooden edge.
His hands encircled her waist, and she could feel the sweet heat from his uncovered chest as he drew her toward him.
A pained whimper escaped her as his experienced fingers tilted her chin and his mouth sought her.
The kiss was spark-hot and scarring, deeply arousing.
When finally he had carried its message to the limit and dragged his lips from her, Merry was so angry at him and so filled with bitter sorrow that her power of speech returned, full colored.