Chapter 20 #2
“I suppose,” she suggested carefully, “that now that you’ve had the fun of catching those beautiful fish, you’ll be letting them go?”
His grin assumed she was joking. Working the rope into a damp coil, he said, “They taste as good as they look.”
Merry studied the effective movements of his well-formed hands as he untangled a small and disgruntled squid from the trap’s interior and tossed it back into the sleeping bay.
“I don’t think I could enjoy the taste of a fish I’d met face-to-face,” she said reflectively, putting her hand outside the canoe and stirring the water with sticky fingertips.
Devon’s eyes traveled to her wet fingers and followed the line of that graceful arm from her rounded shoulder to the deliciously pretty face under the lopsided flower crown, dusky lashes innocently lowered against the creamy cheekbones—and that ridiculous little nose.
Her face was a delight in color and in form, but it was not the face of a woman he would ever have anticipated would wield this kind of power over him.
“Merry!” he said in mock reproach, remembering suddenly the scenes so similar to this one that had led him at the age of ten to stop letting his sister come fishing with him.
The thought produced the smile he was trying to hide.
“I can’t believe you want me to let them go.
Why, that snapper is more than two feet long! ”
The too-small nose took on a mischievous tilt. “Pooh. It’s only a foot and a half.”
“Damn it, it’s two feet if it’s an inch.”
“One foot nine inches,” she said, “and that’s my last offer.”
Her manner was still oh, so playful, but some abstract sense told him that for her this was no game.
She meant to test him. It was like her suddenly to see the fish as a symbol of her own captivity.
He had never met anyone with her amazing sentimentality.
More amazing still was how that delicacy of mind had survived those weeks on the Joke and contact with men like Erik Shay and Max Reade…
and of course himself. He carried that thought to his fingers as he opened the box’s latched back and sent the trap again into the calm waters.
One by one the fish went their ways, tails twitching.
In the meantime Merry was resisting the urge to toss her arms around his neck and shower his blond hair with kisses.
Among other deterrents she’d probably upset the canoe.
From her brother, Carl, and her cousin, Jason, she knew it was usually useless to ask men and boys not to shoot squirrels or catch fish.
Devon had understood her. She knew her uncontrolled smile was silly and a little tremulous.
Devon’s grin had equal elements in it of affection and amused exasperation. Shaking his head slowly, he began to laugh, and she laughed with him until the floral wreath made its final slip and plopped down over her eyes.
The canoe moved idly for a long time near a hilly shoreline heavy with groves of coconut palm and straggling beds of prickly pear with their profuse baubles of flower and fruit.
Staring in a happy daze at the scenery, Merry was recalled to her surroundings by Devon’s voice with the prosaic reminder that even though the heat was unseasonably mild, she had better cover her arms and face because God only knew what Cat would do to the pair of them if Devon brought her home with a sunburn.
Merry struggled into a straw bonnet and shawl as she watched Devon relax against the stern, trailing a line baited with enough sprat to sink the wire hook of its own weight.
“If something bites,” he said, holding her in a lazy gaze, stretching his long, handsomely proportioned legs out before him, “can I keep it if it’s u-g-l-y?”
To cover the soggy wash of love she was feeling for him, Merry answered his teasing with a face. “Man’s work, isn’t it—fishing?”
“You ought to go with Raven. He ties the line around his toe and falls asleep. Once he caught a turbot, and a shark ate that and dragged Raven through fifty feet of water.” Then, “You realize, of course, if one of those fish had been served to you at dinner, you would have eaten it without a qualm.”
She rested her chin on her fist. “I know I haven’t always been philosophically consistent.
I’m to work on it,” she said, thinking about certain lectures from Cat.
Shifting her body, she dug in the picnic basket and discovered her sketch pad.
“Sometimes I think I should be eschewing animal flesh altogether.”
“Doubtless, mine included. Good Lord, what are you doing? Are you going to draw a picture of me?” he said.
“Why, yes, but only as part of the scenery. Imagine yourself as being a rock or a tree.”
“Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.” Devon spoke the quote with a half smile. “What would you like me to do? Must I not talk? Or shall I be amusing? Would you like to hear about this canoe?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Merry, making a rough outline of his hair, which shone in the tropical sun like late-summer wheat.
“The canoe,” he said, “was a silk-cotton tree, hollowed by axes and by burning. Cat and I made it a few years ago—a very wholesome project, mind you. Morgan was beside himself to see us so constructively engaged. Do you know—you have a unique ability to sit for a long time on your heels. Love, stretch your legs out.”
Her eyes of horizon blue became very wide.
Steadying herself on the sides of the canoe, Merry shyly unbent her knees until her feet alternated with his in the white sunlight that leached color from the canoe’s bottom.
She had taken off her shoes, as he had, and his clean, tanned skin heated hers.
The sharp classical cut of his bones was evidenced even in his feet, which were as charming in their appearance as it was possible for that under-valued, ill-regarded body member to be.
It must be love, Merry thought. I adore his feet.
“Tell me more about the silk-cotton tree,” she said with a gulp.
“It has a sensitive soul, you know. It’s widely believed that if you throw a stick at it, you’ll be visited with misfortune.”
“If the silk-cotton doesn’t like sticks thrown at it, how on earth did it react to axes and fire?” she asked, working with her pencil on the humorously arrogant tilt of his upper lip.
“Very well, because we’d taken the precaution of pouring libations of rum at its roots.
The best superstitions always have an antidote.
” Drawing back his leg, he used the top of his foot to gently rub the plush inner curve that stretched to her toes.
As soon as she saw what he was going to do, she expected it to tickle.
The surprise was that the ticklish feelings occurred neither in the manner she had anticipated nor in the places.
A blush began, spreading in from her cheekbones toward her nose, and to cover it, Merry picked up her sketch pad, as though she had to study her drawing from a closer vantage.
Safely hidden, she was able to say, “Devon, why does Morgan live here?”
“Instead of, perhaps, in a tent on the coast of Spanish Florida? Because he’s a rich man, my dear.”
“Don’t the other island families mind that Morgan’s a pirate?” she asked, secretly fanning her blush.
“If they do, they don’t say so to his face,” Devon answered good-humoredly. “St. Elise is so isolated that I don’t think they realize what the name Rand Morgan means in other places.”
Willing the blood from her cheeks, Merry took the bold step of lowering the sketchbook to her knees again. She could only hope for the sake of her self-respect that he didn’t know the full extent of the things he did to her. Casually she said, “How did Morgan come to own the island?”
There was a slight hesitation which made her look up at him, but she could discover nothing unusual in his face.
He said, “Rand bought it from the St. Cyrs.”
“As in the Duke of?” asked Merry, astonished by the eerie coincidence of it, remembering that the Dowager Duchess of St. Cyr had been the catalyst for the disastrous chain of events which had brought her here.
Merry reminded herself that she must not appear to know more about the famous St. Cyr family than the average well-read person might.
Her ability to anticipate him was improving, because the next question Devon asked was, “You know the family?”
There was a keen edge to the question that Devon took no trouble to conceal, and that made her uneasy. Or perhaps it was his soft exploration of the base of her toes that she found disturbing.
“Who doesn’t know of the St. Cyrs?” she said.
“The current duke is highly regarded in the United States, you know, for his opposition to the Orders in Council that permitted the British Navy to blockade American ports.” She waited to give him the opportunity to defend his country’s hateful atrocities.
Either he was in no mood to argue, or he had no strong feelings on the subject, because he made no comment.
The other item of note about the St. Cyr family was that the father of the present duke had been the world-renowned botanical painter. His wonderful volume of nature drawings was one of her favorite possessions; it was in her trunk with Aunt April.
Shading the shapely hollows beneath his Attic cheekbones, she ventured, “I can’t imagine how the distinguished St. Cyrs could have an association with Rand Morgan.”
“Ah—the St. Cyrs are a loose family, my dear. Did you know that the late duke married the daughter of his head gardener? The dowager duchess wore mourning for a year after the wedding and sent her son and new daughter-in-law a wagon of vegetable marrows on their first anniversary.” Fitting his sole to hers, he continued.
“The St. Cyrs had this island ceded to them by Charles II on the condition that they pay ‘unto His Majesty yearly and every year one fat sheep if demanded.’ As Morgan says, there’s quite a tale behind the sheep. …”