12. Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Moonlight fell over Tristan’s shoulders like a warm blanket. It touched the open throat of his shirt and the backs of his hands, laying silver over him with the possessiveness of a jealous lover. He lifted his chin to the pale disk still low in the sky, and a shiver raced up his spine.
The moon had always been his partner on long nights of vigil. After battle, when smoke still clung to his coat, it had kept watch with him.
Tonight it seemed entirely indifferent to his plight.
Rise, damn you.
He looked up at it, jaw tight, while the light slipped beneath his collar. Below his boots, Marguerite d’Ailes waited in his cabin. What was she doing?
Was she standing near the stern windows where the moon could find her too? Silvering the loose fall of her hair, touching the curve of her cheek, the hollow of her throat, the small places where warmth gathered beneath silk?
He wanted to go below, take every cursed layer from her body, and see her dressed in nothing but moonlight.
Hand tightening on the rail, he glared at the moon.
Rise, so I can go down to her.
The moon remained low, touching him everywhere and refusing to release him.
But captains were not allowed to daydream under moonlight, and the foretopsail cracked above him, sharp as pistol fire.
Tristan looked up. The canvas snapped again, furious and half-free. The bosun was already moving, pipe clenched between his teeth.
“Stay where you are,” Tristan ordered.
The man halted. “Sir, I can send Jenkins aloft.”
“Leave it to me.”
A fouled brace needed clearing, and his hands needed something to do.
The ratlines were rough beneath his gloves.
He went up fast, the deck dropping away beneath him, the wind dragging at his shirt and hair.
He reached the yard and braced himself against it.
A worn length of line had twisted around the block.
Below, the men held the sail, but every snap of canvas drove more force into the jam.
Tristan hooked one elbow through a stay, wedged his boot against the mast, and drove his marlinspike into the knot. The line refused him. He forced it harder, feeling the strain through wrist, forearm, shoulder. The spike slipped, scraped wood, and pain shot up his arm.
The rope shifted a quarter inch, then stuck fast.
Tristan stopped fighting the knot and reached for his knife. He sawed through the tarred fibers. Strand after strand parted with a harsh little snap that traveled through his hand. Then the final fibers gave, and the brace came free with a violent jerk that nearly wrenched him from the yard.
Tristan caught himself against the stay, shoulder screaming, breath knocked from his lungs. Below, men hauled hard on the lines. The sail steadied. The frigate settled into her course again with a long shudder that traveled through the mast.
He looked at the severed rope in his fist. That was what command required. A man found the dangerous tangle and cut it before the ship paid for his hesitation.
He climbed down more roughly than he had gone up, boots finding ratlines by habit, wind cooling the sweat on his back. By the time he dropped onto the deck, his shirt clung to his spine, his hair was damp at his neck, and tar streaked his gloves and cuffs. The moon had climbed one miserable inch.
He was wiping the back of his wrist across his mouth when the ordinary male noise of work hushed. Tristan turned, still breathing hard, and saw Marguerite step onto the deck.
She wore a plain working gown, sleeves pushed above her wrists, apron smudged. A streak of soot marked one cheek. Her skin shone with perspiration.
The sight hit him like a broadside, hard enough to empty sense from his head. His tired hands had the sudden brutal wish to take her by the waist, carry her back below, and find out whether sweat tasted different on a woman who negotiated like a minister and blushed like sin.
He should have been too tired for desire to burn under his ribs, but apparently no amount of labor could sweat this woman out of a man once she had gotten into his blood.
“Your Grace,” she said, lifting that soot-streaked chin, “I require water. For a bath. But the cabin boy refused to bring me any. He said it was against the captain’s orders.”
His mind supplied the image—Marguerite in a tub, hair undone, skin wet, soap sliding over the line of her throat. Steam rising. Her shoulders slick. Her mouth parted, not in diplomatic protest but in—Tristan shut the thought down with more force than success.
“Madam, I want many things. A new ship. A crew that obeys before I threaten death, maiming, or additional labor. A post that honors my military achievements instead of burying them beneath paperwork.” He opened his arms, then let them fall. “Did I get any of that?”
She inclined her head, ever the diplomat. Even sweaty.
“I am sorry if matters have not turned out as you wished. I truly am. But I need water to—”
“Miss d’Ailes.” He leaned nearer. “Read my lips. No one takes a bath aboard a warship.”
Her face heated. It was like watching the moon, ever cool, suddenly turn red.
The flush began high on her cheeks, then deepened, spreading beneath the little streak of soot until she looked both offended and unbearably touchable.
He had the demented desire to put his thumb there, drag soot and blush together, then follow the mark with his mouth.
“Sir,” she said, in a tone that suggested his rank had become insufficient, “I have perspired more this afternoon than I did in my entire career at Covent Garden.”
“Then the navy has broadened your accomplishments.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I have scrubbed your tub.”
“My tub?”
“Yes. Your tub, which I found in a state unfit for diplomacy, Christian burial, or contact with human skin. I have also cleaned the brazier, shifted three trunks, beaten the dust from a blanket that may have been at Trafalgar, and persuaded Elsie not to murder the boy who denied us the bath. I am hot. I am filthy. I require hot water.”
“You may have water to drink.”
“If I do not have water to bathe, there will be no joint operations.”
Tristan closed his eyes for half a second. God save him from strategic women.
When he opened his eyes, her blush had worsened. A lesser woman might have retreated. Marguerite d’Ailes merely drew herself taller, indignation turning her into a small nation with artillery.
His blood surged. “You have no reason to worry. I will not bathe either, and I have been working on deck all day.”
Her gaze moved over him. It began at his hair, damp and pulled loose from its tie, then lowered to his open collar, the shirt plastered to his chest, the dark patches of sweat beneath his arms. Her eyes paused where the linen clung to his stomach.
He felt the look like a touch.
“If you do not bathe,” she said, “you will not set foot in my cabin.”
He stepped closer. “Your cabin?”
Her lashes flickered. “You are being impossible.”
“I have been called worse by better-armed men.”
“And bathed less often, apparently.”
A laugh threatened him. Desire sharpened it into something else. He leaned in, lowering his voice. “We will have our joint operations, Miss d’Ailes, bath or no bath. Even if I have to lick you clean.”
Her eyes flashed like a six-pounder touching fire.
A bucket stood by the rail, half-full from a recent swabbing.
Tristan saw her glance toward it. Saw calculation, outrage, and opportunity align in those blue eyes.
He could have stepped back. He could have caught her wrist. He could have done a dozen sensible things.
He did none of them.
Marguerite seized the bucket in both hands and flung the water into his face.
Cold struck him blind. It hit hair, eyes, mouth, chest, ran beneath his collar and down his spine in a shocking sheet. Old scrub water streamed from his jaw, and his hair fell loose over his brow.
Marguerite stood before him, breathing fast, cheeks blazing. “There. One of us has begun.”
Then she stormed away. Tristan wiped water from his eyes with one hand.
Every sailor on deck found work with the frantic devotion of men recently granted a second life. A marine stared at the horizon as if expecting France to reappear. The bosun examined a knot so closely he might have proposed marriage to it.
“Magnificent sprezzatura, fratello.” Lorenzo’s voice drifted from somewhere behind him.
Tristan did not turn. “One word, Lorenzo, and I’ll put you in the hold.”