14. Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Midnight came. Tristan stood outside his own cabin door, one hand braced on the frame, and felt his pulse beat in his palm. The lantern swung, throwing his shadow across the passage.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
What sort of bastard waited with bated breath to consummate a bargain?
Heat moved through him, followed at once by a slash of cold that sat badly in his gut.
He was not a pirate, damn it all. She had accepted the terms with those cool diplomatic eyes and that dangerous little lift of the chin.
They were both adults, old enough to know what bargains cost.
Left. Right.
The light’s motion worked on his nerves until his jaw locked. His hand tightened on the frame, then loosened, then tightened again. Enough of this. He would enter the cabin, consummate the bargain, and leave.
Tristan knocked. No answer. The silence beyond the door thickened.
He set his hand to the knob. It turned. She had not locked him out.
His cabin glowed in low candlelight. A gilded washbasin sat where a regulation tin basin ought to have been, its rim catching the lamplight.
In a hard roll, it would break free and cross the cabin like shot.
Beside it, a mirror leaned against the bulkhead. One sharp list and it would shatter into a hundred flying edges. He marked it instantly as the first thing to go in a storm.
Then he saw his desk. His chart table had been converted into a vanity.
Brushes lay where compasses belonged. Small bottles stood in a neat line, stoppered and scented.
Perfume. Oil. Things meant to be opened slowly, not flung aside in haste.
A chair had acquired a cushion. Where in God’s name had she found a footstool?
Sooner or later, all this frippery would have to go overboard.
His jaw tightened. She had taken his disciplined command space and turned it into something perilously close to a boudoir. As if comfort were not a weakness to be guarded against, but a necessity.
The tub stood behind the screen, drawn close to the warmth of the brazier.
Steam softened the air around it, and water lapped faintly as the ship moved.
He took a step closer. One pale shoulder rose above the rim, slick with heat and candlelight.
Her head rested against the copper edge, hair piled in a heavy knot that had begun to slide free.
Heat pulled low through him. He wanted her and was not saint enough to pretend otherwise. He took a step toward the tub and saw her face.
Steam had returned color to her skin. Her lashes rested against her cheeks. The stubborn little tension she carried at the corners of her mouth had loosened. She looked warm at last.
His chest tightened. Her contentment should not have struck him like a prize.
Her eyes opened. “Is it—” Her voice came hoarse. “Is it midnight already?”
He grunted. “To the second.”
“I’m sorry.” She sat a little straighter, and water slid from her shoulder in a shining line. “I lost track of the time.”
Her voice went through him like brandy taken too fast. Warm intimacy, hoarse at the edges. That, or the bare curve of her shoulder above the water, undid him.
Her gaze traveled over his wet hair combed back with his fingers, his clean shirt open at the throat, the dark coat he had put on.
“You…” Her brows drew together. “You had a bath as well. I suppose I must thank you.”
“I did not have a bath. I took a dip in the ocean.” He had stripped, climbed down the side, and dove into black water cold enough to bite marrow.
Her eyes widened. “You cannot mean you plunged into the sea. At night. The water must have been freezing.”
“Not cold enough.”
The words came out too rough.
Color touched her cheeks, turning steam-pink into crimson. “But what about sharks?”
Tristan glanced down. Bad choice. The water hid her, but not sufficiently. The upper swell of her breast showed at the rim of the tub, pale and wet and. His cock rose with the loyal stupidity of a mast answering wind.
“Woman, no shark would dare come near me. I was armed.”
“With what?”
“With a harpoon. Enough about sharks.” Exhaling, he stepped farther into the room and touched the edge of the screen. “You’ve been busy.”
“You can say that.” Her gaze flicked toward the chair. “Could you—would you hand me the robe?”
The words landed like a signal flare. He had stood under fire without blinking.
Now his pulse beat like a cabin boy’s on his first port visit because a damp woman asked him to pass a garment.
He crossed to the chair and lifted the robe.
White and thin enough that his imagination became a criminal instrument.
He held it out. When she reached, her fingers brushed his wrist.
Every hair along his arm lifted, and a shiver ran through him, like a swell catching the hull broadside.
He could hear the faint unsteadiness in her breathing now, see the color rising along her cheek. He wanted to see every inch of her. Wanted the water sliding over her belly, her hips, her thighs. Wanted to put his mouth where steam had been and lick her dry.
Instead, he turned to give her privacy, a civilized scrap that cost him.
Behind him, water sloshed as she rose. He felt the warmth of her body displace the air, felt it brush his back like a following wind.
He braced himself as he would in heavy seas—feet planted, shoulders squared, breath measured.
“Done,” she said softly.
He turned back. The robe clung to her, damp enough that the white fabric revealed the slope of her shoulders, the rise of her breasts, the narrow fastening at her waist, the lines of her hips.
Before she could see how badly the sight had struck him, he forced his gaze upward. Soot streaked the gold near her temple.
“Your hair is filthy.”
“What a gallant observation.” Her brows rose. “If you must know, the brazier smoked viciously. I had to coax it to life, and it objected to persuasion.”
“You were in the bath. Why didn’t you wash it out?”
“Because I can barely lift my arms.” She rolled one shoulder and winced before she could hide it. “A side effect of blackmailing this cabin into comfort, I’m afraid.”
“What about your maid?”
“Elsie is seasick. Utterly defeated. She took one look at the bucket, announced that Neptune was personally persecuting her, and lay down with a vinegar cloth.”
Tristan crossed to the hearth rug, dragged it before the tub, then picked up a towel and folded it over his arm.
“Sit.”
She frowned. “This was not part of the bargain.”
“Consider it a captain’s order.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. Suspicion warred with exhaustion. Exhaustion won, but he could see that her diplomatic objections had been lodged for future use. She lowered herself slowly onto the rug, robe gathered carefully around her, and leaned back against the tub.
Tristan took the kettle from the hob. “Why did you wrestle with the brazier? It is summer. We sail south. It will grow warmer by the day.”
She sighed. “One of the reasons I want Naples. I hate the cold. Cold rooms. Cold beds. Cold mornings where you see your breath before you see your future.” Her mouth curved faintly. “Cold houses that smell of damp no matter how often you air them. And British men. Pale skin. Cold blood.”
His gaze dropped to his forearm, skin darkened by years of sun and salt. Cold-blooded was not a charge he had ever had to answer. If the ocean could testify, it would swear to the opposite.
“And Italian men differ from British men?”
“I certainly hope so.” Her voice acquired a careful lightness. “I plan on marrying one.”
An Italian husband waiting in Naples. Tristan already wanted to kill the nameless bastard. But they had a bargain. Until they reached Naples, she was his.
To prove it to himself, he moved behind her and began removing the pins from her hair.
A thick coil slid over his hand, then another.
Then the whole mass spilled down, long and lush and astonishing in the candlelight.
No doubt, dry and unbound, it would brush past her hips and skim the backs of her thighs.
“Your hair is so long, I could rig a topsail with it,” he said, pouring water down the strands.
He meant to do the task efficiently and be done with it, but his hand moved higher almost without leave. His fingers found her scalp beneath the heavy fall of hair and began to work there, slow circles at her temples, then at the base of her skull where tension had gathered hard as a knot.
Her spine straightened against the side of the tub, away from his hands.
“You really needn’t—” She stopped, knotting her hands in her lap. “This is an alarming amount of kindness to introduce without warning.”
She tried to smile, but it failed somewhere before reaching her mouth.
“I do not know whether I am meant to thank you, repay you, or begin preparing for the hidden clause.”
Something cramped beneath his ribs, sudden and ugly, as if her quiet confusion had found a bruise he had not known he carried. She could negotiate contracts, but kindness without price left her stranded in unfamiliar waters.
Who had taught her that care required a ledger?
No. He didn’t want to know. The past was weight.
Her past, his past, any past. A man who started hauling other people’s wreckage aboard soon found his deck too crowded to fight, his hold too full to float.
He had no business wanting to know what had shaped the woman sitting between his knees.
“Just lean back and close your eyes,” he said, fingers curling so as not to pull her closer himself.
She gave a throaty laugh. “You are very good with your fingers. Next time you bargain, do not forget to include your hair-washing abilities.”
He bent closer. “Had I included everything my fingers are good for, Marguerite, you would never have signed.”
Color bloomed on her throat, cheeks, and the tips of her ears.
His thumb stilled against the wet strands. “Relax, Marguerite. I am only washing your hair.”
She looked back over her shoulder, just enough for him to see the uncertainty in her eyes. “Only?”
“Only.” His voice roughened. “No clause. No payment. No hidden article.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. He turned her forward again and worked the warm water through her hair.
Her hair was indefensible. Too long. Too fine.
A danger near flame, and in a gale, it might snag in a cable.
Tristan sifted his fingers over the strands, and he could not resist winding them around his wrist. How would it feel, coiled around him while he loved her?
Her head tipped back beneath him, her mouth parted around his name?
Heat moved through him, and he cursed under his breath.
Concentrate, damn you. Girding himself, he rubbed soap between his palms and worked it gently into the roots. She sighed, and her head tipped back another inch until her weight rested against his thigh.
His throat tightened.
He rinsed her hair, then took a towel and began drying it, squeezing it along its length.
She had gone quiet.
“Marguerite?”
No answer. He looked down.
Her lashes lay against her cheeks. Her mouth had softened. He sat back on his heels and looked at her. This, then, was his mistress. Asleep in a damp robe, with wet hair spilling over his towel. Not a moon goddess now, but a damp kitten. Still, the most tempting prize he had ever caught.
Exhaling, he slid one arm beneath her shoulders and the other under her knees, careful not to jostle her, and carried her to the bed. Tristan hoped the three blankets would be enough to keep her warm and tucked them close around her shoulders.
Her eyes opened to a narrow gleam, and she caught the edge of his shirt. “Do you not want to begin the joint operations?”
He stood over her, hands braced on the edge of the mattress, and forced himself not to climb in beside her.
“Go to sleep.”
“But the agreement—”
“I will not operate on you while you are more dead than alive.”
He had come to this cabin to collect on the bargain. He had stood outside that door with his blood hot, his patience ruined, and every intention of taking the moon goddess who had not locked him out. Now she lay before him half-asleep, damp-haired, exhausted, and the taking had become impossible.
She smiled sleepily. “That is not very piratical of you.”
Indeed not. What a farce of a pirate he was turning out to be. “Then close your eyes before I change my mind.”
She caressed the cloth of his shirt and then released it. “Good night, Tristan.”
Good night indeed. His plans had changed from wrapping himself in moonlight and hearing a goddess moan to plunging into the ocean and hearing Lorenzo snoring.
He turned to leave.
The lamp cast a soft golden wash over the cabin, catching on the little arsenal of feminine objects she had smuggled into his command. Baubles, all of them. Useless weight. In a storm, he could strip the room bare in moments and save the ship.
His gaze returned to the bed.
The little moon slept soundly beneath his blankets, damp hair spread over his pillow, one cheek turned into the linen as if she had always belonged there. Not one hour before, he had stood outside this cabin and told himself he would enter, consummate the bargain, and leave. Simple.
And yet, nothing in his life had ever looked less simple than Marguerite d’Ailes asleep in his bed.