Laura Kinsale (25 page)

She was examining the salt-stiffened peignoir for wearability when he returned. He slammed the door behind him as he entered, not even glancing at her. “Some
body stole the bloody ladder,” he fumed. He yanked open a locker and pulled out a clean shirt. “Why the deuce can’t they pick on somebody who can afford it?”

Tess sat down on the bed and held her robe to her mouth.

“Who would want a boarding ladder, I ask you?” He threw the shirt toward her. “Put that on. I don’t know why they didn’t take the dinghy and the anchor buoy while they were at it. Damnation. Haven’t you a skirt left on board somewhere?”

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, flashing a look at her reddened face.

“I threw it overboard,” she said in a stifled voice.

“Your skirt?”

Tess burst into helpless giggles. “I’m s-sorry. The ladder. I threw it overboard. I didn’t mean to! Bu-but I thought he was after me—the thief, you know. I thought he had a knife.”

“Tess,” he said dangerously, “I have the mother of a headache.”

“I’m awfully sorry!” she cried. “I’ll get you another ladder.” She stood up and pulled on the shirt. Its long tails came nearly to her knees. As she looked down to button it, her hair fell into her eyes. She brushed it back. “It will be a wedding present. You didn’t stay long enough for me to give you the one I already had.”

She glanced up, and saw that his expression had softened a little. “Here.” He came closer, reaching out to roll up one of the dangling shirt sleeves. His touch was gentle. She held out the other arm when he had finished. “You were really frightened,” he said quietly. “Last night, when you came out here.”

“Until I found you,” she admitted. “I can’t think why I was so silly, but—oh, I did panic there for a little
while. I saw someone underneath my window. Someone just standing there, smoking. It must have been a sailor, or something like that, but it—I suppose it reminded me of…”

“Never mind.” He smoothed back a strand of her hair. “I’m sorry I left you there alone. I shouldn’t have.”

“Well,” she said tartly, “that’s true.”

He glanced up at her at that, a flash of smoky-gray. There was a troubled expression in his eyes, but he moved away without answering. When he turned to close the locker door, she followed him, and put her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek against his back. “I love you,” she said, by way of apologizing.

He stood still, his hand upon the open door. She felt him take a deep breath. “Don’t do this, Tess,” he said. “It just makes things harder.”

She kissed the taut skin across his spine. “What things?”

He pulled her hands carefully away from him and turned. “You were planning to take passage on the French steamer.”

“I was,” she said, and smiled. “Not anymore.”

“Take it.”

The smile faded. “What do you mean?”

He moved abruptly, knocking the locker shut and facing the blank wood. “It would be best if you went home.”

“Home,” she echoed. “I don’t understand.”

“I can’t live with you,” he said to the wall. “I won’t.”

She stared at his back.

“I’ll give you the marriage papers. You can say that you’re widowed, if you like. You don’t have to use my name, if you don’t want to, but I thought—if there was a child, I thought—”

He seemed to lose the thread of his words. He broke
away and went to the safe on the opposite wall, unlocked it. “I want you to take this.” He crossed to her again and pressed something small and cold into her hand. “It’s a man’s, I know. It’s—I couldn’t think of anything else. It’s what I have, Tess. There’s nothing else to give you.”

In a kind of waking dream, she opened her hand and looked at the emerald signet ring lying there. She said in a small voice, “You’re not sending me away?”

“Don’t you understand?” he asked painfully. “I can’t give you anything.”

“Your love,” she cried. “That’s all I want. That’s all I ever wanted.”

His face tightened. In the silence that followed she heard the thud of feet on the deck above, felt a stray breath of wind from the port lift a strand of her hair.

“You don’t love me?” she whispered.

Gryf felt his heart twist. God, how was he to answer that? To love her—it would be the ultimate folly. He could not put a name to the turmoil of emotion inside him, the confusing mixture of fear and desperate need, but he was certain that he could not, he
must
not let himself love her. Even he was not so much a fool. With love came grief, and he had had enough of it. He could not bear to open his heart to that again. He had to send her away, for he knew with every fiber of his being that if he kept her with him he was lost.

In a low voice, he answered, “No.”

She blinked, trying to straighten the cabin that had gone dizzily distorted in her vision. “Then why—”

“I married you because I had to.”

“Had to…” The ring cut into her pawn from the force with which she squeezed her hand. “Had to.”

He lowered his eyes. “There was no choice. For your sake.”

She felt suddenly that her legs would not hold her. She made the two steps to the berth, and sat down, struggling to hang on to some semblance of calm. When she looked up, her words were quick, almost defiant. “Last night you loved me.”

He turned away at that, refusing to meet her fierce look. “I don’t say I don’t…desire you. God knows—” He made a choked sound, deep in his throat, and clenched his fists. “Sometimes I’ve thought I’d die of it. I tried to fight that, but you just kept pushing. You just wouldn’t go away.”

“I didn’t want to go away. I don’t want to go now. I won’t!”

“It doesn’t matter. If you won’t go, then I will.”

“I don’t understand,” she said brokenly. “You loved me once. Before Stephen.”

He shot her a frown, as if she had delivered an unfair blow. “No. I never did. I was crazy then; I was trying to be—trying to do something I should never have tried. I wish you hadn’t gone to Eliot, but you were right to send me packing. You should have left it there. I wish to God you had.”

She covered her mouth with her fingers to stifle a sob. “Oh—if I hurt you then one-tenth as much as you are hurting me now, I wish I had never been born.”

“I’m sorry.” It was a groan. “That isn’t what I want—to hurt you. I’ve tried to remedy the hurt I’ve already done the best way that I can. Beyond that—there’s no more I have to offer.”

She stared up at him through a bright haze. In a tiny voice, she asked, “Do you want to be divorced, then?”

He hesitated. After a long time he said, “I don’t ask for that. If it’s your choice…”

“It’s not,” she said quickly.

“It might be for the best. You deserve more than this.
You could remarry. I don’t know how long it would take to prove desertion, but—”

“Desertion!”

He looked at her. When he spoke, his words were soft, almost gentle. “That would be grounds enough, Tess. Even in England.”

She gave a half-hysterical little laugh. “I see. You are deserting me. That would certainly remedy whatever hurt has been done.” Her bitterness echoed in the small confines of the cabin. “Perhaps you had better leave first, so no one could say it was the other way round, and I had deserted you instead.”

He looked away again, but not before she saw the pain in his eyes. In a breath she was on her feet and reaching for him. “Gryf,” she pleaded. “You can’t mean this. You may not love me now; I’ve been stupid and foolish and I’ve made you angry, I know. But I’ll make it up. I promise—we’ll be happy. Only give me time to show you. You could grow to love me again—you might.” She clasped both hands around one of his. “Won’t you even try?”

He jerked his arm away. “It isn’t a matter of trying.” He strode to the door and stopped, his face stony. “I can’t love you. I can’t stay near you. I’m not—capable of it. If you don’t understand that, if you can’t live with it, divorce me.” His eyes found hers, winter-cold, and then dropped. “I’m leaving now. I’ll send Mahina with some clothes for you. The steamer sails this afternoon.”

The door closed on his back, and she stared numbly after him.

Gryf stood at the bar in one of Papeete’s more genteel saloons, drawing aimless circles in the dew that dripped off the side of his beer mug.

He glanced up as William Stewart bade a hearty
good-day to his French friends and made his way back to where Gryf was waiting to resume their interrupted rendezvous. With a flash of his black-Irish grin, Stewart beckoned Gryf to a table.

“I understand congratulations are in order,” Stewart said, and raised his glass. “To matrimony—and other enterprises.”

Gryf nodded and drank. The insinuation wasn’t worth being offended over, and he wanted Stewart’s good will if he could get it.

“Shall we have a bit of a gam, old friend?” Stewart sat back and pulled at his black beard, fixing Gryf with a sharp eye. “I confess to some curiosity about your need for employment. I’d have thought the newly wedded husband of a British peeress wouldn’t be interested in work.”

Gryf looked at his beer, then out the open door where the sunset made deep, dancing shadows of the bushy oleanders that lined the street. He rubbed the slick side of the mug. “You’d be wrong.”

“So—she took her money with her when she sailed off yesterday in tears?”

Gryf set his jaw, glanced up at Stewart’s face without answering.

Stewart shrugged and smiled. “It’s not a large island. Everyone knows. High romance. I understand you even performed a gallant rescue of the lady from a desert atoll. Neatly done, I’d say. Very neatly done. I can’t fathom what went wrong.”

Here, in Stewart’s town, drinking on Stewart’s money, Gryf felt it would be impolitic to give the man the facer he was asking for. Instead he said flatly, “Do you know of any work?”

“Oh, I do indeed. I’m just trying to discern how much you need it.”

“I need it.”

Stewart smiled. “You’re not driving yourself much of a bargain.”

“We’ll work it out. I figure there isn’t much competition in my class, either.”

“True enough. What is she? I’ve forgotten—five hundred tons, at the least.”

“Five twenty-seven.”

“What’s her draft?”

“Seventeen eight, fully loaded.”

Stewart sighed. “I suppose it would be a whale in a fish pond to put her in the interisland trade. I’m locked out of the Tuamotus, between Mr. Brander and Mr. Hort and your friend Mr. Fraser.”

“It wouldn’t pay,” Gryf said mildly. This was all a game, he knew. The idea of the
Arcanum
competing with the little schooners that sailed among the islands was ridiculous. “She could make round trip to Sydney with a load of cotton in two months. San Francisco in four.”

Stewart pulled a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it. “There’s already a regular line to Frisco.”

“What’s their price?”

“A hundred and twenty francs per ton.”

“I’ll beat that. I’ll also beat them getting there.”

Stewart smiled. “Ah, yes, I remember. The eager boy. And you’ll do it too, if recollection serves.”

“You know I will.”

“Unfortunately, shipping cotton isn’t really my problem. The difficulty is in finding someone to pick the bloody stuff.” He scowled at the match as he lit his pipe. “Here we are,” he said, between puffs, “record prices on cotton for at least as long as the American war lasts; the perfect location for growing long-grained, sea-island variety—choicest of the choice—and my over-
seers come to me every day saying they haven’t enough men. Would you be interested in some well-financed black-birding? Say, with my brother James in the Marquesas?”

Gryf frowned. He had no taste at all for transporting human cargo.

“An attack of morality, old friend?” Stewart asked. “But no—you’ve always been an upright fellow, haven’t you? I thought perhaps you’d changed, hearing of your—shall we say, ‘advantageous,’ marriage? Have you finished your beer? Come—let’s walk down to see the
Imperial commissaire.
La Roncière is a notorious nobleman. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to meet the newest member of the leisure class.” Stewart winked. “After all, he was delighted to meet me.”

As they stepped out into the twilight shadows of the street, Stewart knocked his newly lit pipe clean on the porch rail, a cavalier waste of tobacco that told Gryf more about the man’s current finances than any balance sheet could have. They had not gone five yards from the bar when Gryf caught another whiff of smoke. He looked around the empty street in passing. A bird called through the tangle of jessamine and hibiscus, and the sound ended on a peculiar sharp click. He stopped. The next moment, he was on the ground, half on top of Stewart, scraping his palms with the force of the dive as the quiet neighborhood echoed to the explosive report of a single gunshot.

Stewart swore, regaining wit and wind, and heaved upward. They both scrambled for cover, no need to talk, no need to question the reflex shove that had taken Stewart down with Gryf. They made the bushes and crouched there, the derringer in Stewart’s hand as ready as Gryf’s own revolver.

No second shot followed. A pair of hefty Tahitian
musclemen appeared from nowhere, and Stewart laid a hand on Gryf’s arm as his finger tensed on the trigger. Stewart whistled, and the islanders looked around. They both slipped into the thicket that lined the street and were gone before the first startled bystanders poked their heads out of the saloon and the shop next door.

Gryf couldn’t prevent a jerk of surprise when one of the huge Tahitians materialized silently from the foliage right next to him, but he managed to keep himself from firing. Stewart and the islander held a brief, low conversation, and then the Tahitian moved off again. After another minute, Stewart cast Gryf a glance and jerked his head. Gryf put away his gun, dusted himself off, and followed the other man as he stepped brazenly into the street.

“So you see,” Stewart said conversationally, making a show of handing the derringer to Gryf. “It would hardly do for bird hunting, but I imagine it would inflict considerable damage at two paces even in an untrained hand. If I were you, sir, I’d have that lovely new wife of yours carry one at all times.”