Mariah's Prize (13 page)

Instead he unbuckled her shoes, sliding them carefully off her feet so as not to wake her. He set the shoes on the deck, heels neatly together, and pulled the coverlet over her. She murmured in her sleep and pushed her face into the pillows with a drowsy sigh.

Then he slung the sailor’s hammock from the beams across from her and climbed into it to wait for dawn. But not, he knew, for sleep.

“He won’t speak to me, Ethan. Not, of course, that I wish him to,” said Mariah a week later as Ethan cleared away the dishes from her breakfast. After the first days of bickering with Ethan over who should carry the tray from the galley, and whether he judged her too frail to do even that much for herself, Mariah had at last given in and let him fuss over her as he wished. At least then she had one person who spoke to her on board. “You can just put aside your little matchmaking schemes right now. Captain Sparhawk spends as little time in my company as he can, and then he won’t look at me squarely or say more than five words, and that only if he must.”

“Ah, miss, the cap’n don’t hate ye like that,” scoffed Ethan.

“He be in one o’ his moods, that’s the truth. Once we takes us a prize or two, he’ll come round.”

Mariah wasn’t sure if she wished him to come round or not, and she sighed deeply, stroking her fingers along the barb of her pen. She sat at the table with her little pocketbook of notes and paper before her, writing—or trying to write—a letter to her mother. Any prizes the Revenge took would be sent to Newport to be condemned by the court there, and dutifully Mariah planned to have at least one letter to send along home. Her mother would expect it. But the sea was so rough this morning that while Mariah held the ink pot steady on the tabletop, the ink inside slopped out across her fingers with each roll of the sloop. Finally she gave up, corking the pot and wiping the worst of the ink from her hand with a napkin.

“I can’t help it if he thinks I forced myself on the sloop and into his business. I did, but I didn’t have much choice myself. My sister” “Aye, miss, ye don’t have to be telling me that tale again, any more than you should be worryin’ about what the cap’n thinks.” Ethan cocked the lid of the pewter coffeepot to see if Mariah needed more from the galley. “Miss Jenny be your sister, an’ that be that. The cap’n, now, he’d run clear to China if one of his sisters needed rescuing, an’ clear to the moon if his mama asked. Ye be doing exactly what he’d be doing his self So stop your frettin’, mind?”

Mariah shook her head. She couldn’t imagine Gabriel going clear to China for anyone, especially not at his mother’s request. If any man had cut his leading strings, she was certain it would be Gabriel Sparhawk. Strange how he’d never mentioned her. She’d assumed his mother was dead.

“You’re probably the only man on board who thinks so.”

“There’s plenty o’ them that do, miss. Only cap’n’s orders be that no men are to speak to you, th’ way he always wants it.”

Mariah’s brows rose with surprise.

“You mean he’s brought other women with him before me?”

Ethan frowned, realizing too late that he’d said too much, and concentrated on buffing an invisible smudge from the side of the coffeepot.

“The cap’n does like his ladies,” he admitted.

“But the others weren’t nothing like you. They be fancy, gaudy bits, married, most o’ them, bent on givin’ their poor husbands an extra, set o’ horns. But ye be a good girl, a cap’n’s daughter yerself, an’ not one out to make mischief on a feather bed. Now to my mind th’ cap’n’s dishonored ye some, talkin’ bold like he does, but I told them ‘tween decks that he’s been sleepin’ apart, and I told ‘em about that hammock, an’ set things right for ye.”

“Oh, Ethan, you didn’t” — “Nay, hear me out, miss! I felt bad about takin’ ye to that wicked old mill that night, knowin’ what the cap’n was expectin’, but I knew from his temper next mom that he hadn’t gotten what he wanted. Right ye was, miss, to cross him like that! But like I said, I’ve done my best to set things ISJ right for ye there, miss. Them ‘tween decks listen to me in such concerns. So ye don’t fret about that either, miss, hear me?”

“I hear you, Ethan. And I thank you, more than you’ll ever know.” She smiled so warmly at him that he blushed all the way to the bald circle on the top of his head. He lifted the tray with a clatter of crockery, glancing over Ma-riah’s shoulder at the papers spread on the table.

“What ye be about there, miss?” he asked, squinting at the papers.

“I

thought ye was done all that before we sailed. “

“I was. These are others of my own, letters and such.” She shuffled them together in a neater pile, self-consciously covering the gambling voucher of her father’s that lay on top. She’d brought it on a whim, a whim that she’d rather Ethan didn’t share with Gabriel.

“Nothing of importance.”

Ethan shrugged.

“I couldn’t tell ye if it be important or not, seeing as how I went t’sea before I learned my letters. I can make my mark alongside my name, an’ that’s all I need to know.”

Mariah relaxed, smoothing the water-wrinkled sheet with her fingers. ‘ “I have difficulty with this one myself. Half of it’s in French, and it might as well be Greek for all I can make it out.”

“The cap’n can read an’ speak their lingo clear as day,” said Ethan proudly. ‘“Twill be powerfully entertaining to see how he fights ‘em.

Won’t be like the Spanish, though. Bead-telling bunch o’ superstitious Papists, Spaniards. Them be scared senseless by th’ cap’n on account o’ his size, him comin’ after them with his sword swingin’ an’ those green cat’s eyes o’ his all afire. It were a pleasure to see, miss!

But with the French—eh, things will be different wit’ the French this time. “

“This time?” She’d learned soon enough when Ethan wasn’t telling her everything he knew.

“We haven’t been at war with France for years and years, and Gab—I mean, Captain Sparhawk’s not that much older than

I.

“

Ethan scowled at the tray, working his tongue behind his lip around the few teeth he had left in his mouth.

“Years don’t always tell the story of a man, lass, nor do kings make all the wars. Our cap’n, now, he’s seen things that made him older than the lot of us stowed together. That’s why I know he’ll come round about you. You can make him forget what needs forgettin’. An’ that’s all I be sayin’ on that.”

That might be that for Ethan, thought Mariah, but his riddles about years and French wars certainly weren’t the end of it as far as she was concerned. She remembered the two Frenchmen Gabriel had killed in Newport, all his allusions to her being safe once he was gone, then the way he’d avoided telling her how he’d come by the awful scar, and now this from Ethan. She didn’t like secrets or mysteries, especially ones that somehow seemed to involve her. They were trying to protect her, and she didn’t like that, either. No matter what Gabriel wanted to believe, she wasn’t a child. There wasn’t one whit of childishness in how she felt when he kissed her, and she’d wager he felt the same.

So why didn’t anyone trust her with the truth?

She was still trying to sort it out that night as she lay alone in the middle of’ the oversize bunk. She listened to the wind thrumming in the standing rigging, the rush of the waves along the sloop’s sides, the constant creaks and groans of the timbers, all sounds she’d become so accustomed to that she nearly stopped hearing them. She counted the bells—four—that marked the end of one watch and the beginning of the next. She sighed and turned over, looking across at the empty place where Gabriel’s hammock usually hung.

Though he never spoke to her at night, coming into the cabin only when he was certain she would be sleeping, and leaving before dawn, she always sensed his presence and silently lay awake in the dark, staring at the shadow of his body in the hammock and unconsciously pacing her breathing to match his until she, too, would finally sleep. On the nights when the loneliness became too much, when she would have given the world in exchange for a kind word from him, she muffled her weeping with her fist and let her tears trickle unheeded into the pillow.

She pushed herself upright in the bunk and tossed back the coverlet.

Ethan said they were off the Carolinas, and tonight the wind smelled of the land. Too hot by half for sleeping, Mariah decided as she quickly dressed without bothering with petticoats or stays, determined to go up on deck for air. And to see that all was right with Gabriel-she wouldn’t lie to herself. Just a few minutes to reassure herself that only the sloop’s sailing had kept him away from the cabin and that no harm had come his way.

He stood alone as far forward on the starboard side as he could without climbing out onto the bowsprit, in his shirtsleeves with his waistcoat unbuttoned and flapping in the wind. The Revenge sliced through the black waves, her deck canting sharply beneath the force of the wind stretching the ghostly pale canvas overhead. Carefully Mariah made her way forward, moving from one handhold to another. The slanting deck was slippery with spray, and on such a dark night she wasn’t certain she’d be rescued if she fell overboard.

To her surprise, Gabriel turned as if expecting her, grinning wildly as he shook his hair from his face. He held his hand out to her, the way he had so many times before in

Newport, and tentatively, unsure of what would follow, Mariah took it.

His fingers curled around her wrist and he drew her in to stand before him, one arm around her waist to hold her steady.

He told himself he shouldn’t touch her again, and again he paid no heed to his own warnings. Already having her here beside him felt right, just as all the days and nights he’d kept apart from her had felt so miserably wrong. Tonight he had reason enough to forget the vows he’d made about her. He had to share this moment with someone, and he thanked whatever god of sleeplessness had sent him Mariah.

“Look, poppet, there,” he said into her ear, holding his brass spyglass steady for her. How had he forgotten how neatly she fit beneath his arm, against his chest? “Do you see the tiny silver triangles, there on the horizon? Will Alien up top should’ve seen ‘em first, and he’ll be powerfully sorry he didn’t, and not just because I mean to stop his rum for a fortnight for nodding off on watch. Those little bits of silver mean gold for you, Mariah, you and me and all the rest of us, for they’re French sails above a French ship.”

“A French ship!” repeated Mariah, his excitement contagious. No wonder they were charging onward as if the devil himself snapped at their heels!

“Aye, a French ship,” he said, his breath hot in her ear.

“And I mean to take her by dawn.”

She didn’t miss the second meaning to his words, and she found she didn’t care. As the sloop raced ahead, the wind and spray whipped into her face, molding her gown against her body as Gabriel’s arm pulled her closer to his chest. The night sky and the sea were inseparable, as inseparable as she felt standing here with Gabriel. She realized she was grinning, too, and she laughed with her head back, the exhilaration beyond words, as she dug her fingers into his sleeve. She had never felt more intensely alive.

Beneath his hand he felt how her heart pounded, not with fear but with the same wild spirit that surged through him. God, he’d missed her. He lowered the glass and kissed her swiftly, roughly, his teeth nipping at her lower lip as she hungrily opened her mouth to his, her taste mingled with the salt from the spray.

Mariah tried to tell herself that what she felt was no more than the excitement of the chase. But no chase could bring that twisting, tightening sensation so low in her body, that curious heat that made her long shamelessly to twine herself around Gabriel. Only Gabriel made her feel like this.

“Stay with me, Mariah,” he ordered, his breathing harsh.

“Swear you’ll stay with me!”

Mariah stared at him, wild-eyed. He wanted her to stay with him. Not go away or be left behind. He wanted her with him. Swear you “II stay with me!

Before she could answer, the excited cry finally came from the lookout above them. The deck was suddenly filled with men, the whole crew willingly roused from their sleep for the first sight of their good fortune, the fortune that came with Gabriel Sparhawk as their master.

The Revenge was gaining fast, her speed no match for the overburdened merchant brig that now showed clearly before them. The men shouted and pointed and pounded each other on the back with eager pleasure as they parted a path for Gabriel, pulling Mariah along with him, to reach the quarterdeck.

There Mariah’s skirts whipped in the wind around her and her hair streamed from her face as she stood beside Gabriel, his arm possessively around her waist. She saw the wild anticipation in the faces of the men turned up to them, and she knew it must mirror her

own. Spontaneously some 3

one began to cheer Gabriel, and the roar was soon picked up by the others.

“Nay, lads, not so soon,” cautioned Gabriel, though his grin was as eager as theirs.

“Wait until she’s under King George’s flag and headed to Newport. By breakfast, say, when we’ve put this little business behind us. Then you can cheer yourself hoarse as you count the gold that will drop into your pockets like rain!”

The cheering began again, and Gabriel let himself savor it, knowing too well how fleeting such moments could be. This was the best part of any chase, when every man was eager for glory, when every battle promised to be an easy one, every prize full of gold, when there were yet no wounded to tend or dead to mourn. And with him to share it all was Mariah, his eager, fierce little poppet. He tightened his arm around her waist, relishing how soft and pliant she was against him.

She was as intoxicated with the chase as he was, her face flushed from the wind and excitement, her eyes dancing. Every other woman he’d known would have been shrieking with anxiety, begging to go below to shiver with fear. Not Mariah, not his brave poppet.

He was sorely tempted to carry her below now, before they captured the other ship, and put an end to all their foolish spitting and scraping and toss her on the bunk and give her what they both craved. Soon, he promised himself, very soon, when he made this capture, he’d take himself another prize. For now he’d content himself by keeping her with him as long as He dared before it became too dangerous.