Taming the Wilde (14 page)

“Yes, I understand,” I mumbled quickly.

He gave me a piercing
look that only served to fluster me further. Everything about Master Roake was intense, in that respect he and I were matched quite evenly. But in these matters, matters of the heart and body he had a distinct advantage. He was older than I, he was undoubtedly more experienced than I, and he was devastatingly male which meant he had far less at stake than I. If we were to take a mad tumble on the high seas I would lose my virtue and perhaps find myself with child but he would be free to sail back to England unencumbered by my woes. These thoughts prompted me to pull away from him and straighten my dress. “I apologize for my distracted state,” I said, “I will mend my ways this afternoon.”

My polite response seemed to confuse him, but he said nothing more as the women returned from their exercise. During the afternoon session I was deep in thought. I knew my purity was at stake, Master Roake's touch seemed to disable my common sense entirely and when he pressed his body against mine I felt sinful stirrings that demanded action.

By the time afternoon classes drew to a close I had come to a decision. It was this decision that compelled me up to the deck, ostensibly to take a little air and exercise. I walked about the main deck, once, twice, three times before I finally gathered my nerves and made a mad dash up to the ship's wheel. Nobody stopped me; perhaps they thought I was taking a brisk run for the good of my health. At any rate I went directly up to Captain Morrow entirely unimpeded, made a jump and seized the captain's hat by the brim. I tugged it away from him and a great shout went up as his greatest secret was revealed – a baldpate.

I dashed away from the
wheelhouse and made for the rigging. Clasping the hat between my teeth I clambered up the ropes, finding the going very difficult indeed. There was a great deal of commotion all about the place and Morrow was roaring with anger, but I had committed to my plan and I had to see it through.

I could hear shouting, but the wind carried much of the sound away before I could properly catch the gist of the threats. Morrow shouted up at me several more times before he stalked away. He returned quite promptly sporting a fresh hat and with Master Roake in tow. I was glad that I was high enough not to be able to make out the expression on Roake's face, for I was certain it would have frightened me terribly and I had quite enough to frighten me already. Things were not precisely pleasant up there in the rigging. Every movement of the ship was
multiplied many-fold and I found myself clinging to the ropes with all my strength as I was flung back and forth with the motion of the waves.

“Come down at once!” A loud hailer had been employed, allowing me the full benefit of the captain's ire.

I considered my sins to have been great enough to probably warrant sufficient punishment and I had no desire to attempt to live in the rigging so I did as he said, carefully working my way down the ropes. It took a great deal longer to descend than it had to ascend and with Morrow and Roake glaring up at the underside of my person, matters became more hair raising the closer I got to deck. When I drew within arm's reach, Roake plucked me from the rigging and set me down before the captain. 

“Two weeks in the brig!” Morrow declared fiercely. “And count yourself fortunate I don't have you horse whipped.”

“Yes sir, thank you sir,” I said, handing him his hat with a humble expression. He snatched it from my hand and glowered at me quite fiercely. “I think you must have lost your mind, my girl,” he said in a high temper. “To provoke me so blatantly.”

“It is almost as if she wishes to be thrown into the brig,” Roake growled as he stalked around to confront me.

Both their eyes were now turned upon me and I quite quailed beneath those hard stares. Roake had fathomed my plan in an instant, and Morrow was cottoning on in his own way. “But why would you want to go to the brig, Miss Wilde?”

“Maidenly panic,” Roake snorted. “The foolish, childish machinations of a woman afraid of her own passion.”

Blood rushed in my ears as I sank into the deepest depths of humiliation. Laughter rose round me as Morrow burst into hearty peals, along with several of the guards. “Would you have yourself locked away like a female dog in heat?” He slapped his thigh as he bent almost double with merriment at my expense.

Outrage finally overcame humiliation as I drew myself up to my full height. “You will not speak to me in such foul terms. Take me to the brig and leave me be!”

Morrow straightened and wiped a tear of amusement from his eye. “Oh no Miss Wilde. I will not send you to the brig. Master Roake is the master of discipline on this ship and you will answer to him.”

Morrow was throwing me to the wolves, no, to the wolf. A wolf I knew would surely consume me as he stood there, licking his chops with anticipation. I had become little more than a weak jest, my escapades serving no purpose other than to draw humiliating attention to myself. As Roake beckoned I could do little other than meekly follow him back to his cabin, my head bowed, my heart in my throat.

In mere moments we were alone. The door was closed and he stood so near to me I could almost taste him on my lips. “You made yourself a spectacle with your antics,” he censured me with a low growl. “Do you truly think so little of me, Miss Wilde? Do you think so little of yourself?”

I was in tears as I tried to make a reply, to explain that I did not understand the feelings that were consuming me, that I felt my doom when I looked into his eyes and that every bit of yearning I felt seemed to me to be a seed of future discontent.

“Please do not cry, Jane,” he said more softly. “There will be plenty of reasons to shed tears ahead, do not spill them for love.”

“Love? Is this what you call love?”

“If it is a pain that makes you mad with desire, that is love.” Roake brushed away some of my tears with the pad of his thumb. “But you will have to answer for your actions, Miss Wilde, we can not have love sick girls dangling from the mast.”

“Master Roake, I am at your mercy,” I said. “Please do not torture me with punishments, I am sorry enough already. Just leave me be, we have but a few short weeks left on this voyage and then you and I will be rid of one another.”

“A young lady who steals the captain's hat and climbs the rigging will surely be punished for it,” he said, dashing my hopes. “But I will allow you to keep a layer of modesty and I will give you the choice of how your punishment is to be administered. You may go across the desk, or you may place yourself over my lap.”

“Please,” I begged, “please do not punish me.”

“And let you think that emotion is an excuse for outrageous behavior? Oh dear me no,” he said, dashing my hopes for clemency. “Come and lay across my lap and we will dispense with the necessities.”

He sat down on his bed and beckoned me over. I no longer had the heart to fight him but I drew in a deep sobbing breath as I laid myself over his hard thighs. I could feel my downfall close at hand as the heat from his body once more sank into mine. As he prepared to thrash me he left my petti-skirt down, but I felt his hand across my cheeks as hard and hot as if he had been touching bare flesh. The intimacy of being pressed against his hard lap was a distraction from the start. Caught between hand and thigh I squirmed as powerlessly as a lamb caught in a predator's jaws.

“Now Miss Wilde, you must learn to talk about your problems instead of undertaking ridiculous escapades in order to avoid them.” With that said he clapped his hand down against my buttocks, sending a heavy solid shock jolting through my nether regions. I felt a spark in my core, a bolt of excitement. He placed several more hard slaps low and slow across the base of my cheeks. I knew it was supposed to hurt, to chastise me with pain but I felt little more than a deep heat and tingle as I pressed my hips against the ridge of his thigh and bit my lip so as not to make any untoward sounds.

As the regularity of the blows increased I found cause for my hips to wriggle and leap, but it was not due to any great pain although he was not being gentle with me. Somehow, through a magic of the flesh, the impact of the blow was transformed from pain to pleasure.

A flurry of slaps soon followed and incredibly I found myself shooting toward a peak of pure joy. My hips rode over his thigh as I began to cry out, hoping he thought it was an expression of contrition. Only when he paused in the spanking and ran his palm over my rump did it become apparent that my state of arousal was not going unnoticed. His fingers skimmed between the cleft of my cheeks and pressed the fabric of my undergarments against my soft, sensitive spot.

I gasped aloud, unable to contain my expression of pleasure as he held them there for a moment, circling them ever so slightly, ever so gently. I had never been touched by another in that
place; I was surprised at how artful his fingers were, how sympathetic their touch. I arched my rump up high and he slipped his fingers slightly lower, pressing over my hard bud. Again I gasped aloud and then his hand was gone from my secret places and the spanking resumed, hard and fast with enough force to make me feel a hot tingling ache spreading through my flesh.

“Are you learning your lesson, you wicked little wench?” His low rumbled question excited me all the
more; there was a certain throaty gravel to his voice that told me he understood my arousal. It did not stop him from plying his palm until I yelped with pain however and by the time he released me my cheeks were hot and aching sore.

He helped me to stand, a difficult act for I had not reached that peak of pleasure and my loins still pulsed with the need for release. Yes my flesh ached, but it was not the pain that caused me to squirm before him. I pressed my thighs together in a maidenly attempt to find my own subtle release, but it was not enough.

Pretending not to know the cause of my flushed and flustered state, Master Roake fixed me with a look that was worldly and wise. “You need not fear your passions and desires Miss Wilde, they are natural. I promise I will not take undue advantage. Your virtue is safe with me.”

Given the way he had touched me, the way he had quite blatantly pleasured me, I doubted that. “My virtue is already in question,” I said, shamefaced. “I have behaved like a slattern.”

“You have behaved like an innocent in the arms of a man,” Roake corrected me gently. “You have fought your nature long enough, Miss Wilde. You need not pretend you do not feel the call of desire. I can see it in every look you give me, your eyes flash with need.”

“I wish to save myself for my husband,” I insisted. “So please, if you have any mercy at all, send me to the brig and do not let me out until we make land.”

Roake looked at me with sympathy. “You are the bravest woman I have ever known, masterful with a blade, a strong enough swimmer to almost escape this very ship and a rescuer of those in delicate conditions – and yet you are terrified of your own femininity.”

“I am terrified,” I agreed. “But not of my femininity.”

“Of what then?”

I looked up at him under my eyelashes. He was so handsome, so devilishly sure of himself and when I looked into his dark eyes I saw my deepest desires reflected in their gaze. This man, who was in possession of courtly curling hair and made with the finely formed structure of a gentleman, he was more dangerous than all the rough and ready
cutthroats in London.

“I am terrified of you, Master Roake,” I said, giving voice to the fear I had felt from the moment I first laid eyes on him. “You are a special kind of devil sent to torment me and you will surely be my undoing.”

“Do not fear me, Miss Wilde,” he replied, running his fingers through my hair with a light touch that my scalp shivered. “Fear only what will happen if you do not obey me.”

“I will never obey you, Master Roake,” I replied, finding refuge in defiance. “Obedience is the domain of the slave and I will never be your slave.”

“I think I can find ways to make you obedient,” he purred, letting his fingers curl in my hair. “And I think you know it too.” He drew me close with that rough grip and claimed me in searing kiss that chased away all notion of rebellion and left me soft and compliant in his arms.

My mind was truly addled as I left Master Roake’s cabin, but the master of discipline was not the only man I had cause to worry about. I almost ran directly into Captain Morrow in my haste to escape Roake’s advances.

“You do not look terribly contrite,” Morrow said, catching me by the shoulders as I emerged from the cabin. It seemed that he had been waiting outside, perhaps with a mind to hearing my cries as Roake punished me. From the expression on his face I could see that the sounds he had heard had not satisfied his punitive urges.

I was still flushed with the devilish arousal Roake had stirred in me and laying eyes on Morrow’s handsome person did not help it at all. I was learning that unsated lust was dangerous, for it cast about like an angry serpent looking for something to sink its fangs into. Captain Morrow was tall, broad, vital and his eyes flashed with the passion of the ocean as he glared down at me. “Has he been soft with you?”

“Roake is a hard man, are you?” My reply was arch, perhaps even inappropriate. It certainly did not please the captain, for his eyes narrowed to blue flint and his jaw tightened as he made his response through nigh clenched teeth.

“You will discover just how hard I can be if you do not adjust your attitude, Miss Wilde, you have had the run of this ship and it is going to your head.”

“Is something the matter?” Roake emerged from his cabin, the rumble of his voice rolling over me from behind as I found myself trapped between two fine specimens of manhood.

“This girl has not been punished.” Morrow’s initial shot was fired above my head.

“I have administered correction.” Roake retaliated sharply.

“I’m certain you have administered something, but it was surely not correction.” Morrow glowered at the pair of us. I did not help matters by letting him see the little smirk that rose to my lips entirely unbidden. I would have made a far more concerted effort to hide my amusement if I had foreseen the consequences. As he looked at me, I saw the ire fade from his eyes and a gleam of anticipation replace it. “Let us see if you smile so broadly in the brig, Miss Wilde.”

The smile dropped off my face and I felt myself grow pale. “Please Master Morrow, do not send me down there again.”

He drew himself up to his full height as he cast sentence on me. “Two weeks, Miss Wilde.”

“Two weeks!” I had barely managed to sustain my senses for three days; two weeks in the brig seemed an unbearable punishment.

“Ample time for you to consider your behavior I should think.” There was no mercy in his gaze.

I turned to Roake to see if he might save me, but Roake’s expression had drawn closed and Morrow’s growl drew my attention back. “Do not look to him, Miss Wilde, my authority supersedes his.”

“Please Captain Morrow, is there not some other punishment?” I pleaded with him quickly. I would have submitted to almost any other punitive action in that moment, even if it meant being bared and thrashed before his eyes.

“Not for you, wicked little witch,” Morrow said, his eyes twinkling with renewed good humor. “ I can only hope this will teach the pair of you something about the importance of maintaining good discipline.” His eyes flicked to Roake and I saw that the length of my imprisonment was intended to be as much of a punishment for Master Roake as for me.

“Come along, Miss Wilde.” Morrow took me by the upper arm and drew me down below decks, a personal escort that drew more than one curious look as we descended to the brig.

“Please, Master Morrow, I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I truly am,” I said, trying to apologize as we descended into the stale environment. My proud nature usually made it impossible for me to beg for anything like clemency, but I was most desperate not to be incarcerated in that dark hole for so very long.

“I am also sorry, Miss Wilde, I am sorry that Master Roake has not been able to rein your behavior in. He is usually very effective, but his affection for you makes good discipline almost impossible.” There was some compassion in Morrow’s reply, but no leniency.

“If you show me mercy, I promise I will behave myself until we make land,” I said, turning to him as we stood before the iron cage in the brig. “I will not put so much as a toe wrong.”

Morrow shook his head and held the iron cage door open. “Step in, Miss Wilde.”

I gave him one last pleading look, then did as he bade me, putting myself into the cage. He closed the door behind me and made the bolt fast. “Let this be the last time I have cause to discipline you, Miss Wilde,” he said with a glance of warning.

I sank into the shadows, seeing no point in further conversation. Morrow gave me one last long look, then turned and left me in the depths of the brig with the rats and the fetid smells and the bucket I had hoped I would never lay eyes on again. I cursed him silently as I watched his shined shoes ascend the stairs, hating him with the frustrated passion that only a prisoner can have for her jailer.

I languished in the brig for seven long days, hoping Morrow would relent, hoping Roake would come and brighten my imprisonment, but I saw nobody besides a guard. It was a deeply miserable place, but it did give me the opportunity to be alone with my thoughts absent of the man that stirred them into senselessness. Unfortunately those thoughts, once consumed with the desire for independence, had become wistful. Every time the hatch creaked I fancied it was Master Roake coming for me. I day-dreamed all sorts of daring scenarios, including Roake coming to me in the night, stripping me where I stood and having his wicked way with me against the bulkhead. They were shameful, lustful fantasies to be sure, but in the depths of solitude I saw no reason not to let them free. There was nobody to judge me in those dank shadows, save skittering rodents who cared nothing for propriety.

On the seventh evening it happened. The hatch creaked open and instead of the guard’s heavy step, a more refined gait made its way toward me. My heart leapt with hope, excitement and other emotions not befitting an unmarried woman. It was Roake, and he had come for me. I welled with excitement and clutched at the bars, feasting my hungry eyes on his fine form as he drew closer.

Roake stopped before my cage with a serious expression on his face and I thought that perhaps he was not pleased to see me. My heart sank with the idea that his affection for me had withered during the course of our separation. I did not even begin to suspect the gravity of the news he bore.

“I am going to release you now, Jane,” he said, unlocking the door. I stepped out and he took me by the shoulders, looking down into my face most solemnly. “You must try to keep your composure when I tell you what I must tell you,” he said. “It is sad news, but your liberty is at stake. Morrow has consented to your early release, but it is very much in peril.”

My joy had turned to fear. I had often seen him serious, but his visage was so devoid of happiness that I knew something terrible must have happened. “You are frightening me, Master Roake. What is it?”

“Lizzy began to bear her child two days ago,” he said. “But she passed this afternoon before she was able to give the child life. Both she and the babe are with the Lord.”

I sank down in a faint, unable to believe him. If not for his strong hands I would have ended up in a pile at the very bottom of the ship, but he bore me up from the floor and held me to his chest as I sobbed with rage and disbelief. Lizzy could not possibly be dead. There was none so vital as she, none so bold or so brave. “I want to see her,” I said. I had to see her, for the terrible news itself was not enough to convince me of the truth.

Roake took me up to the prison deck where Lizzy’s body was lying off to the side, already wrapped in white sheets. Only her face remained exposed, her broad, sweet, generous face now completely devoid of the spark of life. I crouched down beside her, reached out and touched her cheek. She was cold in a way no living person ever could be. It was then that I fully believed what I had been told and then that the weight that had been hanging in my chest since Roake uttered the terrible news came down to crush my heart. “Lizzy,” I wailed, throwing my arms about her stiff form. “I am so sorry my dear Lizzy.”

“Come away Jane,” one of the women bade me gently. I could see that the others had been keeping vigil about her and I was glad for that. I was not the only one who had loved Lizzy, in spite of the misgivings about her pregnancy and the judgment some of our number had heaped on her head, not a soul wanted her to go to the grave.

Though they implored me to let them finish the task of preparing her for burial I refused to go away from her, the fact that she had died without me weighed heavily. I should have been with her in her final hours, I should have been able to whisper goodbye to her before she departed the mortal realm. Instead all I had was her cold body. “I am so sorry Lizzy,” I whispered as I wept over her, my tears falling on her cheeks. “Please forgive me and know how well I loved you.”

“She knew that well enough,” Mary Brawley said, coming to my side and peeling my fingers slowly off Lizzy’s body.

I turned and snapped at the woman most viciously, caring not for her rough nature or her superior strength. “Leave me be!”

“Now Jane, Lizzy is gone, we have to commit her body to the earth, you know that.” Mary said, finding the patience not to drag me away from the remains of my friend.

“Just a little longer,” I begged. “Just a few more minutes.”

“You have been here an hour already and we are losing light,” Roake explained from a distance. He had waited patiently outside the circle of women, allowing us our grief.

An hour? It seemed impossible. It seemed as though I had been by Lizzy’s side for only a few minutes. But what was one hour when eternity had claimed my dear friend? What was another minute, another second? Time itself had taken her and left us with nothing but her husk. I relinquished my grip on her body and pressed my lips to her cold cheek one last time, tasting my own tears as I did.

I could not bear to see her face covered, nor watch as several strong guards lifted her body up to the main deck for burial, but we were all present for the dusk funeral. Morrow presided over the funeral, his hat black to match his coat. There was an air of solemnity that pervaded not just the ship but also the sea. The day was gray and overcast and a low fog was rolling in from the beyond. The waters seemed to weep with us as we paid our final respects to dear Lizzy with prayers and trite hymns that did not go an inch towards expressing the sorrow we felt.

I sobbed as her body was lowered into the ocean waves and Roake pressed me to his chest and made me avert my gaze as the waters churned with the frenzy of predatory beasts. In a final act of earthly cruelty, Lizzy would not sink to a quiet
grave; she would be consumed by the animals that had trailed our vessel for miles. It was a brutal funeral following a brutal death and a brutal life. There was no fairness in it, no grace, no redemption. I howled as my heart broke, my cries muffled against the velvet of Roake’s coat.

He must have carried me
away; I had no memory of what happened over the next hours. When I came to my senses I was cradled in his arms, my face wet with tears. He was murmuring words of comfort but they rang hollow. What possible comfort could there be in words when my dearest friend no longer walked the world as I did?

“Lizzy, where are you?” I sobbed.

“She and her babe are with the Lord,” Roake explained the facts of life and death to me as patiently as he would have done to a child, but I found my belief wavering.

“The Lord never cared much for her whilst she lived, why should he care now?”

Roake let my blasphemy pass by without so much as a murmur of censure. “We cannot understand all that happens in his sight. We can only trust that those who go to him find his love. A love that is not possible in the world of flesh and blood.” He gently eased me from his lap and let me curl up on his bed where I promptly soaked his coverlet with fresh tears. My grief was not only for Lizzy, though I felt her loss most keenly. It was for all those I had lost, for the good and the brave, for all those who had brightened my life and been taken too soon.

“I think God hates me. I think he does this to torture me.”

Roake stroked my hair back from my face but made no reply as I embarked on a vicious tirade against the supernatural forces that seemed intent on leaving me bereft and alone. “She did not deserve to die, she was a good strong woman, she should have been able to bear many children,” I sniffed against his pillow. His scent was strong there and I inhaled it deeply even as my stomach twisted with a fresh fear - if I came to like him, to rely upon him, then he would surely die as all others did. “You should stay far from me, Master Roake, I am as the angel of death.”

He chuckled, a light sound in the darkness. “You are no such thing, Miss Wilde. You are the victim of misfortune, as are we all to some extent. Lizzy was cut down in her prime to be sure, but the birthing of a child is always fraught with danger.”

“I shall never be with child,” I declared, curling my hand into a fist. “To die as she did, that will not be my fate.”

“Your fate will probably be falling off the rigging or running yourself through with your own blade.”

I looked up furiously to see him looking down at me with a gentle smile. “How dare you laugh at my expense at a time like this!”

“I do not mean to belittle your grief my dear, but all things must be regarded in proportion. Any one of us could die at any time, from any cause, be it a cold or an accident or some unknown sickness that creeps up in the night to steal breath by morning. It is not up to us to decide the hour of our passing, or its means. We can but live our lives as fully as possible, take pleasure where it can be found, embrace love as it presents itself and leave the matter of death to the Lord.”