The Windflower (6 page)

She heard his soft laughter behind her and wheeled in fear, the broken railing held tight across her bosom.

"Be careful, there might be nails," he said, and in a gentle imperative added, "Hand it to me. I'll fix it for you."

She put it in his hand and then thought, too late,
Merry Patricia Wilding, if you had half an ounce of courage, you'd have whacked him over the head with it.

"You're very amusing, you know," he said conversationally as he was sliding the railing back into place, matching the holes with the nails.

For the first time since she'd left the tavern, she felt an emotion stirring within her that was not terror.

"I wasn't aware that I was being amusing," she said, a terse edge to her voice.

He finished the task and turned to look at her. "I never supposed you were aware of it. But don't you think you were being a little overly conscientious? Under the circumstances."

It was much the kind of thing that Carl might have said, and it hit uncomfortably close to the truth. Before she could stop herself, Merry bit out, "I suppose
you
think nothing of knocking whole villages to the ground."

"Nothing at all," he said cheerfully.

"And terrorizing innocent women!" she said, a tremble in her voice.

"Yes. Innocent ones," he said, running his palm along her flat stomach where the stuffing had lately been, "and not so innocent ones."

She nearly fainted under his touch. "Don't do that," she said, her voice cracking in good earnest.

"Very well," he said, removing his hand. He went back to lean against the porch, resting on the heels of his hands, his long finely muscled legs stretched before him, and gave her an easy smile. "Don't run away from me, little one. For the moment you're much safer here."

Something in her face made him laugh again. "I can see you don't believe it," he continued. "But stay with me nevertheless. If you run off, I'll have to chase you, and I don't think we want to scamper across the beach like a pair of puppies."

She wondered if that meant he wouldn't invest much energy in trying to catch her if she did try to run and if it might not be worth the risk.

Reading her thoughts with alarming precision, he asked good-humoredly, "Do you think you could outrun me?"

It was hardly likely. A man used to safely negotiating the rigging during a high wind would be quick enough to catch her before she could even think of moving, and strong enough to make her very sorry. Involuntarily her gaze dropped to his hard legs, with their smooth, rhythmical blend of healthy muscle.

"Like what you see?" he asked her.

Merry's gaze flew to his, and she blushed and swallowed painfully. In a ludicrously apologetic voice she managed, "I beg your pardon."

"That's quite all right." He reached out his hand and stroked beneath her chin. "Much too conscientious. Would it surprise you to know, my little friend, that having you stare at my legs is the most uplifting thing that's happened to me all day?"

It was not the kind of remark she had remotely conceived a man might make to a woman, but there was something in his matter-of-fact delivery that made her suspect that he had participated in a great many conversations in precisely this style. Wishing she could match the ease of his tone, she said, "It's a pity your days are so dull."

"Oh, yes," he said with a glimmer of amusement, "in between knocking down villages and making people walk the plank, pirates really have very little to do."

Merry wondered briefly how she could ever have been so foolish ; as to have actually
wished
for an adventure.

"I don't know how you can talk about it like that," she said weakly.

He smiled. "I take it you don't usually flirt with villains."

"I don't flirt with
anyone,"
Merry said, getting angry.

"I believe you don't, darling."

For a second his kind, enticing gaze studied her face, and then he looked away to the south, where a tiny flicker began to weave through the rocks. Another star of light appeared, and another, dragon's breath in the night.

"My cohorts," he observed. Offering her a hand, Devon inclined his head toward the dark-blue shadows that crept along the tavern's north side. "Come with me. Cat is so often right about these things,! and I'm sure you don't want them to see you."

"More
pirates?" said Merry hoarsely, watching the lights.

"Six more. Seven, if Reade is sober."

She hesitated, not daring to trust him, her face turned to him with the unconscious appeal of a lost child.

"Come with me," he repeated patiently. "Look at it this way. Better one dreadful pirate than seven. Whatever you're afraid I'll do to you, I can only do it once.
They
can do it seven times. Besides, I'm unarmed. You can frisk me if you want." His arm came around her back, drawing her away from the tavern. Grinning down at her,| he said, "As the matter of fact, 1 wish you would frisk me."

She went with him, her footsteps passive as a dreamer.

It seemed quite unnecessary to tell him. Nevertheless Merry said. "I've never met anyone like you in my life."

"Probably not," he said. "Would you like to sit in this wagon?"

His question was a baseless courtesy, because before she could answer him, before she was able to see a wagon, he had slid his arms under her knees and shoulders and tossed her effortlessly inside to land on a thick pad of dry straw and sawdust.

The wagon had high sides, but it was open to the sky like a tumbril, its air spiced with dish timber. Gray moonlight picked out neat stacks of wooden ware: nest boxes, dumb-bettys, washtubs, sets of plates and bowls made of white ash and wrapped in jute strings.

As he joined her Merry knelt and, bracing the heels of her hands on the high, jagged grain of the wagon's sides, peeked through an oval knothole. The light spots were closer now, on the beach, and in their acid-yellow flare Merry could see a line of heavily armed men, moving swiftly toward the tavern.

She turned to
Devon
, sitting at his ease against a wagon rib. His knees were drawn up and his wrists balanced there, the hands lightly clasped. If he had been sleeping, he could hardly have looked more relaxed. In a desperate voice Merry said, "My—my husband is still inside."

"Which was he, the freckled boy with the puppets? They won't hurt him or his partner."

Whether or not it was the truth, she had no choice but to accept his word. There was nothing now that she could do for Jason and Carl, and nothing she could do for Sally. Sick with anxiety, she watched the pirates closing on the tavern, faces blankly purposeful, some bare chested with muscles rippling, some bedecked in fine clothes that must be loot from some rich man's plundered vessel, the tailored velvet jackets slit at the seams to fit over heavy biceps, the inset lace ruffles stained and lifeless. Hardly a face was unscarred, and one stout, bare-skulled fellow was missing both his ears. They carried enough weapons for three times their number: a shining, clattering inventory of axes, daggers, and pistols hung thick on them like so many pans on a tinker's cart.

Without planning to she began to count the pirates as they went into the tavern, her lips moving like a schoolchild's.

Diverted, he watched her. "How many are there, then?"

Merry turned to his voice, to look with serious, credulous eyes at his stirring countenance. "Reade must be still in his cups."

"Quick, aren't you?" he observed. "I am being honest with you, sweetheart. Your friends are safe. Morgan's after a different man."

"The man who tried to talk to him?" Merry asked through a dry throat. "He—is he also a pirate?"

"Yes. He's been poaching in Morgan's territory. It was tolerable, until he started to fly Morgan's flag. Things like that make Morgan a little irritable. It may enhance his reputation for being everywhere at once, but it adds nothing to his pocketbook."

From inside the tavern came a terrible shriek, cut off abruptly in the middle.

Devon
said calmly, "Morgan doesn't like screaming."

"What are they doing to him?" she whispered.

"They're only frightening him. He'll survive. Tell me, who are you?"

She had spent so much time in the last few months asking herself that question that it shocked her when he said it, as though a live recoil of her own thoughts had snapped back into her mind. He was the only being outside herself who had ever asked her who she was. Everyone else had always assumed. Who was she? It mattered little that she couldn't tell him the truth, because she had no answer that satisfied herself.

"I—am nobody." It had slipped out, before she could stop it.

He accepted it without a blink. "Is that your name or your avocation?"

"It's both," she said and looked away from him.

"I see." He settled back against the side of the wagon. "Have you always been nobody, or did you become nobody when you married Mr. Nobody? Do you like being nobody?"

She was alarmed to find herself beginning to smile and hoped he didn't see. "I only meant I wasn't
anyone."

"Oh, well, you didn't have to tell me that. I knew the minute I saw you that you weren't just anyone. Did your husband send you outside because I was staring at you? 1 suppose he has quite a problem with that sort of thing. Is that why he makes you pin pillows under your skirt?"

Blushing violently, Merry said, "It wasn't a very good idea."

"Oh, no, I think it was a very good idea. Tell him from me, it worked while it lasted. You look cold. Would you like to get into my jacket?"

Rattled, and bewildered by his seeming non sequitur, she blurted out, "Oh, no, if you take off your jacket, you'll have—"

"Nothing on underneath," he finished cheerfully. "I'm afraid that was the idea. Does your husband sleep in a nightshirt?"

Merry accidentally conjured up an image of Jason, her pretend husband, in a nightshirt, the white linen flapping around his knees like a scarecrow. How in the world did people manage in marriage?

"Well, of course," she answered, too innocent to catch his drift. "What else would he sleep in?"

He slanted a look at her and put his hand to her chin, stroking her bottom lip with his thumb. "Are you sure," he said, "that you're married?"

Merry looked into the lazy eyes and wondered what he would do if he knew that her brother and cousin inside the tavern were officers in the American military, there on what amounted to a mission of espionage, and what he would do if he knew that she could herself draw a sketch of him that would make him a marked man, perhaps even bring him to the gallows. Fear lent conviction to her answer.

"Yes, I'm quite sure."

He traced a fingertip over her cheekbone. "Happily?"

Another trap yawned at her feet. It was a dangerous game; she was a pitifully inept player, and a debilitating, strain-induced fatigue had well nigh nibbled away the last of her wits.

"Hap— I don't know. No, I mean yes. Yes, of course I am. Whenever you meet people, do you ask them so many questions?"

"Sometimes," he said softly. "I'm rather an inquisitive person. Are you?"

He was so close, so very close to her, and she could feel his breath like a cool caress on her cheek, between the silky play of his fingers.

"I-I-I don't know" was all she could produce.

He put his other hand to her other cheek, cradling her head. The stars above seemed to her to begin a slow whirl and to brighten and pulsate.

"Are you curious now?" he whispered.

"N-no." It was a half truth.

"Why are you afraid?" he asked in a gentle way. "Does your husband hurt you?"

More than ever Merry was taken beyond her depth, for the things she knew about marital intimacy could have been written in longhand on the head of a thimble. Improvisation and "I don't know"s nearly exhausted. Merry said nothing and sat listening to the sound of her panicked heartbeat, as, gently, he laid his lips on hers, touching her with the sweetly probing eroticism of an experienced lover, and then drew away. He put his fingers to her lips, and under their subtle, clever pressure her lips parted slightly as his mouth returned to hers, stroking the soft openness. One long, slender finger played in the wisps of hair at the side of her head and traced the outline of her ear, pausing to toy with the sensitive earlobe, and then his broad hand lifted her hair from the back of her head, as if to encompass and steady the spinning sensations she was feeling there. Then he turned her head from side to side, dragging his lips across hers.

Merry had never known there could be such a thing as physical desire and was more than unprepared for the pounding sweetness of his kiss. It was a new world, velvet black and golden, every physical sensation she had previously experienced a pale ghost of this new overwhelming thing. When his lips touched her cheek, they left a trail of fever, and her skin seemed to melt under his fingers, as though they were entering her body.

She made a small, involuntary whimper, and he stroked her shoulder reassuringly, dropping his hand to her waist and pressing her close to him, her shivering small body wanning against the satin of his bare skin. She began to sway under the powerful feelings he stirred in her, and he steadied her with his open hands, his arms around her, his palms flat on her back, and then his mouth came down again upon hers, insistent and urgent. He slipped his hands down until they were cupping her buttocks and lifted her to him with a firm pressure, and the cloth that separated her wanting skin from his could not impede the tingling flow of desire that caused her to move instinctively against him, the innocent wish to be crushed seamlessly against his body growing, blotting out all else, until she began to feel frightened by its powerful pull.