Face to Face (The Deverell Series Book 2) (20 page)

Over his cards, Shay studied her. Merry was sitting against the pillows in Morgan’s bed, blankets pushed down, and clad only in a man’s shirt with the hem pushed up to let the breeze cool her bare legs. The Captain had asked him to join the lass here and they could have the bloody door closed, no less.

The man was worried about the lass. Couldn’t get her topside. Worried enough to be letting him frolic on his bed, after having tossed his arse across the deck for touching her backside. On his bed, door closed, alone with a vision that would have tempted Saint Paddy. The man made no sense, at all. Shay wouldn’t trust even St. Paddy alone with the lass if the lass was his.

Shay played another card. Merry trumped him. “Merry lass, why don’t ye come topside with me today and see if the days are warmer yourself?”

Merry shook her head. She tossed down another card. “Morgan hates it when I stay in the cabin, wants me topside, getting color in my cheeks and laughing, so I stay in cabin because he hates it.”

It sounded idiotic, even to her. She didn’t care. She was desperate to go home and she would irritate the man to death if he wouldn’t return her.

“I want to go home and he won’t let me. I won’t make it pleasant for him to keep me. I will irritate him until he has had enough of me and lets me go. Nothing I say to him has any affect. Perhaps I will wear him down with irritation.”

Shay frowned, half at the lass and half in trying to figure which of his last three cards to play. “You’re a fool, Merry. He’s a good mon. Treats ye well.” He tossed down a diamond and lost the round. “Aint goin’ to happen’, Merry lass, try’n to force his hand to send ye home. If have’n me in his bed playing cards with ye every day doesn’t irritate the mon, nothin’ is going to. Ask me himself, he did, with all them smooth manner to come down and put a smile on yer face. A proud mon, to lower himself to do that for ye, is a good mon.”

Varian was always kind. It was part of the trap. Part of what made what was wrong feel so wonderful and such a temptation. Lucifer was clever and hard to do battle against.

Merry tossed down a card and snapped, “Morgan is just frustrated he’s not getting his way. He doesn’t know what to do about me. That’s why you’re here.”

The Irishman arched a brow in a wickedly suggestive way. “Ah, mon didn’t lower himself at all. Wants ye smilin’ so you’ll start smilin’ in the sheets again. Yer right, Merry lass, the mon is ruthless to send me fion figure down here to stir yer passion. Be want’n it again so badly, himself be let’n me climb in the sheets with ye instead of himself.”

Merry slapped his hand for that. It was mortifying how little privacy a woman could maintain on a ship of men. It was more than half the reason why she wouldn’t go topside. It had taken nearly two weeks to face Shay. She’d had no choice about Indy. The boy was always here, a fixture in the cabin, a fixture in her world now.

They were such a curious pair, the lass and the Captain, and Shay couldn’t help asking, “The mon makes no sense. Ye sleep in these sheets beside him, do ye, and the mon really leaves ye alone if ye not be want’n it, Merry lass?”

She felt the color deepened on her face, but she nodded.

Shay tossed down his last card. “Aye, can be see’n yer logic now. Would want away from the mon meself. Grants you anything ye want, leaves ye alone when ye not be wanting it, and send ye a fion figure from Ireland to amuse yerself with. The mon should be shot. Slovenly bastard.”

Merry tossed a card, took the game, took his coin, and made a face at Shay.
Slovenly bastard.
It was some private joke the boy carried. It made him laugh each time he said it.

In a few moments, there was firm thread outside and Merry muttered to Shay, “Slovenly bastard returns,” before the door came open. She leaned forward, gathering up the cards, her hair tumbling in an ebony spill that hid the suddenly quick rise and fall of her breasts.

Shay became an instant mass of tense facial tissue and tightening muscles. He was always quick to move to the chair before Morgan returned. He’d forgotten himself, yet again. He was lying on the man’s bed with his woman clad only in a shirt no less. The man be throwing him through the window this time.

Merry stopped Shay’s movement with a hand placed on his wrist. “I don’t want you to leave. I want to play another game.”

Shay froze. Getting caught on the bed was bad enough, but Merry’s hand would get him killed. In shattering suddenness, he murmured, “I don’t have any more bleed’n money, Merry lass.”

The Captain’s black eyes settled on the scene without a flicker. Shay watched nervously as Morgan went to Merry, dropped a light kiss on the top her head and then settled at his desk.
Not a word from the mon. The mon was a mystery since the lass. Bloody Christ. Maybe he be waiting to kill me until later, when the lass won’t be see’n it.

“Am I poor yet, Little One?” Varian asked.

She let her eyes dart to him, noting he smiled, but was more Morgan, less Varian, because Shay was in the cabin.

Gathering the cards, she focused on her fingers. “No, unfortunately. I have taken all the boy’s money. I did everything I could to lose, you insufferable man. You’re the only one I can’t beat. I lose to you in cards...” She was tilting her head from side to side in agitation with each word. “…I lose to you at chess...” another tilt. “...I lose to you always. I lose to you everything.”

Merry froze and looked up. She could have killed herself the instant the words left her lips. Whatever she had gained by the sharing of Varian’s bed, she hadn’t gained his poise to aid her in preventing these occasionally awkward moments with the man; moments that made her say such humiliating and childish things.

Varian didn’t look at her. “You may not beat me at cards, but you win every other type of battle, Little One. Every battle you fight against me, except cards. I would let you win at cards if you’d be willing to lose at the others. The problem is, when you win, you are still not happy. You should explore that contradiction.”

“The only contradiction that needs to be explored is why you want to keep a woman who does not want to be with you, you odious insufferable man,” she snapped.

“Perhaps you should surrender to me, Little One, and then perhaps I will not want to keep you. You may be right. I might be the one behaving contrary in all this. I am more than willing to explore the possibility.”

Merry picked up the book beside her and threw it at him, almost hitting him this time. “Go away. I was enjoying the afternoon. You have ruined it.”

Without looking up from his task, Varian said, “Do me the courtesy of not doing that ever in front of the men. I would despise it if you forced my hand to hurt you. If you did that in front of the crew, I would have to respond unfavorably to protect you. Shay, however, does not count in this discussion. Which is why I am charmed by you throwing the book.”

Merry sprang from the bed before the words finished in the Captain’s mouth. Blankets, coin and cards popped up like a tornado around Shay. Even with Morgan sitting, Merry was a tiny figure in front of him. A tiny, furious, and fearless figure. Shay watched in fascination and disbelief.

“Why don’t you ever get angry with me?” Merry exclaimed. “It makes me insane that you never get angry. How is it possible never to lose your temper? I threw a book at you, you insufferable man. I treat you horribly. Why do you insist on keeping me?”

Varian sat back in his chair, watching her temper flash even brighter. “I prefer to do other things than fight with you, Little One. However, if I thought fighting with you would get me what I want, I am flexible enough to fight with you. But I don’t think it will. At least not today. You’ve been in a horrible temper since you woke. Though you do look stunning when you are fiery and angry. Which is why I always enjoy your temper and am never moved to anger by it. I adore you, even in temper. Men are decidedly the weaker sex.”

Frustrated and ranting now, she said, “You are infuriatingly inhuman in every breath. If you would allow me the pleasure of seeing just one unleashed emotion today to confirm that you are human. Anger. Irritation. Anything! If you went on deck and got dirty that might do, and perhaps my temper would pass.”

“I would be more than happy to show you my one nearly unleashed emotion, Little One. You need not throw a book at me to unleash it. You do it very well just standing there in my shirt with the light behind you.”

Merry went crimson from toes to hairline. Her temper had a way of biting her when she was with Varian. He was in a wicked good mood, even after her throwing the book at him, and if she kept it up, she’d be in for only more embarrassment.

She stared at him in utter frustration. There was no reason to this man.

The book sat sprawled beside his chair, and Merry spied pug already chewing on it, having settled at the Captain’s feet the minute he’d entered. Varian took note of the pug, arched a brow, and the mutt huddled closer to him.

She felt laughter and didn’t want it. Her humor bubbled upward and she found herself giggling even as she fought to stop it. Laughter always weakened her against this man. Temper always weakened her against this man. Everything weakened against the man. It was not a fair fight at all. She hated Morgan. She couldn’t protect herself from Varian.

Before she could escape him, Varian pulled her atop his lap, and she was laughing too hard to fight him. Once there, Merry didn’t want to fight him at all. She’d missed the feel of his body around her. Just being touched by him brought her flesh pleasantly alive.

Still, she said, “Let me up. I am turning your orderly existence to ruin and you are turning me into a madwoman. I was not like this before you, Varian. Do you know that?”

Varian smiled at that. Her curls were slowly being displaced by his kisses and every cell in her body began to burn. The lightest of kisses on the flesh beneath her ear made her only ease more into him.

He brushed the wayward tresses from her face in a gentling way. Varian breathed into her hair, “I have a suspicion you were a madwoman before my ship. I just did not have a suspicion I would find a madwoman so impossible to resist. I like the ruin you add to me, Little One. Give me ruin.”

His warm fingers made a slow course up the flesh of her arms. Everything from the waist down now was boiling in her like a kettle. Merry tried desperately to strain away from him and climb from his lap. His arms, careful but strong, held her against him.

“You are like a sea wind,” he told in her a low seductive whisper. “You are fast to temper, fast to laughter, fast to every shift of mood, dragged beyond your will in all of them, except the one shift I miss. Nearly perfect. However, you beguile in your imperfection. Unpredictably changing course and dragging me with you. I like it when you tack this way. When you don’t fight me because you don’t want to fight me. Don’t you grow weary in fighting the wind head-on?”

“No,” Merry whispered, struggling for some increasingly hazy remnant of need to continue fighting him. “I want to play cards, Varian.”

A thoughtful pause. “Ah. Then run along, Little One, before there is too much wind in my sail to change course.” He surprised her by letting her up from his lap without a fight.

Merry went back to bed and gathered the cards with hands that trembled. She looked at Shay and ordered, “Deal.”

CHAPTER NINE

The cabin was filled with a balmy heat, the sheets beside her were cool, and Merry came awake with the horrifying awareness she had just had a very naughty dream.

Sitting up in the bed and rubbing heavy eyelids with her palms, she looked at the cabin bathed in moonlight, and realized that she had such a wicked slumber and that insufferable man wasn’t even beside her. Where was he? She could sense a change in the ships movements. They’d dropped anchor.

She laid back against the sheets, this time curled around Varian’s pillow, yawned and tried to return to sleep. A dropped anchor meant land. Where the devil were they? She’d not been topside for weeks. Were they even in the Caribbean? Varian could have sailed to China. Merry drifted back into sleep.

Answers came at dawn, with Varian’s return. There was sand on his boots, which told her he’d gone ashore last night. Merry’s gaze fixed on the sand, wondering what the devil was wrong with her as a woman, since presently that was the element of his appearance that she found most appealing. She liked imperfection on this man.

Imperfection. Touch of Merry.
That thought made her blush.

Varian settled on the bed close to her, smiling “You’ve stumped me. I don’t know what I have done this time to make you blush, Little One, but I do enjoy the color,” Varian said, amused.

“I am a girl who prefers imperfection, Varian,” Merry said flippantly. “I like the presence of sand on your boots. Confirmation that you are imperfect. That you don’t walk hovering above the earth. Perhaps you should go roll in the dirt and then maybe I will be unable to resist you. I find the sand on the boots only modestly tempting. Where are we?”

Varian laughed. “Ah, you missed me last night if you are so eager to be playful and want me irresistible.”

Varian gazed at her as if completely enchanted by her, the manipulations not even being summoned to hide it from her. The guises were almost always gone between them when they were alone. Every day she got a healthier dose of him. A little more of Varian unleashed. A little less dose of the Morgan drama. It made him all the more dangerously tempting and hard to resist.

“How would you like to meet another notorious pirate captain?” Varian asked, suddenly. “He is a lot less perfect than I am, and I hope you will not find it irresistible.”

Merry made a show of debating it and then frowned. “I don’t think I could survive more than one pirate captain on any given day, you insufferable man. Exactly who are you referring to? Where are we?”

“Jean Lafitte. We dropped anchor at Barateria. My ship requires some repair after that foolishness with the British warship and when I need repairs and replacement armaments Jean provides me the courtesies, when he can manage them. It’s less complicated and less dangerous than going into port.”