Jennifer Horseman (18 page)

He was trying hard to stop laughing at her, she saw, but she hardly understood anything else.

"You mean . . . you can't stop it?"

"Not with you in the same room. No, but I will try to control the greater instincts arising from ah, 'it."'

She stared in obvious mistrust. The information raised a hundred pressing questions but to say she did not feel comfortable discussing male anatomy with Garrett was, if anything, an understatement. "You don't seem to be able to give me anything I want."

A strange smile changed the handsome features of his face. "If you'd only want something I could give."

Garrett watched the confusion brought on by his words. A more sophisticated woman would have known without words, and her confusion made him acutely conscious of how young she was—too young. The strain of the situation began to take its toll, too. She still trembled, and while he knew she had somehow in the course of her hard life lost the ability to cry, the tears shimmered there. The desire to comfort was nearly as great as the desire to draw her slender form against him. He suddenly wanted this over.

Her eyes widened more as he rose and, heedless of his nakedness, came to her. She thought he would take the pistol but no, he knelt in front of her. His hand came over the barrel of the pistol and aimed it point blank to his chest. "Put the pistol down or shoot me now, love. You won't get a second chance."

Emotions rose like a strong, swift tide to greet the outrage of this measure. He knew she wouldn't, he knew it! He could at any moment move the barrel or take the pistol yet he waited for her. Waited for her to accept her helplessness.

Consciousness centered on every strained nerve in her finger, her hand ached with a preternatural heaviness, and while she never wanted anything as much as the courage to prove him wrong, she couldn't.

Murder was not in her soul.

She dropped the pistol, letting the weight of it fall on his hands as she covered her face in her hands. With his eyes firmly fixed on her, he set it on the hardwood floor. The horror of the measure sank through her strained nerves, scaring her as she considered the awful idea of what he would do to her now. "What . . . how will you pun—" She stopped, momentarily unable to articulate the idea. "What will you do ... now?"

He lifted her face to stare into the shimmering blue pools of her eyes. That strange compassion reached his eyes, an inexplicable gentleness. "Listen, love, will I be jeopardizing my life if I tell you there is nothing you could do on earth that would bring you . . . ah, punishment by my hand?"

She could hardly believe he would do nothing when she threatened his very life. Despite the poetry in his eyes, she could not trust him enough to answer as he stared at her; this he saw. "Juliet," he said her name in a whisper as he reached a hand to her face. She gasped slightly as his finger followed her hairline to her neck, stopping when he felt the rush of shivers this caused her. She slowly reached a hand to cover the spot, stopping the sensation as she shook her head.

When she looked as if she believed the small protest might incite him to violence, he stood up and moved to retrieve his breeches. "I think ... I think what I will do now is hit the cold blue ocean water. Have your clothes on when I get back."

An intense wave of relief washed through her, sweet and heady and hot. Her next breath felt like her first as she watched him shut the door. "My clothes?" she questioned in an anguished whisper. What does he mean by it? He took her clothes!

She looked around the room as if she might have i missed something. An audible thump sounded loud in the quiet of the room. Her eyes lifted to the culprit. Tonali sat on his throne on top of the bookcase. Beneath him lay her dress. "You! You took my dress . . . ." Here she had been thinking Garrett took it, and for the most malicious purposes, when, when it was Tonali! She won-. dered wildly if she would have taken his pistol, if thej whole awful scene might never have happened, if only she had looked up to see the cat. "Oh, Tonali, how could you?"

Tonali rose and leapt to the ground. She watched with wide eyes, trying not to be afraid as he slowly stalked to her. He sat like a perfect gentleman, his long tail curling neatly in front of him as his gold eyes held her mesmerized for a long moment. His paw lifted and caught her braid. He bounced it in the air, batting at it like a toy.

She carefully took it back. Animals do not smile, she \ told herself, unnerved nonetheless, more so as Tonali * rose and in an unmistakable gesture of peace rubbed himself against her legs. The feel of his sleek fur passed through her like a caress, for a moment more unsettling than the sight of razor-sharp teeth. Then she chided herself for her imagination and got up, positioning the chair beneath the bookcase to retrieve her dress.

She froze as her eyes held the torn and tattered remains of what was her sole possession on earth. It looked as if he had tried to eat it. ... With what seemed like malicious intent, Tonali had shredded the cloth in front so it hung in irreparable tatters. She saw the buttons on the floor and turned it over. Not one button remained attached. Not one . . .

In a very real sense, this was the least of what happened to her, a thing not to be compared to the long years of living beneath that fear in her uncle's house, years culminating in her abduction, rape, and captivity, being kept from the only thing that mattered to her by arguably the most dangerous man alive. A ruined dress did not compare to these things, and yet as she stared at it, the biblical story of Job came to mind and she understood for the first time how life could be such a constant defeat that one might finally want to forsake it.

She still stood there on the chair, clutching the ruined shreds of her dress, when Garrett finally stepped inside, dripping wet. He met accusation in her eyes, seeing what she held in her hands.

He slowly approached the chair she stood on. He said nothing as he took the ruined dress from her, knowing why Tonali did it. Tonali hissed, baring his teeth, but contradicted the gesture by coming to lean against Gar-rett's legs.

"I'm trying so hard," she said in a whisper. "You don't know ... I keep thinking nothing worse can happen to me, but then—"

"It's only a dress, love. I'll get you something to wear as soon as we get to a port—"

A finger came to his mouth, sudden fury shone in her eyes as she shook her head. "Don't you understand? I don't want anything from you! Anything! I don't want a new dress! I don't want your protection! I don't want to be held here against my will!"

The dress dropped. In a single movement, Garrett took both her hands in his and brought them behind her back as he lifted her down to the floor. Yet her feet never touched it as he held her tight against the hard wet outline of his body. While he held her with the gentlest restraint, the touch of their flesh stole her breath.

"Your complaint is registered, Juliet. And while you might not want my protection, you have it. Accept it. No outburst will change that. But, love," the rich timbre of his voice lowered ominously as he slowly let her hips slide over his. She tensed with a shocking rush of chills as her feet finally touched the floor, "believe me when I tell you, your anger plays a tempting tune. If I see much more of it, I'm going to want to show you what's hidden beneath it."

She frantically searched his face, desperately fighting the effect of being encased in those arms against his body. Neither the thin cotton of her chemise nor his breeches were an adequate barrier for the hot rush of warmth, warmth that brought quick color to her cheeks and made a slow thud of her heart. "What can you mean?" she cried in a breathless rush. "What can you imagine lies beneath it but my struggle to overcome this terror you've brought to my life?"

His next breath was released in a low chuckle followed by a soft curse. "Are you that innocent, love?" he asked as he took her hand and pressed it against her heart. "Am I imagining that? Or the color I've put on your face, the warmth of your skin against mine, the sweet rush of your breaths?"

With an outraged gasp, she tried to push away, but he kept her to him, not at all willing to let her go now. Not with rage darkening those eyes. Not when her small breaths pushed the soft fullness of her breasts against his chest. Not with the riot she incited in his body.

"Your conceit is monstrous if you imagine I might want to submit to your rape again!"

The breathless rush of words paired with the mutinous impulse to slap him brought a warm, lively amusement to his eyes. "Ah, but that's not what I'm imagining. What I'm imagining, love, is that you are one kiss from discovering the difference between what would be rape and ... its opposite." He said this as his lips lightly touched the curve of her neck. Light kisses on the nape of her neck and ear brought a rush of chills, the forbidden feelings that threatened to melt her fury and fear. He caught her gasp as his next breath, his mouth a dangerous inch from hers as he asked, "Shall I show you, love? Shall I?"

A rhetorical question . . . Garrett did not intend to wait for an answer. Then he saw her disbelief and fury change to fear. Wilting like a flower beneath a too-hot sun, she collapsed all at once, her eyes begging him to stop when she could not. Still he hesitated, his desire a voracious, impatient force, unconcerned with the capriciousness of her emotions.

"This game we're playing, Juliet. As much as I want you—and believe me, it's a good deal more than you can imagine—you can stop me by showing me your fear. Believe me, too, this fear is your only defense. So love, I suggest you nurture it; you will be needing it often." , He released her then and she fell back against the bookcase, her head spinning like a child's top. She tried to catch her breath, to calm down, not realizing that her fist was clenched in an effort to control the sudden force of her emotions until she followed the amused light in his gaze to her hands. Like the sudden crest of a wave, all emotion rose to renewed desperation, a desperation released in a whispered plea, "No . . . please," as her arms crossed over her nakedness.

None of this was lost on him. "At least, love, you learn quickly," he said as he turned away, heading to the dressing room to remedy the situation.

She tried desperately to recover, but it was impossible, even as he draped the clothes on the bed and left. She looked from the door to the clothes, approaching slowly. A nightdress? How did he come to have a woman's nightdress in his closet? Not just any nightdress but no finer one had she ever seen. It was made of silk and trimmed in expensive German lace and looked as if it had not been worn. A robe too. She lifted the dark blue silk, surprised by how heavy it was. It had long sleeves, and, as she held it against herself she saw it was too long by a I foot. The wonder was the stitchery on the back: an elaborate and detailed picture of a magnificent peacock spreading his colorful feathers.

ftp- She saw she had no choice. If she had a choice, a ™ choice about anything, she would not only refuse to touch these clothes but she'd be a million miles away. If wishes came true, Garrett and his ship would vanish from the face of the earth, banished in one sweep. Banished too would be the very memory of a night she would otherwise never live long enough to forget.

The day warmed by small degrees as the ship sailed ever closer to Gibraltar. Garrett spent the day in labor with the crew, shifting the weight of the cargo. A heavy load it was, too: bales and bales of tea and tobacco. Like a stage prop, the cargo presented the necessary evidence of pillaging and pirating. The hard labor drenched him in perspiration as he finally emerged on deck an hour from the supper bell. Without warning, he climbed the rail and dove into the sea.

Gayle rushed to the rail to watch. Garrett swam away from the ship, effortlessly gliding over gentle swells, swells that fragmented the light of the setting sun. Gar-rett's eccentricities were numerous, and one of these was an adamant belief in the healing power of saltwater baths. "Two saltwater baths a day not only prevents all ailments and disease it also cleanses and reinvigorates the skin." To which Pots replied, "So would shooting myself, but does that mean I do it?"

The queer bathing habit started during the three years Garrett spent in the Japans as a young man. Not only did he learn of the strange religion of these people, he also adopted many of their habits, regular bathing being one of these. Interested in any healing tool or program, Gayle wanted to believe regular bathing helped ward off diseases. True, he had never known Garrett to be ill: he never once succumbed to the common head colds that swept through the ship, or to any fever. On the other hand, Garrett had trained him too well in the sciences to admit what could very well be a spurious connection between these events. No doubt, a large part of Garrett's enviable health was due to an ironclad constitution rather than to vegetarianism and saltwater baths, as Garrett himself believed. Besides, Gayle smiled, like his father, Pots, and all of the crew, he'd prefer an occasional head cold to a daily routine of ice-cold saltwater swims.

Gayle waited with a towel and one of Garrett's journals as Garrett climbed back up on deck. He spent several minutes shouting orders to the new watch before carefully recording in his book the wind, weather, longitude, latitude, position of the sails, and the changed position of the ship's cargo. This too was one of Garrett's experiments, an effort to determine the most advantageous position of cargo in a ship's hold for speed.

Gayle leaned against the ship's rail, arms folded across his chest, waiting. Garrett carefully entered the new numbers. "What's bothering you, Gayle?"

Gayle knew Garrett too well to be surprised by the wealth of his perceptions. "What's wrong? Her agony as she tries to write that letter to her young man. Curse him to hell, but I'd love to do it for her: 'Dear Sir: We have your young lady aboard our ship. We happen to notice scars on her back and a mangled, scarred hand. Did you notice this? By chance did you notice how terrified she is, the sadness surrounding her? By any chance—" '

"Enough, Gayle," Garrett interrupted with some small irritation, stopping to shout an order across the deck. "The last thing I need reminding of is that ... ah, young man, as you say. What else?"