Nobody's Saint (15 page)

“Damn my reputation! If you don’t get yourself in here and talk to me, I’ll march right up to the galley in my shift and ask for breakfast for two. That should be the end of any worries for my reputation!”

He was going to marry her. What did it matter? He stepped inside.

“Well?” she demanded, closing the door behind him.

He had seen her like this once before, or rather, he had seen the spit and image of her—the thin, white shift, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulder. This was right. This was absolutely right. This was why Magdalena had appeared to him so.

He tangled his hands in Mary Kate’s tousled hair and wordlessly answered her demand, and she melted against him, responding in kind.
Yes!
Diego thought. So right, so perfect, like their bodies had been made for each other from the very beginning.

She yanked the tail of his shirt from his breeches and ran her hands underneath, over his chest, around his ribs and down his back. His fingers tugged on the ribbon of her shift, and he pulled it past her shoulders, baring her breasts, then cupping one, not quite gently. Her flesh was full and firm, her nipple taut in the palm of his hand. She stepped backward, pulling him with her, until they fell onto the bed and he had to take his hands from her body to brace his fall on top of her.

Looking down into eyes clouded by passion, upon lips parted and swollen, he took those lips again before he blazed a white-hot trail of kisses downward. He could feel her pulse fluttering in her throat, taste the faint flavor of rosewater on her breasts. With his teeth, he gently captured the tight crest at the summit of each one in turn and coaxed tiny sounds of desire and frustration from her.

“Marry me, María Catalina,” he whispered against her, even has his hand found the hem of her shift and began tugging it upward.

She groaned deep in her throat. “This is no time for honor, Diego Montoya. Touch me!” She lifted her hips so he could pull the offending garment up more easily and so he could readily obey her command.

He stopped and waited, still looking down at her.

“Damn you!” She hiked her own hem up and rubbed the inside of her bare thigh against the soft warmth of the velvet breeches he was still wearing from the night before.

He kissed her again, running his hand up the satin skin of her leg until he cradled one soft, bare cheek and pressed her hips against him. Her gasp of pleasure was nearly his undoing.

“Say that you will marry me.”

She sucked in her breath. “Jaysus, man, I’ve lost me wits! Make love to me and then we’ll talk!” She tried to pull his head back down, but when he wouldn’t yield, she lifted hers to his.

He kissed her again, let her drive him mad as she ground her hips against his, her heat penetrating the velvet that separated them.

She broke away and began to fumble with the fastenings at his waist. “I may be a virgin, but even I know you cannot do this with your breeches on!”

He lowered himself to one elbow and covered her hand in his. “Stop. Not yet. Tell me you will marry me.”

She giggled, and her breath tickled his lips. “Don’t we have this backwards? Aren’t I supposed to be leading you on and then holding out for the church and the gold ring?”

He pinned her gaze with his, and his voice was choked and intense. “Tell me you knew me the moment that you saw me. Tell me you saw me before we ever met.”

Mary Kate’s muddled brained snapped back from the brink. The burning in his gaze wasn’t lust. It was something else. Something desperate and deeper than she could fathom. “Diego,” she whispered softly.

He rolled off her. “Oh, God, do not speak to me with that voice!”

“What do you mean?” Mary Kate stared at him, her blue eyes wide, the flush fading quickly from her face.

“I have frightened you,” he croaked.

Quick as lightening, those eyes snapped with fire. “I’m
not
afraid of you! But you’re not stepping foot outside of this room until you tell me what’s going on!”

“I want to marry you. I need you, María Catalina, and you need me, too.”

“Are you saying you’re in love with me?”

He drew a ragged breath and sat up on the bed. “No, but I think I could be, in time.”

Mary Kate sat so she faced him, pulling her feet under her shift. “I admire your sense of honor, y’know. ‘Tis a fine thing. But sometimes honor is not what’s important.”

He bristled. “It is always important.”

“Listen now. I like you fine, and ‘tis clear you like me, too, but we’re from different worlds and want different things. Are you telling me that you care for me so much, or want me so badly, that you’ll forsake your own to live in my country?”

“What?” he nearly shouted.

“Well, that’s what you’re asking for! I want you, too, but I don’t love you, either. I’ll not take you at the cost of my home and my family.” She kept her voice even, the essence of rationality. “What we want from each other doesn’t require marriage. Are
you
a virgin?”

Diego bristled again, his face the picture of indignation. “Certainly not!”

“And yet, you’ve never been married.”

“A tryst with a widow is a sin, and sins are forgivable. Deflowering a virgin is…is…”

“Dishonorable?”

“
¡Sí!
And for that there is no forgiveness.”

Mary Kate laughed lustily. “You’re a piece of work, my friend. I’ll be ruined for the man my grandfather would have foisted upon me, and that will be getting me out of a marriage you know I’d do nearly anything to avoid. You hate the English as much as I. I know you can understand that. But Ireland’s a poor country, and the man that weds me can live in a fine house with me and my da and with food enough to last all winter. A man there won’t care so much if he was first. You’d not be ruining my life, Diego, you’d be assuring my happiness. And all the while, it wouldn’t be such an unpleasant task for yourself.”

Diego’s heart began to sink. He had been wrong, so wrong.

At the sight of his crestfallen face, Mary Kate hastened to add, “I’m making it sound like I’m looking for the first available man, and that’s not so. I’m a resourceful woman. I’ve no doubt that I can think of a dozen other ways out of this mess, but this one suits me.” She rose to her knees before him and ran her fingers lightly through his hair. “I’ve come to care for you so. You’re brave in the face of danger, and kind to strange and troubled women. You’re good to Galeno, just like a father. Better than my own da, that’s sure, though I love him. You’re a fine captain. And aye, you’re honorable to a fault. If I were to lie with you, it’d not be a way out of this marriage only. It would be a memory I’d treasure all my life. If I could have both you and my home, I’d marry you tomorrow, Diego.”

“Pretty words, Mary Kate, but not the ones I needed to hear.” He pushed himself off the bed and walked to the door. “I will send breakfast to you.”

When he walked out, it seemed as if something vital had left the room, and it was colder and darker than it had been a minute before. Mary Kate felt shaken, and she slipped back under the sheet and pulled it up to her chin. Mother of God, she had lied to him. Not on purpose! She had lied to him because she had been lying to herself. She had listened to herself tell him how she felt about him, and suddenly it was all crystal clear.

She did love him. Heaven help her, she did. He was everything she had said, a dozen other things besides. When in her life had she known a man to listen to her and care what she said or how she felt? Like most, he found her infuriating, but he found her funny, too. And he was funny, in his formal, earnest Spanish way. When he touched her, he didn’t merely excite her, but he made her feel a part of something, filled her with a sense of belonging she hadn’t felt since she’d left her home.

But there was the rub. Did she love him enough to give up the one thing that had borne her through four years of humiliation? Four years of being paraded before arrogant snobs who would have found her wanting even if she hadn’t made a spectacle of herself! Four years of Sir Calder’s sneers and derogatory comments. Four years of being treated like useless baggage! Through it all, she had clung tightly to memories of cool, green fields. She had reminded herself that, just across the Irish Sea, there were people who loved her and needed her. At night, she would lie in that strange bed and in her mind hear echoes of villagers greeting her with the cry, “
Dia duit!
” The thought of being surrounded by her own language had eased her terrible sadness when she’d realized that somewhere along the way, she had stopped thinking in
Gaeilge
and started thinking in English instead.

Could she abandon her father and sister, just at the brink of being able to return to them? Well, maybe her sense of honor had a bit more stretch and give to it than Diego’s, but she had one, damn it, and loyalty besides! Nay, she had to get home.

But this changed everything. Knowing what she now knew, she could never sleep with Diego. Mayhap she had a will of iron, but even iron could be bent—melted if the heat were high enough. By the saints, what she felt for him was hot enough to melt iron, and she feared she’d lose her resolve in his arms.

Hastily, she reached for her ledger. She was going to have to ask Diego for more ink.

Diego did not know what to make of the Mary Katherine who sat across the table from him at dinner. As had become their custom, they ate in his cabin with the door propped open. In a modest gown of indigo linen, she chewed carefully and asked polite questions about Cartagena between bites. What was the weather like? Did he have many friends there? Was he certain that he could find an English-speaking priest? Might she see another flota waiting to ship gold to Spain? No double entendres or inflammatory statements.

He answered her informatively, adding an interesting tidbit here or there. He offered her more wine, and she turned it down. The meal went just as it should for a man and a woman between whom no formally recognized relationship existed. He had eaten such meals before with wives and daughters of friends and customers. But this one felt terribly wrong, somehow.

“I did not mean to hurt your feelings,” he said, unable to continue the charade.

“You didn’t hurt my feelings.” She took a bite of dolphin fish and chewed it slowly, avoiding his eyes.

“I should not have insulted your own honor.”

“I wasn’t behaving honorably. I’ve thought about it today, and I’ve decided you’re quite right. It would be wrong to make love with you. For now, I’m willing to see how your government will handle the situation. If I must go to Jamaica, well, it might have been easy for this John Hartford to agree to marry me, despite my grandfather’s unflattering description, but meeting me in the flesh will be quite another story. If you think I’ve been difficult with you, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

He relaxed a little. That sounded a little more like Mary Kate. “I am sure my friend Don Juan will help.”

“That would be nice.”

They finished their meal, and he found he was reluctant to let her go back to her quarters. “Do you play chess?”

Mary Kate frowned slightly. “I’ve played with my sister from time to time, and even my da when he’s—when he’s feeling up to it. I don’t know that I’m much good at it.”

“I will not be my usual ruthless self then,” he said with a grin and set up the board.

It did not take long for him to see that she had not merely been modest about her playing skills. For all that Mary Kate was a strategist, she was impatient. She was always thinking ahead to her own next move and failing to pay attention to his game. At the rate they were going, he would have her in checkmate in short order.

“You said you played with your father when he was feeling well. You have told me he is sick, but you have never said what ails him.”

What did it matter? They would be parting ways in a few days. She sighed. “Sometimes ale ails him, but more often ‘tis whiskey.”

“Ah.”

The spirit to which he was accustomed sprang back into her face. “Don’t you ‘ah’ me! He’s a good man, my da! ‘Tis only his heart broke when my ma died. He needs the drink to dull the pain!”

“I did not mean to disparage him,” he assured her. He moved again, but he could see he had agitated her. Her mind was no longer on the game. “How long has he been—sick—this way?”

Mary Kate shrugged. “Since she died, I guess. As long as I can remember, though it grew worse over time.”

“Who took care of you?”

“We had a housekeeper until I was seven, but then her daughter had a baby and she went to live with them. But we did just fine on our own, the three of us. We lived in my grandfather’s house, with a big garden and enough pigs and sheep to keep us if we were careful. I worry though, for Bridget’s never been a thrifty sort. Like as not they feasted on meat for weeks after I left and have been living on turnips ever since.”

His face softened, and he felt a little ache in his chest. In his mind, he pictured a fierce little seven-year-old girl with blue eyes and tangled black hair caring for her sister and her drunken father as best she could.

“But who cleaned your house and cooked your meals?”

Mary Kate grinned a little. “I made my sister do the lion’s share of the cleaning. All I had to do was tell her she was no good at it, that any room she cleaned was no better than a pigsty, and she’d just have to prove me wrong. As for the cooking, it took me three years to get the better of our hearth and pot and more nearly inedible meals and burned fingers than I can count, but I finally got to be fairly good at it. I can make a mutton stew that’ll make you think you’ve tasted a bit of heaven!”

“And all you want is to go back home?”

Her chin lifted a notch. “Oh, I know it don’t sound the very picture of domestic bliss. I’ll not pretend it is. But they need me so, and what is there to life if no one needs you? Why would your heart beat unless it were set on something? Mine is set on my family, my home, my people. Like yours is set on your honor, don’t you see?”

“I do,” he said softly.

“Well then, I’ve bared my soul to you. What would you give me in return?”