The Least Likely Bride (8 page)

Olivia felt a curious little tug in the base of her belly. She dragged her eyes away and picked up the emerald sash, tying it around her waist. She heard the clink of his belt buckle and involuntarily looked towards him again.

He tossed his belt to the floor and with one smooth movement pushed his britches off his hips and stepped out of them.

Olivia’s jaw dropped.

“You did say you were accustomed to the male form,” he said. “Without the fig leaves.”

Yes! On paper or cast in bronze.
Olivia tried to speak but her throat felt stuffed with cotton. He was bending over the tub, splashing his face. His buttocks, smooth and flat, were as tanned as his back, his thighs dusted with fair curls, the hard muscles rippling in thigh and calf as he braced himself. And she could see between his thighs the dark shadow of his sex.

“The human body is the greatest wonder of creation,” Anthony remarked in the tone of one instructing a pupil. “In all its manifestations, thin, fat, long, short. Every line, every curve, is beautiful.” He turned as he spoke, sponging his torso with the soaped towel that Olivia had used.

Olivia knew a challenge when she heard one. She refused to look away and indeed she couldn’t have dragged her eyes from this perfect example of the human form if she’d wanted to.

Every inch of him had been touched with the sun. Fair hair clustered around his nipples, cloaked his sex. He stood naked before her, alone in this cabin, and yet she realized with a shock of what could only be dismay that he was not aroused.

Her reaction, instead of the requisite maidenly horror at the sight of this naked man, was one of confused disappointment. Did he not find her in the least appealing? He hadn’t behaved as if that was the case, but maybe she was too inexperienced to understand. She felt herself blush even as her eyes drank him in.

“Would you prefer to dine on deck?” he asked as casually as if they were in some drawing room. “It’s a beautiful night and your hair will dry in the breeze.” He turned away from her again, to Olivia’s profound relief. She
found his back view much less disturbing. “Could you find me a clean shirt from the cupboard?”

She still couldn’t find her tongue but shirts were a different matter and a welcome distraction. He had wrapped a towel around his loins when she turned back to him with the garment.

“My thanks.” He thrust his arms into it and left it open as he went to another cupboard for a clean pair of britches.

“So, the deck or the cabin?” He cast aside the towel and stepped into the britches. Olivia noticed that he wore no undergarments. Men usually wore drawers beneath their britches. That much she did know from the washing lines around the washhouse.

He buttoned his shirt, leaving it open at the neck, and thrust the tail into the waistband of his britches. He bent to pick up his belt and fastened it at his hip again, adjusting the set of the short dagger in its sheath.

“On deck.” Olivia finally managed to speak, now that the world had returned to more orderly proportions.

“Good.” He went to the door and called for Adam, who appeared almost immediately, as if he’d been waiting outside the door.

“Dinner’ll be ruined,” he grumbled. “What took ye so long?”

“We’ll dine on the quarterdeck,” Anthony said, ignoring the complaining question. “Get young Ned to clean up the cabin while we’re above … oh, and we’ll drink that ’38 claret, Adam.”

“Oh, aye,” Adam muttered, entering the cabin. “It’s celebratin’, are we?”

“We have cause for celebration,” Anthony responded.

“Oh, aye?” Adam repeated with a skeptical eyebrow. He glanced rather pointedly at Olivia. “You’ll not be needin’ yer clothes, I see.”

“I borrowed these,” Olivia said with an attempt at dignity. “But when I leave the ship, I’ll need my own c-clothes.”

“And when’ll that be? I ask meself,” Adam muttered, taking a bottle and two glasses from a cupboard. “ ’Ere, you want to take these up.” He thrust bottle and glasses at Anthony, who took them meekly.

“Come, Olivia.”

“When
will
it be?” she asked, going past him through the door, holding up her voluminous skirts as she stepped over the high threshold.

“When will what be?” He followed her, leaving the door open to the sounds of Adam banging around in the cupboards, collecting plates and cutlery.

“When I leave
Wind Dancer,
” she said impatiently. “When you stop kidnapping me.”

“Oh, is that what I’m doing?” he said as they climbed the companionway and emerged on deck. “You tumble down the cliff and fall unconscious at the feet of one of my watchmen. We succor you and minister to your wounds, and that’s called kidnapping.”

“You knew who I was; you could have sent word and someone would have fetched me.” The real world was intruding again without her agreement, forcing the magic of wonderland into retreat.

“Ah, but you see I have no visiting cards. Pirates in general don’t pay calls on the local gentry,” Anthony explained solemnly. His gray eyes gleamed with amusement, vanquishing her unwitting edge of antagonism.

“Oh, you’re absurd!” Olivia declared, climbing up to the high quarterdeck. “You kidnapped me and took me off to the high seas and my family will all think I’m dead, and even if I ever do get back to them, my reputation will be ruined.

“Not that that will matter,” she added. “Since I never intend to get married, and only potential husbands worry about such things.”

Anthony listened to this stream of words as he uncorked the bottle and poured the rich ruby wine into the two glasses whose long stems he held between the fingers of his free hand. He took the scent of the wine with a critical frown, then nodded and passed a glass to Olivia.

“I trust a vow of celibacy doesn’t also involve a vow of chastity. The two are not synonymous.” He regarded her over the lip of his glass.

Olivia took a larger gulp of wine than she’d intended, and choked. Anthony solicitously thumped her back.

“Take it easy. It’s too fine a wine to quaff like small beer.”

“Oh … oh, I didn’t!” Olivia protested. “It went down the wrong way.”

“Ah, I see.” He nodded and leaned back against the rail, looking up at the star-filled sky. “What a beautiful night.”

It seemed he’d dropped the topic of chastity, and Olivia took a more moderate sip of her wine. The sky was deepest blue with a crescent moon low on the horizon and the broad diffused swath of the Milky Way directly above them. The helmsman stood at the wheel, and
Wind Dancer,
once more true to her name, seemed to be playing in the wind over the swelling sea. “Do you navigate by the stars?”

“A less disturbing topic, eh?”

“Do you use the stars to navigate by?” she repeated determinedly.

“After dinner I’ll show you how,” he said, drawing her to the rail beside him, out of the way of Adam and two other sailors, who clambered onto the deck with a table and chairs and a basket of plates and cutlery.

Adam threw a snowy cloth over the table, lit an oil lamp, and set out two places. “There y’are, then. I’ll bring the meat.”

“My lady Olivia …” Anthony drew back a chair for her with a punctilious bow.

Olivia couldn’t resist a little curtsy, laughing inwardly at the thought of her bare feet and her strange gown. The master of
Wind Dancer
seemed to know exactly how to change her mood. With a word, a gesture, a smile, he drew from her whatever response he wished. And while part of her resented such manipulation, another part of her was entranced.

Adam set down on the table a platter of sliced roast mutton studded with slivers of garlic and sprigs of rosemary, a bowl of potatoes baked in their skins in the embers of the fire, and a salad of field greens and mushrooms.

“Oh,” Olivia said. “I don’t think I have ever been so hungry.”

“Well, eat slowly,” Anthony cautioned. “Your belly’s had almost nothing in it for three days. You don’t wish to be sick.”

“I couldn’t possibly be sick,” Olivia said, spearing a slice of mutton on the tip of her knife. “It smells so wonderful. Adam, you’re a genius.”

For once, the elderly man’s expression softened and his mouth took a slight curve. “The master’s right,” he said gruffly. “Your belly’s shrunk, so go easy.”

Olivia shook her head in vigorous denial and took a large bite of meat. It tasted as wonderful as it smelled. She ate a potato smothered in butter and wiped the grease from her chin with the back of her hand, too hungry to worry about the niceties of the napkin on her lap.

Anthony refilled their glasses and watched her. There was something undeniably sensual about her robust enjoyment of her dinner. He thought of the blithely exuberant
way she’d hurled herself across the netting between
Wind Dancer
and
Doña Elena
that morning to join in the fray. It was as if Olivia Granville, separated from all that had protected and enclosed her, had discovered a new self. Would she bring that same robust enjoyment to bed? he wondered.

A smile touched his lips as he thought of her declaration that she would remain unwed. It was an absurd intention for a young woman of her family background. And yet, as he examined her countenance, took in the firmness of her mouth, the set of her chin, he thought that maybe she would manage it. He was certain Olivia Granville thought for herself.

“What are you looking at?” Olivia asked, suddenly aware of his scrutiny.

“Oh, I was just enjoying your enjoyment,” he said carelessly, leaning back in his chair, lifting his glass to his lips. “Rarely have I seen a gently bred maiden devour her dinner with such gluttony.”

Olivia flushed. “Was I being greedy?”

“No.” He shook his head and leaned over to put another potato on her plate. “I’m just wondering what else you devour with such enthusiasm.”

Olivia put a slab of butter on the potato and watched it melt. “Books,” she said. “I devour books.”

“Yes, I had gathered that.”

“You have a considerable library in your cabin. Where did you go to school?” Olivia was rather pleased with the sly question that she thought would give her some clue to the pirate’s background.

Anthony merely smiled. “I’m self-taught.”

Olivia looked over at him. “I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged. “That is as you please.” He reached over to refill her glass. “Do you wish me to show you how to navigate by the stars?”

This was too interesting a prospect for further probing. Olivia nodded eagerly.

“Come here then.” He stood up with his glass and went to stand behind the helmsman at the wheel. He slipped one arm around Olivia’s waist and drew her backwards, so she stood with her back against him. “Now, you see the North Star?”

Olivia tried to follow the lesson, but for once the sharpness of her mind seemed blunted. She was aware only of the body at her back, the warmth of his arm at her waist, the wine-scented breath rustling against her cheek as he pointed out the constellations. The stars all seemed to merge and she felt stupid as she struggled to grasp concepts that would ordinarily have been perfectly simple for her.

The hand at her waist moved upward against her breast, and she drew a swift breath. But he said nothing, merely continued calmly with the lesson, his hand pressing against the soft swell of her breast.

“You interested in puddin’?”

“Oh, yes,” Olivia said almost jumping away from the encircling arm. “What is it?”

“Rhubarb pie.” Adam set a pie dish on the table with a jug of thick cream. “Lord, you ’ad an appetite on you,” he muttered, surveying the wreckage of the table.

“It was very good.” Olivia sat down and reached for the pie knife. Her heart was beating too quickly and she thought her voice sounded a little squeaky as she asked as casually as she could, “Are you going to have some pie, Anthony?”

He came back to the table. “Funny, but I’d have thought the fascinations of astronomy would have held your attention rather longer. But then, no one makes a rhubarb pie to rival Adam’s.”

Olivia put a large slice of pie on her plate and made
no response. She felt as if she’d been cut loose from everything that had made sense of her life hitherto. And she didn’t know what to make of any of it. The only thing she did know was that her blood was racing, and despite the confusion, she felt more alive than she’d ever felt before.

“S
O WHAT DOES
the message say?” The questioner put a spill to his pipe, and the acrid smell of strong tobacco filled the taproom.

“Jest that if’n we’re interested in sellin’ what we culled, then ’e’ll be ’ere in the Anchor at the end o’ the week.”

“And how does he know there was any culling?” The questioner was young, dark haired, swarthy of complexion. He was dressed in a suit of turquoise silk and wore his hair in the Cavalier style, tumbling to his shoulders in elaborate curls, glistening with pomade. He drew on his pipe in the smoke-wreathed room and surveyed his interlocutor through cold green eyes.

The man shrugged. “Doubt it’s a secret, sir. Message come the mornin’ after. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Of course I want to know!” There was a snarl to the well-bred voice. “We need customers, you dolt! But how do we know it’s not a trap?”

The other man shrugged and lit his own pipe of rather more noxious tobacco. “Dunno, sir. Reckon that’s your business. Ours is to cull.”

The young man was silent in the face of this truth.

“There’s been no one sniffing around? No awkward questions?”

“No, sir. ’Twas pitch black that night an’ the storm was strong. Ship could ’ave gone aground on ’er own. But the whole island reckons ’twas a wreckin’ job,” he added. “Jest can’t prove it.”

“And whoever’s buying knows it was a wrecking job,” the young man mused. “And he knew whom to contact? Who brought the message?”

“Didn’t ’ave no name, sir. An’ he was all swaddled in a cloak, with the ’ood pulled down. ’Twas an ’ot night too,” the man added reflectively. “But ’e was an island man. Spoke like an island man.”

“Mmm. Landlord, bring me a pint of porter,” the young man bellowed suddenly across the counter.

“Right y’are, sir.” The host of the Anchor, who had been listening to a conversation that held no secrets for him, slapped an overfull tankard on the counter before the customer. “I was expectin’ me casks, sir,” he said in an unconvincing whine. “Any sign of when I might be gettin’ ’em?”