The Windflower (23 page)

She leaned right over and shoved her face to within inches of his, until he could feel the warmth of her soft, shapely nose. "Will inevitably what?"

"Will inevitably find something stupid to argue about," he snapped and, making a frustrated gesture, left her alone on the stairway.

Merry, entering the cabin a few minutes later, was struck with a fog of hot air that hung pitch black and sluggish in the small chamber. She knew now by experience that it would take a few hours to cool. A faint breeze wheezed through the high gray square of an open window and carried in the hiss of seafoam and waves slapping the hull. Outside there was also laughter, interrupted briefly by the splash of a longboat meeting water. Merry ran to the bunk and climbed up to look out the window on tiptoe, and by the small closed lantern attached to the boat's bow, she saw that one of the eight passengers was Devon; his gleaming hair made him stand out like a fresh gold coin amid old pennies. He was laughing in evident delight at something Cat, beside him, was saying. Resting her chin on the sill, Merry watched until she could see only a slight bobbing glow from the lantern as the boat broke through the surf and onto the shore, where the nightly fires were blazing high, spraying torpedoes of sparks toward the stars.

Pipe smoke drifted in the window from the watch, and on the still deck someone began to sing "Hosanna to the Son of David." She hummed along while she washed in the basin, changed into Cat's nightshirt, and used Cat's ivory comb on her hair. Sitting on the bunk, munching an apple, she heard Morgan go by on the way to his cabin. He knocked twice as he passed, and said, "Happy dreams, nestling."

"Good night, Captain Morgan," she called and struggled under the blankets, the apple cupped like a doll by her cheek. This was the time of day she devoted to trying to think of some way to escape the
Joke,
and motivation had increased a thousandfold since morning. Tonight the exercise of planning an escape was more intensely therapeutic than usual because with it she could erase Devon from her thoughts for whole minutes.

The guard on deck was thick, since they were at anchor; rival pirates, evidently, didn't trust one another, and the consequence to Merry was that she could never have slipped unnoticed from the ship. The apple rolled from her relaxing fingers, and Merry drifted into a dream-active sleep with the moist flesh of the fruit plying its sugared acids against her lips.

She woke in the wee hours to rough footsteps and shouting on the deck above her, and the scrape of a longboat being secured. Will Saunders's baritone soared in song, and Merry could just make out the line, "He who once a good name gets may piss in bed and say he sweats.'' Hastily she rolled onto her stomach and pulled a pillow over her head.

In a few moments there was a firm tread outside, and her door came whacking open. The pillow was torn from her head and tossed on the floor.

"God. There's a wench in my bed," said Devon, standing over her.

She retreated full under the blanket and had it ripped off her too.

"Wake up, Anne Bonney," he said. "Your friends are aloft, waiting for you. Don't you want to be a lady pirate? There's Saunders and Erik Shay—hear them singing? No, now they've stopped. They want me to send you up to them, clad like a mermaid. Shame on them, they're drunk as friars. Or if you don't want to go up, shall 1 invite them down?"

"No! Devon, please—"

"Wonderful, Merry pet. Could you turn on your back and repeat that?" She felt the mattress shift slightly as he sat by her. "It's damned appealing. Again and more throatily ..."

Merry reared to her knees in a riffle of white hollands, her hair flying over her sloping shoulders.
"They're
drunk, are they? And I suppose you're not?"

He twisted around to smile at her. The lamp he had brought in with him sat in its niche on the small desk, and an arc of rosy light reached into his glowing hair, discovering the moisture dewed there from the sticky sea mist. His supple skin appeared golden, his teeth neat and white, and his eyes made of moonlight. Fragrances from him caressed her; the tang of driftwood smoke and mineral-rich beach sand, the fresh breath of the wind, the bouquet of sweet wine.

"I am but 'lightlie merrie,' my bunkmate," he said, "and not transmuted into Attila the Barbarian. Wait. I'd forgotten. I was that already, wasn't I? Help me with my boots?"

"Boots? Are you taking them off?" she gasped in a voice anything but throaty.

"Of course I am. I don't usually sleep knee-down in leather."

One boot hit the floor, and she jerked with alarm at the thud.

"Now, Devon—" she began nervously, watching him work on the other boot. "Devon, I-—I. . . Devon, please leave me alone. Go away. Go to bed. I want to go back to sleep."

"You're welcome to sleep, and I
am
going to bed. Dear child, this is my bed, gracefully occupied though it may be."

"You can't really mean to sleep in here," she said desperately.

"You can't really be so naive as to think I won't." _ Merry, forgetting that her new motto was panic won't help, said, "No! Devon, no!"

"Don't tell me," Devon said, starting to shuck his jacket, "that we've already degenerated to incoherent protests? I've been looking forward to a moving and articulate appeal to my submerged sense of decency. Please, if you won't be throaty, be eloquent. You haven't soured on a truce, have you? Think. It will be biblical; we shall beat our swords to plowshares, and the lion will lie down with the lamb."

"Not if the lamb has any say in the matter!"

"They don't, as a rule," he said. "One shears them seasonally, bleating or not."

The pirate's shirt was soft-textured and clean. His expression was tidy and his words hardly slurred. It didn't seem fair when she, unblamably asleep, should be handicapped once waked by a soggily semialert brain, eyes that itched under raw lids, and a tongue as flaccid as dry wool. If he wanted bleating, he was going to get it.

"I shall scream!" she said.

"As you like. Mind you, I feel compelled to mention that there are any number of otherwise civil individuals on board who are working their way into pleasantly intoxicated sleep. If you're noisy, someone's likely to come in here and stick a sock in your mouth."

Over the past few days Merry had had enough opportunity to observe men under the influence of alcohol to decide that it was probably true. His shirt, opening over tough, lovely muscle, made Merry's throat contract involuntarily in a gulp. Grabbing the two sides of his collar, she drew it fiercely together and snapped, "There's not enough shame in you to wash a flea's foot! Do you mean to sit there before me and bare yourself?"

He swallowed a laugh, though his eyes brimmed with humor as they devoured her in fascination. "Ah, darling. Now 1 remember. No wonder I'm shocking you. Your husband slept in a nightshirt."

Caught off guard, Merry drew a blank, and it showed in her face.

"That freckled paragon, Jeremiah Jones," he said in a gently encouraging tone. "Your husband. Sleeps in a nightshirt. Recall telling me that?"

There was something unnerving about a man who could grin and "forget" a threat he'd made two weeks earlier; and then turn around and throw in your face an insignificant scrap of conversation eight months old. It wouldn't have surprised her if she'd been deliberately maneuvered into her present indignity of holding his shirt closed. She saw herself in five minutes trying to hold up his britches and shuddered. How he would love that! Before she had figured what to do, he said affably, "I don't want to throw you out of the bunk, you know; just share it. If that's worrying you."

"Don't work so hard to be funny," said Merry, who'd learned the phrase from Cat. She let go his shirt with a sharp gesture and put her bare feet on the cool floorboards and stood with her back to him. "If you're getting into this bed, then I'm getting out of it."

"You're safer than you think" came Devon's voice behind her. "Cat swept me off to the mainland and smothered me in drink and female hospitality. He didn't say so, but I gather the charitable zeal was on your behalf.''

For so brief a statement it had a remarkable number of half messages. Miserably the one that penetrated to Merry most clearly was the image of Devon with a woman. She was disturbed and more than a little embarrassed by the discomfort it caused her.

"I won't hurt you, Merry," he said, his tone kind, warmly sensual, full of humor; the spider in a ladybug's shell. "Come to bed with me."

"No. I'm going to sleep on the floor."

After a short hesitation he said a very cheerful "Better you than me," and in an irritatingly short time the even pace of his breathing revealed that he'd fallen asleep.

There was nothing for Merry to do but dim the lamp and sit in the corner staring morosely into the dark, listening to Devon inhaling and exhaling quietly with intense (and undeserved) peacefulness. Perhaps she should wake him up and try to make him go, but there was no guarantee she'd have any more success than she'd had already, and there was no telling what he might do if she forced the issue. Better you than me, indeed.

On his boots Devon had brought in wet sand and water; Merry's resentment increased as rivulets of gritty water found her and began to creep stealthily to her skin through the nightshirt. It was fortunate that the air curling through the window was warm and soft. After a long time the ocean's roll lulled Merry gently to sleep despite her troubles. The tense column of her neck, which had so long held her head stiffly upright, went suddenly lax, and her head fell hard against the wall, painfully waking her.

Devon was awakened as well; Merry saw his light head rise from the pillow. He kicked off the blanket and came to her, dropping to one knee by her crossed legs.

"You hit your head?" he said.

"No," she said grouchily. "The
wall
hit my head."

"My, we're in a nasty mood. Was it my idea that you sit on the floor?" His fingers felt for and found the low bump on the side of her head. "You've got quite a knock. I had better get—"

"Don't get anything! It's just a little lump," she said, and her tone was so sullen he had to hold back laughter.

As he dropped his hand it touched the hem of her skirt. "You're all wet. What happened?"

"You forgot to use the mud mat."

"Did I? I'm sorry. Well. You can't sit in a puddle." Gently insistent, he made her stand up. "Be reasonable. You can't keep this going all night. Let me take this wet thing off you and put you in bed."

Merry retreated, a white cotton streak, to the other side of the table. Thrusting a forehead that was beginning to ache into his palm, Devon let the helpless laughter overwhelm him.

"Merry, I've got enough liquor in me to—God knows what, float a bugle corps or something. If you think I'm going to play chase around the table with you like an aging roue and buxom Bess the chambermaid ... If I found you a hammock, would you sleep in it?"

It was a respectable compromise, and a way to preserve pride. Inside Merry snatched gratefully at the offer, but all she showed Devon was a nod. She was a little less grateful in a moment or two, when Devon returned with the hammock and strung it across the cabin for her. Merry had never slept in a hammock. As she stared doubtfully at the swaying band of cotton mesh Devon said, "It's simple to use. But for the first time, you had better let me help you get in."

"No!" snapped Merry, in no humor to be patronized. "I've slept in hammocks before. Will you go into the corridor, please? I'd like to change my nightshirt."

"Why should I? You didn't while I was undressing. I'm going to bed. Put out the lantern if you want to be modest."

After a moment's indecision she killed the lantern, then gracefully let the wet shirt fall and drew a clean one over her head and shook it down around her. She sighed with relief as the dry cloth warmed her skin, and with fading gooseflesh she tossed the old shirt over a chair.

From the bed Devon said innocently, "I probably ought to have mentioned that I have excellent night vision."

It would have been nice to strangle him with the hammock and have the bunk to herself, but Merry was too tired to spend time in that happy fantasy. The sagging line of the hammock smiled expectantly at her in the dark. She felt for and tried to smooth a place to lie in the tangled webbing. When she thought she had one, she turned quickly and jumped backward onto it. The hammock jumped too and dumped Merry facedown on the floor.

The hammock was obviously a creature to be approached with caution. She was so mad at it, swinging to the ocean beat above her, that a moment went by before she thought of Devon on the bed. She knew he wasn't asleep, even if he was preserving a discreet silence. Very likely the man was mute from ecstasy.

"It's been a while since I've slept in a hammock," she said from the floor.

"You might try giving it a sugar lump."

"Thank you," she said coldly. "If you have any other advice to offer—"

"Lie on the diagonal. I'm still perfectly willing to help you."

If he hadn't made the jibe about the lump of sugar, she might have softened. As it was, she'd rather break her neck than give him the satisfaction of putting her in the hammock. Raw determination got her into the hammock, on the diagonal, her arms and legs splayed for balance, and she lay like a capital
X,
rocking with the swell until the
Joke
dipped. Bucking enthusiastically, the hammock twirled a pirouette and slung Merry into Devon's hastily prepared grip.