A smile lifted to her eyes and she nodded, praying it was so. At least now Tomas and she had a chance. At least now she was free! At last!
A light wind caught the sails, making travel slow but steady. The day dawned beneath a smooth blanket of low clouds. As the ship sailed southwest through the Mediterranean the clouds scattered, creating holes from which the sun fell in magnificent streams to the grey ocean water. Most of the crew labored arduously in the hold to shift the weight of the cargo, Garrett and Leif included.
They had just set one heavy crate on top of another when Gayle appeared beneath deck. Hanging on the topside stairs, he surveyed the scene. It had taken nearly a half hour to discover why Juliet would not appear on deck, a half hour he might have saved had he realized the obvious: Juliet had a lady's modesty, she could not appear among men wearing a nightdress and robe, even if it managed to cover her head to toe.
"I'm looking for a dress for the Lady Juliet. Who's got one here?" He cast a grin at Garrett and said, "Garrett will be happy to pay a pretty sum for the gift."
"Ah, will you look at that," Samuels grunted as he lifted the next box. "Leif, you raised a clever boy when he's out looking for dresses as we're all sweating like swine
down here."
The men laughed, but Leif groaned, "With four sisters, my son had no choice but to be interested in ... ah, life's more delicate issues."
"I want some credit," Gayle told the group. "I just made the lady happy by telling her I'd get her a dress so she might do something more than pace Garrett's floor."
Garrett looked up with sudden interest.
Gayle pretended not to be nervous. "Now who's got a dress? Heart? Didn't you get a pretty rag for Madeline in London?"
"That I did. But among other appetites, Maddie's got a fondness for pastries, and the dress would look like a sail without wind on Lady Juliet."
Garrett wiped the sweat from his brow with the towel on his neck, approaching the place on the steps where Gayle stood. "You made her happy, Gayle?"
There was no mistaking the ominous tone he put in his question, a question that might have been, just what did you tell her to make her happy? Gayle met his gaze, hesitating but briefly before trying to cast doubt on Garrett's suspicions with a light, breezy reply. "Aye! Don't we want her happy?"
"Desperately, but mind my words, man, not at the expense of a lie."
Garrett's intuition momentarily disarmed Gayle, but it was too late. The ball had already been set rolling, there was no turning back now. "Might I count on your trust, Garrett? You may have ten years on me, and that much more experience, but I am not completely daft when it comes to the fairer sex."
Garrett's gaze held the younger man's, pulling him into the depths of his eyes in the way that he had: a search of his soul. Gayle braced, wondering how he thought to get past Garrett in the first place. Garrett always knew the truth behind a person's words; he knew exactly what Gayle asked of him. Gayle wrote a script, and like Juliet herself, Garrett would only be a player. While normally Garrett was the last man one might expect to surrender responsibility, this offer was tempting indeed.
An interesting situation . . . Garrett almost smiled as he spotted the lie. Aye, one that conveniently absolved him from culpability. No doubt, Gayle had counted on the idea there would never be a reckoning day, that Juliet would be forever changed by her part. Which was extremely possible . . .
"I have a pretty skirt, frock, and blouse," Paul interrupted to make the offer. "I was saving it for Kira, but when I think of the color, dark blue, how 'twill set the girl's eyes off real nice—"
Garrett interrupted to curse, "That's all I need, a little more temptation from those eyes."
Yet Garrett didn't know how bad it would be then. He didn't know until late that evening, after they had finished the task and he was climbing up the rope from a long swim. He first heard the sound, and before he grasped exactly what was happening he felt a quick tension and found himself catching his breath. He turned and saw Juliet standing in a circle with Gayle, Leif, Heart, and Drummer, his quartermaster, shyly receiving their attentions.
The effect of the Dutch costume was . . . well, arresting. She wore a blouse made of white cotton with short puffy sleeves, sleeves that left her thin arms bare. Trimmed in colorful embroidery of red, green, blue, and gold, the full length decorative frock gathered at her small waist and accented her slender form beneath before falling over a dark blue velvet skirt. It was modest and pretty, and with her long plaits she looked like a well-bred young lady of the Dutch countries. Yet it was her laughter as Leif made her spin round and round that caused his breath to catch, for this was, incredibly, the first time he had heard the happy, magical music of it.
Juliet felt his eyes upon her. A not entirely unpleasant tremor ran through her and she stopped, turning back around to see him standing behind her. How could she know he stood there without aid of sight? As if she owned a special sixth sense, a meter of his proximity, a meter she felt intimately connected to her heartbeat, the heat rising in her cheeks, like the lingering remnants of his touch. She could not meet the bemused look in his gaze, fearing that just as she had known how close he stood, he too might know her every thought in the same mysterious way. She lowered her eyes. "You look lovely, Juliet."
Garrett came to stand at her side, less than a half-foot away. She was acutely conscious of this, and folded her arms across her chest in a small measure of protection. A conversation sprang up among the men but she could not listen, stuck as her mind was on his simple compliment. The effect was anything but simple; she felt it trigger a strange warmth inside—a blush—and it made her hand brush the stray wisps of hair from her face. But what was maddening, truly maddening, was how she questioned his sincerity. Questioned it as if it mattered.
Then, against her will, her gaze began a sideways lift to him. He was so tall, more than a foot taller than herself, and she was considered tall for a woman. The lines of his face revealed every ounce of his strength, the length and width of his forehead, his high cheek bones and lean cheeks, the square cut to his chin and the generous curve of his mouth, and especially the intelligence in his eyes. His eyes filled with humor as he gave Leif and Drummer his opinion of the merits of astrological predictions of the weather. He stood with his hands on his hips. Moisture fell unnoticed from his person and no shirt covered the wide expanse of his bare-muscled chest, making her think of his warmth, how that warmth filled her—
She bit her lip, trying to stop the thought. What in God's name was rattling her wits?
She thought instead of Tomas, how he would be waiting for her. She tried to imagine their reunion but found she couldn't, no pictures emerged in her mind. She wondered if it was a protective measure, for while it would be a happy scene for sure, there would also be the conflicting issues of what had happened and his response, whether it would matter or not, if he would still love her in the same way. Why wouldn't he? She would never deny the magnitude of it, indeed, she fought to escape this every minute she was in Garrett's presence, but it had not changed her feelings for him. She still loved him fervently; she always would. . . .
She continued to ponder this as they returned to his quarters for dinner. She sat away from the men on the sofa. Vespa sat on her lap, and as her hand methodically combed the cat's fur she remembered the first time Tomas told her he loved her.
She would never forget that day. She had not seen Tomas for nearly two months and it seemed hardly an hour could go by without thinking of the prearranged day when they planned to meet—the day after her fifteenth birthday. Only Tomas knew it was her birthday. Besides Clarissa's birthday, her uncle forbade all celebrations that were not religious. Yet on the day before her birthday, her uncle had two teeth pulled and, still needing to recover the following day, he decided to stay home.
Her disappointment could not be described. She remembered neglecting her studies to sit and stare at the windowsill, unable to believe it was true, waiting as the sun climbe
d the meridian for something to happen. And something did. A man rode up on horseback. She watched as he disappeared into the house but thought nothing of it until the grooms came out with her uncle's carriage. An emergency at the shipyard took her uncle away.
Oh, she knew a joy then, a huge burst of joy that fueled her long run to where Tomas waited. She came upon him as he slept. Hiding behind a tree, she tossed tiny acorns at him. One finally woke him, and he looked for her. "Juliet? Juliet?" Excitement betrayed her with laughter. She did not know why but she started running, as if the emotions in her heart found vent through her feet, and Tomas gave chase. They were running and laughing and running, and finally she let him catch her. They fell to the ground, breathless and laughing still, and as he brushed her hair from her face he said what no one since her mother's passing had said to her, "I love you, Juliet, I love you . . ."
"The hell he does!" Garrett swore on top of a mean-sounding chuckle.
Juliet's gaze flew to where he stood, her eyes filling with fear and uncertainty until she saw it was only a coincidence. She let the thought repeat itself over and over in - her mind, even as the panic subsided and supper was finally brought in and served. Willfully replacing the panic with the happy thought that Garrett had at last agreed to return her to Tomas, she joined them at the table.
Did luck change? Wasn't it possible? Didn't she always believe that someday, somehow, everything would be all
right?
"Love," Garrett interrupted the conversation to ask, pointing at her hand with a smile, "why are you crossing your fingers like that?"
She glanced down at her fingers and wanted to laugh when she saw they were crossed like a schoolgirl. The reason was simple, really, for now she at least had a chance to find the place in her dreams at the end of the tunnel. He had given her a chance for happiness, and what more really could she ask for? She looked back up and shrugged, resisting the urge to thank him out loud.
Garrett turned to Gayle, who pretended not to notice, before he resumed the description of savages he once found in that part of the New World where a great river cuts through the thickest jungle on the planet.
"... I've never seen such loosely knit social organization anywhere. Rousseau would have had a field day trying to work these people into his social theories. They had no individual possessions; they did not understand the concept. No one owned anything, for all wealth was communally shared: food, shelter, even things like ba skets, pots, and tools — "
"Not the women?" Leif nearly demanded in a question.
"Aye, women too." Garrett laughed at the idea. "And what a happy lot they were, Leif. Everyone slept in these large huts. Individual fathers of children were not often known. Love," he stopped again to notice, "you're not eating again. Don't you like the stew?"
She glanced at her uneaten food. "Oh . . . yes," she said distractedly, and he resumed the story. At that moment she had been debating if it was dangerous or not to feel anything but animosity for Garrett. She felt both excited and nervous by her changed circumstances, and with the weight of her troubles lifted from her shoulders, she knew a profound lightheartedness.
Tonali took to hitting her braid back and forth as Garrett finished answering Gayle's inquiry into the medicine of these strange people, a shared interest between the two men. "The shaman was an old man, very wise, I think, at least from what I could grasp with the language barrier. He shared my dream, though — "
Tonali suddenly hissed. At that exact moment Garrett stopped, and within the fraction of a second, Garrett's dagger manifested itself from nowhere and flew through the air. Juliet caught her scream in a gasp as her eyes flew
to the curved leg of the sitting chair where Garrett's knife had struck a large rat.
Silence came over the table as Leif and Gayle stared, not at the dead rat but at Garrett's changed face. Garrett said in a quiet yet unmistakably threatening tone, "Get it the hell out of here."
She first thought he ordered Gayle, but no. She had never seen Tonali obey a command, but then she had never heard Garrett actually give one. It was the subject of many jokes among his men, Leif in particular; how the great cat made Garrett treat him as not an equal but as a being of obvious superiority, this great god of the cats who for reasons still mysterious to her chose to be Garrett's companion. Yet upon hearing Garrett's command, Tonali stalked quietly to the place. The mouth of the cat never touched the rat. As if trained for a carnival trick, the panther took the dagger's handle in his jaws and obediently stalked from the room.
"Where the hell is Renegade, anyway?" Gayle broke the silence. "I haven't seen him around for months."
"He's hibernating in my bottom drawer. He should be waking anytime now. Ah, love," he touched her hand, "I didn't scare you, did I?"
She shook her head. "I'm just . . . well, surprised. You have such love for all animals—not eating their flesh and so forth-"
"A love that stops with the rodents."
"Garrett's afraid of the pitiful things, if you can believe that."
Juliet's gaze dashed from Garrett to Leif and back again, waiting for him to deny it. She could hardly imagine Garrett afraid of anything or anyone. She suspected he would be guilty of hubris; she imagined him meeting the devil himself with a condescending laugh and a toss of his hair; and no doubt, he'd emerge victorious.
Yet she was wrong; Garrett would never commit the sin of hubris and his next words told her so: "Aye, they scare the hell out of me. You're surprised, love? Trust me, there are stranger things aplenty. You see, evil takes the form of rats in my dreams and the fear spills over to my waking state ... ."
As he spoke she watched Tonali enter through the open door, moving to Garrett's side. The knife was in his mouth; the rat was gone. How did the cat clean the blade? She watched Tonali position the knife at Garrett's side, Garrett ignoring or perhaps not even realizing the miracle taking place as Tonali, using only his mouth, slipped the knife back into the leather strap attached to Garrett's belt.
The cat's eyes turned to her, catching and reflecting the candle and lantern light, so that she saw only two gold stars, for a moment blinding in intensity. She thought of the place Gayle had told her Garrett found the cat: a magical place in the central part of the new Americas, north of that great river where the jungle melts into the arid, dry land above, a place, he said, where dreams and reality merge. He never did tell her the story.
Or anything about himself for that matter. Of course, she had heard from Gayle and Leif of various bits and pieces of his adolescence spent indentured—indentured when he was a titled member of the aristocracy! —to Captain Gainsport, then to Chein Lee. Prince and Gayle told her he had also been to a place called Tibet and had spent two years traveling in India before finding Tonali in the Americas. That was really all she knew.
None of it made sense. How could a member of one of England's first families be indentured to a sea captain or to anyone for that matter? He referred to his mother often, and always with reverence, but how could his mother permit him to be taken away like that?
"Garrett?" she heard herself ask for his attention, which came immediately, joined by a surprised Leif and Gayle, too. She could hardly meet their faces, as with some horror she realized she had interrupted Leif midsentence. She apologized softly, when no apology was needed, then gathered courage. Only because she could not now turn back, she put the most benign question to him: "Gayle told me your family resides mostly in the northern lake district. Worcester?" The question was asked as if they had just met at a tea, which made Garrett smile. "Is that where you were raised?"
This was exactly what Gayle hoped for, and he waited, hoping Garrett would honor her interest despite his well-known reluctance to talk about himself or his unusual life.
A strange light came to his eyes as he met hers. "No, not for the most part. My first five years only, then I was separated from them."
"Oh? Why was that? What happened?"
A strange smile lifted on his face and h
e sighed, Leif and Gayle laughed, though. "Well, love, it's neither a pleasant story nor a flattering one. I'm not sure you'd want to hear it."
The simple statement prepared her to hear the worst. "I think I would, though."
"If you tell her, Garrett, start at the beginning," Leif suggested before Garrett could pull one of his clever dances, escaping Juliet's inquiry by changing the subject. "I've only heard the end from your mother."
"The beginning," he repeated. "Well, the beginning is this: I was a firstborn son to one of England's oldest and most respected families, with a first son's status, title, and position, to say nothing of an enormous fortune. Despite their backgrounds, my parents were good and gentle people. I don't think they understood what was happening until it was too late. Too late by many years. Edric and my sister Jane were born later, and my father died when I was six. Aye," he noticed Juliet's expression, "it was a sad thing in our house. My mother married again and bore my youngest sister, Elsbeth, but that was much later, for in between husbands I became the head of a great, grand house, arriving at my full title and privilege yet left completely without guidance. My mother still didn't notice what was happening to me, lost as she was to her grief, the burden of her new responsibilities to see our properties managed, and so on. Then, too, I always loved her dearly and my . . . ah, problem was rarely obvious in her presence."
Juliet forgot how strange it was to speak to him as if they were normal, how strange it was to know the madness brought by his kisses but to know almost nothing else about him. "What didn't show?"
"The fact that I was not fit to live in her house. She didn't realize it until my eighth year. It happened upon my return home from my third and last expulsion from the schools. I — "
"You were expelled?"
"Love, don't look at me like that. You must know that a boy's expulsion from school is not the moral equivalent of homicide, and certainly, you know better than most, it's not the worst I've done."
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