by Caro Carson
One of the powder monkeys had jumped aboard the Redemption from a Portuguese ship. He was certain there was no Kayna in Portugal, nor in Basque for good measure. The artilleryman from Amsterdam and the Prussian who fed the goats on board knew no towns or countries called Kayna, either. Griffin’s frustration grew. How could it be possible that he’d plucked a woman from the sea who came from no country?
There were still a few countries to be heard from. He’d get his cabin boy to fetch the Algerian cook.
“England.” She stopped him with a hard squeeze of his hand, demanding his attention. This time, when she tried to stand, he didn’t stop her. She set the fur on the chair and gestured toward the door and shook her head. “No, sir.”
She moved to the desk and picked up a rolled-up map, caressing the parchment lovingly. “Yes, sir.”
He laughed, a surprised chuckle at how well she could communicate in the few words she’d heard the men repeating over and over this morning. She smiled, his conspirator in communicating, then she spread out the parchment, looked at the map, and stopped smiling.
He stood beside her and passed his hand over the depicted land. “This is England.”
She winced. Pointed at his chest again. “No England. Captain.”
Ah, of course. She’d thought his name was England, but she’d noticed all the men addressing him as captain. Which meant he’d probably made the same mistake. No one knew of a place named Kayna, because that was her name.
“Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Captain Griffin Dennehay, at your service.”
He bowed with a proper courtly flourish, and smiled up at her before kissing the back of her hand.
She paled, and to his shock, dropped to her knees before him and clasped her hands as if she were praying.
“Griffin.” She said his name as a plea, a reverent plea, almost a prayer.
She was praying to him.
Chapter Five
The king!
Kayna had been waiting all this long morning to be summoned before the king of this floating fortress with its army of men, and he’d been standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder the entire time. Although he was much younger than Arthur, he was the gryphon. The king.
Kings ruled by divine right. Arthur’s victories in battle proved Heaven had chosen him to rule. The Lord had rewarded him with lands and men, horses and halls.
But this gryphon! Such wealth. He was young and strong and pleasing in face and form as well. Kayna stayed on her knees, once more aware of her own limitations. She was merely a notha from a court of a lesser king.
It hurt to think of Arthur as a lesser king, but there could be no denying it. Instead of window slits in the walls of this gryphon’s fortress, a huge rectangle let in light through glass, dozens and dozens of squares of glass held in place by yet more metal. He was a gryphon with wealth to rival the Roman emperors from Merlin’s tales.
Kayna’s eyes stung at the impossibility of such wealth, but she could not wipe away her tears with the sleeve of this borrowed garment. As beautifully embroidered as the trim on Arthur’s finest tunics were, they were nothing compared to the red robe this gryphon had given her to wear. Captain dressed his prisoners in finer clothing than Arthur owned.
Arthur owns nothing now. He is dead.
The grief hit her hard enough that she might have gone to her knees if she hadn’t been there already. She’d had to push aside the memory of the king on his funeral bower in order to meet the morning’s challenge of listening to at least a dozen languages she hadn’t known existed. It was humbling to realize that she was not the expert she’d fancied herself to be. Arthur and Merlin had always heaped praise upon her knowledge, but what was the praise of people who did not realize how poor and primitive they were?
“No, stop that.” Captain took her by the arms and lifted her to her feet. When he saw the tears on her cheeks, he spoke rapidly. As always, her mind tried to catch particular words, the most common ones of the language that she’d been hearing—the I sir no not and yes where good morning what—to put them in context. Captain didn’t use many of those now, however, as he spoke with gentle earnestness.
She was too tired to pick out new individual words. She closed her eyes to close her mind.
He touched her. Strong hands, a masculine sweep of his thumbs over her wet cheeks, were shockingly gentle. Her knees were suddenly weak, and he caught her to him, pressing her forehead into the smooth blue fabric covering his shoulder. She listened not to individual words, but to tone and vibration, to the bass sound of a man’s voice.
Dear Lord, this great gryphon was holding her in his arms. She could not stand like an ingrate with her arms by her sides, so she wrapped her arms around him, too. He had the size and strength of Sir Kay, but there was nothing of a fatherly joke in this embrace.
They stood together for a while, until her thoughts dwelled less on the men who were gone and more on the man who held her. A man whose instinct was to soothe her. Protect her. He’d spent his morning with her, standing by her chair with his hand upon her shoulder. He was a good man.
She’d known many. Arthur, Merlin, Sir Kay—but all the men in her life were gone, and her heart ached with it. Yet she did not sink into despair, because Captain held her. She was grateful for this man, for one more good man, as she faced her unknown future.
She did not know where she was or where she was heading. Only last night, she’d seen Arthur turn to mist, and with him, the sorceresses, the ruby, an entire island. It was terrifying to remember, but no matter how tightly she clung to Captain, he remained solid and real. For now.
How long will you let me stay?
Would he be like Arthur’s knights, staying with a woman for a week’s rest, then leaving her behind as he continued on his quest? Kayna took a deep breath, and let go.
“Muraz, Captain.” She stepped back to look at his face, and nearly started crying anew at the concern in his expression.
“You’re welcome, Kayna.” His lips quirked in a bit of a smile. “But as you haven’t joined my crew, you can call me Griffin, not Captain.”
She understood the last three words. Gryphon, not Captain. The men all called him Captain. Perhaps men used one title and women another in his land.
Someone knocked on the door. She felt tired at the prospect of more men with more languages. The language she needed to learn was the gryphon’s. If he would talk naturally, she would pick up the basics quickly, but not if these snippets of disparate languages from a dozen different men kept clogging her mind.
What was the word for talking? Speak. He’d asked his men to speak to her over and over this morning. She supplemented her limited vocabulary with her gestures and her facial expressions, wrinkling her nose and indicating the door. “Not speak. Not.” Then she touched her hand to her mouth and gestured toward the king’s mouth. “Speak Captain. Speak Gryphon.”
“Yes, I’m trying to speak with you.”
“The chair,” she said, pointing to the furniture. Then she turned to the scroll. “All England.”
The knock sounded again, and to her frustration, the gryphon opened the door. In walked yet another man, but this one was quite young, although as tall as she was. She remembered him from when she’d been caught in the net on the deck. He’d spoken calmly amid the anxious men, as he did now. “Good morning, madam.”
“Good morning, sir.”
The boy seemed surprised, although the common greeting had been simple enough to learn. His next sentence was lost on her, but then he held out her clothing, dried and folded neatly, including her leather boots. How nice to be given something, instead of having some response expected of her. “Ah, muraz.”
“That means ‘thank you,’ I believe,” the gryphon said with that bit of a smile about his mouth.
“You’re welcome, madam.”
Kayna was already dressed for the day, and she certainly would not offend the gryphon by rejecting what he’d given her to wear, but her
bare feet seemed to bother him. Indeed, every man had entered the cabin without removing his boots.
Well, then, she would wear her boots, too. She took one of the sheets of soft leather and set the rest of the stack on the desk, then propped her right foot high on the arm of the chair so that she could begin wrapping the leather around her foot properly. The red robe had the most convenient slit up the front, so the clothing fell away from her bent leg. She rested her chin on her raised knee and began tying on her boot.
She should find out the word for footwear. As she turned her head to ask, she saw the man and the boy, both, gaping at her.
Judging by the looks on their faces, she had, somehow, made a fool of herself.
The lady looked like a mistress fit for a king, standing in red satin with one perfect white leg exposed. But it was her confidence that was truly erotic, her smile as she’d taken that soft leather in her hand and propped her bare foot on the arm of his desk chair.
Griffin drove his hand through his hair. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
Her smile died.
Next to him, Terrence was fixated on that perfect, feminine leg. Well, the boy would have to get his education about the female body from someone other than Kayna. Griffin stalked over to her, put his hand on her knee, and firmly pushed her foot off the chair.
Immediately, she began to kneel before him. He caught her by the upper arms and lifted her back up. “No, stop that. Stop kneeling.” It was damned unnerving, frankly. So was the way her robe gaped open at his touch. He let go of her and grabbed the pile of clothing. “Here. Put these on.”
She nodded as if she understood, but she didn’t take the clothing. She was looking up at him like a pup trying to figure out what its master wanted. He held the clothing out to her.
Kayna shook back the long tangle of her hair and began untying the sash at her waist.
“No. Not here.” He pressed the stack of clothing into her chest so she was forced to hold it, then guided her with a hand on her back toward the screen. “You dress here. Behind the screen.”
The woman was as innocent about her nudity as Eve before Paradise had been lost. Was it possible someone with such pale skin could have come from one of the islands in the Pacific, the ones where Spaniards claimed bare-breasted women offered flowers to passing ships? He’d thought that no more than a sailor’s wishful myth.
He turned his back on the screen and crossed his arms over his chest. Terrence hadn’t moved.
“Close your mouth.”
Terrence did.
Griffin sighed. He had to stop letting this situation turn him into a bear. The lady from the sea was a mystery, and was likely to remain so. She was handling her unexpected arrival on his ship with more patience and grace than he was. He shouldn’t snap at Terrence, either. The lad was actually quite level-headed.
Terrence had come aboard the day Jonas Black had disappeared in that cave. In fact, Terrence had been in the cave itself, which was why he was one of the few who didn’t suspect Griffin of murder. It was rather refreshing to be greeted by someone on the ship who didn’t make the sign of the cross the moment Griffin walked away.
“I’ll go check on dinner, sir. The cook is planning a feast, now that we’ve got fresh provisions.”
“You’re not a cabin boy, Terrence. Your brother saw to that before he disappeared.”
Terrence clammed up. He had yet to acknowledge that the pirate Captain Jonas Black had been his older brother, but Griffin knew the truth of it. Black had given Terrence a magnificent emerald to buy out his service as a cabin boy in the Royal Navy. Although Captain Black had disappeared, Terrence had followed his wishes and given the emerald to the governor of South Carolina to buy out his service. He was a free man. The Redemption was his ride home to London.
“You have the look of your brother, you know.” Griffin said it as kindly as he could, but clearly, Terrence was not ready to talk about it—or about what he’d seen in that cave.
Jonas Black had been the bastard son of an English baron, acknowledged and educated as a gentleman. Terrence must be the same. “I don’t suppose you were tutored in any languages that our lady from the sea might know?”
“No, sir. Only a few years of the classical languages. Greek was the worst.”
Griffin could hear Kayna rustling around. He jerked his head toward the screen. “Give Greek a try.”
Terrence recited what had to be a few stilted lines from a poem taught at Eton.
“Not speak,” Kayna said, and she slapped the red satin robe over the top of the screen. “Stop that. Speak Captain.”
Griffin smiled. Then he rubbed his hand over his jaw to hide that smile, and realized he had more than a day’s worth of stubble. Even pirates shaved. Only deranged madmen wore beards. The pitcher and basin as well as his shaving kit were on the shelving behind the screen. He’d shave as soon as Kayna finished.
This dressing was taking overlong. Her clothing had lacked all the time-consuming bits and pieces. No stockings and garters, no corsets and petticoats. He was rather good at playing lady’s maid when a lover needed to re-gown herself. He couldn’t imagine what Kayna needed help with, but perhaps she needed assistance. Feeling chivalrous, he leaned his head back to peek behind the screen.
She was holding the pewter water pitcher in one hand, one of his pistols in the other, examining it closely with her thumb hooked in the trigger. In horror, he watched her point it at her own face as she squinted down the barrel.
“No!” The word exploded from him as he dove for the gun, knocking her hand aside just as it fired. The blast was deafening, the smell of sulfur immediate, the pain in his forearm burning.
Better his arm than her face. She dropped the pistol and the pitcher, and he yanked her against him, pressing her tightly to his chest. She was shaking. So was he. His ears were ringing; hers had to be, too.
“Terrence,” he called sharply.
“It didn’t hit me, sir. You’re bleeding.”
He made a fist, testing his forearm. “It’s not deep.”
He let himself press his cheek into her hair, grateful, so grateful that he had not just witnessed her death.
Foolish woman. Flintlocks were notorious for going off accidentally. She hadn’t even needed to pull the trigger for a hideous accident to occur. One never looked down the barrel of a gun, just in case. Everyone knew that. Everyone.
“Here, sir. To stop the bleeding.” Terence held out a linen square.
Griffin was holding Kayna too tightly to let go.
“Poor lady,” Terrence said. “I suppose she was trying to end it all. Perhaps she’d been trying to drown herself on purpose when we caught her.”
“No.” Griffin forced his muscles to relax and let go of her. He only pulled far enough away to push her hair from her face, and he remembered the look on her face that split second before he’d made a dive for the pistol. “She was only curious. She had no idea the gun was loaded.” Or that it was even a gun.
His second-in-command, the ship master, burst into the cabin, his own pistol in hand—and pointed properly at the ceiling in case of misfire—with more men behind him.
Griffin hoped his acting skill was adequate to the task. He kept his arm still so it would not bleed overmuch and joked about men who kept their gunpowder too dry. Damned flintlocks. Accidents happened. ’Twas nothing.
He laughed away the fears of those that believed a mermaid in human form brought cursed luck to the sailor who captured her. If his luck was cursed, he would’ve become a eunuch with that one shot. Since when did the men of the Redemption depend upon luck, in any case? Had the men forgotten their hard lives as pirates already? This scratch on his arm was nothing.
The man with one eye and the sailor with a wooden leg muttered their agreement and left. The rest soon followed. Griffin shut the door and stopped smiling.
“Well done, sir,” Terrence said. “Well done, madam.”
Kayna had acted her part perfectly. He knew
she did not understand a word, but she’d taken every cue from him and laughed when he’d laughed. She’d kept a pleasantly neutral expression throughout, so the men were hard-pressed to think of her as a vicious creature able to curse a man or bring doom to a vessel.
But she was pale, and now that the men were gone, her expression as she looked at the blood on his sleeve was mournful.
“The chair,” he said, knowing they were words she would understand.
As she sank into the chair, he let his knuckles drift over her cheek. She was here, and she was whole. “Everything is all right.”
Terrence was anxious. “I can mend that jacket for you, sir. I became quite the valet for the Admiral, before...” Terrence swallowed, not as good as Kayna at hiding his thoughts.
Griffin shrugged out of his coat. “Before you jumped ship to be with your pirate brother, who then disappeared in the damnedest way. We share too many secrets, you and I. Let us be frank with one another.”
Terrence took his coat. “Before I bought out my service with the Royal Navy and then booked passage back to England with a privateer who sails the Redemption under His Majesty’s flag.”
“A good story.”
“And a true one, sir.”
Griffin took the linen square and pressed it to the shallow burn on his forearm. The wound was truly minor. Kayna looked to be in far worse shape, with her haunted eyes and white lips. The gunfire had scared her badly—or perhaps she knew how easily the crew could have turned on her for harming their captain.
“The Redemption shall make the next port. ’Twould be best if the men had a chance to expend their energy in the taverns. Perhaps if they surround themselves with women, they’ll stop thinking of mine.”