Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  15

  “I think,” he said, his voice warm and lazily content, “that I will throw away all your pantaloons. Maybe your corset. And hoops, yes, definitely your hoops.”

  They were lying in the bunk with the pure, golden light of morning streaming through the portholes, falling onto the gently moving floor of the cabin. Their bodies were nested together under the covering of a sheet and light blanket, though Ramon was propped on his elbow, brushing his lips over the sweet curve of her shoulder while, with his free hand, he smoothed up and down the molding of her arm. Lorna had been pretending to drowsiness, in spite of the growing heat of him against her naked back and his gentle caresses. She opened her eyes, stiffening.

  “You did do it. I knew you did!”

  “Do what?” he asked, his voice silky with innocence.

  “Get rid of my pantaloons, so I had nothing to wear.”

  “You were quite adequately clothed, more than adequately.”

  She twisted from his grasp, pushing herself up in the bunk. “Of all the lowdown, underhanded tricks, that’s the worst I’ve ever come across!”

  “I didn’t say I did it,” he protested, turning his attention to her shapely and slender knee, which she had drawn up within his range. He draped his arm over her leg and began to trace the crown of her kneecap with the tip of his tongue.

  “You don’t have to, it’s written all over your smug — stop that, it tickles!”

  He ignored her squirming efforts to avoid his tongue. “What if I did? Admit it, you enjoyed your … unencumbered evening — and everything that followed.”

  “Oh!” she cried and, driven mad by his tickling and his superior attitude, wrenched the pillow from under them and swung it at his head. He dodged, grabbing for it, and they tussled. She leaned over him, and as she found she could not wrest it from him, tried instead to press it down on his face. He surged up, taking the pillow with him. She would not turn loose. He jerked it, leaning, and a moment later she lay face down across his lap. He released the pillow. She felt, rather than saw, him lift his hand above the vulnerable white skin of her buttocks. Like an eel, she twisted face up and lay panting, glaring at him.

  He grinned, the untrammeled pleasure of their play lighting the darkness of his eyes. The white gleam of his teeth shone against the bronze of his skin. He shook his head. “Don’t you know, ma chérie, that I wouldn’t redden even an inch of your beautiful skin.”

  “Why should I know any such thing?” The words were sharp if rather breathless.

  “I want only to please you.”

  He placed his hand upon her waist, closing his grip upon it. “To drive me mad, you mean!” she snapped.

  “In some ways, possibly,” he acceded, pursing his lips as he slid his hand upward to cup her breast. “It seems only fair, since you have not helped my sanity in these last weeks.”

  “You know—” she began, but he cut her short.

  “Yes. Shall we let it go, thinking only of now? I require at this moment simply to know what is your pleasure? If you are dissatisfied, you must tell me what can I do to make you happy.”

  “I — nothing.” She lowered her lashes, feeling the warmth of a flush on her cheeks.

  “Nothing? Isn’t there anything I have done that you would like again?”

  “I … I’m not dissatisfied.”

  “Nor am I,” he said, sliding his fingers into the valley between her breasts, letting them come to rest on the swell above her left side where her heartbeat made the soft white mound tremble. “Nor am I, but you have so thoroughly, if sometimes unwillingly, gratified my most fervent desire, that I would do the same for you. Only tell me what it is.”

  His voice was low, hypnotically persuasive, oddly musical. The vision she had had of him, coming to her through her open French doors after his serenade, flashed through her mind. She hesitated, then shook her head.

  “There is something,” he said, his hold tightening, his tone commanding as he said again, “Tell me.”

  “It … it’s silly, and nothing you can help now, even if it wasn’t too dangerous. It was … is just an idea, a sort of daydream.”

  “But, one that excites you,” he said, beginning to smile once more as he stretched out beside her, drawing her into his arms. “Now I have to know. You can’t keep it from me; I won’t let you.”

  When she told him, he didn’t laugh, as she suspected he might, nor did he mind that her thoughts had gone tumbling into fantasy while she was in his arms. The sound he made deep in his throat might have been of amazement or exultation. A moment later, he was whispering against her ear, “Wait, just wait.”

  Was it the lasciviousness of their thoughts, or the speaking of them aloud that brought them together then with such hunger? The reason did not matter, only the actuality, the strength and fury of the possession, the physical need that was appeased, the human warmth that was exchanged with clinging mouths and enclosing arms. There was another element. It was as if, above the merging of their bodies, there was the forging of a link between their minds; a link that was tentative, fragile, one that might endure or just as easily be broken in an instant.

  It was with reluctance that they dressed, finally, and made ready to go into town. Ramon had business to attend to concerning the cargo they would be loading in the afternoon and, in addition, there was to be the auction of the goods brought in by the different blockade runners. He seemed no more ready to leave Lorna on board alone than she was anxious to stay. Wearing her muslin gown, with a shawl over her arms against the spring coolness at this latitude and a parasol to protect her from the bright sun, she left the gangplank of the ship on his arm.

  The business was contracted without incident, Lorna being regaled with tea and cakes by a junior accountant while Ramon drove his bargain in the factor’s office. As they were leaving, they met Peter and his English friends once more. She knew a moment of dismay as they crowded around, noisy and exuberant, only slightly more sober than they had been the night before. She cast a quick glance at Ramon, but he was smiling, joking with Peter about the cargo he had stolen from under his nose, ready to be entertained. He did not seem to mind the gallantries paid to Lorna this morning, nor the intrusion upon them. If anything, he appeared to welcome the distraction, readily agreeing to wait for Peter and the others as they arranged their business, so that they could all go somewhere for a noon meal.

  Even after they left the red-brick factor’s building near the waterfront, it was still some time before they ate. Their wandering in search of a suitable place took them past the photographer’s shop. There was a great cry, suddenly, to have their likenesses made, and they descended en masse on the hapless practitioner of the art. A short, slim man with thinning hair that left a lifeless brown peak on his high, shining forehead, he was so flustered by such an influx of business so near to the noon hour that he made a muddle of names and amounts of payment. He posed Lorna, as the only lady present, first. Fussing with the backdrop of dark green drapery, arranging her gown in careful folds, placing her hands just so and tilting her head at a precise angle, he kept ducking back under the black cloth that covered his camera on its wooden leg supports. The color of her gown did not suit him, being much too light, as was her hair in his opinion. Her gray eyes would be a problem too; brown eyes showed up best in photographs, and dark blue eyes did tolerably well, but light blue and gray seemed to disappear. It would be much more satisfactory if they were to have the likeness tinted. There was a woman he could recommend who did an excellent job for a very reasonable fee.

  One likeness was not enough. Ramon insisted on having one made for her as well as for himself; and Peter, with a sidelong glance at his friend, requested one too. Not to be outdone, or else as a means of taking a sly dig at Ramon and Peter at the same time, a number of the other Englishmen demanded the same. Lorna sat stiffly smiling, trying not to laugh from the ridiculous advice being thrown at her from all sides as the others watched from behind the photographic artist. As
frame after frame was pushed into the wooden box of the camera and pulled out again, as the powder that gave light for each exposure went off again and again, filling the air with acrid smoke that made her eyes water, she began to wonder when it would end.

  Ramon, when it came his turn, engaged the harassed photographer in a conversation about the difficulties of taking photographs in the field and of the value of such records on the battlefields of the current conflict. It was a subject the man seemed to feel strongly about, and he settled down to his business, taking with unruffled calm the clowning of Peter and the others as they struck Napoleonic and Admiral Nelson poses for posterity. Nevertheless, it was the contention of the young Englishmen, propounded almost before the door of the photographer’s shop had closed behind them, that Lorna had been the cause of the man’s initial lack of composure. Her fatal beauty had completely upset his equilibrium, they declared, and they would not be convinced otherwise, no matter how she protested.

  Luncheon, served in a brick-floored court in the shade of a venerable oak, consisted of turtle soup, rare roast beef, fresh-baked bread, new potatoes in a cream sauce with scallions, and trifle. It was a hilarious affair, with the quips and the wine flowing in equal proportions. Lorna, her sides aching from laughing, watched them as they lounged along the table there in the court, their faces dappled by the sunlight falling through the leaves of the trees, limning the unconscious daring and quick intelligence found in each one. They were never still, never silent, a tightly knit group bound by the camaraderie of kinsmen in a strange country, engaged in a dangerous calling. She found herself thinking, as she let her gaze move from one to the other, of the trip they must all make back down the Cape Fear River and out past the guns of the blockade squadron on the run back to Nassau. How many of them would make it? A year from now, as the blockade tightened and the danger increased by slow degrees, how many would still be alive? How many would remain in memory only as the fading images on pieces of photographic cardboard?

  A species of superstitious horror gripped her for an instant, and she shivered, reaching for her wineglass. It was a relief when Peter glanced at his pocket watch, announcing it was time they made their way toward the auction house if they intended to watch the proceedings.

  Lorna had never been to an auction. She was intrigued by the marvelous variety of merchandise standing in bundles, boxes, and barrels, from spirits to soft diaper linen for infants, each tagged with their lot numbers and arranged along the sides of the great open room. She looked with interest at the podium and lines of stiff, uncomfortable chairs, and at the men and women who promenaded slowly around the room, pausing now and then to finger a piece of cloth or sniff at a sample of an open vial of perfume or a box of spice. It was difficult, given the amplitude of the goods and the prosperous look of the people, to remember that there was a war on and a blockade in force. That was, until the bidding started.

  The auctioneer was hefty and balding; the men aiding him to spot and keep track of bids in the audience, eagle-eyed and brisk, bordering on rudeness. The selling process began in an orderly enough fashion, with an item, such as a bolt of cloth, being held up while the pitch was made in the fast-running, smooth-tongued request for bids. Then, as again and again the bid was pushed up higher than bidders could pay or the crowd thought reasonable, men began to mutter and women to cry. A rough-clad farmer shouted his contempt; a woman fainted. Two gentlemen, both claiming the high bid, went at each other with their canes, while their wives screamed and hid their faces in their hands. A pair of women who could not be classed as ladies both tried to take possession of a length of tulle edged with silver lamé ribbon. Before they could be separated, they had torn each other’s bonnets off and stamped them on the floor, ripped flounces from bodices, dragged hair improvers from curls, and were clawing at each other’s faces. The auctioneer pounded his table for order, his helpers shouted, and men with muskets in their hands poured in a back door to stand before the bales of tea, sacks of coffee, and other foodstuffs as the crowd surged in that direction.

  Order was finally restored, but those moments of turmoil had been enough to show the fear that lurked behind the pretense of normality, the desperate need to hoard against an uncertain future, the grasping after the things that represented accustomed luxury in the pretense that it was not, could not, be threatened.

  Lorna had seen all she cared to see, but did not like to suggest leaving since Ramon would feel obligated to escort her. Her head began to ache with the constant chant of the auctioneer, the shouts of the men helping him, and the closeness of the packed room. A few seats down from where they sat, a back-country farmer with a plug of tobacco in his jaw chewed rhythmically, squirting the juice between his teeth into a cuspidor he held between his feet. The odor of the brass container, the monotonous regularity of his bending to spit, the sound of it striking into the nearly full cuspidor, affected her with aversion. Then came the turn at the auction table for the bonnets Ramon had stacked in the cabin of the Lorelei.

  They were not to be sold singly, but as a whole lot. With the announcement, pandemonium broke out. Women wept and pleaded, their cries rising piteously as several of the Parisian confections were unpacked. There was one of pink straw lined with gathered rose satin and tulle and with a spray of silk roses under the brim. Another was cunningly made of moss green velvet over a wire frame with an open back to expose a woman’s coiffure, and with a fluttering, dipping garnishment of peacock and marabou feathers. The third and most fascinating was of black satin swathed in veiling and featuring a spray of jet flowers that lay along the crown and extended on fine wires, so that they would lie in the center of the wearer’s forehead.

  The bidding started high and went higher. There were six or seven merchants competing in the beginning; they were gradually weaned out to three, then only two. The sobs and sighs died away as the price rose to astronomical heights. Woman sat frozen, while their men looked at each other in grim disbelief. Nothing bid on so far had brought such sums, not tea or chocolate, not bread flour, not material for summer clothing, not tanned leather for shoes. That so much of the resources of a strangling economy should be squandered on something so frivolous, so unnecessary, was appalling, even treasonous, and yet there was not a woman in the room who would not have bartered her soul for one of the bonnets, and not a man who would not have spent his last penny to get it for her.

  The hammer fell. The bonnets were sold to a self-satisfied merchant who was immediately besieged by women demanding to know when they would be put up for sale. In the confusion, Lorna stood and, stepping over Peter’s feet before he could move, made her way toward the door. Ramon caught up with her, catching her arm in a strong grasp, hauling her to a halt while he pushed open the door for her. When they were outside on the sidewalk, he swung her to face him.

  “What is it? Are you ill?”

  Tight-lipped, stony-eyed, she stared at him. “No.”

  His dark gaze raked her face, as if searching for signs of the illness he feared. He lifted a thick brow, his features hardening. “It was the bonnets, then.”

  “Yes, the bonnets! Why did you bring them? Why did you have to make such useless things a part of your cargo?”

  “Because, as you saw, it’s what women want.”

  “But, they don’t need them! They will spend money that could be used so much better for food and clothing, or to supply our soldiers.”

  “I don’t force them to buy them,” he answered, his voice threaded with temper held firmly in check.

  “Maybe not, but the choice was yours, to bring them or to leave them for something more valuable!”

  He studied her, a grim light in his eyes. “It isn’t really the bonnets, is it? It’s the money.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?” she demanded. “You have enriched yourself by preying on the weakness of women for pretty things in an ugly time It’s not fair; in fact, it’s cruel.”

  “Why? If the women can afford it, and it helps them to make the
best of the stupid quarrels of men? They can cheer just as loudly with a new bonnet on as they could deprived of such things.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, her gray gaze direct, “or is it that you just don’t want to?”

  Stepping around him, she drew her skirts aside from contact with his boots and swung down the sidewalk. He plunged after her, catching her in a few quick strides, blocking her path.

  “I have never pretended to be a glory boy, ready to wave the flag and lead a suicide charge. You knew that before you came on this run. If you didn’t expect to see evidence of my mercenary habits, then you should have stayed in Nassau.”

  She gave him a cold stare, moving around him once more. “I suppose I should.”

  “And worn that riding habit of yours while you earned your living,” he called after her, his tone grating.

  She stopped for a stunned instant as she realized that he meant to remind her he was supporting her, and on money earned running the blockade. She whirled to face him, her eyes dark with fury and shame. “That can be done, too.”

  “Lorna—” he began, reaching out, the rage leaving his face, to be replaced by wary regret. But, she did not listen. Swinging around again so fast that the hoops of her crinoline dipped and swayed, she left him there in front of the auction barn.

  The run back to Nassau was hardly a rest cure for the nerves, but was without major incident. One of the greatest requirements for a successful runner of the blockade was impudence, the quality of intelligent daring. Ramon had that in full measure. To break through the line of federal ships that guarded the entrance to Cape Fear on their way out, the scheme hit upon by him and his officers was simple, but sublime. The federal flagship remained in place during the night, while the remainder of the fleet cruised up and down the coast. Because of this, there was a small area around the flagship that was left unguarded. The Lorelei moved down the river in the afternoon of their third day in port, creeping up until she could lie hidden behind Fort Fisher. A boat was sent ashore to discover the latest news of the positions of the ships. Then, with the fall of good darkness, they slipped from concealment and steamed for the federals.