by Susan Ward
Before she could think better of it, she snapped, “Whatever colors I may turn, you will never see them. If you so much as touch me again, I swear, I will scratch out your eyes.”
Her words seem only to please him. “Ah, so there is a touch of spirit beneath that useless show of hand wringing and whimpering. Even better, Little One. I have a feeling I am going to thoroughly enjoy being scratched by you, my dear. Somehow, I don’t think it will be my eyes you’ll be reaching for.”
Easing his elbows onto the arms of his chair, Morgan touched his own lips with the steeple of his fingers.
“If you are agreeable to suggestions, I know exactly where I would like you to begin.” Before she could stop herself, Merry’s eyes did a frantic flight to the door. “You don’t have to run away from me, yet, Little One. For the moment, you’re much safer here. Whatever shameful things you’re imagining I may want to do to you, I can do only so often. My crew can do it endlessly. Would it help you to relax, if I told you I haven’t at all made up my mind yet, what it is I want to do with you?”
Wishing she could match his ease, Merry said, “You could let me go.”
“Yes, I could, but that would tend to limit the scope of my options rather early on. I may not have made up my mind, Little One, but I never said I wasn’t considering it.”
“Whatever you may be considering, sir, I can guarantee it won’t happen, not if I have a say in the matter,” she hissed with sudden, flashing rage.
“You don’t, as a rule, Little One. The hostage’s options are rather limited. Would you like me to explain them to you, since you seem so determined to be my hostage?”
“You and your explanations can go to the devil. Let me inform you of another option to consider. I will kill you before I let you kiss me.” She had delivered her threat with her best menace and was unprepared for his reaction.
His black gaze ate the details of her angry face, and then, to her bewildered dismay, he began to laugh softly.
“Be fair, Little One, you’re the one determined on silence and staying. If it’s not your desire for me to consider anything beyond your quick return to Cornwall, it would have served you better to have moved away from the light and to answer my questions promptly. I can see through your sleeping gown, and unless you correct it, I shall have no choice but to believe that situation pleases you and continue our relationship accordingly.”
The instant horror on the girl’s face was nothing less than comical. Morgan watched as she tried to pull the shockingly thin fabric more protectively around her. She was by far the most absurd creature he had ever run across.
For her part, she did try. But the hurried motions of her hands only succeeded in exposing more of her bosom than the plunging neckline already revealed. Although, the sight of it was pleasing, his humor suddenly diminished as his pity increased for this poor amusing girl. He thought better of letting this continue, at least for the moment.
He smiled, moved from his chair, took something long and white from a drawer, and handed it to Indy. “You had better put her in this, lad. It’s clear she doesn’t understand, at all, what she is doing. Another moment, and we’ll find her nude.”
The boy’s expression spoke nothing, as he took the shirt and went to her. It was clear she misunderstood his intent, because her hands moved in a defensive swing that only narrowly missed Indy. She was beyond listening when Indy tried to explain. It was Morgan who had to take her in hand, and bring her sudden flash of struggle to a quick halt.
“Silly girl. Stop fighting. I am not proposing he tie you up with it. Though, I can’t guarantee we won’t have that later. Right now I only want you covered. If I leave you to your own devices, you’ll have yourself naked in a trice, poor, miserable things that your hands are. While the thought is appealing, if you want me to be able to consider any other course than putting you in that bed and sending the boy away, you had best start cooperating quickly.”
His words made her melt in Indy’s arms with frantic quickness. With steady hands the boy pulled the shirt in place, warned her against panic again, and set her in the chair beside the captain.
The gamin face stared at Morgan with wide-eyed anxiety, but her gaze was remarkably direct and clear, as transparent as a child’s. For the hundredth time, he wondered if it were possible the girl was as innocent as she seemed and then knew in an instant she was.
Morgan’s gaze began to simmer. “I can see now, lad, why you were reluctant to harm her. Though, I am not pleased beyond half that she’s here. Can you imagine what her reaction would have been, if she knew that I was considering more than a kiss a moment ago?”
“I suspect it would have burned the topgallant right off the mainmast.”
“And, I suspect that you realize by now, if you are reluctant to seeing our topgallants aflame you had better explain who this girl is. I also suspect the truth of who she is, has as much to do with her fear, as why you brought her here. It’s pathetically obvious she’s no threat to us. Whatever she was doing with Shelby, had nothing to do with us at all. Do you really want to put the girl through all this when the truth might very well stop it? How far are you willing to let this go?”
“What makes you think I can put a stop to it?”
“Which leads me to wonder what such innocence was doing at Grave’s End and how the devil Shelby got a hold of her? It is also worth noting that while innocence may be refreshing, you wouldn’t bother to bring her here because of it. Guilty or innocent, you would have taken care of the girl at the beach. For the simple fact that you are nothing less than thorough in your actions, and she witnessed my meeting with the earl. There is no reasonable motivation, at all, for what you’ve done, lad, in bringing this girl to me and offering her like a sacrificial lamb on an altar. Unless...” Morgan’s thoughts seemed to hang, with a heavy sense of unpleasant speculation that Merry cared for not at all. “Rensdale.”
Rensdale? The shock of hearing his name, in this of all surroundings, was like being dropped into a tank of icy water. Before Merry realized that Morgan had said the name in a tone that should have warned danger, her round, disbelieving eyes fixed on the pirate captain.
Noting the error too late, she had only a frantic moment to wonder, Dear Lord, what does Rensdale have to do with Morgan? And what have I stepped into now?
Her face was jerked swiftly to meet that burning black stare.
Before Merry could speak, Morgan silenced her. “Oh, no, don’t bother to pretend the name means nothing to you, Little One. Your face lit up like a Roman candle at the mention of it. I should have seen Rensdale mixed into all this.” Morgan’s voice was heavy with sudden weariness and displeasure, as his gaze moved to the boy. “She has his type of look about her. Young, tender fruit. Who is this girl to Rensdale? There’s no point in denying the connection, lad, or the sudden clarity of why she is here. Did you really expect me to bed this girl, to allow you some measure of obscure, petty revenge?”
“Why not?” the boy snapped irritably. “It’s precious little revenge I have had thanks to you. It’s providence she slipped into my hands, at all. Should I deny myself a gift when it’s given?”
Morgan leaned back in his chair and studied the boy with the sharpness of a surgeon’s scalpel.
“Why involve me in all this? If you wanted revenge, you could have raped the girl on the beach and sent her back to him deflowered. There’s more to all this, then you’re telling. It’s only half about Rensdale, isn’t it? You want to strike at me in this, as well. You had better answer me, lad,” Morgan demanded in a voice of tightly controlled unpleasantness.
Frightened to a depth she had not thought possible, Merry could only listen in muted terror to their bewildering discourse. She knew whatever would become of her, might very well rest in this complicated struggle between man and boy.
Her anxious eyes turned to the boy. Whatever he saw in her face had the power to turn him away from the captain when Morgan’s displeasure didn’t.
“Do y
ou truly believe putting this innocent, young girl in my bed, to be ruined, will accomplish what you want in your struggles? Do you think Rensdale would even care if I ruined her? Look at her. All the man wants to do is ruin her himself. Beyond that, I can’t see any fascination this girl could have for him, or any man over twenty, for that matter. She’s young, she’s idiotic, and she’s beautiful. There is nothing for a man to want from her, except bedding her. I can’t see what effect beyond a passing amusement you think it will have on me, if I should decide to indulge her for my pleasure. Has it ever occurred to you I may not let you use this girl as a weapon of war between you and Rensdale, or a weapon of war between you and me?”
The boy swung around and faced the pirate captain with hard, glowing eyes.
“Has it ever occurred to you, that perhaps, that is the point of all this? Your unwillingness to use the girl. You are so consumed with your complicated web of moral contradictions that not only is killing the girl not an option, neither is having pleasure from her. Tell me, what part of all this has changed what she is to you, when only a moment ago I could deal with her however I wish? Is it that she is gently born, or that I’ve made her fate now yours to deal with? You may very well deny the existence of that part of your soul that disdains this grim little conflict, but you can’t escape it. The self-discovery of that should be blindingly obvious, even to you. You can’t accept the truth of what you are. Or, the truth of what I am. Nor, that you can’t change any of it with the power of your will or this insane sense of obligation you feel toward me. It is past time that you free the both of us from this gruesome fiction you’ve created.”
“It’s always been more than obligation. It is you who refuse to accept that. Has it ever occurred to you that what I may disdain is you’re not so subtle manipulations to force my hand in ways I don’t wish to have it forced?”
“Then, give me the girl now and my manipulations will be at an end. You wanted the girl dead before, I will give her to the sea and we can be done with this.”
Morgan couldn’t give the order to kill the girl, and the boy knew it.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed. Oh, but it would be foolishness not to expect there to be more to the trap than this: proving that he couldn’t kill the girl. Or, was Indy trying to prove he was capable of killing her, forcing on him all that meant...?
It couldn’t be that. Dear God, don’t let it be that....
Morgan looked at Indy and felt despair in the center of his soul, a despair he had learned through the years to keep carefully hidden from the boy. Time had not softened the boy. The years had only made him harder. He was no closer to bringing the boy back to what he should be than he had been that first day he found him. Farther, in fact, every day a little farther.
He looked at the girl, young, beautiful, and desirable. What power did the boy imagine this mere slip of girl would have over him, and what the boy termed too often, ‘his inability to escape the truth of himself’? An insignificant scrap of flesh with a blurry tie to Rensdale. Very blurry, since clearly the girl was untouched and well born.
What plot was the boy weaving? Indy did not weave weak plots. Clearly the boy was weaving again. There was more, much more.
Morgan’s head rested back against the lambskin. His eyes were closed. “Leave the girl and get out.”
CHAPTER SIX
Merry Merrick’s first night aboard the most infamous ship, ever to sail the seas, passed in the cabin of its legendary captain unmolested, unharmed, and pretty much unnoticed.
Alone with Captain Morgan, the only exchange of words she had with her mysterious captor was an off-hand suggestion she should take a quilt, if her intentions were to sleep on the window bench.
She awoke, her first morning as Morgan’s prisoner, warm beneath a heavy quilt, lightly scented of wintergreen, which had somehow come to be tucked high under her rosy cheeks and still with her innocence in hand. She gave credit to the pirate captain for neither of these charitable turns, chastised herself for having fallen asleep, and wondered how she could have let the night pass without even attempting an escape.
Charged with sudden purpose and a hazy plan to escape, she climbed from her comfortable bed of pillows. Cursing the chill in the air, she tried the cabin door.
Of course, it was locked. She wondered why she had ever expected it to be otherwise. A key. What she needed was a key.
Dismissing Indy’s prior warning about not touching Morgan’s possessions, she began her frantic search. One by one she tried each lock, the cabinets, his desk, everything. Only his drawers were unlocked. She was both embarrassed and disappointed to find only his shirts and his unmentionables.
Sinking to her knees, she dropped before his sea chest. She wondered at the usefulness of trying it, because the man had locked up everything else tighter than Grandmamma Merrick’s corset. She was unprepared for the slight creak as the heavy lid lifted beneath her prodding fingers.
Afraid to speculate on Morgan’s reaction if he should find her, instead she concentrated on the contents. There were papers, books, and a bag of coin. Pulling it out bit by bit, the contents were dumped around her in annoyance.
In spite of how much the chest held, what it didn’t hold was a key. After having spent a ridiculous amount of time pulling papers upward, she continued out of frustration more than hope. Her eyes suddenly fixed on a box wrapped in cloth on the bottom.
Common sense told her to leave it alone and to clean her mess up quickly. She had no interest in what was surely little more than stolen plunder, but having come this far...
She lifted the box, set it in front of her, and removed its cover. Any chance she would return it undisturbed died an instant death.
The box was made of fine-grained leather, elaborately tooled, expensive, and inlaid in gold was a large crest Merry did not recognize. It wasn’t very deep or large. It was clear whatever was within it mattered enough to Morgan to keep it elegantly safe. The box had a tiny gold lock of its own.
She couldn’t help herself. She took the divider from Morgan’s desk and pried the lock. She worked carefully, surprised when she actually managed to spring it.
Lacking the repugnance for this invasion of his privacy, she stared at the strange collection in pure fascination. It was an oddly sentimental gathering for a man like Morgan.
There, lying on a bed of red velvet, was a single rose, dried by age and fragile, a man’s heavy signet ring, engraved with the same crest as the box, and a small gilt framed miniature of a woman.
It was the picture her gaze fixed on. Picking it up, she stared down with uncontrollable curiosity. It was a pretty face, young and spirited, with lively brown eyes that seemed to carry a hint of a smile. There was something oddly familiar to the face. She studied it. She was sure she had never seen the woman before. But those eyes...
There was something about those eyes that pricked her memory, as if she were being unaccountably slow by not recognizing them.
Who she was? Merry wondered, staring at the face not much older than her own. Her heart knew from some unfathomable sense this girl was dead.
Perhaps it was because of where she had found it, laying neatly beside that faded bud. She was swept with a strange feeling of sadness having this girl in her hands. Surely, it was her own fertile imagination making more of this than she should.
Morgan was a complicated creature. She did not, for one moment, believe him sentimental. Devils simply had no sentiment.
Therefore, she was unprepared for the sight of his undisguised fury as he lifted her cruelly from the floor. All prior experience with Morgan had displayed him above such human failings as uncontrolled anger. Clearly, he was not. Obviously, the devil had made his creature, at least in small part, man.
“Damn you. What the hell are you looking for?”
She had never been more frightened in her life. Morgan’s fury was a thing beyond imagination. He was clearly enraged and manufacturing none of his suave manipulations to hide it.
; “Please,” she whispered desperately, fearing he would crush her in his hands.
He shook her hard. “What were you looking for? Tell me, girl, or by God...”
“A key,” she exclaimed, too terrified to lie. “Only a key. Did you expect to find me waiting meekly in your cabin to be raped?”
Morgan devoured her face in a single, glittering look. His fingers tightened and she yelped in pain.
All at once, a spasm rocketed down her arms, every muscle one-by-one going limp. The tiny portrait slipped to the floor shattering at their feet.
“It was an accident,” she rushed desperately, “I did not mean to drop it. Truly.”
Morgan’s eyes lowered to the floor. In his fury, he had missed what had claimed the girl’s interest. Then he saw the papers, those documents so painstakingly gathered, lying discarded and untouched in a disorderly heap around him. If she had been sent by Rensdale to destroy them, surely they would not be here now.
The papers...he saw the girl, pale and shaking before him, and suddenly let her go.
He watched her sink at his feet to gently lift the gilt frame with trembling hands. “Damn you,” he cursed in a voice low.
The girl met his gaze, her eyes fearful under sooty lashes that cast delicate shadows on her pale cheeks. She looked so tiny on the floor, huddled beside his feet, her dark curls a tangle about her shoulders, her youthful face a wash of concern.
“The portrait isn’t broken. I have only damaged the glass,” she assured anxiously. “I did not mean to break it. Truly. You frightened me or else I would have never dropped it.”
“What a vexing child you are,” Morgan sighed. “If I had any sense at all, Little One, I would lock you in the brig and leave you to the rats.”
“Then, lock me in the brig. I would much prefer the rats to you, sir,” Merry snapped.
Morgan might have managed not to smile, if she hadn’t been so damn in earnest.
“Would you really prefer a hundred rats in the darkness nipping on your toes, Little One, over one big rat nipping elsewhere?”