by Susan Ward
“Blast it, Merry, if you continue to laugh, I will beat you after I finish with Shay. I told you to behave. I should have known better than to trust you with that Irish idiot.”
“I am sorry.” Merry tried to look contrite, failed miserably, and bit her lip to stop laughing. “You are delightfully amusing when you’re angry with me.”
Indy struggled against the hold of the men. Fighting to sit up, he sneered, “It’s clear you don’t have an ounce of common sense in that head of yours. I should spare myself the bother and let you kill yourself, and put me out of the misery of having brought you here.”
“I am not the one who fell.” Laughing again, she put her face close up to his, and asked, “Are you planning to be angry with me for very long about this?”
The boy looked enraged, disgruntled and frustrated. Why that made Merry want to laugh, she couldn’t begin to fathom, but it did.
With a light stride Morgan crossed the deck, his arrival instantly silencing the laughter of the crew. His eyes did a harsh trek across his men and then settled on the three figures on deck beneath him.
“Let the boy go,” came that low voice above Merry.
She had all but forgotten Morgan during the blissful whimsy of the afternoon, but having his towering figure looming above brought her back to reality with a harsh thump.
His flexible, placid timbre carried across the deck without effort. “Any man who leaves his duties the next time the girl is on deck will be hanged.”
The warning disbanded the crew with a rapid flurry and sent, in a flash, the protection of the boys from Merry in a scrambling of long limbs. Though how she could think of the boys as protection against this mountain of man was anyone’s guess.
Morgan stood above her, the crimson circle of the sun a hallo around him, reflecting off of the cool stare of his eyes. For once the reflecting light in those great black eyes was not unreadable. He was studying her like a physician trying to figure out how to remove a wart.
She would have liked to reclaim some dignity by meeting him with a cool stare of her own, springing to her feet, and walking off from him in a manner dismissing, but it was impossible. She was never herself with Morgan.
Without a word, he reached out and lifted her from the deck. The contact brought Merry’s disobedient limbs into action. She began to fight him, her arms anxiously flailing against him as she was carried to the cabin.
“Take your hands off me,” Merry hissed.
“Stop this nonsense before I beat you and spare the boy the effort,” was his answer to that.
A furious surge of words rushed Merry’s lips and then died there.
Morgan was always so annoyingly perfect, somehow managing to remain impeccably neat even during his duties on deck. But her squirming had sent a swirling wash of dark gun powder residue from her hands across his shirt—white today, an unfortunate choice—and there was a streak like Indian war paint across one high chiseled cheek.
It made him look so human. While her mirth was, perhaps not wise, certainly ill timed, definitely never expected, it proved uncontainable. It had been just that kind of afternoon for Merry.
All at once, she found herself uncontrollably laughing into the elegant features of that frightening face that had just threatened to beat her.
As he dropped her unceremoniously in the center of his bed, Morgan said, “You are a madwoman, do you know that?”
Merry couldn’t check the impulse, so peeking through her curls, she flung back at him, “And you, sir, are a mess.”
Morgan looked at his shirt. “You have the oddest humor of any creature I have ever known.” Then, giving her a hard stare, he added, “And you are the dirtiest girl I have ever held in my arms.”
Merry tried to look contrite, failed, and only laughed harder.
“I suppose I must seem odd to you, laughing like this over dirt on a shirt, but you are never anything but inhumanly perfect, sir. A little less perfection and a little more laughter, I think would suit you the better.”
“I am not inhumanly perfect, Little One,” he pointed out coolly, before reaching for the pitcher and filling the basin. “What I am trying not to do is lose my temper. Your conduct was foolish and reckless. You would do well not to disrupt my ship, again.”
“Ah, but you are inhuman,” Merry scoffed, wondering where she got the courage to taunt him. “You are inhuman, like all creatures of myth and legend. You are never anything less than perfect. You don’t allow yourself to be. That, sir, is a tragedy. Imperfection is what you must risk if you are going to enjoy living.”
Merry jerked her curls from beneath her bottom and left gunpowder where her fingers had fluttered. Morgan felt the unwanted pull of a smile, but did a facile frown instead.
“You are an absurd, girl. Now sit still, you little monkey. You are getting gunpowder across my bedding.”
Merry’s blue eyes instantly dipped to the smudges across his pillow and she began to giggle again in earnest. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever had on his bed and she was distinguishing herself by being the only one ever to find enjoyment in his sheets by making them a ruin.
Shaking his head, Morgan stated, “You are a lunatic.”
Still in the hopeless possession of her giggles, Merry studied her toes, grayed by gunpowder. She took no notice of what he was doing, and said without a shred of the proper caution one should have with such a man, “Then you have a lunatic as a hostage. You should release me. Lunatics are dangerous.”
Lifting one delicately boned bare foot in the air, she announced in a melodramatic way Morgan found silly and a trifle charming at once, “I can’t imagine why you keep me.”
“Have you by chance ever looked in the mirror when your face is clean?”
“My face is rarely clean, sir. I am imperfect. I enjoy living too much to bother with perfect.”
Morgan settled on the bunk, dipped the cloth into washbowl, and with patient hands began to work on the grime on Merry’s face.
He surprised himself by quietly saying, “Tell me who you are and I will release you.”
Merry’s eyes shot to his face. Carefully, she responded, “I am a lunatic. Lunatics have no names. I think we are identified by branding. Perhaps you should look for my mark if you are still curious as to my identity.”
No less than a score of wicked responses came to his mind from that. Morgan was pleased with himself that he didn’t say any of them.
As his dark gaze did a subtle inspection of her, he noted that she was exceptionally well made, long of line and lush of curve, just where a man would want them lush. The last thing this girl should want is a man looking for her mark. It would shock her where he wanted to begin.
“I think you’re going to have to soak in a tub for days to get this off,” he commented wryly. “What the devil were you doing with Shay to get yourself covered head to toe with gunpowder?”
With creamy satisfaction, Merry announced with a delightful smile, “Learning to load your canons, Captain. I wanted to fire one, but your gunner wouldn’t let me because of the warship, and was not at all polite about my request. He’s a horrible man. I can’t imagine why you keep him either.”
He inspected her hands and fingers. “Where did you learn to climb rigging so expertly? It is not usually the developed talent of young, wellborn British girls.”
“I sailed to America with my uncle once. Or rather I stowed away with him to America. He was even less pleased than you to have me.”
Morgan only laughed softly and replied, “You are very good at it, but please don’t do it again. You are enough of a distraction to my men if you do nothing more than sit still as you are.” He dumped the towel in the bowl. “I think I am going to have to send for a bath.”
Morgan was about to rise when Merry eased forward, held him with the lightest contact of her hand and reached for the towel. She was unsure of where the boldness came from. Perhaps it was just the unanticipated pleasure she’d felt by making him laugh, when
clearly he had wanted to be stern.
“Imperfection. Touch of Merry.” She removed the streak of gunpowder from his cheek. Smiling into those occult black eyes, she whispered, “There you are perfect and inhuman, once again. You will be your terrifying self when you return to deck.”
Then, on stranger impulse, she placed a soft kiss on the now clean flesh. The shock of what she did mortified her. She jerked back from him at once. Why she felt the want to kiss Morgan then was just as strange to her as doing it. Morgan was not a man to toy with.
Locking eyes with the abyss of Morgan’s terrifying stare, Merry was half-off the bed when Morgan’s hand locked on her arm. He pulled her against him. Before she could stop him, he was kissing her. Her cheeks began to instantly burn with the contact. He let his mouth drag across hers in way that made her body stiffen, then quiver from head to toe.
Unable to work free of his body, Merry soon found herself turned in his arms in a movement that was subtle and graceful, and then lowered into the soft mattress before she had time to realize what he was doing. The weight of his body was balanced above her. She struggled to watch his hands and break free, and it took her several moments to realize Morgan had stopped kissing her.
His laughter was soft. “The next time, Little One, you want to thank a man for washing your face, you will know how to do it properly.”
Morgan gently put Merry back against the pillows and let her go.
“And the next time you kiss me, I will kill you,” Merry screamed.
Merry watched, anxiously trying to still the rioting currents inside of her, as Morgan rose to his feet with an unhurried elegance of movement that hit her like a slap. She could barely breathe.
“I am going to send for a bath,” was all Morgan said, not bothering to even to look at her as he left.
~~~
Descending below decks, the clatter of the afternoon left Morgan with a pulsing headache. He paused at the end of the stairs, the hallway dim, quiet, cool, and pleasantly scented with warm wood musk.
They were a welcome balm after the bright sun, the petty flashing brawls of the men, and the never ending intrusion of sound was unavoidable in the command of a ship. Life on ship had never suited him well.
In his cabin, he managed to maintain the ambiance of a home, out of the necessity of maintaining the illusion that he had one. As that thought filtered through his mind, he spotted a tiny shoe lying outside his cabin door.
It was Merry’s. She must have lost it while struggling in his arms as he carried her below. He picked it up and into his senses wafted the scent of her sweet fragrance, mixed with a hint of rose soap. Even the shoe leather carried her flavor.
The last thing he’d expected, at this point in his life, was to have the fate of an untried girl resting in his hands. This morning, he had sat for an hour in the blue light of dawn doing nothing but watching her sleep. There was a winsome playfulness to Merry, even in sleep. Her tiny body was always turning on the bench, her hand swatting at her unruly cloud of hair, or her even white teeth chewing on the corners of the blankets.
A familiar pondering claimed him. Who was this girl? Why wouldn’t she answer his questions so he could send her home?
Questioning her only brought stubbornness and no response. He had never met anyone he couldn’t make full reason of within a quarter hour, but Merry was a whimsical blend of mismatching pieces. Those pieces were driving him to distraction.
She was a puzzle in every way. She could climb the rigging like the best tar of his crew, having learned it sailing to America with her uncle. That meant she was a girl of means, if not of noble birth. The more he knew of her, if she were nobility at all, it was a modest level of little significance.
Her laughter was a thing of showering lunacy, without a hint of the proper reserve a girl of good birth who moved in society would have cultivated.
Her beauty was unlike any he had seen, but she had altered it, not at all, to turn it fashionable. Her hair was too long, not even short curls cut to frame her oval face. She preferred to tie it in a knot that bounced on her shoulder, charming but not stylish.
Her manners were soft, her voice cultured, her temper a fury, her whim unconventional, her mind educated, her politics treasonous, and her instincts dangerously unaware of the harsher elements of the world. Almost as if she’d never seen them. She was of marriageable age, but romantically untouched, as though she’d never been courted.
What possible connection could this creature have with Rensdale? Where the devil did she come from?
Now, opening his cabin door, his charming puzzle sent the blood rocketing through his veins. He had assumed it was safe to return to his cabin, since Merry had completed bathing. Without any reason to do so, he had expected to find her curled in a chair reading.
Instead, he found her lying on his bed, dark curls fanned around her, with her tiny feet pressed to the wood of the headboard. She was wearing only his shirt and he could see that she wore nothing underneath it, since it was all too apparent she had pulled it on without drying herself well. It was molded to the shape of the round fullness of her breasts, the flat belly, and the gentle turn of her hip.
She was, by far, not the first woman he’d ever found on his bed. He doubted she was among the first fifty, but oh my, she was the most tempting.
Letting his eyes roam her, he closed the door softly. Merry snapped up at once, saw him, and did a startled flip on his bed that did her no good, at all, at this moment. It made her hair tumble in floating waves over her flushed features and heaving bosom. She had landed in an unfortunate posture, balanced on hands and knees.
“If you are open to suggestions, Little One, I would recommend that if it’s your intent to cool a man’s ardor that is not the pose to strike. At least not while wearing his shirt,” Morgan chided blandly, while his blood continued to shoot through his veins and other places.
Merry blushed and sprang from his bed. “It was not my intent to do anything. You startled me.”
Her naive, blunt confession was a timely thing. Morgan’s smile surfaced on its own.
“I know. You startled me, too. We’re even.” He focused on the bedding as he tried to marshal his organs into order. “You’ve also added dampness to the smudges of gunpowder. I don’t mind you lulling on my bed in the afternoons. Though it does my ego no good at all, that you are only inclined to do so when I am not in it, but I would prefer if you didn’t make a ruin of my bed.”
“The gunpowder was your fault. You put me on your bed that time,” she pointed out hotly, and regretted the words the instant she’d said them. They had made his black eyes start to sparkle. “If I am too much a vexing nuisance you could return me to Falmouth.”
“If you want me to be inclined to return you to Falmouth, I suggest you stop climbing into my sheets. It is more likely to give me hope, so I will be inclined to keep you.”
His words made her eyes round in dismay, having the pleasing effect of the cooling of the rest of his anatomy.
“What are you doing here? You never come below deck in the afternoons.”
“It’s my cabin, Little One,” Morgan said softly as he turned to face her. “I am willing to share. Don’t expect me to give it up. If I need to come below deck before eight bells to see you in my bed, I might very well make a habit of it.”
He bent her a look that turned her cheeks to crimson circles. It wasn’t kind to deliberately make her blush. She did it so often on her own. But, he found the cherry-spots charming when they surfaced on her sloping cheeks.
“Oh, why don’t just go away,” Merry moaned, dropping her eyes disconsolately.
She watched him as he tossed his pillows back into their usual arrangement on his bed and stretched out atop the blankets.
Nervously she asked, “What are you doing?”
“You’re quite safe, Little One. I have the necessary headache to prevent... whatever it is you are imaging I might be contemplating doing with you.” He lifted one of the pil
lows to his face and breathed in deeply before placing it beneath his head. He laughed softly, and then said, “Touch of Merry. Headache gone. Behave yourself, Little One, if you are determined to pass your afternoon only watching me snore.”
Closing his eyes, it was only a moment before Morgan heard his cabin door slammed shut.
Dressed only in the captain’s shirt, Merry didn’t dare go any farther than the stairs of the hatchway.
Miserable and huddled there, she stared at her knit fingers, knowing she was cowering here with less dignity than even Kate had in her skittish hen moments, and thought, Merry Merrick you have fallen low.
Leaning her head against the wood wall, she ran her cheek along the cool polished surface and tried to reason a course to free herself of this unpleasant tangle her life had become.
She was trapped on a pirate ship, captive of a man who rattled her in every way and compounded this disastrous state of affairs by behaving, not all, like herself in any predictable manner. Wishing heartily she hadn’t been so stupid as to have gone to Grave’s End, she tried to gather every scrap of her poorly functioning brain to figure out how to undo both vexing states and get back to Falmouth.
She was deep in thought when Mr. Craven came down the stairs. He whipped her with a harsh stare and snatched her painfully from the ground to hold her before his face.
“Let me go,” she cried out in desperate fear.
“Stop your foolishness, girl. I haven’t ruttery on my mind, but there is any of a hundred men here, who ruttery would be their first train of thought, if they found you sitting here in his shirt. Who the devil let you wander loose? Why aren’t you with that stupid Irishman or the boy? Why aren’t you in Morgan’s cabin?”
“He’s sleeping.” Mr. Craven’s eyes sharpened in unkindly revealed interpretation of that and Merry blushed. “Take your hands from me.”
He didn’t. In the biting hold of fingers, he carried her down the hall, opened a door, and all but tossed her to the floor when he released her.
“This is my cabin. Don’t touch a thing or I will blister your backside,” was all he said. To Merry’s horror he locked her in.