by Susan Ward
The last thing he’d expected was to like the girl.
He sipped his drink slowly. The girl in a small way resembled Ann. Was that why the boy had brought her here? The boy disclaimed all memories of the past. Was that a lie? Even after five years, and with the advantage of age, he couldn’t read the boy completely.
For all that Indy was the smartest youth he’d ever known, the trauma of his years in captivity, far too often colored the boy’s perceptions. It made him cynical, untrusting, and wrong in his observations. Indy was never more wrong than in his observations of him. What had he expected by bringing the girl aboard ship? Morgan had his own generous share of flaws, but harming women had never been one of them. The boy should have known that without having dumped Merry at his feet.
Morgan refilled his glass, stretched across his bed, and lit his pipe. Inhaling deeply, he let the smoke swirl through his blood before he released it to swirl in the stillness of the cool cabin air. Another puff and it was no longer the present plaguing his thoughts, it was the past.
The door opened.
Morgan looked up to see Indy there. The boy, without a word, crossed the cabin and stretched out atop the window bench.
Morgan found himself saying, “I want her back in the morning.”
Ignoring the order, Indy began to read.
Morgan took another long pull from his pipe. He watched the boy through the white curls floating from his lips, feeling the edges of his anger soothed.
“Tom has been hearing whispering among the malcontents in the f’cle. He feels the girl is becoming a problem that we need deal with soon.”
Indy set down the book. “A problem for who? You or the girl?”
After a long pause, Morgan’s eyes lifted from the pipe to the boy’s.
Mildly, the captain said, “A problem with the crew aboard ship is everyone’s problem, lad. She is not safe alone in your cabin any longer.”
“As your grace pleases,” snapped the boy. Then, “What has Tom heard? You must really think there is danger, or else you would not have mentioned it.”
A frigid pause rose between them.
When Morgan finally spoke, his voice was without feeling. “Nothing that can’t be handled.”
Indy rolled on the bench, the sharp movement causing his braid to fall until it swung above the cabin floor.
“Damn you. Why didn’t you take her maidenhead in Falmouth and let her go? What amusement can you possibly find, toying with her until one of the crew kills her?”
Morgan reached for his drink. “It’s not my hand that brought her here.”
“But it is your vanity that keeps her a prisoner. Don’t pretend with me it’s more.”
“Nonsense.” Morgan’s smile had taken on a hard edge. “What was it you expected me to do with the girl? I can’t decide which irritates you more. That I haven’t taken her to my bed, or that I want to. It would serve us both the better, if you simply tell me which, since your pubescent disapproval becomes more muddled each day.”
“I am angry because you keep her your prisoner, while you cannot decide between your lust and your honor, and you think that is kindness.”
“Well, well, well,” said Morgan darkly. “We are dragging out the siege canons tonight and trying to level the village with a single blast. Have I missed my epiphany? Of course I desire the girl. A man would have to be dead not to desire her. Of course I’ve not harmed her. A man would have to be a barbarian to harm her physically. That I am unwilling to do either proves nothing more than I am human. Is that really all the point there is, to what you have done, bringing the girl here?”
Indy’s eyes opened wide and he turned then on Morgan and gave him an even look. “Tell me, Captain, if the girl dies because of your quagmire, what part of you will you consider still human?”
There was a short laugh, a lifted brow. “Shrewd. Oh, very shrewd, lad. But, a better question is, if the girl dies, what part of yourself are you depending upon not to be human.”
A long pause. Morgan watched the shifting shards of light in the boy’s eyes, though the emotion betrayed was far from readable.
Refilling his glass, Morgan crossed the cabin and handed it to the boy. He said, “While I’m heartened there is more to you bringing her here than I feared there was a moment ago, the girl won’t rid you of me, boy. No matter your plotting, you will not leave this ship until I wish it.”
Indy’s dark gaze burned in challenge. “You do not read me as well as you think.”
The boy drained his glass, handed it back to the captain, turned on the bench, and went silent.
“Interesting,” Morgan said in a civil way, sinking down into his chair. “If it’s salvation from me you want, boy, you’ve gotten your tribal ritual wrong. When the natives wanted salvation from the gods, they tossed the virgin sacrifice to her death in a fiery pit. The gods didn’t deflower them. Perhaps, you should have slit the girl’s throat at the beach, if you wanted salvation from me.”
“Perhaps,” the boy said calmly. “But perhaps there is a new version of the tribal ritual. The one who finds salvation is the one who deflowers the girl.”
Morgan’s thundering laughter filled the cabin.
“What a naïve thing to say. How refreshingly young. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a virgin, as well.”
~~~
Merry woke to a midmorning of grayish light and rain. Moving stiffly, she realized with a start she was on the window bench. She had fallen asleep in Indy’s cabin and at some point during the night she’d been carried back to Morgan’s. Wondering at the cause of this unexpected and far too sudden change, she rolled over to find Morgan reclined on his bed reading.
Propped on his pillows, legs crossed at bare ankles, somehow Morgan managed to look regal, even shirtless and shoeless. His bronze chest peeked from within a flowing emerald banyan, loosely draped over his goliath frame above buckskin breeches.
Morgan didn’t look up from his book. “Ah, the beautiful detainee wakes. You’ve slept uncommonly late this morning, my dear. Your breakfast is quite cold by now.”
The endearment hung awkwardly in the unsettled air. Merry pulled the quilt high about her neck. “Don’t call me ‘my dear’. From you, it is an obscenity.”
“There is no such thing as an obscenity. It’s a lie made up by the church so that young girls don’t sin.”
When Morgan finally looked at her, his eyes were gleaming in a way that told Merry she had amused him.
“You can blame the rain, not my low character for my presence.” Morgan managed to convey, neatly by his tone, that he would prefer to remain in pleasant solitude with his book. He calmly turned a page and continued to read.
Tossing the rust colored brocade pillow from her lap, she padded barefoot across the cabin to sit alone at Morgan’s table.
“Oatmeal.” Merry’s dainty nose crinkled with real loathing as she stared into the bowl. Beside her was Morgan’s empty plate, and she could see the remains of eggs there. “I hate oatmeal. Why did I get oatmeal?”
Manifesting no interest, Morgan said, “Indy brings your meals. Discuss the matter with him if they are not to your liking. Eat or don’t eat. It seems a rather simple choice.”
“I can’t eat it. There are worms in it.” That elicited no response. She glared at him, thought about throwing the bowl, and instead reached for the pot. To her further dismay, what poured into her cup was cold and coffee. Staring at him, Merry accused, “Is this my latest punishment? First, you rudely transport me, like a sack of meal, from one cabin to the next without my consent. And now starvation.”
“My, we are in a mood this morning, aren’t we, Little One?” Morgan said with an air of disinterest, turning another page. “Or, is it my company and conversation your mood desires today? What should I make of that?”
“You should make that I don’t like worms in my oatmeal.”
“I thought we’d resolved the issue of the oatmeal.”
After several mo
re pages, Morgan finally set aside the book. Reluctantly he climbed from the bed, looked into her bowl to see that there were indeed worms there. “Would you eat eggs if I fetched them for you?”
Merry squirmed uneasily beneath the watching wait of his stare. Why was Morgan being solicitous? It was not that he was ever unkind. It was just unlike him to be intentionally kind.
When she nodded, his hand moved carelessly to lift a curl from her cheek. “You do realize you are the first person on this ship ever to be served by its captain? If I see you properly fed, can I expect to return to my book in peace?”
Merry opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Hunger won over pride. She clamped her mouth shut and jerked her face away.
Morgan’s soft laughter filled the cabin as he let the silky strands of her hair slip slowly through his fingers. “I’m going to take your silence to mean we have a bargain.”
He left then, leaving the cabin door open. More than a quarter hour passed before Morgan returned. Merry was still sitting in the chair as his well-muscled arms passed over her, and he set the tray before her.
As his hands moved gracefully back from the table, his palms found her shoulders, in an idle way. Merry was drawn into his gentle hold before she had time to realize what he was doing. As little as she knew about intimacy, there was something in the way his blood-warmed hands touched her that made this meager contact shockingly intimate.
“Bargain met,” Morgan said. “Now I expect you to eat and be silent.”
And to her further vexation, he dropped a light kiss on her curls. Merry’s eyes followed him in his trek to bed. He stretched back upon the pillows to continue reading. She picked at her breakfast without exchanging another word with Morgan, taking every care to pretend he didn’t exist. For some odd reason, his presence in the cabin unsettled her today, more than usual. Morgan was really doing nothing that should have put her nerves on edge.
Finished with her meal, Merry’s next dilemma was how to occupy herself. These were the worst kind of days for her, alone in the cabin with Morgan. While he could dismiss her from his mind, dismissing him was something she could never quite manage. The cabin hummed with his presence. Even quiet and still, he dominated the world around him.
She remained stoically silent, curled in the chair, one by one dabbing the crumbs from her biscuit off the table, determined not to speak. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was miserably uncomfortable. Frowning, she wondered why he kept her. In spite of his occasional flirtations, she knew he wasn’t pleased Indy had brought her here. She sensed he neither liked, nor hated her. The vast majority of her hours passed snared in his enigmatic, unfeeling presence.
How was it possible a man could make time pass so slowly? Each moment that passed was longer than the one before. It had been only a quarter hour and it felt like eternity. How was it possible this unbearable silence was not unbearable to him?
She could hear every creak and groan of the ship, every footstep, every slapping cable. She turned and looked at him as he turned a page. Even the motion of his hand seemed to pass in irritating slowness.
Without another word, Morgan pushed up from the bed and calmly left the cabin.
For the remainder of the day, the rain kept Merry below decks. She only saw Morgan once, in the afternoon, when he returned to the cabin to enter something into his log book. She had only a moment to wonder how he had left the cabin shoeless in a banyan and returned clad in a shirt, wearing knee high boots.
Merry stared after him as he departed through the cabin door. The door was left open. Another new mystery in her life. Why had Morgan left the door open?
The remainder of the day passed for Merry sitting in the center of Morgan’s Persian rug teasing her pug with Morgan’s slipper. The dog caught and chomped it, from time to time, as she stared out into the passageway.
Occasionally, a member of the crew passed and looked in, betraying a surprise, equal to her own, that the door was open. She smiled at those she recognized, all except Mr. Craven, who had given her a harsh scowled. She wished she had the courage to throw the slipper at him, but to be honest, she was afraid of the man.
At nightfall she fell asleep where she was, slipper in tatters and pug clutched against her breasts. It was how Morgan found her when he entered the cabin with Tom Craven in tow. He stood for a long time above her, looking at her, before he stepped away from Merry.
He made a graceful gesture with an arm for Tom to sit. Morgan poured them each a hearty whiskey. He could feel Tom’s dull eyes, piercingly watching. Which way would his quartermaster go with their most frequent argument of late?
It was Tom who spoke first, into the dark quiet of the room.
“We will reach Bermuda within a fortnight. It is past time to end this, Varian. You can put the girl on a ship bound for England before she is harmed.”
A logical solution, thought Morgan. Morgan’s black eyes shimmered with amusement. “We don’t even know who she is. Why she was spying on my meeting with Camden, or her connection to Rensdale. You would have me release her without even knowing the threat of that? What am I to make of that, Tom?”
Tom made note of the frequency Morgan’s gaze strayed to the sleeping girl. The captain seemed unaware he was doing it. “Surely, there are better ways to get the answers you want than this game you are playing. It would serve you better to put the fear of God in her, buy her silence, and send her on her way.”
“Do you not think I would have done that, if it would have worked?”
Tom met the black stare squarely. “You have not even tried.” Then Tom’s astringent eyes fixed on the girl. “You are old enough to be her father.” Tom delivered that last comment with just the right amount of disdain. Morgan allowed himself to acknowledge Thomas had done that particularly well.
Morgan looked at Tom Craven without letting him see it. He wondered if his remorse over the girl showed, if Tom saw it, if that was why his quartermaster was so obviously worried over the meaningless, never-ending plotting of the crew.
Morgan’s brow skipped upward, mocking. “As I recall, you wanted me to kill her. Now you want me to free her to spare her my bed. You have a rather flexible use of your morality, Thomas. Though, I have always found you Huguenots, flexible.”
“It is best to end this posthaste,” Tom warned fiercely. “You are stirring too much suspicion among the crew. I know you never believe these threats serious, but have you considered once the danger to the girl? What will become of your game if she is killed by the crew? Is your amusement really worth that?”
“Ah. Your concern is needless, Tom.” Smiling, he looked up from his drink, his black eyes mocking embers. “What do you imagine there is about this girl, that she stirs such unlikely reaction from both you and Indy? I think I’ll keep the girl for that. An interesting experiment in human weakness.”
Ignoring the taunt, Tom walked over to the table and refilled his glass. The girl turned on the rug, but didn’t wake. Rather suddenly, Tom said, “Do you really wish to risk the crew having access to her? Regardless of what she is, no woman deserves that. It was a damn foolhardy move to leave the door open all day.”
Morgan cut him off with a wave of the hand. “A good theatrical is often better at managing the men than a hanging. Shay was there. She was never out of his sight.”
“And you think you can trust Shay with the girl.”
Morgan’s smile was disquieting. “But, of course. He would kill any man who tried to harm her.”
“You could sell her in Trinidad. She’d fetch a good price. If you will not free her, sell her. You cannot afford a weakness with the crew. The longer you keep her, the more danger there is to you.”
Morgan arched a brow, richly amused. “To me?”
“Yes,” Tom said pointedly. The skin tightened across his thin cheekbones. “Is she your daughter?”
“Oh, Tom, I thought you were beyond the idle speculation of the crew.”
“So
mething made you stop, in Ireland. More than a few of the men saw.”
“Ah, so I embrace incest, but only within limits. I know I haven’t always been philosophically consistent, but incest even in moderation would be a debauchery I could not rationalize. Don’t work so hard, Tom. There’s nothing to it. She’s not my daughter. She is nothing at all to me.”
“Then why haven’t you beaten the truth from her?”
“She won’t break. Not from a beating, but if you’d like to try.”
Tom dropped his gaze.
Morgan took a moment to assess that, cut short his thoughts, and then bent to scoop Merry from the floor. She half woke, but was asleep again before he set her on the window bench and pulled up the quilts.
“My way is the kinder fate, Tom.”
That made the older man scowl. Tom was, of course, right in every worry and counsel, but it didn’t mean Morgan would let him know it.
Morgan gestured with an arm toward the door. They walked in silence topside. On deck, Morgan said suddenly, “During my days in France, there was a saying at court. ‘The fuck is made all the better by a good hunt’. I admit that it loses something in the English translation, but the sentiment holds true. It’s been a long time since I’ve been afforded the pleasures of a leisurely hunt. Let me hunt in peace, Tom.”
Without letting Tom see, Morgan made a quick assessment of the quartermaster’s face. Lighting his pipe, he waited patiently for Tom to digest that and make his next cautious move. The words had been deliberately coarse, the sentiment purposely crude, and the result predictable. Tom was unsure and didn’t know what to make of any of it.
Strangely, that Tom was unsure did not please Morgan. The longer he stayed on ship, the more he worried that the years had taken too much possession of him. Christina, who knew him so well, had been right about that. Could any man go to the brink of the worst he was capable of doing, and then return to his better self? Morgan’s gaze moved like a nightwalker across the crew. Does any man ever know who he is, who he has become, until he has faced both the best and the worst of himself?