Scoundrel

by Zoë Archer

  His anger ebbed, but he still felt its effect, or, more specifically, his shock that her dismissal of him could cause such a quick and painful wound. To distract himself, he ran his lips back and forth across the silk of her hair. The scent of the ocean clung to her, fresh and cool.

  “I’ve never been in love,” London said on a sigh. “I thought I would grow to love Lawrence, but it never happened.”

  Bennett, who usually did not mind his lovers talking of past affairs, found himself knotted up with a strange emotion to hear London speak of her dead husband. A tight clenching throughout his body. More anger. It took a moment for him to recognize what it was. Jealousy.

  Good Christ, what was happening to him?

  “There are so many words for love,” she said quietly. “Liefde, amour, die Liebe. Greek has so many words. Agape, philia, eros. They all mean something different. So perhaps there is no one definition of love. But I know what I want it to be for myself.”

  It was dangerous territory, the land of expectations that Bennett so scrupulously avoided—if a man such as himself could possess scruples. Yet he needed to know, for reasons he couldn’t figure, everything that was inside of her. “How’d you come by this concept?”

  “I didn’t learn it at home,” she said. “Not between my parents. They were business partners, or rather, my father ran the company and my mother was a fairly valued employee, but nothing more than that. Certainly, there wasn’t love between Lawrence and me. And what the girls I knew spoke of when they talked of sweethearts seemed to be childish infatuation. Not real love. In the world in which I lived, it didn’t seem to exist.”

  “So you invented something, an idea.”

  “I suppose I did,” she murmured, trailing her fingers up and down his chest. Her touch lit tiny fires, like a signal from one camp to another, passing along the message of desire. “Based it on all the ancient love poems and epic tales that I’d been reading ever since I was a child. I would read of heroes and goddesses, or even ordinary people, falling in love, how it was described, how they felt. And I wanted that.”

  She grew pensive, far off. “I thought, ‘When I am with the man I love,” she said, her voice thoughtful and low, “‘everything else’ will disappear. I’ll see only him. He will be the person I want to share everything with. If I am walking alone and I see something beautiful, like a wildflower poking up from the pavement, or something ridiculous, like a monkey in a hat, I will rush to tell him these things. And in the dark of night, he alone is who I will want beside me, and I’ll listen to him breathe in sleep and I shall put my hand upon him and hope he dreams of me, for I couldn’t bear even a moment apart from him.’”

  She turned sparkling eyes to Bennett. “Even now, after my marriage, after everything, I want these things. Foolish of me.”

  When he tried to speak, a hoarse rasp came out. He turned away to clear his throat. “I think,” he said when he could trust himself not to croak like a bullfrog, “that nothing’s foolish where the heart’s concerned. You want what you want, and nobody can slight you for it. But, London,” and here he tipped up her chin so their eyes met and there could be no mistaking what he was about to say, “I can’t love you the way that you want.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said at once.

  He kept his voice level. “I do know. I’ve known it my whole life. I can give affection, desire, pleasure. These things are, to me, love. But the kind of love you’re asking for, it’s not possible, not from me. I can’t bind myself forever to one woman, and I don’t want her binding herself to me.” He placed a kiss, one after the other, upon her temples, the softest of touches of mouth to flesh. “And to think otherwise is only going to hurt us both.”

  “Should we stop this, then? This…whatever it is between us.”

  The idea caused a twist, low in his gut, as though a knife slid into him. They’d both crawled through fire to reach each other, to bring their bodies and hearts together. He felt as though he had died and been reborn many times just to experience the ecstasy of London as his lover. And now, he was to give her up? Impossible. “I won’t stop.” He couldn’t.

  “Me, either.” She nestled close to him as he let go of the breath he’d been holding. “So, there will be no demands for something that cannot be given. I’d rather have now, in whatever form it takes.”

  He stroked her hair, feeling its softness between his fingers. “We’ll have our now.”

  “Maybe, one day, it will happen for me with someone,” London mused aloud. “I would like that. I want to experience my kind of love at least once before I die.”

  He thought about that man, the unnamed, faceless man who would, someday, receive beautiful, passionate, and brave London’s love and would be able to reciprocate it as she needed. Who would be everything in her eyes. Who would hear her stories of sidewalk wildflowers and monkeys in haberdashery. Who slept beside her and dreamt of her because she touched him to be near him always. Bennett hated that man.

  Chapter 12

  A Dangerous Strait

  Tacitly, everyone agreed not to examine the mirror until the morning. Before dawn, Stathis and his sons had loosened the lines between the two caiques, then, with promises of a future reunion, sailed off to make their catch.

  London heard Athena and Kallas arguing below deck. Something about her resting more, which the witch refused to do.

  “It never seems to stop with them,” London murmured, “the arguments.”

  “Surely that doesn’t surprise you,” said Bennett.

  She rolled her eyes. “I do know how anger and lust fuel one another.” When he raised a brow at her, she explained, “It was like that, sometimes, with Lawrence and me. We’d fight about something I did to the house or an aspect of my behavior that he disliked, and I would get angry that he’d make demands but was hardly around, so why should it matter if I went riding by myself or expanded the library.” She waved away the memories of those rows.

  “The best part of those arguments,” she continued, “was what happened afterward. The lights were off, of course,” she added with a blush, “but things became a good deal less…routine.” That passion between them never lasted, though. Only in the heat of wrath did London and her late husband find any form of desire between them. And the pleasure they’d achieved had been selfish, each clawing toward gratification, using the other’s body as a means of attaining climax. She never felt truly fulfilled after such encounters. Only more alone.

  “So you understand what goes on between Kallas and Athena,” Bennett said with a scowl. Interesting. He did not strike London as the sort of man who even comprehended jealousy, let alone felt it. Surely, London had to be mistaken in her interpretation.

  “It seems that there is more to what is happening between our captain and our witch than mere desire,” London said. “Affection, perhaps.”

  “Our witch has got a new fancy,” Bennett allowed. He watched the wind in the sails, noting its direction. “But nothing lasts. She moves on.”

  “Like you,” London said softly.

  He gazed at her steadily. “Like me.”

  “There’s freedom in that.” She would not frustrate herself, grasping at what could not be. “To unloose the passions and let them run where they will with no fear of tomorrow.”

  “Think you did a rather good job of it last night—freeing your passions.”

  The heat of his voice made her tremble. “I did, didn’t I?” She felt proud of herself, proud of what she and Bennett had done, how little she cared what anyone else thought.

  At last, Athena and Kallas joined them on deck, the witch looking considerably improved, though a bit vexed with the captain, a sentiment he shared.

  Bennett uncovered the mirror. It gleamed even more brightly than it had when it was first removed from the stream.

  “Such brilliance in its surface,” Athena marveled, then asked London, “Are you sure of its age?”

  “Quite,” said London, and felt certain of he
rself. Where language was concerned, she needed no other assurances besides her own. “The dialect died out millennia ago. Only a few fragments remain, but there are perhaps only a half dozen people familiar with it, maybe even less.”

  “Including you,” added Bennett. His smile warmed her deeply.

  “And me,” she said, pride and modesty butting up against each other. She was used to comments about her appearance or her clothing or other inconsequential things, but Bennett was the first man, the first person, to value her skill with languages.

  “And the writings?” Kallas asked, scattering her thoughts. “What do they say?”

  London held the mirror, tilting it this way and that to better read the words encircling its rim. She cleared her throat, then began:

  “My eye is golden and lost.

  The rocks tumble, seven three nine, on the east;

  Then the precarious narrow path that must be taken,

  Else find yourself stranded, walk upon the water.

  Onward, and reflect toward the dawn.

  Find me then, if you can, to see

  What I see.”

  Finished, she looked to Bennett to see what he could make of such a riddle. “I wish, sometimes, that these ancients spoke plainly.”

  “Then there’d be no fun in it.” He stared at the mirror as if it could reflect back an answer. London watched the light bounce off the mirror’s surface to bathe Bennett in a golden halo, but he was far more devil than angel. She had proof of that in the wonderful soreness throughout her body.

  “You sure that’s some magic something?” Kallas asked. “Because it sounds like a sailor giving directions.”

  Athena frowned, but did not scoff. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a stretch of the sea to the northeast of here, a few days’ sail,” Kallas explained. “A chain of islands, more rocks in the sea than islands, in groups. The first of seven, then three, and then nine. Once past those, there are two islands that face each other with a narrow strait between them—maybe three times the width of this boat. A difficult sail. No one has ever dared it. Around the islands are wide shoals, too shallow to sail, but it’s said a man could walk on them and the water would only come to his ankles. Then, toward the dawn would mean go east from there.”

  “Then this mirror is a map,” said London.

  “A map of words,” the captain said. He drew on his pipe as punctuation, but could not quite hide some deserved masculine preening when Athena gaped in admiration and amazement.

  “The men in your family must all be incredible sailors,” said Bennett, approving.

  “Always. It’s said one of my ancestors taught Jason how to sail, and another sailed with Odysseus. Will they sing of me, the Muses?”

  “Without a doubt,” said London.

  “You, too, will be in their song, Lady Oracle, who reads the words of the past.”

  “An extraordinary little boat we’ve got here,” said Bennett. He rubbed his hands together. “Now, let’s have ourselves some breakfast. I’m so hungry, I could eat a halyard.”

  London looked around the deck of the caique, at Kallas attending to the sails of his beloved boat, at Athena still shaking her head in wonderment, at Bennett heading off toward the galley below. He was the man whose bed she shared. For a few hours. For a few days. And then…and then she did not know, but she would not let herself dwell on uncertainties. For now, she was here, in the middle of the ocean, on this swift-sailing boat, with these people.

  Sea captain. Noble witch. Life-loving scoundrel. And her. An odd group, but one in which she was discovering her most truthful self.

  London adjusted the tension on the jib’s halyard, keeping its leading edge straight as the wind shifted. She didn’t need Kallas’s guidance anymore. She knew what the boat needed.

  Certain moments in one’s life would always be returned to, even years, decades, later. Some of them were painful—heartbreak, mortification, loss—but there were others that held the clarity and perfection of cut gems, to sparkle against the velvet drape of memory. And, as the years progressed and unfolded in their relentless march, again and again would the mind revisit those moments. Eating a plum, the juices running down your hand, as you walked an esplanade along the shore. The day that the weather cleared and the ground was finally firm enough to be ridden upon, and the leap of your heart as your horse took the first fence. A new old book being delivered and unwrapped from its brown paper, sitting upon your desk, full of possibility, and the musty, rich smell of its pages as you opened it.

  You returned to these moments, sometimes to ease a current suffering, and sometimes for the simple pleasure of revisiting a past joy, but they were there, and held and treasured in the cupped palms of your mind.

  London knew that, no matter what the years brought her, or even the next few weeks, she would always cherish her days spent on the caique, as they sailed toward the mirror’s destination. Though she hadn’t much experience with the larger world, she understood enough to see these days as miniature miracles painted in azure, cobalt, turquoise. Perhaps they were all the more precious because they could not last.

  Squinting in the sun, she checked the jibsheets, both port and starboard, feeling the power in the lines, taking their power into herself.

  Knowing the transience of her happiness, she reveled in each and every heartbeat, each breath. Daytime was filled with light and sky and sea, the glitter of gold upon the waves, the snap of the sails as she learned the wind, passing other brightly painted boats in the timeless rhythm of seafaring life. She felt softness leave her arms, her body, in the joy of movement. Her hair smelled of saltwater and sun. She laughed often. Stories were told, many outrageous, some entirely fabricated. She drank dark wine and ate briny olives. She became a sailor.

  And the nights. She felt like Psyche, visited each night by the embodiment of sensuality. In truth, it was she who visited him, since London and Athena shared a cabin, but the general idea was much the same. Though she prized her days, London could not wait for night, after dinner, when Kallas took the wheel for a few hours, leaving Bennett and her free to do unspeakably wonderful and wicked things to one another in dark, intimate seclusion.

  She explored every inch of Bennett’s magnificent body and, in so doing, came to know her own completely. How, when he bit the tender juncture of her neck and shoulder, she shuddered with pleasure. The insides of her arms, she discovered, were sensitive, and she ran them over his back, across his broad chest, feeling the textures of his skin, his hair. Her breath on the inside of his thigh caused him to growl. His tongue, lapping at the folds of her pussy, made her whimper and writhe. She loved to clutch at the tight muscles of his buttocks as he drove into her, pulling him closer until they were almost one creature.

  He taught her things. She guided him. They tangled together.

  The heat that now suffused her cheeks was not caused by the sun, but by exquisite memory of what she and Bennett had done the night before.

  London was sure that every morning, she emerged on deck with the sleepy, satisfied look of a woman who had been thoroughly pleasured. God knew that Kallas and Athena had to hear her moans each night. She could not bring herself to care. Shameless. She was without shame. And it was wonderful.

  It wasn’t only the physical aspects of their lovemaking that had London smiling to herself. Once they had temporarily sated themselves with each other’s bodies, she and Bennett would lay together in the narrow bunk and talk of everything—weighty matters, trifles. She learned about his life in England as the second son of a noted barrister, his restlessness at the idea of settling down, practicing law himself, and how, when he was recruited for the Blades, life finally made sense. He could at last make good use of his skill with codes, his ease in the darkness. A man like him, of excellent breeding and solid English values, clever of mind and strong of body, could have been an Heir. To her utter astonishment, she learned that he had, in fact, been approached by an agent of the Heirs of Albion wh
ile in his second year at Cambridge. Bennett rejected their advances, their appeals to his vanity, his cupidity. Soon after that, a man by the name of Catullus Graves sent him a letter, inviting him to Southampton to decode some ancient Scandinavian ciphers. That’s when he learned about the Blades, and that’s when he vowed to make their cause his own.

  At his prompting, she told him about her own life, but it was far less interesting, in her opinion, than his. Unlike him, she’d never been to Lapland, Tangiers, Bucharest. She hadn’t scrambled up the sides of snow-covered mountains, seeking shelter before a blizzard hit. She never shared a Berber’s hookah while watching kohl-eyed, veiled dancers in firelight. But, oh, she wanted to, and he described his adventures with such vivid detail that she felt as if she’d lived a whole other life, one outside of books. He asked about the numerous languages she studied, her joy in them, and took his pleasure in hers. She had never spoken to anyone about her linguistic scholarship, always afraid of their response. Bennett was different. She knew she could trust him; he wouldn’t turn on her or decry what was so important to her.

  She thought about them following the mirror’s direction. It would be a difficult voyage—the mirror guarded its secrets well. London hoped Kallas had the skill of generations to navigate treacherous waters.

  Satisfied that the jib’s rigging was in order, London drifted from the bow of the boat toward the quarterdeck. There, she found Athena and Kallas passionately arguing about whether Jason should have abandoned Medea. Naturally, the witch defended the sorceress. Kallas insisted that Jason rightly found a new woman, as Medea was of a less-than-sane disposition.

  “But she killed her own brother to help him escape Colchis,” Athena protested.