Chapter 5
The door opened without so much as a single question of who might be standing outside. It could have been anyone, Blake silently fumed. Mrs. Edwards needed to be more careful, even in the relative safety of his own ship. A woman could never be too cautious.
He nodded in greeting, “Mrs. Edwards.”
“Captain Masters . . .” acknowledged the widow, stepping aside to allow the two men to enter.
In the lantern light, he saw she had changed into the clean clothing, though it had been necessary to roll up the cuffs of both the trousers and the shirt. She was also barefoot, and quite comfortable to be so, it seemed. For a lady who had gone through the battering of ship and sea, she appeared to be holding up quite well, much better than he would have guessed. What kind of life had she led that could produce such a strong female—in body as well as mind?
Once again he found himself doubting her story of her past. She did not seem to fit the typical mold of a docile and domesticated wife, not that he thought all women could claim those attributes.
Keoni stepped around Blake, who had not found the momentum to move from the doorway. “Dancing fool,” murmured the cook under his breath for the benefit of his captain.
“Thank you . . . Kay-oh-nee, isn’t it?” The woman shaped her lips around each syllable of the name, drawing Blake’s attention to her mouth. A sudden desire to kiss her swept through his head, cascading downward to the lower reaches of his body. He stifled the inappropriate sensations that churned like a whirlpool in the pit of his belly.
Grinning, Keoni answered her question. “Yes, ma’am. You said it perfectly. You must have a natural ear for language.”
“Only Spanish and French,” admitted the woman with too much warmth in her eyes for the Kanaka to suit Blake. His friend set the platter on the bed, then prepared the captain’s table with a clean linen cloth and candles before placing the food in the center. “I have visited the islands, though, so I’m familiar with the pronunciation of your words.”
Startled to hear this latest bit of information about the mysterious widow, Blake was about to speak up when Keoni offered, “I will teach you my native tongue, if you are interested.”
“That’s very nice of you,” she responded as the cook lit the candles. “I wouldn’t mind a few lessons while I’m here.”
“Keoni, you have hungry sailors topside,” reminded Blake, interrupting the courtship before he could be asked to perform vows between them as captain of the ship. When it came to women, Keoni charmed, wooed, and bedded more members of the fairer sex than any sailor on the Seven Seas. Not that Blake was envious of his Island brother. That is, not until now.
“Aye-aye, Captain.” His friend turned back to Mrs. Edwards. “Let me know when you want that lesson.”
“I will, Keoni. And thank you again.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.”
“I said that will be all.” Blake cocked one brow in a silent reprimand. And yet he was certain he saw a smirk on the cook’s face when the man turned to leave.
As the door closed, he stepped to a chair and pulled it out for his guest. She looked at him quizzically. “Are you joining me after all?”
“With your permission.”
“You already had it.”
“Very well, then . . .” He gestured for her to sit down. She glanced from the seat to him, then back again. “It won’t bite.”
“I know.” As if unaccustomed to this common courtesy, she silently lowered herself onto the chair, then folded her hands in her lap like a schoolgirl waiting for her lessons. He, on the other hand, had thoughts no schoolmaster should be considering. Her short dark hair drew his attention to the delicate nape of her neck. His hands tightened around the finials of the chair, resisting the urge to touch her, to run his finger down the slender column of her neck. He imagined leaning down and pressing his lips to her skin, tasting her, teasing her.
But he would not want to stop there, he knew. To think otherwise was to be a fool. The fantasy of her in his arms—and bed—was far too tempting. He was deceiving himself with these fantasies.
Pulling himself away from her, he went to the cupboard where he kept a few bottles of good wine and stronger spirits.
“May I offer you a glass of wine?” he asked.
“What? Oh . . . yes, wine would be nice.”
Fending off his inner demons, he swallowed once to loosen the tightness in his throat. Surely it was the effect of the salt water he had swallowed. Yes, that must be the cause. And his fevered blood was also from exposure to the elements. He was fighting off a slight case of the cold. Nothing more.
“Will Keoni bring some plates and forks?” she asked as he filled two glasses. “Or do we eat with our fingers?”
“We are not barbarians.” Reluctant to risk the slightest touch of warmth from her fingers, he chose not to hand her the drink but placed it on the table in front of her. “And no, Keoni is not bringing anything. My personal service is already stored here.”
He went to another cupboard to retrieve plates.
Cara slowly sipped the wine, studying the captain over the rim of the glass. When she was snooping around the cabin earlier, she’d seen the dishes but couldn’t let on that she knew about them. She had learned little else about Blake Masters during her search. Writing papers had shown the most recent date to be March 12, 1833, which would have been two days earlier—if this time here in the past correlated with her time in the future.
Other handwritten pages in his voyage journal hadn’t revealed anything out of the ordinary. There were only notes about the weather, ports of call, and other bits and pieces of nautical jargon that didn’t always make sense to her. Among his personal effects, she hadn’t found any jewelry to use as a means to connect with his life. Even the clothing that she wore against her skin held his scent but not any other clues to his past. His shaving articles were missing, as was a brush or comb. No doubt he’d taken those with him when he moved to other quarters.
Was it so odd for a man to have nothing personal in his own cabin? He was a sailor, a vagabond. If he had no other home but this ship, he should have some kind of mementos he’d collected during his travels.
After he sat down, she waited until he took his first bite of food before picking up her fork and knife. The gentle roll of the ship tilted the wine to one side of the glasses, then the other. The candle flames seemed to follow the same motion. While shadows flickered across the paneled walls, the wooden ship creaked in slow rhythm with the subtle back-and-forth movement. The clicks of their cutlery on the china sounded like a lethargic tap-tapping of a telegraph key.
Trying to ignore the uncomfortable wall of silence between them, Cara savored the taste of the beef, then carrots, then potatoes, meticulously chewing each mouthful. Aside from the dried meat and biscuit given to her on the beach, she hadn’t eaten since her dinner meal aboard the modern-day Mystic. While she expected to be hungry, she didn’t expect the enhanced flavor of the food. Her taste buds were in heaven. Was it her hunger that made the difference? Or was it the food itself, grown in a different century in the purest process of nature? Whatever the reason, she couldn’t remember eating anything quite so delicious as the simple fare of meat and potatoes.
Too bad she couldn’t take the secret back to the future. She could make a killing in the restaurant business. That’s if she were interested in moneymaking schemes, which she wasn’t.
Right now, she had to find Andrew and get back.
“Where are you from, Captain?” The question escaped her lips before she even realized she’d been contemplating it. He paused, his fork halfway to his mouth.
“Everywhere and nowhere,” he answered, repeating her own earlier reply.
“Touché.”
One eyebrow lifted inquisitively. “Pardon me?”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“I merely turned the tables, did I not? Seems fair enough to me.”
She considered his comment,
wondering what he would say if she were to tell him she had been born and raised in the very same area where they’d been washed up on the beach. Trying to think of yet another creative fabrication about her background, she relied upon memories of the eastern seaboard from a summer spent there with her Aunt Gaby.
“I was born in Philadelphia in 1799,” she stated flatly, then took another drink of wine. A long one. She needed to calm her nerves, certain she was not playing this deceptive game as convincingly as she had done on past assignments. When she had learned the present year, she had calculated backward to find her own birth year in case it was necessary. Now she was glad she had. Any woman willing to reveal her age—and it was an advanced age for this time period—might be considered an honest woman.
She could only hope Captain Masters would see it that way. “And you, sir?”
Instead of answering her question, he shook his head in disbelief. “You cannot possibly be thirty-four years old. I am thirty, and you do not appear to be four years older than I. On the contrary, you look at least four years younger. Never mind your youthful agility, anyone can see at first glance your teeth are proof enough.”
She choked. “Thank you . . . I think.” As the alcohol swirled warmly through her body, she thought back to her adolescent years of orthodontia and the daily brushing with whitening toothpaste, all in the effort to attain a dazzling smile that didn’t fit into this world. “Healthy teeth are a family blessing, sir. I am thirty-four.”
“Impossible.”
“It’s your turn to tell me where you were born.”
“I have no memory of it.”
“You’re not getting off so easily.”
“I don’t know my birthplace. And that is the truth.” Though his voice remained calm and unemotional, he cut his meat with a vengeance, slashing it into small pieces with his knife. Cara leaned back against her chair, her fingers still curled around the stemware.
“You are telling the truth.”
He nodded, keeping his eyes on his plate, forking food into his mouth. In silence, she watched him eat for another moment or two before he became aware of her eyes on him. He tipped his head, gesturing toward her food. “Eat,” he grunted with a full mouth.
Continuing with her own meal, she told herself his past was none of her business. She should drop the subject, especially since it appeared the captain was not comfortable with the discussion. She chewed the meat and swallowed, looking for a benign topic of conversation to alleviate the tension in the air, even though a gnawing in her gut pressed her to continue the difficult line of questioning. She tried to ignore it.
They were back to where they had started, eating in silence. Despite her earlier response to the delicious food, she seemed to have lost her appetite. She pushed the carrots around on her plate, picking at them now and then. Occasionally she cut a bite of meat. The gravy had congealed on top of the potatoes, making them far from appealing. But without a convenient fast-food drive-through, there was no guarantee when or if she’d get another full meal such as this one. So she forced herself to finish the food on her plate.
Inwardly, Cara sighed, knowing how much she had fouled up this first meal with the captain, intentionally or not. If she didn’t make amends, he might take back his offer to stop in San Juan Capistrano.
“I’m sorry we got off to the wrong start,” she offered.
He glanced up, his face unchanged. “I, too, am sorry.”
Since he didn’t elaborate, she speculated that he was sorry for more than his surly behavior. He was probably also regretting bringing her on board.
He was a contradiction of himself. Sometimes keeping his distance. Sometimes opening to her. But she suspected it was his curiosity that attracted him to her. After all, she was an oddity in this time period. And, as a lone woman in a world of high-testosterone males, she was undoubtedly sparking his interest on a physical level as well. She wasn’t exactly immune to him either.
Still, she’d seen his pain, his unease over not knowing his origins. She wanted to help him, and she could. Her gift could allow it. And therein lay another problem—how could she explain her unusual abilities that would allow her to unlock his past without jeopardizing her safety. Did they still burn witches in 1833?
However reluctant she was to antagonize him again, her stomach gave her the same internal nudge she’d gotten at the rancho with Andrew’s father. That experience had taught her not to ignore the pain in her gut when it prodded her to do something she didn’t want to do. It would only get worse until she followed the inner guidance.
“Captain, I could help you if you’d only let me—” Read your mind, she’d almost said. “Maybe if you talked about your past, the parts of your childhood that you do remember—”
“I said I have no memory of my early childhood. Leave it be.”
“But it obviously bothers you.”
“Hell, yes! I have no idea who my parents are. Or where they might be. Whether they are dead or alive. Do you know what it is like to have no knowledge whatsoever of yourself?”
“Were you hurt in a fall? Head injuries can cause amnesia.”
“Blast it, woman!” He slammed his utensils onto the table, upsetting his glass of wine. A wash of red stain spread across the linen cloth, but he ignored it. “My life is none of your concern.”
Cara reached across with her napkin and attempted to blot the spill, but he waved her off. She settled back into her seat, letting the napkin drop to her lap while she watched him clean up the mess.
As the ship rolled on another wave, the cabin tilted farther than before. The serving platter slid into her plate, which knocked the stem of her glass. As it toppled, she grabbed to save it. A fraction of a second too late. Instead of spilling onto the table, the red wine sloshed over the lip of the glass, arced through the air, and splattered across the surprised face of the captain.
He let loose a string of curses and mopped his face with his napkin. Then he stopped abruptly, as if remembering his manners in the presence of a woman. The glare in his blue eyes leveled on her.
She bit her lip. “I am so sorry. I tried to stop it, but I wasn’t fast enough.” Even though she wanted to chuckle at the absurd comedy of errors, she knew the wisest thing to do at the moment would be to respect his seriousness of the situation. After all, he was her host.
Cara didn’t need extrasensory perception to know the man was livid. From the way his narrowed, accusing gaze pinned her, he obviously suspected the wine had been deliberately thrown in his face.
She held up her palm in testimony. “I swear I did not do it on purpose, Captain . . . sir.” His angry stare remained unchanged. “Honest! The boat tipped and—”
He pushed his chair back and stood, then raked his stained napkin down the front of his jacket in an attempt to clean it. The effort didn’t do much good. The wine had soaked into the navy-blue wool. Turning away from the table, he shed the coat and tossed it on the bed. Standing in profile, he acted as if she weren’t there and stripped off his damp shirt as well.
Growing up on sunny Southern California beaches should have made her a little more blasé about the tantalizing view of muscled biceps and pecs, not to mention the flat, tight abs on Blake Masters.
But the sudden thud of her pulse and the erotic images that flashed in her mind were anything but blasé.
Lord, he had an incredible body. Coming to her senses, she reined in her unexpected reaction.
His upper right arm was tattooed with a wide band of geometric shapes. Wrapping around his thick biceps, the symbols looked like something from the South Sea Islands. She watched him step to the bureau, presenting his back to her.
Covering her mouth, she held back a gasp at the faded scars between his shoulder blades. The crisscross of pale lines was a shade lighter than his deeply tanned skin. Neither reddened nor puckered, the scars didn’t appear to be recently acquired. Still, the thought of him enduring physical torture, however long ago, sent a shiver down her spine.
Unable to look at the ugly marks without wincing, she dropped her gaze to the tattoos of black triangles and other marks that circled his waist.
Cara wondered what kind of man could be beaten so severely as to leave scars, then willingly tolerate the pain of having his skin pierced and dyed with native symbols.
Her curious thoughts evaporated as Masters lingered in front of the open drawer. From her earlier look around, Cara realized he was staring into an empty space. Apparently he had forgotten that he’d lent her his last shirt. Just as with the dishes, she couldn’t say anything without revealing that she’d peeked into his private things.
“I need a shirt,” he growled more to himself than to her.
“That you do.” Before I go crazy. She imagined she could shock him with her modern-day boldness.
He glanced around sharply. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it is not polite to stare?”
She masked her embarrassment, mimicking him with a bit of his own medicine. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it is not polite to strip off your shirt in front of a lady?’ ’
“A lady? Yes. A woman masquerading as a man? No.” He came over to the table with his stained shirt clenched in one hand.
Naked from the waist up, he looked like a leading actor in a classic pirate movie. Even better. Her heart did a quickstep thump-thump at the delectable sight of his sun-darkened body. Tempted to reach out and touch the dusting of dark hair on his bronze chest, she kept her hands in her lap. Out of his view, her fingers twisted the napkin into a tight knot.
“So . . .” Although she hated to admit it, his words stung. “If I am not a lady—in your eyes, that is—then what exactly do you think I am?”
His glower deepened. “I have not yet decided.”
“I am not—” Her mind scrambled to find the proper euphemism rather than a blunt term that would sound vulgar coming from a woman. “I do not prostitute myself, sir, if that is what you are thinking.”
She combed her fingers through her short hair, feeling the stickiness from the salt water. Lord, she probably looked like a punk rocker who had spent an hour in the mosh pit.
Mystic Memories Page 7