The Windflower

by Laura London

  He repeated his question, and since she didn’t have a ready alias, she was left harboring a pause as revealing as last season’s bear grease in a porch bucket.

  “A woman of mystery,” said Morgan, at the side table, pouring himself wine. “Cat, fetch the thumbscrew.”

  Cat snapped his fingers with apparent regret. “I can’t remember where I put it. It’s been a while since I’ve screwed any thumbs. Captain, sir, it’s the iron maiden or nothing.”

  “If you say so, child.” Morgan rested his long body on a chair arm. “Personally, I can see her lashed to the yardarm, bared to the waist. I’m all in favor of something really vile and modern. Shall we bring it to the crew for a vote?”

  “They,” said Devon pleasantly to Merry, “are teasing. Until I decide otherwise.” He gently loosened the cereal spoon that had been still fastened, unheeded, in the claw-like grip of her fingers. Bowl and spoon he delivered to Cat and then hooked a chair and straddling it backward, faced her over the rail. “Never fear, darling. For the moment all I want is the right to grub around in your pia mater. Hullo! You’re nervous this morning! I only meant your brain.”

  Merry gathered every scrap and particle of the coldness that was making itself at home in the linings of her digestive tract and wove that coldness into her voice as she said, “Browbeat me, then, if it suits your mood. I prefer that to your—”

  “What? My passion? Ah, love, what makes you so sure we’re done with that?”

  She had a second’s warning before his right hand found her and slid gently under her hair to the thin, neat flesh that spread, soft as a gosling, on the side of her neck. She hadn’t learned yet the trick of mastering her respiration; as he touched her Devon heard the sharp intake of her breath. His thumb braced, without pressure, on her rapidly pulsing artery, and the tactile surfaces of his curved fingers were slow on her skin.

  Wishing heartily that she hadn’t been so stupid as to have antagonized him on this, of all subjects, Merry said, in a voice that was embarrassingly hoarse, “Is it too late to retract any part of my remark that caused you offense?”

  “No, but that time is fast approaching.” The pirate’s clever fingers were discovering her nape.

  His touch was scattering her thoughts like leaves in a wind eddy. Trying what was quite possibly the most serious risk she had knowingly taken in her life, Miss Merry Patricia Wilding ventured, “Are you sure—” His fingers smoothed over the tumble of her lower lip, so she had to swallow hard and begin a second time with closed eyes. “Are you sure this is what you want? How do you know I won’t bore you, next time, with a surrender?”

  It was the closest she had ever come to the sort of wordplay at which he was so skilled. It was a joke, only a joke, and if he misunderstood: disaster. Like the gazelle, sick faced, who offered leftover salad to the hunting lion, Merry meant to placate and to make him laugh. Astonishingly she succeeded in both.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked resignedly into the soft folds of his laughter.

  The long firm-boned hand gave her cheek an approving pat and withdrew. “You don’t have to abandon hope, my dear,” he said. “Despite appearances, you’re really quite safe, if you cooperate. Now. When did you meet Michael Granville?”

  Sooner or later, Merry had known, it would come back to this. From the myriad tidbits of information she had culled since being brought on the Joke, she gathered that Devon had paid to have Granville’s room searched and certain papers—what papers?—stolen, which meant the pirate and the English gentleman had a connection, probably unfriendly, but what went into it exactly was anybody’s guess.

  Merry stepped gingerly into the thought that perhaps Sir Michael was an agent for the British government. At the very least he would bring to London a full report of his American visit, though one assumed, naturally, that he had been closely watched during his stay in her country. Strange, that he had had such freedom to wander the streets, but then, what did she know about things like that? If Sir Michael was a spy, what would that make Devon? Surely Washington did not hire pirates to gather information for them! Things were not always as they seemed, she was fast coming to learn. If Devon was an American, please God, her trouble would be over.

  Merry matched his clear golden gaze. “Are you in the employ of President Madison?”

  Morgan choked on his wine and then laughed himself into a stupor. And when the ha-ha’s had died to ho-ho’s and then to faint sobs, Devon turned to him and said, “I wish that you hadn’t. I would have loved to bite ‘Yes’ on that one and see where it led to.” He glanced back to Merry’s drawn face. “As you see, I’m not. You will answer my question, please.”

  Could he trace her through Michael Granville? It didn’t matter, because it was becoming rapidly obvious that any association with Granville was a hazard to her future well-being.

  “I met Sir Michael on the Guinevere the night she was to sail.”

  “All right,” Devon said. “We’ll suppose, for a minute, that’s true. Then what were you doing in the Musket and Muskrat in August? Don’t waste my time trying to convince me you were there only to help with a puppet show. I saw the woman and two men you were in company with. Having you along was an invitation to trouble; they wouldn’t have brought you if it hadn’t been important. Your presence was instrumental to something. I’d like to know what that was.”

  Overset by the knife-edged accuracy of his perception, she denied it too quickly, and too sharply, with an incoherent paragraph of stuttered denials. Cold-eyed, he heard her out as she impaled herself on her own incoherence.

  “Your delivery seems to be getting a little garbled,” Devon said, “so if you don’t mind, I’ll help you. You say you’re the wife of a poor puppeteer. Very well. How much money does he earn in an average performance? So much? I’m impressed. Where were you born? The name of the county? How long have you been married? And you’re how old? The year you were married in? What was the last city you lived in? How many shows would you estimate your husband has given since you’ve been married? Multiply it, sweetheart. That makes the man a millionaire.”

  He was right. Merry buried her face in the shaking cup of her palms. Devon’s voice, as beautiful and merciless as the rest of him, came gently to her burning ears.

  “Whatever you may think, I’m not enjoying this either. Are you ready to tell me who was with you at the Muskrat?”

  If she began to weep now, the explosion of fluid would drain every cell in her body. Head spinning, Merry loosened her tangling fingers with effort, laid her hands in her lap, and straightened her curling shoulders. Somewhere she found the strength to look into the profligate golden eyes.

  “At the tavern, with the puppets. That was my husband—”

  “His name?” asked Devon.

  Not Smith, she thought. “Jones.”

  “Ah. Bill Jones? Bob Jones? Ebenezer Jones?”

  Merry passed her tongue tiredly over her lips and said the first thing that pranced into her brain. “Jeremiah Jones.”

  “That was going to be my next guess,” Devon said. “Biblical and alliterative.”

  Lord help her, it had sounded even more ridiculous said aloud than in her mind. Behind Devon she could see Cat shake his head at her in a pained way and pass his finger over his throat, in a gesture forecasting doom.

  Devon crossed his arm over the chair rail. “I’ll say this for you, flower, you fail with flair. Listen, my child, I’ve been gentle with you so far, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that will go on forever. When you leave the Joke, it will be one segment at a time if you don’t either begin telling me the truth or begin bringing a little more panache to your lies. Satisfy me, and I’ll put you in the longboat as soon as we come near shore and have you delivered, unharmed, to the nearest coaching inn with enough money in your pocket to take you wherever you wish.” He paused, searched her face, and continued patiently. “At the Muskrat you were sitting with one of Granville’s men—”

  “No! No! W
hat are you saying? Who can you mean?”

  “The innkeeper. If it’s a coincidence, you had better explain to me how it comes about, because that connects you twice with Granville and his minions. You have two alternatives, Merry. You can be innocent, and I’ll let you go; you can be useful, and I’ll let you go. My suggestion is that you commit yourself to one course or the other before my temper wears out.”

  With his words she saw and understood, for the first time, the magnitude of her predicament. Had she really thought, minutes ago, that Devon’s feelings for Granville were “unfriendly”? What blindness! What infantile blindness! Devon was no ruffian with an excess of spleen, no overzealous Yankee patriot. With those she might have had a chance. What Devon was, it seemed, was a deliberate, highly intelligent, ruthless man, and a word like unfriendly might patch a single square inch of the cosmos of Devon’s hatred for Michael Granville. Michael Granville. What was he besides a pair of opaque green-gray eyes and well-bred condescension that had made him Devon’s enemy? And—minions? She had been ready for a little innocent adventure to help her country at the Musket and Muskrat, not to land in the cross fire between the sacred and the profane, although it was a pretty good guess that in this war both the parties were on the side of the profane. It wasn’t merely important that she disassociate herself immediately from Granville, it was a matter of survival. And there was almost no way that she could do it.

  Apparently having decided she’d had enough time to ponder her fate, Devon said softly, “So, Mrs. Jeremiah Jones. Does your husband mind when you sleep with Granville?”

  Last night, she remembered, the same insinuation had made her angry. Anger would have been heaven to the unhealthy exhaustion she felt now. There was a sharp ache starting behind her eyebrows, and she put her finger pads on it and rubbed hard.

  “Now, see here,” she said, staring down into her scraped wrists. “I know I might have been in Granville’s cabin, but he was never in it with me. Doesn’t it mean anything that he wasn’t in the room with me when I was kidnapped?”

  “He wasn’t with you because he was on deck—but he’d only been there for a matter of minutes. Before that—”

  “He might have been in the captain’s cabin!” Pride was less important now than convincing him. “Or the hold? Or—or the powder room!”

  Morgan’s gaze shifted from the window, focused, and began to sparkle. “The powder room?”

  “She means,” said Devon dryly, “the powder magazine.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” she sputtered helplessly, “I don’t know the names of places on ships. How do I know where he was? I hardly knew him! Doesn’t it make sense if I don’t know him I wouldn’t know where he was? I was only a passenger on the same vessel.”

  It was a good point, she thought, and she had about a third of a second to be proud of it before he said, “Fine. You don’t know Michael Granville. Then where did you get permission to sail on the Guinevere? Who do you know in British Court circles? What, no answer? Where was your husband?”

  Feebly: “He—he planned to come later.”

  “For a royal command performance? I didn’t see the show, but I heard the content. Seditious and antimonarchical. The swell gentlemen in London and Washington are having a war, my sweet. Do you know how many peaceful ships there are going between the United States and England? Unless he meant to float through the blockade on a buoy.”

  “Regardless of where my husband was,” said Merry with desperation, “and how I got permission to sail on the Guinevere, I still have no connection with Granville.”

  Without lifting his hard gaze from Merry’s, Devon unhooked himself slowly from the chair and, with his hands just above her elbows, pulled her up and against his chest. Fright had distended her pupils until the radiant blue irises were only a narrow halo; they were so close that he could feel each breath she drew, each stammering flex of her heart, each tightening fiber of her muscle as she strained from contact with his body.

  “Tell me, my small quaking friend,” he said in a voice that was light and final, “if you have no connection with Granville, what were you doing in the man’s bed? And if you don’t intend to be candid, I’d advise you to confine your invention to something I can believe.”

  “Would you believe it,” she said faintly, “if I told you that it was because there were ants in my cabin?”

  “Not,” said Devon, “unless you are an entomologist.”

  Meekly she said, “Nevertheless—”

  “Nevertheless nothing. If you had traded cabins, why was there no woman’s clothing in the room where you were sleeping? Or had you left it for the ants to eat?”

  “That’s just it,” Merry said. “The ants weren’t only in my room, they were in my luggage, and the Guinevere’s third mate put such a strong powder in to kill them that—”

  Devon cut her off. “Is it your habit to travel with ants in your luggage?”

  “A servant put them in,” she said in an increasingly strained voice, “because he thought the trunk belonged to my—er, m-my aunt.”

  “For that,” said Devon grimly, “you are going to win the cash prize, two silver buckles, and a side of beef. You’ve done enough spinning, Merry-go-round. Cat? Take her to my cabin. Lock her in. And give the key into the keeping of the most dissipated wretch you can find.”

  “As Your Grace pleases,” snapped the boy. “In five minutes I’ll have the key back—in your pocket.”

  As Cat led her toward the threshold, Merry stopped, hesitated, then said falteringly, “It really is true—about the ants, I mean. But there’s no way to explain it. You have to know Henry Cork.”

  Devon didn’t, so to him it was one more piece of whimsical idiocy from a young girl who was both the most whimsical and the most idiotic who had ventured into his orbit. When the door closed behind the girl and Cat, Devon turned with an impatient shrug toward the window and stared at the bright broken pattern of the sea. He never saw Morgan’s arrested gaze find and softly hold the vacant air where Merry had been.…

  For Rand Morgan, man of myth and nightmare, knew who Henry Cork was. Morgan could have spoken the next English ship and bundled her off; but he was not a man who conducted his charities with sentiment. As it was, he spared a brief regret about the opium, paused to be glad he hadn’t indulged his fleeting desire to take Merry into his own bed, and passed, prayerlike, an apology to a near and concerned spirit.

  The black eyes, with their discreetly veiled benevolences, considered the golden sun-spangled head that hadn’t moved since facing the window. Every impulse of humanity called for meticulous sleight-of-hand manipulation; common sense called for iron restraint. Common sense won without a struggle.

  When finally he spoke, Morgan’s voice was friendly and spruce. “The old there-were-ants-in-my-bed dodge. Good thing you’re too swift to fall for that worn-out hat trick. But what in the world will she do with a side of beef?”

  Devon had learned a long time ago that it merited a man nothing to snap like a trout at each careless sally of Morgan’s. Ignoring it, watching the ivory swooping arrow of a gull, he said, “Cat seems to be entertaining some fears that I’m going to ask him to beat it out of her. Tell him for me that I won’t delegate my atrocities.”

  “Ah” was all that Morgan said.

  Devon swung around and faced his half brother with hard, glowing eyes. “What the devil is that supposed to mean? What’s the virtue in muttering ‘Ah’ at me from between your gritted teeth and staring at me like a bloody sarcophagus? Do you want me to give her to the sea?”

  Innocently, honestly, Morgan said, “No.”

  “Or put her ashore?”

  “God, no.” That was honest too. Morgan smiled. “Why do you ask? You’ll do as you please anyway. Will you still go with the Terrible this evening?”

  “I have to. They’ve committed me to meet a man next Tuesday.” Devon walked to the center of the room and settled the chair Merry had occupied back under the table. “I’ll lea
ve her to Cat. That should please him. What is it about her, do you think, that makes it matter to him?”

  Morgan’s head rested against the lamb’s wool. His eyes were closed. “The boy’s a born manager. She appeals to his maternal instincts. Give him a week, and he’ll be premasticating her dinners.” The blind smile became nasty. “You needn’t worry. Whatever maudlin thoughts he might entertain in that direction, his appetites are otherwise.”

  As Devon well knew, Cat’s appetites and what should be done about them were not a subject on which he and Morgan were ever likely to agree. “Since we’re being worldly,” Devon said, “what do you think the chances are that she was coerced by Granville?”

  “Nonexistent,” said Morgan and drained his cup with the serene look of a man without a single scar on his conscience.

  Chapter 10

  They say it’s bad manners for a sailor to lock his sea chest and one that did was likely to find it nailed shut when he came off his watch. Devon, it appeared, was immune to etiquette. One by one Merry tried each lock in the cabin: the cabinets, the trunks, the windows, the door. Everything but the chamber pot was closed off tighter than a vain man’s corset, and neat as a Dutch cupboard.

  Cat, wanting no more trouble, had left her not so much as a candle, but there was daylight filtering gray-blue through three high windows, each one big enough to have admitted a pair of clinched hedgehogs. Moving like a stubborn wraith through the slow filmy light, Merry continued her search for more than half an hour after even her singing persistence admitted it was useless. She flopped dry-eyed on the bunk bed and decided with a quickly fading flash of humor that it was outside of enough for Devon, who was a tanned and tarred villain of a pirate, to have the audacity to think she was deficient in the department of morals. As for Henry Cork, Merry remembered distinctly telling him last March, when he’d left a water bucket on the doorjamb and soaked the delivery boy, that someday those practical jokes were going to do someone a serious mischief. Ne’er, at the time, had she suspected that that someone would be herself. If she were really moral, she supposed, she would have found some way to hang herself with the bedsheets. But as anyone will tell you who’s tried to hang themselves with bedsheets, it takes a good deal more ingenuity than it might appear to at first. She indulged in a brief, futile fantasy that Carl might somehow find she was here and come and shoot Devon. The fantasy expired on the thought that if Carl did come, it was far more likely that Devon would shoot him.