by Laura London
Devon watched Merry slowly withdraw her hand and lay it in a slack fist on the pillow beside her cheek. “You’re right. I should,” he said as he stood up, making room for Cat to bring the tray to her.
Feeling awkward, light-headed, bashful for no good reason, Merry met Cat’s gaze and said the first cheerful thing that occurred to her. “Look at me—healthy again, though Devon won’t admit it. I want to dress.”
“You can dress if you want to,” Cat said, “but you’ll have to rest on the bed today. You’re better, not healthy.”
“Why not? Don’t worry so much.” Merry was smiling. “What do you think is wrong with me? I hope it’s the clap. Aren’t you supposed to be good at curing that?”
Devon had suddenly discovered something of great interest outside the window and was regarding it steadily, a suppressed smile pulling at his lips.
Glancing at Devon, Cat said sourly, as though in explanation, “It’s Saunders et al. They love to teach her blue language and listen to her innocently chirrup it back to them so they can laugh themselves to jelly. God knows what they’ll think of the change in her when you decide to send her home.”
This was new—someone talking about sending her home as though it were a thing that might happen soon. She thought of Aunt April as she waited a moment to see if Devon had anything to say about it, and when he didn’t, she gave Cat a grin. “This whole experience may make my fortune someday if I become an authoress. Publishing companies are always on the lookout for women whose experience has brought them into contact with peculiar people.” Congratulating herself for having slipped one in under his guard, she sat up and tucked the napkin under her chin. “Furthermore, just because the pitch of my voice happens to be soprano—”
“Of the upper register, particularly when excited.”
“Soprano,” she said emphatically, ignoring Cat’s interruption and finishing her sentence. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that I chirrup. Why don’t you and Devon want to tell me what was wrong with me?”
“Come now. Don’t let your imagination tear downhill like a runaway wagon,” Cat said. “It was a fever. What else is there to know? Save your energy for your breakfast. Do you have to use the—”
“No, and don’t bring it up so casually. I’m not a heifer in a barnyard. If you don’t mind? Cat, please don’t hover.”
But hover he did. She was not left alone, even while she slept, whether she liked it or not. Sails and Raven and Dennis the pig were with her the next morning when the chill started again.
The three of them with fingers and an opposable thumb had been making silhouette portraits of each other using nail scissors and paper pages torn from an old ledger of Morgan’s. Merry was laughing at their amazement because, while they weren’t bad at it, the profiles she made were mirror accurate. Dennis was shuffling around the room with Cat’s paper profile sticking to the watery tip of his snout. Because she thought she had gotten well, she assumed, when she began to feel cool, that a northerly draft had stolen into the cabin, and wrapped herself in a wool jacket, and then, uselessly, in a blanket. In the end there was no hiding the terrible pattern she came to know in the days that followed: the disabling chills and throbbing head, the fever without mercy that followed for as long as eight hours afterward, and then the rapid cooling and torrent of sweat that left her stuporous with exhaustion.
The attacks came at regular intervals, as though some murderous clock in her body was calling them forth. On two days out of three she was ill, and in between she was well enough to sit up, to eat, to read, to talk, and to know that she was getting progressively weaker. Malaria, Cat admitted to her finally; it was treated with quinic and poisons like arsenic and strychnine. The trick was to kill the disease before you killed the patient.
These cures, recommended and accepted as they were, the best hope the age could offer, began to take their toll, and as the days went by it became harder for anyone to make her smile. Devon, gentle as none of them had seen him, helped to beguile her in the long weak hours between her paroxysms. He taught her every card trick he knew, every hand form in shadow play, every verse of his favorite love ballad. He filled the afternoons for her with riddles and fairy stories and led her in lazy conversations about comets and fallen kingdoms and the way hot roasted corn tastes on a fair day in autumn.
In both of them was a deep delight in the simple whimsies of life. The earth, with its endless subtle beauties of color and texture, was not wasted on Merry or Devon, for they both saw the clouds as pictures, the lichen against rough bark as scripture, and sometimes heard the wind as a canticle. Two other people might have discovered these things in each other and begun to celebrate, but Devon and Merry had too many distractions to notice. She only thought, when she had the strength for reverie, that the hours sped by when she was with him. His all-encompassing aim was to remind her of the many reasons she had to cling to the world and to keep her from guessing how close she was to leaving it.
Eventually even sleep became an effort for her, a time of dreams and discomfort and paralyzed half wakefulness. One night sand fleas from the island came to her in a nightmare, their wings shining with the moisture of her blood as they drove their venom repeatedly into her shrinking flesh. She awoke crying, rubbing her sullied face with the cotton sleeves of her nightshirt. Repugnance made her use too much force. The tiny bone buttons on her cuffs cut long raw scratches into her friction-heated skin.
She wasn’t sure what sense told her that Devon was coming across the room to her.
“Merry, let me.” He was separating the snarled ball that she was—the arms and hair and bedclothes. A damp cloth wiped neatly and thoroughly over her mouth, and then over her cheeks.
“Where else?” he asked. Gasping, she touched her forehead and closed her eyes as the cloth moved on her brow, over her eyebrows, to her hairline. After he finished, she heard the fresh splatter of water as he dipped the cloth and cleansed her again. Another woman might have been amazed at how accurately he had perceived her need and how quickly he had responded to it. Illness had eroded her interest in noting and being alarmed by his talents. She only knew she was glad that she was awake now, and that he was with her.
“Nightmare.” She whispered the word automatically. He had guessed. From Morgan’s desk the faint sheen of candle flame spread outward, dissolving in the distances and breathing like a lover on Devon. She saw him like that when she opened her eyes, and saw the nod he made to acknowledge her single word.
She was about to ask him how many bells had gone when she heard a slow warbling call well up, as though from the keep of the ship, to vibrate the humid air around her, and echo back into the cradle of the sea. A second fluttering call blended in, growing with the dying notes of the first, and then she heard a third tune, spasmodically moaning; a primitive and lonely monster song from the deep.
“Devon!” Her voice was trembling.
“It’s only the whales,” he said, remembering years ago, when Sails had told him the same thing. “You can hear them talk on clear, quiet nights like this. They sound melancholy in the beginning, but after you’ve listened to them for a while, their voices are as winsome as singing birds, though not as shrill.” He stroked a rosy curl from her forehead. “Can I give you anything to drink?”
Allowing him to support her in his arms, she gratefully took the water he offered. He hadn’t held her since the night of her escape from the island. It felt so good she didn’t want him to let her go; and when he moved to lay her down, she clutched at his shirt.
“Don’t you want to sleep?” he said.
“No,” she whispered. And so, without speaking, he pulled the bedding away and wrapped her in a flannel quilt and carried her to a chair by the stern window, where he sat down, holding her against him. A row of diamond panes frosted in starlight were open, and the great after-castle window showed a rippling moon dancing in the wake. He tucked the quilt around her feet with care because, though the night was warm, the effects of an exter
nal chill in her weakened condition could be disastrous.
“If you’re hungry—” he offered.
“No.” The smooth, soft fragrance of his skin reached her through his unbuttoned shirt, and she dragged at the shirt fabric that separated her cheek from his bare chest. When he saw what she was trying to do, he helped her and brushed his mouth lightly over her forehead once she was settled.
“I wonder what whales talk about,” she said.
His arm tightened comfortably about her. “Hmm? The whales? I’m afraid my Whale isn’t as fluent as it should be.” Tonight both whale voices were genial and rich with haunting sensuality, and he could almost feel the tenderness in their love play, the underwater ballet of graceful massive bodies wreathed in moist oxygen. A sentimental thought for a man whose softer emotions were seldom about things like love and pairing. Devon became aware suddenly that he was tired. Contact with her body must have relaxed him, and it made him curious about what it would be like to sleep beside her, to weave in and out of dreams with her kitten’s breath on his shoulder. And that was an entirely new thought for him, because though he liked to laugh and touch for a long time with his lovers, the idea of going to sleep beside them had always been vaguely unappealing. Morgan, naturally, had a number of theories about that, none of them flattering.
The girl was looking at him. “The whales,” he extemporized. “They’ve heard that you’re sick, down there, under the sea.” A high moan. “Did you hear that? They’re very sorry, so they’ve sent the patriarch of the humpback clan to the Arctic, where the north wind lives in an ice cave, to ask for cool breezes to make you comfortable while you’re getting well. And when you’ve recovered, they’ll take you riding whale-back.”
She gave him half of a smile, and the skeptical glance of a child cynic whose faith in fantasy games had been lately shaken. He could feel the slight tug on his shirt fabric as she played with his buttons.
“Devon?”
“Yes?”
“This afternoon when I woke from my nap, I heard you talking and—Were you having an argument about me with Morgan? I know Cat thinks this room is better for me because the air circulates more freely, but if Morgan is annoyed about being put out of his cabin, I think—”
“Don’t be so energetic. Just for a few days will you leave the thinking to us? It’s by Morgan’s order that you’re in this cabin, and if there’s a motive beyond simple charity in it, neither of us will be able to figure it out until he wants us to. And there’s more to your being here than ventilation. Since Morgan’s bed is mounted on gimbals, you’ll feel the sea rolling less than in your bunk, which means you’ll rest a little better. I don’t know what you heard that sounded like an argument. Did Morgan sound angry?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Too pleasant, in that way he has. I heard my name mentioned, and he said something about—grapeshot?”
“Ah. That.” Her hand arrived at his cheek, nervously questioning, a sign of some inner disquiet, and it made him wonder if it had become a torture for her to be as dependent as she was on men whose caprices had not always led them to treat her kindly. This time honesty was best. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and Morgan equates insomnia with melodrama. He said that I was sinking like grapeshot in liquid guilt.”
Her head moved, and her disturbed hair made feather movements over his chest and belly that sent new blood tingling in surprise through his veins. As she spoke he was irritably cudgeling it back into its cool discipline.
“Do you mean,” she said, “about me?”
“It would be nicer, right now, not to have to remember I was the one who frightened you so badly that you ran away.” Turning his head lightly, he stroked her fingertips with his parted lips. Instead of the shy withdrawal he had expected, her fingers pressed his mouth, lightly exploring, as he brushed her softness with his tongue.
“I didn’t know when I stole your letters that they belonged to Michael Granville,” she whispered.
Against her fingers he said, “When did you know?”
“After. I began to guess in the boat when I saw your face.” Then, desperately, she added, “Can’t you believe me?” But before he was able to answer her, she moaned softly at a new stab of pain. The effort to consider the weighty yet delicate issue of Michael Granville had revived the submerged malaria headache, and it pounded raggedly in her skull, screaming for attention like a tattered beggar.
“Where does it hurt? Show me, dear” came Devon’s voice, and she carried his proffered hand to her head, letting his clever fingers discover and soothe the shivery pain within her.
“Merry… I wouldn’t care right now if you took every letter I own and boiled them for three weeks in a mustard foot bath.” Holding her very close to him, he said quietly, “Love, I know there’s no reason for you to think you can trust me, but this once, will you? I need to know who you are. It’s going to take a long time for you to recover, and you could use someone of your own with you. You told me you had a family, and at the tavern there was a girl with you—Sally. Let me send for someone.”
She couldn’t bear to have it all brought out again, and the temptation to have Sally with her might, with his nimble prodding, become too great for her to resist. Using every dram of her depleted strength, she put her arms around his neck, lifted her aching head, and laid her lips gently on his. Merry felt the light shock of his breath quickly indrawn, and the side of her breast, comfortably unbound inside her nightshirt, made tight contact with his tensed chest.
For a long time they held each other in that same floating touch. Without breaking the light bond of their lips he carried her to her bed and drew the bedclothes to her chin. When he finally did raise his head from her, it was to gather her flushing cheeks between his palms and stroke her there, staring down at her with a smile until he had watched her drift away from him, drowning like cherry blossoms in a pool into the depths of a peaceful sleep.
Chapter 18
The malaria paroxysm that came the next afternoon left Merry so severely weakened that she was alert for only a few minutes of the following twenty-four hours. Without consulting anyone Morgan changed course for St. Elise, the small island where he owned a modest indigo plantation. Even after she heard they had plotted a new heading, it didn’t occur to her that she wasn’t expected to recover. They had been too careful never to shake her confidence in that by placing steeled controls on their every nuance of inflection and expression.
Cat knew as much about the disease and how to treat it as anyone; no one could have done better, and there were many who would not have been able to keep her alive beyond the first days. The most dangerous form of the lethal malaria fever had entered the dearest of his patients.
He was grateful there was no need to tell Devon, whose clever golden eyes had correctly read the signs—her constant need to sleep, her failing appetite, her progressive apathy. Cat knew very well that when Devon had asked her again how he might find her family, it had not been to have them ease her recuperation, but because it was too cruel that she would have to die so far away from home and among strangers. But now, even if she had told him, it was no longer possible for any of her people to reach her in time.
Morgan had been in to see her, gazing at her while she slept. Cat didn’t know which mask he had begun to dread more, Morgan’s impassivity or Devon’s cheerful efficiency. Uncapped emotion was worse. He found it unbearable to be in the same room with Raven.
Later that week they reached St. Elise, and the move into Morgan’s villa was done with such care that Merry slept throughout. She woke in a wide airy room without a fireplace where arched windows showed the luxuriant greenery and crimson-tasseled blooms of a cashew tree. In the day’s heat jalousie blinds dimmed the sun while they passed inside the breeze, and the immaculate cream-washed walls were restful and cool. The floor was an uncarpeted expanse of breadnut timber that shone like a tabletop and faintly perfumed the room with its orange polish.
During the hour she was awake
, she had been able to drink some thin soup, to joke with Cat about whether or not she would take her medicine, and to meet Annie, the beautiful Indian girl who was married to Cook and whom Rand Morgan employed to manage his household staff in his absence. Often enough Merry had heard the others tease Cook about her, this heart-faced girl of twenty years whose father had worn a bone in his nose and for a Russian cutlass and a box of stale snuff had sold her outright to Cook. Or so the story went. Deaf and mute from birth, Annie communicated with hand signs, and she sat on the bed beside Cat, smiling and helping him teach some of them to Merry until they both saw Merry was too tired to continue, and then Annie had fetched a soft hairbrush and stroked it tenderly through the dying girl’s golden curls, which ran like foam under her hands.
By the next morning Merry was in a coma. Devon had slept only a few hours in many days, and when he had passed out in a chair, they had put him in a bed in another room, so it was Cat who saw her slip under. Sails was with him, and Annie and Cook, and none of them was in any hurry to wake Devon up to see it. They had had to let Raven in to tell her good-bye, and that had drained all of them so badly that even Sails had felt his gnarled hands trembling by the time Saunders had pulled Raven from the room. No one had spoken since then.
Morgan stepped into the quiet with his eyes glowing like a fox’s.
“Is this a wake, my little ones?” he asked, his smooth gaze finding and examining each of them. Crossing slowly to where the girl lay, helpless under the carved Spanish headboard of the big bed, he took her wretchedly white face between his hands.
“Oh, no, my girl,” he said softly to her, “you are not going to die. Because I have plans for you. Because you’re much smarter than your mother was. And because Cat knows better than to sit there like a dust box and let you die.”
Even for Rand Morgan the cruelty was appalling. Sails felt a heavy rush of air in his lungs as he sucked in too sharply on a breath, and beside him he was aware that Cook was stiff as a wagon jack. And Annie was already on her feet and running toward Cat. She might not have been able to understand what Morgan had said, but she had seen what it did to Cat. The sharp change in that face, which rarely altered, struck the room’s silence like a scream. Light o’ God, to have placed that burden and that blame on a boy who was already raw with suffering and who had done everything for her short of cutting out his heart and feeding it to her, and Sails thought that Cat probably would have done that if it would have helped her. What could Morgan be thinking of?