“Do you think, Mr. Beacom, that you can find your way back to the galley? The cook should have put some hot stew on to warm the men’s bellies, and mine is so empty it is rubbing on my backbone. There should be biscuits, too. And cheese. You might as well fetch a jug of ale while you are about it, and some cold beef if there is any to be sliced. Furthermore, just tell Cook his captain is ravenous; he’ll know what to do.”
Beacom glanced at Varian but did not wait for his assent this time before leaving the cabin. Juliet took her seat again.
“This might sting.” She pressed the warm, wet cloth over his cheek, holding it there so long Varian thought his lungs would burst from the pressure of holding back a scream. By the time the incredible burning subsided, he was half sober and she had already shifted her attention to his hand. It was his left, the same one that had had the thumb wrenched out last night, and which now had angry red rope skids on the palm and wrist.
She dipped two fingers into the jar and scooped out a brown, viscous paste. It smelled like the devil’s offal but the instant it touched his burned palm, the pain cooled.
“It was a foolish thing you did,” she said finally. “Especially in wood-heeled shoes with satin rosettes.”
The dark eyes studied her face a moment before responding. “Is the boy all right?”
“He was shaken more than anything else. And you’ve impressed him enough that you’ll likely not find yourself lacking a defender if someone raises their hand and sniggers behind your back.”
“Including you?”
“I mock you to your face, sirrah, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“I have indeed,” the duke agreed dryly.
Studiously avoiding his gaze, she turned her attention to his thumb, applying more of the salve and massaging it gently around the swollen joint.
“You’re lucky this did not pop out again.”
“I would have been luckier had it never come out in the first place.”
She curled her lower lip between her teeth and nibbled fitfully. “Yes, well … my reaction last night might have been a little overwrought. As it happened, you just chose the wrong time to test my patience.”
“Good God,” he murmured. “Is that an apology?”
She stared into the inky darkness of his eyes and felt a disquieting warmth at the base of her spine. “It is as good as you are likely to get.”
“Then I shall accept it … on the condition you accept mine.”
“Yours? For what?”
“For not knowing when to keep my mouth shut.”
The self-deprecating bluntness brought a hint of a smile to Juliet’s lips. It also brought a second rush of heat flowing through her body, stronger this time, centered between her thighs, and as he continued to stare at her, the pleasure intensified, spreading through her body in the most extraordinarily soft waves.
“Spare me the trial of a long answer, my lord, but what are you doing here? What could possibly have induced you to leave your cozy hearthside in London when, surely, as the twelfth duke of Harlow, you could have appointed someone more suited to the rigors of a sea voyage to take your place.”
“Harrow. And I must suppose that the king considered me adequate to the task.”
“Which is … ?”
He grinned faintly. “I’ve not had that much rum, Captain.”
“Whatever your business here, it will likely be explained in my presence anyway.”
“Then that must be by your father’s choice, not mine.”
Juliet expelled her breath on an impatient puff. “Faith, but I am losing interest anyway.”
“I can see that. And if you rub my thumb any harder, you might just as well wrench it out again, for the pain could not be any worse.”
She scowled and flung his hand aside. “I hope you know how to swim, sirrah. If Father finds your wit half as amusing as I do, you may have need of the skill.”
Varian’s smile hovered between amusement and curiosity. The only thing he had need of at the moment was more rum, for it had dulled most of the aches and pains in his body for the first time in two days. Moreover, he found himself increasingly intrigued with this sharp-tongued, clever-witted pirate urchin—and not just with her mind.
Several hours in the driving rain had accomplished what a neglect for soap and water had not, for the grime of battle was washed away, leaving her face clean and smooth. Her hair, half in, half out of the braid, was rid of its layers of dust and gleamed a rich dark auburn in the lamplight. The long strands that curled down her neck lured the eye into the deep, open vee of her shirt, and where the fabric was not completely dry it clung to curves that would have been better left to the imagination. Shapes and shadows that he had found unsettling the previous night set the blood flowing thick and insistent through his veins now, making him begin to entertain a notion that she was even beautiful in a raw, untamed sort of way.
Varian forced himself to look away, wary of the turn his thoughts were taking. If there had been one redeeming benefit to this hellish voyage, it was the refreshing absence of any women on board. Because of his family’s wealth and prominence, he had been plagued for most of his eight and twenty years by grasping females who threw themselves in his path at every opportunity. In his youth, he had enjoyed their attentions well enough, had enjoyed his share of mistresses through the years. But after his brothers’ deaths had made him the sole heir, the efforts to bring him to ground had risen to almost frenzied proportions. His own mother had been the worst of the lot, haranguing him unceasingly about the need to choose a bride and take the appropriate steps to produce a legitimate heir.
He supposed Juliet Dante’s scorn had been justified when she said he had finally just succumbed. The dowager had culled the herd of potential broodmares down to the three richest virgins pure enough to carry the St. Clare seed, whereupon he had simply chosen one. All three had impeccable manners, the same faultless, flawless education that prepared them for nothing more strenuous than being the perfect wife, hostess, and chatelaine. In essence, they were all replicas of the dowager herself: cool, beautiful, sexless in a pale, elegant way.
Try as he might, he could not imagine his intended, Lady Margery Wrothwell, letting him see her with her hair disheveled, her shirt damp and clinging to breasts that were practically begging him to tear aside the damned fabric and bring them into his hands.
He shifted his legs, knowing the stirring he felt was mostly a product of his rum-soaked meanderings, but he was troubled by it anyway. The celibacy he had enjoyed for the past six weeks had its drawbacks and he would be lying to himself if he thought he had reached a state of premarital purity where the curve of a lush breast had no effect on him.
Where the devil was Beacom?
As if reading his mind, Juliet glanced at the door and muttered the same question.
“He has been known,” Varian said lightly, “to take a wrong turn at Harrowgate Hall even though he has spent the past thirty years in service there. Mind you, with sixty-five bedrooms and God only knows how many main chambers, I have erred a time or two myself.”
She stared as if he had just claimed to have flown to the moon and back. “Sixty-five bedrooms?”
“It … is a very old estate.”
“And you live there by yourself?”
“Myself and a small army of about a hundred servants.”
Frowning, she pushed her chair back and carried the pot of ointment back to the sea chest. She found dry breeches and a clean shirt before she closed the lid and propped one foot, then the other on top, using it to keep her balance while she removed her boots. Next, she unbuckled her belt and let it fall to the floor, then pulled the tails of her shirt out of her breeches.
Varian watched, his eyes hooded and heavy, his thoughts drifting, not really grasping what Juliet was doing until she had drawn her shirt up and over her head. When she set her fingers to the task of untying the laces on her breeches, his eyes popped wide.
“I do beg your pardon, Ca
ptain, but … what are you doing?”
“My clothes are damp, they want changing.”
“Perfectly understandable, but—”
She paused and turned around, her hands resting on her waist. This time there was nothing to fuel his imagination but warm, naked flesh and had Varian been standing, his jaw would likely have sagged to his knees. Her breasts were full and round, tanned the same olive shade as her face and arms. The nipples were only slightly darker than the surrounding skin, with tips that peaked naturally like small, ripe berries. Her waist was trim, her hips taut beneath the formfitting black breeches.
Varian had seen all manner of women’s forms, all shapes, all sizes, with or without corsets, silks, and buntings, offered seductively, modestly, and flirtatiously … but this … this unaffected, completely uninhibited presentation took his very breath away.
She stood unmoving for a full count of ten before she laughed that soft, unmanning laugh and tipped her head like a cat observing a mouse. “Have you never seen a naked woman before?”
“Yes. Yes, of course I have, but I … I hardly expected to see you.”
“Well, unless you know of another way to change garments, you will simply have to bear up under the horror.”
When he saw her hook her thumbs under the waist of her breeches to start peeling the moleskin down, he forced himself to turn his face to the wall. The rum as well as the temptation was raging through his blood, strong and pulsing, urging him to simply look and be done with it, but he dared not.
He heard each leg of the breeches being stripped away, heard water spilling into a bowl, a cloth being dipped and wrung, followed by the soft whisper of damp fabric moving over bare skin. He closed his eyes and ground his teeth together for he could feel himself growing thicker, fuller with each swipe of the cloth. And although he could not see it, he could easily imagine the shiny wetness left behind on her breasts, her thighs, the sleek vale between.
“If you take your shirt and breeches off,” she said casually, “I can have Johnny Boy wash them. Or replace them with something more suitable. I warrant he will find something better than canvas breeks and a homespun pinafore, even if he has to swim over to the Santo Domingo and raid the Spanish stores of their velvet and lace.”
Varian groaned inwardly and rolled all the way over onto his side, trusting the shadows to conceal his discomfort. Even so, the pain from the bulge in his breeches far outstripped the pain in his bruised hip, prompting his reply to come out in a strangled whisper. “Tell the boy not to go to any trouble on my account. Beacom can put me to rights when he returns. I thank you for the offer anyway.”
Juliet shrugged and shook out the clean shirt. “Suit yourself. But if you keep straining those breeches without relief, your mother’s concerns about a shortage of heirs will not be resolved by you.”
Chapter Seven
Varian was wakened by the sound of Beacom’s rattling snores. The cabin was dark, indicating it was still night, and when he rolled over to check the source of the light behind him, he saw that it was caused by the faint wash of moonlight coming through the gallery windows. The seas were not nearly as rough as they had been earlier, though the ship still leaped like a spirited filly from one wave to the next.
Juliet Dante had apparently gone topside again. Did she ever sleep? he wondered. She obviously ate, for the remnants of a huge platter of food littered her desk. All that was left of a small feast was a half-eaten biscuit turned nose down in a congealed pool of grease, a triangle of yellow cheese turning waxy at the edges, a few torn pieces of mutton that were marbled with globs of hard white fat. He knew this because he rose carefully out of the berth and went in search of a crumb or two to ease the rumbling in his stomach.
It occurred to him, as he munched on cheese, that he had eaten very little since coming on board the Iron Rose. Most of his sustenance had come from various bottles.
The line of stitches on his cheek, when he gently prodded it, was swollen and throbbing. His shoulder ached and the rope burns on his hand, while not uncomfortably painful, smelled of liniment. He had almost forgotten the lump at the back of his skull, but it did not forget him and he bowed his head between his shoulders, rolling it back and forth to ease the pressure. From that position, light or no light, he could hardly help but notice the dark stains on his shirt. The coarse homespun had been wet when he bled on it, and each drop had mushroomed two and three times its size, turning almost the entire front of the shirt red.
Mindful of his hand and shoulder, he lifted the shirt up over his head and crushed it into a ball. He debated, for a moment, throwing it at Beacom, resentful of the snores that continued with irritating regularity. Resisting the urge, he tossed it on the berth instead, then limped over to the washstand and sponged his chest clean in the same bowl Juliet had used earlier. The stand had a commode cabinet—he supposed the captain’s share-all attitude did not extend to hanging her bottom over a hole in the beakhead—and while he was there, he relieved himself in the enamel pot. When he was finished, it was more than half full, and anticipating the look on Juliet Dante’s face if she lifted the lid and found it well used, he turned instinctively to Beacom again.
This time the servant’s name was a rumble halfway up his throat before it was rammed back down again. Emptying chamberpots was about as far below his station as he could possibly imagine, but when taken in perspective with all else he had endured recently, it seemed a trifling thing.
With fingertips only, he slid the pot out from beneath the wooden seat and carried it onto the stern gallery, a narrow balcony that ran the width of the cabin, good for little other than catching a fresh breath and emptying the contents of thunderpots.
And, it would seem, for slinging a hammock under the stars.
Evidently Juliet Dante did sleep, for she was stretched out on the canvas sling, one arm resting above her head, the other tucked alongside her hip. One leg was folded at the knee, the other hung freely over the side of the hammock, the bare toes gleaming like little pearls under the moonlight. Varian had been provided with one of the hellish devices the previous night and had fallen out twice before managing to master it. But the captain looked as comfortable as a kitten in a basket, rocking gently with the motion of the ship, her hair out of its braid and trailing over the side, the ends drifting like a dark cloud as she swayed to and fro.
His hands tightened on the enamel pot and he knew he should retreat with all haste before she wakened and saw him standing there. His feet did not respond to his command to take him back inside, however. His eyes proved to be rebellious as well, choosing not to look at the incredibly clear sky or the river of phosphorescent seawater that unfurled in a silvery path behind the ship. They preferred to linger instead on the pale arch of her throat, to follow the edge of her shirt where it had become twisted to one side and lay open over her breast.
As much as her offhanded stripping act had affected him earlier, this moonlit display of casual nudity nearly had him coming out of his skin again. For that matter, he could not remember the last time he had seen a woman’s bare toes, or even a foot not hastily tucked under covers or into a slipper. She had fine, trim ankles, too. Supple calves. And thighs that had already shocked him once with their sinewy strength.
“Have you never been told it is impolite to stare, my lord?”
The whispered query sent his gaze snapping up to her face. Her eyes were open beneath a dark brow that was arched upward with curiosity.
“There is a difference,” he said slowly, “between staring and … admiring.”
“Is that what you are doing? Admiring?”
“I am not a monk, madam.”
“Faith, but it would be a waste if you were.”
The observation was made with a husky honesty. While the crescent moon had rendered Juliet’s skin a pale, creamy blur where it peeped through her shirt, it gilded Varian’s broad shoulders with bold strokes, emphasizing every curve of muscle on his chest, every hard band over the ribs, a
nd the sight caused Juliet to experience something strangely like the sparks of St. Elmo’s Fire they had witnessed earlier.
She had come awake the instant he had stepped out onto the gallery. Instinct had sent a hand into the sheath at her waist, but when she saw the vaunted twelfth Duke of Harrow emptying the contents of a thunderpot over the rail, she had relaxed and eased the dagger down by her hip. She had hoped he would simply creep back inside and return to bed, but when he continued to stand there, and then to fondle her with his eyes, she thought it best to end the charade before he noticed the effect all that visual intimacy was having on her own body.
“Whatever would your betrothed think,” she mused aloud, “if she could see you standing there admiring another woman’s breasts.”
He did not answer at once. The wind tunneling off the ship’s hull snatched at his hair and cast it forward over his face so that all she could see was a faint glitter where his eyes should be.
“You do not make it easy for anyone to befriend you, do you?”
“Have I given you any reason to believe I need or even want more friends?”
“Not by a single word or deed, madam. In that you may be absolutely confident.”
“You should tell your body that, my lord,” she said, looking boldly at the obvious ridge in his breeches. “It would appear to need more convincing.”
“I prefer to think my mind has a stronger will. Just as yours does, no doubt.”
She smiled and folded her arm under her head as a pillow, further displacing the edge of her shirt. “Are you suggesting I am inwardly seething with the desire to bed you, sir?”
“I am suggesting nothing of the kind, although it has been my experience that women do not usually strip down naked in front of a man unless they want to do more than simply change their clothing.”
“Nor do men rise up like the mythical phoenix if their minds and thoughts are as pure as springwater.”
The Iron Rose Page 10