by Jo Goodman
“Here.” Bode stood just behind her and offered his handkerchief.
Comfort didn’t look back. She just held up her hand and let him press the handkerchief into her palm. Her fingers crumpled it into a ball that she held against each damp eye in turn.
“I don’t like crying,” she said.
“I know.”
“I hardly ever do.” It was difficult to move words past the hard, aching lump in her throat. Swallowing only lodged it more deeply. Her voice rasped in a way that made her skin prickle. “But sometimes at night, when I dream, I do.”
Even though she couldn’t see him, he nodded.
Comfort took a jerky breath. “Do you have the paper?”
“Yes. Right here.”
“May I see it?”
“Of course.” He wasn’t surprised when she still didn’t turn away from the wall. She swiped at her eyes again before she tucked the handkerchief under the gathered sleeve of her nightgown. When she reached over her shoulder, he slipped the document between her fingers.
Comfort held it in both hands. Her thumbs passed back and forth over the paper while she stared at it. She felt Bode’s presence at her back, but he was quiet. If he wanted her to hurry, or if he was regretting giving it to her, he gave no indication either way.
There was a fine tremor in her fingers as she carefully unfolded the document. The record of her marriage had been made in plain language and neat script.
Be it known by all peoples that on
12 July in the year of our Lord 1870, at
38º3’ North and 123º45’ West,
Beauregard Crowne DeLong
and Comfort Elizabeth Kennedy
were joined in matrimony by the
Master Mariner of the Black Crowne Merchant
Demeter Queen, Mr. Nathan Douglas,
and duly witnessed by her crew.
Below this announcement on the left was Mr. Douglas’s copperplate signature. Under the master’s name were two more signatures, one by James Jackson and the other a simple X with MR. HENRY neatly printed in parentheses beside it.
On the right side was Bode’s bold scrawl, and just beneath, her own signature, written in a fine, precise hand that she could not mistake for anyone’s but her own.
Comfort slowly released the breath she’d been holding. “I signed this,” she said.
It wasn’t a question, but it seemed to Bode that she wanted confirmation anyway. “Yes, you did.”
“It doesn’t look as if my hand was shaking.”
“If it was, you hid it well. You took considerable care with your signature.”
Now she glanced up at him over her shoulder. Her slim smile was rueful. “I don’t usually. This is my practice hand. From childhood. You know, the one you use when you’re learning to write, when you want every letter to be perfectly formed.”
Bode took a step back from the bench as Comfort turned around. She dropped her legs over the side, awkwardly tugging on her nightgown with one hand because she held their marriage record in the other.
“I think I must have been very drunk,” she said. “What do they say? Three sheets to the wind?”
“That’s what they say.” He tore the towel from around his neck, tossed it on the bench, and hunkered down in front of her. “I had to sling you over my shoulder to get you out of the saloon. You couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand. Do you remember that?”
She shook her head. He might well have been talking about someone else, but in her heart she knew he was telling the truth. “I remember Mr. Farwell smashing the window. He was going to push me out.”
Bode’s smile was wry. “I think he might have leaped first.” He sobered. “We had a wagon waiting. Mr. Henry stowed the ladder. I stowed you. You hardly stirred on the way back to the ship. I thought I was going to have to put you over my shoulder again, but by the time we reached the Demeter, you told me you were able to walk. You weren’t steady—I had to keep a hand under your elbow—but you managed to board the ship without falling into the drink, and once we were on deck, you stopped weaving altogether.”
“How could you tell? The ship was rocking.”
“I know the difference. You had your balance back. The men started arriving, and I took you down to the stateroom. You sat just where you’re sitting now, and you let me wash your hands and face, and get you out of John Farwell’s jacket and the—”
“And that awful shift,” she said, closing her eyes a moment. “I let you take it off me.”
“You’re remembering?”
“No.” She regarded him with sad, solemn eyes. “But I must have let you do it, because I wasn’t wearing it this morning. I never thought about that before.”
She was fingering the paper. He wanted to stop her and take her hand. He didn’t; he was still feeling his way. “I tried to leave. I wanted to go on deck, help the men, thank them for what they’d done. Only a few of them had seen you come aboard. I wanted to let them know you were recovering.”
“And I wouldn’t let you leave?”
This time it was a question. “You wouldn’t let me get to the door.” He watched her shoulders rise and fall, but her sigh was inaudible. “I made a decision, Comfort. I suppose we can debate how much it was influenced by what I wanted and how much you were pushing me in that direction.”
“Because I was clinging to you like a wet shirt.”
His brief, slim smile was wry. That sounded better than what either of them had said before. He wished he’d thought of it. “Something like that. If it matters, I didn’t want to leave you either.”
It mattered. She pressed her lips together and willed her tears back.
Now Bode did reach for her. He put his hand over the one that was holding the evidence of their ceremony. “I wanted to marry you, Comfort. I saw an opportunity, and I took it.”
“You took advantage.”
“Yes. I told myself something different. I wanted to believe you were as aware as you seemed to be, and that what you agreed to was an act of conscience and consciousness, but I knew otherwise. Deep down, I knew. It was a carefully reasoned proposal. I told you that if I was going to stay with you, it had to be as your husband. I explained that the men hadn’t rescued you just so I could win the lottery.” Bode watched an uneasy smile flicker across her lips. “I said your reputation would be ruined, and Newton and Tucker would be disappointed in both of us if you didn’t marry me.”
“You said all of that?”
“Very quickly, but yes, all of it.”
“Did you say you loved me?”
“No.”
She nodded faintly. Although appreciative of his honesty, she still couldn’t look at him. “It’s probably better tha—”
“That’s why I’m saying it now,” he said, stopping her. “I love you. I should have told you last night.”
The lump was back in Comfort’s throat, and there was an ache behind her eyes. She remembered Bode’s handkerchief was tucked under her sleeve, but she didn’t want to use it. She would not cry. She sniffed instead. “I wouldn’t remember,” she said on a thread of sound.
He frowned. “What?”
Comfort fanned her free hand in front of her mouth, trying to catch her breath. “If you’d told me last night, I wouldn’t remember it now. And now, I’ll remember it always.”
Bode had no warning, no way to prepare himself. He was still on his haunches when Comfort launched herself off the bench and into his arms. He toppled backward and she followed. He didn’t have a long way to go to the floor, but he still landed hard. He thought she might have laughed, or it might have been a hiccup, and neither of those things mattered because she was placing small, darting kisses at the corners of his mouth, his jaw, his hairline, and his temple.
He kissed her back. The salty residue of tears clung to her cheeks. He caught her face in his hands and held her still. “Look at me,” he said. She did, with eyes so dark they might have been black, and so deep they might have been touching her soul.
“I love you.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“Tell me you believe me.”
“I believe you.”
He studied her face. “All right.” His fingers slipped into her hair. He undid her braid and brought her hair forward in two handfuls. He tugged. She bent her head and kissed him again. The heavy curtain of hair threw her face into shadow. He had a glimpse of her parted lips before she whispered in his ear.
His back-of-throat chuckle made her shiver and her nipples tighten. The document she’d been holding was wedged between them. He insinuated his fingers between his shirt and her shift, took the paper out of her hand, and flicked it to one side. He rolled and turned Comfort on her back, and then he began working his way down her body, starting with the hollow just below her ear.
He spent some time there, teasing her with the tip of his tongue until he heard her breathing quicken. He followed the sensitive cord in her neck to her throat. He pulled on the ribbon that closed her neckline and spread the material so he could see her collarbones. His fingers traced the line of one; his mouth followed the other. The gown slipped off her left shoulder. He attended to that sweet curve before he slid lower. His mouth dipped between her breasts.
Her breath hitched. She closed her eyes in anticipation of his mouth closing over one of her breasts. It seemed an eternity before he made his choice. She cried out softly when his mouth settled on her left breast and his thumb and forefinger rolled the right nipple.
Her movements were edgy, restless. He was plucking all the right strings. Her breasts swelled. Her belly was filled with heat. And between her legs she was moist.
He did that to her with his mouth and his hands and his whisper that was like honey over sand.
She helped him raise her nightgown so his lips could trail over her belly and his tongue could dart around her navel like a whippet. He slid even lower, pushing up her knees, opening them, and then moving between her thighs to kiss her in a most intimate, unexpected way.
His tongue flicked her clitoris. She thought she should pull away. What she did was lift her hips and make an offering of her body. She knew that she was lost, that she would let him do anything, and that the inherent contradiction was that there was nothing selfless in her giving, no sacrifice. She was taking all the pleasure for herself.
There was nothing under her fingers except the hard deck, and she desperately wanted something to hold. She grabbed her knees. Her nails made tiny crescents in her flesh. He jerked her legs so her calves lay over his shoulders and against his back. Her hands fell away and found his head. Her fingers made runnels in his hair. It was still faintly damp. The texture was silky, cool to the touch.
She would have thrown her head back, but there was no give to the floor. It maddened her, this restriction, and it excited her as well. There was only the steady climb, no retreating. Her heels beat a soft tattoo against his back, and she flung her arms sideways. Heat uncoiled in her belly, her womb contracted, and a pink flush spread over her skin from her breasts all the way to her hairline.
“Bode!” She was seized by pleasure so intense that her breath caught, and what she thought she shouted was in reality only a constricted gasp.
She lay very still and let him be responsible for the parts of her that she could no longer move. He eased out from under her legs, closed her knees gently, and reluctantly reintroduced the notion of modesty by tugging on the hem of her nightgown until it flirted with her thighs. He closed the gap in her neckline, thought better of it, and folded it back so her throat and the twin points of her collarbones were visible. Her arms were still flung outward at three and nine o’clock and looked as if they might be boneless. He pulled them in and folded them one at a time over her chest, then sat up on his knees and examined his handiwork.
“I’m not dead,” she said.
Bode wasn’t convinced. “Perhaps if you opened your eyes.”
She raised her eyelids a fraction and looked at him from under her lashes. “What did you do to me?”
“It has a name. Do you want to know?”
“I know what it’s called. I want to know what you did to me.”
He chuckled. “Will you be all right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Bode got to his feet, grabbed the towel from where he’d tossed it on the bench, and disappeared into the washroom. When he came out, he was shirtless but wearing a pair of loosely tied silkaline drawers that rode low on his hips. Comfort was exactly as he’d left her. He stood over her, shaking his head. For a moment, just before her mouth tilted up at the corners like a cat that’d tasted the cream, he thought she might have been sleeping. He bent and extended his hand.
“C’mon. Up.”
Her eyelids fluttered. She looked at him and then at his hand. She raised her arm in a graceful arc and showed him the backs of her fingers as though she meant him to carry them to his lips. He gripped her wrist and pulled her to her feet in one fluid motion. Before she recovered from her surprise, he lowered his shoulder to her waist and slung her over it.
“Bode! What are you—” She stopped because it was obvious he was carrying her to the bed. When they reached it, she begged, “Wait! Wait, just a moment! Turn around. There’s something I—no, the other way—I want to get the—” She lifted her head and shoulders as best she could and reached for the shelf above the bed. She rested the fingertips of one hand on the ledge and nudged the oil lamp with her other hand. The ring was exactly where he said it would be.
She slipped it on. “All right,” she told him. “I’m ready.”
Bode turned and flipped her head over bucket onto the bed. Before she had time to catch her breath or admire the ring, he was bearing down on her. He removed the ring as a temptation by taking her wrists in one hand and holding them above her head. Accepting the invitation of her parted lips, he kissed her deeply and for a very long time.
Comfort sucked in a deep breath as he drew back. She was aware that the hem of her nightgown was no longer a modest covering and the gap in the neckline was now wide enough to reveal a breast. More important than either of these things was the rigid stem of heat pressing against her belly.
Bode let go of her hands and knelt between her thighs. He lifted her hips, angled his, and pushed himself into her. It wasn’t the force of his entry, but the relative novelty of it, that made her go still. She needed a moment, just a moment to . . . yes, there. Her hips twitched. Her vagina contracted around his cock. She smiled when that small intimacy caused him to close his eyes. She made herself relax everywhere but there. Her hands lifted to his shoulders and rested. She raised her legs and tucked them behind his thighs.
“All right,” she whispered. “I’m ready.”
Bode wanted to believe that mattered to him, but he wouldn’t have wagered on it. She was tight and wet and squeezing him with tiny contractions that made him want to grind his hips against her. He eased back and then plunged. And he did it again. He felt her legs tighten and her fingertips press harder against his shoulders. The tips of her nails scraped his skin.
He was in her so completely that he touched her womb. Every stroke was deliberate; every stroke was deep. Each time he thought it would be enough, but until he hovered on the brink, it never was. His pulse quickened. The rhythm of his thrusts changed to rapid and shallow, except for the last. Every contraction was a shiver of intense pleasure. His skin could barely contain it. He buried his face in her neck as he spilled his seed.
Groaning, Bode pushed away and rolled onto his back. He started to reach for his drawers, but Comfort brushed aside his hand and dealt with his modesty in much the same manner that he’d dealt with hers. That left him to put a forearm over his eyes and wait for his heartbeat to slow.
Comfort turned on her side and propped herself on an elbow. She looked down the length of him to his bare feet. They were long and narrow, finely boned, with perfectly articulated toes and broad nails. “Goodness, but you have pretty feet.”
Grunting soft
ly, he curled his toes as if he were making fists.
“That’s why you didn’t want to take off your shoes, isn’t it? The afternoon I visited you and walked on your back, I asked you to take off your shoes and you wouldn’t. I thought you were being fastidious or difficult, but you didn’t want me to see your feet.” She imagined that behind his arm he was rolling his eyes. “I suppose I’m not the first woman to remark how elegant they are.”
Bode cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t want to know.” She fell quiet, smiling to herself as she placed her hand, the one with the platinum band, on Bode’s chest.
“You’re looking at the ring, aren’t you?” Bode said.
She glanced at him. He hadn’t lifted the arm over his eyes even a fraction of an inch. “I am. How did you know?”
“You’re wiggling your fingers.”
Laughing softly, she let them lie still. “Tell me about our wedding. Where did Mr. Douglas perform the ceremony?”
“On the forward deck. More or less in the same place where you met the crew this afternoon.”
She wished she could say it had been familiar to her, but when she’d stood between Bode and Mr. Douglas as each member of the crew filed past, she had no sense that she’d stood there before. “What did we say to each other?”
“Very little except for the exchange of ‘I do.’ It wasn’t a religious ceremony.”
“Oh. Did I sound sure of myself?”
Now he lifted his arm a fraction and looked at her askance. “Yes.”
“Good,” she said, satisfied.
Bode dropped his arm back into place. “In the event you’re wondering, I was equally confident.”
“I wasn’t wondering. You must have been; you had the ring.”
That made him smile. “I did.”
At the risk of being teased, she stole an admiring glance at it again. The slim, polished platinum band was inlaid with sapphire and diamond chips. No matter how she turned her hand, the effect was sparkling. “How long have you had it?”