She stared as if he had just claimed to have flown to the moon and back. “Sixty-five bedrooms?”
“A slight exaggeration, but 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, Captain, 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 form-fitting 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 see
n 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.”
“In truth, it would be a waste if you were,” she murmured.
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, emphasising every curve of muscle on his chest, every hard band over the ribs, and 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 funnelling 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 spring water.”
“Forgive me if I repeat myself, but I am neither monkish nor insentient. Bare your breast and I will look. Bare it under moonlight and I will admire. Rest assured, however, there are more than enough deterrents to keep my lust duly restrained.”
She laughed. “None quite as potent, I would argue, as a man clutching a pisspot in his hands.”
Quicker than she thought him capable of moving, he tossed the enamel pot over the rail and moved to the side of the hammock. He caught her by the wrist and wrenched the concealed dagger out of her hand, then with a sniff of satisfaction, grasped the lip of canvas and jerked it with enough force to tumble her out the other side.
Juliet hit the deck in a tangle of arms and legs. When she sprang to her feet, he was ready for her. He caught both wrists and twisted them savagely around to the small of her back, locking them together in one iron fist while he used his big body to pin her against the rail. Still bearing the scab under his chin where she had pricked him last night, it was his pleasure now to press the sharp edge of her own dagger against her throat and let the cool steel caress the strained white arch.
“Be advised, Captain,” he said evenly. “I learn from my mistakes and rarely make the same one twice.”
“Brave words,” she spat, mocking his accusation from the night before, “with a knife in your hand.”
The knife went spinning away over the rail. He crowded closer and wrapped his hand firmly around her throat so that her chin was in a cradle and his fingers were able to locate and pinch a sensitive cluster of nerves below her ear. There was enough ruthlessness in his fingertips that her body sagged and her lips gasped apart with the pain.
“I am without a pisspot now, madam,” he hissed against her cheek. “Shall I warm myself elsewhere?”
Her curse came out a strangled gasp. Taking crude advantage, he turned his head and kissed her hard on the mouth. When she tried to clamp her lips shut, he gouged his fingers deeper into her neck, winning another cry, another shuddered gasp of pain. His tongue plunged between her open lips and he took what she refused to give, using his mouth, even his teeth to stifle her efforts to dislodge him.
When she managed to wrench her mouth free, he captured it again. When she tried to kick and wriggle out of his grasp, he wedged a thigh between her legs, lifting her until her feet were raised off the deck and she was perilously close to tipping over the rail.
His tongue plundered her mouth without mercy, without allowing a scrap of air or sound to escape. Her hands escaped and in one pounding heartbeat, she transformed all the rage and anger she was feeling into defiance. Fisting her way through his attempts to recapture her hands, she clawed them up into his hair and instead of pushing him away, held him fast and began to return each thrust of his tongue, to match each slant and turn of his lips as he ate at her mouth.
Shocked by the sudden and completely unexpected reversal, it was Varian’s turn to try to break free but Juliet twisted her fingers around clumps of hair, threatening enough force to tear chunks out of his scalp if he pulled away. She used her body too, pushing her breasts against his, riding the wedge of his thigh until she found something more vulnerable and volatile to abuse. He was already half aroused from his imagined triumph, but now the friction and her eagerness in applying it brought them both straining together, feeding one off the other, neither sure who was the aggressor and who the victim now.
It was that uncertainty that caused Juliet to push his mouth away. She knew it had been too long since she had felt the heat of a man’s body between her thighs, but she also knew this was the wrong man to want there. Any man, at the moment, would be wrong, but this one in particular was too potent, too unsettling, and for someone who decried the very notion of trying to seduce her, he was doing a damned fine job. Her mouth was hot and wet with the taste of him and now her flesh was betraying her. There were tremors in her arms, in her legs, and if the hand that had been sliding boldly down her hip had been allowed to curve a few inches lower, there would have been tremors elsewhere she would not have been able to control.
On the other hand, despite his own obvious arousal and the hard glitter of fury in his eyes, he was making no attempt to overcome her rejection and pull her back into his arms.
“You disappoint me, my lord,” she said harshly. “You call yourself a master swordsman, but even a novice knows better than to attempt a finesse when he has not the strength or wit to see it through.”
His eyes continued to glitter, his hands to flex and unflex by his sides. “It was... an unconscionable reaction to an unconscionable situation and I can only offer profound apologies for my conduct. If I have misrepresented myself in any way—”
“You haven’t,” she assured him bluntly. “I thought you were an arrogant, self indulgent bastard when we first spoke, and nothing has happened to change that now.”
She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth to wipe it clean and pushed away from the rail, striding past him without another word or glance. She was too furious with herself, too furious with him to trust herself to remain in his company a moment longer. Her mouth was tender, her breasts ached. Her knees were w
eak and her limbs felt like jelly, throbbing with a violence that made her want to walk up on deck and ravage the first man she found; to strip him, ride him until they both screamed for mercy, then toss him over the side with the galley scraps.
As a poor alternative, she snatched her doublet off the hook, grabbed her boots, and left the cabin, spending the rest of the long and sleepless night alone on her perch in the mainmast.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sun was well past noon when the shout of “land ho” brought Juliet to the quarterdeck at a run. The faint purplish smear off the larboard bow was no more than a jagged bump on an otherwise smooth horizon, but when they drew closer and that one single bump proved to be five distinct islands, the crew of the Iron Rose was all smiles. Within the hour, the order was given to shorten sail, to reduce the sheets to steerage only. Riding in her wake, the Santo Domingo did likewise.
The reason for this became clear when they passed through a band of pale blue water. A reading off the cable put the depth beneath the keel at six fathoms—roughly six times the span of a man’s outstretched arms—up drastically from the hundred fathoms of inky blue that had been beneath them for most of the morning. Less than a league later, the water became a bright turquoise that changed after another two hundred yards into pale cobalt. In all there were seven distinct bands of blue that formed a shimmering aura around the cluster of atolls. The palest bar measured a mere three fathoms of clearance, the bottom so close and the water so clear, the crew could see schools of yellow tiger fish feeding on the crowning heads of coral.
The broken ribs of shipwrecks were also visible, lying in their watery graves. An untold number of captains had allowed their curiosity to bring them too close onto the reef and for their trouble, they’d had their keels ripped open stem to stern. One ship in particular, whose identity and origin was unknown, lay almost intact on the bottom, her single mast pointed in a south-westerly direction. It was this marker that the lookout in the crow’s nest searched for and located with an excited shout.
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