Eyes wide, Lilah looked around, fear causing a sour taste in her mouth.
Except for the dead man, the beach was deserted. She was alone. At least, she seemed to be alone.
Her eyes scanned the forest. If they were watching her, they would come out. They had no need to fear a lone woman. On the contrary…
The memory of the fate that had befallen that other woman taken prisoner by the pirates flashed into her mind as vividly as if it was happening before her eyes at that very moment. Lilah shuddered.
She was naked. Her eyes swept the beach for her clothes.
Funny how different everything looked in the brightening light of dawn. Some half-dozen yards away, just beyond the dead man, loomed the rock from which she had watched Joss swim. The tide had almost reached it. Her dress lay in its lee.
Whatever happened, she would face it fully clad.
Barely taking time to brush the sand from her body, she shook the clothes out and pulled them on, doing up the buttons and lacings with a frantic haste slowed only by trembling fingers.
She had no sooner swept her hair out of the back of her dress than Joss emerged from the forest. Heart pounding, she ran up to him.
"He's dead."
The words were in response to the unspoken question in her eyes. Without a pause he walked past her to the other man, stared down at him for an instant, then bent and cautiously turned him over. Lilah, following, shuddered and turned away at the sight of blood oozing from where the left side of the man's face had been. Joss's shot had blown it clean away. When she looked again, it was to find that Joss had emptied the pirate's pockets and was in the process of stripping him of his breeches.
"What are you doing?" Her voice was faint.
"We need his clothes."
"Why?"
Joss looked up from what he was doing only briefly, but she saw that his eyes were dark and hard, his expression grim.
"When they find us-if they find us-I want them to think they've found two men. You'll be safer by far if we can keep them from guessing that you're a woman."
XXXII
Joss carried the body inland. With a rock, he scraped a shallow grave out of the loose undergrowth and dirt that lay beneath the wildly tangled vegetation. He repeated the exercise with the second body. Joss was quiet, grim, a far different man from the impassioned lover of the night before.
As he carried the second man through the forest Lilah followed silently, carrying the clothes and other possessions Joss had stripped from the body. When both naked corpses were covered with a thin layer of dirt, she helped Joss pile rotting vegetation on top of the graves. Finally he dragged a large, uprooted oleander to lie across the spot.
When he was finished, no one could have told that the jungle had been disturbed in any way, much less that two fresh graves had been dug. Not quite an hour had passed since Lilah had first been so rudely awakened on the beach.
"Come on, we need to hurry," Joss said at last, stopping to scoop up the pirates' belongings and tuck them under his arm before heading back toward the beach. Lilah, still practically speechless with shock, followed close behind. Joss had donned his breeches before hoisting the first body, but his chest and back were bare and streaked with dirt and sweat. The day was already starting to get hot. In the interior of the island the dense vegetation caused a steamy, hothouse atmosphere that was unpleasant. Lilah swallowed air that was as thick as pudding, and fought valiantly not to get sick.
"Do you think the rest of the crew will come looking for their shipmates?"
"Yes."
"Soon?"
"Who knows? Before nightfall, probably. How hard they look depends on who the men were, and how much they need them. If they were just two sailors who weren't much good to anyone, the crew may look for a day or two, chalk their disappearance up to the mysteries of fate, and leave."
"I hope so." Lilah's words were heartfelt. She and Joss reached the edge of the beach, and stopped. Joss put the bundle of clothes down, straightened, and looked at her, frowning. For his sake Lilah forced a tremulous smile. He returned her smile with one of his own, a gleam that could almost be described as tender coming to light in his eyes. Then he reached for her. One hand caught her waist, pulling her close, and the other one cupped her chin so that she was looking up at him.
"You're a female in a million, Delilah Remy. Most women would have swooned dead away long since, or treated me to a case of screaming hysterics."
"I've never had hysterics in my life." Lilah was revolted by the very idea. Joss's grin turned teasing. Some of the strain eased from his face, and Lilah felt better than she had all morning. They had faced horror and death together, and survived, thanks to Joss. He had kept her safe. So far.
"You're wonderful," she said. His eyes narrowed on her face. He bent his head to drop a quick, hard kiss on her mouth. Then he let her go, turning away with a familiar little smack on her behind.
"Enough of this. We have to do what we can to clean up the beach. Let's get to it, woman."
Lilah followed him as he stepped briskly onto the sand. Some quarter-hour later all traces of the deadly battle that had taken place on that white strip had disappeared. Joss had turned over the bloodstained sand so nothing looked unusual. Then he and Lilah eradicated all traces of human presence from the beach by sweeping the sand with palm fronds.
"That should do it," he finally said. Lilah followed him as he headed back toward their hut, trying not to think that even now the pirates might be searching the jungle for their shipmates.
XXXIII
To Lilah, it seemed as though centuries instead of hours had passed since she had left the small clearing in search of Joss the night before. If the snow-on-the- mountain tree had not caught her eye, Lilah would have walked right by the camp. It was comforting to realize how difficult it would be for someone who didn't have any idea of its existence to find it.
"Now for you," Joss said, dropping the bundle of clothes in front of the hut and turning to survey her with a critical eye.
"M-me?" His sudden grimness scared her all over again. It reminded her anew that they faced mortal danger. From Joss's expression, he anticipated trouble, and soon. Lilah swallowed.
"We have to transform you from the beautiful young lady that you are to a grubby youth not worth a second look. Let's see what we have to work with."
With that Joss started rifling through the pile of clothes. Two pairs of breeches, both black, the scarlet silk shirt that had been worn by the pirate who had tried to murder Joss, now stained with blotches of blood, a once-white shirt and scuffed leather boots that had belonged to red-beard, a leather pouch containing six poured-lead bullets, flint and steel and some chewing tobacco, a pistol and a sheathed knife were the sum total of the booty. Joss loaded the pistol, stuck it in the waistband of his breeches, and stood up, holding the smaller pair of breeches in one hand.
"Take off your clothes," he instructed. "We're going to try to turn you into a boy."
He was frowning at her impatiently as he waited for her to obey. Staring back at him, Lilah felt a sudden surge of shyness. To undress in front of him in broad daylight was something totally different from her bold seduction of him by the light of the moon. She couldn't just… strip off her clothes while he watched.
"Turn your back."
He looked at her for a moment as if he couldn't believe his ears.
"You're joking."
"No. Turn your back." Her expression was as stubborn as she felt.
"Lilah…"
Whatever argument he had been going to make he gave up on. Throwing up his hands in a silent gesture of defeat, Joss tossed her the breeches, then turned his back.
Wrinkling her nose, she stepped into the filthy breeches. They were miles too big, and if she hadn't kept a tight grip on the waistband they would have immediately fallen around her ankles.
"What about a shirt?"
"The white one. The red's too fancy, too easily remembered. We don't want anyone c
onnecting these clothes with their original owners."
Lilah silently agreed. She also did not want to wear a garment that was still wet with its previous owner's blood. Picking up the specified shirt, she closed her eyes to its grimy state and tried to close her nose to its smell as she pulled it on over her chemise. Ignoring the smell proved impossible. It was a combination of fish and sweat and other things that were too horrible to contemplate.
"All right. You can turn around now."
Joss turned, looked at her once, grinned at her expression of acute distaste. Then he studied her again, more slowly, and frowned.
"Well?" She cocked her head to one side, regarding him anxiously. The long spill of her white-blonde hair swung around to cascade over one shoulder. Her eyes were huge pools of gray-blue in the delicate oval of her face. The skin of her face and neck was white and satiny smooth as it stretched across her high cheekbones and fragile jawline. Within the open collar of the filthy shirt her collarbone was visible. Despite the hugeness of the oversized shirt, her breasts still thrust provocatively forth. Of her waist and hips nothing was evident. The breeches were so large on her that she was forced to hold them up with one hand.
Joss groaned. "If I ever saw anyone look less like a male, I can't remember it."
"The breeches are too big, but if I tied them up with something and wore a kerchief over my hair, don't you think I could pass?"
"At midnight if you stumbled across a blind man, maybe. Hell, let's try it. You couldn't look any more female than you do right now unless you ran around without your clothes."
He picked up the second pair of breeches and slit them with a knife. Ripping three long strips from the cloth, he knotted them to form a single strip.
"Tuck the shirt in."
She did as he told her, then he wrapped the strip of cloth around her waist and tied it in a knot. Cautiously she let go of the breeches; they now stayed up. Encouraged, she looked up at him hopefully.
"Better?"
He rolled his eyes skyward in an expression of utter defeat.
"What's wrong now?" Her fists rested on her hips as she stared at him narrow-eyed. His pessimism about her chances of passing for a male was beginning to annoy her. The least he could do was be encouraging. She was doing everything she could to please him.
"Sweetheart, you are simply too… too-" His hands made a gesture in front of his chest that indicated that her front had too much curve to it. "What are you wearing under that shirt?"
"My chemise."
"Take it off. Maybe that will help. Something bloody well has to!"
Lilah hesitated a moment, then nodded. "All right. But turn around again, please."
"Oh, for God's sake…!"
He bit off the rest, and spun around. Lilah could tell from the set of his broad shoulders that her insistence on a modicum of modesty was beginning to irk him.
She slipped out of the shirt, then pulled the chemise over her head and dropped it on the ground. The idea of putting the filthy shirt next to her bare skin was unappealing, but there was no help for it. Buttoning it up, she told Joss she was now decent.
He told one look at her and shook his head.
"No better?"
"Worse, if anything. You're simply too female."
"Well, I beg your pardon." Lilah was beginning to feel more than a little out of sorts. "I can't help it, you know."
"Don't get mad now. God graced you with a luscious figure and I'm thankful for it. But at the moment it presents a problem. We'll come about. It just needs… something…"
His voice broke off, and he turned away to cross to the hut. Lilah watched with some suspicion as he disappeared inside. Whatever his idea was, she was quite sure she was not going to like it. Her guess was confirmed when he emerged with her petticoat, which he proceeded to slit and rip into strips as he had the breeches.
"What are you doing?" Over the course of their sojourn on the island, she had come to value the garment highly. It was supremely useful in a variety of ways, it was in one piece, and it was hers. Joss had better have a good reason for inflicting mayhem upon it.
"Binding's what we need, I think," he said, not even looking at her as he blithely continued to tear the garment into strips.
"Binding?" Lilah lowered her hands, frowned, and considered. "Binding?" Her voice rose to a squeak.
"That's what I said. Take off the shirt. And don't give me any more of that 'turn your back' nonsense. It's ridiculous, I won't do it, and in any case you've far more to worry about at the moment than misguided attempts at maintaining a ladylike modesty."
"You-"
"Take off that damned shirt!" he roared.
Lilah jumped. Hearing Joss shout was such a novelty that she was taken by surprise. For just a moment she gaped at him, but at the emerald glare that met her stare she turned her back and meekly started to unbutton her shirt.
Even as she was undoing the last button he was pulling it impatiently from her shoulders. Cheeks flushing hotly, Lilah covered herself with her hands as he turned her around. Despite everything that had passed between them, she could not control the blush that suffused her cheeks as he looked down at her breasts. Her hands spread over them seemed a very inadequate protection for her modesty. If anything, they only seemed to emphasize her nakedness.
"Lilah." The single word, uttered in a soft, compel- ling voice, brought her eyes up to meet his. Her blush deepened, heated. Her lashes fluttered down to cover her eyes on the ridiculous hope that if she couldn't see him, he couldn't see her.
"Stop being so idiotic, will you please?" At these distinctly unloverlike words, Lilah stiffened and her eyes flew open. Her cheeks were still flushed the same hectic wild rose, but as she met his steady gaze some of her embarrassment faded. When he reached for her wrists she allowed him to pull her hands away and then, when he let go, kept them at her sides. Chin high, she stood before him without flinching, bare to the waist. He smiled faintly at her, then looked at her breasts and frowned in concentration. Only the deepening color of his eyes told her that her nakedness affected him in any way.
"If you'll hold your arms out to your sides, we'll see what can be done."
Lilah did as he instructed. Joss then took the torn strips of petticoat and wrapped them around her chest, trussing her up like a mummy and flattening her generous curves.
"It's too tight! It hurts!" she protested as he jerked the two remaining ends into a hard knot at the back. "Ouch! Can't you make it a little looser? Please?"
"Let's see how it looks," he said, ignoring her plea as he picked the shirt up from the ground and handed it to her.
Shifting uncomfortably as she tried to ease the pressure of the bandage around her breasts-to no avail- Lilah pulled on the shirt and buttoned it with many an uncomplimentary mutter. Joss stood a few feet away, regarding her critically.
"Well?"
After a long moment he nodded grudgingly. "Not good, but… better. Now twist your hair up on top of your head."
Lilah held her hair up while he ripped a large triangle from the seat of the breeches and wrapped it around her head bandanna-style. He tied the coarse black material so low over her forehead that it nearly obscured her vision, then tucked it in the back so that it completely hid her hair. When he was done, he stepped back and inspected her. Finally he shook his head with evident disgust.
"Maybe they won't find us, and we won't have to worry about how I look," Lilah offered hopefully, discouraged by this latest evidence of failure in her disguise.
"We can't take that chance," he said, his eyes moving over her with disconcerting slowness. Suddenly intent, he caught her arm, holding her still while he bent to scoop up a handful of dirt. While she gasped a protest, wriggling, he rubbed the dirt over her face and into the skin of her neck.
"Joss! Stop it! What do you think you're doing?"
"A good layer of dirt will help camouflage that female soft skin of yours."
By the time he was done with her she was so f
ilthy that she felt like a walking dung heap. Her skin was caked with grime, and the shirt and breeches were so dirty that if she'd taken them off they could have stood up by themselves.
Standing a little back from her as she shook mud from her fingertips, Joss eyed her again. This time he didn't shake his head.
"Better?" Lilah asked.
"Better," he affirmed. "Walk around for me, would you?"
Scowling, Lilah walked. When she came back to him he was frowning again.
"What now?" she asked with a sigh.
"Could you try not to wiggle your bottom? That seductive sway will give you away in about two steps."
"I do not wiggle my bottom, and I do not have a seductive sway!" The words were a growl.
"Is that so? Walk, will you please?"
Lilah walked while Joss watched critically. Although she concentrated on keeping her body motionless as she moved, he was still dissatisfied.
"Here, put these on," he said, picking up red-beard's boots. Before he handed them to her he dropped a good- sized stone into one. Taking the boots, Lilah frowned at him and automatically started to fish the stone out.
"Leave it," he ordered sharply. "It'll make you limp."
She left it. The boots were huge on her small feet, but the stone seemed to have an uncanny knack for wedging itself under the tenderest part of her sole. This time, when she walked for him, he pronounced himself marginally satisfied.
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