"Um-what's your name?"
Joss opened his mouth to reply when Lilah, appearing to take no notice of the question or the staring men around her, squatted and began drawing aimless patterns on the deck with her finger.
"By damn, is he deaf?" Logan sounded more puzzled than angry, staring down at Lilah with a growing frown on his face.
"Addled, like I told you," Joss said, joining the group. "He's always been a little slow-witted, but the wreck really did him in. He hardly seems to understand what even I say to him, and I'm his bloody uncle."
"Don't know as I care to have any deadwood on my ship." This was said in a thoughtful tone, as if Logan was pondering the point. "On the Magdalene, we all pull our own weight."
"I'll pull his oar and mine too, if necessary," Joss said sharply. "What I won't do is leave him. He's my dead brother's boy, and I'm responsible for him. You want me to read your sextant for you, you take him as well as me."
"Hmmph." Logan pondered this too, his eyes studying Lilah. Joss felt his heart stop as that hooded gaze ran over the slender figure crouched at his feet. To her everlasting credit, Lilah appeared unaware that their very lives hung in the balance while Logan considered whether the liability of taking on a useless mouth to feed outweighed the plus of Joss's ability with a sextant. To Joss's eyes, even with the black kerchief pulled low over her head, hiding her forehead and what was left of her hair, her breasts flattened and the rest of her shape concealed by the baggy men's clothes, and covered with dirt, she still looked unmistakably like a woman, like the one he loved. But she was playing her part well. She even managed to drool at this point.
If she hadn't been a lady, the girl should have been an actress. Joss's heart swelled with pride as Logan turned his eyes away from her in distaste.
"Can he write? Enough to sign his name? He'll have to sign the articles of agreement, same as the rest."
"He can make his mark. Can't you, Remy?" Thus addressed by Joss, Lilah drooled again, never ceasing in her endless pattern-drawing. Joss almost applauded. He had to bite back a grin.
"Get out the articles of agreement."
To Joss's relief, Logan turned away from Lilah to give the order to a man at his left. Now that he had decided to allow the two of them on board, he seemed to have no further interest in his addled crew member. Attention shifted from Lilah to the pirate Logan had addressed, who disappeared briefly below, then returned with a tattered roll of white foolscap. A hogshead barrel was dragged forward, a quill and ink pot were produced. Joss was motioned over; he smoothed out the paper and glanced over it carelessly. It was nothing more than the standard rules of shipboard life and the formula for division of the spoils, calculated to give the most to the captain with a decreasing percentage according to the importance of the crew member. He and Lilah would, he deduced, receive one twenty-fifth of what was left after the captain and other officers took their share. Which was fine with Joss. He didn't intend for either of them to hang around long enough to collect. At the first chance offered, hopefully at a well-populated port, they were going to jump ship. Their lives hung by a thread, and that thread would be cut as soon as Logan got where he wanted to go, or decided that Joss and his addled nephew were more liability than asset. Before that happened, they had to win free. In the meantime, they would have to be very, very careful if they were to survive.
The names of the crew members were signed round- robin fashion. Joss picked up the quill and, with a flourish, signed his name at the far edge of the circle. Then he bent, caught Lilah by the arm, and hauled her up to stand beside him.
"Make your mark. Here, on this paper," he ordered, thrusting the quill into her hand. She promptly dropped it, dribbling ink over the barrel and the boards of the deck as the quill rolled toward the rail. With a pained look, Joss retrieved the quill, only to find Lilah squatting again when he got back to her side. The watching pirates howled with mirth, slapping each other on the back in their merriment at his expense. Even dour Logan had to smile. Starved for entertainment, the pirates were finding their new shipmate an unexpected treat.
Cursing loudly, Joss hauled Lilah to her feet again, thrust the quill into her hand, closed her fingers around it and held them while he tried to convey to her what he wanted. The girl was fantastic. She frowned and drooled, tried to squat and had to be held upright, let her head roll limply on her neck. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought she really was addled. Finally he was forced to trace a scraggly X for her by holding his hand around hers and guiding the quill in the direction he wanted. When it was done and he let her go, she immediately squatted again, while he was left to write beside that lopsided X: "Will Remy's mark."
With the articles signed and put away, Lilah was left to trace her endless patterns on the deck while Logan called for a tot of rum all around. As Joss drained his mug, he thought with relief that they had passed the test. Until and unless something happened to show them otherwise, the pirates had accepted Lilah as what she pretended to be: a half-wit boy.
If she could keep up the act, they would be safe. As he had told her once, she was a female in a million.
Which was why he loved her, although he had never told her that. Maybe he would, one day soon.
Or maybe, just maybe, she was the last person that he would ever tell. He had a feeling that admitting to Lilah that he loved her would give her a hold on his heart that neither time nor circumstance would ever be able to break.
Somebody thrust another tot of rum in his hand. Joss drained it as rapidly as he had the first. For the time being, he and his addled nephew were members of a pirate band.
XXXVII
A week later, the Magdalene was at sea. Lilah's disguise had held. Captain Logan and the others noticed her only when she got in their way. She had a feeling that even then they weren't really seeing her. Her supposed half-wittedness made her blend into the woodwork.
The daylight hours she spent lurching after Joss, or squatting on the quarterdeck while he and the captain plotted their course by means of complicated calculations. As Speare had said, Logan had obtained from a captured ship a sextant with markings that supposedly led to an island where treasure was buried. Joss's job was to lead the pirates there by deciphering these markings. Until that was done, she and Joss were relatively safe. After that, when they were no longer needed… she hated to think what their fate might be.
The Magdalene's cabins had been cut out of her, the bulwarks raised to afford the pirates better concealment when chasing a prize. The crew from Captain Logan down to the lowliest cabin boy slept rolled up in pallets on the deck. At night, when Lilah lay huddled in her blanket, curled alongside Joss in his, a guard was posted not far from where they slept. Every gesture, every whispered word had to be strictly guarded lest it be overheard and their secret exposed.
Logan did not suspect her sex, but he was wary of Joss and not the kind of man to take chances. Though what he thought one man and his scrawny nephew could do against an entire crew of pirates she had no idea.
There were twenty-three of them, not counting Lilah and Joss. Armand Logan was tall and lanky, perhaps in his early forties, dark-haired, with a pockmarked face rendered even more unsightly by a livid scar slicing down from his right temple to his chin. The angry- looking scar was the likely result of a saber cut, Joss said in reply to Lilah's question, whispered while they were settling down for sleep their first night on board. Alone amongst the pirates, Logan dressed well, in suits of fine materials and shirts frothing with lace. The elegant attire went oddly with his marred face. But for all his ugliness he seemed a man much the same as any other, and Lilah had difficulty picturing him in the role of bloodthirsty pirate captain. He treated Joss with as much courtesy as he did anyone, and ignored her completely, which suited Lilah just fine.
The black-haired woman whom Lilah had pitied was one of three captured from the same ship which had yielded the sextant. During the day they were kept locked below, and after dark they were passed around
to whichever pirate had a fancy for a bedmate. Each woman would be raped four or five times a night, the repeated horror apparently having dulled their senses so much that they did not even bother to scream any longer. No doubt they had learned that screaming earned them the additional pain of a blow or a kick. Certainly it did not save them from being violated.
It was all Lilah could do to ignore the pathetic things, but Joss warned her fiercely that to attempt any kind of alleviation of their plight would almost certainly bring about their own downfall. She was to close her eyes and ears to what she saw and heard, and concentrate on saving herself.
It was one of the most difficult things she had ever done, but Lilah obeyed. By going to bed with the sun and pulling her blanket over her head she was able to block out much of the drunken debauchery that went on at night. Only once did the sounds of forced fornication reach her ears.
The woman was not screaming, not crying, only whimpering, the helpless, hurt keening of an animal. The grunts of the man who used her nearly covered her soft sounds. But Lilah heard, and was sick. By the time it was over, the woman gone and the man left to sleep off the effects of rum and sated lust, Lilah was shivering violently. For hours she lay awake, unable to banish the horror from her mind. Then when she slept she had a nightmare that she was the victim. It was a miracle that she did not awaken the ship with her screams. As it was, she disturbed only Joss, who was on her in an instant, his hand clamped over her mouth while he denounced her loudly for waking him.
There were two other women who were not prisoners, who sailed on the Magdalene willingly. One had hair of an improbable shade of brassy red, and a bosom to make strong men go pale. Her name was Nell, and she had been McAfee's paramour. Now that McAfee was gone, she appeared resigned to choosing a new protector from amongst the remaining crew. If she'd ever been unwilling, Lilah saw no signs of it. She seemed only too eager to bed anything in trousers.
The other woman was Nell's sister, Nancy. Nancy was Captain Logan's woman, and had a tendency to queen it over her sister. The two women appeared to dislike one another cordially.
By the morning of the eighth day at sea, Lilah's fear of discovery was receding. It was replaced by a new worry: Nell had her eye on Joss, and was making every effort to put more than her eye on him. She had chosen a replacement for McAfee, it seemed, and Joss, willing or no, was it.
Intellectually, Lilah couldn't blame her. Joss, clean shaven except for the dashing mustache that he'd saved when he scraped off his beard the first day at sea, was easily the handsomest man aboard the Magdalene. He'd inherited McAfee's wardrobe as well as his task of deciphering the sextant, and in the flamboyant silk shirts that the man had favored he was breathtaking. Lilah's temper sizzled when the floozy came flouncing past wherever Joss was working (which happened easily a dozen times a day!), twitching her skirts and fluttering her eyelashes. The hussy even had the nerve to touch him, once running her finger teasingly down the open vee of his shirt; once grabbing at his shoulder as she pretended to stumble; once even going so far as to press her enormous breasts full against his chest as she pretended to have a cinder in her eye and asked him to get it out.
In her guise as Joss's nephew, there was little Lilah could do to thwart the woman's designs. Even so much as a hot glare at Joss could raise questions in the minds of any who might see it. So she had to play deaf and dumb and blind, and save her fury for when she could get Joss alone.
"I can't help it!" he protested when she hissed at him late one night. Lilah thought she heard amusement in his voice, though it was too dark to properly see his expression. The idea that he found the situation even remotely laughable made her even angrier.
"You can keep your blasted shirt buttoned!" she spat in response, and this time there was no mistaking his laughter. Lilah stiffened and shot him a look that by rights should have slain him on the spot.
Lilah's greatest worry was that Nell would come crawling into Joss's pallet one night. Lilah didn't know how she would react to that. Even if Joss turned the woman away-which there was no certainty that he would do-she would be furious. If Joss did not turn the woman away, she would not be answerable for the consequences. This she tried to convey to him after several days of maintaining a discreet but increasingly furious silence, which seemed to amuse more than chasten him.
"How can you let her flirt so with you? Not that flirt is the word for what she does!" This was delivered under cover of slapping waves and rushing wind as Joss came to his pallet for what remained of the night. He'd stood first watch, so it must have been long past midnight. Lilah had been deemed useless as far as standing watch and most other shipboard duties were concerned, so she was free to retire when she wished. But she had not been able to sleep, wondering what Joss was getting up to without her supervision. Not an hour earlier, she had peeped from her blanket to find Nell sashaying along the deck to where he stood near the prow, the steaming cup in her hand her excuse for approaching him. It had been all she could do to remain quietly lying in her pallet. By the time Joss rolled up in his blanket beside her she was spitting mad.
"So you saw that, did you? You must have eyes like a cat," he replied to her accusation with a long-suffering sigh. The notion that he considered himself hardly used made her temper heat even more.
"What I didn't see was you sending her on her way!"
"You couldn't expect me to do that, now could you? Nell is quite an armful for any man."
He was teasing her, baiting her for his own amusement, Lilah realized after a moment's shock. She passed from steaming to full boil. Laugh at her, would he!
"If you like her so well, then be my guest." Lilah flounced over on her side so that her back was to him. "Just don't expect to come mooning around me, you horny goat!"
Joss laughed, and reached out with a questing finger to stroke the vulnerable nape of her neck. Captain Logan had apparently grown more trusting the longer the pair of them had been on board, so there was no longer a guard stationed feet from where they slept. Still, shipmates slept all around, and Joss's action entailed some risk.
Lilah slewed around to glare at him. The clouds shifted away from the frosted moon long enough to allow her to see his face as he lay on his side not two feet behind her, his head resting on his arm.
"You are despicable!"
"And you are adorable. I'm only teasing you about Nell, you know. Though you can't expect me to repulse her out of hand. To do so would be too suspicious. After all, if you were my addled nephew I would probably be glad of the comforts she's offering."
"If you bed her…"It was a slit-eyed threat.
He grinned. She could see his white teeth through the shifting darkness.
"I won't. The only female I feel like bedding has a bosom that's squashed flat as a board, is crusted with dirt and lying right next to me at this moment hollering at me for something that is not my fault. She's a shrew and a witch, and she's ruined me for any other woman. Any attention I pay Nell is just show. Satisfied?"
"No!"
He chuckled, the sound low. "It figures. Now be quiet, shrew, and go to sleep. And for God's sake, don't start shooting Nell any filthy looks. You'll give away the game."
"Then you'll just have to watch yourself, won't you?"
"I'll try to discourage her, all right?" His tone told her that he was trying to be conciliatory.
Lilah was in no mood to be appeased. "You'd better! Or you'll think shrew, indeed!"
But to mitigate the severity of her words, she turned over, scooted a little closer, and under cover of the blankets stretched out her hand. Her fingers found his, stroked them. His hand closed around hers, wrapped it warmly, carried it to his lips. And he kissed her fingers, one by one, lingeringly, right there on the deck of the pirate ship.
XXXVIII
The second week out dawned clear and hot. The Magdalene was on a southeasterly course, lighting a brisk head wind. On this particular morning some twelve days after they had joined the pirate crew, Lilah awo
ke when Joss pushed her roughly. She grumbled, yawned, and sat up, blinking at the brightness of the early morning sunlight.
"Get a move on there, Remy!"
Obediently she staggered to her feet and rolled up her blanket, as did Joss. Then, limping and vacant-eyed, she followed him to a deserted section of the port bow where he attended to nature's needs with flagrant disregard for any considerations of modesty, letting fly over the side as did the other men when weather and circumstance allowed. Lilah had of necessity to be more discreet. Retiring behind a hogshead, she made hasty use of a chamber pot, which Joss had on the first day out thoughtfully discovered and concealed for her there. Finished, she quickly emptied the contents over the side and returned the pot to its hiding place with no one the wiser.
When Lilah emerged from behind the barrel, it was to find Nell simpering up at Joss. The woman's mass of coarse red hair hung in deep waves around her face and halfway down her back. Her skin was swarthy, and her face was round with slightly overlarge features. Despite the woman's blatant vulgarity, Lilah supposed sourly that men must find her exceedingly appealing. Certainly her figure was. Her breasts were large as melons, the nipples boldly visible as they thrust against her loose white top. Her waist was large in comparison with Lilah's, but the voluptuousness of the breasts above and hips below made it look acceptably slender. Even as the woman stood still, smiling coyly up at Joss, her hips were moving, swaying the full black skirt she wore from side to side.
Today, obviously, Nell had gotten herself up to go hunting men. Her blouse had been pulled so far down over her shoulders that the top half of her breasts was bared. Her skirt was hiked short enough to allow much more than a glimpse of bare brown feet and slightly thick ankles. Her waist had been cinched tighter than usual with a sash of bright red silk. Her lips and cheeks had been roughed to nearly the same shade of red. Her eyes were fixed with infuriating avidity on the prey she had in her sights. And that prey was grinning at her with consummate charm and a complete absence of the outrage that Lilah, watching, felt.
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