Agitated, he hooked a finger under his neck cloth and pulled it loose. “Care for her,” he muttered. “How could that be possible? I’ve scarcely gone near the woman in weeks.”
“I don’t know how it’s possible, but it seems to be true. In fact, I think you’re half in love with her. More than half, perhaps.”
Rising from his chair, Gray straightened to his full height. “Now wait. I’m half out of my mind with lust, I’ll grant you that. More than half, perhaps. But I’m certainly not in love with that girl. Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Joss. I keep my conscience in my bank account, remember? I don’t even know what love looks like.”
Joss paused over his desk. “I know what love looks like. Using up all those Portuguese on one meal, killing a valuable goat, bringing out porcelain from the cargo hold…Crack one plate, and you’d lose half the set’s price. Serving meat onto a lady’s plate.” He shrugged. “Love looks something like that.”
Gray ran his hands through his hair, shaking off the lunatic notion before it could take root in his brain. “I’m telling you, I’m not in love. I’m just too damned bored. I’ve nothing to do on this voyage but plan dinner parties. And it’s about to get worse. No chance of cracking a plate tonight.” He jerked his chin at the lamp dangling from a hook, which on any normal night would have been swaying in time with the waves. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’re becalmed.”
“I’d noticed.” Joss grimaced and motioned for the flask. Gray tossed it to him. “Good thing we’ve given the men a fine meal and grog tonight. Becalming’s never good for the crew’s morale.”
“Not good for the investor’s morale, either.” Gray rubbed his temples. “Let’s hope it doesn’t last.
But he hadn’t appeared that night. Not the next morning, either. By the time she finally crossed paths with him the following afternoon, his mumbled “Merry Christmas” was the extent of their exchange.
It seemed they were back to silence.
I don’t want you.
She tried to ignore the words echoing in her memory. They weren’t true, she told herself. She was an expert at deceit; she knew a lie when she heard one.
Still. What else to believe, when he avoided her thus?
Although he rarely spoke to her over the next two days, Sophia frequently overheard him speaking of her. Even these remarks were the tersest of commands: “Fetch Miss Turner more water,” or “See that her canopy doesn’t go slack.” She felt herself being tended, not unlike a goat. Fed, watered, sheltered. Perhaps she shouldn’t complain. Food, water, and shelter were all welcome things.
But Sophia was not livestock, and she had other, more profound needs. Needs he seemed intent on neglecting, the infuriating man.
Good Lord, Gray thought. Here he held this woman in his arms while she made him out to be some sort of…not a saint, exactly, but a man possessing a shred of honor. And all the while she trembled against his body, soft and damp and warm, never suspecting the dozens of ways in which he longed to dishonor them both.
Would she still allow him to hold her like this, encircled in his arms, her backside pressed against his swelling groin, if she could read his thoughts? If she knew that when she titled her head to bury her face in his sleeve, she gave him a direct view of the alabaster curve of her neck, the carved ivory of her collarbone, and the exquisite image that would haunt his dreams-the soft, rose-scented valley between her breasts?
God, what a lecherous bastard he was.
He’d been ashamed of many things in his life, but never before had he felt so ashamed simply to be a man, a part of this violent, brutish race of creatures who flogged one another, beat helpless boys with marlinespikes, and lusted after unsuspecting governesses while they were overset with emotion. This woman was bred for better things, deserved better things. Better than this ship, this life. Better than a base, craving creature like him.
What the devil was Davy doing up there with a marlinespike? That’s what I’d like to know. It’s a sailors duty.”
She put her head in her hands. “I’m afraid that’s my fault, too. I’d been talking to him about moving up to the forecastle, and I…I think he wanted to impress me.”
Gray choked on a laugh. “Well, of course he did. You ought to take care how you bat those eyelashes, sweetheart. One of these days, you’re likely to knock a man overboard.”
The legs of her chair scraped the floor as she stood. The color returned to her cheeks. “If Davy was trying to impress me, it’s as much your fault as mine.”
“How is that my fault?” Gray’s frustration came right back to a boil. He hated himself for growling at her, but he couldn’t seem to help it.
“You’re the one who humiliated him in front of the crew, with all those questions. You goaded him into saying he…well, you know what he said.”
“Yes, I know what he said.” Gray stepped toward her until only the table separated them. “I know what he said. And don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it. Don’t pretend you don’t use those men to feed your vanity.”
“My vanity? What would you know about feeding my vanity? You don’t so much as breathe in my direction. At least the sailors speak to me. And if that entire ‘Kind of the Sea’ display wasn’t one long exercise in feeding your own vanity, I’m sure I don’t know what is.” She jabbed one finger on the tabletop and lowered her voice. “Those men may flirt with me, but they worship you. You know it. You wanted to feel it. Bask in it. And you did so at Davy’s expense.”
“At least I only teased the boy. I’m not the one poised to break his heart.”
She blinked. “It’s only infatuation. He’s not really in love with me.”
He pounded the table. “Of course the boy’s in love with you! They all are. You talk to them, you listen to their stories-even Wiggins’s prattling, God only knows why. You draw them little sketches, you make them paintings for Christmas. You remind them of everything they’ve left behind, everything they pray they’ll one day hold again. And you do it all looking like some sort of Botticelli goddess, surely the most beautiful thing they’ve ever laid eyes on. Damn it, how’s a man to keep from falling in love with you?”
Silence.
She stared at him.
She blinked.
Her lips parted, and she drew a quick breath.
Say something, Gray silently pleaded. Anything. But she only stared at him. What the hell had he just said? Was it truly that bad? He frowned, reliving the past minute in his mind.
Oh, God. Gray rubbed his face with one hand, then gave a sharp tug on his hair. It was that bad. Damn it to hell. If Joss were here, he’d have a good laugh at his expense.
You ought to take care how you bat those eyelashes, sweetheart. One of these days, you’re likely to knock a man overboard.
Tessa DareAfter all,” she said, her eyes meeting his, “it’s not as though you lack sufficient charm to woo ladies. And you’re certainly handsome enough, in your own way.”
She bent her head again. “Oh, stop looking s smug. I’m not flattering you, I’m merely stating facts. Privateering was not your only profitable course of action. You might have married, if you’d wished to.”
“Ah, but there’s the snag, you see. I didn’t wish to.”
She picked up a brush and tapped it against her palette. “No, you didn’t. You wished to be at sea. You wished to go adventuring, to seize sixty ships in the name of the Crown and pursue countless women on four continents. That’s why you sold your land, Mr. Grayson. Because it’s what you wanted to do. The profit was incidental.”
Gray tugged at the cuff of his coat sleeve. It unnerved him, how easily she stared down these truths he’d avoided looking in the eye for years. So now he was worse than a thief. He was a selfish, lying thief. And still she sat with him, flirted with him, called him “charming” and “handsome enough.” How much darkness did the girl need to uncover before she finally turned away?
“And what about you, Miss Turner?” He leaned forward in his chair. “Why are you here, bound for the West Indies to work as a governess? You, too, might have married. You come from quality; so much is clear. And even if you’d no dowry, sweetheart…” He waited for her to look up. “Yours is the kind of beauty that brings men to their knees.”
She gave a dismissive wave of her paintbrush. Still, her cheeks darkened, and she dabbed her brow with the back of her wrist.
“Now, don’t act missish. I’m not flattering you, I’m merely stating facts.” He leaned back in his chair. “So why haven’t you married?”
“I explained to you yesterday why marriage was no longer an option for me. I was compromised.”
Gray folded his hands on his chest. “Ah, yes. The French painting master. What was his name? Germaine?”
“Gervais.” She sighed dramatically. “Ah, but the pleasure he showed me was worth any cost. I’d never felt so alive as I did in his arms. Every moment we shared was a minute stolen from paradise.”
Gray huffed and kicked the table leg. The girl was trying to make him jealous. And damn, if it wasn’t working. Why should some oily schoolgirl’s tutor enjoy the pleasures Gray was denied? He hadn’t aided the war effort just so England’s most beautiful miss could lift her skirts for a bloody Frenchman.
She began mixing pigment with oil on her palette. “Once, he pulled me into the larder, and we had a feverish tryst among the bins of potatoes and turnips. He held me up against the shelves and we-“
“May I read my book now?” Lord, he couldn’t take much more of this.
She smiled and reached for another brush. “If you wish.”
Gray opened his book and stared at it, unable to muster the concentration to read. Every so often, he turned a page. Vivid, erotic images filled his mind, but all the blood drained to his groin.
Once, during one of my lessons with Gervais, I was sketching Michelangelo’s David, from a plate in a book. Only, I could not capture the muscles of the forearm at all.”
“Him again?” He heaved a bored sigh as he turned another page.
“Gervais stood up”-Sophia pushed back from the table and rose to her feet-“wrenched off his coat, and rolled his shirtsleeve up to the elbow.” She placed her hand flat on the table, directly in front of Gray.
“He took my hand and dragged my fingers over every slope and sinew of his arm.” As she spoke, Sophia traced the tendons of her planted wrist with her free hand. When she skimmed her fingers up to the hollow of her elbow, she heard his breath catch. Good. More progress.
“And after touching them,” she said, “I had no trouble sketching those muscles at all.”
Gray snapped his book shut, tossed it aside, and stared up at her in challenge. The dark intensity in his eyes gave Sophia a heartbeat’s pause. Slowly, she stretched one hand toward his face. “Now…hold perfectly still.
Have you…”
“Have I what?” Gray prompted, promptly kicking himself for doing so. God only knew what she’d ask now. Or what damn fool thing he’d say in response.
“Have you ever seen a Botticelli? Painting, I mean. A real one, in person?”
The breath he’d been holding whooshed out of him. “Yes.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip. “What was it like?”
“I…” His hand gestured uselessly. “I haven’t words to describe it.”
“Try.”
Her eyes were too clear, too piercing. He swallowed and shifted his gaze to a damp lock of hair curling at her temple “Perfect. Luminous. So beautiful, your chest aches. And so smooth, like glass. Your fingers itch to touch it.”
“But you can’t.”
“No,” he said quietly, his gaze sliding back to meet hers. “It isn’t allowed.”
“And you care what others will allow?” She took a step toward him, her fingers trailing along the grooved tabletop. “What if you were alone, and there was no one to see? Would you touch it then?”
Gray shook his head and dropped his gaze to his hands. “It’s not…” He paused, picking over his words like fruits in an island market. Testing and discarding twice as many as he chose. “There’s a varnish, you see. Some sort of gloss. If I touched it with these rough hands, I’d mar it somehow. Make it a bit less beautiful. Couldn’t live with myself then.”
“So-“ She leaned one hip against the table’s edge, making her whole body one sinuous, sweeping curve. Gray sucked in a lungful of heat. “It isn’t the rules that prevent you.”
“Not really. No.”
Silence again. Vast and echoing, like the long, marble-tiled galleries of the Uffizi.
And there it was. The prim face of censure he’d been seeking. A strange sense of satisfaction descended on him. Divine justice, perhaps. Other men, better men, confessed their sins to priests and saints, but Gray had chosen for his confessor this governess. The most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on, in all his years of chasing pleasure from one horizon to the next. The only woman to stir this desperate yearning in his breast. And this was his penance-to watch her shrink back into her chair, to see those clear eyes glaze with mistrust as she at last recognized him for the devil he was.
Yes, this was his due. And she wasn’t finished yet, his petite, austere inquisitor.
When I arrived in the stables, he startled me from behind the door. Without a word, he grabbed me up in his arms and carried me into the loft. There he had lit a dozen candles, and strewn rose petals and blankets over a bed of sweet-smelling hay.”
“A dozen lit candles in a stable full of dry hay? You’re lucky you survived the experience, sweetheart. You could have been tinder.”
Sophia raised her eyebrows and stiffened her posture. “Our love was an inferno. I thought I would go up in flames, so glorious was our pleasure that night.”
He covered his eyes with a hand and laughed, loud and long. “What a vivid romantic imagination you have.
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