"No! Yes! Not sure, try again!"
So he did, and then repeated the motion on the other orb.
"Your right side is more sensitive than your left."
"Are you certain? Perhaps you should check again. Oh yes, more of that, right there. Dr. Murray, this is the best examination ever!"
He wanted to agree with her but found himself incapable of talk, only action, the action of tonguing her rosy tips until they stood up like rubies above her alabaster flesh. She writhed beneath him, and wrapped her arms around him to pull him closer. He had to brace one foot against the deck to maintain their balance in the cramped bunk, which brought him so close to her entrance that he almost gave in to the temptation to thrust himself into her and never release her.
But he held back, wanting to make this as perfect as possible for her. Their castaway dreams were ending, and they'd soon return to civilization and their former lives. Their proper lives. If he could not hold Daphne forever in his arms, he needed to imprint himself on her, make these memories so strong that she would never forget their magical time together.
He knew he would never be free of this woman who was the sunshine to his clouds, the light in his life that lifted him out of the darkness of death and disease, lonely nights stretching into a bleak future without color or brightness.
His urge was to clutch her to him and tell her all those things he dared not say with their separation looming. Instead he showed her, reveling in these moments of laughter and lovemaking, a respite from their troubles.
"Do you still feel feverish, my dear?" he asked, propping himself up on one arm.
"Yes, Doctor, I feel my heart racing and my body is so overheated, I do not know what to do!"
He arched an eyebrow at her, running his finger along her mouth, and a moment later her tongue peeked out to lick those lush lips, a gleam of wetness that made his muscles clench. But he would not be rushed, not now when he was so close to completion.
"I happen to have a sovereign remedy for that fever, Miss Farnham. It will restore all your humors to their proper balance." He leaned forward, and instead of kissing her on her soft mouth, moved down her body, his tongue tracing a path over her shivering belly, detouring briefly to her navel, and then lower still.
"You have another spot, yes, right here," he murmured against her groin as he tongued her femoral artery.
"Another pulse?" she whispered.
"A very important one, my dear. It is beating strongly, carrying blood through your body," he said, raising her leg and licking along the softness of her inner thigh, the musky fragrance of her body calling to him like the sea calls to a sailor, and he moved closer between her legs, and did what he'd been longing to do for so long, separating the golden curls with his trembling fingers, then taking her thighs and spreading her wide before lowering his head to take her into his mouth.
Had he not been holding her she might have jumped out of his hands. Clearly this was a new experience, and he felt a fierce rush of satisfaction that he was the man to show her all the delights her body could hold. He tongued her again, and she made a throaty noise and tugged at his hair.
"Alex--is that allowed?" She gasped.
He paused from his task and raised his head.
"Trust me, Daphne, I am a surgeon."
"You are a scoundrel!"
"The two are not mutually exclusive. No more talking now, I am busy."
She stopped talking, but the noises she made as he licked and sucked at her let him know what she was experiencing and feeling. He used his tongue and his teeth and finally his fingers, tasting all of her, feeling all of her until she rose up off the bunk with a cry, her trembling body hovering there before relaxing in his grasp.
He had no intention of letting her think that was all he could offer. Kissing his way up her curves he positioned himself over her and with one hand braced on the bunk, he guided himself to her slick opening.
She encompassed him, enfolded him, welcomed him into her body, and as he glided home he knew it was not enough, memories alone would never be enough. For now, he took his cue from his woman. He lived in the moment, feeling her embrace him with her arms while other muscles tightened around him until he nearly lost his rhythm and his mind. It took every ounce of determination to hold back, to watch Daphne's eyes close, her mouth open, the whispering cries he drew forth from her as he thrust himself deeper, again and again, until finally she clenched around him and went still, the muscles of her neck standing out with the force of her climax, her fingers digging furrows into his shoulders. He barely pulled out in time, fighting every instinct within himself, to spend on the sheets rather than in her womb.
He stroked her hair as her breathing returned to normal and fought his own desire to close his eyes and sleep in her arms. He still had work to do and a long night ahead of him.
"Alexander?"
"Hmmm?"
"Is there a word for--for that thing you did? With your tongue?"
He smiled, though he knew she could not see it, and kissed her atop her head.
"As a matter of fact, there is a word for that, Daphne. It is Latin."
"Ha! I should have known the Greeks would invent such a thing."
"Romans, not Greeks, Daphne. And while they may not have invented it, they did give us a name for it."
"It is too bad you already taught me my new word for today, Alexander, otherwise you could teach me that one also."
He started to reply that he could teach her that word, but she rolled in his arms and put her hand over his lips, her eyes twinkling.
"No, not now. Wait until tomorrow. Why, I would wager there is a word that goes along with your Latin,
Dr. Gravitas
, that illustrates what would happen if I did that to you. You could teach it to me." She frowned. "Not exactly the same way, of course, because your parts are different, but you know what I mean."
He took her fingers in his hand and kissed them.
"There is, I shall, and we will discuss this in the morning."
"Good," she said, yawning hugely. "I am sleepy now. You come and fetch me if you need me during the night, Dr. Murray," but the words were no sooner out of her lush lips than he heard a soft snore, and he carefully disengaged himself from her and exited the bunk, pulling the covers up over her.
He spent a long, precious moment watching Daphne sleep before he sighed, pulled his clothes back on, and returned to his duties. Alexander paused in the doorway, ready to blow out the lantern, and looked over his shoulder at the woman he now knew he loved. At least this night, for one more night, he would not return to a cold and empty bed.
Arnold was alive the next day, though Alexander knew the greatest danger still lay ahead if the wound became septic. In the meantime he monitored the man's progress and diet and administered to the other wounded pirates. He taught Daphne more Latin, to their mutual delight, and talked with her late in the evening. He never raised the largest issue on their minds, the question of what would happen after landfall.
They were lying now in the bunk, but at opposite ends, Daphne braced against the bulkhead while Alexander held her foot in his hands, massaging it, rubbing out the soreness from her ill-fitting footwear. Sails's efforts kept her feet covered and warm, but wouldn't win accolades for style or comfort.
"I never truly appreciated the pleasure of soft kid slippers made to fit my foot. Oh, that feels so good." Daphne sighed in satisfaction. "I am looking forward to ordering many new shoes when I return home. Soft, pliable, shoes. With rosettes."
He knew it was just idle chatter, but it stabbed him like a needle. Daphne took for granted all the things her money purchased for her. In his world there were sturdy work shoes, not kid slippers with rosettes.
He bent his head over his task.
"What do you want when you return to England, Alexander?"
"You"
hovered unspoken in the air between them.
"I want to set up my surgery, perhaps in London, though I am not averse to living in the north."
"You still want to be married, don't you?"
It was said calmly, but when he looked up from the foot he caressed he saw the tension at the corner of her eyes, the stillness as she waited for his answer. He owed her the truth. After all they'd been through, there was much he could not give her, but he could give her the truth.
Daphne pulled her foot back and leaned up on her knees.
"I can be that wife, Alexander." She ticked off points on her fingers. "I can boil an egg. I can cook fish stew. I can start a fire--and that is important for your wife to know. I can scrub pans clean with sand. I can keep a garden. I know words like physiognomy and gravitas and atrophy," her voice dropped, "and some other Latin words."
Her hands twisted in her lap, and she looked down at them.
"I know the man is supposed to ask, but you know I do not always do the proper thing. Will you marry me, Alexander Murray?"
Time stopped, though the rigging still creaked overhead and the men shouted to one another. Alexander had heard the tenor of the commands change, about two hours past.
Daphne still looked down at her hands, her head bowed, the golden curls reflecting the lantern light, and it made his heart ache to see her so. But he needed to be strong, for her and for himself. Alexander put his fingers beneath her chin and lifted it so he could look into her eyes.
"Land was sighted, Daphne. If the weather holds, we will be in England tomorrow."
She looked at him, and for once he could not read her face, the face that was normally as open to him and as easy to read as a picture book.
"You didn't respond to my proposal, Alexander."
"It is a dream, Daphne, a dream only suited to desert islands or pretending on a pirate ship. It is not real, not for the two of us."
He said it as gently and calmly as he could. Why did it feel like hearing a pronouncement of a terminal disease, a disease that would eat at his heart until there was nothing left of him but the husk of a man? Someone who walked, and talked, and moved through his day, but was as soulless as a wind-up automaton.
He did not want to be that man, dead inside, but if he truly cared for Daphne, he would put her first. She might think she would be happy as a surgeon's wife, living off of his carefully invested prize money and what he earned at his craft, but it would not be enough. The first time there was disappointment in her face when she could not buy kid slippers with rosettes because the money was needed for rent and food would be the beginning of the end for them. Only fools believe that love alone will sustain them. He'd been out in the world enough to know better. He'd seen it living with Janet Murray and her shattered dreams.
Alexander's mind flashed back to a bleak evening when his mother sat at the scrubbed kitchen table by the sputtering flame of a rushlight. They could not afford candles. The stipend she received each quarter was small, and becoming smaller as the years passed.
He was consumed with the self-righteous indignation of an adolescent who feels life is not fair, and has not been out in the world enough to know that "fair" and "life" do not go together.
"Why? Why did you give yourself to that man without marriage so now we must live on his charity?"
She'd looked up from where she'd been gazing at her careworn hands, at the empty finger of her left hand. Her white hair combined with the lines of worry made her look far older than she was. He longed to erase those lines from her face, but the words kept tumbling out of his mouth, the anger breaking free.
"You should not have done it, Mother! To give in to your passions that way..."
Janet's soft eyes looked on him with love, despite his anger and words that made him wince inside to recall now.
"My passions brought me you, Alexander. I can never regret that. It is not always a bad thing, to feel. To love."
"Better I had not been born than you should be shamed this way! Taking the stipend from Fieldhouse, bearing the insults of these people who think themselves better because they hide their sins before they go to kirk! I will not give into my passions, Mother. I will control myself!"
"Will you now?" Janet had said, looking at the scraped knuckles of the hand he ran through his hair, disarranging the careful combing. A hand bearing the marks of his latest fistfight with another boy who called his mother names. "Then I feel sorry for you, my Alexander. For without some passion, what is life? Nothing but one empty day following another, without joy."
"I will spare myself the pain and suffering you experienced," he swore.
Those memories gave him the courage now to do what needed to be done, for Daphne's sake.
"You know it is the right thing to do, Daphne. You belong in your own world, in London, not with me."
Her eyes narrowed in anger and her hands, fisted now in her lap, trembled.
"You think you know everything, Alexander Murray, but you do not! I am sure you can tell me all the pieces of my heart, the names in Greek and Latin, but you only know parts of me. Your head is stuffed full of natural philosophy and it has squeezed out the rest of your gray matter, the important bits about butterflies and flowers and love! You do not know my heart and you do not know your own heart! I love you, Alexander, and I know you love me, too, even if you will not say it."
She was so sure of what she was saying, but what did she know? Daphne had always been sheltered from the cruel ravages of the world around her, first by her father, then by Tyndale, then by him. That is as it should be. A woman like Daphne needed to be cared for and pampered, not made old before her time by too much work and too little money.
The dog barked then, scratching at the door, and Alexander was grateful to have their painful conversation interrupted.
"See to your animal, Daphne. He needs you."
Daphne looked at him, then shook her head.
"At least Pompom knows what he needs in life and is willing to say so."