Face to Face (The Deverell Series Book 2) (16 page)

He had been most probably correct. It seemed a tame adventure, filled with backbreaking work at best, the most frequent diversion to the endless hours of water.

So she was not particularly alarmed with the increase of sound and motion, and instead settled back against Varian to listen to the steady flow of his heart beneath her cheek. Instead of the man’s ship, her thoughts were filled with wispy images of what she had shared with the man. He had pulled her tight atop his body, arms entwined around her waist, and even in sleep he hadn’t released his hold. It was clear what he would want when he awoke. The man, it seemed, was insatiable.

Varian had systematically disarmed every fear she had carried about sharing a man’s bed. She been raised with the warning that it was an unpleasant duty that would hurt and embarrass her. It was unclear where it had come from, the belief that a man’s passion only stirred in the darkness, but she held that foolish thought as well.

 She had come awake this morning to shots of sun reflected off the water warmly dancing in playful darts against her flesh and Varian’s black eyes, heavy lids wide, wickedly glowing and watching her. She had tensed twice. First, in awareness of where she was. Then in awareness of what Varian was doing.

He had slowly uncovered her to the dawn and his leisurely gaze, and she had laid in shocking wantonness as he looked at her, every detail in the brilliantly illuminating sunlight. Her conduct was growing more shameful with each passing breath, but those dark eyes, beguiling, carried her with him.

There were any number of things that should have brought her up sharply in alarm with herself, including the tenderness that reminded her of the change in her body that sat in strangely pleasant harmony with the sweet favors of his passion. The worries she had betrayed every part of who she was that sat in not pleasant harmony with her repeated willingness to continue to do so, and her fears about the cost that would be demanded for these hours in his arms.

The sunset lost a bit of its luster as she looked at it. All that seemed clear was she had stepped from the trap of wanting the man into the trap of having had him. The winsome joy of her flesh didn’t match the truth of what she was doing or lessen the slowly claiming fear of what would become of her. It did, however, keep her in his arms.

The explosion that howled through the cabin brought Merry back to earth with the cruelest of landings. Varian’s canons had let loose in a fury of a full broadside, which rocked the cabin, violently tilting it, suspending it for a nerve-racking pause, and then righting itself. Startled, Varian went from slumber to full wakefulness in the blink of an eye. The look on his face sat in shuddering comprehension the ship was going into quite a different kind of battle than the ones she’d witnessed before.

Everything from that moment on held the surreal repulsiveness of a nightmare for Merry. Reality had a way of settling upon you with hard blows, in unkind whim, as it was doing just now. She sat alone in the center of his bed, curled in a tight ball, his covers huddled up against her, as she watched him rapidly move about the cabin pulling on his clothes to get on deck.

Continuing to dress, his goliath body filled with purpose, Varian ordered, “Lock the cabin behind me, Little One. Don’t leave until I return. Open the door for no one except Indy or Shay. If we get the worst of the fighting I will send one of them to take you by boat out of here.”

Merry’s wide doe-eyes fixed on him, in a lost way, that reminded Varian of child trying desperately to make reason of the world. Her hands were still cupping her ears in reaction to the percussive explosions of his guns. They were shaking.

Another thundering broadside rocked the cabin. Varian paused only long enough to cup her chin and give her quick kiss. “Don’t be afraid, Merry,” he said gently. “It sounds worse than it is. Stay in the cabin. Do you want me to send Indy or Shay to be with you?”

Merry, shocked into silence, could only shake her head. The rush of action all around made her vibrate. The sound of the guns, the whiz of musket fire from the rigging, the racing footsteps pounding the deck, and loudly, madly shouting voices. As frightened as she was by it all, she didn’t need one more thing to unnerve her, like having someone see her in his bed. It was foolish that concern should could come to her now, after two days of being there with him, but it did and it brought other thoughts as well.

Varian left her then, walking calmly out of the cabin and into that horrifying unknown, as though he were going to deck for his usual duties. The sight of the cabin door closing brought her up sharply with an unsettling succession of simple truths. Somehow she had forgotten in her desperation to have him who this man was, who she was, and where she was. Lady Meredith Ann Merrick had just spent two days in the bed of the infamous pirate Morgan, as his lover, and he had left her body still warm from his passion to go commit murder and mayhem on the seas.

Truth, in blunt form, brutal and unchangeable. Somehow, for the past two days, each piece of her circumstance had remained mercifully separated from the others, but they were not separated any longer. Their sudden joining, belated, was no less harsh in its deferred arrival. Tears began to stream down Merry’s face.

The battle raged on in minutes of agonizing slowness. Merry remained in Varian’s bed only long enough for function to return to her limbs. Grabbing Indy’s clothes, she covered her cold, sweat damp body, and then picked her way across the cabin scattered with the broken dishes from their dinner. She couldn’t contain any longer the hideous need to see in undiluted clarity what it was she had put herself in the middle of, or the need to know that Varian was all right.

Opening the cabin door, she stared out at the hatchway. Merry now understood Varian’s order had been a wise order. It was hell. There was no other word. The swarm of cursing, panting men and what battle did to their faces. The swirling gray smoke from the decks, not blurring enough, the grim and frantic activity on the battle. The sounds of the canons and guns were no longer mildly altered by the sheltering wood of the cabin and were now horrifying in their loudness.

Numb as a sleepwalker, Merry went to the top step, lowered there, and watched it all. She wished she hadn’t, even while she seemed unable to stop herself. The battling ships raged before her in a scene of utter madness.

Flames were licking the deck of the other ship, racing upward the rigging, dotted of men with muskets in hand, and on the mast hung a tired, bullet ridden flag she identified without effort.

The bold colors of Great Britain were proudly flapping over ruin. That struck her in two leveling blows. First, in the love in her heart for her country. Then, in the love in her heart for a man who had brutally disappointed her in this.

In the convenient workings of her mind, it had never occurred to her that Varian could kill her countrymen. He had never once entered battled with England, and it had come to be almost as if her belief of his inability to do so made him something he wasn’t.

The battle forced Merry for the first time to accept and acknowledge Varian for what he was. He wasn’t that man of fine birth who still found gentlemanly pleasure in the elegant refinements of his youth. He wasn’t exclusively those elements of himself which had captured her heart. He had moved beyond that and acquired a part that was something feared and obscene. Morgan. And this was no shirt he slipped into. It was part of him.

He was a pirate. Without country. Without loyalty. Capable of any violence, any destruction in self-protection or greedy want, and infinitely skilled in the ruin which fell from his hands—she thought of herself, brushing anxiously at tears—ruthless and capably so.

Then through the smoke she saw Varian, the image he made an even greater shock to her senses because it was fresh in her with another image. How he had looked in the glow of a candle, brushing her flesh with such wondrously gentle fingers, his tender mouth slowly roaming her body along the trail of wine she had allowed him to wickedly pour onto her.

It was too late to undo having gone to his bed and to remove what was beating in her heart for him. She was stained by his touch forever. Morgan’s legacy was an ugly tarnish on her and the entire Merrick family. This part of Varian—Morgan—would leave at best her future a horror if she stayed with him, or her family in disgrace if she went back to them.

Merry was ruthlessly seized from the deck by a pair of careless hands, which held her dangling in the air. “What the devil are you doing, you little lunatic? We haven’t got time for a woman under foot. Go back to Morgan’s bed where you belong.”

Her face burned, but her body twisted with fight. “Let me go,” she cried out, frantically trying to disengage herself from Tom Craven’s long, thin body and the horrid stench of his flannel shirt. “Let me go or...”

“Or what?” he sneered, bringing her face up close to his and silencing her with a shake. “Morgan will kill me? Is that what you think? You haven’t a notion of where you are or who he is, do you girl? Do you think your changed sleeping arrangements has changed your importance?” He gave a harsh laugh that ran a chill up her spin. “You are his whore. It’s enough to make him indulge your idiocy, but not enough that he would kill any man on this ship over you.”

He tossed her from him and she nearly fell down the steps. “Get the hell out of here, girl. This is no place for you.”

Back in the cabin, Merry whipped the door shut behind her and leaned against it as the tears erupted. Mr. Craven was right. She had to get away from Morgan while she could still salvage some part of herself.

~~~

Has it occurred to you that the clever raping of one’s heart is crueler than the forced raping of the body? A kind man would satisfy his body of her and let her go.

Indy’s words rose in haunting eloquence in Varian’s memory.
A kind man. You can be brutal sometimes, Indy.

Merry was huddled on the window bench beneath a blanket, looking like a tiny quivering cat just run over by a carriage wheel. She had clearly been sobbing for quite some time.

He understood her feelings without having to ask her to explain them. It had not been an expeditious process, the shift from numbing horror as the man who had recoiled from this madness, to the man who drifted through the violence matter-of-fact about it all.

Tom had warned him she had watched the battle from the hatchway. Tom had reluctantly admitted he had words with her, regrettably unkind. He would deal with Tom later. This would be enough to deal with for a single night.

Varian crossed the cabin, easing down on the bench beside Merry. Gently, his fingers closed around her icy hand, but she was unwilling to look at him. She continued to stare out the window at the starless fog-covered night, which had allowed them to quietly slip from the limping British frigate without having to destroy her.

His voice was carefully quiet. “Little one, you’ve been with me on my ship six months. You came to my bed on your own knowing I am Morgan, and what that would mean to you. Why do you think I left it to your choice what you would have of me?”

Merry’s face whipped toward him then. What Varian saw tore at his heart. She hadn’t understood any of it, it was there in every tense line, the never ending conflict between who he was and where he was forced to exist, and how both had left her the choice in sharing his life. He was not surprised by her words when she finally spoke.

“I want to go home,” Merry said, her voice bitter and young. “I want you to take me back to England and away from you and away from this. I will not stay here with you. I demand you return me to my home in Falmouth.”

Varian brushed back the limp wisps of dark hair from her colorless face. He sighed and then said firmly, “You may have anything you want, Merry, but I am not going to return you to Falmouth.”

He was answered with silence.

Varian didn’t always enjoy her temper, wouldn’t welcome it this night as exhausted as he was, but it would have been better than this. This tragic silence.

She looked very tired, the ghastly and long hours of battle having drained her into this absolutely horrible calm. A horrible calm because it was unfamiliar to him on her body. She moved through her days in whimsical exaggeration, the liveliness of her flesh like a ghost that often hovered in the air after she left it. Even in sleep, there was a playfulness to her in the gentle turns and rolls, the unconscious swat at hair, and the light chewing on the bed covers. Stillness did not belong on Merry’s flesh.

Varian scooped her up in his arms to carry her to his bed, and Merry began to fight with wild exhausted limbs, trying to escape him.

“No, I want to sleep on the bench,” Merry exclaimed in misery. “I want to forget that I ever let you touch me. I want it gone from my body. I will not add more shame to me. Put me back. Now.”

Careful not to harm her as she squirmed to break free of him, he set her in the center of his bed. “I won’t touch you, Little One,” Varian assured her, as he tucked her in beneath his blankets. “I would never share an act of love with you if you were not willing. There is no reason to sleep in discomfort on the bench. You are just as safe lying next to me.”

Merry cried all night. Off and on, in and out of sleep, her tiny body huddled on the farthest edge of the bed away from him.

The tears were a suffering for Varian to endure. They were almost as bad as not taking her in his arms to comfort her.

Patience. All battles are won with patience. She needs time, you fool. Let her alone in this.

So, he struggled not to touch her, struggled not to respond to the sobs, and struggled not to leave the cabin.

The next morning, Varian climbed from the bed somewhere before the bells would toll eight—not at dawn which he had done since Merry’s advent on his ship. He moved about the cabin as if it were any other morning, normalcy, as though he hadn’t lay all night next to this miraculous girl, who had spent it weeping out of regret over him.

Whether she accepted it or not, Merry was his lover, no longer innocent and not in need of his care in what she witnessed. It was time to resume his routines in their complete normalcy as well. Normalcy would bring calm back between them, ease her back into seeing him in totality, as a man, good and bad, and as the man she loved who loved her.