Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (65 page)

“Mis..Miss..Lady Marsdale will receive you now, my Lord,” she stuttered.

“Is she drunk?” I asked the poor woman.

She blanched as white as the walls and at long last nodded tightly.

“Good,” I said and smiled at her warmly. “Thank you, Tessa.”

The girl nearly fainted with relief.

I stood.

“Marsy, there are things I would discuss with you concerning the plantation before you sail,” my uncle said with a sigh.

“We can likely discuss it tonight. I cannot imagine I will be long.”

He swore, and I chuckled as I left them.

My knock on her chamber door was greeted by a cheery, “Come in.”

I swung the door open and glass smashed on the doorframe beside my head: rum and pineapple filled the air as the bottle’s dregs dripped down the wall.

“Damn!” she cried and doubled over with intoxicated laughter.

I was thankful I was wearing boots: there was now shattered glass all about the entrance. I hurriedly entered and closed the door, placing myself so I could reach her before she could fling anything else. She was dressed as she had been the night before, but her hair was bound in a long braid. As her feet were bare, and she did not seemed inclined to do much more than laugh, I returned to the door and carefully scraped all of the glass I could see into a safe pile well away from the doorway, with the edge of my boot.

“We seem to be in a finer mood this eve,” I remarked lightly.

“Go to the Devil,” she said brightly, and jumped onto the bed to sit with her legs curled under her.

I leaned my back to the door and studied her. She looked younger than her years, swaddled in white as she was, with her hair pulled so prettily back and her nose red from the rum.

Her gaze swept over me in return. She sniffed, and her lips twitched with mischievous amusement. She pulled her gown over her head and deposited it haughtily on the bed beside her. She perched there: a bounty from Venus with Mercury’s smile.

I was amused by her mood. I doffed my weapons, carefully hanging my baldric and belt over the bedpost where I could reach them. Then I shed my tunic.

Her eyes held challenge. “Do you, if you truly do favor women as well, find me more fetching this way,” she asked coyly, and cocked her shoulders back to display her pert breasts, “or this way?” She smartly turned about and presented me with her arse.

She cast a look over her shoulder that was more challenge than invitation.

I grinned. “I find you fetching either way.”

Her playfulness and the seed Gaston had planted had wed, so to speak, and thus I was able to drop my breeches and show her I was truly appreciative.

She took a quick breath at the sight of my manhood, and her body stiffened. She quickly turned about and backed up, pulling the discarded gown with her, until her back was to the headboard and her knees and all the white fabric were between her skin and my eyes.

I smiled kindly, and went to sit on the opposite end of the bed, crossing my legs under me and resting my forearms upon my calves so that my cock was sheltered from her view and well protected by my limbs.

“I have seen one before,” she said defiantly.

“I should hope you are not ignorant of them,” I said.

“I have given many of them rise,” she challenged.

“As have I,” I teased.

She snorted. “I hear your sister’s husband is quite handsome, and that he is a buccaneer as you all call yourselves. Have you fucked him, or he you?”

I smiled. “Nay. But aye, he is a buccaneer.”

“Your sister seems quite taken with him,” she said bitterly.

“Aye, they are quite smitten with one another.”

“Lucky them,” she said with less venom and a touch of sadness.

“Have you loved?” I asked.

Her eyes narrowed, and she glared at me before tossing her head and asking coyly, “What is he like, this paramour of yours? Is he boyish?”

I shook my head. “He is manly. A year older than me. There is nothing feminine about him, if that is your next question.”

“Is he hairy?”

I shrugged. “Nay. Neither of us is boyish in comparison to the other.

He has some hair about his chest, and on his legs and arms, and of course about his balls, but no more or less than I.”

Actually, he had far less than I, because of the scars on his chest and thighs, but I would not be telling her of his scars.

“What color hair?” she asked.

“Red, somewhat between rust and blood, depending on the light.”

“Eyes?”

“Green, like fine emeralds.”

“Describe him,” she challenged.

“He minds me of Greek sculptures I have seen. He is strongly built, with great definition of the muscles, so that you can see how they work as he moves. He is shorter than I by a few inches. His bones and features are finely wrought, yet they are not delicate or pretty. He is intelligent, far more than I. He is well-educated, and of noble birth. He is inquisitive of… the workings of nature. He is trained as a physician.

He is an exceptional warrior, with firearms, blades, and all manner of pugilistic arts.”

“Stop,” she said.

I had been studying the blanket as I sought to reduce my matelot to a few simple sentences. I looked up and found her likewise staring at the bedding.

“Do you fuck him, or does he fuck you?” she asked bitterly.

“Both, but usually he fucks me,” I said.

Her eyes were hard when they met mine. “Do you enjoy it? Or do you only allow it because you love him?”

I smiled. “I enjoy it; though, I only allow him because I love him: I will take no other in that way.”

She snorted and picked at the hem of the gown in her arms. “He leads you about…” she mumbled, and then her eyes were hard on mine again. “Do you lead him about by his prick, or does he lead you about by yours?”

I frowned. “I am not sure I understand your intent…”

She sighed with exasperation. “A learned woman once told me that a woman’s power lies in her ability to take a man by the prick and lead him about. Because once you have hold of a man’s prick, he will go anywhere.”

“Ah,” I said, as I began to see the glimmer of understanding on the horizon. “Generally, that is true, and I have known many women who have lived well exercising such power over men. Gaston and I are… in love, such that it is no longer a matter of our pricks, so much as it is a matter of our hearts.”

She snorted her incredulity. “No man can tell lust from love. You are either a fool or fancy yourself a poet.”

I chuckled. “I have been guilty of both persuasions: foolishness and poetic aspiration, but not this time.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Do you wish to lead men about by their pricks?” I asked.

She snorted. “Every woman who has any sense wishes to lead men about by their pricks; how else do you get what you desire?”

“Ah, I see.” And I truly did. “I must be a terrible frustration to you, then, because you cannot lead me about by my prick, as it is already embedded in another, so to speak. And you could not have such an effect upon your father, either.”

Her glare told me I was correct in ways words never could.

“I could have had any man I wanted in the court,” she spat.

I chuckled. “I would bet you could. Though in time, I feel you would have found that there are men well-versed in that game, too.”

She awarded me a look that told me she thought herself much smarter than that. I found this very funny, as I had come across a number of young ladies like her in my travels, and I had ruined all of them in some fashion. Perhaps it was because I was not so easily led about by the prick by such… small hands.

“Is there any more rum in this room?” I asked with amusement, “Or did you drink it all?”

She leaned over and gracefully retrieved another onion bottle from beneath the bed, exposing a tantalizing stretch of buttock and thigh as she did so. I mused on how tempted I would have been to play with her a mere year ago.

She took a long drink before passing me the bottle. I found it to be more of the fruit-and-rum concoction, and I took a healthy drink as well.“Do you intend to stay sotted your entire time here?” I asked.

“Do you think it likely this island will cease to produce rum?” she asked.

“At least you are not drinking the water,” I said with a sigh. But then I remembered Gaston’s comment that nothing lived in rum and men who consumed only rum did not fare much better than things left to drown in it. Perhaps she would kill herself with strong drink. Then I thought that sad and unfair. She did not deserve such a fate. She was merely another pawn in the hand of Destiny.

“Do you wish to do as we must if ever we are to be free of one another?” I asked.

“Can you offer guarantee I would get with child this night?” she asked in kind.

“Nay.”

“Then, nay.”

I shrugged. “That suits me well this eve. Perhaps things will have changed by the time I return.”

“You think I will die of some tropical malady?” she sneered.

“The Spanish might kill me,” I said cheerily, and raised the bottle.

This elicited true laughter from her. “Oh, I hope so,” she said between gasps.

I grinned. “Aye, of course, then you could return to London a grieving widow. I am sure you look quite fetching in black.”

Her mien sobered, though she was anything but. “I do look truly fine in black.”

This set me to chuckling, and I handed her the bottle and left the bed to dress. “If you will excuse me, then, I have matters to discuss with my uncle before I sail.”

“Such as what to do with me while you are away?” she asked. “You know that bastard Ashland will sail?”

“Nay, I have hired him to protect my sister, and you. But I have instructed him that I care not who you see. You are free to find whatever amusement you fancy.”

She frowned at this. “Why? You think...”

I could see she was too rum-addled to think her way out of the bed.

I leaned to her and said clearly. “If you take a lover and you are indiscreet, I can send you back to England without angering my father.”

“You arse,” she spat. “I will show you.”

“Please do.”

I left her there, sputtering invective, and made my way through the darkened hall toward the flickering lamplight at the bottom of the stairs.

I found Uncle Cedric and Rucker sitting in the parlor drinking wine.

I gave them scant greeting and poured myself a cup as they eyed me curiously.

“Do you find her so very onerous?” my uncle asked. “She is quite fetching.”

“If her mien ever matched her physique, I would be quite taken with her,” I assured him. “But as she is quite the bitch, getting an heir upon her is quite the chore.”

“Oh,” he sighed. “I had hoped you might woo her beyond her…

reservations about the marriage.”

“I tried to, Uncle, and I have successfully wooed many a woman. I would even go so far as to say that I have seduced a number of them into doing things they knew they ought not. But she is… Let us say I am not so very motivated with her, and she is very motivated to deny us both the pleasures that are usually so amply available in the absence of love.”

“Pity,” he sighed.

“Aye, it is.”

“At least you will not be giving her opportunity to poison you,”

Rucker said thoughtfully.

I thought of the bottle in her room and frowned at him.

“Like Alexander the Great’s wives, and most of the Ceasars’ wives, and…” he shrugged.

I chuckled. “I had not considered that an option; but you are correct, it is lucky I will be sailing.”

The more I thought on it, the more I felt I was a fool for trusting her in any fashion; but on the other hand, a bride I was ostensibly expected to reject being sent here to assassinate me was far too convoluted even for my father. And by herself, I did not think it was in her to plan such a thing: she was a drinker, not a killer: one prone to drown in her sorrows rather than find a shore to swim to.

“Did she drink a good deal of wine on the voyage?” I asked.

“Aye,” my uncle shrugged, “and beer; but many of us did; it helped to pass the time, and you cannot drink the water.”

“She seems to be intoxicated a good deal of any given day,” Rucker added quietly.

“Lovely,” I sighed.

A woman’s shriek rent the night. It came from the back of the house.

I was on my feet, pistol drawn, and nearly to the passageway to the back room when Gaston appeared in it. Ashland was behind him, sword in hand, eyes intent on my matelot.

I aimed at the mercenary. “Ashland! Nay!”

Gaston bent as the man rushed up, giving me a clear target, but then my matelot did a thing I had seen him do before, and Ashland was up and over Gaston’s shoulder, tumbling to the floor before him.

“Stay down!” I roared at the man.

“Pete!” Gaston gasped between pants. “Is he…?

The front door slammed open. I did not turn to see who entered.

Gaston and I raced to the stairs. He beat me and ran up them. I reached the bottom, and stopped when I felt the presence behind me. I whirled to level my cocked pistol at Pete’s face.

“Striker!” I bellowed.

The Golden One was a great snarling thing, blue eyes blazing in the dim light, naked save breeches and thankfully unarmed.

“Ya Will Na Shoot Me,” he growled.

I did not blink or allow my eyes to waver from his. I spoke slowly. “If I feel my sister’s life, or any other’s, is at stake, aye, I will shoot you, and then I will pray Gaston can mend you.”

His gaze narrowed as he grimaced with amusement, and the sigh he released was more snarl than sibilance, but he did take a step back.

This made him no less menacing, though, as with his hands on either rail, he still seemed to occupy the entirety of the stairwell’s end.

“Don Wanna’ Kill’Er,” he said. “Don Wanna’ Urt’Er.”

“Then what do you want?” Striker asked from behind me.

Pete’s gaze went past me to his former matelot. “Wanna Talk To’Er!”

“Nay,” Striker said.

“I would speak with him, too,” Sarah said.

I did not dare let my eyes leave Pete to turn and measure their mien.

“IWill Na’ Lay AHand On’Er,” Pete growled.