Even a beautiful fish still died, was still food.
She’d left home seeking to experience real life, true passion, grand adventure. Well, this was real life, and it wasn’t pretty. And every moment she stood here, staring blankly at the deck and crying pointless tears, was a moment of real life wasted.
“Here’s another,” one of the sailors called, flinging his harpoon back into the sea. A second later, he crowed with triumph. “Got ’im in one.”
Sophia rushed back to the rail and peered over the edge at the thrashing fish churning the waves to froth. A giddy thrill warmed her toes.
The crewman began to pull in the rope, hand over hand.
“May I help bring it in?” she asked.
“What?” the sailor grunted, not losing his pace.
“May I?” She jerked her chin at the struggling fish and laid one hand on the rope, above his. She had reeled in a fish before—granted, it was a smallish trout, plucked from a stream in the English midlands. But still, the principle appeared the same.
He stared at her a moment, then shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”
Sophia grasped the rope with both hands, and he showed her how to brace one foot on the bulwark and pull hand over hand, letting the rope fall in a neat coil at their feet.
“Ready to try it yerself?” he asked.
She nodded, and he released the rope.
“Ah!” Sophia gave a sharp cry as several yards of cable slid straight through her grip. The dolphin-fish was swifter than she’d expected, and stronger, too. Now she’d made matters worse by giving it more slack, more room to struggle.
“Shall I help you, miss?” the sailor asked.
“No, thank you. I’ll do.” Bracing her foot and tightening her grip, Sophia clenched her teeth and began to pull, arm over arm. For every arm-length of rope she pulled in, it seemed the dolphin-fish took three. What with all this thrashing, the fish would probably resemble mincemeat by the time she hauled it aboard.
But she
would
haul it aboard, if it was the last thing she did. And she would rejoice to see even minced fish on her plate tonight, instead of salt pork.
After a minute, the task seemed to grow easier, presumably because the fish grew weaker. But just when she thought she had it netted, the dolphin-fish made one last desperate surge for freedom, dragging her a few steps toward the bow. Her boot caught in the coiled rope, and she very nearly tripped. She managed to pull up, however, and regain control. Her efforts were rewarded with a rousing chorus of whistles and cheers.
“That’s the way, miss!”
“You’ve got ’im now!”
Slowly pivoting her head from one side to the other, Sophia realized she’ d amassed quite an audience. Evidently her battle with the fish made for high entertainment. Ah, well. Let the men laugh. She was having fun, too.
She smiled as she resumed pulling in the catch.
In fact, she was having the time of her life.
Jesus Christ. The chit was going to get herself killed.
From the stern, Gray looked on in disbelief as Miss Turner played tug-o-war with a fish and the crew watched with glee. What the hell were they thinking?
“What the hell are they thinking?” Joss came to Gray’s side. “Mr. Wiggins,” he ordered, “tell the men—”
“Don’t bother,” Gray called out, vaulting over the rail that separated helm and quarterdeck. “I’ll put a stop to it myself.”
Long strides carried him across the decking, while Gray tried to hold panic at bay. Devil take it, when had the
Aphrodite
become so damned long? Up at the bow, Miss Turner lost her footing, tripping over the coiled rope, and Gray very nearly lost his breakfast.
“Bloody idiots,” he muttered, as a prelude to the worse invectives running through his mind. Only a fool let a fish thrash at the end of a rope like that, churning up the froth, leaving a wake of blood and innards on the waves. It was a cretinous way to catch a fish, and a surefire method of attracting a—
“Shark!”
And from there on, it all went so fast. But so slowly, at the same time.
Had the girl any common sense, she would have dropped the line at once. But she had no sense. She made no sense. She was a pale English rose of a governess, adrift in a watery wilderness, on her way to a grueling post on a godforsaken island, when any fool could have told her—a woman so lovely need never work for her keep.
Had the men around her any sense, they would have cut the rope immediately. But they were idiots, bloody shite-for-brains idiots, too entranced by the pretty girl in peril to reach for their knives.
Had Gray his own knife, he would have drawn it. But he wasn’t wearing his knife, because he wasn’t the captain on this ship, was he? Nor an officer, nor even part of the crew. He was just a stupid, overdressed passenger who hadn’t strapped on a goddamned knife that morning because it might ruin the lines of his goddamned brand-new coat.
No, he didn’t have his knife. But he had his legs, powering him the remaining yards to the bow. He had his arms, lashing around Miss Turner just as the shark’s jaws snatched the dolphin-fish carcass and dragged it under the waves. And he had his voice, that authoritative tone of command. The voice that carried over storms, and gunfire, and howls of pain.
“Let go of the line.” He grabbed her forearms and shook them. Jesus, she’d been holding on to the thing for so long, her instinct was to tighten her fingers further. Precisely the wrong thing to do. As the shark lunged away, the cable streamed through her two-fisted grip, no doubt taking the skin of her palms along with it.
“Let it go!” he ordered. “Now!”
She did. Her shaking fingers were white; her palms were abraded and raw.
And damn it to hell, he stared at those ruined hands an instant too long.
By the time Gray attempted to pull her back from the rail, the shark had spooled out several more yards of rope. The rope that lay coiled and tangled about her foot, that was.
“Cut the bloody line!” he commanded, tightening his arms around her slender frame and jamming his boot down on top of hers.
The rope cinched like a noose about their ankles, yanking their feet out from under them. She screamed as together they fell to the deck, then skidded toward the rail, tugged by their intertwined legs. In a matter of seconds, they would either be pulled overboard entirely, or have their legs torn off. Neither alternative sounded particularly pleasant. Gray shoved his free boot against the bulwark, bracing himself for what he knew would be a futile, and brief, wrestling match with a shark. He gritted his teeth. “Someone. Cut. The. Damn. Line.”
Thwack
.
Someone did.
Gray lifted his head to spy Levi’s hand on an ax handle, and the blade several inches deep in the rail. “Thank you,” he huffed, letting his head fall back against the deck.
And now here he lay on the forecastle, holding Miss Turner as if they were two spoons in a drawer. The crown of her head tucked neatly under his chin, and her round little bottom nestled between his thighs. She was damp with sweat, and panting for breath. Gray was struck by the ridiculous notion that he’d had a dream the other night, very much like this. Except they’d been wearing fewer clothes. And there hadn’t been a half-dozen gawking seamen standing about.
And what did she say, his dream girl? This exquisite, rose-scented siren who would smile as she pulled him to his death?
“Well,” she said. “That was exciting.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“That”—Mr. Grayson slammed the door of the captain’s cabin—“was the most breathtaking display of stupidity I have ever witnessed in my life.”
Sophia cringed in her chair as he plunked a basin of water on the table. Liquid sloshed over the side, trickling toward the floor. With jerky motions, he removed a flask from his breast pocket, unscrewed the top, and added a splash of brandy. Then he threw back a healthy swallow, himself.
She’d never seen him so agitated. He took everything as a joke, laughed off confrontation, deflected insult with a roguish smile.
“You’re angry,” she said.
“Damn right, I’m angry. I’d like to string every one of those bloody idiots up to the yardarm and shout them deaf.”
“So why are you here, shouting at me?”
He yanked open a drawer and removed a box. When he flung it on the table and flipped the latch, the box proved to be a medicine kit, crowded with brown glass vials and plasters and rolls of gauze.
“Because …” With a sullen sigh, he dropped into the other chair. “Shouting the crew deaf is the captain’s privilege. And I’m not the captain. So I’m here instead, playing nursemaid. Give me your hands.”
She lifted her clenched hands to the table and slowly uncurled her fingers. Across each palm was painted a wide, angry swath of red.
Swearing under his breath, he gingerly lifted one of her hands and laid it across his own. His tanned, weathered fingers dwarfed hers.
With his free hand, he dipped a piece of gauze into the basin. “This will hurt.”
“It already hurts.”
“It will hurt more.”
Sophia winced as he sponged the wound. Yes, it did hurt more. It hurt worse when she looked at it, so instead she looked at him. She hadn’t come this near to him in days, not since they watched Davy Linnet climb the mast. Now she drank in every detail of his rugged, handsome face: the strong jaw sporting several days’ growth of beard, that thin scar tracing a path to his sensuous lips, the faint creases at the corners of his eyes, the result of weather or laughter or both. His was a face sculpted by real life, and it wasn’t pretty.
It was captivating.
“Do you realize you could have died?” he asked gruffly.
Sophia bit her lip. She did understand, in some way, that together they had just cheated death. Perhaps she ought to be rattled now, shaking with terror—but instead, she felt nothing but alive. Gloriously alive, and connected to this man, as though that rope were still binding her ankle to his.
He dipped the gauze again. “Why didn’t you let go of the line when I told you to?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s obvious. For a governess, you don’t have much sense.” He blew lightly across her palm, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. His gray-green eyes locked with hers. “For a governess, you don’t make much sense.”
And now a shiver swept down to her toes.
He released the one hand and took up the other, dunking a fresh piece of gauze. Swabbing at her wound, he said, “You’re a puzzle, Miss Turner, but none of the pieces fit. That abhorrent gown cannot have been made for you. Your gloves were a gift. The loss of two sheets of paper has you in tears, and even your handkerchiefs bear someone else’s monogram.”
Panic coursed through her body, drawing every nerve to attention. He blew over her palm again, and this time the sensation nearly undid her.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.
“You’ve been avoiding me, too.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
I didn’t think I had
. Her heartbeat pounded as he dressed her wounds, winding the bandage tightly around her palm. “I told you, I—”
“You told me you’d pay your fare that day, and you’ve been avoiding me ever since. I know why, Miss Turner.”
“You do?”
“I do.” He bandaged her other hand.
Oh, God
. How much did he truly know? Should she stick with her old story? Invent a new one? Normally, Sophia could weave an entire web of lies with the same effortless talent of a spider spinning silk. But he’d always thrown her off balance, from their very first meeting, and now … now she was wounded and in pain, and he was caring for her so tenderly. And when she closed her eyes, she saw the angry, gaping maw of a shark—but she felt his arms around her, holding her fast. Protecting her. All she could think of was how right it felt, and how much she wanted to feel it again.
“You’ve been lying to me all along, haven’t you?”
She couldn’t answer. Her voice simply wouldn’t work.
“Look at you,” he said, his gaze running over her face. “Gone white as sailcloth. I knew it. You never intended to pay your fare. You don’t have a shilling to your name, do you?”
Sophia blinked at him. What to say? She needed to keep her money— which meant she needed to keep it secret. He was offering her a gift, with his ridiculous, wrongheaded, oh-so-male assumption. She would be a fool not to take it.
“Do you?” he repeated, his thumb tightening over her wrist.
Casting her eyes to her lap, Sophia released a breathy, dramatic sigh. “What will you do with me?”
“I don’t know what to do with you,” he said, his voice growing curt with anger again. “Deceitful little minx. I’m of half a mind to put you to work, milking the goats. But that’s out of the question with these hands, now isn’t it?” He curled and uncurled her fingers a few times, testing the bandage. “I’ ll tell Stubb to change this twice a day. Can’t risk the wound going septic. And don’t use your hands for a few days, at least.”
“Don’t use my hands? I suppose you’re going to spoon-feed me, then? Dress me? Bathe me?”
He inhaled slowly and closed his eyes. “Don’t use your hands
much
.” His eyes snapped open. “None of that sketching, for instance.”