“Aye.” His voice cracked slightly on the word, and he paused. It must have been a full minute before he spoke again. “He’s a good man, the captain.”
Her hand stilled. “The captain?”
“Gray. He’s a good man, Miss Turner. He’ll do right by you.”
Sweet Heavens, the boy was giving her his blessing. Sophia didn’t know what to say. It would probably wound his pride, to call him the loving brother she’d never had. Certainly, she couldn’t tell him the truth of how matters stood between her and Gray. She didn’t want to deplete the boy’s faith in his captain’s honorable intentions. To the contrary, she dearly wished to borrow it.
Sniffing, she let go of the goat’s teat and brushed her hand on her skirts. “I think she’s empty.”
“Are you certain?” He reached under the goat and gave the udder a brisk rub. Then he took the teat closest to Sophia and gave it a twist. A fresh stream of milk shot forth, glancing off the rim of the bucket and splashing her slippers.
“Take care!” With a little shriek of laughter, she pushed away from the goat’s side. Davy tilted his hand and squeezed the teat again, this time splattering Sophia from crown to chest. Sputtering and wiping milk from her face, she scrambled to her feet. “Davy Linnet,” she scolded, towering over both youth and goat. “You’re a rascal.”
“Am I?” He flashed her a lopsided, innocent grin. Shrugging, he dropped his gaze and emptied the last drops of milk into the pail. “Well, you’re blushing.”
Sophia made a show of huffing and crossing her arms, but she could not keep the laughter out of her voice. “Never say you’ve learned nothing from me, Davy. You might have shown me how to milk, but I’ve taught you to flirt.”
“A fair bargain, then.” He stood and took the goat by its collar.
“Perhaps. Mind you don’t confuse the two talents. Keep your goats straight from your girls.”
“That’s easily done.” Mischief twinkled sharp in his eye. “The goats don’t blush.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Gray scowled at the ink spattering his trousers and pooling atop the toe of his boot. This was why captains had cabins. It was nigh on impossible to keep a proper log in the first-mate’s berth, with only the most meager of lighting and this paltry writing surface jutting out from the wall, too narrow to accommodate both logbook and inkwell. And, he concluded as he frowned at the now-emptied latter, it was definitely impossible to keep a log without the benefit of ink.
He threw open the door of his berth and entered the captain’s cabin, knowing it to be unoccupied. At this hour, she would be preparing dinner in the galley. Flinging the logbook and quill down on the table, he moved to search the built-in drawers for a fresh bottle of ink. He found none.
“Blast.”
His eye fell on her trunks, stacked neatly in the corner. Surely she had a supply of ink, and quality ink at that. Without sparing a moment to second-guess the decision, he strode to her trunks and worked open the latches of the smaller trunk. He flipped it open.
It felt intimate, revealing. As if he’d unlaced her stays. And what treasures awaited him. Sheaves of paper, neatly wrapped in oilcloth and tied with efficient knots—knots that would do a sailor proud. Small bundles of brushes, smelling faintly of turpentine. And rows upon rows of her little bottles of ink and cakes of pigment. Of course, for Gray, the array of colors did not particularly impress. Rather, it was the care and precision with which they were packed that caused a sharp pinch in his chest. In this trunk was everything of delicacy, beauty, and painstaking care. Everything he admired in
her
, laid open for his examination, with no veneer of lies to obscure his view.
He looked his fill. He touched each item in the trunk, skipping his fingers from one object to the next. He couldn’t bring himself to lift one out.
Until a small, leather-bound book wedged along one side caught his attention. Hooking a fingertip under the spine, he eased the volume up, and a title greeted him:
The Memoirs of a Wanton Dairymaid
. His shout of laughter rattled the bottles in their straw-buffered rows. So this was the one book she’d selected for the journey? A ribald novel?
Gray tipped the book into his hand. The binding was strained and the pages swollen—as though the entire volume had been dipped in water and dried. The cover fell open to reveal an elaborate frontispiece, depicting a buxom dairymaid wearing a straw bonnet, voluminous petticoats, and a knowing smile. On riffling the pages, it immediately became clear that the book’s expanded bulk could be credited to the addition of numerous pen-and-ink illustrations.
He recognized her deft hand and eye for detail immediately. He flipped through the pages, past vignettes of the dairymaid and her vague-featured gentleman engaged in a courtship of sorts: a kiss on the hand, a whisper in the ear. By the book’s midpoint, the chit’s voluminous petticoats were up around her ears, and the illustrations comprised a sequence of quite similar poses in varying locales. Not just the dairy, but a carriage, the larder, in a hayloft lit with candles and strewn with … were those rose petals?
I’ll be damned
.
Gray was fast divining the true source of the French painting master’s mythic exploits. More unsettling by far, however, as he perused the book, he noted a subtle alteration in the gentleman lover’s features. With each successive illustration, the hero appeared taller, broader in the shoulders, and his hair went from a cropped style to collar length in the space of two pages.
The more pages Gray turned, the more he recognized himself.
It was unmistakable. She’d used him as the model for these bawdy illustrations. She’d sketched him in secret; not once, but many times. And here he’d nearly gone mad with envy over each scrap of foolscap she’d inked for one crewman or another. His emotions underwent a dizzying progression—from surprised, to flattered, to (with the benefit of one especially inventive situation in an orchard) undeniably aroused.
But as he lingered over a nude study of this amalgam of the real him and some picaresque fantasy, he began to feel something else entirely. He felt used.
She’d rendered his form with astonishing accuracy, given that it must have been drawn before she’d any opportunity to actually see him unclothed. Not that she’d achieved an exact likeness. Her virgin’s imagination was rather generous in certain aspects and somewhat stinting in others, he noted with a bitter sort of amusement. But she’d laid him bare in these pages, without his knowledge or consent. God, she’d even drawn his scars. All in service of some adolescent erotic fantasy.
And now he began to grow angry.
He had been handling the leaves of the book with his fingertips only, anxious he might smudge or rip the pages. Now he abandoned all caution and flipped roughly through the remainder of the volume. Until he came to the end, and his hand froze.
There they were, the two of them. He and she, fully clothed and unengaged in any physical intimacies—yet intimate, in a way he had never known. Never dreamed. Sitting beneath a willow tree, his head in her lap. One of her hands lay twined with his, atop his chest. The other rested on his brow. The sky soared vast and expansive above, gauzy clouds spinning into forever.
The hot fist of desire that had gripped his loins loosened, moved upward through his torso, churning the contents of his gut along the way. Then it clutched at his heart and squeezed until it hurt. Somehow, this illustration was the most dismaying of all. So naïve, so ridiculous. At least the bawdy situations were plausible, if sometimes physically improbable. This was utterly impossible. To her, he’d never been more than a fantasy.
It occurred to Gray that more secrets might be packed within these trunks. If he sorted through her belongings, he might find the answers to all his questions. Perhaps answers to questions he’d never thought to ask. In spite of this, he let the lid of the trunk clap shut and fastened the strap with shaking fingers. He’d suffered as many of her fantasies as he could bear for one day.
It was time to acquaint her with reality.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Reality was hitting Sophia hard. Or rather, kicking her hard, and leaving bruises the size and shape of a goat’s cloven hoof. Reality was making her ache all over, in muscles she hadn’t known she possessed.
Her first day as ship’s cook had been novel, amusing. She’d experienced the thrill of competency and earning her own keep. Each fire built, each potato peeled, each squirt of milk into the pail was a small triumph. Just a few days later, she was fully prepared to admit defeat. Manual labor was not romantic in the least, and only dimly satisfying, in the way chewing rock-hard ship’s biscuit satisfied one’s hunger—begrudgingly, and at considerable expense of effort.
Once she assumed control of her inheritance, she intended to never boil water or tend a goat again. With a bit of prudence, her trust ought to keep her in servants for the remainder of her days. For the remainder of this voyage, however, she would toil or go hungry. And if there was one thing Sophia suspected would suit her less than a life of menial servitude, it was hunger.
The work suited Gray, though. He’d slipped into the role of
Kestrel’s
captain faster than he’d filled out a borrowed tunic and trousers. Authority was simply comfortable to him, like a second skin.
Despite all that had passed between them, despite his anger and hurt—at some deeper stratum of his being, he was more content than she’d ever seen him. He was pleased to be in command, to be on deck working rather than sitting idly below, and Sophia was pleased to see him where he belonged, living as he was meant to live.
Because she loved him, so much it hurt. She wanted him to be happy, whether or not that meant being with her. And if she never laid eyes on him again after they dropped anchor, she would carry this picture of him forever: Gray prowling the deck of the
Kestrel
, all confidence and energy and charisma, coordinating the movement of the sails and rigging as instinctively as he manipulated the fingers on his hand.
As for herself, the current picture was one she would endeavor to forget.
Toting a pail of hard-earned milk, she shouldered open the door to the storeroom to gather biscuit and salt-beef for the evening meal. Weak light spilled into the barrel-crammed space. She stomped hard on the floorboards: once, twice, three times. Then she counted ten and tried to ignore the sounds of rats scattering into the shadows. Heavens, if her mother could see her now. There weren’t enough restoratives in Bath and Brighton combined to counteract the attack of nerves this scene would doubtless inspire.
When the sounds of scratching faded, she entered the storeroom and turned to rest the milk pail on a waist-high crate.
A hand clapped on her shoulder.
Milk sloshed over the side of the pail, dousing her hand and splattering her skirts. A startled cry whooshed out of her as an arm whipped around her waist. Her back collided with a wall of heat and muscle.
“Is this what you wanted?” The rough whisper warmed her ear.
“
Gray
.” She nearly fainted with relief. He held her tight against him with one arm, his other hand skimming over the curve of her hip. “Gray, what on earth are you doing? You made me spill the milk, drat you.”
“It won’t go to waste.” Resting his chin on her shoulder, he untangled her fingers from the pail’s handle. Bending her arm at the elbow, he lifted her fingers to his mouth, sucking them clean one by one. His tongue traced each finger and the delicate webs between them, sending gooseflesh rippling down the backs of her legs.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” His fingers interlaced with hers, squeezing them until they hurt. “Your dream lover, lurking in the shadows of the stables, the larder … the storeroom? Lying in wait for his wanton dairymaid?”
Sophia froze. Dear God, he’d seen
The Book
. He nipped at the curve of her neck, and she gasped. “You—” She swallowed hard. “You had no right to look through that.”
“You had no right to put me in it.” She could hear the raw edge of anger in his voice. His fingers still gripping hers, he pressed her own hand to her breast. “But let’s not dwell on rights, sweet. Not when wrongs are so much more interesting.”
His hand flexed, digging her own fingers into the flesh of her breast. She felt the soft globe heating in her palm, the nipple firming to a tight knot.
“Gray.” She tried for a reproving tone, squirming in his vise-like grip. His arm tightened about her waist, pulling her backside flush with his hips. The hard ridge of his arousal pulsed against the small of her back, hot and demanding. Her feeble attempts at resistance melted. Hadn’t she been waiting days for just this? Longing for him to reach for her, take her in his arms? Yearning for the feeling of his strength surrounding her once more? Gentle or bruising—the precise manner of the gesture mattered little. What mattered was him. His warmth … his touch … his mouth …
“Did you think of me, as you lay in your bunk at night?” His hand kept kneading her fingers around her breast, chafing her palm against the aching peak. “Did you imagine these coarse hands pawing your body?” He dragged her hand to her other breast, groping impatiently. His lips traced the ridge of her ear, drew on the sensitive lobe with hot, wet suction. The nape of her neck prickled with excitement. Arousal washed through her, sweeping over the surface of her body and rushing together at the apex of her thighs. She closed her eyes and saw red waves of sensation pulse through her with each flick of his tongue against her ear.