Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (16 page)

He asked for no leave, waited for no assent, but left the office immediately, slamming the door with great vigor.

Chiffinch poked at his sea coal fire before removing his cock from his breeches and pissing in the flames. He chuckled softly. The little man had courage and might yet be a good choice for a doctor. He could use some physic himself. Of late, he'd had a hurtful swelling in a big toe that he did not like. And the king swore an oath by the doctor's salve, which added vigor to the male part that would not always obey his desire.

Meriel awoke on the cushioned bench under the stern window, rocked by the ship's motion, her hand brushing spray falling against her cheek through the open window. For a moment or two, she rubbed her eyes, not remembering where she was, until full memory rushed in on her. She swung her legs to the floor, half expecting Giles to be waiting there intent on ...
hey, well, he is no eunuch.

But the room was empty, except for bread, ale and beef laid upon the small table. Had Giles placed all there, and looked down on her sleeping? Had he touched her, made her breasts swell, her stomach ache? Was her dream real?

Hungrily, she tore at a piece of bread with her teeth, gulping ale from the green glass bottle. Pale light from the stern windows lit the cabin, the lantern candle having long guttered out. Her gown and corset lay in a tangled heap on the floor where she had dropped them. She turned back to the windows and saw nothing but water and fog not yet burned away by the feeble morning sun.

Looking below, she could see plainly the dinghy was gone. At least Giles did not think her mad enough to swim the English Channel.

There was a high-backed chair at the table, a chest and piles of rope to complete the sparse furnishings. A small, cloudy mirror was nailed to the wall. She could imagine him before it, tying his hair behind his head like a sailor.

Chewing her bread and beef, she rummaged inside the chest, removing canvas breeches and a rough linen shirt, rather too open at the throat. She tied the breeches on with a short length of rope, rolled up the legs and stepped into her satin slippers, smiling to herself. After having four maids to attend her, she could still dress herself. If she ever became Meriel St. Thomas again, she would not have forgotten such necessary skills.

The mirror showed her to some disadvantage, the pearl coronet tangled tightly in her hair. She removed it along with some long strands of black hair still attached, placed it carefully on the table and began to beat upon the door. When pounding brought no response, she began to yell and hector the guard outside until Giles opened the door.

Although she had wanted him to come to the cabin, now that he was before her, she bit her lip like a shy maid. The light, reflected through the window from the sea, danced across his face, playing along his proud jawline and nose. His shirt was open to a place where a trail of dark hair began to make its way down to ... she had to hold fast to a sharp intake of breath else she'd give her feelings away, though she would hardly know how to describe them.

"Felice, you are free to come up on deck," he said, observing with some astonishment her new clothing.

Meriel knuckled her head like a common seaman, as the best way to hide her unease. "Aye, Captain, my lord earl, and if, as I warrant, you have a yardarm ready for my hanging, or a plank ready for my walking, I'll gladly oblige."

Giles bowed to hide his grin. "I have no such plans for you." He had not expected this Felice: playing the part of charming hoyden, her face bright, her dark hair a curling confusion, her color high, prettier than he had ever seen it. If she had any thought as to how ravishing she was all unkempt, a rope accenting her slender waist and even more her full bosom, which he could clearly observe, her mouth all yielding, she would appear this way always. His nails bit into bis palms and he turned abruptly and climbed to the deck, leaving her to make her own way before he was undone and behaved foolishly once again.

Sorry for my attire, your worship,
Meriel mouthed at his ... well, at his arse, since it was practically in her face all the way up the ladder, and in her memory for quite a time after. Though he had abandoned his coat and medals, he was still wearing his tight breeches for dancing. They exposed every line of muscle and tendon as he brought his weight to bear upon first one leg, then the other, then ...

Once on the small deck, she saw the sky was changing to gray to match her mood. Clinging to the rail in the choppy seas, she went hand over hand toward the short bowsprit with its jib full.

It was a stubby little ship, but a sweet body as Admiral Cheatham had said as they pored over the ship's plans together.

She stood in the stern, breathed in the sharp odor of the sea, lifting her eyes to watch the crying seagulls circling overhead. She felt the ketch meet the waves under her feet, spread her legs to keep her balance and turned her face to the blowing spray. She felt cleaner at that moment than she had since becoming Lady Felice, and somehow safer. . .. Then thought herself mad. Safer with this man who hated her as Felice and would loathe her as a commoner pretending to be his wife?

Still, he could not control the regard in his eyes or mask his kindness. Nor could she ignore the good man beneath the hard, protective shell. She did not want to know that. It made it so much harder for her to use him, though she had no choice.

She felt the warmth of his presence close behind her.
Hey, well, more than warmth, since his body is pressed hard against mine, assuring me that this lord is blessed with as much manliness as any man could expect.. .. Or woman desire.

She tried to move farther into the stern, but his body followed hers with increased pressure, his arms going around her, his hands resting on the railing. She was trapped in a warm, fleshly prison cell, and any wish to escape fled immediately.

"If you crush my breath, Giles, there will be little left of me.... Whatever your plans for tonight."

He moved back, but just enough to allow her to inhale, which she did, fairly swallowing the salty sea air. Needing more, she raised her face and breathed deeply, realizing too late that her head now rested on his shoulder. She did not move away.

"You know well what my plans are."

Meriel had never been the coquette, though she felt herself about to become one. "I've heard what pirates do to captured women."

Her head resting against him softened the answer he might have given. "Perhaps my plans are sweeter, though nonetheless inescapable."

"But, sir, I can't believe a peer of England, especially one with such a worthy little ship ..."

Though he could not see her face, Giles felt her joy in his ketch as a kind of shiver. "I thought you hated my ship, Felice." There was even more puzzlement in his voice than when he'd released her from the cabin below. "You always refused to sail with me, preferring the wilder shores of Whitehall Palace."

"Giles," she said in Felice's voice, "you seem unable to allow me any change at all, but would keep me forever a nineteen-year-old bride."

"Untrue. Indeed, I demand change in you." He felt her body stiffen against him.

Then she spoke in Meriel's humor: "Do you give no quarter, then, upon your pirate ship?"

"Nay, I will give you none, wife. What I will give you is a son and heir to my title. You'll walk that plank tonight."

Meriel gripped the bow rail long after the warmth of Giles's body left her. And without a
by your leave,
too! She waited, hoping he'd return. He did not. And she scarce suppressed a desire to blame him aloud for the chill she now felt through her sailor's canvas breeches.

Instead she began to pace the deck, head high, gaining two good sea legs, while trying not to show more suspicious delight at the sea and the wonderful little ship. She knew that Felice must have exhibited loathing for both. It would not have been in her character to enjoy what was windy and wet.

As a girl, Meriel had been out on the Stour River with Sir Edward in single-masted fishing shallops, but this ketch was a good forty feet in length with a topsail mainmast and a short mizzen, lateen rigged. Still, for all the sea knowledge gained from her master and his library, she had never felt deepwater swells lifting the deck beneath her feet, driving the ship forward like a live thing. Meriel's body tingled with fresh life, finding her balance as if born to it.

Through narrowed eyes, she watched Giles while pretending to be bored. He was more relaxed that she had yet seen him, more as she had imagined from his noble statue that he might look on a ship deck. And she saw his full smile for the first time, blazing against his dark face, as he gazed up through the halyards at the sails, snapping and billowing in a gusting language he obviously heard and understood. At that moment, the wind changed direction and the square-rigged mainsail emptied. Giles climbed hand over hand up the shrouds to the mainsail, balancing along the yard on the footropes. He grasped the sheet rope to adjust the sail, so that it would catch the next change of wind. His muscles tensed and he finished just in time for the sail to fill.

Meriel saw Giles look down to where she stood near the pin rail. She gave a sailor's two-fingered salute. He answered, raising an arm in triumph, holding on with one hand, laughing aloud, master of wind and water. Master of her heart, if she could allow him to know it.

Minutes later, they sailed through a gray fog bank, through the swells around a sandy headland and into the sun, which lit the ship and all in it. Or was it Giles's smile as he climbed down to the deck, his joy obvious at being in this time and place, a joy that she had never once glimpsed at Whitehall?

Lord Giles immediately went forward and climbed out on the short bowsprit, his long legs wrapped around the spar, making love to the ketch and hauling on the headsail like any shilling-a-week seaman. He lost his hold, slipped and swung under the spar. His name caught in her terror-tightened throat.

Giles righted himself, grinning broadly. Relieved, she saw that this lord could acknowledge his own mistakes. She liked that in anyone, but more so in a man because so many men thought they were served only by blame. Yet Giles had no such need. Meriel was more convinced than ever that Felice was the greatest fool in the realm for turning away from such a lord, whose real charms would long outlast Buckingham's or Rochester's foolish ones.

Meriel sat on a coil of rope, languidly leaning against the mainmast, and tried to keep her eyes from him, maintaining a frown on her face.
Hey, well, I am supposed to be abducted against my will, aren 't I?
Perhaps she should worry about her mission to the Hollander's fleet, and she would worry soon. But not yet. Her eyes on this man wouldn't allow it.

Giles's black hair damp and curling with spray, his shirt clinging to his wide shoulders and Well-muscled arms were in sharp outline against the blue water. She swallowed hard because she could scarce believe what she saw, though she doubted she would ever forget. Giles was a picture painted on her mind for all time. Whatever happened, she would be able to conjure the colors of sea and sky, the sound of waves and wind and the picture of a happy man, legs spread wide, riding the swells like he meant to tame them. Indeed, she would not be able to erase this picture no matter if she tried.

And why should she? Tonight he had sworn to bed her. And although it had sounded a threat because he thought her an unloving, wicked wife, the words had not frightened her.

Being bedded by a Garter knight, who looked to be her Adonis come to life, hardly compared to what she'd already experienced. And it wasn't as if she were totally unaware of what happened when a man mounted a woman. Men were men. They did what they did for their own satisfaction. Yet she could not help but think that the Earl of Warborough might be very much better at it than most. Suppressed laughter settled in her belly. She was being wishful, when she never had been afore.

Giles called for sail to be shortened, and as the wind fell away on a larboard tack, they steered the ketch into Great Yarmouth harbor to a dockyard just past the mouth of the North River. He went over the side into the longboat that towed the ketch into its berth, pulling an oar and singing loudly with the men. Leaping to the dock, he called for a hawser to tie up to the ring bolts, and saw Felice overlooking the rail.

"Rig a steady ladder for my lady, Tom."

Tom pulled his forelock. "My lord, it 'pears yer lady be not needing one."

Giles managed to hide his astonishment, but only just. Felice was scrambling hand over hand down the rope ladder in her seaman's breeches as if born to it. What was this? He refused to believe his eyes. Felice was not above such a trick to put him in ease of mind so as to work some secret will on him. He was no eager bridegroom to be duped by a beautiful face and curving form, not to mention very pretty legs. He had himself well in hand, though he was feeling heated. He'd not deny that he wanted this wife, but only to get an heir. No more.

Giles looked quickly away from Felice's ripe body as she clambered into the boat. When his eyes returned much against his will, she was pulling the end of an oar with Tom Barnes, singing with the men. What was Felice's game, with this constant effort to amaze him? She had always been far too indolent to work so hard for his approval. Why now? He must watch her closely, And take hard hold of his thoughts, remembering that he had but one use for the woman. She must deliver an heir to him. That was her only function. Then she could descend to the hottest level of Hades. His heart would not be involved, as hers would not.

Having been sent for as the ketch rounded the sand spit into the harbor, a small coach-and-two with a coat of arms painted in gilt on its door soon arrived on the dock from Harringdon Hall. The arms were quartered with a lion rampant. Meriel knew little of heraldry, but everyone knew the lion quartering was a sign of royal ancestry. 'Od's grace! She didn't want two kings in her tragic life.