The Shores of Spain (11 page)

“I love you, Joaquim,” she mumbled in the darkness.

He pressed a kiss to her hair. “I love you too, darling.”

“I’m glad you’re not angry with me.” She sighed and nestled closer.

With her soft hair against his cheek and her body pressed against his, it was going to take him
hours
to get to sleep.

*   *   *

M
arina woke tangled in Joaquim’s arms, recognizing that only after a panicked instant where she’d dreamed herself entangled in seaweed. But his body was warm and solid. One hand pressed against the small of her back, keeping her close. He smelled of seawater and perspiration.

Not that she smelled any better. The clothes in that closet stank of something acrid, and that scent was all over her now. Her hair must be mussed and she needed to visit the tiny water closet again. And she was thirsty and hungry atop all that. Her careful plan had gone all awry.

But she was still here.
With him
.

Joaquim hadn’t taken her back to Portugal. Nor had he told her to take the bed and gone to sleep on the deck as she’d half feared he would. He’d always been so proper and polite with her until the afternoon before. It was as if telling her his secrets had let loose some flood of passion she’d never known he possessed. Perhaps his other reservations about her would fade too.

She slipped out of his arms and off the narrow bed as he slept on. She stared down at him in the darkness, but then the boat rolled on the water and she nearly fell atop him, so she went to visit the tiny water closet before she accidentally woke him. When she returned a few minutes later, she slipped back under the warm blankets and he folded her back into his arms without even waking. His cheek came to rest against hers, stubble pricking her skin. Sereia males rarely had facial hair, so she found the mustaches so common among the men of the Golden City a little off-putting. She hoped Joaquim didn’t decide to grow one.

But this was warm and comfortable. It wasn’t all she wanted, but it was a good start. She spread her chilled fingers and laid them against his bare chest. He flinched at the cold, but didn’t wake. Very softly—so softly that it was no more than a whisper—she began to sing.

Her sister, Oriana, had amazing power when she
called
, one of the reasons her aunts had pushed Oriana to join the Ministry of Intelligence. Oriana could use her
call
to influence humans from a distance, but Marina’s magic was far more limited. She could barely draw humans to her at all, not more than a few feet. She had to be touching them to have any true effect.

Even so, she could wrap her meager power around Joaquim to guard him from the magic of other sereia. Headed as they were to the islands, she didn’t want him ending up in some other female’s grip. She wasn’t going to let any other woman have him.

So she hummed a wordless
call
, pouring into it every bit of her longing for him, declaring that he was
hers
, asserting her claim on him. She only hoped her limited powers would be enough to hold him.

CHAPTER 9

                   W
EDNESDAY
,
22
A
PRIL
1903
;
THE
OPEN
OCEAN                   

J
oaquim woke with a start when he heard his name called. He was confused for a split second, unsure what was happening and where he was. He was overwarm, tangled in Marina’s arms and the blankets.

He’d never woken in a woman’s arms before. It put thoughts in his head that his body . . .

“Mr. Joaquim?” João called down again. “Are you awake?”

Oh, hell and damnation!
So much for any lustful ideas his body might have. “Yes,” Joaquim yelled back.

Marina blinked up at him blearily. “What?”

“Shhh,” he said. “I’ll be up in a few minutes, João,” he called toward the ladder.

The shadow at the head of the cabin’s hatch disappeared. Joaquim let loose a frustrated breath. He had Marina to himself, but the situation wasn’t what he wanted.

He’d been thinking of a fine wedding, a small one, with just their families. Perhaps taking her to Sintra and Lisboa in Southern Portugal for a week afterward, down to see the Algarve, or up to the mountains of the Douro River Valley. Instead they were on a cramped yacht, and not alone. Joaquim gazed down at Marina’s face.

She still seemed only halfway awake. Her delicate scarred hand came to rest on his chest, and he wrapped his own around it. “I have to go help João,” he said. “You can come up on deck if you want.”

The corners of her mouth turned down as if she wanted to frown, but she nodded quickly.

What am I supposed to say now?
And how was he supposed to escape this bunk? He was pinned next to the hull of the boat. Crawling over her wasn’t a graceful option. Joaquim huffed out a sigh, reflecting then that his breath must also be far from perfect. “I need to go up there, Marina. Would you let me past?”

Her cheeks flushed. She jerked her fingers out of his and struggled with the blankets to free herself. But instead of rising to her feet, she overbalanced and slid from the bunk onto the decking with a dismayed cry.

Cursing under his breath, Joaquim swung his feet over the edge. He got out of bed without stepping on her, and then hauled her upright. Her face was red and she looked on the verge of tears again. Leaning down to meet her eyes, Joaquim cupped her cheeks with his hands. “We’ll work this out,” he promised. “Just be patient with me.”

She nodded again wordlessly.

Yes, I’ve done everything wrong
. But he didn’t know how to fix it, so he grabbed his portmanteau off the floor, set it on the unmade bunk, and dug out a clean shirt. “I’m going to use the water closet and then head upstairs,” he said. “You can join us when you like. Did you bring any clothes with you?”

Marina shook her head, her lower lip enticingly caught between her sharp teeth.

Seeing that, he felt his heart thumping a little harder. For a moment, he actually considered ignoring João. “You’re welcome to dig through this and see if anything of mine would work for you. Or I can ask João if you can borrow something of Aga’s.”

“No, don’t do that. I’ll just . . .” She made a vague gesture in the direction of his bag.

“Very well, then.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her cheek, then went off to the water closet before he said anything else stupid.

*   *   *

M
arina sat down on the unmade bunk. What she’d wanted to do was urge Joaquim to stay with her, but João and his wife had been on deck all night. That was one thing she’d learned on the English ship she’d been on. Someone had to be on duty at all times, even when the sails were down and the motor quiet.

She considered his bag, so trustingly left open.
Does he have any more secrets?
She could go through his things, find out what was in there. Perhaps there was a journal in which he confessed his love for her. Or perhaps there was a journal in which he
didn’t
. Given how poorly things had gone so far, she probably didn’t want to know.

But her borrowed garments smelled now, both from the stench in the closet and from a day’s worth of sweat. She could wash these when they arrived on the islands, but while she was on this boat, she didn’t want to stink. She should have brought a bottle of fragrance.

I’m going to make the best of this,
she told herself firmly. There was no excuse for maundering on about a situation she’d created herself.
She
had crept aboard this ship during the night.
She’d
hidden in the closet. It was all her own doing, and she was going to keep her wits about her.

She glanced into the bag and saw a neatly folded pair of linen shirts on top. She picked up one and shook it out. It would be ridiculously long on her, but she exchanged her dirty shirt for the clean one. She picked up the worn garments and laid them aside, set Joaquim’s portmanteau on the floor again, and neatly made up the bunk. There was no mirror to check her hair, but she located a comb lying on a shelf near the ladder. That must be Joaquim’s. She combed out her tangled hair and braided it.

If she was going to face the morning, she would look tidy while doing so.

Once she’d climbed the ladder to the deck of the ship, she stood still for a moment, blinded by the morning sunshine. The light reflected off the water, making it worse. She shielded her eyes with one hand and looked out over the deck. Joaquim and João were hauling on ropes to raise a third sail—the middle one—that billowed and puffed as it slid up the mast. The ship rolled on the water as that sail belled out. Full sails meant good speed on their way to the islands. Well, she assumed that was what it meant.

This ship had
two
masts, the one toward the front where Joaquim was, and a smaller mast near the back. The sail in the back was already up. Marina spotted a steam pipe protruding from the deck behind the cabin, but it wasn’t belching smoke at the moment, so they weren’t using the engine now. It was a small steam pipe, nothing like the huge ones on the English steamer she’d traveled on. But she’d heard the engine when the ship had first begun to move on the river the previous morning, so they did use it.

João’s young wife, Aga, brushed past Marina where she stood with her back against the cabin. The lovely girl paused and appraised Marina for a second, and then walked on as if she saw nothing surprising about another woman on the ship’s deck. Likely Joaquim had warned them about her unforeseen presence. Aga went to the back of the ship and began coiling a rope attached to a huge wet mess of canvas on the deck.

Marina watched all the activity warily.
The wisest thing to do is stay out of the way.

Once Joaquim and João had finished tying off the third sail, Joaquim came back toward where she stood and eased past her. “I need to check our heading,” he said, and then was gone off to the back of the boat.

Chill air came off the water, so Marina wrapped her arms about herself. João climbed up the front mast, his curly hair fluttering in the wind. He tinkered with something up on the top of the mast—a lantern. Joaquim called out something from his spot at the wheel,
and the ship began to turn, slowly listing to one side. Not enough to alarm her, but Marina watched as the water came closer . . . and then the ship began to right itself again, the sails fluttering as João scrambled down the mast.

Everyone knew exactly what to do, save her.

Presently the ship was slipping forward again on the wind, and Joaquim called for her to come back and join him. She sidled along the cabin and slipped under the sail’s boom to step down into the small spot on the deck where he stood. Aga had spread out the wet canvas, and abandoned it to head toward the front of the ship.

Once the girl was beyond hearing, Marina said, “I didn’t know a yacht would be this small.”

Joaquim’s eyes danced, but he held in his laughter. “This isn’t a small yacht.”

Marina wrapped her arms about herself. “I’ve only been on steamers, and they were all bigger than this.”

“Hmm. What kind of steamers?”

“Oh, the ferries between the islands, and the freighter I came to Portugal on.”

His brows drew together. “How
did
you get from the islands to Portugal? I know there are trading ships, but can you buy passage on one of those?”

“I think so, but taking the ferry to Amado used almost all the money I’d saved up.” She licked her upper lip. “I went to the ships that were heading to Portugal and begged them to take me in return for work. An English ship captain took pity on me and let me work in his ship’s kitchen on the way here. It was only two weeks, but it was . . .”

It had been
almost
unbearable. The work was hot, endless, and confusing, since she’d never cooked before. She’d burned her delicate hands several times and was always relieved when the time came to wash the pans and dishes. Hot water was tolerable, at least. But the cook—a stout, older woman named Mrs. Davies who could
grab a pot of boiling water with her leathery brown hands without flinching—spoke Portuguese. She’d spent the entire two weeks imparting her wisdom about preparing food. She protected Marina from the blandishments of the seamen who came down to eat. And when they reached the Golden City, Mrs. Davies had even told Marina that if she didn’t find her father, she was welcome to come back to the ship to work. After all, it was illegal then for a sereia even to enter the Golden City. Marina had been thankful when she found her father quickly. Going back to that hot kitchen hadn’t been an appealing option.

“It was?” Joaquim prompted.

She felt her cheeks flush. “It was
difficult
.”

That was the wrong thing to say, because his attention focused on her, his brow furrowed with worry. “In what way?” he asked sharply.

She gazed up at his face, perplexed by his tone, and then understood.
He’s afraid they mistreated me.
After all, Oriana had been told she’d been
murdered
by the crew of the ship she’d been taken up by. Such things probably did happen. But not to her. “The cook was kind to me,” she reassured him, “and watched over me like a mother hen. But I never want to go near a stove again.”

The tension in his shoulders eased. “I wish it had been easier for you. That took bravery, boarding a ship full of people you didn’t know and coming to Portugal.”

Marina shook her head. Oriana would
never
have gone begging to a ship full of humans. She would have stolen a ship and sailed to Portugal herself, or done something else brave and daring. “I just asked, and they helped me.”

“Sometimes asking for help is harder than trying to find your own way.”

As much as she would like to believe that, she knew better. She’d always been the cowardly one, hiding behind Oriana for protection from her cousins and the other girls at school. Even this—stowing
away on Joaquim’s ship—while it seemed daring, had been Ana’s idea, not hers.
And it hasn’t gone well so far
.