The Least Likely Bride

Chapter Twelve

Anthony turned the boat in the narrow passage. “Can you swim?”

Olivia shook her head. “No. I grew up in Yorkshire. No one swims in Yorkshire. I’d never even seen the sea until we came here.”

“Then it’s time you learned.”

“I thought we were going to play chess.”

“That too.”

Then Olivia saw the gap in the cliff. It was a very narrow arch. The boat shot through it with one pull on the oars, and suddenly they were in a small sandy cove, open to the sea, but protected on three sides by the overhang of the undercliff.

Olivia gazed at the great red ball of the setting sun dipping into the sea just beyond the jagged rocks of the Needles. After the confines of the chine it was like being on open sea once more.

Anthony smiled at her rapt pleasure and pulled into the beach. “In those clothes, you can manage to scramble ashore unaided,” he commented.

“Do you like them?” She stood up and the boat rocked alarmingly.

“They have their advantages,” he said judiciously. “But on the whole I prefer you naked. As you know, in general I like to use nude models.”

Olivia began to feel as if things were slipping away from her again. She had thought she had been so much in control of this encounter, but now she wasn’t so sure. “I have no intention of sitting for you,” she stated. “Nude or otherwise.”

“Take your shoes and stockings off before you paddle ashore,” he instructed as if he hadn’t heard her.

Olivia did as he said but found that her fingers were clumsy.

“You should roll up the britches too.”

Sucking in her lower lip, Olivia rolled the britches to her knees. The pirate gave her his hand and she jumped into the shallow water. It was delightfully warm and the ridged sand was both hard and soft against her unaccustomed soles. She paddled to shore while Anthony hauled the boat up onto the sand.

“What is all this?” Olivia gestured in amazement to the collection of objects on the beach.

“A chessboard,” he pointed out. “Then supper. I trust you like roast chicken. And blankets and pillows for a night under the stars.”

The chicken looked utterly inedible by anything other than a fox, although it did seem to be plucked. “You’re going to c-cook that?”

“I’m an expert,” he assured her. “You’ll find driftwood along the tideline. Pick smaller pieces as well for kindling.”

Olivia hesitated. She looked across at the setting sun; she felt its rays on her face, the sand beneath her feet. And slowly, inexorably, the skeins of the dream wrapped themselves around her once more.

She set off up the small beach in her rolled-up britches, scrunching her toes into the sand. She gathered pieces of wood with all the care another woman might have given to the selection of embroidery silks, and returned triumphant.

“See, I have little pieces here and bigger ones for later.” She dropped her armful onto the sand.

Anthony had constructed a fireplace of flat stones and had threaded the chicken on a long stick that would serve as a spit. He laid the fire, struck flint on tinder, and within minutes the fire glowed and the chicken was in place across the stones.

“So, now we play chess.” He set the board on another flat stone and sat cross-legged in front of white’s pieces. “You, I believe, have the disadvantage this game.”

“Hah!” Olivia said, dropping to the sand. “I never lose, even when I play black.”

“This time you will,” he said with confidence. “And then I shall teach you to swim. In exchange, you will sit for me. I shall draw you, sitting just as you are on the sand, with your hair up like that… but without the clothes.”

Olivia glanced at him, her face touched by the fire’s light. “If I win, I shall say whether you may or may not.”

“You always have that right,” he said quietly, his eyes now grave as they met hers. “Always, Olivia.”

And she knew that she did. With this man, she had the rights to her body, to her responses. It was for her to decide.

“Make your move,” she said.

Anthony moved pawn to king four.

“Oh, how conventional,” Olivia crowed as she made the standard response.

“I save my surprises for later,” he murmured.

And then an hour later, as the sun sank into the sea, he said almost to himself, “You are the very devil, Olivia. I could have sworn I had you two moves back.”

“I’ll offer you a draw,” she said, grinning. “Take it while you can.”

“You have no choice but to agree to a draw,” he pointed out with perfect truth. “There’s no way you can win any more than I can.”

“Oh, I was hoping you wouldn’t realize that.”

“Don’t add insult to injury,” Anthony said, leaning sideways to turn the chicken. “And don’t forget we have one more game to play.”

“Why would you want to endure another crushing defeat?” Olivia asked in mock astonishment.

“You are so cocky!” he exclaimed. “I think it’s time for some cold water.” He bent and took her hands, pulling her to her feet. “Get your clothes off, I’m going to teach you to swim.” He began to discard his clothes.

Olivia watched him for a second, then slowly she shrugged out of her doublet and unbuttoned her chemise.

“Let me help you.” Naked he came over to her and slipped the chemise from her shoulders. The cool air brushed her breasts and her nipples peaked. He looked down at her, a question in his eyes. His hands went to the buttons of her britches, but slowly, giving her time.

Olivia touched his mouth with her thumb.

He pushed the britches over her hips and down, his hands lightly brushing her skin. She stepped out of them and stood naked on the sand, every inch of her skin exquisitely sensitized, anticipation trembling in her belly, tightening her thighs.

Anthony drew her against him. His hands moved down her back without urgency, again giving her time to draw back.

But Olivia no longer needed time. She slipped a hand down his belly. The muscles of his abdomen contracted and his sex sprang alive under her touch. She leaned into him, loving the warmth of his skin, the hardness of his body, the little breeze that came off the water to make her even more conscious of her own nakedness.

“Perhaps swimming should wait,” she murmured, licking the little hollow of his throat, tasting the salt and the sea.

“There is a way to combine both,” he whispered against her cheek, as he moved his lips to the corner of her mouth. Then his tongue darted into her ear, making her squirm with delight.

“Come.” He took her hand and led her into the water. He led her out until the little waves broke against her calves, and then he drew her into a hard embrace, holding her immobile against his length as his tongue drove deep within her mouth and she moaned softly against his lips. Now there was an urgency to his hands on her body, a fierceness to his caresses.

Olivia shivered as the coolness of the evening air bathed her heated skin. Her toes scrunched into the soft wet sand, and her nipples rose against his chest. He held her buttocks and they tightened against his palms as he pressed her to him so that his penis moved against her thigh.

She shifted, parting her legs to give him entrance, her guiding hand leading him within.

“Put your arms around my neck.”

Olivia obeyed eagerly and he caught her behind the knees, lifting her off the sand as he slid within her. His hold moved to her bottom, supporting her on the shelf of his palms. Fleetingly Olivia wondered if anyone could see them, two naked lovers in the surf, joined in flagrant lust, then she couldn’t have cared if they were exposed on the public stage. She sucked on his lower lip as if it were a ripe plum, then nibbled, little teasing tugs of her teeth as she rode his hips. He kept very still, unmoving inside her, filling her, becoming part of her.

And long long before she was ready, he loosened his hold and she slid down his length with a little sigh of disappointment.

He laughed gently at her expression as she looked up at him in startled discontent. “Don’t worry, my flower. The best is yet to come.”

Taking her hand again, he led her deeper into the water. When the water reached the top of her thighs, he drew her close against him again, an arm encircling her waist as he pushed up her chin with his free hand and for a long minute gazed down into her face. Her tongue lightly touched her lips, her dark eyes held his gaze, and he read his own passion reflected in their velvet depths.

Was this passion what his father had felt for Elizabeth of Bohemia?

His father had thrown consequences to the devil when he’d pursued that passion. And the innocent had suffered those consequences.

Anthony closed his mind to a reflection that only ever brought bitterness. He had Olivia here. She was no part of his past, bore no blame for his father’s impulses. And whatever devils had been pursuing her after their last loving, it was clear from the desire in her eyes, the hunger of her responses, that they were, for this moment at least, vanquished.

He kissed her and her eyes closed. His hand moved from her chin to trace the outline of her breasts rising clear of the water that cooled and stroked her lower body. Gently, he rolled her hardening nipples between thumb and forefinger, increasing the pressure until she moaned and shivered, the throbbing heat of her body in sharp contrast to the cool, lapping sea.

He bent her backwards over his encircling arm as his free hand slid downward over her smooth white belly. His fingers twined in the soft dark triangle at the apex of her thighs. His knee nudged her legs apart to receive the cold caress of the sea even as his fingers followed the water, probing deeply, insistently, until her moans became little sobbing cries of delight. The sea became as much an instrument of her pleasure as his hand, and he used it, drawing her backwards into deeper water still, where she floated against his arm, her body opened, abandoned to the dual caresses.

She drifted, her eyes closed, now only a mindless sensate being at one with the water that held her and explored her with intimate searching fingers indivisible from her lover’s.

She was barely aware as Anthony cradled her against him, carrying her back to the water’s edge. He laid her down in the shallow, creaming surf. The sand shifted beneath her under the rhythmic progression and retreat of the little waves. She reached up for him, lifting her hips as he drove fiercely within her, to possess her so utterly that she had no sense of her self existing outside the body that filled and took her as she lay caught between it and the shifting sand and sea, helplessly abandoned to the wild coursing joy of completion.

And slowly the waves of delight receded, leaving only the sucking sounds of the surf, and Olivia shivered in Anthony’s arms as he gathered her against him. “That was a most unusual swimming lesson,” she murmured.

He laughed softly and stood up, pulling her up with him. “Come, quickly now.” She stood, disoriented, still caught in the half-world of her dissolution. Anthony grabbed her hand and pulled her back into the water, swiftly washing the sand off her back, intimately but without lingering, cleansing the nooks and crannies of her body.

“Run in,” he instructed. “There are towels beside the fire. I’m going to swim.” He turned her to the beach, giving her a playful smack of encouragement, and Olivia returned to her self.

She ran for the beach, leaping over the little waves, her teeth chattering, her skin prickled with goose bumps. The wonderful rich smell of roasting chicken rising on the air, the crackle of crisping flesh, the hiss as fat dripped into the fire, made her hungrier than she would have thought possible. A magnificent hunger, a glorious feeling, as the lethargy of afterglow fought with the physical stimulation of cold water and the evening air on her bare wet skin.

There were towels, as Anthony had said. She grabbed one and rubbed herself dry, watching the sea, watching the swimmer cleaving the water with powerful strokes.

She waited for the black cloud of revulsion to envelop her. But the residual glories of loving were untarnished.

She stepped closer to the fire, warming the backs of her legs as Anthony rose from the waves and came running up the beach, water streaming from his hair.

Olivia gazed at him, loving every line of his body, the little buttons of his nipples, the hard, flat planes of his belly, the soft, quiescent sex in its nest of gold curls, dark now with water, the long, muscular length of his thighs.

“Stop that!” he said, laughing as he reached for a towel and rubbed himself dry briskly if somewhat perfunctorily. “It’s enough to embarrass a man.”

“Oh, pah!” Olivia scoffed. “I thought you were the one who adored the human body, fat, thin, stooped, straight. All the most wondrous creations. Isn’t that what you said?”

“And it’s true enough,” he said, snatching the wet towel from her. His eyes touched her body, lingering over every inch.

Olivia shivered and he bent to pick up another towel.

“You’ll catch your death!” Roughly now he rubbed her all over, turning and twisting her as if she were a rag doll, bending her over his forearm to dry her back and buttocks and down the length of her thighs.

When he was satisfied, he tossed aside the towel and picked up a blanket, wrapping it securely around her. “There now. You’re all ready for bed.”

“I thought you were going to draw me.” Olivia huddled closer into the rough wool of the blanket.

“In the morning, when the sun will warm you.” He threw more wood on the fire. The chicken skin hissed and crackled. “This’ll be ready soon.”

“Oh, good. I’m famished.” She sat down beside the fire, wrapped in the blanket.

Anthony opened a basket and took out a loaf of bread, cheese, a flagon of wine, and two pewter goblets. He poured the wine, a pale creamy canary, and broke bread. “We eat with our fingers tonight.”

“How else.” Olivia took the goblet and the crusty hunk of bread. It smelled as if it had just come out of the oven. “Aren’t you going to wear a blanket too?”

“I don’t find it cold,” he returned with one of his secret little smiles.

“Then you c-can’t object if I feast my eyes upon you,” she mumbled through a mouthful of bread and cheese.

Anthony merely laughed and squatted beside the fire, using the tip of his dagger to test the chicken. The firelight danced over his deeply tanned skin, illuminated the knobbly curve of his spine, sent a finger of light into the dark secret shadows of his loins.

Olivia, curled up in her blanket, drank wine and gazed at him with unabashed lust. She thought suddenly of Godfrey Channing, of what he would think if he could see her thus. And she thought of Brian, probing the thought as if it were an aching tooth, waiting for the nerve to blossom with pain.

Anthony levered a leg away from the body of the bird, watching the color of the juices. “Are you cold?” He didn’t look up as he spoke and yet somehow he’d felt the change in her, and he dreaded looking at her, seeing the revulsion, the withdrawal once again in her eyes.

“No,” she said, resting her chin on her drawn-up knees. “No, not in the least.” Her voice was firm.

Only as he felt the relief seep into him did Anthony realize how much he had been afraid. He began to pull the roasted chicken apart with his fingers, slicing the breast with his dagger, piling the richly fragrant meat on two large flat pebbles.

They ate and drank in the firelight as the moon rose high, sending a silver river of light across the sea.

Later, Olivia lay in the circle of his arm between the blankets. She was sleepy and yet her eyes refused to close. The star-filled night was too beautiful. After their loving, she was filled with such peace and contentment that not even the certainty of its ephemeral quality could spoil her languid joy. It was as if her wounds had been closed. This was the memory she would carry with her. Many years from now she would still remember how it felt to lie here under this rough blanket in the glow of the fire, listening to the lullaby of the waves breaking on the shore, with Anthony’s body against hers, her head in the hollow of his shoulder, his legs twined around hers. Many women… most women… never knew such piercing joy, however long they lived.

This one intense passion would last her lifetime, and it must be better than years of the bland and ordinary unenlivened by even a glimpse of the glory that could be between a man and a woman.

Olivia closed her eyes at last and was surprised to find that tears squeezed from beneath the lids. She hadn’t realized she was crying soundlessly as she talked herself into acceptance of a future reality where this passion could not possibly exist. Lord Granville’s daughter and Anthony Caxton could not enjoy each other in the real world, only in the dream that they had spun for themselves.

It was just before dawn when she awoke, and she was alone under the blanket. She sat up in the gray light, holding the blanket to her. There was a definite chill in the early morning air. Off to the east, the as yet invisible sun drew a thin red line on the horizon. As she watched, the line spread and the sky glowed red and orange, and then the great ball of the sun peeped above the horizon. It rose rapidly until it was all there, casting a brilliant red light upon the flat surface of the sea.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

She turned at Anthony’s voice behind her. He was dressed now and held two fish dangling from their hooks. “Breakfast,” he said, bending to kiss her upturned face.

“I have to…”

“There are rocks behind you and the sea in front,” he said, tossing the fish to the sand and squatting to rekindle the fire from the faint glow of the embers.

Olivia stood up, dropping the blanket. She stretched luxuriously, watching his deft, competent hands at their task. The fire flared and he took up the fish again and carried them to the water to clean them.

Olivia watched him for a minute, then, remembering her need, made her way to the seclusion of an outcrop of rocks. When she came back, he already had the fish on flat stones cooking over the fire.

She dressed and it felt strange to be clothed once more.

“There’s water in that other flagon, if you’re thirsty.” Anthony gestured to the basket.

Olivia drank deep of the fresh springwater. It tasted wonderful. Every sense seemed so much sharper, every experience so much more intense out here on this tiny beach under the ruddy dawn sky.

“As soon as we get back to the ship, Mike will sail you home,” Anthony said, taking the water as she held it out to him.

Olivia gazed out over his shoulder to the sea. They didn’t have to waken from the dream just yet. Her father would not be back for several days. Phoebe and Portia would find a way to satisfy the household about Olivia’s seclusion behind the bedcurtains. It would be wasteful to pass up this gift of time.

“I don’t have to go back today.”

Anthony took the water bottle from his lips. “What about your father?”

“He’s not at home. He won’t be back for several days.”

“And his wife?”

“I’ll just need to send a message so she and Portia don’t worry if I’m away a little longer than they expected.”

Anthony made no response for a minute. “What exactly do they know?”

“They know I’m playing chess with the pirate who kidnapped me,” she said with a little laugh. “And Phoebe doesn’t approve of my playing chess or anything else with such an unsavory character. Portia is more sympathetic, but then, she knows all about passion with unsavory strangers.”

Anthony tipped the water flask to his lips. Was that all Olivia had told her closest friends and confidantes? The wives of the enemy? Had she said nothing about Edward Caxton?

He handed her back the water flask. “I have to sail Wind Dancer to Portsmouth on the morning tide. We can be back tomorrow night.” He turned the fish on the stone.

“Am I invited?” She had the feeling that he had become suddenly tense.

He looked up with a smile of such promise that all sense of tension dissipated. “Mike will take a message to your friends.”

“What are you doing in Portsmouth?”

“I have a little business.”

Olivia knelt on the sand, sniffing hungrily. “What business?”

“I have goods to sell.” He handed Olivia one of the two fishes.

She broke it apart with her fingers and ate. Fish had never tasted this good before. A pirate would always have goods to sell. And presumably, since they’d only been back from sea a few days, Anthony still had everything he’d taken from the Dona Elena.

“Just this, miss?” Mike looked at the little ring of braided hair that Olivia had given him once they’d returned to Wind Dancer.

“Just that,” Olivia said. “But you must make sure you give it either to Lady Granville or to Lady Rothbury.” If she sent a written message, it might fall into Bisset’s hands. The ring would mean nothing to him. Villagers were often sending strange items to Lady Granville, either in thanks for her services or as herbalists’ suggestions for a new medicine. Bisset would think nothing of a local villager delivering something of that peculiar nature to his mistress.

“Put the flag up, Mike, so that we know the message was delivered safely and there was no trouble,” Anthony said, without looking up from the charts he was plotting. “We’ll be standing out in the channel by ten o’clock. If the flag’s not flying, we’ll still be close enough in to put Lady Olivia into the sailing dinghy and get her to shore.”

“Right y’are, master.” Mike tucked the fragile ring into the breast pocket of his doublet. “I’ll be off, then.”

“Thank you,” Olivia said.

Mike bobbed his head and left the cabin.

The channel was too narrow to turn Wind Dancer, and she was warped backwards out of her anchorage. The sailors sang in rhythm with each sweep of the oars as they pulled her along the narrow channel. Olivia stood on the quarterdeck as the chine widened and the first glimpse of the sea appeared. And then they emerged from the cleft in the cliff and the oarsmen pulled the frigate out into the main channel.

Anthony stood at the wheel, calling orders, his voice crisp and clear. Olivia looked back at the cliff, trying to make out the entrance to the chine. Try as she would, she couldn’t detect the break in the cliff. There were tiny rocky coves, one presumably where she and the pirate had passed the night, but it seemed as if the chine had closed over as they’d left it.

“Flag, master!” a voice yelled down from the mizzenmast.

Anthony raised the telescope. A white flag fluttered from the top of St. Catherine’s Hill. He handed the glass to Olivia.

“It seems we have some time,” she said, watching the jaunty message from her friends.

“So it does.” He gave the order for the oarsmen to climb aboard. The longboats were winched after them, even as the sails were unfurled and caught the wind. The ship heeled over as Anthony swung her onto the port tack, then she straightened and began to dance across the swelling waves.

Olivia sat down on the deck, warmed by the sun, and closed her eyes, letting her body flow with the rhythm of the ship. The wonderful smell of frying bacon rose on the air and something else, a strange, bitter scent. Adam came up to the quarterdeck carrying a tray that he set down on the deck beside her. There was bread and bacon, two tiny china cups, and a small copper pot of some strongly aromatic black liquid.

“What’s that, Adam?”

“Coffee… comes from Turkey. We was there a few months back an‘ the master took a fancy to it.” The elderly man’s nose wrinkled. “Powerful strong stuff, it is. Can’t abide it meself.”

“Are you maligning my coffee, Adam?” Anthony had handed the helm to Jethro and now came over to them.

“Each to ‘is own, I say,” Adam declared, and went off.

Anthony sat down beside Olivia. He poured a little of the thick black stuff into each cup and handed one to her. “Try it.”

She took a sip. It was bitter and yet sweet. “I don’t think I like it.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” he said, piling bacon onto bread with his fingers. He leaned back against the rail and took a healthy bite.

Olivia followed suit. “How long to Portsmouth?”

“We should be there by late afternoon. Once we round the Needles, I’ll be able to leave the quarterdeck.”

Olivia turned to look at the approaching ridge of jagged rocks. “They look very dangerous.”

“They are.”

“More so than St. Catherine’s Point?”

“It depends on the conditions. St. Catherine’s rocks are smaller and as a result perhaps more vicious. It’s probably easier on a dark night to run afoul of them than the Needles.” He said it carelessly, helping himself to more bacon.

Olivia looked out at the rocks and the boiling sea at their base. She shivered.

Portsmouth harbor was filled with the navy’s ships. The quay was alive with sailors. Longboats ferrying officers and supplies moved constantly among the great ships, accompanied by the twitter of pipes and the roll of drums.

Olivia stood in a secluded corner of the quarterdeck as Anthony brought Wind Dancer to anchor in the roads between another frigate and a ship of the line. She knew less than nothing of sailing, but knowledge wasn’t needed to appreciate the delicacy of the maneuver. They dropped anchor with a great rattle of chains, and the ship rocked gently on the swell.

“What happens now?” Olivia asked.

“What do you wish to happen?” He traced the curve of her cheek with a forefinger.

Olivia glanced around at the lively harbor. “I look like a boy. What will people think if they see you doing that?”

“That I practice the English vice,” he responded with a grin. “It’s not uncommon among sailors… They spend so much time at sea, you understand.”

“I didn’t know it was an English vice,” Olivia said seriously. “The Greeks and Romans, of course, but… Oh, you’re laughing at me!”

“Only a very little.” He leaned against the rail, idly watching the scene. “If you like, we could spend the evening in the town.”

“But I have no c-clothes… only these.”

“Oh, I suspect we might be able to find something suitable from among the treasures in the hold. Come, let us go and look.” He moved off with his leisurely stride.

She followed him down into the waist of the ship, where he collected an oil lamp. He lit it and led the way down into the dark hold that smelled of sea and the pitch that caulked the timbers.

Chests, barrels, bales, were stacked to the ceiling. “Now, which of those chests… Ah, this one, I believe.” He went unerringly to an ironbound chest. “Hold the lamp.”

She took it and held it high as he knelt and opened the chest.

“What do you fancy? Muslin… cambric… silk… even velvet we have here.” He rifled through the pile of material. “There are some gowns made up at the bottom, as I recall. How about this?” He drew out a gown of dark green muslin.

“It’s very pretty,” Olivia said, examining it in the light. “Will it fit?”

He rose with the gown and held it up against her. “It looks perfect to me. Adam’ll be able to make any adjustments. Now you need stockings and slippers and a shawl.”

He returned to the chests, lifting lids at random, until he had assembled the necessary garments. “There, you’ll be as fine as five-pence.”

Olivia exchanged the lamp for the bundle of clothes. “Shall we eat supper in the town?”

“At the Pelican, madam. It has a very fine table.”

In her borrowed finery, Olivia sat in the stern of the small boat as they were rowed to the quay. Anthony had dressed for the occasion in doublet and britches of a gray silk, so dark it was almost black. Olivia knew she was living a dream. She was part of a play of which she didn’t know the words. She didn’t know how the next scene would play. It was a thrilling, entrancing world that bore no relation to the real one. But they had bought the time and she allowed the dream to catch her up, sweep her along, unfold before her.

It was late when they returned to the ship, and Olivia was aware that she had perhaps drunk too much burgundy for wisdom. She felt as if she were floating on froth… a delightful feeling that she tried to describe to Anthony, but without much success. She caught the grins of the two sailors who were rowing them back, and wondered vaguely but without much concern whether her words sounded different from the way they sounded in her head.

When they were tied up at the ship’s side, Anthony looked up at the rope ladder and then assessingly at Olivia. “You know, I don’t think I want to risk it.”

“Risk what?” A little hiccup escaped her.

“Never mind. Come.” He drew her to her feet. The little boat rocked alarmingly. He bent to put his shoulder against her belly and hitched her up and over, holding her securely behind the knees.

Olivia found her gaze focusing on the points of his shoulder blades through the gray silk. She would have liked to kiss them, but she couldn’t quite reach them. So she gave up the attempt and instead gazed down dreamily through the black veil of her hair at the dark green water washing against the white sides of the frigate. Hands leaned over the rail to take her and lift her clear onto the deck. Anthony jumped down beside her and stood laughing down at her.

“I’m very much afraid you’re not going to have a happy morning,” he said, brushing her tumbled hair away from her face.

“I’m very happy now,” Olivia assured him.

“Yes, my flower, I can see that.”

A little ripple of amusement went around the deck, and Olivia smiled sunnily at these friendly men, whose faces were now so familiar.

“Can you walk to the cabin? Or should I carry you?”

“Oh, I think you should c-carry me,” she said with another little hiccup. “It’s strange but my legs don’t seem to belong to me.”

“Over you go, then.” He hoisted her up over his shoulder and went down to the cabin with his prize.

She swayed on the floor and smiled delightfully at him. “You’ll have to undress me. My hands don’t seem to belong to me either.”

“Well, that is always a pleasure.”

Olivia regarded her borrowed garments with an air of inquiry as they slid from her body. “Did these c-come from the Dona Elena? They don’t seem very Spanish.”

“No, they came from a wreck,” he said, drawing her chemise over her head.

Pirate. Smuggler. Wrecker.

She could hear his voice saying so carelessly how easy it was for a ship to run afoul of the rocks off St. Catherine’s Point. Just like the wreck that had been driven to its doom the night before she’d fallen into the air just above the point.

And the morning after, she had fallen at the feet of Wind Dancer’s watchman, just a short way down the coast from the point. So easy to have lured the ship onto the rocks and then to have transported the spoils to the safety of the chine. So very easy.

Piracy. Smuggling. Those were beyond the law. Olivia knew that they were dirty and dangerous, and men were killed in their pursuit. And she knew too that for most smugglers, wrecking was a mere sideline. She knew that, it was island lore, but she couldn’t grasp it. Not with Anthony. Anthony could not…

She felt sick. A great unstoppable wave of nausea. She pushed past him blindly, desperate for the commode.

Anthony moved to hold her head as she retched miserably, but she shook him off with such desperation that he left her. He remembered too well the miseries of his own first overindulgence, and he wouldn’t add to her mortification.

He went up on deck thinking of the morning’s auction. At dawn they would come, the merchants and shopkeepers, the tavern keepers and the private buyers. They would come in their small boats to examine his wares, and they would bid well for them. He would pay his crew, pay the pensions and bonuses to the men who worked for him, men who were his friends, and he would put aside what he needed to live as he chose. And the rest would go to Ellen to be disbursed to the Royalist insurgents where she and her vicar saw fit.

And on the next night of the new moon, Wind Dancer would take the king of England to France.

Anthony yawned, stretched, and took himself below. Olivia was curled in the far corner of the bed. He undressed by the dimmest of candlelight and slipped in beside her. He reached to roll her into his embrace, but she seemed surrounded by an invisible thorn hedge. Assuming that in her nausea she needed to be left utterly alone, he turned away from her. But he was unable to fall asleep until he had gently moved his back against hers.