Two minutes, maybe three. And then it was over, and Bonnet lay heavily collapsed upon her, sweat crumpling his linen stock, one hand still crushing her breast. His lank fair hair fell soft against her cheek and his exhalations purled hot and damp on her neck. At least he’d stopped humming.
She lay frozen for endless long minutes, staring up at the ceiling, where the reflections from the water danced across the polished beams. He sighed at last, and rolled slowly off her onto his side. He smiled at her, dreamily scratching one bared and hairy hip.
“Not bad, sweetheart, though I’ve had livelier rides. Move your arse more next time, hm?” He sat up, yawned, and began to straighten his attire. She edged toward the side of the bed, then, sure that he didn’t mean to restrain her, rolled abruptly off and onto her feet. She felt light-headed and desperately short of air, as though his bulk still pressed upon her.
Moving in a daze, she went to the door. It was bolted. As she struggled to lift the bolt, her hands shaking, she heard him say something behind her, and swung around in amazement.
“What did you say?”
“I said the ring’s on the desk,” he said, straightening up from retrieving his stockings. He sat down on the bed and began to pull them on, waving casually at the desk that stood against the wall. “There’s money, too. Take what you want.”
The top of the desk was a magpie’s nest, littered with inkpots, trinkets, bits of jewelry, bills of lading, tattered quills, silver buttons, ragged bits of paper and crumpled clothing, and a scatter of coins in silver and bronze, copper and gold, currency of several colonies, several countries.
“You’re offering me money?”
He looked up quizzically, fair brows arched.
“I pay for my pleasures,” he said. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
Everything in the cabin seemed unnaturally vivid, detailed and individual as the objects in a dream, which would vanish with waking.
“I didn’t think anything,” she said, her voice sounding very clear, but distant, someone speaking from far away. Her kerchief lay on the floor where he had thrown it, by the desk. She walked there, carefully, trying not to think of the warm slipperiness that streaked down her thighs.
“I’m an honest man—for a pirate,” he said behind her, and laughed. He stamped once on the deck to settle his foot in its shoe, then brushed past her and lifted the bolt easily with one hand.
“Help yourself, sweetheart,” he said, with another casual wave toward the desk as he went out. “You were worth it.”
She heard his footsteps going away down the companionway, a burst of laughter and a muffled remark as he met someone, then a shift of his voice, suddenly clear and harsh, shouting orders to someone above, and the tramp and scurry of feet overhead, rushing to obey. Back to business.
It was sitting in a bowl made of cowhorn, jumbled with a collection of bone buttons, string, and other bits of rubbish. Like him, she thought, with a cold clarity. Acquisition for its own sake; a reckless and savage delight in the taking, with no knowledge at all of the value of what he stole.
Her hand was shaking; she saw it with a vague sense of surprise. She tried to grasp the ring, failed, gave up. She scooped up the bowl and emptied its contents into her pocket. She walked down the dark companionway, her fist wrapped tight around the pocket, holding it like a talisman. There were seamen all around, too busy about their tasks to spare her more than a glance of lewd speculation. Her shoes were perched on the end of the mess table, bows perky in a shaft of light from the grating overhead.
She put them on, and with an even tread walked up the ladder, across the deck and gangplank, onto the dock. Tasting blood.
* * *
“I thought at first I could just pretend it didn’t happen.” She took a deep breath, and looked at me. Her hands folded over her stomach, as though to hide it. “But I guess that won’t work, will it?”
I was silent for a moment, thinking. It was no time for delicacy.
“When?” I said. “How long after…um, after Roger?”
“Two days.”
My eyebrows lifted at that.
“Why are you so sure it isn’t Roger’s, then? You weren’t using pills, obviously, and I’ll bet my life Roger didn’t use what passes for condoms in these times.”
She half smiled at that, and a small flush rose in her cheeks.
“No. He…um…he…ah…”
“Oh, coitus interruptus?”
She nodded.
I took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips.
“There is a word,” I said, “for people who depend on that particular method of birth control.”
“What’s that?” she asked, looking wary.
“Parents,” I said.
46
COMES A STRANGER
Roger bent his head and drank from cupped hands. A piece of luck, that flash of green, pointed out by a finger of sunlight stabbing down through the trees. Without it, he would never have seen the spring, so far off the trail as it was.
A clear trickle bubbled through a crack in the rock, cooling his hands and face. The rock itself was a smooth blackish green, and the ground all round was boggy, rumpled by tree roots and furred with a moss that grew brilliant as emeralds in the fleeting patch of sun.
The knowledge that he would see Brianna shortly—perhaps within the hour—soothed his annoyance as effectively as the cool water eased his dry throat. If he’d had to have his horse stolen, it was some consolation that he’d been close enough to reach his destination on foot.
The horse itself had been an ancient nag, barely worth stealing. At least he’d had the sense to keep his valuables on his person, not in the saddlebags. He clapped a hand against the side seam of his breeches, reassured to feel the small hardness snuggled against his thigh.
Beyond the horse itself, he hadn’t lost much more than a pistol—nearly as ancient as the horse and not half so reliable—a bit of food, and a leather water flask. The loss of the flask had troubled him for the last few miles of hot, dusty walking, but now that minor inconvenience was remedied.
His feet sank into the damp ground as he stood up, leaving dark streaks in the emerald moss. He stepped back and wiped the mud from his shoe soles on the carpet of dry leaves and crusted needles. Then he dusted down the skirts of his coat as well as he could, and straightened the grimy stock at his throat. His knuckles rasped the stubble on his jaw; his razor had been in the saddlebag.
He looked a right villain, he thought ruefully. No way to meet your in-laws. In truth, though, he wasn’t much concerned with what Claire and Jamie Fraser might think of him. His thoughts were all on Brianna.
She’d found her parents now; he could only hope that the reunion had been so satisfactory that she’d be in a mood to forgive his betrayal. Christ, he’d been stupid!
He made his way back toward the path, feet sinking in the soft leaf-layer. Stupid in underestimating her stubbornness, stupid not to have been honest with her, he amended. Stupid to have bullied her into secrecy. Trying to keep her safely in the future—no, that hadn’t been stupid at all, he thought, with a grimace at the things he’d seen and heard in the last few months.
He pushed aside an overhanging limb of loblolly pine, then ducked with an exclamation of alarm, as something black shot past his head.