“Laugh, and I’ll throttle ye,” Jamie whispered fiercely in my ear. “She is, Mr. Stern,” he called through the door. “I shall give her your respects in the morning, aye?”
“I trust she will rest well. There seems to be a certain roughness to the sea this evening.”
“I…have noticed, Mr. Stern.” Pushing me to my knees in front of the berth, he knelt behind me, groping for the hem of my shift. A cool breeze from the open stern window blew over my naked buttocks, and a shiver ran down the backs of my thighs.
“Should you or Mrs. Fraser find yourselves discommoded by the motion, I have a most capital remedy to hand —a compound of mugwort, bat dung, and the fruit of the mangrove. You have only to ask, you know.”
Jamie didn’t answer for a moment.
“Oh, Christ!” he whispered. I took a sizable bite of the bedclothes.
“Mr. Fraser?”
“I said, ‘Thank you’!” Jamie replied, raising his voice.
“Well, I shall bid you a good evening, then.”
Jamie let out his breath in a long shudder that was not quite a moan.
“Mr. Fraser?”
“Good evening, Mr. Stern!” Jamie bellowed.
“Oh! Er…good evening.”
Stern’s footsteps receded down the companionway, lost in the sound of the waves that were now crashing loudly against the hull. I spit out the mouthful of quilt.
“Oh…my…God!”
His hands were large and hard and cool on my heated flesh.
“You’ve the roundest arse I’ve ever seen!”
A lurch by the
“Shh!” He clasped a hand over my mouth, bending over me so that he lay over my back, the billowing linen of his shirt falling around me and the weight of him pressing me to the bed. My skin, crazed with fever, was sensitive to the slightest touch, and I shook in his arms, the heat inside me rushing outward as he moved within me.
His hands were under me then, clutching my breasts, the only anchor as I lost my boundaries and dissolved, conscious thought a displaced element in the chaos of sensations—the warm damp of tangled quilts beneath me, the cold sea wind and misty spray that wafted over us from the rough sea outside, the gasp and brush of Jamie’s warm breath on the back of my neck, and the sudden prickle and flood of cold and heat, as my fever broke in a dew of satisfied desire.
Jamie’s weight rested on my back, his thighs behind mine. It was warm, and comforting. After a long time, his breathing eased, and he rose off me. The thin cotton of my shift was damp, and the wind plucked it away from my skin, making me shiver.
Jamie closed the window with a snap, then bent and picked me up like a rag doll. He lowered me into the berth, and pulled the quilt up over me.
“How is your arm?” he said.
“What arm?” I murmured drowsily. I felt as though I had been melted and poured into a mold to set.
“Good,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Can ye stand up?”
“Not for all the tea in China.”
“I’ll tell Murphy ye liked the soup.” His hand rested for a moment on my cool forehead, passed down the curve of my cheek in a light caress, and then was gone. I didn’t hear him leave.
57
PROMISED LAND
“It’s persecution!” Jamie said indignantly. He stood behind me, looking over the rail of the
“The filthy boat’s pursuing me,” he said, glaring at it as we sailed past at a discreet distance, well outside the harbor mouth. “Everywhere I go, there it is again!”
I laughed, though in truth, the sight of the
“I don’t suppose it’s personal,” I told him. “Captain Leonard did say they were bound for Jamaica.”
“Aye, but why would they no head straight to Antigua, where the naval barracks and the navy shipyards are, and them in such straits as ye left them?” He shaded his eyes, peering at the
“They had to come here first,” I explained. “They were carrying a new governor for the colony.” I felt an absurd urge to duck below the rail, though I knew that even Jamie’s red hair would be indistinguishable at this distance.
