Desire in the Sun (19 page)

The rest of that day they passed as they had the previous one, on their separate sections of beach with the promontory between them as a sort of neutral territory. By late afternoon the freshwater pool was nearly dry, and Lilah knew that on the morrow she would no longer be able to put off going into the interior of the island to search for more. She didn’t much like the idea—the thought of invading that thick undergrowth, especially with bare feet, was not inviting—but it would have to be done. The one comfort was that Joss was almost out of water, too. Maybe held be the one to step on the poisonous snake instead of herself.

Joss had managed to construct a serviceable-looking hut for himself out of palm fronds and vines, she saw. Looking from her own crude shelter—more chunks of driftwood leaned up against the trunk of a coconut palm—to his sturdy structure set beneath an overhanging
jacaranda, Lilah felt her annoyance rise to a new pitch. She had spent the last two nights shivering with cold, even with her petticoat wrapped securely around her shoulders and her knees drawn up to her chest. Amazing that days so blazingly hot that she had been compelled to shed her stays as well as her petticoat, leaving her in the wildly immodest costume of thin dress and even thinner chemise, could turn to nights so cold. The brisk wind that blew nightly off the ocean swept clear through her ramshackle quarters. She had the feeling that he was as snug as could be. …

She would not torture herself with such thoughts. Instead she would treat herself to the one luxury of her day: a bath. Heading down off the promontory, she set the water-filled shell inside her shelter and gathered up the rest of her makeshift dishes. Then she headed toward the bay.

“Lilah!”

The sound of Joss’s voice yelling her name when they had not spoken for two days brought her head up in disbelief. There was a note of urgency in his shout. She stood up from where she had been rinsing her coconut dishes in the sea—she had already washed her hair, body and clothes by the simple expedient of wading in fully dressed and scrubbing herself from head to toe with sand—and looked in the direction of his end of the beach. Of course she had chosen to bathe where the promontory blocked his view of what she was doing, so in consequence she could not see him either.

“Lilah! Damn it, where are you, girl?”

There was no mistaking the urgency this time. Suddenly he appeared at the top of the promontory, looking wildly around for her. Obviously he was whole of limb, and so she turned her back on him, and continued to clean her dishes in the surf.

Moments later she heard him splashing through the surf behind her. Before she could so much as turn to
glare at him he snatched from her head the petticoat she’d bundled around her hair to keep the wet strands off her neck.

“You give that back!” Lilah raged, but Joss was already heading back through the surf with her petticoat in hand, “You come back here with that this minute, you bounder!”

Stamping her foot, she started after him, fury surging through her veins. To steal her petticoat was the outside of enough—if he had need of an extra piece of cloth that was just too bad! Perhaps he was tired of having his chest and back constantly exposed to the sun and meant to fashion a crude shirt for himself. But her petticoat was hers, and she would fight to the last gasp before she gave it up! With her fair skin and blonde hair, she needed protection from the sun more than he did, anyway. What did he think he was about …?

She had not quite reached the shore when he raced to the highest point of the promontory and started waving her petticoat madly over his head. For a moment Lilah stared, wondering if the sun had turned his brain, but then she understood at last.

“A ship!” she screeched, and picking up her skirt raced up the side of the promontory in his wake.

“We’re here, we’re here!”

She skidded to a halt beside him, jumping up and down and waving her arms in the air and screaming madly just as he was. Though it was a sure bet that the ship whose sails just graced the horizon could not hear so much as a syllable.

“We’re here!”

Joss waved her petticoat overhead like a flag. The ship passed majestically down the horizon, silhouetted against the pink and crimson and orange of the dying sun. Impossible to tell if they had been seen or not, but the ship did not seem to be heading their way.

“If only I could get up higher … !” Joss looked
around distractedly, but he stood on the highest point along the beach. Lilah tugged at his arm. The prospect of rescue had erased all her animosity toward him for at least the moment.

“Lift me up on your shoulders!”

He blinked at her for an instant, then nodded. Lilah had expected that he would kneel down and let her climb onto his shoulders that way. Instead he caught her by the waist, and lifted her up. Her skirt was an obstacle. Without more than the briefest consideration of modesty she hitched it up around her thighs so that he could lift her over his head. Once seated on his shoulders, her bare legs and feet dangling down the front of his chest, she grabbed the petticoat from his hand and waved it frantically. The ship was farther in the distance now, but there was still the off chance that someone might look their way. A sailor in the crow’s nest, perhaps. …

“They’re leaving! They don’t see us!”

“No, stop! Come back! We’re here!”

Holding on to the top of Joss’s head for balance, Lilah managed to get one foot on his shoulder and stand up. He grabbed her ankles, holding her as best he could. If she was to wave her petticoat, she had perforce to let her skirts drop. She did, and they fell down over his head, obscuring it from her view and blinding him. Teetering wildly, she waved the petticoat from that precarious vantage point while he held on to her ankles with a grip like death and tried his best to keep them both upright.

“Come back! We’re here!”

Still the ship receded. Lilah raised herself on her tiptoes. …

“Christ!”

Joss had taken a step backwards to compensate for her antics on his shoulders. Lilah teetered, and then he was slipping out from under her like an eel. …

“Help!”

Lilah shrieked as she tumbled toward the ground, landing with an
oomph
bottom first, right in the middle of his abdomen.

“Arrgh!”

Joss, who fortunately for Lilah had hit the ground first, groaned loudly as she crashed down on top of him. Thankful to have been spared an injury, Lilah shifted around so that she could see his face,

“What happened?”

“I tripped over a damned rock—what were you doing up there anyway?”

He glared at her from his position flat on his back in the sandy scrub grass. She glared back at him from her seat in the middle of his stomach. Then, suddenly, his lips twitched and he grinned. Then chuckled. Then laughed out loud. Lilah, at first affronted, finally had to join in.

“Oh, my,” she said finally, shifting off her perch to kneel beside him. “Did I hurt you?”

He looked at her, his eyes twinkling. “I doubt if I’ll ever eat again. My stomach must be permanently bruised,”

“I don’t weigh that much!”

“You weigh enough, believe me! If I can stand up I’ll be surprised.”

He grinned at her, and she could not help doing the same. Then he sat up gingerly, one hand pressed to his stomach.

“That’s the last time I’ll ever put you up on my shoulders.”

“That’s the last time I’ll ever stand on your shoulders! I could have been hurt!”

“I was hurt!”

“Baby!”

That epithet brought another grin from him. Then he looked toward the horizon and sobered.

“I don’t think they saw us.”

Lilah looked toward the horizon as well. “No.”

“If one ship sailed past this island, another will. We’ll be rescued before long.” He sounded more hopeful than convinced.

“Yes.”

They both stared at the now empty horizon for a long moment. Then Lilah looked at Joss. His whiskers had developed into what was very nearly a full beard, and his cut had healed over so that it was no longer so raw and red-looking. His skin was more bronzed than red. He was leaner, she thought, and if possible even more firmly muscled. The only parts of him that she would recognize without a second glance were the brilliant emerald eyes.

“I didn’t mean what I said about having you whipped,” she said abruptly, her voice low. “When we are rescued, you don’t have to worry. Nobody’s whipped a slave on Heart’s Ease for years.”

His eyes sliced to hers. “I’m not worried. Because I don’t have the least intention of being a slave on Heart’s Ease, ever. When we’re rescued, I’m going back to England,”

She blinked at him for a moment, dumbfounded. “But you can’t!”

“Why can’t I? I don’t imagine we’ll be rescued by anyone who knows us, do you? Unless you tell whoever rescues us about what happened in Virginia, they won’t have any reason to suppose that I’m anything but a free man. Which is just what I intend to be.”

“But—but…”

“Unless you mean to claim me as your property the minute someone finds us,” he added, a considering glint in his eyes as they fixed on her.

Lilah stared at him. He was right. When they were rescued, unless it was by someone who knew his history, there would be no reason for anyone to imagine that he was a slave. When he was dressed and shaved
he looked every inch the English gentleman—he had been raised as an English gentleman. She had it in her power to set him free. …

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ll see you in safe hands, but I’m not going to carry this farce any further. When I’m home in England again, I’ll send you your hundred dollars.”

“I don’t care about the money. …” she began, still at a loss.

“I do.” He set his jaw. Looking at him, stubborn and proud and the least likely slave that she had ever met, Lilah made up her mind. He would have his freedom if she could, by her silence, give it to him. It was no more than she had meant to do later, with her father’s consent.

“All right then. You can send the money if you want, but my father actually bought you, not me. I just … bid.”

“So I’ll send the money to your father. You agree?”

She looked at him, and slowly nodded. “I agree.”

He smiled at her, a sudden charming smile that reminded her heart-stoppingly of the man she had teetered on the brink of falling in love with that first enchanted night.

“Then I apologize for my behavior of two nights ago, and give you my word that it won’t happen again. Until we’re rescued, you’re as safe with me as you would be with your own father.”

He got to his feet as he spoke, and held out his hand to help her up. Lilah put her hand in his with mixed emotions. If he went back to England she would never see him again; certainly he would never willingly set foot on Barbados. And for the rest of their enforced stay on the island she would be as safe from his advances as she would be if he were her father. She should be overjoyed on both counts, she knew—but she wasn’t.

“Shall we be friends, then?”

He pulled her up beside him as he spoke, and let go
of her hand. Lilah nodded, though there was an oddly hollow feeling inside her.

“Friends,” she agreed.

“In that case, I’ll share my fish with you. If it hasn’t burned to a crisp, that is. I was cooking it when I saw that ship.”

She smiled at him, but it was an effort. “Lead on, Macduff,” she quoted lightly, but her heart was not as light as her words. Maddening as he was, and totally forbidden to her as well, it still hurt to imagine never seeing him again. With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach Lilah wondered if, once he was gone, her heart would ever be the same.

XXI

T
he fish was slightly blackened around the edges, but it was still delicious. Lilah ate it off the plantain leaf Joss had cooked it in, licked her fingers, and then rolled up the leaf and ate that too. Joss, sitting across the fire from her, watched her quizzically.

“Is eating one’s dishes another of the quaintly barbaric customs you were raised with?”

“On Barbados, baked plantain leaves are considered a delicacy,” she informed him with a lift of her chin.

He rolled his up and took a bite, then made a face.

“Barbados must be a mighty strange place.”

“It’s lovely,” she said, and proceeded to tell him all about it. From there she progressed to telling about her family, about her mother’s death and Kevin’s arrival on the scene soon after her father married Kevin’s aunt Jane. A shadow must have clouded her face when she mentioned Kevin, because Joss frowned,

“In love with him, are you? Don’t worry, if we survived he may well have too. I don’t doubt you’ll have a touching reunion when you get home to Heart’s Ease.” There was the slightest trace of sarcasm to his words,

Lilah shook her head. “I hope so. I’m very fond of Kevin. But I don’t think I’m in love with him. My father thought he would make me a good husband, and I’m twenty-one, you know. It’s time I was married.”

“Fond of him?” Joss snorted. “You almost make me sorry for the bastard.”

“Don’t call Kevin that—he’s a very nice man, actually. You just met him under, urn, unfortunate circumstances. But why should you feel sorry for him?”