Into His Arms (19 page)

Suddenly, his hands stopped her and pulled her face away from him. “Not yet,” he groaned. With a patience he did not feel, he guided her above him, so that she again straddled the slim hips that tapered from his broad chest. Moving slowly, prolonging every sweet moment, she impaled herself upon him, lowering bit by bit until he had filled her. He was transfixed by the play of the muscles in her stomach and thighs as she moved up and down, her hips making small circles because it pleased her to do so.

Her face was bathed in a fine sheen of sweat, her eyes lightly closed, and he watched the curls of her flaxen hair tease her tight nipples. Still, he kept his hands on her hips, helped her keep the tempo that drove them both inexorably upward, beyond all limits, until they shattered like glass and fell into a shower of diamonds that danced among the folds of the sheets.

Collapsing against him, Faith said nothing. She simply lay in the circle of his arms and breathed the warm, comforting scent of him.

His voice roughened by his earlier passion, Geoff murmured, “I want you to know something, Faith.”

“Shh,” she admonished, placing her fingertips to his lips. “You have told me fairly.”

“Nay. I have not been fair at all. It will never be like this with any other.” He felt her lips move into a smile against his chest. “I would not have you feel cheap or common. You are a treasure.”

She idly wound a strand of his golden hair around her finger and smiled up at him. “What sort of privateer is it who lets a treasure slip from his grasp?”

He sighed. “What sort, indeed?”

“You have not yet sent for my aunt and uncle?”

“Nay, there has been no chance.”

“Then there is no need to rush.”

The lure of skin against skin proved too strong for doubts, and they moved together, pulling the moment around them like a mantle that protected them from the cold, uncertain future.

*

They lay together until darkness fell. The denizens of Port Royal were inclined to carouse long into the night, and the sounds of drunken sailors crooning lascivious verses poured in through the open window. Geoff grinned in the dark.

“Ah, the melodious sounds of my home,” he commented dryly.

Bits and pieces of the words drifted through, causing Faith to blush, but the tunes were jolly, and she snuggled closely against him.

There was a brief pause in the merry-making, and then the music took on a strange, unearthly quality. It was a genuinely harmonious blend of male voices, each one singing his own part in melodies that chased one another and called to her. Pulling on her shift, she rose and gazed out the window, Geoff slipping in beside her.

In the street below, the revelers stood in a circle, uncharacteristically silent. In the center, a group of dark-skinned Africans lifted their voices in a mixture of pain and beauty that nearly made her weep, though the words were in a language completely foreign to her. The light of several lanterns wavered over ebony faces, so that the sound and the graceful swaying of their whipcord lean bodies conveyed the emotion more than their expressions, somehow weaving ever more tightly the web of enchantment.

A cursory look around proved that she was not the only one deeply affected by the strange music. To a person, the group was awestruck and speechless. Each note seemed to speak to the deepest, most forgotten place in each of their hearts and wrung from them their own pain, long buried beneath the futility of their lives. Hard, haggard faces softened as sailors, criminals, and prostitutes looked out into the night, watching their own troubles playing out across the darkness. Silence lingered long after the song ended. No one breathed, and the magic vibrated in the warm night air.

At last, Faith whispered, “How beautiful. It was so passionate and so melancholy!”

Geoff nodded in understanding, though she could barely make out his silhouette in the blackness. “Aye. ‘Tis a wonder to me the plantation owners can bear it, the sadness in the Africans’ singing.” After a pause he added, “How many does your aunt own?”

“How many what?”

“Slaves.”

A quick stab of shock jolted Faith. Slaves? “I do not think she owns any,” Faith defended, despite her own doubts.

Geoffrey merely laughed as though she jested. “Now, Faith, no one can run a plantation without slaves. Most plantation owners boast their number of Africans as surely as they boast of their acreage and profits.”

Any reply stuck in her throat. Did truly all plantations have slaves? How many? Did they sing as these men had done? She could not bear it if they did! She could not understand the words, but she could well imagine they were of wives and parents, the simple joys of their village lives lost.

“Faith?” When she didn’t answer, his curiosity pricked him. “Has she never written of her home? If she is a Puritan, like you, she’s educated. What does she write of?”

Faith had carefully avoided talking about Winston Hall for fear that she would only strengthen Geoff’s resolve to take her there. Now, she was too disconcerted to evade his questions. “She was a Puritan, so aye, she is literate, but she does not write to us.”

“You befuddle me. She was a Puritan, so she can write but does not?”

She would have to tell him sooner or later. How else would she explain the fact that her aunt and uncle would surely be stunned to see her? With a sigh, she confessed, “My mother and she have not written these past fifteen years. Elizabeth was disowned when she married my uncle and became a Catholic.”

Geoff gave her an incredulous look. “Your mother disowned her sister?”

“Nay! She would have written, but her parents and my father forbade it.”

“Your father? Your sainted father forbade his wife write her own sister because he liked not her husband’s religion.” His voice was heavily laden with disgust as he offered up his summary of the situation.

“It is not as you make it sound. The Puritan church seeks a more pure, more true faith, one based upon the Bible and not the ambitions of men in a church gone corrupt.” Geoff rolled his eyes, and Faith tried harder to explain. “I’ll make no attempt to defend our church. Our good minister has shown me that we’ve corruptions enough of our own. Still, my father only did what he thought he must to protect my mother’s immortal soul. As her husband, it was his duty.”

“Just as he endeavored to protect your immortal soul by teaching you to hide your true feelings?” Geoff scoffed. “Over chess, oft you spoke to me of your father’s great mind. If he is the intelligent man you say, then surely he knew that when he bid you cast your eyes down and hold your tongue it was the same as a lie.”

She shook her head, trying to deny the truth in what he said. His words almost made sense to her, caused her to doubt not just her church, but even her family, and it terrified her, sent the whole compass of her life spinning. “Nay! He loved me. He only tried to help me.”

Geoff took her roughly by the shoulders. “Who are you, Faith? Whose words fall from your mouth? You’ve lived your whole life for someone else’s approval—your father, your minister—and you try to make yourself believe the approval you seek is God’s! When do you venture to step foot upon your own path?”

She drew back sharply. “How dare you! What do you think I have done? I am here, am I not? Have you any idea how far Port Royal is from my home, and not only in distance! I am trying to find my path, and aye, I dare to believe in and trust my God! Sometimes I am confused and scared, but I am doing all I can to make sense of my faith.”

“Your faith makes no sense!”

“How easy for you to judge me! God’s Word says it is easier to see the mote in another’s eye than the beam in our own. Whose approval do you seek, Captain Hampton? You looked to your mother and learned that women must be bought with coins and trinkets and pleasure, and you have paid those aplenty! Now you want a woman who cannot be bought so simply, and you know not how to give what she would have. You’re no different than I!”

Geoff pulled back as though she had slapped him, pain he hadn’t known existed in him slicing into his heart. “Enough!” he snapped and turned his back to her.

Undaunted, she addressed the broad expanse of tense shoulders. “Nay, it is not! You dismiss my beliefs as casually as my love. You pretend that you cannot understand my faith in God.”

He whirled to face her again. “Pretend? Nay, Faith, indeed I have no grasp of it. Look around you!” He gestured widely. “How can you have spent over three weeks tossed about upon that vast ocean and believe that you have any significance, that there is any grand plan? And where is the wrath of your God in this modern-day Gomorrah?”

She blinked away tears, but her voice was strong and steady. “His very breath filled your sails across that ocean. His pulse rocked beneath your feet! How can you not believe in a divine force when we were somehow brought together just when each of us needed someone exactly like the other? Brought together on the deck of
Destiny
?”

Geoff fell silent. She was a romantic, a misguided religious zealot. Still, he had to admit there were times that he stood at the helm listening to the wind as it snapped powerfully in the canvas overhead, felt the roll of the ocean at his feet, and it filled him. It was not his mind, or even his heart that swelled. It was something else, something Faith would surely call his soul.

The idea of a God, aloof and impersonal, who sat in judgment of mere men had never rung true to him, but the thought of a divine force that breathed life into his sails in the wind and whose passions tossed his ship at sea, these tugged at his imagination. The needle in his life’s compass seemed to pull, for the first time, in some clear direction, and he rebelled against it.

“Go to bed, Faith,” he said softly.

She had moved from the window’s scant light, and he did not see her dash the tears from her cheeks. “You’re lonely, Geoff,” she whispered. “You needn’t be.”

“Good night.” His voice was heavy, as though he were weary and troubled.

Faith turned away slowly. They both had things enough to contemplate this night. Even as she climbed beneath sheets still warmed by their bodies, Geoff donned his clothes and quietly slipped out into the dark hall beyond. Faith did not fall asleep until the merest hint of first light began to seep through the window, and Geoff never joined her.

Chapter 17

By afternoon, Faith paced the floor of her room like a caged animal. Both breakfast and the midday meal had been sent up to her. “Upon the gentleman’s orders,” she had been told. The heat was stifling, and she paused sporadically to stand at the window and watch the street and try to catch a breeze.

Where was he? Her eyes searched the thoroughfare for Geoff’s tall, familiar form. At last, she pounded a fist against the window frame. If she waited any longer, night would fall, and she dared not venture out alone after dark.

From her place at the window, she had watched the women who came and went below her. Men flocked around those who cast sultry looks from beneath fluttering lashes, and they jeered at and harassed nervous women who cast furtive glances around them. But those who held their heads high and strode with purposeful confidence were relatively unmolested. If a man still had the nerve to approach, fierce glowers seemed to improve the women’s chances.

One woman, not much older than Faith, snapped, “Mayhap you seek a taste of my lover’s cutlass. Cap’n Drake eats swabs such as you for breakfast!”

“No doubt ye’ve tasted his cutlass,” the man shouted suggestively, but he let her be.

Faith squared her shoulders. She would walk out onto those streets, bold as could be. If her manner didn’t protect her, she would call upon Geoff’s reputation to keep her safe. One thing was sure. She would not stay in this room like forgotten baggage!

It wasn’t easy to mask the terrified flutter in her stomach, but Faith refused to give in to the urge to glance fearfully around her. With all the bravado she could muster, she marched down High Street in the direction of the dock.

“Hey, love,” a voice called out, but she ignored it.

“I’ve a lovely trinket ‘ere,” another called, “fer an afternoon’s pleasure.”

Faith sniffed and tilted her head a little higher. Ere she reached the market place that stretched along the docks, she had discovered that she could disregard the crude comments called out to her. With a thrill of accomplishment, she stepped up to Captain Larken’s stall. She had made it without anyone’s help!

Geoff’s friend greeted her with a leer, but when Faith looked at him more closely, she saw that the lascivious expression didn’t reach his eyes. They were, in fact, bright blue and twinkled merrily.

“Well, well,” he said, his voice gravelly. “What ‘ave we ‘ere? ‘Ampton’s pretty little wench, is it? Come back to choose some silk after all?”

Faith smiled at him, her pleasure at seeing him quite genuine. Now, she could relax, for she felt sure that the presence of Geoff’s friend would discourage other men.

“Good day to you, Captain. I hope you’ll forgive my behavior yesterday. I think I may have forgot to say goodbye.” She shook her head in mock regret.

Larken chuckled. “That ye did, missy, that ye did. Veronique, the little minx, she ‘as that effect on other women.”

Faith shrugged as though the incident hadn’t mattered. “She was right about one thing. I do need new clothes. Of course, I need to find Geoff if I’m to do any shopping. Have you seen him today?”

Larken shook his balding pate. “Not today, though I saw ‘is mate, Courtney. ‘E was ‘agglin’ with some merchant over a shipment of wine, I think. Closer to
Destiny
, down that way.” He gestured farther down the docks.

“Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I’m sure that Giles will know where to find him.”

Larken leaned close to her, and she held her breath against the smell of his body and breath, though she smiled politely. Had the man never bathed?

“If I was ye, I’d do me shoppin’ now. Get all ye wants and charge it to ‘im. I’ll find ‘im for the money.”

“Very tempting,” she replied, her face a bit flushed for want of air. “But I really must find Geoff first.” She took a step back and tried not to gasp for breath too obviously. “You’ve been very helpful.” With a little wave, she set off once again, head up, shoulders back.