More Than You Know (28 page)

Rand shook his head. He wished it was in his power to make it right for her. “Do you blame your godfather?"

"No."

"Your mother, then."

"She should have been stronger,” she said quietly. “She let what he wanted be more important to her than what she wanted."

"She wanted to be with him,” said Rand.

"Yes."

"And could she have done that if she had stayed behind?"

"Of course."

Rand touched Claire's cheek. His thumb brushed away the last traces of tears. “Really? They probably had more opportunity to see one another with your father in the country than they would with him outside of it. The duke would not have wanted to cast your mother in an ill light. You know as well as I do that it was her reputation that would have suffered the most. I think she did not want to leave him, but I think she understood that it was the wisest course. I don't think you would be who you are if your mother had been a foolish woman. You were a child, Claire, and you've held a child's way of thinking for too many years. Can you not abandon it now and come to know your mother and father and the duke as mere mortals?"

Claire's smile was a shade watery. Her tone was wry. “You mean they may have made mistakes?"

Rand lifted Claire's hand to his face and let her explore the cast of his features. He wanted her to know the depth of his feeling. “Many of them,” he said. “But the most serious was not helping you discover how deserving of love you are."

One hundred miles northeast of Tahiti, and part of the same island chain, Raiatea was known as the “mother of lands” because it was the first to be settled in the Society group. It required five more days, with
Cerberus
following the true course of the star Sirius, for the clipper to reach the island's natural harbor.

Claire had wondered how she would feel when the ship finally came upon Raiatea. It was here that her own canoe had landed after the long, harrowing journey over Pacific waters. The islanders had received her with a mixture of great joy and awe bordering on fear. If not for the presence of the British frigate, Claire knew she might have been elevated to the position of a spirit god by her rescuers. She was placed in the care of her countrymen instead and taken away from the island before she could properly thank anyone who had helped her.

"I'm looking forward to expressing my gratitude,” Claire told the doctor. “There were times I despaired of being given this opportunity."

"Hmmm.” Macauley Stuart was listening to her with only half an ear.

Claire smiled at his distraction. She wondered how much he had heard of her account. “Are the outriggers coming to meet us?” she asked.

"Yes. There are four of them. Swift as spiders on the water."

Claire remembered. She felt Macauley brush her arm as he leaned forward at the rail. Above her in the yardarms men were calling out, shouting greetings to women on shore who could not possibly hear them. The activity on the ship was still orderly and purposeful, but it was only the presence of the captain and Cutch that kept it that way. Left to their own urges, most of the crew would have thrown themselves overboard and swum for shore.

Claire touched Macauley's forearm to get his attention. “Has the captain said why we're putting down anchor here?"

"Supplies, I suppose,” he said. He tore his eyes away from the throng of honey-skinned women on the shore and regarded Claire with some surprise. “You don't know? I thought you had Captain Hamilton's ear."

Claire's mouth flattened briefly. It was not his words she found distasteful, but the meaning he injected into them. Dr. Stuart had never directly said he knew she was involved in an affair with Rand, but he found ways to indicate it nonetheless. “He's said nothing to me,” she said levelly. “It was only this morning that Mr. Cutch mentioned we were close to the island."

"There's something secretive about the whole business of being here,” Stuart said.

In spite of her wish to be gone from Stuart's company, Claire was intrigued. “Secretive? How?"

Macauley's genial smile was not in evidence. He rubbed his chin, musing. “Whispering when I'm around. Talk that stops when I come into a room. It's only been this last week, I'd say. Do you think it has something to do with the treasure?"

"That may be so, though I suppose it could be any number of things. I didn't realize you were interested in the treasure."

He shrugged. “I wasn't in London. I was clear to the duke on that account. Folderol and folly, I told him. But as we've approached the South Seas, the whole idea of buried treasure seems more reasonable. There's something magical and mysterious about water as clear and blue as the sky and islands that are ringed with rainbows and mist every morning. I can imagine now that men would hide their treasure here just for the privilege of coming back to find it."

Macauley glanced sideways at Claire. “I've surprised you, haven't I?"

"A little.” She recalled how the doctor had first described Bria to her. “I'd forgotten you could be a romantic."

His brogue became more noticeable. “Romantic and practical. That's the curse of the Scots."

Claire laughed. It was good to find some enjoyment in his companionship again. “The outriggers are here, aren't they?” She could hear them bumping into the hull of
Cerberus.
“Will you go ashore?"

"If my legs will hold me. I fear they'll crumple on solid ground."

She patted his arm. “You'll be fine."

Rand chose that moment to join them. “Claire, we're going to put you in a sling and lower you into one of the canoes."

Her eyes widened. “A sling? I've never done that before. I don't expect I'll want to do it again soon. Will we be here long?"

"I don't know,” he said, reaching for her hand. “How long does a wedding take?"

Claire turned on her side sleepily. Her eyes opened as she rolled into Rand's solid frame. When he didn't stir, she smiled and pressed a light kiss to the back of his shoulder. He did not seem to be bothered by the stillness as she was. It was the unfamiliar silence that woke her.
Cerberus
was virtually deserted tonight. Except for a man on watch, she and Rand were the only people on board. It was comforting and somehow disquieting at the same time.

Just above the steady rhythm of the lapping waves, Claire could hear the celebration continuing on shore. At this distance it did not sound so different from the chuckle of the water. It was a pleasant roar in her ears, one she might not have noticed if not for the calm surrounding her now.

Fifteen minutes, she thought. That was how long the wedding took. Rand had spent much more time trying to find the missionary. The Reverend Alvin Simmons was finally tracked to a secluded lagoon where he was summarily captured and carried back to his small thatch church. The poor man insisted on having his clothes returned to him before he would carry out the ceremony. Claire thought it was a reasonable request when Cutch told her about it. Rand apparently considered it a monumental waste of time.

Claire pressed the knuckles of one hand against her mouth. It did nothing to stifle her rather giddy smile, but it helped with the urge to laugh. Until the moment Claire made her vows, Rand's manner had been rather commanding and impatient, almost as if he expected her to refuse him. Not that there had ever been a proper proposal of marriage. It had amused Claire that he was not willing to put the question to her. His logic—that she couldn't say no if he didn't ask her outright—was as absurd as it was endearing.

The only other person surprised by Rand's announcement was Macauley Stuart. His observation that there was something secretive about the stop in Raiatea was proven true. The crew had been informed of Rand's plans well in advance of his prospective bride. Claire supposed that was done in the event she tried to launch herself over the side of the ship. In fact she had only launched herself into Rand's arms. The roar of approval on board
Cerberus
had been deafening. Claire had no idea if the doctor added his voice to the congratulatory cacophony or maintained a stoic silence. Until now she hadn't considered what his opinion of the day's events might be.

Claire stretched, then snuggled comfortably against Rand's naked back. She did not want to think about Macauley Stuart or his opinions. If he was worried about what her godfather would say, she would defend him then. It was not as if he could have stopped her, and it was wrong for the duke to expect that he could.

She wondered how strongly opposed her godfather would have been to the match. If the marriage had taken place at Abberly, would he have been able to give her away? What cautions would he have had for her that she had not already heard from Macauley Stuart or thought of herself?

Claire did not linger long on that course of thinking. She certainly had no regrets about her decision. For all that Rand's manner had been rather high-handed, nothing that was done was done against her will.

Recalling the ceremony, Claire's smile was wistful. After the Reverend Simmons's initial bewilderment and accompanying protests, everything about the exchange of vows went as she would have planned herself. It had been the depth of Rand's feeling for her, not nervousness or fear, that had edged his voice with a faint tremor and brought tears to her own eyes. She was radiant, he told her later. She had been from the moment she appeared in the church on Cutch's arm.

Claire had known the rough-hewn pews were filled with the crew from
Cerberus
because Cutch told her, not because any one of them made the slightest noise. They held their collective breath throughout the ceremony, just as if some doubt about the outcome remained. When she asked Rand about it, he had laughed. It wasn't uncertainty that kept them quiet, he said, but awe. They could have extinguished every candle in the church and still seen the ceremony through her luminescent eyes.

It did not seem outside the realm of possibility.

Claire's toes nudged the back of Rand's calves. She drew her foot along their length and rubbed his ankles lightly. Her murmur had the sound of sleepy pleasure.

"That's a very erotic hum,” Rand said. His eyes were closed and his voice was heavy with sleep.

"Hmmm.” This time Claire's lips touched his back. His skin was deliciously warm. “I didn't realize you were awake."

Rand was skeptical. “It seems as if you've been trying hard enough to make it so."

Claire laid one hand on his hip. “Have I?"

She sounded terribly innocent, Rand thought, but the fingers that were grazing his thigh were experienced. He groaned softly when they reached his groin. Rand laid his hand over hers. She circled his penis. “The Reverend Simmons would be shocked,” he said deeply.

"I'm
shocked,” Claire said.

Rand chuckled. He didn't doubt that she was. It seemed that Claire was often surprised by her capacity for pleasure. She made love with a certain degree of curiosity and wonder, and she seemed overwhelmed at times by her ability to arouse him. She had once described the point at which she lost control and his fierce passion took over as not being able to put the genie back in the lamp. It was wildly exciting and just a little alarming. She hadn't offered her insight as a complaint, merely as a statement of fact.

Rand turned. He was swelling under her steady stroking. He kissed her mouth, circling her tongue with his. His knee nudged her legs apart, and then he was entering her, one warm fist replaced by the damp velvet walls of another. She sighed. Their breaths mingled. She contracted around him. For a while they lay very still, joined together but with no urgency to move. He nudged her lips, kissed the underside of her jaw. Her tongue darted out, first to wet her own mouth, then to lick at his. He took it into his mouth again and sucked. Beneath him her breasts swelled, and her body held him more tightly. His hips made an involuntary thrust forward. Hers lifted. They made small murmurs of pleasure at the same time.

Rand's smile was wry. “I suppose one of us has to move."

Claire's response was a barely audible sigh. She was content when he accepted it as agreement. In time her breathing became as measured as his strokes. She concentrated on nothing but that. She was unaware of how she helped him with the supple arch of her body. The bending of her knees, the fingers in his hair, the cradle she made with her thighs, all of this was done without conscious thought. Her search for pleasure was all instinct now, just as his was. The rhythm was as primal as the ebb and flow of the tides, the tug on their senses as unrelenting as the moon's pull on the seas. There was something profoundly satisfying in reveling in their bodies’ responses.

Claire caught and held her breath as Rand climaxed. He was deep inside her when he came, and his shudder tripped her senses. The single nerve that seemed to control every aspect of her pleasure vibrated with perfect pitch. She pushed on Rand's shoulders, then gripped them hard. She surrendered the small cry that was lodged at the back of her throat, and then she was silent. Her body fell still long before her breathing quieted.

"Are you sleeping?” he asked after a moment.

"No. Dead."

Rand grinned and kissed her lightly on the mouth. “You flatter me.” He sat up and went to the basin.

Claire didn't think any of her limbs worked. “How can you move?"

"Sheer force of will.” He washed himself and then carried a damp cloth back to their bed. She gave a little start when he raised the covers and placed it on her thigh, but then she let him continue. His ministrations were tender, and from Claire's point of view, blessedly quick. She didn't completely relax until Rand tossed the cloth back in the basin and she heard the accompanying splash.

"Do you think I would be more embarrassed if I could see?” she asked.

"I don't see how."

Claire laughed. She felt him crawl into bed beside her. When his thigh rubbed hers she realized he was wearing his drawers again. It came to her that she did not mind being naked when he was not. She liked the idea that he could touch her so freely.

"Your cheeks are flaming,” Rand said, looking down on her.

"You would not credit what I was thinking."

"Tell me."

"Not for all the bloody tea in China."

Rand's eyes widened; then he burst out laughing. Claire's prim, butter-wouldn't-melt voice was so completely at odds with her language that he couldn't help himself. Tears actually gathered at the corners of his eyes.

"You're a wretch to laugh,” she told him.

"I know.” His attempt at a solemn apology failed. It didn't help that the corners of Claire's mouth were edging upward. “That's a smug smile you have."

Claire blinked. “Do you have a lantern burning in here?” she demanded.

"No,” he said, straight-faced. “Candles. Two of them.” His tone became more serious when he saw she was about to protest. Rand's fingers slipped into her dark hair and cupped the back of her head. “I wanted to look at my wife while I made love to her. There's no moon tonight, and only one of us in here can see in the dark."

She smiled a little at that. “You might have told me,” she said softly.

"I will from now on. Do you want me to put them out?” The candles didn't have much longer to burn, but Rand would have snuffed them immediately if that was Claire's wish.

"No, it's all right ... now that I know."

"Why does it bother you?"

Claire was silent a moment, collecting her thoughts. “I don't know if I can explain. I suppose I feel less vulnerable when I think you can't see. During the day my disadvantage is clear. I'm more on guard then, more aware of everything I do. At night, especially here in the cabin with you, I don't experience my blindness so keenly. I imagined if there was an advantage, it was mine."

"You don't have to be on guard with me."

"I know. It just doesn't make it any easier. I never know when I'm being watched. Sometimes I think it's all the time.” She mocked herself with a short laugh. “I know perfectly well I'm not deserving of so much attention, but I—"

"I watch you all the time,” Rand said.

Claire remembered overhearing Bria tell him that.
You notice her. You notice everything about her.
“Do you?” she asked.

"Hmmm.” He bent and kissed her forehead. “Do you mind?"

"It's a little unsettling."

"Bree said your knees would buckle if you knew."

Claire hadn't forgotten. “She was right. From now on I'll use my cane for support as well as guidance."

Rand brushed her mouth with his thumb. “I love you,” he said.

Claire's heart swelled as she accepted the words. A moment later she echoed them softly.