Seize the Fire (34 page)

Leaping up, she jumped over Napoleon, who scrambled aside and nipped at her with an indignant squawk. She untied the canvas at the door, poking her bead into the freezing gloom. "You're late! I was just about to go looking."

The dark bulk outside solidified into a tall form. Sheridan swung the bag of peat off his shoulder and dragged it through the door. "I spent the afternoon in one of those charming burn-pits. Lord, why'd they ever bother to invent pool halls when the world's got delightful places like that?"

"Dear God!" As he limped into the firelight, she saw that he was covered with mud, his coat wet and his face marked with dirty slashes. "Oh, dear God." She threw her arms around him and pressed her face against his damp chest, holding onto him as if he might vanish from her arms at any instant.

He rested his cheek on her hair. For a long moment he held her close.

"You aren't hurt?" Her voice was muffled in his coat.

"Twisted my ankle." He kissed the top of her head. "Not badly. I finally managed to dig myself a reasonable slope and crawl out of the beastly place."

Olympia thought of the pits, where old signal fires set by the sealers had taken hold in the peat bog and burned for months deep underground. A small hole hidden beneath a tussock could be the entrance to a muddy mantrap fifteen feet deep and thirty wide. "I should have gone looking," she exclaimed. "I should have gone."

"Not at all. I enjoy digging my way through mountains with a barrel hoop."

She hugged him hard. "I'm so sorry."

"I'm hoping you had a prior engagement with a goose." He touched her hair. "I reckoned you'd get around to me by tomorrow, but I didn't fancy spending the night ankle-deep in cold water." He gave her a squeeze. "I've got better plans for the evening."

She lifted her face. He smiled down at her, his eyes silver and glittering in the firelight, his face marked with black streaks like some demonic jester. He lowered his head, meeting her lips, his kiss hard and ruthless as his arms tightened around her. Olympia shared the taste of mud and sweat, and thought it as sweet as scones and butter.

She was sorry when he let her go and sniffed in the direction of the hearth. "Seaweed?" he asked glumly.

Olympia thought of a joke.
"Potage à la Maloon Anglais."

He grimaced instead of laughing, which was typical of his reaction to her jokes. "Again? We had that last night." He limped past her and sat down in the sand by the fire. "I'm going to advertise for a new chef if you don't start showing some enterprise." He picked up his big clam shell, tilted the bucket and dipped out a steaming cupful. He drank it down without pausing for breath and wiped his mouth. Napoleon puffed out his feathers, shook himself and huddled in the far corner. Sheridan tossed a thatch of woven tussock grass over the penguin to block the firelight. Napoleon made a clicking coo, rustled once and was silent.

"There are ten crabs," she said.

"The deuce you say." His face brightened. "You're an angel."

She lifted her cloak from the sand, untying the ribbon that held the woolen bundle together. Sheridan took it, peering carefully inside the wriggling package at the crabs netted in a mesh of twisted tussock grass which she'd braided with sealskin strips around a frame of oar pieces. "Blow me—look at that."

"I baited it with goose tripe," she said.

With gingerly moves, he tipped the net and shook a hapless crab into the bucket, one, and then another, snatching his fingers away just in time to avoid the pincers of the third as it tumbled into the steaming water. When six were splashing amid the seaweed, he retied the bag and set it aside, always careful to save something for tomorrow.

"An angel," he said again.

Olympia clasped her hands behind her back, blushing faintly.

He looked at her sideways. "Come here, angel," he said softly.

She crossed the little hut and sat down beside him. He held her close, touching her chin with a grimy hand. "Don't ever come looking for me in the dark, my mouse. I'm a pretty tough bird. If I can't hold out for help till daylight, I wasn't going to make it anyway."

Olympia rested her head on his shoulder. The strength of her feelings was frightening; the idea of losing him unthinkable. In this place, her whole world came down to him. She might have survived by herself now, with the hut he had rebuilt and the food they had learned to find; physically she might have lived, but everything inside her would die.

It seemed strange that she'd ever thought him cowardly and wicked. Sometimes when he was away from the hut, cutting turf or digging far down the beach for clams, she remembered the jewels, but it almost seemed now as if that had happened to someone else, someone as distant from herself as the white-gloved figure in the gold-and-blue uniform was distant from the man who sat beside her in a torn and muddy coat, poking impatiently at the fire with one hand and holding her close with the other.

He gave her another squeeze and stood up, drinking deeply from the canvas water bag he'd sewn from a piece of sail. Peering with one eye into the tiny mirror balanced on a rocky shelf, he tried to rinse his face.

Olympia laughed when he turned around. "Now you're a proper blackamoor." She pulled a piece of linen petticoat from their careful stash of cloth and wet it, standing close to him to wipe the smears of mud from his cheek and jaw. While she raised herself on tiptoe to reach his forehead, he warmed the inside of her wrist with light kisses.

She allowed herself to lean against him. He bent his bead as she worked, nuzzling her temple and then her cheek. She gave up on the washing, parting her lips in anticipation as his long eyelashes brushed downward and his arm slid around her waist.

It was gentle for a moment, the kiss: a slow, warm outline on her lips. Then his arm tightened and his mouth opened over hers, tasting deep, driving out the cold and the wind and the gray desolation, spinning everything down to one hot, delicious center. He held her close, strength and comfort, the steady fire that kept her alive and leapt into blazing flame when he touched her.

His hands slipped down, spreading beneath her, rocking her against him so that she could feel his body's excitement. She stirred her hips in provocative answer, knowing what he appreciated—knowing all kinds of things that he had taught her. They were alone: she could do anything, he anyone, please herself and him without shame. She found she was passionate and eager…and best of all, she found the restless, miserable emptiness that had haunted her life and driven her dreams of glory filled with something much simpler.

She was happy. Here in this barren place, hungry all the time, cold and damp most of it, where every day was an effort to survive until tomorrow—she was happy. She was glad to wake up under sealskin on the sand, when it meant waking up in his arms. She was anxious to look for food, when she knew he would smile and congratulate her and eat a few meager crabs as if they were manna. She felt lucky to sacrifice her petticoat in order to wipe mud from his face, when he would kiss her as she did it.

He made a sound of pleasure, took her cheeks between his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. "A difficult choice," he murmured. "Food or frolic."

"Both," she suggested.

"Certainly. One at a time, or together?"

She closed her hands over his and pulled them gently away. "You need to eat. You must be starving."

"I'm always starving." He tried to catch her back, but Olympia sidestepped. "Very well, Mama. Dinner first."

A meal of crab and mussels seasoned with seaweed left her full and contented, a feeling she knew would be all too emphemeral. After they'd finished, she built up the fire and stacked the peat he'd brought that day to dry. Sheridan lay back on the sealskins. He'd taken off his damp clothes and hung them near the fire, so he sat bare-chested, propped up on a fur-covered boulder, with the extra skin thrown across his legs.

He was exhausted: she could tell it, in spite of his earlier enthusiasm. As she finished cleaning up their few utensils, he sat drowsing in the firelight. By the time she had checked the signal fire outside, carried the bucket down to the windswept beach and brought back a pail of wet seaweed to keep the extra crabs alive, he was fast asleep.

She stood for a moment, watching him. His dark head tilted over one shoulder, shadowing the muscled curve of his arm. She gazed at the pulse in his throat and the little scar that cut his eyebrow—memento of a splintered gun casing in a French broadside at Trafalgar. They made him seem achingly vulnerable; so easily lost—an inch of space, a second of time—a fall down a deeper hole, and it might have been a broken neck instead of a sprained ankle. He knew that, and yet he went every day to search out the fuel they needed to keep the hut warm and the signal fire lit.

Often at night, he played on Fish's harmonica, teaching her songs and sighing over her struggles to carry a tune. Sometimes he even made up new ones, right at the moment, melodies and words about something that had happened that day, while Olympia sat before the fire and listened to him, rocking softly in time.

Tonight, she only wanted him to sleep. She tried to finish her work quietly, but the scrabble of unhappy crabs in the tin pail made him sit up with a soft snort. He leaned his head back, rubbing his eyes.

Olympia straightened from carefully arranging the net over the pail to prevent escapees. Sheridan lifted his arm in invitation. "Princess. Come give me something to stay awake about."

She pulled off her wet boots and socks and set them to dry, snuggling her feet down into the fur beside him. He pulled her against his naked warmth, his fingers working on the buttons of her dress, his mouth exploring her ear.

Olympia smiled and touched his hand. "Rest tonight."

"I'm not tired," he whispered, kissing the side of her throat.

"Liar. You're too tired for this."

He slipped his fingers into the open back of her dress and ran his thumb down her spine. "I'd be dead before I was too tired for this."

She caught his other hand as he reached for her and rested back against his shoulder, gazing down the length of his fur-covered legs to the fire. "Think of something else. If you could be anywhere in the world," she said, "where would you like to be?"

"Vienna," he said without hesitation.

She turned her head in surprise. "Vienna?"

He nibbled her bare shoulder. "Austria. In the spring. And we'd be waltzing to Strauss at the Schönbrunn Palace, and you'd be wearing a scarlet gown cut down to here"—he lifted their entwined hands and touched her bosom—"with one of those floaty hems that just showed your slippers and a shocking peek of ankle whenever you turned." He closed his eyes, his breath warming her shoulder. "And it would be the last waltz, so that you'd be all flushed and out of breath and rosy and gorgeous, and I'd be ready to take you past the Royal Guards up a great, wide, curved staircase to a bedroom with a huge bed and gold velvet hangings where we could still hear the music. And I'd be making plans…I'd be thinking about how I'd scoop you up and cast you on the bed…and spread your arms out…and lean over you…and kiss your beautiful breasts, and your pretty feet, and your ankles, and your calves, and your lovely white thighs…and your delicious…pink…mmmmhhh." He nipped at her neck with a growl, his tongue making a hot circle on her skin. "And you wouldn't have on any underwear."

Olympia pressed her fingers over a smile. "Have you ever been to Vienna?"

He shook his head, his mouth against her hair.

"What an imagination you have got."

"What else do I have to think about out there, digging to goddamned China in a peat bog? Besides—I've been at sea for the best part of a quarter century. Imagination is my life." He was working her dress lower with little tugs. "Where would you like to be if you could be anywhere?"

She bit her lip, staring at her lap. After a moment, she shrugged.

"Where?" he persisted. "Rome? Paris? Some tropical paradise?"

"Actually…I rather like it here."

"Here! The devil. On this island?"

"Well—" She rubbed her hands together under the sealskin. "Yes."

"You cork-brain." He tilted her chin up and kissed her nose. "Why?"

She lowered her eyes. "Because you're here."

He'd been kissing the line of her jaw. At her soft explanation, he stopped. "Me."

She nodded.

"Me?"

She stared at her lap. "Yes."

"Villainous Sir Sherry—King of the Bastards?" he asked hoarsely. "You don't mean that."

She glanced toward him. He was looking down at her hands. His beautiful long lashes hid his eyes and there was a faintly bitter tilt to his mouth.

"Yes," she said. "I do."

He lifted his eyes. "I suppose I should laugh?" he asked with a one-sided smile. "Is this one of your dubious attempts at humor?"

She took his hand and drew it into her lap. One by one, she outlined his fingers. "I'm not joking. You make me happy. Can't you tell?"

He gave a little laugh, looking confounded and pleased. "I don't know how on God's earth I'd make you happy in this dismal situation. Unless you're happy with drudgery all day and nothing but a skimpy supper and a paltry excuse for a tumble at night. Lord, you're still more or less a virgin, much to my credit. Who'd have thought I could be so noble?" His mouth flattened. "Really, I'm surprised I haven't killed myself."

She bent her head. "I like what we do."

"Why shouldn't you? I'm the one who has to keep my wits about me. And I've managed to do it in some exceedingly dire circumstances, too, let me tell you."

"Yes." She looked up into his eyes. "I know you have."

His lips twisted wryly. He looked away.

"I don't care about the rest, either," she said. "The way we have to live. Except that I shouldn't turn away a hot scone with butter now and again, and I wish you had more to eat." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "You work so hard."

"Princess," he muttered. "Oh, Princess." His hand found hers beneath the fur and tightened around it.

Olympia watched him slantwise, admiring the spare elegance of his cheekbone and the line of his jaw. There was still a faint smear of dirt across his temple, half hidden by his hair. She caressed his hand, and felt him flinch almost imperceptibly when she hit a new blister amid the old calluses.