The Elusive Flame (29 page)

Startled by the realization that she had cried out in her sleep, Cerynise stared up at him in confusion. In growing dismay, she turned her face aside as tears gathered. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.…”

Beau sought to calm her fears, just as he had done when she was a child. “Shhh, my love. Don’t even think that. You merely frightened me, that’s all. Your screams sounded very much like those of that little girl who had been locked in the trunk years ago.”

“I suppose your men heard them, too,” she muttered dejectedly, refusing to look at him. “Just like they heard everything else that went on down here last night?”

“So what if they did?” Beau laughed softly, trying to make light of it all for her benefit. “They’re probably wagering which of us will win out, but I have a feeling they’re not placing too many bets on me coming out ahead.” He reached across and gently tugged at her chin. “Turn around, my love, and let me see your pretty face.”

Strange how memories from the past seemed to recur from time to time, Cerynise mused distantly. He had quieted her sobs with almost the same magical words after letting her out of the trunk, but this time she denied his plea. “Don’t call me my love,” she whispered, stubbornly refusing to let him draw her face around. “I’m not your love, so don’t pretend that I am with all those pretty words you use on other women. We both know what you want, and that is to mount me like some lusty bull.”

Beau winced at her unladylike statement, but it only brought home to him all the things he had said in her presence. Perhaps she had been around him too long for
her
good. “Philippe has made soup for lunch. Can I talk you into coming to my cabin and sharing it with me?”

“I’d rather not,” she replied dully.

“Dam—” Beau caught himself instantly. Flying into a temper every time she rejected his invitations did nothing to ease their dispositions. He tried again, this time more gently. “I’ve come to enjoy our meals together, Cerynise.
I wish you’d change your mind. Besides, I have some things I’d like to talk with you about.”

Her aloofness was unswerving. “I’m really not hungry right now.”

Footsteps approaching the open door brought Beau’s attention to bear upon the one who came to stand beyond the threshold. Stephen Oaks looked past him worriedly, settling his gaze on Cerynise, but the man could discern nothing of her present state when she refused to look around. Meeting his captain’s gaze, he asked hesitantly, “Is Mrs. Birmingham all right, sir?”

“Aye.” Beau sighed and straightened himself to his full height. “She just had a bad dream, that’s all.”

Even if it meant angering his superior, the mate felt pressed to let him know just how much his wife had endeared herself to many of the sailors on board. Perhaps such knowledge would help the man realize what a prize his wife really was, in more ways than just beauty and grace. “Billy is wary of coming down, Captain, for fear that something horrible might have happened to her. I’m afraid the rest of the men are up in arms, too, for the very same reason.”

Beau looked at his second-in-command and realized the depth of loyalty the man had obviously come to feel for the lady during their passage from England. The mate’s words came close to laying the blame for the difficulty in their marriage at his feet, not Cerynise’s. And why not? His contrariness and tenaciously stubborn will could set the orneriest tar on his ear. “Then please assure Billy and everyone else that Mrs. Birmingham is resting now after waking from a nightmare. She’ll be as good as new in no time.”

“Aye, Captain.” Stephen Oaks started to turn away but paused and solemnly met his captain’s lingering stare. “’Twould really be nice to see her smiling face on the morrow, sir.”

Beau nodded, aware that the man was gently urging him
to treat his wife with more care. “I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Oaks.”

“I know you will, sir,” the mate replied, and with a brief smile, returned to the deck.

Beau looked around at his wife and found that she hadn’t moved. He bent down to tuck the covers in around her and smooth the stray tendrils of hair back from her temple. “You should have something warmer than these blankets. I’ll bring in the feather tick from my bed.…”

“Please don’t bother. I’m just fine as I am.”

Beau turned with a frustrated sigh and crossed to the door. He had done it up royally this time. She wouldn’t even look at him or accept his efforts to help or comfort her.

Cerynise heard the door close gently behind him and, in the silence that ensued, finally found the privacy to bury her face in the pillow and sob out her anguish anew.

It was at least a good hour later when Cerynise poured water into the basin and, wetting a cloth, bathed her eyes and face until the red blotches that had been brought forth by her weeping began to fade. Patting her skin dry, she leaned forward to stare into the tiny mirror above the washstand.

No more tears,
she promised herself in a whisper, fervently hoping she had shed the last of that salty river for the likes of such emerald-eyed devils as her husband and others more akin to Alistair Winthrop. If Beau didn’t want to keep her as his wife, then she could ill afford to let her despondency over her lost love wreak havoc with her moods. Somewhere, someday, there would be a man who’d love her and could accept her as his bride without caring that she was no longer a virgin. Until then, she would have to make a new life for herself. There would be enough challenges to face in Charleston without letting her dashed dreams get the better of her. Until her paintings started selling, she’d have to be financially dependent on her uncle, but he had lived a bachelor’s life so long, she didn’t know if he could abide having a female under foot
all the time or her paints and sketches cluttering some area of his house. But then, he had always had his nose in a book of one kind or another, so perhaps he wouldn’t notice her presence overly much.

Strengthened somewhat by the new goal she had set for her life, Cerynise turned to her sketches and involved herself in her work, but she sat back abruptly in stunned amazement when a charcoal sketch of Beau gazed back at her from the parchment, and not just one Beau but dozens upon dozens, fluttering from her hands to drift across the cabin floor, so many mute reminders of her infatuation with the man. With a groan, she swept them up and was about to consign them to wadded parchments when her more sensible self asserted itself. She wouldn’t let him drive her to the destruction of her own work. Instead, she would keep the drawings as a salutary lesson in the penalties of allowing her heart to rule her head, and henceforth she hoped she’d be the wiser for it.

The sketches had been stowed away well out of sight and she was standing before her easel, industriously detailing figures on a canvas for a new oil painting, when some instinct halted her in mid-stroke. She raised her head, listening intently. She heard nothing save the muted slap of canvas in the wind, the creak of planks, the distant voices of men, all the sounds that had become so familiar to her that she had to make a concerted effort to hear them at all. Yet she couldn’t deny the feeling that was now sweeping through her. She remained tensely alert, her heart beating with almost painful swiftness and her fingers gripping the brush so tightly they came nigh to snapping it in two. An instant before the rap of knuckles came upon the wood she knew who stood outside her door, the only man so at home on the
Audacious
that he could walk across a swaying deck or descend a companionway without making a sound.

Cerynise moved on trembling limbs and, with a stern reminder to remain composed, opened the door. Beau stood in the passageway, looking greatly troubled.

“I was harsh with you earlier on the quarterdeck,” he said without preamble. “You didn’t deserve that, and I’ve come to say I’m sorry and to make amends to the best of my ability.”

She waited, mainly from the sheer surprise of his unexpected apology, while he, in turn, studied her with an intensity that convinced her that she hadn’t been as successful at hiding the evidence of her weeping as she had hoped.

“Apology accepted,” she murmured quietly, and waited through a long, uncomfortable silence. It seemed an eternity. “If that’s all you wanted, Beau, I should get back to my work. I’ll need to sell some of my paintings as soon as I reach Charleston so I can repay you for what you gave Jasper.”

“You needn’t worry about that, Cerynise. Just consider it a gift.”

“I’d rather not be beholden to you any more than I am already,” she said in quiet dignity.

Beau wondered if some peculiar affliction had stripped him of the ability to openly discuss the matter which had plagued him since arising from his sickbed. He felt equally inadequate in his search for a way to repair the hurt he had inflicted. More than his first mate, he wanted to see his wife smile again.

Another lengthy hush ensued, and Cerynise, uncomfortable beneath his unrelenting stare, stepped forward to push the door closed. Her attempt seemed to awaken Beau, for he promptly moved inward, gently nudging the wooden barrier back with a shoulder. At her look of alarm, he sought ineptly to justify his lingering presence. “Mothering me in front of my men, madam, doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. They must have no doubt about my ability to command.”

“It must be a poor world that you men make for yourselves when any show of caring concern is taken as weakness,” Cerynise replied stiffly. “It makes me doubly glad that I was born a woman.”

The corners of Beau’s mouth threatened to give way to amusement. “Don’t expect me to argue that point with you. Somehow I can’t imagine that you’d be very convincing as a man.” His brows gathered with concern as he continued to study her, and with husky gentleness he inquired, “Cerynise…is all well with you?”

He
knew!
The thought froze her in place, like a doe caught in sudden wariness by the approach of man. Frantically she searched her mind, wondering what she had let slip. Yet she could think of nothing that she had either said or done that would have given away her secret. That left one other option…he was now recalling the event himself. But why wouldn’t he simply question her about it? He was a direct and plainspoken man, definitely not the bashful sort to approach any subject hesitantly. So why would he not ask her outright about the matter?

Cerynise’s gaze delved deeply into those darkly crystalline eyes, searching for some hint of what he might know. They were as beautiful as always, but they revealed nothing. She was reading too much into his question. That was all there was to it, she concluded. She was simply grabbing at straws.

“Perfectly well,” she finally murmured. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Beau, I must get back to work.”

Unconvinced, he continued to study her, making no effort to leave. Slowly his gaze swept over her, heating where it touched, making her look away lest he see too clearly the helpless stirring he caused within her. “I’d like for you to join me for supper, Cerynise, and I hope this time you will accept my invitation. I’ve come to hate dining alone, and Mr. Oaks is no comfort. He seems intent upon chiding me about my uncivilized manners.”

Sit near him at a table for an hour or more? Without Mr. Oaks’s cheerful, stabling presence? Cerynise knew exactly where she would end up, and the way Beau was pressing her, she was certain he had come to the determination that she had no will of her own. Despite an overwhelming desire to yield to his plea, she could not. For her own
preservation she had to think of what she would risk and not be taken in by his cajoling.

“I think under the circumstances, Beau, it would be better if we weren’t in each other’s company so much.” That statement had an all too familiar ring to it that made her wonder how often she had said those exact same words. Thus far, they had failed to serve her purposes, for she was even more involved now than she had been when she first issued that proposal. She tried again, hoping to convince him…as well as herself. “We both seem to have difficulty honoring our titular arrangement. I’ve certainly allowed you far more liberties than either of us initially discussed, so I must consider that it’s best for me not to be in your company at all. Forthwith, it should be as if we had never married.”

If she had ever spoken words that wrung her heart more deeply, Cerynise couldn’t remember them. These took all her strength and will to say.

Beau neither smiled nor frowned. In silence he inclined his head ever so slightly and withdrew. It seemed an end of an era he had immensely enjoyed, but more than that, he was sure his heart had ceased its motion.

Cerynise was trembling uncontrollably by the time she closed the door behind him. She returned to the small desk beside the cot, feeling in no mood to continue her work on the canvas. Instead, she sat with her hands folded listlessly in her lap, her eyes unfocused, with a burgeoning emptiness filling every niche and fiber of her being.

It was that same horrible sense of being hollowed out from inside that sucked much of the joy out of her life through the days and weeks that followed. She kept to herself as much as possible and no longer felt fully connected to life aboard ship. It was as if invisible walls had descended around her, shutting her off from the world outside her cabin. She didn’t even feel alive; she was just existing from moment to moment until the voyage came to an end. Then, somehow, she would have to collect her
shattered heart and put it back together again in some semblance of order.

Following Beau’s visit to her cabin, Cerynise had gone up on deck at Stephen Oaks’s gentle urgings, just long enough to avoid inquiries from any quarter about her health. Once there, she responded to the greetings of the men but never initiated any conversation of her own. The mate tried to draw her out, as did Billy Todd and Monsieur Philippe, who oftentimes came to fetch her tray himself and would stay long enough for a quick chat in French. They all felt driven by the same kind of concern that she had seen in the eyes of other crew members. Deflecting it all with a soft smile, she let the well of emptiness draw her further in.

Christmas still found them close to a month from their destination. Cerynise consented to share the evening with her husband in a quiet dinner attended by Stephen Oaks. She gifted Beau with a lavish painting of his ship, and to the mate she presented a portrait she had painted of him on canvas, as she had done earlier for Billy and Philippe. In return, Oaks presented her with a miniature replica of the
Audacious
that he had carved and outfitted with string rigging and handkerchief sails. He grinned widely as she praised his talents, which took no enormous feat by any means, for she was mightily impressed that he had constructed it all so closely to scale.