The Windflower (41 page)

"Merry!" he said in mock reproach, remembering suddenly the scenes so similar to this one that had led him at the age of ten to stop letting his sister come fishing with him. The thought produced the smile he was trying to hide. "I can't believe you want me to let them go. Why, that snapper is more than two feet long!"

The too-small nose took on a mischievous tilt. "Pooh. It's only a foot and a half.''

"Damn it, it's two feet if it's an inch."

"One foot nine inches," she said, "and that's my last offer."

Her manner was still oh, so playful, but some abstract sense told him that for her this was no game. She meant to test him. It was like her suddenly to see the fish as a symbol of her own captivity. He had never met anyone with her amazing sentimentality. More amazing still was how that delicacy of mind had survived those weeks on the
Joke
and contact with men like Eric Shay and Max Reade . . . and of course himself. He carried that thought to his fingers as he opened the box's latched back and sent the trap again into the calm waters. One by one the fish went their ways, tails twitching.

In the meantime Merry was resisting the urge to toss her arms around his neck and shower his blond hair with kisses. Among other deterrents she'd probably upset the canoe. From her brother, Carl, and her cousin, Jason, she knew it was usually useless to ask men and boys not to shoot squirrels or catch fish. Devon had understood her. She knew her uncontrolled smile was silly and a little tremulous.

Devon's grin had equal elements in it of affection and amused exasperation. Shaking his head slowly, he began to laugh, and she laughed with him until the floral wreath made its final slip and plopped down over her eyes.

The canoe moved idly for a long time near a hilly shoreline heavy with groves of coconut palm and straggling beds of prickly pear with their profuse baubles of flower and fruit. Staring in a happy daze at the scenery, Merry was recalled to her surroundings by Devon's voice with the prosaic reminder that even though the heat was unseasonably mild, she had better cover her arms and face because God only knew what Cat would do to the pair of them if Devon brought her home with a sunburn. Merry struggled into a straw bonnet and shawl as she watched Devon relax against the stern, trailing a line baited with enough sprat to sink the wire hook of its own weight.

"If something bites," he said, holding her in a lazy gaze, stretching his long, handsomely proportioned legs out before him, "can I keep it if it's u-g-l-y?"

To cover the soggy wash of love she was feeling for him, Merry answered his teasing with a face. "Man's work, isn't it—fishing?"

"You ought to go with Raven. He ties the line around his toe and falls asleep. Once he caught a turbot, and a shark ate that and dragged Raven through fifty feet of water." Then, "You realize, of course, if one of those fish had been served to you at dinner, you would have eaten it without a qualm."

She rested her chin on her fist. "I know I haven't always been philosophically consistent. I'm to work on it," she said, thinking about certain lectures from Cat. Shifting her body, she dug in the picnic basket and discovered her sketch pad. "Sometimes I think I should be eschewing animal flesh altogether.''

"Doubtless, mine included. Good Lord, what are you doing? Are you going to draw a picture of me?" he said.

"Why, yes, but only as part of the scenery. Imagine yourself as being a rock or a tree."

"Stones have been known to move and trees to speak." Devon spoke the quote with a half smile. "What would you like me to do? Must I not talk? Or shall I be amusing? Would you like to hear about this canoe?"

"Yes, indeed," said Merry, making a rough outline of his hair, which shone in the tropical sun like late-summer wheat.

"The canoe," he said, "was a silk-cotton tree, hollowed by axes and by burning. Cat and I made it a few years ago—a very wholesome project, mind you. Morgan was beside himself to see us so constructively engaged. Do you know—you have a unique ability to sit for a long time on your heels. Love, stretch your legs out."

Her eyes of horizon blue became very wide. Steadying herself on the sides of the canoe, Merry shyly unbent her knees until her feet alternated with his in the white sunlight that leached color from the canoe's bottom. She had taken off her shoes, as he had, and his clean, tanned skin heated hers. The sharp classical cut of his bones was evidenced even in his feet, which were as charming in their appearance as it was possible for that under-valued, ill-regarded body member to be.
It
must be love,
Merry thought.
I adore his feet.

"Tell me more about the silk-cotton tree," she said with a gulp.

"It has a sensitive soul, you know. It's widely believed that if you throw a stick at it. you'll be visited with misfortune."

"If the silk-cotton doesn't like sticks thrown at it, how on earth did it react to axes and fire?" she asked, working with her pencil on the humorously arrogant tilt of his upper lip.

"Very well, because we'd taken the precaution of pouring libations of rum at its roots. The best superstitions always have an antidote." Drawing back his leg, he used the top of his foot to gently rub the plush inner curve that stretched to her toes. As soon as she saw what he was going to do, she expected it to tickle. The surprise was that the ticklish feelings occurred neither in the manner she had anticipated nor in the places. A blush began, spreading in from her cheekbones toward her nose, and to cover it, Merry picked up her sketch pad, as though she had to study her drawing from a closer vantage. Safely hidden, she was able to say, "Devon, why does Morgan live here?"

"Instead of, perhaps, in a tent on the coast of Spanish Florida? Because he's a rich man, my dear."

"Don't the other island families mind that Morgan's a pirate?" she asked, secretly fanning her blush.

"If they do, they don't say so to his face," Devon answered good-humoredly. "St. Elise is so isolated that I don't think they realize what the name Rand Morgan means in other places."

Willing the blood from her cheeks, Merry took the bold step of lowering the sketchbook to her knees again. She could only hope for the sake of her self-respect that he didn't know the full extent of the things he did to her. Casually she said, "How did Morgan come to own the island?"

There was a slight hesitation which made her look up at him, but she could discover nothing unusual in his face.

He said, "Rand bought it from the St. Cyrs."

"As in the Duke of?" asked Merry, astonished by the eerie coincidence of it, remembering that the Dowager Duchess of St. Cyr had been the catalyst for the disastrous chain of events which had brought her here. Merry reminded herself that she must not appear to know more about the famous St. Cyr family than the average well-read person might. Her ability to anticipate him was improving, because the next question Devon asked was, "You know the family?"

There was a keen edge to the question that Devon took no trouble to conceal, and that made her uneasy. Or perhaps it was his soft exploration of the base of her toes that she found disturbing.

"Who doesn't know of the St. Cyrs?" she said. "The current duke is highly regarded in the United States, you know, for his opposition to the Orders in Council that permitted the British Navy to blockade American ports." She waited to give him the opportunity to defend his country's hateful atrocities. Either he was in no mood to argue, or he had no strong feelings on the subject, because he made no comment.

The other item of note about the St. Cyr family was that the father of the present duke had been the world-renowned botanical painter. His wonderful volume of nature drawings was one of her favorite possessions; it was in her trunk with Aunt April.

Shading the shapely hollows beneath his Attic cheekbones, she ventured, "I can't imagine how the distinguished St. Cyrs could have an association with Rand Morgan."

"Ah—the St. Cyrs are a loose family, my dear. Did you know that the late duke married the daughter of his head gardener? The dowager duchess wore mourning for a year after the wedding and, sent her son and new daughter-in-law a wagon of vegetable marrows on their first anniversary." Fitting his sole to hers, he continued. "The St. Cyrs had this island ceded to them by Charles II on the condition that they pay 'unto his majesty yearly and every year one fat sheep if demanded.' As Morgan says, there's quite a tale behind the sheep. ..."

It was a good day for talking. The kindly fates, after separating Devon and Merry in experience and temperament, had looked back with regretful sighs and cast camelia garlands of warm conversation to the ill-omened pair. The young man who was a spy and the girl who was a spy-of-sorts had earned this fate-given opportunity, he for the sacrifice he had made for her, though that meant he must accept her honesty on faith alone, which was not an easy thing for a man who had never learned to trust his lovers. And if he was deserving for his sacrifice, she won her laurels for its opposite, for the meager, unheralded act of heroism of withholding from him the secret that was not hers to reveal.

So, when anyone would think that they wouldn't have much to talk about, neutral subjects arrived for them the way shells appear on the newly strewn seashore with each flooding tide. Devon had the kind of natural charisma that would have made a crowd of two thousand listen with bated breath as he discussed the digging of a drainage ditch. At age eighteen Merry Wilding was not so talented. Most men would have been happy to stare at her by the hour; only the kind ones would be equally content to listen to her talk; that would come later in her life. And though not one of his myriad discarded mistresses, however fond, would have called him
kind,
Devon delighted even in the most naive of Merry's minutiae. There was little he had not seen on the battlefield or in the bedroom, but he could still find drama in her story about the time she had seen lightning strike a windmill and ignite the canvas covering on the vanes to dancing flames. When little fish nibbled the bait from Devon's line, he laughed and didn't put it out again.

Later he rowed them to a cove he knew where the beach skipped inward between two dormant volcanic peaks. Primitive forests brightened the twin cones and reflected with them in the shimmering film of water that iced the ivory sands as the waves withdrew.

Together Devon and Merry beached the canoe beside a pile of driftwood and wandered along the wave line. He casually held out his hand, and she took it, letting the dangerously unresolved problems between them ride out with the tide.

The sand was heated gossamer, deep enough to cover their ankles. He made her pause before a great conch shell that lay half-buried in the glittering silt. A large butterfly perched atop the shell, its translucent yellow wings parting and closing in soft, gentle beats. He picked up the shell and held it to her, and as she reached for it, feeling its hardness and satiny texture beneath her fingertips, the butterfly took wing. His hands spread under hers, supporting them, taking the conch's weight as she gazed into its swelling folds. The pure colors dazzled her, pearly white along the rim deepening first to pink and then to a brighter scarlet hue, until in the inner mysteries where the light could not reach, the shell became a lovely mixture of dusky purple and hazy deep red. Their joined hands carried the shell to her ear, and the silver-toned roar wept into her senses. Sunlight stung her shoulders, sea moisture found her lips. The bright golden hairs on his chest lifted at the casual affectionate touch of the ocean breeze, and she longed to rub her cheek against their softness. Smiling at him, she raised her head, and they walked again. He carried the shell, with his fingers curled into its open lip, and slipped his other arm around her waist. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her hair, blown by the trade winds, streamed across his chest and throat like fine gold dust.

Eden.

They found a brook that fed the aqua bay with spring water. Two pelicans had landed among the black rocks there and preened their feathers and tossed water over their wings as Merry and Devon strolled by them, following the freshet inland. The foliage of the giant mahoganies met overhead in a natural arbor that allowed sunlight to seep through in pale-green bands. The freshet fed a stream, and that a cascade of rapids widening at the base into a secluded pool. An aged frame of limestone swept along the far side of the pool. Masses of wall marigolds exploded between the broken stones along with heavy blossom bundles in red and violet.

Mincing like a fawn over the sharp little rocks at the pool's edge, Merry walked into the shallows as Devon set down the shell and followed her with more assured steps. The pool was fed by a warm underground spring which she could feel rushing over her feet, and as they waded they found to their delight that it was quite deep, and she leaned back luxuriantly into his arms as the warm, relaxing fluid lapped about her thighs. A mound of swollen scarlet flowers dripped from the limestone outcropping overlooking the pool, and the musky scent tickled at her nostrils. She sighed with joy at the wash of sensations. The sunlight, falling down through the arch of trees above them, probed at her, awakening her, playing across the freckled cheeks, the tiny nose, the huge heavy-lidded eyes. Her thick hair tumbled over her breasts like the cascade that spilled down the rocks behind them, and he could feel her breathe beneath his wrists as he encircled her from behind; it was such a pleasing picture to him, one of lovely skin tugging at thin fabric, wet and diaphanous where the water had done its work—it seemed like she was a new creature, half human, half flower, her gown swirling about her like petals.