Under the Moon Gate (7 page)

Nathaniel pulled back the crisp blue-striped duvet cover and placed Patience on the cool white satin sheets beneath it. Her clothes were constricting her. To make her more comfortable, he took off her bunny slippers and placed them on the floor. Then he removed her skirt, slipped her T-shirt over her head, and folded both neatly on the settee at the foot of the bed. He thought about removing her bra but resisted the temptation. Tucking her snugly under the cover, he placed a kiss on her forehead, and she stirred. He thought he detected a touch of fever.

“Patience. You’ll sleep now.”

“You can’t stay here,” she pleaded, nodding off.

“Sssh,” he said. “We’ll talk about that when you wake up. I’ll be close by.”

Her lids fluttered shut and she grasped for his hand.

“Don’t leave me alone.”

“I won’t,” he answered.

Nathaniel sat down on the side of the bed and held her hand until she fell asleep. She was a wreck. She had probably not slept and had hardly eaten for the entire week.

Then she’d worked so hard helping him douse the flames on the
Fair Winds
. She needed complete bed rest. They would talk about other things when she woke. Soon he heard her rapid breathing as she slipped into slumber.

Once, in the middle of the night, she cried out. Nathaniel shot out of his bed in the guest room down the hall and rushed into her room.

She was sobbing, so he slipped under the covers with her, gathered her in his arms, and soothed her, smoothing her hair and rubbing her back, fighting the growing urge to kiss her.

“I’m here, Patience. I’m here.”

Soon she was resting calmly. He stayed in the bed briefly—to be near her in case she needed him, he told himself.

He apologized to her, although he knew she couldn’t hear him, as he repeated a line from her grandfather’s diary: “I fear I have unleashed the evil, and we cannot turn back from this path.”

Chapter 6

Nathaniel woke early and went into the kitchen to fix breakfast. He was greeted by stainless steel appliances and hanging pots and pans, much like a ship’s galley. The polished Blue Pearl granite countertops and modern European sail-white cabinets trimmed in satin nickel hardware reinforced the nautical theme, enhanced by dazzling views of a restless ocean beyond the large windows.

The kitchen was well equipped and the refrigerator and pantry well stocked, as he expected. Probably Sallie or Cecilia had brought over the food earlier in the week. He doubted Patience had had a decent meal since the funeral. When breakfast was prepared, he left it to keep warm while he went to her room. She was still peacefully asleep, and he enjoyed watching her for a moment. In her hand was a well-worn paperback book with a pirate and a half-clad woman on the cover. He smiled.
Not so prim and proper after all, are you, Patience?

She must have been restless and gotten up sometime in the night to get the book. Luckily, he had slipped out of her room and returned to his bed before she awakened and found him there. He traced his finger on her lips and pushed back a sunlit curl on her forehead, and she stirred and woke, still a bit disoriented.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m staying with you, remember, Cousin?” he teased. She sat up instantly, ignoring her state of undress.

“Where did you sleep last night?” He caught her examining the pillow next to her, where a definite indentation was noticeable. “You didn’t!”

“You were having a bad dream. I simply came in to comfort you and, well, I decided to stay until—”

“You decided to stay? You impudent rogue!”

Nathaniel threw back his head and laughed, a deep belly laugh.

“Now I’m a rogue. I seem to be descending in your estimation. First a pirate, then an adventurer, now a rogue. Cousin, you’re priceless.”

“I am
not
your cousin, and get out of my bedroom!”

“I’m sure we must have been related somewhere back in time.”

“Impossible. Your line died out a long time ago…in the Stone Age. I suggest you leave, this instant. Kindly hand me my robe on your way out.” He looked around and tossed her the sheer white silk robe draped over the settee. Only then did she notice what she wore.

“I don’t remember undressing,” Patience said, eyeing Nathaniel suspiciously. “You didn’t…”

“I barely looked at you. You looked uncomfortable in that tight skirt, and you needed a good night’s sleep.”

“You drugged me, didn’t you?”

“Don’t freak out. I didn’t
drug
you. When I spoke to Sallie, she confided that you hadn’t been sleeping well. She was concerned about you, and she showed me where to find the sleeping pills your doctor prescribed in case you couldn’t—”

“You
did
drug me, you bastard!”

She stood on the bed, hands on her hips, and faced Nathaniel like an avenging angel.

“In future, I’ll let you know if I’m uncomfortable! Stop undressing me, and kindly keep your hands to yourself.”

“I’m working on that problem.” Nathaniel smiled.

Patience turned her back to him, trying to put on the robe with some attempt at modesty.

“You look just like the type who would take advantage. We didn’t…you know…did we?” she asked turning her head in his direction.

“You would have known if we had,” he assured her, laughing at her naiveté. “I made breakfast.”

“I suppose you want to be knighted for that.”

“I simply thought, since you probably haven’t eaten in I don’t know how long, that I’d…” He shrugged.

Patience bit her bottom lip and remembered her manners.

“I’m sorry. That was very sweet of you.” She climbed down from the bed and followed Nathaniel into the kitchen. “I am hungry. What’s on the menu?”

“Everything. Bacon, eggs, fresh fruit… I didn’t know what you liked.”

“Mmm. I’ll take some of everything.” She started to get a plate.

“Uh-uh, I’ll wait on you this morning.” Nathaniel got out plates, silverware, and napkins and sat her down with them at the kitchen table. “I even managed to make tea.”

“Laced with drugs?”

“Dammit, Patience, there are no drugs in your tea. It’s plain blackcurrant tea.”

He moved the heavy silver tray he had prepared from the counter to the table, setting the teapot and the food where she could easily reach them, and watched as she poured tea from the teapot into the Wedgwood bone china cups. When her hands began to shake, he realized she really needed to eat something.

“Let me help,” he said as he stilled her hands and took the teapot. When he touched her, all the nerve endings in his body went haywire.

He placed a lemon slice on the saucer, then spread preserves on a scone he’d found in a pastry box on the kitchen counter, and passed it to her on a delicate china plate. She refused with a wave of her hand.

“You don’t have to serve me,” she said.

“You were kind enough to let me stay last night, so—” He had the urge to rub his thumb tenderly under each of her eyes to remove the dark shadows, as an artist might do with the stroke of a brush.

“But that was…” She gazed uncertainly into the distance.

“When’s the last time you ate?” he prodded gently. His breath caught as he responded to the intimacy in her voice. He wanted to touch her again but held back, not ready to weaken her defenses further as she looked at him and a tear slipped down her cheek, then another, until they came in a steady flow. Despite her night’s sleep, he knew she was too exhausted to stop them, too despondent to care she was crying in front of a total stranger. She had been stoic at the funeral, hadn’t shed any tears. Maybe she was overdue.

“I don’t want to eat,” she said.

When her tears became unmanageable, Nathaniel offered his linen napkin solicitously so she could wipe her eyes.

“Please, don’t cry,” he pleaded. He didn’t know what to do about the tears. An only child raised without a mother, he had grown up cared for by his grandmother. Gran was a rock, the most in-control woman he’d ever known. And the most beautiful. More beautiful than any movie star. All his friends had said he had the hottest grandmother around. But it was her strength he really admired. She’d always been there for him. He suspected she had dark secrets, a past life she never talked about. But she didn’t ever fall apart, and she never let him fall apart. In fact, he had never seen her cry. Soft and gentle? No one could accuse Gran of being either.

After Gran’s death, he had wandered the globe aimlessly, all summer, without reason to put into any port more than a few days at a time, until now. With nothing to show for all that wasted time. He’d barely made a dent in his dissertation.

Nathaniel missed Gran. He tried to reach for memories of the past, a mother’s tender kiss or comforting words spoken to heal hurts. He couldn’t dredge up any. Perhaps he had once longed for them. Now they only existed in his imagination. He remembered his grandmother singing him French lullabies; that was all.

Yet, strangely, something deep inside of him responded to Patience, and he wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to her frailty.

“Here, you need to eat something now. Have this scone. I insist.”

She still didn’t trust him, but, in all fairness, he
was
being polite. He had manners, when he chose to use them. She shook her head, but he lifted the scone to her mouth anyway and coaxed her to take a bite. It smelled heavenly, and though she must have been ravenous, she nibbled on the pastry slowly. When she was finished, he wiped the sugar-coated crumbs and preserves from her mouth efficiently with the napkin. He wanted to skim his fingers across her lips, to let her taste him; he refrained.

“I think you should go down to your boat now,” she said. He wanted to kiss her and realized from the warm gleam in her eyes she might kiss him back, and who knew where that would lead?

“And I think you should eat something else before I go,” Nathaniel said.

Patience relented.

Patience had beautiful hands to match that beautiful heart-shaped face of hers, so delicate and expressive as she finished her breakfast in silence. Her green eyes reminded him of the color of water in a calm sea.

****

“The food is delicious,” she said. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”

“At sea, I guess. You learn to cook or you starve. Actually, my Grandmother Simone taught me.”

“Did you mean what you said about teaching me to cook? I want to learn.”

“Sure. Next time I make a meal, you’ll be my assistant.”

“Wonderful. Meanwhile, I’ll be studying some of my grandmother’s cookbooks.”

Patience got up and stared out the window at the
Fair Winds
.

“It’s still there. I thought the fire was just a bad dream. Why did you dock your boat here?”

“So I could keep an eye on both her and you. I’ll take you out for a sail this morning.”

“Is she seaworthy?”

“She’s in great shape, thanks to you. You were a big help last night. I want to take her out for a while, and I want you to come, too.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you afraid to be alone with me?”

“Apparently I was alone with you last night.”

“There. You see? And nothing happened, did it?”

“I should hope not. And nothing is going to happen. I expect you to behave like a gentleman for the short time you’re here.”

“I won’t attack you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Now where’s the journal?”

“I’ve put it away in a safe place,” she said, slipping out of the room to the cedar chest under the stairwell. “Where you can’t find it.” She opened the chest—and gasped. “The journal, it’s gone! What have you done with it?”

He reached inside his coat. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

She glared when she caught the glint in his eye. “Hand it over,” Patience growled, reaching for it.

Nathaniel shifted it behind his back, and she reached her arm around his waist. He moved it to the other hand, and she reached around his other side until she had both arms around him.

“Darling, I didn’t know you cared,” he said, closing his arms around her and pulling her roughly against him.

“Take your hands off me and give me back my journal.”

“What will you give me for it? How about a kiss?”

“How about a kick?” she countered, kicking him in the shin.

“Ouch! You fight dirty.” But he wouldn’t let her go, instead bringing his mouth down and pressing it against hers, unlocking her lips with his tongue. Invading her. She fought to catch her breath. She tried to fight him but then found herself responding to his touch.

He was so tender, so gentle, and yet so demanding. She went soft, her vision blurred, and somehow her arms wound around his shoulders and she was nestled close to him, lifting her mouth to his for more. The kiss seemed to go on forever. She wanted it to. Her breasts felt full against his chest, and she felt his heart beating.

He grabbed her and lifted her up against him. “Patience,” he whispered. “Closer, come closer. You taste so good. I knew it would be like this. I can’t get enough of you.”

She fought her way out of his embrace and grabbed the journal. “Well, I’ve already had enough of you,” she answered as she spun out of his arms.

He grabbed her hand. “You want more. I felt it.” His breath was coming in heavy spurts now.