Virgin Star (15 page)

"Apples! The poor apple vendor. The boy who was with me when they attacked and the ship blew up. He is injured."

For a ong moment he just stared down at her, wondering. He finally turned and surveyed the crowded deck until he spotted Butcher. "Butcher, was there a boy at the explosion?"

"Aye, Sean," Butcher called back. "Toothless has him in the sickroom, patchin' him up. A good-hearted lad; I've seen him around. Sells apples or something. He was all a-fret about the lass there."

Relief swept through her. The boy had enough trouble with his mother's consumption and no means or job—

Seanessy started forward, only to find the girl at his feet again.

"Please, I beg—"

"Begging, are we?" He appeared genuinely surprised, then: "And to think I haven't even started."

Any woman of experience would have grasped the innuendo, but if she did have any experience, it was no help now. She decided it was best to ignore the nonsense. "Captain Seanessy," she began again, confused by his smile."You see, Jack has a poor mother, an invalid with the consumption, and he tries to support her by apple vending, hoping he can soon remedy their poverty by finding work on a ship. Well! I was thinking, you have so many men here"—she

motioned with her head, "that you might be good enough to extend your charity to him?"

He just stared at her. She tried to read his expression, but it was regrettably indecipherable. Then without taking his eyes from her, he shouted out, 'Tucker?"

"Aye, Captain?"

"Tell the injured lad he can stay on as deckhand. Not this one. Send him to the Merry Luny when she docks. Put him to the gunwales. See what the lad's made of before giving him a class."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

Seanessy started for his quarters again, but Shalyn quickly stepped in front of him, her fervor to make him see renewed by the unanticipated success in gaining a place for Jack. "If I could have your ear for but a moment more?"

Any pretense of patience disappeared as he stood there waiting. Keenly aware of this, she rushed on, "Just consider this: what if you're wrong?"

"Look, child, if I'm wrong I will know about it soon enough. There are a half-dozen men trying to uncover your past as we speak. Meanwhile you are safe." His gaze narrowed, his voice rose. "Until the sharks swimming beneath this ship are hungry enough and I toss you over."

He turned away, abruptly noticing the number of stares they had solicited, more when Shalyn stomped her bare feet in abject frustration and fury. "You bullheaded monster of conceit and arrogance!"

Seanessy turned to see the fury shining bright in her eyes and coloring her cheeks, her hapless ferocity inspiring a frantic struggle to free her hands. He threw back his head and laughed.

He was just so maddening! So infuriating! She wanted to—

She abruptly noticed the way he stared at her.

For all his amusement vanished beneath sudden ire as he remembered, "Why, I had forgotten!"

Like a rabbit with the scent of fox, she froze. She cast a quick glance to the sides, searching for the best escape as she started to back away. He advanced, and indeed he bore the unwavering, amused look of a predator catching a trapped and helpless animal. She bumped into the side of carpenter's room. Trapped. "Why are you looking at me like—"

"It just occurred to me," he said slowly as he stepped in front of her. "that I should be taking advantage of these thumb constraints."

She cried out in protest and tried to duck, but too late. Seanessy swept her up in his arms again and, escaping the interested gazes of a number of men, he carried her swiftly to his quarters. Someone leaped forward and opened the door just as he reached it. He quickly stepped through. The door shut.

She searched the spacious room in confusion. The elegant but spartan furnishings ran a faintly familiar tune, as if she had been here before, but the thought, indeed any thought, disappeared as her startled eyes came to rest on the obscenely enormous bed in one corner.

They were alone...

Sean removed his shoulder harness and hung it on a peg near the door. He faced her again just in time to see her turn from the bed. She looked confused, then frightened, neither of which made sense to him until the moment she uttered the only idea in her mind: "You would use my helplessness to molest me?!"

"Molest you?" he questioned, then, with irritation, "Don't get your hopes up, brat."

Yet he stepped toward her. She held perfectly still, not knowing at all what he was about and certain it was worse than no good. She slowly shook her head and, unconvinced of his intentions, frantically tugged at her trapped thumbs. A warm and lively amusement shone in his eyes as he came to stand in front of her, his tall frame less than an inch away. She was acutely conscious of this, more when he said slowly, "On the other hand perhaps it is unwise to limit the possibilities."

She did not dare an answer as she felt the effect of his nearness immediately and powerfully. Her heart pounded hard and slow, uncertain of the exact nature of the emergency. She shook her head in negation as he leaned over, his large warm hand curving around her neck as if to hold her in place. "And you know, Shalyn, there is something about you. Something very provoking about this small slim form of yours… Something I want, and I want it badly."

She tried to take a step back. "Don't," was all he said as his arms came around her and not only stopped her flight but aligned her slender hips tightly against his. "I like this part."

Alarm and fear sprang into her eyes as her head went back at a sharp angle to meet his laughing eyes. Her stomach somersaulted, her next breath flooded her senses with a warm rush of heady sensation. She could scarcely breathe, let alone reason how best to respond to this inexplicable attack.

"Loose me!" The demand sounded in a queerly breathless voice. "You would not be so cruel—"

He only laughed at the mistaken idea. "Does this feel cruel, Shalyn?" The words were whispered against her ear. Shivers raced from the spot. "Does it?" he asked as his hands began a sensuous caress down the small of her slender back. "A torment of some kind?"

She didn't understand what was happening; she just didn't. She gasped with a strange rush of shivers like tiny pinpoints of fire as the clever hands slowly caressed the curves of her waist and hips, all of the strange sensations disappearing as at last he said, "The truth of the matter is that I don't normally deal pickpockets a cruel hand. But then again"—his tone changed—"I've never had my pocket picked before you."

"What? Oh, please—"

His hand found the slight bulge over the small of her back at last. With malice he reached his large bare hand over and around the tight curve of her buttock until she gasped.

Gasped with the sudden hot slap of fire it caused, a rush of warmth through her loins, tingling up through her chest. It confused her, confused her as nothing else could, and she squirmed as if to stop it. Only to send another hot slap of excited shivers through her. She gasped in a half-cry, her startled eyes lifting to his face with a demand that he explain it...

It took him by surprise. He wasn't expecting it. All he knew was that there was suddenly enough heat between them to light Salisbury Cathedral. His other hand found her belt, flicked it, apart, and then reached around, so both large hands cupped her bare buttocks before he lifted her small weight over his length. She gasped again, a hot tingling pleasure making her squirm—

"Shalyn." He said her name in a sudden husky whisper of his usual voice. "No ... no," he tried to caution her. "Don't move. It will only make it worse."

She waited, scared, but despite the words he made no move to release her or even remove his hands from the embarrassing and shocking position. A small cry sounded as she felt the caress of his hands, somehow soothing and stirring both, and then a husky voice asked, as if curious, "Worse? Did I say worse?" The question was posed with a husky chuckle. "I didn't mean it. Here, Shalyn, I am going to kiss you ..."

"Kiss me? Oh no." She shook her head. Get the idea out of his mind! Kisses were associated with love and passion, and most all of Shakespeare's sonnets, which she adored. Kisses had nothing to do with Captain Seanessy!

Seanessy meant to change her mind. He kissed her once, then again, his warm firm lips as gentle and light as a feather's tease. She froze with the shock of it, tingling shivers making her gasp for breath.

He smiled at this before kissing-her again.

A kiss that showed her the inspiration of the poetry she loved. "Do we like that, Shalyn? Do we?"

She could not answer. A warm flood of sensation rushed through her, and her back arched instinctively. The tips of her breasts brushed against his chest and she gasped, confused, and frightened as tiny aftershocks of heat resonated through her loins. He felt each one, with a husky groan; he could almost see the coral-pink buds tighten beneath the cotton shirt. "Dear Lord." He might have lost any semblance of control if he had not abruptly become aware of her bare feet kicking frantically against his shins, showing her to be a most unwilling victim.

"Stop this! Oh, please! What do you mean to do to me?"

He tried to focus on the fear of the unknown in her eyes, managing with some hard-bought effort. He slowly lowered her until her toes touched the floor. "Not," he said, "what I want to do with you."

He remembered the billfold and unceremoniously removed it and pocketed it where it belonged. His hands tightened and fastened her belt. She was breathing too hard as her head spun with the lingering tumult of her scattered senses. Queer tremulous

tingles still resounded through her. Her knees felt weak.

Mother in heaven, how did he do that to her?

He brushed his lips against her ear, but only to whisper, "If this little exercise teaches you anything, let it be that I am a danger to you. I don't have a clue as to how you do it to me, child, but you do. You would do well to remember it." Then he turned her around and bent down on a knee to examine the locks on her thumbs."Well, I suppose we should get you a metal saw, hmm? That way at least if— when—I start molesting you again, I can be assured of receiving at least a few sobering blows."

Seanessy laughed when she added in a voice trembling with feeling, "You can count on that!"

He still didn't believe her.

Shalyn tried to pretend it didn't matter as she sat on a hard wooden chair in the captain's quarters, but it did matter. She had tried to explain how suspiciously the port master had acted, seeing her there,abruptly leaving, but Seanessy dismissed this without thought. He was just so ... so maddening!

The fact remained that she could not risk appearing on the streets again, subjecting herself to the very real phantoms of her missing memory again. She truly did not want to die. They meant to kill her. Why? What had she done?

She must find her memory... Butcher sat behind her with a metal saw, trying to cut open the thumb lock that kept her hands behind her back. Seanessy moved about the room as he passed quick instructions to two men who were apparently not crew members, but agents of his. They were discussing the Duke de la Armanac and the number of men he had in London. She tried not to stare at him, but somehow his every movement demanded and received her full attention as he laughed at something Toothless, the ship surgeon, said, then ran long fingers through his hair. Feet apart, he drained a large goblet of water. After setting it on the table, he began unbuttoning his shirt.

Just as carefree as you please!

Toothless knelt at the low table mixing a concoction. Pouring this and stirring that, the haggard old man finally brought the cup to his nose to smell. Despite his appearance, he probably knew more about the medicinal arts than the best-trained surgeons at London's finest academies. First of all, he had received the full benefit of physiological studies at Virginia's William and Mary College, and though that was over two score years ago now, human bodies, he oft thought, had not changed all that much. He had spent the next best twenty years of his life married to a beautiful Shawnee woman, living with her people far west of the Colonies. The savages taught him more about healing and medicine than any bookish scholar of medical and physiology texts in the world. When his wife died, he had returned to the "civilized" white world, only to find that it seemed a good deal less civilized and more barbaric, that his heart, mind, and soul had been forever altered by his Indian past. He hadn't drawn an easy breath until the day he signed up with the iconoclastic Captain Seanessy and sailed out into the wide blue sea.

Seanessy had been stuck with Toothless ever since.

Sean saw his agents to the door and turned to see the doctor hiding a smile behind an old hand as he said, "Aye, this will take the sting out of yer burn and dry it up like an old hag's—" Toothless glanced over at Shalyn and changed his mind. "Ah, hair."