Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)

Sophia yanked and twisted her hair into a severe style, then stabbed the coiled knot with several hairpins.

Foolish, foolish girl. If Mr. Grayson learned about that money, he would know her instantly for a fraud. He could take her purse away, or hold her captive in hopes of extorting more. Worse, he could turn out to be a gentleman after all, and simply return her to her family. Be calm, she bade herself, taking a deep breath. Considering his friendship with the Walthams, Mr. Grayson was bound to discover her deceit eventually. But by the time the ship reached Tortola, she would be just weeks from her twenty-first birthday. Just weeks away from freedom. If Mr. Grayson possessed some shred of gentlemanly honor that might compel him to return a ruined debutante to England—and Sophia doubted he did—it would already be too late. By then, her trust and her future would belong to her alone.

Her anxiety somewhat allayed, Sophia reached for her dress. It pained her to put on the same wrinkled gown, but she had no choice. Her trunk accommodated only four dresses in addition to the one she wore. Two were last summer’s muslin frocks, to wear once they reached the tropics. The third was not a dress at all, but rather a smock for painting, and the fourth … the fourth was pure folly.

Once dressed, she turned her attention to the smaller trunk, which held her dearest treasures. Paints, charcoal, pastels, palette, brushes—and one hundred sheets of heavy paper, divided into two parcels, each wrapped tightly in oilcloth. One hundred sheets to ration over a month, perhaps longer.

Although she might have allowed herself three, Sophia withdrew only two sheets of paper. She gathered up a small drawing board and a stub of charcoal before neatly repacking her artist’s cache. As she replaced the oilcloth packet, her hand brushed against the worn leather cover of a small book. Smiling, she lifted the volume to the top of the trunk. The Book.

Given to her by her friend Lucy Waltham, now the Countess of Kendall, this tiny volume had proved an invaluable source of both information and inspiration. The Memoirs of a Wanton Dairymaid, the title read. Its contents were, as one might expect, ribald accounts of a dairymaid’s trysts with her gentleman employer. As a whole, Sophia had found The Book shocking, titillating, and woefully lacking in illustrations. This last, she had set out to remedy.

She flipped through the first half of the book, now painstakingly embellished with pen-and-ink sketches of the wanton dairymaid and her gent in various states of undress. She had planned to return it to Lucy when she finished, but now … A pang of loneliness pinched in her chest. Even if she did see Lucy again, her friend would be forced to cut her. A countess didn’t consort with fallen women.

A sudden image sprang to her mind. A frenzy of colors, textures, tastes… Snow-white petticoats bunched at her waist. Straw strewn on a stable floor. The warm gush of an overturned pail of milk. Miles of smooth, bronzed skin. The taste of salt on her tongue and the scrape of rough whiskers against her neck.

She threw the book back in her trunk and shut it quickly. Irrepressible dreamer she might be, but Sophia was not a wanton dairymaid. And Mr. Grayson, as he was so fond of reminding her, was no gentleman. The air inside the cabin had grown uncomfortably close. She needed to clear her mind. She needed to draw. To gather all this diffuse, unruly sensation within her and force it through the tip of her pencil, onto paper where it could be caged by four margins. Safe. She tucked charcoal and paper under her arm and mounted the ladder, intending to sketch on deck. The instant her head emerged through the hatch, however, Sophia’s plans changed.

She found herself face-to-face with a goat.

With a rude bleat, the goat snatched a sheet of paper from her grasp and crumpled it between its jaws. Sophia watched in confounded outrage as the goat casually masticated and swallowed her precious parchment. When the animal extended its long, narrow tongue in every indication of lunching on her second sheet, Sophia startled into action. She grabbed her drawing board with both hands and smacked the impertinent animal on the nose.

“Easy there, sweetheart.” Mr. Grayson’s deep voice carried from somewhere above. “That’s my investment you’re bludgeoning.”

Sophia stared at the goat. She paused a half-second to imagine Mr. Grayson’s handsome features superimposed on that furry, blunt-nosed visage. Then she whacked it over the head again.

My, but that felt good.

Evidently, the goat did not agree. It grasped the corner of Sophia’s board with its teeth and pulled. Sophia tugged back with all her strength. She lost her footing on the stair and tumbled backward into the cabin. The goat fell with her. Or rather, the goat fell on top of her.