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

Mr. Grayson clapped him on the shoulder. “Just take your time. The royal’s not nearly so tricky as the topgallant—it’s higher, but there’s no need to go out on the yardarm. Stick to the rigging. Keep your feet on the ropes and your eyes on your hands, and you’ll be fine.”


The lad nodded. He mounted a part of the rigging that formed a tarred, narrow ladder and began to climb, his face grim. Sophia watched, breathless, as he quickly gained the first of the perpendicular beams that held each of the Aphrodite’s square-rigged sails. There, some twenty feet above the deck, he reached a sort of railing that surrounded the mast, where he paused before resuming his climb.

“That’s it, Davy,” Mr. Grayson called. “Look lively, then.”

The boy moved on to a new set of tiered ropes and resumed climbing.

“How far up does he have to go?” Sophia cupped a hand over her eyes.

“To the royal yard.” Mr. Grayson met her puzzled expression. “All the way.”

She tilted her head back and let her gaze follow the mast skyward. She couldn’t discern whether she actually glimpsed the top, or whether the towering column simply faded into the distance. The prospect was dizzying.

“But that’s so high!” She blinked up at the mast again. “And on his second day at sea?”

“Exactly. If he’s to be a sailor, he must become accustomed to the feel of the rigging and the motion of the ship. The officers do him no favors if they coddle him at the outset.”

Sophia looked up again. Davy had reached the next yard. He paused there for some moments, clinging to the rigging. He was only halfway to the top of the mast, yet so high she could no longer distinguish the features of his face. The mast swayed back and forth with each pitch of the ship.

“What if he falls?” she asked, swallowing hard.

Mr. Grayson shrugged. “From where he’s at now? He’d be a mite banged up, but he’d live.”

“From the royal yard?”

“Well, then he’d likely die. Whether he hit the deck or the sea, it wouldn’t much matter. But don’t worry, sweetheart. He won’t fall.”

Just then, Davy’s boot slipped in its foothold. The boy caught himself quickly, but not before Sophia gasped and clapped a hand to her mouth. The sheet of crumpled paper fell from her grasp. It never hit the deck. Mr. Grayson snagged it easily between his first finger and thumb. He smoothed the sheet against his embroidered waistcoat before handing it back.

“Wouldn’t want to waste another sheet of paper,” he said with a slight smile. “But you see, sweetheart—we sailors catch on quickly. A sailor with slow reflexes is a dead sailor.”

Sophia looked back up to the rigging. She and Mr. Grayson weren’t the only ones watching Davy’s progress. From the mainmast, bow, helm—all eyes were fixed on the boy. The crewmen watched his ascent with great interest and whispered speculation, as though it were a horse race or a prizefight.

When Davy reached the next yard, a clamor of approval rose up from the deck. “That’s the topgallant now, boy,” a burly sailor called out. “Almost home!”

When the boy hesitated, clinging to the mast, Mr. Grayson cupped his hands around his mouth. “Get on with it then, Davy! The goats are getting lonesome!”

The youth began the last, most perilous section of his climb. Sophia could not bear to watch any longer. She focused on the planks beneath her feet instead, and then—when the suspense became too great to tolerate—she let her gaze slide to Mr. Grayson’s hand where it hung at his side. Sophia kept her eyes trained on that hand—the strong, sculpted fingers, the palm ridged with callus. With that hand, he’d caught her handkerchief, the paper, and Sophia herself on more than one occasion. If Davy stumbled, surely that hand would reflexively move to catch him. She stared at his hand because she knew—so long as it dangled loose at Mr. Grayson’s side, the boy was safe.

She was safe.

Oh, no. Where had that thought come from? An absurdity, that. He was dangerous, Sophia reminded herself. He could expose her deceits and force her back to a miserable existence, and she, who could recite falsehoods effortlessly to dukes and doormen alike, lost all power to dissemble whenever he drew near. And yet, despite all this—or perhaps because of it?—standing in his broad shadow, Sophia began to feel strangely safe. Protected.

She shook herself. It would seem seasickness or Mr. Grayson’s teasing, or most likely both, had rendered her completely nonsensical. Logic demanded she flee to the cabin that instant and remove herself from the influence of that potent, self-assured charm.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she inched closer.

He felt it, her sudden nearness. A warm, feminine propinquity that drew his every nerve to attention. He didn’t need to look.

He didn’t need to, but he did.

God, she truly was exquisite.

Even his grief-blinded brother had called her beautiful, but that word wasn

’t quite enough. There was a rightness to her face somehow, a quality that resonated in his bones. Like the clear ring of fine crystal clinked in celebration, or the echo of a whisper in a cathedral.