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

This should have been her wedding day.

Sophia wondered if the sun was shining on a small, picturesque chapel in Kent. What had happened, she wondered, to the hundreds of hot house flowers especially cultivated for the occasion? She thought of the wedding breakfast, so carefully planned to the last gilt demitasse spoon. Was the pastel pyramid of almond-and rose-flavored ices waiting stoically for her return, a fashionably Egyptian monument to her betrayal?

Even if they’d managed to keep her disappearance concealed until now… when she failed to appear for her own wedding, the secret would be out. Rumors of her elopement with the mysterious Gervais would leap from lady to lady like fleas in a church pew. She’d be the talk of the ton—although not quite the way her social-climbing parents would have hoped. What an elaborate joke she’d played on them all. What a laugh. So why did she feel like crying?

Standing on tiptoe and clutching the wooden pins, she leaned over the ship’s side, staring hard into endless waves and swirling trails of foam. A single tear fell from the corner of her eye, dropping into the seawater with all the significance of a grain of sand strewn in a desert. A flash beneath the waves caught her gaze. A smooth dart rose up from the blue-green depths, then sank beneath the surface again. Sophia waited, holding her breath. It surfaced once more, a bolt of quicksilver slicing through the waves, pacing the Aphrodite’s brisk progress. A sailor nearby called to another, and the two men joined her at the rail, marking the elegant creature’s course.

“What is it?” Sophia wondered aloud, her eyes never leaving the water.

“It’s just a dolphin-fish, miss,” one of the crewmen answered. The creature leapt from the water, its sleek, shimmering form sailing through the air before disappearing once more beneath the waves. It leapt again, and then again, carving playful, exuberant arcs through the spray, trailing silver-dipped rainbows in its wake.

The fish’s course veered, bringing it even closer to the ship’s hull. Sophia admired the creature’s flat snout and the sharp blade of its fin, running the full length of its spine. But most marvelous of all were the bold, iridescent shades decorating its scales.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

A harpoon shot out from the sailor’s hand, skewering the fish with a sick squelch.

“It’s dinner,” the crewman said cheerfully. The two men dropped a net over the side and hauled their thrashing catch aboard.

Gagging, Sophia pressed a hand to her mouth and turned away.

“Now don’t be squeamish, miss,” the crewman said. “You’ll miss the colors.”

The colors? Sophia peeked over her shoulder. The men had the fish completely aboard now, and its flat body thumped uselessly on the planked deck.

“See, miss? The colors are starting.”

As the sailor spoke, the bold hues of the fish’s scales began to shimmer and change. Sophia stepped toward it, fascinated. Its light-blue belly deepened to the truest cobalt. A stripe of fresh green turned electric with gold. Sophia had never seen colors so vivid—not in nature, not in paintings. Not even in her dreams. The fish was a living rainbow.

A dying rainbow, rather. Its arcing body eventually went pale and limp, turning as colorless as the decking. Having withdrawn their harpoon, the crewmen returned to the rail to look for more. And there the fish lay, gutted and lifeless.

Sophia had never felt so disillusioned. The stark reality of life and death had been splashed in her face like so much seawater. She realized, with sudden clarity, that all her life she’d been raised to view the world as a collection of objects assembled for her amusement, her admiration, her consumption. But now she understood—nothing existed for beauty alone.

Even a beautiful fish still died, was still food.

She’d left home seeking to experience real life, true passion, grand adventure. Well, this was real life, and it wasn’t pretty. And every moment she stood here, staring blankly at the deck and crying pointless tears, was a moment of real life wasted.

“Here’s another,” one of the sailors called, flinging his harpoon back into the sea. A second later, he crowed with triumph. “Got ’im in one.”

Sophia rushed back to the rail and peered over the edge at the thrashing fish churning the waves to froth. A giddy thrill warmed her toes. The crewman began to pull in the rope, hand over hand.

“May I help bring it in?” she asked.

“What?” the sailor grunted, not losing his pace.

“May I?” She jerked her chin at the struggling fish and laid one hand on the rope, above his. She had reeled in a fish before—granted, it was a smallish trout, plucked from a stream in the English midlands. But still, the principle appeared the same.

He stared at her a moment, then shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”