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

She sauntered toward him, hands cocked on her hips in an attitude of provocation. His eyes swept her body, washing her with angry heat. She noted the subtle tensing of his shoulders, the frayed edge of his breath. Even exhausted and hurt, he still wanted her. For a moment, Sophia felt hope flicker to life inside her. Enough for them both.

And then, with the work of an instant, he quashed it all. Gray stepped back. He gave a loose shrug and a lazy half-smile. If I don’t care about you, his look said, you can’t possibly hurt me. “Take it however you wish.”

“Oh no, you don’t. Don’t you try that move with me.” With trembling fingers, she began unbuttoning her gown.

“What the devil are you doing? You think you can just hike up your shift and make—”

“Don’t get excited.” She stripped the bodice down her arms, then set to work unlacing her stays. “I’m merely settling a score. I can’t stand to be in your debt a moment longer.” Soon she was down to her chemise and plucking coins from the purse tucked between her br**sts. One, two, three, four, five …

“There,” she said, casting the sovereigns on the table. “Six pounds, and”

—she fished out a crown—“ten shillings. You owe me the two.”

He held up open palms. “Well, I’m afraid I have no coin on me. You’ll have to trust me for it.”

“I wouldn’t trust you for anything. Not even two shillings.”

He glared at her for a moment, then turned on his heel and exited the cabin, banging the door shut behind him. Sophia stared at it, wondering whether she dared stomp after him with her bodice hanging loose around her hips. Before she could act on the obvious affirmative, he stormed back in.

“Here.” A pair of coins clattered to the table. “Two shillings. And”—he drew his other hand from behind his back—“your two leaves of paper. I don

’t want to be in your debt, either.” The ivory sheets fluttered as he released them. One drifted to the floor.

Sophia tugged a banknote from her bosom and threw it on the growing pile. To her annoyance, it made no noise and had correspondingly little dramatic value. In compensation, she raised her voice. “Buy yourself some new boots. Damn you.”

“While we’re settling scores, you owe me twenty-odd nights of undisturbed sleep.”

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “We’re even on that regard.” She paused, glaring a hole in his forehead, debating just how hateful she would make this.

Very.

“You took my innocence,” she said coldly—and completely unfairly, because they both knew she’d given it freely enough.

“Yes, and I’d like my jaded sensibilities restored, but there’s no use wishing after rainbows, now is there?”

He had a point there. “I suppose we’re squared away then.”

“I suppose we are.”

“There’s nothing else I owe you?”

His eyes were ice. “Not a thing.”

But there is, she wanted to shout. I still owe you the truth, if only you’dcare enough to ask for it. If only you cared enough for me, to want toknow.

But he didn’t. He reached for the door.

“Wait,” he said. “There is one last thing.”

Sophia’s heart pounded as he reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a scrap of white fabric.

“There,” he said, unceremoniously casting it atop the pile of coins and notes and paper. “I’m bloody tired of carrying that around.”

And then he was gone, leaving Sophia to wrap her arms over her half-naked chest and stare numbly at what he’d discarded. A lace-trimmed handkerchief, embroidered with a neat S.H.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Gray left the cabin and went to work. He worked for days. He worked until he couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. His life became flips of the hourglass, clangs of the bell—increments of time too brief to allow anxiety for the future or regrets about the past. It was simply, always now. He concentrated on the task of each moment: the sail that wanted reefing, the brace gone slack. Getting the Kestrel from the crest of one wave to the next.

All the while, a deep, insidious current pulled on his heart. Resentment, confusion, fear. Uncertainty, in all its most sinister forms. By sheer force of will, he kept it at bay. A mere hint of uncertainty was all it required to taint authority in irrevocable fashion.

But for all his intensity of purpose, a mere moment in her presence was all it required to scatter his wits completely—he feared, in irrevocable fashion. In the clang of a bell, Gray was undone.

“What are you doing?”

The words fired from his mouth, like a salvo of rifle shots. She flinched with each one. But great God, he felt under attack.

What the devil was she doing in the galley? The galley was not where she ought to be. She ought to be in the captain’s cabin, where she’d remained squirreled away for the past three days. Where he didn’t have to look at this exquisite face, breathe this intoxicating fragrance, suffer these small earthquakes in his chest that left him reeling in his boots whenever she drew near.

“I’m serving dinner.” She held out a deep wooden plate ladled with steaming chowder. “Are you always this late to mess?”