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

“Gray. He’s a good man, Miss Turner. He’ll do right by you.”


Sweet Heavens, the boy was giving her his blessing. Sophia didn’t know what to say. It would probably wound his pride, to call him the loving brother she’d never had. Certainly, she couldn’t tell him the truth of how matters stood between her and Gray. She didn’t want to deplete the boy’s faith in his captain’s honorable intentions. To the contrary, she dearly wished to borrow it.

Sniffing, she let go of the goat’s teat and brushed her hand on her skirts.

“I think she’s empty.”

“Are you certain?” He reached under the goat and gave the udder a brisk rub. Then he took the teat closest to Sophia and gave it a twist. A fresh stream of milk shot forth, glancing off the rim of the bucket and splashing her slippers.

“Take care!” With a little shriek of laughter, she pushed away from the goat’s side. Davy tilted his hand and squeezed the teat again, this time splattering Sophia from crown to chest. Sputtering and wiping milk from her face, she scrambled to her feet. “Davy Linnet,” she scolded, towering over both youth and goat. “You’re a rascal.”

“Am I?” He flashed her a lopsided, innocent grin. Shrugging, he dropped his gaze and emptied the last drops of milk into the pail. “Well, you’re blushing.”

Sophia made a show of huffing and crossing her arms, but she could not keep the laughter out of her voice. “Never say you’ve learned nothing from me, Davy. You might have shown me how to milk, but I’ve taught you to flirt.”

“A fair bargain, then.” He stood and took the goat by its collar.

“Perhaps. Mind you don’t confuse the two talents. Keep your goats straight from your girls.”

“That’s easily done.” Mischief twinkled sharp in his eye. “The goats don’t blush.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Gray scowled at the ink spattering his trousers and pooling atop the toe of his boot. This was why captains had cabins. It was nigh on impossible to keep a proper log in the first-mate’s berth, with only the most meager of lighting and this paltry writing surface jutting out from the wall, too narrow to accommodate both logbook and inkwell. And, he concluded as he frowned at the now-emptied latter, it was definitely impossible to keep a log without the benefit of ink.

He threw open the door of his berth and entered the captain’s cabin, knowing it to be unoccupied. At this hour, she would be preparing dinner in the galley. Flinging the logbook and quill down on the table, he moved to search the built-in drawers for a fresh bottle of ink. He found none.

“Blast.”

His eye fell on her trunks, stacked neatly in the corner. Surely she had a supply of ink, and quality ink at that. Without sparing a moment to second-guess the decision, he strode to her trunks and worked open the latches of the smaller trunk. He flipped it open.

It felt intimate, revealing. As if he’d unlaced her stays. And what treasures awaited him. Sheaves of paper, neatly wrapped in oilcloth and tied with efficient knots—knots that would do a sailor proud. Small bundles of brushes, smelling faintly of turpentine. And rows upon rows of her little bottles of ink and cakes of pigment. Of course, for Gray, the array of colors did not particularly impress. Rather, it was the care and precision with which they were packed that caused a sharp pinch in his chest. In this trunk was everything of delicacy, beauty, and painstaking care. Everything he admired in her, laid open for his examination, with no veneer of lies to obscure his view.

He looked his fill. He touched each item in the trunk, skipping his fingers from one object to the next. He couldn’t bring himself to lift one out. Until a small, leather-bound book wedged along one side caught his attention. Hooking a fingertip under the spine, he eased the volume up, and a title greeted him: The Memoirs of a Wanton Dairymaid. His shout of laughter rattled the bottles in their straw-buffered rows. So this was the one book she’d selected for the journey? A ribald novel?

Gray tipped the book into his hand. The binding was strained and the pages swollen—as though the entire volume had been dipped in water and dried. The cover fell open to reveal an elaborate frontispiece, depicting a buxom dairymaid wearing a straw bonnet, voluminous petticoats, and a knowing smile. On riffling the pages, it immediately became clear that the book’s expanded bulk could be credited to the addition of numerous pen-and-ink illustrations.

He recognized her deft hand and eye for detail immediately. He flipped through the pages, past vignettes of the dairymaid and her vague-featured gentleman engaged in a courtship of sorts: a kiss on the hand, a whisper in the ear. By the book’s midpoint, the chit’s voluminous petticoats were up around her ears, and the illustrations comprised a sequence of quite similar poses in varying locales. Not just the dairy, but a carriage, the larder, in a hayloft lit with candles and strewn with … were those rose petals?