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

I’ll be damned.

Gray was fast divining the true source of the French painting master’s mythic exploits. More unsettling by far, however, as he perused the book, he noted a subtle alteration in the gentleman lover’s features. With each successive illustration, the hero appeared taller, broader in the shoulders, and his hair went from a cropped style to collar length in the space of two pages.

The more pages Gray turned, the more he recognized himself. It was unmistakable. She’d used him as the model for these bawdy illustrations. She’d sketched him in secret; not once, but many times. And here he’d nearly gone mad with envy over each scrap of foolscap she’d inked for one crewman or another. His emotions underwent a dizzying progression—from surprised, to flattered, to (with the benefit of one especially inventive situation in an orchard) undeniably aroused. But as he lingered over a nude study of this amalgam of the real him and some picaresque fantasy, he began to feel something else entirely. He felt used.

She’d rendered his form with astonishing accuracy, given that it must have been drawn before she’d any opportunity to actually see him unclothed. Not that she’d achieved an exact likeness. Her virgin’s imagination was rather generous in certain aspects and somewhat stinting in others, he noted with a bitter sort of amusement. But she’d laid him bare in these pages, without his knowledge or consent. God, she’d even drawn his scars. All in service of some adolescent erotic fantasy. And now he began to grow angry.

He had been handling the leaves of the book with his fingertips only, anxious he might smudge or rip the pages. Now he abandoned all caution and flipped roughly through the remainder of the volume. Until he came to the end, and his hand froze.

There they were, the two of them. He and she, fully clothed and unengaged in any physical intimacies—yet intimate, in a way he had never known. Never dreamed. Sitting beneath a willow tree, his head in her lap. One of her hands lay twined with his, atop his chest. The other rested on his brow. The sky soared vast and expansive above, gauzy clouds spinning into forever.

The hot fist of desire that had gripped his loins loosened, moved upward through his torso, churning the contents of his gut along the way. Then it clutched at his heart and squeezed until it hurt. Somehow, this illustration was the most dismaying of all. So naïve, so ridiculous. At least the bawdy situations were plausible, if sometimes physically improbable. This was utterly impossible. To her, he’d never been more than a fantasy. It occurred to Gray that more secrets might be packed within these trunks. If he sorted through her belongings, he might find the answers to all his questions. Perhaps answers to questions he’d never thought to ask. In spite of this, he let the lid of the trunk clap shut and fastened the strap with shaking fingers. He’d suffered as many of her fantasies as he could bear for one day.

It was time to acquaint her with reality.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Reality was hitting Sophia hard. Or rather, kicking her hard, and leaving bruises the size and shape of a goat’s cloven hoof. Reality was making her ache all over, in muscles she hadn’t known she possessed. Her first day as ship’s cook had been novel, amusing. She’d experienced the thrill of competency and earning her own keep. Each fire built, each potato peeled, each squirt of milk into the pail was a small triumph. Just a few days later, she was fully prepared to admit defeat. Manual labor was not romantic in the least, and only dimly satisfying, in the way chewing rock-hard ship’s biscuit satisfied one’s hunger—begrudgingly, and at considerable expense of effort.

Once she assumed control of her inheritance, she intended to never boil water or tend a goat again. With a bit of prudence, her trust ought to keep her in servants for the remainder of her days. For the remainder of this voyage, however, she would toil or go hungry. And if there was one thing Sophia suspected would suit her less than a life of menial servitude, it was hunger.

The work suited Gray, though. He’d slipped into the role of Kestrel’s captain faster than he’d filled out a borrowed tunic and trousers. Authority was simply comfortable to him, like a second skin.