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

—”

Holding her dress together with one hand, she threaded the milk pail over her other wrist. “I do have dreams, Gray. Beautiful dreams. And yes, depraved fantasies. I also have a heart. You’re tangled up in all of them, and you can ignore me or run from me, but you can’t ask me to deny my feelings any longer.”

She stopped and studied him. Then she rose up on tiptoe and planted a kiss on his cheek. It struck Gray as a pitying sort of gesture, but he could not bring himself to spurn it.

“I know what you want, Gray. I know what it is you really need to hear. When you’re ready to listen, come let me know.”

Her kiss lingered, long after she’d gone.

“Something’s amiss,” Gray said, jerking his chin upward. “Fore topgallant lift.”

The Kestrel crewman hoisted a lantern and peered up into the darkness.

“Where, again? Can’t say as I see it.” Then he turned and peered at Gray.

“It all looks right as roses to me.”

“A line’s gone slack.” With an exasperated sigh, Gray extended a hand.

“Lend me your marlinespike; I’ll see to it myself.”

The sailor did not argue, but handed over the marlinespike with a shrug.

“You’re the captain.”

Gray scaled the foremast rigging, climbing hand over hand past the foresail and fore topsail yards. When he reached the topgallant, he made a perch for himself and rested. There was nothing wrong with the line, or the sail. He’d known that before he began climbing. But there was something amiss with him, and he needed the space and distance to examine it. Cool night air buffeted him, rushing through the loose weave of his tunic and blasting the staleness from his skin. It felt almost as good as a proper bath.

Her question from that afternoon haunted him. What was it that he really wanted? For a self-centered libertine, it had been an oddly long time since he’d pondered that question. For the past two years, he’d poured, bled, and sweated himself into this shipping business. His goals were clear. He wanted Joss to become his partner; he wanted Bel to have her London debut; and he wanted to provide security and a measure of status for their family as a whole. But what did he want for himself? It had been years since he’d allowed himself to spin fantasies of a happy future—not since he was a youth of Davy’s age. Happiness, he’d concluded, was meant for other men: men who lived honorably, kept their promises, built honest fortunes. Men who deserved it. Gray simply took pleasure where he found it, then left it behind. It was mad, and more than a bit dangerous, for a scoundrel like him to dream of lasting joy.

But now she was dreaming it for him. For them. Naïve, fanciful thing that she was, she genuinely believed they could live happily ever after. None of his angry words or dark confessions had persuaded her otherwise. Remarkable. He’d finally met the one girl he couldn’t disillusion. And so, soaring through the darkness, rocked by waves and blanketed by stars, Gray decided to try an experiment. He shut his eyes and dared to dream.

He wanted someone to share his life. To share his burdens, his triumphs, his home and his bed. The longing assailed him, nearly flinging him from the mast with its intensity. It was as though a well of yearning existed inside him, deep and limitless, and he’d been keeping it tightly capped for years, lest he fall into it and drown. And now it flooded him, coursed in his veins like his lifeblood.

He wanted … he wanted so many things. Simple pleasures. To buy her a dozen muslin frocks to replace the one he’d destroyed today. To feed her succulent fruits and ripe cheeses and slices of roasted meat. To lay his head in her lap and feel her fingers in his hair, and listen to all her fanciful tales and dreams. To share thoughts without exchanging words. To lay with her, be in her, feel her body surround him as often as she’d allow. And a child … God, how he wanted a child. He’d been fighting that desire for more than a year, ever since he’d cradled his newborn nephew in his arms. It was irresistible in the most base, selfish way, this impulse to create a life. A child would be bound to love and admire him, no matter what he did. A child would be bound to accept his love. A child would bind him to her, forever.

Somehow it always circled back to her. He wanted her.

This was the voyage he’d meant to go respectable. He thought he’d lost that chance in the taking of her virtue, then the discovery of her lies and that bundle of gold beneath her stays. The futility of all his struggling had burned a black, smoking crater in his soul. But perhaps that was exactly what he’d needed: a blast to his petrified heart, and this resultant void that only she could fill. Perhaps, at long last, what he wanted and what was right were one and the same.