Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)(34)

At other times, he’d smooth over a brewing argument with a jest, delivered in a smooth, disarming tone. Or his casual comment about the wind would be followed by swift adjustments in the rigging. With that clear, pleasing baritone, Mr. Grayson directed the crew just as surely as the rudder steered the ship.

“I know what you’re thinking, Gray.” O’Shea’s brogue lilted down through the skylight one warm morning, while Sophia was hard at work. Mr. Grayson responded, a raw longing in his voice. “Aye. It would be so easy to take her.”

Sophia nearly dropped her quill.

“We’ve the advantage of the wind,” O’Shea said.

“And a faster ship,” Gray replied. “We’d be on her stern in no time.”

Ships. Sophia breathed again. They were speaking of ships.

“Those were the days.” O’Shea gave a low whistle. “One cannonball to the rudder …”

“Wouldn’t even need that. She’d accept our terms with little more than a signal shot and a smile.”

She could hear that smile in his voice.

He continued, “Cannons are for amateurs. Seizing a ship intact … it’s all in the approach. From the moment that sail appears on the horizon, you act as though it’s already yours. All that remains is to inform the other captain.”

Now Sophia smiled with him. She knew exactly what he meant. It was the same attitude she’d carried with her into the bank that day. A half-hour later, she’d walked out with six hundred pounds. She wished she could tell Mr. Grayson that story. He would find it amusing, no doubt. She could almost hear the ringing laugh he’d give when she described the red-faced clerk and the way she’d …

How curious.

She’d barely spoken with Mr. Grayson in over a week. How could she have done, after that horrid night? But somehow, through these overheard conversations and stray remarks, she’d come to know him quite well. She’d come to like him.

She’d come to think of him as a friend. He’d saved more than her life that day.

There was no denying it now, after the conversation she’d just overheard. She had to face up to the truth she’d been avoiding.

He could have had her that night, so easily. Conquest was his specialty, as he’d just said. Ships, women … what ever Mr. Grayson wanted, he took. And he had wanted her, at least in the carnal sense, despite all his protests to the contrary. When she’d pressed up against him so shamelessly, she’d felt his unmistakable arousal. She’d made herself his for the taking, and he had walked away.

Of course, he wasn’t the first person to guard her virtue. Her family, her schoolmistresses, her companions—even her own betrothed—all her life, she’d been surrounded by a fortress of people, all devoted to keeping her untouched. Because her virtue was currency, a token to be bartered for social connections. Would any of those same people give two straws about her virginity, had Sophia been a lowborn, penniless orphan? She doubted it. But Mr. Grayson did. He thought her a poor, friendless governess, with no connections worth mentioning and no one to care. And still, he’d guarded her virtue when, in a moment of drunken foolishness, she would have thrown it away.

In running away from home, Sophia had seized control of her fortune. But she’d also seized control of her body. Her nouveau-riche parents had been desperate for one of their daughters to marry a title. When her older sister, Kitty, had failed to do so, their hopes had transferred to Sophia. But to marry without passion or love, simply for money and connections—it would have made her the worst sort of whore. Sophia didn’t want to lose her virginity as a means of completing a transaction. She dreamed of a different experience, one of passion and emotion and breathtaking romance.

And she’d have lost that dream, if not for him.

Maybe he’d been right. Maybe she ought to thank Almighty God in Heaven that he didn’t want her.

What did it mean then, that she couldn’t?

Rising to her feet, she packed away her quill and ink. Maybe she couldn’t tell Mr. Grayson the story of her own conquest. Maybe he wouldn’t speak to her at all. But the day was fine, and there was a sail on the horizon, and she simply couldn’t stay put in the cabin a moment longer. She wanted to be in the center of the activity, enjoying the warm rays of the sun. Oh, who was she fooling?

She wanted to be near him.

Gray froze as Miss Turner emerged from the hold. For weeks, she’d plagued him—by day, he suffered glimpses of her beauty; by night, he was haunted by memories of her touch. And just when he thought he’d finally wrangled his desire into submission, today she’d ruined everything. She’d gone and changed her dress.

Gone was that serge shroud, that forbidding thundercloud of a garment that had loomed in his peripheral vision for weeks. Today, she wore a cap-sleeved frock of sprigged muslin.

She stepped onto the deck, smiling face tilted to the wind. A flower opening to greet the sun. She bobbed on her toes, as though resisting the urge to make a girlish twirl. The pale, sheer fabric of her dress billowed and swelled in the breeze, pulling the undulating contour of calf, thigh, hip into relief.

Gray thought she just might be the loveliest creature he’d ever seen. Therefore, he knew he ought to look away.

He did, for a moment. He made an honest attempt to scan the horizon for clouds. He checked the hour on his pocket watch, wound the small knob one, two, three, four times. He wiped a bit of salt spray from its glass face. He thought of England. And France, and Cuba, and Spain. He remembered his brother, his sister, and his singularly ugly Aunt Rosamond, on whom he hadn’t clapped eyes in de cades. And all this Herculean effort resulted in nothing but a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and precisely thirty seconds’delay in the inevitable.