Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)(56)

“Nothing quite so dreadful.” She looked up at him, and the coquettish gleam in her eyes had him coughing around his mouthful of food. Yes, everything was as usual. The mere sight of her, so beautiful, so close—stole his very breath. Which left him completely unprepared for the words she spoke next. “I’m going to paint you.”

“Paint me?” Vivid, sensual memories flooded his mind. Her fingers threaded in his hair, her body pressed against his. Gray doubted she even remembered that night, drunk as she’d been. Of course, he couldn’t forget it.

“You don’t mind, do you? I need to practice, and it is something to pass the time.” Pushing aside a mug of tea, she began unfolding a small easel.

“Unless you had some other activity in mind?”

Gray cleared his throat and lowered his gaze to his book. He had many other activities in mind. “I had planned to read.”

“And so you still may.” She threaded her arms through the sleeves of a smock and tied it behind her back. “Just allow me enough time to rough in the outline of your features, and then you can read your book while I complete the rest.”

“I’m not certain …”

She set down a trio of brushes, lining them up from smallest to largest. “I’m running out of subjects, you see. I’ve sketched or painted nearly everyone else on the ship.”

“I’d noticed.”

She paused, staring hard at the brushes. “Had you?”

“Yes.”

Her gaze lifted to his. “And … ?”

And what? What could he possibly say? That her sketches filled him with envy and yearning? That they revealed to him hidden qualities in men he’d worked alongside for years, and showed him more than he’d ever wanted to know of her heart? That he’d spurned this same request—and her— weeks ago, precisely because he dreaded the moment she turned that artist’s eye on him and perceived the true quality of his soul? Irony tugged the corner of his mouth into a half-smile. Let her see it, then. Her supply of black pigment would be exhausted completely. She’d never burden him with that trusting look again.

He drained his mug of tea and threw it down like a gauntlet. “Very well.”

Smiling, she propped a canvas on the easel. “Very well.”

“What am I to do?”

“Just be at ease.” She threw him an amused glance. “Much as I’d rejoice to feel the sea rolling beneath us, I don’t believe you’re in any imminent danger of being thrown to the floor.”

Gray followed her gaze to his hand where it clenched the arm of his chair. Annoyed with his own transparency, he folded his hands across his chest, sliding one boot along the floorboards as he reclined in the chair. “I am perfectly at ease.”

“How is it,” she asked, scratching with a pencil as her narrowed gaze alternated between him and the canvas, “that the son of a dissolute gentleman, raised on a West Indian sugar plantation and educated at Oxford, after inheriting land and an income, decides to make his life at sea?”

Gray stared at her.

She ceased sketching and cast him an expectant look, tucking a stray wisp of hair behind her ear.

“What? You want me to talk? I thought I was supposed to remain still.”

“You are supposed to be at ease. And reminiscing, I find, usually puts a subject at ease.”

Not this subject.

She turned back to her sketch. “Did you dream of becoming a sailor as a boy?”

Gray laughed. “No. I’d never been aboard a ship until I was sent off to Oxford. I was sick and miserable for the whole first week at sea. Couldn’t eat a thing. A stroke of luck, as it turned out, for the sailors caught and ate a tainted fish. Nearly all of the crew fell ill; four of them died.”

“Good Heavens.”

“I offered my assistance to the captain. He put me to work, and I just took to it, somehow. By the time we crossed the Tropic, I was setting and furling sails like an able seaman. Between shifts in the rigging, I learned everything the captain had to teach me about windpower and navigation. When we reached England, I asked him if I could stay on, and he made me second mate. Didn’t make it to Oxford for another year and a half.”

“I wonder that you bothered to go at all.”

“I nearly didn’t.” He scratched his chin. “But the war was brewing. And a letter finally caught up with me, saying my father had taken ill—that sobered me. Both Joss and Bel were still underage, and I knew there’d be no one to look after them if he died. Figured I’d best stay put for a while, so they’d know where to find me if they needed me. Oxford seemed as good a place as any. Only finished three terms, as it happened.”

“Because your father did die.” Catching the pencil between her teeth, she wiped her hands on the apron of her smock.

“Yes.”

She removed the pencil from her mouth and turned her head to stare at him. Her eyes did not meet his, however. Rather, Gray fancied that she studied his ear, or perhaps the line of his jaw. He scratched his neck self-consciously, feeling his whole body heat under her unabashed appraisal.

“And that’s when you sold the land,” she said, returning her attention to the canvas. “And became a privateer?”

He nodded.

“But if you were concerned for your brother and sister, why did you not simply go home? Keep running the plantation?”