Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)(64)

“You’re not a hand. You’re a passenger.”

“I may not be a hand, but I’ve got two perfectly good hands, and if I sit on them a second longer, I’ll go mad.”

Joss stared at Gray’s open collar, where his cravat should have been knotted. “She’s really getting to you, isn’t she?”

“You have no idea,” Gray muttered.

“Oh, I think I do.”

Gray ignored his brother’s smug tone. “Damn it, Joss, just put me to work. Send me up to furl a sail, put me down in the hold to pump the bilge … I don’t care, just give me something to do.”

Joss raised his eyebrows. “If you insist.” He lifted the spyglass to his eye and began scanning the horizon again. “Batten the hatches, then.”

Gray tossed a word of thanks over his shoulder as he descended to the quarterdeck and went to work, dragging the tarpaulins over the skylights and securing them with battens. As he labored, the ship’s motions grew more violent, hampering his efforts. He saved the vent above the ladies’ cabin for last, resisting the urge to peer down through the grate. Instead, he first secured one end, then blanketed the entire skylight with one strong snap on the canvas.

“Ahoy! Ahoy!” Wiggins leaned forward over the prow, hailing the approaching ship, its puffed scudding sails a stark contrast against the darkening sky.

Gray moved to cover the companion stairs, reaching inside the gaping black hole and groping for the handle to draw the hatch closed. Something—or someone—groped him back.

When the skylight was battened, the cabin went instantly black. Sophia felt the sudden, suffocating darkness, even though her eyes were clamped shut, the heels of her hands pressed flat against them to stem the tide of tears.

What was happening?

She stood up on shaky legs, smoothing her frock over her hips and adjusting her bodice in the dark. Fumbling in the darkness, she felt her way toward the cabin door and opened it. A square of light pierced the darkness overhead—the companionway hatch.

She moved toward the stairs and placed a foot on the bottom riser. When she reached forward to grab hold of the ladder’s edge, however, her hand met instead with something warm, solid, and strong.

An arm.

“Sweet,” a voice said. A large hand closed over her wrist. His voice. His hand.

She nearly wept anew. He was still there. In some absurd, maudlin spike of self-pity, she’d prepared herself to never see him again.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, his shadowy face protruding through the hatch. “Get back in your cabin.”

Oh, but of course he was still there. His mere presence signified nothing, she told herself sternly. It wasn’t as though he’d any means of escaping the ship. If he had, he surely would have taken it.

Even so, she hadn’t the courage to let him go.

She used his arm as leverage, hauling herself up the stairs even as the ladder pitched and rolled beneath her. “What’s happening?” The salty breeze whipped loose strands of hair across her face, and she used her free hand to tuck them behind her ear. She gripped his arm with the other.

“There’s a storm coming.” Deep lines etched his face. His own hair clung to his brow in thick, wet locks. “You need to remain below.”

“This isn’t so bad,” she protested, pulling the hair from her face once again. “It isn’t even raining.”

He caught her chin in his hand and stared down at her face. For a breathless moment, Sophia thought he intended to kiss her. She thought wrong.

“Look.” He swiveled her head toward the ship’s bow.

“Oh.” The wind whipped the sound from her lips as quickly as she uttered it. Before them, the sky boiled with towering, greenish-black clouds. If Sophia hadn’t suffered through enough geography lessons to know better, she would have thought they’d sailed to the very end of the earth and were about to tumble off the map into a churning void.

He turned her face back to his. The threat in his eyes was no less murderous than that of the sky. She’d never seen him look so forbidding.

“Now go below. And stay there.”

“Are you coming with me?”

His lips thinned. “No.”

“Ahoy!”

Shouts drew their attention to starboard, where a tall ship backed its mainsail in preparation to speak with the Aphrodite. Peering through the spray, she could barely make out the ship’s name painted on its side: the Kestrel.

The wind accelerated, screaming through the rigging overhead. The ocean’s surface erupted in a thousand white-edged crests, like a sea monster bearing row upon row of menacing teeth.

“Get below!” Gray steered her back toward the hatch.

Then the sky cracked open in a flash of white, just as thunder quaked the deck beneath their feet. For a terrifying, endless moment, the world blanked. There was no sight, no sound, only the pungent scent of sulfur and weightless shock.

With a swift yank on her wrist, Gray twirled her into his chest, wrapping his arm across her torso and forcing her down to the deck. Sophia cowered between the wooden planks beneath her and the human fortress of warmth and strength surrounding her. Protecting her. She took a mental inventory of her limbs, making sure they were all still there. Yes, there were her legs, curled awkwardly into her belly. One arm was pinned beneath her; with her other hand she still clutched his sleeve. She slid her trembling hand down toward his wrist, rejoicing to feel his pulse pound against the crook of her thumb. Her own heart thudded against her ribs. Muffled noises reached her ears—men shouting, wood splintering. But the only sounds that Sophia cared about were these twin rhythms: his heart, and hers. After a few moments, the weight pressing her to the deck eased, and she felt herself lifted to her feet.