Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)(80)

“Go back to your cabin.”

“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll go mad if I spend another day in that cabin, with no one to talk to and nothing to do.”

“Well, I’m sorry we’re not entertaining you sufficiently, but this isn’t a pleasure cruise. Find some other way to amuse yourself. Can’t you find something to occupy your mind?” He made an open-handed sweep through the steam. “Read a book.”

“I’ve only got one book. I’ve already read it.”

“Don’t tell me it’s the Bible.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “It isn’t.”

He averted his gaze to the ceiling, blowing out an impatient breath. “Only one book,” he muttered. “What sort of lady makes an ocean crossing with only one book?”

“Not a governess.” Her voice held a challenge.

Gray refused the bait, electing for silence. Silence was all he could manage, with this anger slicing through him. It hurt. He kept his eyes trained on a cracked board above her head, working to keep his expression blank. What a fool he’d been, to believe her. To believe that something essential in him had changed, that he could find more than fleeting pleasure with a woman. That this perfect, delicate blossom of a lady, who knew all his deeds and misdeeds, would offer herself to him without hesitation. Deep inside, in some uncharted territory of his soul, he’d built a world on that moment when she came to him willingly, trustingly. Giving not just her body, but her heart.

Ha. She hadn’t even given him her name.

“Are you ever planning to talk to me?” she asked. “Don’t you have questions you want to ask?”

“Just one. Have you had your courses?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Then we’ve nothing further to discuss.”

“Not yet,” she said meaningfully.

In truth, Gray wasn’t certain how many answers he wanted, whether she carried his child or no. He knew he preferred silence to lies. It didn’t matter one whit to him who she was, or what she’d done. Whether or not she’d taken lovers before, whether she had six shillings or six thousand pounds. It mattered that she’d lied. That even with her arms around him, her lips pressed to his mouth, her tight, virgin body yielding to his—she had always been holding something back.

In those dark, solitary watches over the past three nights, it had driven him quietly mad, wondering just how much of her he’d ever seen, ever held. He’d opened himself to her completely, and she’d been lying to him since the moment they’d met. In all those days aboard the Aphrodite, was a single one of her smiles ever truly for him? What fraction of her heart had she revealed to him, in all their conversations? When he’d held her, caressed her, entered her—had he finally reached some layer of her being where the lies ended and the real woman began?

Gray didn’t even want to ask. Because he already knew the only answer that mattered. How much of her was his? Less than all. And therefore, not enough.

“Sketching.” He croaked the word. Clearing his throat, he continued, “Go to your cabin and draw, or paint. It kept you busy enough before.”

“I’ve tried. I can’t.”

“What, no more paper?”

“No more inspiration. I … I’ve lost my heart for it, I think.” With a shrug, she turned back to the stove and began stirring lazy figure eights in a bubbling pot. “Gray, be angry with me if you must. You’ve a right to be hurt.

Call me vile names, think all the vengeful thoughts you wish. But you must allow me to do this. I want to help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Yes, you do.” She ceased stirring and leveled the ladle at him, wielding it like a sword. “You’ve eight men on this ship, performing the work of a dozen. I hear everything from that cabin. Do you think I don’t know how hard you’re working? That you’re only resting every third watch, and sometimes not even that?”

Her voice lost its sharp edge, and she flung the ladle aside before wiping her brow with the back of her wrist. “If I run the galley, it frees Davy to stand a watch. If Davy’s able to stand watch, you can get more rest.”

Gray stared at her. He slowly shook his head. “Sweetheart—”

“Don’t.” Her voice tweaked. “Don’t call me that when you don’t mean it.”

“What am I to call you, then? Miss ‘Turner’? Jane?”

“You’re to call me Cook.” With an impatient gust of breath, she blew a wisp of hair from her face. “If I knew how to reef a sail or splice a line, you’d be chasing me down from the rigging right now. I can’t do a sailor’s work, but I can do this. I’ve spent every morning with Gabriel since the Aphrodite left England, and I know how to pound a piece of salt pork.”

“I can’t allow you to do this sort of menial labor.”

“You can’t expect me to sit idly by and read or sketch in that cabin while you’re working yourself to bones.” She grabbed a smaller spoon from a hook on the wall and thrust it at him, handle-first. “I made you food, and you’re going to eat it.”

He accepted the spoon. It was that, or accept a spoon to the skull. She kicked a stool toward him. “Now sit down.”