Chapter Thirteen
Elias reveled in the look of delight on Laura’s face as he massaged her foot. Such a simple act of service and, yet, he enjoyed it as much as she.
Perhaps more than he ought, he mused ruefully, conscious of his body’s stirrings. He tamped them down. His touch was not intended to seduce – to woo perhaps – and he couldn’t help think, perhaps, he would like see that expression again, under other, more intimate circumstances. He looked away but the image was already indelibly imprinted on his mind.
He had worked hard to discipline himself, to hold fast against the temptations of the flesh – to be the chivalrous knight he liked to see himself as.
On the Terpsichore and the Calliope during their many rescue missions, he had seen too many women and girls utterly terrified by his rough-looking and often ill-kempt shipmates as they came to their rescue. The shrinking fear he saw in their eyes, their pulling away from the very men who would snatch them from hell, hardened his resolve that no woman would ever feel like that in his presence.
He’d been teased early on for his insistence on shaving every day, on keeping his hair more or less under control. His crewmates declared him “as pretty as Captain Hardacre”. But it wasn’t vanity – well, not vanity alone – that made Elias do this. His clean-shaven face appeared to make him less threatening. That was why it was usually to him or Kit these brutalized women and children would later tell their stories.
“Mmmm, the other foot please.”
Elias released Laura’s left foot and found the right rubbing itself on his trousered knee. His plan to win her favor slowly was dissolving. Best he concentrate on his task, instead.
Do you love me, Elias Nash?
He had heard her question on the day he left two months ago, but he chose not to answer it. He was certain of his answer – had always been – but the realist in him knew if he had turned back and answered honestly, all he’d have received in return was rejection.
It was good he went away then.
And he was pretty sure she was happy to see him now. Her small moans of pleasure at the foot massage were becoming more and more difficult to ignore.
He lowered her foot into the water.
Better stop now before being tempted to go past the ankle, to touch the calf, to touch her knee…
He bit the inside of his mouth, welcoming the sharp pain and the metallic tang of blood on his tongue. Perhaps now it was safe for him to look into her face.
He was wrong. Laura’s head was thrown back, and a length of her pale hair had dropped from her chignon. Thick, lustrous locks tumbled about her shoulders.
“Elias…” His name whispered with such pleasure from her lips was his undoing. He fixed a smile on his face that was not quite his own and looked into her blue eyes. They seemed nearly the color of the sky above.
He backed away from her, slightly deeper into the cold water of the lagoon. It caused a brief flare of aching in his kidneys. Good. If he stayed in the water longer, perhaps another organ would feel less inflamed.
“Keep swinging your feet in the water, and take a walk along the edge if you feel up to it.”
Laura straightened herself on the small bench and arranged her skirts to keep them dry. “Where are you going?”
Elias found he could now stand up in the waist-deep water. A very safe and respectable distance away.
“I’m going for a swim.
“Are you mad? It’s November! The water is freezing!”
He removed his shirt and allowed himself just one look back as he lobbed it to Laura. She caught and held it bundled in her hands. “That’s the whole idea.”
The lagoon wasn’t that cold – he’d swum in January-chilled waters before now – but he was hoping what was here was cool enough to douse the fire that burned within him. He knew women were supposed to bloom during pregnancy but that was just a social nicety rather than truth. He’d seen plenty of pregnant women looking exhausted and unhappy, haggard even. But “blooming” was the only way to describe the way Laura looked.
Her skin had lost its pallor and there was color to her cheeks and lips. Her hair seemed more lustrous – and she seemed to smile more readily, too, which lightened his heart more than anything else he had seen and done over the past few months.
The woman he thought was impossibly beautiful had become even more so.
*
Laura shook her head as she watched Elias’ long, powerful strokes out into the lagoon. She burrowed her feet in the sand, trying to emulate the feel of his massage on her instep. It was only partly successful, but she had to admit her feet felt wonderful. In fact, she felt wonderful.
The past two months had been restorative and, as late summer became late autumn, she found herself thinking more and more about Elias.
Do you love me, Elias Nash?
He never did answer the question she had asked at their parting. Had he even heard it? Was she ready to know the answer?
She was afraid she knew it already, and was equally sure his affection for her was born from a place of pity. His veiled offer had been that of a charitable man, a chivalrous one. She would be just another example of his goodness, just another one he rescued from slavery. An act of charity.
He was now at the far end of the lagoon, drawn by the upcoming change in tide toward the channel that would drag him out sea if he didn’t swim strongly enough. Laura stood, keeping her skirts gathered along with Elias’ shirt with one hand and tugged at the bench with the other, loosening its legs from the sucking sand. She dragged it awkwardly from the water, emerging from the shallows in time to see Sophia strolling toward her.
“So that’s where you got to,” Sophia called out.
Laura gave an exaggerated grimace, and she looked down at the two pairs of footwear, hers and his, side by side on the grass. She loosely folded his shirt and placed it atop his boots.
“Where’s Elias? Did you make him disappear?”
Laura pointed out to the lagoon. “He’s a madman. He rubs my feet then he goes swimming – at this time of year!”
Sophia shook her head. “It’s something I’ve had to get used to with these men. They’re very… athletic. Did I ever tell you? Kit almost drowned himself in here trying to find out how long he could hold his breath underwater.”
Laura blinked at her. “He did what?”
She watched her cousin hesitate. Her lovely brown eyes, which always seemed to her to be incapable of lying, looked away from hers now. Sophia moved past her to sit on the bench she had discarded.
“I never told you the full story of what happened to Kit and me before you were abducted. He was determined to hunt down a slaver by the name of Kaddouri – and kill him. In fact, it had become an obsession. The final straw for me was when he decided to practice cliff diving. He leapt off the eastern face on the headland.”
“The place by the ruins?” Laura knew the spot. In fact, she had learned every inch of the island in her time here. Tension pulled at her stomach – or, perhaps, it was the babe doing somersaults. She reached for the bench and sank down beside Sophia.
“Kit became a man I didn’t know. The obsession was slowly killing him,” Sophia continued. “I read the journals of the ones he rescued, but I didn’t truly understand why he and his men drove themselves so hard to do what they do. Then you were taken…”
Sophia knelt on the grass and helped Laura into her shoes.
“When you went missing, I suddenly appreciated that single-minded, obsessive drive that runs to the exclusion of all else. It was… exciting. It made me feel more alive than I had ever been before. It helped sustain me for a while even after I was abducted, too. Then Selim Omar made me read the letter that said Kit was dead, and my world ended. Nothing mattered.”
“And now?”
Sophia raised her face and it was illuminated in the late afternoon sun, but it was not that which made her face shine. On it was a look of love. Laura tamped down her envy.
“I just take each day with thanksgiving. Kaddouri’s dead, so that’s done. But I know Kit. He’s content for the moment to play gentleman farmer here on the island, but there’s going to be a time when that’s not enough. When his leg has fully healed, he’s going to want to be at sea again. And when he is, he’ll want to hunt down the Barbary Coast pirates.”
As if anticipating her question, Sophia continued, “I wouldn’t stop him even if I wanted to.”
“What does that mean? You’re going to go on pirate raids with him?”
“Perhaps. I wouldn’t be the first woman to do so.” Sophia shrugged. “But the reason I’m telling you is if you’re planning to encourage Elias’ attentions, you’d best know what you’re letting yourself in for. Before me, he was the only person who could keep Kit grounded, but even Elias is not averse to acting recklessly if the situation warranted – that includes swimming across the lagoon in winter as the tide is going out.”
*
“Still suffering insomnia?”
Elias climbed the last few steps to the rooftop and caught a whiff of rich tobacco smoke before it drifted away on the breeze. Kit lounged against the wall, the red tip of his cigar burning brightly for a moment.
“Not so much now that Sophia’s home.”
Elias slumped down into the discarded canvas chair and looked up into the sky above. It was a stunningly clear evening, only a few thin, lazy trails of thin, grey clouds marred its perfection.
He looked for the belt of Orion in the sky to the south and traced the imaginary constellation lines – the scabbard of his word and the arc of stars that formed the animal pelt he held aloft.
“I still wake up in the middle of the night startled to find her laying beside me, safe,” Kit said softly.
Elias kept his eyes heavenward, picking out The Pleiades – the Seven Sisters who guided navigation in this region – sitting higher still in the sky. The aroma of cigar smoke grew stronger and Elias heard Kit take the creaking chair beside him.
“So what are you doing up here, Kit?”
“Sophia’s not fond of the smoke.”
A companionable silence stretched out between them. There had been many a time when Elias had been on the middle watch at sea, he and Kit sat looking up at the stars.
Elias hadn’t known anything about celestial navigation then, let alone sailing. Kit would talk. He would listen. Suddenly the conversation wouldn’t be about the stars any longer, it would be about a small boy’s terror and being used in the most horrible and unnatural of ways.
At first he had been too shocked to say anything. He just listened. Memories of his own harsh treatment at his father’s hands on the farm had been nothing compared to this. The more Elias kept Kit’s secrets, the more their friendship grew, and more Kit relied upon him to manage the crew and balance his own unstable manner.
It had been more than three months since Kit had been aboard the Calliope with them – let alone spoken about preemptive raids on slaving galiots. Now that Sophia was safe, that restless energy was curbed. Perhaps her calmness had rubbed off on him. It would be no bad thing.
And yet, it was he who now burned with the restless spirit.
“Is this the end, Kit?” he asked.
“Does Alexander weep because there are no more worlds left to conquer?”
Trust his friend to put a none-too-subtle finger on what troubled him. Elias turned his head until he could see his friend’s face in profile.
“I’m plagued by a feeling that this is the calm before the storm; that something’s not right, you know?” he said.
Kit caught his eye and offered a cigar. Elias declined with a shake of his head.
“Don’t borrow trouble. You told me that often enough over the years. If it’s smooth sailing, then take it.” Kit dropped the hand that held the cigar. Blue-grey smoke drifted away.
“I don’t know about you,” the captain continued, “but I’m content to be a farmer for a while, and take a stab at what people call a normal life – wife, a home, a business, family, friends. They say a man can be contented on that alone. Jonathan certainly loves a quiet life – Morwena, too, come to mention it.”
Elias barked out a laugh. “Morwena, quiet? Don’t you believe it – that woman slays dragons with every business deal. Trade is a war, and she is a general.”
“Well, what about you? What happened to your grand plans to fall into the parson’s mousetrap?”
Elias let out a long sigh and turned to the night sky once more. “It’s not as easy as you make it sound.”
“Nothing worthwhile ever is; unless you’ve changed your mind about courting Laura?”
Elias closed his eyes a moment. He didn’t want to talk about this, but he’d be no better than a coward if he didn’t.
“It would be easier if I had changed my mind. Laura talks about returning to England. I have no right to ask her to give up her home.”
“Have you thought about going back? How long has it been since you’ve seen your family? Ten years?”
He shrugged. “I no more belong in Scotland than you do in England. It’s more foreign to me than any place here on the Mediterranean. Everything I have to offer her is here.” Elias straightened himself up in the chair. “Perhaps Sophia was right all those years ago. I’ve set my sights too high. Laura is not the kind of woman to be satisfied with a quiet country life.”
“Perhaps you’d better let her be the judge of that.”
“That is exactly what I’m preparing for.”
Kit stood with a heavy sigh. He placed a hand on Elias’ shoulder to help support his injured right leg in gaining his feet, as much as it was to offer comfort to his friend.
“You spent two years of your life toiling to bring the woman you love back home,” he said. “Ask yourself why you want to give up so easily now.”
Elias closed his eyes and listened as Kit made his way downstairs, the sound of the slight dragging of his leg obvious as he descended.
Aye. That was the question. Why would a man who had run headlong into battle, scaled perilous heights, and conquered savage seas be afraid of one simple answer?
Elias chuffed, shaking his head. He knew the reason why. If Laura told him no, that would be the end of it. He would give her wish to her. He would bow out and she would not suffer his presence again.
And it would be like amputating a healthy limb. One might survive the surgery and live, one might eventually become accustomed to the pain and loss. But one thing was for certain. He would never be whole again.
*
Something pulled Laura from a deep sleep. She lay on her side and ran a hand across her belly, listening. She recognized Kit’s uneven gait down the hall as he crossed the threshold into the bedroom he shared with Sophia.
The mannered politeness with which he had treated her had somehow changed over the past two months to a form of fraternal affection. Any misgivings she had about his marriage to Sophia had disappeared completely. Their love was real and full, evidenced in so many ways – the small acts of attention and regard, the affection that radiated between them even when they weren’t touching.
The sound of another set of footsteps brought her from her musing. These were outside. The sound of fine shell grit and gravel under someone’s feet moved past her window in the direction of the wooden gate that separated the two villa gardens. Alfonso and Lyda had gone to bed hours ago, so it had to be Elias. She had expected he would wish to speak to her alone after dinner but he had not. And once the evening conversation had turned to a rather dull discussion about olive and grape harvests, she’d excused herself and gone to bed.
Now fully awake, she rose. She slipped on a wrapper and opened one of the shutters. It squeaked on its hinges.
The moon hung low in the western sky. Silhouetted against it was Elias. He’d heard the shutter open, and paused with his hand on the gate. He turned and smiled.
“‘What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun’,” he whispered.
“It’s hours too early for the sun,” she whispered back. “Why are you still up? Have you not gone to bed yet?”
He shrugged and walked softly the several yards to her window, standing a few feet away. “Kit’s insomnia is contagious,” he offered.
“Oh? And what weighty matter keeps the Calliope’s first officer awake all night?”
It was good they spoke now, Laura thought. The darkness of night invited confidences that bright daylight would not elicit.
“You,” he replied.