“I didn’t know it was an English vice,” Olivia said seriously. “The Greeks and Romans, of course, but… Oh, you’re laughing at me!”

“Only a very little.” He leaned against the rail, idly watching the scene. “If you like, we could spend the evening in the town.”

“But I have no c-clothes… only these.”

“Oh, I suspect we might be able to find something suitable from among the treasures in the hold. Come, let us go and look.” He moved off with his leisurely stride.

She followed him down into the waist of the ship, where he collected an oil lamp. He lit it and led the way down into the dark hold that smelled of sea and the pitch that caulked the timbers.

Chests, barrels, bales, were stacked to the ceiling. “Now, which of those chests… Ah, this one, I believe.” He went unerringly to an ironbound chest. “Hold the lamp.”

She took it and held it high as he knelt and opened the chest.

“What do you fancy? Muslin… cambric… silk… even velvet we have here.” He rifled through the pile of material. “There are some gowns made up at the bottom, as I recall. How about this?” He drew out a gown of dark green muslin.

“It’s very pretty,” Olivia said, examining it in the light. “Will it fit?”

He rose with the gown and held it up against her. “It looks perfect to me. Adam’ll be able to make any adjustments. Now you need stockings and slippers and a shawl.”

He returned to the chests, lifting lids at random, until he had assembled the necessary garments. “There, you’ll be as fine as five-pence.”

Olivia exchanged the lamp for the bundle of clothes. “Shall we eat supper in the town?”

“At the Pelican, madam. It has a very fine table.”

In her borrowed finery, Olivia sat in the stern of the small boat as they were rowed to the quay. Anthony had dressed for the occasion in doublet and britches of a gray silk, so dark it was almost black. Olivia knew she was living a dream. She was part of a play of which she didn’t know the words. She didn’t know how the next scene would play. It was a thrilling, entrancing world that bore no relation to the real one. But they had bought the time and she allowed the dream to catch her up, sweep her along, unfold before her.

It was late when they returned to the ship, and Olivia was aware that she had perhaps drunk too much burgundy for wisdom. She felt as if she were floating on froth… a delightful feeling that she tried to describe to Anthony, but without much success. She caught the grins of the two sailors who were rowing them back, and wondered vaguely but without much concern whether her words sounded different from the way they sounded in her head.

When they were tied up at the ship’s side, Anthony looked up at the rope ladder and then assessingly at Olivia. “You know, I don’t think I want to risk it.”

“Risk what?” A little hiccup escaped her.

“Never mind. Come.” He drew her to her feet. The little boat rocked alarmingly. He bent to put his shoulder against her belly and hitched her up and over, holding her securely behind the knees.

Olivia found her gaze focusing on the points of his shoulder blades through the gray silk. She would have liked to kiss them, but she couldn’t quite reach them. So she gave up the attempt and instead gazed down dreamily through the black veil of her hair at the dark green water washing against the white sides of the frigate. Hands leaned over the rail to take her and lift her clear onto the deck. Anthony jumped down beside her and stood laughing down at her.

“I’m very much afraid you’re not going to have a happy morning,” he said, brushing her tumbled hair away from her face.

“I’m very happy now,” Olivia assured him.

“Yes, my flower, I can see that.”

A little ripple of amusement went around the deck, and Olivia smiled sunnily at these friendly men, whose faces were now so familiar.

“Can you walk to the cabin? Or should I carry you?”

“Oh, I think you should c-carry me,” she said with another little hiccup. “It’s strange but my legs don’t seem to belong to me.”

“Over you go, then.” He hoisted her up over his shoulder and went down to the cabin with his prize.

She swayed on the floor and smiled delightfully at him. “You’ll have to undress me. My hands don’t seem to belong to me either.”

“Well, that is always a pleasure.”

Olivia regarded her borrowed garments with an air of inquiry as they slid from her body. “Did these c-come from the Dona Elena? They don’t seem very Spanish.”

“No, they came from a wreck,” he said, drawing her chemise over her head.

Pirate. Smuggler. Wrecker.

She could hear his voice saying so carelessly how easy it was for a ship to run afoul of the rocks off St. Catherine’s Point. Just like the wreck that had been driven to its doom the night before she’d fallen into the air just above the point.

And the morning after, she had fallen at the feet of Wind Dancer’s watchman, just a short way down the coast from the point. So easy to have lured the ship onto the rocks and then to have transported the spoils to the safety of the chine. So very easy.

Piracy. Smuggling. Those were beyond the law. Olivia knew that they were dirty and dangerous, and men were killed in their pursuit. And she knew too that for most smugglers, wrecking was a mere sideline. She knew that, it was island lore, but she couldn’t grasp it. Not with Anthony. Anthony could not…

She felt sick. A great unstoppable wave of nausea. She pushed past him blindly, desperate for the commode.

Anthony moved to hold her head as she retched miserably, but she shook him off with such desperation that he left her. He remembered too well the miseries of his own first overindulgence, and he wouldn’t add to her mortification.

He went up on deck thinking of the morning’s auction. At dawn they would come, the merchants and shopkeepers, the tavern keepers and the private buyers. They would come in their small boats to examine his wares, and they would bid well for them. He would pay his crew, pay the pensions and bonuses to the men who worked for him, men who were his friends, and he would put aside what he needed to live as he chose. And the rest would go to Ellen to be disbursed to the Royalist insurgents where she and her vicar saw fit.

And on the next night of the new moon, Wind Dancer would take the king of England to France.

Anthony yawned, stretched, and took himself below. Olivia was curled in the far corner of the bed. He undressed by the dimmest of candlelight and slipped in beside her. He reached to roll her into his embrace, but she seemed surrounded by an invisible thorn hedge. Assuming that in her nausea she needed to be left utterly alone, he turned away from her. But he was unable to fall asleep until he had gently moved his back against hers.

Chapter Thirteen

Anthony rose before dawn, leaving Olivia asleep. He dressed and went on deck, where Adam had soap and hot water waiting for him.

“ ‘Ow’s the lass?” Adam handed him the razor.

“Asleep. I hope she’ll sleep it off.” He bent to the small mirror Adam held up. “I suppose I should have stopped her. But she’s not a child. It’s a lesson we all learn sometime.”

“Not Lord Granville’s daughter, I reckon,” Adam stated, and there was no disguising the hint of disapproval in his voice.

Anthony carefully shaved above his top lip, then he set down the razor and took the towel Adam handed him. “She knows what she’s doing as much as I do, Adam.”

“Aye, as little; that’s what’s bothersome,” the other said. “Ye’ve missed a bit, jest under yer chin.”

Anthony dipped the razor in the hot water again and applied himself anew. He knew from his earliest years that there was no point entering into an argument with Adam.

The buyers came as the sun rose. They gathered in the hold, all aware that they were buying contraband, no one interested in its provenance.

Olivia could hear the bustle as she lay dry-mouthed with pounding head, desperate to return to a sleep that would not come. She heard the scrape of the boats against the ship’s side, the feet on the deck, the voices, the comings and goings down the companionway. She couldn’t hear what was happening in the hold, but she could guess.

A wrecker.

He had said so, as casually as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if, of course, she would know it anyway. She knew he was a smuggler and a pirate, what more natural than that he should turn his hand to a bit of wrecking now and again?

If she turned her head, she could see the gown, the slippers, the stockings that she had worn during the enchanted hours of last evening. To whom had they belonged? What women, dashed to their deaths on St. Catherine’s Point, had treasured that green gown, those silk stockings, those satin slippers?

Nausea rose anew and Olivia struggled over the high sides of the bed and stumbled across the cabin to hang uselessly over the commode. She had never felt so ill, so achingly aware of every pulse and joint in her body. And she felt so bereft of hope, of happiness, of even the ordinary expectations of the little satisfactions of everyday life. She had swung high on the pendulum of entrancement. Its downward swing brought misery in exact proportion to the joy.

But she had felt this way before. Many times before. Throughout her childhood. One minute she had been happy, contented, deep in her books or her play, and then it would happen. This great black cloud would come out of nowhere, and there was no more happiness, no more contentment. She hadn’t known then where it came from, hadn’t connected it with those dreadful moments at Brian’s hands, but she knew it now. And this time the black cloud was of Anthony’s making.