her own hair much like his and daring to leave her stockings and shoes below, Jerusa followed Michel to the deck. After the twilight of their cabin, the sun was blindingly bright as it glanced off the water, and squinting, she shaded her eyes with the back of her hand.
The tropical summer sun was as hot as it was bright. The smooth, worn planks of the deck were warm beneath her bare feet, and despite the wind that filled the brig’s sails, Jerusa felt the prickle of perspiration trickling down between her shoulder blades, under her layers of ladylike clothing. No wonder the men working in the rigging had stripped down to canvas trousers and little else besides hats to shade their faces.
“Ahoy, Mr. and Mrs. Geary! You’re just in time to settle a question for me!” Captain Barker waved to them from the larboard entryway. Behind him the single mast of a small boat was just visible, bobbing alongside the Swan.
“Look here,” Barker said as they joined him and his cook, still in his apron and a knitted wool cap. “I must decide which of this fellow’s wares to buy for our breakfast. If you were at market, Mrs. Geary, which would take your fancy, eh?”
Jerusa peered over the Swan’s side to the little fishing boat below, floating on the transparent Caribbean water as if hanging in air. Her master, a black-skinned man in white trousers and an open red waistcoat, waited patiently with the pride of his catch spread out on his deck for the Englishman to make his decision. Swinging from a bracket on the mast was a large cage of woven reeds, full of small, brightly colored birds—scarlet, yellow, emerald and turquoise—and it was their shrieks and whistles and chattering that Jerusa and Michel had heard from their cabin.
Jerusa shook her head. “I really can’t say, Captain. There’s not a fish I’d recognize from home.”
The fisherman waved his arm grandly toward the cage of birds and said something to Jerusa in a language halfway between French and Spanish.
“He says he hopes the lovely English lady will buy one of his pretty birds,” explained Michel at her side. “All ladies like them, he says. But I wouldn’t advise it, chère. Away from their companions, the little creatures fall silent and pine away. They also bite, and odds are, beneath those pretty feathers, they’re covered with pests.”
“How charming,” said Jerusa as she smiled and shook her head at the fisherman. “But I’d wager he’d still likely do a wonderful trade in the market house at home.”
Barker conferred one last time with his cook, then tossed a handful of coins to the fisherman. “Shark and cod, and a brace of those handsome langoustes,” he said with relish as the fish and lobsters were handed up in a basket. “Oh, we’ll have a fine breakfast, won’t we?”
Less than an hour later, Jerusa, Michel and Captain Barker were sitting on the quarterdeck beneath an awning rigged to shade them from the worst of the sun. The dining table brought from the captain’s cabin was graced by fillets of the fish he’d bought earlier, now cooked and sauced, as well as biscuits and a pot of incongruous, glittering beach plum jam from some distant Connecticut kitchen. For Jerusa the biscuits and tea were breakfast enough, but Michel and the captain argued happily over the different merits of the shark versus the cod as they ate more than enough to make their decisions.
Only half listening, Jerusa sat back in her chair, lazily sipping her tea. On a morning like this, with the bright blue sea and a cloudless sky all around her, it was easy to forget her troubles, or at least to put them temporarily aside. Not even the sight of Hay, glowering from the helm at the little breakfast party to which he’d not been invited, could dampen her spirits. He’d barely spoken to her once she’d assured him she wasn’t worth a grand reward. Not that she cared. She had enough on her platter without adding a disgruntled fortune hunter. Besides, after tomorrow, when Captain Barker said they’d reach Bridgetown, she’d never see Mr. Hay again, and he’d be free to go search for some other missing lady with a wealthy father.
She stifled yet another yawn and set her teacup onto the table. “I’ll leave you two to settle the state of the fishy world,” she said as she rose. “I’m going back below.”
Swiftly Michel looked at her with such concern that, without thinking, she rested her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mr. Geary,” she said lightly. “I’m merely going back to sleep.”
He glanced down at her hand, then back at her face, and smiled so warmly she felt the day grow another ten degrees hotter. “Take care, my dear,” he said, his eyes as bright as the sea as he watched her. “I’ll come to you soon.”
Quickly she drew back her hand and fled before Captain Barker would notice how she blushed. Dear Almighty, why did it take so little from Michel to affect her so much? Yet as she drifted back to sleep, she prayed her dreams would be of him; for dreams, for now, were all she had.
She had just rebraided her hair when the door to the cabin opened behind her, and she turned eagerly. “Michel, I was just coming—”
But she broke off when she saw him, unsteadily supporting himself in the doorway. He was pale and sweating, with deep circles beneath his eyes. “Rusa, chérie,” he said, his words slurring and his smile weak. “Help me.”
The brig heeled on a new tack, and Michel pitched forward. Jerusa grabbed him beneath his arms and nearly tumbled over herself beneath his weight. Her first thought had been that after breakfast he and Captain Barker had turned to rum. But she’d yet to see Michel drink more than he could hold, certainly not to this state, and as she tried to haul him back to his feet and toward the bunk, she felt how his body was warm with fever.
“Here we are, Michel,” she said as they reached the edge of the bunk. With a groan he fell back onto the bunk and curled on his side with his eyes closed. She eased his arms free from his coat and tossed it aside, and then carefully pulled the pistol from his belt before she drew the coverlet over him.
“Th’ damned Creole’s fish,” he muttered thickly. “Should—should have known better.”
Gently she smoothed his hair back from his forehead. She remembered the fish spread out on the deck in the hot sun. If it had been fresh caught, then there should have been no danger, but in this climate, perhaps food turned faster. “Can I get you anything, Michel?”
“Should—should be better soon. Th’ fish an’ I parted company at th’ rail.” His smile was ghastly. “Très dramatique, ma mie.”
“Oh, Michel.” She knew he was right. If he’d already been sick to his stomach, then he should be well enough in a few hours. But that didn’t ease his misery right now, and she thought of what she could do to make him more comfortable. A damp cloth for his forehead, water to sip, perhaps some broth and biscuits for when he felt better. “I’m going to the galley for a few things, but I’ll be back directly.”
She wasn’t sure he’d heard her, for he looked as if he’d already fallen asleep. That was good; he needed the rest. In this heat, the worst danger would be from letting him go too long without water. She retrieved her shoes from beneath the bunk and opened the door. As she did, he turned his head slightly toward her without opening his eyes.
“Th’ gun, Rusa,” he said hoarsely. “Take th’ gun.”
She hesitated, wondering if he was insisting for a reason or if this were only some feverish whim. There’d be no way she could hide one of his long-barreled pistols beneath her clothing the way he did, and she’d feel downright foolish to appear in the Swan’s galley before the cook brandishing a gun like some sort of pirate’s lady.
