Dunham

Chapter 21

21

They lay in Fury's copper bathing tub together late Sunday night after having spent most of the day on the Mad Hangman making battle preparations, with boys and girls coming and going with more information. In the afternoon, Fury had somehow beguiled Old Ben to climb to the Silver Shilling's main mast platform, where the two master navigators had kept their glasses pointed to the west, talking and laughing as if they were bosom companions.

If Elliott hadn't had his head bent with Maarten's and three ships' officers, all discussing the mutiny's possibilities, probabilities, and strategies, he'd have been far more charmed by their camaraderie, and possibly jealous.

But now the plans were set and they could do no more until the wind blew. For the nonce, his mind was as weary as his body, and he wished simply not to be called upon to think, speak, or move.

Three lanterns hung relatively close and swayed gently from the force of hundreds of feet dancing and pounding, keeping time to the lively music. The crews were just beginning their night's festivities after having snored and gamed the morning and afternoon away.

Elliott was behind Fury, who relaxed upon him, her head lolling on his shoulder. He cupped her scar-ridged breasts, but, as usual, she made no sign of feeling his touch and her nipples did not pucker. He plucked at them anyway.

And as he did so, he mused absently upon the things she had brought with her from the Arab world that were, to her, ordinary but to him, extraordinary. This tub, for instance, full of hot water kept hot by three small braziers set in a compartment under the tub, was not a particularly brilliant idea ... so why had his countrymen not thought of it?

She yawned.

Aye, with the hot water and warm woman and comfortable head rest, it would not take much for Elliott to fall asleep, either. They had been engaged in some type of unfamiliar, demanding perversion or another since he'd climbed into her window, and he had never tupped a woman so many times in so many ways for so many consecutive days.

He was beginning to feel it. His legs and arse were sore, as was his jaw.

But as for indulging his particular perversion— After last night, he had decided he didn't want her anywhere near his arse with a cat o' nine tails in case she was still angry enough to wield it more enthusiastically than he liked.

"Do you not have things you can wrap around your nipples to make them stand?" he asked suddenly.

He felt the vibrations from her low chuckle seep from her back into his chest. "Do you think me in possession of every manner of tool and toy?"

"I do now."

Her cheek creased with a grin. "Aye, I do, but they slip off." She shrugged.

He dragged his finger across the nipple that had been sliced in two. "Does this not bother you?"

"Of course it does. 'Tis as if my breasts have been cut off and I must yet contend with these things hanging off my chest. But more to the point, there are days I would give up my command to be able to feel a man's hands on me there again."

The trace of sorrow in her voice made her matter-of-factness more poignant to him. "Yet you and Dunham get on."

She sighed. "I maintain a distance from him for a reason. He, being my father and former captain, is accustomed to being my father and captain. And I, being an adult in command of my own ship, am accustomed to doing exactly what I want. The two are incompatible." She stopped for a moment. "I love him dearly, do not doubt. I think he may love me, too, though he has never said. Even if he did, even if I knew he did, it would not mitigate the fact that he is and mayhap always will be disappointed in me. I will never be able to make him happy."