* * *
Since Sarah spent her free hours with her lover and Ravenna didn’t, she decided she’d better take her maid’s advice and start small. She wore the trousers. Only she did the girl’s suggestion one better: Cutting off the legs, she converted them into sexy little shorts.
Now when the four of them went ashore, Vancouver had already visited the Tahitian king earlier in the morning. The captain was fuming, for despite all his precautions, the Tahitians had stolen several items from the ship, including James’s sword. If James was upset about losing his treasured seventeenth-century rapier, Vancouver was doubly so. To the captain, this was more than the loss of a family heirloom. It was a serious threat to the safety of the ship, and he and his lieutenants remained locked away in the great cabin for the rest of the afternoon, discussing how to best handle this thievery.
By the sound of their arguing, Ravenna figured Vancouver wouldn’t emerge until dusk, wouldn’t see her leave in her seductive shorts. Still, just in case his lieutenants did, she wore a skirt over her new cut-offs. She didn’t even tell Sarah what she’d done, not because she feared her disapproval, but because it didn’t really occur to her that what she wore was so horribly wrong. She planned to take the skirt off when she got to the beach, for swimming, she’d say. No big deal.
But it was a big deal.
After helping her climb out of the long boat, Paul held Ravenna’s hand as they waded through the surf. The day was overcast, sweltering. Paul wore no shirt, and his bare shoulders, long since darkened to a freckle-littered bronze, made his eyes seem all the more blue when they darted toward James and Sarah ahead of them, flitted back to Ravenna beside him. What is he thinking? she wondered. Did Sarah say something to give my plot away?
Pushing his fingers through his hair unconsciously, Paul suddenly halted beside her on the beach. “You’re gonna swim, yeah?” His mouth twisted into an easy smile. “Course you are, you’re the scuba diver. Let me just get rid of this.” Unbuckling his sword, he called James back from the thatch-roofed huts. “Yo, Jem! Take this for me?”
He held out the weapon as James approached. Thinking to lose her heavy skirt, too, Ravenna stepped out of it, gathered it up. The open air felt nice on her freshly shaven legs, and she wondered, did Paul notice? Did she dare risk a look?
She never got the chance. Before she even knew what had happened, James yanked her forward; he’d pried the skirt away, and while he glanced around quickly to see who was watching, Ravenna caught the full force of his anger in his sudden grip, smarting and rough.
“What?” she asked, bewildered by his rage. “James, what’s wrong?”
“Minx,” he said under his breath, while behind her back, he worked furiously to untangle the garment, to wrap it around her as he continued swearing, “Mischief maker…trouble stoker. Sarah!”
“But,” she stammered, “but Sarah didn’t even—”
“Is this your handiwork?” James glowered at the maid when she finally appeared. “Is it?”
“James, this wasn’t—”
“Do you think she has the judgment to know what’s proper?” His dark face set in a disapproving scowl. “Do you think she knows how she looks to a sailor?”
“Oh, she knew what she was doin’.” Paul’s voice behind her, brimming with laughter. When Ravenna turned around, he gazed at her, eyes mirthful and smoldering as they wandered appreciatively down her figure.
In bafflement, James shook his head. “I don’t think you understand, my friend. This is immodest, shameful and—”
“I rather like it.” Paul’s eyes lingered on Ravenna’s, and she felt a warm glow pulsing all through her body. He liked it. She rejoiced in the thought, and it must have shown because Paul smiled a little, as if he knew everything, the fantasies she’d had, her questions for Sarah, the way she’d begged to learn the particulars of how to arouse him.
But while she considered his suggestive words, he turned toward James, handed him the sword. “Take this for me?” When James seemed confused, Paul nodded toward the water. “She wants t’go swimming, yeah? So I’ll take her swimming. That way no one’ll see her but me.”
Reluctantly, slowly, James let her go. He accepted the sword. When Ravenna walked away without taking the skirt, without covering her legs, he looked as if he’d die of embarrassment.
She wasn’t about to wear the skirt now. Yet as Paul began talking to her, she noticed the faces of the sailors they passed. It was as if she wore nothing. Those men without Tahitian women on their arms might have hurt themselves with craning their necks.
“You are a minx, aren’t you?” Paul chuckled to himself as they walked along. “What were you thinking, wearing a bathing costume t’go bathing?”
“I think James overreacted.”
“Well I don’t. I think he’s right.”
“What?” She threw him an incredulous glance. “You think I’m shameful for wearing shorts?”
Leaning into her as they strolled, Paul gathered her up under his arm and pulled her snugly against his side. “You’re gorgeous, really. Nice enough to eat.”
He held her that way until they’d reached the swimming place, a lagoon of sorts where they’d been told they’d find fish. There Paul sat down among the waves, and with the water lapping at his well-sculpted arms, there was no mistaking the passion that burned in his eyes when he beckoned her to sit by his side. “Come here,” he said softly. “I’ve something t’tell you.”
The very idea of it, that he might kiss her again, that his hands might find their way into her clothes, her shirt, within the fall of her cut-off trousers, it made a vicious trembling in the pit of her stomach. Did he know what he did to her? How helpless she was to that look in his eyes?
She went to him anyway, impelled by nine long months of craving. Sitting beside him amid the waves, she tried to still her jangling nerves. He loves you, she told herself. You don’t have anything to be afraid of.
Yet her heart fluttered wildly when his touch alighted at her shoulder, slid in a languorous caress all down her arm. Beneath the water, he edged his fingers into hers, gave them a squeeze, and suddenly she felt better. Hadn’t they held hands a thousand times? His eyes wandered appraisingly to her lips, to her throat and below, until lingering and flaming with a sudden desire, his attention halted at her chest.
She looked down, fearful to see what he stared at so.
Her shirt was completely transparent.
Of course, she should have thought of this in her plotting and scheming. Anyone else would have thought of it, and if she’d been any other woman, she might have seduced him then and there, reached for his rugged chin, unbuttoned her collar and led his mouth down to her waiting breasts, her fingers entwined in his tangled hair while he did the most indecent things.
But she didn’t. She was caught off guard by the boldness of his gaze. That he might actually make love to her there—no going back, this was real, not a fantasy—it was enough to make Ravenna hesitate.
There were little fish in the water at her feet, sergeant majors or something similar, and she found herself staring at them when Paul’s eyes tried to engage her own. She knew he was studying her, and yet how could she look at him? With that unbearable lust so obvious in his gaze, how did he have the patience to put up with her?
When finally he curled his arm around her waist, Ravenna was shivering. “Sarah’s comin’,” he said to her calmly. He tucked her closer, lifted his arm a little higher at her breasts, and Ravenna drew in a quick, sharp breath when he planted a kiss behind her ear. “Don’t let her scold you for not bein’ a lady. Tell her I’ll be the judge o’ that.”
When he withdrew himself and started to stand, she ached to pull him back. Before she could, he’d gotten to his feet. With a splash of salt water, he ambled toward the huts where James sat alone, and passing Sarah on the way, he was soon swallowed up by the darkness of shade.