Mariah's Prize by MIRANDA JARRETT Read Free Book Online Page B

balance on the steep, narrow companionway ladder and toppled backward with a shriek to the lower deck. Layers of petticoats broke her fall, but the basket nipped off her arm and upended. All around her drifted the precious bits and scraps of paper with her father’s handwriting, all her careful sorting destroyed.
    “Miss West!” In an instant Gabriel was beside her, his brows drawn with concern as he offered his hand to help her to her feet.
    “Dear God, how could you do this to me?” Ignoring his assistance, Mariah scrambled to her knees to gather the papers. “How could you?”
    She was weeping stupid, sloppy tears as she clutched the papers in her fists.
    “I swear I didn’t know about the guns or the powder or any of the rest, or I would have told you. My poor father only did his best.
    Can you understand that? He wasn’t lucky like you. This last cruise he was so ill that Tom Parr and the others had to carry him ashore. All he wanted then was to die in his own bed, and thank God he did. So if he let the wretched guns turn foul or whatever they did that’s offended you so mightily, well then, I’m sorry. Damn you, I’m sorry!
    “
     
    Gabriel crouched beside her, his hands resting loosely on his bent knees. Weeping women seldom disarmed him like this, perhaps because most of the women he knew had little real reason to cry. He felt sure this one did and, oddly, he cared.
    “You loved the old man that much?” he asked quietly.
    “Of course I did.” Mariah sniffed loudly.
    “He was my father.”
    “It doesn’t always follow like that.” He took her hand and gently began to pry her fingers open to free the crumpled papers, and to his surprise she let him. With great care he smoothed each one out across his knee before he put it back into the basket.
    “At present I doubt my own father cares whether I’m alive or dead.”
    “You can’t mean that!”
    “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t. We’re too much alike, my father and I. The old Turk looks at me and sees himself, and he doesn’t much like what he finds.” He held her small hand in his a moment longer.
    Her palm was slightly moist, like a child’s, and her fingertips were raw where she’d bitten her nails.
    “I’m sorry I dishonored your father’s memory.”
    She dipped her head in confused acknowledgment. Apologies wouldn’t come easily to a man like this. She drew back her hand, closing her fingers into a little fist in her lap. Overhead she heard the footsteps and shouts of threescore men at their work, but for her everything had narrowed to the single man before her.
    She sat in the square of sunlight made by the open hatch. Her that had fallen back over her shoulders, the ribbon a black band across the white column of her neck. Strange how his eyes were drawn to the vulnerable little hollow there at the base of her throat. There he longed to press his lips and feel the quickening of her blood, and then trace lower, to the tantalizing fullness of her breasts. But he wouldn’t kiss her again. Not here, not yet.
    “That color blue becomes you.” His voice was low, meant for her ears alone.
    “I approve.”
    “The gown, you mean.” She wasn’t comfortable with compliments, especially not for a gown that made her feel trussed up like a plump little hen for roasting.
    “It’s Jenny’s. Blue becomes her more than me, on account of her eyes. She has blue eyes, too, you know, but brighter, blue eyes and pale gold hair, like Mama. The mantua makers all like Jenny because she knows what favors her and what will please Elisha, and she never shilly-shallies the way I do, or decides it’s better to do without. All those bills—from Madame Lambert’s and the other shops—those are Jenny’s, not mine. And Mama’s, too, of course.”
    Miserably she knew she was chattering, but she couldn’t help it. He was listening, really listening, as if what she said was of the greatest importance, and that disconcerted her even more than