Resolved Forbes alone was there, reliable; and Adam never left Maisie at the shack without checking first to make sure that Forbes was next door, watching.
Now Adam nodded toward the departing giant.
"Been here long?"
"Not long. I didn't have any orders."
"Ten minutes, maybe?"
"About that."
Adam nodded. He didn't like it; but he did not wish to show his perturbation too publicly. To change the subject he shifted his gaze toward the Goodwill.
"Still no boom?"
"No, but it might come in any day now. They've got a shipment of timber expected."
"Looks like we're going to be here for quite a while yet."
"Aye."
Adam went inside. There he paused, had to, until his eyes got used to the darkness.
Fully a quarter of this shack was taken up by a huge four-poster bed. A massy, carved thing from which all tophangings had long ago been ripped, and the posts of which had been chipped and scarred by knives, it remained an impressive piece. And it was comfortable.
Adam could not see Maisie at first, but he knew, sensed, that she was on this bed, her accustomed place.
Her whisper came from right about in the middle of the bed.
"It's so hot—already. Lock the door, dear."
He locked the door behind him. He heard her stir.
"That Major Kellsen's been here. A bore. As soon as he went away I got into something cooler. Come over here, darling. Don't keep standing there."
"I want to talk to you about him."
He found the bed, sat on the edge of it. He was seeing things more clearly now.
"Don't scold me, Adam. It's too hot to quarrel."
"I don't think he ought to be allowed in when I'm not here. Even if it's only for a few minutes."
"Adam"—and she looked the other way—"you trust me, don't you?"
"Of course!"
"I wouldn't—I wouldn't've—let you do—what you've done—if I didn't think you trusted me. I'm not a whore, Adam."
"No, no! But this man—"
She rolled over. She took his hands. Her own hands were warm, dry. She held his against her neck, and he could feel the blood throb and course there.
"Sh-sh-sh! No quarrel! Adam—"
"Yes?"
"Uh, how was the fencing?"
"It was all right."
"You must forget about Jervis Johnston. I shouldn't have told you— And it was a long while ago."
"You know what I'm going to do."
"You haven't changed your mind about that, Adam?"
"I don't change my mind."
She had released his hands. Her breathing was loud. He could see her clearly now. Her hair tumbling every-which-way, she wore a yellow silk wrapper, and though the curves in her body were clear there was again about her, here, something of the girlishness, the long-leggedness he had known aboard the Goodwill to Men. It was touching, the sight; and it caught up his breath.
Now she turned her head again, facing him, and she smiled a little, her eyes almost closed.
"Let's not talk about that, Adam."
"All right."
"It's so hot— And I've been lying here waiting for you. . . ."
The strips of sunlight that were javelined in between the jalousies crept toward the center of the room, stealthy as thieves, as high noon approached, while the day drowsed.
From the bay side came the thin high ree-ee-ee of gulls, the closer, more querulous squeal of timbers as various vessels rocked, the rattle of blocks, the rubbing of hawsers, and through it all the lazy monotonous slap-slap of wavelets striking the sand, to hiss up, spreading thin, and slither whisperingly back.
From the other three sides came curses, drunken snatches of bawdy, the hullabaloo of the marketplace.
Inside Tarpaulin Hall the chief sound was a rustle of silks, though occasionally when Captain Long stirred, just to prove to himself how exquisitely exhausted he was, the bed creaked.
"Don't recollect that brown thing," he said sleepily.
The place might have been a shop. Though much larger than the
Goodwill's cabin, it was even more crammed with stuffs, as though these
had somehow expanded in the heat; so that wherever you looked there
were petticoats, bodices, skirts, chemisettes, stockings, corsets, of muslin, sagathy, satin, drugget, silk, perpetuana, rich brocade. Ribbands serpentined ever)'where; lace lay in piles; and the dressing table and each stool were heaped high with fleecy frivolous furbelows.
The brown thing he had mentioned was a hunting jacket, small, trig, made of velvet. Maisie wore it with a man's high broad-brimmed beaver, a man's lawn cravat passed through a ring of gold, a box-pleated green twill skirt. She canted a riding crop under her arm. She strutted the floor for the benefit of Adam's eyes alone.
A warmish outfit? True; but she wore nothing underneath it, not a stitch. And in a moment anyway she had whisked the whole business off and was fumbling for something else, bent over, her back to him.
She was putting on a sort of fashion show. It was these between-number moments that Adam especially enjoyed, and he didn't pretend not to. He gloated. He suspicioned that Maisie hoped for a renewal of their recent activity; and he wouldn't be surprised, he told himself, if she got it. Tarnation, what a body!
He dropped an arm over the edge of the bed and picked up the brown velvet jacket.
Now Maisie was wriggling into something more feminine, something yellow—her favorite color. Her head reappeared, frills and flounces cascading away from it, and she was smiling at him: she upcocked her eyes.
Shopping was Maisie's only pastime here at Providence, and she delighted in the bargains, dickering, making to go away, returning, all that. She would have spent three-quarters of her time at the marketplace, had Adam permitted it. Not because of the pirates, who stood in awe of her and punctiliously brought down their voices and scrubbed their speech when she approached, but rather because of the camp women, who understandably hated Maisie, he had forbidden her to go out unless accompanied by him. Somewhat scared at first, she acquiesced; but now she chafed under the restraint.
For a person in bankruptcy she was marvelously well equipped with cash. You could buy anything at Providence; and Lady Maisie, though wont to crow over the prices afterward, didn't care what she spent.
True, these things were stolen, and more than one of them no doubt had been stained by blood; but Maisie looked wonderful in them all the same.
"D'ye fancy this, m'lord?"
She dropped a curtsey, half in mockery, half in order to show off the yellow skirt.
But he was absorbed now in the brown jacket. Of all the multitude of small sartorial absurdities in the shack, this suddenly had become, to him, significant.
"Swogged if I remember it," he muttered. "When did you buy it?"
"And what if I didn't buy it? What if somebody gave it to me?"
He looked up quickly.
"Who?"
"La, I've been obleeged before this to make complaint of your possessiveness, Captain. Please to remember, sir, that we're not truly married." She giggled. "Though I'll grant that you showed wit when you named us man and wife on the spur of the moment."
She raised her arms and started to slip the dress off over her head. The fact that she wore no underclothing was made dramatically evident, there in the dimness of the shack where her skin shone. She moved her hips, and her shoulders, so that her breasts swung, as she worked the dress off.
Adam came off the bed with a bound.
"Who gave you this?"
She was angry, and it was a hot morning. She was out of the dress now. She held it in front of her, partly covering her nakedness.
"Ah well, if you must know—rather than have my eardrums burst by such unmannerly shouting—'twas Major Kellsen."