She sat up, hugging her knees, shivering as the sweat dried on her skin. She was alone in the cabin but the pillow beside her own still bore the impression of Anthony’s head. Sun poured through the open windows and slowly her panic receded, her heart slowed, her breathing became normal. But she couldn’t shake the horror, or the latent terror of what had been no nightmare but a recreation of long-buried reality.
A jug of water stood inside a basin on the marble-topped dresser, and Olivia pushed aside the sheet and stood up. She ached from top to toe as if she’d just lost a wrestling match. The water in the jug was hot. The verbena soap was in the soap dish, with fresh towels folded beside it.
Olivia poured water into the basin and washed. As she sponged between her legs, she shuddered, knowing now what had unlocked the dreadful memory. After the night’s loving with Anthony, she felt the same stretched soreness that had tormented her after her stepbrother had walked off, whistling, leaving her quivering on the windowsill.
Every time, it had been the same during that hideous year when Brian Morse had lived at Castle Granville. Every time that he’d hurt her, ravaged her with his hard probing hands, he had whispered with soft yet utterly convincing menace that if she ever told a soul, he would kill her. And then he’d walked off, whistling, leaving her on the windowsill like a discarded doll.
How old had she been? Eight or nine, she thought. And she’d been so certain he would fulfill his threat that she had simply refused to allow herself to remember what had happened.
Olivia felt sick. It was an old familiar nausea. She rested her hands on the dresser, waiting for it to pass. Her nakedness troubled her as it had not done before, and she turned from the basin, one hand massaging her throat. She had put her makeshift gown back in the cupboard before she’d gone to bed last night.
Feverishly she flung open the cupboard door and pulled out the nightshirt. Only when she had it on did she feel safe again. She went to the window and looked out at the sea. It no longer stretched smooth and unbroken; there was land ahead. The humpbacked shape of the Isle of Wight. They were nearly home. Anthony had said that if the wind was fair they should see the island by noon today.
Olivia turned back from the window, her arms wrapped around her body as if she were cold, although the sun was warm as it fell across the oak floor where she stood barefoot. All the joy seemed to have been leached from her soul. She felt tarnished, violated, somehow unworthy. And it was as old and familiar a feeling as the vile memories that would not now be put back in their box.
Her eye fell on the chessboard. In an attempt to distract herself from the tormenting tempest of emotion, Olivia examined the problem she hadn’t been able to solve the previous evening. And once again, as so often before, the mental gymnastics soothed her, took her out of herself.
“Solved it yet?”
Olivia spun around at Anthony’s light tones. Her heart began to race again and she was unaware that she was staring at him as if at a monster, her face milk white, her eyes big black holes in her ashen countenance.
“What is it?” He came forward, the smile on his face fading; his voice lost its customary light amusement. “Has something happened?”
“No,” Olivia said, shaking her head. Her hands lifted as if to ward him off, and she forced them to her sides. “The problem,” she said vaguely. “I was just absorbed.” She turned again to the board but her back prickled as he came up behind her.
He bent and kissed her nape and she bit back a cry.
“Olivia, what is it?” He put his hands on her shoulders and she stiffened with revulsion, holding herself rigid as she stared fixedly at the chessboard.
Maybe if she didn’t move, didn’t speak, he would go away.
Anthony looked down at her bent head. What could have happened? He’d awoken holding her, her body curled softly against him. He had been filled with the most wonderful sense of completion, his mind drowsily revisiting the wonders of the night. She’d been fast asleep when reluctantly he’d left her… three hours ago…
So what had happened? He could feel her revulsion, feel the power of her will as she tried to drive him away from her.
“White rook to bishop three. Black queen’s bishop’s pawn to knight three,” she stated dully without moving the pieces.
“Yes,” he said, letting his hands fall from her. “Exactly right.” Her relief as he released her was palpable, but she didn’t raise her eyes from the board.
“How soon before we get home?”
“We’ll reach our anchorage after dark,” he replied. His hands lifted again to hold her shoulders and once again fell to his sides. “Will you not tell me what’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” Olivia said, moving chess pieces at random, still unable to look at him. “Will my clothes be ready, do you think?”
“Adam was putting the finishing touches a while ago. You slept through breakfast but I came to tell you that we do eat at midday if we’re not otherwise occupied. The table is set on the quarterdeck.”
The words were warm, reminding her of the boarding of the Dona Elena… of that exhilaration… of what it had led to… of how hungry she had been. But she could summon no answering warmth. “Thank you.”
Anthony waited a moment, then said, “Will you come, then?”
“Yes… yes, in a minute.”
Again he hesitated, and the silence stretched, taut as a lute string. He left the cabin, going on deck with a deep frown on his brow. He felt that somehow he had offended. But that was ridiculous.
They had been so in tune, body and soul, each complementing the other. He had felt it and he knew she had too. From the first moment she’d fetched up at his doorstep, he’d felt it. And suddenly it was as if that connection had been abruptly severed.
Was she regretting their loving? Regretting that she was no longer a maid? Was she frightened by the consequences of what had happened and blaming him? It would not be an unusual response, and yet Anthony would have sworn Olivia would not respond in predictable ways.
He climbed to the quarterdeck and stood behind Jethro, looking up at the sails, then across to the hump of the island. The green of its downs, the creamy white of its cliffs, were now faintly visible. He called an order and men swarmed up the rigging, loosening the sheets of the great white topsail, furling it on the yards as it collapsed.
Olivia stood on the lower deck watching the operation. It was all so smooth and neat, each move clearly ordered. It reminded her of finding the solution to a chess problem or working out a particularly satisfying mathematical formula.
The table was laid on the quarterdeck as it had been for their supper, and as she climbed the ladder Anthony left his position at the wheel and came over to her. His face was grave, the light in his eye extinguished.
Olivia sat down at the table. There were boiled eggs in a bowl, wheaten bread and a crock of butter, a jar of honey, a pink ham, a jug of ale. Despite her inner torment she was hungry.
Anthony sat down opposite her. He tilted his face to the sun and the breeze, closing his eyes briefly.
“Why did they bring down that sail?” She tried to keep her voice calm, ordinarily interested, as if there was no reason for there to be constraint between them.
“The tops’l is the first sail to be visible from land,” he told her in neutral tones. “I don’t want to draw attention to our approach.” He picked up the jug and leaned forward to fill her tankard. His eyes lifted, met hers, and Olivia turned from the puzzled question in his gaze.
She took a boiled egg and tapped it on the edge of the table to crack the shell. “Do you want to approach secretly because you’re a pirate or because of the war?” she asked, trying for his own neutral tones.