James laughed aloud, then quickly stuffed the sheet corner in his mouth. When he caught his breath, he said, “With a wife like the Duchess, I doubt Marcus will ever let her alone for a day, let alone two days.”
“I wish I were as beautiful as she is, but I’m not, James. I’m sorry. I’m just me.”
“Are you fishing for compliments, Jessie? If so, you don’t do it well. You sound pathetic. Now, be quiet.” He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose. Her eyes were open and, as he lowered his head to hers, they crossed. He was laughing again, and this time he didn’t stop. They played, tickling each other, giving kisses that landed in very odd places, enjoying themselves thoroughly until Jessie’s hand suddenly closed over him and he forgot laughter, forgot everything—Blackbeard’s treasure included, his own name included—except her warm hand caressing him.
When he came into her, deep and hard, she sighed, arching up against him, and whispered, “You are magnificent, James.”
He was gone.
At least five minutes had passed before he managed to say, “Jessie, you nearly killed me.”
“If you’re sweet to me,” she whispered as she kissed his sweating shoulder, “I’ll try to kill you again.”
He moaned, his energy returning at a great rate. He said to her later, “You said you’ve loved me since you were fourteen years old. Jessie, you’ve always fought with me, been in constant competition with me, insulted me, even hit me every time you could when we were racing. Surely that isn’t love.”
“It was my mating call, I suppose,” she said, bit his shoulder, and giggled. “I didn’t know what else to do. You thought I was an obnoxious brat, you used to give me those tolerant looks of yours, those looks that said clearly that you wished you could swat me, and I couldn’t bear it. I had to make you react and so I did everything I could to push you
over the edge.”
“You pushed me over the edge more times than I can even remember.” He began to laugh. “The best time though was when you fell through the ceiling of your father’s stable and landed in the hay trough, mashed cucumbers all over your face, and that was just three months before I married you.”
“I hadn’t intended to fall,” she said, punched her fist into his belly, then lowered her head and kissed his belly where she’d struck him.
“You’d best think about this, Jessie.” He groaned. She whispered against his hard flesh, “Oh, I always know what I’m doing when I’m loving you, James.” Her hands were soft, her mouth warm.
“I’m not going to make it this time, Jessie.”
She made very certain that he didn’t.
There was no nightmare that night, to which James replied the following morning, “I just knew that if you actually saw that place with an adult’s eyes, then the terror would fade into nothing at all. And I was right.” He gave her a fatuous grin, kissed her nose, and left her, whistling one of the Duchess’s ditties.
“Well,” she said to the empty bedchamber, “he was right about that.”
33
He was a bold man that first eat any oyster.
—JONATHAN SWIFT
FROM THE LOOK on the Duchess’s face the next morning over breakfast, Jessie realized it had probably been an excellent night for the English Wyndhams as well.
By the end of the morning, however, everyone was in a profound depression. They’d read Samuel Teach’s two diaries yet again, thoroughly.
“Nothing,” Marcus said. “Damnation, nothing more, except that he bored me nearly to madness.”
“Curse him,” Jessie said. “He said nothing more about the treasure. Didn’t he even try to find it?”
“Evidently not,” the Duchess said, sighed, and patted Charles’s back. He obligingly burped, and she told him what a fine fellow he was.
“That leaves the castle, then,” James said. “More than a long shot. An impossibility, if the truth be told.”
Even Anthony was downcast.
“Let’s forget about all this for the moment. Let’s go to the ocean,” Badger said, and off they went.
It was a lovely day, a bit on the cool side, but it didn’t stop Anthony from running like a wild animal to the water’s edge, shrieking when a wave caught him, splashing up to his knees. The Duchess was sitting beneath a lone live oak that provided some shade from the radiant sun overhead. Badger had brought lemonade and some delicious seed cakes that no one knew how he’d prepared, given the fact that he’d had no time and surely he’d slept throughout the night, hadn’t he?
The men had rolled up their trouser legs and were playing just as freely as Anthony, enjoying themselves as they threw rocks to each other, running and leaping, sometimes falling.