Sail Away Page 14

Marshall laughed, embarrassed. “For what?”

  “’S wonderful. Thank you.” And he snuggled back, not letting go, and eventually began to snore.

  Nonplussed, Marshall lay there, acutely uncomfortable. He tried tugging his hand loose but didn’t want to wake his—dear God, friend, yes, but—what else, now? What more?

  He had to get up and find somewhere else to sleep… but where? His body was making it clear that he was already falling asleep—now was the time and here the place. He knew he wouldn’t be out for long, though, and after all, Davy tended to sleep like the dead… and it felt so good to hold him like this, his cheek resting on the side of Davy’s head. Tomorrow, though—what would he do tomorrow?

  Even that worry could not keep his eyes open.

  AS WILL’S breath evened and his body started to relax, Archer let his feigned snore return to normal breathing. He could scarcely believe what had just happened, could not believe Will had gone through with it.

  He opened his eyes, staring out into the mottled darkness of the tropical growth. His desire was, for once, sated. A great contentment filled him, even though he knew the morning would bring its own difficulties. Will would not simply accept the role of lover—no, that was making it too simple. He would not accept the role of sodomite, even though what they’d done might not technically have been that.

  He’s not going to want me. Not going to want me in the same bed, that’s certain.

  Well, in a way that might make life a little less trying, wouldn’t it?

  No. Not after this—the brief ecstasy followed by the warmth against his back, the sheltering arm around him, the breath against his cheek. He had managed to struggle up to the mountaintop, glimpse the Promised Land—and know that it would be denied him.

  He smiled at his own melodrama. Perhaps not. Perhaps Will would consider that if they were to be trapped on this godforsaken chip of land, they could share this pleasure at least until they were rescued. If they were rescued. Right now, he fervently hoped they could stay here forever.

  They wouldn’t. Not forever.

  But just for now….

  Spent, weary, content for just this precious moment, he slipped off to sleep.

  AS HE’D expected, Will was gone when he awoke. Archer got up, broke his fast with a couple of the custard-fruits, and wandered down to the empty beach. The sea stretched out endlessly, gentle waves rolling up to lap at the shore. Birds wheeled overhead, but no sail broke the smooth line of the horizon.

  And no Marshall in sight.

  Poor Will. No telling how long it would take him to get over his embarrassment. And in the meantime, there were shellfish and coconuts to hunt. Archer pulled on his trousers, rolled up the cuffs, and set off to forage. He would have preferred to wander around without the garment, but the sight of a decently covered torso should reassure William that his shipmate hadn’t cast aside all civilized behavior.

  It wasn’t until the sun neared its zenith that Archer began to feel just a little uneasy. Perhaps he should go looking? No, it wouldn’t do to hunt Will down. He’d done nothing wrong. Neither of them had.

  But knowing Will, that might not be how he would see it. William was conscientious to the point of being annoying. If something went amiss, he was quick to take the blame for it.

  How would he see what had transpired last night? Would he see it? Or would he act as though nothing had happened? That would be easiest, certainly. Behave as though it had been an odd dream, nothing more, and find a plausible reason for changing the sleeping arrangements so the distressing incident could not be repeated.

  That, Archer decided, was the likeliest reaction. The other possibilities—guilt, anger, recriminations—Will would go through all that, but most probably the conflict would remain within the confines of his own skull. They would not speak of what had passed between them, and eventually Will would be able to convince himself that it had never happened.

  I wish I could.

  He smiled ruefully at the thought. No, he didn’t. He wanted to remember every second of it, every touch and sensation, even if there was no hope of ever having it again. Especially if there was no hope—

  “Davy?”

  He spun about, startled. He’d been so distracted he hadn’t heard Will come up behind him. “Yes?”

  “Davy, I’m—” Will was anxious, hollow-eyed, as though he had not slept at all, and he would not look up. He had put his uniform back on, all of it, the brass buttons fastened up tight. He looked terribly uncomfortable. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “It wasn’t a dream,” Archer blurted. “It was real.”

  Will winced as though struck. “I know. And I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not!” Before he could stop himself, Archer seized Will’s arms, shaking him a little, startled at his own temerity. “I’m not. Don’t apologize to me. I don’t regret an instant.”

  Will did meet his eyes then. Whatever he’d expected, it was obviously not this. “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t. I only regret it was so quick. I was afraid you’d stop before—”

  “Davy!” Long fingers caught his arms just above the elbows. “Davy, don’t you understand? I practically raped you!”

  “You—” He would have laughed, except he saw how deadly serious Will was. “The hell you did! You were asleep, for God’s sake!”

  “So were you!”

  “Not for long!”

  Will stared at him for the space of a breath, and his horror-struck expression suddenly wavered. A giggle escaped; he looked embarrassed, but relaxed just a bit, letting his hands drop. “I suppose not. But I shouldn’t have—”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Davy insisted. It was his turn to hold on to his friend as he tried to turn away. He weighed what he wanted to say, what he wanted to do, and realized that to salvage anything, he would have to abandon his own desires. “Will, how long has it been since either of us had shore leave? Don’t you just—go off, in your sleep sometimes? I do. We simply happened to be in the same bunk, that’s all.” He forced a smile, a shrug, a lie. “It felt good, I’ll not deny it, but I don’t suppose it was anything more. I won’t drag you to the parson and demand you make an honest woman of me.”

  He couldn’t read the succession of emotions that flashed across Will’s face before the on-duty mask slipped into place. Relief? Regret? What was he feeling? “I suppose…. So you think it was just physical, then?”

  Archer didn’t know what to say. The truth? “I love you, I want you, let’s go back to bed!” Hardly. He shrugged again.

  “It’s still against the Articles.”

  “Bugger the—” He took a deep breath. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Marshall, the Admiralty is not well represented in this particular principality. We could break every one of the Articles singly or in groups, right in broad daylight on the beach, and they’d be none the wiser.”

  Will’s brows drew together, and Archer could just imagine the pictures he was conjuring up. Damn his literal mind!

  “Not that I have any inclination toward breaking most of them,” Archer added hastily, “except perhaps that damned bloody Number Two, and we haven’t the means for most of the others, seeing as they involve ships and we haven’t got any.” Most of them. But he would dearly love to find as many different ways as possible of breaking Article Twenty-Nine.

  “Discipline is important,” Will said mechanically.

  Fine, then. Will was still speaking to him. The subject was rather more tedious than he’d have preferred, but at least they were still friends. “Yes, of course it is. You can’t have a ship full of fighting men and keep them in order without discipline. And most of the Articles make sense. If the food’s rotten, you have a duty to let your officers know, so the crew doesn’t get sick. Arson, robbery, murder—they’re crimes; it’s the same on land.”

  “Of course.”

  “But if you think I’m going to charge you with breaking Twenty-Nine, you’d better think again.”

/>   The relief on Will’s face, plain now, gave him courage.

  “I don’t think the Articles belong in a friendship,” Davy went on. “The sensible ones are just law or good manners, and the—” Watch yourself, Archer! He stopped for a breath, thinking quickly. “The personal ones…. Twenty-Nine is useful to keep officers from abusing men under their command, or to make older ratings think twice about interfering with the youngsters. We both know men who deserved to swing. But so long as it doesn’t affect ship’s discipline and isn’t hurting anyone, I think a man’s private life should be just that.”

  Will let out a long breath and flopped down onto the sand, raking long, waving lines with his fingers. He was quiet for so long that Archer eventually hunkered down beside him. The sun was warm on his back, the sand cool where his toes dug into it. He studied Will’s pensive face, but could still read nothing.

  “Will?”

  “Davy.” His voice was very quiet, tentative. “Are you certain it was just physical? For you?”

  Archer felt himself flush and cursed his fair skin. But Will was still looking at his own fingers as they made those smooth, curving patterns. “I—” He swallowed, hardly able to hear himself think over the thudding of his heart. “I don’t suppose it matters, really.”

  Will stopped his wave-making. “It matters quite a lot. I don’t—it wasn’t—” The long fingers clenched on a handful of sand. “Davy, for me—it wasn’t just physical.” Will dropped the sand, scrambling to his feet and dusting the remaining grains from his hands. “I’m sorry, Davy, I’ll—I’ll go camp on the other side of the island. I’m grateful for your toler—Hey!”

  He toppled quite nicely as Archer hooked a leg around his ankles and dropped him to the sand, then rolled so their faces were scant inches apart. Will’s breath was warm and sweet.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” Archer said, “that your idiotic hammock wasn’t an accident?”

  “No! I mean, no, it wasn’t an accident, but it’s not—I wasn’t trying to seduce you, Davy!”

  “If that was you not trying—you damned near drove me mad, you know—I’ve been trotting off to make do in the bushes every night just to be sure I wouldn’t skewer you before morning!”

  “Oh!” Will blinked. “Oh, you’re all right?”

  “All right? I’ve had the worst case of blue balls—” His body was just about ready, at this point, for another trip to the underbrush, so he leaned close to demonstrate exactly what he meant.

  Will’s eyes widened, but he didn’t try to move away. “Oh. No, I—hell, Davy, I thought you had some kind of flux!”

  “If that’s what you want to call it….” Giddy and reckless, he rolled over, pulling Will atop him and drawing his face down for a kiss. Their first kiss. That sensuous mouth, sampled so often in his dreams, was every bit as intoxicating in reality. Will was very, very tentative, and Davy wondered whether this was the first time he’d ever been kissed—it was surely the first time with another man—but Will was a quick study.

  “I do think it’s contagious,” he remarked after a little while.

  “Yes,” Will agreed a little breathlessly. “Aren’t you squashed?”

  “Yes. It’s wonderful. Care to try again?”

  “Yes.”

  Perhaps it was foolish, even dangerous, to make love on the open sand. But there had been nothing on the horizon for as far as the eye could see, and he was not going to do anything that might distract Will or give him cause to reconsider. It would not take long; the way Will was writhing against him, he could only just keep from spending.

  Damned uniform buttons—it took forever to undo enough of them to work Will’s trousers down his hips. No drawers, thank God, he’d come up on deck in such a hurry when the storm hit, there’d been no time to put them on. He couldn’t get at his own buttons at all, and didn’t care. He could touch bare skin now as he hadn’t been able to the night before. The sweet hunger overwhelmed him as he ran his hands up Will’s back, falling into the same rhythm as the breath panting against his neck. He wrapped his legs around Will’s, reached down to squeeze his arse and lock them together as the pleasure reached unbearable intensity.

  “Davy!”

  And then they were lying quiet, laughing, holding each other, washed up on another shore.

  “We’d better go back in the trees,” Archer said after a time. “You won’t like the sunburn you’ll get if you fall asleep in that position.”

  Will looked startled, suddenly. “Oh my God!”

  Archer glanced past him. “No ships,” he said. “No one to see, Will. Only you and I.”

  “Let’s go back to camp, then.”

  “Yes.”

  Will was frowning already as they sat up, brushing sand off their bodies. “Davy, what will we do on the Calypso?”

  “If you think you can get your yard up when you know Captain Smith’s around, you’ve more nerve than I,” Archer said. “I think once we’re back on the Calypso, we’ll have to wait for shore leave and practice by ourselves—each of us, alone.”

  “We’d—we’d better practice together a bit more, while we can!” Will looked a little abashed at his own boldness, but Davy rewarded him for it with another kiss.

  He did want to get into the cool shade, though. He wanted to see Will naked on that cot, wanted to show him what they could share, until they were both too tired to keep their eyes open. “Come on, then!” He scrambled up and ran for their camp, but Will’s longer legs overtook him before he’d even reached the trees.

  The sun was edging toward the west by the time they finished, curled up together under the sailcloth blanket, and slept.

  WHEN ARCHER opened his eyes again, he was enclosed in a canvas cocoon, swinging gently with the motion of the ship, chilly and alone. Thunder cracked the world open, and he realized where he was.

  Back aboard the Calypso.

  He was alone. It had all been a dream.

  But someone stirred in the hammock beside him, and eyes, big in the storm-wracked gloom, regarded him over its edge. “Davy? Are you all right?”

  “Oh.” The jumble of dream and waking began to sort itself out in his mind. Captain Smith had released them both from duty after the worst of the storm had passed. If he hadn’t, they’d likely have collapsed on deck, so exhausted they had to hold each other up on the way to the midshipmen’s berth. Davy could not even remember how he’d managed to climb into his hammock. The storm had been long and wearing, though not so fierce as in his dream. The mast had taken a fearful beating, but it had never broken.

  And from where had his mind summoned that tropical island? Wishful thinking, surely. They were in the Atlantic Ocean, fifty miles out from Bristol Channel! Strange what dreams could do. Strange and wonderful.

  But it had only been wishful thinking, not reality. “Fine, Will, I’m fine.” He swallowed and groped for words, reminding himself that if William was awake, there might be other midshipmen listening as well. “I just had a—a curious dream. I am sorry I disturbed you.”

  Another flash of lightning showed relief on Will’s face; thunder rumbled just behind it. “Not you, Davy, only the storm. I had a strange dream too, but a happy one. Blue skies and white sand. You were in it, I think….” Davy heard the frown in his friend’s voice. “I… I cannot remember now.”

  Davy wondered fleetingly if Will’s dream had been akin to his own. Not likely! Mr. Marshall was a parson’s son, and dealt with sodomitical advances at pistol point. His feelings for Will were his own problem, not Will’s. “Just as well, I suppose. If you have it again, it will all seem new.”

  Will laughed softly, and the sound was achingly reminiscent. “I suppose it would, at that. Pleasant dreams, Davy.”

  “And to you.”

  He waited until Will had settled down again, then closed his eyes and hoped that at least in sleep he could return to the island. Blue sky, white sand, warm breezes…. Will’s touch.

  To sleep, perchance to dream… once more.
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br />   VOYAGE TO LONDON

  “WHEN DOES it all end?”

  “End? Will, we’re just on the outskirts! London is the greatest city in the world—I’ve read that there may be as many as a million souls here now.” David Archer was in his element and pleased to be there.

  “I grew up in a village of less than three hundred.” Lieutenant William Marshall sighed and turned away from the post chaise window and the seemingly endless line of homes, hostelries, and other businesses along the London road. The outskirts? What they’d already seen was far bigger than Portsmouth or any other town he was familiar with.

  He’d seen the smoke of the city long before the road became crowded with shops and houses and all the clutter of human activity. If this was the very edge of the urban area, no doubt it would be worse yet before they reached the hub. He’d seen maps, of course, but those did not give a sense of the overwhelming size of the place, or the smell. Small wonder at the verdant growth in the gardens along the road—the amount of manure from daily traffic would be enough to keep any number of kitchen gardens knee-deep in the stuff.

  But he was with Davy, and that made the odor of ordure a little easier to bear. He lowered the window shade and put an arm around Davy’s shoulders, resting his head on Davy’s. “I’m going to miss this.”

  “Yes. We’ve become terribly spoiled, but I don’t regret a moment—or a penny.” Ordinarily, a private post chaise would have been an outrageous expense for a pair of young officers in His Majesty’s Navy, but a very peculiar run of luck had left them with modest fortunes that made the indulgence possible.

  Had it been good luck? Marshall sighed. In many ways, yes. Being kidnapped had transformed his life for the better, financially. He could imagine no other way—at least, no legally and morally unimpeachable way—that a man of only twenty-one might go from living on the careful budget of one hundred pounds per annum to having a tidy sum of six thousand in the bank, drawing interest with no effort on his part. And his heart had reaped a startling and wonderful but potentially dangerous bounty as well: he and David Archer had become lovers during that time. So long as they kept that a secret, they were safe. If they were ever found out, they would die—badly—hanged as sodomites under Article Twenty-Nine of the Royal Navy’s Articles of War.