Spit and Grit Page 9

  “I was taking care of myself,” I tell him.

  “So I hear,” he grins, “but you wouldn’t have lasted very long on those docks. A stranger like yourself in New York? New York can be a dangerous place for a young woman like you wandering around all by herself. Maybe you managed to take care of those two, but you could not take care of me, as you well see. So count yourself lucky it was me that grabbed you and not someone else.”

  “So now what do I do?” I ask.

  “You have now become the captain’s wife,” he tells me. “By the way, you can call me Randolph. And what should I call you?”

  “Mazy,” I sort of murmur.

  “All right, Mazy. You have to pose as my wife, simply to protect yourself from the same kind of men who were going to sell you to me. I can’t pick my crew for their manners, you know. Men at sea are rough men, taking their pleasure where they may. And you are just too damn beautiful to be let free on deck without the captain’s protection.”

  “Can’t you just tell them to leave me alone?” I ask.

  “Perhaps, but sometimes that is not enough. Touching the captain’s property is a crime punishable by death. I could say you were merely my woman, but once you start showing that you are carrying a little mite, I think it would be better for you to be thought of as my wife, rather than just a loose woman. Are you a loose woman? If you are, then that is a whole different story.”

  “No!” I snap. “Well not really,” I amend. “It…I guess it was sort of my fault, but I thought he was going to marry me. That is why I was here, in New York. I live out west, but I knew where he lived, so I came here to blackmailing him over it when I learned he was already married. Only he didn’t take kindly to me threatening to tell his wife, so he handed me over to those scum.”

  “Well, seems you have a lot more gumption than he gave you credit for, whoever he is,” Randolph smiles.

  “Marvin Mayfair,” I say.

  Randolph starts to laugh. “Marvin Mayfair,” he chuckles, “He is a competitor of mine. He owns another shipping company, so no wonder he was using the men on the docks to take care of his dirty laundry. Apparently, you do not know the man very well to have tried to blackmail him.”

  “He is my cousin by marriage. I thought I knew him.” I explain.

  “The man is a womanizer, as you must know by now, but his sweet wife seems oblivious to it. He married her for her money because his side of the family did not have enough to suit him. He lost a couple of ships last year in a storm, so his holdings are low. His mother managed to die just in the nick of time to save his hide, though. If it weren’t for his wife’s money, he would have gone under a long time ago. No wonder he wanted to get rid of you.”

  “I should have let Granger shoot him,” I grumble.

  “I assume Granger is the man you love?”

  He cocks his head at me.

  “I should have married him when he asked me to before I met Marvin, but I didn’t realize I was in love with him until it was too late.”

  “You sure you are in love with him now?” he asks me.

  “He says he’s loved me since the moment he saw me, and he’s never given up on me no matter what. And the way he touches me and makes love to me…”

  “Maybe Marvin isn’t the father,” Randolph suggests. “If you have been making love to Granger as well.”

  “He could be. He made love to me one day after Marvin. I was a virgin when Marvin took me. Granger said if I was already carrying, it wouldn’t matter, he’d marry me anyway, and if I wasn’t then he would still marry me. See, he was tricking me because if I did carry, it could be as much his as Marvin’s, him having done it so close together and he didn’t want me worrying about him raising someone else’s baby.”

  “Sounds like he loved you,” Randolph murmurs.

  “But no telling what will happen in a year. If I am gone for a year, he will think I am dead for sure. He saw Marvin take me off though, so he will pin the crime on Marvin, or shoot him, depending on how mad he gets.

  “Marvin will know they sold you to me, so he will tell your friend you are not dead if he accuses Marvin of doing away with you. He could go to prison for selling you though, so maybe he won’t tell your friend anything.”

  “Poor Granger. He won’t know what to think. He may think I didn’t plan to marry him and just took off to be shed of him,” I moan.

  “Well, no use crying over spilt milk. You need something to wear other than that dress that is falling off your body,” he says with a crooked grin.

  “You have something?” I ask.

  “Not really.”

  He goes to a chest and pulls out a shirt with long blousy sleeves and throws it at me.

  “That should come down past your knees, and you can put a sash around your waist. He throws me a sash as well.

  “Only I wouldn’t be walking out on deck dressed like that, without me,” he tells me. The shirt’s sort of thin and your legs are long and shapely. You’d just be begging for trouble.”

  “I thought they wouldn’t touch me if I was supposed to be your wife,” I remind him.

  “Dressed in that, they may just throw caution to the wind and face the consequences later,” he chuckles. “Turn around, and I will untie your dress for you,” he tells me.

  Randolph comes around to the back of me and unties the knot I had made to hold the top of my dress together. When he unties it, he lets the dress fall and lowers the shirt over my head. He hands me the sash and I tie it around my waist. He turns me to look at me and he shakes his head.

  “You do look beautiful,” he says. “Too beautiful.”

  I go to the small mirror on the wall and I can see that the material of the shirt is so thin, that what is beneath it is not very well hidden.

  “You’ll just have to stay in the cabin,” he says.

  “For a whole year? I would go crazy!” I cry.

  “Until we can figure something out. I have some needle and thread, and if we can find enough buttons, maybe you can put some buttons back on your dress.”

  “Isn’t there any way you can get me back to New York?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “I’m afraid not, Mazy. You are stuck with me for a year.”

  I think by the time I leave this ship, I will have a baby and my life will be changed forever.

  “Don’t look so glum,” he says kindly. “I won’t mistreat you. I will make a decent husband for you if I do say so myself. Who knows, maybe you will take to sailing and never want to leave my ship.”

  I look around the small cabin and then I go over and lie down on the bed that is built into the wall. It is just a little larger than the cot Granger and I slept on in the shack. At least I am not pretending I will marry Randolph in a year. I am just pretending I am married to him for a year. I wonder which is worse? It seems like my whole life is just a pretending game.

  “Is this your cabin?” I ask suddenly.

  “What do you think?” he smiles.

  “Where are you going to sleep?” I ask.

  He nods to where I am lying.

  “There’s plenty of room for both of us in that bed. I know, because I have had women in it before,” he laughs.

  “This is just pretend, right?” I say.

  “Yes, Mazy. It is just pretend. You will just have to trust me.”

  The ship gives a leap and Randolph walks to the door.

  “Feels like rough weather ahead,” he says. “I need to get topside and make sure everything is running smoothly.

  I can feel the ship rising and falling and I am starting to feel woozy and I look around for a pan, just in case I may need it. I find one in the water closet and bring it to the bed as I try to calm the queasiness of my stomach.

  For hours the ship tosses and falls and I am retching every time I turn around. Finally, it seems to calm and my stomach starts to feel better, but I am exhausted from the ordeal. When Randolph comes through the door, he is sopping wet. He starts pulli
ng his wet clothes off and tossing them aside, as though I am not even in the room.

  When he stands in all his muscular glory before me, he sort of cocks his head and says, “You gonna move over? I’m not going to stand here all night.”

  “You…you aren’t going to put any clothes on?” I ask.

  “Seems to me you have seen plenty of naked men in your life, and since I have no intentions of forcing myself on a woman carrying a child, I don’t think you have too much to worry about,” he mumbles and he sort of pushes me over to make room for himself.

  “I’ve been sick,” I say suddenly. “Maybe I should sleep on the outside,” I suggest.

  “If you get sick, you’ll just have to crawl over me. If I have to get up to take care of anything, I don’t want to be crawling over you,” he tells me.

  He lays on his back and he does not cover up. The glow from the lamp that he has left on, which hangs over the table, shimmers over his muscles and my eyes keep being drawn to him.

  “I thought you have seen a man before,” Randolph chuckles, and I did not realize he was looking at me. “If you are that curious, I won’t stop you from looking,” he murmurs.

  “You are just flaunting yourself in front of me like that,” I grumble. “What else am I going to look at?”

  “Then don’t be so shy about it,” he says. “You’re not that innocent, yet you act like you have never seen a man before. If you keep looking at me like that every night, I’m going to have a hard time sleeping. Face it, Mazy. We are going to be together like this for a year, every single night. The view is not going to change. Don’t act all innocent like you don’t know what a man looks like. You keep looking worried like you think I am going to pounce on you at any minute. I know you are not my wife and I don’t intend to treat you like you are my wife, especially in your condition.”

  “I’m only a month along. Granger did,” I say.

  “Are you telling me you want me to?” he asks.

  “No. I’m saying just because a woman’s carrying doesn’t mean a man can’t ... Anyway, Granger did. We did it several times together last night,” I inform him.

  “Thanks for the unwanted information,” he says, and I notice his eyes fixed on me.

  My eyes widen when I notice the way he is looking at me, and I remember he can see through the shirt and his eyes are roaming up and down my body.

  “Why are you looking at me like that? I am sure you have seen a woman before as well,” I whisper.

  “Why not? You’re beautiful and desirable. Granger is a lucky man.”

  “I’ll probably never see Granger again,” I sigh. “All that time he loved me, and I wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Then, when I finally decide I do love him, I end up with you instead.”

  “Sorry I am such a disappointment to you,” he sort of mumbles.

  “You’re very good looking,” I say hastily, not wanting to upset him. “It’s not that you disappoint me. It’s that I wonder what I will do if I don’t ever see Granger again? After all he has done for me, and now we can’t even be together like we planned.”

  “I’m sure you will eventually get back to Granger,” he says.

  “But what if everything has changed? What if he has stopped loving me or I have stopped loving him? How can I go a year wondering about it?”

  “Don’t think about it. It will just torture you.”

  “He made me go a year, pretending like we were going to get married because he was sure he could get me to fall in love with him by the end of the year.”

  “Well, apparently you did fall in love with him by the end of the year,” he reasons.

  “No, it didn’t happen that way. I didn’t think I loved him at all until I thought I couldn’t have him after Marvin took me and I realized I was a ruined woman and not even Granger would want me.”

  “Love is a funny thing,” he says. “You never know what will bring it on.”

  “I couldn’t even tell if I was really in love with him or not because I kept claiming I wasn’t,” I confess. “Yet when he found out I was carrying, he insisted I marry him, so I finally agreed.”

  “But did you really love him?”

  “It felt like I did when he was making me feel so good under his touch and it was so different from what Marvin did to me.”

  “Any man who knows how to make love to a woman can make her feel good. There has to be more to love than just feeling good from how he touched you.”

  “Well, he has always hung in there, even when I was mean to him and told him to go away.”

  “So he just wouldn’t take no for an answer?”

  “I guess not,” I admit. “Ever since I knew him, he would never listen to me. He followed me around like a sick puppy, trying to help me round up the cows, and then saying I should pretend I was going to marry him so his brothers wouldn’t try to court me.”

  “Seems like he wanted you regardless of whether you wanted him or not,” Randolph, points out.

  “That’s probably true,” I say. “I was always confused about how I felt about him and he was pretty upset when I started paying attention to Marvin and told him I was going to stop pretending to love him.”

  As I am talking, my eyes glance over Randolph’s body again.

  “I have never seen a man built like you before,” I say almost to myself. “Your so large, it frightens me to think of you coupling with a woman,” I sort of breathe.

  “Most women like large men,” he tells me, with a chuckle. “I can tell you like looking at me, so it must intrigue you, even if it does frighten you.”

  I don’t say anything, but I don’t stop looking at him and he closes his eyes. I think of the time Granger had tricked me into touching him and I surprise myself by wondering what it would be like to touch Randolph? Now that Randolph is not watching me, I feel more comfortable looking at him.

  I watch as his muscular chest rises and falls. Even though he looks rugged, I see that his features have a certain draw to me. I feel insignificant, considering he is probably so experienced and worldly wise, having traveled all over the world. I am nothing but a little ranch girl who has never left her home until now.

  I think about the women he had loved in his life. He had probably made love to them in this very bed, I reason. Only he must be too busy with his seafaring life to have a wife and children. How could a woman raise a child on a ship? Otherwise, she would be lonely while he was away at sea if she remained on land. I decided it would not be practical to be married to a man of the sea. Then I wonder why I am thinking about things like that?

  Randolph suddenly opens his eyes and notices me still staring at him. He gives a chuckle.

  “I think you need to go to sleep,” he says, and he turns his body away from mine.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Randolph manages to find me some buttons and I tediously sew them to my dress. I don’t have any under things to wear under it though. The hem is all ripped and there are holes along the back next to the buttons. The neck has a piece ripped out of it, from when the man that was assaulting me, had jerked on it to pull it off of me. It makes the neck line even lower than it was before. I try to repair it by hemming the neck line but it makes the neckline so low I believe it is indecent. Only it is better than wearing a shirt that shows my body through the thin material, I decide. Randolph did not find me enough buttons, so I had to space them farther apart, which leaves little gaps between the buttons up the back of my dress, but I suppose it is better than one large gap.

  My thoughts are confused as I venture above board because of an incident in Randolph’s cabin. When the fresh breeze hits me in the face, I breathe the sea air deeply. The wind catches my hair and blows it in a tangle around my face, only I don’t care. I just want to be where I can walk around and look out at the ocean and clear my thoughts. I find my way to the front of the ship and stand at the bow, as it lifts and falls against the waves. It causes my stomach to do flip flops but, at least, it is not making me feel s
ick any longer.

  I had been sick for a week, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I was carrying a child or because of the ocean. Now I am feeling a lot better and I am beginning to enjoy the experience of being on a ship.

  During that week, Randolph started staying up at night to navigate the ship and sleep during the day. I don’t know if it was because he wanted to give me more space to sleep in the bed or because he just did not want to sleep next to me? Then he reveals the reason today. He has not tried to touch me in an intimate way, and though we spend time together playing cards, or chess, he is usually busy running the ship.

  When he sleeps, though, he never wears any clothes and because he sleeps during the day, and the cabin is usually warm, he doesn’t bother to cover up. Sometimes I sit for hours, watching him sleep. I am mesmerized watching him. It makes me think of how I had run my hand over Granger after we finally made love to each other.

  I am thinking about this, as I stand at the bow, looking out on the ocean, because today, just before I came up here, I had been watching him sleep. I was shocked when I witnessed him touching himself in a way that disturbed me. He opens his eyes and sees me watching him, then sort of smiles.

  “I have to relieve myself someway,” he murmurs. “Just having you in my cabin is starting to affect me, I am afraid. You know that is why I do not sleep with you at night. I can’t trust myself.”

  I look away, feeling like I have invaded his privacy. I feel as though I am a burden to him, using his space so he is forced to work at night and sleep during the day, with no seclusion to take care of his needs.

  “I am sorry that I affect you so,” I murmur.

  “It’s not your fault unless you count the fact that you are so beautiful,” he grins.