Bride of the Baja by Jane Toombs Page A

fingers. She leaned back against him.
    "Do you love the sea?" she asked.
    "Of course--it's my life. I've been coming down to the sea since I was a boy."
    "The sea must be like a mistress to a man, like a lover."
    "A lover? No, Margarita, there's only one woman in my life. You."
    A shout came from the lookout high on the foremast. "A light. A light off the starboard bow."
    Jordan released Margarita, retrieved the spyglass and peered across the dark sea, but the light was still below the horizon. In ten minutes' time he saw it, a faint glimmer some four leagues to the west. Jordan turned to McKinnon.
    "That light's most likely on one of the Channel Islands," he said. "What do you make of it?"
    "A bonfire of some sort. The Indians, I suspect, signaling to one another."
    Already the light was fading, and in another few minutes they couldn't make it out at all.
    "I expect you're right." Jordan shook his head. The unexplained light troubled him.
    "Where are we bound?" Margarita asked after McKinnon left them to go forward.
    "To our cabin," he said, deliberately misunderstanding her.
    "No, this ship. Where is she bound?"
    "To San Diego. We'll be married at the mission before they have a chance to hear of the governor's objections." He guided her to the companionway and down to the captain's cabin, shutting the door behind them.
    "This is for the two of us?" Margarita asked, staring around her. "This tiny cramped room?"
    "There're no spare cabins on the ship."
    She nodded to the single berth. "It's a sin for us to lie together before we marry," she told him.
    "I'll do whatever you want, Margarita. Do you want to wait?"
    She didn't answer. Instead she reached up and unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the deck, unfastened her petticoats and stepped out of them, lifted the chemise over her head and threw it to one side. She stood naked before him.
    The ship pitched gently and she let herself fall into his arms. With one hand around her bare waist, Jordan began to fumble with the buttons on his shirt with the other.
    "Let me," she said.
    While she undressed him, she said, "I must learn to speak better English."
    "Why?" Her words surprised him; she was continually surprising him. Would she always, for the rest of their life together?
    "So I may learn more ways to tell you how much I love you. I do love you, Jordan, with all my heart and soul."
    He kissed her, wondering if she noticed he hadn't told her he loved her, wondering why he hadn't, for he knew he did. Why were the words so hard to say?
    When he was naked, she lay on the bunk and opened her arms to him. He let her enfold him, trying to enter her gently, yet still she gasped with pain so he waited, moving slowly above her, their lovemaking matching the rhythm of the sea. He felt her cling to him, arch to him as she kissed him, and he sensed that her pain had lessened, replaced, he knew, by a pounding surge of pleasure for she sighed and trembled in his arms. When at last they slept, she lay with her arms and legs wrapped tightly about him.
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 7
     
    Captain Jordan Quinn paced the lee side of the Kerry Dancer's quarterdeck. The weather had been fair since leaving Santa Barbara two days before, the sky and the ocean were a deep blue and the sea ran in long, unbroken swells beneath the ship. Though Jordan's eyes moved automatically from the rigging to the wake, his thoughts were below decks.
    "Margarita."
    He said her name aloud while at the same time damning himself for being a romantic fool. He had never imagined a woman could enthrall him as Margarita had—he wanted to be with her now although it was only early afternoon, wanted to feel her arms around him and her smooth skin on his. He wanted to lose himself in her. Now and forever.
    "Sail ho!"
    Jordan shook himself from his reverie. Seeing the lookout on the foremast point off the starboard bow, he raised his spyglass and detected the barest glint of white to the southeast. Jack McKinnon came to