Constance woke the next morning to the discomfort of something digging into her shoulder. She rolled, blinked, and sat up. A necklace was on the bed. She had lain on it in the night, and impressed its shape into her arm.
The necklace was an inexpensive thing, a silver chain with a pendant of a flower in painted enamel. Not just any flower, either, but a daisy.
She remembered Lord Cuthburt saying something about a bauble. This must be it, then, a gift he intended for Daisy.
Another complication. Surely he'd expect to see the intended recipient wearing it, and might wonder or even ask where it was when Daisy turned up without it. Yet Constance couldn't very well turn it over to the girl. That would mean having to explain how she got it. Being discovered as a stowaway would be bad.
Having Lord Cuthburt realize what had truly gone on the previous night would be even worse. Not only had he fucked Constance believing her to be Daisy, but he'd wanted her to pretend to be his niece, Margaret. How could any of the deGranvilles face any of the Cuthburts ever again if that came to light?
And there was yet the matter of Walter to consider. Constance watched through her spyhole as the morning's shipboard activities went on and had frequent glimpses of the handsome auburn-haired first mate. She even saw him once with Daisy, the two of them acting at nonchalance.
Constance's heart hammered. What was he saying to her? Was he remarking on the other night? She waited with held breath for the moment in which Daisy would comprehend, and the anger that would have to follow.
That moment did not come. Credit Walter for his circumspection. But as she spied on the lovers, Constance felt a twinge of anger of her own. Walter was a good man, a tender lover, and thought the world of Daisy. All the while unbeknowing that she was fucking with Lord Cuthburt behind his back, bearing the lord's child, and planning to trick Walter into marriage.
She was upset most of all by the unwitting part she herself had played in that last. When Walter had shared her bed, thinking her to be Daisy, she'd allowed him – nay, encouraged him! – to spill his seed inside her. Only after, when he wondered that she'd done so, did she understand that Daisy had not let him for fear of pregnancy. Now, when Daisy confessed to being with child, Walter would think that one lapse had been the cause.
Both women had misused him. Constance knew how wrong it had been to stay silent and go along when he got into her bed. She had known all along and had not been able to bring herself to speak up, tell the truth. At first, it had been fear of being found out. And then, as the event progressed, she had been overcome with desire and responded willingly to his caresses.
The mere thought of it was enough to bring a flutter of heat to her loins. She barely thought of Lord Cuthburt's pathetic cock except with pity and amusement, but whenever she thought of Walter, her body recalled the feeling of him against her, within her. Making love to her with such gentleness.
But she could not dwell on it. She had to find some way to handle this complicated mess she'd gotten herself into. There was the necklace, for one. She had to give it to Daisy, but if Daisy knew that Constance knew about her affair with Lord Cuthburt...
She would tell Daisy that she'd awakened to find it under the door, as if slid there in the night by an anonymous admirer. It would be assumed that it was Walter, and Daisy need not give up her secret.
At mid-morning, the captain of the
Ricarda
regularly called all hands for an assembly. With the sailors accounted for on deck, and midday meal still hours away, the galley was at its least busy of times. Constance waited until she heard the shrill blast of the captain's whistle, then crept out of her small room.
The galley was ship-shape, everything in readiness. Neither Daisy nor Greta were to be seen. Constance took a biscuit and a chunk of salted fish from the pantry to ease her growling stomach, then went to the door of the cook's cabin.
There were voices within. Greta's, and Daisy's. Curiously muffled, but recognizably theirs. Constance opened the door.
Her bite of biscuit lodged in her throat. Her eyes widened.
Greta's bed was a good deal larger than the narrow cot in the smaller room. It was of quite adequate size to hold the two women, and was doing just that at this very instant. They were nude, their clothes draped on a chair, and their bodies were entwined so that the head of each was buried between the thighs of the other.
"Oh, Greta, please, no more," Daisy begged. "No more, please, I don't like it."
From where Constance stood, half-choked on a biscuit and frozen with astonishment, she had the better view of Greta. The cook had one hand firmly holding onto Daisy's bottom, the other on her cunny with fingers slipping quickly in and out. Her mouth was over the red nub of Daisy's clitoris and her tongue darted and swirled teasingly around it. She stopped long enough to speak.
"No falsehoods, Daisy, you know that you do. Now lick me, damn you, lick me the way I taught you."
With a stifled whimper, Daisy dipped her head to her assigned task. Greta sighed, rubbing her thumb on Daisy the very way that Enrique once had done to Constance, and smiled. Her eyes were blissfully shut, else she surely would have seen their startled observer.
"Ah, yes, Daisy, that's right. That's good, very good. I told you that no woman needs a man to make her happy. Oh, right there, yes, don't be shy. I should thank that deGranville girl for making this arrangement necessary."
Daisy made some noise that might have been a sob. Constance drew the door nearly to, just enough that she could still peek in without being seen. She spit out the bite of biscuit and dropped it into her pocket. In her other hand, the necklace dug into her palm and impressed its outline there, too.
"Don't you be crying about it," Greta said. "You liked it well enough that first night when you came cuddling over beside me. All I did then was frig you a little. Bless me, but it's not like you're a helpless virgin."
Greta rolled. For such a small and slightly-built woman, she had wiry strength and turned Daisy onto her back. Now Greta's knees were planted on either side of Daisy's head, Greta's cunny lowered against Daisy's mouth so that the younger girl had no choice but to do as she was directed. Meanwhile, Greta parted Daisy's legs wide, and for a moment Constance had an unobstructed view of Daisy's cunny with its fringe of reddish curls. Greta gripped Daisy's buttocks and bent to apply her tongue once more.
It was strangely fascinating to see them together. Constance remembered how horrified she'd been when Rob threatened to make her do this very thing with Nana Eva, or with young Esperanza. At the time, she had thought it the most vile and unnatural of acts. That had been before Rob's brutal abuse of her backside, first lashing it bloody and then raping it. Compared to what he'd done, a vigorous tonguing by another woman would be far preferable.
Indeed, as Constance watched Greta, she thought of how Rob and Enrique had both brought her to delicious spendings that way and wondered if a woman, who knew from personal experience how it felt and what felt best, might not be better at it. Surely Daisy, for all her mumbled protests, seemed to be enjoying it.
The sight and the memories it evoked combined to make Constance turn liquid with arousal. She considered throwing all caution to the winds and joining them. Off with her clothes, and onto the bed, and there they'd be all three of them wrapped around one another. Hands on breasts, fingers probing into tight cunny passages, tongues coaxing at the stiff buds of nipples or clitorises.
But she was not bold enough to do that. Rather, she closed the door as stealthily and quietly as she was able. She hurried back through the kitchen to the small room, the food in her pocket forgotten, the necklace forgotten. All she wanted to do was pull up her skirt, slide a hand through the damp downiness of her cunny hair, and stroke herself until reaching exquisite release.
"Hsst! Daisy!"
The hiss came as she was just about to close the door behind her. She resisted the urge to slam it and then hide, but what else could she do? He was there, right there, blinking in the dim light and starting as he saw her.
"Who are you?" Walter asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.
Constance could not speak. He was inches from her, the first time she'd seen him so up close though she'd felt him much closer. Russet hair, eyes of some light color either blue or grey, a tanned and handsome face, a lean body whose contours she knew well by touch if not by sight. Her throat worked.
"A stowaway?" he asked.
She nodded.
"You've been hiding... here?"
"Walter, please, I can explain."
"You know my name! It... it was you?"
"Hear me out," she said, and then had no idea what should follow. She could explain? How in the world could she explain?
He glanced over his shoulder, then pushed her into the room and closed the door behind them. Constance saw him shoot a furtive, hotly guilty look at the narrow bed before his gaze returned to her.
