Free Merline Lovelace by The Tiger's Bride

on the table.
    “What the devil!”
    Sarah paid no heed to his exclamation.
    “I warned you what would happen if you left your cabin,” Jamie began, advancing into the saloon.
    She twisted around, impatience stamped across her face. Only then did he see the bright red blood that colored the front of her robe.
    “Yes, yes, I know,” she snapped. “You’ll strip me naked, lash me to the mast, and lay a strap across my shoulders. But I do wish you would wait until I finish stitching up your man’s head!”

Chapter Five
    S arah turned her back on the captain and resumed her task. Gripping the bone needle in fingers slick with blood, she dug it into ragged flesh. She pushed, then pulled, and tried not to wince when the thick black string threaded in the needle’s eye stubbornly refused to follow through the hole. Gritting her teeth, she tugged harder.
    The man stretched out on the table stiffened. “Are you…soon done, lass?”
    “Soon, Mr. Burke.”
    He nodded and took another swill from the brown glass bottle clutched in his good hand.
    The stink of rum and sweat and burned skin clogged Sarah’s nostrils. Taking a shallow breath, she pinched together another inch of the gaping temple wound.
    “A few more stitches,” she promised softly, then dug the needle in again.
    Straithe stood close by her elbow, too close, watching her as a keen-eyed kestrel watches its prey. Sarah tried to push him from her mind, but his nearness ate at her concentration.
    Drat the man! She’d not soon forgive him for histhreats…nor for the way he’d left her to stew and dither and fear about what was happening above decks!
    Her mouth thinning, Sarah recalled her startled shriek when a cannon had boomed across the water. She’d heard the shot strike, heard as well the crew’s shouts and the clatter of rigging hitting the deck. Like the veriest coward, she’d huddled in the cabin, unsure what to do except pray. Most fervently.
    An agonized groan in the companionway had cut her off in mid-psalm. Fighting the fear that clawed at her throat, she’d listened intently. Another moan spurred her to action. Even with the captain’s threat hanging over her, she couldn’t stay in the cabin. She’d nursed her mother through too many childbirths, tended her family through all their ills, and assisted her father in his ministries too many times to sit idly when someone was in pain. Pulling on her still-damp clothes, she’d gathered her courage and gone to offer aid.
    The bloodied Burke had welcomed her soothing hands and calm voice. The ship’s cook, a much scarred man with skin the color of darkest ebony, had scowled ferociously. Sarah had overcome his obvious resistance to her presence by simply ignoring it.
    The man had come to appreciate her aid quickly enough when he sealed the holes in the mate’s shoulder with a red-hot spike. Sarah had thrown herself across Burke and held him down. She’d held on to her stomach, too, although the taste of bile still lingered in her mouth. After she’d thus proven herself in the cook-cum-surgeon’s eyes, he allowed her to reattach the jagged flap of skin to Burke’s temple…her fingersbeing so much smaller and more nimble than his, he admitted grudgingly.
    Now, something close to approval glinted in his black eyes. “Those be right dainty stitches, Miss Say-rah.”
    His deep accent gave her name a musical twist, making it sound like a song.
    “Thank you, Okunah.”
    Jamie listened to the brief exchange in mounting disgust. Miss Say-rah, was it? So much for his misplaced efforts to conceal her identity from the crew!
    And how the devil had she wormed the African’s name out of him? The man had sailed aboard the Phoenix for three years now. He rarely spoke, and never mentioned at all his life before he’d gone overboard off the coast of Madagascar to escape a slaver. He was far handier with a twelve-pounder than a cook pot, but none of the crew dared tell him so. And none, to Jamie’s