The Book of the Seven Delights Read Free Page B

swallow; he just kept pouring the lukewarm liquid in a steady stream between her parched lips and down her ravaged throat. She gulped and gurgled and finally drew air enough to protest.
    "You're drowning me," she croaked out.
    "It's good for you," came masculine tones with a pronounced English accent. "You need liquids." He sighed with exasperation when she fended off the cup a second time. "That is, assuming you aren't one of those females who make a career out of hovering on the edge of oblivion."
    He lowered his face toward hers and she could finally make out that there was a black leather patch over one of his eyes. The sight caused her to gasp, and her parched palate rattled so that she emitted a resounding snort. He winced at the sound and she clapped a hand over her mouth in horror.
    "If that's your game, I suggest you turn around and head home on the next boat. You're not particularly fetching as a near-corpse, and you'll get no points for 'delicate languishing' where we're going."
    "I am not languishing ," she declared, despite the pain speaking caused in her throat. "I'm seasick."

    "You are that." Her tormentor gave a wicked smile. "A fact that would probably make someone, somewhere extremely happy. Not, however, our overwrought steward. He seems to think he'll be blamed if you kick off in one of his cabins. He's below right now cleaning… scrubbing the varnish off everything in your quarters."
    "He's whaaatt ?" She struggled to sit up and free her legs.
    "Stay right where you are." He pushed her firmly back into the chair and reached for something on the deck beside him. A spoon. Heaped with grim-looking paste. "Open up. You have to get something into your stomach." When she tightened her mouth and glared, he wagged the spoon back and forth. "It's this or a snout full of whiskey. Which will it be?"
    "I'll be's-sick again," she whispered, unable to hide her fear of that prospect. To her surprise, he sighed and lowered the spoon. That was when she noticed his face had strong, cleanly chiseled features that were sun-bronzed and framed by sun-streaked hair. But her eyes kept going back to that eye patch.
    "Look, this is the best, the only real cure for seasickness," he declared. "You stay on deck, where you can see the sea move and get fresh air, and you keep something in your belly… not much… just enough to keep things moving the right direction. Oat porridge. Fruit. Light fare. No bloody meat or grease."
    At the word "bloody," her stomach rebelled and he watched her fight it.
    "Open up."
    They hadn't been introduced, but in the next few minutes, Abigail deduced his identity. The Spawn of Satan . In the flesh. Sardonic, determined, and utterly merciless with a spoon. He shoveled dose after dose of that plasterlike porridge into her, barely giving her time to swallow each bite. The lukewarm paste would have glued her mouth together if he hadn't paused periodically to force her to sip that vile liquid, which she now recognized as tea adulterated with foul-smelling herbs.
    When he deemed her sufficiently stuffed, he ordered her to watch the horizon, picked up his implements of torture, and disappeared into the cabin area of the ship.
    Her gaze was drawn to the horizon; not because he ordered her to keep her eyes on it, but because there wasn't anything else to watch. The waves were lulling and, as the sun rose and the glare lessened, watching became soothing. Her stomach was so occupied with the mass it had ingested that it ignored her, and she was so grateful to be ignored that she relaxed enough to doze.
    Shadows were lengthening on her side of the ship by the time her tormentor returned with another cup of that wretched tea and a glass of amber liquid that proved to be a heavily sweetened infusion of mint. She extracted one of her arms from the blankets to hold the cup for herself, but he applied a finger to the bottom of the cup to hasten the process. By the time he handed her the glass of mint tea, she sat up