I Kissed an Earl

by Julie Anne Long

  “What, then, are you doing with this scoundrel?” Flint gestured with his chin to the dead pirate captain. Who was being hoisted by two of his men in preparation for being hurled over the side. Any men who served and died in his care received respectful burials, with the proper words of God read over them.

  The pirates would not. Flint would lose no sleep over it.

  “Cap’n Abrega there, ’e stole me from the La Rochelle dock, sir. Needed another ’and, ’e did, an ’e jus’ took me and what could I do? Le Chat, ’e paid me wages.”

  “Oh? What is the name of Le Chat’s ship?”

  “The Olivia,” the boy said promptly.

  The men absorbed this for a moment. It was a stunning moment of absolute confirmation. Then again, the rumor of Le Chat’s vessel wasn’t entirely a mystery.

  “She’s a bonnie craft,” the boy added unnecessarily.

  “How long ’ad you served?”

  “Three ports, sir.”

  “And where were the last two ports?”

  “To Le Havre and Brest.”

  More silence as this was absorbed.

  “Where was The Olivia bound when you were taken?” Flint tried.

  “Cádiz,” the boy said promptly.

  Flint went still. He narrowed his eyes. The boy squirmed again. Doubtless Flint seemed terrifying, covered as he was in blood of pirates and sweat and fury.

  How would the boy know this of a certainty? But how likely was it that he would produce a destination like Cádiz from thin air?

  “D’yer believe this little bastard, Captain?” Greeber gave the boy another nudge.

  “You’d betray your former captain, boy, by telling us where he’s going?” he said coldly. “How can I trust you?”

  A tricky question for a boy who wanted to live, and had likely been buffeted by life since he’d been born. The life he led now would either make a hard honest man or a criminal of him. Flint still could not have predicted which of those he would become if he hadn’t served Captain Moreheart.

  The boy’s Adam’s apple worked in his skinny throat. “I wants to work, sir. I’ll work ’ard fer me keep, only. No pay.”

  “But were you not on deck moments before attempting to kill my men by orders of that captain?”

  “Aye, sir. But ’e would’ve killed me if I dinna obey ’im. An’ ’e’s dead now, ain’t ’e, sir?”

  “Aye, he is dead. You ought to learn the meaning of loyalty.”

  “Canna learn it from a dead man. Mayhap ye’ll teach it to me.” Almost cheekily said.

  Lavay cuffed him lightly. “You will not speak to Captain Flint with anything but groveling respect, you wee turd. He’s the Earl of Ardmay. You’ll bow and do it now.”

  He boy blanched, rubbed his ear where he’d been struck. Agog, he stared at Flint as though he’d sprouted a halo or horns or some combination thereof.

  He bowed awkwardly. “Beggin’ yer pardon m’lord.” Diffident now, if fascinated.

  “Have you yet been to Cádiz with Le Chat?”

  “Aye, sir. Please sir, ye’ll find ’im a’ the El Cisne Blanco Inn.”

  “If you’re lying to us, boy, I shouldn’t like to be you.” The casual tone was uniquely menacing, and it worked on the boy. “And we’ll know quickly, won’t we?”

  That Adam’s apple bobbed again. Brown eyes flared defiantly for an instant, then flickered and dropped in fear and submission.

  “What will he be doing in Cádiz?”

  Silence.

  Greeber gave the boy a shake.

  “’e’ll sell silks, won’t ’e? Merchant name o’ Rodriguez meets wi’ ’im in the Plaza de Mina. Dinna ken the time.”

  “Greeber, take the boy—your name, boy?”

  “Mathias, sir.”

  “—Mathias below and lock him up. Get Corcoran and the two of you can lower this…hairy bugger…over the side and see if he can get to one of their boats and then to that ship. I’m not terribly interested in his destiny. And I’ll talk to the boy later.”

  The hairy bugger muttered some no doubt filthy sentiment in Portuguese as Greeber shouted for Corcoran’s help to carry out his orders.

  Flint, who had done his duty, turned at last.

  “Lavay, the ship is yours while I go below. And…” He considered this for but a moment. “Make sure Miss Redmond doesn’t hear about the boy.”

  Because the Fates had sent him pirates today. And thanks to that boy, the Fates could very well deliver Le Chat to him, too, after weeks of chasing an apparition.

  They’d known it would come to this eventually. Regardless of whatever mad noble motive drove Lyon Redmond, Flint would do his duty.

  He would win.

  And the courts would decide Lyon Redmond’s fate. May the better player win.

  Lavay understood. He hesitated only a moment, and then nodded crisply. Resignedly. Gave an ironic twitch of the brow.

  “Aye, aye, Captain. Have I mentioned that I’m glad you’re not dead?”

  “Your sentiment warms me to the core, Lavay. May I return the compliment?”

  Lavay nodded again, as though nearly being killed was all in a day’s work for either of them. “Are we changing course, then?”

  The need to make split-second decisions and accept accountability for them if they were wrong had been part of his life since he was eighteen years old.

  “Aye. We’re going to Cádiz.”

  He was already striding off.

  “We’ll be closer to Morocco, too,” Lavay commented casually as he left.

  Flint shot a startled look over his shoulder and kept striding.

  He hadn’t thought of Fatima in days.

  He’d looked death in the eye more than once before. Much was made about what a man saw flash before his eyes when he died. But not until today had Flint seen anyone in particular, and today she was all he saw, and now she was all he wanted to see.

  “Captain?”

  Lavay again. He stopped and spun about. “Yes?” He was curt now.

  “She was lucky again, eh?”

  Flint scowled, Lavay’s smile became a laugh, and then Flint all but flung his body down the ladder.

  He almost ran through the passage to the guest cabin door. He tried the doorknob of the Distinguished Guest Cabin.

  “Violet!” He knocked, then flung the door open. It was empty.

  Ah. So she’d gone to his cabin, perhaps out of instinct now, perhaps because it was farther away from the scene of violent death. He bound up again, ran for the captain’s cabin, strode down the passage and paused before his own door, knocked tentatively, then realized knocking was ridiculous and tried the knob.

  The door opened.

  He paused in the doorway. Violet was sitting perched on the foot of the bed, eyes huge and startled. She composed her face when she saw him and turned away without a word. He could see her expression reflected in the rectangle of mirror: pale and tense and contemplative.

  He didn’t wait for an invitation into his own chambers; he closed the door behind him, locked it, and quietly sat down next to her on the bed.

  He couldn’t recall the first man he’d ever killed; it had been in battle, his weapon had been a musket, and the man’s face had been so distant as to be anonymous; he’d had only one name: the enemy. But he did recall the aftermath. Waking from nightmares. Shaking.

  Violet had seen the man’s face as he’d been ready to shoot Asher dead. She would probably never forget that face for as long as she lived.

  “I killed a man,” she said finally. Sounding bemused.

  “Yes,” he agreed softly.

  He wasn’t quite sure what to say, or what manner of comfort, if any, was needed. Experimentally, hesitantly, he took one of her hands in his. He hadn’t touched her in days, and yet it seemed far too long, and just this touch was a strange relief. As if not touching her was unnatural. Her hand lay in his as impersonally as a glove; her fingers were cool, but not too cold: she wasn’t in shock. He kept it in his an
yway: proof she was alive and unharmed. Gratitude swamped him, momentarily made him weak.

  She didn’t take her hand back.

  “Where is he now?” Her voice was remote, taut. Like someone taking great pains to contain an enormous emotion. He wasn’t certain which one yet. “The man I killed?”

  “Shark food.”

  “Ah.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. He studied her profile, that graceful line he’d once himself traced with a finger on the railing of the ship the other night. He studied her for signs of shock or hysteria; he knew he would recognize it in her. In so short a time the twitch of her brows, the set of her mouth, the way her eyes did or didn’t light in response to something she saw or something he said had become another of the languages in which he was fluent.

  “My brother’s wife, Cynthia, once accidentally shot the penis from a statue,” she offered.

  “Did she?” He was startled.

  “But I’ve never fired any weapons. First time.”

  “Is that so?” he said gently. “Good aim. Shocking, really.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched.

  “Thank you, by the way. For my life,” he added.

  The smile fully took hold of her mouth for an instant. Then faded. “Cynthia was trying to impress a man.”

  This made more sense.

  A little.

  Silence.

  “He would have killed you,” she mused, and now he heard for certain, understood that tension had been gathering in her voice. “That…” She reached for a particular word. Settled on one she clearly found inadequate. “…man would have killed you.”

  Never had that word man sounded so repugnant.

  “That was his objective, yes,” he said evenly. “But he didn’t. Thanks to you.”

  He didn’t add that it was only one of occasions too numerous to recount he could have lost his life. In a dazzling variety of ways, at the hands of cannonballs, scimitars, fists, starvation, or shipwrecks. It was all part of being a man, really, specifically part of being Captain Asher Flint, the newly minted Earl of Ardmay, and he was fairly certain this wasn’t something she wanted to hear now.

  She suddenly looked quickly, directly, hard into his face and he watched, astonished, as a flush of pink flooded her skin. She turned quickly away again, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him.

  Then she sucked in an enormous breath from the air, pressed her palms against her eyes and dragged in a few more breaths from the air. Her shoulders heaved with the breathing.

  Alarming.

  “Violet?” he said softly, and surreptitiously hooked the heel of his boot over the edge of the chamber pot lurking under his bed and dragged it forth, in case she needed to cast her accounts from shock.

  She pulled her palms away from her eyes and stared out across the room.

  “I could not have born it,” she said, her voice cracked. She sounded dazed and astounded and…furious. Not at all pleased with whatever realization she was having. She turned her face up to him again, and her eyes were fiercer than any warrior’s with a sort of accusation and something penetrating and raw and unnerving, as though she was seeing him for the first time and wasn’t happy with what she saw. She looked down at his hand holding hers and gave a soft rueful laugh, and her hand finally came to life. She seized his hand and turned it over, traced the lines in his palms almost fitfully, put it down again carefully on his thigh, as though it were a breakable thing he’d loaned her momentarily.

  He wished he could read her mood. But he was lost. So competent as a warrior moments ago, nearly helpless now.

  “Such a horrible thing, killing a man.” Her voice was trembling like something in her was about to break.

  He understood now. It was eating at her, the fact that she had taken a life. Even if it was to save his. She was just a young woman, not a warrior, and could not expect to rebound so quickly.

  “Violet…killing is never easy even for a hardened warrior. I can only imagine how you must feel. I’m so sorry—I wish you hadn’t needed to—”

  Her head whipped toward him. “Hush, you fool,” she said furiously, her voice hoarse. “Hush.” And now tears were welling in her eyes, swelling and spilling. She knocked at one with a knuckle as though it were yet another man aiming a pistol at Asher. “I could not have born it if he killed you. You. I could not have lived. I simply would have…stopped breathing. I would have killed him a dozen more times. Happily. For you.”

  And her voice cracked on the last word.

  He stopped breathing.

  She seemed to curl in on herself. She folded her hands in her lap, straightened her spine, tensed her jaw, attempting to impose her innate orderliness on the chaos of her emotions and the aftermath of bloody chaos. But she couldn’t control her tears. They welled, clung to her lashes, plummeted like suicides.

  He tried to speak. She’d stolen his breath.

  “Violet…” The word an awestruck whisper.

  He touched her cheek. Her skin was hot with emotion, and soft like the woman who was furious to find herself helpless against it. He knew so many words, in so many languages, scattered and profane though many of them were, yet none came. And maybe her fury and despair had to do with something she seemed to understand so much better than he did: how terrifying a thing it is to love. For it owes its sweetness in large part to the razor-edged fact that it could be lost in the blink of an eye, if, for instance, a loaded pistol isn’t in hand when one is needed. And this is what the love had done to her, revealed to her: she was someone who could kill. She was capable of enormous love, but she’d lost once before, and she’d kill before she let it happen again. And yet they both knew it was bound to end in heartbreak when he caught Lyon. And he would.

  But love—for her brother Lyon—the man he needed to vanquish—was the reason she was here at all.

  “Violet,” he repeated, his voice brusquer than he preferred. He feared gentleness suddenly. He smoothed her hair out of her face, efficiently, because he thought tenderness might undo her. He cradled her nape with his hand, his fingers playing in the hair there, which was a wild tangle, free of its pins. “Violet.”

  She looked up at him then, and the fierce tenderness, the uncertainty there, undid him.

  He brought his mouth down to hers. It was all he knew to do.

  His lips floated near, then brushed hers; his tongue touched the corner of her mouth; tasting salt, the taste of her fear and fury and love. But her lips took brutal command of his. She nipped at them, her mouth parted, and she sought his tongue. And her mouth was so hot and so giving he was ferociously aroused and immediately as frightened as she was, for he knew the greater danger was his.

  Because she knew how to love. He was a neophyte.

  And what began as an attempt to soothe became volcanic as violence withstood and desire held back surged free.

  Her tongue sought out his tongue, and this time something at the very core of him, something never before stirred, was found and blissfully incinerated. He groaned. Need wracked him; he shook with it, with the force of desire for this woman, only this woman, everything about her, and his hands grappled blindly for breasts, stopping to thumb roughly at her nipples through the muslin until she gasped an oath of pleasure, then sliding along the nip of her waist to furl up her dress. He pushed her down onto the bed, pinned her.

  “Shhhh,” she murmured against his mouth as they dove into savage kisses again, as though he was the one needing comfort, as he ducked his head into her throat, kissed the thud of her heart there, kissed her eyelids again to taste the salt. He propped himself over her on shaking arms, bridging her, trapping her, his view her brilliant eyes and pale fierce face and wild tangle of hair, and she dragged his shirt up and out of his trousers, shoving it gracelessly up beneath his armpits to rake her fingers down his chest. He shifted to hook his fingers into the edge of her bodice to drag it down. She pushed her breasts against him, the contact of skin to skin maddening and precisely what they�
�d been seeking.

  Her hands were already busy on his trouser buttons, and she’d sprung his cock with shocking efficiency, her hands stroking the length of him. He was swollen, almost leaping in her hands.

  “Violet…”

  His voice was hoarse; he heard it as though it were coming from somewhere outside his body. It was both a hosanna and a warning to her, but he wasn’t going to stop. Nothing would make him stop. No word from her, no action could make him stop. Now he needed to take her as much as she seemed to need to give, and the consequences could wait. Excuses or recriminations or whatever that would follow meant nothing now.

  She pushed his trousers away, her hands sliding, cupping over the hard flat planes of his arse, gripping his cock, fully, achingly swollen, arcing up toward his belly now, sliding her fingers over its slick dome.

  He hissed in through his teeth. “Sweet mother of God…”

  She was taking him.

  “Please,” she said.

  The disarray they’d made was astounding. He roughly shoved her dress up entirely out of the way, until it was wadded in rumpled folds at her waist now; mercifully there were no drawers to grapple with. He noted a flash—her eyes swiftly widening as with almost absurd efficiency he swiftly pushed her knees up so he could fit his body between them, one at a time, noting the neat satin garters tying up the stockings, each still free of snags. He dragged fingers down along the unthinkably tender insides of her white thighs, pressing them wider apart, and groaned with pleasure when his seeking fingers brushed between her legs and found her dark curls soaked. Violet arced upward at his touch, gasping, and his fingers slipped between the velvet folds, teasing, testing, and she writhed against them, seeking more pleasure.

  He positioned his body above her and took his cock in hand, and at first eased into the tightness of her, as her eyes widened, and then thrust home with unintelligible oath of bliss.

  Violet sank her fingers into his arms and sucked in a breath at the bite of pain, her belly leaping with harsh breaths, but the pain seemed right, an initiation, a cost, and it was gone quickly. She wanted to sacrifice, to bleed for him. He hovered above her, allowing her to accommodate the shocking, glorious feel of him filling her. So right, she groaned a nearly animal sound of pleasure.