If she turned her head, their lips would meet. She wanted it more than pride and reason. More than Aidan.
“Why don’t you tell me first what brought you to my cabin door tonight.”
His hand loosened, slipped along her arm, and with a gentleness she never imagined he possessed, he disengaged her from his body.
“The sextant.”
She blinked, knowing her cheeks were flushed, and knowing from the clear certainty in his eyes that he knew he had affected her.
“Well, you might have said that before.” She turned into her cabin, hiding her burning cheeks, and set down her book to take up the navigation instrument.
“It amused me to tease you,” he said as she came to him again.
“I’m certain it did.” She lifted a brow, pretending she wasn’t perfectly aware that he was perfectly aware of the truth, and pretending the truth simply was not the truth-that for a moment in his hold she’d been a puddle and might still be if he hadn’t released her. “The clouds have cleared?”
“Some.” He accepted the sextant and glanced at the table she’d set the book on. “You are reading Herodotus.”
It was not a question. A statement, rather, without inflection, but there was some hint of surprise in it. He brought his gaze to hers, and the hot, throbbing tingles started all over again.
“A history based on his.” She wished her shirt were laced to the throat. She wished she had on her canvas coat buttoned to her chin. She wished she were anywhere but beneath this man’s clear eyes. She wasn’t made for this sort of confusion, wanting to touch him though she loved another. “Do you know Herodotus’s history?”
He nodded, his brow still taut.
“Well,” she said as evenly as she could manage, “then there’s something we have in common other than this wager. How remarkable.” She forced what she hoped was a demure smile onto her lips.
He lifted the sextant in a gesture. “Thank you.” He turned and moved away. Viola stared at his back until he disappeared into the dark of the gun deck.
Fionn always told her she was too headstrong. With a twinkle in his eyes and a smile, the baron had called her reckless. In this, both of her fathers had been right.
“What d’you think?” Mattie leaned his thick elbows on the rail and scratched his whiskered jaw. The sea stretching beyond was dark and tipped with whitecaps, the sky leaden, the wind briny and damp.
Jin lifted the telescope and studied the vessel on the gray horizon. From its movement, erratic and slow, it was surely adrift. Its sails were furled, one mast split to the deck, and an unfamiliar banner of red and white flapped in the wind. A square-rigged brig not unlike the April Storm, but much larger and heavy in the draft. A stranded merchant ship not entirely stripped of her cargo. Pirate prey, or not?
“We cannot take the chance,” he said quietly.
“Becoua!” The master of the April Storm shouted from the quarterdeck, her voice beguiling even at full volume. “Make a course for her, slow and steady.”
Beguiling, like her half-bared breasts and wide, questioning eyes, and slender hand exploring his skin.
He turned and from midship met her gaze. He must convince her to leave the alien vessel alone. But that would require private conversation. After the incident at her cabin door, he was honest enough with himself to admit that getting close to her again would not be wise. For three days he had avoided it.
She had kept her distance as well. Which suggested to him that it might be useful to alter course in his pursuit of Viola Carlyle’s return to England. He might achieve his goal through another method.
She was not immune to him. In the lamp-lit doorway as she touched him, he had watched her body respond. If she had known it, seen the taut linen over the risen peaks of her breasts, she might not have recovered her bravado so swiftly.
But perhaps she had known it.
She captained a ship like a man, read books university-educated gentlemen read, yet was the most damnably enticing woman Jin had known. In that doorway, with her eyes sparkling in the golden light and her soft lips smiling, he had nearly done what he knew he should not. But perhaps that would be a quicker route to getting her home. A woman under the influence of desire often did whatever the man she desired wished. He had learned this early in life, from his mother’s behavior with his father. Later he had occasionally used that lesson to his advantage.
He did not wish to lie to Viola Carlyle. She was not what she appeared on the surface, not what she wished others to see. For a moment in that doorway, he had seen something quite different in her dark eyes. Vulnerability. And confusion about her desire.
If he were so inclined, he could take advantage of that. But he was no longer that man. He would rather she came without lies.
“You ain’t gonna convince her.”
Jin’s head swung around.
Mattie screwed up his lips. “She ain’t gonna listen if you tell her not to sidle up to that boat.”
“Then perhaps you should tell her. She likes you, I have noticed.”
Mattie guffawed, his cheeks shading crimson. Jin shook his head and returned his gaze to the horizon.
By the time they were within a half league of the vessel he could no longer delay. Setting his shoulders, he went to her post at the quarterdeck.
“This is unwise.” He scanned the sea anew.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“It is my duty to offer it when I see the necessity.”
“What necessity? She’s obviously abandoned. We have nothing to fear.”
“It could be deception. To lure you.”
She cast him a glance, tilting her brows high. “Oh? A tactic you know? Practiced in your pirating days, no doubt.” Her tone remained perfectly sweet and her thick lashes dipped over wide dark eyes. He had to grin. The combination of insulting harpy and demure temptress suited her.
Her lashes flickered again, then she snapped her gaze away. He followed her averted face, unable not to. Here was innocence and allure wrapped in sailor’s swagger, and he was a fool not to have seen this danger the moment he encountered her on the dock in Boston. In twenty years he had not stood on a ship’s deck and felt his heartbeat quicken. Now it did.
“If you wish to make Trinidad within a sennight,” he said, a roughness to his voice he did not intend, “you will be well served to sail on. It is the safer course.”
She set her fists on her hips. “What is it? I can’t believe the Pharaoh is concerned over the possibility of a little skirmish, so it must be something else.” She held her attention to the horizon. She lowered her voice. “Afraid I’ll die and you’ll lose your prize to carry back to the earl?”
“Yes.”
The wind whipped her hair about her cheeks and she brushed it away.
“Well, that is a possibility you will simply be obliged to live with.”
“I cannot.”
Her hands slipped from her hips and her slender shoulders dipped. Without a word she walked away.
The strange vessel’s crew had clearly tried to give fight. Canvas hung torn from the spars and shredded on the deck, black powder marks and cannon shot wounds gaping in the main deck and rails. Most telling, the foremast was snapped, leaning out over the bow at a sickening tilt. Four crumpled bodies littered the deck, too few men to mark it as anything but a merchant vessel, sailors sufficient only to keep her on course. If there were no others below, the rest of the crew might have been pressed into service. Better living the life of a pirate until the next port than dying on the spot. Jin had seen plenty of sailors make that choice.
“Rum business,” Mattie grunted as he came alongside him at the rail. “What’s she gonna do?” He gestured with a jerk of his meaty jowl toward Viola standing amidships below, calling out orders to her crewmen to maneuver their approach.
“Go over there and invite them to tea, no doubt.” Jin took a deep breath and descended to the main deck. He went to her side. “Don’t do it.”
“Be silent, Seton, or I will relieve you of duty.”
“You hired me for this purpose.”
“I hired you under false pretenses. Gui, fetch my sword! Sam, Frenchie, lower the boat. Then both of you and Stew, Gabe, and Ayo come with me.”
Sailors were gathering at the rail, peering onto the other ship’s deck.
“Then allow me,” Jin said quietly.
“I said be silent.”
“A captain should remain with her ship.”
“And leave all the fun to others?”
“Fun? There are dead men on that deck.”
She glanced down at the boy. He proffered her a thick-bladed cutlass and she strapped it to her belt. “You stay here, Gui.”
The cabin boy scowled and glowered nearly as convincingly as Mattie. She ruffled his hair, then loosened the strap of the pistol on her sash. “Men, secure the sheets and lower the boat.”
Jin kept his voice low amid the bustle. “What sort of sailor puts her life at risk simply to amuse herself?”
“You’re starting to sound like my old nurse.”
“Perhaps because you are behaving like a rash child who knows not what is best for her.”
She turned to him fully then, pure determination in her eyes.
“I got along well enough on the sea for fifteen years without you, Jinan Seton. I’ve no doubt I will get along for at least another fifteen in the same manner.” She pushed through her crewmen toward the gangway.
He followed, cursing under his breath. She made it to the ladder first and swung down it to the boat below, perfectly agile. The boat rocked on the striated swells, sailors set oars to water, and they headed toward the immobile ship. They neared and Sam tossed up a hooked rope. Jin grabbed it first, secured it and went up, then threw the ladder down.
She climbed aboard and stopped middeck, surveying the scene.
“Damned pirates,” she muttered.
Jin moved to a prone figure and knelt. Dried blood matted the man’s hair and stained his shirtfront burned with pistol fire, and blood caked the blade of the sword trapped in his waxy grip. He straightened. “Three days at most. No carrion birds as yet.”
“Too far from land.” She crossed herself, her lips moving in a silent prayer, then said aloud, “No one is looking for them.”
“Don’t be a fool.” Prickling heat stroked at his shoulders. “Someone is always looking.”
“Why didn’t they scuttle her or take her for parts?”
“Because they are hiding below until the ideal moment when they will spring forth and kill us all and seize your ship? Just a guess.”
“Coward.”
He simply stared at her.
She grinned. Unremarkably, and despite circumstances, it went straight to his groin. She was, apparently, quite fearless. And quite beautiful when she smiled with impish challenge.
“Boys,” her rich alto cajoled her men, “who wants to go below with me and see what these poor souls were cooking for dinner before the good Lord took them to fairer fields?”
Jin moved toward the companionway, the others remaining motionless-wisely. She came behind him.
“Not too skittish to take a peek now, hm, Seton?” She was right at his back, their footsteps echoing into the deck below.
“Call me a coward again, Miss Carlyle, and I will shoot you myself and endure the earl’s chastisements.”
She laughed, a full-throated, musical chortle. She was brazen, he must give her that. And entirely unafraid.
Ducking their heads, they came onto the gun deck. The air in the narrow space was oppressively close, the gunwales shut tight, and no sign of the cannons having been fired. No bodies were anywhere in sight here, but a stack of empty cages gaped open at the base of the bowsprit.
“They took the live animals but not all the cargo, and none of the rigging or canvas. Not even the water.”
He nodded. “In a hurry. Moving on to another goal, perhaps.”
“Then you don’t believe any longer that they’re waiting to jump out at us like ghouls? I am so sorry for your disappointment.”
A grin tugged at his lips. “Perhaps I will have to kill you myself after all.”
“You try it.” She swung around the rail and continued down into the hold. Jin found himself following again.
“Not interested in checking the master’s cabin?”
“Don’t need to. He was on deck.”
“How do you know that?”
“I knew him.”
Forcing his gaze away from the fall of satin hair down her back, he scanned the broad space only half-filled with barrels and canvas sacks, some broken open and their contents scattered. No humans here, either. “Who was he?”
“Jason Pettigrew. A friend of my father.” She set her fists on her hips. “Fionn captained a brig for him-not this one-right before the war. Jason always said-” She broke off and lines appeared between her eyes.
“Were you aboard that ship?” he said to encourage her to continue.
“Fionn nearly always took me along.”
“From the beginning?”
“Yes. Is this an interview, Seton? Should I sit and narrate my life for you here? Or perhaps you could simply read my diaries, although you would no doubt find them too tame for your tastes.”
“I suspect they would be as fascinating as their author.”
Her gaze snapped to him. But there was no scowl on her face, only a bright-eyed wariness. She pivoted and sprang up the steps.
He climbed up behind her, tracing the curve of her hips with his gaze. “Shall I have the men transfer the cargo?”
“Only the fresh water. We’ve sufficient supplies.”
“And the bodies?”
She cast him a quick glance, surprise in the violet. He held her gaze evenly. If she wished to believe him inhumane, at one time she would not have been far off the mark.
“Tell the boys to cut the canvas and line from this ship to wrap them. We’ll bury them at dusk.”
“Aye aye.”
She unstrapped her pistol and cutlass and handed them to Sam. Then she unbuttoned her waistcoat and kicked off her shoes. She went to the rail, testing the draw of the dagger in her sash.
Jin frowned. “What are you doing?”
With a half grin that sent heat straight to his groin, she dove into the sea below.
Chapter 9
Jin lunged forward to grab her, but too late, clutching the rail as she disappeared beneath the gray water.
“What in the blazes-”
“Cap’n’s got a bee in her bonnet, sir, no doubt ’bout that,” Sam said.
“A bee?” His head spun, heart racing. Panic sluiced over him like the waves that had swallowed Viola Carlyle. His gaze pinned the ocean. “What is she doing?”
“Dunno, sir. Must be somethin’ she’s lookin’ for. But she’s got powerful big lungs.”
“To the boat.” He grabbed the ladder.
They were the longest moments he ever lived, including those he had spent bound in iron manacles to the floor of a slaving ship as it crossed the deep Atlantic twenty-two years ago. Two minutes passed. More. He dragged off his coat, readying to dive. Viola’s head bobbed above the sea’s frothy surface, and he pulled in hard breaths.
She swam to the boat, arms cutting above the shifting foam, hair plastered about her head. Not only hair-a rope, caked with blackish sea vegetation that clung to her cheeks, held between her teeth like a bit.
He leaned over the side of the boat and grabbed her, Mr. French on the other side, and in a splashing rush they hauled her aboard. She shed water, gaining her bearings, but Jin did not release his grasp. Pulling the rope from her mouth she swung the object tied to its end around from her back, leaving trails of green slime across her face, neck and the white shirt plastered to her body. Her visibly cold body.
He wrapped her in his coat.
“What ya got thar, Cap’n?”
“A treasure, of course, Ayo.”
Viola grinned at the sailor, waiting for the storm to break at her side. Seton’s hand gripped her arm like a vise. He dragged her to a bench, released her, and her sailors set oars to water. She was glad for their haste, and for his coat. The sea was unforgiving today. She was accustomed to lengthy dives, but she’d been under this time longer than she should. Her teeth made little clicking sounds in her muzzled head.
He didn’t speak or look at her. Settling the small box she’d retrieved from the bottom of the merchant ship on her lap, she flickered a glance at him. A muscle worked in his jaw. She closed her eyes.
In a moment, it seemed, they were at her ship and she was climbing, sodden and cold, to the deck. Behind her Seton gave orders for the men to transfer the merchantman’s stores of water to the April Storm. She moved toward the stairway. He followed but said nothing until they’d moved beyond the sailors clustered about the main deck. She put her foot on the first step and finally he spoke, but in an even, steady voice.
“Pettigrew once told you of that box, I presume.”
She swung down the steps, clutching her hard-won prize tighter. She’d lost her dagger when the final nail binding the box to the hull popped abruptly and the hilt slipped out of her numb hand.
“Obviously.”
“Its contents must be very valuable.” He followed her aft toward her cabin, but his calm tone did not deceive her. “I know something of such prizes. Innocuous containers with valuable contents. I know how one might take foolish chances in order to retrieve such an object.” An edge cut his voice now.
“It was not so foolish. I have stayed below for longer.”
“Sam mentioned that.” He was right behind her. He reached forward and pushed the door of her cabin open, surrounding her for an instant. She ducked out from beneath his arm and moved to the washstand. He entered behind her. “Nevertheless, it was unwise, taking that chance.”
“Not much of a chance.” She swiped a cloth across her cheeks and brow, smelling the thick brine of the sea. “I knew what I was looking for and retrieved it quickly. My men know-”
He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around.
“I am not one of your men and I did not know that you are likely to hurl yourself into a rough sea.” His crystal eyes glittered in the pale light, fingertips digging into her flesh.
How to Be a Proper Lady Page 8
