by Amber Lin
Like Julia.
A sitting room looked plush and inviting—and completely lacking in information. Who was this man? Could she trust him? And if she couldn’t, where else could she go?
Ah, his study. She stepped inside, eyes widening. Her breath caught as she looked around. The room had clearly been intended as both library and office. Two leather chairs with steep backs faced an unlit hearth.
Bookshelves unfurled to the edges of every wall, flanking the mantelpiece and the window, but only one of them contained books. The others were filled with…vases and statuettes. Draperies and cloth-embroidered frames. An engraved silver box open and overflowing with pearls and other jewels. This was where Nate kept his treasure.
Looking about, it felt like seeing him from the inside, slipping behind his glass door and watching the gears move. She could hear the tick-tock beat of his heart and smell the wood shavings. But it didn’t bring her any closer to knowing him. What did all these things mean? Why did he keep it all here, in this one room?
Most of the books on the single shelf appeared to be related to shipbuilding and navigation. There were a few gothic novels that made her smile. So, her pirate liked to read about dreary castles and mysterious demons. That humanized him, somehow, finding something he did for entertainment. Despite the extravagance in his bookshelves and the loftiness of his captaincy, he was just a man, after all.
One book caught her eye. The Monk. She hadn’t thought Captain Bowen a pious man. She pulled the clothbound book from the shelf. Small gold lettering displayed the title, along with a subtitle. A Romance. Her brows flew up. Indeed, she hadn’t thought of him as a romantic, either.
She flipped the book open.
AND OH! THAT WAS SUCH A BREAST! THE MOONBEAMS DARTING FULL UPON IT ENABLED THE MONK TO OBSERVE ITS DAZZLING WHITENESS. HIS EYE DWELT UPON THE BEAUTEOUS ORB.
She snapped the volume shut with a gasp, catching her finger between the pages. Beauteous orbs? What had she just read? She had no idea, but it seemed very wicked.
She peeked back at the page to be sure.
A RAGING FIRE SHOT THROUGH EVERY LIMB: THE BLOOD BOILED IN HIS VEINS, AND A THOUSAND WILD WISHES BEWILDERED HIS IMAGINATION.
Embarrassment inflamed her cheeks. Well! This was certainly neither a religious tome nor a romance. At least, not one of a type she had ever read.
Imagining her host reading these provocative words started a different kind of heat within her, lower than her cheeks. Much lower. Her limbs felt suddenly weightless, and quite on their own, her fingers turned the page.
‘HOLD!’ HE CRIED IN A HURRIED FAULTERING VOICE; ‘I CAN RESIST NO LONGER! STAY, THEN, ENCHANTRESS; STAY FOR MY DESTRUCTION!’
Julia should have been scandalized. She was scandalized. But all she could think was that she understood all too well. A raging fire through every limb. A thousand wild wishes. The ideas were so foreign, and yet they so perfectly described the exact sensation of her body. Was this the magic of this book? Did it engender such heat in every reader?
In the captain?
Of course, it occurred to her that her breasts were…not particularly orb-like. She had passed for a boy, after all. Hers was not a body to inspire desperate passion in a man.
God. Why was she even thinking about this? It was the book’s fault. This was why such works had been derided by her schoolmasters. A memory came back to her, of the schoolroom. Her friend had been caught with a forbidden book, and she’d been caned for it. Low-brow, the master had called it. Pedestrian. The Devil’s work.
Like this book.
But instead of putting it back on the shelf, Julia slipped it into a tied-knot pocket of her petticoats. Like a thief. No. She would return the book. It would never leave his house. Seeing it had already brought back one memory. It stood to reason she might recollect more with its help.
That was the reason she kept it. No other.
She moved to the desk and opened the top drawer. There were assorted papers and pens. A necklace… Where had it come from? Another trinket, like the ones lining his shelves?
She shuddered, all at once assailed by phantom sensations. A blast of freezing water. Dark, wavy shadows. Sinking, drowning. Were these memories, too?
“Looking for something?”
She gasped at the sound of her host’s voice and slammed the drawer shut. Too late. He knew exactly what she’d been doing. In fact, the curl of his lip said he suspected far worse of her. He thought she was trying to steal from him. And why wouldn’t he?
“I wasn’t,” she blurted.
“Wasn’t what? You weren’t in my study, looking through my desk?” His voice was mocking.
Oh God. She’d ruined everything. No wonder she had ended up destitute, having to resort to a life of criminal behavior to survive. Too curious, too impulsive. Impetuous, she heard in a strict schoolmaster’s voice.
“Please don’t make me leave,” she whispered.
He stalked toward her. No, around her, circling her with long, lazy strides. “Now, why would I make you leave?”
Her whole body felt flushed, perspiring lightly into the crisp new fabric. “I just wanted…I wanted…”
His smile was grim. “I know what you want, Julia.”
Well, that was convenient, since even she didn’t know. “What, then?” she whispered.
“You want information.”
Her eyes widened…because he was right. How did he know? It unnerved her. She wanted information about him, for exactly this reason. He seemed to reach inside her brain, reading thoughts she kept hidden, finding memories left unturned.
She straightened her spine and walked over to him, ignoring the knot in her lower belly. She raised her gaze to his. “Captain Bowen, I would like to apologize for my intrusion on your privacy. If you wish me to leave, I will depart immediately. And of course,” she added, “I’d leave the dress, as well.”
His gaze fell to her body—and stayed there. Heat rose all around them, prickling her skin, as if she stood too close to a furnace. He was the furnace, making the whole world seem hazy and airless.
A raging fire shot through every limb; The blood boiled in his veins…
“You misunderstand.” His voice was low, a rumble of disturbed air around her, a heated breath. “I don’t want you to leave. I’m only asking you to join me for supper.”
Oh.
It should have been comforting. It wasn’t. Too much expectation hung in the air. The very kind she had feared. The kind that happened in the book, between a man and a woman. “And after supper?” she whispered.
“Afterward, I’ll give you what you came here to find.”
Chapter Six
Nate did not turn as she fled the room. The door shut quietly, so gently, before a torrent of footfalls marked her hasty retreat down the hallway. He had scared her. He wasn’t sure why he had been so overt. He could have frightened her enough that she’d try to escape again, and then where would he be? But he’d seen the truth in her eyes, in the rapid pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. She would attend supper.
And afterward, he would escort her upstairs.
A curious calm descended over him. After a decade of planning, of plotting, of gaining enough power that no man could ever threaten him again, he was hours away from revenge. For his mother’s life. His father’s. If he were to let those crimes pass unpunished, he would be admitting that his family had no honor, that their lives were worth nothing.
He doubted she knew the history of her family with his. That they were enemies would be reason enough for her to steal from him. That was how the so-called Quality viewed the world. She was better born, better raised, and was better than the people beneath her. People like him. His privacy, his possessions, his honor—none of it had any value to them.
A soft scratch came from the door.
“Yes?” he barked.
“Someone at the back for you,” came Mrs. Wheaton’s reply.
The only person who ever appeared at the bac
k door for him was Santiago. He didn’t bother asking his housekeeper why she let Adrian into his study, but not Santiago. For one thing, Adrian was a duke. And for another, she had never seemed to like his other friend. She would never say so—indeed, she never said much at all—but it had been clear from the way she deliberately avoided him.
“The girl will be joining me for supper,” he said as he passed her.
He found Santiago standing on the stoop, huddled against the wall. The cold wind was particularly vicious today. Nate waved him inside. “Come in, man. You know better than to knock back here.”
“I don’t mind.”
Santiago didn’t mind much. Nate had saved him from a particularly brutal attack and thus had earned his lifelong loyalty. He did whatever Nate asked. He’d even offered to kill Hargate for him. But that was Nate’s right. His privilege.
“What did you find out?” he asked as they strode into the kitchen and his friend warmed his hands over the stove.
“Not much,” Santiago admitted. “No one has heard from him.”
“Damn. I’d hoped someone would be willing to talk. For coin, if nothing else.”
Santiago turned to warm his backside. “Maybe he left the country. He could have gone anywhere. America. The Orient.”
Nate might have thought so too, but the girl upstairs proved otherwise. Hargate wouldn’t have fled the country if he’d sent his daughter to spy. Or steal. What had Hargate hoped she’d find? There wasn’t much money to be found in the shipping offices. The company had been burning on embers by the time Fortune Investments had purchased it. There were only files full of original Hargate paperwork—whatever hadn’t been confiscated by the courts.
No, his enemy did not seek money. Nate had more valuables in his home than in the warehouse. It didn’t add up. But he had obviously sent her for something.
Therefore, he had not fled the country.
“He’s got enough blunt to resettle,” Nate admitted. “But he might be after more before he leaves.”
“He’s greedy…but the charges against him are solid. He won’t want to stay and face them.”
True enough. So, what was so important that it would make him risk staying?
The paperwork, in sum, proved that Hargate had been siphoning money from the company for many years. A simple discrepancy in the books could be an honest error, but his embezzlement had been consistent and systematic. The invoices and receipts in those files proved it.
What if she hadn’t been sent to steal something? What if she was sent to destroy them? But the authorities had already confiscated more than enough evidence to convict the man. Hargate would know that.
Hargate Shipping had also already been liquidated—almost all of it was now owned by Nate. Stephen Hargate had been indicted for his crimes, though he’d fled before the arrest could be made. The public shame that had come down upon him had gained him permanent expulsion from polite society.
And Juliana too.
So, perhaps it hadn’t only been paternal loyalty that had prompted her actions.
He glanced around the kitchen. The cook had taken her break, as she usually did at this hour. To let the loaves cool. Though he knew she took a nap. She was getting older and soon he’d have to pension her off.
Despite the empty room, he lowered his voice. “What do you know about his daughter?”
Santiago’s brows dipped together. “Her name is Jul—”
“I know what her name is. What else do you know about her?”
He shrugged. “Not much. She attended dinner parties with her father when she was home.”
“When she was home? Where else was she?”
“At school.”
School? No. He’d seen her. He’d seen enough to know she was a woman. Not a schoolgirl. “How old is she? Think, man. This is important.”
“I don’t know. Nineteen?”
Relief flooded him. He wasn’t sure, exactly, at what age he would have called off his plan. Would he have balked if she were seventeen? Lord knew he had been younger than that.
“Find out everything you can about her.”
Santiago nodded as Mrs. Wheaton came into the room. She was quiet on her feet, but they both heard her just the same, their instincts honed for survival. They shared that. They shared more than that, although neither of them ever discussed it.
Nate watched Santiago, feeling an unfamiliar kinship. He had his partners in Fortune Investments, and his employees in his various companies. He had his officers and crew on Nightingale, both the adults and the boys. But he wouldn’t call any of them friends. He didn’t make friends, preferring the easy drift of solitude. He wouldn’t call Santiago a friend, either—he was more of a brother.
A brother who was interested in Mrs. Wheaton.
The realization startled Nate because they had disliked each other from first sight. But it was clear now, it was only Mrs. Wheaton who disliked Santiago. The way he was looking at her—that was more than male appreciation. It was longing, and Nate’s chest hurt just to see it.
“Will Mr. Perez stay for tea?”
She asked the question to Nate, her gaze trained on him…nowhere near Santiago. His heart sank. If anyone deserved to find contentedness, it was Santiago. But it appeared he wouldn’t find it here.
“I don’t think so,” Nate said.
“Very good.”
Nate pretended not to notice the way Santiago’s gaze remained on his housekeeper until she left the room.
…
Julia spent the afternoon reading. The book.
She started at the beginning, because she wanted to understand how a pious monk could end up in such a predicament. Indeed, he was introduced as the noblest of men. He had been raised and educated in a monastery. There was even a boy, an apprentice of sorts, who looked up to the monk with respect approaching idolatry.
The fire filled her bedroom with a cozy warmth. She had a blanket thrown over her feet. And still, she shivered.
Because she suspected what was coming. When the boy declared, “How willingly would I declare the secret which bows me down with its weight! But Oh! I fear! I fear!”
And the Friar answered, “What, my Son?”
To the Friar’s immense shock and dismay, the boy turned out to be a woman. She had dressed as a boy because it was the only way to gain entrance to the monastery. She had lied to him, and he was not happy about that.
It all sounded too familiar.
But the monk’s anger dissipated under the onslaught of his carnal desires. As Julia read on, she became engrossed in the book, and so focused that she almost didn’t hear the faint knock on the door. Stuffing the book beneath the chair’s cushion, she called, “Come in.”
Mrs. Wheaton carried in yet another gown, this one a deep shimmering green with cream undertones, another one far too extravagant to accept. But the only things Julia had to wear.
“I’ve come to help you get ready for supper,” the housekeeper said.
Supper with Captain Bowen. After she had read those wicked words. And knowing he had probably also read them, since she’d found the book in his study.
She felt faint.
Mrs. Wheaton helped arrange her hair atop her head with curls dangling down. The gown seemed exorbitant for her position—where even rags would have been a gift.
The captain stood when she entered the room, and escorted her to her seat. He asked questions about her preferences, which she didn’t know, and laughed when she guessed wrong—it turned out she did not care for beef liver.
The whole situation felt like a fairy tale from a book. Which was how she knew it was wrong.
She might call him a pirate in her head, but he was captain of his own ship, an important man of power and commerce. He was master of this house, even though he spoke kindly to the servants.
While she…was a criminal. There was no reason for him to give her gowns and smile at her across the candlelit table.
“Did you remember anything at a
ll?” he inquired, so earnestly she had to marvel. Almost as if he actually cared.
“Actually, yes.”
He looked surprised. “What’s that?”
“There was a horse.” She paused, embarrassed for a moment. It highlighted the difference between who she had been and who she was now—a fallen woman. Perhaps not in the moral sense—although she couldn’t be sure about that. But certainly fallen in fortunes.
“A horse?” he asked.
“My horse,” she amended. “At least, I remember him as mine. I guess he must have belonged to my family.”
He stared at her, his expression faintly…distrusting. Didn’t he believe her?
She blushed. “I suppose my memory wouldn’t be very reliable, would it? He just seems so real to me now that I’ve remembered him.”
“What was his name?”
“I called him Stockings. Poor horse had to be named by a child. I hope the other horses didn’t tease him too badly.”
She’d meant it as a joke, somewhat, only now the pirate was looking almost worried. As if maybe she’d bumped her head on the way downstairs. Well, she was babbling.
“What about when you went away to school?” His voice reminded her of the leather on her saddle. It looked rough on the outside, but when she ran her fingers over it, it felt smooth. He seemed impossibly harsh, almost regal, at the head of the small table, but his voice flowed over her like a benediction.
“I don’t know where we kept him.” Her laugh was wobbly. “I’m not even sure where he is now.”
“I’m sorry.” He sounded sincere.
She wiped a tear from her cheek. Foolish. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be maudlin. Did you have a horse you loved?”
“I didn’t have a horse,” he answered slowly. “My family didn’t have one, either.”
“Oh.” She winced inwardly. As if he didn’t already see her as spoiled.
He seemed to take pity on her. “Besides, I found my sea legs early. Not everyone has them, but I was climbing the top mast when I was six years old.”
“Mercy. Were your parents in shipping, too?”
He froze. He had picked up his glass to take a drink, but now the crystal hung in the air, his hand stuck in place. His gaze glued to hers. “What did you say?”