Violet didn’t doubt it in the least.
“Peel, Miss Redmond, if you want to eat tonight,” he said suddenly, sternly. “And I thank you,” he added rather stiffly.
She knew this must constituted a concession for Hercules. “You’re welcome,” she said coolly.
Hercules abruptly gathered up cuts of meat and splashed them into a pot for boiling.
Everyone should feel necessary.
And as she worked—worked!—alongside the sort of man her mother would cross the street to avoid she was absurdly moved and utterly piqued that Flint understood what she needed better than she did…and had found a way to give it to her that, of course, benefited him, too. In just this way he’d rescued Lavay and won a first mate and saved Hercules and now had a cook, albeit a temperamental one, for life.
She began to understand why anyone would want to follow him anywhere.
The man was hopelessly, dangerously, bloody clever.
And he looked after his own in a way he’d never been looked after.
And the warmth in her body became a warmth in her chest.
Chapter 14
Flint had decided to take his meal in the mess with the men that night—Miss Redmond took hers in her quarters, as she had from the moment she’d stolen aboard—and when he emerged, leaving the crew behind deep in a card game, stars had begun to wink on, and mauve clouds were scudding over the surface of a rising moon like a crew of polishers.
He saw her leaning against the rail of the ship. Almost as though she was waiting for him.
A strand of hair whipped gaily about her lips in the wind, an escapee from her coiffure the way she was an escapee from her family. He found himself rooting for the rest of her hair to escape.
He was before her in two strides. Almost out of pique, he caught the strand between his fingers. Stilled it. It slid like silk in his grasp. He held on to it longer than he should, helpless not to. Captivated by the small, intense pleasure of it.
“One got away, Miss Redmond,” he teased softly.
Her eyes were in shadow. But he could see her mouth curve a little. And even over the rush of the sea, he could hear her breathing.
Which mean her heart was beating faster now.
He liked being the reason for this.
Slowly her hand went up to take the strand from him. He knew the backs of her hands were untenably soft, because he’d covered them today with his own rough ones during the Potato Incident. He sensed everywhere she was achingly soft, her smooth pale skin emblematic of her sheltered, privileged life. Such a contrast to his own.
He wanted to touch her again.
Likely he could.
Likely he shouldn’t.
He was surprised that sparks didn’t fly from that heating hairsbreadth gap between their hovering fingers.
And at last she took the strand of hair from him without brushing his skin at all.
The disappointment was so ridiculously acute it briefly knocked all thought from his mind.
She ducked her head and smoothed it slowly back behind her ear, a gesture that struck him as almost excruciatingly sensual. He told himself it was simply because it was a quintessentially female motion, that it had been too long since he’d abandoned himself to the pleasures of a woman’s body. He wondered if her neatness was vanity, or her way of imposing order on a chaotic world. Perhaps neatness was her only real control Miss Redmond could lay claim to in her family. Perhaps that’s why she occasionally flung herself about like a firefly trapped in a jar, and had ended up on the high seas with a savage earl as a result.
He had never wondered so much about any woman in his life.
Surely it wasn’t healthy.
“Thank you,” she said finally, once she’d got the hair back in place. She’d tried for coolly amused. But he cherished the tremble in her voice.
He thought enough time on the sea might unravel her in interesting ways. Beginning with that strand of hair and on down.
He contemplated the wisdom of fomenting this.
Wisdom had nothing to do with it, of course.
“I enjoyed my potatoes more than usual this evening,” he volunteered devilishly.
“I cannot begin to tell you how very much this gratifies me, Captain.”
He smiled. She smiled back at him. He wondered if the two of them held conversation in the dark because they both found it safer. It was difficult to see expression clearly in the dark, and so they could interpret them however they pleased.
“Did you think I ought to learn the meaning of work, Captain? Hence the potatoes.”
Good volley!
“I would very much enjoy teaching you the meaning of work.” His voice was quick and low and the meaning unmistakable.
Her breath audibly caught. He’d unnerved her.
She’d unnerved herself.
Irritated, restless, confused, he turned away then, looking out to sea. He placed his hands on the rail, soothed as usual by touching his ship. He began absently tracing a finger in the moisture collecting there.
“Miss Redmond, captaining a ship is nothing if not a constant exercise of strategy. You should know that I excel at it.”
He felt rather than saw her faint smile. She understood both the innuendo and the warning.
“The potatoes were strategy?”
“An intricate one, in fact. Hercules wanted more spices and more assistance in the galley. I simply cannot afford to give him both at the moment. By now you likely realize how unwise it would be to make Hercules unhappy. I thought you might welcome the…variation in routine. It is my understanding that a bored Violet Redmond is capable of wreaking havoc, and I thought it rather poetic that you should replace the cook’s mate you bribed to bring you aboard this ship. And I know, Miss Redmond, what it’s like to be among so many others…but to never feel like you belong. Hence my solution.”
“Clever,” she acknowledged softly after a moment. Not disputing any of it. She sounded absolutely sincere. And rather surprised.
Why on earth he should feel unduly flattered was beyond him.
“Thank you,” she said gently. She sounded surprised. And so uncharacteristically humble he was disconcerted.
But then she said quickly, as if belatedly hearing it: “‘Cannot afford’?”
He gave a short laugh. Which contained very little humor. “Not everyone is a Redmond. My fortune has always depended either upon trade or upon bounty. The king discovered me, shall we say, between fortunes. The title is mine; my future, my income, everything I want, depends entirely upon capturing Le Chat.”
Another warning, of sorts. He let her absorb this for a moment.
She turned abruptly to face the sea then, too.
Her elbow nearly touched his. He had never been so powerfully aware of a woman’s elbow, not to mention his own elbow, in his life. It was beginning to make more sense to touch her than not to touch her. A dangerous rationalization, to be sure.
She was pensive for a moment. He had the unpleasant suspicion that she was thinking.
“While we’re on the topic of strategy, Captain Flint…I’m curious about something. Were these ships robbed and sunk by Le Chat owned and financed by the merchants sailing them? Or were their voyages financed by another person or persons? A group perhaps?”
“Why do yo—”
And then he noticed that her hands were gripping the rail just a little too tightly.
“You know something I do not,” he said sharply.
A hesitation. “I might.”
“And I might hurl you overboard if you don’t tell me what you know.”
“If you intended to ever throw me overboard you would have done it long before now.” Admirable imitation of bored insouciance.
“I will do whatever is strategically necessary, Miss Redmond. Try me.”
She turned to him, trying to decide whether this was true.
“Very well. I will tell you, Captain, if you…trade your quarters with me for the rest of the w
eek. While you sleep in the Distinguished Guest Cabin.”
She was bargaining?
“If you peel potatoes without complaining, losing a limb to your knife or your temper around Hercules, I will allow you to sleep in my quarters on the third evening. I will sleep in the Vole—Distinguished Guest Cabin. One evening,” he immediately countered. He was a trader, after all.
“Done,” she said simply.
“Then tell me what you know.”
“It’s less what I know than what I suspect. My father is head of the Mercury Club, a very exclusive investment group. They are quite selective about their membership—only very wealthy, very clever men are ever invited to join, and they need to be approved by the entire club to gain membership. And since you’ve been a trader, too, surely you know entire groups finance ships and then take a share of the profits, to reinvest or disburse however they please.”
He nodded shortly. “So what are you suggesting?”
“Mr. Hardesty is allegedly a legitimate merchant. The Comte Hebert fully intended to do business with him, having done business with him in the past. So what could be his motive as Le Chat? And what becomes of the goods he steals?”
“The motive in piracy is invariably greed and opportunity. And no matter the motive, Miss Redmond, what Le Chat—your brother—is doing is wrong.”
A beat of silence. “Unless it isn’t.”
He was speechless.
“How could…” He stopped. He could hear his patience groaning like frayed rigging toward the snapping point. “How could that possibly be true?”
“Lyon is not simply a…a criminal. I know my brother.”
“Or knew him. After all, he left the family fold, didn’t he, and you didn’t know he’d do that.”
She went still.
He’d meant to be unkind. He wasn’t sorry.
Well, he wasn’t very sorry.
He was driven to try to explain. “Picture, if you will, an aging sea captain driven at the point of a sword into a launch and sent out to sea to an almost certain death. And then tell me how right that could be.”
She shifted restlessly.
“Perhaps Le Chat robs from the rich to give to the poor?” she suggested desperately.
“You’re suggesting Le Chat is Robin Hood? Good God in heaven, Miss Redmond.”
“And how do we know how many of these piracies can be attributed solely to Le Chat?”
“We don’t know,” he said impatiently. “The robbing and sinking of ships is what seems to matter to everyone. But I do know Captain Moreheart owned The Steadfast. Whether or not he was but one of a group of investors I cannot say. And I cannot speak for the other ships.”
“How can we learn about the other ships that sank?” she pressed stubbornly. “What they were carrying, how their journeys were financed? Aren’t you curious, Captain Flint?”
She had the tenacity of a weed.
They stared at each other in silence. He sighed the sigh of the long suffering, and absently rubbed a finger into the moisture collecting at the rail of the foredeck, tracing and tracing a shape. He tipped his head back, seeking guidance. Saw Orion. Saw Sirius. Old friends and collaborators, he and the stars and his sextant and charts. But the stars offered up nothing but their beauty and their unflagging assistance with mapping his course across the earth.
Not one of them hinted at what he should to do about this bloody woman.
His mission had been so simple just days ago. And now, though he suspected he was indulging a fantasy, and that she was bound to be gravely disillusioned about her brother…he found he simply didn’t want to disappoint her yet. He didn’t want to be the one who darkened her hope. He admired it. He envied it.
For an instant he desperately wanted to be the one who made her face glow with happiness.
“We’ll speak to Mr. Musgrove in Brest and inquire at the docks to see what we can discover about the ships.”
“And I can accompany you to question him?”
“Yes.” He said it curtly, after a moment. Not looking at her.
But he could feel the pleasure and triumph radiating from her. I made her happy.
Oddly, the realization that this made him untenably happy also made him irritable.
That strand of hair had gotten loose again. It whipped gaily around her head, giddy to be free.
“You won’t forget our bargain?” She meant two nights from now she’d be sleeping in his much more comfortable bed if she was a compliant cook’s mate.
He pictured her in his bed, every one of those strands loose over his pillows.
“How could I forget?” He said it shortly.
He glanced down then. And suddenly realized what he’d been tracing in the moisture on the rail: Violet Redmond’s clean, lyrical profile.
He stared, alarmed. Then wiped it almost frantically clean immediately.
“Good night, Miss Redmond. You’d best go below now.”
She was clearly startled to be so abruptly dismissed.
“Good night, Captain.”
He watched her go, spine straight as a soldier’s, inevitably tucking her hair behind her ear as she went.
Chapter 15
It was the oddest bargain she’d ever struck, but she’d survived three days of potato peeling without losing her limbs or her temper, and two more nights of tossing and turning on the lumpy little mattress in the vole hole.
Two days during which the earl had made himself surprisingly scarce. At least when she was about.
He’d left her the other night with his patience nearly in tatters, she knew. But embedded like a thorn in her pleasure at winning a concession about Lyon was the worry she’d driven the earl away. Bored him, perhaps.
Feeling unaccountably deflated, she was nevertheless ready for a comfortable bed and a room that smelled like a clean earl and not like dozens of indifferently clean Distinguished Guests. So when the third evening arrived, she’d tentatively knocked on the captain’s cabin door. And waited.
Then turned the knob when there was no answer.
She slinked in and closed the door. She slipped into her night rail, and unpinned her hair, and gave her head a vigorous shake to encourage it to plummet Rapunzel-like down her back. She divided it into two plaits, and watching herself in the earl’s mirror, brushed it for fifty strokes on either side, until it gleamed and poured through her hands like water.
She lit the lamp perched on the little table next to the bed, which pulsed into life and illuminated about as effectively as a firefly. She thought she might read a bit before she doused it for sleep.
Miles’s book generally did the trick for her when it came to inducing sleep.
She made her way to his bookshelf. And here were the books on English grammar the earl had studied. She furtively pulled one down and thumbed through it with a peculiar, furtive, tenderness, as though she were peeking into his heart. In the margins were notes to himself, in a hand at first very careful, clumsy, which she found unaccountably moving. Then bolder, freer, more certain as it went on.
And here was proof that he hadn’t sprung fully arrogant from the sea, like Poseidon. He had transformed himself through sheer will.
She drew her finger across the spines of books in Spanish, which she could read a little. Don Quixote she recognized. Its presence was ironic: the earl wasn’t one to tilt at windmills, while he thought her belief in Lyon’s virtue and innocence clearly qualified as such. There were a few books in French, which she could read fluently: Le Roman de la Rose. Really, Flint? This amused her, as he’d steadfastly maintained he was not romantic. Though certainly it was a book of action. Embossed in the spines of other books was language that was Arabic or Greek and she’d no hope of ever understanding, the letters looking more like hieroglyphics to her.
He’d been everywhere, indeed. No wonder he wanted to belong to something, to someplace.
At last she took down her brother Miles’s book on Lacao, and took it to bed with her. She pulled up the bl
anket that smelled so like the earl she might have been draped in him. Soap and man. And for a dizzied instant she rested her cheek upon her knees, and wondered, breathlessly, precisely what that would be like.
The book tipped from her knees, and pages gapped a very little in one spot, as though Flint had marked a place where he was reading. Perhaps at the anecdotes of the women who wore naught above their waists for clothes?
Curious, she slipped her fingers into the gap.
And a jasmine blossom tumbled into her lap.
She stared at it, as dumbstruck as though a star had fallen clean out of the sky.
Its bruised cream petals seemed to glow against the stark white of her night rail.
Gently, gently, she settled the book down on the bed. She took up the bruised cream blossom between two trembling fingers, as though she’d captured a fairy.
Succumbing to impulse, she closed her eyes and drew it softly along the line of her jaw. He’d done it as though he were trying to memorize her.
The realization was a sweet kick in her chest, like a blossom too tightly furled bursting opening.
Oh God. This was a man who only kept things that meant a good deal to him.
And that moment, again, was like her first glimpse out onto the sea. Infinite, terrifying, glorious, very uncertain.
And then she heard the unmistakable footsteps pounding toward the cabin.
She sat bolt upright. Bloody hell!
She snatched up the book, clapped the blossom back between the pages, frantically gauged the distance between the bed and the bookshelf, and finally decided to shove both beneath the bed and snatched the blankets up to her chin.
She froze in the semi-dark when the door opened and Captain Flint strolled in, already undoing the buttons on his shirt with one hand while depositing a lit lantern on a small table. He tugged the shirt up out of his pants and flung it off over his head and onto the back of his chair, then and paused in front of the mirror.
I Kissed an Earl Page 19