Without hat and cravat obscuring it, the shape of her face was nearly a heart. Dark curls swept back from the peak of her brow, revealing quite clearly her delicate chin, soft mouth, and big eyes staring up at him as though he were some sort of monster. A swift flutter of black lashes dipped over violet pools, and slowly, like a rising tide, a pink flush stole over her cheeks.
As though in choreographed response, heat funneled into Jin’s groin.
Inconvenient. He should have seen to that particular necessity while in Boston. He didn’t need a woman aboard turning him into a randy lad, a sailor after a long cruise confronted with an unreasonably pretty face.
Not merely a pretty face. She wore only a plain white cotton shirt now. No coat or waistcoat disguised the edges of the useless undergarment beneath it-an undergarment that did nothing to hide the round beauty of her breasts pressing at the laces of the shirt. Breasts the perfect size to fit into a man’s hand.
A lady should wear more than that. If this lady wore more than that she would not be quite so… distracting.
Mesmerizing.
But he didn’t need her breasts at such close quarters to remain stalled in the corridor. The curve of her lush lower lip to her chin decorated with the small dark mole fixed him in place. It seemed as though a master artist had lovingly painted a portrait of a pretty girl, only to find her too perfect, and added that spot to mar his work, but it produced the opposite effect.
“Can’t help yourself, can you?” Her voice came between them beautifully smooth.
Jin blinked. Lifted his head he had not realized he lowered.
“They never can.” Her tone did not alter.
He stepped back. Straightened his thoughts.
“I was returning this.” He proffered the spyglass. His voice was rough.
“Stole it while I wasn’t looking, and now you hope to return it before you’re caught?” She arched a single, slightly unkempt brow. “Take care, Seton. You’re acting like an anxious pirate.”
He drew in a tight breath through his nostrils. “A sail breached the horizon this morning. I put a watch on it.”
The dark eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t see fit to inform me?”
“It failed to show again.”
“You’re accustomed to doing things your own way, I think.”
“I like to spare my captain unnecessary concerns when she no doubt has more important matters to see to.” Like taking the damned telescope from his outstretched hand so that he could return atop where he belonged and where she and her underclad, soft-lipped, sharp-tongued provocation were not. His collar felt hot. And other regions of his body. But he had never been a man ruled by lust. He would not become one now.
But something more than lust drew him. He knew this even as he sought to deny it to himself. Her brazen confidence, her unafraid tongue, her successes in the face of the setback of her entire life, even her crew’s idiotic devotion marked her as an exceptional woman. A woman quite unlike any he had known.
He had known many women.
“Your responsibilities are not modest,” he murmured.
Her brow crept higher. “Doing it a bit too brown, don’t you think, sailor?”
“I am endeavoring to serve my captain, as promised.” And he was. Not as she expected. But a vow was a vow, and no peculiar confusion of desire or little woman’s taunts could undo what he had labored twenty-two months preparing.
“By setting her crew against her?”
He screwed up his brow in question.
“Frenchie and Sam,” she supplied. “The torn sail.”
“I did what you told me to do.”
She set her hands on sweetly curved hips. “And they knew you disagreed with me.”
“I shouldn’t think it would matter if they did. A captain is bound to overrule his lieutenant when he sees fit.”
“His lieutenant?”
Would that she were not a woman. “Her.”
Her eyes narrowed to a squint. But it did not detract from her loveliness. Goddamn it, he wished she were a snot-nosed lad he could take down with a well-aimed fist.
“You really can’t say it, can you?” Her voice rose slightly. “You can’t bear to call me captain. It kills you to even imagine it, you arrogant son of an Egyptian.”
Jin’s temper, well tied for days, slipped free of its moorings. He moved so that the space between them nearly disappeared and he was looking down at her upturned face.
“See here, you spoiled minx, I may be under your command but I am not required to accept-”
“Spoiled minx? Minx?” she exclaimed. “I don’t think a man has ever dared call me that.”
“Maybe if one had, you wouldn’t be so damned-”
“How could you possibly know whether I am spoiled or not?”
“I can see it well enough in your men’s behavior.”
“I warned you, you wouldn’t like it.”
“Would not like what?” Her flashing eyes? Her full lips? The wavy lock of hair tumbling over her brow, obscuring the perfection and rendering her yet more enticing?
“Serving under me.”
Under. Atop. Any way she liked it. And with a fiery temper like hers, he suspected he would like it quite a bit. Given all, the notion appealed more than it ought. The sparkle of challenge in her eyes went straight to his cock.
“You can’t bear it, you conceited excuse for a respectable privateer.” Her mouth curved into a satisfied grin. “Aha. That’s got a rise out of you.”
In a manner of speaking.
He sucked in breath slowly, battening down on his temper and arousal at once. “I am not an excuse for a respectable privateer. I am one.”
“You think that simply because you have a commission from your British government you no longer have the instincts of pirate scum?”
The rise abruptly fell, a bucket of ice dashed on his unwelcome ardor.
“I do.”
“Prove it.”
He grasped her hand, found it clenched, and peeled her fingers apart. He placed the telescope in her palm and closed her hand around it.
“I do not take that which is not mine by right.” He released her.
Her big eyes were in a tumult, her breaths fast. The reaction seemed excessive, but it suited Jin. It was closer to fear than her earlier attitude.
“It’s because I am a woman.” A quaver threaded through her satin voice. “Some men cannot accept orders from a woman.”
“It is because you are a harpy. And I am not some men.”
He left. If he remained in that damned corridor for another minute he might be tempted to tell her the truth.
It was not because she was a woman, a remarkably pretty one with ripe lips he could imagine performing all sorts of tasks other than spewing insults. It was not because he had been a pirate for much of his life. It was not even because he had promised himself to see her to England come hell or high water. It was because sometime over the past two years searching for a girl stolen from her home at a tender age, Jin had realized something profoundly disturbing. Something he rarely allowed himself to ponder.
She had a home to return to. She had a family. That she denied that now, even after so many years, living her life as though the family who cherished her did not exist, infuriated him.
He felt fury. Toward a woman he barely knew.
In his youth, anger had consumed him. For over a decade now, however, he had trained himself to turn that anger toward useful occupation. But this time it stared him in the face in the form of a willful woman who did not understand that the gift she threw away was everything some people-he-ever dreamed of possessing.
Chapter 5
“Glum today, mum? On account of the weather, I wager.”
Viola slanted her cabin boy a scowl, then regretted it when his freckled face fell. He wasn’t but seven, full of good cheer and excitement about everything, much as she’d been when her father first brought her aboard his ship. Her ship for nearly two years no
w. The ship she called home, currently on its way to a man she hoped to also call home someday.
She ruffled Gui’s carroty hair and his grin resurfaced, making him look a great deal like his grandfather, Frenchie. He jumped off the quarterdeck rail onto the planks and slapped his little thigh, the wind ruffling his disordered locks further.
“I know what’ll pick up your spirits, Cap’n. A bite of Little Billy’s grub.” He scampered down the narrow quarterdeck stair and disappeared below.
Little Billy’s grub couldn’t pick up anyone’s spirits. If that lad had cooked a day in his life before setting foot aboard the April Storm, Viola would sell him the whole ship for a dollar.
But she was indeed ill-tempered. Already today she’d snapped at Sam, burned her arm on a sliding line, and tripped over a bucket, and it wasn’t even noon yet under the canopy of low gray clouds. Like the early summer sky, her mind wasn’t clear, and it made her tetchy.
She knew perfectly well what caused it. Who. He stood at the forecastle, his back to her as always, broad shoulders and long legs cut against the bright ocean. He seemed to like spending his leisure time at the fore of the ship. Probably because it was as far away from her as he could get.
He hadn’t liked her insults three days earlier. No man would. She didn’t even know where they’d come from. Her mouth simply opened and out poured nasty word after nasty word. He probably deserved most of them, but that didn’t mean she should give her tongue free rein. Especially when he’d been looking at her like…
No. She must have imagined it.
In the early days, Aidan had gotten that look in his eyes just before he kissed her. That hot, focused look like he was thinking something very different than what they were talking about. But she didn’t know a thing about Jinan Seton. He probably looked at everybody that way when they were insulting him.
He’d kept his temper fairly well. If he truly lost it she could accuse him of mutiny. But a man who lived the life he had did not lose control often. When he did, though, it was a little alarming.
Rather, thrilling. He’d grabbed her hand and the controlled strength in his firm, deliberate touch rocked her.
As he often did when she was staring at him from afar, now he turned and met her gaze. Without hesitation he descended from the forecastle and came aft across the deck and up the companionway to the quarterdeck. It was as though with simply her gaze she beckoned, and as her willing servant, he responded. As though he wished to please her.
Idle dreams. Serena had been the dreamer, Viola the adventurer.
Jinan Seton was certainly an adventure of sorts.
From along her nose, she looked him up and down. She’d learned that commanding men looked other men up and down, honest men looked other men in the eye, and dishonest men looked everywhere else.
“The men have been talking about making port at St. George’s Island.” He met her gaze directly, all business since the interlude below deck when he touched her perfunctorily and made her tremble. “They say you did so once before on this route.”
She furrowed her brow. “They have a spot they’d like to return to there.” A brothel where the girls wore nothing but net stockings and lace undergarments. Or so a seaman, drunk as a sow, had told her that night long ago. Only seventeen at the time, and longing to know what would encourage Aidan’s interest, Viola had nearly bribed the sailor to return to the brothel and purchase a set of the girls’ garments for her. She hadn’t the courage to do it, though. When she told Aidan about it later, he chucked her on the chin and said she was too good a girl for that sort of thing.
“Why not allow them?” Seton glanced at the horizon, then the water running fast along the port side. The breeze was fair, and she had noticed he didn’t miss a thing. He was always watching, calculating, planning the ship’s next move. “A day in port will not put us off schedule.”
But it would give the men a chance to introduce him to that brothel.
“No.” They could afford a few days in port. Stopping at Bermuda wouldn’t hurt a thing. “No. We should continue on. With storms unpredictable as they are, I don’t want to lose time while I have the advantage.”
“Unpredictable?” His handsome face remained passive.
“Early summer storms. You must have sailed these waters a hundred times.” She set a suspicious glare upon him.
“Not recently. I have spent a great deal of my time during the past several years on the other side of this ocean. Along the coast of England, principally.”
He spoke with such ease, as he did everything. She’d never met a sailor so competent and purely confident, perfectly settled in who he was and what he intended. It stirred a frisson of memory in her, of a time when the men of her world walked with a sense of entitlement. In her child’s recollection those men treated women not only with deference-as her crew did now-but with consideration. Men who not only did as one told them, but anticipated a girl’s wishes.
On her seventh birthday, the baron had walked her to the old oak and showed her the swing he’d installed there. Without even asking, he knew she’d wished it above all things. He’d held her hand, her tiny one in his warm palm, and she’d looked up into the smiling face of the man she loved like a father, because he’d been that to her, even though all along he knew he was no such thing.
Strange how a former pirate should seem familiar to her in the same manner as her former father. But there was something uncannily gentlemanly about Jinan Seton, a manner that bespoke cultivation despite his ungentlemanly profession. Perhaps that was how he’d gotten his royal nickname. And his arrogance.
He seemed to be studying her, almost as though he were waiting for her reaction. As he did so, his gaze grew oddly intent, and warm, as in the corridor the day before.
“Whatever the case,” she said, ignoring her tripping pulse, “you know how common sailors can seek to inveigle their captains into doing what they wish despite the negative consequences.”
His brow creased. “What sort of negative consequences-”
“Cap’n!” A shout came from the lookout. “Spar’s loose off the foremast.”
“Again,” she muttered. “It’ll have to be refitted when we dock at Trinidad.” She began to make for the stair.
Seton put out a hand to stay her. “I’ll see to it.” His clear eyes did not question but looked once again carefully at her.
She nodded him on.
He saw to the dislodged yardarm. She watched as best she could between the full sails, impressed as always with his calm command of her men, their ready acceptance of his orders. Difficult task completed, he returned to her post at the helm as though she had called him back. Which she had not, although a demon in her had been wishing it for no apparent reason other than she liked to be goaded. Or simply merely to see him up close. At certain angles, the sight of him made her a little breathless.
At all angles. She couldn’t ignore his lean physique she’d seen unclothed, his gorgeous mouth. If she were a regular woman, she would probably be falling all over him.
Her tetchiness redoubled.
“What do you want, Seton?”
“Further orders.”
“No you don’t. You want to annoy me.”
“Seems like you are taking care of that well enough on your own.” He folded his arms over his chest, and his perfect mouth tilted up at one corner. He wore only a waistcoat over his shirt, and the beauty of pure male muscle stretching the linen tight muddled her wits.
“It’s the men.” She admitted a partial truth. “Little more than a sennight out and they’re eager to be back on shore.”
“They have only recently returned from your last cruise. Perhaps you are a bit hard on them?”
“Well, I may be that after all.” Not much of a retort. But it made his grin broaden slightly. Viola found herself seeking for more not-so-clever ripostes that might stretch that grin into an actual smile.
“You needn’t deal with any of this.” He seemed to speak slowly
. “Ever again. You could cash in the April Storm and say good-bye to grumbling sailors and broken yardarms forever. If you wish.”
She released a tight chuckle, struggling not to stare at his arms. But his crystalline eyes were compelling enough, a fall of dark hair shadowing them.
“Why would I wish a thing like that?” She made an effort at a scoff. “Sun getting to you, Seton?”
“Perhaps only your men’s vain wishes.”
Again with the brothel.
“The men don’t need a stopover in Bermuda this week.” She rushed the words because the sudden notion of his clear blue gaze fixed on her while she was wearing nothing but net stockings and lace wiped her mind clean of all else. “They need a golden beach under swaying palm trees three weeks from now.”
For a moment he said nothing. Then, “And what do you need, Viola Carlyle?”
Her every muscle went still as stone.
“Your sister still believes you are alive, Miss Carlyle.” His steady gaze did not waver. “I have searched you out and come here to bring you home.”
Chapter 6
Viola’s throat seized up entirely.
“I don’t have a sister.”
“You do, and she has been waiting for you to return for fifteen years.”
“You’re mistaking me for someone else.”
His brow lowered. “Why haven’t you?”
She twisted her lips to control her sudden quivers. “Mistaken-?”
“Returned home.”
She had no response that she could share with this man. She’d barely even told her father as he lay dying, when finally after thirteen years he had asked her that same question.
“You could have returned to England at any time these past years. You have a ship of your own, and sufficient funds.” Seton’s regard remained constant. He had a way of doing that, holding her gaze as though he could wait an hour, a day, a fortnight for a reply.
Except in the corridor below three days earlier, when for a moment he had looked-strangely-impatient.
How to Be a Proper Lady Page 5