How to Be a Proper Lady

by Katharine Ashe

  “You don’t want to cuss like that.” The voice behind him was smooth as satin.

  She wore sailor’s clothing again, her usual heavy coat and broad hat, not the tattered gown he had hastily removed to touch the skin beneath. Yet in his impatience to be inside her again he had never removed her undergarment, and now his imagination beset him like a callow lad. His hands knew that she would be beautiful to the eye.

  Her lips curved into the barest smile.

  “Billy, Gui,” he said, “go now.”

  The boys obeyed.

  He rewrapped the linen about his palm. “How did your appointment pass?”

  “That’s a great deal of blood. You should see to that.”

  “What did the harbormaster say?”

  “I have oil and bandages in my-”

  “Blast it, woman, answer me.”

  “I don’t take orders. And I’ll do nothing until you allow me to dress that properly.” She glanced at the drawing-knife. “Did you cut it on that old thing? It could fester in an instant. You will lose your hand.” His hand that even now wished to trace the slope of her cheek lit by the sun, to explore again the body that had been his to touch in the dark.

  He returned to his work. “Then I shall have a hook installed in its place to frighten off pestering females.”

  She set her fists on her sweet hips, the breeze catching up her tresses and fluttering them about her face and shoulders.

  “You’re in a wretched mood.” She chuckled. “Didn’t you sleep?”

  “Your snoring wakened me.” He sounded waspish. Not his finest self by far, but she brought out the worst in him. And the lust-driven Bedlamite. Her eyes bespoke tangled bedclothes and limbs, and her lips… Jin’s vision fogged again imagining those lips wrapped around his-

  “I don’t snore.”

  “You do,” he snapped, unraveled. “What? Has no other man ever mustered the courage to tell Violet la Vile that she snores like a drunken dockworker?” He released the line and moved toward the gangway.

  “No other man has ever been present while I’m sleeping.”

  He halted. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Cur.”

  “Ever?”

  Her nostrils flared.

  Jin’s pulse skittered, cold and metallic like the panic he’d felt the night before when for a moment he believed he had taken her maidenhead. He tamped it down.

  “Of course not.” He forced a derisive laugh. “That would be like a lord allowing his valet to watch him sleep, wouldn’t it? Mustn’t allow the minions to see you vulnerable. Or rather, acolytes.” Or a former slave whose first master had called him an animal because of the violence he’d seen in him-the nature that could not be tamed.

  “You are a prize boor,” she grumbled.

  He strode up the gangplank, away from her, his head spinning. But the insane desire pressed at him to return to her and tell her the truth-that he had never felt a woman’s touch like hers-that it had never proven difficult to leave a woman’s bed until hers.

  She had allowed him to see her sleep.

  When he’d awoken before dawn he watched her shallow breathing, her full lips and the tilt of her chin, her lovely features peaceful, soft in slumber. But she was not his to hold, and without taking again that which he wished from her, he had torn himself away.

  Now her footsteps followed him.

  “You must come with me to the harbormaster’s office. I told him I could be trusted to provide the money in time, but he didn’t believe me. Only your name got his attention. It seems your reputation precedes you. Not a poor reputation in English ports, apparently.”

  He pivoted. “Why is it that I once more find myself obliged to remind you that I hold a commission from the Royal Navy?”

  She stepped close, nearly as close as that first day when he was a prisoner aboard her ship, nearly as close as the night before. She swept her dark gaze over him.

  “I’ll admit it’s difficult to believe. That a man like you would agree so easily to be bound seems improbable.” A question lit her eyes; its meaning seemed more than the words she spoke. Jin’s heart pounded. This could not be. He was not intended for her, not even to satisfy a temporary desire. She was intended for more.

  “Do not mistake me, Viola,” he forced across his tongue. “I do only that which serves my interests.”

  The grin slipped from her lips.

  “Then you’d better accompany me to the harbormaster’s office shortly or you’ll be tossed into jail with the rest of us. That, I’ll wager, would not serve your interests in the least.” She moved across the deck away from him. “But first I will doctor that wound. That is an order, Lieutenant.”

  Chest tight, he stared at her disappearing down the companionway. Around him the ship rested peculiarly quiet. Sailors were motionless at their work, watching him.

  “Hands at the lines!” he shouted. “Ready to make way.” He swung up the stairs to the helm. At the wheel Mattie met him with a scowl and a shake of his head.

  “What’d you say to put her back up, so short on last night and the loss o’ them low-dunnits?”

  “Nothing of your concern. Make for those mangroves, fifty yards to portside. We will drop anchor there.”

  “Saying something she don’t like? Or doing something? Something you shouldn’t be doing. Teasing her?”

  “You are a besotted fool like the rest of them.”

  Mattie’s thick brow lowered. “Don’t like to see a lady treated poor.” His gruff tone warned. “And this one, she don’t deserve it.”

  Jin fixed his helmsman with a hard stare. “Decide now if you wish to aid or hinder me in this, Matt. But at this late date, if you choose to make trouble for me, take care to wear your knife close when you sleep at night.”

  The hulk’s weathered face paled. “Got us fifteen years between us, you and me. You’d never.”

  “Watch me.”

  Jin descended to the main deck, then to the companionway, black anger boiling beneath his skin. Threats now, to a man he had known since he was a lad. But Mattie knew better than anyone of what Jin was truly capable. Mattie had seen it with his own eyes. Such images did not fade from a man’s memory. Ever. Nor were such acts ever erased from a man’s soul.

  The ship rocked in the rough harbor like an old nag in the traces, reluctantly getting under way. Jin passed through the short corridor to the shipmaster’s open cabin door. The chamber was empty, its accoutrements tidy, the bed in which he had taken his pleasure in a woman of aristocratic blood now neatly made. The sextant no longer graced the writing table, in its place a wooden medicine chest, its drawers carefully labeled, with folded squares of cotton beside it.

  He took up a bottle of wine from beside the chest, uncorked it, and doused the cravat, then unwrapped the stained linen and flexed his hand. Blood oozed from the wound anew. He closed his fist, and his eyes, and breathed in her scent, all about him now-the scent of spiced roses and damnable woman.

  “Afraid it’ll sting?” Like water rippling over a rocky beach, her laughter came from the doorway. Her hat dangled in her hand.

  He pressed the cravat to his palm. “Afraid you will swoon at the sight of blood?”

  She moved to him. “I’ve been a woman for thirteen years, Seton. I’ve seen more blood than probably even you.”

  “Charming.” He worked the alcohol into the slash, the pain nothing to him. “You may wish to curtail some of this delightful frankness when you again reside in your father’s house in Devonshire.”

  She hesitated only a moment. “My father’s house now belongs to me and it is in Massachusetts.”

  With each pass of the cravat the blood flowed afresh.

  “Incompetent man.” She grabbed up a scrap of cotton and trapped his palm between hers, lifting it and pressing down hard. “You’ve been master of your own ship for years and you don’t even know how to treat a wound?”

  He did. Perfectly well, of course. He had tended more sailors’ injuri
es than he cared to count. But he had no desire to stanch this wound yet. Today he wished to bleed.

  Brow taut, she took up a vial of root powder and dusted the cotton then replaced it against his palm, her movements deft and competent and her slender fingers strong upon him, as when she had clasped him to her in the moonlight.

  “Do you truly care nothing for it? For them?” He watched her face as she concentrated on her task. “Does it not affect you that those who call you sister and daughter still hope for your return? That they yet consider you one of theirs?”

  She opened another drawer in the chest and withdrew a small pot corked with wax. “You know nothing of it.”

  “I do.”

  She worked quickly, adept at this as she was at twining her crewmen about her will. With gentle application she spread the oily salve across his palm, then pressed a layer of cloth to it and bound it with a strip of linen. She tied it off and released him, then wiped her hands and closed the medicines in the chest. She slipped the key into her pocket and set her hands on her hips.

  “Don’t make a fist if you mustn’t. And don’t use it for anything but the most innocuous tasks.” Her lashes flickered, as though a not-so-innocuous task his hand might perform occurred to her. “If you mustn’t,” she repeated somewhat airily.

  Beauty, bravado, and maidenlike confusion all wrapped into one. For the first time all day, Jin found himself smiling and he said unwisely, “And if I must?”

  Her gaze snapped away. “Then I know a superb blacksmith who could have a hook ready for you in less than a sennight.” She hefted the medicine chest and set it on the floor at the foot of the bunk. Despite the shapeless coat that concealed her curves, he could not draw his gaze from her. He could watch her move, watch her grin or swagger or sit in perfect stillness upon the bow of her ship with her hair tangling in the wind… endlessly.

  Heat washed through him-this heat entirely foreign, insistent, not desire. His heart raced, a reckless pulse he’d only ever felt once, twenty years earlier. That time he had run, evaded his keepers, and escaped through the dusty cane fields. As they gained on him, his limbs weak from starvation and bare feet bloodied by the dry stalks, his heart had raced thus. And when they had caught him, he’d fought.

  He made himself speak.

  “Why do you resist returning home, Viola? You cannot wish to live the remainder of your days in this manner.” He did not need to gesture about him at the worn walls and narrow window of her tiny cabin, the shabby furnishings she maintained so neatly without the help of a steward, only a seven-year-old cabin boy. “You could have so much more. You were born to have more.”

  “Did Mr. Castle come here while I was at the harbormaster’s office?” Her lovely face was immobile.

  He had his answer, then, the answer he suspected despite the previous night.

  “No.”

  She moved to the door, tugging on her hat. “I heard news of the fire in town. Apparently it spread to a second field, but no one knows if it reached the house. I hope they are all well.” She went ahead onto the gun deck. Her sailors tipped their caps and she cast them smiles as ever, but distracted. Her mind was elsewhere. And, apparently, still her heart. With Aidan Castle.

  “I sent Matouba on horseback,” he said. “He should return shortly with news.”

  She darted him a glance, then climbed the stairs to the main deck. Round the capstan sailors pulled at long poles, chanting an old rhythm as they released the anchor one yard of massive chain at a time. Jin called for a boat to be lowered and passed orders to Becoua to have the sails furled and other chores completed. Ignoring Mattie’s glare, he followed the master of the April Storm off her ship and across the harbor to town.

  The harbormaster came around his desk and extended a hand.

  “If I had known who you were last night, Mr. Seton, I should have insisted on your company for lunch today. But it shall have to be dinner tonight instead, and of course Miss Daly as well. Pity you’ve just missed Captain Eccles. He has gone on to Havana but will be sorry to have passed you by so narrowly.”

  “I don’t believe I am acquainted with Captain Eccles, sir.”

  “Of course you are.” The port master pulled a chair forward for Viola and gestured for her to sit. She did so gingerly, her violet eyes wide.

  The harbormaster settled into his. “According to Eccles, when last you encountered one another he was not yet master of his own ship, but under the command of Captain Halloway.”

  “Ah. Halloway’s lieutenant aboard the Command.”

  “That nasty business with that pirate Redstone and the earl, whatever his name was. Poole?” The port official waved it away, rummaging in his desk drawer. “An excellent story, though. My wife and I found it enormously diverting. Eccles gave me this to pass on to you if you should happen through port. Remarkable that you should do so not a sennight since his sojourn here.” He extended a sealed envelope across the desk. Jin tucked it into his waistcoat.

  “I thank you for the invitation to dine with you tonight, sir. But what of this fine on the April Storm? Will you give me leave to collect the sum from Miss Daly’s banker on Tobago and return it to you within the sennight?”

  “Of course, of course. We ain’t savages here.” He chortled comfortably, and stood. “But not until tomorrow, after you have supped on my wife’s pork pie and jelly. A man hasn’t lived until he’s had a mouthful of that pork pie.” He patted his belly, then ushered them affably to the door.

  “By the by, Seton, I must thank you belatedly for apprehending the Estella last winter. Those Cuban pirates absconded with at least two loaded merchant vessels out of this port and I suspect a third that went missing and we never heard of again. Brutal fellows. Brutal, I tell you, from the stories I got from the few men who survived. Though there weren’t many of those, of course.” He shook his head, then clapped Jin on the shoulder. “It is a fine thing to have a ship like the Cavalier in these waters. Where is that quick little schooner now?”

  “She is indisposed currently, sir.”

  “Cleaning time, I daresay. Well, best get her back in the water where she’ll do honest men some good. Now don’t you be late to dinner or the missus will scold me. Seven o’clock direct.” He closed the door.

  On the street again, amid shoppers passing by and carts laden with the commerce of a port town, Viola turned to him.

  “Englishmen are the most peculiar people I have ever met. They do know what you were, don’t they?”

  Beneath the brilliant blue equatorial sky, Jin’s blood ran cool now, anger gone for the moment. This was what he had come to know, what he had trained himself to for a decade. This game of pretending his past did not exist, the past in which the only identities he owned were slave, murderer, and thief.

  “Indeed they do,” he replied.

  From the shadow of her hat brim, she studied him. “I suppose they prefer you as an ally rather than an enemy.”

  He saw no reason to reply.

  Finally she spoke again. “I need to go to the shop. My dress was ruined riding that horse last night a-and… I…” She stuttered to a halt. “Perhaps you could wait for me at the inn.”

  “As you wish.”

  He watched her along the street because it seemed he could not do otherwise, no matter how he wished it. A pair of women carrying lace-edged parasols stepped hastily to the side as she passed. They looked after her, heads tilted close and lips moving.

  Jin headed toward the inn, drawing the letter from his pocket as he went into the public room. He settled at a table with his back to a corner and slid the blade of his knife along the edge of the envelope.

  It was not from the commissioners of the Admiralty. Not even from Viscount Colin Gray, his erstwhile colleague in the Falcon Club. The hand was delicate, that of another member of the slowly shrinking Club, the single lady agent, a lady with sufficient funds and connections in the Admiralty to send dozens of letters into the Atlantic Ocean searching for him. A lady who would no
t have done so without good reason.

  Apparently, Constance Read needed him.

  April 12, 1818

  London

  Dear Jin,

  I hope this missive finds you well. But I will not waste time in pleasantries for which you care nothing; I will come to my point swiftly.

  Our friend Wyn is unwell. He will not admit to it, but he speaks in riddles as ever, evasive, and I cannot penetrate him. But I fear for him. I have no doubt that Colin has written to you; he has a project for you in the East. I write to beg you to take Wyn with you, provide him with purpose and distraction to cure him. I do believe at this time, Jinan, that you are the only one amongst our small band of friends who can help him erase the past and begin anew.

  Wishing for your quick return to England,

  Fondly,

  Constance

  Wyn Yale, born in Wales yet more comfortable in London or Paris or even Calcutta than in his homeland. He was not even Jin’s age, yet now, according to Constance, the Welshman was comfortable nowhere.

  Among the five members of the Falcon Club, Wyn was the most suited to the work, stealthily ferreting out missing persons of distinction and returning them home. Colin, Viscount Gray and secretary of the Club, was a leader, a man meant for a position of power, not skulking about in shadows. Leam Blackwood had gotten into it reluctantly, avoiding for a time the responsibilities that weighed on him as a Scottish peer, and now he was fully quit of the work. But before Leam left the Club he had invited his young cousin, Constance Read, to join them. She had taken to their mission with alacrity, flitting from one society event to another, charming all with her wit and beauty, and carrying away secrets as they slipped off the tongues of unwitting informants. As for himself, Jin’s search for atonement had made the Club a comfortable fit for him. For a time.

  But Wyn was a spy through and through. He was made for better than the Club, much as Viola Carlyle was made for better than a former pirate.

  He scanned Constance’s missive again. She wrote to him now because he was the person she believed could best help their Welsh friend. Because he was the only other among them who had taken another human’s life in cold blood.