I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (13 page)

Saw his eyes fly to her fingers and back to her face. He missed nothing. Like someone who’d needed to vigilantly defend his perimeter his entire life. He noticed; he collected facts; he stored them up the way soldiers stacked cannonballs or bricks for the building of fortresses or launching of attacks.

“He matters very much to you.” It was a statement, not a question. “Your brother. Your family.”

She’d been too forthcoming. He knew her family was both her strength and her Achilles heel. She would need to learn to become more circumspect for Lyon’s sake.

“Why were you in Lacao as a boy? Did you see the blue butterflies?”

He smiled faintly for some reason, and only then did she hear the yearning in her voice: She would have liked to see the blue butterflies, too.

“I did indeed see the butterflies. Splendid creatures. Otherworldly, like something from a dream. I was serving aboard a ship called The Steadfast when we docked there. Captain Moreheart’s ship.”

“Serving? But you were…weren’t you just a small boy?”

He stared at her, clearly bemused. Thinking. Then pressed his lips together, considering which end of that vast question he should grasp to begin answering it.

“Yes,” was all he said, finally. Sounding as though he was humoring her with even that. With a small, maddening smile meant to imply that bridging the distance between her life and his was too tedious a conversational journey to contemplate. And the longer the conversation went on, the wider the gulf would become, and they would become like two people forever throwing ropes to each other across a chasm. And missing.

This could become very embarrassing, in other words.

Violet had never feared embarrassment. And as far as she was concerned, a defended perimeter merely invited breech attempts.

“But your mother…” She left the question dangling open. A door he could walk through if he chose.

He must have seen something akin to distress in her face. Otherwise she was certain it wasn’t a question he would answer.

“My mother became ill from drink and could no longer care for me. So I went to work.” He pronounced the last word ironically, like a tutor reminding a student of a freshly learned concept. “And ships…how could anyone resist the lure of a job on a ship?” He said this in all seriousness. Reminding her of her brother Miles and his passion for all the exotic things that crawled and flew, and she was visited again by a wave of guilt and homesickness, and a peculiar affection for the idiosyncrasies and specific passions of men. It made the one who stood before her seem human and almost—almost—endearing.

“Unfathomable,” she agreed soberly.

It was a nautical joke. He smiled again, pleased and surprised. One day she might grow accustomed to his smiles, but for now each new one was like stumbling across an undiscovered constellation. She felt unequal to them.

And with this latest smile, something startlingly like ease crept into the room. She smiled, too, and with two of them beaming at each other the atmosphere became rather heady.

“But you were raised in America?”

“I was born in England. And by the laws of England I am a citizen. But I survived the voyage across the sea with my mother, and we settled in New York State for a time, until she…was no longer able to care for me. I was fortunate to be mentored by Captain Jeremiah Moreheart, who gave me a position as a cabin boy, and made sure I learned everything there is to learn about sailing. He mattered very much to me.”

He smiled a little. To her astonishment, she thought she heard a sort of gentle solicitousness: He was instinctively trying to soften his otherness, to ease that hint of distress she’d been unable to disguise. To reassure her that, at one time, there were people in his life he cared for and who cared for him.

The confidence felt like a gift, and she felt a little shy about it. Odd, because she would truly have to wrack her brain to recall the last time she felt awkward. Or at loss. This man was truly the very frontier of “awkward” for her.

“But shouldn’t you like to live in England, since you are now an earl? We do like our nobleman there.”

To her wonderment, they were officially having a conversation, complete with rhythm and ease. But don’t think about it. It was like playing the pianoforte: If you looked at your hands whilst you played a tune you would become too conscious and lose your place in the song rather rapidly.

But for the first time in her life she was greedy to know things, anything, about a man.

“Your mother was English?”

“My mother was Irish, Cherokee Indian, and perhaps a few other things as well, but those are the things I know about. My father was English. So I’ve heard.” Very dry, that sentence. She tried not to look too fascinated, but it was a struggle. Indian blood swam in his veins. He was so nonchalant about his parentage, when parentage was the source of everything that made her who she was: her privilege, her security, everything she’d known or enjoyed.

“And when did you go to sea?”

“I went to sea at about age ten, and after that I lived—”

He stopped abruptly. He went still, his eyebrows diving a little. His eyes flared wide in wary surprise, perhaps at the fact that he’d been enjoying their exchange. Had lost himself in it. And as though his goodwill was contained in an hourglass and the sands had run out, he waved vaguely at the map. “Everywhere. But mostly in America or at sea. I took my first command at eighteen.”

I took my first command. How easily he said it. As it “taking” was his birthright, even as a parentless child.

His cool faint smile was a polite punctuation mark to their conversation. A shutter came down over his eyes. Likely he’d said all of this purposefully, because it splendidly did the job of re-erecting a wall and emphasizing the differences between them. Putting her in his place.

“Captain Moreheart was captain of The Steadfast, Miss Redmond.”

And Le Chat had sunk that ship and killed the captain.

He smiled with faint irony.

“And now I must see to my ship. You may stay through the next port, Miss Redmond. From there I’ll decide what becomes of you. You will stay below decks in the vole hole until informed you may walk above. I’ll send Lavay to escort you there. And your aim is impeccable. Really quite shocking, in fact.”

At least something had shocked him.

He was gone, closing the door none too gently behind him.

Chapter 9

F lint found Lavay on the foredeck waiting for him as he’d been commanded. Lavay was too polite to look speakingly at his watch and back at his captain. He noted the tardiness with his eyebrows instead.

“I was detained. My apologies, Lavay. Come walk with me.”

It was a mercifully sun-blasted day, with high, frisky, cold winds filling the sails and reddening faces. Flint’s crew was going about the business of maintaining a ship, cleaning decks, inspecting rigging, stitching sails. He heard a distant lowing; a few cows were aboard below, destined for dinner. Hercules, the cook, was below, likely muttering darkly beneath his breath and doing the work of two men, slicing and chopping and grinding and boiling, since bloody Miss Redmond had paid the incompetent cook’s mate to stay in London.

“In a hurry, Flint?” Lavay said mildly, which was when Flint realized he’d been striding as though he could walk across the water to Le Havre.

He paused at the bow. He craved a cheroot, perhaps a cigar, maybe even opium, for God’s sake. He’d tried all of them but never thereafter partook in them, apart from the occasionally socially proffered cigar.

Something strange had happened a few moments ago. Some strangely perilous door had opened during that conversation with Miss Redmond. He’d lost his equilibrium. He was uncertain how to regain it. He would take the wheel of the ship today, needing something to do with his hands. He said nothing. He put his hands in his pockets, but they didn’t belong there, either. So he placed them flat on the rail, and touching his ship seemed to soothe him. Still he said nothing.

So Lavay began, sounding amused. “She’s only a woman, Captain.”

Flint shot him a baleful look. “I don’t believe I’ve ever before heard you use the words only and woman in the same sentence.”

“A beautiful woman, then,” Lavay corrected, a smile spreading all over his face. As if this explained everything one needed to know about an adversary.

“Is she? I suppose the nuisance factor rather obscured that for me.”

He was lying. The first word—after beautiful, and then nuisance, that was—that sprang to mind when he thought about Miss Redmond was determination. He thought of the dark strand of hair fluttering as she breathed, asleep from exhaustion. Of a surprisingly lethal aim, and a seat-of-the-pants resourcefulness, and an arrogance that rivaled his own, and a sense of entitlement that made one want to either conquer or throttle her, and the feel of firm thighs beneath his arm as he carried her slumped over his shoulder to his bed. Of the love and passion that had sent her after her brother.

And the bands of muscles across his stomach tightened.

He sucked in a deep lungful of cold sea air, as head-spinning as a good cigar. He willed the image of Fatima into his mind. Which was hardly more restful, because Fatima and the forgetfulness he would find in her soft, dusky, supple, demanding body was weeks away in Morocco.

“My point, I suppose, is that you’ve survived far more difficult circumstances than a beautiful, well-bred stowaway. Perhaps you’ll recall your tenure in a certain Turkish prison?” Lavay excelled at irony, too. “Surely you’ll survive this one without depriving me of meals.”

“I needed to make a point, Lavay. The point being you shouldn’t feed the animals, or they’ll think they’re welcome about the campfire,” he said dryly. “And do you have to be so impossibly…French about everything?”

“One’s charm needs to be expressed in the company of beautiful women,” Lavay defended easily. “Or I may explode like a grain silo from the sheer effort of storing it.”

“Grain silos explode as a result of trapped gasses,” Flint pointed out dourly. Lavay laughed at this.

“It’s just that she was particularly unwelcome at this juncture.” Flint felt grim. His funds were dwindling, his cook was unhappy, a pirate was elusive, his future was tentative, there was much that he wanted that remained out of reach, and there was a woman on board. All in all, not one of his favorite weeks. Turkish prison notwithstanding.

“What does she want? Why is she here?”

“She believes her brother is Mr. Hardesty. In other words, the pirate Le Chat.”

Even the urbane Mr. Lavay was made speechless by this.

Flint smiled. So Flint told him of Violet’s theory and watched the usually unflappable first mate’s brows rise and rise until they nearly vanished into his golden hairline.

“I’m not entirely convinced she’s not a willful girl on a lark. Or grasping at straws because she misses her brother. Or that she’s just bored and spoiled and reckless and enjoys causing uproars because she craves attention. Given that she’s the one who threatened to cast herself down a well, and the like. Her legend precedes her. I was told of that after I danced with her at the ball.”

“But if you’re not entirely convinced, this must mean you’re…partially convinced?”

Flint inhaled. Then puffed air out of his cheeks, capitulating.

“Very well. She’s not unintelligent. She clings to her position like a barnacle, and shows a surprising—” maddening, infuriating “—singularity and clarity of purpose. She asked questions about Hardesty and Lavay, and they weren’t entirely foolish questions. So, as much as I loathe saying it, I can identify a method to her madness. In short…” He sighed. “Bloody hell, but I find myself reluctant to discount her entirely.”

“So she can stay.” Lavay sounded a little too pleased.

“One port. We’ll bring her ashore, introduce her at Comte Hebert’s, where Hardesty is said to be dining. Hebert knows we’re searching for Le Chat but he isn’t aware that we believe Hardesty may be the culprit. And then we’ll watch her closely while we’re there. Because, Lavay.” He turned his back on the sea, leaning against the rail. “Damnation, imagine the pleasure it will be to bring Le Chat to justice…with the help of his sister. I can’t think of better revenge for Captain Moreheart. And quite honestly, the sooner we accomplish this the better, because God knows I need the money.”

“She knows this is your goal?”

“She knows. She thinks that if her brother is indeed Le Chat then the blowing up of ships must simply be a misunderstanding of some kind.”

Lavay laughed.

“And that she’ll be able to protect him or prove his innocence or ward him off should we bring her near him.”

Lavay musingly looked out over the water. “She might very well be a gift to us.”

Flint snorted at the very idea. “I’m more inclined to think she might be a curse. But we can manage either eventuality, and if she does indeed prove to be bait then I can’t object to it. We’ll see how well it works during one visit. Now to the supplies. My funds are low. Whatever else one might think of His Majesty George IV, he isn’t stupid, and he certainly recognizes how to motivate a man. We’ll need to negotiate for more supplies in Le Havre, if we can.”

Lavay nodded, taking this in. “And you want me to handle supply negotiations, oui?”

“Oui.”

“Hercules claims you give him nothing with which to work in the galley. He can only create bland mush.”

“Bland mush is the traditional fare of sailors everywhere. If Hercules is bored with his job, tell him I’ll happily find even more work for him to do.”

Their irascible Greek cook worked like a donkey and fought, when necessary, like a wolverine, and when Flint noticed Lavay’s amazed expression he realized his mood and not his sense, was speaking. He sighed. He was an excellent strategist when it came to managing his ship and crew.

“See what you can purchase in the way of spices in Le Havre with the minuscule budget I’ve given you and then tell him to become inventive with a slaughtered cow. But explain to him that if we do buy spices we may have to do without the cook’s mate, and ask him to choose which he prefers. He’ll understand this. And we’ll have mutiny on our hands if the food momentarily improves vastly only to become porridge and durable biscuit rocks once more.”