I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (14 page)

“Aye, sir. And Captain?” Too innocent, his tone.

Flint turned to look at Lavay suspiciously.

“Where will she be sleeping tonight?” A question directed out over the water rather than to Flint’s face. But he could see a slyly suppressed smile at the corners of his friend’s mouth. Flint stiffened. “Miss Redmond and I have come to an agreement. She will be sleeping in my quarters again tonight. I will sleep in the vole—in our Distinguished Guest Cabin again.”

Lavay turned abruptly, eyes wide. “How did this come about? Never say your heart has gone soft?”

“God, no.”

“Something else gone hard?”

Flint scowled a threat at Lavay, who was struggling not to laugh, but also still clearly trying to puzzle out Flint’s mood.

Good luck, Flint thought dourly. I don’t recognize it myself.

He took another draught of sea breeze, felt the last of London’s coal and soot and drink and smoke cleansed from his lungs. “Don’t be tedious, Lavay. If it’s so necessary for you to know,” he said ungraciously. “She won a contest.”

There was a short stunned silence.

“You…played a game?” Lavay said this slow, flat incredulity, hilarity suppressed, clearly trying to picture it. “And you lost to a…girl. What manner of contest was this? Ribbon-tying?”

Flint felt ridiculous now, in retrospect, which was doing nothing to settle his temper. “I challenged her to aim a dart…let’s just say it landed rather serendipitously in the right spot,”

he finished curtly. “She was lucky.”

“You speak metaphorically, Captain? She aimed a dart as in the vein of Cupid?” Lavay mimed taking a dart to the chest. He was laughing unabashedly now.

“Oh, for God’s sake. Enough. If you would please escort Miss Redmond to her proper quarters to see to her trunk, and perhaps allow her to spend a half hour or so strolling on deck. She’ll need to be escorted, and you’re the only man who bears close enough of a resemblance to a gentleman to do it.”

“You’re certain you don’t want that honor for yourself, Captain?”

“I believe I said enough, Lavay,” Flint said. The tone was mild, but it was one that Lavay recognized as risky to countermand.

“Very well.” He turned to go, then stopped and turned.

“She was just lucky?” Lavay asked shrewdly.

Flint surrendered to an impulse he’d been resisting for much of the day. He pushed his palms against his eyes and heaved a sigh—really more of a hybrid of moan and sigh, so gusty it could have filled a sail—and then dragged his hands up over his hair.

“Let me just say this, Lavay. If she is indeed Le Chat’s sister, and if he’s anywhere near as wily as she is, capturing him will prove more challenging than we dreamed.”

About ten minutes after the earl’s departure from his cabin—long enough to unpin, rake her fingers through her hair, re-pin it picturesquely, and tie on her bonnet, but not nearly long enough to do more of the poking around in his cabin that she would have preferred to do—she heard a genteel tap at the door.

“Miss Redmond?”

She opened the door to Lavay’s golden handsomeness.

“I’ve been requested by Captain Flint to escort you up on deck should you wish to take the air. But first we shall first visit your quarters in the Distinguished Guest Cabin if you should like to address any personal needs.”

“Taken for a walk,” she mused. “Rather like a…pet.”

Pets or servants. It still rankled.

“Would it offend you if I said that I wouldn’t mind at all keeping you as a pet?”

He said this with all appearances of polite curiosity, but delightful wickedness lit his eyes. She pretended to give this serious consideration. “I would say it’s rather bold of you, but I should not take offense. But I should warn you I wouldn’t suit as a pet, Lord Lavay. I am not in the least obedient.”

She wondered into which category Lavay would fall. Lavay, she decided, would be a pet, not a servant, should she care to win him. He flirted with an expertise akin to dancing; it held as much pleasure and as few surprises, but it was soothingly sophisticated. He was a suitable whetstone for her own skills. She would be diverted, if not challenged.

“And yet here you are about to walk docilely alongside me to the deck,” he reflected mischievously. “We shall see. Are you certain you needn’t revisit your quarters before we take the air?”

“I should very much like to breathe the open air straight away, thank you.”

She’d been lurking in the bowels of the ship long enough. She wanted to see what daylight and sea looked like from the deck, and she thought it was about time to learn whether her nerve would desert her when she was presented with the vastness of the ocean and no land in sight. At the moment she felt nothing but excitement, however. So much so that she nearly skipped like a child.

He allowed her to precede him up the ladder to the foredeck. She was as certain he’d done this in order to enjoy the view of her climbing as she was that the view wouldn’t disappoint him. When she’d reached the top rung of the ladder the wind made a rude grab for her bonnet and then all but yanked her all of the way up on deck.

To her astonishment, she staggered left and then right like a drunk, pushed by the wind. She heard a scramble of boots, and then Corcoran was magically there, arm extended. She reached for it as she would a banister and he helped haul her up the stairs.

“Oh, hang on t’me now, mum, ye’ll fly away like the wee bi’ of kitten fluff ye are, ye will.”

Violet was quite tall and fit and she’d never been accused of being anything so fey in her life. She didn’t mind it at all. His arm felt like a hairy branch beneath her hand. He took the opportunity to bow yet again. She heard a hearty cracking sound. Perhaps his knee. She hoped it wasn’t his spine.

“Impressive bow, Mr. Corcoran,” Lavay said smoothly. Corcoran was upright again. Not his spine, then. “And impressive timing. I’m certain Miss Redmond appreciates your limberness and convenient arm. But you’ve duties to see to. As do the rest of you.” He raised his voice, and all around her Violet heard scattered hurried bootfalls as men lurking with feigned casualness scrambled off to see to their duties.

Violet took her hand away from Corcoran’s arm lest he succumb to animalistic tendencies. He didn’t look so inclined. His face was radiant…with a faint cast of mulishness.

“Corcoran?” Lavay said a little more curtly.

Corcoran bowed again, crammed his cap back onto his head, and stalked off. They watched him go, and Lavay offered her his arm. They’d promenaded not more than four feet when they heard an unmistakable voice and familiar impatient footfall behind them.

“Corcoran will now likely sell touches of his arm to the rest of the crew the way pilgrims sell relics.”

The earl planted himself in front of them, looking rather like a fourth mast. He was in no danger of being toppled by the wind. He glanced at her hand resting lightly on Lavay’s arm. Long enough for her to notice. She saw his brows twitch in a frown, which he immediately repressed. Smoothing his expression the way she often smoothed her own brow to ward away wrinkles.

For no reason she could identify, she slid her hand away from Lavay, as though her hand had developed its own allegiance. She was surprised.

He looked swiftly and penetratingly hard into her face before his own went inscrutable again.

“Ah, very good. I was looking for you, Lavay.” He turned to look at Lavay a few seconds after he said this, a peculiar delay.

“Were you, sir?” Lavay said somewhat flatly, voice raised slightly to be heard above the wind and snap of sails. “And yet we just spoke a moment ago.”

He looked a bit mulish, too, albeit in his refined French way. Violet began to understand the earl’s point of view about what the presence of a woman could do to a group of men. Men. No wonder every season the herd of fools was thinned out via duels and mad phaeton races.

Not that she wasn’t enjoying it.

Particularly since she half suspected the earl had appeared to see her. Again. The wind suddenly gave Violet another hearty push, and she clapped a hand to her frisking, bucking bonnet, which threatened to launch from her head and take her scalp with it. She planted her feet apart, getting purchase on the deck, learning how to stand upon it, and while the men stared at each other in another of those silent conversations, she stared about her, at sky and ship and sea.

And her heart slowly filled like the sails of the ship.

Everything was in elemental motion: the wind that made the huge sails snap and billow from three masts; the deck swelled and rocked beneath her feet as though she stood on the belly of a sleeping giant, as though the sway of its lungs beneath the sea sent the water heaving. Wind had scoured the sky to a blue so blinding looking upon it hurt and yet she did for as long as she could, then dropped them. The blue-green sea was silver-trimmed and diamond-shot in the sun. The Fortuna pared it into curls of creamy white foam and left a wake that closed behind it as though they’d never come that way at all. Violet tipped her head back as far as she could. Above the masts and rigging, in which a few men were perched, seagulls rode the air, their wings looking like sails against the blue. She wondered if these birds in flight were the inspiration for the first great sailing ships.

Something in Violet eased, stretched, breathed, at long last and the sensation was so utterly new she understood with finality how confined she’d truly felt her whole life. Yet surely the opposite should have been true. Surely a sane and proper woman would have been frightened and humbled and nauseated by the pitch of the waves. But it was like hearing for the first time a note that harmonized with whatever wild tone her soul sang. It was a foreign feeling for her. She suspected other people would have called it peace.

With a start, she finally remembered the men, who seemed to be honoring her wonder with silence. She whirled in time to see a startling expression fleeing the earl’s face, and her breath caught.

He’d been looking at her, she thought, almost the way she’d been looking at the sea. And then she realized she was squinting in the blinding light, and she reflexively reached up her hand to smooth her brow, and thought perhaps she’d been mistaken about his expression, because now the earl was officious and brisk. “You’re fortunate. It’s a fair day, yet, Miss Redmond. During storms, even grand sturdy ships like The Fortuna can be tossed like twigs in a river.”

“It’s…” She couldn’t finish.

“Don’t try, Miss Redmond,” he agreed, shading his eyes. “There are honestly no suitable words, so we shall not fault you for failing to find them. Nothing makes a man feel more like God than sailing a ship over the sea with no land in sight. And nothing makes a man feel less like a God than clinging to a shred of ship exploded by lightning in a storm.”

It sounded uncomfortably as if he knew this from experience, and she hoped it wasn’t one she would ever know.

“If you ever want to know your true place in the universe, Miss Redmond, the sea and a great empty night sky will put it all in very clear perspective for you.”

She disliked the lecturing tone. Why did he feel it necessary? And yet she suspected he was right. He was the sort of man who would need to test himself again and again. Not against other men. By pitting himself against something he could never really conquer. Perhaps this described her as well.

Oh God. She hoped not. She did want a peace not dependent upon pitting herself against things.

Then again, perhaps the earl had had enough of incessant challenge, and this was why he wanted to settle down on solid ground and have the sorts of things that everyone of her acquaintance took for granted.

He turned away from her. “I wanted a word with you, Lavay. I think we’ll reach port sooner than expected, and I’d like to discuss our visit with Viscomte and Viscomtesse Hebert. Shall we say half past in the captain’s quarters?”

“Of course. Yes, sir,” Lavay said crisply.

The earl nodded crisply to both of them and strode off, on his way shouting something up at a man called Dewey, who appeared to be staring down at her through a spyglass. His words were lost to the wind, but Dewey heard them clearly enough. The spyglass swung instantly upward again.

“So it suits you,” Lavay said, with a little smile. “The sea.”

Her quick laugh sounded a bit too shrill and exhilarated in her own ears. “There are no words that don’t sound woefully inadequate, but I should like to say it is beautiful. Is it always so windy? I might need to put a rock in my hat, if so.” Or a biscuit. The wind gave another hearty yank at her bonnet and her dress lashed her ankles, and she wished she were wearing half boots as she was sure sailors the deck over, as well as Lord Lavay, were taking the opportunity to feast their eyes on her stockinged calves and would later make wagers on the color of her garters.

“Winds and seas like these are our friends; easy enough to navigate in, filling our sails, speeding the ship along. Calmer days are pleasant but tedious, particularly if we’ve a destination we need to urgently reach. And too much calm can ultimately be deadly.”

Too much calm can be deadly.

It was so utterly her life philosophy she considered she ought to stitch it into a sampler.

“Why are calm days deadly?”

“If we can’t move, we may not be able to reach shore in time to replenish needed supplies. Though we’ve a stove with a still now. Fresh water lasts such a short time, and we need to share it with beasts when they’re aboard. I do hope you enjoy small beer. Though the captain might be willing to share his wine.” He grinned. As though the likelihood was hilarious. She clapped a hand on her bonnet, which was flapping like a goose struggling to take flight. The decks of ships, Violet had learned today, were a challenge to one’s dignity.

“Lord Lavay…I should like to ask you a question.”

“I stand ready to answer it,” he said solemnly, clasping his hands behind his back as they strolled, paces evenly matched as Violet adapted quickly to walking over a moving surface.

“I understand that you are indeed a lord, but I fear I am unaware of your title.”

He answered easily. “I am a viscomte of the house of Bourbon, Miss Redmond.”