I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (15 page)

Her jaw did not precisely drop. But her eyes widened, which allowed in such a painful amount of light she immediately restored them to normal gazing width.

“But why then…” She looked upon Lavay in an entirely different light now.

“…do I serve Captain Flint?” He considered his answer. “Because he won me in a card game.”

She halted.

He was pleased with her speechlessness.

“Oh! Did you want me to begin at the beginning, Miss Redmond?” he asked with feigned innocence, eyes dancing. “It’s often easier to follow a story when it does begin there.”

He strolled onward, and she followed, her hand now comfortably resting on her head like a supplementary hat.

“Well, you see, I sailed with him when we were boys. I was an officer, naturally. I am the older one. He was hired on. He took rather a lot of ribbing for his parentage.”

She felt her rib cage tighten, as if she were the one taking the mockery. She was afraid to ask.

“What…manner of ribbing?”

“They called him a ‘savage,’ among other things.”

He wasn’t accusing her of anything, precisely. But he might as well have shot her with a dart. She felt heat start up in her cheeks. She didn’t meet his eyes. She suspected Lavay knew precisely what she was feeling in that moment, as Lavay had likely been the earl’s spy at the ratafia.

“Did you do any of the ribbing, Lord Lavay?”

“How did you know?” He sounded more amused than contrite or surprised.

“Because you were a boy and an aristocrat, and it’s what boys and aristocrats do. I should know, having been raised among them.”

“I did. It’s how I know he doesn’t suffer fools gladly,” he said ruefully. “He pummeled me soundly. Outside the ship, of course, or we would have been soundly punished. The gauntlet or the lash. Moreheart wouldn’t have stood for fighting.”

Men were a mystery to Violet. How could they pummel each other or aim pistols at each other and remain friends? It almost seemed as though it was how they expressed affection.

“So our friend Flint rather earned a reputation. In fact, I would venture to say he owes his ability to fight—and fight quite impressively dirty, I might add—to that very thing. And I might owe my life to it, too. Here’s to savages.” He raised an invisible toast. Splendid rationalization. But Violet still couldn’t shake off a sort of residual anger on behalf of the earl. She could imagine that parentless boy layering on armor against words and taunts, becoming more and more formidable rather than bitter.

And now she remembered when he’d blinked. When she’d used the word savage. So it was still a chink in his armor, then. She knew a quiet shame that had naught of mischief to it—in other words, not the sort of shame she felt when she’d disappointed her brother Miles by attempting to run off with Gypsies. This was a new sensation. It was perilously close to humbling.

She wondered, however, if his arrogance was native or something acquired. Native, she decided, as she was rather an expert on arrogance. It seemed an inextricable part of him. Born of absolute confidence. It just needed the proper circumstances to be brought into full bloom.

“You said the earl was in the habit of doing impossible things. But how did the ribbing save your life?”

“Ah. I am glad our first conversation made such an impression upon you.” It was impossible not to twinkle back at Lavay.

“I don’t know if saving a life can be said to be impossible, though I certainly didn’t make it easy for him. I played deeper than I should have with the wrong men in the wrong gaming hell, who then cornered me with knives when they wanted their winnings. Who could blame them?”

Another of those shrugs, which had begun to fascinate Violet, as did the content of the conversation. Gaming hells? Knives? Mistresses? The words that were tossed about so casually by these men made her light-headed, like hard drink. They sketched in a world of men she could scarcely imagine, and which she of course found fascinating.

“As destiny would have it, Captain Flint was in the same gaming hell and took note of the commotion. I shall endeavor not to horrify you with the details of the story, but in short, I’ve a grand scar and so does Flint, but we won and we’re alive.”

“Thank you for sparing me. The mention of the scars rather implied what transpired. Very good use of detail.”

He laughed. “Thank you. And did I mention there were five of them? And two of us?”

Two sailors up high inspecting rigging saw her just then and dropped jaws, then whipped off their caps and went motionless.

“Have a care, Mcevoy, or a gull might fly in your mouth,” Lavay shouted up to them. “This is Miss Redmond. Don’t bow, for God’s sake, Emerson. You’ll crash to the deck. You’ve seen a woman before.”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but not one quite like that, sir.” He beamed cheekily. Violet curtsied for them, and they continued watching her as though she were indeed a siren. Not an Amazon. A siren.

“Back to work!” Lavay half growled, half bellowed.

They scrambled back up the rigging, nimble as monkeys. Or some such animal. Likely Miles would have known what to compare them to.

“But…five men attacked you and the earl?”

She felt faint. And all too fascinated.

“Five men came at me, expecting me to surrender my purse. And the earl appeared just in time. They only attacked, as it were, when he appeared to object to their treatment of me.”

She was speechless. She could imagine how the earl expressed objection. Lavay smiled faintly at her expression. “Well, it’s not as though he cannot help it, you see. The…saving of things. I suspect it’s Captain Flint’s way of telling the world, ‘This is how it’s done.’”

She wondered if it was also Flint’s way of showing the world, “This is how you could have saved me when I was a boy.”

Breathing was strangely difficult as she thought about it. She did not particularly want to like the man whose raison d’être was capturing her brother Lyon, assuming Lyon was indeed Le Chat.

And yet he’d come to the rescue of a man who’d been born with every privilege, who’d once mocked him. Because he’d been needed.

Oh, Lyon, you fool. What a formidable enemy you have.

“And…you began to serve the earl as a result of this rescue, Lord Lavay?”

“Serve?” He quirked a brow, amused at the word. “Well, recall I’d been taken for all of my money. I do mean that I was in rather straightened circumstances. Doubtless my rescue wasn’t entirely altruistic on his part. He’s cleverer than that, Miss Redmond. He knew I was an accomplished sailor, fluent in many languages, would not embarrass myself in grand company and would indeed smooth the way for him, and would be trustworthy as I not only owed him my life. He decided he could make use of me. And of my conscience,” he added whimsically.

“He gambled that I possessed one. And he was the only gambler who won that night in the gaming hell.

“He gave me a position as first mate on his ship. When he carried letters of marque during the war, he was allowed to sell any ships captured on behalf of the English king and to share the proceeds with the crew. As first mate, my percentage has been impressive. I have earned my share. And I taught him to behave as a gentleman in exchange, opening doors of trade to him in every country.”

She noticed the distinction, and she didn’t think it was an accident, for it was a snobbery she couldn’t help but share: “Behave as a gentleman.” For title or no, the Earl of Ardmay had been born a bastard. Not a true gentleman. He could never be one. He would always need to behave like one. His formal and flawless speech had hinted to her of this. It had nothing of, for example, Jonathan’s indolence or offhand slang. Jonathan’s birthright afforded him the luxury of carelessness. No one would mistake Jonathan, or any of her other brothers, for that matter, for anything other than the wealthy English gentlemen they were. Violet wondered how Lyon, if he were indeed Le Chat, had acquired a ship. Had he bought one, or captured one, like the earl and Lavay? But one would need to be aboard a ship in order to capture a ship.

Where had Lyon been? Where had his journey taken him?

“The earl said he’d taken command of his first ship at eighteen.”

“Oh, that he did. He served Captain Moreheart admirably, but in truth, by the time he was grown he chafed under command; Moreheart knew this. When Flint led his first raid of a pirate ship and captured it at the behest of Moreheart, Moreheart allowed him to keep it. He became its commander. He is best in the solitude of leadership, anyhow. It is where he is most comfortable.”

The solitude of leadership? She’d never thought of it in quite that way. But it made sense. She imagined all leaders felt a singular loneliness. The earl had been born into loneliness. But was it comfortable?

She pictured him standing in that ballroom, the picture of elegance, larger than life, and still so subtly removed from everyone there.

“But does it ever trouble you at all to serve below him in rank, given your title and ancestry?”

Lavay shrugged, that pleasing one-shouldered shrug. “I suppose I do not think of it as such much of the time. It is a grand adventure, you see. If I am to serve anyone, I cannot think of whom I would rather serve. I owe him a debt, and when it is discharged, I will return to my estates in France, which are beautiful, Miss Redmond, very grand, very profitable. I’m certain you would look as lovely strolling about the grounds as you do strolling about the deck here.”

She tipped her head back, biting back a smile, despite it all enjoying the novelty of being shamelessly, insincerely wooed by this charming Frenchman who clearly needed more money to support his land and had such faith in his charm that he didn’t care that she knew it.

“No doubt I would,” she agreed placidly. Liking him anyway.

He smiled at this, too. “I understand you are to accompany the earl and me into Le Havre when we arrive. You should know the earl has secured an invitation to a soiree held by the Comte and Comtesse Hebert, who are also friends of my family’s, and the comtesse is a particular old friend of the captain’s.”

He said in such a way that Violet was immediately certain the comtesse knew the meaning of

“work.”

She was immediately irritated by the notion of spending an evening under the jaundiced eye of a beautiful, bored married woman who doubtless could speak to the relationship between the earl’s thighs and his blessing.

And in a perverse way, rather looked forward to it.

They paused, and she was conscious of a shift in Lavay’s demeanor: he was a flirt and a charmer and a gentleman, but he took his duties seriously, and his primary duty was to his role as first mate.

She sensed he was about to bid her good day for now, with reluctance but with conviction. Off in the distance, she saw the earl speaking to the sailor who had the wheel of the ship. The two of them peered up with grave fascination at the sails. He shouted some order lost to the wind, at least to her ears, and men on deck scrambled to tug them in a different direction. What a massive undertaking, the steering of a ship! The earl had dispensed with his coat, and the wind filled the back of his linen shirt, gluing the front of it to his vast chest, making him look, fittingly, like a galleon poised for sail. It seemed safer to study him from this distance. It was impossible not to admire him abstractly, as a—oh, thing of natural curiosity she might draw. He was curves and angles and distinct lines, the broad shelf of his shoulders narrowing to his waist made a perfect V.

His thighs were…oh, bloody hell, they could only be described as magnificent. His hair whipped out behind him. She knew it was just shy of touching his collar when the wind wasn’t having its way with it. Too much of it, Lady Peregrine had said. It wasn’t true. Any more or less would somehow seem all wrong.

It was a patently ridiculous thought, but a vehement one.

It was as though every part of him participated in sailing that ship. The magnitude of his responsibility and competence and the confidence with which he undertook all of this all at once struck her smack in the breastbone, as shocking and exhilarating as a gulp of sea air. So that’s what breathtaking means, she thought.

Almost as though someone was steering him just like a sail, the earl turned toward her. How did he know when she was looking at him?

She turned away, but not before she saw the sun strike a spark of light from those blue eyes. He shaded his gaze, perhaps settling in for a longer look at her, as if he, too, thought her safer to inspect from a distance. The way one might squint a far-off ship into focus, deciding whether it was friend or foe.

She looked up at Lord Lavay. “And Mr. Hardesty is invited to our dinner with the Viscomte and Viscomtesse Hebert?” she asked a trifle more tersely than necessary.

“Oui. As Mr. Hardesty believes the Comte is financing his next journey to the West Indies, you can be certain Mr. Hardesty is invited and will attend, which is, after all, why we are going. It should prove to be an interesting evening.”

Chapter 10

T hanks to a fair wind, two nights—one of which Violet had been obliged to sleep in the vole hole, which meant fitfully turning and tossing in order prevent her body from touching overlong any part of that vile little mattress—and one day later they dropped anchor during clear benign weather in Le Havre, France, and were lowered over the side of the ship rather gracelessly into the launch by the means of pulleys. They got her into the boat without soaking her hem or peering up her dress, though the temptation must have been torturous, and a small crew, a staff really—Greeber, Lumley, Corcoran—rowed them into the busy harbor, where ships clearly from all over the world, judging from languages shouted by the sailors on their decks sailors and the words painted across hulls, were anchored.

“The Comte Hebert found himself in reduced circumstances since the war, which means he now holds only five properties, one palace, and two hundred or so servants among them.”

The earl explained this to her. He’d scarcely spoken to her in the past two days, which made these words feel far more significant than they were. She had a peculiar hope he’d been ignoring her, because “ignoring” was more active than forgetting all about her.