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.
“I don’t have sufficient funds for anything. Why do you think I work for rich American merchants?”
His gaze seemed to sharpen. “So you admit to being English.”
“I admit to being born in England. But that doesn’t make me who you say I am.”
“You cannot deny it.”
“I can. Do you have any proof?”
“I need no proof. You give yourself away every time you open your mouth.”
She opened her mouth then snapped it shut. He leaned back against the rail, as though he had all day to pursue this conversation. Which he did. He had trapped her on her own ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Criminally clever, the Pharaoh.
“Your accent is nearly as flat as an American’s,” he said, “but inflections, certain vowels bespeak your origins.” He ducked his head. “And you speak words no lowborn sailor would know.”
“I don’t.”
“The first time I came aboard your ship you used the word sobriquet. A few moments ago you said inveigle.”
“I read quite a bit.”
“Why is that?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“You should. You are the daughter of a gentleman. A nobleman-”
“Everyone knows my father was a smuggler.”
“-and a lady.”
That, she could not deny. Her mother had been born into a gentleman’s family, well situated with a fine house and good lands. When Maria Harrell’s father gave her to wed to the quiet, book-loving Baron of Carlyle in order to improve the social fortunes of the family, she’d been but seventeen, suitably dowered, very pretty, and already in love with Fionn Daly-a common sailor she should never have even met let alone given her heart to.
They had never fallen out of love. Four years later, in a blooming spring when Lord Carlyle was in town for the session and Lady Carlyle at home tending to her firstborn, the Irishman had sailed into port and… made Viola. Ten years after that, Fionn returned again to finally claim his love and his child. With disastrous consequences.
Viola held her tongue. Nothing she could say now would suffice, and her heart beat too swiftly to allow for measured speech. She slipped her gaze across the deck, at the sailors about. All loyal to her, most she’d known nearly her whole life. Her life. Her reality. Not that world she’d been born into that now seemed a million miles away plus an ocean.
But not all the men aboard belonged to her life. Big Mattie stood at the base of the mainmast, glowering over a young sailor at the lines. An intruder in her home. Like the other two sailors from the Cavalier. And Seton.
She pivoted to him. He was watching her carefully. She tried to brush off the sensation of being known by him. He did not know her. He knew only a name from another time.
“Do your men know?” she demanded.
“Your true identity?”
“My past.”
“Only the three aboard this ship.” His expression remained sober.
“And my men? Have you told them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I have?” His brow was firm, his look honest. Unnervingly so.
She moved toward him swiftly, pulse racing, until she was as close as they’d stood belowdecks the day before. The gray sky framed his handsome face.
“Who are you?”
His clear gaze did not waver. “My identity has never been in question here.”
“Why have you sought me out? What business is it of yours whether I return to England or not?”
“Your sister is lately wed. Her husband wishes you found.”
Amid the tattering of thoughts and emotions, something sharp twisted inside her. He had come aboard her ship with gain in sight. But she had known that all along; it should not bother her now.
“You imagine that some stranger’s wish is sufficient to drag me back to England against my will?”
“I do. But I prefer you to come willingly.” He said it simply enough, but a glint of fierceness entered his eyes. Instinct told Viola to retreat. She did not. She could not show weakness. A man like this would use vulnerability to his advantage.
“Why can you not simply tell him-both of them-that you found me happy and hale, and leave it there? After all these years she must be satisfied with that.” If she cared at all. Serena had not returned any of Viola’s letters in those early years. Perhaps Serena had still loved her, but with Viola’s parentage known, her elder sister must have been ashamed. And her poor father… Rather, the baron.
A hint of hardness flashed at the edges of Seton’s beautiful mouth.
“Say her name.”
Viola blinked. “Whose name?”
“Your sister’s.”
There was a fastness about his gaze now, a swift, assessing penetration that sought her insides and made them quiver. At the fringes of her consciousness clung the remnants of memory again-of sunlit parlors scented with lavender and roses, of eyelet and lace and silks of pale pastels and ribbons of jewel tones threaded through hems and hair. Of the scent of dry, old wood and damp mossy cliffs, the dust of books in the library and polish on the banister, sweet polish, lemon and thyme. Of emerald fields dotted with fluffy white sheep and meadows of wildflowers. She saw a kind, wide-lipped smile and a pair of mismatched eyes surrounded by dark golden hair. Her sister, her fondest companion, her best friend, the girl with whom she had lived every single day of ten years of life and whom she still loved.
All this came to her with the mere thought of her sister’s name and the unrelenting gaze of an Egyptian pirate.
Not only Egyptian. And no longer a pirate. A British privateer. Sent to seek her out? The illegitimate daughter of a smuggler and an adulterous woman now deceased?
“Who is my sister’s husband?”
“The Earl of Savege, Lord Carlyle’s close neighbor in Devonshire.”
Viola’s stomach twisted. It just got worse and worse. A nobleman? A lord? She must be glad for Serena, and wish for her happiness, and that it was a match her half sister liked. But there was no place there for her now, and she did not want it.
“He will be disappointed when you return without me, no doubt. But he has no authority over me, even if he is an earl.”
“You will return with me.”
“I will not.” She broadened her stance and set her fists on her hips. The pose cut the edge from her agitation and made her feel nearly at home again. In her own place. A place that suited her.
“You belong there.” He spoke as though certain.
She laughed, but it sounded forced. “I belong here aboard my ship with my men. Accustom yourself to the idea, Seton.” She pivoted and strode to the stair and down, snapping commands as she went. But she felt his gaze on her, and inside she was a welter of confusion.
If she belonged here on her ship with her men, why was she so determined to settle down to life with Aidan Castle on his farm in the tropics, even for part of the year? She loved him, of course. She had loved him since he clerked in that Boston merchant’s office and her father brought him home to dinner one night. The night Viola discovered her woman’s heart.
She’d been but fifteen, still hoping someday to return to England but not knowing if it could be done. Her mother was dead; without that tie, Viola was nothing to Charles Carlyle. And Fionn always insisted she meant everything to him. His only child. His best little sailor. And someday, he hinted, Mrs. Aidan Castle.
He’d often left them alone. He loaned Aidan the funds to help him purchase the farm, even when his ship barely had sufficient canvas for sails. Clearly he regretted what he’d taken from Viola, a life of stable respectability, and he wanted better for her someday. He had seen better in Aidan Castle, self-made man, born in England like Viola, cousin to British gentry but now as American as Fionn. Like Viola. Her father had provided her at a tender age with the perfect match. And she had not disobliged him in falling in love.
Then why did the notion of meeting Aidan in mere weeks no longer fill her with anticipation? She was no fool. He hadn’t written to her in ages. But when he saw her again they would be as they were before, and he would ask her to marry him, as he had hinted for so many years. She should be happy.
Images of Seton standing so close in her cabin doorway steered her away from that refuge. She descended instead into the hold. Every crack in the wood, every sagging beam and worn plank loomed in her vision as her feet met the lowest deck. Stacked with barrels and crates and cloth-wrapped furniture, it looked like a merchant ship. The sailor guarding the powder magazine and his companion tipped their caps. She nodded, scanning the cargo.
Why was she carrying mercantile goods to Trinidad? She was a privateer, for pity’s sake. She ought to be searching out ne’er-do-wells, not carting flour across the Atlantic.
She breathed in the thick, close air and hated her unsettled thoughts. Seton was to blame. Everything had been perfectly fine until he boarded her ship. She could make a stop on Bermuda as the men wished, and put him ashore there. She didn’t need him to sail her ship for her.
She didn’t need him for anything.
“Sam!”
The sailor chatting with the guard at the powder magazine jumped to attention. “Cap’n?”
“Go tell Mr. Seton we will double our pace to Trinidad. I want to make port in sixteen days.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n.” He leaped to the stair. Viola stared blankly at the floor of her ship covered with another man’s property, and for the first time in her life felt trapped upon the sea.
“Cap’n Jin?” Little Billy slopped a ladle of a runny stew into a bowl and proffered it. “I been thinking.”
Jin settled with the bowl at the tiny table at the edge of the mess. The cabin that passed for a kitchen wasn’t five feet square, but it was one place he had never seen Viola Carlyle on her ship.
He needn’t make an effort to avoid her; she was seeing to that well enough. For four days she had passed every order to him through her sailors. His revelation had made an impression on her. Now he only needed time to determine how to make that impression serve him. And to control his temper. Her foolish defiance still burned as though she had insulted him personally. He must dampen that anger before approaching her again.
He lifted a spoonful of stew. “Thinking about what, Bill?”
“ ’Bout them rebel Scots we chased in the North Sea. And that boy we brung home afore that, from Spain.”
Jin swallowed the flavorless goo and took another bite. Best to get it over with swiftly, as he should be dealing with Miss Viola Carlyle. But he had not counted on her outright refusal.
He should have. He realized that now.
“Have you?” he murmured.
“That’s right, sir.” Billy dropped a whole unpeeled potato into the pot and stirred. “Didn’t see a lick of swag from them, though the gover’ment paid us all nice like. But I been wondering what we done them missions for.”
For justice. To help those in desperate straits. To serve the crown. In service to the Falcon Club.
Nearly two years ago he had set aside the work of that exclusive club and set out to find a missing person whose family had long since presumed her dead. All but her sister. But Serena Savege did not know of his mission, nor did Alex. He had not told them.
“We did those missions because His Majesty asked it of us, Bill.” The partial truth was better than none. Perhaps he should have given Viola Carlyle only the partial truth. Perhaps he still had leeway to invent another story, one that would convince her of the wisdom of his intention.
No. He had spent far too many years of his life embedded in lies. He would not begin that again now, especially not with a lady, no matter how hardheaded.
He swallowed the remainder of his stew and set the bowl on the counter.
“Enjoy the grub, sir?”
“No. But you are doing a fine job of pretending to cook.” He patted him on the shoulder. “Thank you, Bill.”
The lad’s face broke into a toothy grin. “Welcome to it, Cap’n.”
“Billy.”
“Welcome to it, Master Jin.” The lad winked.
Jin scanned the cannons and nodded to the sailors on the gun deck, then climbed the sagging companionway to the main deck. Atop, he halted. Beneath sails filled to capacity, Viola Carlyle sat at the forecastle surrounded by sailors and backed by a vibrantly blue sky and foam-tipped sea. Before her, a quartet of men stood in a perfect line, singing.
In the middle of the day. Flying at ten knots on a following sea.
Singing.
To her.
The song was unremarkable, a well-used chantey, though this time in impressive harmony. She obviously approved. She had pushed her hat back on her brow, revealing most of her face. She smiled, resting her gaze upon each singer in turn with appreciation, sun sparkling in her dark eyes.
For a moment, Jin could not move, restive heat tugging at him. In four days of barely glimpsing her he had simply not allowed himself to think about how pretty she was.
Clearly her men were thinking about it now. The gaze of each singer, and that of every other sailor sitting about her, was pinned to her. Nearly forty men sat rapt by their captain as the ship cut across low swells, bobbing forcefully yet nevertheless speeding on, apparently manned by ghosts.
The song came to an end, she lifted her hands to clap, and the sweetest, richest laughter came to him upon the wind. Beautiful laughter, full of fresh delight and incautious pleasure. Sailors stomped their approval on the boards. But Jin could hear only her.
Then her gaze shifted aft and came to him, and all sign of her enjoyment died.
Jin’s lungs tightened, his breaths thin. Even scowling, she enticed. She allured as she threw out spikes and he wanted to take her down beneath him and strip the displeasure from her eyes and replace it with eager compliance.
Which he could not do. Not in the manner he wished.
She broke the gaze. He strode forward, the dispersing sailors making way for him. The singers clouted each other on the backs, offering congratulations and looking smug. With sweet smiles and dulcet tones she doled out praise and thanks, rousing blushes on swarthy cheeks. As they passed Jin, he set them to tasks they should have already been doing, and continued toward their captain.
“Jonah, do you recall that little problem I mentioned last night that requires tending?” she said as he neared. The sailor before her pulled off his cap like a lackey addressing a lord and nodded eagerly.
“Sure do, Cap’n mum. The head’s needin’ unstopperin’.”
“Yes.” She offered a sympathetic tilt of her lips. “Things are bound to get uncomfortable if we leave it plugged up for long, aren’t they?”
“Yes, mum! I’ll set right to it in a jiffy.” His head bobbed on his skinny neck and he scampered away.
Jin stared at his back for a moment, then turned to the woman who sent a man off to clean the refuse hole with a happy grin. He gestured toward the forecastle.
“What was that about?”
Her brow lowered and she pushed her hat lower on it. “Good day to you too,” she muttered. “What’s got your goat? Or perhaps you’re always this ill-tempered.”
“Ill-tempered? This from a woman who insults me every occasion she can manage, then avoids me on all others?”
“I am not ill-tempered.” Her gaze flickered. “At least I wasn’t before you stepped on deck.”
“What were those men doing? The wind is full in the sails. They ought to have been at the sheets holding her to a steady course, not singing like fools for your pleasure.”
“The ship is running perfectly well,” she snapped. “As you can see.”
“And if the wind had changed abruptly, we would be capsized by now.”
“But it didn’t change and we are afloat,” Viola snapped. He was correct. But for a moment enjoying the simple company of her men and a relief from her too constant thoughts of this man, she’d been perfectly happy. And thoroughly irresponsible. “Are you questioning my knowledge of my ship?”
“Only your handling of its crew. What sort of captain countenances a concert at full sail on a following sea?”
“A captain who knows much more about her sailors than apparently you do. No surprise.” She moved to go around him and he stepped into her path. “Get out of my way, Seton, or I’ll take the butt of my pistol to your head.”
His voice lowered. “Do not threaten a man with beating who knows well how to give as good as he has gotten, Miss Carlyle.”
Something had changed, and for the first time since this man with a reputation for unbridled violence had come aboard her ship, she was frightened. Not by threat of violence to her. She didn’t believe he would harm her, not when he was calling her Miss Carlyle and intending to carry her back to her brother-in-law the earl in England. But the acute clarity had disappeared from his eyes, replaced by something quite different. Something heated and unsteady. On any other man she would think it uncertainty. Perhaps even confusion. On Jinan Seton-arrogant as the day was bright-it alarmed her.
Her hands went damp and cold, her belly contrarily hot.
She tried to shake it off. “If you call me that aboard my ship one more time, I will have you thrown over.”
“If you continue to sail this ship as you are doing, we are all likely to take a swim together.”
She eyed him narrowly, but it only increased the heat in her twisted belly. She crossed her arms.
“If you must know, it is my birthday. The singing was a gift.”
He appeared nonplussed. “Your birthday.”
“Yes. I am five-and-twenty. As of today I have achieved my majority. Even in England, no man has authority over me now.”
“Is that what this is about?” He gestured toward the sailors. “Asserting your authority over men?”
“This is about sailing my vessel in the manner I see fit. Do you have a problem with that, sailor?”
“I do when you put all aboard in danger.” He scanned her face, his enigmatic gaze by far the most dangerous thing aboard to Viola’s unsettled senses. “You treat them like suitors.”
“I treat them like family. For that they are to me.” Her only family after her father stole her away from the one she had known.
“You flirt with them.”
“I make difficult work seem appealing.”
“And Jonah’s fawning when you assigned him to clean the head just now? What was that, his sheer idiocy?”
“He is very loyal. He gladly does what his captain wishes, unlike some sailors who shall remain nameless although we both know exactly who I’m talking about.”
He shook his head, his look incredulous. “And I suppose if you told Jonah to jump into the belly of a whale he would do it without hesitation.”
“Very clever. I am really astoundingly impressed.”
“What? Would you prefer classical references from the stories you read to them at bedtime like a nursemaid reads to her infant charges? No wonder they all make dog’s eyes at you.”
She was getting to him. She could see it in the tight sinews of his neck, the taut line of his jaw. She was making the cool, confident Pharaoh agitated, and the success swirled inside her like a dram of gin. Beneath his crystal gaze she did feel a bit drunk. A bit reckless. Like the girl she had once been.
“Jealous of their devotion, Seton? Perhaps if you read to them they would make dog eyes at you too.” She waggled her brows.
“This is no way to captain a ship. These men are all half in love with you.”
Her heart did an odd little jump, but she forced a shrug.
“If it works, who’s to complain?” She allowed herself a taunting smile. “Is that why you’re distressed that I’ve been avoiding you? Are you half in love with me too, then?”
“Good God.” He scowled. “What do you take me for, a complete fool?”
“A man must be foolish to fall in love with me?”
“That, and nearsighted and bereft of the capacity for rational thought, not to mention in possession of a death wish.”
That stung, and she didn’t like that it stung. She struggled for a retort and words tumbled through her lips.
“I’ll wager I can make you fall in love with me.” Oh, God.
He cracked a hard laugh. “I dare you to try.”
“Do you?” Her cursed tongue! “All right. What shall we wager?” The unbidden words just kept popping out. But there was something exciting about the idea, something dangerous and tempting that she should not feel.
His mouth actually hung open. But holy Magdalene, what a mouth. She could nearly taste him with her imagination, male heat and smooth command. Pity he was looking at her like an escapee from McLean Hospital. And of course, pity she couldn’t stand him.
“You are mad,” he said in wondering tones. “Aren’t you?”
“I never back down from a dare. How do you think I got here? A mere woman?” She gestured aft to the quarterdeck.
“You are serious.” His eyes narrowed. “You cannot be serious.”
“Afraid I’ll win?”
“Patently, no.”
“Then let’s agree to terms. If I win, I get your new ship.”
“No.”
“And if you win, I will return to England with you.”
He went perfectly still. Viola struggled to breathe evenly. She didn’t know where her words had come from. She did not wish to return to England.
On the other hand, it might be worth it to watch him squirm while she hung all over him in an effort to seduce him. She would not meet with success. He had a heart of stone and a will of iron and he would win. But she could always turn right around and come home afterward. After seeing Serena. Her half sister. The countess.
Oh, good God, what had she done?
“The duration of the wager?” he finally asked.
“A fortnight.”
“A fortnight?”
She lifted a brow. “Men have fallen in love with me in minutes before.” Aidan always claimed he had.
He looked at her with clear disbelief. “I have no doubt that some men are equally as mad as you.”
That was rather lowering. And more than a sting. It actually hurt.
Her ire flared. “Perhaps you are as well, pirate scum.”
“Again with the insults. You are losing your moral high ground.”
“My high ground is well enough. Will you take the wager?”
He studied her for a silent moment, his ice eyes enigmatic now. “Yes.”
She found it a bit difficult to breathe. But she’d gotten herself into this. And she now would have to touch him, and feel the heat simmering beneath his skin again, as she had in the corridor. A touch that had left her sleeping fitfully every night since.
His eyes glimmered. “Regretting your impetuosity already, Miss Carlyle?”
Her pulse stumbled. “I said do not call me that aboard my ship.”
His perfect mouth slid up at one edge, and this time the grin was purely confident. “Name your terms.”
Terms? He must speak to her with deference and allow her all sorts of liberties with his person.
Her cheeks flamed. His gaze shifted across them and the slightest crease appeared in his cheek.
“You must remain aboard at all times,” she said in a rush, “even when we come into port, until the end of the fortnight, unless I disembark as well, and then you go with me where I go.” Goddamn him for doing this to her, for making her tongue say things it should not and for being so arrogantly gorgeous she was quivering with anticipation.
“All right.”
Beneath his steady gaze, her thoughts tangled. But she must see this through. Her pride was at stake. “If you disembark for any other reason, you forfeit the wager and I win automatically.”
“And the corollary terms? If you throw me off, you forfeit the wager and I win?”
“Exactly.” She would not. She had borne his unnerving presence for a fortnight already. But in his light eyes now was calculation. This was a foolish mistake. Her gaze dropped to his lips. A colossally foolish mistake.
“And at the end of the fortnight you must tell the truth,” she added. “No lying about it just so you will win.”
“Of course.”
She thrust out her hand. “Agreed?”
He encompassed it, and her entire body got hot. His grip was strong and she wanted to feel that strength elsewhere. To feel his hands on her. She was a disloyal tart, daring a man to touch her while her heart belonged to another.
“At the end of the fortnight, Viola Carlyle, you will board my ship and sail to England with me.” He spoke quietly and steadily, entirely unlike her shaking insides.
“At the end of the fortnight, Seton, you will regret that you ever came within a league of Violet Daly.”
He released her and walked away, completely at ease, unaware of the shimmering air about him. She stood immobile, staring at his back until he descended belowdecks, cursing herself and him. She would make his life unendurable. With her attentions she would force him off her ship and he would leave her alone. Then she would take up with Aidan exactly where they’d left off last when he held her and told her she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
But the notion of embracing Aidan again didn’t speed her heartbeat now. Not Aidan at all.