Viola allowed her crew a fortnight’s furlough stirring up trouble in alehouses about town while she fitted out her ship, did noisome paperwork, and argued with the clerk who worked for the merchant whose goods she would carry to Trinidad. Once she unloaded the cargo and enjoyed a few weeks of Aidan’s company, she would return to northern waters and scouting out enemies of her adopted country, as the state of Massachusetts had commissioned her to do nearly two years ago when her father died. She had been de facto captain since his illness grew debilitating two years before his death. But he had never wanted to leave the ship, and aboard she had been able to look after him.
Finally the cargo was loaded-barrels of flour, beans, hams, apples, and a vast quantity of furniture that filled the hull but provided little ballast. The April sat so light in the draft now, they would make the journey quickly, in less than a month if she was clever and they didn’t run afoul of brigands along the route.
But that’s why she had hired on the Pharaoh. Her own personal assurance. If trouble came looking for her, she would have the right man at her back.
When finally she climbed aboard, a single traveling case in hand, he was already amidships handing out orders to her men. Everything atop was industrious preparation.
“Cozening up to the crew already in hopes of a mutinous promotion, Seton?”
“No, sir.” His very fine mouth barely tilted up at one corner. “Merely doing my job.”
She forced herself to look away from that mouth to the decks and rigging and dozen sailors heaving the capstan round, weighing anchor, getting under way just as she would have it. Her crewmen took to Seton’s leadership naturally. She couldn’t blame them. His very stance suggested command-confident yet easy-the sort of mien she’d struggled for years to perfect so that when her father’s long illness finally took him, she was able to be an effective master over five dozen men.
The sky sparkled bright blue, the bay water inviting, the breeze fresh and promising. But a frisson of unease tickled her neck swaddled in thick fabric.
“Everything in order?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All hands aboard?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve never sailed under a woman before, have you, Seton?”
“No, sir.”
Of course he hadn’t. She could count on one finger the female shipmasters she had met in her life.
“You may call me captain.”
“I will call you whatever you wish.” His tone was unremarkable enough, but a glint lit his light eyes.
She didn’t trust him. He’d said she would not regret taking him on. But pirates lied as a habit. She doubted he intended revenge. He seemed more the sort to demand what he wanted-as he had demanded she hire him on.
He had not yet called her captain.
She met his stare as she had in the rain when, nearly naked and strapped to the mizzenmast, he’d been her prisoner. Now he wore neat trousers, a pristine white shirt that complemented his tan skin, a simple linen waistcoat and cravat, and an expression of ever-so-mild challenge on his handsome face, as if he needn’t even bother with a more threatening air.
She broadened her stance, the comforting weight of the pistol on her sash bumping against her breast.
“What are you staring at, sailor?”
His ice eyes did not flicker. “My captain, ma’am.”
“Get back to work, Seton.”
He bowed.
Bowed?
Then he did as she ordered. Viola drew in a long breath and headed toward her cabin. They hadn’t left port and already he was mocking her. She had made a foolish mistake taking him aboard. But she certainly would not admit it now, even sitting at dock while she could still send him packing. Perhaps once they were seaboard she could throw over some of the cargo, make her load lighter, and run down to Trinidad that much quicker. Or she could throw Seton over.
He had never seen anything like it. And the more he observed, the more astounded he became.
They worshipped her. From her bit-sized cabin boy to the mountain manning the helm who made Big Mattie look like a child’s doll, every one of her crewmen treated her like a queen. Like a queen they could not get enough of. When she was out of hearing they spoke of her in reverent terms. Complimentary terms. Affectionate terms. When she was atop they alternately fawned on her or snapped to her orders without a grumble. Mattie and Billy were already head over ears, the two-faced idiots. But even stolid Matouba seemed to be coming under her spell.
Jin was not a man to be befuddled. But he was.
To a certain extent, he did understand their besotment. Most sailors saw few women in the course of things, and even fewer women without rouge, brass-tinted hair, and sickly white skin from days spent sleeping off the night’s work. When she removed the hat that gave her the look of a witch crossed with a sandbag, Viola Carlyle’s cheeks glowed with life. The hair she bound in a braid or knot was richly dark and curling in satin twirls everywhere it escaped its bonds. And her skin was smooth and fine despite her years at sea. She was a taking woman, even if she never showed a glimpse of the sweet, curved figure he’d seen dockside. Her crewmen were bound to admire her.
But there was more to their devotion. It required no more than several days in the men’s company to understand that.
“Cap’n says as she’ll read to us tonight like she done last cruise.” A narrow, salty fellow going into his sixth decade mounted a yardarm, making ready to strike a tattered sail.
“I likes that one ’bout the fellow what’s got nicked in the heel with the arrow,” his partner, a dark youth, replied as he climbed the rigging. “His mum better’ve dipped him in that river up to her elbow instead.”
They chuckled.
“Did ye know, Master Jin, Cap’n can read?” The youth’s eyes gleamed down at Jin with unmistakable pride.
“Can she?” Naturally. She had been schooled in a gentleman’s nursery.
“Yessir. Read to us all ’bout that there horse made of wood and them dolts what didn’t see the trick till it was too late.”
Jin had never heard of a lady reading about the Trojan War. The heel of Achilles-and the rest of that bloodthirsty warrior-were not typically considered suitable fare for gently bred females. But a man who kidnapped his daughter and set her to work on a smuggling ship at ten years of age would not fret over niceties.
“Though usually it’s them preachers’ sermons.” The older fellow nodded with a smile.
“Captain’s a God-fear’n woman.”
God, perhaps. But she did not yet fear Jin. When she spoke to him she held her chin high and gaze direct. On the other hand, she spoke to him infrequently, and never when she needn’t. She took her meals alone in her cabin. Likewise, she did not linger about deck in the fair weather when the sea was clear of company and the men were relaxed enough to pipe a tune or sing. Whether it was due to his presence he could not know yet.
But when she passed him on deck or the companionway, she did not pause to converse. That was as good a sign as he could wish for so early in their journey. She was uncomfortable with him. If she feared him, eventually she would do his bidding. They always did-both women and men.
“What are you standing around for, Seton? Waiting for someone to come along and carve a statue of you?” Violet la Vile’s smooth tones came from the quarterdeck above. “Oh, I mistake it. You’re already still as stone. A statue would be redundant.”
Definitely no fear yet.
He tilted his gaze up to the rail. The afternoon sun slanted behind her, casting her in silhouette. Clothed in canvas bags and a ridiculous hat as usual, she looked like a sack of potatoes.
He knew better. He had seen her curves. He had imagined them at his service.
He nodded. “Seeing to this torn sail, ma’am.”
In the shadow he could barely see her eyes narrow to their usual squint. Ladies did not squint. That habit would have to be broken once she resided in her father’s house again. But amid the piles of neck cloth stacked high around her cheeks, the squint did not render her features less attractive. Only more provoking.
“It’s not torn sufficiently to risk losing the wind by switching it out now.” She gestured. “Wait until dark.”
The sailors halted their work, casting uncertain glances back and forth between them.
“Respectfully, ma’am,” Jin replied evenly, “the wind at present is negligible. When it picks up at dusk you’ll want her full ready.”
“Are you questioning my orders, sailor?”
Jin drew in a slow breath. For two years he had been his own master. Before that he was independent most of the year when Alex was on land and he captained the Cavalier in its master’s stead. For over a decade he had never had an argument with his superior.
But before he had signed on with Alex, the last commander Jin sailed under taunted him aplenty, questioning his authority with the men, and his decisions. That particular pirate captain’s disrespectful attitude had come to an abrupt halt when, after he attempted to take a stick to Jin, instead he bled to death from a wound inflicted by his own knife.
Jin had been borrowing the knife at the time.
But Viola Carlyle was not a pirate. She should not even be a sailor. However much she behaved and looked like a high-handed ruffian, she was a lady, and his current project was to rescue her from this existence. Even if she got under his skin in a way no other sailor quite had. Or woman. Then again, he’d never known a woman sailor with a voice like brandy and a penchant for saying precisely what he did not wish to hear.
He swallowed back the response that rose to his tongue. “No, ma’am.”
“No… Captain.”
It was a damned good thing the sun was setting swiftly. In the slanting shadow he could not discern her eyes now. Big, dark eyes with thick lashes even her foolish costume could not hide.
He slid his gaze to the sailors balancing on the spar. “Mr. French, Mr. Obuay, unfurl that sail and come on down.”
The men hoisted the torn canvas back into place, the light breeze snapping through the fissure in it. Without glancing at her again, Jin turned and crossed the deck to the forecastle.
“Keepin’ it real friendly like with the captain, hm?”
“Cork it, Mattie.” Jin waved a pair of sailors loitering nearby toward the foremast. They hopped to it, lowering the colors for night.
“So, this be your plan?”
“It is.” He unsnapped the spyglass from the cradle on the rail in which he had set it earlier. A sail had breached the far horizon just after dawn, and Jin assigned Mattie the watch all day, with sharp-eyed Matouba in the crow’s nest. She might be the most contrary female on the seven seas, but Jin would not let anyone near her. Until he had her safely aboard his ship, no vessel would come within range of Viola Carlyle-friend or foe.
He peered out over the darkening horizon, the current lifting the bow in easy dips and rises beneath his feet. The ocean in all directions was perfectly clear.
“Seen anything today?”
Mattie leaned his bulk against the rail and picked at his teeth with a stick. “Fish. Swells. Clouds.”
“Clouds?” The sky was wide open, clean blue darkening to pink and lavender.
“Just testing. You seem over distracted lately. Didn’t know if you’d notice.”
“Mattie,” he said quietly, “I have killed men for offering me less grievous insults.”
Mattie glowered then pursed his fleshy lips. “Ain’t ever kilt no lady, though, have you?”
Jin turned about and strode toward the stair, then down into the brig’s belly. The air was close below, the low-ceilinged deck lined with sixteen heavy iron cannons tail to tail. Hammocks hung between their hulks, the lumpy shapes of sailors resting in preparation for the night watch. The April Storm was much larger and considerably less graceful than the Cavalier, an inelegant, aged brig. Its boards creaked beneath his footsteps as he moved forward toward the officers’ closetlike quarters, the shipmaster’s cabin dead ahead. She liked to spend dusk atop the quarterdeck. Now he could return the spyglass to her quarters without confrontation.
He moved into the narrow corridor between the officers’ bunks and almost collided with her.
Without hat and cravat obscuring it, the shape of her face was nearly a heart. Dark curls swept back from the peak of her brow, revealing quite clearly her delicate chin, soft mouth, and big eyes staring up at him as though he were some sort of monster. A swift flutter of black lashes dipped over violet pools, and slowly, like a rising tide, a pink flush stole over her cheeks.
As though in choreographed response, heat funneled into Jin’s groin.
Inconvenient. He should have seen to that particular necessity while in Boston. He didn’t need a woman aboard turning him into a randy lad, a sailor after a long cruise confronted with an unreasonably pretty face.
Not merely a pretty face. She wore only a plain white cotton shirt now. No coat or waistcoat disguised the edges of the useless undergarment beneath it-an undergarment that did nothing to hide the round beauty of her breasts pressing at the laces of the shirt. Breasts the perfect size to fit into a man’s hand.
A lady should wear more than that. If this lady wore more than that she would not be quite so… distracting.
Mesmerizing.
But he didn’t need her breasts at such close quarters to remain stalled in the corridor. The curve of her lush lower lip to her chin decorated with the small dark mole fixed him in place. It seemed as though a master artist had lovingly painted a portrait of a pretty girl, only to find her too perfect, and added that spot to mar his work, but it produced the opposite effect.
“Can’t help yourself, can you?” Her voice came between them beautifully smooth.
Jin blinked. Lifted his head he had not realized he lowered.
“They never can.” Her tone did not alter.
He stepped back. Straightened his thoughts.
“I was returning this.” He proffered the spyglass. His voice was rough.
“Stole it while I wasn’t looking, and now you hope to return it before you’re caught?” She arched a single, slightly unkempt brow. “Take care, Seton. You’re acting like an anxious pirate.”
He drew in a tight breath through his nostrils. “A sail breached the horizon this morning. I put a watch on it.”
The dark eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t see fit to inform me?”
“It failed to show again.”
“You’re accustomed to doing things your own way, I think.”
“I like to spare my captain unnecessary concerns when she no doubt has more important matters to see to.” Like taking the damned telescope from his outstretched hand so that he could return atop where he belonged and where she and her underclad, soft-lipped, sharp-tongued provocation were not. His collar felt hot. And other regions of his body. But he had never been a man ruled by lust. He would not become one now.
But something more than lust drew him. He knew this even as he sought to deny it to himself. Her brazen confidence, her unafraid tongue, her successes in the face of the setback of her entire life, even her crew’s idiotic devotion marked her as an exceptional woman. A woman quite unlike any he had known.
He had known many women.
“Your responsibilities are not modest,” he murmured.
Her brow crept higher. “Doing it a bit too brown, don’t you think, sailor?”
“I am endeavoring to serve my captain, as promised.” And he was. Not as she expected. But a vow was a vow, and no peculiar confusion of desire or little woman’s taunts could undo what he had labored twenty-two months preparing.
“By setting her crew against her?”
He screwed up his brow in question.
“Frenchie and Sam,” she supplied. “The torn sail.”
“I did what you told me to do.”
She set her hands on sweetly curved hips. “And they knew you disagreed with me.”
“I shouldn’t think it would matter if they did. A captain is bound to overrule his lieutenant when he sees fit.”
“His lieutenant?”
Would that she were not a woman. “Her.”
Her eyes narrowed to a squint. But it did not detract from her loveliness. Goddamn it, he wished she were a snot-nosed lad he could take down with a well-aimed fist.
“You really can’t say it, can you?” Her voice rose slightly. “You can’t bear to call me captain. It kills you to even imagine it, you arrogant son of an Egyptian.”
Jin’s temper, well tied for days, slipped free of its moorings. He moved so that the space between them nearly disappeared and he was looking down at her upturned face.
“See here, you spoiled minx, I may be under your command but I am not required to accept-”
“Spoiled minx? Minx?” she exclaimed. “I don’t think a man has ever dared call me that.”
“Maybe if one had, you wouldn’t be so damned-”
“How could you possibly know whether I am spoiled or not?”
“I can see it well enough in your men’s behavior.”
“I warned you, you wouldn’t like it.”
“Would not like what?” Her flashing eyes? Her full lips? The wavy lock of hair tumbling over her brow, obscuring the perfection and rendering her yet more enticing?
“Serving under me.”
Under. Atop. Any way she liked it. And with a fiery temper like hers, he suspected he would like it quite a bit. Given all, the notion appealed more than it ought. The sparkle of challenge in her eyes went straight to his cock.
“You can’t bear it, you conceited excuse for a respectable privateer.” Her mouth curved into a satisfied grin. “Aha. That’s got a rise out of you.”
In a manner of speaking.
He sucked in breath slowly, battening down on his temper and arousal at once. “I am not an excuse for a respectable privateer. I am one.”
“You think that simply because you have a commission from your British government you no longer have the instincts of pirate scum?”
The rise abruptly fell, a bucket of ice dashed on his unwelcome ardor.
“I do.”
“Prove it.”
He grasped her hand, found it clenched, and peeled her fingers apart. He placed the telescope in her palm and closed her hand around it.
“I do not take that which is not mine by right.” He released her.
Her big eyes were in a tumult, her breaths fast. The reaction seemed excessive, but it suited Jin. It was closer to fear than her earlier attitude.
“It’s because I am a woman.” A quaver threaded through her satin voice. “Some men cannot accept orders from a woman.”
“It is because you are a harpy. And I am not some men.”
He left. If he remained in that damned corridor for another minute he might be tempted to tell her the truth.
It was not because she was a woman, a remarkably pretty one with ripe lips he could imagine performing all sorts of tasks other than spewing insults. It was not because he had been a pirate for much of his life. It was not even because he had promised himself to see her to England come hell or high water. It was because sometime over the past two years searching for a girl stolen from her home at a tender age, Jin had realized something profoundly disturbing. Something he rarely allowed himself to ponder.
She had a home to return to. She had a family. That she denied that now, even after so many years, living her life as though the family who cherished her did not exist, infuriated him.
He felt fury. Toward a woman he barely knew.
In his youth, anger had consumed him. For over a decade now, however, he had trained himself to turn that anger toward useful occupation. But this time it stared him in the face in the form of a willful woman who did not understand that the gift she threw away was everything some people-he-ever dreamed of possessing.