Page 43

S imon Dante wandered out onto the deck to relieve himself and remained at the rail, letting the breeze brush back his hair and fill the loose folds of his shirt.

He braced his hands on the wood and let his head hang between his shoulders, cursing his own foolhardiness even as he wondered what hidey-hole Beau had taken herself off to tonight.

He could, he supposed, hope against hope she was waiting for him in her cabin, but what point was to be gained in making a bigger fool of himself than he had already?

She hadn’t been there any night this past week.

She was avoiding him as she would a festering boil.

In a way, he was glad. It had given him time to clear his head and focus on the course that lay before him.

She had distracted him. Unsettled him. He had been full of rage and fury, bristling with a desire for revenge when he had come on board the Egret .

Isabeau Spence had lured him back into a world of softness and sexual heat, her body had lured him into its silky folds and he had lost himself there.

He had not offered anything and she had not demanded anything beyond that one night.

She did not want anything from him now, not even conversation, so it seemed, and that should have suited him just fine.

So why was he unable to concentrate on anything for any length of time without closing his eyes and seeing her body stretched out pale and luminous in the moonlight.

? Why was he not able to look at her without his usual detachment, or fall asleep at night without first spending time staring into the darkness, craving the soft sound of her breath against his throat?

And why was he standing on a chilled, windy deck, hoping to pace Beau Spence out of his system?

He still could not rationalize his attraction to her.

She was coarse and ill bred—a snobbish thought, to be sure, but one that was as ingrained as the manners and mannerisms that kept him from becoming anything but the Comte de Tourville, regardless of how hard he tried to avoid his titles and responsibilities.

His former wife had been the ideal, suitable match; a dazzling beauty with impeccable social graces and a blinding ambition that would have left any man gasping in her wake.

He had indeed been dazzled and blinded, and she had left him gasping at the coldness and treachery that flowed through her veins.

She had made him cynical and mistrustful, wary of ever surrendering his soul to any woman again.

And yet, Isabeau Spence was not like any woman he had encountered before.

If she had a thought, she spoke it or wore it openly on her face.

She was fiercely independent and fiercely possessive of her freedom, and he doubted there was any man alive who could tame her completely … or want to tame her completely.

He felt like a cat trapped in a cage, and he wished for stronger winds that might blow them to England’s shores sooner.

The quicker he was off the Egret and away from the temptation of those golden tiger eyes, the quicker he could return to a more comfortable state of indifference.

A drunken, senseless night at a brothel was what he needed.

What both he and Pitt needed to clear their heads and shake them back to reality.

Dante stroked a hand along the cold bronze body of one of the demi-cannon.

A glance at where the lines from the topsails were dogged told him the set without having to search the darkness above, and it was purely force of habit that made him glance up.

After all, it wasn’t his ship, wasn’t his course to order, wasn’t his place to challenge the bearing of the wind… .

At first, he saw nothing but the pale bloom of canvas interrupting the tableau of stars and night sky.

But then he caught sight of the figure of a man dangling down, swinging against the mainsail, one foot tangled around the clew lines, the other crabbing as frantically as his arms were windmilling to grasp hold of something more secure.

The scream was brief and muffled, leaving the distinct impression of the owner’s identity trembling on the air, and Dante was in the shrouds, climbing, before the sounds of the wind and the sea had completely absorbed it.

He reached the stout upper yard and crossed it with hardly any thought to his own footing or balance.

“Beau? Beau! Hold fast, I’m almost there!”

“M-my foot is slipping!”

Anchoring himself to the mast with one arm he slid down and straddled the yardarm, reaching down, lunging for a fistful of her clothing just as the wind relented and the sail slackened.

Her foot slipped free and she screamed again, a short, panicked cry that was bitten off when she felt the pressure tighten on her doublet.

“Grab my arm! Reach up and grab my arm!”

Beau managed to clutch at his sleeve. A powerful surge of strength tautened the muscles as he hauled her upward and she felt herself upended and lifted over the yardarm so that she sat straddling it with the mast at her back and the bulk of his chest in front.

Dante released her doublet in exchange for a more secure hold around her waist. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

A rapid shaking of her head was the only answer she could muster.

“You’re certain? You haven’t broken or twisted anything?”

She hesitated and he could see her turning her ankles, testing her knees and hips. She shook her head again and leaned forward, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder.

He let go of a lengthy sigh and waited for the pounding in his chest to abate. “Should I even ask what you were doing up here?”

“I come here all the time,” she replied, her words muffled against his throat. “To think.”

“To … think?”

“To think ! Sometimes I just need to get away from everybody and everything and think. Is that so terrible? So hard to understand?”

“No, but on a night like this, do you not think you could have found someplace a little less venturous? And where the devil is the watch?”

“I relieved him.”

“You—?” He swore under his breath again. “If this were my ship, and you were one of my crew, I don’t give a damn how good or valuable you are, I would—”

She lifted her head, lifted her eyes slowly to his, and he was startled to see a bright film shimmering along her lashes, starting to swell at the corners.

“—I would give you the thrashing of your life,” he said gently, “for risking your neck like this. ”

“I told you,” she whispered. “I have never so much as cut my hand or … stubbed my toe … until you came on board.”

“Forgive me,” he murmured, “if I have brought this ill fortune down upon you.”

He reached up and tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, then urged her head back onto his shoulder again. “Go ahead. You can cry if you want to, I promise I will not tell a soul.”

“There is nothing to tell, because I never cry! Never!” “Forgive me again,” he said softly, stroking his hand down her hair. “It must have been a trick of the light.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“That.”

He stopped stroking her hair and moved his hand away. “This?”

She took a small breath. “No, not that.”

He put his hand back.

“Stop 1-laughing at me.”

“I swear I am not.”

“You are,” she insisted. “You’re always laughing at me.

You laughed when you found out I was a woman, and again when you were told I was the ship’s pilot.

You found it amusing when I tried to shoot you on the Virago and you did not take me the least bit seriously when I said I would fillet you into tiny pieces if you kissed me.

And in the cabin that night—” Her head came off his shoulder and not only her eyes, but her cheeks, were suspiciously damp.

“Yes? In the cabin that night?”

“You were laughing at my ignorance,” she whispered. “I know you were.”

Perhaps it was because of the bad fright she had just experienced, or perhaps it was the starlight playing with his powers of perception, but when she looked at him, her guard was down and the full measure of her vulnerability was suddenly, unwittingly, revealed in her eyes.

The ship still pitched side to side, sliding forward and rearing back as it carved through each new swell, and he was forced to keep one hand grasped around a mast brace, the other clamped securely around Beau’s waist, but he could and did draw her even closer than she had managed to insist herself.

“No, mam’selle,” he said slowly. “If I was laughing at anyone’s ignorance, it was my own. Believe me, Isabeau … it was my own.”

A small huff of air escaped her lips, and while it might have shaped the word liar , he did not contest the charge with more words.

The stars shifted dizzily overhead and the wind snatched at locks of his hair, blowing it forward so that when he dragged her mouth up to his, silky black strands were trapped between them.

She scarcely noticed. Or cared. He was kissing her, that was all that mattered, and she flung her arms around his neck, kissing him back with a desire that bordered on desperation.

They broke apart, both gasping quick, shallow breaths, both staring at one another as if expecting some form of rejection.

When none was forthcoming, they melted together again, open mouthed and open eyed, holding one another hostage until the tremors in their bodies threatened to rival the tremors coursing through the mast.

He tried to draw her closer and cursed at the impossibility.

He tried to appease himself by devouring her with kisses, thinking it would do until he could get them down out of the rigging and he could devour her in other ways.

His hand did not have as much faith and went beneath her doublet instead, unfastening the belt that held her hose snug around her waist. He gave the wool a fierce tug, tearing the seam open from waist to crotch, and, with his mouth slanting more determinedly over any effort to protest, he slid his fingers deftly through the gap.