Текст книги "I Married the Duke "

Автор книги: Katharine Ashe

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“When you examined her,” he said over his shoulder, “you touched her face.”

“Aye.”

“What did her skin feel like?”

The Scot’s grin rolled through his words. “Fancy the lass after all?”

“No, damn you.” The inevitable pause. “Yes.” He shrugged. “She took those children upon herself at no thought to her own disadvantage.” And she was a servant to society debutantes. So he, heir to a dukedom, might as well lose his head over her.

“Ye’ve got a weakness for a soft cheek, lad.”

“And you have a weakness for dancing girls. Hang me for my vice and choke on the rope, old friend.”

Gavin chortled and went across the day cabin. “Ye’ll have to dose her wi’ drink again to settle her belly. Take a dram yerself while yer at it, lad. Ye look like ye coud use it.”

Luc turned to the sleeping woman.

Wrapped in the fine wool, she barely made a dent in his cot. He knew she’d taken little to eat aboard; Miles and Joshua had both reported to him. But she looked like she hadn’t eaten well in weeks. In the dimness of dawn stealing in through the shutter, her lips were dry and pale, her cheeks slightly sunken, and her skin less silken than he had been fantasizing, rather more like sailcloth. When she awoke, those brilliant cornflowers would open wide with surprise, or flash with indignation or warm with feeling she could not entirely conceal. But for now only the triangle of orange hair at her brow relieved the severity of her face.

He acted next purely from desire and without hesitation: he reached over and tugged the linen head covering back.

A halo of satin fire hugged her skull like a knit cap. Not orange or red. Flame, burning hot toward white. Like polished copper.

He pulled the covering entirely off, freeing a length of fiery beauty that caught his breath in his throat with awe that sank straight to his groin. There was so much of it. It would reach to her waist when she stood. It was impossible not to imagine her above him, the shining tresses cascading over her bared shoulders and breasts and draped across his chest. Or spread upon white sheets, his hands tangled in her glory as he worked his way into her.

He stifled the groan rising in his chest. He should move away.

He went to his knees beside the cot and touched his fingertips to her brow. He had felt the satin before at the nape of her neck. Now he turned his knuckles against her skin, teasing himself only, and drew them through the straight, heavy strands, closing his eye and feeling the caress deep in his body, then deeper.

It felt good. “Dear God.” Too good.

Her breath stirred against his skin. “Praying, Captain?”

Chapter 4

The Servant

Luc withdrew his hand and sat back on his heels. “Always, duchess. A man like me needs all the help he can muster.”

The summer blooms trained upon him were wary and rimmed with red. He stood, went into his day cabin and returned with a cup.

“You wish me to be drunk today too? Perhaps so that you can fondle my hair a bit more?”

He did not withhold his smile. A servant she might be, but she certainly didn’t seem to know it. “Water with a splash of brandy. Doctor’s orders.”

She frowned, but drew her arms free of the blanket and pushed herself up to sit. She accepted the cup. The gold and ruby ring winked against her skin where the blanket gaped. Her arm was like cream, untouched by sun and supple from shoulder to wrist.

“My physician says you have avoided taking fever.” He spoke to prevent himself from staring. The short, unadorned sleeve of her chemise showed at her shoulder. The gown she’d worn aboard was simple too. Her beauty and character demanded silk and lace. But on her, even the plainest linen seduced. “Congratulations, duchess, on possessing a hardy constitution.”

“Not hardy enough to retain my clothing, it seems. Where is it?”

“Oh, somewhere about.” He waved vaguely.

“Do not let my calm suggest to you, Captain, that I am comfortable sitting before you in this state,” she said with perfect composure. “I assure you, I am not.”

He withheld a grin. How this woman had been born into the servile class he could not fathom. “You mustn’t allow it to bother you,” he said. “Sailors routinely lose their garments to the elements. Or thieves. Brigands. Pirates. You know how it goes.”

She returned the empty cup to him. Her hair spilled down her back like a waterfall. “You have had your clothing taken too, I am to guess?”

“Only the eye.”

“You should not have done it.”

“I didn’t. The other fellow did.”

“You should not have gotten me drunk. A dram would have sufficed.”

He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms loosely. “Is it magical? Do you keep it bound up to preserve its mystical properties?”

“Foolishness again.” She turned her face away. “Don’t you mind being foolish?”

“Good God. The ladies used to call it charming. But I suppose Napoleon soured everyone on charm. Charm is so French, after all.”

“You said you would not take advantage of me,” she said quietly but firmly.

“Our terminologies are clearly not in accord. For I am most certain I would remember having taken advantage of you last night if I had.”

She did not respond but remained with her head bent and face averted.

“Samson,” he murmured.

“Samson what?” she replied.

“Wasn’t he the one with the hair that gave him strength? Or was that David? Forgive me, I forget my catechism at moments like this.”

“Moments like what?”

“Moments in which a beautiful woman reclines upon my bed and I find myself not reclining with her.”

She finally faced him again. Luc’s breath slid away. A single drop of moisture rested on her pale cheek, its trail like silver.

She lifted a hand and passed her fingertips beneath her eyes, but not to rub away the tear. It was as though she did not know it was there.

“Are there dark smudges?” she asked.

“Barely,” he managed to utter. “Beautiful, recall? I speak only truths, you know.”

“I told you, I don’t know anything about you.”

Which was nearly true, after all.

She took up the linen neck cloth and, as he sat entirely bemused and wholly aroused, she twisted the mass of spun copper into a knot and secured it beneath the covering.

“Have you regained your strength now, Lady Samson?”

“Have you tamed your piratical manners, Captain Andrew?”

“Is it vanity?”

“Your arrogance?” Her brow went up, a spark lighting her eyes again that he felt in his chest. “Most certainly, I imagine.”

He smiled. “If you don’t like it to be seen, why don’t you have it cut?”

“So that I can torment men like you with it, which I have also already told you. Really, you don’t pay attention to a word I say, do you?” She tucked final strands beneath the linen.

How much money would he be obliged to part with to convince her to loose all that hair again? Just once. Once so that he could run his fingers through it and feel the surge of pure, uncomplicated lust. He could make her an offer that would render her compensation from Reiner laughable.

The notion intrigued.

He would add a bonus if she agreed to wash it.

“Every word,” he murmured. “As though they were pearls.”

She cut him an inscrutable glance, then swung her legs over the side of the cot. The hem of her chemise poked out from the blanket, the dullest white linen without ornament. It was an astoundingly prim garment from which a glimpse of her calves and feet emerged. Luc’s mouth went dry.

“If I allow my ankles to dangle in your sight for a bit,” she said, “will you forget about my hair?”

“Probably not, despite how comely those ankles are.” Like the rest of her, a wrinkled and rumpled governess and none too clean yet still breathtaking. A beautiful servant on her way to his castle. “How will you travel to Saint-Reveé-des-Beaux, duchess?”

“I will hire a coach, though I hardly see how that is your concern.”

Rather, entirely his concern. “If I choose to follow you, will you call the gendarmes down upon me?”

Her delicate brow dipped, the cornflowers wary once more. “Why would you follow me?”

“My brother lives nearby.” In the chateau. He could tell her. He should tell her. “It is on my route.”

“If you remain at a distance, I don’t care if you follow me the length of the continent and back again.”

“That is a comfort to hear.” He stood and offered his hand.

Her shoulders stiffened. She climbed off the side of the cot without his assistance and pulled the blanket tight about her again. “I must find Mr. Miles and retrieve my clothes. When will we arrive at Saint-Nazaire?”

“Tomorrow if the wind holds. And Mr. Miles will bring your clothing when it is dry. Today you must remain here.”

“In your cabin?” Her cheeks flushed. “Your bed?”

He allowed himself a slight smile. “Yes, but alas, without me in it. I have work to do elsewhere today.”

Her quick breath of relief caught him. She had not expected to have a choice in the matter. A servant with her beauty . . .

He felt like a fool for teasing her. Worse, a scoundrel. He should have known. Other men did not always accept no as an answer.

Other men had not lived through the hell he had.

Luc reached for his hat hanging on a peg. “Last night you asked after the character of my men? Why? Has someone bothered you?”

“No. But there is one young man . . .” She chewed on the inside of her lip, a habit she had to which he was developing something of an addiction.

“Tell me,” he said. “Now.”

The cornflowers flashed anew. “You are remarkably autocratic.”

“It comes with the ship.” He allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction. The duchess was back. “Tell me.”

“The other day he visited Dr. Stewart’s infirmary and claimed a toothache, but he was lying.”

“How do you know he lied? Did Dr. Stewart suspect him?”

“No. But . . . I felt it. Whatever it is that sailor wishes from Dr. Stewart’s medicine chest, I believe he has ill intentions.” She spoke with confidence again, uncowed by his anger and unafraid of his authority. He had never known a woman of such beauty that was both modest and vulnerable, yet assured and resilient. She astounded him. He could not look away from her, but he could not speak.

“I felt it,” she repeated earnestly.

“How did you feel it, little duchess?” he said, and lifted a hand to her chin. “As you feel—”

She jerked away from his fingertips. “Don’t touch me again.”

Luc stepped back.

On his eleventh birthday, pointing a pistol with a shaking hand, he had said those words to Absalom Fletcher. So Fletcher had found another victim. A younger victim.

He turned to the door. “I will take your warning under advisement.”

He left her then to his bedchamber alone. Having stolen his peace and sanity, yet offering him nothing with which to remedy those losses, she did not protest his departure.

HOWEVER MUCH SHE needed the sleep, Arabella could not remain in his bed. Only one wicked temptation might have enticed her to linger: the opportunity to fill her senses with his scent that made her a little dizzy. But the bed linens bore only the mild scent of soap.

She had shared beds with her sisters enough to know that the scent of a person clung. She loved curling up in the sage-smelling warmth Eleanor left on the pillows when she rose at dawn to study and write. Ravenna’s spot in the bed was always tangled and crumpled, strands of wild, Gypsy-dark hair mingled with Beast’s silky black hairs and occasionally a mangled rope toy lost in the coverlets. Many times alone upon her plain cot in the servants’ quarters of whatever house she had served, Arabella had imagined being cuddled beneath the old four-poster with her sisters, keeping warm from the winter and laughing. Always laughing, even in the depths of poverty and want, for that was love.

She had slept in Captain Andrew’s bed, yet his scent was absent.

Mr. Miles served her breakfast in the day cabin but informed her that due to the rain her clothing was not yet dry. When he left, she bound herself up in the coat he had offered her the night before and carried her aching head to the infirmary. Sailors cast her curious glances as she went. She hurried by. They’d all no doubt seen considerably more than the hem of a woman’s chemise. I am a sailor, Miss Caulfield.

None of the sailors would bother her. The captain would not allow it.

Only he posed a threat. Everything he did and said made her feel confused and out of control. For the first time in years of determination and work, she was behaving recklessly, standing in the rain, drinking brandy, and sleeping in a man’s bed—and wanting to do it all.

She did not want him to touch her again. He was autocratic and arrogant and he made her uncomfortably hot all over when he looked at her. Always before, men’s attentions had repulsed her. But when she had awoken to his caress, she wanted to turn into his touch.

The cabin boy Joshua had left off his vigil, and she went alone down the companionway and along the orlop deck to the infirmary. The door was open a crack. She pushed it wide and halted.

The skinny youth from three days earlier stood above the medicine cabinet. The drawers were open. His hand was clutched around a brown bottle prominently marked with skull and crossbones.

She moved toward him. “What do you have there?”

He tucked the bottle into his pocket. “Begging your pardon, miss. Doc said I was to take this medicine—”

“He could not have meant for you to dispense it yourself, or for you to take that bottle in particular.”

The youth looked hard at her, his attention dropping to her chest.

The ring. She had not thought to tuck it away. She had only been thinking of her ridiculous infatuation.

“Set down the bottle,” she said.

“Give me that ring, then, miss, and I’ll give you this bottle.” His attention darted to the door. No one had been on the orlop deck when she came, and the winds blew especially hard today. The ship creaked furiously and the animals in the hold were restless and noisy. If she screamed it was entirely possible no one would hear her.

“I’ll leave the bottle, I promise,” he said. “I don’t mean any harm, miss. Just gimme the ring.” His eyes looked wild above his sunken cheeks. Perhaps he was ill. Perhaps he was merely starving. Perhaps desperation drove him to this.

She understood desperation.

“Return the bottle to the case and leave now,” she said, “and I will pretend you have not tried to bribe me.”

His eyes again skipped between the door and her ring.

She extended her hand. “Give me the bottle,” she said in her most authoritative governess voice.

The sailor slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew a slender blade.

Her throat caught.

He grabbed her wrist and pushed her to the wall. His body was wiry but he was tall and surprisingly strong.

“If you won’t trade, I’ll have both.” The blade gleamed close to her face.

“What foolishness is this?” she managed to utter, nerves spinning through her. His grip bruised her arm and his hand holding the dirk grappled at her shirtfront. He could cut her even without intending to. “We are at sea. Your crime will be discovered immediately.”

He yanked. The ribbon sliced into her neck. She threw her weight into her leg and thrust up her knee between his thighs.

He staggered back, gasping for breaths. He opened his fist and the ring winked like blood in his palm. She dodged for the door. Face twisted, he staggered toward her.

“THEY’RE DOING WHAT?” Luc squinted across the whitecaps. Sunlight glinted off dozens of white sails three hundred yards portside, casting the nearby naval vessel in a glorious glow.

“Standin’ about with the sheep, Cap’n.” Joshua chewed on a straw, his little thumbs hooked into his suspenders like a farmer.

Across the water Luc could not clearly see faces yet, but he knew well the cocky stance of the man posed proudly atop the quarterdeck of the ship opposite. Tony Masinter had been the best of first lieutenants and of friends. Luc could not have wished for a finer man to take his place as the master of the Victory. But why in Hades his old ship was bearing down on his new one now was anyone’s guess.

“Cap’n?” Joshua said.

Luc glanced at the deck of his brig. It was peculiarly spare of sailors, given the company that had appeared on the horizon an hour earlier. It wasn’t every day a hundred-twelve-gun naval frigate escorted a humble merchant ship into port. But it seemed as though Tony intended to do just that.

“Twenty of the men, you say?”

“P’raps more. But I’ve only got twenty fingers.” Joshua shrugged.

Luc turned his back on the other ship, leaned against the rail and folded his arms. “Why do you suppose the men are doing such an odd thing, Josh?”

“P’raps on account of the women’s flimsies hanging from the beams, sir.”

Luc stood up straight. “Women’s flimsies?”

“There’s one bit, Cap’n, ain’t nothin’ more than a scrap of nothin’, but it’s got them all castin’ wagers as to who gets it. That is, if she forgets to take it with her when we make port, you see.” The boy winked.

“I see. Thank you, Joshua.” He strode toward the companionway. He should send Miles to see to the matter. But he’d be damned if his crewmen and blasted steward would ogle her undergarments while he had to content himself with heated fantasies.

What in the devil had Miles been thinking to hang her clothing to dry in the livestock pen? Warmest location aboard, hell’s thunder.

Halfway to the hold he heard her scream.

Sailors’ heads came up around him.

“Orlop deck, sir,” one of them said.

He leaped down the stairs and bolted toward Stewart’s office, men in his wake. No time to load a pistol. He reached for his sword and slammed the infirmary door open.

With her back pressed to the wall and color flushed across her cheeks, she wielded a bone saw in one hand and a pewter jug in the other like a Valkyrie, with regal fearlessness. A yard away, the sailor pointed a dirk at her neck. His other fist was clutched tight, but between the awkward bones shone gold and red.

“I told you they would come.” Her voice was strong but compassionate, as though her pale throat were not inches from the lad’s blade. “You should have listened to me.”

He was one of the new men that Luc’s quartermaster had hired on at Plymouth. Barely old enough to raise a beard, now he stared at Luc with fear, the dirk shaking in his grip.

“He told me he’d pay me three guineas to do it,” came his raspy reply. “Three guineas.”

“Whoever he was that made you such a promise, boy,” Luc said, lifting his sword and stepping between them, “he’s left you to swing for it alone.”

The youth made no move to resist. The dirk fell to the floor with a clatter and he seemed to crumple in upon himself.

Luc gestured for one of his men at the door to take up the dirk, then he reached for the thief’s hand and pried the ring from the slack fingers. He nodded to his crewmen crowding the door. With a growling cheer, they burst into a volley of shouts, grabbed the thief and shoved him before them from the cabin.

Her eyes were wide, her face pale now. She lowered her arms. Luc took the saw and jug from her and set them on the examination table.

“He carries a bottle of arsenic in his coat,” she said.

“The men will find it. Are you—”

“I am well,” she interrupted him. Her throat constricted but her chin ticked up. “I am well.”

“You showed great bravery. Greater than many a man I’ve seen when threatened.”

“He was frightened. He did not want to do what he had agreed to do.” Her attention went to the ring in his hand.

He placed it upon her palm and she wrapped her fingers around it.

“I regret to have misled you, Miss Caulfield. He’s a new man aboard. I should have taken better care.”

“What will you do now? Will he be tried by a court when we reach port?”

“He has already been convicted. He will serve his sentence within minutes.”

Her eyes snapped to the door where the sounds of the cheering sailors had faded. “What sentence?”

“Theft aboard ship is a flogging offense.”

“Flogging?”

“Twenty-five lashes.”

“Twenty-five?” It would kill him. “Here? Immediately?”

He nodded.

“No. No, he mustn’t be beaten.”

Captain Andrew slid the sword into his belt. “The law is clear, Miss Caulfield.”

“You are the captain. Does that not make you the law on this ship, as you warned me? Spare him.” She stepped forward. “I beg of you.”

He looked down at her, his scrutiny intent now. “He has stolen from you. And you say he stole from Stewart as well. Why do you wish him spared?”

“I cannot be the cause of a man’s death.” The ring was meant for life, not death.

“Perhaps you won’t. Perhaps he will live.” The captain turned and left the cabin. She rushed after him. Ahead, the cheering of the crew on the main deck came down the stairway.

“He is starving,” she said behind him, gripping the stair rail. The sea spread out to all sides of the ship, brilliant in the sunlight. “Can you not see that?”

“Then he should have availed himself of the plentiful rations aboard this ship,” he said without turning to her.

She made herself release the rail and step out onto the open deck. “If he’s new aboard, how would he have known the rations would be plentiful?”

He halted and turned to her. The deck was crowded, her view of the frothy sea and the activity around the forward mast limited. What she could not see could not hurt her. Her limbs loosened uncontrollably. She felt dizzy.

“You are defending a thief, Miss Caulfield. A man who intended harm to you.”

“But the objects of theft are restored and he did not commit murder.” She clasped her hands together before her in supplication. “Captain, you must see reason.”

“Madam—”

“I cannot bear the burden of this man’s punishment upon my soul.”

“Then you should not have come aboard my ship with a possession worth stealing.”

He was not speaking only of the ring. He was speaking of her. She had put him off, told him not to touch her, and now he was making her pay for it.

It could not be. She could not be infatuated with a man who could be so cruel. But she had trusted in a man’s character and suffered for it before.

Dr. Stewart approached. “Captain, the men be ready for ye to pronounce sentence.”

Arabella swung to him. “Doctor, you mustn’t allow this.”

He shook his head. “ ’Tis the way o’ it, lass.”

She pushed through the crowd toward the mast. The crewmen made way for her. The youth stood lashed about both wrists to the yardarms to either side of the mast. His ribs poked out.

Three guineas. A fortune for a common sailor. Enough to feed his family for a lifetime.

“Look at him, Doctor,” she said. “He is skin and bones.”

The Scot frowned. “Lass—”

“He stole nothing,” she said. “I gave them to him. I gave them to him!” she shouted.

The sailors went silent amidst the clatter of rigging in the wind and the creak of planks and the ever present whoosh of the ocean.

“If you will flog anyone today, Captain,” she said, “I am afraid it must be me. I discovered a rat in my cabin and I borrowed the bottle of arsenic from Dr. Stewart’s cabinet to dose it so that it will not visit me again tonight. This sailor was helping me with the task. And—” She faltered.

Captain Andrew’s knuckles were white around the hilt of his sword.

“And I gave him my ring in thanks,” she said firmly. “I—I gave it to him as a gift. I am . . . terrified of rats, you see.”

Not a man aboard made a sound.

“Lass—”

“It is true, Dr. Stewart.” She pivoted to him. “I gave it to him. So he did not in fact steal anything. Captain, you must let him free now.”

Slowly, with deliberate movements, Captain Andrew sheathed his sword and walked toward her. “You gave him both the bottle and ring?”

“I did. I– Yes.” She trembled. The wind whipped through the flimsy skirt of her chemise below the concealing coat. She felt undressed and out of control, as always with him.

“What do you say to this, Doctor?” he said without removing his attention from her. “Shall I flog the little governess for stealing poison from your infirmary to treat a miscreant rodent?”

She gulped over her alarm. He would not.

“Cap’n, I admit, I maself gave the lass the poison for the rat,” the doctor said.

She sucked in breath.

The captain nodded. “Gentlemen,” he said, still watching her. “Release the prisoner. Our guest has an item of value that she must return to him.”

Reluctantly the sailors untied their captive and shoved him toward her. Head hanging, he shook like the rattling rigging. In his sunken eyes fear and uncomprehending gratitude warred.

Her throat closing, Arabella reached into her pocket for the ring.

“Naw, miss,” the youth rasped. “I can’t take it, now I think on it.” His words came quickly. “My ma, she wouldn’t like me taking gifts from a lady. She’d think she owed her life to you and she’d never let me hear the end of it.” He backed away a step.

“Mr. Church,” the captain called to his lieutenant. “Escort Mr. Mundy to the brig, if you will. And give him his dinner ration now. No one—not even those saved from a whipping by heavenly intervention—goes hungry aboard this ship.”

The lieutenant grasped the youth’s arm and led him away. Arabella’s fingers clamped around the ring in her pocket.

The doctor came to her side. “Ye’ve done a fine charity, lass. Bless ye.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“Miss Caulfield.” The captain strode toward the stairway. “Do attend me in my day cabin, if you will. I have a matter I should like to discuss with you in private.”

Dr. Stewart shook his head then turned to the gaping crewmen. “Back to work,” he ordered. “All o’ ye nou.”

The day was warming, the sun poking through wispy clouds. But Arabella shivered as she went to the captain’s cabin.

He stood with his back to the door, facing the open window. On the sea beyond, a huge ship flew the flag of England. His stance was rigid, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“You would not have flogged me,” she said.

He turned about. “Wouldn’t I have? How do you know? I thought you said you knew nothing of me.”

“I could not allow him to be punished for my foolishness.”

“Foolishness?” He moved toward her. “Was it upon a whimsical order from you, duchess, that he removed the poison from Dr. Stewart’s medicine cabinet?”

“Do not call me that.”

“Why not? You behave as one, mismanaging justice according to your wishes.”

“I could not—”

“Are you his confederate?”

Her eyes flew wide. “No. No, of course not.”

“How did you know?” He was angry, emerald flashing in his eye, but controlled, restrained. The night before she’d sensed his restraint with her too. “How did you know he intended theft? Harm to another? Even my quartermaster who is an excellent judge of men had no idea. How did you know he was lying when he asked the doctor for medicine?”

“I . . .” He would not understand. The Reverend never had.

“You?”

“I can read people.”

“You can read people?”

“I can read people I encounter.” Except him.

His eye narrowed. “You can read a man’s thoughts?”

“No. It’s not like that. I can sense feelings—desires and fears—and I guess at the reasons for them. Usually . . .”

“Usually?”

“Usually I am correct. It is what makes my services so sought after in society. It is very useful when seeking status or connections to know the unspoken wishes of others.”

He took another step toward her. “You do this with everyone?”

“Only if I wish to.”

“Do you wish to read me?” It was not an idle curiosity. But there was no desire in his gaze now, no teasing, only that intensity that had frightened her in the tavern in Plymouth.

She willed her feet not to retreat. “Yes.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“And what have you discovered of my desires, little duchess?”

“Nothing.”

“What prevents you from making the attempt?” He moved close. “Fear?”

“I have tried.” She should not tell him. “I failed. I don’t understand you.”

“Convenient,” he said.

“Not at all.”

He did not speak. She could no longer meet his gaze.

“What will you do now?” she finally said.

“Make you walk the plank, of course.”

Her eyes shot up. His face was hard but the anger had gone.

Her lungs filled. “Of course.”

“Miss Caulfield, do not interfere again with the justice that I mete out, do you understand?”

She swallowed over her relief and nodded. “I understand.”

He studied her face. “What did he intend to do with the arsenic?”

He believed her. He believed that she could read people. Or he believed her to be the thief’s accomplice.

“I don’t know.”

“No?”

“I told you, I am not a mind reader. I only . . .”

“Only?”

“Feel. I feel the emotions of others, Captain, because I have none inside myself to stand in the way.”

He stared at her. “A remarkably candid admission, especially from a woman who claimed minutes ago that a man’s punishment would be a burden upon her soul.”

Her heart beat too swiftly. “What will you do with him?”

“Remand him to the navy.”

“That ship—”

“A naval vessel. Its captain will make good use of him. The lad will not realize how fortunate he has been for many years, I suspect. But eventually he will.”

“You will let him go free?”

“Have you ever rowed in the galley of a hundred and twenty-two gun frigate, Miss Caulfield? It’s hardly freedom.”

“But, he is a thief.”

He lifted a brow. “Now you wish to see him flogged? Little governess, do make up your mind.”

“Why did you spare him? Everyone knew I invented my story.”

“And dragged the good doctor into it,” he said ruefully. “Clever witch.”

“Witch?”

“Another word came to mind, actually. I edited it before speaking.”

One moment in anger, the next teasing. “You are a strange man, Captain Andrew.”

“And you are a most unusual governess, Miss Caulfield.”

“I thank you for the compliment.”

The crease appeared in his cheek. “Was that what it was?”

Arabella’s heart thumped again, but not from fear. “You must at least question him. Someone hired him to steal poison, it seems. Perhaps his employer wished one of your crewmen harmed. Or dead. Perhaps . . .”

“Me? Perhaps he wished to kill me? Mutiny, perhaps?”

She nodded.

“Not to fret, Miss Caulfield. The lad will be suitably questioned.”

“Are you typically the target of murderers, Captain?”

“Not usually.”

“Yet it seems not to surprise you that another man could wish you harm.”

He lifted a brow and smiled slightly. “I find that somewhat disingenuous coming from a woman who has made no secret of her opinion of my imperfect character.”

“Can you not be sincere about anything? Do you laugh at everything? Even real danger?”