I Kissed an Earl: Pennyroyal Green Series (23 page)

“We both were in prison. In Turkey. And then we”—he waved his cleaver about, illustrating a sort of fight, presumably involving swords or knives or cleavers—“escaped. I had a bad leg, aye?”

Good God. The earl’s life story clearly rivaled that of Ulysses. She could hardly get the words out when she asked them. “Very well. A bad leg. But what were the both of you doing in prison?”

“We serve on a ship captured by pirates. They took all the cargo, aye, and threw the men into prison. They hope for a ransom, but we are both poor bastards, Flint and I, and so the rest of the crew they leave; we rot there. Me, I cannot walk so well. Shot in the leg. Captain? He wounded, but he not so bad. He could escape any time. The guards, they are stupid, they are lazy, they are violent. Pah! No match for Flint. But he would not leave me. For a year, almost?”

“Behind bars? You were in prison for a year? And he wouldn’t leave you.”

She couldn’t picture that larger-than-life man who freely roamed the seas trapped in a cell made of stone.

“Very few bars. Mostly walls. A window this size.” He paused to shape something like a two-foot square with his arms, cheerily. “But they allow us to walk in the courtyard. We see the sun once a day. We made our own weapons, aye, from bits of stone that fall from the wall?

Each night we sharpen them.” He gestured again with the cleaver to illustrate. “Against the wall. Until they are good for killing. And then we finally go over the wall one night. Attack with hands and feet and our weapons. Kill only two guards.”

She felt woozy again. “Only two?” she repeated ironically. Men. And this was the man who was in pursuit of her brother. Where other men saw walls he clearly saw opportunity.

Hercules missed the irony. “Captain Flint, he knew I could fight and he knew I could cook and he knew I would follow him anywhere. And so I am here.”

He cannot help the saving of things. Because no one had ever saved him? Then again, she’d leaped to his defense.

She’d do it again.

But what if Lyon was the one attacking him?

Oh God. She squeezed her eyes closed momentarily, appalled by the vise of her circumstances. How had it come to this?

“What did you do in prison?” She wondered if it was anything like being imprisoned in Sussex.

“Oh, he read books. And read them and read them. The prisoners, they come and go, aye?

Some are gentleman captured, then ransomed and freed. They leave books behind. Flint, he read them to me. He gulps them down like meals, the words. Becomes a learned man. I learn English. He learn many languages, our captain. In many countries. Mostly very naughty words.” He winked exaggeratedly. “They are the most useful to sailors.”

Violet didn’t doubt it in the least.

“Peel, Miss Redmond, if you want to eat tonight,” he said suddenly, sternly. “And I thank you,” he added rather stiffly.

She knew this must constituted a concession for Hercules. “You’re welcome,” she said coolly. Hercules abruptly gathered up cuts of meat and splashed them into a pot for boiling. Everyone should feel necessary.

And as she worked—worked!—alongside the sort of man her mother would cross the street to avoid she was absurdly moved and utterly piqued that Flint understood what she needed better than she did…and had found a way to give it to her that, of course, benefited him, too. In just this way he’d rescued Lavay and won a first mate and saved Hercules and now had a cook, albeit a temperamental one, for life.

She began to understand why anyone would want to follow him anywhere. The man was hopelessly, dangerously, bloody clever.

And he looked after his own in a way he’d never been looked after. And the warmth in her body became a warmth in her chest.

Chapter 14

F lint had decided to take his meal in the mess with the men that night—Miss Redmond took hers in her quarters, as she had from the moment she’d stolen aboard—and when he emerged, leaving the crew behind deep in a card game, stars had begun to wink on, and mauve clouds were scudding over the surface of a rising moon like a crew of polishers. He saw her leaning against the rail of the ship. Almost as though she was waiting for him. A strand of hair whipped gaily about her lips in the wind, an escapee from her coiffure the way she was an escapee from her family. He found himself rooting for the rest of her hair to escape.

He was before her in two strides. Almost out of pique, he caught the strand between his fingers. Stilled it. It slid like silk in his grasp. He held on to it longer than he should, helpless not to. Captivated by the small, intense pleasure of it.

“One got away, Miss Redmond,” he teased softly.

Her eyes were in shadow. But he could see her mouth curve a little. And even over the rush of the sea, he could hear her breathing.

Which mean her heart was beating faster now.

He liked being the reason for this.

Slowly her hand went up to take the strand from him. He knew the backs of her hands were untenably soft, because he’d covered them today with his own rough ones during the Potato Incident. He sensed everywhere she was achingly soft, her smooth pale skin emblematic of her sheltered, privileged life. Such a contrast to his own.

He wanted to touch her again.

Likely he could.

Likely he shouldn’t.

He was surprised that sparks didn’t fly from that heating hairsbreadth gap between their hovering fingers.

And at last she took the strand of hair from him without brushing his skin at all. The disappointment was so ridiculously acute it briefly knocked all thought from his mind. She ducked her head and smoothed it slowly back behind her ear, a gesture that struck him as almost excruciatingly sensual. He told himself it was simply because it was a quintessentially female motion, that it had been too long since he’d abandoned himself to the pleasures of a woman’s body. He wondered if her neatness was vanity, or her way of imposing order on a chaotic world. Perhaps neatness was her only real control Miss Redmond could lay claim to in her family. Perhaps that’s why she occasionally flung herself about like a firefly trapped in a jar, and had ended up on the high seas with a savage earl as a result. He had never wondered so much about any woman in his life.

Surely it wasn’t healthy.

“Thank you,” she said finally, once she’d got the hair back in place. She’d tried for coolly amused. But he cherished the tremble in her voice.

He thought enough time on the sea might unravel her in interesting ways. Beginning with that strand of hair and on down.

He contemplated the wisdom of fomenting this.

Wisdom had nothing to do with it, of course.

“I enjoyed my potatoes more than usual this evening,” he volunteered devilishly.

“I cannot begin to tell you how very much this gratifies me, Captain.”

He smiled. She smiled back at him. He wondered if the two of them held conversation in the dark because they both found it safer. It was difficult to see expression clearly in the dark, and so they could interpret them however they pleased.

“Did you think I ought to learn the meaning of work, Captain? Hence the potatoes.”

Good volley!

“I would very much enjoy teaching you the meaning of work.” His voice was quick and low and the meaning unmistakable.

Her breath audibly caught. He’d unnerved her.

She’d unnerved herself.

Irritated, restless, confused, he turned away then, looking out to sea. He placed his hands on the rail, soothed as usual by touching his ship. He began absently tracing a finger in the moisture collecting there.

“Miss Redmond, captaining a ship is nothing if not a constant exercise of strategy. You should know that I excel at it.”

He felt rather than saw her faint smile. She understood both the innuendo and the warning.

“The potatoes were strategy?”

“An intricate one, in fact. Hercules wanted more spices and more assistance in the galley. I simply cannot afford to give him both at the moment. By now you likely realize how unwise it would be to make Hercules unhappy. I thought you might welcome the…variation in routine. It is my understanding that a bored Violet Redmond is capable of wreaking havoc, and I thought it rather poetic that you should replace the cook’s mate you bribed to bring you aboard this ship. And I know, Miss Redmond, what it’s like to be among so many others…but to never feel like you belong. Hence my solution.”

“Clever,” she acknowledged softly after a moment. Not disputing any of it. She sounded absolutely sincere. And rather surprised.

Why on earth he should feel unduly flattered was beyond him.

“Thank you,” she said gently. She sounded surprised. And so uncharacteristically humble he was disconcerted.

But then she said quickly, as if belatedly hearing it: “‘Cannot afford’?”

He gave a short laugh. Which contained very little humor. “Not everyone is a Redmond. My fortune has always depended either upon trade or upon bounty. The king discovered me, shall we say, between fortunes. The title is mine; my future, my income, everything I want, depends entirely upon capturing Le Chat.”

Another warning, of sorts. He let her absorb this for a moment. She turned abruptly to face the sea then, too.

Her elbow nearly touched his. He had never been so powerfully aware of a woman’s elbow, not to mention his own elbow, in his life. It was beginning to make more sense to touch her than not to touch her. A dangerous rationalization, to be sure. She was pensive for a moment. He had the unpleasant suspicion that she was thinking.

“While we’re on the topic of strategy, Captain Flint…I’m curious about something. Were these ships robbed and sunk by Le Chat owned and financed by the merchants sailing them?

Or were their voyages financed by another person or persons? A group perhaps?”

“Why do yo—”

And then he noticed that her hands were gripping the rail just a little too tightly.

“You know something I do not,” he said sharply.

A hesitation. “I might.”

“And I might hurl you overboard if you don’t tell me what you know.”

“If you intended to ever throw me overboard you would have done it long before now.”

Admirable imitation of bored insouciance.

“I will do whatever is strategically necessary, Miss Redmond. Try me.”

She turned to him, trying to decide whether this was true.

“Very well. I will tell you, Captain, if you…trade your quarters with me for the rest of the week. While you sleep in the Distinguished Guest Cabin.”

She was bargaining?

“If you peel potatoes without complaining, losing a limb to your knife or your temper around Hercules, I will allow you to sleep in my quarters on the third evening. I will sleep in the Vole—Distinguished Guest Cabin. One evening,” he immediately countered. He was a trader, after all.

“Done,” she said simply.

“Then tell me what you know.”

“It’s less what I know than what I suspect. My father is head of the Mercury Club, a very exclusive investment group. They are quite selective about their membership—only very wealthy, very clever men are ever invited to join, and they need to be approved by the entire club to gain membership. And since you’ve been a trader, too, surely you know entire groups finance ships and then take a share of the profits, to reinvest or disburse however they please.”

He nodded shortly. “So what are you suggesting?”

“Mr. Hardesty is allegedly a legitimate merchant. The Comte Hebert fully intended to do business with him, having done business with him in the past. So what could be his motive as Le Chat? And what becomes of the goods he steals?”

“The motive in piracy is invariably greed and opportunity. And no matter the motive, Miss Redmond, what Le Chat—your brother—is doing is wrong.”

A beat of silence. “Unless it isn’t.”

He was speechless.

“How could…” He stopped. He could hear his patience groaning like frayed rigging toward the snapping point. “How could that possibly be true?”

“Lyon is not simply a…a criminal. I know my brother.”

“Or knew him. After all, he left the family fold, didn’t he, and you didn’t know he’d do that.”

She went still.

He’d meant to be unkind. He wasn’t sorry.

Well, he wasn’t very sorry.

He was driven to try to explain. “Picture, if you will, an aging sea captain driven at the point of a sword into a launch and sent out to sea to an almost certain death. And then tell me how right that could be.”

She shifted restlessly.

“Perhaps Le Chat robs from the rich to give to the poor?” she suggested desperately.

“You’re suggesting Le Chat is Robin Hood? Good God in heaven, Miss Redmond.”

“And how do we know how many of these piracies can be attributed solely to Le Chat?”

“We don’t know,” he said impatiently. “The robbing and sinking of ships is what seems to matter to everyone. But I do know Captain Moreheart owned The Steadfast. Whether or not he was but one of a group of investors I cannot say. And I cannot speak for the other ships.”

“How can we learn about the other ships that sank?” she pressed stubbornly. “What they were carrying, how their journeys were financed? Aren’t you curious, Captain Flint?”

She had the tenacity of a weed.

They stared at each other in silence. He sighed the sigh of the long suffering, and absently rubbed a finger into the moisture collecting at the rail of the foredeck, tracing and tracing a shape. He tipped his head back, seeking guidance. Saw Orion. Saw Sirius. Old friends and collaborators, he and the stars and his sextant and charts. But the stars offered up nothing but their beauty and their unflagging assistance with mapping his course across the earth. Not one of them hinted at what he should to do about this bloody woman. His mission had been so simple just days ago. And now, though he suspected he was indulging a fantasy, and that she was bound to be gravely disillusioned about her brother…he found he simply didn’t want to disappoint her yet. He didn’t want to be the one who darkened her hope. He admired it. He envied it.

For an instant he desperately wanted to be the one who made her face glow with happiness.