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Phil was silent a heartbeat longer. “I confess I don’t know what to say.” Humor edged Phil’s pretend dumbfoundedness. “Does this mean you’ll be moving him back to a cabin, after all?”
“It’s not too late to throw you overboard,” Katherine snapped.
Phil only laughed. “Yes, it is. I could swim to England from here.” The spyglass jolted as Phil tucked her hand into Katherine’s elbow. “You mustn’t be angry with yourself, dearest. Despite your better judgment, you find Captain Warre attractive—and understandably so.”
“He tried to kill me.” The resentment she’d clung to for years sounded ridiculous with his taste still heady on her tongue.
Phil ignored her. “The question is, what will you do about it once you arrive in London?” She lowered her voice. “An affair may work brilliantly to your advantage. What better to motivate him into championing your cause? Keep him hungering after your charms and see if he doesn’t press your case most urgently.”
“Your imagination has run wild.”
“Was it my imagination, or did Captain Warre have his hands inside your—”
“Enough!” Katherine pulled her arm from Phil’s grasp. “What you saw was not part of a master plan to whore myself for Dunscore. It was an accident.” A moment of weakness, after she’d worked so hard to be strong. She focused her spyglass on the distant ribbon of land they’d been paralleling. “I hate him.” She hated what he stood for, what he made her remember—the person she’d been when he’d fired on the Merry Sea. Vulnerable. Terrified. At the mercy of others, in so many ways.
“Then use him and be done with him,” Phil suggested in all seriousness.
The desire to see him, to touch him, seemed to have a life of its own. The kiss had turned the whole thing into a damnable mess that had to be stopped before it went any further. She lowered the spyglass. “He believes a few words to the right people will turn the bill under. There will be little reason for us to see each other after we reach London.” Questions she wished she didn’t have fought to be asked.
She felt the lightest touch as Phil brushed a strand of hair from her shoulder. “I meant it when I said you mustn’t be angry with yourself,” Phil told her. “Sometimes our bodies have minds of their own, no matter how harshly we try to command them into submission.”
Katherine raised a brow at her. “When have you ever tried to command your body into submission?”
Phil laughed prettily. “It isn’t that I haven’t tried, dearest.”
“Where Captain Warre is concerned, I can’t afford to fail.” Even now, his touch smoldered on her breasts and his spicy maleness wafted from her skin.
Phil squeezed her arm. “It’s the most unfair thing imaginable for him to turn out to be so—”
“Useful.”
“—desirable. For heaven’s sake, Katherine. You’re a woman grown, and he is a very tempting man. You needn’t take it to heart. Desire is just...desire. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
“Is that what you learned in Paris?”
“Yes.” Phil looked away and pushed at her hair. “Yes, precisely. Things happen in Paris—all kinds of things that go against reason. It’s not for nothing that they call it the City of Love.” She waved her hand. “But that’s neither here nor there. We’ll be in London shortly, which hasn’t near the magical quality of Paris, and if you’re not going to have an affair with him—”
“I’m not.”
“—you’ll need a different plan because I daresay even he won’t be able to make the bill disappear that easily.”
* * *
HE NEEDED TO get away from the sea, and it couldn’t happen quickly enough.
James stalked through the lower gun deck, snatched up the oil rag he’d been using and attacked the salt clinging to the hinges on the nearest gun port.
The sea had addled his brain—he’d seen it happen to better men. God, what had he done?
He licked his lip and tasted drying blood, just as a splash of salt spray hit him in the face. Damnation—he swiped his eye with the back of his wrist and heard William calling him.
“James.”
“Go away.” Instead, William came over and stood next to the cannon. James stood, too, and the motion made his face throb. “Don’t take directions well, do you?”
“Not from you.” William stood with his feet shoulder-width apart and folded his arms. “I came to apologize.”
“Sod off.” James turned away to oil the next hinge. There wasn’t a trace of apology in William’s voice, not that James wanted an apology. Or deserved one. She’d pushed the limits of his patience until he’d boiled over. Christ, he was a disgusting wretch, on fire for the very qualities her ruination had produced—a ruination that was his own damned fault.
The sooner this bloody ship docked, the better.
“What are your intentions toward Katherine?” William demanded.
“My intentions?” James tossed the rag aside and turned back, disbelieving. “You catch us in a compromising position and now what? You think to force my hand? I can’t imagine your captain approves this approach.”
“She may be the captain, but she’s still a woman. A very vulnerable one with little experience fending off men who try to seduce her.”
When an Englishman wearing a Barbary costume and gold in his ears demanded that one do the right thing, it was a sure sign the world had turned on its head. James felt his lip crack and pressed his fingers to it—too hard, though, and he flinched. “I begin to wonder how well you actually know Captain Kinloch, for all your professed friendship. Perhaps you’ve failed to notice the cutlass at her side, and her willingness—nay, her eagerness—to use it?”
“And the fact that she didn’t.” William’s eyes hardened. “If you lure her into an affair, I promise I won’t be so gentle in my next dealing with you.”
“I have no intention of luring Captain Kinloch anywhere—least of all into an affair. Captain Kinloch is the last woman I would ever contemplate having a liason with.” That was a bloody lie.
“Your actions half an hour ago prove otherwise.”
“The only thing my actions prove is that I’m a man who’s been too long at sea, and Captain Kinloch is a very beautiful woman who, apparently, has been too long at sea, as well.”
William got right up in James’s face, but this time James was ready. William would not strike him again. “If you make her fall in love with you,” William said, “if you break her heart, I swear on all that’s holy you’ll regret it.”
Fall in love with him? Good God. “Such pretty romantic notions, Jaxbury. For God’s sake, all I want in the whole world, all that’s driven me for months, is the prospect of consuming large volumes of cognac in front of the fire. I assure you, breaking Captain Kinloch’s heart has no place in that plan. She has no place in that plan.” Never mind that at this particular moment he would give up all the cognac in France for a single rut with her. God.
“That’s just fine,” William said. “But if it’s true, then I would suggest you stay the hell away from her.”
As soon as he repaid his debt, it was a suggestion James had every intention of following.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#ulink_44b41b08-62f6-595a-8fd6-46fadebe51ab)
OF COURSE, IF the debt depended on his own sense of obligation, he could simply forgive himself and be done with it.
The idea had no small amount of appeal several short days later, standing with Captain Kinloch and Miss Germain in front of the late Lord Dunscore’s towering house in St. James’s cloaked by the rank London evening, with an impatient hired hack in the street and no answer at the door. He held Anne against his chest to shield her from the damp and contemplated whether it would be possible to break down the door.
“Perhaps they assumed you were never returning and closed the place up for good,” Millicent hissed into the drizzly night.
“And left the lights burning?” Captain Kinloch shot back in a tight whisper. “There must be servants here.”
“Deaf ones.”
Meow! came Mr. Bogles’s outraged protest from inside a lidded basket.
“If we can’t get in,” Captain Kinloch snapped, “we’ll go to Philomena’s.”
James was just about to risk an almost certain nighttime spectacle by rapping the knocker a third time when the door finally cracked open on silent hinges. A skew-wigged servant scowled out at them.
“Dodd—” Captain Kinloch started, but James had no patience for that.
“Do excuse us.” He pushed past the old servant into a grand marble foyer that left no doubt as to the extent of the wealth Captain Kinloch had inherited.
“Now just wait,” the man sputtered. “You can’t—”
“Please tell your footmen to bring her ladyship’s trunks from the carriage.”
“I beg your pardon!” came Mr. Dodd’s indignant protest. “I—” Then suddenly he sputtered, “Lady Katherine?” Comprehension dawned. “I—I mean, your ladyship! I had no idea. That is to say, we had no word— We weren’t informed of your arrival.” He swept into a deep bow.
“The trunks,” James ordered, and was instantly sorry when Anne roused in his arms. “Go back to sleep,” he tried to murmur, but it came out more like a muttered command.
“The trunks. Of course. Of course!” The man finally spurred into action.
Millicent carried Mr. Bogles’s basket inside, while his repeated meows echoed through the foyer as footmen finally began carrying trunks up the great, curved staircase. Captain Kinloch stood frozen beneath a blazing silver chandelier, looking as vulnerable as Anne felt in his arms.
“Your ladyship is aware,” Mr. Dodd started, but paused. “That is to say, does your ladyship intend...”
For God’s sake, this was more than James could tolerate on a few moments’ sleep snatched during a pothole-ridden coach ride that had lasted an eternity. He glanced around for somewhere to put Anne and spotted an upholstered bench against one wall.
“Intend what?” Captain Kinloch came to life suddenly. Sharply.
“Does your ladyship intend to—” Dodd swallowed visibly “—evict Mr. Holliswell and Miss Holliswell, then?”
Her ladyship’s head whipped around. “Holliswell.” Her tone sliced through the air like her beloved cutlass.
Bloody hell. James went to the bench, fighting an urge to hold Anne closer rather than put her down, but Millicent gathered Anne away from him before he could decide otherwise.
Mr. Dodd wrung his hands. “He and Miss Holliswell have...set up residence, you see, and—”
“In my father’s house?”
“We did protest, your ladyship. Let me assure you!” Dodd’s eyes traveled from Captain Kinloch’s turban, down the length of her loose hair and over her woolen wrap, to the billow of Barbary trousers peeking out below and the boots that had served well on a ship’s deck but were unspeakably outlandish here. “But it’s well-known that Mr. Holliswell is to acquire... That is to say, he expects to receive...”
“He is to acquire nothing.” Those glittering topaz eyes flicked toward James just long enough for him to see fear developing behind her outrage. His gut tightened, and he was relieved when with angry strides she went to peer into a sitting room. He could see from here that it was strewn with gilded sofas and chairs that looked as though they belonged at the French court.
“What furniture is this?” she demanded.
“Miss Holliswell has been...redecorating, your ladyship,” Mr. Dodd said faintly.
Her hands fisted at her sides. “I want the Holliswells’ things thrown into the street.”
And wouldn’t the gossips have a frenzy with that. “Where are the Holliswells now?” James asked irritably. He would explain the folly of her plan later.
“They are out for the evening, sir.” Dodd eyed him with mistrust. “I believe they went to dine with Lord Croston.”
Devil take it. “I am Lord Croston,” he said sharply. By God, he would find Nick tonight and put an end to this.
“But...” Dodd’s eyes grew wide, and he paled.
There was nothing pleasant about the tight smile curving Captain Kinloch’s mouth as she turned her back on Holliswell’s painfully distasteful furnishings. “I daresay this would be an excellent time for you to effect your miraculous return,” she said, stopping in front of him. “And when you see Mr. Holliswell, you may tell him not to step foot in my house again unless he wishes to be gelded.”
“I fully agree with the first.” The fact that hearing her speak of gelding aroused him even the tiniest bit made it even clearer this business could not end quickly enough. “As to the second, I may not phrase it in exactly those terms.”
“I will find it very hard to stand paralyzed by the strictures of politeness while Holliswell steals my estate,” she warned.
Meow! Mr. Bogles agreed.
This, from the woman who thought he was ruthless. An accusing voice reminded him this was all his fault, but the fact that he owed her did not make her any less impossible. “If you don’t grasp some concept of the strictures of politeness, Parliament will hand your estate to him on a silver platter before you can toss a single gilded footstool into the street.”
* * *
COME MORNING, KATHERINE fully intended to throw an entire sitting room suite into the street. She tried relaxing her fists, but curled them tightly again to keep Captain Warre from seeing how badly she was shaking. “It would seem he’s already been handed my estate on a platter. But if he does return tonight, he’ll not step through the door.”
The door. It rose high, topped by a sweep of carved marble and flanked by great stained-glass panels whose lead canes she used to trace with small fingers. The last time she’d been here, servants had streamed out that door with her trunks as she bid a numb farewell to Papa and his new wife.
The adventure will do you good, Katie. And when you return, I’ve no doubt you’ll trounce us all at hombre.
The cold chill of powerlessness iced through her and settled in her stomach.
“As long as there’s no bloodshed,” Captain Warre said with irritation, “I don’t care what kind of reception you give him. But I’ll thank you not to make my task more difficult by losing control of your temper when I’m not present to tame you.”
Her attention shot to him. Tame her. She forced a smile. “Find your brother tonight and solve the problem, Captain, and you need never concern yourself with my temper again.”
“Nothing would please me more, I assure you.”
She glared at him, tempted to continue goading him simply as a distraction. But behind him a wispy memory lighted on the staircase—Mama with her hand on the banister, glittering and laughing before an evening on the town. One more hug, Katie, but then I must go or your father will throw me over his knee.
The great entrance made her feel small. She could not do this. She was not like Mama, sparkling and polished to London perfection. She was more like the wood the Possession was made from—burnished and solid, but showing the effects of many storms.
London would tolerate nothing less than sparkle and polish.
“Then by all means, Captain,” she said, “be on your way. We have no further use for you here.” One word and their trunks could be loaded back onto the hack and returned to the Possession. Everything inside her screamed to give the order.
He stood watching her, tight-lipped, studying her too closely. “I shall go speak with Nick and Holliswell. I’ll send word of the result.”
“Excellent.”
“Do try to refrain from anything rash in the meantime.”
“I have no idea what you could mean, Captain.”
“It’s too soon to go careening back to the ship and sailing away in the night.”
“What an imagination you have. I—”
