How to Be a Proper Lady

“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.

Chapter 5

“Glum today, mum? On account of the weather, I wager.”

Viola slanted her cabin boy a scowl, then regretted it when his freckled face fell. He wasn’t but seven, full of good cheer and excitement about everything, much as she’d been when her father first brought her aboard his ship. Her ship for nearly two years now. The ship she called home, currently on its way to a man she hoped to also call home someday.

She ruffled Gui’s carroty hair and his grin resurfaced, making him look a great deal like his grandfather, Frenchie. He jumped off the quarterdeck rail onto the planks and slapped his little thigh, the wind ruffling his disordered locks further.

“I know what’ll pick up your spirits, Cap’n. A bite of Little Billy’s grub.” He scampered down the narrow quarterdeck stair and disappeared below.

Little Billy’s grub couldn’t pick up anyone’s spirits. If that lad had cooked a day in his life before setting foot aboard the April Storm, Viola would sell him the whole ship for a dollar.

But she was indeed ill-tempered. Already today she’d snapped at Sam, burned her arm on a sliding line, and tripped over a bucket, and it wasn’t even noon yet under the canopy of low gray clouds. Like the early summer sky, her mind wasn’t clear, and it made her tetchy.

She knew perfectly well what caused it. Who. He stood at the forecastle, his back to her as always, broad shoulders and long legs cut against the bright ocean. He seemed to like spending his leisure time at the fore of the ship. Probably because it was as far away from her as he could get.

He hadn’t liked her insults three days earlier. No man would. She didn’t even know where they’d come from. Her mouth simply opened and out poured nasty word after nasty word. He probably deserved most of them, but that didn’t mean she should give her tongue free rein. Especially when he’d been looking at her like…

No. She must have imagined it.

In the early days, Aidan had gotten that look in his eyes just before he kissed her. That hot, focused look like he was thinking something very different than what they were talking about. But she didn’t know a thing about Jinan Seton. He probably looked at everybody that way when they were insulting him.

He’d kept his temper fairly well. If he truly lost it she could accuse him of mutiny. But a man who lived the life he had did not lose control often. When he did, though, it was a little alarming.

Rather, thrilling. He’d grabbed her hand and the controlled strength in his firm, deliberate touch rocked her.

As he often did when she was staring at him from afar, now he turned and met her gaze. Without hesitation he descended from the forecastle and came aft across the deck and up the companionway to the quarterdeck. It was as though with simply her gaze she beckoned, and as her willing servant, he responded. As though he wished to please her.

Idle dreams. Serena had been the dreamer, Viola the adventurer.

Jinan Seton was certainly an adventure of sorts.

From along her nose, she looked him up and down. She’d learned that commanding men looked other men up and down, honest men looked other men in the eye, and dishonest men looked everywhere else.

“The men have been talking about making port at St. George’s Island.” He met her gaze directly, all business since the interlude below deck when he touched her perfunctorily and made her tremble. “They say you did so once before on this route.”

She furrowed her brow. “They have a spot they’d like to return to there.” A brothel where the girls wore nothing but net stockings and lace undergarments. Or so a seaman, drunk as a sow, had told her that night long ago. Only seventeen at the time, and longing to know what would encourage Aidan’s interest, Viola had nearly bribed the sailor to return to the brothel and purchase a set of the girls’ garments for her. She hadn’t the courage to do it, though. When she told Aidan about it later, he chucked her on the chin and said she was too good a girl for that sort of thing.

“Why not allow them?” Seton glanced at the horizon, then the water running fast along the port side. The breeze was fair, and she had noticed he didn’t miss a thing. He was always watching, calculating, planning the ship’s next move. “A day in port will not put us off schedule.”

But it would give the men a chance to introduce him to that brothel.

“No.” They could afford a few days in port. Stopping at Bermuda wouldn’t hurt a thing. “No. We should continue on. With storms unpredictable as they are, I don’t want to lose time while I have the advantage.”

“Unpredictable?” His handsome face remained passive.