inlets and beaches and mountains. He had spent most of his youth sailing between them, picking up work where he could, stealing it where he could not.
Sixteen hours and they would be in port. Two days after that the fortnight would be over, and he would return Viola Carlyle to the home in which she belonged. To her family.
Her footsteps sounded on the deck behind him, approaching. She moved with a confidence her men did not possess, and he knew her by her tread and the scent of spiced flowers coming before her on the wind. He knew her satin voice and the flavor of her mouth and the texture of her skin at the delicate curve of her throat. He knew her stubborn determination and the reluctant flicker of uncertainty in her violet eyes. He knew her more than he wished to.
He turned his head, met her unshrinking gaze, and feared that two days and sixteen hours might prove an eternity.
Chapter 10
Avoiding him had not served the purpose she hoped. He was as gorgeous as he had been four days earlier when in her cabin he kissed her into a rag doll. The slant of the setting sun rendered his face and hands dark and set him before a curtain of cobalt fading to lavender. It was not a sight conducive to steady nerves.
She sucked in a breath and poked her fists into her hips. “I don’t want you to kiss me again.”
His brow tilted up, a look of tolerant endurance settling on his handsome features.
“Don’t look at me like you don’t know what I am talking about.”
“I have no intention of kissing you again.”
“I don’t think you had any intention of kissing me the other day either, but you did it anyway.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “You cannot refrain from quarreling-about anything-can you?”
She had intended a more seductive approach, along the lines of flirtatiously refusing him her favors so he would grow desperate for them and declare himself in order to have her, and thus she would win the wager. Her quartermaster, Crazy, had once told her that it drove a man wild when a woman he desired would not kiss him or cuddle with him. He’d said at those times he would have promised anything,
But Seton didn’t look desperate. At best, he seemed mildly amused. This was not going as she’d planned. Neither of them was following the script.
She pursed her lips. “I don’t argue when I agree with someone, which I never do with you, so you are unlikely to witness my compliance.”
The golden light of the fading sun glimmered in his eyes. Viola’s throat dried to the texture of a ship’s biscuit. He had witnessed her compliance quite well. He had taken part in it.
“Have you business you wish to discuss?” he asked with maddening calm. “Ship’s business, that is?”
“After we drop anchor in the harbor and unload, you and I will head along the coast to a farm not far away.”
“For what purpose?”
“To pay a call on a man my father used to do business with. An old friend.”
“I can remain with the ship.” Until the fortnight of the wager was out, he meant. But she wasn’t about to lose, and she had an ace up her sleeve: Aidan Castle. That, Crazy had told her, was another certain method for making a man mad with desire. Present him with competition.
“You’ll come with me,” she said. “Bring Mattie along, if you like. For protection.” She grinned and lifted a single brow. But she did not receive the reaction she expected. Instead of denial or cool indifference, his gaze remained steady upon her and rather warm.
“I do not need protection from you, Viola Carlyle.”
“Our first three weeks out I didn’t see you atop for one sunset,” she replied, “and yet here you have been five evenings running now, since you kissed me. It can only be because you like to see me.” She cocked her head. “Certain you don’t need protection from me, after all?”
“Why aren’t you at the helm? That is where you like to be at dusk, is it not?”
“Trying too hard to get rid of me now. That’s interesting.”
“If you say so.” His mouth tilted up at one edge and for a moment the sinking sun seemed to flare upon the horizon, shooting sparks into the darkening sky above.
This was strange, knowing one another’s habits as sailors on the same vessel always did, yet not really knowing anything of him in truth. Most of her crewmen confided in her, seeing in her a sister or daughter, even a mother. But this man kept his own counsel. The Pharaoh, she suspected, needed no confidant. The cut of his jaw and cast of his features, the manner in which he held himself, square-shouldered and in command-these bespoke a man of thorough independence.
She knew nothing of Jinan Seton except that his rare smile… made her see stars.
She saw stars when he smiled.
She blinked it away.
“My first few years aboard ship, it was the only time of day Fionn allowed me up there.” She lowered herself to the bowsprit, her behind settling onto the beam’s curve. He watched without expression. But it was her ship and she could sit where she wished. And she wished to sit with him in the sunset.
It seemed natural.
And perhaps if she sat here long enough, he would smile again.
“I have very fond memories of that time,” she added.
“They are not your only fond memories.” It was not a question.
She shook her head. “No. I have plenty. But…”
He waited, as he always did. He was good at being silent and listening. She had never been, not from her girlhood. The quiet, dreaming daughter had been Serena, a perfect complement to Viola’s madcap energy.
She looked off to the glistening horizon.
“Dusk is special.” She liked to be atop at dusk, for then the sunset shivered through her and made her feel weak with lonely longing. It was the time of day that seemed least safe, when no matter which direction the
It was nonsensical. And it was the way Jinan Seton made her feel.
She could admit this to herself now looking into his eyes glimmering with the twilight. Since the moment she’d met him weeks earlier, a sliver of that lonely longing had threaded through her and remained. And she fed it because she loved the feeling. He made her feel like longing was something to be wished for, something to be enjoyed, as she always secretly had.
“What about you, Seton?” She leaned back onto her hands. “What are your fond memories of childhood?”
His gaze slipped over her body leisurely, laying tendrils of heat beneath the surface of her skin. Then he looked into her eyes.
“I suppose that standing beside the auctioneer’s block while the boy who purchased me unlatched the irons from my wrists and gave me freedom must rank as my best childhood memory, Miss Carlyle.”
For a long moment she could not draw air into her lungs properly.
“I suppose it would,” she finally said. After another minute during which lines creaked in blocks and sailors’ voices at the other end of the ship came along the breeze, she said, “Did you know your family?”
“My mother.”
“Only your mother?”
“She watched her husband sell me to the traders. He had noticed that the boy who ran about the servants’ quarters looked a bit too much like his wife and an Englishman who had lived in Alexandria seven years earlier. He
