“Like what? Like a beautiful woman has chosen me amongst all the men in this room to approach and I am enjoying my good fortune?”
Her lashes fanned wide, the violets springing to warmth. Then she frowned, marring the lovely cast of her features.
“Save your flattery for giddy females, Seton. I won’t be flummoxed.”
“I did not intend flummoxing.”
“Apparently you don’t intend plenty that you do.”
“You are talking around yourself. Are you flummoxed or not?”
“In your dreams.” She twisted up her sweet, full lips that tasted like honey, and he sought steadiness. But it eluded him. In his dreams of late she gave him those lips to please. In his dreams she drew him between her thighs and gave him all of her.
“Where, I wonder, has gone the perfumed ingenue from aboard ship,” he murmured.
Her eyes flashed wide again for an instant, perfectly candid. “Not far. Why? Was she having an effect?”
He laughed. “How many women do you have in that body, Viola Carlyle?”
Her brow pleated. “Only the one, as I’ve been trying to convince you.”
“What is the occasion?” He gestured to her gown. He did not again allow himself to glance at her breasts barely concealed by a strip of fabric tucked into her bodice, or he would commence slavering like the rest of the fellows in the place.
She tugged an ugly gray shawl about her shoulders.
“I am a woman, Seton. A woman is permitted to wear a skirt without particular occasion.”
He lifted a single brow. “What happened to making your sex irrelevant?”
“I still am.”
He glanced about at the dozen men in the taproom who clearly would not agree.
“Hm.” He returned his gaze to her, to her lips. He could pass his tongue over the spot of beauty riding the curve of her lower lip, then elsewhere-the soft gully of her throat, the firm tips of her breasts. He could do only that for an entire night and be satisfied. Nearly. “That scowl is taking, you know, but it does not quite suit your current fashion. Perhaps you should change clothes again.”
“Perhaps you should leap off a gangplank into a nest of hungry sharks.” She brushed past him, the caress of her arm grounding him in sudden, complete heat. For a moment, Jin could not move, every muscle strained against his nature.
Perhaps she intended it. But if she intended it, she would be slipping him demure smiles as she had aboard ship. Perhaps, instead, she hadn’t any idea that a lady did not touch a man even in such an accidental manner. Perhaps despite fifteen years living among sailors, she truly did not know what happened to a man when a beautiful woman touched him.
“Sharks are always hungry, Miss Carlyle,” he uttered, and turned to follow, but she pivoted back to him.
“Don’t call me that here,” she whispered, “or when we arrive at the farm. Please.” Her eyes were dark, unsettling vulnerability coloring them as before on her ship. “Please promise me you won’t.” Her gaze searched his, anxious.
“It is that important to you?”
“I have nothing to bind you to a promise, I realize. But I know that if you give me your word you won’t break it.”
“How can you be so certain of that?”
She blinked, a swift shuttering of her expressive eyes. “I simply am.”
Jin nodded. “I give you my word.”
Her lashes flickered again, then she turned and made her way from the inn.
Chapter 13
During the drive along the coastal road then into the island’s interior, she hid her face behind the brim of a plain straw bonnet and said nothing. He studied her, the tight set of her shoulders beneath the thick shawl she wore like armor despite the midafternoon heat, her slender, callused fingers twisted about one another.
She was a woman transformed-not so much in clothing as in attitude. As the ocean disappeared behind hills and palms and the calls of tropical birds and scents of soil and green, growing things became stronger, she grew stiller and stiller. But this was not the stillness of her sunset vigils on the
She wished silence, and he gave it to her, content to await an explanation.
The coachman turned the carriage along a narrow drive flanked by enormous yucca trees, and their destination appeared before them. It was no mere farm. The drive was not long but the house was sizable enough, two stories, elegantly English in style, gleaming and whitewashed with a veranda wrapping about three sides. Fields of sugarcane stretched out along slopes with the perfection of a painted landscape.
Viola’s head came up and a gasp escaped her lips. She stared at the house, fingers gripping the carriage’s dusty edge.
Finally he spoke. “Whose estate is this?”
“It belongs to Aidan Castle. He was once a clerk in Boston, then worked on my father’s ship for several years before purchasing this land.” Her gaze traveled with reluctant greed over the house and outbuildings, not in any obvious pleasure. “The last time I visited, he hadn’t yet built the house. It’s impressive,” she added in a subdued voice.
The carriage pulled to a halt before the porch, and a servant emerged from the beveled front door. Jin climbed out, his boots scraping on the pebbled drive from which heat rose with humid dust. He turned to offer Viola his hand. She ignored it, fussing with her skirts and shawl at the steep step, then releasing an exasperated breath and accepting his assistance. On the drive she pulled her fingers from his quickly.
“Good day, mum. Sir.” The servant drew the luggage from the carriage.
“Good day,” she replied. “Will you please tell Mr. Castle that Violet Daly has arrived?”
The servant bowed and disappeared within the house.
Jin proffered his hand again to assist her up the porch steps, but she grasped the rail and ascended alone. He held back, watching her pass her palms over her skirts several times and adjust bonnet and shawl again. Then he followed.
The door opened. With a confident stride a man came onto the porch. Dressed in a neat linen jacket and trousers, buffed shoes and silk waistcoat, he appeared about Jin’s age, broader framed though not quite his height, his face and hands darkly tanned. His attention went directly to the woman standing between them.
She moved to him, tucked her chin down, and extended her hand.
Castle grasped it, said, “Dear Violet,” and drew her into his embrace. She put her arms about his waist and pressed her face into his coat.
Jin stood perfectly silent, the late-afternoon sun slanting across the veranda and the pair before him, the slightest breeze rustling through the cane stalks in the fields and fluttering through Viola’s skirts.
She had not told him the truth, of course. The occasion for her change of clothing and demeanor, apparently, was Aidan Castle.
He felt the same, thick-chested and solid. And he smelled the same, like shaving soap and tobacco smoke, so familiar that Viola almost sensed her father nearby now, as though if she were to look up Fionn would be standing beside Aidan.
He released her and she allowed herself to study him clearly. He looked the same as well. Light brown hair curled over his brow, somewhat long as sometimes he wore it when he forgot to have it cut. His face had not altered, square and tan, with the same slightly heavy nose, wide, bowed lips, the shallow cleft in his chin, and warm hazel eyes that smiled at her now.
“Your journey passed smoothly, I assume?” His voice was so familiar, a voice she’d heard every day until four years earlier when he left her father’s ship to become a planter.
