How to Be a Proper Lady

“I do.”

She worked quickly, adept at this as she was at twining her crewmen about her will. With gentle application she spread the oily salve across his palm, then pressed a layer of cloth to it and bound it with a strip of linen. She tied it off and released him, then wiped her hands and closed the medicines in the chest. She slipped the key into her pocket and set her hands on her hips.

“Don’t make a fist if you mustn’t. And don’t use it for anything but the most innocuous tasks.” Her lashes flickered, as though a not-so-innocuous task his hand might perform occurred to her. “If you mustn’t,” she repeated somewhat airily.

Beauty, bravado, and maidenlike confusion all wrapped into one. For the first time all day, Jin found himself smiling and he said unwisely, “And if I must?”

Her gaze snapped away. “Then I know a superb blacksmith who could have a hook ready for you in less than a sennight.” She hefted the medicine chest and set it on the floor at the foot of the bunk. Despite the shapeless coat that concealed her curves, he could not draw his gaze from her. He could watch her move, watch her grin or swagger or sit in perfect stillness upon the bow of her ship with her hair tangling in the wind… endlessly.

Heat washed through him-this heat entirely foreign, insistent, not desire. His heart raced, a reckless pulse he’d only ever felt once, twenty years earlier. That time he had run, evaded his keepers, and escaped through the dusty cane fields. As they gained on him, his limbs weak from starvation and bare feet bloodied by the dry stalks, his heart had raced thus. And when they had caught him, he’d fought.

He made himself speak.

“Why do you resist returning home, Viola? You cannot wish to live the remainder of your days in this manner.” He did not need to gesture about him at the worn walls and narrow window of her tiny cabin, the shabby furnishings she maintained so neatly without the help of a steward, only a seven-year-old cabin boy. “You could have so much more. You were born to have more.”

“Did Mr. Castle come here while I was at the harbormaster’s office?” Her lovely face was immobile.

He had his answer, then, the answer he suspected despite the previous night.

“No.”

She moved to the door, tugging on her hat. “I heard news of the fire in town. Apparently it spread to a second field, but no one knows if it reached the house. I hope they are all well.” She went ahead onto the gun deck. Her sailors tipped their caps and she cast them smiles as ever, but distracted. Her mind was elsewhere. And, apparently, still her heart. With Aidan Castle.

“I sent Matouba on horseback,” he said. “He should return shortly with news.”

She darted him a glance, then climbed the stairs to the main deck. Round the capstan sailors pulled at long poles, chanting an old rhythm as they released the anchor one yard of massive chain at a time. Jin called for a boat to be lowered and passed orders to Becoua to have the sails furled and other chores completed. Ignoring Mattie’s glare, he followed the master of the April Storm off her ship and across the harbor to town.

The harbormaster came around his desk and extended a hand.

“If I had known who you were last night, Mr. Seton, I should have insisted on your company for lunch today. But it shall have to be dinner tonight instead, and of course Miss Daly as well. Pity you’ve just missed Captain Eccles. He has gone on to Havana but will be sorry to have passed you by so narrowly.”

“I don’t believe I am acquainted with Captain Eccles, sir.”

“Of course you are.” The port master pulled a chair forward for Viola and gestured for her to sit. She did so gingerly, her violet eyes wide.

The harbormaster settled into his. “According to Eccles, when last you encountered one another he was not yet master of his own ship, but under the command of Captain Halloway.”

“Ah. Halloway’s lieutenant aboard the Command.”

“That nasty business with that pirate Redstone and the earl, whatever his name was. Poole?” The port official waved it away, rummaging in his desk drawer. “An excellent story, though. My wife and I found it enormously diverting. Eccles gave me this to pass on to you if you should happen through port. Remarkable that you should do so not a sennight since his sojourn here.” He extended a sealed envelope across the desk. Jin tucked it into his waistcoat.

“I thank you for the invitation to dine with you tonight, sir. But what of this fine on the April Storm? Will you give me leave to collect the sum from Miss Daly’s banker on Tobago and return it to you within the sennight?”

“Of course, of course. We ain’t savages here.” He chortled comfortably, and stood. “But not until tomorrow, after you have supped on my wife’s pork pie and jelly. A man hasn’t lived until he’s had a mouthful of that pork pie.” He patted his belly, then ushered them affably to the door.

“By the by, Seton, I must thank you belatedly for apprehending the Estella last winter. Those Cuban pirates absconded with at least two loaded merchant vessels out of this port and I suspect a third that went missing and we never heard of again. Brutal fellows. Brutal, I tell you, from the stories I got from the few men who survived. Though there weren’t many of those, of course.” He shook his head, then clapped Jin on the shoulder. “It is a fine thing to have a ship like the Cavalier in these waters. Where is that quick little schooner now?”

“She is indisposed currently, sir.”

“Cleaning time, I daresay. Well, best get her back in the water where she’ll do honest men some good. Now don’t you be late to dinner or the missus will scold me. Seven o’clock direct.” He closed the door.

On the street again, amid shoppers passing by and carts laden with the commerce of a port town, Viola turned to him.

“Englishmen are the most peculiar people I have ever met. They do know what you were, don’t they?”

Beneath the brilliant blue equatorial sky, Jin’s blood ran cool now, anger gone for the moment. This was what he had come to know, what he had trained himself to for a decade. This game of pretending his past did not exist, the past in which the only identities he owned were slave, murderer, and thief.

“Indeed they do,” he replied.

From the shadow of her hat brim, she studied him. “I suppose they prefer you as an ally rather than an enemy.”

He saw no reason to reply.

Finally she spoke again. “I need to go to the shop. My dress was ruined riding that horse last night a-and… I…” She stuttered to a halt. “Perhaps you could wait for me at the inn.”

“As you wish.”

He watched her along the street because it seemed he could not do otherwise, no matter how he wished it. A pair of women carrying lace-edged parasols stepped hastily to the side as she passed. They looked after her, heads tilted close and lips moving.

Jin headed toward the inn, drawing the letter from his pocket as he went into the public room. He settled at a table with his back to a corner and slid the blade of his knife along the edge of the envelope.

It was not from the commissioners of the Admiralty. Not even from Viscount Colin Gray, his erstwhile colleague in the Falcon Club. The hand was delicate, that of another member of the slowly shrinking Club, the single lady agent, a lady with sufficient funds and connections in the Admiralty to send dozens of letters into the Atlantic Ocean searching for him. A lady who would not have done so without good reason.

Apparently, Constance Read needed him.

April 12, 1818

London

Dear Jin,

I hope this missive finds you well. But I will not waste time in pleasantries for which you care nothing; I will come to my point swiftly.

Our friend Wyn is unwell. He will not admit to it, but he speaks in riddles as ever, evasive, and I cannot penetrate him. But I fear for him. I have no doubt that Colin has written to you; he has a project for you in the East. I write to beg you to take Wyn with you, provide him with purpose and distraction to cure him. I do