we were children. You never did care much what clothing you wore so long as you could run about comfortably in it.”
Viola took a deep breath. “And I should like you to teach me how to be a proper lady.”
Serena’s brow knotted. “But, Vi, you already are a-”
“No, I am obviously not. If I ever even learned the things a lady must know I have forgotten all of it.” She set her shoulders. “But I should like to learn how to be one and try it out before I decide whether it will suit me.”
“Whether it will suit you?” Serena’s voice hitched. “Are you planning to return to America then? Soon?”
Viola grabbed both her hands. “No. No. I don’t know for certain. Really. Though I do
Now she would throw herself into becoming a lady that Serena could be proud of, not one who slept on a couch, dressed like a man, and doused servants with tea. And in busying herself with this monumental task, she might occasionally forget the crystal blue gaze and devastating embrace of the beastly man to whom she had very foolishly given her whole heart.
“She is astoundingly pretty.” Yale spoke beneath his breath, staring at the empty doorway through which Lady Savege and Viola had disappeared. “Quite.”
Jin caught the footman’s eye and gestured him from the room.
The Welshman sighed affectedly. “Ah, we are not to chat about pretty girls, are we, but get right down to business. More’s the pity.” He settled back in his chair, a lean, dark portrait of elegant indolence. Jin knew better than to be fooled by this posture.
“You will have ample opportunity to flirt with Miss Carlyle once I am gone.”
“But it would be much more fun to flirt with her while you are still here. I like to see wealthy men suffer.”
Jin didn’t bother denying it. Yale’s perception of others remained acute as always. It was one of the reasons he trusted the Welshman, and one of the pair of reasons he was leaving Savege Park so quickly. The other was less comfortable and had everything to do with his inability to be in the same room without wishing to touch her. But he could not touch her again, and he did not like his every thought spied upon.
He had elsewhere to be. His other goal to achieve now that this one was settled.
“Still in the suds, Wyn?”
“Why else do you think I responded to your summons from across the ocean so swiftly? Hoping you’ll lend me a pony, don’t you know.”
“I don’t, in fact. You have never before asked me for a pound.” He leaned back against the sideboard. “Constance wrote to me. She is concerned about you.”
“Of course she is. She must be concerned about someone, and she hasn’t got Leam to worry over any longer. Colin, Lord Commander and Chief of All, doesn’t give a fretful woman anything to work with, and is in any case so busy teasing Lady Justice that he is perpetually cheerful. And you, of course, have been absent for so long the rest of us barely recall what you look like. So I suppose it must be me.”
“Quite a speech.” Jin took up his coffee cup. The brew was cold now, but outside the day was already turning sultry and he would be warm enough on the road. The road that would take him away from Viola Carlyle, finally and permanently. “Constance is hardly a fretful woman. Does she have reason for her concern?”
Yale swiveled to him, his eyes slightly narrowed and his usual half smile thin. “Can’t you determine that yourself, old friend?”
“I haven’t got anyone following you, if that is what you are suggesting.”
“Ah.” Yale nodded. “That must be a first.”
“It was, of course, only that once that I set a trail upon you.”
“And I suppose you will claim it was Leam who most concerned you on that occasion.”
“I will. And it would be the truth.”
Yale assessed him thoughtfully. “You never lie, do you, Jinan?”
“Can I help you with anything, Wyn? Do you need money?”
The Welshman tapped his fingertips on the gleaming tabletop. “Rather, I need a drink.”
“Thus Constance’s letter to me.”
The Welshman’s gaze flashed up. “Do you know, I have just had the most marvelous idea, Jinan. Constance needs a man to worry about, and you are a fellow who truly lives his life dangerously. Why don’t you marry her and get her off my back?”
Jin lifted a brow.
“No. Listen,” Yale persisted, the light of deviltry in his silver eyes. “An heiress wed to an adventuring Midas. The perfect pair. Then she could worry over you from now until kingdom come instead of me. Why not?”
“Why not, indeed.”
“What? Extraordinary beauty and an enormous dowry are insufficient enticements?” He crossed his arms in a pensive attitude. “I suppose a lady must also know how to captain a ship to be truly appealing to the Hawk of the Sea.”
Jin pushed away from the sideboard and moved toward the door.
Yale chuckled, then said more soberly, “Colin wants you and your ship in the Mediterranean. Malta, apparently.”
He paused at the door. “Malta?”
“I believe so, yes. Something about a plot to oust we Brits and some heiress or other who eloped and her parents disowned her but now she must be unearthed before she is caught in the crossfire. He’s asked me to go and wishes you to do the driving, as it were.”
“I will let you know.” He went to the foyer, then onto the drive where his horse awaited him, his traveling pack strapped to its haunches. Without another glance at the house or the terrace where she might now be taking breakfast, Jin mounted and set off.
He had not lied. In London he had a bishop to meet and a small casket to purchase. He would put up in the rooms he kept in Piccadilly, pay a call on Colin Gray and an admiral or two, and pursue his goal of retrieving his mother’s box.
But the pressure in his chest insisted otherwise. It said that now he rode nowhere, to no purpose, and with no aim. As the distance stretched between him and the woman from whom he must remove himself, for the first time in twenty years Jin felt like a man truly at sea.
Chapter 20
At first, recreating herself into a lady did prove quite a lot of fun. The modiste arrived, tossed about fashion plates, fabrics, and laces, and oohed and ahhed over Viola’s figure while clucking over the indelicate hue of her skin. Viola was then draped with tissue-thin silks, crisp taffetas, and light muslins, strapped with measuring tapes, poked with pins, and generally treated like a mannequin. Petticoats and shifts of the lightest fabrics were produced in abundance. Silly little coats called pelisses, punishing stays, fringed shawls, gloves in every color, and a panoply of bonnets followed.
Viola found a paper and pen and scribbled the names of each garment so as to be able to recall them later. The activity of making the list, however, reminded her of those first months aboard ship when she had done the same, noting spars, lines, sails, and armaments until she had memorized the name of every single piece of wood, iron, hemp, and canvas aboard. And simply writing made her miss her ship’s diary, jotting down the day’s monotonous events each evening before turning in. With the memories swimming about, she could not fully enjoy the dressmaker’s antics. But Serena’s pleasure in the activity was patent, and Viola could not begrudge her happiness.
When Mr. Yale peeked his head in the door to query about their progress, the dressmaker shooed him away. A lady’s boudoir was no place for a man, apparently. Viola wondered what Mrs. Hamper or Serena would think if she
