How to Be a Proper Lady

“Heading on to Port of Spain, then?”

Viola passed her hand across her brow, shoving back matted hair. Everything was damp, from her coat to- oddly-her anticipation.

“Mm hm.” She stared at the torchlight illuminating the doorways along the street. But she would not find answers there, only in the bright Caribbean sun.

“Haven’t heard from Mr. Castle lately, now, have you?”

“Not since December.”

He cleared his throat. “Them planters gets busy sometimes. And he’s still learnin’ the ropes, mind you. ’Taint every day a sailor sets onto land to farm.”

“It’s hardly a farm, Crazy.” With the money Aidan had saved from six years as lieutenant aboard her father’s ship, he had purchased fifty acres of sugarcane.

His brow frazzled. “You go on down there and see what’s what.”

“Will you check up on my house on your way home? The renters are good folk, but I should see if they’ve need of anything.”

“You won’t be pushing off for another fortnight. Why don’t you take a stop by yourself?”

“Too much work to do here unloading the cargo we took on, and refitting. I won’t have the time.” Or the will.

“Got no fond feelings for that old house, have you?”

“You know about that jail we just sent those boys off to?” She gestured. Crazy nodded. She lifted a brow.

He chuckled. “Never did like to be left there, did you, Miss Violet?”

“No, sir.” But her father had left her there nonetheless, for months on end with her aunt and three baby cousins while he’d gone off smuggling, then in 1812 when the war began, privateering for Massachusetts. Viola had never cared for cooking or washing or sewing. She’d only liked to read the newsprints and, when she could get her hands on them, stories of adventure.

Every spring when he’d taken her back aboard, he swore she was born to it. He couldn’t keep her ashore.

Serena had always said she would take to sea life like a natural. Serena… her beautiful, sweet elder sister who long since believed her dead, just like their mother. Who probably never thought of her at all now. Who would be shocked to see how her little sister had turned out, tanned and uncouth and leading a scruffy band of seamen working for Americans.

For years after her father stole her out from under her sister’s eyes, right off the property of the man she’d always thought was her father, Viola had hoped to return to England. She had written letter after letter, sending them off when her real father wasn’t ashore so he wouldn’t know and be hurt by it. For a hardened sailor, Fionn Daly had a heart of jelly when it came to the females he loved-his widowed sister, Viola, and Viola’s mother, whom he never gave up on despite the fact that she married another man. Right up to the day his extravagant devotion killed her.

Serena never replied to Viola’s letters, not one in six years. So at sixteen Viola ceased writing. But sometimes she still wondered, and wished she had a spyglass that reached all the way to Devonshire. Serena would surely be wed now, with a handful of babies of her own…

But Viola might never find out. She was going to marry Aidan. Since he refused to go back to England until he made his fortune, she wouldn’t be going there anytime soon either. Her life was here. In America. With Aidan.

“Good luck with the missus, Crazy. Hope she takes you back this time.”

“God willin’, miss.” He chuckled. “Could use the extra prayers if you got the time.”

“Oh,” she laughed, “God doesn’t listen to me about that sort of thing any longer. Hasn’t for years.” She waved and continued on to the boardinghouse. On a quiet, narrow street removed from the bustle of the docks, it boasted the peace and quiet she never got on board her ship. She couldn’t stand it for more than a fortnight or so at a time.

A withered old lady answered the door.

“Mrs. Digby, your apple cobbler has beckoned me back once again.”

“Miss Violet.” The woman’s eyes crinkled. “Welcome home.”

Hardly home. But the linens were always dry and hadn’t any bugs.

“For your trouble.” Viola pressed a dozen coins into the proprietress’s shaky palm and climbed the stairs to her room. She couldn’t afford extravagance, but Mrs. Digby kept her in reasonable comfort.

In her chamber she stripped off wool and linen thick with rain and salt and sweat. The serving girl came to make up the fire and Viola gave her a penny, then stood in a tin basin with a pot of hot water to wash. Before the hearth she dried her hair, finger combing out the knots, then fell into bed. She would sleep till Sunday if she didn’t have to rise early the following morning to see to the April’s cargo.

Before her eyelids fluttered closed, her gaze rested on a tiny statuette on the table beside her bed. Her most prized possession except for her ship.

Her father had traded a whole set of silver plate he’d taken off a Dutch merchantman for this treasure, her thirteenth birthday present. About the length of her forefinger, it was intricately carved and painted with graceful precision. Gold, red, blue, green, yellow. A tiny figure of an Egyptian king.

A pharaoh.

Years later, when she first heard of a pirate with that name-a sailor so brutally successful even Spanish buccaneers feared to cross him-she wanted to meet him, to see with her own eyes the man who was bigger than life. A real legend. Recently, when talk at dockside taverns said the Pharaoh had turned to wrecking pirate vessels exclusively, she wanted to meet him even more.

Now she had.

And because of her, a mere woman, the mighty Pharaoh was sleeping in a jail cell tonight. Also because of her, come the morning, he would be free. If he kept that gorgeous mouth shut.

She fell asleep smiling.

Jin awoke shivering.

He clamped down on his body’s reflexive reaction. Not to the cold. To the iron bars hovering before his eyes.

He shrugged up straighter against the wall, pulling in long, chest-deep breaths, willing away the crawling damp of his flesh and the throb of panic weakening his limbs. Dawn light filtered through the tiny square of a window just above a man’s head in the ten-by-ten cell. About him and in the adjoining cage his crew slept or slumped on the musty floor. The lot of them rested soundly anywhere. So could Jin. Usually.

He hadn’t been behind bars in twelve years, since he was seventeen. On that occasion, two men had paid for his liberty. At his hands. With their lives.

Eight years before that, with wrists in irons, he’d been dragged fighting onto an auctioneer’s block in the blaze of the Barbadian sun. That time a boy had paid for Jin’s freedom. With gold. A twelve-year-old boy to whom Jin owed his life. Each day of freedom since then still seemed like a stolen gift.

A steady, muted click turned his head. In a corner of the cell across the way, Little Billy knocked a battered wooden die against the wall. His neck craned up and he flashed a quick grin.

“Mornin’, Cap’n.” At sixteen, Billy had not yet outgrown his name; short, skinny, gangly, and grinning like a lad. “Ready for the judge?”

“There will be no judge, Bill.” Jin ran his gaze along the walls and bars of the port jail cell, searching for weakness in the structure. Out of habit. He needn’t. They would be released within hours. He had already heard it from the harbor officer the night before when the fellow delivered the rags Jin and his crew now wore in lieu of their own clothes. The April Storm’s master had lied to the port master about him and his ship.

She was mad. He would be taking a madwoman back to her respectable family in England.

Beside him Mattie expelled a great cavernous yawn. Lifting hands as big as hams, he rubbed them up and down his face and shook his heavy head, then set a glowering look on Jin.

“What’s the plan, Cap’n?”

“I am working on it.”

“Why don’t you just pays these fellas for her, Cap’n?” Little Billy scuttled toward them and gestured to the ceiling, apparently intending to indicate the coastal officials. “Take her off their hands, like?”

“You ain’t thinking straight.” Mattie slugged the lad on a bony shoulder. “That mort ain’t nobody’s