had, unasked, taken Jimmy under his wing; Gareth had seen the pair practicing knife throwing, Bister’s specialty. In terms of protecting the women in the party, they weren’t without resources.
Not that Gareth thought Arnia needed protecting. Like Mooktu, she hailed from the northwestern frontier, and like all the females of those tribes, was as lethal with blades as her menfolk, yet the cultists would be unlikely to recognize the danger Arnia posed, not until it was too late.
Learning about Dorcas, Emily’s very English maid, a tall, bustling and competent female somewhere in her late thirties, had required the application of a certain amount of self-effacing charm, but she’d eventually thawed enough to admit that she rode very poorly, and that she’d been with Emily and her family for most of Emily’s life.
Dorcas, too, was grateful for his rescue and subsequent protection of her mistress, yet she continued to view him with an underlying suspicion she did nothing to hide. As he’d been careful to suppress, and if not that then conceal all evidence of his unhelpful attraction to her charge, he wasn’t sure what lay behind Dorcas’s watchful, ready-to-be-censorious eye.
He heard a footfall-
Seeing him, she smiled and strolled his way.
He struggled to keep his answering-too revealing-smile from his face, managed to replace it with a frown. “What are you doing up at this hour?” He glanced around. “You shouldn’t be on deck-it could be dangerous.”
She tilted her head, studied him for a moment, then, smile still flirting about the corners of her rosy lips, she looked out across the waves. “It’s so peaceful and quiet, you’d hear any other vessel approaching, surely?”
She looked back at him, met his eyes.
The best he could do was humph, and lean back on the railing. “Couldn’t you sleep?”
He was being deliberately off-putting. Just having her near…but the more he replayed their earlier conversation, the more he dwelled on the soft light he’d glimpsed in her eyes, the more he was certain she was carrying a torch for MacFarlane, and he had no intention of trying to compete with that. With his friend’s ghost.
“I seem to have been sleeping too much, if truth be told. And it’s such a lovely morning.”
She settled against the railing beside him.
The warm softness of her body called to his, a siren song weakening his defenses. He told himself he should push back and move away-seize the excuse of being on guard to do a circuit of the barge.
Instead, he stayed exactly where he was, from the corner of his eyes watching the breeze playing with her hair, teasing out tendrils to lie alongside her porcelain cheeks.
After a moment, he forced his attention back to the waves. “I…gather you come from a large family.”
Emily laughed. “That’s an understatement. I have three sisters and four brothers. I’m the second youngest-only Rufus is younger than me.”
“So you’re the baby of the girls?”
“Yes, but that’s something of an advantage. We’re all very close, although of course the other three are all married and have their own households. Nevertheless, we still see each other often.” She was perfectly willing to discuss her family, as it allowed her to turn his way and ask, “What about you? Do you have brothers and sisters?”
He stiffened, straightened. “No.” He glanced down at her, then softened the single syllable with, “I was an only child.”
She noted the past tense. “Your parents…have they passed on?”
Eyes back on the waves, he nodded. “There’s no one waiting for me in England.” He shot another swift glance her way. Half smiled. “Not like you.”
“Ah, yes-there’ll be a fattened calf and all manner of celebrations when I get back.” And if matters unfolded as she hoped, he’d be there to share them. Her delighted smile as she looked out across the waves was entirely genuine. She’d had a sudden disconcerting thought that he might have someone waiting for him in England-some lady, even a fiancee-but his statement had been a blanket one. A species of relief slid through her veins, and left her almost giddy.
He was prickly and stiff, but she wasn’t going to let that deter her. According to her sisters, men-strange beasts-were often that way when they were attracted to a lady but trying to hide it. As for the rest, she’d realized that “Protective” was his middle name, at least as far as women were concerned. However, she’d yet to see any clear indication that with respect to her, that protectiveness had moved beyond the general to the specific.
But they had plenty of journey ahead of them, plenty of time for her to watch and see.
She was still at the stage of mentally ticking items off the list of characteristics her “one” should possess. Her ideal was fairly clear in her mind, but matching the reality to her list was proving more challenging than she’d expected. There were all sorts of issues one had to take into account.
But at this moment, she was content. She fully intended to work on him, on encouraging him to allow his attitude to her to grow less stilted. A moment’s consideration had her stating, “I believe I’ll take an amble about the deck.”
That brought an instant frown-as she’d expected.
“It would be safer to go back inside the main cabin.” He stepped back from the railing, frowning down at her.
She smiled sunnily back. “If you’re on watch, perhaps you should walk with me-you can view the rest of the barge as we go.” She didn’t give him a chance to refuse, but turned and started to stroll down the walkway between the cabins and the barge’s rail.
Then she turned and smiled at him over her shoulder. “Come on.”
Gareth couldn’t resist. Feeling inwardly grim, he found himself following in her wake-responding all too definitely to that alluring smile.
To his inner self she was far too attractive, and with every passing day, with each new fact he learned about her, grew only more so. She was distraction, and fixation, and potential obsession, and he knew he should back away, but…unlike the men under his command, she was elusive and difficult to manage, and-as she was demonstrating-their journey was going to make keeping his distance close to impossible.
He joined her as, holding back her waving hair, she excitedly pointed to a cormorant diving in the waves. And he wondered why, instead of feeling weighed down, his heart felt light-lighter than it had in a long, long time.
Three
His batman looked up, nodded, and continued to buff. “No sign of any of those idiot fiends.”
